Celebrim
Legend
I allow it to be very powerful.
Ok, not that powerful. PC's are immune, and frankly to try to force players to let you play their character is so dysfunctional that I would speak to this player privately and tell them if they don't stop they are out of the group.
They could certainly try this in my game and I'd let them roll the check, but the difficulty I would assign to the check would be absurdly high. I take into account three things when assigning DC to a persuade check. First, the relationship of the target to the PC. Secondly, the risk or cost involved of the request with respect to the target. And thirdly, the extent to which the request violates what the NPC naturally wants to do and believes. In this case my assumption would be that the guard doesn't know the PC's and even has some small animosity to them. Second, that the guard is being asked to risk death on their behalf with little to no upside. And thirdly, that the guard is being asked to violate their own sense of honor and feelings of goodwill toward their king. As a result, I would assign a DC for this persuade check probably at minimum in the low 30's. So if you had like a +12 on the check and rolled a 20, then I would indeed allow you to persuade the guard to do that.
Again, they are basically unknown to the priestess who will as a priestess probably rightly perceive herself as higher rank than the PC, they are asking the priestess to make a great sacrifice on their behalf with only a rather slight reward, and they are asking the priestess to violate their most sacred sense of honor and most cherished beliefs. This is actually probably a more difficult check than the first one, and I'd assign a DC around 36 or higher for this check. I suspect in 5e that such a DC would make this check basically impossible, but even in earlier editions you'd need a very high bonus and a very good roll.
No, that is sanity. It's fine to have a very high level character be supernaturally persuasive and I won't just say "no" to a character that really has superhuman persuasive ability. But even superhuman persuasive ability has its limits. If you are trying to convince a dragon which thinks of you only as food, to risk its life in violation of its most deeply held beliefs, you better have godlike persuasive ability because the DC of that stunt is going to be around 50. And even that value assumes that I've made tweaks to magic and magic items that were balanced on the assumption that the DM would just say no, so that they no longer give large and easy bonuses to skills that I'm going to treat as actually valuable.
Rechecks would be allowed if suitably earned at a later point, but remember that all of these requests which violate the target's beliefs would likely engender animosity in the target so that the target is now more hostile to them than before. So essentially the DC's would only be getting higher. The above priestess now considers the would be seducer a scoundrel with base morals and evil intent. So unless she was nearly persuaded the first time, chances are the DC is now 41. And if she was nearly persuaded the first time and her wisdom is high, which she's a priestess it probably is, she'd simply recognize the threat involved her and refuse to see the PC in the future.
If the player argues this with you, you have a simple solution: what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Introduce a high charisma NPC and simply start controlling the PC as a puppet, overriding all the players wishes. Do not allow the player to play their own character using the very rules that they are trying to apply to others until such time that they either storm away from the table (and good riddance) or they concede that you are in fact the DM and they were in fact being ridiculous.
Now that sanity is restored, let's address how the player can play in a way that they get what they want - a character that can talk their way out of anything - without being abusive and ridiculous. And the answer is basically, "Good roleplay." And by that I don't mean simply that the player is themselves charismatic. I mean that the player addresses the weaknesses of their persuasion arguments by intelligently altering the terms of the deal and engages in what amounts to good strategy.
In the case of the guard, through extended RP and multiple skill checks, find a guard that isn't honorable and doesn't actually like the king, and then make friends with that guard, and then offer the guard some sort of tangible reward and means of helping the players without getting caught. If you can do that, then the circumstances of the persuasion check changes. The guard likes you, the guard isn't violating their own beliefs, and the guard while still taking a big risk now perceives that there is a reward that makes that chance more compelling. Same request, but because of the changed circumstances I might lower the DC of the persuasion check to a mere 18 or so - a hurdle any superhumanly charismatic bard ought to be able to leap.
You want to seduce a priestess of marital fidelity? First become friends with that priestess without raising her suspicions regarding your ultimate intentions which is going to take a prolonged series of role play and skill checks. Then at the same time become someone that the priestess admires and perceives as having great social rank - you are a famous hero, you are well celebrated within her cult as a good man, you have been honored by the king with medals and titles, and so forth. Then ideally, marry the priestess so that she's no longer violating her own deeply held beliefs in order to get the reward you are promising her, and no longer risking the inevitable wrath of her deity when she does so (and for that matter, you aren't either!). Now as the beloved husband, the request you are making with your persuade check is almost trivially easy, and only the most inept sort of request of that sort is going to fail. But even if you do only some of that and your intentions were never honorable, you might just with good strategy maybe get the DC down low enough that with a good check she'd forget her own good sense so that at least the seduction is believable if this is turned into a story.
Ok, not that powerful. PC's are immune, and frankly to try to force players to let you play their character is so dysfunctional that I would speak to this player privately and tell them if they don't stop they are out of the group.
They could certainly try this in my game and I'd let them roll the check, but the difficulty I would assign to the check would be absurdly high. I take into account three things when assigning DC to a persuade check. First, the relationship of the target to the PC. Secondly, the risk or cost involved of the request with respect to the target. And thirdly, the extent to which the request violates what the NPC naturally wants to do and believes. In this case my assumption would be that the guard doesn't know the PC's and even has some small animosity to them. Second, that the guard is being asked to risk death on their behalf with little to no upside. And thirdly, that the guard is being asked to violate their own sense of honor and feelings of goodwill toward their king. As a result, I would assign a DC for this persuade check probably at minimum in the low 30's. So if you had like a +12 on the check and rolled a 20, then I would indeed allow you to persuade the guard to do that.
Again, they are basically unknown to the priestess who will as a priestess probably rightly perceive herself as higher rank than the PC, they are asking the priestess to make a great sacrifice on their behalf with only a rather slight reward, and they are asking the priestess to violate their most sacred sense of honor and most cherished beliefs. This is actually probably a more difficult check than the first one, and I'd assign a DC around 36 or higher for this check. I suspect in 5e that such a DC would make this check basically impossible, but even in earlier editions you'd need a very high bonus and a very good roll.
No, that is sanity. It's fine to have a very high level character be supernaturally persuasive and I won't just say "no" to a character that really has superhuman persuasive ability. But even superhuman persuasive ability has its limits. If you are trying to convince a dragon which thinks of you only as food, to risk its life in violation of its most deeply held beliefs, you better have godlike persuasive ability because the DC of that stunt is going to be around 50. And even that value assumes that I've made tweaks to magic and magic items that were balanced on the assumption that the DM would just say no, so that they no longer give large and easy bonuses to skills that I'm going to treat as actually valuable.
Rechecks would be allowed if suitably earned at a later point, but remember that all of these requests which violate the target's beliefs would likely engender animosity in the target so that the target is now more hostile to them than before. So essentially the DC's would only be getting higher. The above priestess now considers the would be seducer a scoundrel with base morals and evil intent. So unless she was nearly persuaded the first time, chances are the DC is now 41. And if she was nearly persuaded the first time and her wisdom is high, which she's a priestess it probably is, she'd simply recognize the threat involved her and refuse to see the PC in the future.
If the player argues this with you, you have a simple solution: what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Introduce a high charisma NPC and simply start controlling the PC as a puppet, overriding all the players wishes. Do not allow the player to play their own character using the very rules that they are trying to apply to others until such time that they either storm away from the table (and good riddance) or they concede that you are in fact the DM and they were in fact being ridiculous.
Now that sanity is restored, let's address how the player can play in a way that they get what they want - a character that can talk their way out of anything - without being abusive and ridiculous. And the answer is basically, "Good roleplay." And by that I don't mean simply that the player is themselves charismatic. I mean that the player addresses the weaknesses of their persuasion arguments by intelligently altering the terms of the deal and engages in what amounts to good strategy.
In the case of the guard, through extended RP and multiple skill checks, find a guard that isn't honorable and doesn't actually like the king, and then make friends with that guard, and then offer the guard some sort of tangible reward and means of helping the players without getting caught. If you can do that, then the circumstances of the persuasion check changes. The guard likes you, the guard isn't violating their own beliefs, and the guard while still taking a big risk now perceives that there is a reward that makes that chance more compelling. Same request, but because of the changed circumstances I might lower the DC of the persuasion check to a mere 18 or so - a hurdle any superhumanly charismatic bard ought to be able to leap.
You want to seduce a priestess of marital fidelity? First become friends with that priestess without raising her suspicions regarding your ultimate intentions which is going to take a prolonged series of role play and skill checks. Then at the same time become someone that the priestess admires and perceives as having great social rank - you are a famous hero, you are well celebrated within her cult as a good man, you have been honored by the king with medals and titles, and so forth. Then ideally, marry the priestess so that she's no longer violating her own deeply held beliefs in order to get the reward you are promising her, and no longer risking the inevitable wrath of her deity when she does so (and for that matter, you aren't either!). Now as the beloved husband, the request you are making with your persuade check is almost trivially easy, and only the most inept sort of request of that sort is going to fail. But even if you do only some of that and your intentions were never honorable, you might just with good strategy maybe get the DC down low enough that with a good check she'd forget her own good sense so that at least the seduction is believable if this is turned into a story.
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