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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8447159" data-attributes="member: 16814">This feels like special pleading.&nbsp; We're looking at, what, 9-11 pages defining how social interactions work in 5e, some with pretty exacting specificity some being pretty vague.&nbsp; However, when it comes to convincing the shopkeeper to give you a better price while shopping, 5e defines this interaction and mechanizes it pretty effectively.&nbsp; You have a shopkeeper NPC, you assign them BIFTs and an initial attitude towards the player which will be friendly, indifferent, or hostile (and the scope of actions from the NPC is pretty well laid out here).&nbsp; Then the players can engage in conversation with the NPC, and make checks with clear processes to improve attitude or discover BIFTs, which can be spent for advantage on improving attitude or the final CHA check.&nbsp; Then there's the final CHA check to see if the results were obtained, with a DC set by way of current attitude and what's being asked.&nbsp; This is a pretty robust and well mechanized process.&nbsp; It doesn't look at all like the freeform play you were characterizing.Now take a game like Blades in the Dark, which is often held up as an example of a game that strongly mechanizes social encounters and is quite often decried for it.&nbsp; There are fewer pages of rules for social interactions.&nbsp; Matter of fact, the rules to use are the same ones for any action in the game, with a quick list and blurb for the various social actions (which are pretty wide open and often interchangeable) -- less than what 5e has to define the proficiencies, even.&nbsp; Yet, this gets held up as too much system for social challenges quite often, with distaste for this often stated.&nbsp; 5e has more than this, but gets a pass because you can just ignore it.There's a double standard at play here.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 8447159, member: 16814"] This feels like special pleading. We're looking at, what, 9-11 pages defining how social interactions work in 5e, some with pretty exacting specificity some being pretty vague. However, when it comes to convincing the shopkeeper to give you a better price while shopping, 5e defines this interaction and mechanizes it pretty effectively. You have a shopkeeper NPC, you assign them BIFTs and an initial attitude towards the player which will be friendly, indifferent, or hostile (and the scope of actions from the NPC is pretty well laid out here). Then the players can engage in conversation with the NPC, and make checks with clear processes to improve attitude or discover BIFTs, which can be spent for advantage on improving attitude or the final CHA check. Then there's the final CHA check to see if the results were obtained, with a DC set by way of current attitude and what's being asked. This is a pretty robust and well mechanized process. It doesn't look at all like the freeform play you were characterizing. Now take a game like Blades in the Dark, which is often held up as an example of a game that strongly mechanizes social encounters and is quite often decried for it. There are fewer pages of rules for social interactions. Matter of fact, the rules to use are the same ones for any action in the game, with a quick list and blurb for the various social actions (which are pretty wide open and often interchangeable) -- less than what 5e has to define the proficiencies, even. Yet, this gets held up as too much system for social challenges quite often, with distaste for this often stated. 5e has more than this, but gets a pass because you can just ignore it. There's a double standard at play here. [/QUOTE]

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