Skills used by players on other players.

[Ovinomancer]

I realize you are very confident on your stance and that trying to bring enlightenment to the unenlightened but if you stopped for just a moment and actually considered his posts as not wrong but from a different correct viewpoint you might actually see that point of view(not agree with it perhaps or want to play that way but at least see that his view isn't based on fallacy but a different view on the rules and spirit of the game).

I do no such thing. I've been questioned as to how I might rule on a topic and have explained my method and the reasoning behind it. In return, it's been ignored and/or misrepresented while being maligned. I'm peeved, not preaching.

What it all boils down to for the Skills are rolled verse other players crowd is role playing.

No, it isn't. My players role play just fine. If you play Blades in the Dark, where players have even more ability to declare fictional states, roleplaying still exists. What's below is a very idiosyncratic definition of role playing. It's not standard, although it's got a non-negligible following. You're absolutely welcome to do it, but when you ask a board if what you did is okay by the rules and your dismissal of answers is because of your individual opinion of roleplaying -- well, the fault in not getting approval for your ideas is on you.

See there just are not any/many rules on role playing. Yes I think maybe somewhere there might be a paragraph about you are supposed to try and actually play your character as not you but instead as a different person and try and keep that personality as different than yours. Like being a actor. Actors do not play a character how THEY want that character to behave but instead how that CHARACTER would react. If the actor is anti-gun in political views the pro-gun character doesn't suddenly change views because he is being played by that particular actor.

There is no such paragraph in the 5e rules.

In D&D there is little to help a player do this. Almost nothing.

This is because 5e does not endorse this definition of roleplaying. You can use 5e with that definition -- there's nothing to stop you, but 5e does not endorse nor is it built to sustain that definition of roleplaying. Again, your definition of roleplaying is idiosyncratic.

So a great many players do not do this. They run those characters as just basically themselves. Oh sure they might realize and have to deal with different physical capabilities because the game mechanics make them but mental ones? There aren't many at all. A save mod for certain things ect is about it. So it's no wonder they do not think very much about those stats at all. Why not dump your lowest scores into those slots as there is very little drawback! In the vast majority of games they can have a 6 int and still be the brain of the group! Still come up with all the plans and be the one to figure out all the riddles and puzzles ect... It's a game like Poker man, just chill out and lets hack some stuff.

And you know what? if that's what your table wants to do and is having a blast doing then .....there is nothing wrong with that.

Different strokes for different folks.

These people are roleplaying, though. Your narrow definition that supports you being right isn't the actual definition of roleplaying. It fits inside that definition, but it's not the entirety of it. What you describe above as not roleplaying is still actually roleplaying.

At my table however, I would like players to not be themselves playing a pen and paper video game. I would rather them role play there characters and that means doing NOT what their players would do but what there characters would do. If one of my players created a extremely foolish pampered dandy PC and wanted to play out his slowly changing over time to a battle hardened veteran soldier, then at 2nd level when the bard of the party tried to con him into doing something foolish and using the Dandies ego to do so i would expect that player to role play that out. Probably with a persuasion roll contested by insight and if that Dandy failed the roll I would hope the Dandy would be role played appropriately.

This is one of the best things about playing rpg's.

It isn't about the DM telling anyone what they think. It isn't one player trying to get over on another. It's role playing.

Not really, but I believe you believe that.

Now as I said. If you and your group don't have fun doing that and do things totally differently then I'm fine with that. You do YOU! I don't say that while secretly looking down on your point of view. I get it. Your all good man.

Well, I also use the rules and the play framework explicitly promoted by the 5e rules, so, there that as well.

I have played this dang game for 41 years this Christmas. I know from experience there are a VAST many ways to play the game. None of them wrong.(ok thats a lie, I have seen a few that are wrong but only because they were unfun for the people playing or predatory towards some of there members, but other than those few cases none of them wrong).

You, you've played a version of D&D for that long maybe, and this is part of the problem. You've an ingrained expectation that you haven't challenged. You're okay with magic missile having a different set of rules, or with concentration being a new spellcasting mechanics, but you can't let go of previous edition thinking to consider how the game fundamentally uses a different paradigm of play.

I guess my mistake when I got frustrated the other night and came to post this thread was not aiming it at one particular set of gamer.

As a topic for discussion to the entire play style arena at large of course it was bound to draw ire and fire from styles that just do not agree with the entire premise of my style(of the moment).

That style currently appreciates(at times) inter-party conflict on a wide range of levels as long as those arise from role playing reasons with an eye kept strongly on what is fun for all parties.

Here's something fun -- at no point have I made my arguments from the point of view that PVP wasn't allowed, or with the table rule that the target decides. I've stuck entirely to the rules as presented in the front of the PHB -- dice are only used to decide uncertainty and that players get to say what their characters think. If someone tries to persuade a PC, the player decides what that character thinks so there's no uncertainty -- no roll is made. It's that simple and it follows the PHB procedure. It doesn't care about how you define roleplaying, it doesn't care what you'd do if it was a grapple and not a persuasion check -- it applies the rules as presented.

In my original post I should have made all this more clear and also mentioned motivation. At the time the player at issue was not a strong role player(but he is coming along slowly in that direction) who suddenly refused to take another players role playing in character into account and refused to role play the fictional character HE had built but instead just wanted to go hack stuff and ignore the role playing portion of the game.He also had a bad week and was a very moody player at the game table as sometimes happens to us all.

I believe he did take the other player's roleplaying into account -- he expressly denied the request to assist the villagers. What you mean is that he didn't accept that the other PC had mystical convincing skills that override his desires for what his character does. Ability scores don't come into this, unless you have experience trying to get shy people to agree with you. Here's a hint, they may be shy, which means they don't speak up, but that doesn't mean they're going to agree with you or follow you. Same with intelligence -- sometimes you're too dumb to be convinced (I have a dog like this). What you did was interject what YOU thought his character should do -- and we know this because you didn't ask the barbarian to make a persuasion check against the bard to convince the bard to go dungeoning but the other way around -- and then got surprised when the player didn't agree with your meddling with his character. Now, you've decided that it's your definition of roleplaying that's right and that trumps what the rules say. I suppose that's good, you get to dismiss everything everyone says that doesn't affirm your position as they're not roleplaying. Trite, not original, but I suppose effective. I shan't return the favor -- what you do is also roleplaying, even if it's very, very narrow, it fits inside the big box.

 

[Ovinomancer]

And, as I noted previously, it's further complicated because we're entangling two issues: PvP and agency.

Honestly I think this whole debate would be more clear if we stuck with a scenario where an NPC was trying to persuade a PC. The most important parts of the debate would still be there, without PvP clouding the issue.

Earlier somebody said something about @Blue also using house rules, and he responded that "not allowing PvP is a house rule" or something like that. But I think the person meant how he is using skills in general. (Funny how I can't remember now if I said something or it was [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] or [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]....)

I only play a 5 CHA Demosthenes on the internet, but I guess I got that skill check in!

 

[clearstream]

This is the fundamental point of differentiation between the way you play and the way us folks on the other side of the argument play. In our play style, a player cannot ask to make a check.

For me that isn't a point of differentiation: the players decide what they want their characters to do, and as part of narrating the outcome using the rules, the DM decides if a check should be made. Informally, a player could say "I'd like to make a Persuade check against" which is simply shorthand for describing that they want to persuade someone: the DM still decides if a check should be made.

There's been some focus on "uncertain": for me the honest answer to that in regard to a skill is that it's uncertain if the DM decides it is uncertain. We could no doubt enumerate our reasons why we do/don't believe situation X is uncertain. Wargamers sometimes say that the dice represent the myriad of factors that the rules can't simulate. Rosewater speaks about the value of randomness in creating surprise... and I often use it for tension in my games. Garfield discusses uncertainty for increasing variety, protecting egos, broadening audiences; and also player skill in dealing with randomness. When I think of real life, it's not like a movie: if I rewound ten minutes of real life, things could turn out differently on the second run through. D&D is like that, too: maybe everything should be treated as containing some inherent uncertainty.

That's why I think the honest answer is, it's uncertain if the DM decides it is. Even if that is through the DM appointing the players to decide whether or not it's uncertain. Uncertainty is a sliding scale, because in speaking of uncertain some good questions are - how uncertain, and what am I uncertain about? Whoever decides the odds and the stakes plays a big role in deciding the meaning of uncertainty. For groups like those I've played with, that is the DM, although the players can certainly have their characters do things that will change the odds or up the stakes!

 

[Ovinomancer]

For me that isn't a point of differentiation: the players decide what they want their characters to do, and as part of narrating the outcome using the rules, the DM decides if a check should be made. Informally, a player could say "I'd like to make a Persuade check against" which is simply shorthand for describing that they want to persuade someone: the DM still decides if a check should be made.

There's been some focus on "uncertain": for me the honest answer to that in regard to a skill is that it's uncertain if the DM decides it is uncertain. We could no doubt enumerate our reasons why we do/don't believe situation X is uncertain. Wargamers sometimes say that the dice represent the myriad of factors that the rules can't simulate. Rosewater speaks about the value of randomness in creating surprise... and I often use it for tension in my games. Garfield discusses uncertainty for increasing variety, protecting egos, broadening audiences; and also player skill in dealing with randomness. When I think of real life, it's not like a movie: if I rewound ten minutes of real life, things could turn out differently on the second run through. D&D is like that, too: maybe everything should be treated as containing some inherent uncertainty.

That's why I think the honest answer is, it's uncertain if the DM decides it is. Even if that is through the DM appointing the players to decide whether or not it's uncertain. Uncertainty is a sliding scale, because in speaking of uncertain some good questions are - how uncertain, and what am I uncertain about? Whoever decides the odds and the stakes plays a big role in deciding the meaning of uncertainty. For groups like those I've played with, that is the DM, although the players can certainly have their characters do things that will change the odds or up the stakes!

The DM does not have authority over what a PC thinks -- that is reserved for the player, and, frankly, is just about the only thing that's absolutely the players' but there's still mechanics that override that. In the case of what a PC thinks, it's never uncertain (barring some magic), so there's never a need to roll: the PC thinks what the player says. The DM has absolutely zero say that this is uncertain.

 

[Ratskinner]

There seems to be an assumption here that a score of 8 means "really bad at everything related to that stat".

So should a character with 12 Charisma be portrayed as a silver-tongued, fast-talking charmer? Because 12 is exactly as far above the "average" score as 8 is below it.

How about the 12 Intelligence character? Always solving problems through analysis and logic?

Really an 8 means "very slightly (-1 on a d20, or 5%, to be specific) worse at something than average".

But there are a lot of people here who seem to think that a "dump stat" of 8 means your feebleness in that area is a defining characteristic of the character.

If he rolls it, that's fine, part of the game. If the player skips the roll by fast talking the DM...not so fine. The assessment you're objecting to comes from the players who would attempt the scenario I described, who often (IME) view an penalty as being something to desperately avoid rolling.

Also to quibble, that "slightly worse than average" only applies to the raw stat, not proficiency/expertise. Even at level one, a tweaked persuader would likely have a +3 (Cha) +4 Expertise for a total of +7. That is your silver-tongued charmer, not somebody who simply has a 12 Cha.

Now, can the 8 Cha, also take that? Sure, but I don't see that that often, if ever. (Just like I don't see very many Str 8 Great Weapon Fighters) So your 8 Cha guy is slightly awkward and has only the "natural 20" chance to succeed at DC 20 or better checks.

Honestly though, given that the average 4d6 drop the lowest roll is 12, and the PCs are so broadly competent...yeah, having a penalty to something is a kind of defining characteristic. Maybe not as mathematically damning as players often react to, but nonetheless, compared to the usual +5 or better...

 

[ccs]

Protection from what?

I don't run games where the PCs are immune to something simply because they're PCs.

"Persuade" isn't an offensive spell.

Never claimed it was.

 

[Ovinomancer]

If he rolls it, that's fine, part of the game. If the player skips the roll by fast talking the DM...not so fine. The assessment you're objecting to comes from the players who would attempt the scenario I described, who often (IME) view an penalty as being something to desperately avoid rolling.

Also to quibble, that "slightly worse than average" only applies to the raw stat, not proficiency/expertise. Even at level one, a tweaked persuader would likely have a +3 (Cha) +4 Expertise for a total of +7. That is your silver-tongued charmer, not somebody who simply has a 12 Cha.

Now, can the 8 Cha, also take that? Sure, but I don't see that that often, if ever. (Just like I don't see very many Str 8 Great Weapon Fighters) So your 8 Cha guy is slightly awkward and has only the "natural 20" chance to succeed at DC 20 or better checks.

Honestly though, given that the average 4d6 drop the lowest roll is 12, and the PCs are so broadly competent...yeah, having a penalty to something is a kind of defining characteristic. Maybe not as mathematically damning as players often react to, but nonetheless, compared to the usual +5 or better...

Again, though, this only applies to persuades directed at PCs -- who's thoughts, by the rules, are the sole authority (barring magic) of the player. A high CHA, Persuade proficient PC will still excel at the task vs non-PCs, which, let's be honest, is the vast majority of any possible uses.

Having NPCs persuade PCs, though, really reeks of DM control -- the DM establishes the NPC bonus, establishes the scene, and established the attempt, then forces a result through a die roll? In fairness, I used to agree with this until I realized that it was a thin rationalization for me, as DM, pushing an agenda on the players through using my superior power over the fiction. I don't do this, although I will say things like "[the NPC] is silver-tongued and makes an excellent argument." That's window-dressing, the players have the ability to do what they want with that.

 

[Aiden_Keller_]

I would say that you can "USE" the roll like you did...but that the other players do not have to 100% comply...

 

[Guest 6801328]

Yeah, well, casuals been working just fine for myself & everyone I've ever played with* for nearly 40 years. So I'm not inclined to believe we're in any great danger. As such I'll not be changing how I DM.
(*A very large #, including some true s)

You don't have to change. That's one of the great things about D&D.

However, I would question your claim that casual language hasn't affected your play. You also posted this:

Yes.
In games I run just being a PC offers you no particular protection.
PCs & NPCs can effect each other,
NPCs can effect other NPCs,
And PCs can effect other PCs.

Which, to me, suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of what skills in 5e are and how they work. The sort of misunderstanding to which the language "I'll use skill X against so-and-so" promulgates.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't run games where the PCs are immune to something simply because they're PCs.






Never claimed it was.

To go with this, what you're explicitly saying is "it is uncertain whether or not your PC agrees with this NPC, so the NPC will roll CHA+persuasion and you roll...," huh, you know, the PHB doesn't say what Persuasion is contested by. The DMG talks only in terms of DCs. So, do you set a DC for the PC that the NPC rolls against, or what?

This ignores, of course, the fact that you, as DM, are declaring that what the PC thinks is uncertain and subject to rolls anyway.