Skills used by players on other players.

[GameOgre]

You're right, it is roleplaying but it is just one flavor of roleplaying. But it's, effectively, the director telling the actor "act this way..." Instead of the actor deciding how they think the character should act. Sure, sometimes the players make choices that I wouldn't choose, but that's why D&D is different from, say, a play.

I believe the social skills are there to allow the DM to be neutral when taking on the parts of all those NPCs. As a DM I don't want to have to decide if my NPCs are persuaded or deceived or intimidated by the PCs. I'd rather roll the dice instead of having to decide if my NPC would find this particular argument compelling. Because that would be the player persuading me, not the character persuading the NPC.

Do you imagine a player is going to have fun if you force him to act in a certain way, to comply with your notions of roleplaying?

Here's something to consider: don't take a high Persuade roll to mean "you persuaded the target". It just means, "You made a persuasive argument." How others react to that persuasive argument is up to them. It might be, "Yeah, Mr. Bard, I can't really find a flaw with your logic, but you always do that with your fancy college words. I'm going to dig my heels in even more just to spite you." Or literally countless other reasons why the person wasn't persuaded. (You might want to encourage your barbarian to play around with this sort of thing. Don't tell him to do something different, just ask him to...you know...roleplay his choices.)

I'm sure you've been in the situation where somebody has presented an argument in which you can't find any holes, but it still doesn't make you change your mind. Right?

Just let everybody roleplay in the way that they enjoy. If you really can't handle that, don't invite the person who has different opinions.

Well if your willing to say"Your sleight of hand roll doesn't mean you get to steal from your fellow party member but instead you perform a amazing display of sleight of hand" then yes i agree.
However if you allow the sleight of hand but disallow the persuasion then I think that's a bad bad thing.

 

[FrogReaver]

I agree with such rules. you treat the characters as equal and apply the rules equally.

This is fine by my book. All I'm saying is if you allow one character to use his skills on another pc but disallow the other pc from using his skills on him in turn...that is messed up game play.

But the fundamental premise is that the player decides what his PC does. Or more appropriately in this situation, "the player decides if there is even a possibility that his course of action could be changed".

If the player decides nothing is going to deter his PC from his set course of action then nothing can. The dice don't determine what the PC does, the player determines that. In fact, the point is that there should never have been a dice role in the first place in such a situation. Even when dealing with NPC's that already have their mind made up on what they are doing there shouldn't be a roll. There is no difference in the players and NPC's in this. The skills work the same on both of them. It's just who gets to decide whether their is the possibility their PC would do something, the DM or the player.

 

[FrogReaver]

Well if your willing to say"Your sleight of hand roll doesn't mean you get to steal from your fellow party member but instead you perform a amazing display of sleight of hand" then yes i agree.
However if you allow the sleight of hand but disallow the persuasion then I think that's a bad bad thing.

The player doesn't have to agree to be stolen from. The player does have to agree that his PC can be persuaded to do a certain thing. There is a huge difference there.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Well if your willing to say"Your sleight of hand roll doesn't mean you get to steal from your fellow party member but instead you perform a amazing display of sleight of hand" then yes i agree.
However if you allow the sleight of hand but disallow the persuasion then I think that's a bad bad thing.

Agreed.

When used on an NPC you can roll the NPC's perception to see if they notice the theft.

When used on a PC you ask the (victim) PC what happens.

EDIT: And to acknowledge FrogReaver's point, there is a difference between the two:
1) The Persuade skill is a matter of player agency, of the player deciding what his/her character thinks and believes.
2) The Sleight-of-hand ruling is just because PvP needs to be consensual.

 

[GameOgre]

But there is uncertainty about hiding, about attacking, about swimming, about arm wresling, about grappling.

Once the Player of the Barbarian decides his PC already has his mind made up about a particular course of action then there is no uncertainty there. Let me pose this question to you. Suppose their is an NPC Barbarian loves his brother. Can the Bard use a simple persuasion check to persuade him to kill his brother? I think everyone here agrees that no check should even be asked for in that scenario. The outcome of that attempted persuasion is that it never works.

So then if that Barbarian is a PC who decides how much he loves his brother and if he will kill him? The player of course. Should a Bard be able to persuade him to kill his brother? Just like with the NPC version, if the player really loves his brother and would never kill him then he could never be persuaded of such. There should never be a check made if someone tries to persuade him of that.

So where does the decision power for whether a PC would ever do something or not? It comes from the player. Ultimately this means PC vs PC that some skills work and some skills don't. But you need to understand why that is. It's because players determine the amount of certainty or uncertainty in the things their PC's do.

But you are cherry picking your questions. Persuasion isn't a 100% thing. You don't either fail and get turned into a slave or pass and it was nothing. In the case of the barbarian and his brother if the barbarian failed his check and was persuaded then maybe he sees the fellow taking about killing his brother as a good person who his brother wronged perhaps unknowingly and then THAT PLAYER would decide to confront his brother about the other player or try and get the two of them together to work things out. He would help that player AND HIS BROTHER in the best way that player thought the CHARACTER would do it.

 

[Bawylie]

Nothing. But social skills are what we are discussing here.

The way I handle PvP at my table(s)...and trying to Persuade or Intimidate another player is very much PvP...is that the target of an attack gets to narrate the result, with no dice rolling.

So if player A attacks player B with a sword, player B simply gets to describe what happens. And I do have players who will willingly say, "Ok, I get hit and take X damage..." Others will say, "I duck and the sword whistles over my head." Sometimes they'll attack back, sometimes they'll just keep dodging until the attacker figures out that in my game it takes two to tango. (Thanks to either [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] or [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION], I can't remember which, for introducing me to this approach.)

And, yeah, since Persuade is really an attack on another character, so the target gets to decide what happens.

That is my favorite approach to player-on-player action. While it does sidestep the game system and the usual task resolution (roll a d20, etc.), the tradeoff is voluntaryism and consent. Someone disinterested in engaging in that way can opt out. Someone interested in engaging in that way can opt in and build on what’s happening.

I can’t even tell you how much shenanigans you skip in a kids/young adults game when you do pvp this way.

 

[FrogReaver]

But you are cherry picking your questions. Persuasion isn't a 100% thing. You don't either fail and get turned into a slave or pass and it was nothing. In the case of the barbarian and his brother if the barbarian failed his check and was persuaded then maybe he sees the fellow taking about killing his brother as a good person who his brother wronged perhaps unknowingly and then THAT PLAYER would decide to confront his brother about the other player or try and get the two of them together to work things out. He would help that player AND HIS BROTHER in the best way that player thought the CHARACTER would do it.

No sir. The bard was attempting to persuade the barbarian to kill his brother. If the barbarian fails the check should he kill his brother? Or should there not be a check at all?

You see if a successful persusastion check to kill his brother means the barbarian still doesn't want to kill his brother then I'm not sure what your persuasion checks are really for?

 

[Guest 6801328]

But you are cherry picking your questions. Persuasion isn't a 100% thing. You don't either fail and get turned into a slave or pass and it was nothing. In the case of the barbarian and his brother if the barbarian failed his check and was persuaded then maybe he sees the fellow taking about killing his brother as a good person who his brother wronged perhaps unknowingly and then THAT PLAYER would decide to confront his brother about the other player or try and get the two of them together to work things out. He would help that player AND HIS BROTHER in the best way that player thought the CHARACTER would do it.

You say "he would" as if there's an objectively deterministic outcome here.

That's where I think proponents of this sort of roleplaying (@Maxperson, @SAelorn, are you listening?) often go wrong. They seem to think there is a single best, most probable way that people would respond to certain stimulae, and that acting out this prescribed path is "roleplaying".

But as we all know, people act in all kinds of unpredictable, improbable, irrational ways.

I think roleplaying is deciding what you want your character to do and then finding a great narrative to support it. In my experience most players, once they understand this, will pick courses of action that contribute to the narrative. Personally, I want to be surprised by other players, both in what they choose to do and how they make it fit their character. A wood elf who always acts like a stereotypical wood elf is...uninteresting?

Sure, some people will use it as an excuse to pick the optimal action every time. But...WTF?...do you think you're going to bludgeon those people into playing the game your way? Better to lead by example and wait for them to see how much more fun it is.

 

[GameOgre]

You say "he would" as if there's an objectively deterministic outcome here.

That's where I think proponents of this sort of roleplaying (@Maxperson, @SAelorn, are you listening?) often go wrong. They seem to think there is a single best, most probable way that people would respond to certain stimulae, and that acting out this prescribed path is "roleplaying".

But as we all know, people act in all kinds of unpredictable, improbable, irrational ways.

I think roleplaying is deciding what you want your character to do and then finding a great narrative to support it. In my experience most players, once they understand this, will pick courses of action that contribute to the narrative. Personally, I want to be surprised by other players, both in what they choose to do and how they make it fit their character. A wood elf who always acts like a stereotypical wood elf is...uninteresting?

Sure, some people will use it as an excuse to pick the optimal action every time. But...WTF?...do you think you're going to bludgeon those people into playing the game your way? Better to lead by example and wait for them to see how much more fun it is.

So here is a question for you guys who disagree with my view.

If you were DMing a game that allowed interparty conflict and one character built a pure combat oriented character and the other built a social character and the combat character got it into his head to attack the social one and the social one was trying to persuade him not to kill him.

How would you DM this? You would let the combat character use all of his abilities on the social one and disallow the social one from using his to defend himself?

 

[iserith]

This admits the possibility of an argument that successful skill use is like magical compulsion.

Consider Dexterity (Stealth) skill use. PC Alice satisfies the requirements for a hide check and wants to hide from PC Barbie. She rolls 16 against Barbie's 13 passive Wisdom (Perception). According to the game mechanics, she is hidden. Barbie can't see her and doesn't know where she is. Clearly if that is admitted to be true, then it becomes harder to see why a similar Contest, Alice's Charisma (Persuasion) against Barbie's Wisdom (Insight) might not work?

Per the rules, a player determines how his or her character thinks, acts, and talks. The player plays the game by describing what he or she wants to do. The DM then adjudicates and narrates. In your example, Barbie's player is still able to determine how his or her character thinks, acts, and talks despite Alice being hidden.

I will add that an ability check is a mechanic used to resolve uncertainty as to the outcome of a fictional action. It does nothing more than that. It's not a tangible thing in the context of the game world that could have an impact on anything. So, a "successful skill use" is in actuality an ability check that is simply resolving uncertainty as to the action the player (in this case) described as wanting to do. If there is no uncertainty, then there is no ability check. And because the player determines how his or her character thinks, acts, and talks there is never any uncertainty as to the result and therefore no ability check.

One might prefer then to argue that magical compulsion means only spells. Say we don't mind a bit of PvP and Alice stabs Barbie with a poisoned dagger? Dealing enough damage to Barbie, who fails her save, to knock her to "dying". If those mechanics work between the characters - and there is no reason at all in the game mechanics to suppose they would not - and Alice knocked Barbie to "dying". Didn't she just change how Barbie acts, without casting a spell?

I think this line of reasoning ends up in a place where, for whatever reason, we need to make a special exception for "social skills". The OP called attention to that right off the bat. For some reason, we're fine with other skills and features operating as written between characters even if they aren't spells. Yet, when it comes to social skills, we want to put up a shield.

I think the disconnect is in treating "skills" as if they are some kind of power a player can activate. They aren't. A player describes his or her character as making a case to the other character (for example). The player of that character determines what his or her character thinks, does, and says about that. There is no uncertainty and therefore no ability check.

For me, the test of good roleplaying is your character acting as they, not you, would act. The Barbarian player would have added to the enjoyment of the group by taking and enhancing the narrative thread created by the Face player.

There were all sorts of problems with how the players chose to interact with each other here, and "using skills" on each other wasn't a good solution, nor supported by the rules of the game. The barbarian's player is the only person at the table who can decide what the barbarian will do. If I were the barbarian's player, I would have employed the improvisational technique of "Yes, and..." to figure out a way that I could accept the face's argument. I'd also be searching my personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws for a way do this and fish for Inspiration. If, for example, one of my personality traits is "I watch over my friends as if they were a litter of newborn pups...", I could say "Okay, I'll go with you to help the villagers, but only because I have to protect you pups from your own good intentions." Ding - Inspiration.