Smart vs. Intelligence and Combatless Roleplaying Sessions

[Lonely Tylenol]

How is it untrue? Techincally if you follow when you are suppose to institute skill checks and ability checks you would be checking every five minutes. How else do you explain using a strength check at one door but not another when they are both closed doors? Easy because as DMs, we choose when we are going to do checks and when we arent. If we can deem it a bonafide obstacle for the pc, then we'll ask for a check.

...

Performing routine tasks in normal situations is generally so easy that no check is required.

So there's a rule covering that. Routine tasks. Normal situations. No strength check to lift the spoon to your mouth. No dexterity check to get it in.

 

[fusangite]

Voadam, I'm curious: if the mechanics don't fit with your style of play, why not change them so the two are congruent or pick a game system whose mechanics don't conflict? There is no point in having the rules needlessly conflict with the game you are playing when it is relatively simple to eliminate the conflict.

It doesn't seem to me that anything is gained by not developing house rules that maintain an agreement between rules and playstyle. To do otherwise is just sloppiness.

On another note,

Hey Mallus, I think you're the only person I agree with on this thread. Keep up the sane posts!

 

[fusangite]

If i was to apply this to real life, ai know a lot of people whom speak very well and can be very diplomatic, but they come across the wrong way to people (my boss for instance). I'd say her charisma is a 6 despite the fact that she is very elequoent with her speech

That's me IRL. That's why I run NPC interactions with the verbal component played-out and the non-verbal (ie. body language, tone) represented by the dice rolls. It seems to provide the best of both worlds.

 

[ThirdWizard]

D&D isn't "anything you can imagine is possible." I can imagine an archmage teleporting about the planes. I can imagine a jedi knight with a light saber. I don't expect to be able to play either in a 1st level D&D game.

You're arguing with yourself here. Noone is saying that you should be able to play a genius diplomat at 1st level except you, because your rules support that style of play if there is no difference in a PC with 0 ranks in Diplomacy and another with 23 ranks in Diplomacy.

 

[Voadam]

That's a fair analogy, but it still doesn't directly answer my question. Leaders and exceptionally charismatic individuals make for a flavorful addition to a plotline. Do you include these types of characters in your game world? If so, how? Are they limited to NPCs if the players can't achieve that level? If they are NPCs, do you play them out yourself, or are they limited to "off camera" scenes?

Your question, if I understand you right, is why social but not physical for player interaction vs mechanical resolution.

I prefer player over character control of the character for mental and social things.

I prefer first person immersion over mechanical player/character difference for roleplaying (playing the role, acting). I prefer having players roleplay their characters instead of control a character.

Physical stuff could be done out as a NERO style LARP. Or it could be done out as a purely abstract task resolution system (do this physical task to resolve this individual game action). However unless you are playing in a full environment, LARPing that way does not support character immersion or portraying the fantasy world. A single DM cannot LARP a group of individual monsters. There are environment things that cannot be really done out well with live action (flying monsters for example).

The difference between the two is that physical stuff in a tabletop game is abstracted because while you are playing tabletop you cannot do the physical stuff.

Choices, not shoulds.

Or, let me switch questions here. How does the Leadership feat work in your games? Is it off limits to PCs? If they do have access to it, do they automatically gain their cohorts/followers, or do they need to RP out the exchanges with them? If they don't RP it out, why does that mechanic work as is but not other mechanics that depend on the character's charisma? I'm asking because I am still trying to understand the advantages of a RP-only resolution mechanism...

Well since you ask, one player has sought out leadership. The party paladin is interested in the dragon leadership one from draconomicon so he can have a dragon mount. He talked to me about it and I told him I would present in game an opportunity for him to acquire one but it would involve a great quest. He is 16th level now and will not gain a feat for another 2 levels. Some dragon interactions have led to him agreeing to quest to prove his worthiness and I expect good story and roleplay stuff to come out of this.

If he never took the feat and the situation came up in game where he through roleplay earned a mount he would get one without spending a feat. That has happened with rescued or allied NPCs who help out the party regularly.

We talked it over and because he wants to go this route I am altering the game so he has the opportunity to earn the benefits of the feat (which if everything goes smoothly will come to fruition when he turns 18th level and he will spend the feat then).

If he was creating a high level character with a feat for a dragon mount as part of his starting stuff, that would be fine too. But in the middle of the game I want that sort of stuff not just to be a mechanical expenditure of a feat, it should be part of the play of the game.

The dragon, like his paladin mount, is going to be played as a full NPC under the DM's control, though with significant ties and relationship to the paladin.

Same thing when the wizard took on a familiar, it was a big in game thing.

 

[DonTadow]

...



So there's a rule covering that. Routine tasks. Normal situations. No strength check to lift the spoon to your mouth. No dexterity check to get it in.

But, what is "routine" is perfectly up to subjectability as is the word "normal situations". Why can't certain social interactions be balled up into this as well?

 

[Voadam]

You're arguing with yourself here. Noone is saying that you should be able to play a genius diplomat at 1st level except you, because your rules support that style of play if there is no difference in a PC with 0 ranks in Diplomacy and another with 23 ranks in Diplomacy.

DaimonW has been asking about playing master characters better than he is at social skills. JFK, Winston Churchill, Aragorn inspiring the armies. Fine concepts. Can the Aragorn inspirational war leader concept be executed mechanically as a 1st level character?

Mechanics limit concepts too.

 

[DamionW]

But doesn't that, in effect, remove all skill from playing D&D? It renders all player input effectively meaningless, except for basic declarations of desired outcome.

Mallus, I think if you look back on page 5 you'll find post 165 addressed this concern (I was replying to your post but I'm not sure if you noticed that response I made). There is a barrier between Level2 and Level 3 abstraction there, both of which are above your example of just desired outcomes and dice-rolling (Level 1 abstraction). Also, as has been noted, many many areas all parties agree that it's fine to design characters who go beyond the limitations. No one has a problem with a strength 17 fighter who can smash skulls into jelly with a warhammer, or rogues who can tiptoe quieter than a pindrop, or wizards that can do any number of arcane effects such as fire streaming from their hands. All of these character concepts are outside the realm of player abilities, yet mechanics exist to supplant the character's abilities to go further in fiction than in reality. Yet somehow when we arrive at the area of convincing other people, not merely talking to them in first person as part of role-playing, but bypassing NPC obstacles through lies, negotiations, or threats, the bar is raised all the way to Level 3 abstraction. Now all of the sudden, if we aren't able to convince this person in meta-game space as well as if we were standing there within the fictional game space, our character should fail. No one is claming first-person dialogue and role-playing needs to be removed from the game. The only claim is that a common sense approach says that if mechanics allow you to surpass player limitations in nearly every area of the game, convincing people through basic conversation should allow some mechanics to at least temper it beyond the limitations of RP dialogue.

 

[Voadam]

If this argument can be used to argue that Cha-based skills should be ignored in favour of player ability, since there aren't systems that cover all player vs. character ability interaction, then you can also use it to argue that attack rolls should be ignored in favour of player ability. Or that any mechanical system that creates a divide between player and character knowledge should be ignored.

That is, of course, if it were true that the existence of situations in which player ability and character ability are not separated by the rules implied that any of the systems that do separate these abilities should be ignored. Which it isn't.

That you have an example of a situation in which player ability and character ability are blurred together does not imply that player ability and character ability should be blurred together in other domains, and certainly not in domains that have rules that deliberately separate player and character ability, as is the case with Cha-based skills.

Should is based on arbitrary preferences. I'm not arguing nobody should use social mechanics. Those who want to have character mechanics resolve social interactions should use mechanics to resolve them. Those who prefer player interaction without dice rolls should use player interaction without dice rolls.

The former style allows people to run their characters without roleplaying them. Which allows execution of concepts the player is not good at or would not want to roleplay.

The latter requires first person roleplaying and allowing player interactions to affect how things go.

There can be mixes and matches with dice using circumstance modifiers or fuzzy adjustments based on skills and charisma without dice rolling.

Which system should be used depends on preference and desired play style emphasis.

 

[Voadam]

Voadam, I'm curious: if the mechanics don't fit with your style of play, why not change them so the two are congruent or pick a game system whose mechanics don't conflict? There is no point in having the rules needlessly conflict with the game you are playing when it is relatively simple to eliminate the conflict.

It doesn't seem to me that anything is gained by not developing house rules that maintain an agreement between rules and playstyle. To do otherwise is just sloppiness.

I do. I don't use the social skill resolution mechanics as RAW.

I consider the interaction, the character, and the situation and keep roleplaying or adjudicate based on my judgment and move on.

Works well for me and my group.

My arguments have been that using mechanics, using pure roleplay, or using roleplay modified by character(including mechanical choices) and situation, are viable rules choices that serve different play styles.