Social skills in D&D: checks or role-playing?

[Teflon Billy]

...What I still don't get, though, are those who roll without any roleplaying at all. I'm not trying to put down the way they play; I just don't understand the point of a roleplaying game without roleplaying.

Tactics can be fun. So can puzzle solving.

 

[nimisgod]

I chose option 3 as well. I don't mind a lack of role-playing though, so the "insist" part doesn't apply to me.

If a player is especially friendly or convincing, then they get a bonus. If the target is unfriendly or suspicious, then the DC increases.

I would almost rather not have a roll at all, were it not for the fact that there are other factors that I might not be able to take into account that would affect the situation.

 

[Ace]

Most of the time I let the players play it out interpreting what they said as the roll. A good performance means a god roll and vice versa

If I am in a hurry just roll and go

 

[Imperialus]

I do the same as Ace. The player rolls first and then plays out the scene according to how his character did. I then award XP's based on the roleplaying.

 

[Seravin]

I run a mixture in the game because not all my players like or want the same thing out of the game. Some want more role-play others aren't comfortable with doing that.

Usually I try and have the players role-play what they want to do first so I can see the tact they want their characters to take. This way I can see if the players hit upon something the NPC cares about in some special way.

But I will still roll the checks because I believe the skills are in the game to be used. There are times when I've had to rethink how I apply the skills or set the DC, but those situations are usually at the extreme end of things (high-level rogue with maxed out social skills).

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Typically, it's a roll modified by the player's role-play. When I DM, I typically ask for a roll whenever some thing the player says causes the NPC to think, when there's a stated outcome (ie: "I'm saying this to buy us some time, and get an extention, not actually more pay"), or when I see a clear goal in the direction of the conversation. As a player, I find that I don't get the benifits of my 17 Cha + max skill ranks, unless I explicitly ask for a roll. There have been several times I've been forced to say "I'd like to diplomacy the wizard now."

 

[Norfleet]

Personally, the way I'd do it would be somewhat reversed: I wouldn't wait for the player to act, then roll it. I'd roll the skill first, then depending on the check result, provide the player with a hint, or not. The same would be applied if the player specifically requested the hint. A player lacking in the requisite skills gets no hints. If the player then chooses to act the scene out, I'd make the result dependant on how well he did, whereas if he chose to simply go with the provided hint, for better or worse, I'd just take the check result.

The analogy of the football player simply doesn't apply: A character's physical abilities are inherently internal to the game: A strong player has no ability to imbue his character with any of his own strength. Mental and social abilities, on the other hand, ultimately originate with the player. An unassisted character can't really be any smarter than the player is. Thus why there are skills to cover player deficiencies in those areas.

As for the old issue of the dumb character played by a smart player, who routinely comes up with overly brilliant ideas, the character's brain will eventually overheat from all that thinking, and his head will explode. It's like overclocking a computer. Eventually, the thing just melts down or explodes into flames.

 

[Clueless]

I think the best use I've found in my games for rolling for diplomacy and other rolls is when I have a player doubting their own abilities completely. There's supposed to be an interaction element to roleplaying, and I'm loathe to just wash over that with a diplomacy check when the players are too lazy to do it or too afraid they'll mess up (or just too dim to NOT mess up). We're often here to talk to the npc's not just to metaphysically 'bash' on them with a roll or two or three to get past the 'problem'. Id use it purely as a backup system.

What I *have* used it for is to reassure a newbie player before. She wanted to play a 'face' sort of character, but literally was so scared to talk sometimes out of stressing over the pressure of the scene - that she'd end up not being able to so much as say her name. Pure nerves and the pressure she put on herself to perform.

Knowing her character had a high skill, and after telling her to *breathe* I had her roll. Luckily she rolled well or I would have had to BS a further result to calm her. In fact, she rolled a crit on it to boot. My words, "Alright. No matter *what* you say, you won't mess up here, ok? I'll let you know if you do and we'll rewind a bit. So take a breath, organize your thoughts - you certainly had the time to think about what you were going to say on the way to the meeting. And when you're ready... just let it out." The roll really didn't change *anything* in how I was running the character. But it did give her the confidence to do a brillant job in cutting a deal with him.

End result: Best roleplaying I've ever seen out of her.

 

[nHammer]

I use how a player roleplays the situation, as a modifier to the die roll.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

What I still don't get, though, are those who roll without any roleplaying at all. I'm not trying to put down the way they play; I just don't understand the point of a roleplaying game without roleplaying.

Maybe you are taking too limited a veiw of what roleplaying is... I roleplay whether my character accepts a particular plot hook, what will get her into a fight, whether she will shoot, charge or heal, who she will heal, if she will coup de grace, if she will stop to heal herself, boost her AC etc... Different characters make all of those choices very differently, depending on their personality, skills, and abilities. I roleplay when I decide to make a diplomacy check (trained or untrained) or to go for intimidate or just bulldozing through the situation instead. And I roleplay a lot with the other PCs, and reasonably with the NPCs without monopolizing the game time. But when it comes time for conflict resolution - when I want something to happen which the DM is not going to make happen automaticly, there needs to be a skill check involved. And depending on how involved that conflict resolution would be, not to mention how nuanced, I will 'roleplay' ( =act ) parts of the scene.

But the roleplaying is a fundemental part of the game, IMHO. Its not the improv between fights, its who and how and why you fight to begin with... If a group does great, enthusiastic 'roleplaying' in their downtime, where great rifts and/or bonds would form between the characters - then when the fight started, the wizard would be casting cat's grace on the rogue he supposedly loathed, or the cleric taking an attack of oppertunity to heal the fighter who had harrassed her earlier... You tell me if they are playing a roleplaying game or not.

Oh, yeah, I didn't answer the poll because the answers were too loaded to choose an accurate one... maybe loaded is a bad word, since I don't think it was done on purpose, but as you can see from the responses, they don't cover all the options.

Kahuna burger