Social Skills, starting to bug me.

[dagger]

How do you keep my personal ability in check, as compared to the stat on my PC because I used CHA as a dumpstat?

You role play your character and keep yourself in check? NPCs and the world reacts to you? Or maybe you don't speak bad your are just horribly disfigured and have horrible hygiene? That's the way it has always worked in our games. Anyway this is not a concern for our games and never has been.

the player can say his PC acts however he wants (diplomatic or rude)

Well the way they roleplay and speak with the NPCs will determine how they act. If the player says something rude to the king it will not matter what he rolls on his Diplomacy.

I would just rather rip out the social skills if I ever DM PF and let the chips fall where they may.

 

[kinem]

To maximize roleplaying, don't roll dice for social skills. The DM should base NPC reactions primarily on what the player says, and the context, and then take the PC's skill bonus informally into account as a modifier to that. (Not the other way around).

This has three big advantages:

1. It avoids the regrettable situation where the player says something completely inappropriate for his 'diplomacy' check, but succeeds anyway because the dice say so.

2. It makes impossible the ridiculous situation where players complain that while an NPC has strong reasons to take some course of action or not to, he should somehow have been influenced otherwise by something the PCs said to him in a few minutes of conversation, because the PCs are "so diplomatic" or "so intimidating". (Often combined with #1.) The DM must have complete freedom to make that call by getting inside the NPC's head.

3. It encourages players to work on their real life diplomacy skills.

Yes, this means that those who are good speakers will have an unfair advantage. This is only a problem if they are allowed to usurp 'face' roles. So tell them not to.

 

[S'mon]

I agree; IME social skills have the potential to suck a lot of the fun out of the game for me. GMing 1e AD&D again, it's very noticeable how much better the roleplay is, and I think the Reaction % rules are part of that - your CHA helps determine the initial attitude of the NPC; everything after that is up to you, the player.

I noticed Monte Cook recently talking about the importance of having social skills in 5e so that socially inept players can play socially ept PCs. Why in-game combat can challenge the players' tactical skill, but social encounters must never challenge the players' social skill, is an attitude I just can't understand.

Edit: Even having high social skills can suck. I had a maxed-out-social skills Savage Worlds PC designed to win over marauding brigands, gave a great short speech, and was not allowed to even roll because (it seemed) it would have messed with the railroad for me to have affected them.

 

[Crothian]

I think role playing depends more on the group and DM then the game. In our 1e game we don't role play a lot and that because there really are not that many NPCs and social interactions.

I like social skills because sometimes I don't want to role play talking with the guard or the minion. A die roll is quick and easy for situations that need that.

 

[Crothian]

Edit: Even having high social skills can suck. I had a maxed-out-social skills Savage Worlds PC designed to win over marauding brigands, gave a great short speech, and was not allowed to even roll because (it seemed) it would have messed with the railroad for me to have affected them.

That has nothing to do with social skills, that's a bad DM.

 

[S'mon]

That has nothing to do with social skills, that's a bad DM.

I think he had a very difficult, very railroady campaign to run, and I had signed up knowing it was linear in design. But what sucked was that I'd invested the resources and they were wasted. If there were no social skills the GM could have ignored my nice speech in a judgement call and that would have been a lot more ok.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

When we have similar playstyle we don't need to roll if some social skill works. Well, some "sense motivation" roll sometimes, because we aren't in that world, so we can't see their body language etc. Too random to try to spot something peculiar in dm:s acting.

But skill needs to be taken in account and character stat, otherwise is just us doing persuading to each other.

When group is unfamiliar or social playstyle different between people it's easier to roll the dice. Also, if social situation is something we consider totally boring, like haggling for prices (though some people enjoy that stuff, we just aren't those).

We kinda always had some sort of rolls for those thing even when we played AD&D. However we do expect people to state out what they say/how they say it/and what they want. Not always roleplay that, but to know what is purpose of interaction so you know what actually roll for if it's one of those quick ones.

One of my groups is very in-game talky, and another not so, and bad habit of disturbing the game with totally unrelated off-game topics.

I used to play in this big group where socially better people had much more play-time. I am socially able that way too, but kinda like to side with more silent ones. Hey, they had many cool ideas, often very interesting characters too, they just were not in habit of yelling over the self-loving pratters. And that group was 12+ "real roleplayers", uh I wish they had talked less and rolled more. This is often problem if people's ability to be social doesn't include public speaker skills and some have them more. It's not fair, and it has nothing to do with characters. This is toally meta-game competition and dice rolling intruptions are also good way to spread the turns, not just combat turns but also social ones.

I can understand very well social skill rolling be disturbing if it changes usual play-style that worked for everyone.

Or if people tend to just roll with any futher explanation.
I mean situation like:

DM: guard stops you "halt, he says, what is your business."
player: 17
DM: what
Player: mmh diplomacy.... no bluff it's my better skill so bluff 19
DM: ?
player: did it succeed
DM: What are you telling him
Player: some bluff-stuff, what is the target number?

I do hope you have lsser problem.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

This might be the wrong way to put it, but I hate trying to make the playing field 'level' for everyone.

Thats just the way I am though and the way I learned to play. I feel that if you want to play a leader/bard/face guy then you should break out of your mold and play it. I guess I am mean.

I would have very big problem with this in my second group. The one with in-game silent types. Because I sometimes want to roleplay not socially smart quiet type. And if there weren't those rollls, people would just keep looking at me until I say something. Terrible annoying. I have enought of that in workplaces/school/other random social meets. Sometimes I get lucky with someone really socially dominant. It's not about charisma it's about social 'alignment' I think.

Isn't purpose of roleplaying to pretend to be somebody else.
Rather than straitjacket us to our personas/skillsets. I've played in groups where real-life medical lore/investigation procedure lore/military lore/weapon lore is expected of players (rather than characters). I am against this, unless everyone in gruop is interested. We have to study enough pointless boring crap in RL, I think I want to keep my hobbies to things that intrest me.
I am actually interesting about everything, I have short attention span and 8 different professions (yep not that good at anything). It's just that that group had lot of "know-it-alls" who thought they were so awasome. Nope.

Lovely if it works for your group. But maybe if they are too happy about rolling for skills, there has been some silent disstatisfaction how it has been handled before. But maybe it's just system confusion, mathematic, clear patteric gaming systems can be very hypnotic. Talk to your group how you feel about current method, and ask if they had some problems with old, and if not houserule.

 

[Greg K]

I noticed Monte Cook recently talking about the importance of having social skills in 5e so that socially inept players can play socially ept PCs. Why in-game combat can challenge the players' tactical skill, but social encounters must never challenge the players' social skill, is an attitude I just can't understand.

I don't stand theabove attitude. As a DM, I am not interested in challenging the characters social skills or puzzles. Nor, am I interested the in the player's tactical skill.

Everything is about the character.

And, while I use skills, there is no "I want to intimidate the character Player Roll die)". The player's are still expected to roleplay it. I'll give a circumstance bonus or penalty, but I don't want to reward someone just, because they are a good talker, BSer, or figured out howto game the GM just as I don't want to penalize someone at my table that does not have the social skills at the level of their character.

Edit: Even having high social skills can suck. I had a maxed-out-social skills Savage Worlds PC designed to win over marauding brigands, gave a great short speech, and was not allowed to even roll because (it seemed) it would have messed with the railroad for me to have affected them.

That has nothing to do with social skills. That is a bad DM railroading unless there was something going on that you don't now (brigands being under magical compulsion)

 

[billd91]

I noticed Monte Cook recently talking about the importance of having social skills in 5e so that socially inept players can play socially ept PCs. Why in-game combat can challenge the players' tactical skill, but social encounters must never challenge the players' social skill, is an attitude I just can't understand.

Some do challenge the player's skill. Take a look at bluff. The content of the bluff gives you net benefits or penalties when opposing a sense motive check. Honestly, even if you don't give out bonuses or penalties for content of the social skill check, it's not that different from running a D&D game without a tactical grid or focus for combat. It's more a matter of play style than anything else.