D&D 5E Using social skills on other PCs

[iserith]

The question is are the social interaction rules a specific rule that can be read to similarly apply to say roleplay as if persuaded or entertained or whatever.

The answer is No for the reasons stated in the post you're responding to. Even in a practical sense, it doesn't hold - what does a player actually have to do if the orc rolls a 24 to Intimidate them? By whom and how is the DC being set? What is the meaningful consequence for failure for the orc (another prerequisite of calling for ability checks)? It just doesn't work.

Players decide how their character respond to attempts to deceive, persuade, or intimidate them. There is no ability check that can "force" a player to have their character behave in any particular way. That's not how the game works.

 

[Maxperson]

what part are you disagreeing with?

The part where you are not your elf and dwarf. Playing those roles makes you those characters. As such, you get to decide what they think and feel, which for the player means that there is no roll for the intimidation. He decides yes or no. Though I have seen players who are unsure of how their PC would act roll themselves to see which way it goes.

 

[HammerMan]

In our game, the dice most certainly do not tell a character what they think or how they act or speak.

what? who said anything about the dice telling you how to act or speak (how would they even?))

They sometimes describe how well they've accomplished a task they were attempting.

yup and that is what we use them for how well the charater does.

So, it is becoming clear you want NPCs and PCs to behave similarly via the mechanics. You still haven't concretely shown how the rules support this claim. Which is kinda what this conversation is about.

becuse the rules don't spell out that they are diffrent...

a way not supported in the rules

I disagree

This might be the first time I've ever seen someone invoke the concept of DM Agency. The DM controls the whole world and has infinite dragons. I don't think many people are worried that the DM's Agency is in peril from anyone's interpretation of the rules. It's a false equivalence you are making.

okay, so um NPC agency? that sounds weird...

In other words, I don't think many DMs would be upset by a player rolling high on an intimidation check and besting an enemy (DMs are, after all, supposed to be fans of the PCs who are the protagonists of the story).

I agree so far.

I don't think you can make the same claim about players though.

really? no player has ever told the awesome story about the time a dragon did something amazing?

In fact, I'll say the opposite is true: many players - without explicit buy-in for this playstyle at session 0 - would be upset by the DM rolling a high intimidation check for an NPC and expecting the PC to behave accordingly.

what? so you think if the group wants you to role play in the scenero presented that would upset peopel? the farther this goes the more confused I get.

 

[clearstream]

One can take it that way, sure, but because they can be used against other NPCs, the argument that their mere existence proves that they are meant to be used against PCs is not logically valid (in the literal sense; validity is a concept in the academic discipline of logic, which this argument lacks).

I agree that we're really just making reasonable inferences. From skimming posts, it seems most agree that their presence has some meaning.

One explanation suggested above is that such skills are strictly for NPCs to use against NPCs. Although for me that is a reasonable use case, I don't believe that was on the designers' minds when they wrote "A monster is defined as any creature that can be interacted with and potentially fought and killed... The term also applies to... civilized folk who might be friends or rivals to the player characters." Friendship and rivalry sounds like social interaction, to me. Overall, what seems envisioned is that PCs will interact with NPCs (monsters.)

I think it would be possible to say - yes, the PHB lays out the meaning of those skills for player characters, but it is silent on the meaning of those skills for monsters. So the matter is one of incompleteness, rather than contradiction.

 

[Bill Zebub]

my reading and interpreting of the same rules? the 2-3 other posters that agree with me, the hand full of times this quastion keeps poopin up

I may have missed something, but while a few people play the game the way you do, and maybe think that's how RPGs in general ought to be played, I don't recall anybody else arguing that the rules for 5e explicitly support this position.

Really this argument isn't even about roleplaying games anymore, it's just kind of a surreal debate about language and logic. I'm half annoyed and half fascinated.

 

[Bill Zebub]

okay, so um NPC agency? that sounds weird...

This is @Lanefan's argument, that NPCs and PCs are equal in every way except PCs are controlled 1:1 by players, and NPCs are controlled 1:N by DMs. (I'll give them points for consistency, as this corresponds to their argument in other threads that rules for PC generation must apply to NPCs as well.)

 

[HammerMan]

The answer is No for the reasons stated in the post you're responding to. Even in a practical sense, it doesn't hold - what does a player actually have to do if the orc rolls a 24 to Intimidate them? By whom and how is the DC being set? What is the meaningful consequence for failure for the orc (another prerequisite of calling for ability checks)? It just doesn't work.

okay lets answer these...
what does the player have to do: reat and play out there characters reaction
by whom and how is the DC being set (this I house rule ALOT becuse I don't like the DCs in the book, but) I will go with the book has guides.
what is the meaningful consequence of failur... well that depends on what they are trying to accoplish and how the PC react... if the orc rolls low maybe they get laughed at, or really low ignored... again this sin't a fully fleshed out scenero, but you know that.

Players decide how their character respond to attempts to deceive, persuade, or intimidate them.

okay

There is no ability check that can "force" a player to have their character behave in any particular way.

You are the only one saying force... find anywhere i suggest anyone force anything?

That's not how the game works.

except in your strawman argument.

 

[Voadam]

Can you be a bit more specific in how you interpret this rule in the context of your game?

"Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it's you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks."

Because it seems from my perspective that you find that there is an exception to this rule when an NPC uses Intimidation/Persuasion/Deception on a PC. And, if the NPC is successful on a roll, then the player must play it out as if their PC is intimidated/persuaded/deceived. Which doesn't sound at all like a player determining how their character "thinks, acts, and talks". It sounds like the dice determining it for them.

I am not him but I can pick this up.

The idea is that the rules on ability checks to resolve an attempt to influence a PC can be read as a specific rule creating an exception to the general roleplay rule similar to how spells can.

The social interaction influencing rules that are not explicitly for NPCs only would then apply to a PC similar to how casting a spell on a PC will work on them. These are pretty vague and narrative.

The big picture would then be more of a game concept of try to roleplay these specific influences in roleplaying your character. This can create more stage direction type roleplay hooks as part of the game or it can create a closer match of roleplay to mechanics.

Some like this type of playing a specific mechanics driven role roleplaying, others prefer deciding their own role to a greater extent in their roleplaying.

Different styles and preferences.

I suppose, if a player concedes their roleplaying agency to the dice (when dice are rolled), and it was their choice to do so from the outset at Session 0 as part of the agreement for the campaign, then it somewhat cleaves to the rule. Do I have that right?

It is a rules question and a lot of DM discretion in the RAW so there is a lot of DM rulings opportunities here. I would think this works best if everybody is clear on table expectations and on board with the style being used.

I'm asking honestly so that I might learn something from your playstyle. I don't believe you have actually explained your interpretation other than in this vague sense of "interpreting things differently". Hoping you can be more specific as that is kinda the reason I'm hanging around here - to see what I can learn that might be fun for our table, and also to share what works for our table with those who are open to it.

My preference is generally for PC autonomy and that is the way I run my D&D games, but my read of the 5e rules is that it supports either style of play.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I agree that we're really just making reasonable inferences. From skimming posts, it seems most agree that their presence has some meaning.

One explanation suggested above is that such skills are strictly for NPCs to use against NPCs. Although for me that is a reasonable use case, I don't believe that was on the designers' minds when they wrote "A monster is defined as any creature that can be interacted with and potentially fought and killed... The term also applies to... civilized folk who might be friends or rivals to the player characters." Friendship and rivalry sounds like social interaction, to me. Overall, what seems envisioned is that PCs will interact with NPCs (monsters.)

I think it would be possible to say - yes, the PHB lays out the meaning of those skills for player characters, but it is silent on the meaning of those skills for monsters. So the matter is one of incompleteness, rather than contradiction.

I really just take it as descriptive, with an implied "...and use this any way you find useful."

So, sure, rolling Intimidation for an orc to provide some guidance to the DM and players on how intimidating he is doesn't contradict any rules, it's just not supported by any rules.

 

[Charlaquin]

my reading and interpreting of the same rules?

Obviously, but based on what principles and what passages from the rules have you arrived at this interpretation?

the 2-3 other posters that agree with me, the hand full of times this quastion keeps poopin up

That’s an argument ad populum, which is fallacious and therefore not logically valid.

so the rules on how to use social skills (with page numbers and qutoes) wasn't evidence?

It was not a sound argument for the position it was being used to support, as @iserith demonstrated.

Okay, here is my basic thoughts, there are no rules for what happens when you make a skill check. there is no rule saying what happens to your monster/npc/pc when a social skill happens. IT is up to the DM/PC, and as such never interferes with the player agency.

I disagree. When a player describes an action (assuming it is a complete description, including goal and approach), what happens on a success is that the player succeeds in their goal. When an NPC takes an action in a social context, the outcome is not uncertain, since the player decides what their character does, so no roll is necessary to determine the outcome.

I also agree with "Sometimes you don't need to roll" if my NPC kobold is trying to threaten the 15th level barbarian I wont roll, it just isn't happening. Also if the 1st level wizard tries to intimadate the adult dragon...also no roll. when there is a question, when someone can be intimadated we have them roll, then the person in charge (DM for NPC Player for PC) decide how they react.

Great!

why? what makes you get to decided what is and is not enough to count as following the rules?

I don’t get to decide, words just mean things. The quote cited did not contain an explicit exception to the general rule that the player decides what their character does. You may have inferred an exception, but no exception is explicitly written, and in an exceptions-based rules system, an exception must be written explicitly in order to override a general rule.

and this board isn't a peer review journal or college term paper.

Ok? But we’re arguing about what the rules say, which requires us to use epistemology to determine the validity and soundness of the interpretations being presented.

you are talking in circles. go back and read my examples and find anywhere that I go against the rules.

Go against what rules? You cited the existence of social skills on monster/NPC stat blocks as evidence that those skills are meant to be used against PCs, based on the logic that they would be useless if they weren’t. I countered your argument by pointing out that those skills would still have a use if they were not meant to be used against PCs - specifically, they can be used against other monsters/NPCs. Your conclusion therefore does not follow logically from its premise.