D&D 5E (2014) Using social skills on other PCs

[HammerMan]

doesn't contradict the player's ability to decide for his PC what the response is.

who said it did?

So use them on the PC. Go for it. The player still gets to decide whether the PC is persuaded or intimidated. Not the DM.

um... who said otherwise?

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Yes, the parenthetical in your first sentence seems to need to address the specific/general question. Why is the general rule for players determining thoughts of their PCs immune to the specific outcome of an ability check?

Ah, I get it now. Because the DM is narrating the outcomes of the check, not the behaviors of the PCs.

I mean, let's take the Frightened condition as an example. Even if the DM said that the result of a check imposed the Frightened condition upon the PC, then what? The PC would be bound by the mechanics of the Frightened condition: disadvantage on checks and attacks while the source of fright is within sight, and can't move closer to the source of fright. None of that infringes upon the player determining how their character thinks, speaks, or acts. They might think or say "I ain't afraid of no source of fright", but so what? They can't do certain things as a result. They might try to act brave and move closer but, again, so what? The just because you attempt to do something doesn't mean you can't do it. The player is still deciding on their PC's behaviors - thoughts, actions, speech. The outcomes of those behaviors are constrained now however.

 

[Charlaquin]

How can it be allowed but not supported? The entirety of the support for your argument rests on a single sentence in an out-of-the-way passage in the PHB and further requires dismissing other clearer text that contradicts it (like monsters use ability checks like PCs do) as somehow meaning to only apply to monster on monster interactions (which isn't supported at all but is required to claim support for your position). I don't follow the argument that claims one way is clearly supported but has to dismiss other lines of evidence supporting different claims to do so.

Once again, I do not claim that monsters don’t use ability checks like PCs do. My position is that ability checks work the same way when made by monsters and by PCs. The way they work is that the DM calls for them to be made when the outcome of an action is uncertain. The outcome of an action made to force a PC to make a certain decision is not, in my evaluation, uncertain. Therefore, the rules do not support the DM in calling for an ability check to resolve such an action, whether it’s being made by a PC or by an NPC.

 

[HammerMan]

Once again, I do not claim that monsters don’t use ability checks like PCs do. My position is that ability checks work the same way when made by monsters and by PCs. The way they work is that the DM calls for them to be made when the outcome of an action is uncertain.

Okay so if the DM doesn't know how intimidating/Persasive this creature is, that is uncertain right...

The outcome of an action made to force a PC to make a certain decision is not, in my evaluation, uncertain.

nobody is forcing anything

Therefore, the rules do not support the DM in calling for an ability check to resolve such an action, whether it’s being made by a PC or by an NPC.

so how does a DM (not you, not me, any general DM) determen how good a monster is at a charisma skill if they don't have the ability to call for a cha skill roll'

 

[Charlaquin]

I wouldn't argue with an RAI interpretation. I've said often enough that I actually agree with your approach. I disagree with the argument you're making to support it, though, as I find your rules argument to be pretty flawed. I prefer an argument that stands up some clear principles of play and how you can use the 5e ruleset to achieve those. I think the game plays better if you start with the principle that it's never uncertain what a PC thinks because that's entirely up to the player. I don't think this is mandated or extra supported by the rules, though.

I agree with that starting principle. I also think that principle is supported (not mandated) by the rules.

I find the rules to be essentially a Rorschach blot -- you see in them whatever you want to. There's some genius there I can appreciate, as it taps into decades of D&D to be kinda like whichever version you liked best (except 4e).

I disagree with that assessment. I think the text is not always very clear, but it has specific intent behind it (as evidenced by Sage Advice), and I think that intent is discernible from the text itself, via a thorough and holistic reading. It does require taking all of the rules in both the player’s handbook and the dungeon master’s guide together as one complete rule set, which may have been a poor choice for how to communicate the intent, given that it’s well known that most players and DMs don’t engage with the rules that way.

 

[iserith]

again try stepping itno someone elses shoes, reread our arguments and pretend to be us... re read it with fresh eyes and try to imagine our reading.


except we rule there is uncertainty and we do so by reading those rules.

please show me this carve out for "acts in the face of deception, intimidation, or persuasion" that would end this if a rule said that...but we both know they do not.

I've stepped into your shoes. So has my Discord. We play a little game where we imagine what someone must think and know to have arrived at their position. The result of that analysis is that there is some ignoring of rules and obfuscating going on combined with an emotional response to defend a preference that doesn't need to be defended since it's not being attacked. This appears to be what is on display here.

You're ruling uncertainty about how intimidating the orc is, for example, which isn't a task. It's description - color, flavor. You roll a d20 and you tell your players how intimidating the orc appears. You aren't resolving a task, you're randomizing the description of the environment. It's not an ability check in the way the rules support.

Players determine how their characters act, think, and what they say. That's what the rules tell us. You might wish for a more "powerful" rule, but it doesn't get much more clear than that. You as DM don't get to say whether my character finds the orc intimidating. You can describe how intimidating the orc is. You might even use dice to determine that description. But the rules support there being no ability check here because there is no uncertainty as to how the PC responds - the player decides.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

(hey another house rule to bug people...we use bloodied) how is them pretending your wall isn't real and they can walk through it different then saying a spell doesn't effect them, saying that ANYTHING you describe isn't real?

At this point, it almost seems like you are deliberately misinterpreting what people are saying. I certainly hope not. I will try to maintain patience.

Again: The player can have their PC pretend (think) anything they want. That does not make it real in the game world. I mean, what they think could be right, but just because they thought it does not make it so.

wait you have been arguing that people don't and there is nothing DMs can do about it (in my experience do it long enough and you wont be invited back) Now you cange it to they always do...

What? I argued nothing of the kind. I said that players can roleplay their characters any way they wish. That does not mean they will ignore everything the DM is saying.

 

[HammerMan]

I've stepped into your shoes. So has my Discord. We play a little game where we imagine what someone must think and know to have arrived at their position. The result of that analysis is that there is some ignoring of rules and obfuscating going on combined with an emotional response to defend a preference that doesn't need to be defended since it's not being attacked. This appears to be what is on display here.

um, what? You can't wrap your mind around after 40ish pages of back and forth where we see it diffrent unless we are wrong?

You're ruling uncertainty about how intimidating the orc is, for example, which isn't a task.

the orc is attempting the task

Players determine how their characters act, think, and what they say.

yes and?!?

That's what the rules tell us. You might wish for a more "powerful" rule, but it doesn't get much more clear than that.

you read that is such a weird way though... a way that makes every action a word game, every time something breaks it you need to find an exception or just disallow it.

You as DM don't get to say whether my character finds the orc intimidating. You can describe how intimidating the orc is. You might even use dice to determine that description. But the rules support there being no ability check here because there is no uncertainty as to how the PC responds - the player decides.

by your reading... try again... Your RAI and my RAI are not the same, but both are our best way of reading RAW.

 

[Ovinomancer]

In order for the results of an ability check to override the player’s authority over their character’s decisions, an ability check must first actually be made. Since the criteria for when to make an ability check is that the outcome of the action is uncertain, the DM does not have the support of the rules in calling for an ability check to resolve an action with an outcome that is not uncertain. Since a player decides their character’s actions, an action taken with the goal of forcing the character to make a particular decision is certain to fail. Therefore the DM is not supported in calling for an ability check to resolve that action.

This is the strongest version of the argument I can think of as well, but it immediately gets eroded by numerous lines of evidence that require outright dismissal or further unsupported argument to sidestep. The existence of monsters having proficiency in social skills, for instance, now has to have the completely unsupported statement that they're only to be used on other monsters. The same applies to the clear text of the ability score section that says that monsters use ability scores to complete tasks just like PCs -- this has to have an unsupported carve out for CHA tasking. Now we have this single sentence rule causing significant and otherwise unsupported alterations to other provided rules. That's before we even get to the canonical insight vs deception discussion! That requires an entirely special handling of resolution phrasing to avoid the single sentence. Then, lurking in the background like hungry grues, are any of the knowledge checks. How do we ever deal with a knowledge check -- literally a check to see what a PC thinks about a topic -- against this proscription? Even if we take any talk of metagaming offline and let player declare whatever they feel like for knowledge of something, a check to confirm cannot escape telling the player what the PC thinks.

So, if we're to go with the strongest argument, we have to acknowledge all of the ways that the rest of the rules erode it with vigor and require further patching or outright ignoring other parts of the rules when inconvenient.

A further point, that just occurred to me, is that the player may be uncertain about what their character thinks. We have no supported rules procedures for the player declaring uncertainty to the GM. We have to come up with that. I don't think it hard, but it's also not at all supported by the rules.

 

[Maxperson]

who said it did?

Everyone claiming that the social skills are an example of specific beats general, allowing social skills to override the general roleplaying rule allowing the player to decide without doubt, how his PC responds to social situations. That includes you.