D&D 5E Using social skills on other PCs

[Lanefan]

Is there anything in the rules that says you can't try to "use Intimidate" on a tree?

Probably not, which ties in with my mantra that a player is free to try anything. Success, however, is not guaranteed.

 

[Lanefan]

I realize this probably wasn’t a serious question, but you can certainly try to get a tree to do something by acting threateningly towards it. I don’t think the rules would support the DM in calling for a a Charisma (Intimidation) check to resolve that action though.

Maybe not, but (once I stopped laughing) I'd have 'em roll anyway just for the hell of it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Maybe not, but (once I stopped laughing) I'd have 'em roll anyway just for the hell of it.

Nothing wrong with that! Making calls the rules don’t support is a time-honored DMing tradition. I do it all the time myself.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

The second one - the story - is your goal maybe, but not mine. If everyone's having a good time in the moment I don't much care if a story gets created or not.

Ah, so 5e wouldn’t be your style after all. Too bad.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not sure it's that simple. Not everybody at WotC necessarily got the memo, especially in the early days, that 5e was a bit different from previous editions. (I mean, 7 years later and look how many people here still fail to grasp it.). Lots of different writers worked on products, and they might not necessarily have understood how it works.

My evidence for that is Lost Mines of Phandelver, in which the 5e play loop is basically ignored in some of the area descriptions.

Recent books have been released with CHA proficiencies assigned to monsters. There might be a creditable argument that there was the usual confusion of a new edition going on at first, but the pattern has held. The most recent adventure path released, which specifically focused less on combat, is full of NPCs write-ups with CHA proficiencies. I don't think that this hold much water as an explanation. Further, these write-ups are presented without any guidance or direction on how to use such assigned CHA proficiencies as part of GM solo play to enhance the experience. There's no support whatsoever for GM solo play to be a focus -- and by this I mean the GM playing the game between their own NPCs and resolving actions using the normal loop without any player involvement. This is a weird thing to claim as the reason for the continued assignment of CHA proficiencies to monsters/NPCs.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Allowance is made for the DM to do literally anything they want, so this seems like a meaningless point to me.

Sigh. Sure, and if this is your point that all of it is meaningless, including any assertions you make about the game. Further, this kind of argument makes it seem like I'm reaching for Rule Zero or whatever rather than pointing out that the game makes this kind of allowance directly within the core game loop in the very first description of how play operates in the PHB. And continues to repeat it in multiple places. It's another bit of strawmanning.

When ruling an action as uncertain requires specifically contradicting a general rule - or “suspending roleplaying” as clearstream framed it, it is reasonable to expect there to be a suggestion somewhere in the rules that the DM aught to do so, and in what circumstances. Since no such suggestion seems to exist, I think I am justified in saying that such an action is not supported by the rules. Doesn’t mean the DM isn’t permitted to do it. Just means the rules don’t ever tell them to.

Well, this would apply to many things, then, and we'd never be able to move to using ability checks so long as at least one player holds onto roleplaying. I don't think this case applies -- the GM decides when a given action declaration is uncertain. Monsters are explicitly allowed to take actions that are adjudicated like player actions in the loop (otherwise we're in trouble for a lot of other 5e play). So, the GM must have the authority to suspend roleplaying and move to a mechanical resolution. We can clearly see this in PC play -- when a player is roleplaying and an action appears to be uncertain, the GM can halt the roleplaying and ask for a check. This isn't controversial (I don't think). It's only when we consider if a non-PC does something that suddenly the GM lacks any general authority to make this switch? And that this is a second order effect from another rule because it's not clearly stated to be the case?

Again, because it seems I'm being treated poorly here, I 100% agree that PCs being immune to CHA proficiencies is RAI. I 100% agree that this approach lends to better play at my table than the alternative and that I will advocate for using it. HOWEVER, I find the argument you are proposing to support your claims, and the claim that this is the best logical interpretation of the rules, is terribly flawed and is actually a circular argument where you're assuming your conclusion in your premise. I'm arguing against the argument, here, not the position the argument is trying to support.

 

[iserith]

Indeed. My point is more that if an action declaration has two or more parts, even if only one part is stated, there needs to be a resolution for each individual part. In your examples this was the case, as not every resolution requires a roll every time. But when they do e.g. the tree is hard to climb AND the clue is hard to find once there, combining these things into one roll isn't granular enough.

That's really on the DM though for setting up the challenge that way. And anyway if one action declaration leads to two resolution steps, that's okay with me. I probably wouldn't present a lot of these sorts of situations though.

And what matters next is how that failure is narrated. Me, I'd make a roll anyway (search rolls are always hidden here) because the PCs and thus players have as yet no way of knowing if they failed to find the clue because it isn't there to find or because it is there and they simply missed it.

This is probably because you have a care about "metagaming." (I do not.) The PC spend a resource to find out there was no clue (time) and that's good enough for me.

 

[Lanefan]

Ah, so 5e wouldn’t be your style after all. Too bad.

Don't see what the use or not-use of 5e has to do with it; the same can be said of any edition.

 

[Hriston]

This topic gets re-hashed a lot, it seems, and in general my stance is that social skills don't 'work' on other PCs.

But I was just reading some of the early materials for Stonetop, a kickstarted PoA game, and came across this:

View attachment 147502

I like that a lot. It leaves the target PC fully in control of the player, but also provides a framework for Cha skills to 'work' on other PCs.

I don't have an elegant way to map that to 5e rules, but thought I'd throw it out there as a middle ground between the two sides of the debate.

EDIT: Try again on the attachment....
View attachment 147505

In my 5E game, I try to test the PCs by presenting them with opportunities to play/give in to their personal characteristics (TIBFs), which in a social encounter sometimes takes the form of an NPC putting pressure on those characteristics. If the player has their PC do what the NPC wants, they get inspiration, which I encourage them to spend at every opportunity, so I can continue to apply pressure with the goal of exploring and developing the character.

 

[Bill Zebub]

In my 5E game, I try to test the PCs by presenting them with opportunities to play/give in to their personal characteristics (TIBFs), which in a social encounter sometimes takes the form of an NPC putting pressure on those characteristics. If the player has their PC do what the NPC wants, they get inspiration, which I encourage them to spend at every opportunity, so I can continue to apply pressure with the goal of exploring and developing the character.

That would work for me.

Out of curiosity, do you roll for the NPCs to see if they use that kind of pressure, or do you just make the call yourself? (Not a trap question; genuinely curious.)