D&D 5E Using social skills on other PCs

[HammerMan]

I am just going to say that there is NO consensus on if skills work on PCs,

 

[Charlaquin]

You know, there's a whole other aspect of this that's important, and without it I can understand why @HammerMan might think this sounds crazy: it involves a shift from randomly sprinkling traps and secret doors and hidden items, with no clue to their presence, and both using those things more sparingly and giving players a reason to search for them.

So instead of just hiding a document under a desk, the players already know they are searching for a document.

Instead of randomly trapping some doors and chests and desks, the players get some kind of signal that they should be extra cautious.

Etc.

And that's because it can get exhausting if you have to describe how you search every door you come across.

If traps and secrets ARE randomly sprinkled then, yeah, I can see what you just want to say, "I roll Detect Traps" or "I roll Perception."

So the two playstyles....narrative description by players and "broadcasting" by DMs...go hand it hand.

Agreed. And here’s the thing about that: players come to the table with experience having played with other DMs, who might have different styles. So if someone comes to my table having played with another DM who sprinkles traps around randomly with no telegraphing or indication of their presence, they tend to get very jumpy when asked for more detail about an action. They’ve grown accustomed to needing to be as vague as possible to avoid committing to something that might spring a random trap they had no way of knowing to expect. They don’t want to say they open the drawer, especially if you ask them if they’re doing it, because they’ve been traumatized by some jerk DM using that as an excuse to spring a totally un-telegraphed trap on them. So they resist saying anything that could indicate their character is doing anything at all, and the game becomes a nebulous void of abstract dice rolls with as little description as anyone can get away with and I’m bored to tears just playing rollies all night with no meaningful narration going on. So instead, I set the expectation in advance that players be clear about what their characters are doing and to what end, and before long they learn that I don’t just spring traps on them at random, and the worst thing that can happen when they describe an action is that they might have to make a check.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ok, then I guess that's just two different playstyles. You're using the traditional Gygaxian approach, which has a long and glorious history, and I'm using a somewhat newer approach.

I would rather use clues, think, and solve puzzles with my own brain. I am less interested in just rolling dice and being told what happens.

Actually I would say our style is in a lot of ways very similar to the old Gygaxian style, though with less player vs. DM antagonism.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Isn’t farting around with the mechanism half of every scene where Indie interacts with a trap? He chucks something into the beam of light to see what happens, he tests the pressure plate that triggers the poison dart, he pours sand out of the bag to get the weight right, he steps on the wrong spot before remembering Jehova (apparently) starts with an I in the Latin alphabet…

Indy walks down a lot less hallways than a group in D&D. Our group would be out of the dungeon by the time you finished describing in exacting detail your door opening procedure.

I like the push mechanic in Call of Cthulhu for situations like searching a desk. The roll, if any, represents a regular, light touch search. By Pushing (gain a reroll) you then negotiate the terms (dumping the contents, taking extra time, etc). Really speeds up the pixel bitching by focusing it only when it might be more relevant.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think you have that reversed, Gygax was all about player skill not character.

Yes, I'll concede that point. Not the timeline...because when I played in the 80s it was all about "I roll to detect traps", "I roll to see if he's lying", "I roll to look for secret doors", etc.

But, you're right, that wasn't necessarily Gygax-driven.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Indy walks down a lot less hallways than a group in D&D. Our group would be out of the dungeon by the time you finished describing in exacting detail your door opening procedure.

I like the push mechanic in Call of Cthulhu for situations like searching a desk. The roll, if any, represents a regular, light touch search. By Pushing (gain a reroll) you then negotiate the terms (dumping the contents, taking extra time, etc). Really speeds up the pixel bitching by focusing it only when it might be more relevant.

Yeah you need to read my other post about not "sprinkling" traps/secrets around randomly.

 

[Nefermandias]

and I am not comfortable with you telling people how to talk... lucky we don't play in the same circles, but we have spun WAY out of RAW here.

No, it's well within RAW that the players must declare their actions as... actions instead of phrasing it as questions. The rules says clearly that a player should state what their character do and how they want to accomplish it. That's not the same as asking the DM a question. You are stepping over your player's agency every time you "autopilot" for them.

 

[Faolyn]

Butting in...

Okay. please explain how you remove not just the memories of how you did things, but all of the ways your brain thinks and behaves based on those past experiences?

I would guess by treating it as a different game and actively reminding yourself that no, things are different in this game/edition.

Except you insist that just nameing a skill that someone wants to use isn't good enough even if you understand what they mean

To be fair, many tables try to encourage roleplay by at least giving a light describing how you're doing something. You don't need to actually go into a step-by-step description of how you're doing. But it's expected you'll say something like "I make sure to show my teeth a bit" or "I wave my knife under his eyes" when you roll Intimidation.

As an example, in my game, when there's a lock that needs picking, what usually happens is Player A will say "I use my lockpicks and rolled a 14. Is that enough?" And I'll say no, so Player B will take over and Player A will say "I use the Help action to give him advantage. So," <turns to Player B> "see, you got to wiggle the tool just like this and then lever it like that, and..." (or something similar) and then Player B rolls at advantage. They have this whole thing going on and joke about how they make a great lockpicking team. Here, the wiggling and levering description is used to support the Help action here. I wouldn't allow Player A to perform the Help action unless he could actually show how he was helping, because standing around is not Helping. As I constantly tell my mother.

But anyway, I think you might(?) be confusing giving a brief description like "I make sure to show my teeth a bit" with having to give a full step-by-step, fully acurate description of the task at hand.

 

[Charlaquin]

okay, I will stop. I am not trying to insult (I'm not even good nature joking) I just dislike word games.

I appreciate it.

dude, I have NEVER seen this problem. If it was a 10% chance of it happening I would have seen it MANY times. You are inserting an issue that does not exsist.


again, if out of dozens (if not 100s) of actions this should be happening over and over again. In YEARs of running like this it just doesn't happen. I can't imagine someone saying they didn't do something they just said they did...

I mean, we both pulled random numbers out of thin air for how often these things happen - 7 out of 10 was yours. The point is, it can happen if you rely on making educated guesses about the player’s intent and the character’s behavior, but it can’t happen when you ask the player to state those things clearly.

I would just sigh "Yes I try it"

Great! Then I could adjudicate the action and we could move on. We could even have avoided the part where you sighed if you had stated an action in the first place.

I don't think that any of what we discussed was NOT clear/

If the players have 7 keys and they say “I try the key”? No, that’s not clear.

I am more worried when your house rule and own thing is influencing advice you give and how you argue RAW.

My preference for declarations of action isn’t even something I advise other DMs to adopt, that’s a me thing. Expecting a clear statement of goal and approach I recommend because I find it works more smoothly with the basic pattern of play and makes it easier for the DM to determine if an action can succeed, if it can fail, and if it has meaningful stakes, and I do understand those criteria to be the RAW on how to decide if an ability check should be called for.

I may be mixing you two up

Yeah, fair. They and I have very similar understandings of the rules of 5e and very similar play preferences. I have never played in one of their games and vice versa, so I don’t know firsthand how similarly our games play, but I imagine there’s a lot in common there.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Yeah you need to read my other post about not "sprinkling" traps/secrets around randomly.

Then why does it matter how they search the stupid desk? You're just having the same outcome with more steps. Maybe accept some people just don't want to engage much with certain pillars to get to the part of the game they find fun. Let them roll (as the outcome is uncertain due to low player input) and move on. A filed roll might still get the clue, just make a mess, noise, or take longer.

As no one here is an expert in trap construction/disarming, it's all pointless faffery, often where the DM thinks they are conveying one thing, and multiple players are drawing multiple different conclusions. Do you force someone to describe their swordthrusts? I mean, most of us know about as much about fighting as traps or searching for hidden compartments.