D&D 5E Using social skills on other PCs

[Faolyn]

Unfortunately, this was an error that @Ovinomancer spotted maybe fifty pages ago, and it wasn't understood then.

Which error? Since I honestly don't remember what Ovinomancer pointed out.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

The Roll With It approach isn't exempt from the adjudication process though. It just means the DM is finding more cases of uncertainty than the Middle Path intends. Just like the Ignoring the Dice approach is going to find fewer cases of uncertainty.

Yes, like this, I'd say:

Rolling with it: Ability Checks for every action that has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. The DM is making this hard for the players with inserting a lot of meaningful consequences. Only the very easiest actions are auto-success, only the most impossible actions are auto-fail.

Ignoring the Dice: outside of combat, it's virtually all auto-success and auto-fail.

The Middle Path: a good balance of calling for checks (when appropriate) and granting auto-success for capable adventuring (and auto-failing impossible actions).

 

[clearstream]

Which error? Since I honestly don't remember what Ovinomancer pointed out.

The prompting or pixel-hunting implied by @iserith's stated approach.

 

[HammerMan]

Do you not use Insight in your game?

Insight and Perception are the two most used skills in our games (although stealth comes in 3rd it is a distant 3rd, and athletics and acrobats are really low, but persuasion seems to be at the bottom)

When you have a contest, you aren't deciding what the PC thinks. You are determining what the dice say. The dice say that you spotted a tell, or lack of tells, that indicate that the NPC is lying or telling the truth (or vice versa; the NPC can use it to tell if the PC is lying). Whether the PC chooses to accept what the dice say is up to the player. I mean, the player could roll really well on Insight, the DM could say "she seems to be telling the truth here," and the player could still just not believe her.

yes but I am going to go out on a limb and say that again that would be a corner case.

And some DMs may use a passive Deception, or roll ahead of the game, or only roll when the PC is using Insight and decides to make it a contest. Or they might not roll at all, if the NPC is telling the truth or has some trait that prevents others from telling its lying.

yeah I love the idea of more passive skills, I just don't see them used much.

So you're basically just telling the PCs that this guy is lying. Or trying to, at least. The first example (the fidgety one) sounds like me when I'm trying to talk in general (not lie, just talk: social anxiety for the win!). I would have no reason to assume that the person is lying, but that maybe they're being intimidated or controlled by someone.

again conclusion can be jumped to all around.

And if you actually said "the guy looks you right in the eye when telling you this thing" I'd likely assume liar. Or they're using a gaze attack. (The thing about liars not looking you in the eye is mostly a myth.)

and again this is a MAJOR disconnect. I know more people (at gaming circles) that would assume that meant telling truth, but with MY personal experience where my dad would do that I agree with you. It is another reason open communication with the DM and sometimes use of skills is important to relay the information without misscommunications.

 

[iserith]

That uncertainty is resolved by making an Insight check. That is literally the purpose of the Insight skill:


Do you not use Insight in your game?

When you have a contest, you aren't deciding what the PC thinks. You are determining what the dice say. The dice say that you spotted a tell, or lack of tells, that indicate that the NPC is lying or telling the truth (or vice versa; the NPC can use it to tell if the PC is lying). Whether the PC chooses to accept what the dice say is up to the player. I mean, the player could roll really well on Insight, the DM could say "she seems to be telling the truth here," and the player could still just not believe her.


And some DMs may use a passive Deception, or roll ahead of the game, or only roll when the PC is using Insight and decides to make it a contest. Or they might not roll at all, if the NPC is telling the truth or has some trait that prevents others from telling its lying.

Wisdom (Insight) in this example is resolving the player's action, not the NPC's. You can set a DC by rolling it as a contest or not, as you see fit. But what we're not doing is rolling to resolve the NPC's attempt to influence the PC and saying the PC believes it if the roll hits a particular DC. That would go against the players controlling what their PCs think. So when the DM is looking at adjudicating the NPC's task, we can't call for an ability check at this point because we run into a lack of uncertainty about the outcome. The player decides what the outcome is here.

So you're basically just telling the PCs that this guy is lying. Or trying to, at least. The first example (the fidgety one) sounds like me when I'm trying to talk in general (not lie, just talk: social anxiety for the win!). I would have no reason to assume that the person is lying, but that maybe they're being intimidated or controlled by someone.

And if you actually said "the guy looks you right in the eye when telling you this thing" I'd likely assume liar. Or they're using a gaze attack. (The thing about liars not looking you in the eye is mostly a myth.)

First, I'm not a DM that rolls dice to decide how to describe the environment. I'm just saying some DMs do. But anyway, you know what they say about assuming. It's smarter play to take action in the game world to verify one's assumptions.

 

[HammerMan]

The prompting or pixel-hunting implied by @iserith's stated approach.

yeah and going with the whole "look you in the eyes" example above it is pixel hunting on one screen when the programer might have had a screen that didn't look like yours... good luck picking up the clues that don't line up...

it would be like clicking on the X ten times and nothing happens but 17 spaces right and 6 up is where the X was when programer put it there... so click in the grey section... and pixel hunting.

 

[iserith]

The problem for me as I outlined before, is you end up granting automatic success to the NPC's deceit, if the PCs don't query it.

It's no more granting success than describing the sky as blue is granting success.

 

[Charlaquin]

okay and the PC gets to decide what that means and how they react... again it seems a strange time to roll, but if by corner case you need to, okay the rules support you.

In what corner case would you need to make a roll to determine a thing the player decides (specifically, how they react to an NPC’s attempt to get them to do something)?

 

[iserith]

Perhaps re-read what it says there. Especially if you are with the guidelines are rules folk.

I know those sections backwards and forwards since I discuss them a lot. I stand by what I said. The approaches assume more or less instances of uncertainty than a Middle Path DM. That's all.

 

[Charlaquin]

The problem for me as I outlined before, is you end up granting automatic success to the NPC's deceit, if the PCs don't query it.

No more than a trap “automatically succeeds” at being hidden.