D&D 5E What is a Social challenge, anyways?

[James Gasik]

Wouldn’t then the solution to your problem with skill challenges simply be to be less exacting about the requirements and allow players to opt out of SCs when it makes sense?

If you're asking me as a DM, why yes, of course. But when I'm playing, that's not my call to make.

If you're saying that the rules about Skill Challenges could be more clear about when, how, and why they are to be used; absolutely. But I only have my experience to draw upon, and more often than not, they were employed in scenarios where they really didn't need to be, or constructed not with a particular group in mind, but some hypothetical group of players in the adventure writer's mind.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Personally, I don't want and would not use a structured system for "social combat". I saw it too often in 4E (whether that was the intent of skill challenges or not).

Social encounters will always be either a structure set up by the DM or a mini-game that puts the focus on meta gaming. If it’s the former, once you know the DM you can still "play to the DM". If it’s the latter you're largely in my experience replacing role playing with roll playing with people just looking for excuses to use their best numbers and no longer approaching the game in character.

So for social encounters in my games, I focus on the what, not how. What have they done up to this point, what are the attitudes and goals of the NPCs, what (not how) do they say it. I also try to mix up the skills used. Persuasion is important, but so is insight, potentially others such as religion, arcana, history or survival.

Depending on what they say, what they contribute I'll set a DC which may well be automatic. It's not perfect, but there are just too many variables to systematize it, and I wouldn't want to.

But I mean, if its one die roll, why not two, or three, or five? I mean I'm pretty sure @Hussar made a pretty good argument up thread for why that will mechanically produce better results.

 

[James Gasik]

But I mean, if its one die roll, why not two, or three, or five? I mean I'm pretty sure @Hussar made a pretty good argument up thread for why that will mechanically produce better results.

It probably should never be one roll, but it's mostly done for expedience. I mean, cracking open my VtM 20th, I see that seducing someone is three rolls; first you make a good first impression, then you make some witty remark to break the ice, and finally you make a pass at the other person. Failure at any stage ends you up with a drink in your face!

But reducing something like that to dice rolls seems blah...even though I would think most players would balk at trying to seduce their DM!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

How do we know this? Aragorn persuaded Faramir to hand over his kingdom.

Yeah, that was sort of along the lines of "Here's Anduril, the Sword Reforged. Swear on it now to uphold the honor of your ancestral line and office, Steward!" I mean, Aragorn didn't exactly try to convince him, he showed him proof that to one as learned as Faramir was, pretty much clinched the argument from a logical standpoint, as who else could have reforged that blade, but Elrond, and who is going to doubt the word of a (1/4) Maia?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It kind of feels like the honorable steward formally recognizing someone with both a blood claim to the throne and support from lots of folks whose opinion the steward values (support about them as a person and for their claim) is a bit different than a random bard walking up and convincing a monarch to just abdicate after a pleasant conversation?

But how was all of that established? That is the interesting part! This is where a 'Dungeon World version' of that scene would be coming from, for instance, the checks would happen, and it would be established "Hey, my character is the king, and this guy is the Steward!" its a description of how it came about, vs being a mater of 'setting lore' carved into office paper by the hand of some ancient (yesterday) GM. This is why there's a completely different sort of thing going on in these different games, because the underlying function of rolling dice is very different. Some situations could be handled in a more trad setup using some sort of mechanics, but there will be rough edges. These kinds of resolution mechanisms are not REALLY 100% compatible with trad play. They do work fine in things like 4e (played a certain way) or many of the Indy games like DW we often use as examples.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think one problem with using Skill Challenges in social encounters is that it is a little strange for a whole party to walk up on a guy and start making different rolls. I'm thinking of all those episodes of the A-Team where Hannibal gives Face some impossible task, and Templeton goes off and does it alone (though occasionally he uses an assistant to sell the bit).

It's kind of like the classic thief scenario of dealing with a trap; we expect the thief to do all his investigation and MacGyvering solo, though it's perfectly reasonable to design a trap where the whole party can get involved (off the top of my head, the National Treasure movies have a few setpieces along these lines).

Well, I don't think an SC (unlike combat) requires any specific temporal or spacial arrangement. One character could be over here, another over there, they could do their things on different times or days, etc. It just has to fit together in terms of fictional logic as a coherent whole. Now if one PC is going off to do something, I'd think that's probably not the 'whole thing' (IE the challenge has greater scope and whatever they are doing is just one little bit). It isn't impossible for a kind of scoping issue to arise here, where you think the challenge should cover one thing, and then figure out later it might have needed to cover other stuff that wasn't played out as part of it. You can probably fix things like that in most cases.

There was a huge downside to skill challenges as well, though I wonder if I shouldn't talk about that in the 4e thread, but eh, I'm typing at the moment.

Skill challenges were intended for all the players to get involved, but there are occasions where a character can offer nothing to the proceedings, and in fact, due to mediocre numbers, is more of an anchor to the party than being of any benefit!

That can happen, sure. @pemerton has had a couple examples of that he's posted, where the dwarf was a liability, but the dwarf also figured out how to mitigate it as far as possible (in one scenario he left the table, in the other he carried out a side task) though amusingly in both cases that character's social ineptitude figured pretty heavily in the outcome (the second one maybe it was more just the constraints of the dwarf's personality).

 

[James Gasik]

Well, I don't think an SC (unlike combat) requires any specific temporal or spacial arrangement. One character could be over here, another over there, they could do their things on different times or days, etc. It just has to fit together in terms of fictional logic as a coherent whole. Now if one PC is going off to do something, I'd think that's probably not the 'whole thing' (IE the challenge has greater scope and whatever they are doing is just one little bit). It isn't impossible for a kind of scoping issue to arise here, where you think the challenge should cover one thing, and then figure out later it might have needed to cover other stuff that wasn't played out as part of it. You can probably fix things like that in most cases.

That can happen, sure. @pemerton has had a couple examples of that he's posted, where the dwarf was a liability, but the dwarf also figured out how to mitigate it as far as possible (in one scenario he left the table, in the other he carried out a side task) though amusingly in both cases that character's social ineptitude figured pretty heavily in the outcome (the second one maybe it was more just the constraints of the dwarf's personality).

Granted, that sort of thing shouldn't happen; the DM should tailor the skill challenges to their party to some degree; no sense asking for a History check if nobody is good at it (or at least, don't ask for a high DC!). But published adventures can't do that, so...

 

[Pedantic]

I do have to point out, however, that in many conversations (you can find examples on this very forum), the idea of being able to cast spells in a social encounter is completely rejected out of hand; you can look at just about any discussion of guidance to see that kind of pushback. And casting a spell that requires a saving throw on an NPC is right out as the targets know they have been affected by a spell by the rules and will no doubt be very unhappy once it wears off.

This is an outgrowth of how verbal/somatic components work. The game would be better if more thought/care went into that system. I like the idea of a divide between vulgar spells, quieter manipulative ones, and ideally, some common magics that are just socially acceptable.

 

[pemerton]

But even in your examples, it is binary. All you've done is include conditions. Those conditions are either met or not... still binary.

That isn't to say someone could imply they will follow the conditions and then renege, and have consequences possibly.

I don't know what you would count as non-binary.

"I want a lift to Port Fairy."
"I can take you as far as Geelong."

That would be a potential compromise in many social conflict frameworks. Does that count as non-binary?

But the heft isn't ever as significant IMO.

<snip>

unless you pose efficient force to stop the PCs from the "direct route" (i.e. combat) to solving a problem, rarely with players look for another solution.

That's not my experience.

When my PC Thurgon, Knight of the Iron Tower returned to his ancestral estate of Auxol, he wanted to reunite with his brother Rufus and his mother Xanthippe. The result in the first case was resolved using social mechanics, in the form of simple tests. In the second case it would have been resolved via a Duel of Wits, but Thurgon prayed first that the doubt and burdens would be lifted from Xanthippe's shoulders, and the prayer was successful.

These aren't problems that can be solved by combat. And they were the most important problems to confront Thurgon in the play of that game.

 

[pemerton]

And online in forums, for decades, I've seen a lot of DM's who are very resistant to social systems. There's much talk about what players shouldn't be able to get from success, what things should be taken off the table, how DC's are too low and it's too easy for players to succeed. Many claims about wanting social interaction to be more interesting, but most of the actual discussion is how to prevent those dirty, dirty players from getting what they want. The DC's go up, the players bonuses rise, "Bluff is not mind control" because no matter how easy it is to trick people in real life, somehow NPC's cannot be easily beguiled, and eventually you hear horror stories about players who just give up and start using magic to bypass intractable NPC's

To me, what you're describing sounds like bad GMing.

I agree that it seems quite common in the online space.