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

[ad_hoc]

Right but, if that's the average social encounter, then when people say "I wish the game focused more on roleplaying" or that characters have more social abilities, what does that even mean?

I guess we would need to ask them.

 

[bloodtide]

Right but, if that's the average social encounter, then when people say "I wish the game focused more on roleplaying" or that characters have more social abilities, what does that even mean?

It means people want games with more role playing then roll playing, or to put it simply a game that is anything other then mindless combat.

You can find good role players and have a good role playing game. However, there will still be way too many players that just want to skip anything and get right to the combat.

The big hang up is: The rules. For too many players, unless they are using a rule, they are not "playing the game". They don't want to just sit around and talk, they want to use the rules to play the game. They want action, adventure and most of all combat.

The dream would be social rules as detailed as the combat rules, so that would be hundreds of pages. You'd have social based abilities. People and creatures would have Social Armor. Everyone would have a Base Social Bonus. Everyone would have Social Life. You'd have social backgrounds and archtypes and feats. You'd have Renown, Standing, Honor, and other such social rank rules. You would have items and equipment that had effects. And all magic would be re written to fit the social rules. The best way would to have a dual "classic combat side" and a "new social side" much like a multiclassed character. So you might be a 3rd level fighter/2nd level commoner. The social classes would get abilities per level, just like other classes. And when you defeat someone socially you'd get loot and XP.

So the 2nd level commoner, who wants to get past a toll guard for free, would attack with the "we are all in the same boat" 1st level commoner ability and attempt to get the guard to see that they are both just folk. The 3rd level guard would resist using the 2nd level guard ability "I'm just following orders". Dice are rolled, both sides attack and defend. If the commoner gets the guards social life down to zero, he gets to pass for free and gets Confidence points and XP.. If the guard gets the commoner to zero social life first then they don't get to pass for free and gets Confidante points and loyalty points if "just following orders" and XP. And so on.....

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I do not believe that D&D needs a specific social subsystem but I believe that D&D needs a non combat resolution system that is more complex and nuanced than the simple pass fail of the ability check
I am not sure what that would look like, the skill challenge was an attempt but I think it lacked something.
I will admit that I maybe looking for something fairly meta, so I would be happy with an optional add-on. My issue with the skill challenge was that it was still mostly pass fail.
My thoughts are that the players spend some meta currency to increase success that the DM can later use to raise complications but that may not be the best approach.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I find it interesting people want a social system that is not just pass/fail when everything in the game is pass/fail really.

Sure, you can have "degrees of passing or failing", but somewhere there has to be that line when you move from some level of success to some level of failure. Perhaps over separate goals an encounter might involve some success on one goal with some level of failure on another, etc., but for any individual goal it is either one or the other, it is really binary to a large degree.

We already have features which grant dice bonuses to skill checks, such as Bardic Inspiration; grant advantage on them, or offer a minimum result. While there are certainly many more features that are combat-oriented, it isn't as though the game is devoid of socially-oriented or supporting features.

Finally, IME few players find role-playing the exciting or fun part of D&D. Exploration and combat (certainly) are much more important to the game, so social encounters tend to be run faster and more straight-forward. But, frankly, it all comes down to taste and personal preferences. When I have tried to engage players in greater role-playing, I am most often met with blank faces, or perhaps one or two more talkative players will take the lead and others will simply sit and listen, without really contributing at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A lot of people say they want the game to focus more on Social interaction and roleplaying. Or decries that there aren't Social mechanics. But what would that even look like?

Would we have "Social monsters" with a "Social CR" and care taken to ensure they have level-appropriate Social abilities? Would you earn xp for "defeating" a social encounter? How does one define victory?

The game as it stands now, it mostly comes down to "wily merchant has thing you want but charges too much." "I roll Persuasion, and get a 17." "DM thinks, decides that's a good enough number, merchant drops the price". You can add some nuance by allowing players to make other checks to get information that might give them advantage, but players have lots of tools to give them advantage as needed, or expertise to gain stratospheric check results.

And what's a social ability? What would it look like? Advantage on certain checks? The ability to auto win a social roll? Or in the case of an NPC, impose disadvantage or just ignore the results of a check, like some kind of "Legendary social resistance?".

Is it worth it to have a detailed system where all parties roll Social initiative, both sides have "resolve" (social hit points), and everyone takes turns trying to wear the other party down? Should there be a Social AC or Social saves?

And would it even be worth it, when players can possibly use spells to circumvent the whole system (as they generally do with exploration)?

My answer, one of them, is to simply point at the SC system in 4e. If something isn't significant enough to trigger such an encounter (which in and of itself defines the basic elements of structure) then there isn't a social conflict, and I see no reason to engage a set of mechanics in order to simply deal with an INTERACTION where nothing is at stake. So, the PCs need to deal with the Residuum Traders of Ohm because they need a significant quantity of pure residuum in order to build the Device of Qa'al. The dramatic question here being "Is the wizard Cantose going to have to give up the money he had put aside to join the Guild of The Orb in order to help his friend Jantos construct the Device so he can rescue his girlfriend?" Well, is he? Is he going to DO it if it comes to that or not? Those are interesting questions, and if he can successfully negotiate with the Traders, he might still have enough cash for the membership fee. In that case he can have his cake and eat it too, so to speak, but otherwise he'll have a tough choice to make. The GM is going to put the paint on that, as 4e gives him the freedom to set the complexity, and probably the level of the challenge (it might be argued it falls at the level of the Quest all this is adjudicating). The GM will also set the specific primary and secondary skills, although that generally comes down to "the ones that obviously fit with the fiction in this situation." To be honest I've pretty much ditched the idea of specific primary and secondary skills, though as a GM I will usually call out things that I think will be apparent uses in each situation.

Another answer is more the PbtA type of answer, which is there simply are no such things as 'combat' and 'social' (or whatever, non-combat) as mechanical categories within these games. PCs do things, the GM responds with new fiction/move/question, or declares that the PC has made a basic or playbook move, and it is resolved. So in this case you could swing at a guy, you could talk to the guy, you could run from the guy, you could ignore the guy, and each one will simply lead to more fiction and moves, some of which may indeed be social interaction. Again, if the action has essentially no stakes, then its either just narrative, or it MIGHT trigger a 'special move', say like in Dungeon World where a PC might trigger 'Carouse' or something like that (DW has several 'down time' moves you can trigger).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I guess we would need to ask them.

Oh, yeah, maybe like a threat titled something like "What is a Social Challenge, anyways?"

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Burning Wheel Duel of Wits


Interesting bit:

What DoW does that is fun is two main things. First, it facilitates you role playing out the argument, because every time you roll for an action you actually have to say a sentence or two of what your character is saying, and make it sound like they're doing the action you picked. So, it you choose rebuttal, you actually have to role play your character rebutting a point. In my experience this is really fun, because although I might have choose rebuttal because I'm expecting my opponent to make a Point, I then actually have to rebut their point after they make it. It's a fun RP exercise! Secondly, it provides rules for establishing the winners, losers, and more often than not, compromises. Whether the Duel of Wits is between PCs or a PC and an NPC, the result of the mechanics determines who has to compromise by how much. This disclaims the responsibility for the GM in making potentially tough decisions about how NPCs react to PC arguments. Between two PCs this system provides a fair way to decide between the players who's character has to give more in the compromise.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I do not believe that D&D needs a specific social subsystem but I believe that D&D needs a non combat resolution system that is more complex and nuanced than the simple pass fail of the ability check
I am not sure what that would look like, the skill challenge was an attempt but I think it lacked something.
I will admit that I maybe looking for something fairly meta, so I would be happy with an optional add-on. My issue with the skill challenge was that it was still mostly pass fail.
My thoughts are that the players spend some meta currency to increase success that the DM can later use to raise complications but that may not be the best approach.

I think you all might well check out @Manbearcat's PbP of 4e, which includes quite a few SCs, highly modern cutting edge 4e-style SCs executed by players playing with a very clear notion of how that works. It turns out it is pretty damned tight! I mean, @darkbard has noted that the success rate is very high, but my take on that is that the stakes in an SC should be no less momentous than those of a combat, so outright loss should be a low-probability outcome, assuming the players are playing well. Also, 4e allows for raising the level of an encounter in order to create a greater challenge (and also XP reward), so higher stakes challenges that you might actually lose will be higher level, and thus harder to win (or at least requiring the expenditure of more serious resources).

It can be found here: The Slave and Her Sovereign

 

[Minigiant]

A Blind Date with your sister's friend.

The 4e Negotiation of a Duke's Favor is another.

 

[James Gasik]

In my mind, really, "role-play" and social skill mechanics are diametrically opposed forces. When I first started playing D&D and other games, we didn't really have social skills. We just...played our characters. I was never asked to make a Charisma check for anything.

There were rules, of course, for encounter reactions and the like based on Charisma, but I didn't understand them and found them to be clunky; it was easier to decide what an NPC's attitude would be, and then have them react to the actions and statements of the characters accordingly. I admit, I was basically short-changing Charisma as an ability, but as near as I could tell, so was everyone else, and we were certainly having fun. One of the DM's I looked up to as a mentor even uses Comeliness in his games to this day, but never once have the mechanics been employed; it's just a number to describe NPC's, so rather than having to say "she's unbelievably hot" he can say "she has 20 Comeliness".

Everything came crashing down the time I played GURPS. Things went well for some time, when one day, we were faced with an obstinate guard, and I wanted my swordsmen to intimidate him, so I roleplayed thusly. The GM asked me to make an Intimidate skill roll (which wasn't even a skill in the core book but in a splat!) and it broke my mind. "Roll a die...to roleplay?" I was flabbergasted.

Thus began my long standing annoyance with social systems. I'll be acting in character, and suddenly "make a die roll". It doesn't matter how sensible my argument was, or how passionately I'm in character; the die roll interrupts me, and even if I'm told I get a bonus, I might get a lackluster roll, and my acting in character falls flat on it's face.

(I know what should happen is that I am asked to make the roll first, then act it out, but it never really goes that way!).

Or the other extreme, the shy player makes a character with Charisma because they want to know what it's like to be liked by most people. They say "uh, i'll try to talk to the noble" and the DM goes "well, what do you say?"; and more often than not, I've seen the DM shake their head and gatekeep the attempt because they can't disassociate the player's roleplay from the character's ability.

Now I have played in systems that go a little extra with regards to social mechanics. Earthdawn had a "social defense" stat in the 90's that I thought was rather brilliant. But when I played 4e, and social engagements were reduced to skill challenges, once again, it became "guy with good numbers wins", balanced by "guy without real life social grace gets penalized."

The way I see it, you can't have it both ways; you either have a game where NPC's judge players by their words and deeds, or you rely on mechanics to determine how an NPC reacts to the character's words and deeds, which may not be the same thing.

Or as I put it often in games "you have to assume the character can be more or less competent than their player".

This is why social mechanics are so simple in D&D, so the players and the DM can find some happy medium that an in depth system isn't going to help, since those can be gamed and optimized; and worse, if they are gamed and optimized, people without good Charisma checks simply won't play, because they know their actions will be counter productive.

Many times on forums I'll hear the argument "ah a Fighter can be a perfectly good face, give 'em decent Charisma and proficiency in a social skill". That tells me that person plays in a game where it's more about the roleplay than the results.

Where someone else might believe that a "face" character is a 18-20 Charisma character with all three social skills (and maybe insight, if your DM believes it does anything) and Expertise to blast past all the checks. That tells me that person plays in a game where it's more about results than roleplay.

Most tables, I feel, are probably somewhere in the middle.