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What is a Social challenge, anyways?
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<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8963219" data-attributes="member: 6877472"><p>Really what should be happening is, the DC of the social check should be based on the roleplay, but that's super subjective and nothing stops a DM who doesn't want something to occur from just saying "I don't care how well you argue, the King isn't giving you access to his treasury."*</p><p></p><p>I'm not saying that this is a negative thing necessarily, some things should take more interaction than a single die roll, and some results could be abusive to game balance if they were "on the table", so to speak. But it does make social interaction murky; in combat, you are dealing with set DC's, like the AC of an opponent. And you know that if you roll a 20, you're going to be able to make a damage roll.</p><p></p><p>In social encounters, however, the DC isn't known, and the DM doesn't have to tell you that what you are attempting to do is flat out impossible until after you attempt it, which can sometimes feel like Lucy taking the football away from Charlie Brown.</p><p></p><p>As for the "state action first, then rp", while that would be ideal, that does interrupt roleplay, and as my earlier example pointed out, sometimes the DM can just waive rolls entirely if they like the roleplay enough.</p><p></p><p>This highlights the critical difference between most of the ways you interact with the game and social interaction. By and large, D&D functions by appealing to the rules of the game, making actions with relatively set parameters.</p><p></p><p>In social encounters, however, you aren't appealing to the rules directly, but appealing to the authority of the DM, their personal interpretation of the rules- which can come up in every aspect of the game, by design. It's why we have a DM.</p><p></p><p>But in my experience, social interactions are probably the most dependent on DM fiat (outside of edge case spell interactions, since many spells do what they say they do, even when that leads to confusing outcomes- a personal favorite is how you can't block a doorway with a Flaming Sphere, since you don't take damage from walking through it).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 8963219, member: 6877472"] Really what should be happening is, the DC of the social check should be based on the roleplay, but that's super subjective and nothing stops a DM who doesn't want something to occur from just saying "I don't care how well you argue, the King isn't giving you access to his treasury."* I'm not saying that this is a negative thing necessarily, some things should take more interaction than a single die roll, and some results could be abusive to game balance if they were "on the table", so to speak. But it does make social interaction murky; in combat, you are dealing with set DC's, like the AC of an opponent. And you know that if you roll a 20, you're going to be able to make a damage roll. In social encounters, however, the DC isn't known, and the DM doesn't have to tell you that what you are attempting to do is flat out impossible until after you attempt it, which can sometimes feel like Lucy taking the football away from Charlie Brown. As for the "state action first, then rp", while that would be ideal, that does interrupt roleplay, and as my earlier example pointed out, sometimes the DM can just waive rolls entirely if they like the roleplay enough. This highlights the critical difference between most of the ways you interact with the game and social interaction. By and large, D&D functions by appealing to the rules of the game, making actions with relatively set parameters. In social encounters, however, you aren't appealing to the rules directly, but appealing to the authority of the DM, their personal interpretation of the rules- which can come up in every aspect of the game, by design. It's why we have a DM. But in my experience, social interactions are probably the most dependent on DM fiat (outside of edge case spell interactions, since many spells do what they say they do, even when that leads to confusing outcomes- a personal favorite is how you can't block a doorway with a Flaming Sphere, since you don't take damage from walking through it). [/QUOTE]
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