D&D 5E When To Roll Persuasion?

[Geeknamese]

I always let the roleplaying dictate success or failure. If we're having a social encounter dialogue and the PCs are talking with the NPC in-character, I don't disrupt it with any die rolls. As per the rules, it's only when there's uncertainty of success that I call for a die roll otherwise, I reward their good roleplaying with success.

Now, if what they're trying to do or convince the NPC of is opposing the NPCs Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, Flaws or loyalties/obligations, then that's when I would ask for a check and I would grant Advantage or Disadvantage based on the roleplaying.


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[jgsugden]

Have you ever met someone that was clueless as to how offensive, awkward or,otherwise uncharming they were? That gives you an idea of how I use persuasion - mostly passively. An unpersuasive character will stick their foot in their mouth unintentionally and often. A charismatic and persuasive person will manage to make an awkward or insulting introduction sound bold and unconventional direct. I rarely require a roll for persuasion, intimidation or other Charisma skills unless there sa compeition (such sa bidding war or competing proposals).

 

[ccs]

The check comes when the DM determines what the player describes has an uncertain outcome. That necessarily means the players must offer a goal and approach first. How that goal and approach is communicated can be a straightforward statement of what you're doing and what you hope to accomplish. Or it can be acted out (as you say).

In my view, whether you act it out or whether you plainly state the goal and approach should have the same uncertainty and DC, assuming the goal and approach boils down to the same in either way of communicating it. In other words, your acting ability or way with words obviously adds to the play experience, but otherwise has no effect on the mechanics.

The DM then narrates the result of the adventurers' actions. I would add a further limitation on the DM here in that he or she cannot in the narration of the outcome state what the character is doing outside of what the player has already established.

Typically, when I need to resolve an outcome on a player's stated action, I call for an ability check. Then the players decide which of their skill proficiencies, if any, apply.

Pretty much what he said. Especially that 1st line.

I'm fine with either the player speaking in 1st person or just telling me what they aim to accomplish. Once either is done I'll decide if any dice need rolling & the DC.


Here's a humorous tale of tragic success from our PF session several weeks ago on this very topic:
The PCs had successfully infiltrated the enemies fortress by disguising themselves as new recruits. In their exploration they came to realize that they'd missed a magical "key" needed to access a teleporter arch. Without this they were stuck on the current floor. Eveyone remembered me describing the key in a previous encounter (now a 2hr hike away), but nobody thought it important enough to add to the loot sheet.... Or thought someone else had written it down....
Theyconcluded that they had left it behind with the other mundane gear & bodies.
So they spent at leasta 1/2hour debating what to do. (we're not concerned with things bogging play down)

They concluded that they would need to bluff the guards in one particular room. They decided to spin a tale of being stupid newbs & get the sgt on duty to open the arch so they could get to the mess hall.
OK. As it stood I'd decided upon a fairly simple bluff DC while they planned & re-planned. And what would happen if they failed. The only question was who was going to be making the bluff check as none of their characters have any ranks invested in this skill.... They chose the Paladin - because highest modifiers.
All he had to do was roll the dice & tell me the #. Odds were pretty good that they'd get to the mess hall lv.

But before I could say anything, he declares that he throws open the door to the guard room & shouts in a panicked voice that the wall captain needs reinforcements right now! "You, you, you, go. Now." And says that he points to the first three guards he sees (indicating wich minis on the map. 2 were identicle, 1 different. You know, sgt & 2 grunts.).
And then he rolls the dice. A 19+mods. An outstanding success!
Except that what he said bore NO semblance to the plan he & the other players had spent 30+minutes hashing out.

So, slightly confused, the sgt & two grunts headed off to see the wall capt. This will take about 5 minutes round trip.
The player has his paladin rush into the room & start searching random foot lockers. Completely ignoring 2 facts:
1) That the previous key they remember was found on the sgt of the squad they'd ambushed. They know this fact. And that I use the same mini to denote the sgts. of this force. Another known fact. Wanna guess who had this key?
2) That the room he's entered is L shaped....

The other players? They were like "WTH? What part of that plan didn't you (paladin) understand??"

From around the corner: "What's going on? Hey! What the @#$ are you doing in my foot locker?"
There were 3 more guards. Wich should be no surprise as every other guard squad they've encountered #s 6 soldiers.
Roll initiative. And cue gigantic battle as the pcs switch from trying to get to the mess hall to just trying to escape the fortress alive. This ultimately ends with 3/4 of the PCs down & the war-mage surrendering to the bad guys.

The original plan would have almost certainly worked. All Sean had to do was roll the dice....
But he added the RP & I'm not going to negate that. Nor will I reward you for actually saying the exact wrong thing.

 

[abirdcall]

As it has been previously mentioned rolls are for uncertain outcomes.

Players don't declare checks in this edition. They say what they're doing. Then the DM determines the outcome.

I have players roll persuasion checks when I am unsure of the response an NPC will make to their attempt to persuade.

I will give an example:

The characters were confronted by a crooked town captain and his guards. He was determined to fight them and put them in jail. A player asked to roll persuasion. I said, no that's not how it works, let me know what it is that you are doing. So they had a conversation back and forth. Once I felt that the player had been given enough of a chance to have meaningful input I decided that their attempt to persuade the captain against attacking them automatically failed. This is because the party had something he obsessively wanted (and they had found clues to that effect) and wouldn't be persuaded otherwise.

Now, if the player had tried to intimidate the captain, that would have been difficult but might have worked. That would have probably been a roll.

After the game the player said that they didn't feel like it was a fair adjudication of their character's abilities. They had expertise in persuasion so should be able to declare persuasion checks. We discussed how ability checks in the system work and came to an understanding.

My feeling is that in general ability checks shouldn't be made often, but when they are it should be an exciting and pivotal roll.

 

[Jester David]

Like an attack roll, a Persuasion check doesn't determine how competent the player is at persuasion - their proficiency bonus does that. What the die roll does is to introduce the factors of opposition, environment and sheer random chance that affect the potential outcome.
...
Asking the player to roleplay the outcome of a failed check as a sudden loss of competence on their part is missing the point of the interaction.

But DMs or players often narrate the effects of a failed attack roll. That's part of the game, as the failure becomes part of the narrative.
Isn't narrating a failed diplomacy check doing the same thing?

 

[guachi]

I have no problem role-playing out a persuasion attempt, using how the player approached things to influence the difficulty, then assigning a DC and having the player roll the dice.

I also have no problem with asking the player what he wants to accomplish, having the player roll the dice, and letting the roll influence the narrative.

The last persuasion check I had the PCs do was selling the MacGuffin horses after many sessions of tracking them down. The PCs were going to make lots of cash from them and after many sessions of combat, combat, combat I wanted to do something different and not have sale merely be a single die roll. I had an NPC accompanying the party explain how the buyer liked to bargain. As DM, I told the PCs that we would role-play the negotiation for a few minutes, I'd use what they said and how they did to influence the roll, then I had one PC roll.

I've found that some players get frustrated when they expect to roll dice but aren't so sometimes I like to explain why they aren't and when I will call for a check. Either it's because they are automatically failing or succeeding or, in this case, I'd like to engage the social pillar. Some players like that so I'll cater to that. Or, in the negotiating case, it's because the DM wanted to do that because I was getting bored with combat. One of the PCs called it "the filler episode" and she was correct. An entire session with no combat!

 

[abirdcall]

But DMs or players often narrate the effects of a failed attack roll. That's part of the game, as the failure becomes part of the narrative.
Isn't narrating a failed diplomacy check doing the same thing?

Most of the time you don't fail the attack because you bumbled. The enemy dodged or absorbed your blow. No difference here.

 

[Quickleaf]

It's a really good question with a lot of nuance that partially depends on how each gaming group handles interaction with NPCs.

When the DM should ask for a Charisma (Persuasion) or Diplomacy check?

The method I've seen most often in play is that the player makes an argument and then the DM calls for a Persuasion check. Or Intimidation/ Bluff depending on how the interaction is presented.
Occasionally,the DM will modify the DC based on the results of the roleplaying that occurred before the check was made. Which is tricky as it adds two points of failure: you either do a bad job or roleplaying and the DC goes up, or the roll is bad. And occasionally you get the situation where they character says all the right things and does a beautiful speech but then rolls a "1".

The alternative tends to drop the roleplaying and acting and just has the character declare they're making the check and rolling.

It occurs to me that we're doing this backwards. That the second method is closer to the desirable course of play. We should roll the Charisma check first and then act out the actual discussion. We should find out the result of the check and then roleplay based on how well we rolled. If the player rolls terribly, they should modify what they were going to say based on that result. But in a good roll, they can really try and say something memorable, possibly with prompting by the rest of the table.
Or even the DM. Instead of the DM modifying the DC of the check, they should give cues and modify how the player is roleplaying at the table, suggesting taking points.

Thoughts?

But DMs or players often narrate the effects of a failed attack roll. That's part of the game, as the failure becomes part of the narrative.
Isn't narrating a failed diplomacy check doing the same thing?

I think there is a fundamental difference...tricky to articulate. The natural flow of person-to-person dynamics – at my table – when handling roleplaying works against Method #2 (Roll and then Act Out Your Roll). Preserving that natural flow of dialogue – at my table – is more desirable than modeling the dice/rules precisely. The thought of rolling doesn't even occur to me until it's clear there's something being negotiated, something in question. But my games tend to involve a lot of dialogue that doesn't have anything to do with the dice (which is not true of combats, which are dice-heavy).

IF I had a player who took a strong Actor stance (not many in my groups) and was constantly creating flowery prose, I would definitely consider using Method #2 for them. OTOH, when my non-Actor players have moments on inspiration to act dramatically, I am very comfortable determining when to award an auto-success or auto-failure (i.e. circumvent the dice entirely).

But this is a topic that's *very* hard to discuss at the theoretical level because so much depends on the situation and the players at the table. There's no one "better" way. There's what's works at your table.

 

[Guest 6801328]

When the DM should ask for a Charisma (Persuasion) or Diplomacy check?

The method I've seen most often in play is that the player makes an argument and then the DM calls for a Persuasion check. Or Intimidation/ Bluff depending on how the interaction is presented.
Occasionally,the DM will modify the DC based on the results of the roleplaying that occurred before the check was made. Which is tricky as it adds two points of failure: you either do a bad job or roleplaying and the DC goes up, or the roll is bad. And occasionally you get the situation where they character says all the right things and does a beautiful speech but then rolls a "1".

The alternative tends to drop the roleplaying and acting and just has the character declare they're making the check and rolling.

It occurs to me that we're doing this backwards. That the second method is closer to the desirable course of play. We should roll the Charisma check first and then act out the actual discussion. We should find out the result of the check and then roleplay based on how well we rolled. If the player rolls terribly, they should modify what they were going to say based on that result. But in a good roll, they can really try and say something memorable, possibly with prompting by the rest of the table.
Or even the DM. Instead of the DM modifying the DC of the check, they should give cues and modify how the player is roleplaying at the table, suggesting taking points.

Thoughts?

I've always played RPGs the first way but discovered "role then narrate" through The One Ring. I vastly prefer it.

 

[Guest 6801328]

As it has been previously mentioned rolls are for uncertain outcomes.

Players don't declare checks in this edition. They say what they're doing. Then the DM determines the outcome.

That's not incompatible with roll then narrate. Player declares intent, DM asks for a skill check, player narrates the resulting scene, in either 1st or 3rd person.