Ruin Explorer
Legend
I think your point is really well-made. Some degree of asymmetry is fine, but the idea that it's okay for combat (and often other areas) to be resolved with a roll and basically no description or the like is fine, where with social stuff, you have to RP and the skills shouldn't even be used in a lot of cases is pretty ridiculous.Not perhaps entirely, but if its okay someone can sidestep even the most basic tactics in combat because they don't want to or don't feel up to it, then yes, the same thing applies to social processes as far as I'm concerned. The fact other people don't like it when they do that is, bluntly, not their business.
I mean, I get where it comes from - a lot of people grew up playing D&D for decades without any social rules beyond Reaction rolls and the like, whereas the combat rules were always detailed. But like, from literally a year after I started playing D&D, I was also playing RPGs that had social rules, so I didn't grow up that way (I started in 1989 not 1979 or whenever). So people are used to this approach where social skills are basically "decorative".
And then D&D itself doesn't help because in 3/4/5E you have such poor/limited guidance on what they can/should do (whereas there's tons of guidance on many other tests in the game). I think if they do a revised PHB or a 6E they really need to learn from what other RPGs have been doing since the 1990s and especially since about 2010. Then have an optional rule which basically amounts to "treat them as decorative", so people who want to do that can keep on doing that and not feel bad.