Willful Disadvantage

[Oofta]

There's another thread related to this: if a player has poor social skills but wants to play a PC with good social skills, how do you handle it?

I'm not going to re-post my thoughts other than to say: sometimes it's appropriate for the dice to decide the outcome of social encounters. Is the player good at faking being bad at lying? Is the DM good at picking up on that? What will be more fun for the group and more consistent?

If someone told me this was their flaw I'd let them ham it up if they want, but then let them roll at disadvantage. Presumably they've discussed it with me ahead of time. I don't think we need total immersion when it comes to this kind of stuff any more than I ask the players how they're swinging their sword or have them describe holding their breath and accounting for the wind when they shoot a bow.

i enjoy social encounters. i think the RP and back-and-forth you can get from remaining in first person for the majority of social encounters is a big part of the fun. I encourage and would rather have someone stammer out a "Of course King Blarg we never call you old fat and lazy even though it is quite an accurate description... I mean your rotundness is amazing...umm" and so on than to have them say "I try to butter up the king but want to roll with disadvantage on my persuasion check".

However, I don't force my sense of fun or play style on the players. If someone just states what they're doing and grab dice, I may ask for clarification before they roll. Different people game for different reasons, I simply accept that for some people D&D is little more than a glorified battle strategy game. As long as I have fun playing with them, it's all good.

 

[GMMichael]

So every player who every has a dump stat is redefining as wanting to fail and therefore needs to succeed to fail? I don't buy it. . .

But "wanting to fail" is not usually considered a game breaking issue, determining that they are "gaming the system" and redefining it so that they need to success to fail just feels very antagonistic. . .

Sorry if this post feels so negative, but it feels so antagonistic to define anything the player wants to do as "something that must be opposed, because it's now a goal and a goal can't be accomplished without a roll".

You're waaay overthinking it.

CCS said it best. But, don't forget the first part of my re-assessment: the GM determines if a roll is necessary. Since not doing something is usually easier than doing something, wanting to fail means wanting to do something that's so easy, it shouldn't require a roll. But since that's not always the case, at least the GM can decide if the new course of action requires a roll, without the player arbitrarily adding bonuses to anyone's roll.

It's not saying "you have to roll to do anything you want." It's saying "what you're actually doing might not actually require a roll."

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I'd allow my player to intentionally roll disadvantage if he thinks his character is really bad at something. If he roleplays that out well and it is an essential disadvantage he gives himself, I might even grant Inspiration for it.