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Kaun
2012-10-21, 05:38 PM
When it comes to social skills in RPG's (diplomacy as an example); Do you let you players use these skills on other players?

Why/why not? and if you do, how do you do it?

Personally, i generally don't. I just don't see the point. I mean i could let the player roll and if their skills are stacked they will probably succeed but as a GM, telling player A that his character likes player B's character more now because of a dice roll seems futile. Even if i can get player A to play along it is probably going to cause animosity because seldom do players enjoy watching their characters being forced to do something against their will.

Anyway, i am interested to hear others thoughts.

Kane0
2012-10-21, 05:48 PM
I'd usually let them if they are being mature and are doing it for a good reason, otherwise it becomes a case of "RP it out between yourselves"

It can work of the party face is being played by someone shy and not good with words, but can also backfire if the boisterous powerplayer is optimising himself a Diplomancer build.

I guess It's up to the players. I mean I'd be happy to accept that my character has been placated by a good diplomacy roll by an NPC, why not a PC?

Edit: We bluff each other a lot, and that always works well.
The biggest problem I have is intimidation. It has wonky mechanics that dont have a save or opposed check or anything, and since you are usually intimidating PCs about your level it doesn't work mechanically. I usually let the targetted PC have an opportunity to make an opposed Intimidate check if they want, or otherwise make a will save against the intimidate attempt.

kieza
2012-10-21, 05:53 PM
I allow players to use Bluff on each other in-game, but not Diplomacy or Intimidate. My rationale is that Bluff simply limits the information available to the characters, whereas Diplomacy and Intimidate actually alter the target's attitude, which is something removes control of their character.

Totally Guy
2012-10-21, 06:14 PM
I happen to like games that allow for social conflict because you can set up the scene, agree to whatever assumptions and conditions the game makes, say just the right amount of dialogue and get an outcome. By relying on dice you get a level playing field where everyone understands a situation the same way.

When you're trying to do the same without a system to support you one player has to give up else there is no resolution. Playing your hardest and best becomes a bad thing if there's two of you doing it against the other. Caring about the outcome becomes a bad thing if you're a person who plays at their best and hardest.

If you're rolling dice you can still play your hardest and best without upsetting the flow of the game and you can chalk it up to your own tactics and the character's skills and accept the loss.

Some games have the PCs and NPCs play by the same rules and others have PCs and NPCs play by different ones. Then there's a big set of games in which the PCs and NPCs play with the same rules, except for the social stuff and that seems kind of odd to me. I'd expect more games to exist on either end of spectrum.

obryn
2012-10-21, 06:50 PM
Only when it's more fun for everyone at the table - including the player getting bluffed or persuaded. Otherwise, nope. Fun trumps PvP skill use.

-O

scurv
2012-10-21, 07:01 PM
gross. I hate social rolls between pc's.

TuggyNE
2012-10-21, 07:06 PM
I allow players to use Bluff on each other in-game, but not Diplomacy or Intimidate. My rationale is that Bluff simply limits the information available to the characters, whereas Diplomacy and Intimidate actually alter the target's attitude, which is something removes control of their character.

Basically, this.

SuperPanda
2012-10-21, 07:54 PM
Very similar to the above statements.

I'll let players use Bluff / Sense Motive to see if they think a character is withholding information, particularly when they already know that the player is withholding information but I don't generally encourage players to use their social rolls against each other.

Diplomacy I might allow for a player who has a hard time wording things but only as a role-playing nudge that "he made the argument really well." It still never works for "give me that magical item you just looted so that I can sell it and by myself an upgrade." It just means that the appropriate reaction is to laugh off the attempt instead of hit the character for it.

Intimidate I don't allow simply because between players I figure they might as well just attack each-other at that point (and if one knows they can't win then there is your intimidation).

kardar233
2012-10-21, 08:31 PM
Yeah, I let people roll to lie/detect lies (as it's mostly unconscious reflexes that the person has no control over), but otherwise RP it.

Jack of Spades
2012-10-21, 08:46 PM
I see a lot of bluff/sense motive, and the occasional knowledge check, between players, but other than that, it's pretty much all roleplay. Using diplomacy/leadership skills on other players is generally considered a d*** move with us anyhow.

In high fantasy games, we also abuse our relative knowledge of languages against one another too. It works because our group is good at avoiding metagaming. We don't run very functional high-fantasy games. :smalltongue:

Vorr
2012-10-21, 09:31 PM
Never. But I generally don't let players use the social skills at all. I do it Old School: your character has the social skills of the player. So even if your character is Prince Charming, if your Larry the Deviant anti social third shift gas station attendant cave man, then your prince character won't be so charming.

huttj509
2012-10-21, 09:40 PM
It's the sort of thing that can work if everyone at the table has the same expectations, especially if they're good at seperating character knowledge/motivation from player.

I'd not recommend letting it shift attitudes wildly, but to decide "ok, who wins the argument of whether you should talk your way past the guards, sneak past, or kill past" it can provide a handy resolution mechanic as long as nobody built a diplomancer (some weight to the more diplomatic/whatever character can be fine, but not auto-win).

As an example from Shadowrun of the sort of situation it could work, my character was rescued from a Megacorp facility where he had a bunch of wires hooked up to him. As we were escaping, my character said he knew a safe place. The guy driving cast a truth spell and asked "are you lying." Well, out of character the gig was up, because I had to ask to see the wording of the spell, etc. In character, I managed to sucessfully bluff him (don't remember the skills used, it was years ago) and directed us to the Megacorp trap, me having been brainwashed to think I was working for them as an inside man to nab the runner group.

"Why'd you let me drive, man?"
"My character thought you were telling the truth, dude!"

Fun session, good and tense use separating in/out of character knowledge, and great dramatic irony as we ALL knew what was coming.

Look, if your running partners get captured by a Megacorp and are hooked up to wires when you rescue em, just geek them and run unless you have a REALLY good reason otherwise.

But that sort of thing in 3.5 could have involved a bluff roll, possibly diplomacy or intimidate...the situation was such that having PCs in a social contest against each other would not have been out of place. You don't want one player dominating the others willy nilly though.

huttj509
2012-10-21, 09:41 PM
Never. But I generally don't let players use the social skills at all. I do it Old School: your character has the social skills of the player. So even if your character is Prince Charming, if your Larry the Deviant anti social third shift gas station attendant cave man, then your prince character won't be so charming.

Do you require the players to have the requisite weapon, heraldry, and wilderness survival skills as well?

Ravens_cry
2012-10-21, 09:49 PM
When it comes to social skills in RPG's (diplomacy as an example); Do you let you players use these skills on other players?

Why/why not? and if you do, how do you do it?

Personally, i generally don't. I just don't see the point. I mean i could let the player roll and if their skills are stacked they will probably succeed but as a GM, telling player A that his character likes player B's character more now because of a dice roll seems futile. Even if i can get player A to play along it is probably going to cause animosity because seldom do players enjoy watching their characters being forced to do something against their will.

Anyway, i am interested to hear others thoughts.
The rules don't allow it anyway, at least in D&D 3.X.

Vorr
2012-10-21, 10:33 PM
Do you require the players to have the requisite weapon, heraldry, and wilderness survival skills as well?

I'm not sure I understand the question.

But I do hate Roll Playing:

Player 1:"I walk over to the King." **Rolls Diplomacy**
DM:"The King does exactly as you say and gives you anything you want."

OR

Player 2: "I walk into town." **rolls Gather Information**
Dm:"Ok, by walking into town and standing there for one second, you now know every single rumor and story in town."

TuggyNE
2012-10-21, 10:50 PM
I'm not sure I understand the question.

That is, do you require a player to be able to accurately demonstrate precisely how to counter the orc's axeblow and twist their sword past their attempted parry to kill them? If not, there's a serious double standard in play; character ability to hit things, cast spells, whatever is no less abstracted away from player skill in those areas than diplomacy, bluff, or intimidation.


But I do hate Roll Playing:

Player 1:"I walk over to the King." **Rolls Diplomacy**
DM:"The King does exactly as you say and gives you anything you want."

OR

Player 2: "I walk into town." **rolls Gather Information**
Dm:"Ok, by walking into town and standing there for one second, you now know every single rumor and story in town."

Those are indeed bad, but that's a false dichotomy; those are simply examples of laziness. A comparable situation would be a wizard's player saying "I cast whatever spells are needed to win the fight." Roleplaying relies on the player being able to direct their character's actions, though not necessarily to carry them through successfully themselves; that is, player directs and character acts. Forcing the player to do everything, with no ability to say "yes, my character is able to accomplish this, though I cannot" is a bad idea; equally bad is a player pressing the easy button and saying "good things happen, you figure out how my character got there, OK?"

A concrete example of roughly the right balance is a player saying, "I indicate to the King the negative consequences of failing to honor the alliance with the Dwarves, and politely suggest that the nobility might seize this opportunity to gain power at his expense." This outlines the rough course of Diplomacy without requiring the player to have a silver tongue or the mind of a Richelieu; it's abstract without being pointlessly vague. Furthermore, the DM can actually work with that to explain the result; it's possible to have the right idea, but stumble on your words (or, for that matter, to be inefficient in your approach, but so eloquent you manage to achieve the desired result anyway).

Ravens_cry
2012-10-21, 10:57 PM
Player 2: "I walk into town." **rolls Gather Information**
Dm:"Ok, by walking into town and standing there for one second, you now know every single rumor and story in town."

It generally doesn't work like that. Sure, it may take that long out of game, but much more time is generally spent in game. The rules for Gather Information (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/gatherInformation.htm) in 3.5 explicitly mention this.
If you are doing it differently, you are breaking the very rules you are complaining about.

Kaun
2012-10-21, 11:05 PM
A concrete example of roughly the right balance is a player saying, "I indicate to the King the negative consequences of failing to honor the alliance with the Dwarves, and politely suggest that the nobility might seize this opportunity to gain power at his expense." This outlines the rough course of Diplomacy without requiring the player to have a silver tongue or the mind of a Richelieu; it's abstract without being pointlessly vague. Furthermore, the DM can actually work with that to explain the result; it's possible to have the right idea, but stumble on your words (or, for that matter, to be inefficient in your approach, but so eloquent you manage to achieve the desired result anyway).

You require them to provide leverage. I like to do the same thing. It doesn't make sense for a lot of these skills to work with out it. A diplomacy check with out leverage is fine to improve someones opinion of you, but to convince someone to do something they normally wouldn't do requires some sort of leverage.

Sidmen
2012-10-22, 12:26 AM
You require them to provide leverage. I like to do the same thing. It doesn't make sense for a lot of these skills to work with out it. A diplomacy check with out leverage is fine to improve someones opinion of you, but to convince some one to do something they normally wouldn't do requires some sort of leverage.

Most of the time, yes. However, this leverage can be either real (I have a painting of you with your mistress), or imagined (rumors that the nobility are losing faith in the king, that if he fails to live up to his obligations to the Dwarves, they might fail to live up to their obligations to the king when he needs it... a rumor started by you a few days ago with no actual basis in fact).

Totally Guy
2012-10-22, 01:16 AM
Player 1:"I walk over to the King." **Rolls Diplomacy**
DM:"The King does exactly as you say and gives you anything you want."

OR

Player 2: "I walk into town." **rolls Gather Information**
Dm:"Ok, by walking into town and standing there for one second, you now know every single rumor and story in town."

Standard response: "No, you tell me what you are trying to achieve, and what your characters says or does and if those things align, I'll tell you what you need to roll."

NichG
2012-10-22, 02:34 AM
The whole 'you don't ask your players to demonstrate swordsmanship, so why should you ask them to demonstrate persuasion' thing is misleading in my opinion, and it keeps coming up in these discussions.

Fundamentally, a game in some way tests the abilities of its players. In soccer you have to run and kick the ball and have spatial awareness of your teammates and be able to aim. In chess, you have to figure out what move to make. I think its a perfectly consistent position to hold that tabletop RPGs are a game about social interactions and roleplay. Its in the name. This doesn't mean you can't have social mechanics or die rolling as part of it, but it does mean that you're not somehow being illogical if you choose to run your game differently.

And there are games where you would have to demonstrate your swordsmanship. People do medieval combat recreations all the time.

TuggyNE
2012-10-22, 03:11 AM
Fundamentally, a game in some way tests the abilities of its players. In soccer you have to run and kick the ball and have spatial awareness of your teammates and be able to aim. In chess, you have to figure out what move to make. I think its a perfectly consistent position to hold that tabletop RPGs are a game about social interactions and roleplay. Its in the name. This doesn't mean you can't have social mechanics or die rolling as part of it, but it does mean that you're not somehow being illogical if you choose to run your game differently.

I'm not sure I agree with this; D&D in particular is a combat-heavy RPG, so it's often reasonable to expect similar, consistent treatment between pure roleplay skills and pure fighting skills. There's also the question of what abilities you're testing; it's a very old-school idea to test e.g. player ability to ferret out bizarre traps based on the DM's habits, or to require the player to convince the DM of something in order for the character to succeed, or whatever. More on this in a bit.


And there are games where you would have to demonstrate your swordsmanship. People do medieval combat recreations all the time.

Indeed, but those aren't what you might call "tabletop roleplaying games", so they don't fit the discussion too well.

So I'd say it's a matter of two major considerations: genre conventions/player-DM agreement on the one hand, and consistency on the other. That is: if the biggest focus of the game is complicated social maneuvers, with a strong emphasis on player ability rather than character traits, then it's fine to agree to be constrained by your own actual diplomatic abilities, as a group. Similarly, if you really like the battle of wits between a fair but killer DM and metagaming players, it's fine to basically ignore a rogue's skills in favor of requiring lots of care with 10' poles.

In both cases, however, it's a group agreement to ignore certain levels of character abstraction. Those abstractions were put in to allow precisely the sort of separation between character and player ability I mentioned in my last post: not to remove the need for player skill, but to change it from "I personally know the minutiae of trap-checking/diplomatic maneuvering/weaving baskets/casting spells" to "I've figured out approximately what my character should do, and I'm going to have them do that as well as they can".

For consistency's sake, if you allow this sort of higher-level direction for some things (the classic example being sword-swinging, but that's by no means the only one), you should seriously consider using the same criteria for other things (such as trap-finding, social skills, and so forth).

Totally Guy
2012-10-22, 03:20 AM
Fundamentally, a game in some way tests the abilities of its players.

I'm cool with that. But how do competitive folks get an outcome? Does a third party listen and decide it? The skill I've found to be tested in practice in an unrestricted environment is manipulation of the players through force of personality. It was really awkward back then.

What rules could we impose to help the group judge the player's portrayal of the characters and not judge the player's own dominance over the group? You might have these already but they might not be written down.

huttj509
2012-10-22, 03:53 AM
For consistency's sake, if you allow this sort of higher-level direction for some things (the classic example being sword-swinging, but that's by no means the only one), you should seriously consider using the same criteria for other things (such as trap-finding, social skills, and so forth).

Yeah, there was a reason I mentioned Heraldry Lore and Wilderness Survival skills as well, but 'weapon skill' was the one focused on.

I mean, let's take Survival. If someone finding their way overland mentions finding a landmark in the right direction, and using that to keep the path until they next check the map and compass, do you give them a bonus? Do you require that sort of thing for them to find their way around at all? How much of a bonus? +2? Enough to negate that the character has wisdom of 6 and no skill points?

What if the player mentions what sort of berries they're looking for, how to tell good ones from poisonous, when foraging for food. How about edible fungi?

Heck, knowledge checks to identify monsters, spellcraft checks to identify spells.

My character can know arcane signs I can barely imagine. He can be able to survive in the woods with naught but 2 sticks to rub together. He can jump farther, swim faster, and climb better than I ever could. He can disguise himself so well his own mother wouldn't have a clue, but Pelor forbid he be able to string 4 sentences together without needing to say "um, you know" in the middle, because that would just be silly.

Totally Guy
2012-10-22, 08:32 AM
I made this quick flow chart to remind myself how to run this sort of stuff.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v44/macdonnell/Argument.gif

Friv
2012-10-22, 10:37 AM
The level of social interaction that I allow die rolling for between players is equal to the level of physical interaction that I allow die rolling for.

If players can make rolls to grab objects from each other or wrestle one another to the ground or what have you, I allow minor social rolls with equivalent long-term effects (i.e. not many). If players can stab one another to death without the table declaring foul, they can persuade each other just as fully.

Obviously, this works better in games with functioning social mechanics than it does in D&D, where I usually just have to declare "Yeah, what he's saying makes sense" and see what players do with that.

LibraryOgre
2012-10-22, 10:50 AM
I'll talk about the abstraction bit in another thread, but...

It really depends on the kind of game.

In D&D, we roll Bluff and Sense Motive against each other all the time. They are the primary weapons of our PvP arsenal... lying to people, telling half-truths, and watching their player flail in frustration when they can't act on things they know to be true, but their character does not.

In a more social-oriented game (L5R, for example), where the concept of a "party" is necessarily looser, PvP diplomacy is the order of the day, and it is not about forcing another character to do something... Diplomacy isn't a magical headlock that you can use to walk someone around the ring. No, Diplomacy is about influencing the NPCs reactions, so someone who reacts against it is insane.

If I successfully use Diplomacy against a fellow PC, but don't convince the player, then the player has a choice... let his PC be swayed, because I was so bloody convincing, or have the PC be thought mad, stupid, or obstinant by the NPCs around because he clearly failed to listen to such a persuasive argument. If he doesn't want his PC to be swayed by the argument, that's fine, but in a social game, it is NOT just about choosing your ground and standing on it. It's about making the current flow the way you want it to. There are LOTS of examples of people in RL who refuse to be swayed by any kind of argument, from politicians to 3-year-olds. But that doesn't make them right, and if society carries on in spite of them, they're just a pebble in a stream, able to do little to affect the course of the river.

NichG
2012-10-22, 11:08 AM
I'm cool with that. But how do competitive folks get an outcome? Does a third party listen and decide it? The skill I've found to be tested in practice in an unrestricted environment is manipulation of the players through force of personality. It was really awkward back then.

What rules could we impose to help the group judge the player's portrayal of the characters and not judge the player's own dominance over the group? You might have these already but they might not be written down.

The game in some sense naturally resolves the winner, since each character can choose how to move on from a given event. Much like in combat you take hitpoint damage which takes some time to heal, or you expend spell slots which take some time to recover, there will generally be behavioral consequences that persist beyond the decision point. So I'm not sure there's a clean, objective 'winner' to a social conflict so much as there is a continual pattern of gains and trade-offs over the course of several sessions. If the rest of the party thinks you're an idiot, or dangerous, or whatever, then that long-term impression takes a lot of work to get over, even if you did manage to resolve a single event to your satisfaction.

I'm not sure that's exactly what you're looking for though. I've had clever players really skillfully manipulate other players and its made for some very interesting games. There was one campaign where a player maintained two simultaneous 'models' for what the real plot was in his head, one plausible but the other what he thought was 'really' going on and he used the false model to manipulate the party while he built his goals around the other one. That kind of richness is hard to achieve with a strictly mechanical system. Having mechanics that interface alongside it is fine, and can even improve the richness of the result - things like, you can use this power and the target must tell you one thing they honestly want from you.

As far as D&D being combat heavy, the rules are, I agree (though individual games need not have combat for many sessions and it'll work just fine - freeform RP is always an available fallback here). In some sense thats why using D&D's rules for social interaction is a bad idea - the engine clearly doesn't focus on it, so the result is going to be somewhat primitive compared to natural human social interaction.

Anyhow, at this point I'm mostly arguing preference. The point I wanted to make is that there's not necessarily a double-standard. Call it my version of Stormwind: Just because you ask players to demonstrate one ability out of character does not mean you need to ask them to demonstrate all abilities out of character to be logically consistent.

scurv
2012-10-22, 11:19 AM
if it is a Roll Play campaign, I am agreeable with using social rolls

If it is a role-play campaign. Your RP better sell it, Because I am not buying that roll.

The point of Role-playing is to role-play. If we are going to skip out on the RP. I am just going to fire up a gamesystem.

Friv
2012-10-22, 12:28 PM
if it is a Roll Play campaign, I am agreeable with using social rolls

If it is a role-play campaign. Your RP better sell it, Because I am not buying that roll.

The point of Role-playing is to role-play. If we are going to skip out on the RP. I am just going to fire up a gamesystem.

I assume that you therefore remove all social traits from games that you run?

huttj509
2012-10-22, 12:32 PM
if it is a Roll Play campaign, I am agreeable with using social rolls

If it is a role-play campaign. Your RP better sell it, Because I am not buying that roll.

The point of Role-playing is to role-play. If we are going to skip out on the RP. I am just going to fire up a gamesystem.

Again, what sort of player knowledge of wilderness survival methods, campaign history, heraldry, and arcane lore do you require in your role-play campaigns?

You want to have gathered enough food just because you rolled a 20? What sort of food were you looking for? Small game? Make me an archery roll to see if you hit. Mushrooms? Can you describe how you weeded out the poisonous ones? Nuts and berries? Wrong type of forest.

obryn
2012-10-22, 12:59 PM
if it is a Roll Play campaign, I am agreeable with using social rolls

If it is a role-play campaign. Your RP better sell it, Because I am not buying that roll.
I tried to go the "full roleplay" route once. My players and I ended up stranded in the middle of the woods without horses or anything. We had to run after the police ("town guard") confiscated our weapons. I suppose our Thief shouldn't have tried to pick open that supply shed, but we were in desperate need of iron rations. We didn't find a single orc or gold coin, either. :smallfrown:

-O

DrBurr
2012-10-22, 01:35 PM
Generally I use Bluff & Insight when people don't want to share information but I never ask for Intimidate or Diplomacy checks though my players sometimes make these rolls anyways and most of the time they roll with the rolls as long as their having fun and I don't interrupt and usually laugh at the stupid situations that occur between the player characters because of these antics

TheCountAlucard
2012-10-22, 02:09 PM
When it comes to social skills in RPG's (diplomacy as an example); Do you let you players use these skills on other players?Depends on the system. Paranoia? Yes. Exalted? Yes. WoD? Yes. D&D? Haven't run it in quite a while, but I didn't back then; don't know how I'd answer now.


Why?For Paranoia? Because it's more funny that way. :smalltongue:

For Exalted? Because the game has a system in place for how one affects what a character likes and dislikes, how much of said influence is needed to affect changes, how it interacts with a character's motivation and temperament, and how one resists such mental influence, be it natural or unnatural.

For WoD? Because if Majesty and Dominate didn't affect fellow PCs, no one would take them.


and if you do, how do you do it?Depends on the game.


I mean i could let the player roll and if their skills are stacked they will probably succeed but as a GM, telling player A that his character likes player B's character more now because of a dice roll seems futile.To be fair, it's rarely that simple in either of the more serious examples I provided.


Even if i can get player A to play along it is probably going to cause animosity because seldom do players enjoy watching their characters being forced to do something against their will.Do you mean against the player's will, or against the character's will?

Kaun
2012-10-22, 04:39 PM
Do you mean against the player's will, or against the character's will?

Player's.

Depending on the game, the right dice rolls, should affect the character's will. Getting the players to accept that their characters will has changed against theirs can be difficult.



In a more social-oriented game (L5R, for example), where the concept of a "party" is necessarily looser, PvP diplomacy is the order of the day, and it is not about forcing another character to do something... Diplomacy isn't a magical headlock that you can use to walk someone around the ring. No, Diplomacy is about influencing the NPCs reactions, so someone who reacts against it is insane.

If I successfully use Diplomacy against a fellow PC, but don't convince the player, then the player has a choice... let his PC be swayed, because I was so bloody convincing, or have the PC be thought mad, stupid, or obstinant by the NPCs around because he clearly failed to listen to such a persuasive argument. If he doesn't want his PC to be swayed by the argument, that's fine, but in a social game, it is NOT just about choosing your ground and standing on it. It's about making the current flow the way you want it to. There are LOTS of examples of people in RL who refuse to be swayed by any kind of argument, from politicians to 3-year-olds. But that doesn't make them right, and if society carries on in spite of them, they're just a pebble in a stream, able to do little to affect the course of the river.

This is an interesting way of handling such a problem as long as you have NPC to use as guide stick. Defiantly a new way of looking at the problem for me though.

LibraryOgre
2012-10-22, 04:40 PM
I tried to go the "full roleplay" route once. My players and I ended up stranded in the middle of the woods without horses or anything. We had to run after the police ("town guard") confiscated our weapons. I suppose our Thief shouldn't have tried to pick open that supply shed, but we were in desperate need of iron rations. We didn't find a single orc or gold coin, either. :smallfrown:

-O

We played a conspiracy-oriented game of Ninjas and Superspies (that I observed contained neither Ninjas nor Superspies) that had precisely ONE incident of combat... and that was because a player complained about not having any fights, so while investigating a UFO sighting, the GM had us attacked by a gorram wolverine. Put one of our PCs in the hospital, and I wound up having to Judo the damn thing away from her long enough to shoot it.

I drew my weapon a few times, but usually either to have it ready (because the Air Force pukes flying the saucer might shoot us after they crashed), or as part of intimidation.

Every time he complains about a lack of combat, we bring up the wolverine incident.

scurv
2012-10-22, 05:52 PM
Well.... basically yes if it is a role-play campaign. For the players who are less capable of expressing them self we do tend to grade on a curb. But in general we kinda like to be entertained with the good RP. That and for when we make our hourly breaks it gives us something to bs about.

That and nothing says cheese like a bluff roll every five minutes.

What turned me off hard to Diplomacy rolls was having a DM enforce a bluff roll on my mage/craftsman about the value of a magic item she made.... apparently a vamperic blade is worth 500 gold when in that campaign it took 20kish worth of materials to craft it.

And he wondered why he lost his core players that night.

scurv
2012-10-22, 05:59 PM
Again, what sort of player knowledge of wilderness survival methods, campaign history, heraldry, and arcane lore do you require in your role-play campaigns?

You want to have gathered enough food just because you rolled a 20? What sort of food were you looking for? Small game? Make me an archery roll to see if you hit. Mushrooms? Can you describe how you weeded out the poisonous ones? Nuts and berries? Wrong type of forest.

So...in a talking based game, We are going to substitute dice rolls for talking? Odd.

Dice rolls for physical skills is one thing. It is a very different thing then Substituting dice for talking, Personally if we are using dice rolls in-place of roleplay well you might as well fire up the official campaign of nwn.

NichG
2012-10-22, 06:17 PM
Again, what sort of player knowledge of wilderness survival methods, campaign history, heraldry, and arcane lore do you require in your role-play campaigns?

You want to have gathered enough food just because you rolled a 20? What sort of food were you looking for? Small game? Make me an archery roll to see if you hit. Mushrooms? Can you describe how you weeded out the poisonous ones? Nuts and berries? Wrong type of forest.

If a player can enrich the game by bringing in such skills or information, I do everything I can to cultivate that instead of shooting it down. That said, this is a 'tabletop roleplaying game' we're talking about, not 'survival training'. It all comes down to 'what is my game about?', and that is a question that must be answered separately for each table. The only wrong answers are the ones that are lies (lies to the players about what the game is about, lies to yourself, etc).

Unfortunately, many games have these lies built in at some level, or at least encourage confusion on the matter. Old school D&D still had 'Int' and 'Cha' and 'Wis' as stats after all, even if the gaming materials also explicitly encouraged player skill in these things. The thing is that those stats only determined a couple other mechanical factors such as how many hirelings you can have, how many languages your character can know, etc. Over time it evolved into an interpretation that 'your character is exactly this charismatic, in every sense of what charismatic could mean.' My personal choice if making a system from the ground up: don't create stats that sound like they completely determine the character's mental abilities; instead, explicitly limit it to things that are more mechanical or more difficult to have players enact via their RP.

awa
2012-10-22, 07:11 PM
for me diplomacy and intimidate to change reaction no
bluff and intimidate to cause the shaken condition yes.

in regards to the popular tangent in this thread
in my most recent game i removed diplomacy as a skill and just use the charisma score. so its primarily modified by the content of your talk.

personally one thing i absolutely hate is character not role playing their scores.
so if you are super eloquent but have a cha of 4 ill assume you implied the queen was a whore or something equivalent.

(although honestly ive had more problem recently with people acting dumber or less charismatic then they are to try and sabotage the party)

obryn
2012-10-22, 07:32 PM
Every time he complains about a lack of combat, we bring up the wolverine incident.
The joke I was aiming for was that it was my players and I, not their characters. You know, aiming for "roleplay" instead of "rollplay."

Re-reading my post, that's not 100% clear, and I could indeed have been clearer. :smallsmile:


So...in a talking based game, We are going to substitute dice rolls for talking? Odd.

Dice rolls for physical skills is one thing. It is a very different thing then Substituting dice for talking, Personally if we are using dice rolls in-place of roleplay well you might as well fire up the official campaign of nwn.
There is a rather large middle you're excluding, here.

-O

Kane0
2012-10-22, 11:14 PM
To expand a little on what I said way back:

In my game:
"OK, Player 1 wants to intimidate/bluff/diplomacise player 2? Why and vaguely how?"

Assuming the answer is acceptable, and that I can trust the players involved to handle the situation maturely (which I do in my group):

"Player 2, how do you react to the attempt, before it is resolved? You can answer this question in or out of character."

Player 2 might:
a) Accept the attempt and roleplay it out
b) Not accept the attempt and attempt a roleplay resolution to the attempt
c) Be happy to let the dice decide their characters reaction

It usually ends up as option a or b for bluff, c for intimidate and diplomacy varies.

If player 1 is attempting this on the entire party, then each can decide individually or i decide that it is a dice roll.

Personally though, I usually choose dice when im a player. You dont roleplay a hide check to hide from your party or the somatic/verbal components of a spell, so why should you roleplay social interaction and then disregard the dice? Its why the skill is there, isnt it?
Of course if you happen to be eloquent and describe your attempt in detail I give the usual +1 or +2 bonus, just as if a player describes in good enough detail how he plans to tackle a particular challenge.

TuggyNE
2012-10-22, 11:32 PM
So...in a talking based game, We are going to substitute dice rolls for talking? Odd.

Dice rolls for physical skills is one thing. It is a very different thing then Substituting dice for talking, Personally if we are using dice rolls in-place of roleplay well you might as well fire up the official campaign of nwn.

In place of it? Not really. To guide and direct it? Whyever not? (In particular, I fail to see how providing two or three sentences of description verbally before rolling a die is "substituting dice rolls for talking".)

One thing I see I forgot to mention earlier was a suggestion to use die rolls first, and roleplay a more or less convincing speech accordingly, if possible. However, if anything that requires even more skill; it's not everyone that can convincingly pretend to be both convincing and unconvincing at a moment's notice.

I guess essentially, though, I simply don't see the appeal of a game based on being able to sweet-talk the DM into this or that; I prefer to have my characters succeed or fail on their own merits, not so much on mine. (Because, quite frankly, my merits are largely confined to scholarly pursuits.) Obviously, some people do want to test their own social abilities directly, rather than directing their characters.

D&D is not wholly unsuited to that, but it has rather a lot of baggage that makes it less workable. Therefore, I tend to recommend that groups who do want to play that way consider switching to a different and better-suited system. Similarly, using D&D as a basis for LARP combat isn't necessarily wrong, it's just a little too heavy-weight (IMO).

Totally Guy
2012-10-23, 12:42 AM
personally one thing i absolutely hate is character not role playing their scores.

This happens automatically when you roll dice for it. Characters with high scores will succeed more often and characters with low scores will rack up more failures. It's self reinforcing. This blew my mind when I first read it in a game called Inspectres.

awa
2012-10-23, 11:16 AM
if your rolling that's fine but you don't always roll for everything. (this is more important for extreme scores) if you have a situation where the words you say mean more then the stats that's when it becomes a problem. if you have a cha of 3 and no ranks then you should not be capable of convincing anyone no matter how good you the player speaks.

my greatest hate is characters pretending their character cant figure something
for example from a game i was not actually in so im paraphrasing. paladin gives a prisoner to non good ally walks into the next room stares at a wall with his fingers in his ears. the paladin waits a bit then reenters the room where he is told the prisoner has tripped pulled out all his fingernail and slit his own throat on a completely unrelated note we now know where the villains is.

Apparently this kind of thing was a regular occurrence in their party. for a character with a positive wisdom and int score that is in my mind unacceptable

Morithias
2012-10-23, 11:36 AM
I always thought that Diplomacy didn't work on PCs PERIOD, regardless of who was using it.

The whole "You have to roleplay even if your character has 18 charisma" always struck a blow to me, being mentally disabled (not going to say what, but it's a social thing).

People play D&D and such for ESCAPIST fantasy. Reminding us that in the real world that we suck, well...that just makes us mad.

Also if someone needs to actually roleplay diplomacy and such, what happens when they out argue the DM? What happens when a "Star Trek Insurrection" type thing happens, when one player makes an argument that makes perfect sense for siding with the bad guys and kill that elf village, causing all the other PCs to go off the rails?

Edit: Also I just thought of something else.

I have 148 IQ, by WOTC standards that's a high 14, almost 15. Do you allow me to use my real world intelligence on my 5 INT barbarian? No? If so why can't I use my 18 charisma, in place of my real world charisma?

It's a double edge sword, yes the main diplomacy rules are fairly broken, but rules can be fixed. You can't fix "Holy crap the whole party has turned against the good guys cause one guy managed to convince them otherwise." Cause there was no roll.

Kaun
2012-10-23, 04:29 PM
I always thought that Diplomacy didn't work on PCs PERIOD, regardless of who was using it.

The question wasn't really system specific.

NichG
2012-10-23, 04:52 PM
Also if someone needs to actually roleplay diplomacy and such, what happens when they out argue the DM? What happens when a "Star Trek Insurrection" type thing happens, when one player makes an argument that makes perfect sense for siding with the bad guys and kill that elf village, causing all the other PCs to go off the rails?


This is called the campaign's crowning moment of awesome. As a DM, I love this: the game is well and truly alive when the players pull something like that. As a player, its a wild ride.



I have 148 IQ, by WOTC standards that's a high 14, almost 15. Do you allow me to use my real world intelligence on my 5 INT barbarian? No? If so why can't I use my 18 charisma, in place of my real world charisma?


Actually, I would be absolutely fine with you using your real world intelligence on your 5 Int Barbarian. At least the way I run it, Int does the following things: sets save DCs for certain spells/abilities, determines starting languages known, determines skill points, acts as prerequisite for certain feats, modifiers the value of certain skills. I don't let players roll an Int check to solve a puzzle, so its only fair that if you solve a puzzle then you solved it, regardless of your character's Int.

Now, if you want to play down your natural intelligence because thats the character you want to play then thats fine too (I mean, why are you playing a 5 Int barbarian if you don't want to roleplay someone dumb - it takes real effort to get your Int that low!)

Morithias
2012-10-23, 05:06 PM
Actually, I would be absolutely fine with you using your real world intelligence on your 5 Int Barbarian. At least the way I run it, Int does the following things: sets save DCs for certain spells/abilities, determines starting languages known, determines skill points, acts as prerequisite for certain feats, modifiers the value of certain skills. I don't let players roll an Int check to solve a puzzle, so its only fair that if you solve a puzzle then you solved it, regardless of your character's Int.


Give me a second to find the comic, and I'll show you why that is a VERY bad idea.

http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/ffn/index.php?date=2003-09-17

Yeah here we go.

What happens when I start going "SCIENCE" and my orc barbarian starts making muskets and gunpowder.

huttj509
2012-10-23, 06:22 PM
Give me a second to find the comic, and I'll show you why that is a VERY bad idea.

http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/ffn/index.php?date=2003-09-17

Yeah here we go.

What happens when I start going "SCIENCE" and my orc barbarian starts making muskets and gunpowder.

In another related webcomic link:

http://agc.deskslave.org/comic_viewer.html?goNumber=4

NichG
2012-10-23, 07:03 PM
Give me a second to find the comic, and I'll show you why that is a VERY bad idea.

http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/ffn/index.php?date=2003-09-17

Yeah here we go.

What happens when I start going "SCIENCE" and my orc barbarian starts making muskets and gunpowder.

Well, aside from that I ask you to show me a functional design? Either you find that it works or that the rules of the universe are different than you thought.

But there's a difference between out of character intellect and out of character knowledge anyhow. Its no different than if you hear something at the table that your character wasn't there for (for instance, if another PC was secretly having a meeting with the villain and I ran it in open air at the table). But intellect is completely fair game. I will never say 'you aren't smart enough to think of that', but I will say 'how does your character know what uranium is?' and other such things.

If in the world of the RPG there's an orange rock that sometimes explodes when miners are digging for ores, then you could absolutely say 'I want to extract it, put it in a confined space, and make explosives!' - thats out of character intellect. If you say 'I mix up a batch of thermite, heres the composition' then thats out of character knowledge.



In another related webcomic link:

http://agc.deskslave.org/comic_viewer.html?goNumber=4


This is just silly, since Charisma is the most powerful stat in older editions of D&D - it determines how many hirelings you can have, which is nearly the same as how many extra lives you get given the lethality of those systems! And charisma is none-too-shabby in 3ed either, as the stat with the most 'X stat to Y' abilities in the game.

Morithias
2012-10-23, 08:08 PM
that sometimes explodes when miners are digging for ores, then you could absolutely say 'I want to extract it, put it in a confined space, and make explosives!' - thats out of character intellect. If you say 'I mix up a batch of thermite, heres the composition' then thats out of character knowledge.


yes because using exploding rocks as weapons is clearly something someone needs super high intelligence to figure out. Sure I won't be able to use it to build a nuclear bomb, but I could place them around a castle a minefield to deter sappers.

Zeful
2012-10-23, 08:26 PM
I'm not sure I understand the question.

But I do hate Roll Playing:

Player 1:"I walk over to the King." **Rolls Diplomacy**
DM:"The King does exactly as you say and gives you anything you want."

OR

Player 2: "I walk into town." **rolls Gather Information**
Dm:"Ok, by walking into town and standing there for one second, you now know every single rumor and story in town."

It's a good thing both of those scenarios are impossible by D&D's skill rules, and letting them happen is more your fault than the system's. Actually, I can't think of any system where those scenarios are the intended way to play the system and letting them happen isn't the GM's fault.

NichG
2012-10-23, 10:57 PM
yes because using exploding rocks as weapons is clearly something someone needs super high intelligence to figure out. Sure I won't be able to use it to build a nuclear bomb, but I could place them around a castle a minefield to deter sappers.

I do believe we were discussing an Int 5 Barbarian. That is only slightly more intelligent than a dog. But yes, I'd be fine with your Int 5 Barbarian coming up with and applying that tactic. I would not be fine with your Int 5 Barbarian suddenly intuiting the germ theory of disease (or for that matter, your Int 22 Wizard).

Kane0
2012-10-23, 11:06 PM
Friend just gave me his input on the subject:

Instead of roleplaying a social roll out, they haggle the DC of the check. That in itself is the RP.

LibraryOgre
2012-10-23, 11:06 PM
One thing I like to imagine, when you've got a low-Charisma PC and a high-charisma player is that the PC puts a lot of "uhhs" and stops in their speaking, so they sound way off.

Morithias
2012-10-23, 11:10 PM
One thing I like to imagine, when you've got a low-Charisma PC and a high-charisma player is that the PC puts a lot of "uhhs" and stops in their speaking, so they sound way off.

So why can't you imagine that a high charisma PC, and a low charisma player is the opposite?

LibraryOgre
2012-10-23, 11:19 PM
So why can't you imagine that a high charisma PC, and a low charisma player is the opposite?

Because, IME, the problem with a low charisma player *isn't* that they talk poorly, it's that they refuse to talk. They want to resolve it with a die roll, rather than engaging the situation... even if they do it poorly.

It is akin to the fighter who doesn't want to use tactics, but expects him to acquit himself well in combat against foes who use tactics.

Morithias
2012-10-23, 11:41 PM
Note to self. If I ever play in a Kingmaker or Empire game, make sure I'm dming. I don't need the DM to require me to explain long complex and boring economics before I make my economy check less he say I don't know enough so the empire automatically loses money.

Zeful
2012-10-24, 12:16 AM
Friend just gave me his input on the subject:

Instead of roleplaying a social roll out, they haggle the DC of the check. That in itself is the RP.

That is hilariously sly. Your friend is cool.

huttj509
2012-10-24, 03:20 AM
Because, IME, the problem with a low charisma player *isn't* that they talk poorly, it's that they refuse to talk. They want to resolve it with a die roll, rather than engaging the situation... even if they do it poorly.

It is akin to the fighter who doesn't want to use tactics, but expects him to acquit himself well in combat against foes who use tactics.

My experience has had a few times that stood out as auto-fail because the player wasn't as quick witted or good with words as the character was supposed to be, which is probably why suggestions that seem too far on the side of "just RP it and ignore the dice" make me cringe.

Now, I don't think the IC argument being used shouldn't matter, but if a character has allocated skill/stat points to being able to do something well, that should matter too. My preferred method is something along the lines of "Darthos recognizes where the prince is coming from, but points out that the imminent chaos of the goblin horde might reflect worse on the prince than the risk of looking weak asking for assistance in driving them off." The die roll would then allow the character's skill, attributes, and luck to account for things like: was he properly respectful? Is the prince feeling particularly stubborn today? Did he completely flub his argument and come across as calling the prince stupid?

The description allows for circumstance modifiers based on the arguments used (I'd suggest no more than +/- 4 unless the statement is REALLY good/bad), without requiring me as the player to have the proper tone, wording, and lack of "um" on the fly.

Now, if you wish to completely remove all social skills and set things up like that beforehand, sure, but don't leave the skills in for people to put points in, then ignore them.

Kane0
2012-10-24, 05:02 AM
That is hilariously sly. Your friend is cool.

:smallsmile: I'll make sure to let him know.

Killer Angel
2012-10-24, 07:38 AM
This is just silly, since Charisma is the most powerful stat in older editions of D&D - it determines how many hirelings you can have, which is nearly the same as how many extra lives you get given the lethality of those systems! And charisma is none-too-shabby in 3ed either, as the stat with the most 'X stat to Y' abilities in the game.

It's not silly, but it's precisely on target. Some systems can give you some mechanical advantage for having a high Cha, but many systems don't, and many systems have skills based on your Cha.
Let's say that a high cha gives me hirelings: good, I can spend resources to improve it... but why should I spend skill point to improve cha-based skills? who cares for diplomacy or bluff when the DM doesn't want a check on those skills but let me simply talk? since bluff +0 or bluff +20 are the same thing, I'll roleplaying it! Better to use those skill points on things like move silently and hide.

And BTW, the 'X stat to Y' abilities part, it's not a strenght... it's a way to bypass the fact that your character must have a high (cha) to work properly, and lacks the other stats that you need to improve your Saves, AC, and so on. And to obtain this, you still have to spend resources represented by feats and so on.

NichG
2012-10-24, 12:21 PM
It's not silly, but it's precisely on target. Some systems can give you some mechanical advantage for having a high Cha, but many systems don't, and many systems have skills based on your Cha.
Let's say that a high cha gives me hirelings: good, I can spend resources to improve it... but why should I spend skill point to improve cha-based skills? who cares for diplomacy or bluff when the DM doesn't want a check on those skills but let me simply talk? since bluff +0 or bluff +20 are the same thing, I'll roleplaying it! Better to use those skill points on things like move silently and hide.


Sure, thats a fair statement. I don't begrudge players who do that. Of course those skills actually do other things in D&D as well - Bluff to feint in combat or disguise one spell as another via a skill trick, for example. But if it has zero use, then by all means don't take it. I won't force players to spend a build resource on things like Profession(Farmer) because they decided they wanted to come from a farm in their backstory - D&D 3.5 is too unforgiving a system for that kind of thing.

But to fix that problem I also create alternate uses of those skills in my campaigns that don't conflict with the statement that social encounters should be determined by roleplay. Detailed discussion of such things belongs on the Abstraction in Combat and Social Interaction thread though. Basically it comes down to offscreen stuff versus onscreen stuff, and information control and 'powers' instead of one-stop conflict resolution.



And BTW, the 'X stat to Y' abilities part, it's not a strenght... it's a way to bypass the fact that your character must have a high (cha) to work properly, and lacks the other stats that you need to improve your Saves, AC, and so on. And to obtain this, you still have to spend resources represented by feats and so on.

With Iaijutsu you can get something like 9 times your Cha added to damage of an attack (once per 1d6 added by Iaijutsu focus, via I think the Iaijutsu Master PrC). You can use this on a full attack. Add smite evil/law/good/chaos for an occasional 10th Cha-to-damage, compared to the 1.5 times stat that everyone else gets on their damage. Slippers of Battledancing are an item that gives you Cha to hit, on top of whatever else you might have. Plus you can get Cha to hit from Snowflake Wardance. So now you have twice an ancillary stat to hit compared to the once that everyone else gets. You can get Cha to all saves a few times over with the right combination (Paladin is one, Nymph or certain other races is another, and I think there's at least a third but I don't remember it right now). Cha to AC? Sure, if you're an Ascetic Sorceror Nymph or Ghost then you get it twice! Cha to hitpoints, even, via Dry Lich if thats your thing. Cha to all skills? The Marshal will do that for himself and the entire party.

You can't really do this kind of stuff with any other stat. Wisdom is decent (Shiba Protector, SSage or Monk) but lags pretty far behind on some of those tricks, and then Int is a distant third. Believe me, having played in several moderate to high op campaigns dominated by Cha builds, short of the very most high op games one easy path to being awesome at everything is to go Cha.

The problem is that initially, Cha really was weak. So the game designers noticed this and started throwing in little Cha-based abilities here and there. The problem is, each of them seemingly wanted to fix it in their own way, and didn't notice eachothers' efforts until it had gotten pretty gross.

Killer Angel
2012-10-25, 05:02 AM
But to fix that problem I also create alternate uses of those skills in my campaigns that don't conflict with the statement that social encounters should be determined by roleplay. Detailed discussion of such things belongs on the Abstraction in Combat and Social Interaction thread though. Basically it comes down to offscreen stuff versus onscreen stuff, and information control and 'powers' instead of one-stop conflict resolution.


Well, that's certainly a way to do it, if the players agree.
I, for example, wouldn't. I like to roleplay, but I also like to "measure" the effectiveness of my silver-tongue character, and this is made with the different bonuses of my social skills.
Do you want to give bonuses (or penalties) to my skill, based on my actual roleplayin? sure, go for it. But the goodness of the skill itself must have some weight in the process, in the same way it's better a +20 rather than a +2 in a skill like survival.
It helps, if you describe the way you collect the morning dew, but 'til we're not playing a diceless system, it won't suffice alone.


The problem is that initially, Cha really was weak. So the game designers noticed this and started throwing in little Cha-based abilities here and there. The problem is, each of them seemingly wanted to fix it in their own way, and didn't notice eachothers' efforts until it had gotten pretty gross.

Eh, that's one of the biggest problems with all the D&D splatbooks...

scurv
2012-10-25, 06:43 AM
This thread jinex me, Now I got a player who wants his Mary-Sue to focus in social skills, and is currently arguing with me about why i basically disallow them.

Nero24200
2012-10-25, 06:46 AM
I don't like PC's using social skills on other PC's, if only because I don't like the idea of telling a player "Someone got this result on a dice roll, so we dictate your character's action". I also generally don't have NPC's using Enchantments for that reason (though in the case of Enchantments I'm more lax if only because it's magical compulsion, not changing a person's mind).

DigoDragon
2012-10-25, 06:57 AM
My players never use Diplomacy/Intimidation rolls on each other. They just RP it out and decide if they're pursuaded or not, while I just play moderator to ensure everyone got to put in their opinion/vote on the matter.

Now what I as the DM do when there's a stalemate in the argument, is I'll secretly roll their skill checks and then I'll side with the "Better argument" (this being whoever got the highest check). So if the party is trying to decide the merits of chasing NPC1 or rescuing NPC2 and they're at an impass, I might roll in secrecy and then casually mention-

"Well, the Fighter's idea of rescuing NPC2 might be better. After all, NPC1 isn't a fast guy and he's not teleporting or anything like that..."

SigniferLux
2012-10-25, 08:20 AM
Never. But I generally don't let players use the social skills at all. I do it Old School: your character has the social skills of the player. So even if your character is Prince Charming, if your Larry the Deviant anti social third shift gas station attendant cave man, then your prince character won't be so charming.

I will mostly agree with this, but follow an alternative.

I use the players raw Charisma ability, without check, to determine how well a character speaks, be it to the King, to a random NPC, or to another PC. Depending on the charisma -score- he has, i describe the scene accordingly.

But i still allow players to put points to social skills. Why? Because i tell them to roll these on practical occassions, like:
A player tries to fast-talk a commoner to make him friendlier towards him for a few hours, roll diplomacy. The effect is that, for a few hours, that commoner is friendlier to the player.
A player wants to show an intimidating presence and inflict enemies with awe and game-rules penalties. Roll an intimidation check and for the whole scene enemies have a -2 to saves or attack rolls or something like that.
You want to feint? Bluff.
You want to mimic voices? Bluff.
You want to make a noisy diversion for you to hide? Bluff.

You want to lie, convince someone, or really scare someone? Roleplay it.
If you are the King you do not need intimidation checks to make a person be afraid that he will face the guillotine if he does not obey.
If you walk up to someone and say you have 10 gold in your pocket, but you have 15, you do not roll Bluff. There is no reason the other character could know the truth.
You want to convince a person to follow you around in town? Give him a logical reason to do so.

As for Sense Motive, when players use it i describe them, based on their roll, the current emotions of the target, and let them judge by themselves.
Saying a "asking this vampire of it's intention and rolling this Sense Motive makes you understand that he feels fear".
Fear of his Master? Fear of the players? Fear from something that this question reminds him? Makes the players use their imagination.

Nearly all the players i ever met prefer to roll a dice than roleplay their character and say a general smalltalk, like "i try to make the King my servant and with my +100 (easily attainable) Diplomacy i can make it happen".

Best game (and longest) i ever played was when i put those rules to my players and, thus, encouraged them to roleplay than roll dices.

Zeful
2012-10-25, 12:09 PM
I will mostly agree with this, but follow an alternative.

I use the players raw Charisma ability, without check, to determine how well a character speaks, be it to the King, to a random NPC, or to another PC. Depending on the charisma -score- he has, i describe the scene accordingly.

But i still allow players to put points to social skills. Why? Because i tell them to roll these on practical occassions, like:
A player tries to fast-talk a commoner to make him friendlier towards him for a few hours, roll diplomacy. The effect is that, for a few hours, that commoner is friendlier to the player.
A player wants to show an intimidating presence and inflict enemies with awe and game-rules penalties. Roll an intimidation check and for the whole scene enemies have a -2 to saves or attack rolls or something like that.
You want to feint? Bluff.
You want to mimic voices? Bluff.
You want to make a noisy diversion for you to hide? Bluff.

You want to lie, convince someone, or really scare someone? Roleplay it.
If you are the King you do not need intimidation checks to make a person be afraid that he will face the guillotine if he does not obey.
If you walk up to someone and say you have 10 gold in your pocket, but you have 15, you do not roll Bluff. There is no reason the other character could know the truth.
You want to convince a person to follow you around in town? Give him a logical reason to do so.

As for Sense Motive, when players use it i describe them, based on their roll, the current emotions of the target, and let them judge by themselves.
Saying a "asking this vampire of it's intention and rolling this Sense Motive makes you understand that he feels fear".
Fear of his Master? Fear of the players? Fear from something that this question reminds him? Makes the players use their imagination.

Nearly all the players i ever met prefer to roll a dice than roleplay their character and say a general smalltalk, like "i try to make the King my servant and with my +100 (easily attainable) Diplomacy i can make it happen".

Best game (and longest) i ever played was when i put those rules to my players and, thus, encouraged them to roleplay than roll dices.

So, if one isn't a charismatic orator to begin with, social skills are absolutely worthless in your game? And you don't see the problem with this?

SigniferLux
2012-10-25, 12:39 PM
So, if one isn't a charismatic orator to begin with, social skills are absolutely worthless in your game? And you don't see the problem with this?

I am not a psychologist or diplomat either.

And i roleplay an NPC to the best of my abilities.

Making the roleplaying be played with dice is like taking a miniature wargame and play the battles by talking anime style. You lose the basic element of the game.

Water_Bear
2012-10-25, 03:38 PM
I am not a psychologist or diplomat either.

And i roleplay an NPC to the best of my abilities.

I've taken the liberty of bolding the word which proves you have completely missed the point here.

You and I (and probably most of the posters here) can roleplay well enough that this kind of rule wouldn't really affect us; we'll be able to play suave pirates and witty sorcerers and have a ton of fun doing it. But this isn't really about us, it's about the people who aren't so good with the Improv but still want to play a character with a positive Charisma modifier. Is your sense of verisimilitude or integrity as an "old school" DM worth making their game experience less fun?

If so, then just be straight with it and don't let people join you're group unless they're in your theatre class or something. If not, then maybe you should consider using the social rules to suplement roleplaying, which I think we can both admit is pretty much the whole point of them.


Making the roleplaying be played with dice is like taking a miniature wargame and play the battles by talking anime style. You lose the basic element of the game.

"Making the combat be played with dice is like taking an improv group and having everyone draw their lines on a canvas with oil paints. You lose a basic element of the... art?"

See how easy it is to use that same argument to justifty substituting any real world skill into an RPG? After all, LARPers do all their combat with actual (fake) sword-swings, and there are people who (think they can) preform real magic rituals! Why let dice decide the outcome at all when you could have the Players just use their own abilities?

Except that all of those would make our games less fun, whereas the "no social rolls" rule only bothers other people. And who cares about those jerks anyway?

NichG
2012-10-25, 03:39 PM
So, if one isn't a charismatic orator to begin with, social skills are absolutely worthless in your game? And you don't see the problem with this?

"If one isn't good at planning and resource budgetting, being a vancian caster is absolutely worthless for them."
"If one is really risk averse, being a melee tank is absolutely worthless for them."
"If one can't control their impulse, being a sneaky character is absolutely worthless for them."

Different players are good at different roles to different degrees. Thats why you have options. The problem is when someone thinks "The game should make me be good at this if I do this mechanical thing, regardless of my ability." It doesn't work for a sneaky rogue that jumps out of hiding to insult or attack people rather than focusing on the scouting he came to do, it doesn't work for a wizard who can't figure out what spells to memorize and when they should be deployed, and it doesn't work for a player who is trying to play a super-charismatic guy when they don't understand socialization (in games that focus on RP). There's no more of a problem with the last than there are with the others, unless you aren't up front with players about it.

Zeful
2012-10-25, 03:55 PM
"If one isn't good at planning and resource budgetting, being a vancian caster is absolutely worthless for them."
"If one is really risk averse, being a melee tank is absolutely worthless for them."
"If one can't control their impulse, being a sneaky character is absolutely worthless for them."

Different players are good at different roles to different degrees. Thats why you have options. The problem is when someone thinks "The game should make me be good at this if I do this mechanical thing, regardless of my ability." It doesn't work for a sneaky rogue that jumps out of hiding to insult or attack people rather than focusing on the scouting he came to do, it doesn't work for a wizard who can't figure out what spells to memorize and when they should be deployed, and it doesn't work for a player who is trying to play a super-charismatic guy when they don't understand socialization (in games that focus on RP). There's no more of a problem with the last than there are with the others, unless you aren't up front with players about it.

Except those aren't comparable at all. Because it's not about the player being psycologically capable of certain roles or the skill-set those roles require. It's about enforcing a minimum competency in tangentally related skills for the character's skills to work. This would be more comparable to only letting characters of multilingual players take languages other than English Common. Or only letting SCA players build fighters. It's a nonsensical alteration of the rules that doesn't add anything for the game.

To put this in perspective: I'm not a good speaker, I'm playing a game with SigniferLux. There is no point, regardless of the character's ability, disposition, or personality where I should ever try convincing anyone of anything, because my skill as a player is being directly equated to the character's skill. This means I'm automatically excluded from all social encounters unless I can mind control someone, or decide to just outright kill them. Essentially, in order to be part of social encounters in his game, I have to be Chaotic Evil. Why? An arbitrary rule change that only serves to stereotype players, reduce creativity and prevent people from attempting to use D&D as a social lubricant; which, incidently, the entire reason I got into roleplaying games, I saw it as a way to build my skills as a speaker and get more comfortable around people. I now have no incentive to bother with social play other than to end it prematurely, when I get bored of not being allowed to play.

NichG
2012-10-25, 04:15 PM
Except those aren't comparable at all. Because it's not about the player being psycologically capable of certain roles or the skill-set those roles require. It's about enforcing a minimum competency in tangentally related skills for the character's skills to work. This would be more comparable to only letting characters of multilingual players take languages other than English Common. Or only letting SCA players build fighters. It's a nonsensical alteration of the rules that doesn't add anything for the game.


It is entirely about minimum competency. Imagine I had a mechanic that looked something like this:

You can roll your Bluff skill, opposed by someone's Sense Motive. If they fail, they believe that you believe whatever it is you just said.

Lets think about that. Yes, it uses a mechanic to determine success. But it still would pose problems for socially challenged players. They might not be able to figure out the difference between believing that something is true, and believing that a person believes it is true, sufficiently to get any use out of that ability. This really isn't any different than someone with bad spatial skills who can't understand flanking and threatened areas, or someone bad with numbers who can't figure out how to optimize a character and so is stuck playing weaker characters than everyone else at the table.


To put this in perspective: I'm not a good speaker, I'm playing a game with SigniferLux. There is no point, regardless of the character's ability, disposition, or personality where I should ever try convincing anyone of anything, because my skill as a player is being directly equated to the character's skill. This means I'm automatically excluded from all social encounters unless I can mind control someone, or decide to just outright kill them.


It doesn't sound like you couldn't succeed, it sounds like you've decided to stop trying. And it may not even be because of a lack of your ability.

I've played in games where the DM has 'a right answer in mind', which can be incredibly frustrating. If you know you're good at what you're doing and the DM shuts it down, you can be confident that its the DM's quirks that are responsible. If you instead try to improve on something you're not good at with such a DM, you can feel like its your fault.

Despite what I'm arguing, I would say that I'm not very good at playing manipulative characters, and that is fundamentally because of my lack of ability as a player. I played a game with a DM like that and so long as I wasn't playing manipulative characters I learned to recognize where it was the DM's idiosyncracy causing me to fail and I could point it out, or change tactics to take it into account. But because I didn't know what a good kind of manipulative play looked like, it was very hard for me when I tried to use a manipulative character to 'learn how to do it'. The cues I was getting from the DM were mostly negative, and I couldn't see the opportunities to initiate manipulations in the setup.

These problems were actually totally independent of the roleplay aspects too - it was about the large-scale tactics of figuring out the important people to manipulate and what might work on them (when the DM had made social environments that were more or less iron-clad against such manipulations). It was sort of like going from 'I don't know how to play first person shooters' to jumping straight into a competition between experts.

But, if I had tried that with another DM I play with, I would have gotten helpful hints, he would have tried to ease me into the role, etc. I'd still have to 'do everything myself', but with help from the DM I'd actually be able to improve my ability to do so. I had a similar problem playing 'wise' characters until I played one with this DM.
Being able to use the numbers as a shield and a weapon is sort of a false security, because really if the DM wants to screw you over, he can make the DCs unhittable. Really, the key is to play with someone who understands that you're learning and helps.

Zeful
2012-10-25, 05:09 PM
It is entirely about minimum competency.Not really. I'm not the one framing the argument. My competency at dialog/debate outside of knowing the language is completely incidental to my character's competency at this. Many roleplayers have a separation between themselves and their character, and so never get into specifics of roleplay. A player should be as able to say, "Zeful tries to convince the guard to let us through by playing up his sense of honor," and not have to spend a huge amount of time trying to insincerely try to convince someone they know doesn't exist. Immersion is where you begin to forget the separation between yourself and your avatar in the world, and it can't be forced like proponents of the "no social rolls" are trying. And they are trying to force roleplay and immersion rather than let it happen.


It doesn't sound like you couldn't succeed, it sounds like you've decided to stop trying.Well of course. Why should I try? I don't talk like this in real life: I, ah, hold inappropriate pauses, often breaking up simple sentences into several sections; stuttering, and, um, my pattern of thoughts... often interrupt what I'm saying. Simple grammar breaks down, and I can shift tenses, or run on tangents, with very little prompting.

It's very much the opposite of the charismatic, decisive speakers that I enjoy playing specifically as a power fantasy, which I'm being told I'm not allowed to excel at because-- in the best case the DM wants to enforce immersion and roleplay, rather than let it happen naturally which stifles it , or in the worst case, because he's too lazy to actually run a social encounter and just excises the rules from play. Why should I bother playing at such a handicap on his playing field? I'm not going to get anything out of it or convince anyone of anything, or based on the remarks of the people endorsing removing social skills as "The One True Way To Play" not be allowed to succeed at all. So what's the point?

*And yes it does, I've played in games where the only time a player is allowed to talk is if he does it in character, nobody bothers talking much in those.

NichG
2012-10-25, 05:48 PM
Not really. I'm not the one framing the argument. My competency at dialog/debate outside of knowing the language is completely incidental to my character's competency at this. Many roleplayers have a separation between themselves and their character, and so never get into specifics of roleplay. A player should be as able to say, "Zeful tries to convince the guard to let us through by playing up his sense of honor," and not have to spend a huge amount of time trying to insincerely try to convince someone they know doesn't exist. Immersion is where you begin to forget the separation between yourself and your avatar in the world, and it can't be forced like proponents of the "no social rolls" are trying. And they are trying to force roleplay and immersion rather than let it happen.


Actually, at least in my case, its because very simply I want there to be a reward for coming up with an amazing line of BS, an amazing manipulation, etc. The reward is: no rolls, that was wonderful, it just works! If your line of BS/manipulation/whatever is not amazing, it doesn't mean it fails. After all, most tabletop games are heavily biased towards party victory and there's no reason that social encounters should be different. But it may mean that there's a compromise or a bit of awkward or an additional barrier that must be passed. I want there to be amazing things happening at my table, because something that is honestly and truly clever is a pleasure to experience and revel in. Even a fantastic disaster of an attempt can be fun for everyone at the table.
Defaulting to the dice, especially a one-shot conflict resolution roll, is basically saying to me 'this isn't the interesting part of the game, lets move on', and I want it to be the interesting part of the game.



Well of course. Why should I try? I don't talk like this in real life: I, ah, hold inappropriate pauses, often breaking up simple sentences into several sections; stuttering, and, um, my pattern of thoughts... often interrupt what I'm saying. Simple grammar breaks down, and I can shift tenses, or run on tangents, with very little prompting.


You did say in your prior post that you desired to use D&D as a way to improve. But you're also saying that you want D&D to enable you to not have to try. These seem to be contradictory points.



It's very much the opposite of the charismatic, decisive speakers that I enjoy playing specifically as a power fantasy, which I'm being told I'm not allowed to excel at because-- in the best case the DM wants to enforce immersion and roleplay, rather than let it happen naturally which stifles it , or in the worst case, because he's too lazy to actually run a social encounter and just excises the rules from play. Why should I bother playing at such a handicap on his playing field? I'm not going to get anything out of it or convince anyone of anything, or based on the remarks of the people endorsing removing social skills as "The One True Way To Play" not be allowed to succeed at all. So what's the point?

So there are a few issues here. One, whether or not your level of ability precludes success is highly DM-dependent. A DM who is willing to work with you will take it into account - the important thing is to try. Refusing to try means that a DM has nothing to work with, and if you insist on succeeding without trying then that creates a lot of problems for the DM, so it wouldn't surprise me if things got more hostile, especially with DMs who are insufficiently savvy to figure out what's going on.

Two, if there are other players at the table who would enjoy playing out challenging social encounters, who are you to say that they should not be able to? Ostensibly you're joining a game where everyone is going to have things they enjoy more or less. If you really hate the social roleplay and are truly uninterested in it, play a character who isn't the party face. If you're just rolling 'to get the social stuff over with', then you're doing the other players a disservice. If you really want to excel socially and can't, though, then you really just need to find a table whose philosophy is compatible with that rather than insisting that a given table change their philosophy. Really my point here is, you do yourself a service to be selective about your gaming, and having a diversity in options and philosophies helps everyone find the table that suits them best.



*And yes it does, I've played in games where the only time a player is allowed to talk is if he does it in character, nobody bothers talking much in those.

I'm certainly not suggesting anything like this. It seems completely tangential to the discussion.

Zeful
2012-10-25, 06:22 PM
Actually, at least in my case, its because very simply I want there to be a reward for coming up with an amazing line of BS, an amazing manipulation, etc. The reward is: no rolls, that was wonderful, it just works!The only problem with that is you are not your character. Playing a character with low social skills should have a penalty. If social play is entirely dependent on player ability, you can not invest in social skills at all, and still be more effective than the player that does.


If your line of BS/manipulation/whatever is not amazing, it doesn't mean it fails. After all, most tabletop games are heavily biased towards party victory and there's no reason that social encounters should be different.That would require a system that does not have an opportunity cost towards social endeavors just because you built your character for combat endeavors. Which isn't how most games are designed. Otherwise social encounters aren't biased towards party victory.


Defaulting to the dice, especially a one-shot conflict resolution roll, is basically saying to me 'this isn't the interesting part of the game, lets move on', and I want it to be the interesting part of the game.And that's terrible reasoning on your part, not the game's.


You did say in your prior post that you desired to use D&D as a way to improve. But you're also saying that you want D&D to enable you to not have to try. These seem to be contradictory points.No. I want to try, but I also don't want to be penalized for arbitrary reasons built on terrible logic. By removing social skills, you've removed the buffer that lets me actually freaking experiment in social situations, and have directly told me through gameplay that I shouldn't bother trying.


So there are a few issues here. One, whether or not your level of ability precludes success is highly DM-dependent.And everyone that weighed in in support of this attitude have all said in one way or another that I will fail.


A DM who is willing to work with you will take it into account - the important thing is to try.Everyone that weighed in in support of this attitude are not interested in working with the players. So why indulge their power trip?


Two, if there are other players at the table who would enjoy playing out challenging social encounters, who are you to say that they should not be able to?I'm not. Also "playing out challenging social encounters" does not automatically mean LARPing it up, and probably the big mental disconnect between us.


Ostensibly you're joining a game where everyone is going to have things they enjoy more or less. If you really hate the social roleplay and are truly uninterested in it, play a character who isn't the party face.Not the issue.


If you're just rolling 'to get the social stuff over with', then you're doing the other players a disservice.Not what I'm doing.


If you really want to excel socially and can't,Not what I want.

SigniferLux
2012-10-26, 01:11 AM
I've taken the liberty of bolding the word which proves you have completely missed the point here.

You and I (and probably most of the posters here) can roleplay well enough that this kind of rule wouldn't really affect us; we'll be able to play suave pirates and witty sorcerers and have a ton of fun doing it. But this isn't really about us, it's about the people who aren't so good with the Improv but still want to play a character with a positive Charisma modifier. Is your sense of verisimilitude or integrity as an "old school" DM worth making their game experience less fun?

If so, then just be straight with it and don't let people join you're group unless they're in your theatre class or something. If not, then maybe you should consider using the social rules to suplement roleplaying, which I think we can both admit is pretty much the whole point of them.



"Making the combat be played with dice is like taking an improv group and having everyone draw their lines on a canvas with oil paints. You lose a basic element of the... art?"

See how easy it is to use that same argument to justifty substituting any real world skill into an RPG? After all, LARPers do all their combat with actual (fake) sword-swings, and there are people who (think they can) preform real magic rituals! Why let dice decide the outcome at all when you could have the Players just use their own abilities?

Except that all of those would make our games less fun, whereas the "no social rolls" rule only bothers other people. And who cares about those jerks anyway?

Here, i will put in bold something i previously said too:



I use the players raw Charisma ability, without check, to determine how well a character speaks, be it to the King, to a random NPC, or to another PC. Depending on the charisma -score- he has, i describe the scene accordingly.


I don't know if i managed to make it clear but what i meant is (an example):
Ken the Bard has Charisma 18 but bad real life social skills. When he speak to the King and says "snork, i like beer in this kingdom, snork" i take it and describe it as "Ken the Bard gracefully compliments the King about their fine beer production and bows gracefully in respect (if he knows how to)".
The opposite case is: Bogu the Barbarian has charisma 7 and the player is a guru in real life. So, the player says "your actions contradict the course of mine fine sir" which i translate to "i don't like what you do man" and describe accordingly.

The point i am trying to reach here is that i take into account more what the player says than the way he does. After all, most Asian wisdom quotes translated in English are phrased really bad but have a deeper meaning than what politicians say.

I do not understand what you mean with your second quote, but i will try to explain that whenever we play a game we play it for, mainly, a specific element.
In roleplaying games you have to roleplay. It shouldn't matter if you speak slowly or quickly, fluently or not, and if it does then i advice you to change group.
On the other side if you come to a roleplaying game and wish to play the roleplaying scenes with dice is like going to a first person shooter video game and wishing to describe the fight scene through microphone. In roleplaying games you describe and speak. In shooter games you shoot and kill.
If you uphold the logic of "people should roll dice because they -believe- they are incapable of roleplaying", because nearly no man is born without voice and thus can speak to roleplay, then you should also roleplay with mute people, people with mental illnesses and Romanian circus dancers who can't speak English (or used language).






But, if I had tried that with another DM I play with, I would have gotten helpful hints, he would have tried to ease me into the role, etc. I'd still have to 'do everything myself', but with help from the DM I'd actually be able to improve my ability to do so. I had a similar problem playing 'wise' characters until I played one with this DM.
Being able to use the numbers as a shield and a weapon is sort of a false security, because really if the DM wants to screw you over, he can make the DCs unhittable. Really, the key is to play with someone who understands that you're learning and helps.

I am quoting this small paragraph to strengthen it with an example i also have experienced.

I was generally the first one to get into PnP RPG between my friends, so i was the one who taught most of them. I, for nearly two years, played with a party who were completely new to long term RPGs and they had some mild experience with me in the past.

Trying to play like i described made the players feel their characters more than any other i have ever seen. They tried to roleplay most scenes, cared much less for their "weight capacity" or "armor class" and more in proceeding with the story, learning NPCs's backstories, trying to achieve things that seem small to the average Skyrim player.

For them protecting an NPC who was, to begin with, just there to help them a bit, became a life purpose, they cared more about taking a feat which gives them a roleplaying knack when talking to specific people than the average "+4 to bluff". Hell, one of my players even prefered to give himself the flaw of speaking with extended "s" (was some kind of snake character, ssssspeaking like thisssss) which i waned him that would bring many negative responses to his character, but he liked it.

Changing the scene i recently went to a "proffessional place for roleplaying". With the exception of one and a half people, what i only saw was: "i rolled Diplomacy, y u no beliv mi NPC?" and "i am heroz, i must convince all because lul i'm best", "look, me character can do 352 zillion damage and if you speak bad to me i kill you", which really dissapointed me and my expectations. And it was not something i saw only from players but StoryTellers also encouraging it.



To put this in perspective: I'm not a good speaker, I'm playing a game with SigniferLux. There is no point, regardless of the character's ability, disposition, or personality where I should ever try convincing anyone of anything, because my skill as a player is being directly equated to the character's skill.

Even if i do not take into account the nice way you put things in your posts, even if i also do not take into account you have the ability and mental state to type and (most likely) speak in a logical way and take part in a forum conversation, even if we take as an example than you are a really bad diplomacer in real life, i believe you can tell a king that his troops are outnimbered and that going to war while there is famine in town is not wise.

Even if you phrase it like "you king is bad go war, famine kill men and you lose" what you meant is still there and the way the character acts in the scene is --influenced-- (which means that they give you a small boost in the scene, a "your royal arse should not go to war" phrase does not change) by the stats he has (his Charisma score, his Knowledge Nobility, his knowledge war/tactics, his Intelligence and Wisdom scores, his current mental and physical state, by the number of coffees he drunk from the morning, his race, etc.).

Judging the king's reaction by a single roll is like continually pressing "enter" on your keyboard to skip the dialog in an RPG game and get to fighting. It shows boredom.


I am sorry for the long post, but from my last post i did not have the time to write here, so i tried to put it all at once.
Also excuse me for any grammar or vocabulary mistakes i made.

TuggyNE
2012-10-26, 01:28 AM
I don't know if i managed to make it clear but what i meant is (an example):
Ken the Bard has Charisma 18 but bad real life social skills. When he speak to the King and says "snork, i like beer in this kingdom, snork" i take it and describe it as "Ken the Bard gracefully compliments the King about their fine beer production and bows gracefully in respect (if he knows how to)".
The opposite case is: Bogu the Barbarian has charisma 7 and the player is a guru in real life. So, the player says "your actions contradict the course of mine fine sir" which i translate to "i don't like what you do man" and describe accordingly.

Reasonable enough. I can't say I disagree with this.


In roleplaying games you have to roleplay. It shouldn't matter if you speak slowly or quickly, fluently or not, and if it does then i advice you to change group.

Fine so far.


On the other side if you come to a roleplaying game and wish to play the roleplaying scenes with dice is like going to a first person shooter video game and wishing to describe the fight scene through microphone.

... And you lost me. How is it impossible to usefully combine dice with intention to derive effect? Why are these mutually exclusive? What precisely makes die rolls such a bad baseline mechanic for this, anyway?


Judging the king's reaction by a single roll is like continually pressing "enter" on your keyboard to skip the dialog in an RPG game and get to fighting. It shows boredom.

Fair enough. A single roll is by no means a great mechanic for significant interactions, although I'd prefer it to none at all. Similarly, rolling a single die to determine whether you win or lose an entire combat is pretty lame, although I'd again prefer it to not rolling at all. In both cases, adding more complexity to the rolls tends to make them far more interesting to work with, giving a more fleshed-out framework to describe what's going on. For example, you can describe individual attack-parry sets, or particular spells being cast, in a sentence or two, using the dice to shape the skeleton of your prose.

SigniferLux
2012-10-26, 02:20 AM
... And you lost me. How is it impossible to usefully combine dice with intention to derive effect? Why are these mutually exclusive? What precisely makes die rolls such a bad baseline mechanic for this, anyway?


Because it eliminates the basic aspect of the game. I don't think i have the ability to describe it any better.

I believe dices should be rolled only for actual things that players can't do, like the combat rolls, or the few uses i mentioned in my first post.

What we can actually do in roleplaying games is speak with NPCs, speak with PCs, speak with one and another, describe and imagine. I see combat or other mechanic-wise situations (like traps, stealth, traveling, etc) as a "sideline" or "nessesary evil" to consult to when it would cause unbalance to say "i charge and hit the hydra's heart".

You don't go to a roleplaying game to roll dice, you go to speak, describe and imagine. Rolling for outcome basically beats the purpose of the game.

Also, encouraging a player to roll for outcome inspires lazyness ("why should i spend time in my home and compose a heroic talk for my army when i can just roll a dice for better effects") and discourages players from roleplaying if their skill is not "high enough" ("even if i compose an epic speech for my army, my diplomacy skill is so low that they will run the wrong way thinking i'm a jester").

That's why i prefer to take into account everything else, other than the simple skill of "roll to do". A barbarian army will never be encouraged by a fluffy puny outsider rogue, no matter his diplomacy check. I would never be convinced i am a duck, no matter who tells me that, even if he can succeed with his (+100 -40) +60 roll.

Let's not forget that it's a completely other thing to lessen one's ability to slaughter, and to discourage a player to not speak because his skill is low.

Killer Angel
2012-10-26, 02:38 AM
Different players are good at different roles to different degrees. Thats why you have options. The problem is when someone thinks "The game should make me be good at this if I do this mechanical thing, regardless of my ability." It doesn't work for a sneaky rogue that jumps out of hiding to insult or attack people rather than focusing on the scouting he came to do

So, if I'm playing a rogue, all I have to do is say (whispering to the DM to create the right mood) something ala "I hide in that alley, then behind those barrels and, always moving silently, sneak pass the guards when they're not watching".
I don't have to roll my move silently and hide in shadow, right? I've just roleplayed the situation.

huttj509
2012-10-26, 02:40 AM
What is the basic aspect of the game in the D20 system?

SigniferLux
2012-10-26, 02:46 AM
What is the basic aspect of the game in the D20 system?

Please, let's not turn the discussion to that side. Let's assume we are talking about roleplaying games generally.

Killer Angel
2012-10-26, 02:49 AM
What we can actually do in roleplaying games is speak with NPCs, speak with PCs, speak with one and another, describe and imagine. I see combat or other mechanic-wise situations (like traps, stealth, traveling, etc) as a "sideline" or "nessesary evil" to consult to when it would cause unbalance to say "i charge and hit the hydra's heart".

You don't go to a roleplaying game to roll dice, you go to speak, describe and imagine. Rolling for outcome basically beats the purpose of the game.


My PC is a Paladin. For obvious reasons, her CHa is sky high... she's a charismatic presence and (in theory) all the people look at the paladin for guidance.
Except, I'm a normal player, not so good in speaking and at my best the final result is an uninspiring speech. (We all know that there are players that are naturally shy but like to play a charismatic figure, 'coz they dream to be such a way.)

But nope, the player that plays the wizard with very low cha, will always do better than me, because the player is a charming dude.

How fascinating...

We're not rewarding roleplay, we're rewardin (or penalizing) players' social abilities.
You can give bonuses and maluses for a good acting, you (as DM) should encourage players' roleplay, but in the end, what's written on the character's sheet, should matter something.

NichG
2012-10-26, 02:54 AM
So, if I'm playing a rogue, all I have to do is saying (whispering to the DM to create the right mood) something ala "I hide in that alley, then behind those barrels and, always moving silently, sneak pass the guards when they're not watching".
I don't have to roll my move silently and hide in shadow, right? I've just roleplayed the situation.

This is a pretty far cry from what you quoted of me. But okay, lets take the rogue for example.

I find myself constantly having to remind one of my players that you cannot hide in plain sight without the Hide in Plain Sight class ability. He gets into situations with the assumption 'I'm really good at stealth, I'll just be invisible and it doesn't matter who is watching' and then discovers 'oh look, a closed door with a guard in front of it' and doesn't know what to do. He has a tool in the form of 'my character has Hide and Move Silently', but he's still learning how to use that tool effectively.

If I say 'there is a room with crates along the east wall near an air vent, ceiling-level pipes above, and a half-open window on the west wall, and two guards playing cards at a table underneath the window' and the challenge is for a character to infiltrate the building, then the player who says 'I climb up to the window, watch for when the guards are distracted, move to the pipes, drop down and hide behind the crates, and go for the air vent' will do much better than the player who says 'I break through the east wall with an adamantine sledgehammer and then Hide and Move Silently!'.

Killer Angel
2012-10-26, 03:04 AM
This is a pretty far cry from what you quoted of me. But okay, lets take the rogue for example.


Point taken, but I was thinking to the rogue by myself, and then I saw the example in your post... :smallwink:



I find myself constantly having to remind one of my players that you cannot hide in plain sight without the Hide in Plain Sight class ability. He gets into situations with the assumption 'I'm really good at stealth, I'll just be invisible and it doesn't matter who is watching' and then discovers 'oh look, a closed door with a guard in front of it' and doesn't know what to do. He has a tool in the form of 'my character has Hide and Move Silently', but he's still learning how to use that tool effectively.

If I say 'there is a room with crates along the east wall near an air vent, ceiling-level pipes above, and a half-open window on the west wall, and two guards playing cards at a table underneath the window' and the challenge is for a character to infiltrate the building, then the player who says 'I climb up to the window, watch for when the guards are distracted, move to the pipes, drop down and hide behind the crates, and go for the air vent' will do much better than the player who says 'I break through the east wall with an adamantine sledgehammer and then Hide and Move Silently!'.

All fair and good, I totally agree, both with "bashing" the player that looks only at the sheet, pretending to succeed, both regarding your second example.
But that's the point: the rogue with move silently +20 that "watches for when the guards are distracted, yadda", will obtain more success than the one with move silently +20, that use the sledgehammer. Why?
'Cause you, as DM, reward the roleplay and the correct use of the ability.
But let's say that you have a fighter in full armor with +0 move silently, that says "I watch for when the guards are distracted, yadda".
Is the result the same of the rogue? I don't think so, 'cause in the end, the effective ability of the character got some weight. Their actions are well played and reasonable, but the rogue is better in this kind of things.
So it should be also for social skills.

SigniferLux
2012-10-26, 03:07 AM
My PC is a Paladin. For obvious reasons, her CHa is sky high... she's a charismatic presence and (in theory) all the people look at the paladin for guidance.
Except, I'm a normal player, not so good in speaking and at my best the final result is an uninspiring speech. (We all know that there are players that are naturally shy but like to play a charismatic figure, 'coz they dream to be such a way.)

But nope, the player that plays the wizard with very low cha, will always do better than me, because the player is a charming dude.

How fascinating...

We're not rewarding roleplay, we're rewardin (or penalizing) players' social abilities.
You can give bonuses and maluses for a good acting, you (as DM) should encourage players' roleplay, but in the end, what's written on the character's sheet, should matter something.

Oh my, i'm getting tired. Let's go again.



I don't know if i managed to make it clear but what i meant is (an example):
Ken the Bard has Charisma 18 but bad real life social skills. When he speak to the King and says "snork, i like beer in this kingdom, snork" i take it and describe it as "Ken the Bard gracefully compliments the King about their fine beer production and bows gracefully in respect (if he knows how to)".
The opposite case is: Bogu the Barbarian has charisma 7 and the player is a guru in real life. So, the player says "your actions contradict the course of mine fine sir" which i translate to "i don't like what you do man" and describe accordingly.


I will also add that, there are some lines that need not be passed. We are not talking about the equality problem between African Americans and Americans. If you can't correctly play a female character, do not play one. Likewise, if you cannot correctly play a leader, do not play one.

And, before you say anything about karate kids only playing monks, let me redraw the line between what we can do while roleplaying and what we cannot do.

You paladin's words, even if dull, will inspire more in the hearts of the army that the wizard's. But if the wizard spends two evenings preparing a speech in his home and you just came and want to roll dices because "you are shy", there are nice wargames for you.

As far as you can speak, read and write you can also compose a small paragraph.

NichG
2012-10-26, 03:33 AM
Is the result the same of the rogue? I don't think so, 'cause in the end, the effective ability of the character got some weight. Their actions are well played and reasonable, but the rogue is better in this kind of things.
So it should be also for social skills.

Well as I've said before, I heavily modify or strip out social skills that work this way from my campaigns anyhow, so I don't really agree here. I prefer the 'it gives you a tool' type of mechanic to the 'it decides the outcome' type of mechanic for such things. Examples from my campaign:

Diplomacy
Take Back:
5 ranks: You can make a check to take back something you just said. At 10 ranks, you can try to let someone else take back something they said. At 15 ranks, you can find out how an NPC will react to a statement before you say it.

Know Opponent:
You can make a check to determine things about the personality and culture of someone you're negotiating with. You get an additional relevant fact for every 5 you beat the DC. Examples: This society mistrusts people who speak around a topic and appreciates bluntness instead; This society puts heavy ritual significance on sharing food and drink; The concept of ownership is foreign to this society; the elder likes board games, and will open up to people who share a game of Ak-thuru with him.

Know Desires (5 ranks min):
You can determine if there is something the other negotiator wants that has not been said - basically, are they actually stonewalling or are they waiting for the right bribe. At +10 DC you get a hint of what this is. At +20 DC you get a stronger hint.

Bluff
Spin: You can modify reputation consequences of actions up or down by up to 50% (Reputation is a score in this campaign, which is a prerequisite for leveling up, and low reputation can get you penalized). You can also, in a vague sense, modify what people-as-a-whole remember about the events you work Spin on.

Subtle Magic: You can make it so that a person does not realize that they made a save against a magical effect you created (this is really a Bluff prereq on a metamagic feat). If the spell is overt, this doesn't buy you much, but it works wonders for Charm spells and the like where being found out would be disastrous.

TuggyNE
2012-10-26, 03:42 AM
First off, apologies for any lingering lack of clarity in my writing.


I believe dices should be rolled only for actual things that players can't do

OK, I think I may understand now. For example, I expect a good high-level bard (in D&D terms) to be able to give speeches that not more than ten people in human history could match. You can't do that. I can't do that. Nobody who sits around and plays tabletop games can do that. How, then, do you expect to represent that at all properly?

You may say, "a Charisma modifier is good enough". (Ironically, that reduces a large chunk of what's represented here to a single die roll, and even less; is that consistent with your stance that roleplaying social skills should not be reduced to rolling a single die?) I would say it fails to represent a character that has trained to persuade people far beyond even their considerable natural talent — or similarly a character that has a great deal of practice intimidating others, and further enhances that with subtle magics, to the point that they are superhumanly convincing.


I see combat or other mechanic-wise situations (like traps, stealth, traveling, etc) as a "sideline" or "nessesary evil" to consult to when it would cause unbalance to say "i charge and hit the hydra's heart".

The question then becomes, how is it that this same sort of imbalance never arise in social situations?

I would strongly suggest that it does. As partial evidence, I present the various disgruntled posters so far that have felt unfairly penalized for their lack of IRL speechifying. (In fairness, I could also point to the more specific example in D&D 3.x of Diplomancy, as something that happens when you have a mechanic that has some serious flaws: it imbalances the game purely through social situations, which shows the need for mechanics to handle this, and mechanics that work well at that.)


Please, let's not turn the discussion to that side. Let's assume we are talking about roleplaying games generally.

The discussion was started with, and largely revolves around, D&D in its various permutations. I am by no means an expert on the broad field of RPGs, but I believe most use dice in some way for their core resolution mechanic. So the point largely stands, until we all start playing Amber Diceless.


I will also add that, there are some lines that need not be passed. We are not talking about the equality problem between African Americans and Americans. If you can't correctly play a female character, do not play one. Likewise, if you cannot correctly play a leader, do not play one.
[...]
But if the wizard spends two evenings preparing a speech in his home and you just came and want to roll dices because "you are shy", there are nice wargames for you.

:smallannoyed:
No. Just ... no.

SigniferLux
2012-10-26, 04:15 AM
You may say, "a Charisma modifier is good enough". (Ironically, that reduces a large chunk of what's represented here to a single die roll, and even less; is that consistent with your stance that roleplaying social skills should not be reduced to rolling a single die?) I would say it fails to represent a character that has trained to persuade people far beyond even their considerable natural talent — or similarly a character that has a great deal of practice intimidating others, and further enhances that with subtle magics, to the point that they are superhumanly convincing.



I use the players raw Charisma ability, without check, to determine how well a character speaks,

I think i already said that i use the score and not the modifier. Also, i believe i cleared it out that it affects and not restricts.





:smallannoyed:
No. Just ... no.

I hope you keep the same ideas when a mute person comes and tries to play an RPG with you, especially if trying to play a talkative fluent magnificent guy.

I believe you are confusing something. The matter of equality. You are not a lesser if you cannot lead. And if you cannot lead, you cannot roleplay it.

I should not roleplay a wizard with 25 INT who prefers to rush into battle with his dagger.

All these are parts of metagaming. If i am playing Darthus the INT 25 wizard, of course my real life intelligence is not that high, but i must at least try to do things in the "intelligent" way (no rushing in, strategy above all, thinking before speaking, etc.). If i cannot because i do not tolerate this, or "i just can't man", then i will try to play something i can.

In the same way it's metagaming when i try to play a woman who puts everything inside for fun, a chaotic evil character who saves babies or a lawfull good character who kill babies, the wise high priest who does not believe to Gods, etc.

I can also not play for 24 hours per day, every day. Limits exist, and understanding them is vital so that i do not create something i cannot support by play.

To end this i will add that i prefer players trying, and award the one who puts effort than the one who rolls the dice to do things. Even if you can't speak well, trying to do so, the course of trying, is more important than the outcome.

Fortuna
2012-10-26, 04:17 AM
I really like the notion of taking what you say, rather than how you say it, and filtering that through the lens of your character sheet.

What I don't understand is why that should be limited to the Charisma score? How is it any different to interpret a statement based on a diplomacy check, or a bluff? After all, social situations are far from static, and social skills as much so. If the character should happen to stumble over a key word (or over an inopportune stone to send a sword blow wide), why, that's a natural 1. If the audience is in a friendly state of mind and the character is on top speechifyin' form (or spots a weakness and takes the chance), natural 20!

I don't understand why Charisma can be used here, but social skills cannot. Can you please explain that to me?

Zeful
2012-10-26, 04:22 AM
Even if i do not take into account the nice way you put things in your posts, even if i also do not take into account you have the ability and mental state to type and (most likely) speak in a logical way and take part in a forum conversation, even if we take as an example than you are a really bad diplomacer in real life, i believe you can tell a king that his troops are outnimbered and that going to war while there is famine in town is not wise.

Even if you phrase it like "you king is bad go war, famine kill men and you lose" what you meant is still there and the way the character acts in the scene is --influenced-- (which means that they give you a small boost in the scene, a "your royal arse should not go to war" phrase does not change) by the stats he has (his Charisma score, his Knowledge Nobility, his knowledge war/tactics, his Intelligence and Wisdom scores, his current mental and physical state, by the number of coffees he drunk from the morning, his race, etc.).You want to know the hole in this argument that ruins it as an example? That's not convincing someone of something, that's simply stating the obvious. Convincing someone requires that what you're attempting to tell him, isn't self-evident. Being outnumbered, in a war during famine? It's nothing less than patronizing to even think that that qualifies as convincing him of something.


Judging the king's reaction by a single roll is like continually pressing "enter" on your keyboard to skip the dialog in an RPG game and get to fighting. It shows boredom.Bull. You know the reasons people skip cutscenes in video games? Agency. Cutscenes by their nature remove the player's agency, turning an inherently interactive medium into a non-interactive medium. Comparing that to rolling a die, the near-ultimate expression of player agency in this genre? Insulting, at best. You don't have to like it, you can even strive to replace it with something better. But misrepresenting it, as you and Gamer Girl and others have in this thread and others on this subject, that's not acceptable. Choosing to roll the die is one of the best results you can get out of the players, because actual boredom? It's expressed as apathy. Players that are bored just zone out, brushing off attempts to engage them. Rolling the die allows for people such as myself, who aren't confident with words, who would rather not speak at all, to interact in a social environment with literally no risk to themselves, removing the fear and pressure to perform, letting them relax and more easily fall into the role. It's possible to use that to get people to open up by slowly asking for fewer and fewer checks, but engaging in more and more roleplay yourself. If you can get a good rapport with your players, something that's arguably necessary for Roleplaying games in general, you have an in to let you encourage them to give and engage more. Rolling the die is a crutch, I'm not even going to disguise that, and if removing the crutch works best for you, more power to you, but for me, and others, removing that crutch makes social encounters less appealing, as the weight of the rhetoric used becomes much more frightening, even if what was said in both cases is constant.

Killer Angel
2012-10-26, 04:33 AM
grrr... forum eating posts...


Oh my, i'm getting tired. Let's go again.You paladin's words, even if dull, will inspire more in the hearts of the army that the wizard's. But if the wizard spends two evenings preparing a speech in his home and you just came and want to roll dices because "you are shy", there are nice wargames for you.

I've never said to condone a lazy behavior from player's part.


I don't know if i managed to make it clear but what i meant is (an example):
Ken the Bard has Charisma 18 but bad real life social skills. When he speak to the King and says "snork, i like beer in this kingdom, snork" i take it and describe it as "Ken the Bard gracefully compliments the King about their fine beer production and bows gracefully in respect".

(snip)

The point i am trying to reach here is that i take into account more what the player says than the way he does.


What I'm reading here (correct if I'm wrong), is something that sounds as "if the players says something (roleplay!), the outcome will be based on the character's effective ability".
Otherwise, how could the player say "snork", and the king hears gracious compliments?


I think i already said that i use the score and not the modifier.

The difference is subtle. You have a high modifier 'cause you have a high score. To remove the skill and using the stat's score, isn't so different.



To end this i will add that i prefer players trying, and award the one who puts effort than the one who rolls the dice to do things. Even if you can't speak well, trying to do so, the course of trying, is more important than the outcome.

And here we are again. When the player tries, the outcome is positive. But it's still based on how good the character is, in doing that particular thing. It's the bard with cha 18 that pleased the king.

SigniferLux
2012-10-26, 05:04 AM
I really like the notion of taking what you say, rather than how you say it, and filtering that through the lens of your character sheet.

What I don't understand is why that should be limited to the Charisma score? How is it any different to interpret a statement based on a diplomacy check, or a bluff? After all, social situations are far from static, and social skills as much so. If the character should happen to stumble over a key word (or over an inopportune stone to send a sword blow wide), why, that's a natural 1. If the audience is in a friendly state of mind and the character is on top speechifyin' form (or spots a weakness and takes the chance), natural 20!

I don't understand why Charisma can be used here, but social skills cannot. Can you please explain that to me?

As i see it, the charisma score is more representing in the way that it cannot be raised to thousands, but can still be mildly raised.

The great difference between skill and ability score is that the skill can reach 100 easily, while the ability can reach 40 by min-maxing. But i will refrain from talking about high levels, because too many things get unbalanced, and talk about low levels.

Until level 12, a player gets 3 ability points, no matter class, race, etc. But until level 12 a rogue gets 8 skills per level and a fighter 2, and what can be added to one can be added to the other with the same efficiency. Which leads to the fighter always being back on skills, and by their logic, back in RP. Which also leads to "you fighter meatshield, i face rogue talk".

I find it more fair to take into account an ability which, if the fighter wanted to play a leader character, could be high from the beggining. But even if it wasn't, and the fighter decided to become better at speaking instead of stronger as the levels progress, he gains some points to invest to Charisma without a very big penalty.

An example:
Brock the rogue started with 14 charisma and 250 skill points.
Dan the fighter started with 10 charisma and 2 skill points.
Brock can spare many points to put into social skills, which is the basis of roleplaying games.
Dan has no points to spare, even if he wanted to, so he is crippled to forever be incompetent in social.
Brock goes for dexterity, to become better at thieving skills because his character was a lone adopted child and, campaign progressing, he found that larceny is the way of life he wants.
Dan the fighter found out that he loves talking and would like a more equal chance with Brock in roleplaying, and not just be the meatshield, so he raised his charisma to 13, which made him a more "roleplaying" character.

Also, there will never be the guy saying "oh look, i got 250 charisma, you can't tell me i can't do that". Affects and not dictates.


What I'm reading here (correct if I'm wrong), is something that sounds as "if the players says something (roleplay!), the outcome will be based on the character's effective ability".
Otherwise, how could the player say "snork", and the king hears gracious compliments?

I believe one small correction will solve this matter:
"will be based on" to "will be influenced by"
Seems the same, but is really different.
And, my example was not to be taken word by word but by meaning.


And here we are again. When the player tries, the outcome is positive. But it's still based on how good the character is, in doing that particular thing. It's the bard with cha 18 that pleased the king.

No, it's the bard for whom it is easier to please the king.

Killer Angel
2012-10-26, 05:40 AM
As i see it, the charisma score is more representing in the way that it cannot be raised to thousands, but can still be mildly raised.

The great difference between skill and ability score is that the skill can reach 100 easily, while the ability can reach 40 by min-maxing.

Basically, you want to avoid the abuse of skill optimization, right?
I can symphatize with you, given some excesses reached by skills in D&D at epic levels, and the abuse of builds as the diplomancer, but this debate is not limited to 3.5, and many systems cover (with skills and ather mechanical, measurable aspects) the world of social interactions.

ReaderAt2046
2012-10-26, 01:54 PM
I think the problem here lies in one simple limitation of RPGs. When I create an RPG character, he does not have my body. He does not have my skills. But he does have my mind and my soul.

To put it a different way, we can imagine a character being stronger than the player. We can imagine a character being more accomplished than the player. But it is impossible for a player to imagine a character as being more intelligent or more charismatic than he is, because the character's soul is the same as the player's.

On the issue of how to fix this, I suggest letting the players simply choose. Those who actually do have the charisma to match their characters will rely on that, and not on the uncertain dice. Those who don't have those skills can roll, and the dice will represent (albeit badly) what could otherwise not be represented at all.

Fortuna
2012-10-26, 02:33 PM
As i see it, the charisma score is more representing in the way that it cannot be raised to thousands, but can still be mildly raised.

The great difference between skill and ability score is that the skill can reach 100 easily, while the ability can reach 40 by min-maxing. But i will refrain from talking about high levels, because too many things get unbalanced, and talk about low levels.

Until level 12, a player gets 3 ability points, no matter class, race, etc. But until level 12 a rogue gets 8 skills per level and a fighter 2, and what can be added to one can be added to the other with the same efficiency. Which leads to the fighter always being back on skills, and by their logic, back in RP. Which also leads to "you fighter meatshield, i face rogue talk".

I find it more fair to take into account an ability which, if the fighter wanted to play a leader character, could be high from the beggining. But even if it wasn't, and the fighter decided to become better at speaking instead of stronger as the levels progress, he gains some points to invest to Charisma without a very big penalty.

An example:
Brock the rogue started with 14 charisma and 250 skill points.
Dan the fighter started with 10 charisma and 2 skill points.
Brock can spare many points to put into social skills, which is the basis of roleplaying games.
Dan has no points to spare, even if he wanted to, so he is crippled to forever be incompetent in social.
Brock goes for dexterity, to become better at thieving skills because his character was a lone adopted child and, campaign progressing, he found that larceny is the way of life he wants.
Dan the fighter found out that he loves talking and would like a more equal chance with Brock in roleplaying, and not just be the meatshield, so he raised his charisma to 13, which made him a more "roleplaying" character.

Also, there will never be the guy saying "oh look, i got 250 charisma, you can't tell me i can't do that". Affects and not dictates.

The thing is, though, that by high levels a bard should be able to make speeches that will sway the hardest hearts. That's part of the bard's thing. The fighter can still play a leader, though perhaps not a well-liked one, but if he wanted to be the party face, well, he should have picked a class with social skills.

I also object to your assertion that less social skills means less RP. It doesn't have to. You can play it that way if you want, you can shut up if your character is bad at speaking, but you don't have to. If everyone at the table is alright with it, there's no issue, and if they aren't then why isn't the god wizard handling all the combat? I can see no good reason why roleplaying should be limited to those who invest heavily in it IC more than other areas of the game, and I also see no good reason why people who find that they want a talkier character shouldn't multiclass or pick up cross-class ranks or similar. You can still roleplay, it's just that your roleplay is limited by your character's abilities.

Water_Bear
2012-10-26, 03:26 PM
I think the problem here lies in one simple limitation of RPGs. When I create an RPG character, he does not have my body. He does not have my skills. But he does have my mind...

To put it a different way, we can imagine a character being stronger than the player. We can imagine a character being more accomplished than the player. But it is impossible for a player to imagine a character as being more intelligent or more charismatic than he is, because the character's [mind] is the same as the player's.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I can easily imagine someone more intelligent* or charismatic than I am. After all, I've met and read about real geniuses and people with silver tongues, it isn't that far a leap to extrapolate how they would react to a given problem. I can't actually do what they do, but I know the general way they approach problems and the kind of results they tend to reach.

*Standard "There's no Such Thing as General Intelligence" disclaimer. Go read The Mismeasure of Man if you disagree. Actually go read it anyway; Gould is an amazing author and scientist, and the book is super informative and fun.


On the issue of how to fix this, I suggest letting the players simply choose. Those who actually do have the charisma to match their characters will rely on that, and not on the uncertain dice. Those who don't have those skills can roll, and the dice will represent (albeit badly) what could otherwise not be represented at all.

Yes. This is how you do it, thank you.

ReaderAt2046
2012-10-26, 04:06 PM
I'm not sure I agree with that. I can easily imagine someone more intelligent* or charismatic than I am. After all, I've met and read about real geniuses and people with silver tongues, it isn't that far a leap to extrapolate how they would react to a given problem. I can't actually do what they do, but I know the general way they approach problems and the kind of results they tend to reach.

Perhaps I should have said "act out" or "project" rather than "imagine"

Water_Bear
2012-10-26, 04:23 PM
Perhaps I should have said "act out" or "project" rather than "imagine"

Well, again, that's not that hard. As long as I don't actually have to solve the equation to navigate the 5-dimensional maze or actually deliver the speech to convince the villain to turn against their alien masters and commit suicide, I can generally outline the sorts of things which the character would do to achieve those ends. With that, some actual knowledge of the jargon and the confidence to say BS with a straight face, it's not mind-blowingly difficult.

This actually ties back into the main theme I've been going for; there's no reason to make a Player have to do something their Character can do mechanically. You know the result your character is going for, you have a general idea of how they would get there, and then you roll the dice and maybe deliver a sentence of description. That goes for oratory as much as swordplay, computer hacking and basket weaving.

TuggyNE
2012-10-26, 05:30 PM
The great difference between skill and ability score is that the skill can reach 100 easily, while the ability can reach 40 by min-maxing. But i will refrain from talking about high levels, because too many things get unbalanced, and talk about low levels.

That's a little dubious; it requires more effort to hit >100 skill checks, IMO, than it does to hit >40 ability score.


Until level 12, a player gets 3 ability points, no matter class, race, etc. But until level 12 a rogue gets 8 skills per level and a fighter 2, and what can be added to one can be added to the other with the same efficiency. Which leads to the fighter always being back on skills, and by their logic, back in RP. Which also leads to "you fighter meatshield, i face rogue talk".

I find it more fair to take into account an ability which, if the fighter wanted to play a leader character, could be high from the beggining. But even if it wasn't, and the fighter decided to become better at speaking instead of stronger as the levels progress, he gains some points to invest to Charisma without a very big penalty.

Hmm. That is a definite problem; I prefer to solve it by fixing the Fighter class's criminally low skill points, rather than changing how social skills work; both solutions involve changes to the rules, but I'd argue that giving 2+int classes more skill points involves a smaller change and one that fixes other problems simultaneously.

Another point to consider is that a Fighter who spends ability score increases on Charisma instead of Strength or perhaps Dexterity or Constitution is going to be significantly less effective at his primary job as the price of becoming vaguely competent at a secondary task. A better solution would allow the Fighter to become at least moderately good at the secondary task without any dent to primary effectiveness — in other words, more skill points, and perhaps a better class skill list.


An example:
Brock the rogue started with 14 charisma and 250 skill points.
Dan the fighter started with 10 charisma and 2 skill points.
Brock can spare many points to put into social skills, which is the basis of roleplaying games.
Dan has no points to spare, even if he wanted to, so he is crippled to forever be incompetent in social.

Exaggeration doesn't help anybody here. Brock, at 10 Int and Human, gains a total of 135 skill points by level 12; Dan, also Human and with 13 Int for Combat Expertise/Improved Trip, gains a total of 60 skill points by level 12, with an inferior class skill list. However, there's very little to spend those points on, except perhaps for prerequisites, and he has a cap of 15 points spent on any given skill, so it's reasonable for him to invest some into social skills if he wants to become minimally competent. (Whatever Dan does, he will never be extremely good at social situations, under any system put forward so far except simply ignoring the character's skills.) Note, though, that many players, right or wrong, decide that if their characters can't be good at something they won't put effort into becoming mediocre, so it's quite possible for Dan's player to simply avoid putting points into Diplomacy/Intimidate or increasing Cha, whichever system you use.


Dan the fighter found out that he loves talking and would like a more equal chance with Brock in roleplaying, and not just be the meatshield, so he raised his charisma to 13, which made him a more "roleplaying" character.

I'm a little dubious that apparently the only scope for "roleplaying" is trying to get others to do things for you through social skills; what about inter-party chatting, in-battle one-liners, or hobbies, to name a few?


To put it a different way, we can imagine a character being stronger than the player. We can imagine a character being more accomplished than the player. But it is impossible for a player to imagine a character as being more intelligent or more charismatic than he is, because the character's soul is the same as the player's.

This is partly true and partly false. Certainly, it is very difficult to imagine in detail someone whose mental powers are significantly superior to our own — this applies not merely to one's own character, but to any character, and even in business it makes it difficult to hire somebody genuinely more intelligent or wiser than ourselves.

However, I do not agree that it is impossible, or even necessarily immensely difficult, to sketch the outlines of what such a person would be able to do, and I strongly believe that this is a task RPG rules should take on themselves, to be corrected if they fail at it.

For that matter, it is honestly surprisingly difficult to imagine in detail precisely what a superhumanly skilled swordsman is doing. All you can reasonably manage are the outlines: he parries blows that should have hit, even by giant abominations or foul emissaries of evil, his blade strikes home past all defense, and so forth. (If you don't believe me, try explaining exactly how those parries work in sufficient detail for a training manual.) Or, borrowing a line from Water Bear, explain how a brilliant hacker cuts through or avoids layered firewalls, honeypots, password protection, antiviruses, and so forth. I'll give you a hint: movies don't get it even vaguely right.


The thing is, though, that by high levels a bard should be able to make speeches that will sway the hardest hearts. That's part of the bard's thing. The fighter can still play a leader, though perhaps not a well-liked one, but if he wanted to be the party face, well, he should have picked a class with social skills.

I also object to your assertion that less social skills means less RP. It doesn't have to. You can play it that way if you want, you can shut up if your character is bad at speaking, but you don't have to. If everyone at the table is alright with it, there's no issue, and if they aren't then why isn't the god wizard handling all the combat? I can see no good reason why roleplaying should be limited to those who invest heavily in it IC more than other areas of the game, and I also see no good reason why people who find that they want a talkier character shouldn't multiclass or pick up cross-class ranks or similar. You can still roleplay, it's just that your roleplay is limited by your character's abilities.

Essentially, both of these. Much more concise than my attempts to explain. :smallwink:


Well, again, that's not that hard. As long as I don't actually have to solve the equation to navigate the 5-dimensional maze or actually deliver the speech to convince the villain to turn against their alien masters and commit suicide, I can generally outline the sorts of things which the character would do to achieve those ends. With that, some actual knowledge of the jargon and the confidence to say BS with a straight face, it's not mind-blowingly difficult.

This actually ties back into the main theme I've been going for; there's no reason to make a Player have to do something their Character can do mechanically. You know the result your character is going for, you have a general idea of how they would get there, and then you roll the dice and maybe deliver a sentence of description. That goes for oratory as much as swordplay, computer hacking and basket weaving.

And also this, with extra bolding on the most important part. In order to make RPGs about the character itself, rather than a thin disguise for Joe Blow, it's necessary to have the mechanics focus on what the character can accomplish, whether or not the player can accomplish that.

Totally Guy
2012-10-27, 05:15 AM
Don't try to hack this stuff into D&D. If you want games that do it well find them and play them.

NichG
2012-10-27, 09:26 AM
Don't try to hack this stuff into D&D. If you want games that do it well find them and play them.

The feel of D&D is vastly more malleable than I think people give it credit for, and it generally has the advantage that its the one system your average player will be familiar with, so its much easier to get a game together or at least to have a wider selection of players. This advantage should not be underestimated.