Monsters to throw at social encountor focuses party

[Amdy_vill]

I am playing in a party that is focused on social encounters, and our dm is struggling to find monsters that are good to put up against us. so does anyone have any good monsters to put up against a social encounter party.

[Zhorn]

Fey with bargain making and wordplay.
Dangerous hospitality, with skirting the lines between avoiding to be rude, but also avoiding eating any of their offered foods or accepting gifts, etc.

[JoeJ]

Fey with bargain making and wordplay.
Dangerous hospitality, with skirting the lines between avoiding to be rude, but also avoiding eating any of their offered foods or accepting gifts, etc.

Kobold Press has an adventure called Courts of the Shadow Fey that mostly takes place in a fey court. One of the features of the court is that it has a dueling season.

[Cheesegear]

I am playing in a party that is focused on social encounters

What does that mean?
Does that mean a party that is more focused on roleplaying? In which case it doesn't matter because nobody can teach you, or force you, how to roleplay.

Or does it mean that party is CHA-based and all of them are interested in using Deception, Intimidation or Persuasion? In which case it doesn't matter because everything is on the DM, and they can just decide what will and wont work. Any creature that can speak, can potentially be roleplayed out of a fight. Depends on what you roll, and depends on what you - the player - can convince your DM of.
Social encounters don't really have rules in DND, because social encounters are almost purely roleplaying. You don't need rules for that. Just do it.


and our dm is struggling to find monsters that are good to put up against us.

Again, I don't know what you mean.
If your role is to talk and speak, you shouldn't have to be put up against 'monsters'. You can be put up against anything that can speak a Language. Or, Hell, for double triple roleplaying points, come up against creatures that can't speak (e.g; Chwingas, from Rime of the Frostmaiden).


so does anyone have any good monsters to put up against a social encounter party.

No idea what that means. But I assume you mean monsters that use roleplaying as part of their schtick - and in that case, the monsters are only as hard or easy as the DM makes them.

Anything that Shapechanges. The DM - should be aware of what Nystul's Magic Aura does, just in case one of the CHA-based characters is a Paladin.
Anything that can spit out Charm effects.
Any spellcaster that uses Enchantment spells. However I do have to stress that some players get upset when the DM takes control of their character. But that's exactly what Enchantment spells do.

[HPisBS]

Succubus / Incubus.

[stoutstien]

All NPCs should have social components but Devils, fey, rakshaha, and lamia spring to mind.

[DwarfFighter]

The PCs encounter an Orc trading party. Their tribe is in a resource and manpower crisis and the elders have convinced the chieftain to reach out to the nearby Elf, Dwarf and Human settlements to establish peaceful trade to get them through the hard times. The Orcs traders are not very diplomatic, being more used to "negotiate" with violence, yet forced to restrain themselves for the good of the tribe.

Meanwhile, die-hard traditionalists in the tribe see these overtures of peace to be a betrayal of the tribes martial tradition and will attempt to subvert or outright attack trade negotiations.

The PCs will have as many Orc traders you need, to make up for their combat shortcomings, that are fighting on their side against the attacking Orc raiders. Throw a Orc spell caster or two, and an Ogre, in there to spice it up.

-DF

[Yakk]

There are a pile of horror-puzzle monsters whose influence on an area is going to be detected socially.

[Unoriginal]

I am playing in a party that is focused on social encounters, and our dm is struggling to find monsters that are good to put up against us. so does anyone have any good monsters to put up against a social encounter party.

Literally all sapient monsters can make for interesting social encounters, the rest depends on context.

Arcanaloths can fit one situation but not another, and the same can apply to Troglodytes.


Would you mind giving us more context, please?

[da newt]

Any monster that doesn't have a language is immune to all the 'social' expertise of the party, therefor a fine combat challenge.

If you are looking for foes who excel at social stuff, devils, dragons, vampires, rakshasa, hags, NPCs, fey, beholder, mindflayers, etc - there are tons of them out there.

More info will help us figure out what you are looking for.

[Amdy_vill]

our dm is more looking for monsters that have the stats to go up agesnt us in a social encounter, creatures who can beat our ridiculous insights and cha checks and have the cha and insight to manipulate us.

[Cheesegear]

our dm is more looking for monsters that have the stats to go up agesnt us in a social encounter, creatures who can beat our ridiculous insights and cha checks and have the cha and insight to manipulate us.

So, it's what I thought. By 'social encounter', you don't actually mean anything complex or something that requires roleplaying. Y

You're treating social encounters like a combat, where your numbers need to be higher than the hostiles' number.

But also, why? You can effectively yell "Prove you're not a Fiend!" at all NPCs, and until they do - or don't - just refuse to believe anything they say. You don't have to roll dice for social encounters if you don't want to.

Doppelganger; Shapechange, Read Thoughts, and wont trigger Divine Sense or Detect Evil and Good.
Oni; Ditto. But also can cast Charm Person.

Ancient Copper and Green Dragons have Deception +11. I don't know if your DM rules that Chromatic Dragons have Shape Change. But the Copper one definitely does.

Yochlols and Rakshasas both have Deception +10. Both trigger Divine Sense. So that's game. Must have Nystul's Magic Aura.
- Yochlols open up a bunch of **** with Drow. So there's a whole social campaign you can do with that.

After that you have Succubus/Incubus and Arcanaloths.

[Amdy_vill]

So, it's what I thought. By 'social encounter', you don't actually mean anything complex or something that requires roleplaying. Y

You're treating social encounters like a combat, where your numbers need to be higher than the hostiles' number.

But also, why? You can effectively yell "Prove you're not a Fiend!" at all NPCs, and until they do - or don't - just refuse to believe anything they say. You don't have to roll dice for social encounters if you don't want to.

Doppelganger; Shapechange, Read Thoughts, and wont trigger Divine Sense or Detect Evil and Good.
Oni; Ditto. But also can cast Charm Person.

Ancient Copper and Green Dragons have Deception +11. I don't know if your DM rules that Chromatic Dragons have Shape Change. But the Copper one definitely does.

Yochlols and Rakshasas both have Deception +10. Both trigger Divine Sense. So that's game. Must have Nystul's Magic Aura.
- Yochlols open up a bunch of **** with Drow. So there's a whole social campaign you can do with that.

After that you have Succubus/Incubus and Arcanaloths.

we are RPing that's a big part of the Social encounter system in the dmg, If we truly **** up and get a bad insight and try to use the wrong information we don't get a roll we fail. I mean I am playing a character who tells everyone their a god and I have **** up doing that several time from letting it slip to the party that I may not be a god to people who have seen through my bluffs and called me, to people who didn't and became aggressive because of that. but there are fewer of these heated moments and interesting outcomes without stat lines that can go up against us or even manipulate us instead

[Angelalex242]

If you wanna make these guys think about ethics, throw a Celestial at them.

The Servants of Heaven won't pick fights with humans...most of the time. They're more interested in testing the quality of your character.

[WaroftheCrans]

It really sounds like the problem is with your understanding of the system, and the party's willingness to break bounded accuracy.

I'm willing to wager that instead of using scaling dcs based on how hard it would be to do something you're instead just opting for an opposed check. That's not how the system should work, because it wasn't designed for that.

Want to convince someone you're a god? Fine either you've done some serious roleplaying (not rollplaying) to lower the dc, or it's a 30 dc even if Dave the acolyte of Pelor only has a 3 to insight. The DM would be better off just telling you it's an automatic failure no matter how high you roll.

More on the god example, suppose you succeed on a deception check to tell someone you're a god. Ok, that's great, this person "can tell your not lying" but obviously you aren't a god, so he may draw conclusions anywhere from you being insane or dominated.

The only problem here that I can see is that your table is ignoring the system math and assumptions, damming verisimilitude to hell, stripping agency and intelligence (even from your fellow pcs it seems, since they're subject to this as well) and then turning around and complaining about it not working.

Once again: System math and assumptions matter. If you intentionally do your best to break it, you'll end up fighting far above your cr. This is especially easy to do with skills since expertise wasn't taken into account well.

Persuasion, deception, intimidation and performance are not reality warping spells. No skill check can make the impossible happen, and diplomacy isn't brainwashing. People are capable of holding onto their wits despite the 53 you rolled after adding all your modifiers.

Lastly, some creatures just straight up can't be defeated through diplomacy. The tarrasque can't be told that this he should be your pet, and really neither can an owlbear. There are tons of situations that social skills have no place in.

Lastly for monsters with absurd deception, insight etc checks look at the high end celestials and fiends. Sure, they'll cream non t4 parties if played intelligently, but these are the consequences.

Edit: also no one in this thread knows your vids of play your bonuses classes or anything else so it's hard to give you the suggestions you're looking for.

[OrbanSirgen]

A bit off-topic, but the thread title immediately made me think of a minotaur with a top hat and a monocle... Lol

[JoeJ]

A bit off-topic, but the thread title immediately made me think of a minotaur with a top hat and a monocle... Lol

In the Freedom City setting for Mutants & Masterminds, one of the supervillains is a minotaur (actually THE minotaur, made immortal by Hades) who wears a suit and runs a multinational criminal organization.