Played an Eloquence Bard for the first time and I feel sort of guilty.

[Yakmala]

I was in a one-shot over the weekend and pulled an old 5th level Lore Bard out of mothballs for the run. The DM allowed me to update the character using Tasha's and I switched to the College of Eloquence.

I'm not sure I've ever felt quite as overpowered at 5th level.

Minimum Persuasion/Deception roll of 20. Fast talking my way past the guards was barely an inconvenience.

Both times I used Unsettling Words, once for Dissonant Whispers and once for Suggestion, I rolled a 7 on my bardic inspiration, pushing my bard's effective DC from 15 to 22. Needless to say, the enemies didn't stand a chance.

Don't get me wrong, I love the theme and the flavor of the College of Eloquence and had a great time roleplaying the character, I just felt like I was bullying the NPC's and enemies at times.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Not much wrong with being a silver tongued Bard early on, without magical influence you still can't persuade people to act against their typical inclinations.

I'm not sure I'd call it the most overpowered thing, definitely on the stronger side if you're lucky with Unsettling Words.

[Snails]

I do not feel guilty when the Ranger and Rogue pounce on the enemy in the Surprise Round, yet again.

I do not feel guilty when the Bard talks us past some weakling guards who would probably have been nothing more than speedbumps. The genuinely important stuff is guarded by dangerous foes, after all.

[Dalinar]

without magical influence you still can't persuade people to act against their typical inclinations.

I think this is a key point to consider. Depending on your DM, they might just say "it's not feasible to convince the guards to abandon their post without good reason," so you'll have to RP out a reason ("I heard screaming down the hall" perhaps) and you might face consequences down the line based on that ("the guards will attack you on sight when they realize they've been duped").

That said, Unsettling Words is incredible, and I'd love to play an Eloquence Bard/Aberrant Mind multiclass someday. Completely subtle enchanting spells AND incredible Persuasion/Deception checks? Brrr.

[Yakmala]

I do not feel guilty when the Bard talks us past some weakling guards who would probably have been nothing more than speedbumps. The genuinely important stuff is guarded by dangerous foes, after all.

Oh I agree, getting past mooks is not a big deal, but at level 5 with a D8 bardic inspiration, Unsettling Words, on average, is like having a +4 Rod of the Pact Keeper. Until the bard gets to the level where most bosses have legendary saves, very little is going to resist his spells. Toss an Instrument of the Bards into the equation and non-legendary creatures have a snowball's chance in hell of resisting things like Charm Person, Hypnotic Pattern or Dominate Person/Monster. That said, if I keep playing this bard with this DM, I'm sure more undead and constructs will begin showing up.

[Cygnia]

My Bard's only lvl1 and I'm looking to spec into Eloquence come 3rd lvl, so this is what I actually want to accomplish. :smallamused:

[Mr. Wonderful]

What an awesome villain this would make!

The good guys return from a desperate fight against the enemy, only to learn that the whole town is against them.

No one cheers them, their patrons look for ways to back out of providing rewards. Most merchants won't do business with them, with the exception of a few looking to make gigantic markups.

And all because an Eloquence Bard was at work sullying their reputation.

SUCH a great plot hook!

[ImproperJustice]

What an awesome villain this would make!

The good guys return from a desperate fight against the enemy, only to learn that the whole town is against them.

No one cheers them, their patrons look for ways to back out of providing rewards. Most merchants won't do business with them, with the exception of a few looking to make gigantic markups.

And all because an Eloquence Bard was at work sullying their reputation.

SUCH a great plot hook!

I ran an evil Bard Villain once.

The first time they encountered her she masquaraded as the receptionist for the Mayor of a town they were defending. Passing in details of their movements, activities and any mistakes they made like leaving their horses or any valuables in the care of the town guard, etc...

She did a lot of harm over a lengthy period of time. Then she fled as they confided in the mayor (with her present) that there must be a mole in his organization.

She fled, and later infiltrated a Dwarven Kingdom as a prophetess and set up events to make it seem like she had precognition. By the time the PCs arrived (I mean it was months of sessions as they perused other leads), she had the ear of the young Dwarven King that these “Heroes” visiting the Kingdom on a quest to ask them for an artifact were actually Thieves seeking to usher in a great calamity.

It was quite enjoyable, and a good challenge for the social PCs to try and figure out how to untangle her network of informers.

It ended in a pretty epic rooftop battle between her and the Party’s good Bard (her counterpart).
She counterpelled or had an answer for most of the PC Bard’s maneuvers. Until she said *blank it*, and drew her magical quick drawing short sword and just charged her and took her down in a desperate direct battle.

Afterward, she named her sword “Swift Resolution”, and added the inscription on the Blade: “When words fail”.

That sword has reappeared in almost every game now and finds it’s way to the hands of the party diplomat.

[LudicSavant]

I was in a one-shot over the weekend and pulled an old 5th level Lore Bard out of mothballs for the run. The DM allowed me to update the character using Tasha's and I switched to the College of Eloquence.

I'm not sure I've ever felt quite as overpowered at 5th level.

Minimum Persuasion/Deception roll of 20. Fast talking my way past the guards was barely an inconvenience.

Both times I used Unsettling Words, once for Dissonant Whispers and once for Suggestion, I rolled a 7 on my bardic inspiration, pushing my bard's effective DC from 15 to 22. Needless to say, the enemies didn't stand a chance.

Don't get me wrong, I love the theme and the flavor of the College of Eloquence and had a great time roleplaying the character, I just felt like I was bullying the NPC's and enemies at times.

Is the DM just letting you have your way with the NPCs with a pure Persuasion check and nothing else? Because that's not what the social rules in the DMG suggest, and it might have made for a more entertaining experience for you :smallsmile:

[Eldariel]

I was in a one-shot over the weekend and pulled an old 5th level Lore Bard out of mothballs for the run. The DM allowed me to update the character using Tasha's and I switched to the College of Eloquence.

I'm not sure I've ever felt quite as overpowered at 5th level.

Minimum Persuasion/Deception roll of 20. Fast talking my way past the guards was barely an inconvenience.

Both times I used Unsettling Words, once for Dissonant Whispers and once for Suggestion, I rolled a 7 on my bardic inspiration, pushing my bard's effective DC from 15 to 22. Needless to say, the enemies didn't stand a chance.

Don't get me wrong, I love the theme and the flavor of the College of Eloquence and had a great time roleplaying the character, I just felt like I was bullying the NPC's and enemies at times.

I had the same experience when I first played a Diviner Wizard. Not the fasttalking part (though between Minor Illusion, Disguise Self, Suggestion, and Portent you can get up to surprising amounts of trouble).

Moreover, if I had low Portents I was trivialising big enemies all by my lonesome and with high Portent I, or an ally, was almost guaranteed to go first in big fights (and with a 20 I could of course give our Pally or Rogue an autocrit but that only happened once). Only 2/day as opposed to ~12/day for your average Bard but I found that it's more than enough; you don't need an autosuccess or fail that often if you aren't absurdly unlucky otherwise (and Wizard has lots of "does stuff on failure"- spells anyways). The campaign started on level 3 and our big fights were basically down to me playing right (and our two HPKs [half-party-kills] down to me experimenting with my abilities and this not having them when it would've mattered) - rest of the party couldn't pick whether we lost or won.

And on 6 you can suddenly cast a stupid amount of Divinations daily, which especially if you have the big ones like Clairvoyance, Detect Thoughts, Locate Object, etc., basically just hands out solutions to a vast variety of scenarios and lets you play with near-perfect information.

****ing with enemy saves is just incredibly strong up until they get Legendaries (and even then, many don't have those). So many level 1-2 spells just knock them out cold.

[Chugger]

I played an AL module recently online, tier 3, and we had a bard who had an instrument of the bards and did very effective crowd control. This was a tough module - but the bard made it super easy. Disadvantage on H Pattern is devastating. Yeah, almost felt like we were cheating. I was running a light cleric and hardly had to heal anyone. I didn't cast a single fireball - cuz it would have messed up the patterned monsters - so I zapped things w/ my lightning bolt wand or used spir weapon or just tolled the dead. Easy mode.

Eloquence features on top of a normal bard doing effective crowd control - yeah - it can be OP feeling in some encounters.

A non-AL DM can possibly do things to mitigate this if it gets out of hand. AL DMs largely can't or won't (technically they can be heavy-handed, but the grim reality is that if they are, they'll get a rep for it and players will not sign up for their tables - I've seen it happen). AL DM's might be kind of stuck w/ whatever AL/WOTC sends their way.

[Hael]

Eloquence bard is deeply OP, but it gets at something I was trying to argue in another thread. Namely that features like silver tongue essentially force the DM to reduce the power of what’s possible with a persuasion or deception check. So rolling a nat 20 on ‘these aren’t the droids you’re looking for’ might be acceptable but not if it’s an autopass. Thus in practise those features are less powerful than they seem to be.

A lot likely comes down to whether the DM was creating content to match the party or if he/she is using a module with suggested outcomes for skill checks. Eloquence bards are ridiculous for the latter, but less so for the former.

[Eldariel]

I played an AL module recently online, tier 3, and we had a bard who had an instrument of the bards and did very effective crowd control. This was a tough module - but the bard made it super easy. Disadvantage on H Pattern is devastating. Yeah, almost felt like we were cheating.

This is why CC heavy parties are so good. Hypno with DA is obviously efficient, but even without it, two Hypnos does the same or more. Or Arcane Trickster's HP from Hiding, but that does come late.

In general, few premade adventures challenge heavy CC parties. Generally you just walk through most encounters mopping up the CCd targets and go from there. In this edition everyone does decent damage so you don't even need any dedicated damage dealers to this end. You can just have 4 CC bots using their simple damage effects for walking through encounters. Incidentally, from the same campaign where I played my Diviner in, the party had a Blaster Wizard who eventually left because he felt I could basically adventure alone (we mostly bypassed encounters, not even bothering to kill the CCd assailants if it looked free; Phantom Steeds to just ride past, Alert Hypnotic Pattern and walk away, etc.).

[stoutstien]

I was in a one-shot over the weekend and pulled an old 5th level Lore Bard out of mothballs for the run. The DM allowed me to update the character using Tasha's and I switched to the College of Eloquence.

I'm not sure I've ever felt quite as overpowered at 5th level.

Minimum Persuasion/Deception roll of 20. Fast talking my way past the guards was barely an inconvenience.

Both times I used Unsettling Words, once for Dissonant Whispers and once for Suggestion, I rolled a 7 on my bardic inspiration, pushing my bard's effective DC from 15 to 22. Needless to say, the enemies didn't stand a chance.

Don't get me wrong, I love the theme and the flavor of the College of Eloquence and had a great time roleplaying the character, I just felt like I was bullying the NPC's and enemies at times.

It's a strong subclass but one shots are not the best way to shakedown new options thanks to the power of RNG. Also wouldn't the minimum roll be 18 with maxed Cha, expertise, and silver tongue even then why not grab expertise in other skills rather than stacking it on an already massive bonus.

[MrStabby]

I was in a one-shot over the weekend and pulled an old 5th level Lore Bard out of mothballs for the run. The DM allowed me to update the character using Tasha's and I switched to the College of Eloquence.

I'm not sure I've ever felt quite as overpowered at 5th level.

Minimum Persuasion/Deception roll of 20. Fast talking my way past the guards was barely an inconvenience.

Both times I used Unsettling Words, once for Dissonant Whispers and once for Suggestion, I rolled a 7 on my bardic inspiration, pushing my bard's effective DC from 15 to 22. Needless to say, the enemies didn't stand a chance.

Don't get me wrong, I love the theme and the flavor of the College of Eloquence and had a great time roleplaying the character, I just felt like I was bullying the NPC's and enemies at times.

In terms of feeling bad, dont focus on what you did but focus on the other players and ask if you stopped them shining.

If you talk your way past guards, that's no big deal... unless you have someone else in the party expert at taking down enemies so quickly they cant raise an alarm or a PC who excels in adventuring days with more encounters (and you just bypassed this one).

Dont worry about your spells being awesome unless they are powerful enough to remove the drama and tension from a fight and leave the contributions of others seeming unimportant.

Just focus on what the other players are looking to do and make sure that you are not doing anything that devalues their strengths. As long as you do that then be as awesome and as powerful as you like.

[Eldariel]

In terms of feeling bad, dont focus on what you did but focus on the other players and ask if you stopped them shining.

If you talk your way past guards, that's no big deal... unless you have someone else in the party expert at taking down enemies so quickly they cant raise an alarm or a PC who excels in adventuring days with more encounters (and you just bypassed this one).

Dont worry about your spells being awesome unless they are powerful enough to remove the drama and tension from a fight and leave the contributions of others seeming unimportant.

Just focus on what the other players are looking to do and make sure that you are not doing anything that devalues their strengths. As long as you do that then be as awesome and as powerful as you like.

If you play like that though, they are devaluing your strengths. Why should party choose one, probably more risky way of dealing with the guards over something like autosuccess diplomacy/deception? More broadly, why should one character's shtick take precedence over another's?

Generally in these kinds of cases, no satisfactory solution exists. The very fact that these two characters are in the same party means one is bound to be dissatisfied. A friend made a Rogue for the same party where I had a roguish Wizard. We had the same stealth (I had Prodigy as a Vuman while he was Kenku), similar skills at lockpicks, etc. Meanwhile, I could teleport, levitate, improve my own checks, imitate voices potentially better than Kenku, etc.

The fact that she made her character forced me to essentially not do my thing since then I'd make her redundant. So I was forced to remake my whole character and change my concept, which, to be honest, sucked. Especially since my established character was forced to change by a new character (and the person most certainly knew what my character did; we had played together for months with her as Paladin). And note that I wasn't a part of making her character so I couldn't very well tell her that, let alone without coming off as a jackass.

Perhaps party should go with the best option. Eventually we did a heist together, but incorporating her literally forced me to do a riskier, worse version of the same plan. Which is not very satisfying. Your options are basically:
- Spoil another's fun
- Spoil your own fun

[Kenny_Snoggins]

Eloquence bard is deeply OP, but it gets at something I was trying to argue in another thread. Namely that features like silver tongue essentially force the DM to reduce the power of what’s possible with a persuasion or deception check. So rolling a nat 20 on ‘these aren’t the droids you’re looking for’ might be acceptable but not if it’s an autopass. Thus in practise those features are less powerful than they seem to be.

A lot likely comes down to whether the DM was creating content to match the party or if he/she is using a module with suggested outcomes for skill checks. Eloquence bards are ridiculous for the latter, but less so for the former.

I agree with this completely. Less effort has gone into the social design of DnD than combat, and even at low levels, the Eloquence Bard busts the psuedo bounded accuracy in Persuasion checks wide open. I feel like silver tongued while initially seemingly impressive, is almost just a ribbon because even without it the Bard is pushing the limits of what the game can handle in terms of influence on a skill check. I've had two things happen with this, as a Bard main: either the DM just hand-waves that your persuasion never works, because the argument you state is not convincing (although I feel this is incorrect: asking the actual player to make an incredibly charismatic and compelling argument IRL is like demanding the barbarian actually go lift up a car in the parking lot. You say what you want to happen, what skill you will apply, then roll), or you dominate social interaction so hard that your main gameplay pillar becomes boring, and you have to take extra care not to just talk your way out of every combat encounter because the rest of your party will get rapidly disgruntled at not getting to use their toys at all while you blather at everything that moves, and many things that don't.

There is a lot of discipline that goes into playing a bard who is not oppressive on the table in terms of hogging the spotlight, and that partially depends on the limits your DM places on the power of persuasion. I feel like there are standard areas where it should be better defined-- like I think it's reasonable that in town, the bard has set DCs to haggle for discounts on purchases where your super-nova Persuasion score can really be applied in a fair and powerful manner. But it's a tightrope.


I think this is a key point to consider. Depending on your DM, they might just say "it's not feasible to convince the guards to abandon their post without good reason," so you'll have to RP out a reason ("I heard screaming down the hall" perhaps) and you might face consequences down the line based on that ("the guards will attack you on sight when they realize they've been duped").

That said, Unsettling Words is incredible, and I'd love to play an Eloquence Bard/Aberrant Mind multiclass someday. Completely subtle enchanting spells AND incredible Persuasion/Deception checks? Brrr.

Especially since you can stack Unsettling Words with Mind Sliver, so Mind Sliver to reduce their saving throw, then your wizard or whoever winds up a Save-or-Sucks and you hit them with another D6-D12 nuke to their save. Even without further min-maxing to get disadvantage on the roll, My Eloquence Bardlock is shaving off an average of 8 from the BBEG's save. And you typically have enough bardic inspirations to outpace their legendary resistances, and the DM is put in a bind where there is never really a save time NOT to use LR since you can tank any save he opts to not auto-pass fairly reliably. Once you get one of the Tasha's new Bard instruments that increases spell save DC, your 'true' SSDC at level 10 and 20 CHA (my PC's current level, 7 Bard 3 Warlock) is what... 8+4+5+3+(D4)+(D8) an average of TWENTY-FREAKING-SEVEN, so Tiamat/Vecna esque SSDC from a Tier 2 PC. Using only cantrips and short-rest resources. Yeowza.

[Mr. Wonderful]

I ran an evil Bard Villain once.

The first time they encountered her she masquaraded as the receptionist for the Mayor of a town they were defending. Passing in details of their movements, activities and any mistakes they made like leaving their horses or any valuables in the care of the town guard, etc...

She did a lot of harm over a lengthy period of time. Then she fled as they confided in the mayor (with her present) that there must be a mole in his organization.

She fled, and later infiltrated a Dwarven Kingdom as a prophetess and set up events to make it seem like she had precognition. By the time the PCs arrived (I mean it was months of sessions as they perused other leads), she had the ear of the young Dwarven King that these “Heroes” visiting the Kingdom on a quest to ask them for an artifact were actually Thieves seeking to usher in a great calamity.

It was quite enjoyable, and a good challenge for the social PCs to try and figure out how to untangle her network of informers.

It ended in a pretty epic rooftop battle between her and the Party’s good Bard (her counterpart).
She counterpelled or had an answer for most of the PC Bard’s maneuvers. Until she said *blank it*, and drew her magical quick drawing short sword and just charged her and took her down in a desperate direct battle.

Afterward, she named her sword “Swift Resolution”, and added the inscription on the Blade: “When words fail”.

That sword has reappeared in almost every game now and finds it’s way to the hands of the party diplomat.

Thanks for the awesome story! A villain like this is upends all the usual campaign tropes by opposing the party without a direct, physical challenge. It was no doubt very frustrating for them to see their hard-earned reputation under attack. They needed to find a new way to counter the threat, one beyond kicking in doors and fighting ferocious monsters.

I bet it was immensely satisfying for the party to finally overcome the evil bard. Big thumbs up!

[sophontteks]

Persuasion oppression isn't unique to thr eloquence bard. Taking 10 is nice, but advantage helps even the score.

A glamour bard has the nuclear charm option.

Fey wanderers get expertise now plus wisdom on persuasion checks. They now have access to enhance ability (charisma) too.

Redemption paladin can add +5 to their persuasion checks

There are a good few options for insane persuasion rolls. Persuasion tends to have high DCs so it's pretty fair. It is not easy to convince people to do stuff for you.

[Tanarii]

Eloquence bard is deeply OP, but it gets at something I was trying to argue in another thread. Namely that features like silver tongue essentially force the DM to reduce the power of what’s possible with a persuasion or deception check. So rolling a nat 20 on ‘these aren’t the droids you’re looking for’ might be acceptable but not if it’s an autopass. Thus in practise those features are less powerful than they seem to be.
The DM shouldn't have to change what's possible, and "these aren't the droids you're looking for" is never possible. Because what's possible using Cha checks in social encounters is detailed in the DMG Chapter 8.

[KorvinStarmast]

The good guys return from a desperate fight against the enemy, only to learn that the whole town is against them.

No one cheers them, their patrons look for ways to back out of providing rewards. Most merchants won't do business with them, with the exception of a few looking to make gigantic markups.

And all because an Eloquence Bard was at work sullying their reputation.

SUCH a great plot hook! It's so good that it was used against Geralt in one of the Witcher stories. :smallwink: While it wasn't a bard who did the convincing (I get the idea that it was a certain sorcerer) the 'cha based character does this' fits well enough.

I played an AL module recently online, tier 3, and we had a bard who had an instrument of the bards and did very effective crowd control. This was a tough module - but the bard made it super easy. Disadvantage on H Pattern is devastating. It is that, but when you run into "immune to charm" enemies or those with advantage on saves against spells, it's not quite as awesome.
Eloquence features on top of a normal bard doing effective crowd control - yeah - it can be OP feeling in some encounters.

There are a good few options for insane persuasion rolls. Persuasion tends to have high DCs so it's pretty fair. It is not easy to convince people to do stuff for you. Persuasion checks are not magical spells, nor are they a guaranteed success.

The DM should have to change what's possible, and "these aren't the droids you're looking for" is never possible. Because what's possible using Cha checks in social encounters is detailed in the DMG Chapter 8. Yeah, I wish that particular info was more widley referred to.

(Of course, I kinda cheat as a DM: for initial reactions, I often use OD&D persuasion rolls based on 2d6 unless it's an opposed roll, d20 system style). And then I still have to think through "OK, how did this play out?"

[Willie the Duck]

I was in a one-shot over the weekend and pulled an old 5th level Lore Bard out of mothballs for the run. The DM allowed me to update the character using Tasha's and I switched to the College of Eloquence.

I'm not sure I've ever felt quite as overpowered at 5th level.

Minimum Persuasion/Deception roll of 20. Fast talking my way past the guards was barely an inconvenience.

Both times I used Unsettling Words, once for Dissonant Whispers and once for Suggestion, I rolled a 7 on my bardic inspiration, pushing my bard's effective DC from 15 to 22. Needless to say, the enemies didn't stand a chance.

Don't get me wrong, I love the theme and the flavor of the College of Eloquence and had a great time roleplaying the character, I just felt like I was bullying the NPC's and enemies at times.

While you are not wrong about the Eloquence Bard being very powerful, I think two other things are happening as well.
1) the DM did not have an adventure that was particularly limiting to you. Yes, in general, they also gave you lots of leeway with your Persuasion/Deception rolls and what they could do, but the adventure sounds like one where you could kinda walk all over it. If enemies failing against a Dissonant Whispers and a Suggestion was all it took for your spellcasting to dominate, well then a sorcerer with heightened spell could also have run roughshod over the thing. If, instead, the situation was that there were two people in place where the suggestion was cast, such that one would notice the other being super easily swayed and raised an alarm, would you still have won so easily?
2) You succeeded, easily, and then retroactively analyzed the archetype. You yourself said taht you rolled twice for Unsettling Words and came up with 7s both times. That's an outlier. What happens when you roll two 1s? What about when you roll any given number, but the opponent would have failed their save regardless (meaning that it wasn't being the Eloquence Bard that made the difference)? Will you factor those into your analysis?


Oh I agree, getting past mooks is not a big deal, but at level 5 with a D8 bardic inspiration, Unsettling Words, on average, is like having a +4 Rod of the Pact Keeper. Until the bard gets to the level where most bosses have legendary saves, very little is going to resist his spells. Toss an Instrument of the Bards into the equation and non-legendary creatures have a snowball's chance in hell of resisting things like Charm Person, Hypnotic Pattern or Dominate Person/Monster. That said, if I keep playing this bard with this DM, I'm sure more undead and constructs will begin showing up.
Up until level 6, this is a 3-5 times per long rest ability (that, it should also be noted, can also only be used when you have a bonus action free, and thus only one opponent per round). It is a far cry from a Rod of the Pact Keeper. Instrument of the Bards are indeed some of the most high powered magic items for their respective rarity levels.

[Tanarii]

(Of course, I kinda cheat as a DM: for initial reactions, I often use OD&D persuasion rolls based on 2d6 unless it's an opposed roll, d20 system style). And then I still have to think through "OK, how did this play out?"
You still need to determine initial attitude. 2d6 is as good as any method if you don't know.

[LudicSavant]

You shouldn't reduce the entire social pillar to "make a Persuasion check" in 5e.

Per the skill rules in the DMG (yes, there are in fact lots of rules that PCs should know in the DMG in this edition), you can't use Persuasion rolls on many creatures unless you do something to overcome their intransigence (such as learning and appealing to their Bond, Trait, or Flaw). The Persuasion check is just the "finishing move" after you have opened them up.

Additionally, you can up the ante for Persuasion checks without cheapening or reducing the player's abilities. One example of a way to do this is to have an epically charismatic or manipulative enemy leader (say, the greatest evil Bard who ever lived), and persuading people against them requires a contested check against their Persuasion or Intimidate or the like. Just as you fight more combat-capable foes as you advance in the combat pillar, so too should you face greater schemes in the social pillar.

[sophontteks]

Persuasion checks are not magical spells, nor are they a guaranteed success.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. I said nothing related to this response.

I said persuasion checks tend to have high DCs, because it's normally pretty difficult to convince people to do something, unless they were previously beholden to anyway. Hard and nearly impossible DCs are not uncommon when trying to convince a stranger to help you, or better yet trying to seduce them.

But hard and impossible rolls certainly do exist and the DCs can be made by a good variety of different character.

Persuasion is normally one roll in a series of events of much greater complexity.

[Tanarii]

I'm not sure what you are talking about. I said nothing related to this response.

I said persuasion checks tend to have high DCs, because it's normally pretty difficult to convince people to do something, unless they were previously beholden to anyway. Hard and nearly impossible DCs are not uncommon when trying to convince a stranger to help you, or better yet trying to seduce them.
DCs for persuasion only go up to Hard. A DM is either extrapolating from the table or ignoring the table if they go up above DC 20.

Which is, of course, their right if they so choose. That's why I'm not a huge fan of tables, but in this case it stops Persuasion from being used as magical spells. Someone hostile to you can't be convinced to do more than a minor favor at no risk to themselves, unless your DM extrapolates or ignores the table. If they do that, you might be able to persuade them to do a major favor at some risk to themself for DC 30.

[sophontteks]

DCs for persuasion only go up to Hard. A DM is either extrapolating from the table or ignoring the table if they go up above DC 20.

Which is, of course, their right if they so choose. That's why I'm not a huge fan of tables, but in this case it stops Persuasion from being used as magical spells. Someone hostile to you can't be convinced to do more than a minor favor at no risk to themselves, unless your DM extrapolates or ignores the table. If they do that, you might be able to persuade them to do a major favor at some risk to themself for DC 30.
Hmm, DCs go up to 30. If there is a table that only goes to 20 I don't think it'd be very useful. Anyone skilled can handle even nearly impossible tasks with a reasonable chance of success.

[Tanarii]

Hmm, DCs go up to 30. If there is a table that only goes to 20 I don't think it'd be very useful. Anyone skilled can handle even nearly impossible tasks with a reasonable chance of success.
You need to either be level 13 and ability 20, or level 17 and ability 18, or have expertise, to have any chance to succeeding in nearly impossible. That's a bit more than "anyone skilled".

However, I'd suspect then only have 0, 10, 20 because they're trying to show is what kind of things can be done in the normal range, where success is likely, as well as what should be automatic no check needed. Which they seem to feel is 10-20 for the normal range.

Extrapolating from the table up to 30 isn't totally unreasonable. I go back and forth on it myself, I can see advantages to the best you can do is the DC 20 line, but also to allowing truly exceptional characters to do amazing things at DC 30 is a core table/concept. And it's not like it's hard to do, you can just pull the DC 20 line from one attitude better, and make it DC 30.

[Hael]

The DM shouldn't have to change what's possible, and "these aren't the droids you're looking for" is never possible. Because what's possible using Cha checks in social encounters is detailed in the DMG Chapter 8.

Obviously it’s not that simple and not like a suggestion spell, but for all intents and purposes the end result isn’t that far removed. I can paraphrase the DMG as talk talk, blah blah blah, something like an insight check to figure out fatal flaw of the guard (gullible, greedy, stupid), blah blah blah, persuasion check to accept the hostile bribe or convince him tolook the other way where a table is used depending on initial condition.
Since the skill checks are auto passes, the outcome is all but assured provided the PCs don’t mangle the rp element too badly. Moreover, the guards that are placed there are often hooks to the story where some sort of action is clearly expected (like in various modules) so it’s often difficult to NOT go along with the obvious interaction and implied rolling opportunities.

And in the real world, the DM when put on the spot with something unexpected, they usually just roll to speed things up.

[Tanarii]

, persuasion check to accept the hostile bribe or convince him tolook the other way where a table is used depending on initial condition.
Which could be anywhere from DC Automatic to DC 0 to DC to 20 to DC Nope, depending on the particular guard's predilection to accept a bribe, likelihood of getting caught, and consequences for being caught.