Just a vibe check of the Lemmy community with a deliberately exaggerated meme.
A reddit post would get flooded with argumentative mini-essays from folks who can’t string together 5 words in-character.
A character performing a persuasion check should attempt to describe and act out their persuasion.
Once complete, the GM should evaluate the description, and use that as a modifier to the persuasion roll.
A character that says “ummm, IDK, I guess I just try to influence them using my high charisma” should get no modifiers to the roll. A character who tries but entirely flubs the conversation should get a -1 (when appropriate), a great performance with an entertaining flourish to the description should get at least a couple ++ to the roll.
Someone after my own heart. Say what you’re going to say and I’ll decide the DC. Just say “please” and probably get a straight check DC 12-14. Insult the guard’s mother and children will likely get a DC of at least 15 and maybe disadvantage. Going above and beyond probably doesn’t require a roll and nets you inspiration.
Do the same thing with combat. A barbarian that says “hit with axe” every round just gets a regular chance to hit. A barbarian that says “I charge in yelling my battle cry swinging my great axe while kicking over the chair between us as I advance” might get a +2 to attack that round (as long as they don’t use the same thing every time.)
Dungeons: The Dragoning 40,000 is a d10 dice pool game with “stunt dice”
If you make any attempt at all to describe your action in-character (such as your example), you got +1 die
If your description was especially cool, or interacted with the environment in some way, you get +2 dice instead (I guess technically your example would likely be here, because a chair is part of the environment, probably)
And “crowning moments”, the kind of really hype action that gets the whole table invested, the sort of thing that happens once or twice a session at most, earn +3 dice
It really helps keep people invested in the role play
Yes, but if you don’t offer the same accommodations for the person who goes into excruciating detail about how they lift up an iron grate, there’s a bit of an unfair imbalance there. Same goes for someone who can’t necessarily verbalize an entire conversation on the subject, but can say, “I’d like to try and persuade the Governor that we’re perfectly capable individuals, and specifically bring up how we took care of the rats in the tavern cellar, as well as how we turned away the bandits attempting to burgle Mrs. Henderson’s store.”
If you don’t allow for either of those types of situations, you’re just promoting people who have a real-life charisma over those that don’t.
But you would do that. Someone that just says “I force the iron gate open with strength” gets no bonus, just a straight roll. Someone that says “I look for a weak spot in the gate and use a pry bar that I found earlier to force that spot open” maybe gets a +2 to their roll for extra thinking.
Also, it depends on the group, you don’t need a one size fits all for this. If you have one or two people who are uncomfortable with going into detail, then you have to adjust your GMing to match the situation. But if there’s just someone who needs a little encouragement, then you start throwing bonuses for extra roleplaying left and right.
The whole point is to make it fun for everyone (including the GM) so you’re going to give bennies for out of the box thinking and extra effort, appropriately scaled to the group you are in.
Now I want to play a one shot of extreme DND where every skill check has a real life equivalent. Making a DC 25 knowledge check? The answer is in one of these books, you have 15 seconds to look through them.
Sentences like “Can I roll for persuasion?” or worse “I perception the room” are one of my biggest pet peeves coming from players. Tell me what you want to accomplish, I will tell you whether and what you need to roll. I’ve mostly managed to train that behavior out of my players, thankfully. As a newbie DM I used to use die rolls as a crutch – “this is a dice rolling game, so the more dice we roll the more fun we’re having, right?” I thought. I also hated saying no to my players, so stupidly high DCs were a way to shift the blame onto the dice for my players’ failures. As I’ve gained experience, I run a much less dice-heavy game. I very often just let my PCs succeed with no roll required.
The one case where I don’t mind the players asking to roll is when they ask to “INSIGHT CHECK” à la critical role; it’s always fun to see the players so passionately engaging with NPCs.
My complaint is when I have a PC with an insane charisma score and the DM wants me act out the conversation, then I fail in my persuasion without rolling. “The NPC would not be convinced by that”
Maybe I am not being very charismatic, but my PC is! Let me roll for it! You don’t make a mage fail in their spells because they can’t do magic in real life, do you?
The way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with voicing your opinion, especially between games. Saying “hey, I feel like the fantasy of my character isn’t coming to life, is there any way I could get you to take the Charisma score of my character in greater consideration during social interactions going forward?” after a game is a great way to deal with that. That said, there’s only so much that Charisma can account for. No matter how charismatic you are, you won’t persuade a king to give up his kingdom. Your DM likely thinks your arguments are just too weak for you to persuade someone, regardless of your Charisma. Maybe their expectations regarding your wit and roleplay are too high, or maybe you need to re-evaluate your expectations of what is possible in your game.
Yes of course there are limits in the same way that no character can lift a mountain regardless of their strength score.
However, I don’t think it’s appropriate to base the success of my persuasion on my real-life ability to come up with a convincing argument. That’s the whole point of DND, characters can do things that people IRL could never accomplish. If my character is remarkably persuasive, they could come up with arguments more persuasive than my own.
As seen in OPs meme, you don’t base the success of a strength check on the real life player’s ability to lift a big rock or whatever. It’s unreasonable to treat charisma any differently. Personally, I just stopped trying to act out scenarios and saying, “I want to persuade them of this let me roll for it”, because the success rate was much higher.
IMO, if you want players to act out the scenario you need to give a very large fudge factor to the success of arguments based on a charisma roll.
In my games the DM calls for a check. The player describes their intentions and then the DM calls for a check when appropriate. So if someone gives really good reasoning for an NPC to act a certain way, there might not be a persuasion roll, if the character says something dumb then the roll DC might increase. The point is, no one is allowed to say “i roll persuasion to get them to do X”
Mhm. You don’t have to be particularly eloquent for it, but a basic description of what your character is trying to say goes a long way. “I persuade the guard to let us past” won’t get you much, but “I appeal to the guards better nature, and use our shared occupation/love of X/ my most attractive smolder to ask the guard to let us past” will do great things in either the DC or getting advantage.
Players Decide, PCs act.
You tell me what your PC wants to achieve and how. I set the DC to check how well they perform at that attempt (or declare “no roll needed”, because it’s trivial / impossible).
You want to persuade an NPC? Tell me the gist of your argument and I’ll consider how receptive your target is and set a DC for checking how well your PC can present said argument.
(In some cases like “I want to hit them real good with my sword” or “I want to climb up that wall”, no detailed description is necessary, we both know what you mean.)
