Silver Tongue
I always thought Laurel had the best response to this one.
“I would like to start social combat,” says the silver-tongued diplomat.
“I respond by starting actual combat,” says the cynical assassin.
That’s because there is little defense against a talky character once they start talking. When you tilt your build (like most players) towards combat effectiveness, it can be distressing to discover that you have few resources left to devote to mental defenses. Anyone who has ever found themselves on the wrong end of a yet-another mind-whammy can attest to the sentiment.
This is the fundamental difficulty with persuasive PCs. They can be a great deal of fun until the GM gets fed up with your bullshit. It is always possible to shut that mess down once it gets out of hand. GMs may employ impervious enemies, even-better-than-you persuaders, and something as simple as the suddenly-strict application of rules (e.g. “Sorry! You aren’t allowed to make Diplomacy checks during combat.”). All all on the table.
Methinks Bard in today’s comic is getting close to that point. Push it too far with the outrageous requests and logic pushes back. “Yeah, no. It doesn’t matter what you say. Without magic, he’s not giving away his pants.”
In my experience, silver-tongued PCs are best advised not to push it too far. I suspect this will cause some controversy, but I think this is one of those soft skills that tests players rather than characters. Since it’s a GM’s job to describe how each NPC reacts to persuasive overtures, they have a great deal of non-mechanical leeway in social scenes. And because there’s a natural storytelling inclination to push back against “you get exactly what you want every time forever,” it’s on you as a talky PC manage your GM’s patience.
What does that look like in practice? Lean into verbal pratfalls. Allow yourself to look foolish on occasion or say that wrong thing. Choose not to apply every little situational bonus to a check. Because chances are that a social-shifted character is going to succeed against that vast majority of NPCs. Finding a way to apply the occasional unfavorable result to yourself is a way to keep the flow of narrative from doing it to you.
What do you say, Handbook-World? How do you like to handle wins-talking-every-time type PCs? Does the old self-nerf hold water, or is that just a patch on a mechanical problem? Sound off with your own silver-tongued solutions down in the comments!
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I remember when an NPC basically told my character to sit down and shut up while she talked to the other characters. Prestige class to Intimidate and the DM said it worked.
I was not the least bit sad when that NPC turned out to be a villain and we got to fight her.
I much preferred a different game, when I played as a bard and I used performances, card readings and diplomacy to befriend people and improve attitudes among the crew of a pirate ship. No mind-twisting, but genuine work to get along. It worked, too.
I’m glad your character at least got some revenge! It’s never fun to just be shut down by an NPC with no recourse.
Bard is going to get spanked the next time he picks up an AP from Questgiver’s place of business, isn’t he? … And he deserves it.
Bard: “But you are the bigger man, you wouldn’t take revenge, would you?”
Questgiver: “I… Dammit…”
Questgiver: “No, Bard. Not I.” *smiles knowingly* “Let me introduce you to your teammates, Fighters 534 through 538, and your adventure path: ‘the Road of Wedgies’. It’s perfectly balanced – just for you.”
This is the way.
Yep, ultra-persuasive describes my current bard, but I don’t believe in pushing it too far. I mean, yes, she _will_ make outrageous proposals and demands, because that’s very much in character — but I certainly don’t expect to even get a roll for them, much less expecting success. Not without using mind-altering magic, at least, and I generally shy away from that…
For example, I _will_ suggest that a dragon might like to surrender as a prelude to rolling initiative — but both in and out of character, that’s mostly just for amusement… at best, the dragon might find it funny enough to not kill us all immediately.
Oh, and this particular character does love being sociable in combat. I don’t expect it to accomplish anything actually persuasive, but it gives the GM a chance to let the villain to monologue at a receptive audience, or to otherwise make the fight more than just repetitive combat actions.
And of course, when you’re playing a relatively weak combatant, distracting the enemy with conversation is a fine way to use your action to give advantage to allies. Poking a dragon with a rapier isn’t going to accomplish anything useful, but taking its attention off the barbarian might.
I LOVE socializing in combat! Even if you’re doing nothing, taunting the enemy is always a good time.
Mechanically speaking, if talking is the thing of the scene, then it makes sense that the talky talker “wins” if they are built toward that effect.
However, it also makes sense that there are limits to a talkers ability to talk their way out of something.
If you are being arrested, the cop doesn’t ever care what you have to say, they are arresting you. And also “You have the right to remain silent… ”
If you are fighting someone and suddenly try to talk you way out of it or talk the foe into joining your side, why in the 9 hells would they ever feel compelled to listen? (Outside of literal magic of course, but Charm has both disadvantage if they’re hostile and it has its own limits as well).
I think you generally let the RP decide how effective the mechanics are in any given situation.
There is no “right” answer here (and no “wrong” one either). You just let the scene dictate how effective anything is in a given situation and if talking seems like it might work for some reason, then the talker probably has the advantage, but if not… silver tongues can get cut out of a mouth just as easily as lead tongues.
I’d say for both of your examples, there is the caveat that if what you are proposing is something that they consider more important or beneficial, there’s a good possibility that you might succeed.
For the cop, perhaps you are telling them about the plan to assassinate the mayor or your interest in donating large sums of money to the city’s fine civil servants. The former could backfire if the cop is in league, while the latter could backfire with an honest officer, but in general both of these could be valid ways to use talking to get out (temporarily at least) of the situation.
For the combat, that’s even easier. Combat is inherently dangerous – even if the foes are winning, there’s still a chance of serious injury or death. If the talker offers the enemies enough of what they would gain by finishing the combat, there’s a good chance (represented by skill rolls) that they would be willing to talk.
Of course, if all the talker is trying to do is “diplomatize” them without a net gain on their part, there’s definitely no chance of success.
I am the bard in our party. We use the Tome of Heroes rules on gaining status for favors, which my character mostly uses to find magic items we can buy, get letters of introduction, and occasionally borrow a ship for a week or four. It’s a nice mechanic for giving perks while also limiting too many shenanigans.
What Bard did here would result in infamy. On one hand, they are a local legend for talking Questgiver out of his robes. On the other hand, everyone knows the story and will avoid talking to Bard as much as possible. (There’s a reason my bard tends to have a couple of personas)
I do use the social rolls on possible combatants. We have a general policy of “you have one chance to see reason and this is it” before we throw down. Sometimes it works (“the dragon turtle really isn’t with the cultists but it can’t fit down the hallways to eliminate them”) and the rest of the time it means we aren’t bloodthirsty murder hobos. I mean, they resisted a Persuasion roll of 20-ish, they obviously were determined to be stupid.
I did also intimidate a demon, but I had Advantage from being back-lit by the holy auras from the paladin and sun priest. That helped us figure out where it’s boss went.
It is also the “wait,we’re heroes, not mass murderers.” when dealing with unfamiliar officials. A good social roll will raise enough hesitancy that I can present some of those letters of introduction.
I mean, as long as he has Glibness and a potent charm person spell, he CAN get away with nonsense like this.
Also, is this the first time we’re seeing Bard’s ‘player flaw’?
I think his flaw is in being a “one-trick pony” (https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/calling-the-audible), although he has also demonstrated a willingness to use the rules to achieve nonsensical results (both today’s comic and https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/overperforming).
Unless magic or some other form of literal mind control is involved, no skill is allowed to override or rewrite a character’s basic description. And that’s a hard and fast rule. Accordingly in a culture with a strong nudity taboo, no roll would allow Bard to convince someone to strip naked in public.
I think that a lot of games have sloppily-written rules for this sort of thing, and players often come away with the idea that the rule is: Roll for complete narrative control of this other character. (To be sure, the fact that many players may want it to work this way plays into this.) And some games realize this; this is why they specifically disallow use of these skills against other player characters.
But I think that GM thoughtlessness is also a factor. GMs should have an understanding of what an NPCs limits are, and not build scenarios in which those limits become hard counters to the flow of the game.
While in general I agree with your analysis, there are always situations where the “impossible” could happen. To use the nudity taboo example, there are numerous cases of people doing so as part of a dare. Similarly, someone could easily be threatened into doing the same. Heck, there’s also the folk story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Scammers have tricked victims out of far more prized items than clothes throughout history.
The D20 Modern Negotiator prestige class can actually use Diplomacy during combat to persuade NPCs to disengage from combat or even turn and attack their (former) allies with a successful roll. As long as *they* are not the one to initiate hostilities, if the foes make the mistake of letting them begin to speak before combat begins, the Negotiator gets a surprise round to attack before anyone rolls initiative, regardless of who attempted to attack first.
My son’s samurai still shudders at the memory of the charismatic fox demon that used the culture’s ingrained social niceties, rules of hospitality, and the spell Sanctuary to foil the swordsman’s first-strike ability and guarantee that the monster had ample opportunities to maliciously, mind-alteringly monologue prior to any successful melee.
…but you better believe that as soon as anyone made their Will save, that villain died WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.
I’ve got a chart that has modifiers to a characters chance to succeed in a persuasion situation. Goes from 100% down to a negative 100% and based on how the resulting action will affect the person they are trying to persuade. 100% for when it’s obvious the resulting action would be of great benefit to the person, all the way down to -100% where the resulting action would have obvious disastrous effects (such as death). They also get a modifier for their Charisma and there are DM modifiers that can apply that the players don’t get to see (such as them being way more scared of the big, bad than your character).
I remember that Glitter Hearts had a few moves related to social maneuvers, one of which was “Convince someone”. I think the most interesting thing was that there were rules for using this on OTHER PLAYERS: the other player had the option to agree or disagree, and there were bonuses for going along with it. So while if you really didn’t feel it, you could say no, if you hadn’t decided, there was a mechanical incentive to say yes.
Bluff and Diplomacy are not mind control, and I can and will make use of that circumstance modifier to the DC if I need to.
“Finding a way to apply the occasional unfavorable result to yourself is a way to keep the flow of narrative from doing it to you.”
I strongly disagree. If you’re into that, go ahead, I’m not poo-pooing someone else’s parade. But as both a Player and GM, I don’t hold to this. Firstly as a Player if my paper-person is a silver-tongues rizz machine, then they should stay silver-tongued until the dice gods taketh away. AS a GM, there are plenty of ways to say “Ah, that doesn’t seem to work as you expected”. Either by including NPCs who are “immune” to their silver-tongued charms, or as it works in GURPS, some NPCs simply cannot be persuaded in some ways.
In GURPS “social combat” system it’s flat out declared that the GM can decide some NPCs simply cannot be socialed into doing certain things, for whatever reasons. Further more, while it’s not RAW, the community has come up with a good way to handle social attacks against PCs, they take a penalty to do actions that are against the line of successful social attack. So if they’re Intimidated, they’d take penalties for any actions that do not include backing down or running away. This covers NPCs social fighting PC and social PvP.
And there is always ye olde “rolled up hardback GM’s guide smack to the head” to straighten out problematic Players taking social combat “too far”.
haha, last session basically.
NPCs: Though shall not pass!
PC: I try to intimidate them to be friendly to us for the next 10 minutes.
DM: That would take one minute to do. You had 6 seconds.
I granted hin the intimidation for the -2, but the hidden crossbow hit for a crit anyways.
Ah yes, the threat of diplomacy. I liked that in the Order of the Stick board game, the bard character’s main attack was diplomacy.
Obviously, there should be situations where there are bonuses or penalties to diplomacy checks based on how reasonable the request and/or situation is. Equally clearly, there should be times when a check is an automatic success or failure.
With that said, the automatic successes/failures are not always warranted depending on situational differences:
Auto-success: Offering a merchant the asking price for an item
Need a roll: After insulting the merchant, offering the asking price for an item
Auto-failure: Convincing quest-giver to give you all the clothes he is wearing
Need a roll: Convincing quest-giver to swap clothes with you so that the angry client-assassin comes after you instead.
I’ve been the persuasive PC before. I sort of liked it? Better than roleplaying a 7-cha lump. (The GM thought I was playing a lawful stick-in-the-mud until I pointed out the low Cha.) Anyway, being very persuasive… wasn’t as fun as the actual combat. Like, know Giant language for flavor and have Diplomacy trained… enemies are reasonable giants… I basically never got to do any real fighting that playtest session.
And I was meant to be playtesting the combat abilities. And I wanted to fight, but felt honor-bound to try and do things the Good way first.
For clarity, the 7-cha lump and the guy who knew Giant were separate events. I was comparing the two, especially to a third more balanced character I didn’t directly bring up.
Despite what memes have conditioned us to believe, the same rules apply to social skills as they do to other skills: You say what you’re trying to do, the DM decides if it’s realistically possible (If you should even bother rolling) and what the DC is based on what you’re attempting. How you do a thing (Moving the rock with appropriate tools, moving it by hand, moving it by looking at it funny) determines the DC, and it’s the same with social rolls: The DC is set by the argument you make, how well you present it, supporting evidence, the surrounding context, your relationship to the target, and any number of other facts.
Low DC: Persuade someone friendly to do something in their nature with a good argument presented well. Hop the narrowest part of the chasm.
High DC: Persuade someone ambivalent to take a big risk for you with a middling argument presented not so well. Backflip across the widest part of the chasm.
Impossible, so don’t even bother rolling: “Aw, c’mon, please?” Jump to the moon.
This is why we don’t need designated rules for social interactions; the rules for skills already covers that. What we need are better people at tables.
For the charismatic types, I think it’s good to remember that success doesn’t necessarily mean “unconditional acceptance of whatever you say”. You can get an NPC sympathetic to you and give sound reasoning for helping you, but they’re still going to weigh that against their own needs and desires. When my characters pull out the persuasive skills, I’m not expecting that the other party will just agree to something unreasonable, but that they’ll try to find a way to make it reasonable. They may offer toned-down alternatives (such as loaning you a useful item rather than giving it away entirely), ask for something in return, or just explain why they won’t go along with it and what (if anything) can be done about it.
While I like having the option to be able to talk down opponents and use charisma to manipulate NPCs, there needs to be a point where talking just isn’t gonna work.
I’ve got a real persuasive character in my current group I’m running, but the player is a long time GM and never pushes things too far. Her character is a barrister, and despite not being lawful, follows the local rules and laws to the letter when possible, (though isn’t above inflating the actual amount of jurisdiction they have in a given situation) and I haven’t had to reign in their powers of persuasion even once. No crazy attempts to swindle leaders out of their kingdoms, or enemies out of combat. In fact, their biggest persuasive win thus far was to get the backing of the leader they just helped out in claiming the enemy ship that was captured in battle as the party’s new airship. Since one of the rewards I had been planning was ‘the resources to build their own ship in some form’ it was a very easy pivot to make.
Though the one not-actually-that-problematic behaviour of the player and character is that they have ZERO CHILL when it comes to letting bad guys finish their speeches. It lead me to half-jokingly create this magic item, though I haven’t actually used it yet.
Ring of Let Me Finish (Alternatively, Ring of Monologues)
As long as you are giving an impassioned speech, this ring protects as if by the spell Sanctuary, requiring a DC 25 Wisdom save to bypass. The effect ends if you make an attack or cast a spell, or when you finish your speech, and recharges on a Short Rest
I had a DM who could not seem to get it through his head that if I persuaded the Merchant to give me a discount, then the merchant shouldn’t be upset about it afterwards.
“But you’re destroying his business!”
Then either he should be blaming himself for that and assume he’ll offset the loss from other customers, or he should be only offering me a level of discount that he can afford to take the hit. I’m not shaking him down or hypnotizing him with magic, I’m asking for a fair deal and convincing(not tricking) him it’s worthwhile to give it.
I remeber i had to snap at my DM (which im not proud of) to “let our rogue make a persuasion check for god’s sake!” When she was making what we all (the DM included) tought were really solid arguments and getting nowhere. The “obstinant cranky NPC” shtick was getting really old really fast and the check really did help things move along.
Sometimes it is necessary.