Charisma characters are the bane of a thought out narrative

I have this one fucking player who has turned two encounters and a whole dungeon from dnd to tabletop talking. He rolls his bullshit +10 or so to persuasion out of every situation. I've called him out on his bullshit, but I don't think it will stop. Anyone else have to deal with this?
>Pic unrelated; someone's artificer I drew

Let him try to persuade a golem.

...Actually read the rules and stop being a spineless twit?

Throw in the odd ooze or horde of mindless shambling undead if you feel like you aren't getting any combat in. Don't completely neuter his diplomacy character as if that's what he wants to be that's what he wants to be, but it's absolutely reasonable for there to be some encounters you can't talk your way out of.

The difficulty of persuasion is 100% up to you, nigga. Make it so you need an 18 to succeed in any situation that isn't straightforward and plausible.

1 Necromancer extremist.

Boom, you have whole campaigns of mindless undead who can't be convinced to do anything.

If no characters in your setting have enough motivation or conviction to not be swayed by a wondering weirdo with a silver tongue then maybe you should stop designing npcs after yourself.

Not OP, but I've run into players who kick up a fuss about "muh standard DCs" the same way they do about "muh CR appropriate" and "muh wealth by level".

Just because someone rolls high doesn't mean they succeed. Persuasion is not a non-magical means of mind control.

>Charisma characters are the bane of a thought out narrative
translation: the players did something unexpected and my railroad is ruined

The problem comes from the way that the tabletop roleplaying community has abandoned roleplaying.

There used to be no such thing as a persuasion check, or a diplomacy check, or a bluff check, or an intimidate check.There was no "oh I'll just roll a check to see if I can convince the king to do what I want" then roll the die and gets a 20 and just gesture to it as if nothing more needs to be said. Skill checks are absolute idiocy, trying to make the complex simple. What the hell is this shit, anyway? In 3.5 a character fighters a lot of goblins then gets better at convincing people? The margin between a 1st level and 20th level bard is ridiculous; he can literally talk random commoners into suicide with a fucking 100% success rate. Absolute stupidity. It's the same in D&D. Some people are skilled at persuasion, that is true. Or naturally talented. You know what is representing this? Charisma. You think Strength is entirely a talent thing? No, you can increase it by working out and not eating soyboy food. Listen up: skill checks are a mistake. They are meant to counteract shit DMs who can't play the goddamn game correctly. Let the player talk out his shit, and if he has a high charisma, be more lenient toward him, and if he doesn't, be less lenient. Actually ROLEPLAY the fucking NPC, think in his head, am I going to agree with this fuck? Having a "thought-out narrative" is shit anyway, but so is letting one player make the game setting into a joke by convincing the entire city guard to suck his cock with a 35 Diplomacy check.

And no, you are not being oppressed or treated unfairly just because you can't play a party "face" when you suck at roleplaying. That's like claiming anyone should be allowed to play the fighter even if they make bad tactical decisions, and that a DM who doesn't fudge numbers to keep a retarded fighter alive, is "oppressing" him as well.

stop being a cuck and using persuasion in place of roleplay

how i handle is with a 'disposition system'
where the higher their persuasion and other speaking skills are the more likely the character is willing to listen to bullshit, whereas if their charisma and such is lower they are less willing to listen

but i still make them roleplay it out with whoever they are talking to, and if they fuck up i roleplay the enemies or antagonists just dont give a fuck and fuck the party up anyways

If that's who the PC wants to play I suggest switching to a system that more robustly handles social encounters

>but i still make them roleplay it out with whoever they are talking to, and if they fuck up i roleplay the enemies or antagonists just dont give a fuck and fuck the party up anyways
This is the correct way to GM.

>implying "social combat" systems in RPGs are anything but complete shit.

>He rolls his bullshit +10 or so to persuasion out of every situation. I've called him out on his bullshit, but I don't think it will stop. Anyone else have to deal with this?

Hypnosis is an incredibly interesting phenomena; I'm not a smart man, I don't know how it entirely functions or what's at play here, but I do understand three things: it operates on the power of suggestion, it was illegal in many countries because it was considered witch craft, and it can't force someone to do something they truly don't want to do.

Charisma isn't mind control, stop treating it like it is.

Stop using intelligent encounters and/or throw encounters that have an actual reason to want the party dead. This isn't rocket science.

>character talks his way through an encounter
Being able to do this has been an intended part of the game since OD&D.

System? In 3.PF you have - 20 to diplomacy if you do it in less than one minute

The problem is the player, not the character.
I also happen to play a char based character who is also focused around persuasion and making friends, he is even a pacifist. But unlike the player you are talking about, I never fuck around with the story important characters without asking the DM about it prior to the session.

>oh no
>roleplaying
>in a roleplaying game!

If you're the DM, then it's entirely your own fault. You're the one who sets up encounters and the one who calls for rolls. If you set up an encounter that can be resolved with diplomacy, then why are you surprised when someone uses diplomacy to resolve it? If you set up an encounter that can't get resolved with diplomacy, then why would you let someone resolve it with diplomacy?

Also can you really call it "a thought out narrative" if it can't stand up to the PCs actions? Sounds to me like you didn't put in enough thought about how the PCs would actually fit into it.

ITT: people who show signs of D&D brain damage.

Fiction First, nigga. before rolling, you have to be justified in the fiction (please note that this doesn't mean you have to be a smooth talker IRL, just that you have to build an interesting narrative). Fiction should inform you about if and how the roll is to be made.
Also, not playing D&D usually helps.

I think it's legit to let people make a social roll and then RP the result. I don't do it that way as a player but if I was GMing I'd be fine with it.

Atleast he didn't take the feat that turns the campaign into yugioh

What are the situations he is getting out of? For instance allowing the player to talk his way out of a mugging by an opportunistic group of bandits makes sense or out of an arrest by an underpaid town guard but if the person has some intense motivation working against the roll you shouldn't have to let him do that. Don't be totally railroady and do make concessions where it makes sense but there is no reason to let him away with it all the time

Fortune in the middle. Fiction goes before and after the roll. But the roll needs to be there too.

Context first, then ask for a roll if you think it's actually plausible in the first place, apply disadvantage to batshit stupid plans only if you think they have a chance to work.

If the player fails the DC, then something interesting should happen.

I hate that "Sir Bearington" shit I see all the time.

>Not OP, but I've run into players who kick up a fuss about "muh standard DCs" the same way they do about "muh CR appropriate" and "muh wealth by level".
Tell them those are guidelines and not rules.

>Not OP, but I've run into players who kick up a fuss about "muh standard DCs" the same way they do about "muh CR appropriate" and "muh wealth by level".

This is the world 3,x left us.

Had a player attempt to argue with me in game about how a Vrock wasn't a CR appropriate encounter for the party while they were exploring a section of underdark.

>"I wanna be a Bard! I wanna be a Diplomat!"

No.

"Charisma" is one of the worst blights inflicted on roleplaying in the modern era, right next to intelligence and wisdom. It's a series of codified "fuck yous" to the DMs and authorial intent alike. Any stupid shit your player wants to do they justify with "Charisma." Any unrealistic character shit or stupid skills (fucking sense motive) has them whining for charisma. They beg for diplomacy, bluffing, and intimidation on the pretence of "charisma." And on the flipside, games with actual artistry and historical research put in has them gets shit on as "boring."

I am sick and tired of coddled Millennials expecting that their actions should have no consequences and that they should have a charismatic fucker there to haggle with merchants and make allies, and being convinced that if they DIE and LOSE THE GAME that they don't have to really really lose because ~diplomacy~!

I tried introducing my players to this cool military campaign I wanted to run last weekend so they could bring their characters this weekend, and they immediately started the usual shit.

>"I want my character to be an ambassador!"
There are no ambassadors. There are only generals.
>"I want to be a diplomat!"
There are no diplomats in this setting.
>"Yeah but there might be!"

It never fucking stops. Now I have to find a whole new group because every shitty ass player nowadays is brainwashed into thinking everything should be like Game of Thrones. Nobody expected to read about a wimp solving their problems without violence in the old days. It should not be acceptable today either.

There is a MASSIVE gulf nowadays between real roleplay games and the unrealistic tripe being thrown around, and it's getting harder and harder to find people who aren't blinded by the sparkleys and are receptive to intelligently planned and researched settings/plots. They think they're entitled to be superheroes instead of part of something bigger.

>"Make it harder because you don't like it" as a legit suggestion
You know this is That GM territory, right?

PCs trying to plug their numbers into a scenario without meaningfully engaging with it are a blight on the hobby bro.

The OP described it as "the player turning DnD into 'tabletop talking'" which I take to mean the player is meaningfully engaging but in a way the OP doesn't like.

Where did he say the player was just plugging numbers? He's complaining about diplomacy being used at all.

This is really the problem of roleplaying games. It's why players don't act with agency anymore, why roleplaying feels isolated & arbitrary from the rest of the game.

Skill checks (which are useful tools when abstractions arise from the narrative), in their attempt to slay the beast of GM favoritism & bias (which can be a problem) has created an even bigger monster.

No, the OP is complaining about plugging in his +10 persuasion to every situation.

He's complaining about both things. I think in this case the player is both engaging in a way the GM doesn't like and has enough of a grasp on the system that he's doing it with numbers that put him above the norm.

But if the GM doesn't want diplomacy in his game, he should just say that, not focus on the numerical advantage. Tell the player you'd prefer if the campaign was more combat-oriented because that's what you're in the mood for and ask the player to reroll something more suited towards that. Negotiation isn't a bad thing.

>He's complaining about both things

The OP is a little vague about what he means by "tabletop talking", but he is very specific when he's telling us what the player is actually doing, which is "He rolls his bullshit +10 or so to persuasion out of *every* situation"

>But if the GM doesn't want diplomacy in his game

I don't think the GM has even said anything about not wanting diplomacy in his game, but both the GM and the player are operating under the false assumption that every skill is usable in any situation and you don't even need to justify how/why you're using that skill.

I disagree, I think you're getting a good clue of what situation the player is using the skill in from the way the OP describes it as "tabletop talking". Don't go into minutia then ignore that entire sentence.

I think the OP is frustrated precisely because the player is using his skill in an appropriate situation, and so he can't really do anything about it without coming off as being wrong.

The real problem with OP's post is his belief that a narrative can be "thought out" if it won't survive contact with diplomacy, of all things. Advice should focus on telling him to create narratives where the player can't just solve the problem by talking that can still be made interesting for the charisma PC, not on taking revenge on the player for "winning too much".

Well, the player has managed to turn "two encounters and an entire dungeon" into "tabletop talking" which if done cleverly, kudos to the player, but we should probably ask OP to expand on what he exactly means by "tabletop talking" before we form an opinion on a "good clue" rather than on the part of the sentence that is far more concrete.

To be fair, we're both trying to approach this problem with inferences and an incomplete picture of what's actually happening.

Persuasion is not mind-control. Problem solved. No matter how high you roll, you can't convince people to do things that are completely against their nature. I suppose you could threaten them, but if it's, say, a guard for a tyrant king, their fear of their boss will outweigh their fear of you.

What?

My GM let me get away with persuading a golem, although it was only because I tried it in a similar vein to the guy out of making money.

user, it's okay. They have whole charities for people like you.

>.There was no "oh I'll just roll a check to see if I can convince the king to do what I want" then roll the die and gets a 20 and just gesture to it as if nothing more needs to be said.
The proper way to do this is have the players role play the conversation. Then judging based on the intent ( not what the actual players says, so players who aren't good speakers aren't penalized ) adjust the difficulty.
Player wants to convince the king to abdicate his throne for no reason? DC 30 or autofail if you want to be mean.
Player convinces that same king to abdicate his throne because the true heir has been found and everyone else knows it and he either gets off the throne or tries to stay and sparks a civil war with little popular support? Depending on the kings personality, DC 20 if he's likes the power it gives and DC 15 if he didn't really want to rule anyways and DC 10 if he didn't want to rule and the true king would be a better ruler anyways.

Tell me about it. Persuasion is broken as fuck.

>be a new DM
>playing 5E because it's meant to be 'balanced'
>Set up standard quest ogre terrorising town.
>Local feudal lord asks party to kill ogre for 100 gold
>Level 1
>"Actually sir you'll find I'm the lord of this keep and you're an imposter
>Ok ...
>He rolls a NAT 20 obviously
>Guards seize and imprison him and swear allegiance to the bard
>Bard is now Lord of a keep with the party as his various advisors.

Totally derailed my game but I have too abide by it because of the rules. Hopefully WOTC FAQ it or fix It in 6E.

That's not the rules, troll. Skill checks cannot critically succeed. Here's your pointless (you).

>Player wants to convince the king to abdicate his throne for no reason? DC 30 or autofail if you want to be mean.


This is always a fucking autofail. Name me one instance ever in history where a king has been forced to abdicate his throne because of one conversation and literally no reason what so ever.

Part of the problem is the virulent DMs must always say Yes or they're literally that guy meme. It's bollocks. It's okay to say no. It's literally your job to say no when appropriate.

>ten thousand year old superintelligent magical murder-lizard
>has an army of thralls bred specifically to serve it
>cares more for the sanctity of a single copper coin in its horde than the lives of a thousand humans
>but for some reason any random faggot has a 5% chance of convincing it to kill itself because MUH NAT TWENNY

Take this reply OP and spend it thriftily, for you shall get none other from me this day.

It's a fantasy game so you should allow for the fantastical "barbarian scared the king into fleeing his throne" kind of things that makes fantasy fun.

No it shits up the game for the DM and every other player involved because then that one player has a license to literally circumvent every single challenge in the game no matter how absurd or far fetched via no thought, no skill, just one lone dice roll.

It's nonsense and not how the game is meant to be played in the slightest.

Oh and also just because you made the king leave doesn't mean you convinced everyone else too.
Now you have some juicy "loyal knight becomes massively disappointed in his lord but his oaths bind him" and "evil noble sees this as an opportunity to gain rulership" side stories.
>No it shits up the game for the DM
If you want to write a novel write a fucking novel.
>that one player has a license to literally circumvent every single challenge in the game no matter how absurd or far fetched via no thought
I'm talking about 5e, not bullshit editions where DC is meaningless because players stack bonuses into the stratosphere.
In 5e a 30 DC means it's impossible even for a persuasive player early game and even if you specialize in it ( rogue expertise and +5 charisma ) you would still need a 13 or higher to succeed. And if you used buffs beyond that it means you probably have supernatural support anyways so there is no problem with a practically guaranteed success rate then because it's fucking magical influence.

Oh and I forgot to mention that is assuming a 19th level rogue ( a 20th level rogue would autosucceed a DC 30 ) at which point the party could conquer the country by force and he's just expediting the process.
So yeah it's actually pretty fair but you're That DM afraid of players interrupting your railroad so you ban options without even checking out the math.

You're retarded.

You're missing my point.

It's not that I think the player shouldn't be allowed to try to convince the king to abdicate.

It's that I think if the player wanted to do that they would have to put effort into setting up a scenario where they could conceivably ask the king to abdicate - then set up the roll.

Not just walking into the throne room and throwing a dice at I as that makes for an incredible dull and absurd narrative situation. And is the equivalent of a fighter being able to pick up and throw a mountain the size of everest at an enemy because 'its fun lol'.

Who needs your swords and spells when you can just roll a NAT 20 diplomacy and convince all your enemies to kill themselves =)

Yes I am implying that, most from firsthand experience

...

you guys realise it's copypasta right?

What's wonderful about this line of reasoning is that it immediately identifies trolls and bullshitters.