Our bard makes consistently high persuasion rolls and reasonable requests such as lowering prices or allowing us to...

>our bard makes consistently high persuasion rolls and reasonable requests such as lowering prices or allowing us to take shelter for the night
>constantly fails because he’s a social autist who doesn’t know how to talk to people when he’s put on the spot
Why would a DM do this shit?
It’s autistic to force the party face to “act it out” while not expecting the same thing from th rogue or fighter.

take them aside and have this conversation. If you don’t like how they respond ask how the other players feel. You may need a new DM, new players or both. Alternatively, this may resolve peacefully. The only path to moving this forward is to talk to them.

Both the player and dm are both a fault here dude.

>I roll to attack the orc with my longsword.
>Success!
>GM doesn’t find my description of the attack exciting or realistic enough.
>Mime it out sloppily.
>Miss anyway.

>I roll to stab the orc with my spear.
>GM asks me to describe how.
>My description is so vivid that I succeed without having to roll.

>I poke him with the pointy end and his guts spill out

This is the fault of a bad player.

This isn't a video game, you don't just make dice rolls. You perform actions that trigger dice roles.

DM has to coax it out of the player in a better way then you fail bc you didn't impress me.

1) you need to performed something to get a roll, you don't just announce a roll, the DM decides when a roll is needed.

2) if the action is really sloppy you can raise the check, apply a modifier, add a setback whatever the system

Or

3) if the player is just getting used to it, make it clear it's a shock that succeeded. Wow they took pity on you, or that inn keep must be pretty simple.

4) when they do finally give a sensible action, give them a boost to reinforce it.

Even in video games, player skill matters. It's fine to expect players to grow with their meta-experi nice.

So do you actually bring a sword and show how you swing it before you can roll a die on attack otherwise suffer a negative modifiers?

The DM is being a cunt, tell him to stop. Some players are a bit more awkward and especially people in this hobby should understand that. The fact that he wants to play a high charisma character suggests this is something he wants to fix, he wants to be a more charismatic person. So why demean him instead of supporting him? The DM should let him roll when he's being awkward because his character wouldn't be, also you should let him roll if he just describes what he tries to convince the npc of (just like in combat, you wouldn't have someone actually perform an attack). The die decides how succesful his character is.

You should however reward attempts at roleplay by either giving him advantage on rolls (or whatever kind of bonus your system allows), or if he manages to do an especially good performance compared to HIS regular performance (big emphasis on "his", don't compare him to some made up ideal player, compare it only to his average performance), let him win without a roll. This will encourage him to actually try and become less awkward and a better player which helps both your group and him as a person. If you punish and shame him for even trying to roleplay then he will just refuse to do it.

>So do you actually bring a sword and show how you swing it before you can roll a die on attack otherwise suffer a negative modifiers?
No, but if you don't specify who you are attacking and don't specify what you are attacking with before you roll, I'm going to say your natural 20 means jack shit and you'll need to tell me all that stuff before you reroll your attack.

>No, but if you don't specify who you are attacking and don't specify what you are attacking with before you roll
Not the same thing, retard.

>oh no! i have to learn actual IRL social skills and actually roleplay my character and can't just be a quiet autist who mumbles "i roll to persuade" and expect to succeed

Maybe stick to videogames where you get dialogue options and you won't have to awkwardly stutter through every social encounter and embarrassing your fellow players.

I feel like it's more the effort that matters. If the kid tries and the mechanics are good then why fail the dude.

This is exactly why you don't play social characters in games where social interaction doesn't have objective mechanics. In D&D, skills are worthless, save for a few specific uses deliberately outlined in the rules. You use Charisma for Charisma based spellcasting and saves in case of 5e, anything else is the equivalent of a homebrewed bonus that you shouldn't presume exists without the GM telling you about it beforehand.

My GM would count the time I took to think of a response as in character

How hard can it even be to make chit-chat for a few seconds? Post stories of bad fuck ups pls

It's exactly the same thing. I need to know what you are doing to persuade the other person, and what you are going to do it with. You can't just say "I persuade the guard to let us in", you need to say what you are persuading him with. Bribing him? Telling him you are a friend of the boss? Pretend that your head is on fire and you need to go inside to put it out?

If you don't tell me how you plan on doing something, it doesn't fly. Simple as that.

>It's exactly the same thing.
The social equivalent of "I attack him with my sword" would be "I talk to him in common" you stupid fuck.

I wonder ]}who{[ might be behind threads like these. Endless skub must flow.

You can't just say "I stab the orc", you need to say how exactly you're stabbing him. Are you piercing his armor with brute force? Are you making a feint? Are you creating an opening by throwing pocket sand in his face?

If your swordplay doesn't sound realistic or plausible enough I'm not going to let you succeed on the attack roll.

Wait no, that's retarded.

Do you even know what you're arguing? Because the original problem was that the DM forced the guy to PERFORM his attempts at persuasion and judged him on those instead of the rolls. Not just describe them, PERFORM them. And you used the word PERFORM in your first post.

>1) you need to performed something to get a roll, you don't just announce a roll, the DM decides when a roll is needed.

Also
>I attack the goblin with my sword
is equivalent to
>I persuade the guard to let us in

>what is edge alignment

>The social equivalent of "I attack him with my sword" would be "I talk to him in common" you stupid fuck.
Yeah, you're 20 feet away from the guy and there's another guy in the way. Are you going to charge through and eat an AoO? Are you going to move round? Planning on throwing your sword for some reason? These are all options on the table, but unless you do something like move your character or say what you're doing, simply saying "I attack him with my sword" is going to need clarification.

Similarly, you might go speak to someone in common but you still need to explain how you plan on persuading him. There's literally bonuses and penalties if you decide to bribe a corrupt guard or threaten him with legal action, and I can't apply them if you don't tell me how you're doing it. If you don't give a method I'm going to assume you're just asking for the guy to do something out of the kindness of his heart, and that WILL take a big penalty. Just as charging in directly without maneuvering round the other guy is going to eat an Attack of Opportunity.

>You can't just say "I stab the orc", you need to say how exactly you're stabbing him. Are you piercing his armor with brute force? Are you making a feint? Are you creating an opening by throwing pocket sand in his face?

Feinting takes a move option and reduces his AC so you can hit him easier. Throwing pocket sand is a dirty trick that takes a standard action that means you can't stab him at the same time. If you're stabbing him you're going to get less damage done because of his damage reduction (overcome by bludgeoning) that you need a club to get past.

Your terminology's wrong, but it actually is important to know exactly what the player is trying to do. He literally has all the options in the world that can benefit greatly his attacks or make him practically useless, and I need to know if he's doing any of that, or if he's just moving up to the guy and doing one basic attack.

>the original problem was that the DM forced the guy to PERFORM his attempts at persuasion and judged him on those instead of the rolls. Not just describe them, PERFORM them. And you used the word PERFORM in your first post.


I'm not the OP and my first post wasFrankly, though, OP sounds like a buttblasted player who didn't succeed by throwing a dice, getting a 20 then saying "I persuade the merchant to give me 50% off my purchases" then getting butt-blasted that the GM asks a reason why the merchant would do that.

What IS edge alignment?

Nobody is talking about this overly specific situation that you're making up as you go along, you crazy autist. That isn't an argument.

>plays an rpg
>can't rp

>Throwing pocket sand is a dirty trick...He literally has all the options in the world that can benefit greatly his attacks or make him practically useless, and I need to know if he's doing any of that, or if he's just moving up to the guy and doing one basic attack.

Yeah, and those are additional options prescribed by game mechanics. None of it prevents his basic attack from working if he chooses not to employ any of these options.

In the same vein, describing how you're persuading people can give bonuses / penalties depending on the method chosen, but doing it without a description should work perfectly fine.

My character knows more about swinging a sword than I do, therefore it makes perfect sense for me not to have to describe the blow by blow in detail (unless I want to for dramatic effect). I won't know shit about proper edge alignment to maximize the power of the blow to cut through armor and whatnot, but my character does.

The same thing applies when casting a spell, when researching magic, and whatnot. The whole point is that the character is better than me and has access to knowledge I don't have, so we abstract it away with game mechanics.

Similarly, my character knows more about persuasion than I do, and he'll know what sort of persuasion is most effective in-universe given the social context, the relative social positions of a guard and an adventurer, and what is a plausible in-universe explanation to persuade the guard to let him pass. Unless the game had been focused on social minutia, I won't. Though if I want to act it out it for role-play purposes, or I had actual in-universe information that can be used in the persuasion attempt, I can choose to do so to gain a bonus or whatever.

Don't bother arguing. This same guy comes into every thread like this and makes the exact same posts.

Tell that faggot you didn't sign up for LARP. Dice are god.

because some DMs are looking for any reason at all to say "actually you fail, now get back on the rails and let me jackoff to my NPCs some more."

You don't bust out the archery set to see how well your ranger shoots their bow, so why would you expect your player to be as eloquent as a magically enhanced professional speaker?

Almost as if this hobby attracts people with social issues

>Yeah, and those are additional options prescribed by game mechanics. None of it prevents his basic attack from working if he chooses not to employ any of these options.
So if you choose to use a basic fucking attack, you can just say that you make a basic attack, but you still need to move up to the enemy and say who you're hitting. That's still the basics of what you're doing.

If you're using magic, you can't just say "I do a magic at the guy" and expect me to understand what you're trying to do.

Meanwhile, there's no such a thing as a basic persuasion, so you still need to give me more details than "I roll to persuade". With what? What are you persuading with? What exactly do you want from the person?

Sure, your character knows how to use various persuasion techniques but you still need to make the choice as the player WHICH technique you're using. Unless you want to make a sense motive roll to work out what sort of thing which would give you some hints, but even after that you still need to tell me something!

Because no-one gives a particularly good answer to "why can't you tell me the basics of what you are doing to persuade?"

Eh I can see why to a certain extent. I had a player with absurdly high bluff but he came up with really stupid lies.

He convinced the guards he was innocent of a crime by confessing to committing a worse crime. I don't see why the guards should have let him go just because he had a really high roll, when he used that roll to convince them he was a worse criminal.

>you still need to move up to the enemy and say who you're hitting
The social equivalent to this is "I move up to the guy and talk to him."

Yeah, I see what you mean now. I mean nobody can be this retarded, he's got to be trolling.

At the most charitable, he made a very good case against a strawman — that you can't simply walk up to someone and declare "I persuade him". That's fucking obvious, and nobody disputed that.

>Why would a DM do this shit?
Because it encourages immersive roleplaying.
>It’s autistic to force the party face to “act it out” while not expecting the same thing from th rogue or fighter.
No it's not.

It's a ROLEPLAYING game. If you can't handle ROLEPLAYING, maybe you should git gud.

>not having the rogue or fighter "act it out"

Yeah, I think there's a middle ground to be drawn here. The player should be able to state an argument that has some semblance of plausibility, and he should make an honest effort to roleplay it, but he shouldn't be penalized for botching it.
I imagine OP's DM just watched too much Adventure Zone/Critical Role and are holding his/her players up to an unrealistically high standard.

Why the double standard with persuasion skills compared to any other type of skill?

No, you need to say how you persuade the person. That's the basics of persuading someone. If someone doesn't want to do something you have to actually persuade them to do it.

You can't hit someone with a sword if you're not next to them.
You can't persuade someone to do something if you don't have a reason for them to do what you want.

Those aren't even remotely similar concepts.

Your DM is just trying to make the game more interesting than "Okay I roll to haggle" *rolls* "Okay you pass prices are lower" ad infinitum with every skill check.

That being said if he's still making the player fail despite rolling well you should bring it up that it's unfair for the player, since he's effectively making his character's resources useless.

Not them, but I imagine its because outside of systems with very firm 'social combat' rules, anything dealing with persuasion or RP in general has very little rules attached. Its sorta assumed that people are going to be in/out of character as much as they desire or can actually pull off. And because thet part inherently deals with some form of communication, it cant really be nailed down very well, so people take to bonuses/penalties for how they initiate it.

see

There is a line between "I role to persaude," and fully role-playing something out. I wouldn't let him roll unless he had a good reasoning, but I wouldn't expect him to make a big, dramatic scene of it.

In general, we don't have enough info from op to determine who is in Tue wrong here.

F A B U L O U S
S T A B
A N O N

Ok, then.
I roll to spellcraft.
I roll to knowledge (history).
I roll to profession.
I roll to craft.

Why aren't you letting me do these things by me saying "I roll to do X"? What do you mean, I need to say what I'm crafting or what I'm using spellcraft for or what knowledge I want to know? You're just making me roleplay out everything and making me be terrible!

Fuck, Veeky Forums, why this hobby attracts so many cunts? I'm not defending the inability to roleplay, but some of you are simply condescending and mean. I thought such type of activity, heavily cooperative and social, will interest mostly acceptive and understanding people, not obnoxious faggots.

Bitter and angry people tend to have few friends, so they spend a lot of time online and write a lot of bitter angry posts. They therefore account for a disproportionate number of the posts you see on Veeky Forums.

Add to that the neurobehavioural fact that negative experiences (e.g. seeing unpleasant posts) receive disproportionately more attention than positive ones (e.g. seeing supportive, helpful posts), and you've pretty much got an idea why the population of Veeky Forums seems to consist mainly of bastards.

The stupid part is constantly making him fail because of his acting.
If he rolls good but acts bad just make it so the NPC falls for it. Maybe they are stupid enough to fall for it or maybe the NPC feels sorry for him and decides to roll with it.

In these cases the GM must choose what is better for the storytelling, follow the roll or follow the acting. A shitty GM won't know how to alternate between the two and will stick to a single mindset and that doesn't make for a very fun game.