Do you let pretty much anything go as long as it doesn't provide mechanical advantage in the name of roleplaying, or do you make every check be rolled regardless?
I let Monks run on walls, do backflips, cartwheels and somersaults for their tumbling past threatened squares, karate-chop-cartwheels, and falling-axe heel kicks after "jumping" downwards off the ceiling... no extra rolls necessary other than your standard roll for tumbling through threatened squares...
No extra Acrobatics check for running on the wall, no jump check to see if you can backflip off the guy's chest after kicking him twice...
Out of combat social interaction seldom needs any rolls unless I have a set DC for specific information... the 7 Charisma Fighter can speak up at my table without being penalized in normal situations... you are an ugly-@$$ man, but I need money, so I will treat you like a beautifully full wallet, and not an ugly-@$$ man...
Sure, maybe tell the player behind the 7 Charisma Fighter to pipe down when in the presence of the mayor or king or whatever... let the Bard do the talking, bro. Even if the player doesn't say much, their character is built to handle any difficult DC's that may be part of talking to authority or the like.
How often do you force a player to roll for fluff?
For me, pretty much never... $#!+, I gave the Rogue an untyped "badass" bonus for jumping off the flying carpet to land on the dragon... certain death if he missed, and the dragon had Mirror Image active (so even more of a literal chance to miss)... he had already rolled two Acrobatics checks... one to pretty much squeeze/tumble past the other people on the carpet with him for a running start, and one for the jump... he rolled both before I even asked him to roll anything. I mase him roll miss chance for Mirror Image. Nailed it.
I gave him a bonus on the Climb check required to dig his knives in deep enough to stop his momentum. Otherwise, he deals his slashing damage and the his knives keep cutting... he keeps falling... better twist those blades, son... dig deep...
Badass pulled it off without needing help from the bonus I gave him, smashed the Climb check with an 18 on the die. Stopped sliding/cutting down by her hips, climbed her back with each stab the next turn, and the third turn he was mounted on her, he crippled her wing, but stayed on her as she tumbled out of the air to finish her off before they hit the ground.
The team went into a suicide drop dive on the flying carpet to hit the Rogue with Feather Fall right after he killed the dragon... literally right before it was too late to catch him...
I would have hated to ruin that encounter with unnecessary checks. I think people are afraid to try stuff or speak up in social encounters if you are forcing every check every time they use any skill.
Same Rogue stayed swallowed to cut a Jutond Troll in half from the inside out... foolish Rogue had like 4hp left, but stood victorious on the stumps of the troll's legs as the torso fell to the floor.
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if you wanna rp (within reason) without extra rolls, DO IT!
you wanna try to gain some additional mechanical advantage for making it sound cooler? not gonna happen.
yes you can backflip/cartwheel while avoiding the AoO. still just 1 acrobatics, the higher you roll, the better it is.
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I'm not allowing wall running over gaps or over people without proper checks, mind you. Nor free 5ft steps with cartwheeling-karate-chops...
But I like the players at my table getting lost in their attack routine, acting out TWF going low left, high right, like simultaneous offset scissors... no, I am not going to bring in BS targeting rules simply because you happened to say stomach and neck... dance your beautiful dance, my friend, I will tell you what all your attacks amount to as quickly as I can math...
Don't waste that throat slice on this guy, you hear his death rattle before his sword falls out of his hand, throw that attack at someone else...
Anything to keep the game running as smoothly as possible... with 18+ level TWF Rogue/Slayers, and ZAM/Inquisitor archers... I literally cannot handle prolonging combat with BS skill checks. Lol.
A full attack from the archer goes arrow by arrow... because they roll them all before hand, 1st attack roll, 1st attack damage... that way, when people die on the 2nd arrow, the 3rd can go somehwere else... so does the TWF Rogue... prerolls for half a dozen attacks each round...
When they get lost explaining what they are doing, you get to see your world through their eyes... they are explaining their vision of your story...
Holy $#!+, I didn't say that wall was stone, but the player just said he shoots his arrows past the pointed wooden posts of the walls... you hear everything you left out through their descriptions of your environment... I wouldn't dare distract them from telling me what they see... I need to know what they pick up from my descriptions.
Forcing rolls in the middle of stream on conscious thought ruins the creativity. Me-thinks...
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In our game where I'm a player, diplomacy is rolled so often that you wonder how 1st level commoner societies don't collapse into anarchy. Like seriously, the last session, I had to roll to get the sheriff's current location... in my home village.
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The only time a roll is required is when there is a chance for failure, a chance for success and consequences for either. If all three of those elements are not present, there is no roll.
I think the problem you're describing comes mostly from GM's who haven't learned how to adjudicate player actions.
What matters is their goal and their method. What are they trying to do and how are they going to try and make that happen.
Making a running jump up a wall with a double somersault--that's really just a descriptor, if all they want to do is, say, get passed someone in a narrow corridor. One goal, one roll. Nice and easy. If they want to gussy it up, that's fine within reason.
Now, if they wanted to bypass a pit by running up a wall and do one somersault to get past one opponent and a second to vault over someone else, that's really three separate goals, so should involve up to three separate rolls.
I would like to clarify that using colorful descriptions and the like is not role-playing, it's a form of acting. Role playing is just...playing a role. When you choose to swing your sword or nock an arrow, even if you never offer up a single adjective to describe your actions or utter one syllable in character, you're role playing.
I feel like this thread could easily be called"Are You a Bad GM?" Seriously, nothing described here is anything besides following the rules. Forcing extra rolls or implementing penalties because of a description--those are houserules. And bad ones.
...I had to roll to get the sheriff's current location... in my home village.
I'm so sorry. Those BS "gather information" checks are THE WORST.
I actually played in a game where I started off as a coachman. I told the GM I climbed into the coach. They asked for an Acrobatics roll. I failed, and they proceeded to tell me that I couldn't quite make it up into the coach.I stared blankly at them for a moment before I announced that I would try again, that I would continue to try until I succeeded, and that I would do so for similarly mundane and automatic actions, such as lacing up my boots, eating soup and getting out of bed in the morning, so could we please just assume as much from the start and forgo the roll all together and maybe do something actually fun with our free time? There are probably better ways to help budding GM's develop their skills, but ouphe. That one really gets my hackles up.
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I think a lot of this stuff can be covered by rolling before you describe your action.
Step 1: Tell the GM what you want to do (eg. Dodge past your opponent without provoking any AoOs)
Step 2: GM tells you what to roll (eg. Roll acrobatics)
Step 3: Roll dice (eg. )
Step 4: Determine the result of the dice (eg. Spectacular success)
Step 5: Describe* how the action went depending on the outcome of the dice (eg. "With a flourish I flip over the guard's head before dancing back away frok him into the crowd.")
Doing things this way means nobody gets bonuses or penalties for roleplay, but the roleplay is still there.
There might be moments where you want to change the order (eg. a player gives an inspiring speech and you want to reward their roleplay by giving them a bonus), but rolling before you describe solves this problem most of the time.
I don't want to cast any judgements on GM'ing... I seriously doubt I could ever be considered a good one. I probably don't do half the checks I should out of not having a complete understanding of the game I have chosen to try run.
The players at my tables, bless them all, have held my hand through this process with masterful patience.
However, as they developed prestige within the land, I stopped asking for certain rolls in certain places, and less rolls in more places... it is their freaking kingdom, they go to their towns and talk to their citizens... pretty sure they would laugh in my face if I asked for a Diplomacy roll now... it's level 19, buddy, I can go buckwild and start slaying everyone I see... it will take a god to stop me... Diplomacy, in MY kingdom?! Lol.
They are very decent to their citizens, actually... and treat them with wonderful diplomacy, even without needing to roll for it. They don't just march around slapping their citizens, demanding $#!+... even though they all know literally nobody around can stop them...
Conquered Pitax, told Chileax they're next, are almost willing to go to war with Brevoy over some BS between Restov and some Centaurs the kingdom bedriended... literally take no $#!+, but for all the right reasons...
So I have wonderful PLAYERS, they all know I am not great at this, and they work with me... not take advantage of me... so descriptive story stuff is going to get you further than trying some loophole BS exploit shenanigans...
I hang out on these forums enough to recognize shenanigans. Lol.
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Mrcharima is on the right track. The roll should always be done first so the player can actually roleplay the scene. For some reason the only time the majority of the players are interested in roleplaying is when there characters are doing well. Most often this is when the character has obvious flaws and the player tries to roleplay the flaw away. To me that is not roleplaying that is cheating. If a character dump CHA and did not invest anything into social skills they should have troubles.
The best roleplaying I have ever seen came from a failed diplomacy roll. The character had dump CHA and rolled a natural 1 on his diplomacy. Instead of trying to correct the situation with “Roleplaying” he ran with it. He started insulting everyone in the inn and being completely obnoxious to the people he was trying to get information from. He had the entire group practically fall on the floor with laughter. This of course led to a brawl with the people we were supposed to get information from, but everyone had fun.
Roleplaying should not be a way to get a second chance it should enhance the story. Sometimes the characters fail and those failures are just as much a part of the story as the successes.
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In the end it's all about having fun so that is the first question that I ask myself before asking for a roll.
"Is it fun?"
And there isn't a clear straight forward answer.
Sometimes is fun to just describe crazy stuff that your character does
Some other times is fun to see "I want to run in this direction, leap on the wall, wallrun for 5 ft. then jump over the bugbear to reach the goblin on the other side, and kill him before he kills my companion. I know I have decent acrobatics, but this doesn't sound like it's guaranteed and we are all very invested on whether this diceroll succeeds or not"
Some other time players and NPCs have the most casual of conversations and one of them mentions something that unbeknown to them is relevant to the npc or the plot and I might ask a seemingly random diplomacy check, or a sense motive to catch the subtle doubt in an NPCs eyes.
Sometimes the Charisma 7 Barbarian is belittling the Charisma 32 Sorcerer in a conversation and I remind him that he is some sort of Muscular Gollum talking to what seems to be the god of Rockstars and that the difference on how you talk and present yourself is probably making you feel very inadequate and self-conscious and shaking his confidence in his own words.
But that's definitely not something that comes up a lot between people who have charisma within a 6 points of difference, nor is something that comes of as "interaction not allowed. I am retconning the scene"
Just a gentle nudge to remind player what all those numbers generally represent.
It is also something that I encourage the player to do with me when it works on their behalf.
Sometimes The party gets stopped by the city guards and they are harassing them and just being generally arrogant around them and a player asks: "What's their Charisma? I have 24 charisma, a circlet of persuasion and an intimidate pool of +26. Did they really told me that?"
It's not the kind of stuff that would stop entire encounters on their tracks without rolls, but more like a shift between a outcomes of an interaction without rolls.
It goes with a bit of everything.
Want to play darts at the local tavern? I don't need you to roll, you have good BAB and you use thrown weapons on a regular basis, you are clearly better than the other patrons.
Oh, the near sighted wizard who spend all his time on books wants to play darts too? well.. it's not going so well.. actually you know what? Roll me a d20 and let's see i you get in some kind of interesting trouble like breaking a bottle of expensive wine or almost hitting someone at the Half-Orc Table.
Declare what you want to do.
Roll the dice for the skill and target the ref has decided on based on that description
Determine if you succeeded, or if not, how you failed.
My personal feeling is that unless the skill description specifically allows it, you can’t do more than you set out in the initial declaration. E.g. Bob the fighter can either climb the ice wall using both hands (DC25) or climb the ice wall with his sword in one hand (DC 30). If he chooses the first option and rolls a 32 he doesn’t get to upgrade to keeping his sword out, because he didn’t take the risk of rolling a 29 and failing.
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Giving out bonuses due to good acting is exactly as valid as giving out bonuses for good penmanship or color-coordinated dice.
Not everyone is a skilled actor. Not everyone wants to try their hand at it. "My character tries to run past the orc on the right and attack the ogre." is every bit as legit as "'Foul giant, prepare for battle!'--Sir Krysvalien attempts to break through the orc battle line in order to come to grips with the hulking brute behind them!"
Social encounters are usually a mess in most games I've seen. People either don't roll anything--which defeats the point in investing in social skills--or they make up arbitrary systems instead of using the perfectly suitable ones in the core rules.
A big one for me is players declaring "I roll X." No, no you don't. Tell me what you are trying to accomplish and how you're going to do it. I'll tell you what roll it is.
Intimidating a grizzled city watchman will be harder than bribing him. But his super-green associates haven't witnessed the horrors of war or had to compromise their ideals, so the reverse is true for them. Etc.
Again, three questions need to be asked before every possible roll. And you need three Yes's to justify picking up the die. Is there a chance of success? A chance of failure? Are there consequences?
Lvl19 rulers of a kingdom that have fostered goodwill with their citizens? There really isn't a chance for failure if they're asking around about some local gossip. So don't roll.
And even if they were lvl1, with no ranks in any social skill at all, there are absolutely zero consequences for asking where the nearest tavern is or whatever. So don't roll.
If those same lvl1 social pariahs were hoping to learn the True Name of the Lord of The Faeries by asking some commoners at said local tavern, it doesn't matter if they roll a 20. Success is not possible. So don't roll.
I got started in roleplaying in a lot of more cinematic or supers oriented games, so colorful descriptions of actions is kind of standard. That said, I don't penalize players for not doing it, but I will take the lead then and add all the dramatic flair I deem necessary if they just want to roll the dice and call out a number.
Of course everything has limits though and I draw the line at tying multiple actions into one, like a backflip off a minotaurs chest to land 10 ft in the nearby tree after planting a foot in his chin. Some systems can handle that, Pathfinder really ain't it without appropriate feats.
the only time I penalize players is for unnecessary pvp, I will murder the entire group and start again after a lengthy discussion of why this is bad, especially since at the start of every game, this exact thing is brought up and agreed by the group that is something that should be avoided.
I never have the problem with players saying "I roll 'x'"...I got no problem if my players know that certain out of combat actions require specific types of skill rolls...
That's just it. If a player wants to frighten someone into cooperating with a display of force, I can say "roll Intimidate, but use your Strength instead of your Charisma". If they want to climb into the chamber through a small open window, I can say "roll Climb using Dexterity". And that's just one tiny facet, really.
In your example, there's an argument to be made that your player is trying to Bluff the NPC...or maybe Intimidate them? Or both? --and the GM had the final say on which it is. Not that every player will try to use their best number for everything; a lot of players just don't think of all the different ways a situation could be represented by the rules.To return from this quasi-tangent, I will put a stop to players who are trying to change the genre of the story. An archer splitting an enemy's arrow mid-flight, then firing two more arrows into the arrow-halves back at the enemy may be an entertaining description, but it doesn't fit in a more somber or gritty/realistic game, especially at lower levels. Describe away, but keep it reasonable.
But your example really is perfect. That's exactly what I'm going for when I tell my players to tell me about their objective and their approach. Your player used smart, attentive game play to find the best approach to get to their destination.
The big problem I have when people want to use roleplaying is that they are always looking to make their situation better. Roleplaying is supposed to be where you assume the role of your character and act out what he does. Sometimes the players fail but no one wants to roleplay that. If the character dumped CHA to the floor and did not invest any point in any social skills then trying to act suave and sophisticated and talk your way out of a problem is the opposite of roleplaying. To really roleplay a character like that would mean you are acting rude and crass.
Roleplaying should not be used as a second chance or as to avoid the weakness of a character. It should be used in conjunction to the rules to develop the story.
In a movie the actors have a script to set the scene. In the game we have rules to do the same thing.
I am issuing a challenge to all the “role-players” to actually roleplay out the scene instead of trying to change it. The next time you are using a social skill and it bombs try roleplaying the failure instead of trying to change the outcome. Who knows you may actually enjoy it.
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If it's just for fluff (means no mechanical benefits)and if it's within the characters "theme" I would allow it (e.g. the monk who describes their trip attack as jumping off the wall, kick the enemy in the face and then do the "black widow neck grab roll").
On the other side, if the player tries to get a mechanical benefit from it (e.g. sliding around the enemy while giving him a liver punch) the player has to make a roll and also get a drawback if he fails by more tehn 5 points (risk & reward).
Also if a player act his character out of theme (e.g. the illiterate Barbarian wants to theorizes about a magic ritual) he has to make a roll or I even deny it completely.
For me the biggest problem with this are social encounters especially when dump/low-int/charisma start to talk like they are the brain/face of the group.
Same for Intimidate, when a character with low charisma but high Str/Con tries to intimidate someone with brute force...
I don't want to take the roleplay away from my players but at the same time if I would allow them to do this sort of stuff, character stats become obsolete.
I don't punish roleplaying with stupid checks.
I reward roleplaying with appropriate checks. :-)
If a character is doing something for which there are rules for a check, I'll try to ask for an appropriate check. If they're RPing doing it really well, they might get a circumstance bonus to their roll but that's not guaranteed. That way the check is there, but their RP isn't negated by the check.
I think the players in my group know the RP and the check coincide so their RP is geared toward creating the situation that would facilitate a check. Without the RP, there might not have been a check at all.
(Although if someone did say "I want to roll a check for my character to attempt to do X" I'd probably allow it without the RP set-up because not everyone is comfortable with committing to the descriptive, and I don't think that should be a limiter on their characters' actions.)
I'd likely ask for an acrobatics check for wall-running though (unless someone is under a spider climb effect), using similar guidelines for distance jumping. (I have a vague sense that I've read guidelines for wall-running before though.)
As I've mentioned before, "acting" and "roleplaying" are not the same thing. What most people call roleplaying is just acting. And acting, while it enhances a ttrpg, isn't necessary to play one.
Social interactions seem to usually needlessly complicated by ad-hoc houserules that people feel the need to throw in for some strange reason or they're completely waved away without a single d20 being picked up.
The witty player with a dull character and the introvert playing a suave character are both only problems if you reward acting skills in your game. Which (see above) doesn't actually make much sense at all.
If your player can state what they want to achieve (make the innkeep give them a free room, convince the baron to support their cause, kill the goblin, etc)
and how they want to achieve it (threaten violence, appeal to his common sense, with a sword etc.), then you can take it from there with what roll is appropriate and how likely that given approach is to succeed.
In my experience, giving the players whose strengths don't align with their characters a little room to breathe and just letting the dice do the talking can help them understand what their character is capable of, to the point that they may well surprise you with a gem of truly wonderful in-character acting down the line.
I haven't really had anyone at my table use roleplay as a way to try cheat the system, apparently I have been blessed with decent people at my table. It's all been fluff and fun... who needs to cheat with roleplay in a gestalt campaign? You already have everything you need, no desire to cheat the system.
You want to spin-slice your way around an enemy that you alone are fighting? Go for it... I know you don't have the Circling Mongoose feat chain, but this is purely thematic, so I honestly don't give a $#!+... do a belly slice swim move to get past your blocker... you aren't setting up some wierd dynamic flanking charge, so I don't care.
Somersaults in hallways, gainer backflips, footplants off the ceiling above... as long as you aren't trying to play me for something extra, I am not going to play you with extra dice rolls...
Please, tell me a story... I want you to have fun with your abilities...
Please, tell me a story... I want you to have fun with your abilities...
This I get. And is...maybe the central point of the thread? If so, I dragged in a lot of stuff that was only semi-related at best.
The first time I saw something like what you're rallying against was very early on in the hobby for me. One friend said they wanted to attack in a specific way, the DM said they'd take a -2 to damage. And it just killed the scene.
But honestly, I don't think it's too common beyond really inexperienced GM's; it's like someone trying to be a rules-lawyer without understanding RAW.
I guess I'm just unclear what the difference is.
The difference is twofold. First, the GM gets first and last say on when a die is rolled and what it's rolled for. I've seen players try to use Jump instead of Climb, Bluff instead of Diplomacy (and vise versa) and the infamous Sense Motive instead of...being an active listener and participating in the game and the story. I swear, it used to be that 99% of all Sense Motive checks were absolutely inapplicable to the situation that the skill was being shoehorned into. Should have been called Sense Next Story Beat.
So there's that. But your players are obviously extremely familiar with this system, and they don't sound like the type to try and use their Biggest Number for everything.But then there are different approaches that all fall within the same skill, or one approach that could be two different skills.
Let's go back to the inkeep example. Maybe they're a retired campaigner and have a drunk-tapper under the bar? The threat of physical violence is more likely to piss them off than scare them.
Maybe they're trying to get in good with a ritzier crowd, which you happen to have some influence with? Threatening to publicly voice your dislike of their establishment might be a decent way to shake them up.
But maybe you happen to know that the innkeep is running an underground gambling ring in the cellar? Mentioning the punishments of gambling in this city might be the best route to strike fear into this poor chap.
--all Intimidate. All diffent approaches.
Now, what if, in the second example, you're not outright threatening to give the inn a bad review, but more just bragging about how Baron von Dukenson is a good friend of yours. Is that still Intimidate? Or is it more Diplomacy? Or even Knowledge?
In the third example, maybe you're just warning the 'keep that, hey, if they don't let you stay for free, your friend over here will probably blab to the authorities? That could be Diplomacy again.
What if, in any of the above examples, you don't actually have the ability to make good on the threat? That's more a Bluff, then. Right? Or...maybe not.
-mostly, what this method allows me to do is keep the game more firmly under my control (which only matters when your players are jerks, really) and rewards attentive players and clever game play (which matters always and forever no matter what).
From someone more on the player end so far, my stance here is twofold.
1) I try to provide in-universe and out-of universe descriptions of my characters' actions, rather than just one or the other. I find that doing something like this communicates intent more clearly than just one or the other, and makes it easy for the GM to let me know if they want me to do anything like make another roll or two.
2) Generally, I'm more open to doing something super-flashy that my character isn't build for in situations where it wouldn't have any mechanical effect. If, e.g., I can pass beside an enemy without provoking and/or trivially dodge AoOs, and there's an open space between that enemy and a wall, I might move through the empty space and flavour it as jumping off/running on the wall to avoid them, or as vaulting over the enemy if there's enough space both beside and above them. If the description would actively modify the involved mechanics (such as if there's no floor in the wall space, or there's not enough space both beside and above them to pass without moving through their space), then I'd typically wait to see how it plays out. Or, depending on my character's personality, word it confidently, then add something like, "Or that was the plan, at least," and move into an embarrassing flub if they fail.