"Date me" "No" "Ok then I'll antagonize you and make up lies the whole time" "And now I'll never date you" "WUH?!"

Breaking Bad Paladin is actually a hilarious character idea, and would be a great addition to the campaign if he wasn't so hostile to the rest of the players.

"Hope they never played again with Aladin the Paladin." Someone tell him.

Don't throw your dnd books at problem players, use mace instead, it's the ideal weapon for smiting evil.

Persuasion Check Firstly? That was a PERFORMANCE roll. Second? This would be an insight or a WISDOM SAVING THROW against a charisma effect. Third? And say it with me everyone: PERSUASION IS NOT MIND CONTROL. Fourth, DM effectively gave the DM role to two problem players. Way to fucking go.

Why Even Bother? When you have a DM who acts this petulant, you gotta leave.

Straight Lies Being nice does not entitle you to a date. The fact the girl got her computer taken away means that this incident is probably one the sister has seen before. And good on her for pulling her away

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who dealt with the 'player has a plot central item and refuses to let anyone else know about it'. I had a changeling rogue who had a massive plot hook letter be given to them because the player was struggling to feel involved. The rogue stuffed it into their bag. ... Along with everything else. I wasn't keeping track of weight. My bad, I know. After sessions of trying to get this rogue to simply SHARE this letter, even suggesting it could be an 'accident' if that's not something the character would do, as I was running out of random bullshit to give the team - the party was getting frustrated. I was running out of options, and started digging. I discovered exactly how much shit the rogue had in their bags. They never discarded anything. Ever. It wasn't even that they had anything valuable, but just the sheer bulk of random shit was outrageous. Next session, I told the rogue (privately!) they had too much stuff and needed to go through their inventory and figure it out. What to keep, what to sell, what to give away. It was also an opening for the letter to make it into the party's hands. (Which I told them via private message and was acknowledged) The rogue refused to go through their stuff, refused to discard anything, refused to share the letter. I had enough. "You feel a strange shifting to your pack, the weight shifting aside along with a zipping sound. You look down and the contents of your pack have emptied onto the drenched cobblestone. The stitching of your pack has split from the sheer weight." Essentially giving everyone free dibs on the party "loot" - which was all basic supplies, really. Rations, torches, etc. But the wind snatched that letter and carried it a few extra feet away, fluttering and snagging itself on the paladin's armored greaves. Just like that, party finally had their plot hook that I'd given to them 4+ sessions prior. However, I was the bad guy for 'targeting' the rogue and 'turning the party against them'. Like "Carmilla, I gave you 2 sessions, 2 private conversations, and an ultimatum on the 3rd session to just turn the plot item over. It meant nothing to your character, I explained it was for the betterment of everyones' gaming experience, I don't even understand why you're mad at me for your character being a hoarding pack rat." It's been three years and I'm still salty over that shade. And before anyone asks, I did go over everyone elses' sheets. No one else was overburdened because no one had the opportunity to even become burdened, let alone overburdened. Rogue was keeping everything.

That gloom stalker story makes me want to ask the DM, "So why are you an evil piece of shit? No not the monsters, not even you as a DM, just as a person, why are you an evil piece of shit?" Actually Aladin the Paladin is the beginning of a three partner I think. Involving his brother Raladin the rogue and um, I forget the last part.

For the paladin story they did let him back into the campaign using a completely different character. His creation was the brother of the paladin whose name was almost the exact same thing. And his entire motivation for being there was to get revenge for his long lost dead brother. Basically he wanted to kill the party. That character also died and I think they let him back in one more time but he was completely banned from playing a character with any kind of relation to any of his previous characters. Edit: I think they put him on thin ice, telling him that if he pulled another stunt like that then they'd kick him out.

Ok! On this persuasion point? A D&D horror story of mine hinged on a chaotic evil necromancer PC arguing that handing over my character’s daughter to a creature he knew would kill her after we had all, as a group, fought her previously, was justified by both his alignment and her rolling persuasion at a nat 20 to convince him to do it. I made that point about it not being mind control. If a black dragon wants to eat you and rolls a nat 20 with a +40 modifier, you’re not gonna be walking into its mouth thinking, “whelp, I never thought of that point before,” and allowing it to eat you.

How was posting the horny DM's lies about being in a relationship and having seen you NAKED in the group chat an asshole move? If someone is making up shit about you like that I would say you're absolutely within your rights to expose them! It says a lot about OP's calibre as a person that even after they'd been slandered to the group they consider exposing that to be a bad thing.

The first story reminds me of why even though it's cool to have a jack of all Trades character. I remember the one thing that Luffy said during Arlong Park "I can't use swords, nor am I a chef, nor am I good at navigation or lying. Without these people I'm as good as dead." It's always good that if you have a character that is taking a leadership role to acknowledge that your character can't. Or in most cases shouldn't do everything. Let other characters have specialties and shine with it.

The "my characters where bards and left me with a paladin order" is non ironicaly a hilarious reason for a name like that

I love how Crispy isn't concerned for the person hit by the DND book, But is concerned for the book's health XD

Talk about missed opportunity. I've heard Aladin the Paladin's tale before, and I'm disappointed that you didn't follow it up with Raladin the Rogue. The stories you did choose were still good ones though. Thank you. 🤠👍

With the "why am I allowed" I do think it's also worth noting that a passive perception of 30 eliminates surprises as a thing for the whole group. It's a rather minmax build all things considered, not for combat, but for the high PP. Either the DM was very inexperienced and didn't know what it could do, or subscribed to a "players can do whatever can't say no to them, but you must be able to counter everything they do" mindset. Whatever the reason being however, it was most uncool inregards to the adverserial game it ended up being. As the OP indeed rightly asked, why was it OKayed? It's a build that'd be nixed in my tables.

We use persuasion rolls against players at our table when the player can't articulate themselves the way their character might. "They say fact x, y, and z. I rolled an 18 vs your 15 so I was well articulated and broke the facts gently." edit: The actual number doesn't impact the other players choice. But it does indicate that we spoke clearly and tried to say it in a way the other character would react best to, based on our knowledge of them.

How to use pvp persuasion (mainly for characters with better charisma than their players) : roll to persuasion 1-5 you stumble over your words 6-10 you speak but your voice lacks confidence 11-15 you speak with confidence 16-20 you make a strong argument 21-25 music swells and a flag waves behind you as you speak. (Now the important part) players having heard your ally speak decide how you respond. Make sure the players know they don't have to agree on a high roll and might still be persuaded on a low roll. This is here to add flavor and help in character interactions. I use similar descriptions when describing how NPCs respond as well for consistency.

Scout story: This is a really good illustration as to why newer GMs should start out using modules or pre-built campaigns before migrating to their own stories. Yes, sometimes a given character build can absolutely destroy planned content and you need to throw a wrench in the works, but most of the time both combat and puzzles are more fun when players get to play their own characters. This is why people build characters rather than just having them issued by the GM. When using a pre-built world with set monsters, players have multiple ways to overcome an encounter and GMs learn how to tweak encounters in subtle ways to affect the outcome without being obvious. This GM has obviously not learned that skill, instead they're creating a linear experience where everything the party encounters is designed to thwart this specific party. Worse, as the player learns the GM adapts to make that knowledge useless. Aside from being annoyed at not being able to play your own character, it also make the world feel empty. If every encounter is designed to punish this one character, then a different character could walk through and kill everything. Except, of course, that they couldn't since the GM would then create new encounters to thwart that new character. It';s not a living world, or even an open-world game; it's an abattoir designed to kill this specific group of characters then reset in a new configuration to kill the next group.

That second story with PP30 character, asking for a Perception roll while scouting ahead, that's how Passive Perception works. You don't "get the benefits" of your high PP score. It really basically just sets the DC for an enemy to sneak up on you. It's used when "hand waving" travel, and when something is sneaking around near you. Keeping watch while traveling and sneaking enemies are the only circumstances mentioned in the PHB for when to use PP. You could also "use" it in any situation where the old 3/3.5 "Taking 10" rule could apply (that's essentially what it is based on). Other than that you have to ROLL a Perception check. I personally take a high PP into consideration when I am letting a player know what they are able to casually observe, but RAW it really only has a very few limited specific circumstances under which it is meant to be used. The rest of the story however, is right bull hock! That DM needed a talking to!

Story 3: Yeah, that sounds less like players that want to play D&D and more like people that want to control and manipulate people. What a couple of assholes. OP was totally right to leave. And yes, Persuasion can't be used like that, and shouldn't be used between player characters, except in very rare occasions.

I personally allow persuasion and other charisma checks against the party, but I let the players decide what the results say. If they get a high deception roll on an obvious lie, they usually say they are still skeptical. If they roll persuasion on a dumb idea, they will offer ideas to make us less dumb. (Usually, my players are yet to abuse the system either way)

For the centaur bards, they literally held an entire plot line hostage so they can be the centaurs of attention.

Hey now, let's not start comparing Aladin to Theseus. At least Theseus seems genuinely angry at you if you knock Asterius out first during their boss fight, and wouldn't try to steal his friend's stuff. Joking aside- great video, as ever. Glad I haven't really had horror story sessions in my time.

The first story sounds like a great plot hook in the hands of a good DM and a good player. "Whatever it is you've done, I...remember...I have also done it! Yes! Isn't it exciting?" And then you find out that the character is essentially "cloning" people's memories (no spells or abilities), because they're a pod-person construct of some stripe meant to replace someone. But that mission went sideways somehow, in a way the character no longer remembers, leaving the character with no objectives, no goals, just soaking up everyone else's memories like a sponge in a puddle of milk. A poor little lost monster with no identity... Oh, and the memories are just as the person they're talking to remembers them, complete with bias and departures from reality. It could be an interesting exploration of self-image versus truth. ...Well, hell, now I'm going to have to try it.

Regarding the Persuasion thing, personally I do allow my players to do Persuasion (or other social rolls) on each other... but *only* if both parties consent to it. Usually when a player is unsure if his characters could be convinced or not and chose to leave it to the dice, or when they are for it to begin with but want the other player to still put effort. But I always allow players to give their veto and declare their characters flat-out cannot be convinced (and in my particular case, on one game I got a character who is a nun and I imposed a rule that no amount of persuasion roll could seduce her, *period* .)

I absolutely hate it when dm's make chrisma mind control. "They convinced your player" ya and my character would never give up his wedding ring of his dead wife Exspecialy to sell it to a pawn shop. The trump card to this is. Are you telling me what MY character would do and what THEY think.

The first DM is my least favourite type of DM. The "Competitive DM", the how do i beat my players and win at TTRPGS DM. I played a campaign of pathfinder where someone tried to play Summoner but almost every enemy had a item, spell or trinket to anchor or banish summoned creatures.

What is with all the lawful stupid paladins and edgelord muderhobo rogues? I have never encountered either of these problems and now I'm a little nervous about trying to return to D&D.

In response to the shooting the monk thing, I play it like this: this is a world with people in it, not an MMO where you can just look at a person and immediately know their class their abilities and whatnot. So if a group of bandits jump the party of course they're going to shoot crossbow bolts at the Monk until they realize hey that's a bad idea Whereas if the party decided to piss in the Cheerios of Moriarty they would send specialized people with information on what the party can do Noticed the extreme dichotomy between those two examples because the first happened and makes the second feel that much more dangerous even if you still just use the bandit stat block again creating a fabricated sense of danger or that a lot of DMS struggle with

Regarding the use of persuasion on other PCs, my preferred rule is to allow it to happen and to rule on whether the check was a success or failure, but let the targeted player get to be the one to decide what a success or failure actually looks like based on how receptive they think their character would be to the proposal. Following this example of a bard trying to convince their party they should be the one in charge of all the party's loot, the other players might respond anywhere from brushing the suggestion off as a joke and not taking offense at it to saying they still want everything divided fairly but would be willing to try letting the bard be the one to handle loot distribution for awhile.

Being australian is enough to dazzle a good bunch of non-australian people with your accent. I speak from experience :D

I love how the dm had their rulings and how she let her friends treat others back fire in her face making her have to scrap the campaign. Such a good cumupts

Oof, that last story of Op. Sorry that happened to you.

That went from 0 to r/nicegirl really fast

I played with a paladin player who tried to blatantly steal from me after we found treasure. No sneaky or story just ripped the treasure from my weakling wizard arms. So I thunder waved him into a wall and my barbarian friend gave him the business end of an axe. We agreed to keep the paladin on a chain as a meat shield we would and did sacrifice at the drop of a hat after that.

I like how you said DMs can reward players for caring about the game. I saw a game where the monk used a special ability to not be mind controlled and the whole party, not just the player, was ecstatic. The DM knew monks could do that, but he also knew the monster wouldn't have known. Stopping someone from success can effect the whole table.

Oh God. Not Aladin the Paladin again.

"This guy is like Theseus from Hades if Theseus also sold drugs" 😂😂😂 Best line ever!!

@ throw a bone at your players: I once cirumvented an encounter in the underdark. We were funneled in to a field of those exploding mushrooms and our only way was through a nasty monster. Our fighter got a sword that extinguished all natural fires. I took a stick and bashed one of the mushrooms and it harmlessly poped as the sword extinguished the fire in the biochemical reaction that was bound to follow. The DM let us go plowing through the field and avoid the monster and gave us full 100% exp as he felt this a creative use of our resouces.

I do allow party members to use a persuasion roll to help win another party member to their reasoning, but I ALWAYs make sure that the player who is being influenced understands that it is not mind control and that whatever they are trying to be persuaded to do, does sound like a good plan, or good thought, or the best way to go, but I also let them do with that information what they will. Sometimes players are not good at articulating what it is exactly they are trying in the way of persuasion so I allow the roll to help smooth out the rough edges of their argument. This never means that the PC, or hell even the NPC, will actually do what it is they are being asked, and it has lead to some funny moments for the players. I am 100% behind the "Persuasion is not mind control", but I am not for not being able to use persuasion, or any other skill, against another player. I, as the DM, am the arbiter of what any roll at my table actually means. For the story above, NO FREAKIN WAY IS ANY ADVENTURER GOING TO HAND OVER THEIR LOOT, or at least their portion, JUST BECAUSE YOU MADE A GOOD ARGUEMENT ABOUT WHY THEY DESERVE IT. Yeesh, I mean riches and epic gear are usually why someone is out and about in a world that can literally end at the whims of some Divine Master because they are bored. Keep up the good work Crispy.

16:08 Booh! OP missed a perfect opportunity to write "centaurs of attentioin".

I agree with no persuading the party. Unless you can actually can make a compelling argument in character, you aren't going to succeed as someone will try to meta-game.

Love your videos bro, keep it up

Persuasion is how convincing you are in your truthful ideas. If you ask the king for the crown, and succeed on the persuasion, the king will believe that you think you should have his crown. He dosent automatically think he should give it to you.

Okay but Aladin the Paladin saying his parents were bards and liked to rhyme is actually a hilarious backstory

The persuasion one infuriates me so much I can’t ever listen to it again

1:34 saying "I can't prove this DM has some problems with favouritsm" is like floating in the ocean, and saying you can't prove water exists. What proof do you need, when you have functioning eyes?

the trick with the "shoot your monk" is to make enemies realize what isn't working so you shoot your monk a bit and if they keep catching the projectiles the enemies would reasonably stop shooting the monk once they work it out. that DM really needs to realize you play into both player weaknesses and strengths and also IF HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH A CHARACTER OR SOMETHING HE NEEDS TO TALK ABOUT IT

Oh my god, the Theseus from Hades comparison is absolutely spot on!!

"if the players want to convince each other, they better actually convince each other" My take is: "I do not adjudicate PvP. If you guys want to do PvP, you do it and let me know what happened. If you disagree about what happened, then nothing happened."

"Hope they never play with Aladin again" Oh, you sweet summer rat...

When I was much younger and 3.5 was THE newest thing, I played D&D one shots at game night at the games/comic book/only nerdly gear to be found shop (lovely place, made good friends had good times aside from well, this.) I do not remember the event but the big hook was the ability to play centaur characters and two of the local peeps, a happy nerdy couple, rolled up horse peoples. And that was the only happy thing to happen after that. We got teamed with a Broody Moody McEdgeysulk playing a rouge ( I think, this was about 15 + years ago and my brain has hidden many of the painful details) and not only he but the dice were against us that night. None of us could roll worth spit, and our DM, new to this whole thing in general, was struggling as much as we were. Broody Moody will not cooperate with us because that's 'out of character!' so we are not only fighting the dice gods and the adventure's baddies but our table mate who will not budge from his method acting. The final incident was when the wife centaur's character was trapped in a kobold shooting gallery where the little lizards sharpshooters were sniping us behind the cover of thick stone walls riddled with arrow holes. She, being a horsed sized target, falls and is soon a pin cushioned and making dying rolls. Her husband is not playing a centaur so one one is big enough to carry her back to town even if we aren't tpked and we didn't have a healer this game because no one playing one showed up that night, and none of us have any healing except Broody Moody who flat up refused to heal anyone, even the character dying on the floor, a character limited to this event that we will not be able to drag back to town for a resurrect, because "its not what my character would do." So, about to watch his wife lose a character she will not be able to res and will not be able to play after this event, the gallant hubby announces pvp on Broody and rolls. At this point the screaming match has attracted half the shop and cooler heads stepped in and after more shouting, it was decided no one would count that nightmare and the wife would get to keep her centaur character. Moody Broody did come back the next week but was not playing that character though I, because I am a bitter and petty person, made it known to the table he could not be counted on to support or heal anyone. He protested he was playing a different character, but I trusted this guy as far as I could drag a centaur and never shared a table with him without giving the rest of the players fair warning about his method acting. Sorry, not sorry even almost 20 years on.

I really like the way my table does persuasion rolls. If character A and character B are arguing, player A and player B are going to roleplay out that argument. If character A is being convincing, character B can agree. If character A is being unconvincing, character B can disagree. However, if character B is on the fence and undecided, player B asks player A to make a persuasion roll. Whoever rolls higher, modifiers and all, wins. It's always consensual on both players parts since it's the player calling for a roll, but it stops us from spiralling into disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing and also helps us make our minds up if we really aren't sure which way our character would swing.

It's always nice to hear problem players/GMs getting their comeuppance. Usually, they either get kicked out or the group disintegrates and that's about as far as repercussions go. I doubt problem players often learn from their mistakes when that happens though. So hearing that "nice girl" got her computer confiscated when her mother found out, feels somewhat cathartic to me because there was much more of a personal consequence for their shenanigans.

"This guy is like Theseus from Hades if Theseus also sold drug" I lost it there. This is such a good description with such a misguided yet self-assured "good" character.

"Money lending is EVIL!" So is robbery, Aladin...

congrats on beating cuphead!

Perfect timing! I'm at work and Hella bored

I'd allow persuasion rolls but only for roleplaying purposes. Give the other players a chance to reconsider their position due to how 'how eloquent and pursuasive' the bard was. Chances are they'd still say no of course, and that's fine.

If I was the GM (and party) in the Paladin game I kinda would've tried to see how deep into the drug dealing swamp we could've pulled the paladin without him noticing in his self-righteousness.

I have alwyas liked this kind of videos, from you, that crab, the dragon... but this moment right here 26:36 , is the first time I laugh out loud watching them, is so simple im ashamed to admit it ngl

Only time I do "persuasion" when it comes to PCs, is informational rolls, as sometimes I can't decide if a particular discussion would convince my character or not. No mind control here folks, just my dumb @$$ being indecisive.

That story with the Gloomstalker is so frustrating, and it particularly sucks because the first issue is apparently something that isn’t that uncommon for DMs to do when they have a player with the Observant feat. It’s not like it’s breaking the game, spotting ambushes and traps doesn’t automatically deal with them, just let them use the feat they went out of their way for.

Oh, I know the first one VERY well. Had a game I played an Occultist, a class from EN Insider, to play a Werecreature. Another player got bit and got the werewolf stuff, but had all the downsides, and my version would be better by virtue of magic not bypassing my resists. Ok. Then the Paladin joins... As a natural werewolf with none of the downsides. When I complain they deadass said "it's not my fault you chose a bad class" then attacked me for in another game having a rotating character because get this... I had told the DM I'd bring another character in for something so long as we then go get my guy from where he went and I finally get my characters acr, and I do a rotating character thing until then... Then the DM had us doing other stuff untill I had to tell them "can we FUCKING DO WHAT WE AGREED ON ALREADY?!" Every other character had gotten at least one arc, some multiple...

Cassie & Rachel? Got immediately distracted by the fake names because my brain went straight to Animorphs

Think of it this way, you give the player many challenges, and even make them a little harder the more powerful in the game they get, but you make them feel awesome, by allowing them to use all their weapons and skills at hand, while still keeping the difficulty, so the player also feels like they accomplished a big task, or challenge, making them feel even more awesome, this can be applied to every game, video games, TTRPGs, it's a simple yet effective mechanic, and it can be adjusted depending on the audience.

In that first story, you better bet I'd be asking to see the stat blocks on the monsters, and if tremor sense and blind sense weren't written down, the DM would be getting a full stack of books straight to face.

How I do persuasion between PC's when I DM is, every time someone wants to roll persuasion on another PC, the 'defending' PC decides "don't roll, you can't persuade my character" or "no need to roll, my character is persuaded" or they can go "you COULD persuade my character, roll me a DC 17 persuasion check" and so on. It's all upto the player being persuaded. Same for Bluff and Intimidate. Regardless of what the characters may think of eachother, I want the players working as a team atleast.

Another unwritten rule of D&D is 'never use charisma skills against another player.' those that have high ranks in them likely are social characters built for it, and let's be fair, sense motive isn't something most people put a lot of ranks in. its like swim; you only want ranks in it when you're actually in the water.

Aladin the Paladin Spoiler Alert! Aladin did not learn his lesson and made brothers/cousins/etc related to Aladin to get petty vengeance on the party

Its a shame, because the explanation behind Aladin the Paladin's name was actually kinda funny. With a little rewriting it could work as a decent humorous backstory: "I am Aladin the Paladin! My parents were bards, and they loved rhyming, thus they named me Aladin" "Did they know you were gonna be a paladin when you were just a kid?" "My parents were also very pushy"

“I hope they didn’t play with aladin again!” Ha!

I feel bad for the scout/gloomstalker with observant. I have played that exact combo in a Ryme of the Frostmadien campaign, but I had a good DM, and that character absolutely shined. Meta gaming DMs that design every encounter to thwart one character’s abilities are no fun, just leave and find a better DM.

16:10 Missed opportunity to say "Centaurs of attention"

I so want to hear the Raladin story now.

Rolling against each other, be it attack rolls or persuasion checks is PvP, and I don't allow PvP at my table, except under very specific circumstances. 1 - Gambling. I have two worshippers of Tymora, and it is a tenet of their faith that they MUST gamble at least once a day, even if it's just 1 copper piece ante on one roll of the dice. Do I allow the cleric of Loki to attempt Sleight of Hand or some other means of cheating? You bet I do! The players are aware of the attempt, even though the characters are not (unless she fails). 2 - Sparring. If the players want to have a sparring match with each other, then they may do so, obviously doing non-lethal damage, and obviously WITH CONSENT OF ALL PARTIES INVOLVED. 3 - When the wererats go feral on the full moon. The party members have to find some way to keep the wererats from killing them in their sleep. So far, they've been pretty creative, and the full moon is over now, so they're good for a few weeks. Mind you, when the wererats go feral, *I* am the one running their characters. The players have NO control at that point, so it's not PvP so much as PvNPC, albeit temporary NPCs. I haven't had to fudge the die rolls, but I've been VERY RELIEVED TO LOSE. Honestly, I am SO FRUSTRATED at the people who wrote this module, putting in wererats as one of the early battles! First, one player character was bitten and failed her Con save, so she got infected, and then, when she went feral, she bit another PC, who failed HIS Con save, and although the lycanthropy has a lot of benefits, it also has some SERIOUS downsides, unless they can learn to CONTROL them. One of the downsides is that they now have a craving for human flesh, even if that human flesh is their own party members. Another is that the gang of wererats will now hunt them down, because they were not properly invited and initiated, and the wererats will only accept properly invited and initiated members of the "family." Also, every full moon (until they learn to control it), they become feral, turn into their hybrid form, whether they want to or not, and start attacking anyone they can reach. There MAY be other situations come up where PvP is appropriate. MAYBE. It will involve player consent, though. And it certainly won't be "Persuasion is mind control, and their arguments don't have to make any sense, at all." That's STUPID. Also, why in the world would they argue that the most charismatic characters are the smartest characters, when you have two high intelligence, and one high wisdom character? Charisma has NOTHING to do with smart. You can be a charismatic airhead. And sadly, you can be a DM airhead, too. UGH! This is almost as bad as having to roll play NOT paying attention, in order to get the higher passive perception than what you would roll, if you were looking for stuff. And then, not being able to see ANYTHING, ANYWAY, because the DM simply doesn't want you to have ANY warning of the battles to come, because sending your WELL TRAINED scout out in advance to scout is somehow unfair, but breaking the rules to beat that scout is fair???

Ok but the joke of two bards naming their child aladin and forcing him to go and become a paladin is actually funny if its just one part of a bigger backstory

That last one is... oof. I mean, dating among members of a gaming group can work , even if one of the parties is the DM/GM (I should know, I'm DM for my group, and my girlfriend is one of my players - and yes, we gamed together before we started dating). But yeah, a big part of making that work is not treating the player differently. DM in that story should have just let it go when she got turned down. It wasn't even a harsh rejection; heck, if the DM had taken it better and maybe tried again later, it *could* have worked out. But nope.

I allow players to roll persuasion against each other as a means of saying "my character wants to say this" the roll is how well they articulate their points because not everyone is a debate master. It doesn't FORCE the others to agree but I trust my players to at least take it into account when deciding things

About the last story: Femcel... That's a new word for me. So is this like the counterpart (female version) of the Incel? And just when I thought that Incels are all guys only. I always heard stories about nice girls or creepy girls, but femcels, that's a new kind that I've never heard of before. Anyway, it seems that that DM has low self esteem of herself. Doing such a thing to OP and to her own campaign that's mess up. I think OP did the right thing to do.

my last rogue had expertise in perception which combined with the rogue minimum roll skill gave her a pretty decent base perception that equalled her passive perception I played her to be quite paranoid, so high perception and keeping her eyes everywhere was pretty fitting

I would say you could make persuasion rolls against other players, but only if the other player allows it or requests it. if one or both players don't want it, don't allow it. One example was that one player asked what my assignment was that my character got from my boss in character. I didn't know for sure if my character would want to tell them that since they didn't know eachother very well, but it wasn't extremely important information, so i asked the player for a persuasion check, and afterwards i told him that after he rolled high enough. I think that's the key here. persuasion, insight and deception shouldn't be used on other players too control them, but you could use them to facilitate roleplay. Things like asking a character to do something like dance with them, even if they have never danced before, asking for a weird favor or something similar could be used to make some interesting situations to facilitate roleplay, but not to control characters. I think most of the time in character roleplay should be the deciding factor, but if you as a player don't know for certain how the character would react, maybe you could ask the player for persuasion.

Love the qualifier Theseus *from Hades.* Mythological Theseus was way worse, and almost as bad as his brother Pirithous.

When I DM, I just never remember what abilities my characters have. It has resulted in party stomps a few times, more often parties just clean-sweep enemies.

So, as a DM I allow players to roll persuasion to persuade other characters, but I let the player who's character is being pursuaded choose the DC that it would take to convince them of such a thing, and its entirely possible that there is no roll that they could make that could convince them (Like trying to get the warlock to hand over their tome from their patron for example, or trying to convince the rogue to tell you where their safe houses are unprompted) but the player who is being persuaded gets to use that roll to inform how their character takes the request. The reason I do this is because I, allong with some of my players, are naturally persuasive individuals, while others are not - and they too would like to be able to influence the party and their decision making. Usually, if they roll well, I offer suggestions as a DM about what their character might try to say/do to be persuasive, and this works well for us But the key is, failure and success is not in MY hands when it is party decisions. Its in the hands of the players that are 'being convinced' and they are never FORCED to go along with anything

I did once request another player to roll persuasion at me, when my dragon hatchling (for those who don't play Rifts, think of your classic dumb-as-a-brick barbarian but literally a newborn dragon) had found a cursed axe that she was convinced was her mother (long story). The party was trying to figure out how to take it away from her without getting eaten, and settled on challenging her to an axe throwing contest and having an NPC wizard try to break the charm when she threw the axe. I as a player really wanted this plan to work, because while RPing with the mom-axe was really funny, I knew cursed weapons tend to lead to disaster, but I didn't want to metagame, so I told the player taking the lead to roll persuasion and let the dice decide. She succeeded, we had an axe-throwing contest, and it turned out the NPC wizard was a rakshasa and they stole the axe. All of this is to say is that I agree with Crispy that rolling persuasion against other PCS should generally not be allowed, unless the targeted player requests it.

With passive perception, if you're actively looking around and roll under a 10, you take the 10, this is essentially the thing in the movie where someone's looking around a corner and hears a creak in the floorboards behind them. (assuming their PP is high enough).

Note to self: Allow persuasion roles on party members. Also make it that they build up a resistance over time and may end up offing the bard if they try this crap :D

One person should have just been like “no we aint doing that” ask everyone to help them and then do a persuasion check with 4 advantages looool

I don't know... the 'Training Day' paladin sounds hilarious. I can't wait until he forces his Squire to smoke PCP at sword point

>Be Aladin the Paladin >"Money lending is evil!" >"I am a drug dealer now!"

I recently downloaded the Apotheosis rule book, and it says something interesting about the evil alignment, it basically describes an evil person as someone that believes the end justifies the means, so yeah, if your lawful good paladin thinks murdering someone just because, then you're wrong because the *LAW* doesn't straight up murder criminals on site, AND because you're not doing it for justice, you're just a psychopath

"I'll diulite it with sawdust" ay yooo lol! He really gonna cut random drugs with sawdust lol?

I've had SOME success in allowing persuasion rolls in PvP settings, but it's usually for stupid things like "Oh my bard was solely responsible for killing this goblin" or "Oh I'm the one who came up with this plan", and my party were all having a great time. I'd never allow that kind of thing to remove player agency though.

1:39 witha rpg game maker called "smile game builder" i make rpgs, I occasionally get requests from various discords i have join to make their characters OP. My Rpg games are silly, casual, and usually have the style of a comedy, I tell them that i can't tolerate Mary sue characters as they are bad guys in my games, and like the vultures that are denied food, they whine, cry and verbal attack me, which leads me to crushing their characters into dust as the main bad guys. It's rare that i get a request like that now, but some people really don't like being refused. (and it's funny to crush them into the dirt.) Main character syndrome also makes me see red. While not a ttrpg, I thought you'd like to hear a game developer's horror story, feel free to use it.

When my players try to roll social checks against each other, I allow the roll but don't force the players to follow the rules on it. I only encourage them to take the roll into account when reacting to what the other did. E.g. if someone tries to find out if another player is lying about their past, I usually allow them to roll insight and/or deception, IF they both want to, since it gives them a relatively good guideline. But even if the player rolls an insanely good insight check, the other is not obligated to reveal anything they don't want to. (Though I would probably say something if they even then insisted that the character seems completely truthful, but I have never had problems with that so far.)

I like to think the OP in the first story was T-posing in the dark while levitating

Only exception I have for the "Mo Persuasion on PC is if there is a cursed Item like they have done in Critical Role, since it makes sense they would have to use it to peirce the fog of mind the cursed items tend to put into the PC connected to them. Just adds stakes to my Players' dice rolls that seem to understand dramatic timing.