15.11 Persuasion

The Persuasion skill is one of the most nuanced, and the most difficult to resolve by simply rolling a die and checking the result. For social skills like Persuasion, you need to have a good understanding of what your players enjoy about in-game social interactions. Some players enjoy speaking in-character, and want to be rewarded for good role-playing that matches their character. This should be generally encouraged where possible, because good role-playing can be fun for everyone.

However, other players may struggle to speak compellingly as their character, or may simply dislike it. No one would require that a player must demonstrate superhuman intelligence to play a wizard, or exceptional strength to play a barbarian. For the same reasons, you should not require your players to personally have great social skills in order to play a socially adept character! It’s completely fine for a player to say “my character tries to persuade them”, without saying every word that their character says, as long as it’s still clear what the objective of the persuasion is. You can also encourage players to give it their best shot at speaking in character, and make it clear that NPCs will react as if the character was far more eloquent than the player.

15.11.1 Persuading Groups

Creatures often make decisions together, rather than individually. For example, in a king’s court, a player generally cannot simply influence the king alone; his trusted advisors must also be persuaded. There are two ways that you can represent this: competing Persuasion checks, or shared defenses. One way would be to have the players make a competing Persuasion check against the advisors, with the highest result determining the king’s decision. Alternately, you can have the king and his advisors all collectively treat their defense against the player’s Persuasion attempt as the highest value among any individuals within the group. In general, competing Persuasion checks makes more sense for loose-knit associations, while shared defenses makes more sense for tight-knit groups.