Here's one that came to me when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep.
I've written before about my social interaction rules for 5e. My rules are an adaptation of Courtney Campbell's/Hack & Slash Publishing's On the Non-player Character. Basically, I wanted to create a synthesis of old school D&D's reaction roll-based social interaction mechanics and modern D&D's social skills.
I somehow managed to create something complex enough to (probably) not be appealing to either old school or modern D&D players, but I like it a lot. It's entirely DM-facing, so I don't have to worry about players shouting "I take the Converse action!" Instead, players describe what their characters do, and I have a big list of "actions" that give me guidelines for adjudicating a very wide variety of approaches to social interaction. I've playtested it, and it works for me.
On the NPC also includes a system for tracking an NPC's bond level. Player characters can form bonds with recurring NPCs. The bond level is a measure of the strength of that bond. An NPC's bond level represents how familiar and friendly they are with the party - how likely they are to grant or refuse a favor, for example. The players can increase their bond level with an NPC by spending downtime with them, converting them to their player character's religion, giving them gifts, romancing them, or just hanging out.
I'm just saying, go read that original post if you haven't, for context.
Now I'm going to talk about NPC personality traits, bonds, ideals, flaws, and secrets (TBIFS). TBIFS were, along with backgrounds as a whole, one of 5e's more ingenious additions to D&D - little short-hands for how a character acts, who or what they're connected to, what they value, how they're deficient, and what they're hiding:
In the 2014 PHB, every player character background came with a handful of tables to randomly determine the character's TBIFS. I recommend using them as a starting point and then customizing them for the specific character. I would use them even in an old school game.
Of course, like many of 5e's better contributions to the game, TBIFS are a thing of the past in the 2024 version of the rules, replaced with one-word descriptors based on ability scores and alignment. Sigh.
But I still use TBIFS in my D&D games (5e or otherwise), and now I always will. I also use them for NPCs (including any intelligent monsters the player characters might talk to).
And so I thought, suddenly, in the middle of a sleepless night, that I should add a downtime activity that allows player characters to learn an NPC's TBIFS!
First, I made a slight change to the rules for calling on an NPC bond:
When a PC attempts to elicit a major favor from an NPC with which they have a bond, the PC makes a Charisma (Intimidation or Persuasion) check against the NPC’s social DC or a Strength (Intimidation) check against the NPC’s morale. The PC’s check has advantage if their request/threat resonates with the NPC’s ideals, bonds, flaws, or secrets.
This could probably be more broadly applied to social interaction in general, but I figure that in most social interaction scenarios, the players are unlikely to know any of this information about the NPC.
Next, I wrote up the rules for the new downtime activity:
Familiarize
The player character spends a week of downtime with the NPC in order to learn more about them. The player decides whether they would like to try to learn one of an NPC’s personality traits, ideals, bonds, flaws, or secrets.
Personality traits are learned at a rate of one trait per week of downtime spent with the NPC (no check required).
Ideals, bonds, flaws, and secrets are learned by making either a Wisdom (Insight) check (if the player wishes for their character to intuit the information) or a Charisma (Deception or Persuasion) check (if the player wishes for their character to trick the NPC into revealing/convince the NPC to reveal the information).
All checks are made against the NPC’s social DC. If the NPC is proficient in Deception, add their Deception bonus to the DC against Wisdom (Insight) checks. If the NPC is proficient in Insight, add their Insight bonus to the DC against Charisma (Deception) checks.
Successful Insight checks discover the information automatically and without the NPC necessarily knowing that the information has been discovered. Successful Deception or Persuasion checks result in a bond roll, which is modified by the bond level and degree of success or failure of the Charisma check:
Degree of Success/Failure Reaction Modifier
5-9 +/-1
10-14 +/-2
15-19 +/-3
20 +/-4
If the modified bond roll is greater than the current bond level, then the player character learns the desired information, and the bond improves by one.
If a Deception check fails, the bond level decreases by 1d4+1 levels, to a minimum of 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment