Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything has landed! Hooray!

I immediately turned to the DM section to see what it could offer me. The answer is rather mixed, but that is to be expected: I am an experienced DM who is rather set in his ways. Advice on Session Zero is not new to me, and I tend not to include puzzles in adventures I design. I am sure there are many – and I hope you are one – who find the advice therein to be invaluable.

However, I found one section of the advice tremendously interesting, and that was “Parleying with Monsters”.

It also describes a few mechanics that I dislike, but your mileage may vary on that.

Desire-Based Diplomacy

I have mentioned before that I dislike negotiations where the entire interaction comes down to “roll a Charisma check” and you have no idea of how the character negotiated a successful result.

One of the ways of overcoming this is to provide a few things that the target wants, and so having the negotiation succeed if the players can offer the NPC the desired items. A guard may want money, or someone to pretend to be him to woo his potential girlfriend, or any number of possibilities.

How do the players determine what the NPC wants? That can change from situation to situation. Although I like the idea of role-playing it out, Wisdom (Insight) checks are one way of doing so. I suppose Charisma (Persuasion) might also work!

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything also offers the solution of using a knowledge skill to determine what an NPC wants – using History, Nature, Arcana, or Religion.

What Do You Desire?

The task of determining what an individual monster desires is made easier by Tasha’s, which has tables of potential desires for each creature type (i.e. humanoid, celestial, and aberration).

Unfortunately, these lists are quite incomplete, and lead to much duplication of items in an extended campaign – or even a campaign where you need to negotiate with the same type of creature again and again. So, take them as a spur to your imagination and expand on them as you will.

How then do the characters determine what an individual creature desires? I find the method described in Tasha’s incomplete. It suggests characters can research what a creature wants. Does that mean using the Research downtime task? That makes sense, but it is a little tricky to do in the middle of a negotiations. “Hold that thought – I’ll be back in a week!”

There are definitely times – especially with notable individuals with great poker faces – when doing some preliminary research is a great idea. “So, Tasha wants to be reunited with her Demonomicon. I guess we need to find that!” However, for your random guard or monster, this seems impractical. At this point, leading questions to the NPC in questions seem in order.

Perhaps Insight or a Charisma-based skill is needed to winkle out the details, or one of the knowledge-based skills can be used to determine where to start.

Yes, you might not know the specifics for a monster, but perhaps you are aware of a number of things they like? I would not like the answer to be presented immediately, but a range of options that can then be narrowed down seems like a good idea.

Note also that it is possible that a creature may want a few things – they do not all have to be monomaniacal!

Gaining One’s Desire

Now, what do you do if the characters provide the NPC with the object of their desire? Tasha’s suggests that it allows the Charisma check is made with advantage.

This is a solution. It is not the only one.

Consider occasionally that it allows an automatic success. “The Demonomicon? Great! You may enter Iuz’s domain through my secret teleporter!”

Or perhaps that it allows the check in the first place. Either you make the Charisma check with disadvantage if you cannot give the creature what it desires, or the check automatically fails.

You can use different techniques for different situations. Personally, I prefer not using dice if the players are happy role-playing out a situation but knowing what a creature wants makes it easier to shape the encounter. Meanwhile, if I have a group that prefers rolling dice to acting, then at least I can give explanations as to what is said during the negotiation.