So I was at a game just a little bit ago and something happened

Sounds reasonable to be annoyed.

You would have been within your rights to have the dude at least try and run away after the player failed. Or teleport away on some Fiat bullshit.

However, you didn't do that, and the players (as they may do) abused their privileges to get a benefit. Hence, the player got something you feel they didn't deserve, and your irritated.

Totally reasonable to be annoyed. It is, however, at least 50% your fault for letting the situation drag on. Next time, nut up, and take the carrot out of their reach.

One issue is that you let them roll.

If it's impossible for them to succeed even if they roll a 20, then you should tell them that. They're free to still attempt to perform the action after you tell them that, but if the DC is just too high, skip the dice roll and tell them that they were going to fail regardless of what they rolled, as you explained earlier. In this scenario, it seems like the DC could increase a little after each failure, and you can go ahead and use that as justification for why it would be beyond their ability to succeed.

But, I think the MAIN issue is that the player decided to do something you didn't like and was sort of out of character. Typically, the best way to go about handling this is just directly talking to the player. Explain that it's a very short and quick path to making a character unlikable by having them bully people, and it's kind of off-putting for players to abuse their power that way.

If that doesn't work, explaining things like potential consequences (you can't just rob a guy and not expect him t try to get some kind of revenge) might remind them not to press their luck. In fact, that option is still available, though honestly at this point it would seem more like you being petty, rather than the salesman.

>>52626321
Just have the guy hand him over a poison instead of the power potion; I mean who's to say what a magic power potion should look like? If he really is a back alley salesman he would have dealt with situations like this before and have a backup vial or to to hand over. You can even have the poison buff the character in the short term so the salesman has time to get away and then after a day or two the detrimental effects kick in.

>>52626321
Tell them this guy just watch them horribly fail to threaten him so many times he's actually toughed up and gained confidence. Basically he lowered in standing to them on an intimidation level.

Folks seem to forget NPC standings and reaction value. You can't just make your sworn blood rival agree to a plan because you passed ONE CHECK. You've got to work up towards it, slowly thawing out the hatred or annoyance they have for you. meanwhile if you keep failing they're only going to hate you more and make it harder to get them to agree to anything with you.

Also have the guy claim the players mugged him to the guards or something, cause they fucking did. Make this have concequences

>>52626321
Other people have given good advice so I'm going to go off on a tangent

Having every single player 'try their luck' at a skill is a terrible idea. It's just brute-forcing an issue via probability and shouldn't be allowed, and trivializes failure.

FATE has a good line about this. When you're rolling dice, both success AND failure should advance the story. You fail to intimidate the guy? He tells you to fuck off and leaves, or attacks you. He shouldn't stand there and wait for 6 other people to walk up to him and roll dice at him like he's slots machine. Intimidating him with 6 other people should give a bonus to the guy rolling Intimidate, but they don't ALL get to roll.

Hell, even oldschool D&D editions don't let you roll dice at problems until they go away. You try to have everyone in the party break down a stuck door? Enjoy your wandering monster checks!

>>52626321
The salesman should have disappeared into the shadows when his client tried to threaten him, long before he had time to return with a second person to try and threaten him.
The way I run it, the person who wishes to initiate something rolls, and if there's still time and it's reasonable, one other (usually the one with the available highest modifier) can roll. Keeps things fluid.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'm not surprised that some, if not most, of this is my fault for being a poor gm. I'll learn form this and try to act more appropriately next time. I could make a bunch of excuses but I feel confident in the fact that I blew it, I'm probably feeling disappointment in my self more so than angry.

Again, thanks for the advice.

>>52626321
Your mistake was having the guy just hang out while seven different people attempted to intimidate him into giving them free shit. At no point did the skeevy salesman say to himself "Yeah, fuck these guys, I'm out"?

>>52627078
OP, this guy is correct.

At the very least, have there be consequences for what the players did. Maybe later, the shady contact's organization shows up and it turns out they struck a deal with -insert party rival here-, and now the party will pay in blood.

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>>52626682
>When you're rolling dice, both success AND failure should advance the story. You fail to intimidate the guy? He tells you to fuck off and leaves, or attacks you. He shouldn't stand there and wait for 6 other people to walk up to him and roll dice at him like he's slots machine. Intimidating him with 6 other people should give a bonus to the guy rolling Intimidate, but they don't ALL get to roll.

>>52626527

This guy gets it. If there was no way he could ever succeed, why did you let him roll?

>>52626982
Nah, you didn't blow it, you just let it go in a flat direction at the end of the night. Understandable.

>>52626682 gives some great advice here. There's no shame in even telling your players you need a minute to think of how you should play the failure. That's much preferable to brute forcing a solution or you giving them a kneejerk ruling.

>>52626321
>first intimidate
>the guy mocks you
>second intimidate
>the guy tells you to fuck off
>third intimidate
>he calls for his goons or whatever to get you out / he closes his shop and leaves

>>52626321
size actually inflicts a +/- 4 modifier

>>52626321
I never allow multiple rolls on a single action, unless it's to spot an ambush and it determines who gets to act in the surprise round.

Highest modifier rolls, assists are valid if applicable (also makes larger concentrations of guards harder to sneak past). If players complain, point out this means that not everyone needs to take Perception, and it also means it's actually possible for them to sneak past groups of more than 4 creatures.

If players say that enemies shouldn't get multiple rolls while the players should, slice players' wrists and dump them in a shark tank.

>>52626321
- I intimidate the dude
- *rolls* you fail and he laughs at your empty threats
- k, I call Arnold the barbarian for a second intimidate roll
- the guy calls the town guard

The more it drags on the deeper the shit the party falls into. Sure, you can intimidate or kill the guards, but good fucking luck when you become wanted outlaws and have to deal with professional bounty hunters on top of that.

The party I DM for was also guilty of "roll cheese", where everyone rolls for a single check. Obviously this increases the odds of success immensely, so I implemented a new houserule:
>Each player takes a -2 cumulative penalty to checks that another player has already attempted.
So for example, if player A and player B both make intimate checks against the merchant (and fail), player C will have a -4 penalty to their intimidate check against the merchant.

When using this, it's important to remember that Nat 20s only succeed if a Nat 10 with a +10 bonus would succeed. So crit aren't necessarily automatic wins with a -12 penalty.

This makes sense in scenarios like intimidate where if you had six people fail to scare a dealer, he probably wouldn't be scared by another guy, but for skills like perception isn't doesn't make much sense. So yeah, it's bullshit artificial difficulty, but it's designed to cancel out bullshit artificial successes, so I think it's fair.