Playing off obscenely high bluff

[Raine_Sage]

Alright so I was just wondering how you general handle it when a player rolls so high on a bluff check that there's no conceivable way they could fail. Not from a mechanics viewpoint, but from a story viewpoint.

Namely when a character, with no magical assistance, tells a lie that is so obviously a lie that the person that they're lying too would have to have an INT of 7 to actually believe them.

Obviously if you're doing the + and - for good rp houserule you could always just give a -10 penalty for stupid lies but let's assume you're not doing that. How do you play off the elven ranger, in no disguise whatsoever, telling a Black Dragon, that they are in fact a tiefling assassin. While standing right in front of said dragon. With the body of the tiefling right next to them. Yes this actually happened once.

Since it was funny I had the Black dragon actually buy it for a moment before realizing that it was in fact impossible and the party had a good laugh at her expense.

[Grinner]

The way I see it, you have two options:


Go along with it.
Let common sense prevail, to hell with what the dice say.


The first is definitely funnier, but the second...well, if you're playing D&D, you're probably using the wrong system. I believe one of the DM Guides has something to say about blatantly false statements and Bluff, but the fact is that there's a culture around D&D which holds the rules sacred.

If I tossed the rules to the wind in favor of common sense, I would prepare for backlash. At least with certain kinds of players.

[Lorsa]

Saying something obviously false convincingly doesn't automatically make people believe you. It might make people believe you are insane though, for believing something that is obviously false.

[Socksy]

It's a -20 to bluff checks for completely nonsensical things. I think the example given was "I'm actually a lammasu polymorphed into a halfling by an evil wizard, you can believe everything I say because everyone knows lammasu are trustworthy."

In my last campaign session, a diplomancer convinced the fighter that he was a pelican polymorphed into a human. When the cleric and her maxed-out Sense Motive explained that pelicans couldn't be adventurers, it was explained that he was clearly an Awakened pelican.

[HighWater]

Saying something obviously false convincingly doesn't automatically make people believe you. It might make people believe you are insane though, for believing something that is obviously false.
This is a way to handle it.

But also consider the qualities of a good lie: a good lie doesn't immediately state what it desires people to regard as the "truth", it first casts doubt on what they currently believe to be true, before driving home the alternative explanation. Nobody with a +20 in Bluff will say "The sky is green." They will instead say "Due to optical illusions, blah blah, magic this, stuff that, etc. etc. and in the end the only logical conclusion is that the sky only APPEARS blue, but it is REALLY green." The simplest of lies for the OP example:

"Look Mr Black Dragon, sir, I know what this looks like, but a crazy wizard just body-shifted me with this elf..." Or "I take the shape of the fallen to torture their loved-ones." Or "I'm CURSED!!! Whaaaaa! *panic*" (THEREFORE it now becomes somewhat more reasonable I'm actually the Tiefling...)"

A high bluff score isn't so much in convincing people what you say might be true, but in convincing them that there's a reasonable course of events through which what you states may actually be true. In a world that is fueled by magic as much as DnD is and where curses and ways to hide magic are so rampantly abundant, is it really such a stretch to believe something happened to the tiefling which turned him into the elf, and the elf into the tiefling?...

Nothing is really "obviously false". The senses are not even to be trusted in our own reality (the scientific evidence on this is overwhelmingly massive, our entire perception of the world is based only loosely on what is detected by our senses, the rest is our brain trying to make sense of it), let alone in a reality that is so readily distorted by a force that defies all logic, even its own (actual magic). The dude makes the bluff check (opposed by sense motive and penalised by just how tricky the explanation needs to be)? Man he really knows how to twists his words to conform to a twisted reality... Whether you want the player to come up with the entire explanation or just let his character handle that, is up to DM fiat (but remember that players do not need to be able to do what their characters can, this really should also apply to social skills).

Add to that that "logic" really isn't as prevalent in our decisionmaking (emotions and feelings are very important) and that a high intelligence really doesn't prevent you from believing outright falsehoods (in DnD this falls quite rightly to WISDOM not Int, it takes a quite decent Int to come up with and understand convoluted and complicated conspiracy theories that are internally consistent, doesn't make them true in spite of this consistency).

Bluff is supposed to let you get away with... well, murder really.
A "normal" person lieing? --> no skillpoints in bluff, average charisma, so a score of 1-20. A Rogue who specialised in lieing and has a decent charisma (say +20 total) will even with the worst roll (a 1) tell a BETTER lie (21) than a normal person telling his BEST LIE EVER (rolled a 20). People tend to believe your best lies even when you're a normal person...

For a DM it's easier to nerf Bluff to "believable" lies as it makes it a lot harder for players to derail the story. You're perfectly justified in nixing gameshaping powers if it'll destroy the game, but prepare for some protest as people don't enjoy losing power, especially on an ad hoc basis and even more so when other powers aren't equally struck. And don't forget: as in DnD the unbelievable is true more often than not, just what is considered "believable"?...

[Svata]

In the given elf claiming to be the tiefling example, I would have gone with him saying something like, "Stupid elf, tried to true mind switch with me to take my place." That would be an unlikely but not impossible lie, and a good enugh bluff check, which I assume he got, would make it be believed.

[Slipperychicken]

You're supposed to use the adjustments for believability, that's part of 3.5's RAW. Neglecting to use that is improperly setting the DC, like giving someone a DC 10 Strength check to burst through a 5x5 stone wall.

[GolemsVoice]

The thing is, by allowing the player to roll the check, you allowed for the possibility that somebody might believe what he says. So now that the player has rolled very, very well, I feel it's bad form to take away his result AFTER he already has rolled for it.

If the lie is stupid or hard to swallow, you give penalties or don't allow the roll at all. You don't negate a roll after it has happened. After all, you wouldn't have negated it had it failed, so you have to allow success, too.

But as others said, D&D has so absurdly many ways to curse, change and generally confuse people that the best way to go about it, story-wise, would be magic. Now I don't know which spells black dragons have, and how much they know about magic, but it's likely the elf told a VERY compelling story, and the dragon just had a mental off-day or surrendered from too much long-winded babbling.

[hamishspence]

The way I see it, you have two options:


Go along with it.
Let common sense prevail, to hell with what the dice say.


The first is definitely funnier, but the second...well, if you're playing D&D, you're probably using the wrong system.

I like the OoTS approach to it:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0767.html

[Slipperychicken]

But as others said, D&D has so absurdly many ways to curse, change and generally confuse people that the best way to go about it, story-wise, would be magic. Now I don't know which spells black dragons have, and how much they know about magic, but it's likely the elf told a VERY compelling story, and the dragon just had a mental off-day or surrendered from too much long-winded babbling.

It's also worth mentioning that in D&D, anything is possible. The black dragon might actually have been a Tiefling assassin who was mindraped and polymorphed/reincarnated into being a dragon.

[Grinner]

I like the OoTS approach to it:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0767.html

That is exactly what I was thinking. :smallbiggrin:

[The Oni]

The way I generally play off incredible high bluff checks vs. completely impossible statements (i.e. the sky is purple and raining gumdrops backwards) is that the target of the bluff believes that the speaker believes it, and therefore believes that the speaker is utterly, genuinely insane. If the speaker happens to be holding large shiny weapons at the time, this also has the effect of an Intimidate check.

[Mr Beer]

If the player fails to embellish the so that it's possible, no matter how unlikely, then there is no reason that the target should believe them. You shouldn't be able to Bluff someone into thinking that up is down or pigs are chariots or whatever without some kind of an explanation.


The way I generally play off incredible high bluff checks vs. completely impossible statements (i.e. the sky is purple and raining gumdrops backwards) is that the target of the bluff believes that the speaker believes it, and therefore believes that the speaker is utterly, genuinely insane. If the speaker happens to be holding large shiny weapons at the time, this also has the effect of an Intimidate check.

This is a good way of dealing with it.

[Genth]

Just a thought - but at those high bluff levels, wouldn't it be basically impossible to imagine or say the actual argument the character makes? Since it would be the perfect choice of words and argument to make that person believe them. Bluff wouldn't JUST be about tone of voice or sincerity, but the actual way you make an argument. People can be convinced to believe pretty strange things. You -should- be able to bluff your way to making someone believe pigs are chariots, since it's a skill the -character-, not the player has.

[Mr Beer]

You -should- be able to bluff your way to making someone believe pigs are chariots, since it's a skill the -character-, not the player has.

Not if the player just says "no that's a chariot not a pig", not in my game anyway. If he says "a wizard is making you think it's a pig but actually it's a chariot", that can work.

[The Oni]

Sure. If you describe it in the highly technical (read: absolute B.S.) terminology of high-level illusion magic, then a bluff could conceivably convince someone that a pig is a chariot/a chariot is a pig.

That said, I once wrote a Liar Savant homebrew PRC class for Charisma-based casters whose abilities basically consisted of "if you can convince someone that it's true, your magic will actually make it true." With certain limits. (This included the ability to magically obtain an extra bullet for an empty ranged weapon by playing Dirty Harry.)

This of course works in a setting with a Planescape-like aesthetic, not so much some other settings.

[Genth]

We live in a world where people can bluff their way to 'selling' bridges. Where a hoax can be put online about a world leader and it can cause the stock market to crash. It just doesn't seem so ridiculous to me that an incredibly charismatic and good liar could get people to believe nigh anything.

You don't ask a player making a roll on a difficult ranged attack to precisely describe how they adjust for wind speed and the like, they just give the action and consequence they are trying to make. The 'end result' of the bluff - to make the person believe that the pig is a chariot - is what the player says, to ask them to accurately describe the argument they make and to say "Well, that's unconvincing, it doesn't work", kinda defeats the purpose of having a bluff skill.

It's not High Level Illusion magic, it's simply that humans (and by extension, elves, halflings, orc, and everyone else) are social creatures, and there are.. well, 'cheat codes' for the brain. Bluff is knowing those cheat codes.

[erikun]

First, I'd classify what exactly is an "unreasonable" bluff. Remember that said black dragon can likely change its appearance easier than a human changes their pants, lives with deception as a family pasttime, and has likely spent the last 700 years in setting up strange disguises and absurd situations to manipulate the local human civilization towards their own ends.

Your personal assassin, polymorphed and stuck in another form while the person they just killed is wearing the assassin's face? Is this completely unbelievable, or is this the same trick the dragon used last month to fake its own death? (And is this a trick that the dragon will be interested in using in the future? :smallbiggrin:)

Ultimately, though, you'll likely have this decision:

The way I see it, you have two options:


Go along with it.
Let common sense prevail, to hell with what the dice say.

The first means that the characters have a chance at doing pretty much anything they try, but it also means that the results can frequently come out as very silly - quite nice for a casual party sort of game, but maybe not what you want if your groups is trying for a gritty realistic setting. The second means denying that some situations would even be possible (or a bit better: having the NPC ask how/for proof) but as with above, sometimes one person's idea of "impossible" is not the same as someone else's.

[Tessman the 2nd]

Probably Swordsaged but, Bluffing someone just convinces them You think it is the truth, it doesn't convince them it to be the truth, but that you believe it.

[GolemsVoice]

The first means that the characters have a chance at doing pretty much anything they try, but it also means that the results can frequently come out as very silly - quite nice for a casual party sort of game, but maybe not what you want if your groups is trying for a gritty realistic setting.

My way of handling would be, as I said, to make the ruling before the dice are rolled. If success is impossible, you can't roll for it. If you can roll for it, success is possible. Thus, once you've allowed the roll, you're comitted to it's consequences.

[ComatosePhoenix]

I'd say have the Dragon Fall for it, but let the adventure party realize that the dragon is completely bonkers.

Adventurer: No I am the Tiefling assasin

Dragon: wonderful, have you brought me my Tea?

Adventurer: (most likely confused) I had but this elf assasin made me drop it

Dragon: Well don't just stand there pick it up.

Adventurer: (now very confused) as you wish sir

Dragon: CALL ME NORRIS

If the players want to have some fun, join them. It lets you steal the chips away from the fighter who just fell out of his chair.

[Sith_Happens]

Most systems I know of vary a bluff/lie's difficulty based on believability. Not that that helps much when they go and cast Glibness, but still.

EDIT: Just noticed this thread's in the 3.X subforum, somehow I thought it was in the general RPGs forum. So the reference to "most systems I know of" is rather unnecessary.

Specifically in 3.X (since that is in fact what this is being asked about), the target can get up to +20 on their Sense Motive this way.