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Anlashok
2014-05-10, 01:41 PM
This assertion is a popular one I see directed at a lot of games (d&d, savage worlds, 40k, etc) and it's always been one that confuses me.

Because I in turn look at systems that are supposedly "good" at noncombat systems (something touted a lot by fate) and... I see that there's not a lot of extra stuff you gain in a social system over one of these "unsuited games".

Is it because they're not universally rules heavy or light? If anything can't that be a good thing? Heavy rules to adjudicate what happens during a scene that requires extra mechanical effort but rules that get out of the way when you're dealing with segments that should have more direct roleplaying?

Aedilred
2014-05-10, 02:07 PM
I think it's a question of perspective. If a system is very combat-heavy, combat will naturally draw attention, people will focus on combat applications for their plans, equipment, skill choices, and generally pay more attention to combat than other areas of the rules. If you're not careful, the game can make it look like roleplaying is what happens between combats.

It's not just the roleplaying talk-y bits that might get overlooked, too, but anything that isn't combat-related.

Of course, it is quite difficult to come up with mechanics for social roleplay that are actually worth having.

toapat
2014-05-10, 02:19 PM
it can be broken down into a few parts:

DnD for example:

It is very easy to make a character who sucks at RP. They will be strong mechanically, but socially a character who can compete well on all fronts needs Intimidate, Sense Motive, Bluff, and Diplomacy to do well, Thats 4 skillpoints.

Comparatively, say Mage: The Awakening, needs you to think about your actions alot more. It forces roleplay constantly.


Alot of it comes from people who dont understand that the difference between the combat rules is that those are definite while the social rules are guidelines usedd moreso to present who your character is.

Yora
2014-05-10, 02:22 PM
I like games in which most things that happen are not combat. But I much rather play these things out as it is plausible and makes for a good story. I don't want to play mini-games and get distracted by rules and dice while we're playing out conversations and negotiations. If it happens that a proposal or request of the PCs is not obviously in the NPCs best interest but also not outright denied, I make a single Charisma roll at the very end to see how persuasive the PC had been.

The best social interaction rules are those that are very short and simple.

NichG
2014-05-10, 02:57 PM
The way I'd look at it is to say, if you take the set of choices you can make about your character in the process of character creation, what percentage of those choices are going to be influencing primarily non-combat things, what percentage will be influencing primarily combat things, and what percentage will have a significant impact on both. This also has to be weighted somewhat in terms of the impact of each choice (e.g. where you put each skill point is not the same value as what class levels you have in D&D).

Systems for which there are far more primarily-combat choices than primarily-noncombat choices are basically biased towards combat, regardless of the mechanical complexity of the various subsystems - most of the meaningful decisions that the player makes about their character have to do with how that character performs in a fight.

What can make it more extreme is if there's a strong combat bias and a large number of choices via which you can trade non-combat ability for combat ability. In that case, not only may the system be biased towards combat, but it may also encourage players to 'dump' non-combat things in favor of combat. Similarly, if you had a strong non-combat bias and a large number of 'trade-off' choices you could get the reverse effect.

The reason a lot of rules-lite systems get praised as not having this bias is that they don't have many character choices that matter very much for combat so there's very little pressure to put a lot of focus on a character's combat ability since you can't really go very far in that direction usually. However, that does not actually resolve the issue for people who do want a rules-heavier system that is not extremely combat focused. Dense social mechanics are not necessarily the answer though.

One way to do it is to just make a lot more choices at character generation that have a strong impact on the character's non-combat situation. For example, 7th Sea has Arcana which allow characters to have either positive abilities like 'find a friend in any port' or flaws which the DM can activate 'you fall in love at the drop of a hat, and fall in love with this person'. It also has things like Backgrounds which are choices about the sorts of plots you want the campaign to involve, and Advantages which are often things like 'this character is from nobility' or 'this character went to university', with impacts on the overall way that the character integrates into the world (even though there aren't really any particularly complex social mechanics in the game).

Actana
2014-05-10, 03:15 PM
This assertion is a popular one I see directed at a lot of games (d&d, savage worlds, 40k, etc) and it's always been one that confuses me.

Because I in turn look at systems that are supposedly "good" at noncombat systems (something touted a lot by fate) and... I see that there's not a lot of extra stuff you gain in a social system over one of these "unsuited games".

Is it because they're not universally rules heavy or light? If anything can't that be a good thing? Heavy rules to adjudicate what happens during a scene that requires extra mechanical effort but rules that get out of the way when you're dealing with segments that should have more direct roleplaying?

One large factor about systems that are or are not suited to non-combat things is how heavy they are otherwise. D&D is a very rules heavy game so people go into D&D expecting heavy rules, but it fails to deliver any decent rules heavy mechanics outside of combat.

Whereas Fate, as you mentioned, doesn't have that much more "non-combat" things, it doesn't have any more combat things either. Fate Core is a very rules light system, and it handles non-combat scenes exactly the same as combat ones (supplements and alternative rules can of course change this, but at its core (hue hue hue) combat and non-combat situations are virtually identical mechanically in Fate). People do not go into Fate expecting a game that is heavy on the rules, and therefore the rule-lightness of the game allows equal coverage for both combat and non-combat situations.

As for the "non-combat should be roleplayed" argument... I've never really subscribed to that notion. In an ideal world everyone would be perfectly capable of playing characters who have high "mental stats", but that's just not going to happen. I don't really see any reason mechanics and roleplaying have to be exclusive from each other either - mechanics can supplement roleplaying and vice versa, both in combat and outside of it.

neonchameleon
2014-05-10, 08:39 PM
This assertion is a popular one I see directed at a lot of games (d&d, savage worlds, 40k, etc) and it's always been one that confuses me.

Because I in turn look at systems that are supposedly "good" at noncombat systems (something touted a lot by fate) and... I see that there's not a lot of extra stuff you gain in a social system over one of these "unsuited games".

Is it because they're not universally rules heavy or light? If anything can't that be a good thing? Heavy rules to adjudicate what happens during a scene that requires extra mechanical effort but rules that get out of the way when you're dealing with segments that should have more direct roleplaying?

There are several factors going on here - of which many are subtle. And some aren't. And as mentioned, there's the relative size and shininess of the combat engine (something 4e suffers badly from - that's an extremely spiffy combat engine and a workmanlike social game).

Also Fate is actually pretty trad. It's a vast improvement on D&D - but this doesn't make it exceptional. AD&D is weak (there's only a charisma stat) and D&D 3.X is little better (despite superficial similarities, 4e is a bit better thanks to the later versions of the skill challenge rules (the DMG1 one being worse than useless). Fate's a good all rounder, but it's no Smallville, Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, My Life With Master, or Hillfolk. Pessimal would be something with hideously complex resolution, but I digress.

So where does fate score socially over D&D? Let's start by comparing the social skills. 3.5 has Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Disguise, Perform, and Sense Motive. Fate has Deceive, Empathy, Provoke, Rapport, Will, Resources, and Contacts. Doesn't seem like much? The last two are critical - they set your place in the world. Social status matters. Also 3.X has 6 social skills out of 36 - and the average character has at most a dozen skills. Fate has seven social skills out of 18 - and a starting character has ten trained at various levels. You can be anti-social, but few characters lack any means of skilled social interaction (even if it's only provoke). So using the skill system, Fate characters have a much bigger social focus, and one that reaches out into the world's background rather than simply is about the here and now. (4e and Pathfinder are both slight improvements on 3.X here because they cut down the number of skills - but the difference is minor).

Then let's look at how you use the skills. By the RAW in D&D the only thing you do directly with Perform is earn money (and by adventuring standards you only earn trivial quantities). But let's look at a couple of real world actions.

The first is going to be pretty silly. Use a pickup line like "Baby someone had better call Hieronius. Because he's missing an angel!" How do you handle that in D&D? If you had a robot DM it would be bluff - you're lying so you check if it's believed (on a good enough roll your target ends up believing they are an angel?). More sensibly it's diplomacy as a single round action - but that's still an ugly fit. In Fate it doesn't just matter how you are doing things, but what you are trying to do. It's obviously trying for Rapport (a much better fit than Diplomacy) - but you are trying to use your Rapport to create an advantage for later, a mechanically defined part of Fate. What you are doing has useful consequences. You probably take a harder DC for your Rapport check for such a bad line... (This incidentally is one of the places 4e has an advantage - skill challenges which are N successes before 3 failures allows you to take mechanically useful supporting actions rather than simple pass/fail.)

Let's take another example. You want to get past the Royal Guards so disguise yourself as the Baron of Lostville. Your disguise check does what? Shows you how well you've disguised yourself. "You might be the Baron of Lostville, but you're still not coming in without written instruction". Perfectly legitimate in 3.X - but the Fate split between Creating an Advantage and Overcoming an Obstacle means that you know which you are doing in advance, and the effect of the successful disguise (using Deceive). Once again the Fate skills and actions just line up better with what the characters are trying to do than the 3.X ones, making it superior for this purpose.

Now let's look outside the skill system (where Fate does what's wanted with less struggling than 3.X or 4E) and at things that support skills. In D&D 3.X you have spells. And the point of D&D style spells is to render challenges irrelevant. Picking people up in a bar as in the first example? Charm Person. Trying to get past the guards as in the second? Charm Person. Charm Person and a number of other spells flat out allow you to bypass or utterly subvert social situations and make the non combat game weaker. In Fate you get Aspects, Stunts, and Fate Points. Aspects tie you to the world and other people, increasing the social play of the game. Stunts are like Feats on steroids (see below for my absolute favourite stunt updated to Fate Core - most of them are more prosaic). Aspects tie you to the world, to other characters, and to motivations, and so add to the social side as well as adding to the stakes. And Fate Points let you declare what truly matters to you and so build up the motivation and the tension. And allow you to turn things round by being that good - further adding to the social side.


Master of Disguise [Deceit]

The character can convincingly pass himself off as nearly anyone with a little time and preparation. 1/Session the player temporarily stops playing. His character is presumed to have donned a disguise and gone “off camera”. At any subsequent point during play the player may choose any nameless, filler character (a villain’s minion, a bellboy in the hotel, the cop who just pulled you over) in a scene and reveal that that character is actually the PC in disguise!

The character may remain in this state for as long as the player chooses, but if anyone is tipped off that he might be nearby, an investigator may spend a fate point and roll Investigate against the disguised character’s Deceit. If the investigator wins, his player (which may be the GM) gets to decide which filler character is actually the disguised PC (“Wait a minute – you’re the Emerald Emancipator!”).

So as I think I've been through there;s a lot you do socially in Fate that's aided and abetted by the rules that at best has gears squeaking and grinding in D&D. The small flourishes matter more than the big ones.

Amidus Drexel
2014-05-11, 02:24 AM
So where does fate score socially over D&D? Let's start by comparing the social skills. 3.5 has Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Disguise, Perform, and Sense Motive. Fate has Deceive, Empathy, Provoke, Rapport, Will, Resources, and Contacts. Doesn't seem like much? The last two are critical - they set your place in the world. Social status matters. Also 3.X has 6 social skills out of 36 - and the average character has at most a dozen skills. Fate has seven social skills out of 18 - and a starting character has ten trained at various levels. You can be anti-social, but few characters lack any means of skilled social interaction (even if it's only provoke). So using the skill system, Fate characters have a much bigger social focus, and one that reaches out into the world's background rather than simply is about the here and now. (4e and Pathfinder are both slight improvements on 3.X here because they cut down the number of skills - but the difference is minor).

Let's take another example. You want to get past the Royal Guards so disguise yourself as the Baron of Lostville. Your disguise check does what? Shows you how well you've disguised yourself. "You might be the Baron of Lostville, but you're still not coming in without written instruction". Perfectly legitimate in 3.X - but the Fate split between Creating an Advantage and Overcoming an Obstacle means that you know which you are doing in advance, and the effect of the successful disguise (using Deceive). Once again the Fate skills and actions just line up better with what the characters are trying to do than the 3.X ones, making it superior for this purpose.

So as I think I've been through there;s a lot you do socially in Fate that's aided and abetted by the rules that at best has gears squeaking and grinding in D&D. The small flourishes matter more than the big ones.

I'd like to point out that 3.5 has a some more skills that I would add to this list, at least for your comparison to Fate; namely, Gather Information and Forgery. Gather Information is a straight-up social skill, without question. Forgery is pretty much only useful when you're going to be interacting with people, so it makes sense to put it in this category (at least for the comparison).

If the goal is to get past the guards by deceiving them, all you really need is a Forgery check - but you could also use Bluff or Disguise. If one of those three doesn't work, you can try one of the others (and given the nature of these skills, nothing prohibits you from using all three at the same time). Similar effects can be created with a variety of spells (conjuring documents, magical disguises, charming, etc.).

Your other examples (and your general conclusion that Fate handles social interaction more mechanically than 3.5 does) I agree with you on, but that one needed nitpicking. :smallwink:

Ravens_cry
2014-05-11, 02:50 AM
Eh, there isn't many systems that are bad at role play. While some may have various carrots to encourage it, like Exalted's stunt system, I can't think of any sticks to prevent it actively. Just because your character is bad at social interaction, with all the finesse of a rampaging grizzly, does not mean they are bad at role play, that just means that's the role they play.

Zombimode
2014-05-11, 04:18 AM
So as I think I've been through there;s a lot you do socially in Fate that's aided and abetted by the rules that at best has gears squeaking and grinding in D&D. The small flourishes matter more than the big ones.

Well, that might be true, but you are presenting D&D 3.5 in a bad light - quite unfairly so, since you seem to miss quite a few of the finer points of the system. I take that you don't actually play 3.5?
But lets look over your examples, shall we?


Then let's look at how you use the skills. By the RAW in D&D the only thing you do directly with Perform is earn money (and by adventuring standards you only earn trivial quantities).

This is actually not true at all. If it were true, the Perform skill would read "15: you get 1W10 SP ..."
But using the perform skill results, as you would expect, in a performance by your character. This performance is given a qualitative descriptor based on the result of the skill check. Ie. with a 25 your character achieves a "memorable" performance. Now the rules can't tell you the effects of a performance, because that is entirely dependent on the situation.
Also, you get attention and reputation as a direct per RAW result of perform checks.
From my experience, Perform is a very powerful tool in the players arsenal.


The first is going to be pretty silly. Use a pickup line like "Baby someone had better call Hieronius. Because he's missing an angel!" How do you handle that in D&D? If you had a robot DM it would be bluff - you're lying so you check if it's believed (on a good enough roll your target ends up believing they are an angel?). More sensibly it's diplomacy as a single round action - but that's still an ugly fit.

What is the character trying to do? Most likely to influence another creatures attitude, right? Thats right there in Diplomacies core functionality.
You are misrepresenting the diplomacy check as the pick-up line. Why would you do that? Is the character time constrained and has only 6 seconds to impress the lady? If not, the pick-up line is just the start, followed by a drink, some small talk and what you have. All of this is represented by the diplomacy check.
But you know what? I agree that D&D is bad at representing romance encounter mechanically.


Let's take another example. You want to get past the Royal Guards so disguise yourself as the Baron of Lostville. Your disguise check does what? Shows you how well you've disguised yourself. "You might be the Baron of Lostville, but you're still not coming in without written instruction". Perfectly legitimate in 3.X - but the Fate split between Creating an Advantage and Overcoming an Obstacle means that you know which you are doing in advance, and the effect of the successful disguise (using Deceive). Once again the Fate skills and actions just line up better with what the characters are trying to do than the 3.X ones, making it superior for this purpose.

I don't understand this example. The D&D character tries to disguise himself to get past the guards. The intent of the actions seems pretty clear to me: "I will disguise myself as someone who surely has the authority to get past the guards." That this action alone is not sufficient to overcome the obstacle of the guards is not a fault of the disguise skill, or the D&D system in general.
Now, I don't know Fate at all, but if a Fate character tries to use Deceive to get past the guards in this situation, the results should be the same. If not, the Fate character does more than just disguising himself and at this point, the comparison breaks down (because the D&D character could also do more than just disguising himself). This really seems like a strawman comparison.


Now let's look outside the skill system (where Fate does what's wanted with less struggling than 3.X or 4E) and at things that support skills. In D&D 3.X you have spells. And the point of D&D style spells is to render challenges irrelevant. Picking people up in a bar as in the first example? Charm Person. Trying to get past the guards as in the second? Charm Person. Charm Person and a number of other spells flat out allow you to bypass or utterly subvert social situations and make the non combat game weaker.

And this point, you've completely lost it. There are two important points you are missing: 1) in most cases using magic achieves something similar but not equal to mundane methods. That means despite apparent outside similarities of the results, the magic user might act in qualitative different way. I will elaborate in a second. 2) sure, magic can achieve lots of things, but the countermeasures come in quantity.

Picking people up in a bar with Charm Person? I hope you can see the difference between that and using normal methods. The former is more akin to drug another persons drink to take advantage of him/her later on. In many countries this counts as (attempted) rape. The magic user who uses Charm Person to get laid is acting qualitative differently than one who uses pick-up lines/diplomacy. It might get him in trouble while doing so, even, but more on that in the next point.

Getting past the royal guards with Charm Person? A bad idea in many respects.
First: these royal guards don't have any countermeasures against mind-affecting effects? Not even Moment of Perfect Mind? Yeah, I don't buy it.
Second (more important): Charm Person is single target. It also has somatic and verbal components. How does casting such a spell will help you in this situation? "HALT! You have casted a spell without permisson while dealing with Royal Guards while trying to get access to something. By the law of King Augustin IV. you are hereby to be executed on the spot." Besides, even if it were just one guard who fails it saving throw and has no other protections, the spell does not render the obstacle irrelevant: "The spell does not enable you to control the charmed person as if it were an automaton, but it perceives your words and actions in the most favorable way. You can try to give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn’t ordinarily do. (Retries are not allowed.)"


In essence, the rules of D&D 3.5 for non-combat situations are better then you (and many others) give them credit. This is probably the result of you a) not reading the rules carefully enough, and/or b) not actually playing 3.5 to get an experience on how the system behave in actual play.

neonchameleon
2014-05-11, 06:00 AM
I'd like to point out that 3.5 has a some more skills that I would add to this list, at least for your comparison to Fate; namely, Gather Information and Forgery. Gather Information is a straight-up social skill, without question. Forgery is pretty much only useful when you're going to be interacting with people, so it makes sense to put it in this category (at least for the comparison).

Gather information is a very good point :) Forgery - once we move that far out we have a whole can of worms.


Well, that might be true, but you are presenting D&D 3.5 in a bad light - quite unfairly so, since you seem to miss quite a few of the finer points of the system. I take that you don't actually play 3.5?

Does Pathfinder count? If not I haven't played 3.5 in years. If so I am later today.


This is actually not true at all. If it were true, the Perform skill would read "15: you get 1W10 SP ..."
But using the perform skill results, as you would expect, in a performance by your character. This performance is given a qualitative descriptor based on the result of the skill check. Ie. with a 25 your character achieves a "memorable" performance. Now the rules can't tell you the effects of a performance, because that is entirely dependent on the situation.

In short they are near meaningless.


From my experience, Perform is a very powerful tool in the players arsenal.

Performance is almost a pure DM Fiat skill and how powerful it is is determined by the DM.


What is the character trying to do? Most likely to influence another creatures attitude, right? Thats right there in Diplomacies core functionality.
You are misrepresenting the diplomacy check as the pick-up line. Why would you do that? Is the character time constrained and has only 6 seconds to impress the lady?

First the Bluff was being flippant. Secondly you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And people using cheesy pickup lines are normally expecting to get shot down.

[quoote]I don't understand this example. The D&D character tries to disguise himself to get past the guards. The intent of the actions seems pretty clear to me: "I will disguise myself as someone who surely has the authority to get past the guards." That this action alone is not sufficient to overcome the obstacle of the guards is not a fault of the disguise skill, or the D&D system in general.[/quote]

That RAW there is no mechanical way to overcome the obstacle (that doesn't involve magic) is.


Now, I don't know Fate at all, but if a Fate character tries to use Deceive to get past the guards in this situation, the results should be the same.

The mapping isn't perfect. And most skills can be used to both Create an Advantage and Overcome an Obstacle, with the former having a defined mechanical effect (something D&D doesn't normally have).


And this point, you've completely lost it. There are two important points you are missing: 1) in most cases using magic achieves something similar but not equal to mundane methods.

In most cases similar means superior.


2) sure, magic can achieve lots of things, but the countermeasures come in quantity.

And almost all of them are magic.


Picking people up in a bar with Charm Person? I hope you can see the difference between that and using normal methods.

Of course. The point is it walks utterly round the skill rules.


Getting past the royal guards with Charm Person? A bad idea in many respects.
First: these royal guards don't have any countermeasures against mind-affecting effects? Not even Moment of Perfect Mind? Yeah, I don't buy it.

Because Royal Guards are all Martial Adepts using the Bo9S. And all of them consider Concentration the most vital skill. Riiiiiight. The best way to stop 3.X spellcasters is by having Tippyverse level ubiquitous magic - or an arms race. This much I will accept.


Second (more important): Charm Person is single target. It also has somatic and verbal components. How does casting such a spell will help you in this situation? "HALT! You have casted a spell without permisson while dealing with Royal Guards while trying to get access to something.

So your Royal Guards are now not only all trained using the Bo9S, they are all trained in Spellcraft, and all Telepaths so they know why the spell was cast right now? Riiiiiight. I'd expect them to be something like Warrior-4 myself. And you seem to be assuming that Charm Person is a spell that has a range of Touch rather than can be cast from more than 25 feet away. And you were saying I was misrepresenting the rules?


Besides, even if it were just one guard who fails it saving throw and has no other protections, the spell does not render the obstacle irrelevant: "The spell does not enable you to control the charmed person as if it were an automaton, but it perceives your words and actions in the most favorable way. You can try to give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn’t ordinarily do. (Retries are not allowed.)"

If "Most favourable way" doesn't make it pretty trivial then Diplomacy is irrelevant as a skill.


In essence, the rules of D&D 3.5 for non-combat situations are better then you (and many others) give them credit. This is probably the result of you a) not reading the rules carefully enough, and/or b) not actually playing 3.5 to get an experience on how the system behave in actual play.

And now you're into the Oberoni fallacy. People do not use the 3.5 social skills as written. That is because as written they are terrible in all the ways I've just indicated and you've had to make your Royal Guard telepathic martial adepts to get round. The rules play better than they read because most DMs aren't idiots and don't use them except for inspiration.

Raimun
2014-05-11, 06:30 AM
I think you can't have too complex social mechanics in an RPG-game. If you do, social encounters just slow down. Most of the time, it's best to roleplay the situation and then roll a relevant skill to see if you fail or succeed. That way, you still get to be creative but the outcome is still determined how skilled your character is. Just because the idea is solid, its execution might be not.

Even in systems where the rules for combat outweight the rules for social encounters (and other non-combat combined), it's still usually worth it to take social skills. For example, in D&D, if your Class Features and Feats are already finely tuned for brutal slaughter of your enemies, that is most likely enough and you are free to use your skill points for social skills.

Zombimode
2014-05-11, 09:44 AM
In short they are near meaningless.

That fact that the character is giving a performance and that this performance is either bad, routine, enjoyable, great, memorable or extraordinary is meaningless, how exactly?
Because I'm sure if the situation calls for a performance that a character can provide one with clearly defined results is quite meaningful.
Sure, if you never get in such a situation... but how is that different to any other ability?


Performance is almost a pure DM Fiat skill and how powerful it is is determined by the DM.

Sure, in the same way that the relevance of any ability is determined by the DM. This is only natural as the DM provides the setting and the obstacles. Nothing will really protect you from a bad DM. So... don't play with bad DMs, I guess?


First the Bluff was being flippant. Secondly you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And people using cheesy pickup lines are normally expecting to get shot down.

... your point being?



That RAW there is no mechanical way to overcome the obstacle (that doesn't involve magic) is.

What? A successful disguise check with a successfully forged invitation paper to get past guards who are instructed to only let people through that are both recognizable as proper guests AND have the correct invitation papers is not within the system? How?

You've completely lost me here.


The mapping isn't perfect. And most skills can be used to both Create an Advantage and Overcome an Obstacle, with the former having a defined mechanical effect (something D&D doesn't normally have).

Again, from my perspective of next to no knowledge of Fate, it seems that the rules operate on different paradigms, which makes a comparison difficult - and open to bias.


In most cases similar means superior.

Well, things really aren't that easy. You know the term "strictly better" from Magic The Gathering? In that game, despite having 12000+ cards, lots of them doing rather similar things, only very few cards are actually strictly better then others.
Invisibility is sometimes better then hiding, sometimes not. Diplomacy, Bluff and Sense Motive can be used in situations were spells cannot. Magic can be detected, it can be dispelled, and mind-affecting spells are almost alway hostile. Barring a few corner cases, magic is limited, while skills aren't.
You just can't make a general statement that magic is in most cases superior. It simply isn't true.


And almost all of them are magic.

Sure, your point being?


Of course. The point is it walks utterly round the skill rules.

Yes? Because influencing the mind of others with magic IS a different type of action than trying to influence them with argument and wit? In short: I don't see your point.


Because Royal Guards are all Martial Adepts using the Bo9S. And all of them consider Concentration the most vital skill. Riiiiiight. The best way to stop 3.X spellcasters is by having Tippyverse level ubiquitous magic - or an arms race. This much I will accept.

Moment of Perfect Mind is available to all creatures with 2HD or more for the cost of one feat. And yes, I consider high profile guards to have the easiest method of defense available against will save effects to be quite believable. This is also not an arms race. In a typical (non-tipy) fantasy setting, there are lots of dangerous creatures and abilities that target will saves. Warding high profile guards against at least some of those is quite sensible.


So your Royal Guards are now not only all trained using the Bo9S, they are all trained in Spellcraft, and all Telepaths so they know why the spell was cast right now? Riiiiiight. I'd expect them to be something like Warrior-4 myself. And you seem to be assuming that Charm Person is a spell that has a range of Touch rather than can be cast from more than 25 feet away. And you were saying I was misrepresenting the rules?

You don't need to have spellcraft to realize a spell was cast. They also don't need to be telepaths because casting a spell in this situation is potentially dangerous. If you draw a gun while the president makes a speech, the guards WILL bring you down regardless of your intent.
Also, high-profile guards as warrior level 4 is not believable in my book, at least not in reasonably high-fantasy settings.
Sure, Charm Person is a short range spell. Depending on the situation, that will allow you to cast it without the guards noticing it. It is, in any case, not a free pass.


If "Most favourable way" doesn't make it pretty trivial then Diplomacy is irrelevant as a skill.

A guard who is instructed to not let anyone pass who is not recognizable as an authorized person OR who does not have the proper invitation papers, will not let you through automatically while charmed. It is not something the guard would normally do. So you need to make the opposed Cha check. Possible, but not a free pass.


And now you're into the Oberoni fallacy. People do not use the 3.5 social skills as written. That is because as written they are terrible in all the ways I've just indicated and you've had to make your Royal Guard telepathic martial adepts to get round. The rules play better than they read because most DMs aren't idiots and don't use them except for inspiration.

No. My point is, the rules are quite decent if people would actually read the carefully and not interpret them in stupid ways (ask someone what he thinks the Bluff skills allows. Hint: this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0767.html) is not actually supported by the rules, but many people, especially those who think the bluff rules are bad, do believe so). They aren't perfect, but they are better them people given them credit for.

But something tells me that you and I have both vastly different experiences with D&D and likely also different expectations to what a system should provide. So maybe we can agree to disagree?

Coidzor
2014-05-11, 01:47 PM
Eh, there isn't many systems that are bad at role play. While some may have various carrots to encourage it, like Exalted's stunt system, I can't think of any sticks to prevent it actively. Just because your character is bad at social interaction, with all the finesse of a rampaging grizzly, does not mean they are bad at role play, that just means that's the role they play.

Nah, a rampaging grizzly would at least be scary or scandalous. Seems we're more talking about something so anemic it doesn't even get noticed and is thus a nonentity.

toapat
2014-05-11, 02:42 PM
there are some cases you can explicitly point to where the game is mechanically bad at Roleplay (See: 3.5's poor skill system) but i dont know of anything where the system is intentionally bad

Coidzor
2014-05-11, 03:16 PM
there are some cases you can explicitly point to where the game is mechanically bad at Roleplay (See: 3.5's poor skill system) but i dont know of anything where the system is intentionally bad

Well, no, we've got quite enough problems without people making the system intentionally bad. It's just that whether or not they intend for things to be bad, if their focus is on the combat system and they neglect everything else then there are going to be consequences for that.

neonchameleon
2014-05-11, 04:28 PM
I think you can't have too complex social mechanics in an RPG-game. If you do, social encounters just slow down. Most of the time, it's best to roleplay the situation and then roll a relevant skill to see if you fail or succeed. That way, you still get to be creative but the outcome is still determined how skilled your character is. Just because the idea is solid, its execution might be not.

The most complex I'm aware of that works better than freeform is Monsterhearts, and there you have a few skills (with yes-but results possible) and Strings, that represent one unit of emotional hold and can be spent to do things including offering other PCs XP to take actions. Anything more complex IME gets in the way.


That fact that the character is giving a performance and that this performance is either bad, routine, enjoyable, great, memorable or extraordinary is meaningless, how exactly?

1: The variance is far, far too great. You can have the same PC missing DC 10 one night and hitting DC 25 the next. So all a great performance does is show you aren't an absolute beginner.

2: It's memorable. It gets you talked about. That's about it. Other than the cash gathering function, there's no more useful mechanics there than there would be in 4e that doesn't have the Perform skill at all.


Sure, in the same way that the relevance of any ability is determined by the DM. This is only natural as the DM provides the setting and the obstacles. Nothing will really protect you from a bad DM. So... don't play with bad DMs, I guess?

On the other hand Spells always in 3.X do what they say on the tin. There's a huge disconnect here between skills and spells.


Again, from my perspective of next to no knowledge of Fate, it seems that the rules operate on different paradigms, which makes a comparison difficult - and open to bias.

They do operate on slightly different paradigms. The paradigm Fate operates on is that preparation is always possible.


Invisibility is sometimes better then hiding, sometimes not.

Here I'm going to switch systems. In Pathfinder invisibility gives someone moving +20 to their hide check where relevant (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/i/invisibility). It trumps almost all mundane hiding (and people get really upset with 4e because in that Invisibility just means you aren't seen rather than that you are also hidden).


Diplomacy, Bluff and Sense Motive can be used in situations were spells cannot.

Where "situations" are generally within an Anti-Magic Field. See, for instance 3.5 Glibness. Which, by the way, isn't actually a hostile spell.


Magic can be detected, it can be dispelled,

In short, the solution to magic is more magic.


Barring a few corner cases, magic is limited, while skills aren't.

And a fifth level wizard has more spells in a day than Gandalf cast in the entire Lord of the Rings. 3.X casters are swimming in magic. They have absurd amounts of it for a supposedly limited resource.


You just can't make a general statement that magic is in most cases superior. It simply isn't true.

You can't say it is in all cases. You can say in most.


Moment of Perfect Mind is available to all creatures with 2HD or more for the cost of one feat. And yes, I consider high profile guards to have the easiest method of defense available against will save effects to be quite believable.

"For the cost of one feat". Yeaaaahhh. How many feats after first level do you think most people have? And the average non-caster is going to have no ranks in the concentration skill. So the cost is going to be significantly more than one feat if you want Moment of Perfect Mind to be a better pick than Iron Will. And this doesn't take into account that Moment of Perfect Mind is in a splatbook that's commonly banned (Bo9S is IMO the best splatbook for 3.5 - but that still doesn't mean it's going to be legal).

Skills that are going to be more important for a guard than Concentration.

1: Profession (Guard)
2: Knowledge (Nobility and Royalty)
3: Diplomacy (or Intimidate depending what's being guarded).
4: Sense Motive
5: Perception
6: Intimidate (or Diplomacy)
7: Gather Information.
8: Heal

Commonly also Climb, Jump, Swim, Move Silently. And for most guards even Craft (Underwater Basketweaving) is more important than Concentration.


This is also not an arms race.

Of course it isn't an arms race. You aren't dumping probably their only feat past level 1 and one of their far too few skills into things that aren't going to be used from day to day. And Royal Guards are still mooks - in this case parade ground troops whose main job is to deal with inquisitive or bolshy aristocrats. They aren't normally a crack anti-PC force. Their main job in guarding is like normal security guards - make sure that people can't go into the wrong places accidentally, or with only trivial effort. Meaning that you can throw the book at anything that bypasses them. Store security staff are paid not to catch crooks but to make it awkward for them, so they go elsewhere.


In a typical (non-tipy) fantasy setting, there are lots of dangerous creatures and abilities that target will saves. Warding high profile guards against at least some of those is quite sensible.

As I said above, Royal Guards are normally parade ground troops. They aren't the best available or anything like - you wouldn't waste genuinely good people on guarding doors. They are there to make sure that there aren't any accidents.


You don't need to have spellcraft to realize a spell was cast. They also don't need to be telepaths because casting a spell in this situation is potentially dangerous. If you draw a gun while the president makes a speech, the guards WILL bring you down regardless of your intent.

Ah, you're thinking of the Secret Service. The spies and the bodyguards. The genuine ones who are more likely to look like a Lady of the Court than in Royal Guard Plumes. The reason that in a lot of fiction guards and jailers are both treated as mooks is because they commonly are. Uniformed Guards are where you want a visible presence, which is very different from an effective one.


Also, high-profile guards as warrior level 4 is not believable in my book, at least not in reasonably high-fantasy settings.

Why? Do you think the level is too high, or that they should be Aristocrat level 4 because it has skills more like what they do?


No. My point is, the rules are quite decent if people would actually read the carefully and not interpret them in stupid ways (ask someone what he thinks the Bluff skills allows. Hint: this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0767.html) is not actually supported by the rules,

Hint: About half of that is simply hard to believe or things that are almost too incredible to consider. Which is only +20 to Bluff DC. The idea that Tarquin would be playing silly buggers with his manual as a test is not entirely implausible, so a bluff could convince people of that. The reason that most of that wouldn't work by the rules as written isn't what Haley is convincing the guards of, but the little line in the bluff skill that says "A successful Bluff check indicates that the target reacts as you wish, at least for a short time (usually 1 round or less) or believes something that you want it to believe." The second that they leave Haley's presence they should be saying "Hang on a minute... Over here!"


But something tells me that you and I have both vastly different experiences with D&D and likely also different expectations to what a system should provide. So maybe we can agree to disagree?

And seemingly different expectations about worldbuilding :) So yes.


there are some cases you can explicitly point to where the game is mechanically bad at Roleplay (See: 3.5's poor skill system) but i dont know of anything where the system is intentionally bad

Why would anyone deliberately create a mechanically bad system.

toapat
2014-05-11, 05:01 PM
Why would anyone deliberately create a mechanically bad system.

because they refuse to hand the material to external parties to find inherent logic flaws.

Because they were too invested into the development to invest resources back into the thing that had inherent design flaws

because they refuse to listen to the responses from external parties.

NichG
2014-05-11, 05:12 PM
'Magic vs mundane' is not the same as 'combat vs non-combat'. Imagine a Harry Potter RPG - to be true to the source material, the non-combat situations should also often be solved by magic, but that wouldn't make the system only good for combat. You could in fact have a system where the only way to interact with anything in the game world is through 'magical abilities' or 'spells' or whatever, have those interactions make for interesting gameplay, and at the same time have the system completely lack combat of any sort - basically 'Magical MacGyver'.

Raimun
2014-05-11, 05:19 PM
Few things about using magic instead of social skills in D&D:

- Most magic that influence minds make the people hostile after the spell wears off
- Most such spells can be resisted by Will save and Spell Resistance
- Glibness is Bards only. Wizards and such don't get access to it too soon.
- As mentioned above, spells can be detected and dispelled
- If you don't enchant all (potentially) opposing creatures witnessing the spell being cast, you need Still and Silent Spell-Feats to mask the verbal and somatic components. Otherwise, they will oppose you.
- Answer: "Use more magic!" is not always a realistic option because:
* You simply don't have enough XP and therefore, levels, at that point
* You don't know the right spells
* You don't have the right spells prepared
* You need to resolve the issue right away. There's no preparation time.
* Researching new spells is a thing but I have the feeling most GMs won't allow spells that make social skills redundant
- You don't have infinite spells per day. Skill usage saves spells for situations that skills can't solve.
- Mind controlling everyone that disagrees with you (but doesn't try to kill you) raises ethical questions. Even if your character does not care about any of that, someone else just might...

So yes, magic can be used to overcome social challenges in a pinch but entirely relying on it is simply foolish. There are too many potential drawbacks compared to simply using social skills. Especially powerful leaders are the sort of people where most, if not all of the above drawbacks will come in play. They are also the archetypical example of a very challenging social encounter, where success is critical.

Coidzor
2014-05-11, 05:48 PM
because they refuse to hand the material to external parties to find inherent logic flaws.

Because they were too invested into the development to invest resources back into the thing that had inherent design flaws

because they refuse to listen to the responses from external parties.

Well, that's still more an incidental, albeit logical, consequence of the way they went about things rather than setting out to make a bad system as one of their goals.


'Magic vs mundane' is not the same as 'combat vs non-combat'. Imagine a Harry Potter RPG - to be true to the source material, the non-combat situations should also often be solved by magic, but that wouldn't make the system only good for combat. You could in fact have a system where the only way to interact with anything in the game world is through 'magical abilities' or 'spells' or whatever, have those interactions make for interesting gameplay, and at the same time have the system completely lack combat of any sort - basically 'Magical MacGyver'.

Now there's an idea.

da_chicken
2014-05-11, 06:49 PM
Eh, there isn't many systems that are bad at role play. While some may have various carrots to encourage it, like Exalted's stunt system, I can't think of any sticks to prevent it actively.

Oh, I don't know. The skill challenge system presented in 4E was a pretty huge stick to prevent roleplay when according to the module you're running you have a challenge that awards XP and to pass it you have to make 3 Diplomacy, Bluff, or Insight checks in a row before you fail 10 times. We even had fantastic modules that required things like that, and then provided no mechanism or means to progress with the module if you didn't overcome the challenge. It got to the point that if there was a skill challenge involving social skills, we just skipped it because nobody was having any fun. The ones where failure means you have to fight city guards or something were even worse, since you could spend a couple days wandering around town fighting guards over and over. It got increasingly implausible as time proceeded. Honestly, I think that was a major cause of my group reverting to 3.x. Sure, you could blame the module writers or the DM, but ultimately it was a mechanic that made game play less fun and encouraged just rolling dice to resolve things that previously we roleplayed out. That's never a good thing.

Ravens_cry
2014-05-11, 07:58 PM
Nah, a rampaging grizzly would at least be scary or scandalous. Seems we're more talking about something so anemic it doesn't even get noticed and is thus a nonentity.
Even that role can be played. Plus, there is optional rules for using other ability scores with skills as is appropriate. For example, someone trying to physically intimidate someone with a show of strength would use Strength instead of Charisma with their Intimidate ranks. It's in the DMG, though how often it's played that way is another matter.

Coidzor
2014-05-11, 08:07 PM
Even that role can be played. Plus, there is optional rules for using other ability scores with skills as is appropriate. For example, someone trying to physically intimidate someone with a show of strength would use Strength instead of Charisma with their Intimidate ranks. It's in the DMG, though how often it's played that way is another matter.

Yes, one can be a nonentity outside of combat and one can be forced by the system to be a nonentity outside of combat. While you'll get funny looks for choosing it, being forced into it is generally bad design. And you get funny looks because it's generally something one would want to avoid as a player who is engaged in playing the game. :smalltongue:

Also, what DMG?

Ravens_cry
2014-05-11, 08:08 PM
Yes, one can be a nonentity outside of combat and one can be forced by the system to be a nonentity outside of combat. While you'll get funny looks for choosing it, being forced into it is generally bad design. And you get funny looks because it's generally something one would want to avoid as a player who is engaged in playing the game. :smalltongue:

Also, what DMG?
The 3.5 DMG, the first one.

Coidzor
2014-05-11, 08:20 PM
The 3.5 DMG, the first one.

I was more reminding you that we were discussing things much more generally than that. :smalltongue:

Ravens_cry
2014-05-11, 09:52 PM
I was more reminding you that we were discussing things much more generally than that. :smalltongue:
Ah, you should have said. Subtle I am not. Because I am not, subtle that is.
Did I mention I am not subtle?:smallbiggrin:

toapat
2014-05-11, 09:57 PM
Ah, you should have said. Subtle I am not. Because I am not, subtle that is.
Did I mention I am not subtle?:smallbiggrin:

well, its both a forum on a site dedicated to the works of a mad author whose most public work is a comic formerly about and now set in a world that obeys loosely 3.5 DnD.

and basically all of my posts so far have basically pointed to the system or Pathfinder.

Coidzor
2014-05-11, 10:07 PM
Ah, you should have said. Subtle I am not. Because I am not, subtle that is.
Did I mention I am not subtle?:smallbiggrin:

Well, your opening post on the subject touched upon both roleplaying systems in general and a bit of D&D, so I probably should've been more clear as well, sorry. x.x

Ravens_cry
2014-05-11, 10:30 PM
Well, your opening post on the subject touched upon both roleplaying systems in general and a bit of D&D, so I probably should've been more clear as well, sorry. x.x
It's all right, I'd say we both could have clarified things a little.