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Riffington
2007-09-11, 07:42 PM
I hear about Diplomancy being too powerful, and... thinking about it more makes me wonder why Diplomacy ranks go up past 4 at all? Or, for that matter: Intimidate, Bluff, Sense Motive, etc.

If we assume that a 1st level cleric should be able to talk down a hostile drunk, and we allow diplomacy to scale with level, then by 20th level he'll have enemy warlords pledging allegiance to him. People propose fixes like "subtract target's level", but this is ridiculous - if high level adventurers bicker over the last pancake, should it take powerful diplomancers to talk them down? Surely they should listen to reason MORE easily than inexperienced adventurers.

The same is true of Bluff. A first level Bard should be as good a liar as Ali G (or at least as good as Ashton Kutcher). If this can scale, then at 10th level he won't need money to buy things -- and worse: any Solomon he can't fool can never be lied to by the other characters. Games are WAY more interesting if the Paladin could be a halfway decent liar if he could bring himself to do it. By the rules, anyone the bard can't push over will just take one look at the Wizard and say "Is this true"... the look on her face gives it away every time.

--
Now, it's good to have social skills... and I like to see characters progress a bit there. It's neat when the arrogant aristocrat or brusque barbarian learns a lesson in manners. But is there any good reason to have them reach stratospheric levels like other skills?

tainsouvra
2007-09-11, 07:59 PM
is there any good reason to have them reach stratospheric levels like other skills? That's exactly the reason--they are like other skills and a heroic specialist in one should be capable of impressive feats. A diplomat with +50 to his skill should be just as impressive as a tracker with the same rating...the problem is that a DC of 60 doesn't seem like enough to turn a violent psychopath to your best friend in under 6 seconds, but the rules permit it. The main problem with Diplomacy is that it's too easy to reach the level of skill needed to instantly turn an aggressive enraged horde into a group of passive happy hippies. Simply making the attitude-change chart more demanding, as well as introducing creatures and abilities that resist Diplomacy, is enough without overhauling the entire set of social skills.

Anything more than that, honestly, is just a reason to not use the d20 system for skill checks at all :smallsmile:

Kenbert
2007-09-11, 08:06 PM
That's exactly the reason--they are like other skills and a heroic specialist in one should be capable of impressive feats. A diplomat with +50 to his skill should be just as impressive as a tracker with the same rating...the problem is that a DC of 60 doesn't seem like enough to turn a violent psychopath to your best friend in under 6 seconds, but the rules permit it. The main problem with Diplomacy is that it's too easy to reach the level of skill needed to instantly turn an aggressive enraged horde into a group of passive happy hippies. Simply making the attitude-change chart more demanding, as well as introducing creatures and abilities that resist Diplomacy, is enough without overhauling the entire set of social skills.

Anything more than that, honestly, is just a reason to not use the d20 system for skill checks at all :smallsmile:

You're right -- adjusting the DC chart should be enough, and it's probably a good idea for a merchant to have some sort of defense against getting "conned" into giving awesome items away for nothing. Another thing that might help (as a house rule) is to say that no single diplomacy check can change an attitude by more than perhaps two levels.

tainsouvra
2007-09-11, 08:31 PM
You're right -- adjusting the DC chart should be enough, and it's probably a good idea for a merchant to have some sort of defense against getting "conned" into giving awesome items away for nothing. With the latter part, are you referring to Bluff? Diplomacy won't do that--it can make the merchant go from indifferent to helpful, but it in no way makes him wish to bankrupt himself.
Another thing that might help (as a house rule) is to say that no single diplomacy check can change an attitude by more than perhaps two levels. You can accomplish enough by altering the table such that it is statistically unlikely that more than two levels will be changed at once...I'd probably make it three though, myself.

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-09-11, 08:39 PM
Making social skills work better has been a huge concern for me as a DM.

As a player, however, they're hilariously awesome for derailroading and obtaining otherwise hard to get things. My new character is the most serious abuse I've ever worked out with these skills. I'll be winning more battles by talking then by fighting by around level six.

Mewtarthio
2007-09-11, 08:47 PM
You could look at Rich Burlew's variant Diplomacy rules in the Gaming section.

Riffington
2007-09-11, 08:49 PM
So if you want to make social skills less awesome at high levels, do you really also want to gimp them at low levels?

Basically: If a mob boss wants to convince a hit man or police officer that he would be a better employer and they should serve him rather than attacking/arresting him (which they are just about to do)... that's like a 25% chance. So DC 20, since a great Earth Human would have +5 or +6 tops.
Do you just make that a higher DC to make it a challenge for higher level characters, despite it meaning low level characters are worse than real life?

Do you really make characters without Bluff skill unable to deceive?

EndgamerAzari
2007-09-11, 08:50 PM
If we assume that a 1st level cleric should be able to talk down a hostile drunk, and we allow diplomacy to scale with level, then by 20th level he'll have enemy warlords pledging allegiance to him.


If that happens, the DM is at fault. There are circumstances where diplomacy should not even be able to function.

DeathQuaker
2007-09-11, 09:07 PM
I generally do Bluff and Sense Motive as opposed rolls. So your silver-tongued bard will, yeah, have an easy time of convincing Moe and Joe the Thugs in the corner that "No, really, my friend was just admiring your pockets, not picking them."

He's still going to have a heck of a time smoothing his way past the very experienced head of the constabulary whose intuition is keener than a razor edge.

Diplomacy rolls... huh, actually, there haven't been a lot of Diplomacy rolls in the games I've run. But generally I would just start with the tables in the books as a guideline and adjust modifiers as I need to based on hostility levels and other factors. In some circumstances, again, opposed rolls would come in handy, and then you're just pitting skill against skill.

The other thing about social skills in my games is that they're generally only done when a shortcut is needed. We usually like to roleplay social interaction where possible; it's only when we need to either do a lightning fast shopping trip (okay, roll your haggling rolls) or when a character's ability technically exceeds the player's. :smalltongue:

Riffington
2007-09-11, 09:17 PM
The roleplay vs rollplay: yes, this fixes the problem.
But consider the difficulty if the head of the constabulary has a Sense Motive that stands up to the Bard.
1. He beats the party Bard, because he just looks at the bard's friends; their eyes give everything away. Don't tell me every character took Bluff.
2. He beats every 2-bit thug, every time. This means that criminal organizations have to change a lot, if only the high level characters can ever lie to the police.
Now, if you just wave away the rolls, fine. But it seems like just capping social skills at a fairly low level (5 ranks?) would work as well.

Quellian-dyrae
2007-09-11, 09:27 PM
Myself, I have the social skills be about a communication of intent, not a determination of reaction. For example, I revised Intimidate to mean that the target believes you are willing and able to follow through with a threat. So if you successfully threaten to kill the BBEG's minion if it doesn't tell you where your foe is lairing, and that minion is afraid of dying (moreso than whatever the BBEG probably threatened to do to it) it will probably tell you what you want to know. If it's a fanatical zealot who would gladly die for the cause, it believes you will kill it, but that doesn't make it any more likely to give you the information you want.

tainsouvra
2007-09-11, 09:44 PM
But consider the difficulty if the head of the constabulary has a Sense Motive that stands up to the Bard.
1. He beats the party Bard, because he just looks at the bard's friends; their eyes give everything away. Don't tell me every character took Bluff. If your DM allows this, that is fine, however that is a house-rule change to how Sense Motive works. The skill normally can be used..."to tell when someone is bluffing you, to discern hidden message in conversations, or to sense when someone is being magically influenced." If someone isn't personally Bluffing him, he doesn't get a Sense Motive to sense a lie, per the rules.

Using Sense Motive on someone's companions to bypass a Bluff check is not given as a valid use of the skill, and its use as such is a house rule. The most that, per the official rules, our constable friend could manage is to successfully have a hunch that the party is not trustworthy...that's all, nothing specific to the lie the Bard is telling, just a general feeling that they're shady characters.
2. He beats every 2-bit thug, every time. This means that criminal organizations have to change a lot, if only the high level characters can ever lie to the police. The constable in question, if he's equalling a high-level Bard's Bluff checks, is an amazingly trained and talented officer. He is mid-or-high level himself, with an almost supernatural ability to know when he is being lied to. Such a character would probably be well-known as a master investigator and, simply put, should be feared by criminal organizations in his region.
But it seems like just capping social skills at a fairly low level (5 ranks?) would work as well. This is true if, and only if, you don't want social skills to be a core part of the game. With such a low cap, any character can easily max out his social skills, making them boil down to a coin toss regardless of who is using them--in short, not something that any character could be built to utilize. That effectively removes social builds from the game rather than fixing them.

Mojo_Rat
2007-09-11, 09:52 PM
Thing is Diplomacy can only become an issue if its allowed to. To be honest there are sentient creatures that can communicate that will not give a rats ass that you are trying to speak to them. IT seems to me that mostly It should largely only apply in a situation here communication is already existent. Even then there will be things the NPC just wont do. It isnt charm or dominate it may even be that just because they now like you they still plan to kill you because they are like that.

Kenbert
2007-09-11, 10:00 PM
That's a good point, Mojo_Rat. The diplomacy check takes ... what, a minute? of dialog that's not going to happen with the common encounter. Unless it's a Bond villain.
"Do you really expect me to talk, Goldfinger?"
"No, Mr. Bond! I expect you to listen to half an hour of plot exposition as this laser moves closer and closer to your crotch, which imposes a penalty on any checks you make, because you're distracted."

tainsouvra
2007-09-11, 10:00 PM
That's a good point, Mojo_Rat. The diplomacy check takes ... what, a minute? of dialog that's not going to happen with the common encounter. Unless it's a Bond villain. At a -10 penalty, it takes one combat round.

Mojo_Rat
2007-09-11, 10:05 PM
what Im Saying Is unless he player does something spectacular to make sense. I would wholly encourage any DM to ignore then -10 penalty one combat round thing.

I dont care how good a diplomat you are, but you step into the middle of say 2 Gangs fighting all your talking is going to do is direct their attention. Diplomacy isnt some sort of magic mind control.

Kenbert
2007-09-11, 10:14 PM
The only exception to that (so far as I can imagine) is the sort of "oh you really don't want to be doing that" sort of thing ... something that in one combat round piques the interest of the aggressor. For instance, Captain Jack Sparrow in the cave suggesting that Barbossa not regain their mortality ... it gets him to listen for long enough to get that "diplomacy check" in. but even then, well, it's more of a DM's call to determine what should happen.

BardicDuelist
2007-09-11, 10:17 PM
what Im Saying Is unless he player does something spectacular to make sense. I would wholly encourage any DM to ignore then -10 penalty one combat round thing.

I dont care how good a diplomat you are, but you step into the middle of say 2 Gangs fighting all your talking is going to do is direct their attention. Diplomacy isnt some sort of magic mind control.

Yes, but if we look at the skills themselves (particularly epic skills), we see that realism and real world rules tend to completely vanish (without even considering magic) by about level 5.

The skills are meant to be amazing, and amazing in D&D tends to be whatever is even more outlandish and unrealistic, but cool, than the most recent action movie.

Personally, I don't see these skills as any more broken than magic in D&D. They are easily negated by the number of things immune to mind affecting things as well.

tainsouvra
2007-09-11, 10:19 PM
what Im Saying Is unless he player does something spectacular to make sense. I would wholly encourage any DM to ignore then -10 penalty one combat round thing.

I dont care how good a diplomat you are, but you step into the middle of say 2 Gangs fighting all your talking is going to do is direct their attention. Diplomacy isnt some sort of magic mind control. In order to cause two hostile parties to become helpful, you have to make a DC50 Diplomacy check. To do it in one round, you have to make that check at a -10 penalty. As a simplification, this means that convincing two gangs that are fighting to instead become friends, you are making a check equivalent to DC60.

That said, check out some Difficulty Class Examples (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/usingSkills.htm#tableDifficultyClassExamples). DC60 is literally way off the charts. Someone who can pull that off is doing something that defies all mortal explanation, he's just that impossibly good. It shouldn't make sense in a non-D&D world, as it's roughly equivalent to managing to track the path that a single ant took across across solid stone more than a month ago.

Kenbert
2007-09-11, 10:20 PM
Yes, but if we look at the skills themselves (particularly epic skills), we see that realism and real world rules tend to completely vanish (without even considering magic) by about level 5.

Level 5? I'd say more like ... 2. haha ... anyway, that's the sort of reason I prefer lower-level stuff. Some high-powered campaigning is fun, but when it comes down to it, I prefer having things a bit more realistic. Which is why I also like low-magic campaigns. But that's a discussion for another time and place.

Hectonkhyres
2007-09-11, 11:11 PM
In the circle we belong to, the DM always caps the effect of diplomacy and bluff at a point of his choice. As long as the bastard has some minimum of common sense, this works infinitely better than letting the dice do the talking.

DSCrankshaw
2007-09-11, 11:26 PM
How do people feel about the way Star Wars Saga does it? Your Persuasion check (persuasion covers both Diplomacy and Intimidate) has to beat your opponent's Will Defense (which scales with level faster than skills do), with penalties for an initial attitude less than friendly (even indifferent has a -2 penalty). A success only improves his attitude by one step, and it can only be done once per encounter.

I actually think this is too harsh. I personally think you should be able to make multiple attempts per encounter, to attempt to move him further up the attitude chart, but a failure by five or more moves him back down. That way you can attempt to bring him around, but if you fail too often, you only make matters worse.

Riffington
2007-09-11, 11:44 PM
If your DM allows this, that is fine, however that is a house-rule change to how Sense Motive works. The skill normally can be used..."to tell when someone is bluffing you, to discern hidden message in conversations, or to sense when someone is being magically influenced." If someone isn't personally Bluffing him, he doesn't get a Sense Motive to sense a lie, per the rules.

Using Sense Motive on someone's companions to bypass a Bluff check is not given as a valid use of the skill, and its use as such is a house rule.

If you are concerned about house rules, then directly ask the Wizard "Is all that true"? Then she has to personally bluff, admit a lie, or plead the nonexistent Fifth. However, as a real life matter... good investigators do surreptitiously look at the reactions of the storyteller's friends.



The constable in question, if he's equalling a high-level Bard's Bluff checks, is an amazingly trained and talented officer. He is mid-or-high level himself, with an almost supernatural ability to know when he is being lied to. Such a character would probably be well-known as a master investigator and, simply put, should be feared by criminal organizations in his region.

Yeah, but have you thought through the ramifications of how MUCH they'd fear him? Of how much it changes such an organization's structure if one's minions can never effectively lie to the police? It's not that you need to keep them loyal... loyalty won't make them keep your oaths. Nor will fear. They all need to be kept in the dark about everything. And that's just a start.

Kenbert
2007-09-11, 11:47 PM
Other than KOTOR / KOTOR II I'm not too familiar with the star wars system. I guess that makes sense; though it seems front loaded if the Will Defense progresses faster than a skill can, as you say.

It really just needs to be something that the DM and players can agree on.

Peace,
Kenbert

tainsouvra
2007-09-11, 11:47 PM
If you are concerned about house rules, then directly ask the Wizard "Is all that true"? Then she has to personally bluff, admit a lie, or plead the nonexistent Fifth. Or just not answer and let the party face handle it. No Bluff occurs in that situation, so no Sense Motive opposes it.
Yeah, but have you thought through the ramifications of how MUCH they'd fear him? Of how much it changes such an organization's structure if one's minions can never effectively lie to the police? It's not that you need to keep them loyal... loyalty won't make them keep your oaths. Nor will fear. They all need to be kept in the dark about everything. And that's just a start. Exactly...and when an organization is up against a master investigator and wants to keep him in the dark, double blind is a minimum.

Jothki
2007-09-12, 12:16 AM
Bear in mind that even if someone likes you, that doesn't mean they'll help you. A good diplomacy check can turn a suspicious guard into a guard who would love to let you in but he's been ordered to keep everyone out, and is willing to send in a message but doesn't think it would help you. Similarly, a check can turn a deranged cultist who wants to sacrifice you in order to revive his dead god into a deranged cultist who sincerely regrets that he has to sacrifice you to revive his dead god.

horseboy
2007-09-12, 01:09 AM
How do people feel about the way Star Wars Saga does it? Your Persuasion check (persuasion covers both Diplomacy and Intimidate) has to beat your opponent's Will Defense (which scales with level faster than skills do), with penalties for an initial attitude less than friendly (even indifferent has a -2 penalty). A success only improves his attitude by one step, and it can only be done once per encounter.

I actually think this is too harsh. I personally think you should be able to make multiple attempts per encounter, to attempt to move him further up the attitude chart, but a failure by five or more moves him back down. That way you can attempt to bring him around, but if you fail too often, you only make matters worse.

Sounds like a half-ass rip off of Earthdawn. Their defenses are Physical, Spell, and Social. Based off of Dex, Perception (Int) and Charisma. Then different "classes" go up at different rates depending on their orientation.

Kurald Galain
2007-09-12, 06:14 AM
One of the problems with diplomacy is that it's considered a full-round action (or even faster than that), whereas in real life diplomacy is a full-day action.

Barbarian: Raaagh! Me kill you!
Diplomancer: Calm down, my friend. Let us discuss the terms of our allegiance over a nice glass of -- aaargh!
Barbarian: Thog smash puny mancer!!!

Irreverent Fool
2007-09-12, 07:04 AM
Or just not answer and let the party face handle it. No Bluff occurs in that situation, so no Sense Motive opposes it.

Not answering rarely works unless your face can somehow draw the attention back to himself.

Face: "...and so you see, we ultimately had to leave him to guard the entrance and await our return. We don't have time for a trial, lives are on the line!"

Mayor: <looks at wizard> "Is this guy for real?"

Wizard: .....

Mayor: "Yeah, you with the long white beard and other stereotypical wizard accessories! If this is all true, then why aren't your clothes damp?"

Wizard: .....

Mayor: <gaining circumstance bonuses during each awkward silence> "You know, I think there may be a hole in your story..."

-----

That aside, I think the main problem with the social skills is that they represent conversation that your character and the 'victim' are having that are not something that is getting role-played out. It's easy to imagine your character swinging his sword through the air and dodging nimbly aside as the giant's club comes crashing down when all that really happened was the d20+attack didn't meet your AC score. Imagining an oratory master saying the precise things that will sway another's opinion is harder to imagine simply because most people don't have it in them to precisely read their subject and play on his unique sympathies.

As for the craziness around about level 5, I feel it's true. There's some huge article describing why even the greatest heroes both real, modern, and legendary were level 5 at the highest, mostly based on skill-ranks. Once you pass level 5, you're up there with Hercules, Merlin, Einstein, Hitler and Batman. The vast majority of people are lucky they even lived long enough to see level 1.

Dausuul
2007-09-12, 07:17 AM
I hear about Diplomancy being too powerful, and... thinking about it more makes me wonder why Diplomacy ranks go up past 4 at all? Or, for that matter: Intimidate, Bluff, Sense Motive, etc.

If we assume that a 1st level cleric should be able to talk down a hostile drunk, and we allow diplomacy to scale with level, then by 20th level he'll have enemy warlords pledging allegiance to him. People propose fixes like "subtract target's level", but this is ridiculous - if high level adventurers bicker over the last pancake, should it take powerful diplomancers to talk them down? Surely they should listen to reason MORE easily than inexperienced adventurers.

I think the point is that the higher-level you are, the more confident you are in yourself and the less impressed you are by folks trying to change your course of action. If two 20th-level characters are bickering over the last +5 holy pancake of speed, they simply won't pay attention to the level 1 diplomancer trying to talk them down--he's beneath their notice.


The same is true of Bluff. A first level Bard should be as good a liar as Ali G (or at least as good as Ashton Kutcher). If this can scale, then at 10th level he won't need money to buy things -- and worse: any Solomon he can't fool can never be lied to by the other characters. Games are WAY more interesting if the Paladin could be a halfway decent liar if he could bring himself to do it. By the rules, anyone the bard can't push over will just take one look at the Wizard and say "Is this true"... the look on her face gives it away every time.

But if the bard is convincing enough, the subject shouldn't be suspicious enough to bother asking the wizard.

IMO, the real problem is the fact that the bard can Bluff the wizard into quitting the magic business and taking up macrame, because the wizard has no Sense Motive.

I hear (and hope) they plan to address at least some of this in 4E...

Riffington
2007-09-12, 08:19 AM
I think the point is that the higher-level you are, the more confident you are in yourself and the less impressed you are by folks trying to change your course of action. If two 20th-level characters are bickering over the last +5 holy pancake of speed, they simply won't pay attention to the level 1 diplomancer trying to talk them down--he's beneath their notice.

So in other words, powerful characters are arrogant snots? I mean, that's great for Greek mythology or Amber. But presumably anyone with a positive Wisdom will see more value in others' opinions the more experience they get.




But if the bard is convincing enough, the subject shouldn't be suspicious enough to bother asking the wizard.


Surely you meant to say, "if the subject has no ranks in Sense Motive".
If you do take ranks in it, you are sufficiently astute to know that you get the truth out of the guy who isn't the faceman.

dr.cello
2007-09-12, 08:56 AM
Surely you meant to say, "if the subject has no ranks in Sense Motive".
If you do take ranks in it, you are sufficiently astute to know that you get the truth out of the guy who isn't the faceman.

That's sort of a fallacy. "This guy is convincing, so he's probably lying." Even (or especially) if you have ranks in Sense Motive you'd believe someone who beats your roll. You wouldn't think 'I believe him only because he's better at lying than I am at detecting lies.' What you're more likely to do if you have ranks in Sense Motive is be certain that someone is lying, instead of just suspicious. (Apparently they've conducted studies on the subject of policemen and lie detecting, and they aren't actually better at it than other people, they're just more certain when they do notice a lie. Not exactly relevant, but interesting.)

Sure, you can try to force the non-face members of the party to make a bluff check, but that seems like metagaming. You're relying on the way the game's mechanics work. I think that it doesn't take much to say 'yeah, that's right.' What you're doing when you ask for the rest of the party to confirm the story is developing a hunch that they aren't trustworthy. You should be relying on the way a human lie detector might work. He knows he's good at detecting lies--he doesn't know that he has a +10 bonus in Sense Motive. So when he doesn't think someone's lying, he shouldn't be thinking 'I just failed a Sense Motive check,' but 'huh. Looks like he's telling the truth.'

I agree that a successful sense motive check to develop a hunch should probably grant a circumstance bonus on the opposed roll--possibly even after the fact. (Let's say you rolled an 18 total, and the bard managed a 19 total. You succeed on a Sense Motive check to gain a hunch that there's something wrong, giving you a +2 circumstance bonus. Your result is now 20--and now you're pretty sure he's lying.)

Basically, I think it should be analogous to other skills. The rogue with the high Climb modifier has to make the hard check; then he can just lower a rope and everyone's climb DC is lowered to a more manageable number; everyone else still has to make checks, but it's a lot easier. In the case of bluff checks, since it's not a flat DC but rather an opposed roll, I'd either give them a huge circumstance modifier or just make it so the presence of the other party members can only provide the inquisitor with a bonus to his sense motive rolls.

Sure, if you're doing a proper inquisition, you'll probably want to interrogate everybody separately--but if your party face has allowed it to get to that point, he's done something pretty wrong. Most of the time, a sense motive check isn't an active inquisition so much as a passive resistance to the bluff check. In other words, the party's face is taking the initiative in preventing things from getting to the point where they'll be grilled and scrutinized. Part of being a good liar is never giving people a reason to suspect you in the first place.

Kyle
2007-09-12, 08:56 AM
So in other words, powerful characters are arrogant snots? I mean, that's great for Greek mythology or Amber. But presumably anyone with a positive Wisdom will see more value in others' opinions the more experience they get.
That all depends on the people in question, doesn't it? A group of people that make their way in the world by murdering other sentient beings by the boatload for fun and profit--something not atypical for the common adventuring party--are likely not going to overly interested in the opinions of every pot boy and scullery maid, regardless of how reasonable their suggestion to simply cut in half and share the +5 holy pancake of speed might be. And woe unto the person who even things to hide the axiomatic maple syrup.

Golthur
2007-09-12, 09:43 AM
One of the more interesting solutions I've seen to this debate was to make players roleplay everything out, but, based on social skill checks, they could gain special benefits - such as "I didn't really say that", i.e. a do over - so that the character's ranks in social skills have a relevant benefit in game.

That being said, I haven't actually tried it to know how it works in practice.

Person_Man
2007-09-12, 10:55 AM
I ignore the Diplomacy rules. When a PC wants to change an NPCs mind, he has to roleplay the situation. I set a difficulty based on my subjective read of the situation, and grant the PC a bonus or penalty based on how well or poorly he made his case and stayed in character to do it. Then he rolls a Diplomacy check, and I have the NPC react based on how much the PC went over or under the DC I set for the situation. It works phenomenally well.

Riffington
2007-09-12, 02:14 PM
It isn't metagaming, it's good practice. It's what police do: they corroborate witness' stories. Now, they have the luxury of separating the witnesses before said corroboration; that way the witnesses with high Bluff (+3) don't give the others a circumstance modifier. When they're asking their kids what they did at the park, they just make sure to ask each kid a couple questions. "Oh, did you have fun on the slide?"

It's especially not metagaming for someone with ranks to understand what techniques give them the best chances for success. Any more than it's metagaming for fighters to avoid attacks of opportunity when advancing on their foes. If you're good at something, you know how it works. You spent 5 minutes learning the game system, they spent 15 years learning the subject it models.

As to "analogous to other skills": to which ones? To Move Silently or Swim, where the rogue can add at best +2 to the cleric's roll? To Climb, where he lowers a rope? To Find Traps, where he does all the work? I'd analogize it to combat: letting the face handle everything is like having the enemies just attack the fighter.

Now, as to "Part of being a good liar is never giving people a reason to suspect you in the first place.": Absolutely. But part of being a good judge is to suspect every story you hear.


That's sort of a fallacy. "This guy is convincing, so he's probably lying." Even (or especially) if you have ranks in Sense Motive you'd believe someone who beats your roll. You wouldn't think 'I believe him only because he's better at lying than I am at detecting lies.' What you're more likely to do if you have ranks in Sense Motive is be certain that someone is lying, instead of just suspicious. (Apparently they've conducted studies on the subject of policemen and lie detecting, and they aren't actually better at it than other people, they're just more certain when they do notice a lie. Not exactly relevant, but interesting.)

Sure, you can try to force the non-face members of the party to make a bluff check, but that seems like metagaming. You're relying on the way the game's mechanics work. I think that it doesn't take much to say 'yeah, that's right.' What you're doing when you ask for the rest of the party to confirm the story is developing a hunch that they aren't trustworthy. You should be relying on the way a human lie detector might work. He knows he's good at detecting lies--he doesn't know that he has a +10 bonus in Sense Motive. So when he doesn't think someone's lying, he shouldn't be thinking 'I just failed a Sense Motive check,' but 'huh. Looks like he's telling the truth.'

I agree that a successful sense motive check to develop a hunch should probably grant a circumstance bonus on the opposed roll--possibly even after the fact. (Let's say you rolled an 18 total, and the bard managed a 19 total. You succeed on a Sense Motive check to gain a hunch that there's something wrong, giving you a +2 circumstance bonus. Your result is now 20--and now you're pretty sure he's lying.)

Basically, I think it should be analogous to other skills. The rogue with the high Climb modifier has to make the hard check; then he can just lower a rope and everyone's climb DC is lowered to a more manageable number; everyone else still has to make checks, but it's a lot easier. In the case of bluff checks, since it's not a flat DC but rather an opposed roll, I'd either give them a huge circumstance modifier or just make it so the presence of the other party members can only provide the inquisitor with a bonus to his sense motive rolls.

Sure, if you're doing a proper inquisition, you'll probably want to interrogate everybody separately--but if your party face has allowed it to get to that point, he's done something pretty wrong. Most of the time, a sense motive check isn't an active inquisition so much as a passive resistance to the bluff check. In other words, the party's face is taking the initiative in preventing things from getting to the point where they'll be grilled and scrutinized. Part of being a good liar is never giving people a reason to suspect you in the first place.

tainsouvra
2007-09-12, 04:26 PM
Not answering rarely works unless your face can somehow draw the attention back to himself.

Face: "...and so you see, we ultimately had to leave him to guard the entrance and await our return. We don't have time for a trial, lives are on the line!"

Mayor: <looks at wizard> "Is this guy for real?"

Wizard: .....

Mayor: "Yeah, you with the long white beard and other stereotypical wizard accessories! If this is all true, then why aren't your clothes damp?"

Wizard: .....

Mayor: <gaining circumstance bonuses during each awkward silence> "You know, I think there may be a hole in your story..." If your DM works that way, that's cool, but that's not coming from the rules themselves. That's his assessment of what could logically happen given a Mayor who is used to dealing with supernaturally-convincing adventurers...but that's not from the Bluff or Sense Motive skills, it's something he's making up because it seems appropriate to him.

It's not wrong of your DM to do it that way, but it isn't supported by the rules and it severely undercuts social skills in the game.

mostlyharmful
2007-09-12, 04:44 PM
It doesn't matter how convincing you are, if you start talking random wild looney stories then people will start asking your friends if your crazy or for real or what, at which point the jig is well and truely up. There is a reason why in real life con artists only do a job with otther con artists and not the local mafias leg breakers or a physics proffessor.

A Bard walks up to you and tells you that the sky has turned green or that all rabbits must be worshiped as emissaries of the oncoming appocalypse, (roll bluff + beat random commoners sense motive). The next step isn't instant golrification of the overlords of bunniedom, its verification and debate.

Riffington
2007-09-12, 04:56 PM
If your DM works that way, that's cool, but that's not coming from the rules themselves. That's his assessment of what could logically happen given a Mayor who is used to dealing with supernaturally-convincing adventurers...but that's not from the Bluff or Sense Motive skills, it's something he's making up because it seems appropriate to him.

It's not wrong of your DM to do it that way, but it isn't supported by the rules and it severely undercuts social skills in the game.

It doesn't undercut social skills in the game. It forces everyone to use them.
Does it undercut combat in the game if the enemies try to attack the sorceror instead of going after the tank?

If something is a small part of the game (tracking, open locks, etc) then it's fine to have only one person be capable of it. You give that person the spotlight for a moment and move on. If something is a large part of the game (negotiation, storytelling, combat), then you want all the players to participate. If socializing is a large part of the game, and you leave it all to the faceman, then everyone else gets bored.

horseboy
2007-09-12, 05:01 PM
It doesn't matter how convincing you are, if you start talking random wild loony stories then people will start asking your friends if your crazy or for real or what, at which point the jig is well and truly up. There is a reason why in real life con artists only do a job with other con artists and not the local mafias leg breakers or a physics professor.

A Bard walks up to you and tells you that the sky has turned green or that all rabbits must be worshiped as emissaries of the oncoming apocalypse, (roll bluff + beat random commoners sense motive). The next step isn't instant glorification of the overlords of bunniedom, its verification and debate.

Well, in a "world" with giant space hamsters, half balors, 1/4 orc, 1/4 trolls, and wizards that can stop time, put the queen's dress on the king, hang him outside in mid air then go back and get freaky with the charmed princess, what constitutes "loony"?

Fax Celestis
2007-09-12, 05:06 PM
Social skills exist in game mechanics terms because it is largely taken for granted that people who play D&D and the like usually do not have the best social skills in real life, but would perhaps want to play a character who did have strong social skills.

tainsouvra
2007-09-12, 05:07 PM
It doesn't undercut social skills in the game. It forces everyone to use them. No, it forces none of the PC's to bother using them, because they'll never work in a party :smalltongue:
Does it undercut combat in the game if the enemies try to attack the sorceror instead of going after the tank? No, but that's not what this is equivalent to. This is closer to the fighter missing every attack because the sorcerer's BAB isn't high enough. It's utterly bypassing a set of abilities because someone else doesn't have them, and it's not how the rules were written. You have them, you use them, and the target deals with you, not someone who happens to be standing nearby and hasn't done a single thing.
If something is a small part of the game (tracking, open locks, etc) then it's fine to have only one person be capable of it. You give that person the spotlight for a moment and move on. If something is a large part of the game (negotiation, storytelling, combat), then you want all the players to participate. If socializing is a large part of the game, and you leave it all to the faceman, then everyone else gets bored. If that's how it works in your campaigns, that's your prerogative, but I have not run into that situation a single time in more than a decade of playing D&D. I run my games differently, though, so it encourages different behavior on the part of the players.

mostlyharmful
2007-09-12, 05:56 PM
Well, in a "world" with giant space hamsters, half balors, 1/4 orc, 1/4 trolls, and wizards that can stop time, put the queen's dress on the king, hang him outside in mid air then go back and get freaky with the charmed princess, what constitutes "loony"?

We aren't talking about the PCs interpretaiton of looney, they are the ones interacting with bi-curious Balors with a keen interest in landscape gardening. We#re discussing the mayor of the local town who will react in a vaguely rational manor to outrageous news or else the campaign has no grounding point against which the adventureers can show their awesomeness. The average Joes of the campaign can be hoodwinked for a little bit and mind raped a little further but eventually it is nescessary for them to just have no earthly idea what the hell the PCs are on if they come up with something beyound the scope of the believable.

which means you can take farmer joe in a confidence game but all that will net you is a sack of beans, if you want him to think the world is on fire and he should sell his land RIGHT NOW you'll need illusions and mind control not just high bluff and diplomacy.... and if you want him to dthink that down is up, four lemmings when put in a room together will automatically square dance and that bush won the 2000 elections then he just won't understand what you're on about in that it makes little to NO SENSE.

horseboy
2007-09-12, 07:44 PM
We aren't talking about the PCs interpretation of looney, they are the ones interacting with bi-curious Balors with a keen interest in landscape gardening. We#re discussing the mayor of the local town who will react in a vaguely rational manor to outrageous news or else the campaign has no grounding point against which the adventurers can show their awesomeness. The average Joe's of the campaign can be hoodwinked for a little bit and mind raped a little further but eventually it is necessary for them to just have no earthly idea what the hell the PCs are on if they come up with something beyond the scope of the believable.

which means you can take farmer Joe in a confidence game but all that will net you is a sack of beans, if you want him to think the world is on fire and he should sell his land RIGHT NOW you'll need illusions and mind control not just high bluff and diplomacy.... and if you want him to think that down is up, four lemmings when put in a room together will automatically square dance and that bush won the 2000 elections then he just won't understand what you're on about in that it makes little to NO SENSE.
That's kinda my point, in a world where Bane has walked the land, telling the farmer that he's coming again, flee your home and hide in the hills, we'll take care of your cow, just go now! That's well within the realm of plausible. There's not really much that's not plausible.

Fax Celestis
2007-09-12, 07:48 PM
That's kinda my point, in a world where Bane has walked the land, telling the farmer that he's coming again, flee your home and hide in the hills, we'll take care of your cow, just go now! That's well within the realm of plausible. There's not really much that's not plausible.

If I were that farmer, the first thing I'd ask is, "Why aren't you running?"

horseboy
2007-09-12, 08:08 PM
If I were that farmer, the first thing I'd ask is, "Why aren't you running?"

We're heroes. Somebody's got to buy you time. :smallwink:

dr.cello
2007-09-12, 08:38 PM
It doesn't undercut social skills in the game. It forces everyone to use them.
Does it undercut combat in the game if the enemies try to attack the sorceror instead of going after the tank?

No, I'd say it's rather a lot more like making it so the rogue couldn't handle the traps. Sure, there are situations where the face can't use his social skills. But if you make it routine, then the bluff modifier of the group is no better than the dwarf with 4 charisma. Assuming four characters, that's four progressively worse chances to fail.

daggaz
2007-09-12, 09:03 PM
The Giant came up with some great houserulings as to how diplomacy should work. Like all good things, they rely on a good deal of common sense, but said common sense is more or less written down for even the idiots to understand.

Riffington
2007-09-12, 09:17 PM
No, I'd say it's rather a lot more like making it so the rogue couldn't handle the traps. Sure, there are situations where the face can't use his social skills. But if you make it routine, then the bluff modifier of the group is no better than the dwarf with 4 charisma. Assuming four characters, that's four progressively worse chances to fail.

If you're travelling with a dwarf with 4 charisma, you are absolutely not going to get away with bluffing (unless he's in the dark as well). Just like when you were a kid: if you brought your 6 year old cousin along for mischief, your parents found out about it.
Now if the dwarf had 10 charisma, it'd be a different story.

Anyway, do you let the rogue make the only stealth roll, or does your party travel at the cleric's noise level?

Stormcrow
2007-09-12, 09:19 PM
Riddle me this lads and lasses, A Sorcerer say or a Bard if you please with a mighty and bountiful charisma, 16... Into tavern does stroll and charm person does cast, and thus the question asked, "Give me all your money?" and thus...

For this action is neither suicidal nor dangerous the humble peasant faces opposed CHA or relent, and thus even at low levels without Diplomacy, the plebs can be exploited by you... or by me.

Mewtarthio
2007-09-12, 09:22 PM
Riddle me this lads and lasses, A Sorcerer say or a Bard if you please with a mighty and bountiful charisma, 16... Into tavern does stroll and charm person does cast, and thus the question asked, "Give me all your money?" and thus...

For this action is neither suicidal nor dangerous the humble peasant faces opposed CHA or relent, and thus even at low levels without Diplomacy, the plebs can be exploited by you... or by me.

Now, the spell makes the target Friendly to you. It's not dominate with an opposed CHA check thrown in. If it's something they'd never consider doing, even for a friend, they won't do it.

Stormcrow
2007-09-12, 09:27 PM
Give this a read.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/charmPerson.htm

Mewtarthio
2007-09-12, 09:51 PM
Give this a read.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/charmPerson.htm

Ah, yes. Thank you for that. Very good chance that I would have overlooked that, no? :smallbiggrin:


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.) An affected creature never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, but it might be convinced that something very dangerous is worth doing. Any act by you or your apparent allies that threatens the charmed person breaks the spell. You must speak the person’s language to communicate your commands, or else be good at pantomiming.

"Give me all your money" is obviously harmful: You end up broke and get nothing out of it. Besides, the subject still only views your words favorably. A charmed mother won't snap her baby's neck, no matter how little personal danger it presents nor how high the enchanter's Charisma modifier is. The spell does two things:

The subject will do for you anything they'd do for a friend without hesitation.
If the subject would do something for a friend, but only after much convincing, the spell bypasses the convincing entirely for an all-or-nothing CHA check

The spell's pretty confusing (see Rich's Diplomacy variant (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/jFppYwv7OUkegKhONNF.html) to see a system that tries to get around the poorly-worded attitudes), but I do not believe it's intended to be essentially a short-acting, somewhat unreliable dominate effect at first level.