my new problem (power role players/gamers)

[quiet1mi]

yes they exist... power role gamers.... instead of boosting their damage to the higher reaches of the upper planes they boost their diplomacy/intimidate/bluff modifier to the upper planes...

This sort of behavior is quite unexpected and has caught me flat footed... so other than turn my political intrigue game into a dungeon crawl,nixing their character sheet, or simply saying that they fail more often than not for no good reason. How can I best solve this problem...

my ideas

• allow the NPC to realize that this character has a silver tongue and make it difficult for them to get a word in edge wise...(advisors that interrupt, thus circumstance penalties, the diplomancer)
• have nobles, whose power is threatened by the smooth talking player, send assassins to kill him (or chop out his tongue). Thus allowing the hack and slashers to have some fun
• provide less influential people for the smooth player to talk to (like kings,major nobles,captain of the guards)
• occasionaly throw in a deaf king/noble/captain of the guard

to give an example... the player is using the vow feats (poverty,nonviolence,peace) along with other exalted feats that boost diplomacy or cha related skill checks (nymph' kiss). the result is a level 3 Expert with a diplomacy modifier of +26 (that is enough to turn a hostile into a friendly on a roll of 11 or better after a minute of talking... or hostile to indifferent on a roll of 9 or better in a single round [6 seconds of talking]

I can see him taking the evangalist class until level 10 so that he can turn hostlie into friendly in a single round by taking 10...all without a save or magic.

[Dairun Cates]

For the record, this is actually common and still just power-gaming, it's just a different standpoint on it. Some actually say they're the real power gamers since diplomacy difficulties NEVER go up as is. There's a reason Rich Burlew wrote an entire article "fixing" diplomacy.

[Talic]

First, diplomacy takes a minimum of 1 minute, to begin with. Even when hurried, it takes a whole round. If the person is interrupted, well, it doesn't work.

I've had party members with diplomacy figure they can talk down an angry mob with it... Only to be surprised when one of the more bloodthirsty members of the mob threw a rock at him and shouted something to get the mob back on track, drowning him out.

I've also had a higher level try to take a full round, only to be surprised by the minion's employer casting a silence spell, before the full round was up.

There's a lot of ways to stop diplomancers. you don't need deaf people. Dumb ones work better.

Say the human that does this speaks Common, Elven, and Dwarven.
The person you want to be the challenge speaks giant (and only giant), and is a member of a northern tribe that is seeking... blah blah so on.

Obviously, the Tongues spell will bypass that somewhat, so then throw in things immune to mind-influencing abilities. As players are immune to diplomacy, it's also within reason to designate a few key players as immune to it as well.

[bosssmiley]

Diplomacy as written in 3.5 is broken. One of the tables of DCs was mislabelled (from DCs for Cha tests to DCs for Diplomacy checks) when it was reprinted from the 3.0 PHB.

As Dairun Cates says, use Rich's Diplomacy fix. I have for a while now, and it totally works.

[Armoury99]

Combine Rich's kickass diplomacy rules with the principle of the Virtual Role from Ars Ludi. Now PCs have better DC's to play with (that aren't obvious and in the player's handbook) and they actually have to roleplay the encounter as well.

Works great in my campaign anyway,

[Gorbash]

Diplomacy relies largely on the DM, and you can always just say no, you didn't succeed for reasons other than a role on the dice - perhaps the individual is too zealous/stubborn/proud to change his mind and not even a roll of 100 would change his mind, so throwing dice is unnecessary. If let unchecked, somebody could convince a vampire not to drink blood anymore. If you want to control it, whenever he makes a roll of 30+ just ask him what did he say EXACTLY to change the attitude, and if he doesn't come up with anything that's close enough to that roll - nothing happened.

Can I get a link to that Burlew's fix?

[ericgrau]

I'll agree that what you allow on diplomacy is heavily DM dependant. It's not that the rules are broken here, it's that they're highly inadequete. As the DM, you should decide what's really diplomacy and what's just trying to roll dice to defeat someone. I'd only allow it for reasonable diplomatic ventures. And auto-success on uniting two sides that really could work well together isn't broken, regardless of how high level or low level the listeners are. That is assuming you also have the time, an intelligent statement that expresses the benefit of uniting, a crowd or individual that will listen, etc., etc.

As it happens, I recently saw a proper example of using diplomacy to change a group's attitude all the way from hostile to helpful:
http://www.lfgcomic.com/page/168

Though I suspect the matron may have yet-to-be-revealed fore-knowledge that made negotiations less difficult. Or she might just be wiser than the rest, and more reasonable. See also previous comics to see people who just plain wouldn't listen and... other negative circumstances.

Bluff is a similar issue, but at least the rules provide you with circumstance modifiers there. As you'll likely run into PCs that break the very limits of sanity, I'd suggest going beyond the -20 penalty limit. That penalty is for at the very limits of sanity, the long convoluted explanations that would normally make you raise an eyebrow but you guess might possibly be right and this guy seems honest enough... No, when a PC says to the king, "You should give me your daughter's hand in marriage. Ha! 57 on my bluff check!", I'd just plain have the king say "Ya right." Or, at best, a -40 circumstance penalty for something that isn't just ridiculous, it's downright ludicrous, rude and poorly worded. Even then the king should say, "Oh? Interesting proposition. What is the emergency and resulting clever scheme you surely must have in mind?"

Also remember that, per the rules, "bluff is not a suggestion spell" (and even a suggestion to do such would be questionable). That doesn't mean it can't be better than suggestion under certain circumstances, but to use it to say nothing more than "Do this" is 100% unambiguous rule-breaking.

[shadow_archmagi]

A clever, wise, and moral king would immediately give his daughter to me because I deserve it!

There are very few commands you can't rephrase as "it would be a good idea to" or "you should" or other things.

[Aquillion]

The magic words: "There aren't enough dice in the world."

But also. Running a political-intrigue game using D&D without heavily houseruling (or replacing) the diplomacy mechanics is a very very bad idea. D&D was designed with dungeon crawls first and foremost, and nowhere is this better reflected than in the absurdly over-simplified and broken Diplomacy rules... they're made for fighters and sorcerers with all their real focuses elsewhere to try and occasionally convince a tribe of goblins to help / not actively harm, or whatever. They're not made to be the core of a campaign, and you can't successfully rest a campaign on them without heavily modifying them.

[ericgrau]

The magic words: "There aren't enough dice in the world."

LOL exactly. The solution to diplomacy and bluff abuse is knowing when to say, "no friggin' way."

EDIT: Starting on strip #1. Maybe I'm just tired, but that is the funniest comic ever.

[Lochar]

No, you're not tired. It is the funniest comic evah!

[sonofzeal]

Easiest way - demand that the RP it, with the Diplomacy role determining how likely they are to listen, and the content of what the player says determining whether they agree. Be flexible to players who may have IRL cha penalties (or perpetual foot-in-mouth disease), but never just allow a Diplomacy roll to get someone "on your side". People don't switch alliegences IRL like that, do they?

[quiet1mi]

Is the giants fix just to modify the attitude and then they roll for diplomacy, or does it modify their attitude as well.If the fix does include the modification of attitude, can someone explain to me how it works?(meeting the DC improves by one step,beating it by 10 improves it by two steps and so on.)

I do not want to seem like one of those DMs that just leave everything up to the tables and book to decide, I just need consistency yet not too hard to make it impossible to talk to people out of/into doing something...

@ Talic: those are very good ideas (especially silencing the Diplomancer to prevent him from swaying the king against the thieves guild) and I will use those in adition to my other tactics of keeping the player in check...

[Viruzzo]

http://www.giantitp.com/articles/jFp...kegKhONNF.html

It completely changes the use of the skill, changing the effect from "shift attitude to X" to "you persuade the opponent to accept a deal, suggestion or idea". It can be viewed as form of Suggestion with a saving throw that takes into account current attitude and acceptability of the suggestion for the opponent. Overall a much better rule, that encourages roleplaying the skill check.

BTW, saying "you just can't do that" is not a good way to DM. You should always let the players a chance, albeit small, to do something if they think of a good way to do it. Obviously letting them just get it with a die roll is not acceptable. With skills that should be roleplayed at least some like Diplomacy you need to raise the DC's comparably to their skills and then give out bonuses for good explanations and acting.

[Jack_Simth]

For the record, this is actually common and still just power-gaming, it's just a different standpoint on it. Some actually say they're the real power gamers since diplomacy difficulties NEVER go up as is. There's a reason Rich Burlew wrote an entire article "fixing" diplomacy.

It doesn't actually work, mind; it mostly nixes the diplomancers, and is not too bad for high Charisma characters who simply take ranks in diplomacy (bards and Rogues, say), but the Wizard-20 can't convince his equal-level lover to give him the time of day without bribery, cross-class ranks, a very high Charisma bonus for a Wizard, or similar (seriously - Base DC 15 + Character Level = 35; Relationship: Intimate, -10; risk vs. reward: No reason to withhold, no particular benefit: +0 = DC 25. Without at cross-class ranks, bribery, a charisma bonus of +5 or better, or some combination, he can't do it on a roll of 20) ... and it takes him a full minute to fail at asking "what time is it?"

[Viruzzo]

It doesn't actually work, mind; it mostly nixes the diplomancers, and is not too bad for high Charisma characters who simply take ranks in diplomacy (bards and Rogues, say), but the Wizard-20 can't convince his equal-level lover to give him the time of day without bribery, cross-class ranks, a very high Charisma bonus for a Wizard, or similar (seriously - Base DC 15 + Character Level = 35; Relationship: Intimate, -10; risk vs. reward: No reason to withhold, no particular benefit: +0 = DC 25. Without at cross-class ranks, bribery, a charisma bonus of +5 or better, or some combination, he can't do it on a roll of 20) ... and it takes him a full minute to fail at asking "what time is it?"

Which is just meaningless, since skill rolls are supposed to recreate important and heroic uses of abilities. Besides, that situation does not even call for a Diplomacy check since the lover would have no reason not to tell him and thus doesn't need to be persuade. If she does have an important reason not to tell him, then the variables are different and a failure may well be appropriate.

[Talic]

First: If you have to say that diplomacy doesn't work here, at any time, you're adding to the Diplomacy rules. If you do that, don't use it to justify the diplomacy system. If you have to change it to make it work, it's not a working system.

[erikun]

Well, I'm not that familiar with the Diplomacy rules, but a few things to note:

First, some NPCs will only go so far in their negotiations. It will take extreme methods from the PCs to get them to agree. Sure, the baron may be willing to let the townsfolk move elsewhere... assuming the PCs are willing to move them themselves and pay for new houses to be build.

Funny thing about politics: the better you are, the more you are hated. Sure, the Diplomancer could convince the king of just about anything, but he'll likely end up as enemies of many high-ranking politicians. Politicians with connections to the local assassins' guild...

Not everything they encounter is human (hopefully), and some non-humans have an odd definition of "friendly". A hungry ogre will probably define "friendly" as letting you hop into the pot, rather than throwing you in.

[Jack_Simth]

Which is just meaningless, since skill rolls are supposed to recreate important and heroic uses of abilities. Besides, that situation does not even call for a Diplomacy check since the lover would have no reason not to tell him and thus doesn't need to be persuade. If she does have an important reason not to tell him, then the variables are different and a failure may well be appropriate.

Then why include "no reason for the information to be withheld" and "intimate relationship" modifiers?

It's a DC 16 check to ask a first-level commoner directions to town square. Hard for the Charisma-10 Wizard to find the place. If you check the skill DC listings, this is just over "tough" when it should be something basically anyone gets basically any time, virtually instantly for the asking.

If you want to tack in that the DM has to call for it, then you've got a conundrum: If the DM decides it should happen trivially, it does. If the DM decides it shouldn't be trivial, it's exceedingly difficult for someone who's not actively focusing on the skill - you've got a "rule" that's highly complex, but amounts to simple DM fiat in the vast majority of cases.

Rich's rules work okay if you assume that everyone has Diplomacy as a class skill and has a significant investment of ranks in it. Otherwise? Not so much.

Edit:
At least, with the existing rules, you still maintain the ability to consider motivations for the NPC, rather than just having them blindly do stuff (Diplomacy directly affects attitude, not motivation or action). That is, if you Diplomatize a prison guard to Friendly....

The Lawful-Good Guard makes sure you're reasonably well treated (provided you're not actively trying to escape) and pleads your case with his lord for leniency. He's doing his duty (Lawful) in not letting you out, but he's being as Good as he can about it towards his friends.
The Chaotic-Good guard maybe arranges so that you've got the ability to make a bloodless break for it (but what's a Chaotic guy doing guarding a prison in the first place?) - if he's not convinced that doing so will cause other's harm down the road. Otherwise, he acts as the LG guard. He's being good (no harm to others), but he doesn't really care about the rulebook.

The Lawful-Evil guard gives you a method of suicide so you can avoid being sentenced, and die with your honor intact. He's Lawful, so he doesn't let you go. He's evil, so his solution is death and destruction (yours, but hey, that's li... err... the way the ball bounces).
The Chaotic-Evil guard... why's he guarding anything, again? ... gives you a dagger, and loosens your chains, so that you can break out violently on someone else's watch. Ideally during the watch of someone he doesn't like (and there should be a lot of people he doesn't like).

A Neutral (Whatever) guard picks one of the extreme alignment responses that's within one step of his, either randomly or based on circumstance (e.g., if the Lawful-neutral Guard is convinced you're guilty, he'll give you a vial of poison so that you may die with honor; if the Lawful-neutral guard is convinced you're innocent, he'll plead your case; if the Lawful-neutral guard isn't sure, roll 1d2...).

That's how they react when friendly - they are taking risks to help you (all of them are potentially risking their positions).

[ericgrau]

Meh, when you aren't using diplomacy for diplomacy, when you want a hostile NPC to automatically become friendly without any rational negotiation, I don't see that as a specific fault of the rules. Perhaps you could call it an inadequecy for not specifically planning for and disallowing powergamers.

Like the rules do in other situation such as:
"A shadowdancer may not hide in his own shadow."
"A bluff is not a suggestion spell."
(bard's Inspire Competence) "Certain uses of this ability are not feasible."
"Despite penalties to movement, you can take a full-round action to move 5 feet (1 square) in any direction, even diagonally.(This rule doesn't allow you to move through impassable terrain or to move when all movement is prohibited, such as while paralyzed.)"

I especially like the way they worded the shadowdancer one, to make it so glaringly obvious. Some rules shouldn't need to even be there, but they are to prevent at least some dumb powergaming. It usually looks like:

DM: "That doesn't make any sense!"
PC: "but the rule says I can!"
DM: "I'm sure that's not what they meant..."
PC: "N'uh, that's what the rule says so I can do it."

It's a futile effort to predict all potential abuse, though, and even with clarification some PCs might still argue/abuse. I'd say diplomacy is the same way.

[Viruzzo]

Rich's rules work okay if you assume that everyone has Diplomacy as a class skill and has a significant investment of ranks in it. Otherwise? Not so much.

This is a problem with the skill system in 3.x in general: after a certain point, PCs that specialize in a certain skill will be able to do anything with it, and the others will have no chance to do the same things. Rich's rule tries to limit the exploitability of the original rule, limiting eventually the non-specialized player which would be useless anyway with the highest DCs (else there would be no need to specialize in the first place). The fact that a non-specialized PC may have problems is far

As for the "DM fiat", you're getting me wrong: I'm not saying that by the rule it shouldn't be used in those cases, but that there I as a DM would not slow the game by inserting a Diplomacy check every time someone talks to an NPC.
If you wish to do so no problem, the rule could still hold itself (BTW the old skill DCs have no meaning with this rule) if you consider (for the commoner example) that the mage has no real social skill and is not using any mean to convince him, so just asking in a non particularly polite and alluring way, resulting in (about):
- 1/4 that the commoner just tells him
- 1/4 that doesn't tell but can be made favorable ("why should I tell you?")
- 1/4 that doesn't tell, can retry
- 1/4 that he is offendend, won't tell and can't retry
The 20th level girlfriend problem still stands, and a solution may be adding the level difference instead of opponent level (but there has to be a limit on the negative, say -5): with the above example it would become -10 intimate, +0 no risk/reward, +0 level difference getting a success with 5 or more. If you still want to make the challenges easier you can change the base DC to 10 instead of 15, without changing the mechanics of the rule.

The "getting information" example is also a bad one, since for any +0 information it may seem unreasonable not to give it right away, and is not really the purpose of Rich's rule as stated in the "Check" entry. Convincing someone to actively help you is more like it, and as such it is quite conceivable that helping a PC do something not risky for free can have a 25% chance of happening: after all, it's their time they would waste helping you.

As for the motivation of NPCs, apart from the fact that you are resorting to DM fiat to determine the effective outcome of the skill check (by itself it just says they're "friendly", so the DM has to make up what that means), I don't see the problem with Rich's rule. Basically, instead of blindingly raise his attitude to X you try to persuade him do something: that will probably be hard since it involves risks for him, and based on his alignment and what you ask him you may get the usual +/- 2 circumstance modifier.

Anyway, I didn't really want to write an apology of Rich's rule, since the base system is broken (too easy to raise the attitude a lot, higher levels of attitude are too powerful, and you can't screw it up bad) there are many things you can do. I suggested Rich's rule because I like it, if you don't no sweat: just keep in mind that sooner or later you will not be able to silence or interrupt or interfere with a skill check of a Diplomancer and either he will abuse the rule or you'll have to resort to fiat.

BTW, if giving information to your lover is +0 risk/reward for your PC, he needs to work on his relationship.

[ericgrau]

I dunno, I could see a 20th level nerd having trouble landing a 20th level hottie .

J/k.

[Chronicled]

"A bluff is not a suggestion spell."

As seen here:

Bluff

The character can implant a nonmagical suggestion in a target, display a false alignment, or disguise his or her surface thoughts.

Example Circumstance Sense Motive Modifier
Instill suggestion in target +50

This is identical to the effect of the suggestion spell, except that it is nonmagical and lasts for only 10 minutes. It can be sensed as if it were an enchantment effect (Sense Motive DC 25).

A bluff can be a Suggestion. And you can beat an NPC's Sense Motive by 50 at level 6 without cheese as a Beguiler (Glibness for the win).

[Viruzzo]

I dunno, I could see a 20th level nerd having trouble landing a 20th level hottie

But she is his girlfriend, so she probably is a nerd too. "Wanna come to my place, see my Star Wars action figures?" "Sweet!".

[Skjaldbakka]

Then why include "no reason for the information to be withheld" and "intimate relationship" modifiers?

It's a DC 16 check to ask a first-level commoner directions to town square. Hard for the Charisma-10 Wizard to find the place. If you check the skill DC listings, this is just over "tough" when it should be something basically anyone gets basically any time, virtually instantly for the asking.

Not everyone will give you the time of day when asked. So the wizard might have to ask a few different people before anyone bothers to respond to his question. Offering a street kid a few coppers for directions wouldn't be too terribly inappropriate either.

[ericgrau]

As seen here:



A bluff can be a Suggestion. And you can beat an NPC's Sense Motive by 50 at level 6 without cheese as a Beguiler (Glibness for the win).

I quoted the PHB. Those are the epic rules. And using a 3rd level bard spell to mimic a 2nd level bard or 3rd level wizard spell is nothing special. And it just shows even more that the typical tactic of beating a sense motive by 1 or even 21 is not a suggestion.

But she is his girlfriend, so she probably is a nerd too. "Wanna come to my place, see my Star Wars action figures?" "Sweet!".

Then that's gotta have a massive circumstance bonus, heh. OTOH if she's a real catch then she's rare and she can dump him easily or cheat on him and get any nerd she wants. Heck, even one with a high cha.

"Um sweetie. Sorry, not tonight. I got, um... other stuff, to do."

Still kidding, kinda. Hopefully she's not that shallow.

time of day: Probably should have a +5 (or more) circumstance bonus for being trivial, similar to the bluff mod.

[skeeter_dan]

As a DM, circumstance bonuses and penalties are your friend. If whoever they're diplomacizing is surrounded by their friends, add a circumstance penalty to the DC for the check. If you're worried about the king being persuaded too far by your diplomancer, make one of his advisers a diplomancer and you can have a diplo-battle.

[Chronicled]

I quoted the PHB. Those are the epic rules. And using a 3rd level bard spell to mimic a 2nd level bard or 3rd level wizard spell is nothing special. And it just shows even more that the typical tactic of beating a sense motive by 1 or even 21 is not a suggestion

Ah, but unlike Suggestion, Glibness lasts for 10 min/level, doesn't offer a Will save, has no signs of misconduct after the initial casting (whereas a guard might notice you casting Suggestion on the King), and lets you practically auto-succeed on Bluff checks even if you don't beat their Sense Motive by 50+ for the duration.