Choo choo!

[Essence]

Eventually when you get down to it, you want certain NPCs who are inviolate to diplomacy. The king shouldn't ever get swindled out of his kingdom or the BBEG talked into converting to good, unless it's part of the plot.

I have a problem with this, and I'm curious to see who falls where on this issue.

I don't run games wherein I have a predetermined notion of where the plot is 'supposed to go'. I run games wherein I set up characters with motivations and goals, and the PCs interact with them, sometimes helping, oftentimes upsetting them. But I have never, and believe I will never, prevented the PCs from being able to use their abilities upon an NPC without a valid mechanical reason for it.

If a PC can nail a DC 40 Bluff check at 5th level (and I've seen it happen), they can walk out of a guarded stronghold and tell the guards "Hey, don't bother with us, we're just illusions." I don't see why a similar miracle wouldn't allow the PCs to swindle a king out of his kingdom.

I view RC's commentary above as a subtle kind of railroading -- basically, if you as the DM are unprepared to deal with the effects of a PC's abilities, you need to disallow the ability explicity before creation, or you are going to end up depriving him of his stated shtick at some random time that will inevitably be a moment that the player thinks is important and, more importantly, cool.

Just wanted to get y'alls opinions.

[Username17]

RC's comments, when applied directly to D&D as it stands would indeed constitute railroading of the most infuriating kind. James the Diplomancer has spent a considerable amount of character abilities and character chutzpah into talking to people. If he goes to all the trouble of successfully getting into a conversation with the High Priestess of Orcus in order to convince her to abandon the demon lord and come be his girlfriend on the side of Righteousness, and the DM interupts the action and says "You know what, she's the god damn villain of this campaign, request denied. Roll initiative." - that sucks. The established flow of the game has just been thrown right out the window and James' number one character schtick has just been erased by DM fiat.

---

But I don't think that's what RC was really suggesting. The idea is actually that Diplomatic abilities should come with inherent constraints that include not working on the Villain PCs in the same way that they don't work on the Hero PCs. That Diplomancer abilities should be used on Mooks exclusively and priced as such. All the named characters should be able to stick to their motivational ground throughout the story regardless of how silver tongued a Diplomancer happens to be.

And if you price diplomantic abilities appropriately for those limitations and put everyone on the same page as to what those limitations are going to be - then it's not railroading at all. It's only when you spring these limitations on players in-game after they've already purchased and attempted to use those abilities that it's Grade A bullshit.

-Username17

[User3]

Limitations aren't railroading. Just like your character can't go and slay Thor or blow up the evil wizard's castle by snapping his fingers, he can't convince people of certain things.

Really I'm not a supporter of diplomacy skills much.

There are certain times when social ability is a major schtick of a character, James Bond's ability to seduce women, or Aragorn's ability to lead troops. And I think we probably want some abilities to simulate that stuff, but overall I don't like how D&D does social skills at all. And really I'd come up with an entirely different system.

There are two forms of diplomacy how I see it.

Spin: This is pretty much the ability to take facts and spin them so that your side sounds better. This isn't going to dramatically change people's points of view, and requires that you appeal to their interests and trick them into thinking they're upholding their own principles. This one isn't particularly dangerous because it requires some argumentative backing to work. Appealing to the mercy of the evil cleric of Tyranny to free his slaves just isn't going to work.

Charisma: This is pretty much the invisible sort of quasi mind control. This one is the dangerous kind and seemingly what all D&D social skills amount to. Charisma social abilities don't particularly have any rational basis. You suddenly fall in love with someone or you feel willing to follow your commander to your death. These abilities tend to be the ones that most need to be represented mechanically, since you probably can't role play out the extreme beauty and charm of the goddess of love that makes all men swoon to their feet. And these abilities need some kind of limits, otherwise they can dominate your story completely.

The idea is pretty much what Frank said, that charisma based abilities should work only on Mooks. Major characters should treat them like PCs would, in that they should roleplay out the influence, but be able to resist it. The evil villain chick in 'Die Another Day' was attracted to Bond, but she wasn't about to give up her plan for World Domination. And that's generally how you have to handle charisma based abilities in stories. At some point, you've just got to have people capable of resisting them. Otherwise there is no story.

That has nothing to do with railroading but rather with game balance and you pretty much respond to it the same way you would if a player asked for any other game breaking ability. Not giving PCs a given option isn't railroading. It's only railroading if you arbitrarily decide that it doesn't work.

[RandomCasualty]

That was me who made the above post, I got logged out for some weird reason.

[fbmf]

Not giving PCs a given option isn't railroading. It's only railroading if you arbitrarily decide that it doesn't work.

I see your point that as long as the players knew from the word "GO" (That is, way back at character creation time) how Diplomacy 3.RC was going to work, that they can't bitch if they sink a lot of points into it.

Game On,
fbmf

[Josh_Kablack]

As long as you go by what's in the Core 3.5 rulebooks, and throw out the Epic uses, I don't actually see this problem with Diplomacy.

I mean, sure you can theoretically build a character who by 8th level can change someone's attitude from Hostile to Friendly, but the RAW stipulate a time requirement of at least 10 full-round actions...and that's rather unlikely to happen between Hostile parties unless one has already captured the other.

Additionally, I think I see the attitudes as being perhaps a bit less general in their application than you do.

James the Diplomancer has spent a considerable amount of character abilities and character chutzpah into talking to people. If he goes to all the trouble of successfully getting into a conversation with the High Priestess of Orcus in order to convince her to abandon the demon lord and come be his girlfriend on the side of Righteousness,

Okay, so James has just successfully made his Diplomancy roll and changed the Priestess's (who is our current main antagonist) attitude to "Friendly". Now I'm inclined to run this as, she's no longer about to attack James and his party on sight, and she will even take risks to help James. That doesn't mean that her alignment has changed or that she's going to just give up her life's ambition of raising an undead army and conquering the land for her Demon Lord. It does mean that she will modify her plans to make the arrangment more favorable (in her opinion) for James. She may spend considerable effort trying to recruit James to her side; she may give James warning where her undead horde will strike next; she may even decide to spare James's home village for the very last; she may not hold it against James that he and his companions keep trying to kill her; she may give her minions orders that James is to be taken alive while the others can be killed. Even were I to allow the Diplomacy roll to work as a "win", she would go so far as to apologize to James for carrying out the will of Orcus and explain that his land can only be spared if James can get the Demon Lord to change his mind and she'll help by letting him use her portal to the Abyss, at which point the next quest starts immediately and the next BBEG already knows about James' goal and persuasive abilities and will work to thwart them.

[Username17]

It's only a DC 50 to influence that hostile antagonist to Helpful, at which point she "Will take risks to help you." That's beyond the simple "offer limited help" crap she'd do at the Friendly level.

Make of that what you will.

-Username17

[Crissa]

"The cost of an event in an interactive story must be directly proportional to its improbability" - Ken Perlin

What this means, though, is that the player has a responsibility to play their role, and in so doing, you promise to deliver a coherent story.

How is this relevent? Abilities and mechanics which produce irrational results break this unwritten contract.

The premise here is that the diplomacy skill provides irrational results: Once you get so high, anyone agrees with your character, and the game is over.

So obviously it needs a mechanic by which it is opposed not just by mood, but by power level of the target, and possibly their importance to the story.

-Crissa

(Yeah, I've been working all week. Your goofy sidekick will return next week.)

[RandomCasualty]

1143277818[/unixtime]]
The premise here is that the diplomacy skill provides irrational results: Once you get so high, anyone agrees with your character, and the game is over.

So obviously it needs a mechanic by which it is opposed not just by mood, but by power level of the target, and possibly their importance to the story.

Yup, and the more I think about it mechanically, the more I think the whole thing might as well not have a concrete system and probably shouldn't even include a dice roll.

I dont' think you really gain much by having random NPC reactions. To me it just makes the game more irrational and the fact that the reaction is random doesn't add anything to the game. It adds replayability to the adventure since the adventure may go a different way each time, but it doesn't inherently give the feeling of PC accomplishment, since it's just a dice roll and not a set of decisions.

I personally prefer a diplomatic system which looks more like a minigame. By which you may have a plot branch which says "the heroes can change the mind of the king if they show him the goblin chief's letter, and have a diplomacy of level X. If the heroes have a captured goblin prisoner and the letter, then they only require diplomacy of level X-1 to convince the king."

What this does is make the PCs decisions matter as well as rewarding them for investing points in social skills. Because it's the PC's decisions that negate railroading, not a random roll of the dice. What I absolutely despise about the social system right now is that it doesn't take into account the PCs actions at all. In effect you just use diplomacy and the game goes into autopilot. And it's not good especially because it's an irrational autopilot where the NPCs don't make rational decisions and generally is story destructive as opposed to beneficial for the story (since it breaks suspension of disbelief).

Skills as I see them are shaped by the plot. The very idea that you can use a skill generally has to be called for by the plot itself. For instance, open lock only works if there happens to be a locked door in your path. Using knowledge arcana to figure something out requires that the adventure provide you with a juncture to use it. I don't really find a problem with doing that with diplomacy too and including some encounters vulnerable to diplomacy skill use.

[Lago_AM3P]

I dont' think you really gain much by having random NPC reactions. To me it just makes the game more irrational and the fact that the reaction is random doesn't add anything to the game. It adds replayability to the adventure since the adventure may go a different way each time, but it doesn't inherently give the feeling of PC accomplishment, since it's just a dice roll and not a set of decisions.

It doesn't matter much in this game since you can pretty much kill anyone in the streets or in bureaucracy without reprocussions, but in d20 modern and Shadowrun and Exalted, being able to gain the favor of random NPCs is really important and useful.

And the character who is able to charm/scare the pants off of people and get what they want from complete strangers is so common that you just gotta have them. Really basic character concepts like Aladdin and Batman would just not exist if they were in a game where they couldn't reliably influence the attitudes of random people.

And instead of just being able to gain fanatical followers out of named NPCs, how about a compromise position--named people have a much smaller range of response from people who try to diplomatize. Like while you can convince the nameless peasant hordes in the street to rally after you to storm the keep, you might be able to just make the King of Glyover pay you an extra 5 percent for your quest. This allows people like James Bond to fast talk his way out of getting sliced in half by a laser.

Handled by two completely different ranges of responses of course.

I personally prefer a diplomatic system which looks more like a minigame. By which you may have a plot branch which says "the heroes can change the mind of the king if they show him the goblin chief's letter, and have a diplomacy of level X. If the heroes have a captured goblin prisoner and the letter, then they only require diplomacy of level X-1 to convince the king."

I'm good with this. It would require a complete retooling of the skill system--which you pointed out needs to be completely redone anyway--and instead of putting extra bonuses on spells and items, you'd get a lot more mileage out of circumstantual bonuses.

Like if you were able to stop a plot against his life and save his daughter before meeting him, the Duke would be a lot more open to diplomacy checks from a complete stranger. Because right now the game suggests that you should be getting a +2 to your roll because of this and there are items that give a +10 bonus to every check you ever make. And that's poor.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Most conversations where one could be said to be using Diplomacy involve point-and-counterpoint formats, even if they're less formal than an actual debate. Therefore, why not have a system where a diplomacy check is opposed by another diplomacy check? This adds a level-dependant variable to it, and sets things up so that people who are in political positions(And therefore use diplomacy often) such as kings and preists are less likely to fall whimpering to the PCs feet as soon as they turn on their Charisma.

-Desdan

[Josh_Kablack]

Yup, and the more I think about it mechanically, the more I think the whole thing might as well not have a concrete system and probably shouldn't even include a dice roll.

I dont' think you really gain much by having random NPC reactions. To me it just makes the game more irrational and the fact that the reaction is random doesn't add anything to the game. It adds replayability to the adventure since the adventure may go a different way each time,

IIRC, Gygax's original intent of having reaction rolls were that you would use them to determine the attitudes of NPC's whose attitudes you hadn't preplanned. In that context (which is a game of largely random encountes) , they make perefect sense. And in that context, they don't run afoul of RC's contention that you shouldn't be able to influence the attitudes of preplanned story characters.

[power_word_wedgie]

What Josh mentioned was what I remembered as well. The same could have been carried over to the racial reaction tables. Just because you're an elf in 1st edition didn't mean that they needed to hate every half-orc PC in the group.

edit: And to extend my answer a little more, don't any of these creatures/kings have advisors? Yeah, I charming bard could bluff a king out of his pants, but there's going to be a charasmatic and wise advisor that since we're doing this in a magic-filled world are going to have magic items that will pump their Sense Motive and Bluff skills through the roof. After all, this is what they do for a living. Thus, these guys are going to be around to bring the king back to earth and, if the king is really that gullible, not allow the PCs to hog in on the sweet deal that the advisor has.