Brobdingnagian at [unixtime wrote:1174107925[/unixtime]]Okay, so tell me this.
At level 15, your wizard goes into a castle, dominates the king, and gets his whole country, and keeps it because he then orders the former king's execution.
FIne, because dominate offers a will save and is perceived as an obviously hostile act. It can also be resisted by something as simple as a protection from evil spell and it can be dispelled. So it's quite risky. Go ahead and try it.
Your fighter goes, kicks the king's butt with a teddy bear on a stick, and does the same to anyone else who would challenge him, netting himself a kingdom.
Again, quite risky. The king might just as easily kick his ass.
Your rogue, who has been specialising in diplomacy, can't do sweet crap all because you want people to fight.
No, the rogue can go in there with zero risk and possibly get the king to do favors for him. But he won't get the king's entire kingdom just by asking for it.
Diplomacy is useful because it's a zero risk skill. Unlike holding a sword to someone's throat or casting a dominate or charm, people don't perceive simple talking as being a threatening act, so you can go in there and do it without risk of having your head mounted on a lance.
Also the effects of diplomacy are permanent and can't be resisted or dispelled. But yes, the effects need to be limited for that reason. It just can't be as good as dominate person, otherwise it's a ridiculously broken ability.
Basically I view social skill uses as being another mini-challenge in an adventure. And that's what skills do for the most part, beat mini-challenges. Look at the other skills.
-You come to a locked door, you use open lock.
-You come to a trap, you use search and disable device.
-You come across a pit, you use climb to traverse it.
-You come across some ancient writing, you use decipher script to translate it.
And so on and so on.
Uses for social skills I see as being special skill opportunities that the DM places in the adventure. If no doors are locked, then open lock is useless, if there is nothing to climb, you can't use climb. If there aren't obscure runes, you can't use decipher script. Similarly, if no NPCs are open to diplomacy then you can't use your social skill.
Now, a good adventure obviously should let PCs use social skills from time to time, but they're on stuff like minor encounters. Bluffing the guard to get into the king's ball without a fight, or using diplomacy to convince the Drow that you've got a common enemy, and so on.
Skills should add to an enhance the adventure, not completely drive it as you're suggesting.
Running diplomacy as you suggest is freakin' stupid, because the moment somebody gets that good at diplomacy, the game ends. They achieve universal peace and everyone (even the gods themselves) worship them as an overdeity and they get all the gold and items they want, and now they're the DM. Your only solution to this is to have everyone walk around with cones of silence on, so that there's no dialogue whatsoever in the entire campaign!
I just don't see how that's fun at all. I'm sorry, but I don't. It sounds incredibly lame and boring to play. And if you call that roleplaying, well... uh, we have a serious difference of opinion.
moment with myself. Unfriendly does turn hostile on a roll of 5 or less according to the Hypertext SRD. Silly me. (Should be higher.)
