Diplomacy +23 at 3rd level??? Help, my player must be wrong!!!

Lord Pendragon said:

No, it's a core rule. I believe the relevent text is in the DMG under Adjusting NPC attitudes, if memory serves. Skills like Diplomacy do not work when used by one PC on another. The player always gets to decide how his character will react to any given statement (barring magic.)

So this 3rd-level super-diplomat can't use his Diplomacy skill to convince the rest of the party that they'd be better off if he held on to all the magic items they find. Or it'd be a good idea if he rode the paladin's warhorse. etc. etc.

This came up before in a thread where a PC sorceress was trying to use a high diplomacy score to basically make the party fighter into her personal servant. RAW, it doesn't work.Np. Just clarifying.

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We call this Roll Playing... not Role Playing. The best response to a roll is one of the following:

1. I assume by your current interest in my position you wish for me to follow you
2. ARGH! What is that THING? (points at the d20 the person just threw at them)
3. I see this as a political position, my free will, and will treat it as such, however i will roleplay against you, and the DM will award myself victor for simple efforts
4. yeah, so you can roll a dice, so can I. What is it you want?
5. I have a spork!
6. Please treat me as a party member not a tavern wench... ignore those ranks in profession (wenching)
7. *best ever* Narf?

The main reasons we respond like this is because we're there to interact, not throw dice around at each other... much. Outside of combat the dice can become pointless as a good set of roleplayers will dispatch of such modifiers and take care of things. We've even had the barbarian act as diplomat to a group of orcs... lucky we did too, he walked up and said some ego inflating things and we all got through without much effort; the barbarian wasn't too smart anyway, but it suited the character.
I may not be able to find an in-book reference where you cant, but I personally find it quite rude that you dont partake of effort with myself in a game.

-Romers

Lord Pendragon said:

No, it's a core rule. I believe the relevent text is in the DMG under Adjusting NPC attitudes, if memory serves. Skills like Diplomacy do not work when used by one PC on another. The player always gets to decide how his character will react to any given statement (barring magic.)

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Interestingly enough, that section only says that "NPCs can never influence PC attitudes" with a Diplomacy or Cha check and that the "players always make their characters' decisions." No reference to PCs using Diplomacy against other PCs. That being said, I agree with you that it shouldn't be possible.

shilsen said:

Interestingly enough, that section only says that "NPCs can never influence PC attitudes" with a Diplomacy or Cha check and that the "players always make their characters' decisions." No reference to PCs using Diplomacy against other PCs. That being said, I agree with you that it shouldn't be possible.

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That's the part. i.e. Regardless of Diplomacy rolls, "players always make their characters' decisions." I wish I had the search feature, I'd pull up the previous thread that delved into this. That thread was, conversely, a DM irritated that he couldn't use Bluff/Diplomacy on his PCs, when running NPCs, and then of course devolved from there.

Basically, neither the DM nor another player can tell a player how his PC will react to a proposal, regardless of a +1000 Diplomacy roll. And that's absolutely the way it should be.


Although my 9th-level bard would be more than happy if one of my current DMs ruled it the other way. Hel-lo, Overlord of the PC group!

Basically, neither the DM nor another player can tell a player how his PC will react to a proposal, regardless of a +1000 Diplomacy roll. And that's absolutely the way it should be.

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*nod* and it's a pretty easy rule to work with as a DM - you just make a couple rolls (or consult his handy-dandy list of pre-rolls so the dice don't tip the players off) comparing the NPCs appropriate social skill vs the PCs sense motive, and use that as a guideline on how to play the NPC out - should he come across as slick and believable, or stumbling and obviously up to something.

For PC to PC interaction, however... yeah... not all that useful.

Sejs said:

*nod* and it's a pretty easy rule to work with as a DM - you just make a couple rolls (or consult his handy-dandy list of pre-rolls so the dice don't tip the players off) comparing the NPCs appropriate social skill vs the PCs sense motive, and use that as a guideline on how to play the NPC out - should he come across as slick and believable, or stumbling and obviously up to something.

For PC to PC interaction, however... yeah... not all that useful.

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Good point. That's how I tend to run bluff and diplomacy for the NPCs vs. the PCs. If the NPCs lose, I'll roleplay them appropriately and 'slip up' on purpose. What's sad, however, is when an NPC is really obviously lying through his teeth and the PCs believe him anyway. Well, not that sad

I dislike the idea of my stats doing the wheeling and dealing for me. I at the game to play, not be played.

I hope they get Rich Burlew to work on D&D 4th edition, since I really like his proposed changes to problematic rules. He did a similar analysis and fix for polymorph.

Pielorinho said:

I want to second this: I think it's a fantastic reworking of the skill.

Briefly, it does the following things:
* Considers all diplomacy checks to constitute "deals" that the character is offering to another character;
* Takes into consideration the value of the deal that the diplomatic character is offering
* Takes into consideration the attitude the audience has toward the diplomat
* Takes into consideration the power level of the audience; and
* Takes into consideration the wisdom of either the audience, or of the audience's advisor.

Although there are numbers attached to all these things, it's very easy to wing the system, and it makes it so that you can never have "too much" diplomacy; instead, a higher diplomacy allows you to get increasingly powerful, increasingly wise, and increasingly hostile characters to agree to deals that are increasingly favorable to you.

Daniel

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Lord Pendragon said:

Basically, neither the DM nor another player can tell a player how his PC will react to a proposal, regardless of a +1000 Diplomacy roll. And that's absolutely the way it should be.

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While I agree a player should never be forced, I would also expect good roleplayers to take another person's skills and stats in consideration when interacting.

If a party member has an uber charisma and diplomacy skill, then I would expect other players to at least listen to him when he offers a proposal. They could argue back of course, but at least be open to the ideas instead of just blowing them off.

Ridley's Cohort said:

The house rules you linked include someinteresting ideas, but they basically break the skill system in a very ugly way.

The fundamental problem is that the rules scale poorly and thereby make Diplomacy an absolutely useless skill at higher levels unless you have max ranks. If you have only a handful of ranks of Diplomacy to round out your PC and travel in the company of high HD NPCs, you need to roll high to buy a drink at the bar or convince your lover to give you the time of day. Literally.

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Hmm...looking at them again...

Okay, I'm fifteenth level, and I'm going to ask my lover for the time of day. She's also fifteenth level, and has an 18 wisdom.

This is a DC 34 check.
The fact that she's an intimate is -10 on the check.
It may seem there's neither risk nor reward to her acceding to the request--but of course she knows that if she's rude to me, she's likely to lose my affection. Assuming she likes me, I'd say this is a fantastic deal: no risk whatsoever to her acquiescing, and significant benefit (my continued lovin'.) Another -10 on the check.

This is a DC 14 request.

Granted, that might be a little too high--but I think that the general idea is good. Frankly, I think that nobody in the history of the game has ever required a diplomacy check for getting your lover to give you the time of day; there's no reason why Burlew's rule would suddenly require such a check.

In any case where a reasonable person is going to go along with a deal, just have it happen. You only make the diplomacy check when the NPC has a chance of not going along with the deal.

So, you make checks in the following situations:
-Get the librarian (whom you don't know) to allow you into the reserve stacks.
-Get the town guard to tell you whether anyone in a yellow cloak has been through the gate today.
-Get the ogres to agree to give you passage through their lands, in exchange for your not blasting them with a fireball. (Take an intimidation bonus while you're at it--or just use the intimidate skill instead).
-Convince the cleric that your mission benefits their church, and that they should therefore hook you up with some hot healing action.

You don't make checks in the following situation:
-Get the librarian (whom you've worked with for years) to allow you into the reserve stacks, given that you've been using them for years.
-Get the town guard to tell you how to properly bind your weapons before entering town.
-Get the ogres to agree to give you passage, after you've paid them the toll they've been demanding on travelers.
-Convince the cleric to sell you holy water at the normal price.

Treated sensibly, I think this is a great system.

Daniel
-Convince the cobbler to trade you a pair of boots for your gold coins.
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rkanodia said:

I took a look at those rules, and I think they work pretty well for cases where the deal is about something of substance and/or the PCs have an ulterior motive. An argument can definitely be put forth that higher-level people should (generally) be harder to convince to agree to something; their time is more valuable than that of commoners, and the resources they commit to a plan will be more significant.

All sorts of skills break down when exposed to trivial cases. If a DM is making people roll Diplomacy to buy a drink or get the time, then their PCs probably aren't thrilled when it takes them 1d4+1 hours to find out the Soup of the Day using Gather Information or when they can't get Rex the Dog to come over and accept a pat on the head because they don't have any ranks in Handle Animal.

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First of all, those house rules fail outright when applied to characters who are not more or less maxxed out in skill ranks. The author has admitted as much.

Second of all, you are mistaken about the 3e skills breaking down so easily for two reasons. The character can Take 10 and automatically succeed at trivial actions. Truly trivial actions have DCs of 5 or less, usually much less, so failure will rarely occur even if you are forced to roll for some reason (and if circumstances are so extraordinary that a roll is require we are no longer dealing with a trivial case).