Conscripting the Enemy... Diplomancy and the Intimidator Man.

[Garthanos]

It has been brought up by @AbdulAlhazred Not an explicit quote.

If the warlord can defeat an enemy in battle why not let them convince the enemy to join them...

this inspired the Diplomancer thoughts.

I conjectured that the intimidate skill was allowed to route the enemy or force them to surrender.



In a much lesser and easier sense one might be able to use it stop even an enemy on the battle field from attacking you or someone near you or approaching closer.... would this take a standard action. Could it affect several adversaries near each other.. OR could you combine it with some flash bang move that would allow it to affect several.

ie the Intimidate skill lets theoretically any class do some bad ass things if the dm lets it... it would be useful for more explicit effects to be enumerated. My standing argument for enumerating abilities is it valuable to give the martial hero permission to do awesome things 9as well as explicitly limit the spell caster who has no intrinsic limits)


[h2]The Diplomancer [/h2]
So what if that same concept was applied to diplomacy? What are the pit falls? I know this concept may have been abused int the past, but I think its another route to awesome

Its currently pretty underfed conscripting the enemy seems an extreme that feels a bit like the effect achievable with intimidation and may only work when someone has been defeated and spared.

Diplomacy might convince an enemy you seem harmless so they do not attack you right now ... similar in reverse to the intimidate effect its less likely to work on a bloodied enemy or atleast one you have personally attacked.


[h2]The Deciever[/h2]
The bluff ability does have some enumerated combat ability as well is that enough? am I underestimating it?
it doesnt seem as wow as the intimidator.



Anyway it seems some enumerating skill use in combat has been done a bit via some skill powers ... but if the skills were properly expressed maybe that wouldn't even have been necessary?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My comments are:

1) Diplomacy, one of the few skills with no acknowledge combat function whatsoever. You could use it to negotiate with an enemy and make them 'not an enemy' but I think that is properly left to RP/SC, and isn't generally something that happens while trading blows in an all-out fight (though perhaps you could do a combat/SC that allowed for it). I think, outside of combat, there's no reason you couldn't convince a nominal enemy to become an ally. It seems perfectly feasible.

2) Intimidate, the combat use of this is borked. If you have a very high skill bonus (especially coupled with serrated weapons or other ways to bloody easily) it can become rather stupid broken. OTOH because its a skill use and thus fairly subject to DM adjudication its prime fodder for issues that normally don't come up in 4e. IMHO 4e should have a morale system, and then Intimidation can tie into that. You COULD intimidate someone into joining you, but I think that is much like Diplomacy, not something to roll into a single power use.

3) Bluff, the combat use of Bluff that is in PHB1 is utterly worthless. You have to burn a Standard action to maybe accomplish a result that is no better than what can be had with many powers that also do damage. The hiding ploy is equally low value, as it only lasts to the end of the existing turn, and already you've burned your Standard, what do you hope to accomplish? AT BEST (and this depends on how your DM interprets the "retain the benefits of being hidden" language of RC) it means you might be able to deploy an AP and make an attack with advantage. Seems kinda lame for all that resource use. So Bluff's combat use needs a serious rewrite. I've only seen it used ONE time in a fight, and that was probably not an optimum move by the player.

I think its reasonable for skills to have 'ad hoc powers' associated with them. Skill powers can be used to represent the really crazy stuff, like reliably hiding in plain sight, scaring off an enemy, or etc.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Not helpful, but the pcs in my campaign have been 'Pressing' defeated enemies into their crew since 6th level.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not helpful, but the pcs in my campaign have been 'Pressing' defeated enemies into their crew since 6th level.

Yeah, well, 4e's mechanics are so generalized that in reality you don't NEED to work out specific procedures for this kind of thing. You can just call a 0 hit point bad guy 'defeated', and then decide what's a reasonable way to get them into service, and what sort of performance you can get.

Heck, you could do this. Call someone press-ganged (IE serve or die) to be a minion. A weakly motivated 'hireling', might simply be represented as having half its normal hit points, after which it gives up or flees (or plays dead, etc). This could represent some creature intimidated into service, or serving a disliked or distrusted master. Normal monster performance would represent a situation of proven trustworthiness or possibly excellent pay and benefits (probably for more mercenary types). They are still likely to break if put in any sort of bad spot once bloodied. Really reliable allies that share the PCs agenda are basically ordinary CCs, they don't usually break unless reduced to 0 hit points (and somehow remaining alive, which is perfectly possible of course).

I tend to interpret 'damage' a bit more broadly than most perhaps, so its often possible that monsters and such simply give up due to 'psychic damage' that is really a morale loss. You can of course use the non-lethal damage rules, but its not always necessary.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Heck, you could do this. Call someone press-ganged (IE serve or die) to be a minion

Right first time, exactly what I did.
Well except for the ones that mutinied.

 

[Garthanos]

3) Bluff, the combat use of Bluff that is in PHB1 is utterly worthless. You have to burn a Standard action to maybe accomplish a result that is no better than what can be had with many powers that also do damage.

I have two players who love rogues who ignore it entirely...

So Bluff's combat use needs a serious rewrite.

Agreed


I use the bloodied state to adjudicate enemy morale ... having most sentient enemies look for the door when they hit bloodied in this case I have always thought random die rolled morale was kind of meh. i mean with the game giving some clues the DMs can role play the enemy.
I see the intimidate usage to be another method to give players agency in the arena influencing the enemy and havent seen it abused.

 

[Garthanos]

Yeah, well, 4e's mechanics are so generalized that in reality you don't NEED to work out specific procedures for this kind of thing. You can just call a 0 hit point bad guy 'defeated', and then decide what's a reasonable way to get them into service, and what sort of performance you can get.

Heck, you could do this. Call someone press-ganged (IE serve or die) to be a minion. A weakly motivated 'hireling', might simply be represented as having half its normal hit points, after which it gives up or flees (or plays dead, etc). This could represent some creature intimidated into service, or serving a disliked or distrusted master. Normal monster performance would represent a situation of proven trustworthiness or possibly excellent pay and benefits (probably for more mercenary types). They are still likely to break if put in any sort of bad spot once bloodied. Really reliable allies that share the PCs agenda are basically ordinary CCs, they don't usually break unless reduced to 0 hit points (and somehow remaining alive, which is perfectly possible of course).

I tend to interpret 'damage' a bit more broadly than most perhaps, so its often possible that monsters and such simply give up due to 'psychic damage' that is really a morale loss. You can of course use the non-lethal damage rules, but its not always necessary.

To certain lets call them non-modern mindsets serving the one who has defeated you can be seen as a manner of regaining pride, the enemy has proved their worthiness in particular both strength and mercy and in serving they may partake of that.

Virtually ANYTHING can done non mechanically , however

Yes I think strongly encouraging that open ended interpretation of damage has some very useful things with it.

Having martial powers doing psychic damage might give context for interpretting things as morale and similar ptsd effects (well that is an affliction if I ever heard one) interpretation of hit points.

 

[Rolenet]

But if the Diplomancer can end a fight then it's really disappointing for the fighter PCs. The balance is very tricky. You don't want to allow the 3.0-type half-elf Diplomacy beast who can walk into a random encounter and end up with 3 ogre allies.

On the other hand, if the Diplomancer is just using speech to fight, then it would be a variation on some bard (or other leader) powers: it would be a Cha attack that deals psychic (morale) damage and some condition. Hit Points are clearly not merely wounds - just as a 0hp creature is not "dead". So it's already supported!

Same for Intimidate and some barbarian powers.

But if you want stronger Diplomacy conditions, you might run into the issue of "not-fights", that is if the Diplomancer can prevent the target from attacking him, or attacking at all, then it's merely trading an attack for an attack - and lengthening the encounter!

That's why I'm not too hot on makng Diplomacy part of a fight!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have two players who love rogues who ignore it entirely...

Agreed


I use the bloodied state to adjudicate enemy morale ... having most sentient enemies look for the door when they hit bloodied in this case I have always thought random die rolled morale was kind of meh. i mean with the game giving some clues the DMs can role play the enemy.
I see the intimidate usage to be another method to give players agency in the arena influencing the enemy and havent seen it abused.

Yeah, I think in general this is true. I think it was even true pretty much back in the days of AD&D when I'd basically have the bad guys run at the point where it seemed like they were just dropping without really having any visible impact on the party vs bothering to roll a bunch of dice. Morale/Obedience might be useful though for that situation where maybe the bad guys won't even START a fight, or will just book quickly.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But if the Diplomancer can end a fight then it's really disappointing for the fighter PCs. The balance is very tricky. You don't want to allow the 3.0-type half-elf Diplomacy beast who can walk into a random encounter and end up with 3 ogre allies.

On the other hand, if the Diplomancer is just using speech to fight, then it would be a variation on some bard (or other leader) powers: it would be a Cha attack that deals psychic (morale) damage and some condition. Hit Points are clearly not merely wounds - just as a 0hp creature is not "dead". So it's already supported!

Same for Intimidate and some barbarian powers.

But if you want stronger Diplomacy conditions, you might run into the issue of "not-fights", that is if the Diplomancer can prevent the target from attacking him, or attacking at all, then it's merely trading an attack for an attack - and lengthening the encounter!

That's why I'm not too hot on makng Diplomacy part of a fight!

I think you just need to have a standard for what powers can do, and then make all things people do in combat powers. That's my approach. You can still have improvisation, its just a process of creating a 'power' (albeit a highly informal one in many cases) that does what you want. The point is, you wouldn't have a power, even a daily, that just ended a fight in one shot, so you wouldn't have any such thing in the form of a 'Diplomancer' either. You'd just have a bunch of defined things that Diplomacy can do, and the generalized 'Diplomacy Check' that covers things outside combat where you're just exercising your skill within the context of a challenge of some sort.