Dealing with talk monkeys

[Regicide]

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

It's not free. Someone spent a feat and a power slot on the ability to do that. In return they might get past the encounter, but they're not getting loot and the threat is still present so that when the party goes past they now have enemies both in front and behind them. And of course there is nothing saying the guard wouldn't double cross them eventually and alert others of their presence.

Should a 30+ roll, completely impossible for your average person to achieve, well into what only heroes can attain not give you something... heroic? *shrug*

 

[Obryn]

I'd improvise a Skill Challenge for something like this, using the DCs on Page 42 with situational adjustments. I'd also give full XP if the party passes. A single roll shouldn't take care of everything. (I'm shuddering and remembering the single-roll Diplomacy insanity under 3.5...)

-O

 

[Ryujin]

It's not free. Someone spent a feat and a power slot on the ability to do that. In return they might get past the encounter, but they're not getting loot and the threat is still present so that when the party goes past they now have enemies both in front and behind them. And of course there is nothing saying the guard wouldn't double cross them eventually and alert others of their presence.

Should a 30+ roll, completely impossible for your average person to achieve, well into what only heroes can attain not give you something... heroic? *shrug*

I've forked out four feats and a power slot to hit people and it still doesn't end an encounter with a single roll.

 

[Sgt_Shock]

I totally agree, but what I'm saying is that that's not provided for in the PHB.

Hostile - Intimidate vs. Will+10 (or an arbitrary DC set by the DM)
Unfriendly - Intimidate vs. Will+5 (or an arbitrary DC set by the DM)
other - Intimidate vs. Will (or an arbitrary DC set by the DM)

I'm not sure how I'd tweak this as a DM, without making it too complex. I'd probably just want to wing it. I do think that intimidate should be roughly equally useful as diplomacy throughout the course of a campaign, but diplomacy should be better when dealing with friendlies. Intimidate should be better in combat or near-combat situations.

I always viewed the bonus as more of the way to represent that the intimidator understands his friends better than an enemy. The key to scaring someone is understanding their nature. This way, you know what scares someone and what doesn't.

 

[Regicide]

I've forked out four feats and a power slot to hit people and it still doesn't end an encounter with a single roll.

Your statement might not be a meaningless non sequitur if the diplomacy roll was actually being made during an encounter instead of to avoid it.

Let me guess, you don't allow people to use the sneak skill to get past encounters either but an invisibility effect works fine? If you don't want skills to be of any use in your game, let your players know that before they pick feats and powers that help skills.

 

[Obryn]

Your statement might not be a meaningless non sequitur if the diplomacy roll was actually being made during an encounter instead of to avoid it.

Let me guess, you don't allow people to use the sneak skill to get past encounters either but an invisibility effect works fine? If you don't want skills to be of any use in your game, let your players know that before they pick feats and powers that help skills.

Um, I don't see how you got what you wrote here from what he wrote.

Is there a problem with using the (corrected) Skill Challenge rules instead of a single roll for this sort of thing? Or is a single roll the only real way to do it, so sayeth Regicide, amen?

-O

 

[LostSoul]

It could not, since the power doesn't have the "Charm" keyword. Your voice sounds more pleasant, your demeanor more amiable, but that doesn't mean mind control. In some instances it means that the party is taken captive, instead of a TPK...

Yeah, I agree. I looked at the fluff text and that didn't sound like it would charm anyone; looking at the keywords makes sense too!

Beguiling Tongue reminds me of the old spell Friends.

Anyways, to the DMs: How much does the fact that the warlock cast a spell matter when you make your decision? At this point we're no longer really dealing within the bounds of human experience. Can he really talk his way through the gate?

I think it's a DM's call, probably the sort of ruling you need to make clear. I'd base a lot of it on RP - if the player hammed up his unearthly, fey nature, forcing everyone to cower in awe at his otherworldly glamour; and then if the roll was Will Defense + 10 or more - maybe that would work, yeah.

 

[FurryFighter]

So, I have this big encounter set up. It's got everything; there's monsters and traps and a big set-piece battle to bust into an enemy fortress! The players are all ready to go, and then the warlock says those dreaded words....

"I'm gonna use Diplomacy."

Oh god. He's level five, and he rolls a total of 32 (18 on the die + 4 charisma + 5 trained + 5 power bonus), so now I have to deal with it.

Well, he tried to talk the hobgoblins into letting him pass, and his check result certainly supported it, but I didn't want to let this big set piece go to waste (and there wasn't really any way to insert it later), so I had the hobs accept his claims of friendship but stand firm by their orders to let none pass, and therefore allow him to leave peacefully if he chose, but he'd have to fight his way in anyway if he wanted to go on. (Which they had to, so they wound up doing the fight anyway.)

How do I deal with this sort of thing? I felt bad that I essentially screwed him out of any benefit of his massive diplomacy roll, but at the same time Beguiling Tongue is an encounter power! So I can expect to be seeing this a lot in the future.

How should I handle trying to talk his way out of a fight?

I guess making one good talk roll should count sort of the same as making one strong attack roll, so it should remove a minion or two, or demoralize one normal monster, or something else that's approximately what one good attack roll would do. Even then I know he probably won't be happy with it, because I know he's angling to try to bypass the battle totally. Intimidate has some rules for how it might interact with combat, but Diplomacy and Bluff? I have no idea.

Somebody tried to use a skill and their head to get around an encounter rather than mindlessly bashing like people claim 4e is all about, no roleplay and only mass fighting, and it went to waste instead of the encounter going to waste..

I had a similar situation. The PCs were in a tower causing the entire continent to go insane, killing everything in their path on the way to the top. No regard for life whatsoever. They are blocked in a 5ft highway by a minotaur. They decided to roll a diplomacy check and rolled a 20. So.... he became their friend. until he fell 80 feet during the next battle on a rope. The damage didn't bring him to 0 hp but I decided he died anyway.

There's no reason to not do this sometimes. Start throwing monsters that don't know their language or don't care in the future.

This sounds like a great opportunity for creating story and roleplay and all that.

"The minotaur looks down on you, and starts thinking. To him it was just a job to guard this place, and he could care less who owned it or what he had to do for his job. But somehow he felt that, whether due to the intensity and earnestness of these intruders' pleas, or due to being vaguely aware of the whole scope of the danger caused by what he guarded, or perhaps both, his job wasn't worth doing anymore."

yeah, fell apart at the end, I was just hashing it out anyway.

 

[Keenath]

I have a real problem with your intended approach. Essentially, you want to force the party into a fight. So, just have the bad guys attack. 'Nuff said.

Sometimes you can't just have the enemies attack. Like for example, a bunch of guards on a gate and the PCs are staying outside range. Sometimes things just come up during play that you didn't expect, and I'm trying to figure out how to handle them on the fly.

If, on the other hand, you want DMing advice on how to railroad the party through RP, well, that's another problem that I bet a lot of people will have trouble helping you with.

It's not a railroad to say that you can't talk your way past these certain guys! Sometimes there are people who can't be reasoned with despite being intelligent and sane people. Sometimes there are people you can't intimidate no matter how scary you are. Sometimes there are people who won't stand aside no matter how convincing your bluff checks are*.

The whole point here isn't "How do I force the PCs to follow my story?" but rather "How do I give the players a benefit for doing something cool without allowing it to totally break the encounter?"


* For example, consider the military and the chain of command**. A captain doesn't have the ability to give orders to a private from a different company -- he can't walk up to Private Goober who's guarding a door and order the private to move. Private Goober doesn't take orders from random people who walk past who happen to have a higher rank. The officer has to respect chain of command and get Private Goober's superior officer to have the door opened. There are exceptions, but really Hollywood gets this wrong all the time. In this case, Goober probably can't be bluffed into opening the door by somebody pretending to be an officer.

** "It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til you know who's in ruttin' charge around here!" - Jayne Cobb

 

[Mouseferatu]

Somebody tried to use a skill and their head to get around an encounter rather than mindlessly bashing like people claim 4e is all about, no roleplay and only mass fighting, and it went to waste instead of the encounter going to waste..

Making a single skill check and assuming you can talk your way out of battle isn't "using their head" to get around anything.

Now, if he launched into a lengthy, in-character attempt at persuasion, that check could (and probably should) have been the start of a skill challenge that could, if successful, have avoided the battle.

But claiming that saying "I use Diplomacy" and rolling a single d20 should accomplish that? No, I don't think so.