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

[Artoomis]

Help, we've got a player who dun' git' himself a Diplomacy skill of +23 for a 3rd level without magic items:

* 6 ranks
* 5 ranks in each of Bluff, Knowledge (nobility) and Sense Motive gives +2 synergy each - +6
* Half-elf gives +2
* Negotiator feat gives +2
* Charisma 18 gives +4
* Skill Focus feat gives +3


Are there any stacking limitation errors here?

jh

Does the Negotiator Feat give any other benefit other than +2 to Diplomacy? If not, it is essentially the same thing as Skill Focus (but for only +2) and I don't think they should stack.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Does the Negotiator Feat give any other benefit other than +2 to Diplomacy? If not, it is essentially the same thing as Skill Focus (but for only +2) and I don't think they should stack.

Well...

NEGOTIATOR [GENERAL]
Benefit:[/i] You get a +2 bonus on all Diplomacy checks and Sense Motive checks.

...and...

SKILL FOCUS [GENERAL]
Choose a skill.
Benefit: You get a +3 bonus on all checks involving that skill.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new skill.

Notice how they are both unnamed bonuses?

Therefore, they stack. Also, it would seem pretty silly if they didn't...

 

[Nail]

As many others have said: "Don't worry about it."

It is crucial, however, to talk with the player about everyone's expectations. Diplomacy (much like illusion magic) is highly dependent on the DMs style.

On another note: Boy-howdy, would this guy make a great Thaumaturgist.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

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.

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.

 

[scholz]

I have three words.
"Other Party Members"
Just keep this character around the other player characters and they will do what you need to keep this character from getting out of a control. If super diplomat uses his stellar ability to make friends of the local orcs, let the other party members say something and odds are that will undo all the diplomacy.
In my experience at least one player will be hostile, cajoling, threatening, cruel, untrusting, opportunistic, or unfair with regard for the npcs.
This tends to work for charms as well.

 

[Talon5]

My God! Why? Why would you want diplomacy that high? I mean- my God, why?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

My God! Why? Why would you want diplomacy that high? I mean- my God, why?

Because, occasionally, it's *fun* to talk the dragon out of its scales.

 

[rkanodia]

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.

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.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

PCs can't use Bluff against each other.

The player always decides what his character believes.

Is this a rule?

No, it's metagaming.

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.

Ah. Oops. I meant to say 'can Bluff another PERSON into believing stupid crap.' Guess missing that one word changed the meaning a bit. My bad.

Np. Just clarifying.

 

[Sejs]

On another note: Boy-howdy, would this guy make a great Thaumaturgist.

Heh, the image I had was this guy being a sorcerer that focused on summoning and planar magics (would require tweaking the sorc class skill list a bit, but we'll ignore that for now).


Planar Binding, whistle up something huge and terrible, keep it bound and then go on to the negotiations stage of things...

Demon: "Wait, wait.. let me see if I've got this right. You want me to raze this city to the ground, grand temple and all, single handedly. All at great personal risk to myself. And in exchange, you'll give me a couple cans of Fresca, and an old leather hat."

Sorcerer: "Yep. That's the deal."

Demon: "Well... alright. You seem like an okay sort of guy. I'm in."