Hey Quas,
I didn't, I quoted you at the top of my post.
The misinterpretation is my fault, as I can understand how the original line could be read as "He might send assassins after you because he's friendly" instead of "He might send assassins after you even though he's freindly". The latter was what I'd intended.
And the following:
"He's 'Friendly' toward you now, so he may send an assassin to kill you." ?!
What is the problem with DMs disliking the idea of a PC making friends with NPCs?
"No! You're supposed to be attacked by the orcs, and fight your way to their chief. Not this stupid happy talk."
...seemed to be words put in my mouth. Possibly, however, that's my misreading, and not your attempt to overly simplify what I was saying.
I think you are just confused as to the game definitions of the 5 NPC attitudes.
Actually, I believe we
disagree as to the game definitions of the 5 NPC attitudes. I'm not confused at all. I could be wrong, and please, quote away if you've got something that trumps my opinion, but I'm not confused.
If they are about to be attacked, the NPCs are Hostile, not Unfriendly. And going from Hostile to Friendly is a Diplomacy DC 35! With an extra -10 on the roll if it has to be done immediately (one round).
Actually, I could have just had the NPCs as Indifferent. Indifferent means "Acts as expected socially under the circumstances." If you're in a gang meeting, and things are tense, and 5 well-armed uninvited people break down the door, you are socially expected to open fire. You don't have a deep personal loathing for this guy you never met before. You don't wanna start talkin' bad 'bout his mama. You just wanna follow your instructions, which were along the lines of "Hey, man, shoot anybody who ain't on the list."
I had them as Unfriendly because the PCs were wearing the wrong kind of clothes, and were obviously not gang members of any sort. That meant "We're going to attack, and not only that, we're going to enjoy it, because this is our chance to grind our boots into the upper-class a bit."
I never said it was a one-round action. Initiative hadn't been rolled yet, so I gave the PC time to make his case. And, when he finally rolled his Diplomacy check, he got a natural 20, plus 5 from an action point, which, when added to his ranks and bonuses, totalled 37. The Lieutentant, who himself was Hostile (for personal reasons), was moved to Friendly. Because of the Lieutenant's personal allegiances, his Friendly status in no way precluded him from killing the PCs if they got in his way, but it did mean that he wasn't specifically aiming to do so, and that he might feel a twinge of regret as he did.
This most likely speaks to some radically different approach to those 5 Attitudes. It seems really unpleasant to you to conceive of someone who could be friendly to you while still taking violent action against you. Or perhaps you conceive of those 5 attitudes to be overridingly powerful, such that if someone was Hostile to you -- "You killed my father, mistreated my sister, stole my ranch, burned my bible, and shot my dog, and now I'm going to kill you, you soulless monster, whatever it takes" -- and you rolled well enough on your Diplomacy check to bring them to merely Unfriendly, then he'd stop and say, "Well, I still don't like the fact that you killed my father, mistreated my sister, stole my ranch, burned my bible, and shot my dog, but I'm now just going to scowl at you from across the room and say mean things about you behind your back."
In my mind, moving that guy to Indifferent would cause him to continue on his course of action as expected (the socially expected action of vengeance), moving him to Friendly might make him give a bit of leeway (he'd respect the PCs and avoid hurting innocent friends of theirs, unless that was his original goal, and he might say something like "I understand why you did what you did, but this still has to come down to us crossing swords."), and moving him to Helpful
might convince him to let the PCs live. Not a definite -- it'd depend on his personality -- but at the very least, he'd let the innocent friends of the PCs go, give the PCs time to prepare, make it a formal duel instead of an assassination, etc. Or maybe, if his personality was right, he'd drop to his knees in tears as the weight of the PCs' words cut through the vengeance that had controlled him. It might. Or it might not. As I said, it depends on the personality of the NPC in question.
How does that strike you?
Kahuna Burger, you said:
if you don't allow the use of sense motive to oppose bluff attempts, I doubt it was because you "figured out how the rules are supposed to work". You may have found a way to interpret or adjust them that works better for you, but I'd say you are dealing in house rules, not some better understanding of the rules as written. Not that this is a problem, if your players like it.
KB, again, I may have misspoken. I
do allow the use of sense motive aganst bluff attempts. But I consider a single bluff attempt to be a series of statements, such that the PC gets one roll, and the NPC gets one bluff attempt, for all of their statements.
From the d20 Modern Errata and FAQ, a statement that compares the Sense Motive skill to an Investigator's
Discern Lies ability:
What's the difference between the Investigator's discern lies ability and the normal use of the Sense Motive skill?
To see the difference between Sense Motive and discern lie, lets look at the two ways Sense Motive can be used: to overcome a bluff, and to get a sense of the trustworthiness of an NPC.
In the first case, keep in mind that a bluff is not the same thing as a lie. A bluff is a quick prevarication intended to distract, confuse, or mislead, generally only for the short term. A bluff is not intended to withstand long-term or careful scrutiny, but rather to momentarily deter an action or decision. You bluff your way past a security guard by flashing a video club card and acting like you know what you're doing. You bluff your way out of a brawl by acting like you're tougher than the 250-pound biker. Bluffs involve attitude and body language. Bluffs often include lies, but they usually aren't very sophisticated and aren't intended to deceive the target for more than a few moments.
A lie, on the other hand, is a simple misrepresentation of the facts. A suspect tells you he was in Chicago on the day of the crime, when in fact he wasn't. A client tells you he'll pay $10,000 for the job when he intends to stiff you. Body language and attitude aren't a big part of communication. The lie may be very sophisticated and well thought-out, and is intended to deceive you at least until you discover evidence to the contrary.
Sense Motive checks can help you see through bluffs. But, when used properly, they should not help you determine that any given statement is a lie. Furthermore, an NPC should not have to make a Bluff check every time he utters a lie-therefore, there's nothing to use Sense Motive on.
The second function of Sense Motive is to determine the general trustworthiness of a character. Using it in this way, you might determine that your suspect is highly, well, suspicious, and might tend to lie to you. But that doesn't tell you which, if any, specific statements are untrue. (In fact, an NPC can be highly untrustworthy even if he doesn't happen to be telling any lies at the moment!) Furthermore, this use of Sense Motive requires a whole minute to use, so it can't be applied to a single statement.
Discern lies, on the other hand, can be applied to determine the truth of an individual statement.
I am attempting to use it in that spirit.
