Sadrik said:
I don't mean to sound pig headed but, nah. My believability quotient is being challenged with the idea that somebody can come into a town and instantly know which ally is safe and who to avoid. I think that should all be done through role playing and I dont like telling the players what is safe or not without an augury spell. Go there... find out for yourself... don't consult the prescient die roll. Again "macro" skill checks are not for me. If this ever happened I wouldnt like it:
DM - "You come into the town where you are looking for the ruby."
Player - "I make a Streetwise skill check to find where it is." Rolls die, "20!"
DM - "At the bank."
Player - "We go there."
That's not at all what I was intending to imply. The "tells" that a Streetwise character is looking for when evaluating people have to do with attitude and general behavior, interactions. "Okay--that guy is a bit shifty and is moving like somebody who's looking for a mark. He's probably a pickpocket. He has his eye on the fellow in the outfit that looks a bit like a uniform, so that guy's probably a guard." And so on.
The character is knowledgeable about how things are done on the street--how you should present yourself, and how others present themselves, specifically in the lower social strata.
Is that culture-specific? Yes. But then, so is Diplomacy. Knowing the correct forms of address in culture A doesn't immediately mean you know the right way to go about things in culture B. HOWEVER, the skill in the game embodies both the specific knowledge and the more abstract general knowledge. You don't know the forms of diplomacy in this town, but you do know what forms diplomacy usually takes. You pay attention and ask insightful questions and you end up not insulting the monarch.
Same thing with Streetwise. You may not know the local gangs, but you do know in general how gangs organize themselves, and what sorts of things tend to impress or fail to impress people in the lower social classes. As above, so below--but... different.
Anyway, in my opinion, streetwise doesn't tell you who's safe and who's not. It tells you whether they're dangerous because they have gang members watching their backs or because the law is on their side. If they were safe, you'd be up in the high town making diplomacy checks. ;>
As for the finding a major plot item, that's clearly ridiculous. Just about as ridiculous as making a Diplomacy check in 3E with a +30 skill modifier to turn somebody from an enemy into an ally. ^_^;;;
As the DM, you do what you have to do to keep the story rolling. You don't waste time on trivial stuff--if something impinges on the plot not at all, you probably just let people do it. "We need to buy a ruby." Okay, you can find a merchant and buy one. "We need to buy a *cheap* ruby." Okay, make some skill checks to ask around. (If the DM is looking for a hook, a cheap ruby from Streetwise might be rather hotter than the players would like.) "We need to find the Dread Ruby of Rules Lawyering." Well, sorry, nobody on the street is going to be able to tell you where that is--but your Streetwise character can spend a bit of time listening for rumours in low town while your Diplomacy character mingles in high town, and they can compare notes.
The final thing I'll say on this subject: Social skills are both very useful and very problematic for role playing. The down side of them is that if you don't use them well, you end up just rolling dice instead of talking through encounters. However--some social interactions (finding a place to stay for the night that's reasonably comfortable and cheap) don't need to be played out if they distract from the plot. DM has to decide which things need to be played out.
The up side is that these skills let us play characters that are not like us. This is particularly important when playing "up" the skill level. Back in 3E, things like the +30 diplomacy modifier? How do you simply role play being that diplomatic? I'm sorry, you can't. Hell, Jimmy Carter can't. There's nobody in the real world who's that diplomatic. The skill modifier represents superhuman levels of skill, and while the player should put a little effort into saying something other than "I make a Diplomacy check", they're not going to be able to make as convincing a case as their character could, no matter how hard they try. At that point, the dice decide whether the immovable demigod or the unstoppable bard gives first.
4E has made things a little better on these lines by dividing things up between tiers, and saying that challenges should be level-appropriate. Sure, if a level 30 bard strolls into his home town, he should be able to talk just about anybody into anything at all. But he's not bumming around there much any more--he's hanging out in Sigil, and pretty much everybody is out of the ordinary out that way. This keeps the range of possible outcomes in the more humanly conceivable range. (No more talking an enemy into being a bosom buddy with one die roll.)
But you still have the issue of, for example, a very shy player who wants to play a character that's not like them. We roll dice for our characters to fight, we don't arm-wrestle the DM. We do apply some tactical thinking to fighting as well--but that's not the whole picture. Same thing with social interactions: you do some thinking about how you want to approach things, and the DM and the player interact, and then you roll the dice as well. Then the DM can give a minor bonus or penalty depending on whether the approach is extremely appropriate and insightful or whether it's just plain stupid. But still, the skill modifier should be the most major thing involved--you need to do more than just talk it out.
I do think that the most important thing is to think of both of these skills as being primarily social and not knowledge skills. The "knowledge" you can get out of them with a long (hour, day, whatever) skill check is really the result of a lot of activities all rolled up. That's why the DM always has to be thinking about the "speed of plot" for a given use of the skill--keep the pace of the story correct, and everything will be fine. Don't waste your players time with inconsequentials, but don't let them get away with ignoring meaningful interactions with NPCs (unless your whole group is just in it for the fighting and you're ignoring all of that sort of stuff.)
Choosing the wrong plot speed for social encounters is the same as varying the dungeon-clearing speed between "You took a five foot step? Roll to check if you stepped on a rusty nail. Ooo. Tetanus. That's going to sting." and "Roll a d20 to see if you defeat the dragon." Just as ludicrous in either place.
That's my take on things, anyway.
