D&D 4E Diplomatic Inspiration / Leadership

While diplomacy does indeed have a fair number of broad uses all of them outside of combat
visions of the diplomancer stopping fights in the middle run through my head... "shakes head and kicks it across the floor."

That said I think one that might have been more explicitly enumerated and combat valuable was missed Ok it probably infringes on the class feature of Warlords/Bards and Clerics but I am rolling
with it for a moment bear with me. My idea borders on giving everyone with trained Diplomacy a significant Warlord like ability. (that is a key word there I am thinking this is Trained only)

The healing skill has a number of functions one of which was enabling a target to expend a
second wind without the use of an action is on the list. Presumedly one use or even the
standard use might be for when the other character cannot spend an action like they are unconcious. This has no range and takes a full standard action. This does not require a trained healer to do. The subject only gets to heal; A feat changes the action cost of this to


Next let's examine what the Warlord gets... Inspiring Word such as used by a Warlord is not limited to if the target has a second wind available this encounter and could even affect the same target twice but is limited as to how many times Warlords and Clerics and Bards also give a boost on this D6 at minimum and enable the other secondary benefits of a second wind. Inspiring Word is only aminor action. Its range is 5/10/15

Neither the Heal Check nor Inspiring word takes an action from the target ally. However this idea makes more sense if the subject of the Diplomatic Inspiration does have a cost for the subject ie they have respond to the Diplomatic action. One possibility is emulating the Dwarf race ability which allows them to use second wind on a minor action.

Communicating clearly and with subtly in the din of battle may be difficult those with Words of Inspiration are expert at it. This ability should have some range but more limited than the Healing Word abilities perhaps only 3.

This might be a leadership feat but if so then its basically multi-class Warlord at that point

Anyway stepping on toes probably only valuable if your party doesnt have a Poet Priest or Politician but does have a trained Diplomat.
[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] is doing a Leadership skill for his Heroes of Myth and legend perhaps that context might call for this as it is separated off from the other benefits of diplomacy.

So to be clear, this is a 4e idea?

Oh duh, I see the tag now.

jaelis said:

So to be clear, this is a 4e idea?

Oh duh, I see the tag now.

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Some of my ideas do work in both contexts for instance one is a class feature for fighters called Battleready which allows fighters to have decent initiative most of the time (using mental attributes to represent planning and prediction and awareness so you are not actually - reacting - to the onset of battle, ie instead of using Dex). This is something that can be used without change in both games.

Garthanos said:

That said I think one that might have been more explicitly enumerated and combat valuable was missed Ok it probably infringes on the class feature of Warlords/Bards and Clerics but I am rolling
with it for a moment bear with me. My idea borders on giving everyone with trained Diplomacy a significant Warlord like ability. (that is a key word there I am thinking this is Trained only)
The healing skill has a number of functions one of which was enabling a target to expend a
second wind without the use of an action is on the list.

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Y'know, there may already be a Skill Power along those lines...

Soothing Words is the closest thing, and not that close.

Neither the Heal Check nor Inspiring word takes an action from the target ally. However this idea makes more sense if the subject of the Diplomatic Inspiration does have a cost for the subject ie they have respond to the Diplomatic action.

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The Skald's Aura can be triggerd by an ally, BTW, in case you're look for precedents.

This might be a leadership feat but if so then its basically multi-class Warlord at that point

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Inspiring Leader /is/ the multi-class Warlord feat that gives you watered-down Inspiring Presence.

'Diplomancy' to me just always seemed like it should be a CLASS! I mean, there are skills, but they more represent 'knacks' or general knowledge than anything else. If you have some focused ability to do something, the that sounds like (in 4e parlance anyway) a POWER. Now, there are skill powers, so that can work as a way to get a little bit of something on the side, and you could of course work things in with theme/PP/ED as well, but if you want 'guy that has a shtick of being so persuasive that people will do almost anything he asks' then that seems like it really deserves to be at least a BUILD of its own with specific powers and a CHA primary.

Unfortunately 4e's class-specific power lists make this a bit daunting. Second-best is a CHA primary build in some class (or 2, or even 3 if you are ambitious and know your build fu) that can evoke this. There really are a lot of options, a star/fey 'lock, some paladin builds, obviously several warlord builds, clerics, combos of those. You can reflavor some powers, fill in with skill powers, etc. Anyway, I always thought the whole relying on cranking skill bonus in Diplomacy sky-high was a bit of an odd rules quirk way of doing it, though obviously such a character would likely have a pretty substantial CHA/Diplomacy bonus, at least in some realizations.

AbdulAlhazred said:

'Diplomancy' to me just always seemed like it should be a CLASS! I mean, there are skills, but they more represent 'knacks' or general knowledge than anything else. If you have some focused ability to do something, the that sounds like (in 4e parlance anyway) a POWER. Now, there are skill powers, so that can work as a way to get a little bit of something on the side, and you could of course work things in with theme/PP/ED as well, but if you want 'guy that has a shtick of being so persuasive that people will do almost anything he asks' then that seems like it really deserves to be at least a BUILD of its own with specific powers and a CHA primary.

Unfortunately 4e's class-specific power lists make this a bit daunting. Second-best is a CHA primary build in some class (or 2, or even 3 if you are ambitious and know your build fu) that can evoke this. There really are a lot of options, a star/fey 'lock, some paladin builds, obviously several warlord builds, clerics, combos of those. You can reflavor some powers, fill in with skill powers, etc. Anyway, I always thought the whole relying on cranking skill bonus in Diplomacy sky-high was a bit of an odd rules quirk way of doing it, though obviously such a character would likely have a pretty substantial CHA/Diplomacy bonus, at least in some realizations.

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Yes I think the last time I looked at it I came to the conclusion you can make it that Intimidation work the problem seems to be you can actually make it work to well if you go nutso. Then use the rod of pacification also known as a flensing weapon to bloody and enemy and you are good to go it could make good story even.

I think step one of making this more inline might be to make it a multi-stage process them diplomats take time. "Pause hostilities" - nobody is yet putting away weapons -" engage in dialog" - til people are willing to talk it isn't going anywhere fast -- "find compromise" or something.

At this point skill challenge mechanics are probably begging to take it over and to heck with diplomancerism but if we want the diplomancer to do combat moves like a class that is another kettle a weird kettle.

Garthanos said:

At this point skill challenge mechanics are probably begging to take it over and to heck with diplomancerism but if we want the diplomancer to do combat moves like a class that is another kettle a weird kettle.

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Impromptu skill challenge is what I did when the party decided in the middle of a combat that they wanted to negotiate - it made a fair bit of sense in retrospect, the combat started out vs Archons, not known for being talky, then their master showed up, and was someone they thought they could convince.

One thing that made it easier was that he didn't care about his Archons. So combat and negotiations continued simultaneously, with an easy Diplomacy check for putting away your weapons.

[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] [MENTION=82504]Garthanos[/MENTION] This is where I bill the 'non-wonky math' feature of HoML. Since a skill check and an attack roll are going to work exactly the same, you can simply make powers which attack with skill checks! That makes this sort of design a lot cleaner. Instead of imputing all sorts of craziness to a Diplomacy or Intimidate check, you simply create a power, which has an attack line of something like 'Intimidate vs WILL' and it can do whatever (psychic damage being an obvious possibility).

AbdulAlhazred said:

This is where I bill the 'non-wonky math' feature of HoML. Since a skill check and an attack roll are going to work exactly the same.. That makes this sort of design a lot cleaner.

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Why /were/ weapons +2 or +3, Skills +5 and implements +0...?

...different for the sake of difference?

Tony Vargas said:

Why /were/ weapons +2 or +3, Skills +5 and implements +0...?

...different for the sake of difference?

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I really have no idea. There was no specific reason why AC was 2 higher than NADs either. In HoML I simply did away with AC (armor provides a small amount of DR) and then simply put out a blanket proficiency bonus rule which applies to weapons training, skill training, and 'tool' training (anything else which might fit the same pattern, technically weapons basically ARE 'tools' in this system).

The result is, things 'just work'. The only exception being you would need to use the 'take 10' value for something like a skill if you wanted to have it function like a defense. In practice I feel that its better to have 3 defenses and I haven't really delved into that as a concept, but it could work and I could see it as something perhaps used in some specific situations. As people have long pointed out 4e really has at least a couple other 'defenses' anyway, passive Perception and Insight. In 4e this doesn't work super well (and we saw how the 'defense against grappling' kind of failed) but in HoML it would. The only negative IMHO is it tends to create a lot of holes in PC's defenses (much like the ability scores as defenses design of 5e, which I don't much care for).

Anyway, this was, IMHO, one of the greatest failings of 4e - mechanically. I suppose there was some sort of historical reasoning behind it, they tweaked this and that number and it just ended up that way. Maybe nobody quite thought it through and they left it without realizing how it was a big impediment to the ease of designing game material later on. Who knows? MM or someone might be able to answer...