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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4133640" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't see a major difference mechanically between "Searching in the panty isn't going to help.", and "You search the pantry thuroughly but don't find anything." except in cases where the PC's have extremely limited time.  And if they do have extremely limited time, "Searching in the pantry isn't going to help" is jarring as a response.  It renders the challenge rather pointless.  It's not my story at that point, its the narrators and I'm barely along for the ride just so I can pick up the dice.  In fact, I'm barely narrating my own character at that point.  I might as well let the dice pick my dialogue.In that case, I barely see why I'm making choices.  None of my choices as a player are particularly meaningful.  Either the murder weapon appears in the pantry as soon as I search there, or else I don't actually search the pantry and end up in the freezer instead.   Meanwhile, presumably the monster is whereever I didn't search waiting for its appropriate moment on stage.  As a player, I'd wonder what the narrator needed me for.Well, not my DM.  After about two sessions of that, I'd stop showing up. I'm not sure that's exactly what the rules say though.  Not as much time is spent on diplomacy as persuasion as I'd like, but explicitly the srd says:"In negotiations, participants roll opposed Diplomacy checks, and the winner gains the advantage. Opposed checks also resolve situations when two advocates or diplomats plead opposite cases in a hearing before a third party."It's not perfectly clear what this means, but it would seem like resolving a dispute amongst two NPC's was 'negotiations'.  It is also implicit in the notion of influencing NPC attitudes that NPC inclined favorably to you will act in a helpful manner.  So, it would seem like if both NPC's are friendly to you, that you could persuade them not to fight.  It would be extremely wierd to allow intimidate and bluff to allow persuasion (which both explicitly do through different mechanisms), but not diplomacy.While I agree that the diplomacy rules are badly written, I don't agree that that is true in the general case that the skill rules don't tell you what the outcome of a skill check is.  A climb check tells you whether you can climb the wall.  A wilderness lore check tells you if you can find food, or track an outlaw.  Properly written a diplomacy check ought to be able to tell you whether you can persuade two combatants not to fight (at least for the time being).  Agreed, but I'm not entirely sure that has changed.  A climb check can help you climb a wall; it can't tell you whether climbing the wall is useful.  You are claiming however that if a climb check can't help you 'Escape from Sembia', that the DM will tell you before hand, and that is indeed new.  What is the test of manhood of the Bear Tribe? Right, but that is true of both 3rd and 4th edition.  Nothing new in that.Not particularly, but I'm not sure that I have too in order to run the encounter in the more 'traditional' fashion.</blockquote>

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