KarinsDad said:
Skills are tight in 3E. Most classes cannot even afford what their players consider the basics, let alone additional skills such as Sense Motive.
Ah. Good. I was already warming up on a "charisma-based skills shoud /shouldn't be roleplayed"-argument.
Yea, I think that the classes need some more skill points, and some more class skills. I generally agree.
Bluff is mostly good for a Rogue, but rarely good for anyone else.
Bard, of course. They usually have a higher CHA and it's class skill, too. Sorcerers could profit from their high CHA here, too, but they may spend their skill points for something else, and can use magic for that sort of problem, anyway. Paladins have high CHA, too, but often don't use such "underhanded ways"
So, here you have a skill (Bluff) which can be extremely high with little effort for a Rogue and most other characters cannot afford more than a little Sense Motive, so his Bluff almost always works unless it is ludicrous.
Well, they profit from WIS here, a couple of ranks, and the Sonse Motive Modifiers should do the rest. And those get quite high: +10 for the stuff where it starts to matter, and even the stuff where a good bluffer should get away with most of the time gets +5.
On the other hand, people pull Bluff and Sense Motive out whenever they want some weird initiative / decision making type of things to occur.
That's no problem of the rules, but of rule interpretation. The type of situation you describe should put the "it's-way-out-there"-signal in the DM's head on. If they think they get away with such a BS, the other get's a +20 bonus on his sense motive check. That should cancel out the rogue's bonus (except at high levels, and at high levels you should really be able to accomplish something), or even be more than the bonus the rogue gets. Combine that with the wisdom modifier and the couple of ranks the other one has, and it doesn't look good for that rogue anymore. You can always attempt something. It's another matter if you succeed...
Which means that your combatant types such as Fighters, Paladins, Monks, etc. suck at these types of confrontations and Rogues tend to excel.
It's only fair: rogues tend to suck at situations where combatant types excel, especially if they can't get their sneak attack off (undead, constucts, oozes, plants, dragons.... or just not the opportunity). If you played a rogue who is in the way in most combats AND can't shine on other occasions, would you have a good time playing? Don't think so. You need balance, before everything else. I have seen a lot of situations where someone didn't like a rule and changed it so it better suited him. And it often made sense. But it almost always made one class or the other almost unplayable.... (in 2e, I play a wizard/thief whose thief part was intended to be the assassin type. But after the third boss or so who had avery single square inch of his hide-out brightly illuminated and stood with the back to the wall, so I couldn't even attempt my backstab, he just became a wizard that can open locks and disarm traps, goodbye to my old character concept!)
Why should Rogues almost always win these types of things? It doesn't make sense. Yes, they are supposed to be sneaky and dexterous, but that should not overlap into being QuickDraw McGraws virtually every single time. There should be a lot of Rangers and Monks who are just as fast or faster than Rogues, but not in this situation. Why?
??? You talk about fainting?
I would never have combat events revolve around opposed skills that most characters cannot afford to purchase.
Well, question being, do they need to purchase those? A fighter has no problem hitting foes. He can fight the enemy right on, just take the weapon and stick it repeatetly into the enemy. He hits most of the time and does tremendous damage. They don't need tricks. But the rogue is pracitacally lost without tricks.
The designers had to make sure every class could stand out in combat, one way or the other. That's important because Basic D&D is much about combat. And therefore all characters can make themselves useful in battle. In other setting, where there's more emphasis on politics and such like, that has not to be the case (see the courtier class in Rokugan)
In fact, in our campaign, characters gain a bonus to Spot (+1 at levels 1, 4, etc.), Listen (+1 at levels 2, 5, etc.), and Sense Motive (+1 at levels 3, 6, etc.). The reason is that without this, a lot of classes at high level have to take a bunch of cross class skills in these, just in order to have some minor ability to be perceptive.
That's nonsense.
The fighter in D&D can fight. He can fight very well. He can't do much else! It's not so bad for him that he won't be so keen as the scour (a rogue or ranger) for once the enemy makes his move, he's in a world of trouble.
I am a 20th level Wizard who has adventured for 5 years and I still never notice the Bandits hiding in a tree, even though I have been ambushed like this dozens of times.
No, you don't. That's because you're a wizard, you're not so attentive cause you're always reading those books ;-)
No, seriously: If those bandits are very good in hiding, how could you see them? It doesn't help you to know what you have to look for if ther's nothing to look for because those bandits are to good in what they do (and you're not using your magic..)
Or, I am a 20th level Wizard who has parlayed with Kings and Dukes and Merchants and I get faked out every single time by a low level punk Rogue trying to sell me spell components.
Sounds like a problem of rule interpretation, again. If you know that's lead in your hand and that Rogue tell's you it's really gold, than there's no bluff check. The DM just says that it's impossible to make you believe that without magic, and there's no roll. Or he says that it's practically impossible and sets the bonus to your sense motive check to +40 or so. If you have many ranks in bluff, you also know what you can do and what you can't. That's why the low level punkt Rogues can fake you out everytime. And that Wizard's got to have a low int if he buys his spell components from lew level punk rogues, anyway!
Or, I am a 20th level Wizard who has adventured for 5 years and I still never bother to look up in a cave to see if a Piercer or some form of Slime is up there.
Or you have looked up a thousand times. Everytime the ceiling of the caves was wet and slimy. And only two times out of that thousand that was an ooze creature. You looked there always, but you don't see!
Like Driving a Car is a skill that most modern people acquire to some level just by doing it over and over again,
I know people who drove for years and still can't really dive! It's not doing, it's learning. I know someone who has crashed half a dozen cars (well, not quite, but It was 4 cars or so!) within the first half year after he had got the licence. And the next car always had more power than the last....
Spot, Listen, and Sense Motive should be skills that all adventuring classes acquire over time (to varying levels of success), just because they use them repeatedly while adventuring and they are often critical to success. This should be just like BAB and Saves. Some classes are better, some are worse. But, all gain at least a little bit of it as they level up.
I don't think so. I could get persuaded that everyone should get more skill points per level, and the class skill lists need some expanding, but I don't think it'a good idea to just grant skill ranks.
The problem is that opposed skills can result in astronomical DCs relatively quickly due to adding a D20 to a modifier when opposed skills are class skills instead of cross class skills. It's a generic game design problem. IMO.
Yes, that's true. Adding a d20 always results in a great measure of randomness (you have to get high-level before you have the ficed part of any roll - except weapon damage - greater than the random part of the d20). But's the way d20 is, and I think it's not that bad.
Why would you want to intentionally faint in combat!?....Wait a minute
