A Fighters skill points....

[Crothian]

So if they have 0 ranks then role playing it well might be stumbling over themselves, saying the wrong words and then trying to shake the wrong hand. Thereby horribly offending the dignitary, where does the +2 come in again?

If they have inside info that could help them then that is a circumstance modifier. Which is already in the rules and easily accounted for.

In the instance the +2 modifier wouldn't come in. And yes, circumstance modifier are in the rules. My suggestion wasn't meant to be a blanket rule over all situations, it was a suggestion that fit the circumstances being presented.

 

[Crothian]

There are thousands of feats. That's versatility. If you only get to choose from six feats because you are predicating game balance on a smaller number of more powerful feats - you have reduced customizability by aboout 99.4%. And that's not even counting the fact that these have prereqs, which force players to make their selection from path feats every level or fall behind - thereby reducing a 6th level character from 2000 choices of which 6 are chosen (about 8.8 quadrillion options to six).

For rather obvious reasons, I don't like that solution at all. You know the mantra - options, not limitations. If players have to take feats from a small collection of increased effectiveness options, that essentially is disqualifying all the thousands of feats which have here-to-fore been printed - and that means that quadrillions of options that are supposed to be viable are not - and that's bad.

-Frank

Well, many of the thousands of feats are crap. And few of them are fighter feats. Just becasue there are many, many options does not mean all the options are good. And no one id forcing fighters to go down the feat chains, they can continue choicing their feats as they want. By having the longer feat chains we are adding to the choices, not restricting them.

 

[Darklone]

Thanks, Crothian... your explanation was a bit better than I would have been able to say. I don't nullify skills at all, I rather got a reputation for putting skills over magic.

But in the case of a king who's got a message from two dudes, one being a guy with Charisma 20 and Diplomacy +25, the other being a lowly soldier from his frontier who was the only survivor of a hostile attack...

The diplomat tells him with honeyed words it was a little bandits raid, the soldier tells him with shaking knees in a barely audible voice it was the attack of another nation and brings a tabard bearing the Imperial Guards signs of that nation.

Then I have a look at the kings stats. He's proven great wisdom over the years... is loved by his population and has a nice Sense Motive and Charisma value by himself.

In this case, I would expect a wise decision from the king.

Simple case: The soldier produces proof of his words. The diplomat had only words. I wouldn't expect the king to rally his army and send it north... but he will for sure take the soldier seriously.

Skills are useful... very useful in my games. The best proof for this argument is that one of 8 chars in my group has only Int 10, the others all multiclassed into high skill classes or took very high Intelligence. But skills aren't everything and I'd be damned if I put some skill rolls higher than heroic actions or excellent roleplaying. It has an influence... but for me the roleplaying sets the borders for how much a skill roll can achieve, not the other way round.

 

[Bauglir]

So the diplomat has a fairly large circumstance modifier to overcome with his story, made all the harder by the wise king's high sense motive. If he's slick enough (ie rolls well enough) then he may well convince the king that perhaps the evidence doesn't mean what it appears to mean, or that the soldier in question is attempting to manipulate the king to start a war..

 

[Bauglir]

In the instance the +2 modifier wouldn't come in. And yes, circumstance modifier are in the rules. My suggestion wasn't meant to be a blanket rule over all situations, it was a suggestion that fit the circumstances being presented.

Remember that the result of the bluff (for example) would not rely entirely on the delivery. An uncharasmatic, but reasonably smart character might come up with a fairly plausible story for the bluff, leading to a circumstance bonus on the roll. This would go some way to offset but in no way overrides the low charisma / lack of bluffing skill

 

[Norfleet]

I tend to agree with Darklone on the matter.

The way I see it, using skillful play to overcome a low skill number on a character sheet is no different from using good tactics to overcome a low BAB and damage.

Yes, a character with absolutely no ranks can put together an argument as convincing as one from a +23 diplomacy character....who doesn't try. A diplomatic character who goes through the effort to put together an equally good argument will get an even better result.

It's no different from a low-level character being able to defeat a tough opponent if he puts together a cunning plan and executes it. It doesn't invalidate the higher level character's levels. The higher level character could have accomplished the same task, with little or no effort. He didn't have to apply himself to the battle. To him, a straight-forward "go and hit the enemy" worked perfectly fine.

It's like repairing an automobile: A person with a low repair automobile skill could repair the car....but he'd spend a great deal of time poring through manuals and reading documents on how to fix the damn thing. Of course, accomplishing this would be a learning experience(giving him XPs). A person with a high automobile repair skill simply looks at the car, instantly finds the problem, and fixes it with his eyes closed.

High skill ranks in doing something, is, essentially, a crutch. If you have a high skill in it, you don't have to try very hard to do it. It doesn't mean that somebody with a lower ranking couldn't accomplish the same task, if he went that extra mile. Of course, a highly skilled character who goes that extra mile himself can accomplish results that could only be described as magic by the less skilled.

And all of this is completely irrelevant to fighters, who like swords.

 

[Darklone]

So the diplomat has a fairly large circumstance modifier to overcome with his story, made all the harder by the wise king's high sense motive. If he's slick enough (ie rolls well enough) then he may well convince the king that perhaps the evidence doesn't mean what it appears to mean, or that the soldier in question is attempting to manipulate the king to start a war..

Right. In this special case though, the fighter (going for paladin) had a righteous reputation of being crazily honest and the king knew that he (the fighter) acted to prevent a war more than one year ago.

Being straightforward, simple and honest can mean more than having high Bluff and Diplomacy. As Bauglir said... good tactics on the side of the player in that regard don't give the diplomat any real possibilities in a direct confrontation.

Of coure, a real bad ass diplomat probably has some other cards left to play

 

[Bauglir]

Even if the soldier was 'Derek the Truthful, he who never lies', still the situation IMO should not be resolved in his favour without ever rolling a dice. The diplomat has many routes to go down to make a halfway convincing story, and all his charm to make it stick. Perhaps the 'enemy soldiers' were some third party attempting to plant evidence to start a war? Perhaps Derek has turned to evil? (a harder bluff but not impossible) or perhaps (dum dum DUM) this isn't Derek at all, but someone posing as Derek in an attempt to start a war?

Remember that, with all the combat tactics in the world, the combatter is still slave to his attack bonus (+/- a small circumstance bonus - flanking etc) and abilities. A mage cannot bypass a dragon's armour & DR just by coming up with a really nice way to stab it with his non-magical dagger, while the fighter is having trouble denting it. In the same sense I would not allow a fighter to outperform a charisma based character in their field of expertise, just by coming up with a good story, particularly if the character in question is unlikely to have been smart enough to come up with that story in the first place.

 

[Darklone]

Uhm, that char... Int 16

"Stick to da facts!", his dwarven teacher always told him.

 

[Norfleet]

Even if the soldier was 'Derek the Truthful, he who never lies', still the situation IMO should not be resolved in his favour without ever rolling a dice. The diplomat has many routes to go down to make a halfway convincing story, and all his charm to make it stick. Perhaps the 'enemy soldiers' were some third party attempting to plant evidence to start a war? Perhaps Derek has turned to evil? (a harder bluff but not impossible) or perhaps (dum dum DUM) this isn't Derek at all, but someone posing as Derek in an attempt to start a war?

Important NPCs are not automatons manipulated entirely by random numbers. You forget the fact that, in any situation, people are predisposed to believe certain things and favor certain patterns of behavior: Trying to convince somebody of something he already believes to be true is very, very trivial, and when somebody is telling you something that you already suspect is true, while somebody else is telling you something which contradicts that, you're already innately predisposed to believe the former, even if he did. All this can matter far more than how skilled a negotiator or debater either party is. Skills CAN be made entirely irrelevant under the right circumstances: When modifiers became stacked so high that the task has become impossible, a failure can be ruled on any attempt without even rolling: If even a 20 cannot grant you success, there's no reason to roll it at all, and the situation described definitely warranted heavy modifiers: Predisposition, reliable confirming witnesses with credible evidence, the works.

Furthermore, while the diplomat DOES have many routes to go down, none of the matters if he DOES NOT USE THEM. Perhaps he could have explored those options: On the other hand, perhaps he didn't feel it was worth the risk of being labelled as a snake, and chose not to push the matter too hard. As you said yourself, a hard, but not impossible bluff: Let us not forget that a failed bluff has highly negative consequences to one's credibility. Even if success was possible, it's quite possible that success in the short run would be detrimental to the diplomat's career in the long run, and a failed attempt disastrous.

Remember that, with all the combat tactics in the world, the combatter is still slave to his attack bonus (+/- a small circumstance bonus - flanking etc) and abilities. A mage cannot bypass a dragon's armour & DR just by coming up with a really nice way to stab it with his non-magical dagger, while the fighter is having trouble denting it. In the same sense I would not allow a fighter to outperform a charisma based character in their field of expertise, just by coming up with a good story, particularly if the character in question is unlikely to have been smart enough to come up with that story in the first place.

You, sir, are clearly thinking in very hide-bound, one-track ways. A combatant is NOT necessarily a slave to his attack bonus: Attack bonus only matters if you, personally, are directly attacking an opponent: Plenty of tactics can be executed without this: For instance, the lobbing of grenade-like weapons makes your attack bonus far less important: To simply strike him at all requires merely a ranged touch, and even failing that, you'll still nail him in the splash radius. What effects occur depend on the specifics of what you're throwing. Other tactics are completely unrelated to attack bonus at all: Dropping the ceiling on your opponent is highly effective, can be done at even low levels in the right conditions, and being smashed under many tons of rock hurts. A lot. A mage with a nonmagical dagger cannot bypass a dragon's DR merely by thinking of how to stab it, but there's no reason why the mage has to do this: Plenty of other options may exist that you might not even have considered, due to your preference for thinking in the box. Combat is a complex affair which is more than simply combatants trading blows until one or the other is dead.

D&D is a complex game where, as in life, the larger numbers don't necessarily always win.