Advice on a Feint Situation

[Celebrim]

Ok, please stop insinuating that I am doing this or that.

I am not insinuating anything. I'm not even implying anything. I am openly and emphatically declaring that your stance is as rule lawyer-ish as it comes. As long as you are being pedantic, at least be correct.

Frankly, you seem to be arguing with me for the sake of arguing.

I suppose in the sense that any argument over a point like this is meaningless, as we don't know each other or game together and are unlikely to persuade each other, that on that point any such discussion as this is argument for the sake of argument. However, I am not disagreeing with you merely for the sake of being disagreeable or contrary. I really do think you are horribly wrong and giving bad advice. Suggesting that I'm arguing merely for the sake of argument, is I think implying that you don't think anyone could have a legitimate reason for disagreeing with you.

In fact, if you pay attention to what I'm saying rather than being quick to tell me I'm wrong, you will see that we actually agree with each other, except you want to let a metagamer cheat and I don't.

What exactly do we agree over? I don't agree that this can be neatly characterized as "metagaming", and I certainly don't agree that anyone is cheating. But to the extent I feel disinclined to let anyone get away with dysfunctional behavior, it would be the DM in your suggested resolution. I feel this scenario is congruent to the 'Search' examples you have ignored, and feel that the DM forcing a player to take a particular action as punishment for having seen a dice roll made in the open is rude, relies on DM fiat rather than rules, is prone to abuse, and suggests a DM that won't take responsibility for their own mistakes. To draw another comparison with a similar case, it would be like the DM accidently blurting out the answer to a riddle or puzzle, and then disallowing the player from correctly answering the riddle or puzzle because he's now "metagaming".

DM: "Nope, sorry. You are only giving the correct answer because you heard it. You have to give the wrong answer now and be cursed."
PC: "It's a fair cop."

Taking a vote on this is a not a solution in the general case, as we have no way of knowing whether there are only two players, can't guarantee that the vote would be fair, and in any event it's the GM's responsibility to be a neutral referee and not the other players.

I have no patience for metagaming...

I think you are allowing your emotion in this matter to overrule your reason.

My argument is in defense of the actual rules. If you think using the RAW in order to eliminate any metagaming is a form of "rules lawyering", then call me a rules lawyer! I won't defend cheating, and metagaming is cheating.

Ok, you are a rules lawyer. Once again, you are trying to fix a failure of the social contract, or a perceived failure of the social contract, by resorting to constructions of the rules that can't be justified by the literal text. Since the rules themselves can't fix a failure of the social contract, this is dysfunctional behavior. I don't agree that metagaming is equivalent to cheating, nor do I necessarily agree that this particular instance of metagaming was cheating. (Again, on what substantial point do we agree?) There are times when metagaming is perfectly valid, as for example steering your play away from subject matter you know a fellow player would find personally objectionable, or changing how your character behaves in order to successfully riff off of another players prompts when arguably it would be 'realistic' to engage in conflict, or tacitly agreeing to open conflict between PC's with the understand it will never be mortal or break the party. This is a very mature sort of metagaming.

But what you are calling 'metagaming' here is basically no different than prodding a square with a 10' poll even after a Search check revealed no traps, or giving the answer to a riddle the DM accidently blurted out, or identifying the villain correctly when the DM accidently uses the real name of the NPC in place of his nom de plume, or deciding a theory you voice is correct because when you voice the theory the DM is unable to hide his reaction. Those things are not the fault of the player. He can't be blamed for information the DM has imparted through the metagame that should have been concealed, nor can you justly compel a player to ignore this information on the grounds he wouldn't have acted that way without it because you just can never know the counterfactual.

Once again, it's the DM screwing players over and who should be embarrassed and apologetic here. And I say that not as player too often burned by DMs, but as a guy who has been 'the DM' for like 25 of the last 32 years and has learned from my own mistakes.

I had to respond to this part cause it's baffling.

I consider that a confession of your failing not mine.

Quoting out of context?

I'll quote the rules for Feinting in full:

Feinting is a standard action. To feint, make a Bluff check opposed by a Sense Motive check by your target. The target may add his base attack bonus to this Sense Motive check. If your Bluff check result exceeds your target’s Sense Motive check result, the next melee attack you make against the target does not allow him to use his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any). This attack must be made on or before your next turn.

When feinting in this way against a nonhumanoid you take a –4 penalty. Against a creature of animal Intelligence (1 or 2), you take a –8 penalty. Against a nonintelligent creature, it’s impossible.

Feinting in combat does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Your quote doesn't appear in that text, so its already out of context. The rule you quote doesn't apply to Sense Motive checks made in defense of Feints, which have their own special rules. The quote you make appears elsewhere, but even there it has been deprived of its context by quoting it in isolation despite the fact that the sentence itself is referencing both the prior sentence explicitly and the following sentences implicitly.

The Sense Motive rule is like 2 sentences long.

No, it's not. I'll quote it in full now:

Check

A successful check lets you avoid being bluffed. You can also use this skill to determine when “something is up” (that is, something odd is going on) or to assess someone’s trustworthiness.

Sense Motive DCs
Task Sense Motive DC
Hunch 20
Sense enchantment 25 or 15
Discern secret message Varies

Hunch
This use of the skill involves making a gut assessment of the social situation. You can get the feeling from another’s behavior that something is wrong, such as when you’re talking to an impostor. Alternatively, you can get the feeling that someone is trustworthy.

Sense Enchantment
You can tell that someone’s behavior is being influenced by an enchantment effect (by definition, a mind-affecting effect), even if that person isn’t aware of it. The usual DC is 25, but if the target is dominated (see dominate person), the DC is only 15 because of the limited range of the target’s activities.

Discern Secret Message
You may use Sense Motive to detect that a hidden message is being transmitted via the Bluff skill. In this case, your Sense Motive check is opposed by the Bluff check of the character transmitting the message. For each piece of information relating to the message that you are missing, you take a -2 penalty on your Sense Motive check. If you succeed by 4 or less, you know that something hidden is being communicated, but you can’t learn anything specific about its content. If you beat the DC by 5 or more, you intercept and understand the message. If you fail by 4 or less, you don’t detect any hidden communication. If you fail by 5 or more, you infer some false information.

See also: epic usages of Sense Motive.

Action
Trying to gain information with Sense Motive generally takes at least 1 minute, and you could spend a whole evening trying to get a sense of the people around you.

Try Again
No, though you may make a Sense Motive check for each Bluff check made against you.

Special
A ranger gains a bonus on Sense Motive checks when using this skill against a favored enemy.

If you have the Negotiator feat, you get a +2 bonus on Sense Motive checks.

Synergy
If you have 5 or more ranks in Sense Motive, you get a +2 bonus on Diplomacy checks.

You'll notice resisting feint isn't mentioned anywhere. The rules on resisting feint are self-contained, as for one thing they provide for a special opposed check not used anywhere else in the rules.

I quoted the one and only sentence that could possibly be in regards to the Feint rule. None of the other text in the skill is associated with Feinting. My gawd man, are you just joking around here?

You are wrong on at least two counts. First, this sentence is not referencing the feint rule. You can't just assume this sentence references the feint rule just because no other one does. You neglect the possibility that none of this text references the feint rule. The sentence you do reference is preamble, and most probably and logically summarize the 'Hunch' and 'Sense Enchantment' rules below that will soon be disclosed. As preamble, the sentence you reference is most likely not even a rule, but just introductory or summary text describing the rules that will follow in the section below so that someone skimming through the rules will be able to determine if the section applies to the situation. But, even if the preamble has in fact the force of rules, then the sentence that you excluded from the preamble is most definitely the one of the two that actually references resisting feint. It reads: "A successful check lets you avoid being bluffed." Referencing back to the Feint rules, they read in part: "To feint, make a Bluff check opposed by a Sense Motive check by your target." So this sentence refers to the general case of which resisting Feint is an example. And this sentence if you include it with the out of context sentence you keep quoting, devastates your attempt at rules lawyering, because that sentence begins: "You can also use this skill..." In other words, whatever that sentence does refer to, it is most certainly not resisting attempts to feint or other bluff checks. Again, the sentence you have quoted most likely references the additional rules that follow which are not resisted checks, but have static DCs.

By insinuating that I'm "joking around", you are implying that you don't think people could have a valid reason for disagreeing with you.

And again, you are not in fact referencing the actual rules. Nothing in the rules actually states that a character that is successfully feinted has any constraints on his subsequent actions. You have not provided any evidence for that claim. Nor have you provided rules evidence that what you call 'metagaming' is cheating and contrary to the rules. Nor for that matter is your chosen solution to call for a vote of the players strict adherence to the rules. It does have the advantage of at least trying to address a social contract issue as a social contract issue, but it is not I think a good idea to ask players to rule against each other nor is it always possible (again, suppose we only have the two players), nor does it put the responsibility for the problem where it should rest.

What you have done is decided is that the implied social contract as you understand it has been violated, and then tried to construct a very shaky rules argument for justifying not only your perception and understanding of the social contract, but a solution not actually found in the rules. And then baldly stated the counterfactual claim, "My argument is in defense of the actual rules."

Yeah, which one?

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION]: Ok, so now you've done and gone deep.

Your post is so long and addresses so many points I can't respond to everything, and as I largely agree with most of your points fisking would be the inappropriate response anyway. Also, I need to respond to some of your points out of order.

Basically, I agree with your assessment that if we follow the rules strictly, we are lead to the conclusion that Barlo is intended, at least in the case of a normal feint, to know he has been feinted and has time to respond.

But you are misusing some of your terms here. What you are repeatedly referencing as 'the metagame' isn't in fact the metagame, but something that I will here call 'the fiction'. The fiction is the narrated situations and actions that together created the imaginary shared space in which the game takes place. The metagame refers to how we agree to play the game, and not to the fiction of the game. An example of the metagame would be the tacit understanding by the players that the purpose of playing is 'to win' and winning is defined as gaining levels and earning loot, where another table instead understands that the purpose of play is primarily to tell a story and that death isn't failing if it makes a good story. We generally use metagame as a verb, when we mean a player making decisions about his character that are based on metagame goals (like 'winning') or knowledge rather than on information about the fiction that is available to his character. Normally, this has a negative connotation, but I think it's fairly easy to establish that not all such decisions are necessarily bad ones.

There are a lot of different theories as to whether the game, that is the rules, supports the fiction and is derived from it, or whether the fiction is derived from the game. I don't think we can settle that here, but I'll be up front and state that I think almost inevitably it is the game that creates the fiction. Thus, the fact that I think since Barlo has an unconstrained chance to respond to a normal feint action, the most logical narration of the fiction created by the game is that Barlo at least potentially knows that he has been feinted and now has to choose how to respond to that. If we want some other fiction to prevail, such as for example having the feint action succeeding representing Barlo not knowing that he's been exposed and left vulnerable by Able, then we have to actually change the game - that is the rules - to privilege that fiction. The RAW doesn't privilege that interpretation, and even appears to contradict it.

This is true even if we make the declaration and rolls secretly. Among his other problems with this situation, Oryan77 in my opinion wants the game to support a fiction he has in his mind, which in fact it doesn't support very well.

So when you disagree with me regarding whether or not it is reasonable to expect a player to make a conscious decision to cause the death of his own character, you are simultaneously misunderstanding me and possibly (?) making a different statement regarding the desired metagame - that is to say, the purpose we have in playing the game. First, there is a difference in saying that it is unreasonable to expect a player to make the conscious decision to cause the death of his own character, and saying it is not reasonable for a player to make the conscious decisions to cause the death of his own character. I have no objection to a player deciding that in this case, the proper way to play his character is to make decisions that he knows will lead to his own death. I merely assert that it is unreasonable to expect him to make such a final and important decision as that just because you think he should.

Now I'll quote you:

To me, it would be just as damaging if Barlo’s player was thinking “Abel is Barlo’s friend – this has gone too far – he should withdraw and try to cool down the situation”, but then decides “well, he can’t do that now, because I know about the feint, so he should keep fighting”.

I'm not sure I understand your point entirely here, but whatever it is, it's very interesting. Which of the thought processes do you consider poor? Are both poor, or is one correct and the other wrong? It seems to me that they are equivalent, but the first exposes yet another reason why revealing the roll regarding the feint and then trying to limit the player's agency based on something that doesn't exist in the fiction (the dice roll) is wrong.

Where I disagree with you is whether or not the fiction has primacy. I think that we have to allow the game to create the fiction, because in the long run it inevitably does. We can pretend that the rules of the game aren't (as it were) the physics of the game world, but in the long run as we adhere to the rules the game world will more and more take on the character of a world where the game rules are it's physics. So we might as well accept that. There are no end of DMs that fail to accept that, and are all the time frustrated and heavy handedly trying to remove player agency, because the players are always judging their actions on the basis of the rules rather than the fiction as the DM imagines it, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are demanding players read their minds. I recall many instances of DMs on this board, frustrated by things like when an NPC points a heavy crossbow at a player and demands they surrender, that they don't do so and instead attack, because "in the real world if someone pointed a heavy crossbow at you, you'd be intimidated". I recall one DM on the board becoming frustrated because players made the calculation that dismounted they would do more damage, when "in the real world, a cavalry charge would have been more successful".

These DMs are all the time trying to use DM force to make the world match the world they desire, and to the extent that they aren't simply would be novelists that prefer players as puppets to direct (most I think aren't), they seem to never analyze the combination of their own beliefs that "the rules aren't the physics of the world" and yet perversely that the players should act as if they don't know that the rules will be used to resolve the fictional situation. They are always bouncing up and down about the players "metagaming", when in fact it is they that always have this unreflected upon metagame going in their head "the story should be realistic, as I understand the word, and players should act according to my notion of what is real and not according to the game or the metagame". If you really have a coherent model of what is realistic, you better have a hyperrealistic set of rules that matches that model if you want that fiction - and that metagame - to prevail in the long run.

As such, I would say it is the rules and not the fiction that is key to the interpretation here. The fiction will ultimately be derived from the rules, after we've adjudicated the player propositions.

Does it? Simply calling for a secret roll tells me something is up – if he took a normal swing, I would not need to make an opposed roll.

Since the opposed roll is secret, the DM will handle both sides of it. Indeed, I'll probably be handling all the rolls, including the attack rolls, behind the DM screen. If a player protests that this requires a high degree of trust in the DM, I'll explain that next time they should consider that before going to a PvP situation with no upfront metagame agreement. All one player will know is that he was not successfully attacked this round, and whatever color of narration I used to explain this. For all he would know, the other player just swung and missed. For that matter, all the feinting player will know is that he tried to feint, not whether he succeeded.

However, it's worth noting that I have a homebrew Tactics skill that among other things can be used to answer in the affirmative questions like, "Is the other player denied their DEX bonus?", "Or is the other player currently taking the defensive fighting stance?", or even "Does the other player have the Combat Reflexes feat?" Or with a sufficiently high check, all of that at once.

 

[N'raac]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] – that post got way too long, and I was distracted in the middle of it. Apologies to those getting eyestrain reading it.

I like the “fiction” term, but terminology seems to be a lot of the argument. The statement that “metagaming is cheating”, for example, suggests a correlation between the terms. But is metagming cheating? Well it depends on the social contract. Maybe we decided our game should be like Order of the Stick and break the fourth wall.

Even in a more typical “PC’s should act on PC knowledge” game, I suspect most would agree that Metagaming such as “I must create a character who can get along with the other characters”, or “That is the adventure hook – play along” is not “cheating”. It is clearly metagaming. This, I think is in agreement with your comments.

The specific argument, however, definitely focusses on whether the fiction intended to be generated by the Feint mechanic is:

(a) “if the Feint succeeds, the defender has no idea that he has been feinted until, at least, the attacker makes the attack against which he has no DEX bonus”; or

(b) “if the Feint succeeds, the defender knows that he has been feinted and will be easier for the attacker to strike”.

If the intent of the designer is (a), then having the rolls occur at the time the Feint is announced, rather than at the time the followup attack is initiated, is poor design. If the intent is (b), the design is great. In either case, the designer has failed to explicitly state the fiction intended to be created by the mechanic.

A great discussion on DM’s expecting players to react in a manner inconsistent with how the mechanics work.

My comment was more directed to “gaming the rules”. If we assume that the group has adopted “fiction (a)” with respect to the feint mechanics, it is just as much “metagaming” (as that term has been used by Barlo’s detractors) for Barlo’s player to change his mind and attack instead of withdrawing after seeing the Feint check as it would be for Barlo’s player to change his mind and withdraw instead of attacking after seeing the Feint check. In either case, the feint check Barlo in character did not detect is changing his actions. The difference, of course, is that choosing to withdraw is the action that looks most like being influenced by the successful feint check.

In regards to “secret rolls”, again we have not defined the terminology. It requires just as much trust in the DM for the players to roll the dice where only the DM can see them, and somewhat less if they roll in a manner that DM and player can see them, but the other player cannot. All three are “secret rolls”.

I find many players irrationally attached to being the “masters of their own fate” if the ‘1’ that kills them was rolled by their own hand. Regardless, if the agreed fiction is (a), then there must be no indication to Barlo [BTW, I am assuming Abel and Barlo are uncreative so the players and characters share the same name] that Abel is attempting a feint. That might be accomplished with the DM making the rolls (and NOT asking “Barlo, what’s your Sense Motive”) or by having Abel roll a secret roll, which the DM and Abel know is a feint, but Barlo does not, and letting Barlo roll his own Sense Motive after taking his own action.

We then get the question of whether he rolls before Abel declares his action (fiction: The feinter can tell whether his feint was successful) or after (fiction: the feinter can’t tell whether his feint succeeded until it is too late).

 

[N'raac]

One more comment: let us assume a player distrusts an NPC. He makes a Sense Motive check, and it fails. Is he now required to trust the NPC, or is the player still permitted his distrust? Does the answer differ depending on whether:

(a) the Sense Motive roll was secret and he does not know whether an opposing Bluff check was rolled or not;

(b) he got to see his Sense Motive roll, but not the Bluff check (or even whether one was rolled);

(c) both rolls were made in the open, with modifiers known, so the player knows absolutely whether his roll was a success?

If he is not permitted his distrust, can a PC with a high Bluff skill effectively usurp control of any and all PCs lacking the Sense Motive bonus to resist him?

 

[Oryan77]

I am not insinuating anything. I'm not even implying anything. I am openly and emphatically declaring that your stance is as rule lawyer-ish as it comes. As long as you are being pedantic, at least be correct.

Ok. Feint requires a Sense Motive check to work. I follow the only text in the description of Sense Motive that relates to something like Feinting, and you see that as rules lawyering? I'm not trying to nit pick a rule here or dig deep to find a rule to support my side. I flipped to the dang skill description which is linked in the Feinting rules and quoted it. If we're not supposed to use the Sense Motive description in reference to Feinting, then why are we rolling a skill check at all in order to Feint? Obviously you don't need to use the Sense Motive skill in your version of Feinting. A successful check in your eyes is still a failure to anyone metagaming to avoid the feint penalty.

I feel this scenario is congruent to the 'Search' examples you have ignored

I've ignored your examples because they are irrelevant and weak. I didn't feel the need to start bickering about why. I wanted to stay on track. Sorry, I don't mean for that to be rude. We're already having a hard time seeing eye to eye as it is and me replying to your examples would open up a whole other can of worms.

the sentence you reference is most likely not even a rule, but just introductory or summary text describing the rules that will follow in the section below so that someone skimming through the rules will be able to determine if the section applies to the situation.

Wait, I'm the one interpreting things, and I'm the one making assumptions on which part of the Sense Motive skill text I'm allowed or not allowed to use in reference to the Feinting rules. Yet, you know the intent of the designers use of text and whether it is meant to support rules or whether it is an introductory summary? Not to mention that you know which part of the Sense Motive text we are supposed to use to reference Feinting rules (in your case, none of it)?

I think you are allowing your emotion in this matter to overrule your reason.

Ok, you are a rules lawyer.

I consider that a confession of your failing not mine.

Among his other problems with this situation, Oryan77 in my opinion wants the game to support a fiction he has in his mind, which in fact it doesn't support very well.

You are obviously up in my head and know better than I do. You're getting a little more personal here than I wish to deal with. So, you win the thread. I'm bowing out. Say what you need to in order to have the lasts words, but I won't be responding any longer. No hard feelings man, but this is ridiculous.

 

[Celebrim]

One more comment: let us assume a player distrusts an NPC. He makes a Sense Motive check, and it fails. Is he now required to trust the NPC, or is the player still permitted his distrust?

I'll answer your simplest question first. The player is permitted to continue to distrust the NPC. He has received no positive affirmation that the NPC is untrustworthy, but the player's right to play his character as he sees fit trumps all. It doesn't depend on anything. If an NPC is to successfully trick and deceive the PC, it is up to me as the DM to so successfully play the role that I indeed trick the player. There is nothing else that will do.

Incidentally, while all this is true, usually the player's sense motive roll as well as the NPC's bluff roll are made in secret. In this way, the player doesn't receive any information through the metagame he is not supposed to have.

You yourself suggest a good reason why bluff does not work on PC's like mind control. Others will probably come to mind. Of course, an exceptional roleplayer can simultaneously play his character as appearing deceived and yet prepare for deception - trust but verify if you will. This is a frequent stance of many cunning fictional protagonists - for example, it's the entire shtick of the character Columbo. But that is a matter left up to the player's judgment.

 

[N'raac]

Ok. Feint requires a Sense Motive check to work. I follow the only text in the description of Sense Motive that relates to something like Feinting, and you see that as rules lawyering? I'm not trying to nit pick a rule here or dig deep to find a rule to support my side. I flipped to the dang skill description which is linked in the Feinting rules and quoted it. If we're not supposed to use the Sense Motive description in reference to Feinting, then why are we rolling a skill check at all in order to Feint? Obviously you don't need to use the Sense Motive skill in your version of Feinting. A successful check in your eyes is still a failure to anyone metagaming to avoid the feint penalty.

First, it is the only Sense Motive check in the game which is modified by BAB, so it is not a typical Sense Motive check. To me, that opens up the possibility it differs in other ways.

I can't speak for Celebrim, but to me the "rules lawyering" is the absolute insistence that your interpretation of the interaction between the Feint mechanic and the Sense Motive skill description is the only possible interpretation any reasonable reader could make of the two sections. It is not. In fact, if the mechanics accurately reflect the fiction the designer intends, then it seems more reasonable to interpret to interpret the mechanic as "character knows he has been feinted when the roll is made" on the basis that the player sees the roll* when the Feint is attempted, and therefore knows the result before the character's next action.

* Now, you might reasonably argue that the roll should be made in secret, but nothing in the rules says it is to be secret. By contrast, the rules do say "The Disguise check is made secretly, so that you can’t be sure how good the result is." This seems to indicate that the norm is that rolls are not secret, and exceptions are specified in the rules.

A group might well decide the fiction should be "a successful feint cannot be noticed until the followup attack is made". It could even be "the character will never, ever realize he was faked out", but that's not really consistent with the usual short term duration of Bluff. But it is just as reasonable (and, I have been persuaded by this thread, more consistent with the mechanic as presented in the RAW) that the fiction intended by the designer is "if you fail, you are faked out - you realize it, but you are denied your DEX bonus against the next attack by this attacker, provided he makes it by his next action".

Now, a group could reasonably decide they prefer "he does not know the feint worked, or was even attempted", even if you agree that the designer intended otherwise. Or you could interpret the designer having that intent, but designing a mechanic that poorly represents it. In either case, I go to either rolling only when the followup attack occurs, or making the feint rolls secret.

"He knows he has been feinted and can act accordingly" is not the only possible, or even the only reasonable, interpretation. But neither is "He does not know", whether or not followed with "and anyone who asserts otherwise is a metagaming cheater".

 

[N'raac]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] - it's not an easy issue. On the one hand, "player agency" sums it up. On the other hand, if I envision my character to be a mighty warrior, I should not build a character with an 8 STR and take 1/2 BAB class levels, then complain that my player agency has been compromised because my vision of my character as a mighty warrior is not being realized in game.

Why, then, should I be able to complain that my 8 WIS character with no ranks in Sense Motive should not be easily Bluffed by a fellow with a +15 Bluff roll? Perhaps I should properly play my character as, perhaps, still suspicious, but taken in by the specific bluff. Why do we have skill rank choices, and a Sense Motive skill, if those who choose to invest their character resources elsewhere are exempt from the consequences of lacking resources in that area?

This is a branch of the "we resolve negotiations with role playing not skill checks" argument, of course, and I propose not to drag this thread into that debate (yet I will post this nonetheless). My simple preference is either we have mechanics for these matters, in which case we live within these mechanics (with some decisions on just how much impact they have and how long they last) or we remove the mechanics. It's not fair to tell the stuttering wallflower who invested in a 20 CHA and plugged all his skill points into social skills, selecting a class that emphasizes such skills, that "we role play interaction" and let the 8 CHA warrior with only combat skills, whose player is a smooth talker, be as or more successful in social interaction.

We do not ask the warrior's player, who can barely rise from the couch, has not seen his feet in the 21st century, and needs two breaks to catch his breath when he climbs the stairs out of the basement, to role play his feats of herculean agility and endurance, while giving the wallflower combat skills for his 7th Dan Black Belt and years of experience with kenjutsu. You play a character. the character is often good at things you are not, and not as good as you at other things. Part of role playing is adopting that role, even where it is detrimental to the character.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] - it's not an easy issue. On the one hand, "player agency" sums it up. On the other hand, if I envision my character to be a mighty warrior, I should not build a character with an 8 STR and take 1/2 BAB class levels, then complain that my player agency has been compromised because my vision of my character as a mighty warrior is not being realized in game.

Agency is the power to try; not the right to succeed. It guarantees you some right to shape the fiction, but not unlimited right. If you want unlimited right to shape the fiction, you should become a novelist and not a gamer. Because it is a game we are playing, it is ultimately about struggle and striving. If you want self-validation, write fan fiction instead.

As a GM, when new PC's are introduced into the game, I first talk with the player about what they want to achieve, and then we discuss how to get there mechanically. A player that wanted to build a mighty warrior, but then allocated character building resources in a way that made that difficult, is at best confused. But their agency isn't actually being effected here. They still made all the choices, including the choice to make a character who had the delusion he was well suited to being a warrior. The resulting game would probably play out that delusion, and that might not satisfy the player, but they actually made the choices that got them there.

Why, then, should I be able to complain that my 8 WIS character with no ranks in Sense Motive should not be easily Bluffed by a fellow with a +15 Bluff roll?

I don't even understand what you are trying to say. The character is easily bluffed. A successful Sense Motive check resisting Bluff means that you receive the positive affirmation that a character using Bluff is indeed lying to you. A successful Sense Motive check versus DC 20, potentially gives you the positive affirmation that a character that isn't using Bluff is in fact being honest. A player with an 8 WIS character and no ranks in Sense Motive does not receive these positive affirmations because he is easily bluffed. Whereas, a player whose character has many ranks of Sense Motive receives this additional information all the time and can react accordingly, because he is not easily bluffed.

Failing a sense motive check versus a bluff check (normally) tells a player nothing. All he knows is that his character has no reason to believe that the person speaking to them does not believe what they are saying, and that he has no reason to believe that the person speaking to them has an ulterior motive. What the player makes of that and how they roll play their PC in response is up to him and his interpretation of how his character would act under these situations. It's not my job to tell the player how to play his character 'properly' as if the player character was actually my character and I had more insight into the character than the player did. If the player decides that the NPC speaking to him is being perfectly sincere because he's actually completely insane, and RPs according, that's the player's decision. If the player decides that his character is taken in, the player also decides what his character would do if he was taken in. It's not my job as the DM to tell a player, "Look. Your character was taken in by the NPC's bluff. You now have to do what he says.", because first that it is not how an RPG usually works, second because PC's are specifically called out as immune to this sort of thing, and third because that's not even how bluff works against NPCs (barring a result of 50+ on your bluff check).

There are some limited exceptions to the right of a player to play his character fully, most notably in a fantasy setting mind controlling or effecting magic or in a horror game how they react to terrifying things, but even then if a DM abuses these exceptions its a violation of the social contract and bad game mastery.

As for the rest of where you are going with this, I'm going to break some bad news to you. There is a fundamental difference between mental abilities and physical abilities. In the case of physical abilities, it is very easy to ensure that the physical ability of the player is not present in the game world because the player is not physically present within the imagined game space and his physical ability can easily be made to have no impact on the proposition->fortune->resolution cycle of the game. But in the case of mental abilities, it is impossible to ensure that the mental ability of the player is not present in the game world because the player is in fact mentally present within the imagined game space and his mental ability inevitably has impact on the proposition->fortune->resolution cycle of the game. And this isn't even the bad news. The bad news is that this is a good thing, and we wouldn't want it any other way. If the player wasn't in fact mentally present in the game, and his mental ability - his knowledge, his will, and his personality - could not impact the imagined game space, then the player would literally have no agency. He'd be reduced to the role of a computer, helping to carry out the processing for the world's slowest artificial intelligence.

But what this does mean is that we must kill the delusion that there is somehow a perfect and clean separation between the game and the metagame. The fiction is never actually real, because it is a fiction. A person can never fully pretend to be a person that they are not, nor ever fully have their decisions not be informed by who they are even if that was desirable. It also means that you are presenting not only a false choice when you say, "My simple preference is either we have mechanics for these matters, in which case we live within these mechanics (with some decisions on just how much impact they have and how long they last) or we remove the mechanics.", but an impossible choice. We can't actually choose to take the player out of the game and leave it all up to the character. Apart from the player, the character doesn't exist.

What we can do is have mechanics that are like the described Sense Motive mechanic, where a player is fed clues regarding the honesty of an NPC. But we can't do the converse, and insure that a player with very high perceptiveness doesn't get fed clues through the metagame. A high perceptive player cannot turn off his keen insight, nor can he successfully pretend to not have these insights even if he wanted to, because one can never know exactly what the counterfactual case is really like. Even if the player wanted to pretend to be clueless, he could only guess at what it would really be like. He could never be accurate about it.

It's not fair to tell the stuttering wallflower who invested in a 20 CHA and plugged all his skill points into social skills, selecting a class that emphasizes such skills, that "we role play interaction" and let the 8 CHA warrior with only combat skills, whose player is a smooth talker, be as or more successful in social interaction.

First, 'it's not fair' is not a very strong complaint. It's not fair that some people are charismatic, and some or not, and some are perceptive and some or not, and some are athletic and others disabled, and some are capable of tremendous feats of reasoning and some struggle with basic math and logic. So it would be hardly surprising if there were many things about the game we couldn't make perfectly fair in the sense that you mean it. We can make a game balanced, but we can't easily make chess a fair game in the sense that it doesn't matter who plays it. (And for that matter, would we want to do so? We could imagine such games, but they would quickly bore us precisely because they lacked any struggle and striving and therefore any agency.)

But fortunately, at least in this particular situation, we don't have to actually say any of those things. What I as the DM can say to the shy stuttering wallflower that wants to play a character with 20 Charisma, is that to some extent they are going to need to come out of their shell and speak up and engage the NPCs if they are to make full use of that 20 charisma resource that their character has. But if they speak up and role play and specify the sort of thing that they are saying, that the mechanics of the game will guarantee more often than not that however lamely they say things, however unpolished their speaking, however much they stutter, however uncharismatic they are, that those real words will be transformed in the game world into what would have been polished, forceful, appropriate, or suave and will be perceived by the NPC in that fashion. What those mechanics however can never do for them, is tell them when they should try to bluff, or persuade, or intimidate, or seduce or command or give insight into the particular approaches that would be especially effective against a particular NPC. It's up for them to choose the path and the approach in the same fashion its up to a player of a character with a good climb score to choose the wall to climb. All I can promise is that whatever path they choose, they'll succeed more readily and more often than the characters without those resources.

(But, if you try to climb up an overhanging wall of ice covered polished obsidian, don't be surprised if you are beaten to the top by the plate wearing DEX 8 cleric that used a ladder.)

In like manner, if a player with innately high charisma chooses to play a thug with very low charisma, he can play the character as posh and suave all he likes, but through the mechanics of the game more often than not his pretty and powerful words will be transformed in the imagined space of the game into sounds that are awkward, pompous seeming, and grating and people will generally ignore and dislike his character anyway. I can't however remove from the player his skilled social judgment in knowing what sort of things one should say and when, or when silence is the better part of being likeable. Nor for that matter can or even ought the player do so, though perhaps they can if they are skillful RPers envisage how their character comes off and try to act in a manner that foreshadows the likely fortune.

And in doing so, because that requires tremendous skill and intelligence, they'll only impress the DM and the other players more, and so I'm not sure that even then you can really divorce that person from their charisma ever no matter how they play. Indeed, I know for certain that it's not possible for a player who is not funny, to successfully roleplay a character that is. So life isn't fair, and don't expect a mere game to change that.

Part of role playing is adopting that role, even where it is detrimental to the character.

Ok, sure. So what? If you are really serious about social mechanics carrying most of the work of deciding how NPC's respond, why would it be necessary to double down on an 8 CHR by purposefully being a jerk all the time? A lot of the time it is more skillful and more mature role playing to take mechanical cues and roll play the character in response to the fortune. But a character with low charisma is by no means necessarily a jerk or even unlikeable, and it's actually unsophisticated RP to act as if that is what 8 charisma meant. And if we aren't leaning on the social mechanics, then in point of honest fact there is no way a charismatic person even trying to play someone without charisma can succeed, as the best they will manage is a lovable oaf, or a powerfully effecting jerk, or someone that you palpably loathe, or a sympathetic goof, or something else because in acting they will inevitably bring their tremendous stage presence to the part. That's why when making a movie you don't hire bad actors to play unlikeable low charisma characters. There is a difference in playing a character that arouses the audiences pity, and being an actor that arouses the audiences pity. And life isn't fair.

 

[N'raac]

I’m not sure we are as far apart as you may perceive us to be.

It's not my job to tell the player how to play his character 'properly' as if the player character was actually my character and I had more insight into the character than the player did. If the player decides that the NPC speaking to him is being perfectly sincere because he's actually completely insane, and RPs according, that's the player's decision. If the player decides that his character is taken in, the player also decides what his character would do if he was taken in.

I wonder what the players would think if, each time they rolled a successful Bluff check, the NPC’s were played on the basis that they think the PC is perfectly sincere in his insanity. “A successful Bluff check indicates that the target reacts as you wish, at least for a short time (usually 1 round or less) or believes something that you want it to believe.” It does not, therefore, indicate that the target believes you are hopelessly insane, and does not fall for your ruse.

But fortunately, at least in this particular situation, we don't have to actually say any of those things. What I as the DM can say to the shy stuttering wallflower that wants to play a character with 20 Charisma, is that to some extent they are going to need to come out of their shell and speak up and engage the NPCs if they are to make full use of that 20 charisma resource that their character has. But if they speak up and role play and specify the sort of thing that they are saying, that the mechanics of the game will guarantee more often than not that however lamely they say things, however unpolished their speaking, however much they stutter, however uncharismatic they are, that those real words will be transformed in the game world into what would have been polished, forceful, appropriate, or suave and will be perceived by the NPC in that fashion.

In like manner, if a player with innately high charisma chooses to play a thug with very low charisma, he can play the character as posh and suave all he likes, but through the mechanics of the game more often than not his pretty and powerful words will be transformed in the imagined space of the game into sounds that are awkward, pompous seeming, and grating and people will generally ignore and dislike his character anyway. I can't however remove from the player his skilled social judgment in knowing what sort of things one should say and when, or when silence is the better part of being likeable. Nor for that matter can or even ought the player do so, though perhaps they can if they are skillful RPers envisage how their character comes off and try to act in a manner that foreshadows the likely fortune.

Here, I think you and I are on the same page. Where I have seen some games depart (and some gamers strongly argue in favour of) is that the latter player is rewarded for his pretty and powerful words – he gets a bonus, or just automatically succeeds, with his social interaction objectives because he “role played so well”*, where our stutterer will be penalized for his own lack of oratorical skill rather than being rewarded for his character’s investment in those skills.

* No, he did not. He role played horribly. He role played his 8 CHA socially inept character as a skillful orator.

That's not to say bonuses could not be obtained. Either character should get a bonus if they, for example, know that the Duke of Chester is a lover of fine food and drink, and so bring him a gift of a rare vintage. Similarly, if they know he thinks poorly of the Baron of Undermere, and suggest he is collaborating with the Ogre tribe they are trying to get him to assist in attacking, that is much like our poor, or skilled, warrior flanking an opponent, and should be similarly rewarded with a bonus. But attempting to superimpose the suave player's oratorical skills on his socially inept 8 CHA character? That merits a penalty for poor role playing, if anything.

Indeed, I know for certain that it's not possible for a player who is not funny, to successfully roleplay a character that is.

Perform (Comedy). The problem is that the fiction can only go so far as to say that he has told a few jokes and the group laughs uproariously. We can’t make it funny to the players. As a result, it comes off poorly.