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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5612112" data-attributes="member: 42582">There's a sense in which this is not true of D&D combat - the players roll their attack dice, and their damage dice, and when the enemy reaches zero hp the PCs have won the fight. The GM's interpretations and adjudications can alter the difficulty of the attack numbers (who is flanking, who has the higher ground, etc etc) and even the outcome of the damage numbers (who has DR, who has regen, etc). But it can't change the fact that rolling high attack rolls and higher damage rolls is taking the players towards the goal, of victory by their PCs in the combat. (Whether a monster like the nilbog is a refutation of my claim here, or rather just a very badly designed monster, I'll leave for someone else to work out!)I think Hussar's point is that, to the extent that this is true of 3.5, it's a flaw in 3.5's design.For what it's worth, if I was GMing 3E I would treat Bluff as a persuasion skill. So you'd have three persuasion skills, as in 4e - one for persuasion by deception and fast-talking, one for persuasion by being scary, one for persuasion by being reasonable.I think these five quotes capture the main issue here.Janx makes clearly what I also take to be Hussar's key point - that the GM, in setting up the backstory and determining complications, is having a big influence on the scope of PC action, and in a different sort of way from giving a monster DR or regeneration - it's not just tweaking a dial in some otherwise transparent action resolution mechanic.Krensky mentions resolving the factual question by rolling on the Mythic Fate table. But GSHamster's response to that makes sense to me - the player, by investing PC build resources in the Bluff skill, has declared that s/he want to play a game in which his/her PC wins by (among other things) bluffinf. So instead of rolling on the Mythic Fate chart, why not let the PC's high bluff check settle the issue?[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]'s concern - that this is, in effect, the player setting the challenge for his/her PC - I think is obviated if the DC is still set by the GM, and any complications that attend the success are also set by the GM. This also answers [MENTION=5889]Stalker0[/MENTION]'s concern about social skills being too strong.(On this approach, [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s idea that the whole table's sense of reasonableness is relevant would come into play only as a threshold test for a Bluff check being permissible at all, rather than as an element in the resolution of the check once it is agreed that the check can be made.)GSHamster also flags the GM being flexible with the timing of events in order to produce an interesting story, rather than the GM holding the events constant and making the players work around that conception of the gameworld. Ron Edwards discusses this sort of case as one relevant piece of data for distinguishing narrativist from simulationist (ie exploration-heavy) play.Which means that JamesonCourage's concern about making the game too narrativist would apply to both of GSHamster's suggestions. The game would no longer be strictly exploration, because significant elements of the gameworld would be settled as part of the actual adjudication of the situation, by a combination of GM decisions in order to introduce complications, and GM decisions as part of the adjudication of player skill checks.I think this is a very deep difference in playstyles.This is true, but how is it to be achieved? And what are the points at which the beating will take place? In particular, who has primary say over what will be the nature of the key challenging situations - the players, or the GM?Different answers to this experience produce very different play experiences, in my view.</blockquote>

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