Bluff at Range

[LostSoul]

Well, then, maybe you stare into the guy's eyes until he lowers his guard. Your massive force of personality overcoming his will. Maybe you wink to give it that extra punch.

 

[hong]

Well, then, maybe you stare into the guy's eyes until he lowers his guard.

... because he starts thinking that you fancy him.

Your massive force of personality overcoming his will. Maybe you wink to give it that extra punch.

Now he KNOWS you fancy him.

Hey, maybe we could make Innuendo checks in combat to make people drop their pants I MEAN their guard.

 

[LokiDR]

Thanks Volefisk, for answering the question I posed. I still don't think it all that realistic to aim elsewhere then shoot your real target, but it does fall in the normal bent reality of D&D. I guess in the future I will ask the player to try to justify it once or twice in the evening before he just starts saying "I bluff". Thanks to all for your replies.

 

[Stalker0]

That's a high price to pay for "safety."

By 8th level, there are many rogues that can take a single charged hit from a monster and be alright. There are also many rogues that when hit by 3 or 4 attacks from said monster in a single round will be dead or uncouscious. You are trading offensive power for defensive longevity. You don't have to make that trade, but you may have a longer career if you do.

 

[ForceUser]

The point I was making was that if you're within 30 feet of a monster, you're not really safe. Almost any critter can get you in a single move at that range. Ranged sneak attack in a sustained melee, therefore, is a poor tradeoff for losing your normal rate of attacks, but I won't disallow it all the same.

 

[reapersaurus]

thank you, hong, for saying my argument for me.

There's a simple solution to these thorny problems, LokiDR:

Remove the stupid Feint aspect of Bluffing from the game.
It has NO business being applicable in combat.

But in addition to hong's comments about Feint NOT being normal combat moves, I will echo others in expressing my complete lack of believability in a ranged Feint. It is quite telling that noone can give a believable example of Feinting in ranged combat. To me, that is proof enough to cement the case against Feint being used in ranged combat.

Just because the rules don't specifically state that a Feint is in melee doesn't mean that it should be used in ranged combat.

I compare it to Divine Might from DotF.
The prerequisite is Power Attack, so IF a DM ruled that you couldn;'t use it with ranged weapons, I would totally understand.

 

[Creamsteak]

Although I can't imagine how one would feint with a ranged weapon either, I won't be house-ruling this away. It stands as it reads, cheesy as it may seem. Otherwise, you're screwing over rogues who want to sneak attack but don't want to melee. It takes a standard action to bluff a foe anyway, why screw the ranged rogue more by making this maneuver more difficult? At the end of the day, logic problems aside, that's the deal.

You've never played paintball or anything similar have you? It seems difficult to explain, but yes, you can feint players in order to manipulate them into favorable shooting positions.

For instance, I was behind two barrels, nobody knew I was there. Another player was moving over a ridge, and suddenly three enemies opened up on him. I shot from behind them at a bush near them, they moved up from the bush, thinking that that would put them right out of my sight, but of course they actually moved right into my line of fire.

Three kills... reminds me that I should either sell my gun or start playing again...

 

[Creamsteak]

Another example is to fire above a player to get them to move lower... or to provide cover fire (which in real life denies an enemy his dexterity to evade shots, but doesn't strike them...)... of course the deal is that all these feints involve expending ammunition...

Cover fire, misleading shots, throwing objects like a rock to distract someone... all types of feints that would work at range.

Doing anything that manages to force your opponent to lose his dexterity should count as a feint, and throwing an empty flask at another player could be a feint, if bluffed well enough.

That's why feint is a bluff ablity, because the more convincing your lie is, the better.

 

[reapersaurus]

creamstake - your example is completely invalid.
It is using a cover situation where they are surprised.

We're talking about a very non-bluffable position here: a fighter with a sword in hand looking right at an archer 30 ft from him, and the archer's gonna BLUFF him?
Actually, with the definition of Feint being misdirection, like "Hey! Look- it's Elvis!", I guess there's nothing stopping the archer from attempting a Feint at range.

Of course, that's yet another reason to remove a bad combat-affecting application of the Bluff social skill from the game.

 

[Creamsteak]

We're talking about a very non-bluffable position here: a fighter with a sword in hand looking right at an archer 30 ft from him, and the archer's gonna BLUFF him?

I didn't know that. Of course, just to regress to my opinion...

Yes, you could bluff a fighter looking right at you.

If I had a +30 bluff (pretty high) I could throw an empty or weighted flask full of green water at your fighter, and pending a good roll, your fighter may be convinced that bottle is a threat. Possibly a poison gas potion that is about to leak out and poison your fighter.

But it wasn't, it was a feint. Your character is only without his dex bonus for two or three seconds, but sufficient enough for a single crossbow shot. He looks at the bottle briefly to re-afirm his opinion that it is just a distraction.

Keep in mind that your character gets his sense motive check anyway. Probably with a +5 or +10 modifier if your character really doesn't believe a bottle is a threat. It is possible to trick someone who is looking right at you, and the better there ability to sense that you are lying the better.

In my RL experiences, you can trick someone at dodge-ball with a feint. Paintball and Dodgeball are both games that involve bluffing your opponents to get them to do something you want. I'm just curious to how it is that a fighter is immune to being distracted? I've been distracted while a baseball was pitched to me. I've been distracted when someone screams my name, but they are not referring to me.

Hey, I just thought of a ranged way to get a fighter to lose his dex bonus. Flash him. Moon him. He obviously isn't going to be thinking about dodging your attack for those 1 or two seconds. Unless of course he can sense your motive.