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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nichwee" data-source="post: 5305394" data-attributes="member: 84242">This draws a fine line tbh between being just "I ues my .... skilll" by any other name, and actually being a description. With an Intimidate roll it is no biggie - pick the first scary thing you can think of and say you threaten that. With Diplomacy it gets harder, as Diplomacy varies from culture to culture and by mood of those involved.Complement a Klingon on his smooth skin and he will try to kill you (smooth skin is an insult to Klingons), so you suddenly find that some skills are easy to describe in basic form "I threaten him with ..." = Intimidate, "I move behind him slowly and quietly ..." = Stealth, but can get complex for others "I comment his ...." = wrong choice of words for a Diplomacy check.So if you can just say "I complement him and discuss how he has been for 5 minutes and then ask him what I want to know" you may as well have just said "I use my Diplomacy skill" and saved the extra 20 odd words. If you actually have to come up with an idea what you should say to complement the guy and get on his good side it just became your OOC diplomacy that matters not your character's.Roleplay can exist much more in the choice to use a given skill or power imo than in how you say you are using it.Example:Players want info from a barman.Party Bard asks, barman lies, Bard thinks he is hiding something.Bard heads back to his friends, and mentioned his concerns, and that he thinks he may be able to talk the guy round given some time.Party Barbarian gets up half way through the planning and says "DM, I try to intimidate the barman to tell me what we want to know".Barbarian PC rolls mediocare, and fails.Barman gets shirty and calls for a local guard to throw the Barbarian and his friends out.Bard Player laments the lost chance to smooze the barman with his insanely high Diplomacy skill.Barbariab Player shrugs, and says "Sorry, I know it would have been better to let you do a Diplomacy roll, but my character gets annoyed when he thinks people are keeping things from him and tends to react agressively when it happens."Bard Player shrugs and says "oh well, can't fault you for Rping your character properly".End Example.In this both the Bard and Barbarian were RPing well, it doesn't matter that the Barbarian Player just said "I use Intimidate on the barman". The attempt was good roleplay considering the player knew the odds were better leaving it to the Bard, but the character wouldn't be that patient. Roleplay is in the decisions (playing the role), not how they are acted at the table or how the are resolved by the rules. Bonuses for good RP and dramatic explainations can be good - but should be a secret thing behind the DM Screen imo, or you get those who are good storytellers abusing the fact to their advantage (I knew a player who would try to never "lie" but would always "persuade the target to believe them" as they had merit bonuses to persuading - it was in Mage:Ascension iirc, which allows dice pools to gain numerous bonuses and penalties for all sorts of things)</blockquote>

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