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<blockquote data-quote="rkanodia" data-source="post: 1765444" data-attributes="member: 11681">I think we may have a miscommunication.&nbsp; I am not trying to argue that a DM should make it difficult for PCs to find out the Soup of the Day, or get Rex to come over, or know the name of the kingdom they are in.&nbsp; For all of those things, the PCs should just be able to say &quot;I do it&quot; and the DM should say &quot;OK&quot;.The point I was getting at is that it's OK for the Diplomacy house rules (mentioned earlier in the thread) to not really work for certain trivial cases, because other skills have the same problem.&nbsp; You deal with those cases by acknowledging the silliness of requiring a skill check, and just forget about the check.I entirely agree with your interpretation of number 1.&nbsp; For number two and three, you are right in that I missed the special section on untrained checks.&nbsp; For number three, I still think it's silly that about 25% of the population (Int &lt; 10, roll 10 or less on 1d20) can't name their own country.There are other cases.&nbsp; For instance, if you don't have ranks in Listen and you want to talk to someone who is 10 feet away, they'd better be shouting, because the Listen DC to hear 'People Talking' at that range is DC 1 - and you have to beat a check by at least 10 to understand what they're saying.&nbsp; Also,&nbsp; the lowest DC to appraise something is a 12, meaning that most people apparently don't know that 10 silver pieces are worth a gold piece.&nbsp; Biting social commentary aside, that's clearly just a silly little snag in the rules.The whole point I am getting at is that stupid little things like that don't matter.&nbsp; Ridley's Cohort argued against the Diplomacy house rules because, if you follow them exactly as written, you could fail to buy a drink or get the time of day from your lover.&nbsp; I say that doesn't really matter: I hadn't even thought about using the Diplomacy skill to handle those situations, so I don't care if the Diplomacy skill can handle those situations.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="rkanodia, post: 1765444, member: 11681"] I think we may have a miscommunication. I am not trying to argue that a DM should make it difficult for PCs to find out the Soup of the Day, or get Rex to come over, or know the name of the kingdom they are in. For all of those things, the PCs should just be able to say "I do it" and the DM should say "OK". The point I was getting at is that it's OK for the Diplomacy house rules (mentioned earlier in the thread) to not really work for certain trivial cases, because other skills have the same problem. You deal with those cases by acknowledging the silliness of requiring a skill check, and just forget about the check. I entirely agree with your interpretation of number 1. For number two and three, you are right in that I missed the special section on untrained checks. For number three, I still think it's silly that about 25% of the population (Int < 10, roll 10 or less on 1d20) can't name their own country. There are other cases. For instance, if you don't have ranks in Listen and you want to talk to someone who is 10 feet away, they'd better be shouting, because the Listen DC to hear 'People Talking' at that range is DC 1 - and you have to beat a check by at least 10 to understand what they're saying. Also, the lowest DC to appraise something is a 12, meaning that most people apparently don't know that 10 silver pieces are worth a gold piece. Biting social commentary aside, that's clearly just a silly little snag in the rules. The whole point I am getting at is that stupid little things like that don't matter. [b]Ridley's Cohort[/b] argued against the Diplomacy house rules because, if you follow them exactly as written, you could fail to buy a drink or get the time of day from your lover. I say that doesn't really matter: I hadn't even thought about using the Diplomacy skill to handle those situations, so I don't care if the Diplomacy skill [i]can[/i] handle those situations. [/QUOTE]

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