Diplomacy and Taking 10

[Kafkonia]

Anyone who's seen my post in the unlikely builds thread knows that my Shackled City character has, rather inadvertantly, wound up with a +15 in Diplomacy at 2nd level. My question is, can you take 10 on a diplomacy check? I don't see anything by the RAW to prevent that, but in that case I could sway a hostile person to indifferent without even rolling a die...

I know diplomacy is much-maligned.

 

[Mistwell]

Except you would have to rush the check to do it in a single round, which incurs a significant negative to the check.

Sure, you could do it in a tavern where you suspected things were going to turn ugly in another few minutes. But in a dungeon facing a horde of goblins whose room you just busted into? No.

 

[James McMurray]

You can take ten on diplomacy.

You do not have to rush the check to do so. Taking ten doesn't change how long a skill check requires.

 

[Mistwell]

You can take ten on diplomacy.

You do not have to rush the check to do so. Taking ten doesn't change how long a skill check requires.

No, what I meant was that a normal use of diplomacy, either with or without taking 10, takes more than a round.

"Changing others’ attitudes with Diplomacy generally takes at least 1 full minute (10 consecutive full-round actions). In some situations, this time requirement may greatly increase. A rushed Diplomacy check can be made as a full-round action, but you take a -10 penalty on the check."

You need a 25 to move someone from hostile to indifferent. 15 bonus + 10 for takng ten = 25, - 10 for rushed check = 15, which is not sufficient to move them to anything other than still hostile.

 

[James McMurray]

I guess I got confused byt he addition of timing, since the question originally asked had nothing to do with time. I think I'm on the same page now.

 

[frankthedm]

And If you want another way to keep diplomacy from getting out of hand is to remember the Set DCs only changes the NPC attitude twards the character using diplomacy.

 

[RigaMortus2]

As long as you aren't being distracted or threatened, I beleive you can Take 10 on a Diplomacy check. It would take the usual amount of time. If you are rushing it, it would work like Mistwell suggests.

As long as there is no penalty for failure, such as if making a really bad roll would get you a worse result than had you not tried at all, then you can also Take 20. It would, however, take 20 times as long. So if you figure it takes a minute for a Diplomacy check, it will take you 20 minutes if you Take 20... Which, IMHO, would also allow your target to also Take 20, which effectively would nullify your Take 20.

Personally, I don't know if I would allow a Take 10 or Take 20 on an opposed roll. But that'd be a house rule.

 

[Kafkonia]

As long as there is no penalty for failure, such as if making a really bad roll would get you a worse result than had you not tried at all, then you can also Take 20.

I personally wouldn't allow taking 20 because, as written under the "Try Again" portion of Diplomacy, "Even if the initial Diplomacy check succeeds, the other character can be persuaded only so far, and a retry may do more harm than good. If the initial check fails, the other character has probably become more firmly committed to his position, and a retry is futile."

 

[RedFox]

You can take 10 but you can't take 20.

Rogues get Skill Mastery, by the way, which allows them to take 10 even while distracted or threatened. If you twinked it out enough, you could reasonably ensure that you could pull it off in combat without a roll. You'd need a really high Diplomacy mod, due to the -10 penalty for rushing it, though. It'd be like Charm Person, only better.

 

[blargney the second]

Changeling rogues with the substitution level at 1st can take 10 on diplomacy even while threatened.