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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2321777" data-attributes="member: 4937">Actually, it requires a Gather Information check, but assuming that the information is public and not secret, the DC of the check is like 0 (in this DM's opinion), and unless the character is god awful horrifying or there is a huge social gulf between the character and the NPC he approaches there is no point in rolling.  By the way, that may be overkill, but it is the rules as written.  Quote:"Use this skill for making contacts in an area, finding out local gossip, rumormongering, and collectin general information"See, I can rules lawyer too.Why not?  Because its forbidden under the rules or because it would be annoying to roll all those pointless checks?  I grant you that there is no point in disrupting the flow of the game to roll checks that will pretty much always succeed.  And under the raw its just about impossible for it to do either if the person is indifferent to your presence.  You have to produce a roll under 1 to get a negative result under the rules as written, and very arguably if you walk into a shop and produce some money you've just claimed a pretty worthwhile circumstance bonus on the check because the shop keeper wants your money and has a reason to at least pretend to be nice.No, I don't, or at least I don't see the difference you see.  One is a first impression.  The other is an attempt to haggle.  The first implicitly influences the shopkeeper's attitude.  He sizes up the customer.  He's thinking, "Is this guy a bum?  Is this guy a nobleman who might be a good customer, and who might refer good business to me?  Is this guy a wealthy mercenary I might can sucker into giving me more than the service is worth?"  The second is an attempt to persuade the shopkeeper to give you a particular price.  First impressions might make haggling harder or easier, but they are there.I didn't say you did.  I said you were overlooking that social situations were the same sort of 'make a skill check or sink' situations as trying to swim.  Maybe you are the King and you don't need to be diplomatic because thier is no (obvious) negative consequence for you if you brush a courtier off.  It's not that you didn't fail the check, its that you didn't care about the consequences.  This is just like being the construct that doesn't have to worry about breathing.  But most of the time, you are thrown into a social situation and you must make your skill checks or else effectively you will have failed them.I'm not sure that the RAW say much about it one way or the other, because they spend alot more time on combat situations than social situations.  Certainly I don't see anywhere were it explicitly says that diplomacy checks are not needed in these social settings.I don't think you are getting it.  Let's back up and try again from a different route.Suppose that the King orders you to sing a song.  "Entertain me.  Sing me a folk song of your rustic people.", he says.  Now obviously, you can't be forced to make a Perform check.  But, if you decide to obey the King and sing, you have to make a Perform check.  The Perform check is implicit in the decision to sing.  You either make the Perform check or you don't sing.  You can't say that you are going to sing and not make a Perform check because you aren't trying to impress the king.  Your song turned out in some fashion whether you were trying to impress the king or not.  And if you choose not to sing, then clearly you better be a darn charismatic person because King's are used to having thier will obeyed.Most social situations in which a diplomacy check are warranted are indentical to the above situation.  Even though the Duchess does not make an explicit demand to the PC for the PC to entertain her, that is implicitly what such a social situation represents.  The Duchess has implicitly demanded of the PC that they perform a Diplomacy check and reveal to her who they are and what quality that they might have.  You don't get a choice in social situations as to whether you are trying to impress people or not.  In social situations people are always judging you whether you want them to be judging you are not.  So when the Duchess comes up and speaks to the PC, he doesn't get a choice to not try to impress the Duchess.  The Duchess is demanding, "Impress me. Show me that you are my kind of person."  And the very same is true even if we are just talking about meeting a farmer on the road carrying his wagon load of hay, or if you are approached by a babe in the bar.  If you don't believe me, then I daresay you don't know many rural farmers and haven't been approached by many women in a bar.  When you are in a social situation, you don't have a choice whether or not you are going to 'do something', except in the sense that you can choose to do nothing which - like choosing not to swim - has the same result as failing the skill check.</blockquote>

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