Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6307770" data-attributes="member: 17106">To me, the thing with social skills is to be clear about what they mean. That is, to focus on process, rather than outcome. Establishing Diplomacy, for example, as a measure of how eloquent and persuasive the character is makes it much clearer to adjudicate.It's entirely possible, for example, for very attractive and charismatic people to get by in some situations, even if what they're saying is total BS. But some astute observers will conversely see right through it. On the other hand, it's also clear that other people act in their own best interest, and if you have something genuinely compelling, they may listen even if you do a pretty poor job of conveying it.For me and those of my players who have been embedded in the science world, the distinction between the merits of one's thoughts and the ability to convey them is quite easy to understand because we see it all the time. Some people have good ideas, some people are good in front of a crowd, some have both, some neither.I think where the rules go wrong is in focusing too much on outcomes. If I read the 3e Diplo, for example, it starts withThis is misleading. It is possible to change the attitudes of people with Diplomacy, but that isn't really what the skill does. The skill allows you to speak well. The NPC attitude is determined by a variety of factors, of which your speech is only one.They've buried the lead with that line about "basic" DCs. Those DCs are so basic, they're really inappropriate in just about any in-game situation.The Bluff skill is even worse:Gee, thanks for that. The skill at least does a good job of making the effects of circumstance somewhat more explicit, but still ultimately fails to convey the sophistication of deception. It's vague and confusing.I had a few really cheesy Bluff-related gambits from the players in the early 3e days, before I figured out that the skill is really just telling you how well you delivered the lie, not controlling the target's mind. But again, if you read the text, they buried the lead; it suggests that Bluff is a suggestion spell, and then says that it isn't.The DMG text on adjudicating skills is significantly better, but of course, people read the PHB first.</blockquote>

Verification