Excerpt: skill challenges

[Remathilis]

Wow. Just wow.

A couple of points I'd like to make.

1.) Auto Failure.

It's absolutely blowing my mind there are DMs who think that using intimidate to secure trust and aid from a local lord is not only viable, but acceptable. Its like trying to hammer in a nail with a screwdriver. I'm surprised if there wasn't a 6th line: Initiative (very easy): the noble is surprised as the PCs draw steel, so he summons his guards.

I'm all for creative OotB thinking, but I do think there are some skill checks that shouldn't succeed. You can't intimidate someone into trusting you, you can't make a jump check leap over a mountain, and you can't impress a local lord with your stealth check (BOO!)

2.) Railroading.

This phrase you keep using, I do not think it mean what you think it means. Railroading is when the PCs are powerless from changing the plot, regardless of any option. If the noble MUST live so that he can do something important and the PCs cannot lay a finger on him for that reason, that's railroading. Deciding that a certain skill or skills only work in a particular combination or that the NPC has a particular agenda he will be furthering no matter how smooth/suave/menacing the PCs are IS NOT RAILROADING, ITS ADDING TO THE PLOT.

Remember kids: if your standing still and the plot keeps moving, your on a railroad. If you walk up to a T section and are miffed you can't go straight, that NOT railroading, that's limiting your particular options at that junction.

3.) successes and failures

This is great IMHO. I can play social meetings like encounters. Each "round" the PCs describe their actions, and one of them roles. Their success/failure in that given round moves the conversation in that direction. It allows a round-to-round structure and keeps the game from turning into "8 people talk. one person rolls diplomacy. You roll a 2, you fail to impress the duke. No retries." Instead, you know if things are going good or bad as they advance, and the multiple rolls allow more chances to succeed on the dice, rather than one "save or fail" skill check.

 

[Remathilis]

Ok, ok, I can't resist any longer.

Ahem. By rules as written, 3e does not permit you to Intimidate a Duke into loaning you troops. Ever. For any Duke at all. No matter what. Go read the rules for Intimidate. Its purely a "smash people against the wall and make them comply" skill. By RAW, an Intimidated target functions as a Friendly NPC. But 1d6x10 minutes after you cease to pose an immediate risk of physical harm, the target shifts to Unfriendly or Hostile. Long term intimidation violates RAW.

Thanks Cadfan!

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

The absolute failure in this circumstance could be that no matter what you roll and no matter who you are, the Duke does not like to be bullied.

By extension I suppose all the folks that Intimidate does work on just really love being bullied.

The Duke also doesn't like being lied to, so he's immune to Bluff.

He also doesn't like having to capitulate under any circumstances-- he's used to getting his way and he's just not the sort of person who is ever going to give an inch, no matter what-- so he's immune to Diplomacy.

 

[billd91]

Player: "I swear by my life, no man may besmirch my honor and live. I don't care if you are surrounded by your guards, nor even that I may lose my life in the bargain, but if you dare question my trustworthiness again, I will cut you down where you stand."

DM: "The Duke is taken aback, but clearly impressed by your manner. After a moment he laughs. Standing up, he claps you on the back. 'By the Gods, man, I wish I had a captain among my guard with such balls!'"

If you want the Duke to react that way to intimidation attempts... then template the situation that way! But don't expect every Duke to behave the same way and don't expect that intimidate will work the same against everybody. It happens to be counter-productive in this situation. How is that a problem?

 

[Harr]

Why is everyone having such a fit over the Intimidate thing. It's an example. It has nothing to do with tha actual rules.

I mean, unless the skill challenge rules actually say, "Every skill challenge must have at least one skill which automatically fails," or "In every negotiation challenge against a Duke, Intimidate must always be made to fail *always*," it's irrelevant.

The DM who wrote that one example thought that it would be interesting to bar Intimidation. Big whoop. How does that affect anybody? Clearly the rules say that the DM may bar a skill if he wants to. We already knew that anyway. That's always been like that.

Chances are overwhelminfly good that I can write the same encounter with no skills automatically barred and have it be 100% legal 4e D&D.

By the same token, unless the rules actually say "Skill challenges must never have any more than 6 possible skills, and some of those skills must lead into using others," there is nothing anywhere that says that all skills can't be used in one challenge. So I can write a challenge that is bacially "use whatever skill you want and convince me how it's relevant" and have it be 100% legal 4e D&D.

The problem with this is that it's just an example, it says nothing concrete. Sure, you may or may not choose to do these things as a DM, but nothing is saying that you have to, or that the majority or even the average game will have them.

 

[Dausuul]

Doing something which I am absolutely sure to win 6 times is better than trying something with a high risk of failure.

I'd rather roll 1d20+15 vs. DC 17 six times than to try my luck with 1d20+8 vs. DC 20

Yep, not much point in chosing if you don't know which options you can chose from.

That's a pretty extreme case. Let's assume something more reasonable. For instance, your choice is to make five "easy" rolls of 1d20+9 vs. DC 15; or to make two "moderate" rolls of 1d20+9 vs. DC 20; or to make one "difficult" roll of 1d20+9 vs. DC 25. We'll say one failure dooms your attempt.

If you choose the first option (five rolls against DC 15), your odds of success are a bit under 24%.
If you choose the second option (two rolls against DC 20), your odds of success are 25%.
If you choose the third option (one roll against DC 25), your odds of success are also 25%.

 

[Vendark]

Ok, ok, I can't resist any longer.

Ahem. By rules as written, 3e does not permit you to Intimidate a Duke into loaning you troops. Ever. For any Duke at all. No matter what. Go read the rules for Intimidate. Its purely a "smash people against the wall and make them comply" skill. By RAW, an Intimidated target functions as a Friendly NPC. But 1d6x10 minutes after you cease to pose an immediate risk of physical harm, the target shifts to Unfriendly or Hostile. Long term intimidation violates RAW.

Thank you.

I think if people would actually read what Diplomacy and Intimidate do, instead of assuming what they do based on their names, a lot of the issues here would disappear. Most especially, you can't use Intimidate to impress someone into liking you or agreeing with you. That's Diplomacy; even if you do it by flexing your muscles and boasting about how much ass you kick, it's still Diplomacy. Intimidate is solely for threatening people, and you can't do it in a way that won't make them see you as an enemy in the long-term.

 

[Spatula]

Not quite.

Intimidation is about making people afraid of what you will do if they do not do as you say. It is, by definition, about striking fear of you into them - but not necessarily fear of violence. You could threaten to reveal a dark secret (blackmail), threaten to foreclose on a loan, threaten to pull out of a treaty they desperately need you to remain in, threaten to pull out of a business deal that will ruin them if it falls through, threaten to publicly humiliate them, etc. The whole point is to convince the other party that you are both capable and willing to make something undesireable happen. It can be used to great effect in social situations, if done subtlety. It's just not something you use when you're trying to build trust, which the example clearly states you are.

Convincing people of danger from a third party is not intimidation. That's more an issue of convincing them of the truth of what you are saying, which is either bluff (if you are lying) or diplomacy (if you are not). You can't cow people into believing you, only into not calling you a liar to your face.

I'm guessing the discussion has moved past the "what does Intimidate mean?" stage (I'm only up to page 9) but I just wanted to say, this is a damn good explination of what a social Intimidate is. And it is a social skill, not a "I scare them with my muscles" skill - which is probably better represented with a strength feat.

Also,

No DM with proper strength of will recognises straitjackets.

QF-motherbleeping-T.

 

[doctormandible]

Why are we assuming long term aid? I certainly didn't. My scenario was "tell us what we want to know." There are no prolonged troop deployments or long-term goals which require the Duke to stay helpful. So I don't buy your "Intimidate wouldn't work in 3.x", because clearly it would it my scenario.

It's absolutely blowing my mind there are DMs who think that using intimidate to secure trust and aid from a local lord is not only viable, but acceptable. Its like trying to hammer in a nail with a screwdriver.

I don't recall anyone suggesting that Intimidate breeds trust. Why are we assuming that we need trust? AGAIN, we're talking about "Tell me what I want to know or Tiny over there is gonna start pulling off fingers. And when we're done with that, he's gonna start doing that to your kids and servants." TRUST?! Hell no. Information? From any but the most fearless (and I mean magically) kind of Duke. We can't be assuming that the book example of a Duke is some sort of fearless ubermenche with nothing to lose and only the ties of his irreproachable moral convictions keeping him to this mortal realm.

 

[billd91]

Why are we assuming long term aid? I certainly didn't. My scenario was "tell us what we want to know." There are no prolonged troop deployments or long-term goals which require the Duke to stay helpful. So I don't buy your "Intimidate wouldn't work in 3.x", because clearly it would it my scenario.

Well, that's your scenario. You are free to template up the challenge as you see fit. Intimidation might well work. But it isn't going to be helpful in the initial setup that sparked this scintillating debate, is it? Why? Because in that situation with that Duke, it's a hindrance.