Heroes of Battle and Defining Roleplaying

[S'mon]

And, thanks for proving my point about needing guides to arbitrate more social situations. I would have expected a will save on the part of the noble vs. a DC 10+cha modifier to avoid being insized enough to teach me a lesson. Or maybe a sense motive vs bluff check. In your game, would I just be **** out of luck for trying to get into a duel?

I can avoid all this trouble by just _roleplaying the noble_ in-character - if he's a hothead he'll accept the challenge, a coward will order his guards to seize/slay the PC, etc. Only if I'm unsure of his reaction would the d20 come out - in this case maybe a Bluff roll to see how convincing the PC was in making the noble think it was a legitimate challenge, or Intimidate if the aim is to scare NPC into submission. Generally though unless the player requests a roll, I don't need one in this case.

 

[Ranger REG]

Hm, this is interesting. I actually find it far easier to run political intrigue & war in 3e than running combat (esp high level combat), because in the former case I don't have this huge pile of rules getting in my way. Whereas other GMs see rules governing X as a necessary crutch & comfort blanket to even think about using X in their game. I'd never considered this.

Well, this is where role-playing comes in, to have interaction between PCs and NPCs with minimal use of dice.

 

[tetsujin28]

Game designers have said some pretty dumb things (White Wolf, I'm looking at you). But yeah, that's...pretty dumb.

 

[buzz]

Yes. And a fighter is merely a commoner who has lost his temper.

Sigged!

 

[ThoughtBubble]

I can avoid all this trouble by just _roleplaying the noble_ in-character - if he's a hothead he'll accept the challenge, a coward will order his guards to seize/slay the PC, etc. Only if I'm unsure of his reaction would the d20 come out - in this case maybe a Bluff roll to see how convincing the PC was in making the noble think it was a legitimate challenge, or Intimidate if the aim is to scare NPC into submission. Generally though unless the player requests a roll, I don't need one in this case.

So, does this make the charisma score of the character involved irrelevent? Is it possible to be so people savy to push the buttons of someone to the point where they break? Does being in a world where dragons live, and people can talk to animals, and teleport via trees make it any more likely? If one man can face down giants, and another command the very forces of nature itself, can someone pull a man's mind out of its senses?

The problem with just _roleplaying the noble_ is that there may come a point where what I feel is reasonable and what you feel are reasonable are different. Rules are good for those sorts of situations. Frankly, I'd probably trust your judgement on the situation, as long as I could point to my character sheet with the ridiculous cha, bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate and say "This helps, right?" Unfortunately, the answers I've heard on this thread seem to be saying "No matter what your abilities are, that option will never work". That's really where my only worry with RPing it out comes with, when people forget that there's some danger of having already decided how the situaiton will go, regardless of other influences. Maybe the lv 10 socialite can be able to pull a manuver off that seems too crazy to work.

I am glad you are on to the concept that rules help some people play, like the group I play in. Having the bank of rules gives us all something that we have to agree on, despite our different playing styles and methods. But, could you be considerate of my easily bruised feelings and avoid describing using the rules as a 'crutch and a comfort blanket', consider it more of 'having a mutually understood method for resolution'. It doesn't carry the implication that people who like rules are somehow less competent than those who role-play things out. To me, it's less a crutch, and more a yardstick (though I suppose you could use a yardstick as a crutch in a pinch).

Really, there's never a single answer to judgement vs rules. It's all about finding what and where works for the situation at hand. Of course, we all know that.

But sometimes, when the situaiton is horriffically complex, and things could swing either way, it's nice to have a little chart of values that can be distilled into modifiers and then make an opposed roll. Or better yet, letting the player make an opposed roll.

Good conversing with ya, and thanks for helping me get my post count up.

Oh, and Kae, You lost me in there. When did the a question of the ability of a character to taunt someone into a duel have its point become 'A pesant would never do that'? Or are you pulling a fast one on me?

Reg, that was an interesting read. My only caution is to, as always, use caution when avoiding or minimising the rules, as it is possible for players to feel that they have no control over the situation. Should I link to one of those GNS classification things to be equitable? Seriously though, I am not saying that you have to follow rules at all times in all things, or that DMs are incapable of making things up. I'm just saying that they can smooth things over. And if the game is about something, then having the rules of the game be about it helps.

Can you have politics in D&D? Heck yeah. But if I'm going to be running a game about politics, D&D would not be my first choice of system to run it in. Hm... Thinking about it, that sentence has really been what I've been wanting to say all along.

 

[S'mon]

So, does this make the charisma score of the character involved irrelevent?

No - and as GM I like to have copies of the PC sheets so I can refer to their CHA, Bluff etc when roleplaying the noble (think of it as default take 10 if you like); plus a good player will RP their high CHA PC as having high CHA, which helps.

Obviously player needs to trust GM, if the two disagree it's the GM's decision that goes, but like I said a player can request a roll and if they get 30 on their Diplomacy roll, that's likely to mean something. BUT there are indeed cases where no matter how high your Diplomacy score, something just can't be done. Think of it as trying to hit a target in melee where the target is outside your Reach or has 100% Cover. This requires more judgement from the GM than do the combat rules, which are far more comprehensive, but the same principle applies.

My general policy is that there is no substitute for roleplaying the important PC-NPC interaction (unimportant stuff like selling loot may be resolved with abstract Gather Info & Diplomacy rolls); for one thing that to me is the most fun part of the game and the reason why it's a roleplaying game not a wargame. I'll use Diplomacy, Bluff & Intimidate rolls to support that interaction, never to replace it.

 

[S'mon]

If one man can face down giants, and another command the very forces of nature itself, can someone pull a man's mind out of its senses?.

Not via a Diplomacy roll. The most that can do is make the person think well of you. Pulling a man's mind out of its senses requires magic - or seduction, and there's no Seduce skill in the PHB.

BTW I recognise that my approach may somewhat devalue the character-interaction skills. IMC I don't use the standard Bard class, and I give Rogues d8 hit dice. _Most_ of the PCs in my (supposedly dungeon-crawl) campaign have good CHA & good character-interaction skills, and the players seem happy with the way I run PC-NPC interaction.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Hm. I think I agree with that well enough.

And I actually was using the constantly taking 10 approach in a D20 modern game. I had a low people awareness guy playing a high wis high sense motive sort, and, since he never would think of it, I just assumed that he was constantly taking 10 on his sense motive roles, and thus getting extra information all the time. It was pretty fun.

 

[S'mon]

But sometimes, when the situaiton is horriffically complex, and things could swing either way, it's nice to have a little chart of values that can be distilled into modifiers and then make an opposed roll. Or better yet, letting the player make an opposed roll.

I pretty much agree with this, in that when I think things could go either way I certainly do like to resort to the d20 roll; however with most interaction skill checks I'm more likely to set the DC at 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 (depending on how difficult task is) rather than try to calculate a DC per the RAW, which may often set it too low or too high given the circumstances (eg per the RAW it can often be ridiculously easy to Intimindate the BBEG), then request a roll, which (as I don't check the PC's skills before this request) may be an auto-success, especially at higher levels, or auto-fail if it's a difficult task and the PC doesn't have relevant skills. In general I prefer to wing DCs rather than refer to the PHB during play. The D&D designers didn't spend much time on the skills section, and my judgement often gives a better result than their scanty guidelines, which can give silly results if applied without judgement. By contrast the combat rules are comprehensive enough that they don't need judgement in their application to work, but using judgement never hurts.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Thoughtbubble, I'm completely with you on this point, and I think you are making some excellent points. Some of the "rebuttles" that you are recieving seem pretty facile to me.

The current Heroquest rules are interesting because they use essentially the same mechanic for handling social interactions of just the kind you mention as well as combat. In fact it is more than mere social interactions, it is *relationship* interactions that it seeks to model as well.

There is NO reason why the d20 system shouldn't be able to handle this kind of thing - it just needs someone to develop an appropriate way of handling it. WotC made a decision to step back from world-interaction for high level characters, I don't know why. Possibly to simplify things?

At a first glance it seems like you would need something to quantify relationships, and a multi-skill check mechanism for resolving an issue with social skills (akin to the multi d20-check mechanism for resolving an issue with combat)

It might be worth starting a thread in house rules (reposting the content of some of your posts to set the context) to see what thoughts could be developed along these lines.

Regards