D&D 3E/3.5 In Favor of 3.5, With One Reservation.

[orion90000]

To each their own. I personally like the was 3.5 deals with things with dice rolls. I'm a bit too ADD as a DM for the PCs to waste hours at the taverns and haggling with the shopkeeps when I got kobolds to squish and dragons to slay. I usually have everyone do the shopping out of character in between adventures (as busy as everyone is, I tend to do this myself with their input)

 

[billd91]

I think it's more of a style issue than a major rules one. If you want to promote the role playing aspect of it, you can do so. Just start with that and only allow a die roll after getting well under way rather than use the die roll as a substitute for the role play. Use the die roll to assess how well the character does as the vehicle for the players role play ideas. Give bonuses or penalties for particularly good/bad role play and tactics.

 

[Dordledum]

Assuming that Water Bob is still playing his low magic Conan campaign, I can imagine playing out merchant encounters is fun.

As a Forgotten Realms player on higher levels with vast amounts of treasure, that could easily take up multiple sessions of shopping. We tend to adopt Orion's tactic. Shopping, levelling up, etc. we always do by e-mail inb etween sessions to save up valuable gametime.

We do prefer to roleplay over rolling dice though. We use the dice only to check succes if we try to roleplay inplausible actions or to check if we know stuff (them knowledge rolls).

For once, we tried to invade a barbarian stronghold, and came to a closed and guarded door. We were spotted by the guards and they asked: "Hey you! Do you know the password?" Knowing that we had no password, I immediately flapped out: "Of course I do, you idiot, do YOU know the password?"

Highly inplausible that it would work, so a bluff roll was in order. I rolled a natural 20 and we're still talking about that encounter 7 years later.

I prefer roleplaying, but the dice are pretty handy at times.

 

[kitcik]

On a tangent, I think 4E is even worse. Those "skill challenges" are just crapola IMHO.

I agree with both [MENTION=92305]Water Bob[/MENTION] and [MENTION=85158]Dandu[/MENTION] - it all depends on what style game your players desire and your DM is capable of handling. You can still RP the whole thing with your 6 CHA half-orc barbarian acting all suave --> the NPC will just listen to their wonderful speech and reply with a "get out you dirty orc!"

 

[Water Bob]

Assuming that Water Bob is still playing his low magic Conan campaign, I can imagine playing out merchant encounters is fun.

As a Forgotten Realms player on higher levels with vast amounts of treasure, that could easily take up multiple sessions of shopping. We tend to adopt Orion's tactic. Shopping, levelling up, etc. we always do by e-mail inb etween sessions to save up valuable gametime.

The merchant example, I made up as I wrote, but the gnoll thing happened in my AD&D 2E Forgotten Realms games.

Back in the day, once FR came out, we fell in love with the setting. I've got most of my AD&D 1E and 2E hours logged there (we spent quite a lot of time in Dragonlance, too).

Merchant roleplaying happened in FR just as frequently as it does in my Conan game.

I mentioned above that I think the good GM keeps a finger on the pulse of his game. When these impromptu roleplaying moments pop up, he lets them live. But, he doesn't do it 100% of the time. No, sometimes it gets old...."Oh, great, another stingy merchant to deal with." As GM, you've got to know when an RP moment will enhance the game and just roll dice and move on if it feels like the game is bogging down.

I mix and match all the time. Sometimes visting a town for a few days takes five minutes of game time, and everybody buys replacement gear. And, sometimes, we take three game sessions in the town, roleplaying.

As long as it's fun and interesting.





Here's the rub with the 3.0/3.5 rules, though: We play out an encounter strictly with roleplay. Let's say the PCs have approached a town after sundown, and the town gates have closed. I describe the guard on the battlement that looks down at them. There's another in a guard tower with a crossbow. We play out the interchange between the guard that the PCs. It's fun. But, ultimately, the PCs don't convince the guard to let them inside this night. They'll have to spend the night in the wilderness then come back to the gate in the morning.

The roleplaying went that way, but then a player looks at his sheet and says, "Hey, I've got a 16 CHA, and I'm +11 at Diplomacy...I shoulda convinced that guard to let us in!"

But, he didnt'. When we roleplayed it out, although it was an enjoyable RP momemt. The players even laughed at my rendition of the guard. The juxtapositon of the characters stats and the outcome of the roleplay may not seem correct.

In my view, the character did what the character did as the player played him.

In a 3.0/3.5 view, it was an unlikely occurence that the character would roll so low as to miss the throw to let the PCs inside the town at night. The character could have Taken 10 and made the throw.

Thus, this is the problem I sometimes have with the game.

 

[Dandu]

DC 40 Unfriendly to Helpful. DC 30 Indifferent to Helpful.

 

[Celebrim]

See how the older rules promoted roleplaying? It's natural to get to this place using the AD&D 2E rules. But, with 3.0/3.5, it's a different story. Instead of roleplaying, rolling dice is encouraged. Instead of the player originally asking questions about the sword, back and forth, with the GM, the question is likely to be, "I want to roll an Appraise check. What's my DC?" And, once you give him the DC, he wants to know what his check told him.

The trick is to not use the additional information provided by the dice throw to short cut the roleplay, but to enhance it.

So if the player says, "I want to roll and Appraise check.", first of all, don't tell the player the DC. Simply treat this as identical to the proposition, "I carefully examine the sword." (because that is what his character does as a result of the appraise check proposition), and relay to the player information on the basis of his success (or failure) at examining the blade. Yes, you are telling the player how much his character thinks the sword is worth, but also tell him specifically what he discovers just as before.

Now, the player knows something about the blade (or thinks he does), and the RP encounter with the merchant runs the same as before, with the exception that the player now has some concrete evaluation of the worth of the sword (even if it may be wrong). Then he enters into the negotiation with the merchant on that basis, just as before.

The player at this point may say, "I want to roll a diplomacy check.", which is fine, but at my table at least, rolling a diplomacy check cannot be used to substitute for the specific sort of content or approach that the player makes in a conversation. Instead, it only effects how well that content and approach is recieved. So, again, the conversation proceeds the same, except that the player's diplomacy check (combined with the merchant's own appraisal of the weapon) is setting the merchant's expectation of the minimum he will sell the sword for. If the character has a low charisma, even if the player is a good haggler, he still won't obtain as low of a price as a player with a higher charisma character might. Of course, if the player isn't a good haggler, or the player has a poor evaluation of the weapons worth, he still might accept the merchant's first offer (foolishly), but now you also know something else about the encounter that could influence how you play the merchant. If the merchant likes the buyer, and he obtains a higher price from the buyer than he expects (or desired), you can evaluate the merchant's character to determine how the merchant now reacts - perhaps he tries to make it up to the nice but gullible buyer by offering him some small benefit, or perhaps he decides that such a 'generous' man is his new best friend and greets him warmly whenever he sees him (whether out of a good heart or no), or perhaps he feels guilty and in the future offers legitimate good deals to the buyer.

The point is to use the dice rolls to steer the RP, but not replace it. That is part of the skills of mastering 3.X. Used together with RP, I think you'll find that the social/intelligence rolls enhance RP rather than detract from it.

 

[Celebrim]

The roleplaying went that way, but then a player looks at his sheet and says, "Hey, I've got a 16 CHA, and I'm +11 at Diplomacy...I shoulda convinced that guard to let us in!"

But, he didnt'. When we roleplayed it out, although it was an enjoyable RP momemt. The players even laughed at my rendition of the guard. The juxtapositon of the characters stats and the outcome of the roleplay may not seem correct.

In my view, the character did what the character did as the player played him....Thus, this is the problem I sometimes have with the game.

I think that the RAW charisma/diplomacy rules are missing some details that should clarify this situation.

First of all, Diplomacy per the RAW can't be used to convince someone to do something for you. It's frequently used that way (and rightly so I think), but that's not what it does according to the rules. So understand to begin with that if you are using Diplomacy in that way, you are already off in house rule land. Diplomacy per the rules only changes the attitude that the NPC has toward you - perhaps changing the gaurds attitude from indifferent to helpful.

However, and this is important, it's not at all certain that a person who is helpful will automatically do X. In this case, the gaurd might helpfully let you in, but he might also consider that he's risking his job by letting the players in, and so indead helpfully directs them to his boss or relays the request to his boss. That is also 'helpful' (at least from the NPC's perspective, the PC's of course may not want him to 'help' in that way at all, in which case, perhaps we should be examining how 'bluff' works).

Secondly, if you are using Diplomacy to do persuasion checks, keep in mind that there can be massive circumstance modifiers applying to either the check to modify someone's attitude or the check to persuade them. In particular, trying to persuade someone to do something that seems to be against their best interest should have a -10 penalty or higher. If the guard evaluates that letting the PC's in is against his best interest (he could get beheaded for violating orders), then apply a -10 circumstance penalty. Likewise, if the NPC is under orders from someone of higher rank than the PC's, this could also apply a circumstance penalty. If the King specifically ordered the gaurd to not let anyone in, and the PC's are strangers, that might be worth another -8 circumstance penalty. If the NPC's deity directly ordered him not to let anyone in, and the PC's accent identifies them as coming from a nation currently at war with the NPC's nation, that might be worth like a -15 circumstance penalty ON TOP of the -10 penalty being applied because the NPC is risking his life by cooperating.

In otherwords, depending on the situation, it may be perfectly reasonable that a mere 16 CHR and 11 ranks in diplomacy aren't enough to get someone to open a door, and the outcome of the roleplay may be perfectly reasonable for the skill level indicated. On the other hand, the same outcome might be rather unreasonable if the PC has a +30 bonus to diplomacy and the player makes a reasonable argument that appeals to the NPC's values.

Or consider a slightly different situation. Perhaps the guard was ordered by a sergent, a man he doesn't particularly like, to not let anyone through the door. And the PC's are clearly low ranking aristocrats of some sort, and they want through the door. You as the DM may now evaluate the circumstance entirely differently. The NPC may now consider that the PC's outrank his sergant, and that the trouble the PC's may cause him if he doesn't open the door is more than the sergant can, and further that letting the PC's in my discomfort the sergant (to the NPC's own amusement). In this case, you might consider a circumstance bonus of +4 or so on a diplomacy check, with the result that very diplomatic PC's could hardly fail provided the player offered in a mildly good argument.

But in every circumstance, play out the encounter. You know more earn a diplomacy check by stating that you want one, than you earn a climb check without specifying which wall you want to climb and how you get to over to it to climb it. Diplomacy checks have to come with some sort of explanation of the content of the request or encounter. For example, the outcome of a diplomacy check where the player says he is flattering the pretty merchant's wares might be very different than one where the player says he flirts with the pretty merchant. And of course, it is not enough to say merely, "I want to flirt with the merchant." This must be met with the request, "Ok, what do you say?", because the results of saying, "My good lady, are you not looking radiant this morning?" or "Lo wench, let us retire to yonder ally, for you make me randy." can be very different. Depending on what you know about the pretty merchant, and how overt and aggressive the flirtation, flirtation might add a large circumstance bonus or a huge penalty to a diplomacy check. Content always matters, regardless of whether you throw dice.

 

[kitcik]

I agree in general with [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] but I want to make this point.

If the character has 16 Cha nad 11 ranks in Diplomacy, that player needs to make sure the DM knows this before the RP (either b/c they know the DM is aware of this fact or by actually pointing it out).

Then, it is up to the DM to take this into account in RP'ing the situation. If the DM's natural reaction to one of the player's suggestions is "I don't think so" he should consider that the PC is a much more winning type than their player and consider something along the lines of "maybe you can, my little schnookums."

Anyway, you get the idea - the DM has to take into account not just the words the player says in RL but the way in which their character would say them due to their stats. That's one of the difficult things about RP.

 

[TKDB]

The others in the thread have more or less covered all the main points, but I just want to pitch in my two cents:

I can definitely sympathize with your complaints, but I see it as a necessary evil for the sake of making the game more fair for a broader spectrum of players. Handling things like social interaction and trapfinding entirely through roleplay, without getting dice involved, is certainly more interesting, but it also limits the range of character types a person can play. Sure, you can handle a high-Cha character played by a socially awkward player as someone who's awkward at first glance but likable when you get to know them...but that still doesn't let a socially awkward player play a silver-tongued smooth-talker. Similarly, a player who's not very good at puzzling out potential traps and ways to find them isn't going to have much luck playing a master thief (who realistically should have no difficulty with such things, seeing as it's part of the job description).

Essentially, you wind up with a game where some things (mainly physical tasks, like attacks in combat or feats of strength) are based on in-character capabilities, while others (mainly mental tasks, such as the aforementioned social interactions and trapfinding) are based on out-of-character capabilities. You can be a paraplegic and still play the most agile acrobat in the world, but in terms of how you actually interact with the game world, your character will only ever be as eloquent or clever (not to be confused with knowledgeable -- I mean clever in the sense of things like being able to find and safely deal with traps and so forth) as you are as a player.

D&D is fundamentally a form of escapism. While 3rd edition's skill mechanics may impede that in the sense that they tend to dispose players toward strictly mechanical interaction with the game world rather than immersive roleplay, they also promote it by giving players who want to play characters with mental faculties exceeding those the player possesses in real life a way to make that a tangible reality in terms of how the character interacts with the game world. Ultimately, I feel it's better for a system to have such mechanics, because while they may tend to discourage immersive roleplaying, they do not entirely preclude it. While not "easy", I feel it is easier to bring roleplaying into a game that leans toward "rollplaying" than it is to properly represent characters with mental faculties exceeding those of their players in a system that doesn't have mechanical representations of those faculties apart from player's roleplaying.