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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 5339359" data-attributes="member: 57112">The hysteria over this has, frankly, gotten more than a little absurd. Have DMs been so spoiled by 4e that they've forgotten that, once upon a time, they were once asked to make rulings and determine the effectiveness of player actions? On a regular basis, no less?Otherwise rational people, making otherwise rational arguments, are stating their concern that this power will led to increased DM adjudication? Adjudication is the DM's job! If you're worried about adjudicating you're in the wrong line of work.The two largest concerns voiced about the power is thatA: It's too open-ended; requires too much DM arbitrationB: Might serve as an instant-win for situations/skill challengesAnd here's the beauty of it; both of these are true... and both of them cancel each other out! What is Instant Friends capable of? Whatever you say it is. I have no intention of letting anyone use this power to bypass a skill challenge. I've got a lot of trusted friends; I've still got to ask them real nice for favors, and sometimes haggle or bargain with them. In fact, I've worked security, and I would have never let my best friends go where they weren't allowed to be. This is not Mental Domination, people. In pre-4e parlance, what you're doing is setting the NPC reaction to Friendly. And since it doesn't work in combat, that automatically rules out those who are actively Hostile (like, say, a certain Prince of the Undead oft-invoked in the name of outrageous hyperbole.)And just because an NPC is Friendly doesn't mean they will now give in to your every demand instantly except for a few clearly stated exceptions. Friendly NPCs will still need to be Intimidated, Bluffed, and Diplomacied... Diplomatized... Diplo... the point is, the only DM in their right mind who is letting people use this power to bypass Social Skill Challenges is the DM who thinks this is a perfectly acceptable interpretation of the power. If you don't think that's what the power does, then you get to say, as the DM, that that's not what it does. Simple, ne?So what is the usefulness of this power, then? While, that's up to you. You might forgo the skill challenge in lieu of an interesting roleplaying encounter. Or you might fall back on an even more useful Friend: the DM's Best Friend. A flat +2 bonus to all social skills for the duration of the power seems like a fair tradeoff with regards to the flat, one-time bonuses of Glib Tongue or Arcane Mutterings. Maybe increase the effectiveness of the Wizard Aiding Another party member's Diplomacy checks for the encounter ("You can trust this guy. He's solid, and he's cool.") I dunno, whatever the player wants to do with it that seems balanced and fair, to you, the DM, go nuts with it.This kind of give-and-take adjudication between player and DM used to be at the very core of our pastime. It's what separates the roleplaying game from the board game or the computer game. That there are DMs who are loathe to this sort of thing boggles my mind. And then there are DMs who don't think they should have to determine the outcome of noncombat encounters! I'm stunned, in a first-successful-save-still-causes-dazed sort of way.I dunno, I get that everyone gets something different out of the game, and enjoy it in their own way. To each his own, I guess. I just do not get it, at all. At what point did "open-ended" become a slur in tabletop roleplaying?</blockquote>

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