Is Diplomacy Worth It?

[superkurt13]

After playing in a particular game for about a year now, it just dawned on me that I think I might have rolled a diplomacy check maybe once. I've read several posts about how useful diplomacy is, even broken in some cases, and I wanted to get some opinion on how it can be used to ones advantage. I'm about to reroll a new 10th level character so I'd like to know if Diplomacy should be something I work into it. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly apprecited.

 

[pawsplay]

Diplomacy is best used to make life a little easier. Ex: You walk into a new town. Find the tavern. Upon meeting a gossipy tavern worker, you use Diplomacy to befriend them. Now you learn about goings on around the tavern and town.

Diplomacy can be used to convince hostile gray dwarves to sell weapons to you, gain access to fresh water from suspicious desert dwellers, convince a gouging merchant to come down to a reasonable price, or persuade a red dragon to allow you to buy your lives and freedom.

It can be "broken" when the GM treats it as a form of suggestion. As written, diplomacy only establishes an attitude; specific requests are dependent on making that request seem reasonable based on your relationship. For instance, a "friendly" Blackguard who has been hired to kill you might be persuaded to take a locket to a loved one as a favor, after he kills you. A "loyal" half-fiend might not join your cause; instead, he may conspire to kidnap you and recruit you to his, rather than simply killing you.

 

[airwalkrr]

One of the reasons people typically decry Diplomacy is because of the relatively ease with which one can min/max the modifier. Consider the following core rule example:

half elf bard 1
Diplomacy 4 ranks
Cha 15
Skill Focus (Diplomacy)

We are already at a +11 at 1st level assuming a very moderate build. But that isn't so bad right? I mean, a Dwarf with a 15 Int can have +11 to Craft at 1st level. Let's consider the same bard at 4th level.

half elf bard 4: +2
Bluff 5 ranks: +2
Diplomacy 7 ranks: +7
Knowledge (nobility & royalty) 5 ranks: +2
Sense Motive 5 ranks: +2
Cha 16: +3
Skill Focus (Diplomacy): +3
Negotiator: +2
circlet of persuasion: +3 (if this is his only magic item, it is not so hard to believe he could have it by 4th level)

Suddenly, we are at +26. Over the course of three levels he has more than doubled his bonus. However, more significantly, he can take 10 making a rushed Diplomacy check (a -10 penalty to use Diplomacy as a full-round action) and make ANY hostile creature's attitude indifferent automatically. So by 4th level, he has managed to find a way to stop any battle he wants before it even starts. All it takes is a full-round action. What you might find even more obscene is that a half-elf marshal who had just a little luck at character generation can do this at 2nd level.

half elf marshal 2: +2
Bluff 5 ranks: +2
Diplomacy 5 ranks: +5
Knowledge (nobility & royalty) 5 ranks: +2
Sense Motive 5 ranks: +2
Cha 18: +4
Motivate Charisma: +4
Skill Focus (Diplomacy): +3
Negotiator: +2

So this slightly better half-elf marshal can end any combat on round 1 without a magic item. It just gets worse when you add in the choker of eloquence and other silly such things. The problem is that Diplomacy rules are much too absolute to be useful. It doesn't offer concrete enough examples about what it is supposed to be used for. So taken literally, it seems like you can make just about anyone your buddy.

Of course, as you'll note from my sig, I nip that in the bud by deciding since Diplomacy rules are not precisely defined, that I only have to follow it when I really want to. It serves as a nice guideline, but there are plenty of ways a chaotic evil character can be helpful to you according to his point of view when it does, in fact, nothing to help you.

 

[pawsplay]

by 4th level, he has managed to find a way to stop any battle he wants before it even starts.

I don't think so. If someone I'm indifferent toward is attacking me, I still fight back. This is where things get tricky. Diplomacy shifts attitudes. It does not cause other creatures to take actions they would not ordinarily.

 

[pallandrome]

Also, it only determines the creatures attitude towards YOU, not your buddies. Also, if you cannot effectively communicate to the creatures, you can't use deplomacy on them.

 

[newgrace]

I think the idea is he could stop someone from attacking him, not prevent someone from fighting. So the first round of combat he could diplomacy the person to stop being hostile.

Diplomacy is easily misused, but most PCs I see just dont use it at all. Im a fan, and with its creative use, have managed to create many interesting situations. Ive used diplomacy (with bluff) to keep a decent reputation in a town where a farmer I had threatened the previous day was "telling" on me in a busy tavern. Luckily I had just spent a few hours buying rounds and using diplomacy on key figures to try and make friends. So with bluff I changed his story to something credible and where I was the victim, then used diplomacy to try and keep the key figures from becoming indifferent or even hostile.

Ive used it to convince a bard to stop singing bad songs about our party's exploits.

I played an evil undead necro and convinced a ghast to give us information on the local area, and to not attack us. I had to give him a bag of fingers I had collected earlier, and luckily ran into him far enough away from the party that he thought the bag a fingers a good meal. I also made a deal to keep supplying him with body parts, altho the story hasnt enabled me to keep my bargain...hey, im evil, but i didnt lie, it just didnt work out.

One of the games I ran I had a PC trying to use it on everything, and unfortunatly I didnt understand it well and it started causing frustrations as he was almost always successful. So my main bad guys would convert over to being "helpful". As they said above, even a helpful evil person may still kill you, you just may of talked him out of torturing you first. Perhaps a twinge of guilt as he quickly finishes you off. Hell, as a DM, you could really turn it on the PC for using diplomacy, and the bad guy quickly kills you rather than throw you in a cell to rot for a few weeks.

So bluff is to lie, or to hide the truth, while diplomacy is to change the mood. Good diplomacy could make the cities guards see you as a friend, and help you if they see you doing something "inappropriate". Its a good way to gain a friend or cohort, and learn about a local area. Diplomacy could make a local druids circle point you in the direction back to civilization, rather then leave you lost.

Diplomacy is all about creativity, and you have to know what you are trying to accomplish. Bluff is usually reactive, while diplomacy is proactive. You have to be trying to accomplish something, not reacting to a situation...usually.

Thats my view, and with a good social character, its a handy tool.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Hmmm, I appreciate your example Airwalkrr but when you say:

and make ANY hostile creature's attitude indifferent automatically.

This is not how it plays out ime.

The problem with using any social skill (except for the explicit combat applications of bluff & intimidate) is that their needs to be a dialogue occuring. If one side is not listening then a diplomacy +26 is not able to be used.

Sure, by RAW there is grounds for the above to not be true, but the quality of a game where hard RAW interpretations over-rule DM's game mastery is going to be pretty poor. Not that I think such a diplomatic Bard cannot prosper - it is just that this Bard needs to hunt for opportunities to engage in dialogue.

Anyway, back to the OP. To get the most out of diplomacy for your character, your character needs to:
- use it as often as possible on the most important npcs you can find
- it is a very inefficient gather information so don't waste your time trying to use it like that
- do the gather info first to pinpoint who manages what
- then go to the important people
- have a reasonably legitimate case first as something for the skill to expand on
- use the skill to get the assistance you're after
The assistance can be extra helpers, backing of the law, non-intervention, equipment, or even someone else will do something on your behalf + more. It all depends on campaign circumstances. Essentially you'll want to use diplomacy to build a social network and you'll want to reuse and expand it.

In a mechanics sense, diplomacy can be used to gain character advantages in a dialogue rich setting.

 

[The Souljourner]

It's really quite simple. Diplomacy is as useful as your DM makes it. He could ask you to make a diplomacy roll with every NPC you talk to, or he could never ask and only allow it in very specific occasions when he's decided it will have an effect (or even never - he may make you spell everything out that your character says and does and base reactions on that, entirely ignoring the skill).

So.... ask your DM. Sounds like he's not a big fan of using skill rolls in social situations, but maybe he just wasn't really thinking about it. I know that I as a DM try to make sure that every skill is used whenever it's at all applicable, so PCs feel like their skillpoints were worth the investment.

To sum up: +30 to diplomacy does you no good if your DM won't let you roll.

-Nate

 

[ivocaliban]

I was somewhat surprised to read you've almost never used Diplomacy in your game. It's certainly a major component of mine, but then again I'm one of those people that prefers the intrigues of the court to dungeon crawls. I can imagine that if your characters spends the majority of his/her time leaping pits and slaying beasts underground...Diplomacy is going to be a lot less useful than other skills.

Personally, I think it's the DM's job to incorporate any skill which a PC character or class (or PrC) focuses on. I'm not saying every encounter should be tailor-made for the PCs, there should always be surprises, but if someone puts emphasis on a particular skill, then I feel it's necessary to find ways to work it into the campaign. In the same way that a Fighter expects his BAB and his surplus of Feats to be utilized, a Bard who pours his skill points into Diplomacy expects them to pay off. I don't like to disappoint.

I certainly know the Aasimar Swashbuckler 3/Wanderer* 3/Dread Pirate 7 PC in my six-year campaign has gotten a great deal of use out of his 8 ranks of Diplomacy. With an 18 Charisma (+4 to Diplomacy) and Fearsome Reputation (+4 to Diplomacy), not to mention possible synergy bonuses from Bluff and Sense Motive, he's able to accomplish quite a bit without ever having to draw his rapier. Not only using the main function of Diplomacy in the PHB, but the Haggle and Mediate aspects from Complete Adventurer he's made the most of his natural charm to persuade others to join his cause.

While he isn't a diplomat by trade, it's become something of second profession and it fits well with both his race and the honorable version of the Dread Pirate prestige class. As a follower of Pelor, he's much in favor of the common man and has become quite a man of the people. Diplomacy has enabled him to bring a peaceful end to disputing factions, to make individuals who don't even like him listen to what he has to say, and (along with that Dread Pirate requirement in Appraise) save and make a great deal of money through trade.

I'd say Diplomacy is indispensable...depending on the focus of the campaign, of course.



*Wanderer is a slightly altered version of the class from AEG's Swashbuckling Adventures.

 

[Voadam]

After playing in a particular game for about a year now, it just dawned on me that I think I might have rolled a diplomacy check maybe once. I've read several posts about how useful diplomacy is, even broken in some cases, and I wanted to get some opinion on how it can be used to ones advantage. I'm about to reroll a new 10th level character so I'd like to know if Diplomacy should be something I work into it. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly apprecited.

Ask your DM how he uses it.

Some ignore it.

Some never ask for a role but treat you differently in roleplay based on your character's skill check modifier and charisma.

Some require you to ask for rolls.

Some roll behind the screen and don't tell you.

Some see Diplomacy as getting your way.

Some see it as changing NPC attitudes and how you interact with them at that attitude is up to you.

Some require just a roll.

Some require describing how you are doing the interaction then roll.

Some have you do out the talking then they roll before making the big decision/taking the requested action.

Some have you roll, then have you roleplay attempting to emulate the result.

Quite a few variations on how the DM can handle diplomacy.