Issues with Social Skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate

[lin_fusan]

Well, in my case, I should have been more perceptive that the party had been slowly cycling out social skills from their characters. If I had been more perceptive, I would have pushed the party toward more "let's adventure to get the town to like us" rather than "let's use social skills to get the town to like us".

As for the OP, more and more I feel that 4ed's Skill Challenge system should be implemented in a confrontational social situations. I feel that having one character be the "face" is fine, but sometimes that means having the rest of the party stand around and do nothing. With a Skill Challenge, everyone can (and should) participate in the role-playing.

 

[Loincloth of Armour]

Imagine the SEALs nat oned on their intimidation check. They still have guns. Maybe guns give such a bonus to intimidation that it's essentially auto-success?

Since the SEALs natural 1'ed their imtimidate, (which while not an auto-fail is still not impressive) there are many ways to play it.

1) Target panics, and attempts to flee. Not rational, but people do irrational things in stressful situations.

2) Target goes along with SEALs, since they present an immediate threat of violence. But target has to be watched every single moment. The moment the SEALs have their attention diverted, target attempts to flee, fight back, shout out, or do things to spoil their plans. Had the intimidate worked, the target would be too scared to try any of these.

3) Target resists passively: goes limp, fakes a sprained ankle, knocks thing over to make noise, insults the SEALs manhoods by stating that only 'small' men use guns to cover for their inadiquecy, lies at every opportunity to waste time, etc. Violence will only make him more surly and determined to get free.

4) Target attempts to leave a trail to be tracked, or evidence so that others will know what happened. Will cause problems for the SEALs later.

5) Target goes with SEALs for now, but when he has a chance, will call the police, the press, his congressman, his senator, the White House. Will raise holy heck over the incident and not let the issue die.

6) Target simply won't be cowed, no matter what. Remember Sarah Conner and the T-1000 in T2? "Call to John and the pain will stop." She was in its power, knew it was serious, and the threat was immediate and real. Pure intimidate check, but damn it: some things are too important. "Never give in, never compromise. Not even in face of Armaggedon." Some people are like that.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Charisma does what it says on the tin. And if I'm DMing the Cha 4 PC would have been met by a shower of rotten fruit. Which wouldn't have been much of a surprise - seriously, Cha 4 means that there must be something badly and spectacularly wrong with you. And I'd have warned the PC in character creation about this. (And punished him before then).

Edit: And SEALS rolling a natural 1 on intimidate might be a police academy style routine. Or meeting a high profile lawyer and set of cameras...

 

[Negflar2099]

Well personally I always like to know why a character has such a low charisma (unless the player makes it obvious in the way they roleplay them). Maybe the fighter with a 4 charisma is very quiet and can't even get the crowd to pay attention to him or maybe they all know him as this mean, rude creep and they don't like him. They might listen to his battle plan if it's the difference between life and death but unless he succeeds at a Diplomacy check they aren't going to be 100 percent behind him. That might mean their morale is low or they agree with his plan but they want someone else to the be the leader.

In the situation with the dead body the guards might want to bring the person in even if they are telling the truth. Imagine a show like COPS where the police show up but the person they are talking to is rude, or gives the cops a hard time or just looks like they can't trust him. Even if he's telling the truth the cops don't know that and without a Diplomacy check to back it up I would rule they seem like they believe you but want to bring you in for questioning. How many movies have we seen where the cops don't believe the hero even though we in the audience know they are telling the truth. Those heroes may have truth on their side but that doesn't mean they have the cops on their side.

As for the Navy Seals well that's why I like how 4e automatically gives a bonus to skills based on level. A team of well armed Navy Seals is high enough level that even the guy who didn't pay attention in intimidation class can easily scare a single peasant (especially if they bust into his house late at night).

Someone pointed this out on a different thread but with intimidate it's important to remember that there's a difference between just scaring someone and scaring them just enough that they do what you want. If the Nay Seals fail their intimidation check maybe the person they busted in on is so scared they pass out or they start fighting back like a cornered animal instead of doing what they seals demand. It's all in how a DM describes it.

 

[ExploderWizard]

There are a lot of interesting viewpoints here so far. I am of the opinion that a hardcoded pass/fail numerically based skill system hurts gameplay more than it helps. Social encounters are reduced to verbal combat style exchanges. Too much energy is spent worrying about the result of the roll rather than what is actually being said or done.

I'm well aware of the skill of the character versus the player argument but more important than that is the quality and fun of the gameplay. If a system is established that takes the joy out of PC/NPC verbal interaction just so some player too lazy to actually say something meaningful can roll a die and expect a result based on the attributes of the social combat munchkin then it suddenly becomes less interesting for the group as a whole. " I use diplomacy on him" is a perfectly legitimate excuse to kill a character on the spot IMHO

4E was designed to allow everyone to participate meaningfully in combat. In a social encounter everyone just lets diplomacy guy do the talking unless its a skill challenge where everyone just finds a contrived way to roll against thier better skills whether it has any real bearing on the situation or not.

Part of the whole issue stems from characters being built/designed rather than generated. There are some characters who have charisma as their actual combat attack stat. These characters get to be naturally talented at social skills without have to trade off anything for it. Other characters have to give up effectiveness in combat or other areas just to have a good charisma score. This means that combat is not as separated from the skill system as it could be.

The verbal interaction between DM and players at the table is where the heart of the roleplaying activity is. Skill checks can erode away at the fun of that if applied too rigidly. With all the precision and legalese wording in rulebooks these days the chances of that happening are becoming more likely.

 

[billd91]

What I forgot was that he had managed to tweak his character to have a CHA of 4 (I think) in order to build a duel-wielding damage monster (he also took the imperceptive flaw so his Spot and Searches were at -6 or something)...

Now I was kind of stuck... he built the character without any consideration for his other stats. His only concern was damage and hit points. Do I handwave his low CHA? But if I do that, then what was the point of having a CHA stat?

Honestly, I have never figured out a good way to handle this kind of situation.

My response, as a DM in this situation, is usually "Sucks to be him." If he wanted to gain the benefit of maximizing certain abilities, he gets to suffer the penalties of the areas he deliberately shorted and if that makes his life hard, so be it. A really good player can take it and have fun with role playing his inept attempts to make himself understood by the NPCs. A less good player may not be able to handle that challenge, but it's important to underline that it's a challenge he set himself up for.

 

[fuzzlewump]

To take your metaphor seriously, there are no locked chests in your world; anyone can open them if the player is good at describing verbally how to pop a lock. If anyone can open a locked chest, regardless of their skill point allocations, why bother putting any ranks into thievery?

What? No. I'm saying that if its okay to have one guy in the party with thievery, it should be okay for one guy in the party to have diplomacy. Does that suddenly mean everyone should dump charisma? No more than they would dump dexterity.

Now, allowing the high diplomacy person to roll his or her check for another person is a different idea altogether. That's just so people will participate, and not go OOC and just wait to go back IC for the diplomacy trained person to say it, like I mentioned in a previous post.

 

[Starfox]

I think, especially regarding puzzles, low stats are to be taken into consideration by the DM and not the player. If a player has high wisdom he can figure out how to gain more out of the solution of the puzzle by perhaps approaching the puzzle a different way.

One way to do this is to give out information based on the characters skills and attributes. When high-Int rogue asks about the trap, you tell him it is an overbalanced lever mechanism and that the springs look a little worn. When dumb sorcerer asks, you tell him it looks like a silly mechanical contraption. Both might get more info by further inquiries, but the rogue starts out way ahead. Adjusting perception to the character is also great fun once you start doing it.

4E [...] There are some characters who have charisma as their actual combat attack stat. These characters get to be naturally talented at social skills without have to trade off anything for it. Other characters have to give up effectiveness in combat or other areas just to have a good charisma score. This means that combat is not as separated from the skill system as it could be.

This is quite a serious problem with 4E, mores so than in 3E, where is is still a (much smaller) problem.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

This is quite a serious problem with 4E, mores so than in 3E, where is is still a (much smaller) problem.

I don't think it is, at least from a game balance perspective. The "best" attack stats in the game are Intelligence (which governs AC, reflex, and all knowledge skills), Dextrerity (which governs AC, Reflex, Initiative, Stealth, Thievery and Acrobatics) and Constitution (which governs starting HP, healing surges, Fortitude and endurance). A character with any one of those 3 as his primary attack stat can fairly easily just pour everything into maxing out that stat, and he'll gain a massive amount of surviveability in addition to amping his attack stat. Charisma is useful for skills, but I'll take an improved Initiative, AC and Reflex score over a good bluff check any day.

 

[bert1000]

I'm well aware of the skill of the character versus the player argument but more important than that is the quality and fun of the gameplay.

I am clearly on the side of making social skills matter and that the mechanics should effect the outcome. That said, I would love to come up with some ways where player skill can also count in social situations. In combat, player skill primarily comes into play for positioning and selection of action/powers, to put it in 4e terms. Character skill comes into play to determine resolution of those actions. Positioning and power selection is reasonably complex so I think this is a good balance. Also, in my mind I can separate “tactical mastery” as an adventuring skill (represented by player skill) that doesn’t necessarily have to be linked to character intelligence, etc.

In social situations, however, there usually isn’t a complex set of options equivalent to combat for player skill to be tested. I would love to see a social encounter system that gives the player some tactical options/choices, to be resolved by character skill. I would not want this to squash descriptive dialogue either, but I don’t think it needs to.