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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuzzlewump" data-source="post: 5085259" data-attributes="member: 63214">Point out to me where I said that because the rogue has lock picks, the barbarian can open the chest with thievery. Otherwise, I'm going to have to completely disagree.If you're talking about the implication of allowing one character to roll diplomacy for another, there's a reason why I keep saying physical skills and social skills have a profoundly different role and effect at the table. My stance is not to generalize being able to roll skills for another for all skills, or even all the time. It's allowable only in the case where diplomacy is the go-to skill that you must use to "win." Win, in the case of the OP, is to prevent the guards from taking you to jail.If you make the three social skills more generalized, then each character should have a great opportunity to get at least one of them and be able to hold his own in a social skill challenge. One guy has an aura of likability(diplomacy), the other is able to persuade people with facts and logic(which could be lies, but it's sound: bluff), the other is the guy you don't want to mess with because he has an incredible force of personality that tells you things will go wrong if you do (though not necesarily originating directly from him, as intimidate is described to be in the books: personal threats.) So, any of these skills could be used on the guards to win.If it's a case of well you have to have diplomacy, or that diplomacy is a vastly superior option (personally threatening a guard and lying are bad ideas, generally, and those are the only way you can use those skills by the books. That's too narrow by my standards) then that means the guy who plays the class with diplomacy as a trained skills speaks and the rest sit back, even if they'd have great fun to speak.It might sound wrong, but it's my experience that some players will sacrifice their immediate fun for what they see as the 'good' of the group. If that means keeping their mouth shut, then they will. Not every person is so proactive as to say whatever they want whenever if there are hurdles.I'm glad a good lot of you have groups that ignore these mechanics, but my group doesn't. It's not a question of dumping charisma or not getting diplomacy because it sucks, it's putting a 10-12 in charisma and not being a class that has diplomacy. Hell, even if you put a 14 in charisma as a fighter, you're still much better shutting up and leaving the face to talk (if they can. If you require the whole party to talk at every scenario then it seems like maintaining the importance of the "face" is actually violated since why bother if you know the goblin barbarian will ruin anything you've said when he opens his mouth?)To return to the first point, saying that having one guy with diplomacy is the same as having one guy with thievery is not saying that a barbarian can unlock locks with thievery. It's saying that social challenges are a group thing. If the guard is friendly with the 'face' then the whole party benefits directly. If the trap is disabled by the thieveryer, then the whole party doesn't have to deal with the trap. Having more than one is unnecesarry.A much better analogy is knowledge skills. You only need one person with it and the whole group is good. By contrast, if you only have 1 guy with climb and there's a mountain, you have a problem considering skill checks alone.My point? Requiring only one person to have diplomacy is the same thing is the same of the other skills that really only require one person to have it. The use diplomacy for another is an idea that spawned from two things, which have nothing to do with realism or character creation.1. Players will go out of character, share their ideas, then go back in character and the diplomat will speak the best idea. By allowing diplomacy stand ins it skips this middle man and the challenge is much more organic.2. Players will avoid situations where failure would harm the group, if not just themselves. Allowing stand-ins increases the likelihood that they'll speak.So, at my table, not allowing diplomacy stand-ins just brings me to #1. Players of non-diplomats are still sharing their ideas, and they're still justified in dumping charisma or whatever, because their ideas are still shared. Cutting out this middle man just makes sense in a lot of ways for my table. Also, they'll dump charisma if its not a primary or secondary attribute and won't get diplomacy if it's not a class skill. It has little to nothing to do with how important I make diplomacy. It's a rules thing.If no one gets a social skill, then yeah, that is lame because, assuming a charisma type character is present, which is likely, they just assumed it wouldn't be important because of my style.So basically, I'll still put in traps even if no one has thievery. But to require that everyone who wants to be able to bypass a trap get thievery is simply not supported in the rules. The rogue disables it and everyone gets by. Diplomacy can/should work in the same way. You disable the social threat and the entire group gets by.But the difference here is that no one has special fun from talking about disarming a trap unless maybe I'm playing with engineers or something along those lines. However, all of my players will be interested in human social interaction no matter what they put on their character sheet. So, along with reasons 1, 2, that's why I think there should be a special exception for social skills. That is, again, not saying thievery should be generalized to everyone if one guy has it. But, since social skills speak to such a universal interest in my players, it's okay if they speak even without a class that is skilled in that regard.Blah, and to clarify I mean "it's okay" to mean they will not feel or will feel very little reason not to speak in character their ideas. If a force each character to have their own check, I think that makes social skills too important and intrusive. Or I force everything they say to be in character. Those aren't good options for me.</blockquote>

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