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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 3980679" data-attributes="member: 704">Or they can be a catalyst by providing the player with the knowledge that he can try to do something with a non trivial chance of success.I once created a changling rogue in an Eberron game with maxed disguise, bluff, and forgery skills.  This character ended up doing the following in that game: - Impersonated a preist in a theocratic dictatorship - attempted to talk his way past an inquisitor by insisting he was a half orc fighter, and not some changling impersonater. - Was locked up briefly for attempted mail fraud - started and spread rumors of an ancient cult with an intent to destroy the worldThe one thing you cannot overlook about D&D is that it is first and foremost a game, and that in any game where the players take it at all seriously, and there are consequences for failure, no one will undertake actions which they think have no real chance of success.Lets consider the first Starwars movie from an RPG perspective instead of as a movie.  Luke and Han are at the point where they need to infiltrate the deathstar and rescue the princess.If there are no hard and fast rules for non combat interaction, than there is no way Luke and Han would have tried to bluff their way past the guards face to face (in most games).  They would have most likely tried to compromise the security systems, crawl through ductwork, and avoid detection while extracting Leia.  Trying to bluff their way past the guards would depend entirely on whether or not the DM intended to have the players bluff their way in, or would have required a DM open minded enough to allow it, and able to work out a way to determine success or failure fairly.  And even then, without any stats to back it up, it would be hard for Han or Luke to argue successfully that they are skilled enough at lying to warrant a bonus.But with a system in place to handle it, several things change.  First among them is that the DM will probably notice that the rules exist, and work out at the least a bare bones contingency in the event the players try to use that approach.  A second consequence is that the players will have a chance to optimize their character towards using those skills.  If Han has maxed out the Bluff skill, than the DM has a harder time justifying a negative result by DM Fiat.The end result is that a player can be reasonably confident that a given approach to a problem will at least have a reasonable chance to succeed, and the DM is less likely to be caught off guard and allow the course of action.People who do not like these kinds of rules are quick to point out that with a good DM, these kinds of problems wont crop up.  I will in turn contend that most DM's are average, and that all DM's tend to create gaming situations based on what they expect to happen.  A good DM is willing to let the campaign go off the rails, but it is exceedingly rare to see a DM is able to let the players doing something that has catastrophic effect on their planning.In any event, I would rather have a DM that is forced to consider an unexpected solution to an in game problem than a DM who can trivially say 'that wont work'.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

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