Monsters are more than their stats

[gizmo33]

gizmo33- That's a perfectly reasonable and logical point to make. However, it is completely 100% misapplied when you use it on the ability of a succubus to seduce someone.

Saying anything is 100% completely anything is setting the bar a bit high logically, regardless of the subject. I think there's some reason to be skeptical about your ability to confidently put these issues into the categories that you do, and I'll try to explain why below.

If we were debating something like how a dragon breathes fire, and I was arguing that a dragon doesn't need rules on how to breathe fire because, honestly, most of the time a dragon breathes fire a PC isn't around to see it anyways so you can just fudge it, well, then I'd be dumb. Because a dragon breathing fire is something that a dragon often does to PCs, and to which PCs respond by using abilities and defenses, so it needs rules.

What if it doesn't do it often? What if the ability is "the dragon can breathe fire once in it's lifetime". Even in such a case, I really think frequency of use is not the relevant issue here - from what I can tell it's possibly that you might actually not believe that to be the case. So the significant question to me is what *are* the conditions under which you should want rules?

Seducing someone is NOT an analogous ability. If we were talking about a magical "seduce man" spell with a range of 30'+3 per level and a duration of 1 day per caster level, that would be different. But we're not. We're talking about a beautiful woman trying to use sex to manipulate a man. That doesn't need a die roll.

How is seducing someone not an ability that's analagous to throwing a rock into a bucket from a distance? Whether or not either one has to do with a PC living or dying would be based on the context that we don't know, and setting up a rules system that arbitrarily decides it knows the answers to these questions seems to me to be a step backward.

 

[Lacyon]

So if there's a PC who is a bard-type, and he tries talk the king out of being enamored with the succubus, then basically I'm back to the situation that we had in the 1E days where I'm making it up off the top of my head.

Unless you instead fall back on the skill challenge rules provided with 4E, for example.

I was assuming, based on an earlier example given of some lich's ritual, that the power would at least be mentioned in some flavor text for the module. Whether or not that counts as a "rule providing a framework for belief in existence" I guess is a matter of interpretation, and I'm not sure myself.

There's no mention of any kind of 'seduce person' ritual in the Succubus description we've seen. Some people seem to think she needs one and that it should be well-defined in the rules or made up. Some of us are okay adjudicating it with the tools we've already caught a glimpse of. Still others are waiting to see what additional rules are going to be available.

 

[gizmo33]

Except that now you have a robust framework for player characters using social skills, including guidelines on how to set DCs based on how difficult you want the task to be. And in 4e you even have a framework for using combinations of multiple skills of varying DCs.

And no, the rules don't need DCs written out to tell us specifically how difficult it is or isn't to convince a man to mistrust his mistress. 3e got by without that just fine.

The first paragraph seems to contradict the second in the case of the mistress being a PC! Again, I don't seem to find the distinctions that you make to be as well-defined as you seem to believe. IME PCs get around to doing pretty much everything NPCs try to do - whereas apparently you're assuming AFAICT that only NPCs will seduce people because PCs are just about killing things.

In any case, I'm not saying that "complexity" isn't a limiting factor on what I'm talking about. But if you don't measure a succubus' interpersonal skills on some sort of scale, allowing you to measure her abilities against the PCs, no matter how crude, then your really just left with DM fiat. And yes, while this will happen in the future, and has happened in the past, deciding on DM fiat as an ideal design rather than a fall-back in overly complex situations IMO is undesireable, well-travelled territory, and something I'm surprised people want to revisit.

 

[gizmo33]

Unless you instead fall back on the skill challenge rules provided with 4E, for example.

I'm assuming that you'd have to know something quantifiable about the abilities of both participants in any sort of skill challenge situation. To the degree that the succubus' skills here are well defined, then I don't see what the issue is and I'd have no objections. It's the case of the rules saying nothing more than "a succubus is really seductive" and forcing me, as a DM, on the fly, to put numbers behind that general statement is what I have a problem with. Such a situation doesn't help me actually utilize the proposed "skill challenge rules", so I'm not sure what good they do in that case.

 

[Lacyon]

The first paragraph seems to contradict the second in the case of the mistress being a PC! Again, I don't seem to find the distinctions that you make to be as well-defined as you seem to believe. IME PCs get around to doing pretty much everything NPCs try to do - whereas apparently you're assuming AFAICT that only NPCs will seduce people because PCs are just about killing things.

In the case where the mistress is the PC you reverse the roles (and rolls) and the challenge is to convince the man to continue trusting you in spite of the words said by the NPC. You still don't need the rules to say that this is DC X, because the DC can and should change based on situation.

It doesn't do too much for PC vs. PC action, but I'm okay with D&D rules being focused on cooperation between players instead of competition.

 

[Lacyon]

I'm assuming that you'd have to know something quantifiable about the abilities of both participants in any sort of skill challenge situation. To the degree that the succubus' skills here are well defined, then I don't see what the issue is and I'd have no objections. It's the case of the rules saying nothing more than "a succubus is really seductive" and forcing me, as a DM, on the fly, to put numbers behind that general statement is what I have a problem with. Such a situation doesn't help me actually utilize the proposed "skill challenge rules", so I'm not sure what good they do in that case.

It's even easier than that, IMO. Decide what level challenge this particular succubus' seduction is and look up the baseline DCs for that level skill challenge. She's a level 9 creature, so that makes a good default.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with basing it on the succubus' skill ranks instead, but there's no reason that a) this should be required or b) every succubus needs to be equally good at it anyway.

 

[Cadfan]

How is seducing someone not an ability that's analagous to throwing a rock into a bucket from a distance?

I honestly don't know how to answer that.

I mean, I know what the difference is. The former is an act of roleplaying that depends on the personalities and interactions between two characters. The latter is an attack roll.

I don't know how to explain the difference to someone who looks at the two and insists that he can't tell them apart.

 

[gizmo33]

In the case where the mistress is the PC you reverse the roles (and rolls) and the challenge is to convince the man to continue trusting you in spite of the words said by the NPC. You still don't need the rules to say that this is DC X, because the DC can and should change based on situation.

Well the rules don't really tell you what the DC is for anything in 3E. At best you get a chart with general circumstances (ex. "the wall is slippery") matched with a general target number, and some suggestions for possible modifiers.

And I'm not arguing that it should be different. And it doesn't matter to me who rolls - the seducer or the target, it's still the same basic logic - you have to figure out the actor's chance of success, and the target's chances of avoiding the actor's success.

If I'm waist deep in quicksand, with flies buzzing in my face and shooting a bow at a kobold in leather armor hiding behind a tree, the obviously there are ALL KINDS of modifiers to my chance of success. But given that this is the case are we to assume that the ideal game design dispenses with dice rolling and that the DM just decides what the chances of success are without guidelines? Or that a succubus' archery skill is described in the rules as "pretty good" and the specifics are left to the DM to work out every single time he wants a succubus to use that skill?

 

[Lacyon]

If I'm waist deep in quicksand, with flies buzzing in my face and shooting a bow at a kobold in leather armor hiding behind a tree, the obviously there are ALL KINDS of modifiers to my chance of success.

But you can, in general, assume that the challenge is going to be something like level-appropriate, no?

But given that this is the case are we to assume that the ideal game design dispenses with dice rolling and that the DM just decides what the chances of success are without guidelines? Or that a succubus' archery skill is described in the rules as "pretty good" and the specifics are left to the DM to work out every single time he wants a succubus to use that skill?

Why are you assuming no guidelines?

(The succubus' archery skill isn't described at all, but it's still easy to extrapolate from the basic system - Dex attack versus AC).

 

[ThirdWizard]

Or that a succubus' archery skill is described in the rules as "pretty good" and the specifics are left to the DM to work out every single time he wants a succubus to use that skill?

Are we talking about 4e still or some theoretical debate that doesn't have anything to do with 4e anymore? I'm a bit confused.