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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ZSutherland" data-source="post: 3016180" data-attributes="member: 7638">Lord Mhoram - I see your arguement, I really do, and the boxing mitt reference is a nice touch.    However, as I pointed out in my response to Thanee, I'm not trying to teach them to be sociable anymore than I'm trying to teach them to fence.  They just have to learn what works at my table.  Just like combat.  All the combat feats in the world aren't going to save the fighter if he's too dumb to avoid getting boxed in or make use of cover when it presents iself.  I'm not an adversarial DM because if the PCs fail, no one's having much fun.  No one likes to fail, and in a really bad failure, like a TPK, I just wasted untold amounts of prep time for no return at all.  If anything, I probably let them get away with role-playing social stuff that wouldn't actually work very well IRL because I want them to succeed.ThirdWizard & Thotas - I like that take on the social skills better than the one I've been implementing, though I'm still at a loss as to who to deal with Diplomacy and meta-gaming surrounding Sense Motive.  I'm simply not skilled enough an improvisationalist to alter descriptions on the fly as Frum suggests.Psion - My adventures never crumble because of a single skill check in the sense that a failed check cuts off the only path to success.  Rather, they get wonky in the reverse manner.  A seriously successful skill check will result in content skipping.  Then the game goes short and I wasted a lot of prep-time.  Imagine a simple adventure like the one I started to describe earlier.  There are some goblins raiding nearby farms for livestock.  They will attack farmers who get in their way, but are there primarily for the cattle.  The PCs start out knowing nothing.  They hear some rumors about goblin raids, accept a job from a local minor noble who is a gentleman farmer to stop the raids, investigate a bit, locate the goblins lair, and proceed to do whatever they decide to do to stop the raids.  Lots of options are open to them.  They might go to the farms and conduct Search checks looking for clues and make Track attempts to help them follow the goblins back home.  They might interview the farmers for further information about these particular goblins in question.  They might stake-out a likely farm and try to capture some of the goblins and interrogate them, or simply stealthily follow them back.  They might kill the goblins in the lair or negotiate with them.  All that could take hours unless it happens like this.  "I make a Gather Information check amongst the raided farmers to get as much information as possible." Some short while later they arrive at the goblin lair having learned with the roll that the goblins want only the livestock.  The group's spokesman makes a Diplomacy check against the first goblins they find (the party's bard does speak Goblin, right?), convinces said goblins to escort them to their leader, then makes a second Diplomacy check to negotiate a trade agreement so that the goblins will purchase the livestock (you know you rolled up treasure for these guys, so they're undoubtedly loaded).  They go back and tell the noble what they did, accept their pay, and the adventure is over.  It was decided almost entirely by 3 successful skill checks. On the whole, I think I'll take Frum's advice and just scrap the social skills for a while and see how it goes.  However, several good points have been made by people who disagree with me, so I'll keep a close eye on it in case I'm mistaken.</blockquote>

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