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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3020017" data-attributes="member: 18280">When things are physically quantifiable, it is far easy to determine static bonuses which should be applied to an action.  For example, it is easy to see the phsycial effects of a running head start on a jump, and it is easy to quantify in game terms (although most game worlds seem to have a much lower gravity than ours -- especially when falling damage is also taken into account!).  So, it is easy to see that weilding an axe or a sword might be different.  It is not, of course, always as easy to agree as to how they should be different.  There are arguments on these topics that were in full force when I started on the Holmes blue box.  There will be arguments on this topic when I am dead and gone.This social skill argument is very simular, IMHO, to the Search argument that I particpated in a while back.  Do the PCs tell you where they search, or do they just make the check?  If they specifically state that they are looking under the cushion where the wand is hidden, shouldn't that give them enough bonus to make the check automatically?  If you know something is hidden in the fireplace, and they specifically look there, shouldn't there be some form of bonus?Others will claim that saying "I bluff the guard" is akin to saying "I search the room" or "I search the fireplace".  You're stating your action.  All well and good, but the DC for the hidden object is based upon your searching an area, not the fireplace specifically.  There ought to be a bonus.Again, let us say that you want to bluff the guard.  What are you doing out at night after curfew?  Surely, if you can think of a plausible excuse ("I was summoned to the bedside of my dying mother!") your chances of success are higher.  You might even get a potentially unwanted escort.  Another character, quite skilled in bluffing, might get away with hemming and hawwing yet convince the guards that she's harmless, will return to her inn room, and won't do it again without saying as much.Surely it is obvious that any attempt at bribery is modified based upon the bribe, and the perceived means of the briber to deliver.  Equally obviously, any attempt at threatening someone is based upon the threat and the perceived means to deliver.Real diplomacy requires a give-and-take.  You are making a situation ease because it becomes mutually beneficial.  Party A provides Party B with X, in exchange for which Party B provides Party A with Y.  Could be the goblins need help with the kobolds in exchange for safe passage.  Could be a lot of things.  In the case of a successful roll, the DM should provide an IF/THEN:  "After talking to the goblins for a few minutes, you realize that they are having problems with kobolds.  IF you help them, THEN they will give you free passage."Is it harder the quantify social interaction than it is to quantify physics?  Obviously so.  Does that mean that no attempt should be made?  Not in any game that I am playing.  If you have a Charisma of 6 and no ranks in diplomacy, you might want to speak like an angel, but you're very likely to garble the attempt.  Likewise, a socially inept player who tries to actually come up with something to sway the other party in a Diplomacy check is going to get a bonus to that roll.  If the PC has a good Diplomacy score, he's more likely to succeed, sure, just as characters with a good Jump score are.  In other words, what the player says goes through the character filter.  It won't take long for the socially clever player to realize that his ideas work better if presented by a socially clever character.  But neither will it take long for the player of the socially clever character to realize that best results come with some effort -- in fact, this is explicit in my house rules.Sure is, but that's not what we're talking about here.  In fact, D&D 3.X contains a whole slew of feats to describe your combat maneuvers.  There are systems that do the same for social interactions.  In those systems, when you've lost, you've lost.  In the "roll & go" school of thought, why don't the NPCs get to "roll & go" against the PCs?  "Sorry, you can't attack the BBEG.  Turns out, you're quite friendly to him.  Helpful even.  He explains quite clearly why those orphans have to die, and why you have to do it, and you believe him."  Sure.So, on one hand, we want to treat social interaction like combat -- you just roll.  OTOH, we don't want to treat social interaction like combat -- no threshold over which you "die"; i.e., you lose the argument, you are convinced, and the character does what he is convinced of despite what the player may think.  I mean, really, do you let your PCs decide whether or not they die at -10 hit points on a case-by-case basis?What we are really talking about is gaining the benefit of just rolling, without having to put in any effort, without having the same apply to you, and without having the consequences of failing -- unless you force PCs to go along with failed Sense Motive checks no matter how suspicious the players.So, while I say that "what you say" is the closest analogue to the conditions of a physical skill check, I will agree that it is not a perfect analogue.  Certainly, physical skill checks don't have the same inherent hypocracy.RC</blockquote>

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