PCs using bluff on PCs

[jeffh]

This is a problem. On the one hand, I want players to role-play the characters that are written on their sheets, including reasonable reactions to NPCs based on their skills. On the other hand I think players should be able to control their own characters. It's not trivial to reconcile these two beliefs.

I run two games at the moment. In one, this rule works as written, and with the extrapolation that was mentioned in this thread. In the other, these skills work on PCs just fine BUT I'm also using the action point rules, and I included the ability to completely override such a skill check (not just add the usual bonus to the opposing check) on the list of things an action point can do. It seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

 

[Moff_Tarkin]

I know PCs have control over their characters and cant be forced to act a certain way because of a skill but bluff has to work on PCs, otherwise what is the point of having a sense motive skill. My friend admits its because NPCs can bluff PCs but other PCs cant.

Lets say that when the party enters a big town the rogue goes off and commits some petty theft to add some clink to his pockets. When he gets back the party fighter asks him where he has been and the rogue says that he stopped off in a local tavern to gather some information on the area. Now the fighter might insist, probably due to out of character knowledge, that he knows the rouge is up to no good and demands an honest answer. I know you dont need a gut feeling or hard evidince to think someone is lying to you. You might just be overly suspicious. But there should be time when the DM says "Hey, you have no reason to belive he is up to no good. You have seen no evidince of wrong doing and you get no gut feeling when talking to him"

The hard part is trying to find out if the character is acting according to good role playing or out of character knowledge. It is usually the second. I have notice that whenever a player pulls the DM aside or passes a note some party members start acting suspicious and asking questions. "What are you up to? Do you know anything about this? I know your lying." I have seen rogues be sneaky behind the everyones back and no one ever questions them until one of the people overhears a private conversation with the DM or sees a note that was passed. Then everyone becomes Adrian Monk. Picking up on every little detail and questioning the characters every move. Always saying, "I dont believe him" if they get anything but an incriminating answer.

 

[calypso15]

*snip*

The hard part is trying to find out if the character is acting according to good role playing or out of character knowledge. It is usually the second. I have notice that whenever a player pulls the DM aside or passes a note some party members start acting suspicious and asking questions. "What are you up to? Do you know anything about this? I know your lying." I have seen rogues be sneaky behind the everyones back and no one ever questions them until one of the people overhears a private conversation with the DM or sees a note that was passed. Then everyone becomes Adrian Monk. Picking up on every little detail and questioning the characters every move. Always saying, "I dont believe him" if they get anything but an incriminating answer.

I think you need to have a heart-to-heart with your players, and tell them to drop the lousy metagaming.

 

[Al]

You can't enforce players to roleplay in any particular way. You can't enforce them to respect a Diplomacy check of 50. You can't enforce them to believe a Bluff that beats their Sense Motive by 40 points. You can't enforce them to not playing as a mastermind even if their Int score is 6. You can't enforce them to not go on a mindless psychotic rampage if their alignment is lawful good. You can't enforce them not to metagame, use out-of-character knowledge or abuse the system three dozen ways.

Let's be clear: ignoring social skills is as heinous a transgression of good roleplaying as flagrant metagaming abuse.

Players can roleplay as they wish. The point is that good roleplayers *will* and *should* react accordingly. I have players who can patently see that they are being misled, but can but despair as their characters are led around by the nose at the behest of a charismatic NPC with good social skills. The best adjuster I can think of is roleplaying xp. If a character consistently ignores in-game social skills, that's no rp xp for him.

 

[Li Shenron]

I have a friend who says PCs cant use the bluff skill on other PCs. Like if the rogue steals the fighters sword, and the fighter asks him if he knows what happened to it, the rouge could not use his bluff check. The guy playing the rogue would just have to lie and the guy playing the fighter would decide wether he believes him or not. No bluff or sense motive roll at all.

He isn't right is he? It just seems stupid that you cant use the bluff skill on another player. A rogue with max ranks in bluff can do it a heck of a lot better than the player can.

Well there's no reason why PC1 should be forbidden to make a Bluff check against PC2, who is anyway always entitled to disbelieve it.

Just as if it was an NPC telling a lie to PC2, if the bluff result of PC1 is higher than the sense motive result of PC2, the DM tells PC2 that PC1 seems telling the truth. PC2 may still not believe.

Probably the point is (as with NPCs) that you can try a sense motive check even against someone who is not lying, in which case the result is always "he's telling the truth" (unless the DM uses some HR that a bad sense motive roll wrongly tells you that someone truthful is lying).

In brief, I think that if the PC2 doesn't want to believe PC1, the DM should let them roll and in the case (1) PC1 is effectively lying and (2) PC2 wins the opposed skill check, then PC2 discovers the lie and chooses how to react, otherwise doesn't discover anything but still chooses how to react.

 

[Li Shenron]

In case I didn't make it clear enough: a successful BLUFF check never forces anyone to believe if he doesn't want, not even an NPC.

If you prefer you can say that there can be a circumstance penalty on your bluff check (or bonus on the sense motive check) large enough to make the opposed rolls futile.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Not that this should or shouldn't be how people play the game:

In my games the players just sort of migrated toward using Social Skills on eachother when the situation and role playing demanded it. Usually when there's a paladin and a rogue in the same party, it seems.

The paladin wants to play his PC the way he thinks he SHOULD be played, as does the rogue. In fact, the Rogue was, at the time, presenting himself to the whole party as a wizard! So people just broke out the dice without my prompting, everybody got duped, and they wandered around with a wizard who didn't cast too many spells for a while. Later, when the town was being sacked, the "Wizard" ran into an abandoned potion shop and grabbed everything valuable in sight. Outside he told the Paladin: "I was, um ... making sure no ne'er-do-wells could break in and steal anything of value." Opposed checks, Rogue wins, game moves on.

The paladin gets to play his paladin as Lawful and Righteous and it doesn't have to slow the whole game up.

Now, if it were a case of one player trying to absue the other players and force characters to perform actions ... as a GM I'd stop it immediately.

So I think using Social Skills on other PCs has its uses, certainly, but I wouldn't make it a RULE either way: I.E. you 'never' can use them or that they 'always' work like written.

--fje

 

[niastri]

Well, what I was wondering is why he is thinks PCs cant use bluff on other PCs. I read the skill and saw nothing about that. Maybe it was in the 3.0 rules. Is there a section in any 3.0 or 3.5 book that states PCs cant bluff PCs? I have to know what logic he used to arrive at this conclusion.

We always use the differences in skills and abilities to help determine our reactions in role playing.

One of the most fun campaigns my group has had involved a group of fighter and wizard types being run all over the world by the super devious (and skilled) rogue who led the gullible party wherever he wanted. Part of the fun was role playing your character while he was being made a fool of, fully knowing as a player how ridiculous the situation was.

Even when you get a +10 circumstance mod to your sense motive, if the other guy is 20 higher on his bluff, you aren't doubting him too much.

Now, you can't control the other players actions, and that is one of the rules of the game that doesn't change, each PC absolutely chooses how his character reacts, but if the *character* is bluffed, it is a lousy role player who doesn't act accordingly.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Now, you can't control the other players actions, and that is one of the rules of the game that doesn't change, each PC absolutely chooses how his character reacts, but if the *character* is bluffed, it is a lousy role player who doesn't act accordingly.

So basically, you allow each player to determine his PC's actions...so long as he decides to go with what the opposed skill check dictates, and if he doesn't he's a bad role-player?

How is that any different from simply ruling that PCs can use social skills on each other? At least by ruling it, you're up front about it. Your way, you make players think they're free to choose, then when they do you degrade them for bad role-playing. :\

 

[Malin Genie]

I think there is middle ground here.

A character - PC *or* NPC - can lose an opposed Bluff check and still be suspicious, still attack, or take some completely different action in response (upend a bowl of custard on his own head and dance a jig, for example.)

The win on the opposed check simply means that the target does not think that the speaker is lying. It doesn't mean that the target may not hate the speaker anyway, decide that someone who knows a dangerous 'secret' must be silenced, decide that the speaker, if not lying, must have been mind-controlled or memory-modified....

The only one who knows how their PC would react to that situation is the player. The player should decide how their character would react, on the basis of believing that the speaker is not consciously lying. Most characters (PC or NPC) would drop their suspicions and move on - but there are circumstances where even a successfully bluffed target (PC or NPC) won't....