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General Tabletop Discussion
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Persuasion - How powerful do you allow it to be?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7646826" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Sometimes. And yet, we see cases where people will risk or accept torture and death rather than be persuaded as well. I don't think it necessarily follows that because people can be persuaded, that they will be persuaded, much less that because some or even most people were persuaded everyone would be.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I also don't think that it follows that a persuasion skill check necessarily corresponds to minutes or seconds of in game activity. I think it would be perfectly valid to establish a scene, engage in some RP to establish the character of the relationship between the Priestess and the NPC, and for the player to say, "On the pretext of friendly conversation and banter, I'm going to spend the evening trying to seduce the priestess.", and then to use a single skill check to resolve an entire evening of gradually increasing intimacy leading up to the PC's pass at the Priestess. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say as I'd only allow the skill check in the first place if some plausible circumstances like that preexisted in the fiction. Something boorish like walking up to the Priestess and saying, "Let's get naked, babe.", would either not get a roll, or else would get one with a huge circumstance penalty because it doesn't establish a reasonable basis in the fiction. </p><p></p><p>This gets back to my discussion of "intelligent strategy" in your social challenges. Just as combat has tactics that make it easier to succeed, so the player needs to demonstrate good tactics if they want to play a successful Diplomancer. I have nothing against Diplomancer as a concept, and consider it a valid character with examples in fiction. I don't say, "No." to these sort of things. But I do assign difficulty based on the circumstances of the fiction with the intention of producing a transcript of play that is a good story. In the case of seducing the Priestess, that probably involves a series of reasonable steps with less risk and less difficulty than frontal assault on her most cherished values, and that may in fact require days of time - the social equivalent of laying siege to a well fortified town - and multiple checks to resolve the series of steps that gradually erode her fictional positioning and put her in precarious position. I don't as a DM have a stake in whether or not the player succeeds in their goals - that is to say I don't care what the resulting story is. I only care that the resulting transcript is a good story.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7646826, member: 4937"] Sometimes. And yet, we see cases where people will risk or accept torture and death rather than be persuaded as well. I don't think it necessarily follows that because people can be persuaded, that they will be persuaded, much less that because some or even most people were persuaded everyone would be. I also don't think that it follows that a persuasion skill check necessarily corresponds to minutes or seconds of in game activity. I think it would be perfectly valid to establish a scene, engage in some RP to establish the character of the relationship between the Priestess and the NPC, and for the player to say, "On the pretext of friendly conversation and banter, I'm going to spend the evening trying to seduce the priestess.", and then to use a single skill check to resolve an entire evening of gradually increasing intimacy leading up to the PC's pass at the Priestess. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say as I'd only allow the skill check in the first place if some plausible circumstances like that preexisted in the fiction. Something boorish like walking up to the Priestess and saying, "Let's get naked, babe.", would either not get a roll, or else would get one with a huge circumstance penalty because it doesn't establish a reasonable basis in the fiction. This gets back to my discussion of "intelligent strategy" in your social challenges. Just as combat has tactics that make it easier to succeed, so the player needs to demonstrate good tactics if they want to play a successful Diplomancer. I have nothing against Diplomancer as a concept, and consider it a valid character with examples in fiction. I don't say, "No." to these sort of things. But I do assign difficulty based on the circumstances of the fiction with the intention of producing a transcript of play that is a good story. In the case of seducing the Priestess, that probably involves a series of reasonable steps with less risk and less difficulty than frontal assault on her most cherished values, and that may in fact require days of time - the social equivalent of laying siege to a well fortified town - and multiple checks to resolve the series of steps that gradually erode her fictional positioning and put her in precarious position. I don't as a DM have a stake in whether or not the player succeeds in their goals - that is to say I don't care what the resulting story is. I only care that the resulting transcript is a good story. [/QUOTE]
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