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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8011176" data-attributes="member: 7016699">The information about the guarded gate isn't necessarily all that player-facing, just looking at the gate. It might (in 5E) be difficult at best to tell more than numbers, and numbers alone wouldn't make the gate impassible. I feel as though I've been explicit that the PCs should be able to determine how well the gate is guarded, and how sensitive the BurgerMaster is--otherwise it's a complete "gotcha," and I don't do those. I'll grant that the mechanics of combat are more player-facing than the mechanics of social interactions, but that's not the same thing.I'm not a huge fan of absolute descriptors, but I don't think that having a gate guarded by a force the PCs cannot defeat or having an NPC with a hard-coded reaction will inevitably be bad; it comes to being sure the PCs have information to make well-thought-out decisions. I think you and I have different positions on this.In the OP's example, there seemed to be competing contradictory player goals, or the player whose character did the insulting had the goal of disrupting the negotiation attempt. When player goals diverge, especially from character goals, it seems to me as though there's an out-of-game problem among the players.As to unintentional offense--that doesn't seem likely here, and my comment was a light-hearted spin on the line about diplomacy being the art of not giving unintentional offense (which line is my reason for using a Diplomacy skill to nail an insult).</blockquote>

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