Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormonu" data-source="post: 5735667" data-attributes="member: 52734">I want those who have a high Charisma score and who have invested points into skills such as Diplomacy to have some meaning, but I'm conflicted on how to do it.Just as I don't think that someone who has low Strength in real life should be forced to always play-low Strength characters, I think everyone should have the option to play a high Charisma character if they want and not have their options limited by their own social skill limitations.At the same time, I don't want a single die roll to dominate every social situation or to have utter improbable results because someone pulls out a silver-tongued speech with their 8 Cha character.In combat, you have to at least tell the DM what you're going to attempt and give a basic idea how you're going to do it ("I'm going to bash the goblin with my long sword!"), and it should be somewhat similar in social situations.  Likewise, it shouldn't fall to one character to make all the rolls; that's as bad as relying on one character to do all the fighting.  Ideally, a high Charisma/Diplomacy character should be able to convince someone quicker and more reliably, but lesser characters should have a chance to succeed, though they may have to struggle harder to do so.  And they should feel welcome to try their hand at negotiation and such, just like everyone is pretty much coaxed to do something helpful during a fight.Where you want dramatic tension, I suspect you'd want multiple checks or an extended encounter.  For example, the corrupt baron shouldn't be convince to acquiesce his kingdom any more easily than the party has a chance of killing the ancient red dragon in one blow.  Some situations where there is a chance of failure but it's not dramatically important - getting the barmaid to sit and drink with you during downtime, for ex. - might be best handled like encountering a minion; a single check will solve the matter.The big problem is coming up with a system that dramatically allows characters to influence social situations without either pure RP or dice-rolling to dominate.  Skill challenges were a nice start in the right direction, but they are too formulaic; they should feel as organic as combat in that you know where the starting point is and you have option to achieve success, but it should be open enough to let PC's move toward how they want to achieve victory (and that there are many different forms of victory or defeat).</blockquote>

Verification