Sense Motive - passive or active?

[DarkMaster]

Yep, if the GM allows it the way to do it is make suggestion OOC. Personally I treat playing Int 7 barbarian as a chance to chill out & not worry about riddles! OTOH if I had to make a rousing speech to my Horde before battle, even if my PC had zero Diplomacy or whatever I'd still do my best to do a good barbaric speech.

Edit: Whatever the stats say, fantasy heroes are cool - they should look cool in play, like Ron Edwards says in 'Sorcerer & Sword'. You can be cool in a Diplomacy-0 way: "I have no tongue for this, Crom, but..."

Well if they have charisma 8, and no social skill at all, in my fantasy world they are not cool even if they reach epic level. They are just extremely good wizard or figther but they are less cool than the average 1st level paladin.

 

[S'mon]

Well if they have charisma 8, and no social skill at all, in my fantasy world they are not cool even if they reach epic level. They are just extremely good wizard or figther but they are less cool than the average 1st level paladin.

We have completely different game styles & ideas of what we want from the games we play. I want the protagonists, the PCs, to be as cool as the heroes in a good sword & sorcery novel; as I GM I aim to help the players accomplish that, as a player I try to play one. Who wants to be a dork, even an Epic dork? One player in Stalkingblue's Midnight game is doing a rather brilliant job of making his CHA 4 Fighter, Pallas, into a cool, gripping sword & sorcery character - while being utterly true to that CHA stat and his complete lack of interpersonal skills.

 

[DarkMaster]

We have completely different game styles & ideas of what we want from the games we play. I want the protagonists, the PCs, to be as cool as the heroes in a good sword & sorcery novel; as I GM I aim to help the players accomplish that, as a player I try to play one. Who wants to be a dork, even an Epic dork? One player in Stalkingblue's Midnight game is doing a rather brilliant job of making his CHA 4 Fighter, Pallas, into a cool, gripping sword & sorcery character - while being utterly true to that CHA stat and his complete lack of interpersonal skills.

You know how bad CHA 4 is I consider it the equivalent of IQ40 applied to social skill, CHA 4 should probably be institutionalized, He should almost be completly unable to live in society. To me cool is someone other looks upon as role models, that create new trends of thinking, acting or in fashion. In order to imposes your way of thinking and acting you have to have a strong personality. I don't see the CHA 8 character being able to do that even with all the skills training in the world. Someone can be a skilled diplomat knowing all the rules of argumentation and all the tricks in the book to convience but without the charisma he doesn't that Wow thing that most actor or rock band singer have (Modern hero).
The CHA 8 character could be that Dr that only writes in scientific journal and his known only by others very specialised Dr and the CHA 14-18 could be the equivalent of Dr Phil, probably not the best, but very apt in social interaction

 

[S'mon]

You know how bad CHA 4 is I consider it the equivalent of IQ40 applied to social skill, CHA 4 should probably be institutionalized, He should almost be completly unable to live in society.

Yup, that's Pallas, alright.
He's still a really cool character, though. Of course he doesn't say much...