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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 5187231" data-attributes="member: 15470">Welcome to DM'ing!! I do try to imagine the courses of action my party might take and work out the DC's for skill checks in advance; it helps (a lot) to give yourself a day or two to think of various modifiers, or to look up, for example, the Jump rules, and pre-calculate all of the conditions that apply at a point the PC's might be trying to jump over. You can do this both to make a formal "skill challenge" or simply to set a single skill check DC. The "general rule" for an opposed skill check is generally "aggressor makes a d20 skill check against a static DC from the 'defender' .."  So, for example, Stealth: if I'm trying to sneak past a sleeping dog, we use my d20 + my stealth versus the dog's "Passive Perception" (minus the penalty for sleeping, if any). Now, the key bit is, we remember my Stealth result. If somebody else tries to use an Active Perception check to spot me before my next turn, then we use their d20 + their Perception versus my (now-passive) Stealth result. That said, Insight, Diplomacy, etc, all sound like very good approaches with this particular encounter, and they don't quite work the same way. The most common Insight usage is against somebody's Bluff check, which does work much the same way as Stealth/Perception. However, in the case you describe, I'd set a DC for "Insight to detect the control/dominate effect" as part of my NPC work-up for the NPC in question. I'd probably set a couple of different DC's, probably using the DMG's "DC per character level" chart (ah, right, page 42, thanks MrMyth) .. I might set it as follows:DC 12 (Easy) Insight: "There's something a bit .. off .. about him."DC 17 (Moderate) Insight: "The more you talk to him, the more it strikes you that, there's just something not-right about his diction and turn-of-phrase .. maybe he's just not a native Common speaker, but he doesn't have an accent at all."DC 22 (Hard) Insight: "You think you recognize the signs of some form of magical compulsion on him; you'd really need some time with an Arcane ritual of some sort to get a better read on what's going on, but .. he's not himself, exactly."(Text for flavor, the idea is, my PC's are making one die roll against several DC's at a single time; I'll usually structure the text so that I can read both at once, e.g., if a PC rolled a 19, I'd just read the DC 12 and DC 17 back-to-back.)Diplomacy is a different kettle of fish entirely; its been left fairly undefined, so you can use it as you like. A lot of DM's use it to express "protocol", e.g., if you're going to the Duke's ball, do you address the Duchess with the proper honorific, do you use the right fork for the right course of the meal .. for that, you want to set up some "failure" DC's as well as some "success" DC's. For example, you might opt for a "terrible insult" down below DC 5, a "minor gaffe" at DC 5, escaping notice at DC 10, getting noticed positively at DC 15, and really standing out (flirtatious, charming, etc) at DC 20 or 25. When it comes to negotiation, you typically want to peg results similarly: my Diplomacy stand-off situations usually include a DC below which things degenerate into a fight, insult DC's, a no-deal DC, a "counter-offer" DC (larger block of results than the others), an "acceptable" DC, and a "Hey, we'll even throw in ..." DC. Then I modify the ROLL based on what the party are offering.For example, my party come upon a trapped-in-magic-circle demon; they've also encountered a magical defense that they can't get past. Negotiations ensue. I might set my "he hates you" DC down at <= 4; my "he's insulted and breaks off communication" DC at 5; my "no, no deal" DC at, say, 9; my "he makes a counter-offer" at DC 13, my "acceptable" DC at 21, and my "he throws in a boon of some sort" at DC 25. Then I modify their roll as follows:If they're offering: - nothing: -5 - banishment back to his original plane: +0 - freedom, full stop: +5 - a chance to kill the mage who bound him here: +5If this happens after: - a failed intimidate check: -5 - a failed bluff check: -2 - a successful intimidate check: +2 - a successful bluff check: +0 to +5, depending on the "bluff"If they want things in addition to simply "take care of our problem", each additional thing they want lowers the DC. So, somebody wanted a magic sword, that might lower the DC by 8 to 10 - our demon doesn't have a magic sword, can't conjure one, and doesn't have much political capital to convert into a sword. As it turned out, my players wound up getting the "counter-offer" deal; the demon's counter-offer was "You give me your worst sin." They have no idea why he wants their sins; he gave them a Bluff answer about why, which nobody was able to penetrate via Insight, and they finally agreed. Not exactly appropriate to your situation, I'm thinking - Diplomacy, while a perfectly good option for getting a normal NPC to change his course of oction, is rarely going to get you anywhere with a dominated/controlled NPC!That sounds about right, to me.I try to keep a decent lid on "free form" scenes, at very least going around the table - one of my players describes it as, "you always seem to ask whoever is least engaged a question, at just the right time to re-engage them."Sometimes, that means squashing somebody a little - while the party were stuck in a trap, the bard kept having ideas that might get them out, and wanting to roll skill checks ... all well and good, but when she tried the third in succession, I told her "Okay, we'll come back to you in a minute. Sophie, what are you doing while the bard's been doing all this?" ... (generalized, its, "don't let the most talkative player dominate the session", though you do have to recognize that some players are perfectly happy in an almost "watching" role.) As for initiative, yeah, I think you handled that spot on. My party, shortly before coming to the demon, encountered a thinking undead creature, and a good dozen minion-y unthinking undead. "Roll Initiative", I told them, then asked what they were doing. They (cleverly) didn't just charge straight into combat. Instead, they began negotiating with the thinking-undead creature - while the minions attacked them. So, some used Standard actions for Diplomacy checks, while others used Standards on minion-slaying. It worked out for them, they got the thinking-undead to agree to let them past without fighting them, which made the encounter much easier than it "should" have been had they just fought straight through it.Since I *do* like doing that sort of thing, I've settled on a non-RAW interpretation, of letting people make the "try to perceive something" rolls as a Minor action - e.g., Arcana, Dungeoneering, History, Insight, Nature, Perception, Religion - which winds up working out fairly well in play. Hope that helps!</blockquote>

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