Smart vs. Intelligence and Combatless Roleplaying Sessions

[DonTadow]

Bluffs the guard into believing what? Lies with what intent? Even just saying, "I bluff the guard into thinking I'm someone who should be here," is good enough in most cases. Especially if the player doesn't know what kind of person would legitimately be there, but his character the professional liar, would. The DM can fill that in because he should know what kind of lie the guard would believe. If the DM says, "sure, you tell him you're an undercover spy from the allied kingdom of Hoob, and ask him politely not to blow your cover since you're on a mission of great diplomatic importance," suddenly the player has a good story to use the next time he bluffs a guard. He didn't know anything about Hoob before, but his character did, and now he's got a hook for roleplaying based on the results of a die roll.

If you just say "I bluff," you're not saying anything. And if people are actually doing that in your games, that's a different problem than the issue of player abilities vs. character abilities. That's a lack of interest in having a character at all.

edit:

Saying "I bluff," and leaving it there is like saying "I attack," and not defining important variables like "the orc" and "with my longsword." It has no content by itself, and needs to be placed in context in order to have any meaning. If a player doesn't understand that, he doesn't understand what the Bluff skill is, and again, that's a completely different problem than the one under discussion.

Yes but the player knows his character better.
How much of a stretch is it for a player to say " i walk up to the guard and tell him I am his superior" as opposed to " I walk up to the guard and i'm going to bluff him into believing i am his superior".

There's a big difference. The first is role playing the second is talking to the dm.

 

[DamionW]

A fighter uses weapons and his attack is with that weapon. HIs attack is modified depending on waht weapon you wield.

Do you ever truly modify the reality of the game based on which specific weapon the fighter has? I've never seen a DM that stops every fight and asks "Which blacksmith made your sword, because that will change it's weight and balance, and maybe he only spent three days honing it instead of two... So, that PARTICULAR sword you're using, I'm going to decide it does 1d6 instead of 1d8 because you can't come up with a convincing explanation why the sword does 1d8.

No

You hate hack n' slash, yet you give it the dignity of working as dictated by the rules. Why if you DON'T want hack'n'slash reduce the effectiveness of non-combat rules by making them arbitrary? If you want player's to avoid combat, you should show how investing character design in ways that can out-talk or out-think their opponents work as they should. To make them dependent on player portrayal is a DISincentive.

 

[DamionW]

Yes but the player knows his character better.
How much of a stretch is it for a player to say " i walk up to the guard and tell him I am his superior" as opposed to " I walk up to the guard and i'm going to bluff him into believing i am his superior".

There's a big difference. The first is role playing the second is talking to the dm.

How much of a stretch is it for a player to say "I attack the orc with my sword" as opposed to "I whip my arm sideways with a overhand grasp of the hilt and reach into the orcs bare ribcage."

Do you demand the second level of detail in combat in order to pick the orcs AC? If not, why does the presence of a person who needs to say "I bluff by telling him premise X," instead of "I tell him specific dialogue Y" change the DC that the bluff roll needs to succeed?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Mechanics are unnecesary to roleplay a character. Even though there are no mechanics you can roleplay the different characters in a murder mystery.

We seem to have a definitional disagreement on roleplaying.

You say third person control of a character is roleplaying the character. I say it is a step removed from actually roleplaying the character.

In other words, if I don't roleplay the way you do, I'm not really roleplaying. That's a good attitude. :\

All mechanics are disposable. Adding or subtracting mechanics simply changes the game.

If you want to remove certain skills from the game, that's fine. But if you leave them in so that some players put skill points in them thinking it would be useful, but then you ignore their character's proficiency in favour of the player's proficiency, that's unfair.

If you dispose of ALL mechanics, you're not role-playing, you're rampaging in a schizophrenic break between reality/fiction. Mechanics define how out of game decisions affect the fictional reality. Without any mechanics at all, all out of game decisions must exaclty mimic in game reality at which point you must cease being a player yourself and become a character.

There's a good discussion on what it is, exactly, that constitutes "role-playing" here. The relevent point is #2, which is that the power to define the game world is partitioned to participants, who mutually recognize the partitioning of power. In other words, there must be mechanics. In "An Evening of Murder" there are mechanics. IIRC, you cannot, for example, kill someone unless you are the murderer (and if you are killed, everyone must pretend you are dead), and there is a plot-script that must be followed so that the story develops and people can gain new clues to determine who the murderer is. Even improv theatre has rules. Hell, even Calvinball has rules, and rules that determine in what way the rules may be changed. Mutual recognition and deference to the rules are what differentiate a roleplaying game, a theatre production, or a movie from simply pretending to be someone else. Mechanical systems are a special kind of rule that underwrites the ability to portray a character that you lack the ability to portray, e.g. one with four arms or one with a silver tongue.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

How much of a stretch is it for a player to say "I attack the orc with my sword" as opposed to "I whip my arm sideways with a overhand grasp of the hilt and reach into the orcs bare ribcage."

Do you demand the second level of detail in combat in order to pick the orcs AC? If not, why does the presence of a person who needs to say "I bluff by telling him premise X," instead of "I tell him specific dialogue Y" change the DC that the bluff roll needs to succeed?

I think that this should be underlined a few times. The issue here, really, is consistency between parallel systems. If you're going to be inconsistent, at least admit you're being inconsistent up front and allow for adjustments to be made. If you're going to try to avoid inconsistency, then you need to take the systems for what they are, which is to say methods for portraying actions that you cannot yourself necessarily perform: swinging swords, selling iceboxes to eskimos, etc.

 

[DonTadow]

Do you ever truly modify the reality of the game based on which specific weapon the fighter has? I've never seen a DM that stops every fight and asks "Which blacksmith made your sword, because that will change it's weight and balance, and maybe he only spent three days honing it instead of two... So, that PARTICULAR sword you're using, I'm going to decide it does 1d6 instead of 1d8 because you can't come up with a convincing explanation why the sword does 1d8.

No

You hate hack n' slash, yet you give it the dignity of working as dictated by the rules. Why if you DON'T want hack'n'slash reduce the effectiveness of non-combat rules by making them arbitrary? If you want player's to avoid combat, you should show how investing character design in ways that can out-talk or out-think their opponents work as they should. To make them dependent on player portrayal is a DISincentive.

I didn't say it mattered about the blacksmith. I said it mattered what type of weapon it is. The weapon is important to the attack roll. The lie is important to the bluff check.

Oh and yes I do demand the second level of detail in my campaign. Again, mechanics break from the role playing "though their essential to the game" . However, like a pimple I make my players role play during battle to cover up that ugly distraction.

By the way, there is no dditional moddifier for hte role playing. It just doesnt make sense to play a role playing game and try not to role play as much as possible.

Also I"m not against hack and slash styles of games. Their is no reason why there is not as much role playing in them as any other game. Just less puzzles and npc interaction.

 

[DamionW]

Yes it should.

A DM determines what house rules he runs. If he decides to accomodate your different play style tastes that is his choice, but I would expect a DM to run a game according to the style they like. You as a player should knowingly decide whether it is still worth it to you to enter a game run in that different style that will penalize your character concept that does not correspond to that play style.

The problem I have is that most DMs don't state in a house rule up-front in clear english: "CHA-based skill mechanics will be irrelevant to PC to NPC reactions. As DM I will arbitrate that solely based on the dialogue you can produce."

Instead, they wait until the smooth-talking character I've designed is in front of the guard that I need specific dialogue to successfully deceive him.

That's the same as waiting until I've played a ranger character until 4th level and deciding I won't have access to spells. Maybe I wouldn't have chosen a ranger to portray if I knew you'd be shifting the rules assumptions on me.

 

[DamionW]

I didn't say it mattered about the blacksmith. I said it mattered what type of weapon it is. The weapon is important to the attack roll. The lie is important to the bluff check.

Oh and yes I do demand the second level of detail in my campaign. Again, mechanics break from the role playing "though their essential to the game" . However, like a pimple I make my players role play during battle to cover up that ugly distraction.

Asking for a specific lie's wording is the same as asking which SPECIFIC long sword he's swinging. Describing the premise of a lie, such as "I'm the guard's superior," or "I'm Lord Valiant's cousin," or "I came here to warn you that your girlfriend's sleeping with Bill the Other Bouncer," are all sufficient to determine the DC modifiers relevant to the guard's bluff sense motive roll. Saying "I lie to him." isn't sufficient detail. Asking the player to lie to you in character is the same as him to swing a broom handle to prove his quarterstaff strike would hit.

 

[Voadam]

Originally Posted by DonTadow
A fighter uses weapons and his attack is with that weapon. HIs attack is modified depending on waht weapon you wield.

Do you ever truly modify the reality of the game based on which specific weapon the fighter has? I've never seen a DM that stops every fight and asks "Which blacksmith made your sword, because that will change it's weight and balance, and maybe he only spent three days honing it instead of two... So, that PARTICULAR sword you're using, I'm going to decide it does 1d6 instead of 1d8 because you can't come up with a convincing explanation why the sword does 1d8.

I would expect him to mean that if a fighter uses his shortsword, it does a d6 damage. If that fighter uses a longsword it does a d8 damage.

 

[DonTadow]

Asking for a specific lie's wording is the same as asking which SPECIFIC long sword he's swinging. Describing the premise of a lie, such as "I'm the guard's superior," or "I'm Lord Valiant's cousin," or "I came here to warn you that your girlfriend's sleeping with Bill the Other Bouncer," are all sufficient to determine the DC modifiers relevant to the guard's bluff sense motive roll. Saying "I lie to him." isn't sufficient detail. Asking the player to lie to you in character is the same as him to swing a broom handle to prove his quarterstaff strike would hit.

You proved my point.

There's a big difference if a pc tells me that he's "Lord Valient's cousiin" as opposed to "a guard's superior" as opposed to " your girlfriends sleeping with the other bouncer. All would have different modifiers. The better the lie the easier the modifer. I dont believe its the dm's responsiblity to make up role playing for the character. 9 times out of 10 pcs will lie, intimidate or negotiate using previous knowledge gained. "learning that lord valient is head of the nights"