Smart vs. Intelligence and Combatless Roleplaying Sessions

[DonTadow]

Thanks. I did re-read the thread more carefully and I do find myself rather less sympathetic to the more extreme positions on my "side." And I am with you in wanting to hear from Don et al what happens to points in these skills.Agreed. Player persuasiveness may inform these checks; it may heavily inform them but I agree with you that it should absolutely not wholly replace them.So what? People with better geometry skills get more flanking bonuses because they know where to position their characters. People with better logic can make more effective use of suggestions spells. Etc. Etc. Not all players are as smart as eachother; not all players are as observant as one another. Does this make D&D unfair? Of course not. I do not understand what is so special about articulateness that it is not treated as just another talent a player can bring to bear in the game.Richard Nixon became President, for God's sake. The idea that one cannot succeed at diplomacy or politics without personal charisma is just bunk. It's not impossible, just harder. It just takes more work.

I'm a pretty funny, charismatic guy in many situations. But I suck at comic book dialogue; I have no intuition for it. So, in one of Teflon Billy's superhero games, I used to write down heroic things for my character to say in advance because I lacked the talent to make them up on the fly.

It sounds like many people are frustrated by the idea that the personal attributes that make them good at some of D&D don't make them good at all of D&D. In my view, if one wants a good gaming dynamic, one's game should reward the widest rather than narrowest range of real-life skills. The more different kinds of real world skills allow your players to shine, the more diverse and interesting the group you can assemble. DM "whim" determines the stats of every monster you face and the DC of every skill check you make; why would social skills be a special area of corruption?Fair and balanced for whom? How is that "fair and balanced" for people who are bad at game mechanics? Obviously, your idea of fairness is privileging people good at game mechanics over people with all other types of skills. To me that's not especially fair; so I try to make my games a hybrid of the two things that you are placing in opposition.

And frankly, on its face, your concluding statement is completely ridiculous. Basically, you are saying that it is unfair to reward role playing in a role playing game. Why are they called "role playing games," then?I stand corrected.But combat is a special case. To argue that because combat can't be informed by real world skills, neither can any other aspect of the game is fallacious. It does not logically follow. As you, yourself point out, figuring out the plot of the game and remembering crucial details is just the opposite: there is such total overlap between character skill and player skill that these things are barely represented in the mechanics at all. RPGs contain a continuum of player vs. character skill overlap with combat on one extreme and memory on the opposite.Well, they are wrong to go to that extreme. But because people carry acting out interactions too far doesn't mean that this kind of play has no place in D&D.

WOOOHHHHHH. I NEVER said get rid of Cha based skills. They are very important. My stance is that the mechanics support the role playing, not vice versa. I think my case has been pretty adamant about keeping the mechanics, but not letting the mechanics BE the role playing. Read Mallus posts on here and that pretty much sums up my opinion. A Big thing in my games (which is about to start in 12 minutes) is to make sure that all my pcs skills are used. Depending on what is going on I might ask them to make a roll and I might not. In my head, I do exactly waht Damian says. I give them a take 10 on certain rolls if they have ranks in it and the task is not overly absurb.

Case in point, If the scout in my party is trying to talk her way into the goblin prison holdings and the party have guard uniforms on shell say something like.
I walk up to the guard and tell him we are here to see the prisoners.

The goblin isn't all that smart and he's not suspcious. NOw, the rules say i do a bluff check, but the scout has a 8 in bluff. Yeah she could roll a 1 but 1s don't automiatically fail on skill checks. So knowing her bluff rank, I avoid the roll and accept the bluff as an automatic success. Why do I do this? because if you followed the rules you'd be rolling bluff, diplomacy or intimidate on every single npc dialogue, thus slowing upthe game. I do not support taking dice rolls out of the game especially charisma based ones, but I do support dms picking and choosing their spots. I played in a diceless game for a time and though fun, there were just times I realized how important rolling dice on skill checks were. That said, my major position is to NOT take the role playing out of the role playing game.

I don't think that circumstance bonuses on role playing areneeded and I don't use them. I only initiate circumstance bonuses on situations (player is wearing guard uniforms). The role playing is there for flavor, but the flavor is the meat of the game.

There is no mechanic without the role playing.

BTW. Sorry I've been MIA this weekend, had a couple of party's and two long rpgs

 

[DamionW]

I like the method you outlined, and may give it a try. I'd probably add a few things, though.

1) To encourage newbies, I'd put in a "handicap." i.e. If they're just not that good at in-character dialogue yet, then I'd judge their peformance more leniently than someone who's been playing for years. The only way to get better at it is to do it, and I would like to get them up to speed as quickly as possible.

The thing is, a lack of skill in developing in-character dialogue rapidly is not limited to newbies. I started playing RPGs over 10 years ago and like playing characters with a strong identity and background and speaking in first person to add flavor. The problem arises when there is a 1st person exchange with an NPC standing as an obstacle. Certain NPC interactions are as important to overcome as traps or monsters in dungeons. To overcome them, you must convince them by using either falshoods (Bluff skill), negotiations (Diplomacy skill), or threats (Intimidation skills). To not overcome these NPC obstacles means to not progress the plot and/or character development. I can usually deliver the first premise of my lie/offer/threat in first-person. Where it breaks down for me is having a continual reparte with the NPC back-and-forth to develop my lies/counter-offers/threats beyond the first push such that they're believable. Now the skill to do those things is EXACTLY the same abstraction at Level 3 as it is to tie a knot in front of you to show you I can succeed on a Use Rope check.

I challenge you to show me how those two circumstances are not equal. Not one person who prefers a RPing dialogue as a task resolution has been able to prove that to me. How is me developing a lie proficiently as a player, to keep a straight, believable face and interaction while telling a falsehood any different than me climbing a wall, or dodging an attack or any other Level 3 abstraction? If I happen to be smooth-talking better than a used car salesman, but my CHA 8, 0 Bluff barbarian couldn't convince someone of anything, why should my lie being delivered well be rewarded by overcoming the NPC obstacle if I didn't make the character investment in any CHA ability or bluff ranks? If I did invest the abilities and ranks to get a Don Juan character with 17 CHA and 8 ranks in Bluff, how does it make me feel about that investment when the player next to me blows right by an NPC obstacle just based on his improvisation skills and fast-talking ability without regard for character concept? It makes me feel like I'm wasting time playing this game because the deck is stacked against me.

2) I'd like the circumstance modifier for performance stronger, give it a +10 to -10 range.

At that size of circumstance bonus, you're essentially returning it to the realm of auto-success or auto-failure based on player ability. It shows a bias towards those with improvizational skills over those who are not good at rapidly creating dialogue. You are just better off admitting you want dialogue to trump dice rolls up front and telling your players not to invest ranks in Bluff or Diplomacy because you will be arbitrating those based on player performance. A full +10 or -10 swing in one direction is essentially the same thing.

3) Insist that the dialogue be appropriate to the character played in order to get a positive circumstance modifier. A typical bard and a typical barbarian might have the same level of skill at diplomacy, but how they persuade will be very different. As an example, the bard might use flattery and extravagant words, while the barbarian would use a guileless look, a pledge on his honor, and an oath on his father's soul.

That seems fair to me. You're the DM, you decide what's acceptable and what's not. Just be honest with your players about how you will make rulings and don't assume everyone feels that RPing dialogue is paramount, because other people's playstyles might see the game differently.

The only issue I had with your statement was where you said this addresses "lack of fairness" If persuasion through in-character RP is part of play, then one player being more persuasuve than another is no more unfair than one player being better than another in a one-on-one basketball game.

ThirdWizard spoke for me. The lack of fairness I'm refering to is being a persuasive player and using those skills meta-game at the table to overcome obstacles in the game for your character. If a player wants a character to be convincing and persuasive, as DM you should enforce an investment in character concept that supports that (a high CHA score, or the Negotiator feat, or ranks in CHA skills, whatever). If you don't enforce that, you can't turn around and wonder why everyone is using CHA as a dump stat for their characters, because they know any manifestation of that ability in game can be RPed away to a success even if they don't make a persuasive character design.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

So what? People with better geometry skills get more flanking bonuses because they know where to position their characters. People with better logic can make more effective use of suggestions spells. Etc. Etc. Not all players are as smart as eachother; not all players are as observant as one another. Does this make D&D unfair? Of course not. I do not understand what is so special about articulateness that it is not treated as just another talent a player can bring to bear in the game.

Mostly it's that there's a mechanic implemented that coordinates it. I don't see much problem with applying circumstance bonuses for believable lies, but circumventing the system is right out. However, there's no system for determining whether a character knows how to flank well, and so it must be ad-libbed. As I've mentioned, such a system would be so impossible to implement it becomes a necessary hole in the rules. There's no rule to determine whether you're a good flanker, and thank goodness for that.

Richard Nixon became President, for God's sake. The idea that one cannot succeed at diplomacy or politics without personal charisma is just bunk. It's not impossible, just harder. It just takes more work.

And speechwriters with many ranks of Diplomacy.

I'm a pretty funny, charismatic guy in many situations. But I suck at comic book dialogue; I have no intuition for it. So, in one of Teflon Billy's superhero games, I used to write down heroic things for my character to say in advance because I lacked the talent to make them up on the fly.

I used to have a GURPS character who had the Lechery disadvantage. I wrote down about a hundred bad pick-up lines and used them in game. The GM gave me penalties to my seduction roll based on how awful the lines were. It was great fun. But I never attempted to pick up a girl without rolling the die. I actually don't think I'd feel comfortable with that particular DM deciding whether or not my character managed to "score". It would have felt kind of creepy...

It sounds like many people are frustrated by the idea that the personal attributes that make them good at some of D&D don't make them good at all of D&D. In my view, if one wants a good gaming dynamic, one's game should reward the widest rather than narrowest range of real-life skills. The more different kinds of real world skills allow your players to shine, the more diverse and interesting the group you can assemble. DM "whim" determines the stats of every monster you face and the DC of every skill check you make

Well, whim and the MM and the DMG. Most things are provided with DCs and stats intact. If the DM changes them, he's deviating from the rules assumptions, and every time he does that he needs to inform the players beforehand. That could be as simple as "I'm using monsters that I've edited and might not follow the monster design formula provided in the monster manual...be careful." But it's the same warning required by the DM who says "I'm not using the Cha-based skills. You have to roleplay it instead."

But that's also a different story because it deals with the world the PCs are encountering and not the characters themselves. Using dragons with weird powers that the characters have to overcome using the abilities they expect to have available is different than changing the abilities the characters have available. What does removing the Cha-based skills do to the balance of the Bard? Of the rogue? Of the cleric or barbarian, even? Changing monsters or making things have harder DCs changes them equally for all players. Changing skills changes them only for those players who wanted to use those skills.

why would social skills be a special area of corruption?Fair and balanced for whom? How is that "fair and balanced" for people who are bad at game mechanics?

There's a baseline situation at least. You know that if you have maxed out your Bluff skill there's a pretty good chance you'll be able to bluff most normal people. Keeping track of game mechanics is much easier than keeping track of an arbitrary DM. I don't think that understanding the skill system is something that one player can be that much better at than another, unless the other player is a complete newbie. Not the same way that one person can be a good orator and the other trips over his words.

And frankly, on its face, your concluding statement is completely ridiculous. Basically, you are saying that it is unfair to reward role playing in a role playing game. Why are they called "role playing games," then?

The mechanics are what allow me to play a character that's a better liar than I am. I play that role in the game by putting lots of ranks into Bluff. But it's the balance between the mechanics of the Bluff skill and the mechanics of other skills and abilities that make the game fair.

Roleplaying can be encouraged by awarding circumstance bonuses for good roleplaying, but not necessarily for being good at what the character is trying to do. If a dumb half-orc barbarian comes up with a believable lie, plausibly in character, and it seems to me to be the sort of thing that character would say in such a situation, then sure, I'll give him a bonus. But if he comes up with something that's not in character, but would get him an advantage, I probably wouldn't give the bonus. But the dumb barbarian would probably be better served intimidating in that situation anyway, and it would be more in the character's idiom to do things in character that would provide circumstance bonuses to Intimidate...raising his voice, standing up from his seat, snarling, etc.

edit: What Mishihari Lord says, above, on this topic.

Having fun acting in character is part of roleplaying, but that's not all there is to roleplaying, and acting should not take precedence over providing a fair, balanced game. But as you can see, some people want to toss the dice aside to use acting as a task-resolution system.

 

[DamionW]

But combat is a special case. To argue that because combat can't be informed by real world skills, neither can any other aspect of the game is fallacious. It does not logically follow. As you, yourself point out, figuring out the plot of the game and remembering crucial details is just the opposite: there is such total overlap between character skill and player skill that these things are barely represented in the mechanics at all. RPGs contain a continuum of player vs. character skill overlap with combat on one extreme and memory on the opposite.Well, they are wrong to go to that extreme. But because people carry acting out interactions too far doesn't mean that this kind of play has no place in D&D.

To me, CHA based skills seem to be the special case. A RPG player who happens to make his life as an architect doesn't automatically get to act as if they had 10 ranks in Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering). An intramural swimmer doesn't get to let their character bypass a raging river by showing his breast stroke techniqe, the DM still enforces a swim check based on the character's abilities. Reflex saves aren't arbitrated by initiating a game of dodgeball and seeing how well you can get out of the way of things. However, when someone feels RPing is vital to the game, often they bypass a CHA skill check in order to see the dialogue that would be used. So my argument isn't that combat marks the standard such that every other mechanic must match that. My argument is that no other area except situations where you're trying to talk your way past an NPC is your real life skill brought into question, so that attitude needs to be brought into check.

RPing is fun. It's fun to watch someone develop an identity for their character and run with it. I'd never play the game if no player had to come up with an identity for their character and use first-person speech to develop it. However, when the DM places an NPC obstacle in the party's way, he needs to realize a few things: a) The party will need to get past that obstacle eventually b) The first person back-and-forth development of a dialogue is utilizing the player's skill to fast-talk, not the character's. c) If you happen to like any one player's falsehood or negotiation, you are not necessarily judging it as an objective portrayal of the character in question until you bring the dice mechanic into play.

So, am I arguing to remove RPed dialogue from the game? Certainly not, it makes the game what it is and broadens the imagination. Do I think an ingenious lie that is delivered in first person perspective should automatically allow a PC to bypass an NPC obstacle? No, because then you are not examining the character's ability to persuade and to lie, you are only examining the player's ability to think on their toes.

All of this can also be used regarding the use of puzzles, as this thread is about. When solving a puzzle, it is usually carried out in the realm of Level 3 abstraction where the player is thinking the puzzle through with his own reasoning skills. Personally, I don't have a problem with this because I like puzzles. However, if I'm at a table where another player is becoming frustrated because they aren't enjoying puzzles, it's worth discussing this with the DM and other players what the puzzle portion of a dungeon is contributing to a game. If enough people don't want to use them, the DM should take that into account.

 

[fusangite]

To me, CHA based skills seem to be the special case. A RPG player who happens to make his life as an architect doesn't automatically get to act as if they had 10 ranks in Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering). An intramural swimmer doesn't get to let their character bypass a raging river by showing his breast stroke techniqe, the DM still enforces a swim check based on the character's abilities.

I agree. But, first of all, I am suggesting that articulateness confer a circumstance bonus depending on how the person performs in the given situation not additional ranks. Secondly, Knowledge (Arcana, Nature, Planes, Religion, Dungeoneering) can effectively be substituted simply by reading D&D manuals and remembering what you have read. Knowledge of ecology, hiking, etc. can effectively augment Survival and Know (Nature) checks quite effectively in quite a similar way to social skills.

But I will nevertheless grant that compared to other things for which skill checks are rolled real world talent can help one a lot more. However, compared more generally to things in the game where one's out of game knowledge and abilities are helpful, social skills are right in the middle of the continuum. But even if they were at the extreme end, why would that be a problem? Something has to be.

So my argument isn't that combat marks the standard such that every other mechanic must match that. My argument is that no other area except situations where you're trying to talk your way past an NPC is your real life skill brought into question, so that attitude needs to be brought into check.

But that is simply not true. As I have repeatedly said, real world geometric, memory and critical reasoning skills are far more important in D&D and work against player equality (if that's even something we want!) far more than charisma-based skill checks.

I agree with you that some of the ways Charisma-based skills are run are bad. But, there is more than one way to run these skills and produce a satisfying game for the players.

RPing is fun. It's fun to watch someone develop an identity for their character and run with it. I'd never play the game if no player had to come up with an identity for their character and use first-person speech to develop it. However, when the DM places an NPC obstacle in the party's way, he needs to realize a few things: a) The party will need to get past that obstacle eventually b) The first person back-and-forth development of a dialogue is utilizing the player's skill to fast-talk, not the character's.

That's not true in my games. In my games, it is a hybrid. People roll as they talk and how my NPC "hears" and contextualizes the player's words are determined by those die rolls.

c) If you happen to like any one player's falsehood or negotiation, you are not necessarily judging it as an objective portrayal of the character in question until you bring the dice mechanic into play.

An in-game character is a complex, hybrid amalgam of a player, his rolls and the stats on his sheet. Not one of those three things should determine everything. The complex interaction of these things makes RPGs what they are. And, frankly, in this context, what constitutes an "objective portrayal"? How is that even measurable? Either players trust the GM to be a fair arbiter or they don't.

Do I think an ingenious lie that is delivered in first person perspective should automatically allow a PC to bypass an NPC obstacle? No

Good. Neither do I. No matter how brilliant the lie, a bad roll will make a character sweat, blink or otherwise give the game away, letting the NPC know, in no uncertain terms, that he's lying.

All of this can also be used regarding the use of puzzles, as this thread is about. When solving a puzzle, it is usually carried out in the realm of Level 3 abstraction where the player is thinking the puzzle through with his own reasoning skills. Personally, I don't have a problem with this because I like puzzles. However, if I'm at a table where another player is becoming frustrated because they aren't enjoying puzzles, it's worth discussing this with the DM and other players what the puzzle portion of a dungeon is contributing to a game.

Agreed!

If enough people don't want to use them, the DM should take that into account.

Indeed -- you've certainly described the situation re: puzzles in the game I play on Mondays.

 

[fusangite]

Mostly it's that there's a mechanic implemented that coordinates it. I don't see much problem with applying circumstance bonuses for believable lies, but circumventing the system is right out.

Agreed!

However, there's no system for determining whether a character knows how to flank well, and so it must be ad-libbed.As I've mentioned, such a system would be so impossible to implement it becomes a necessary hole in the rules. There's no rule to determine whether you're a good flanker, and thank goodness for that.

And by that, I suppose you mean that because you are good at geometry, you are glad the rules let that advantage be brought to bear but because you are less charismatic, you want the rules to inhibit people from bringing that particular advantage to bear.

What I am saying here is that I do not buy the idea that it is bad for real world skills to make you a better D&D player. Games, of any kind, would not be fun if one couldn't shine using one's real world talents. Any game that successfully abolished the influence of real world talents would essentially just turn into a version of Chutes and Ladders.

You don't like games in which charisma and articulateness matter. I do. My idea of a great board game is Diplomany -- a game that is half geometric relations and half social skills. That's a combo that works for me. I like D&D for much the same reason. You don't have to play D&D the way I do, of course, but I just don't buy the idea that the rules don't include the flexibility to play out social interactions at variable levels of abstraction.

But I never attempted to pick up a girl without rolling the die.

I agree with this idea. My players' social skills matter in my games. But so do their rolls on charisma-based skills.

Well, whim and the MM and the DMG. Most things are provided with DCs and stats intact. If the DM changes them, he's deviating from the rules assumptions, and every time he does that he needs to inform the players beforehand.

Whoa! Here we completely part company. The idea that changing a monster or introducing a new monster requires advance notice to the players does not fit at all with my idea of a fun game. I would kick my GM for doing that. Why limit the sense of discovery and challenge like that?

That could be as simple as "I'm using monsters that I've edited and might not follow the monster design formula provided in the monster manual...be careful."

It sounds like your games tend to value "balance/fairness" (translation: only valuing a narrow range of human talents/skills) above a lot of things I consider to be of equal or greater importance.

But it's the same warning required by the DM who says "I'm not using the Cha-based skills. You have to roleplay it instead."

Actually, I am with you here. Nerfing a quarter of the skills without notifying the players would be grossly irresponsible on the part of a GM.

But that's also a different story because it deals with the world the PCs are encountering and not the characters themselves.

As I said above, a character, at any given moment, is a composite of his rolls, his stats and his player, all entangled in a complex but hopefully fulfilling way.

What does removing the Cha-based skills do to the balance of the Bard?

I agree. That's why I'm opposed to removing them.

Changing monsters or making things have harder DCs changes them equally for all players.

That's not exactly true. Changing the DC to climb a wall from one where all the PCs can make it up to one where only the fighter and rogue can is not an equally felt change. Similarly, switching a monster's DR from 10/magic to 10/- is going to privilege characters with two-handed weapons and severely inhibit those with light weapons.

There's a baseline situation at least. You know that if you have maxed out your Bluff skill there's a pretty good chance you'll be able to bluff most normal people. Keeping track of game mechanics is much easier than keeping track of an arbitrary DM.

I'm not in favour of arbitrary DMing. I'm in favour of fair DMing. DMs can allow people to play out NPC interactions in a way that is fair and even-handed. And it's not like bad/arbitrary DMing will go away when it comes to social skills just because you eliminate playing out the interaction; DMs will still have to determine a circumstance modifier for Bluff and Diplomacy skills regardless based on situation and the basis of the character's arguments.

Not the same way that one person can be a good orator and the other trips over his words.

That's why I use the example of geometry and flanking. Some people never get good at that, knowing where to put themselves, factoring in the other PCs' and monsters' movement rates, etc.

The mechanics are what allow me to play a character that's a better liar than I am. I play that role in the game by putting lots of ranks into Bluff. But it's the balance between the mechanics of the Bluff skill and the mechanics of other skills and abilities that make the game fair.

Fair in what sense? You guys have a particular definition of "fair" that sounds an awful lot like "advantageous to me." What you seem to want is a game that confers advantages for things you are good at while shielding you from disadvantages that might accrue from things you are not so good at. Would your version of D&D be "fair" for an articulate person with crappy math, geometry, tactics and spatial relations?

To be honest with you, I would have some difficulty with a player who decided to be the bard spokesperson for a party who, in real life, couldn't string two articulate sentences together. I, as the GM, and the other players would end up having their suspension of disbelief damaged every time there was an NPC interaction. Would it be "fair" to the charmless individual? Possibly. Would it be "fair" to the GM and other players who are trying to imagine debates, speeches and negotiations? No. While some people's gaming styles get on just fine with social interactions abstracted like combat, many people's don't. Is that "fair" to people who aren't articulate? I guess not. But so what? Life's not fair anyway, so it might as well be fun.

Roleplaying can be encouraged by awarding circumstance bonuses for good roleplaying, but not necessarily for being good at what the character is trying to do. If a dumb half-orc barbarian comes up with a believable lie, plausibly in character, and it seems to me to be the sort of thing that character would say in such a situation, then sure, I'll give him a bonus. But if he comes up with something that's not in character, but would get him an advantage, I probably wouldn't give the bonus.

What you are doing here is applying principles used for awarding XP to awarding circumstance bonuses; this makes no sense. Increasing someone's chances of success because they are doing a job badly but in an authentic way is just assinine.

Having fun acting in character is part of roleplaying, but that's not all there is to roleplaying, and acting should not take precedence over providing a fair, balanced game.

Look: define fair and balanced. I'm getting sick of you guys claiming that being rewarded for real world proficiency at geometry, math and tactics is somehow fair but being rewarded for talent at other real world things is somehow unfair. Furthermore, these objectives are of equal importance; the solution to play-acting trumping tactical cleverness is not to simply reverse the situation and have tactical cleverness trump play-acting. D&D should be about a balance between these things. However, what particular balance is struck should be based on the social contract between GM and players in each individual gaming group.

But as you can see, some people want to toss the dice aside to use acting as a task-resolution system.

Yeah. But don't lump me in with them.

 

[Voadam]

I'll be happy to repeat that the game does not need social or mental interaction mechanics where these can be handled by players.

You are left with roleplaying interactions and players figuring out things. Which was the situation in prior editions of D&D.

Social and intellectual mechanics for such things are optional. The game does not break without them.

Different approaches to resolving these matters will appeal to different play styles and serve different play experiences.

 

[fusangite]

I'll be happy to repeat that the game does not need social or mental interaction mechanics where these can be handled by players.

You are left with roleplaying interactions and players figuring out things. Which was the situation in prior editions of D&D.

Social and intellectual mechanics for such things are optional. The game does not break without them.

Agreed, with the following proviso: if any Charisma-based or Intelligence-based skills are removed, players should be notified prior to choosing their class. Furthermore, some classes, like Bard, might need to be re-balanced.

Different approaches to resolving these matters will appeal to different play styles and serve different play experiences.

Hear! Hear! But it is important to distinguish between a group having a particular play-style and requiring house rules. I effect a pretty similar playstyle in my groups to other GMs who like players figuring things out and role-playing NPC interactions. But the way I do it does not require house-ruling; it sounds to me like the way you effect this style does.

 

[Voadam]

Anyway, back to the original topic.

In my games I tell the players they play the characters and make decisions for the characters. A character's int is mechanical, it determines bonus skill points, bonus languages, int skill modifiers, whether a character qualifies for certain feats, and affects certain class powers like wizard spellcasting. Smart characters will not prevent dumb player decisions.

My players know not to expect a riddle or puzzle or social interaction to be handled by dice checks.

Generally riddles and puzzles have been like the following.

In White Plume Mountain the wizard put in a guardian sphinx. Answer her riddles and she lets you go by, because that's what sphinxes do, its a magic or cultural thing for them. Fail to answer correctly and she will attack and try to eat you.

If the players answer the riddles or kill the sphinx or figure out a different way around then they can go on deeper. Success on the riddle generally means less resources spent on a fight and they are fresher when they meet the next challenge than they might otherwise be.

I chose to handle the riddles by letting the players try to figure them out. In character they could try divinations or other mechanical tools to aid them or just work on them by the player's deductions.

Other options I could have used include int checks for hints (whichI'd have to make up), and int checks for flat out success. Neither of those options appeal to me.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

The thing is, a lack of skill in developing in-character dialogue rapidly is not limited to newbies.

In my experience it is. I haven't run into any experienced players who have trouble with 1st person dialogue. I don't know if everyone learns, if those that don't drift away from the hobby, or if those who don't don't play with groups like mine, but I haven't seen it.

That said, if I had someone in my game who was poor at 1st person dialogue, but kept trying and was still fun and entertaining, I'd probably give him a handicap (in the golf sense) as well.

<snippage>

Now the skill to do those things is EXACTLY the same abstraction at Level 3 as it is to tie a knot in front of you to show you I can succeed on a Use Rope check.

I challenge you to show me how those two circumstances are not equal. Not one person who prefers a RPing dialogue as a task resolution has been able to prove that to me. How is me developing a lie proficiently as a player, to keep a straight, believable face and interaction while telling a falsehood any different than me climbing a wall, or dodging an attack or any other Level 3 abstraction?

The difference is that level 3 abstraction for dialogue is fun, while level 3 abstraction for other activities is not. There isn't really any other reason, but this reason by itself is sufficient. This of course varies by individual and group, but it's true for me and everyone I have played with (AFAIK).

If I happen to be smooth-talking better than a used car salesman, but my CHA 8, 0 Bluff barbarian couldn't convince someone of anything, why should my lie being delivered well be rewarded by overcoming the NPC obstacle if I didn't make the character investment in any CHA ability or bluff ranks? If I did invest the abilities and ranks to get a Don Juan character with 17 CHA and 8 ranks in Bluff, how does it make me feel about that investment when the player next to me blows right by an NPC obstacle just based on his improvisation skills and fast-talking ability without regard for character concept? It makes me feel like I'm wasting time playing this game because the deck is stacked against me.

Conversely, if I delivered a great argument in character and failed while someone succeeded with a level 2 resolution, I would feel cheated. High-fidelity roleplaying (my term for staying very true to your character's capabilities) is a worthy goal, but so is player control. Since you can't have both at the same time, you have to pick a balance based on your personal preferences.

As a related point, incentives strongly affect behavior. If players are rewarded for in-character dialogue, you will see more of it and they will try harder. As a result, they will get better at it, and your game will be more fun. I think that's a good reason all by itself to use dialogue-based resolution.

At that size of circumstance bonus, you're essentially returning it to the realm of auto-success or auto-failure based on player ability. It shows a bias towards those with improvizational skills over those who are not good at rapidly creating dialogue. You are just better off admitting you want dialogue to trump dice rolls up front and telling your players not to invest ranks in Bluff or Diplomacy because you will be arbitrating those based on player performance. A full +10 or -10 swing in one direction is essentially the same thing.

I disagree. A +/-10 would be for an extraordinarily good or bad result, which doesn't happen very often. There are three elements to you skill result, dialogue quality, skill modifier, and roll. The die roll varies by 20 and the skill modifier runs from 0 to whatever. Giving the dialogue circumstance modifier a spread from -10 to +10 just puts its strength as about equal with the other two factors, which is what I'm after.

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ThirdWizard spoke for me. The lack of fairness I'm refering to is being a persuasive player and using those skills meta-game at the table to overcome obstacles in the game for your character. If a player wants a character to be convincing and persuasive, as DM you should enforce an investment in character concept that supports that (a high CHA score, or the Negotiator feat, or ranks in CHA skills, whatever). If you don't enforce that, you can't turn around and wonder why everyone is using CHA as a dump stat for their characters, because they know any manifestation of that ability in game can be RPed away to a success even if they don't make a persuasive character design.

ThirdWizard totally missed the point. I want to resolve social interaction primarily though dialogue. Given that that's the system I'm using and everyone knows it, it's totally fair. Saying otherwise is like saying that it's not fair that I beat you at basketball because I'm better at basketball. That's the way the contest is defined, and if you're good at it, you'll do well.

I think you can still retain the importance of social skills and Cha while having dialogue strongly affect resolution, as long as the target number for the task is set such that skill points can make the difference between success and failure.