NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lonely Tylenol" data-source="post: 2699302" data-attributes="member: 18549">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.</blockquote>

Verification