Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Berandor" data-source="post: 1202235" data-attributes="member: 225">As one who voted (4), let me try to explain.ETA: I agree with KahunaBurger (yes, that happens <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />), especially withI am very grateful for the expansion of skills in 3e. I tend to tell very role-playing oriented stories, and stories where skills are mostly more important than combat abilities, so a greater focus on these skills is appreciated.Now, I think skills like diplomacy, bluff, sense motive etc. are very useful and simulate an important part of interaction. So I want these skills to be significant. If I include a lot of role-playing and interviewing NPCs, but don't use these skills, nobody would take them.The skills also tell the player how good his character is in a certain area. A professional free-climber whose character can't climb won't volunteer to ascend the castle walls. The overweight couch-potato playing the rogue might.So, if a player is oratorally gifted but plays a barbarian with Charisma 6 and Int 7, he better take cross-class ranks in social skills or shut up when talking to the king (unless he wants to embarass himself).Playing out how and what a character says is a huge part of our game - in fact, we tend to play too much sometimes. Still, I base the reactions of NPCs on the skill checks of my players. And I expect the same in return. A character of mine once held a cool but very unusual monologue, speaking before an army of farmers and beggars before a fight. His pep talk consisted of "trust your hate, even if you must gut your friends". I spent about an hour and a half writing this speech beforehand, and it was very cool. But if I had rolled badly on my diplomacy roll, I would have accepted these people throwing eggs at me. Sometimes you just don't succeed, no matter how good you are. (Luckily, I rolled a 19 for a total of 35 and even got a small troop of dwarves embracing my philosophy <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)Sometimes, I even roll beforehand and play out the result. Or, simply rolling might be a good way to cut to the chase when I notice the other players getting bored. But these examples are exceptions.Just like a good or bad description of a combat action doesn't give a bonus or penalty to attack and damage rolls, a good idea or good role-playing doesn't change your roll. "It's all in the dice, baby." Otherwise, good players don't need skills - they get their bonuses by virtue of being good role-players.That said, I also include "hooks" in my characterizations of important that the players can use to circumvent some skill checks. It's much like a puzzle or riddle that the players have to solve. If they're attentive, they might notice that the NPC is greedy, or frightful, or perhaps a little naîve and self-absorbed, and use it to their advantage.So I chose option (4), because when choosing between these options, it comes the closest to my belief.Again, we play a very role-playing oriented game. But role-playing, to us, is not a means to get skill bonuses, but the means to having fun at the table. It's why we come together every few weeks to play out fictionary scenarios, and adapt to the developments the dice dictate us. And when situations arise where cool role-playing and bad rolls conflict, we curse the dice and not the DM. Because we still experienced the cool role-playing, after all.Perhaps this helps you understand where I come from, Mouseferatu.Or not, because I rolled a 2 on my "internet diplomacy" check <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Berandor</blockquote>

Verification