Social Skills, starting to bug me.

[Voadam]

To address the OP

I would prefer to role play and let the DM decide how the NPC reacts rather than leave it up to the dice. Or when I try to bluff, sometimes I do it well, and other times I do it badly. I would just rather the DM play off of how I actually do it in character than rely on my dice roll.

When we play AD&D (I’m the DM) the social skills thing is not an issue, but we play PF at the moment. I have been on a slow trend of being negative towards social skill rolls for a while before even 4e came out though.

Social mechanics cover a wide array of gaming styles and can be tailored fairly easily to a preferred style.

The different preferences for styles of social mechanics and resolution methods are mostly a taste issue and what will be best for individuals will vary.

Your preference for AD&D style direct roleplaying and DM ad hoc adjudication is a reasonable preference and easily accommodated in Pathfinder.

Use the social skills for their mechanical effects and ditch the social interaction aspects of them.

Bluff is good for feinting.

Sense motive is good for avoiding feints and sensing enchantments.

Intimidate is good for the in combat demoralize ability.

Diplomacy is good for gather information or can be dropped.

There you go.

If you take up pathfinder DMing these are easy to implement house rules. Just explain to the players ahead of time how you will handle social interactions and social mechanics and everybody can allocate their build resources like skill points as they deem appropriate for the game rules you will be using as DM.

 

[dagger]

They are used to AD&D anyway so it will not be a problem, and besides its not like they will DM anything.

 

[Rogue Agent]

I would point out that synonymous does not have to be 100% the same all of the time. Being diplomatic is synonymous with being sweet. That being diplomatic is also synonymous with other approaches doesn't change that.

As you typically do, Hussar, you are moving the goalposts.

You now appear to be arguing that any technique which should be resolved using the Diplomacy skill can be resolved with the Diplomacy skill. To which the answer is: No , Sherlock. Your circular reasoning is very, very circular.

And, of course, completely besides the point.

There is a functional difference between "I'm sweet on the Queen", "I flirt with the Queen", "I compliment the Queen's shoes", "I bribe the Queen", "I blackmail her chief advisor to say nice things about me", and dozens of other possibilities. Those are all character actions.

Saying "I use my Diplomacy skill on the Queen", on the other hand, isn't a character action. It's a mechanical invocation with nothing to actually resolve.

There are skills and abilities where can get away with that (the Climb skill or an attack roll, for example) because there's an assumed default of what the game world action is. But in the case of Bluff or Survival or Forgery, that's not the case.

And even in the case of the default action, there's usually a need for some specificity. When faced with a dead-end you can't just say, "I use my Climb skill on the corridor." You have to explain what you're attempting to climb in order to overcome the dead-end.

Diplomacy, for example, only changes how someone views you - it changes the target's attitude, nothing more.

Also: This is (yet another) factual inaccuracy on your part. It's not true in 3E and it's not true in 4E.

EDIT: Also not true in Pathfinder. I checked.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Also: This is (yet another) factual inaccuracy on your part. It's not true in 3E and it's not true in 4E.

EDIT: Also not true in Pathfinder. I checked.

Check

You can change the attitudes of others (nonplayer characters) with a successful Diplomacy check; see the Influencing NPC Attitudes sidebar, below, for basic DCs. In negotiations, participants roll opposed Diplomacy checks, and the winner gains the advantage. Opposed checks also resolve situations when two advocates or diplomats plead opposite cases in a hearing before a third party.

Umm, how am I factually inaccurate? I don't know Pathfinder, so I cannot comment on that. But, for 3.5 I'm dead on.

There is a functional difference between "I'm sweet on the Queen", "I flirt with the Queen", "I compliment the Queen's shoes", "I bribe the Queen", "I blackmail her chief advisor to say nice things about me", and dozens of other possibilities. Those are all character actions.

Well, the first two are exactly the same - simple diplomacy checks to try to change attitutde, "I bribe the queen" isn't actually resolved by any skill checks directly, although I could see it using Diplomacy as you are still trying to change attitude, and the final example is not covered by any skills in d20 - you'd have to do a lot more steps.

Sure, they're all character actions. And, to be fair, I'd prefer them to "I use diplomacy on the queen". Then again, no one is arguing in favor of that. My point is, "I compliment the queen's shoes" or "I'm nice to the queen" and "I want the queen to like me better, Diplomacy 23" isn't really all that different at the table.

This is a level of hair splitting that I don't think resolves anything.

 

[BryonD]

Umm, how am I factually inaccurate? I don't know Pathfinder, so I cannot comment on that. But, for 3.5 I'm dead on.

So if I say you can cut circles with a pair of scissors that means you can't do anything else?

I find the claim that such a narrow and restrictive reading of RAW so blantantly in conflict with RAI to be counter-productive.

 

[LostSoul]

So if I say you can cut circles with a pair of scissors that means you can't do anything else?

I find the claim that such a narrow and restrictive reading of RAW so blantantly in conflict with RAI to be counter-productive.

Wasn't there a section in the DMG that said you could use skills for tasks not specifically detailed in their entries? I recall reading that, but I can't find it. Maybe it was in the 3.0 DMG.

 

[Rogue Agent]

Umm, how am I factually inaccurate? I don't know Pathfinder, so I cannot comment on that. But, for 3.5 I'm dead on.

What you said: "Diplomacy, for example, only changes how someone views you - it changes the target's attitude, nothing more."

What you just quoted from the 3.5 SRD: "You can change the attitudes of others (nonplayer characters) with a successful Diplomacy check; see the Influencing NPC Attitudes sidebar, below, for basic DCs. In negotiations, participants roll opposed Diplomacy checks, and the winner gains the advantage. Opposed checks also resolve situations when two advocates or diplomats plead opposite cases in a hearing before a third party."

I'm not really clear on how you can personally quote the 3.5 SRD listing three different things you can do with Diplomacy and then claim with a perfectly straight face that it says you can ONLY do the first thing on the list and NOTHING MORE.

My point is, "I compliment the queen's shoes" or "I'm nice to the queen" and "I want the queen to like me better, Diplomacy 23" isn't really all that different at the table.

Well, okay. I guess that works for you.

But a lot of us recognize that human interaction is complex enough that there are more ways to improve someone's attitude towards you than just "acting nice to them in a very vague and non-specific way that has no consequences whatsoever".

 

[Water Bob]

I would prefer to role play and let the DM decide how the NPC reacts rather than leave it up to the dice.

I use a hybrid style, because I, too, like the AD&D style of game. But, it is neat for a character to excell in a skill he has put a lot of points into.

Let's take a typical bargaining situation with a merchant. In AD&D, I'd just play the encounter as my whims take me. Keeping the session interesting is the name of the game.

With 3E, what I do is roll behind my screen on the PC's skill, not letting the PC see the roll. I use the outcome of that roll to influence how I role play the situation (making the merchant likeable, or stingy, or easy/hard for the player to get what he wants). Then, I just role play it out as I would in AD&D. The only difference being that the dice helped me determine the attitude of the merchant rather than making it up on the spot.

The players never see these rolls, but they know that their Skill Points help them in the long run.

 

[pemerton]

The difference is huge : the first is in character somehow (very dry, I must say). The second is not allowed at my table... This is nor roleplay for me, it kills immersion.

The player must state an action, then we decide what skill is used.

I think none of us want to hear "I diplomatize the queen" or similar non-specific usage of skills. "I bluff the guard" is also lack-luster and non-specific.

<snip>

I think it is pretty fair that a player action regarding a skill needs to include the approach and goal/intent. "I bluff the guard to let me through by telling him I'm a messenger with an important letter from the Duke for the Duchess"

I agree. To borrow terminology from Burning Wheel, intent plus task makes for a skill check. Sometimes elements of these will be implicit from the context ("I greet the Queen with as much charm as I can muster - my Diplomacy roll is 23, including +2 for my successful History check to recall appropriate forms and titles.") Sometimes they will not be, and the player needs to provide them (perhaps with help from the other players and/or the GM, depending on the practice at a particular table).

I guess I just don't worry overmuch about this level of hair splitting.

So, why am I bothering, if it really doesn't affect the outcome, forcing the player to detail the steps in making someone like his PC better?

But it does affect the outcome. It changes the fiction. If it really doesn't matter how the PC is bringing it about that the Queen is well-disposed (polite greetings, complimenting her shoes, mentioning that he played a minor role in the coup that brought her to power), then why are we bothering with a roll at all? It sounds like nothing is at stake.

It keeps the game moving, and we can get back to the stuff that obviously does interest the player, because this interaction obviously doesn't.

I've never, ever been a big fan of trying to "force" people to role play.

This seems to me to relate to a slightly different but important point. It seems that a lot of D&D players use skill checks not as action resolution mechanics, but as scene framing mechanics - the Perception check is used to oblige the GM to reframe the scene as one in which my PC sees the interesting stuff, and the Diplomacy check is used to oblige the GM to reframe the scene as one in which an obstreborous NPC is no longer an obstacle to the PC's goals. Who will use Perception checks this way? Someone who doesn't like "find the hidden silver bar in the torch sconce" play. Who will use Diplomacy checks this way? Someone who doesn't like "role playing" encounters.

I don't have a strong view on the merits of these sorts of mechanics, although my gut feel is that the GM should be framing scenes the players are interested in in the first place. Mabye the mechanics are important in a play environment in which GMs are using a lot of pre-packaged, untweaked scenarios. Anyway, I agree with you that if Diplomacy is being used in this sort of "reframing" way, then requiring "roleplay" is pointless and self-defeating.

But anyway, I think it would improve these sorts of mechanics if the ruleboosk spoke more frankly about what they are for, and didn't try to pretend that they are about action resolution.

Now, for those who want to go deeper, then why on earth would you want to use the D20 social mechanics? They're just so poor.

My interpretation of your "going deeper" is that it is about wanting to use social skills as a genuine action resolution mechanic, rather than as the sort of "reframing device" that I was talking about just above.

Then again, I think this is a huge, glaring deficiency in the D20 skill mechanic.

I think this may be fair of 3E. I don't think it is fair of 4e, which (i) notes that Diplomacy is normally part of a skill challenge, and (ii) in the skill challenge rules requires that the GM frame the situation in fictional terms, and that the player's mechanical engagement with the situation also be framed in fictional terms (with the GM having final veto rights). Page 42, and the "skill variants" mentioned in the Rules Compendium, also pretty clearly require fictional framing in order to invoke a skill.

My personal preference is that failure should always be an option. The possibility of failure- even catastrophic failure- makes for a more interesting game.

I've played a game with the possibility of catastrophic failure on every skill check - namely, Rolemaster. I don't dispute that it can produce an interesting game. I don't think that it always does let alone that it tends to produce a more interesting game - sometimes it produces a less interesting, because, frustrating game.

I tend to prefer the possibility of catastrophic failure resulting from poor choices - preferably, poor choices deliberately taken because for some reason the player wouldn't choose otehrwise - rather than poor rolls. This is another reason why framing skill checks by reference to the fiction matters, I think.