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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bgaesop" data-source="post: 3961423" data-attributes="member: 57730">The only argument I've heard yet that really convinces me that rules for social encounters could be a good thing is that 1) they'd be optional and 2) they'd allow the players to play characters who are more socially capable than themselves. That last part seems like it would be obvious, but to me at least it wasn't. I'm capable of being rather charming and socially capable in real life if I do say so myself, so when I want to play the charismatic rogue character it's not much of a challenge. But when my friend with the perpetual stutter and low self esteem wants to, he's in a bit of a bind: either he doesn't pull it off well enough for him to enjoy his character, or he knows it's just the DM fudging reactions to make it work for him. This would be a great way for him to get the results he wants and know that the DM isn't just going easy on him.On a similar note, I heard somewhere (and I wish I could remember where so I could give credit to whom it's due) a really brilliantly simple way to combine roleplaying and dice-rolling for social encounters in 3.X: have the players roleplay out the part of the encounter that results in a Diplomacy, Bluff, whatever roll, and then have the DM assign a number 1-20 based on how well he thinks they roleplayed it. That's their skill roll, then add their character's bonus to it to get the total result. That way you can't have a 20 charisma bard tell a dragon to "just feck off and give us your hoard you great flying git" and get a decent result despite his god-like skills, while the savvy word-bender player still needs to invest some ranks in order to get the full effects of his manipulations into play.</blockquote>

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