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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1538740" data-attributes="member: 5171">As long as we agree that broad generalizations are silly, I'm a happy camper.How the game is run, yes.  The game mechanic itself, no.  As for your rogue being essentially useless if his skills weren't maxed out, I have to say that it sounds unlikely, unless you were a) playing with a bad DM, or b) playing in a campaign that really wasn't geared to charismatic stuff altering the plot.  Some campaigns aren't aimed that way -- the DM is planning on a dungeon hack, and hasn't prepared for anything like a charismatic rogue character.  You can avoid that problem with good GM/Player communication.Maybe you can provide us with some hard examples of things that you found problematic.  What class was your character?  What was your bonus to bluff checks?  Is there any chance that the DM could come give his side of the story as well?  There's always the possibility that the person you were frustrated at not being able to bluff was reading your mind, or had hard facts that made your bluff impossible, even though from what you knew, it was decent.Don't get me wrong.  I've gamed with bad DMs.  But, your recent statements to the contrary, you were saying that 3rd Edition promoted this kind of bad playing, and I don't really think that it does.  It might make it harder for the DM to let you do that really cool thing, because there are now rules that show how hard it is to do that really cool thing, but it also makes it harder for the DM to arbitrarily give your character a disadvantage he doesn't deserve.I don't feel that it doesn't apply to me, because hey, the possibility for bad DMing is always there.  I just want to figure out exactly what we're talking about.Not sure where you're going with this.  If you need to vent, that's fine, but I don't see an absolute connection between "GMs might talk about being fair on the boards and then be unfair in real life" and "GM can't have everything prepared".  The "talk on a board" comment, aside from sounding a bit like a veiled implication that I'm misrepresenting myself, doesn't make sense to me.  If I'm going to brag and blow my horn on the board, I'm going to talk about the cool monsters I made and how the PCs fell for my evil plots, while omitting the "And then the stupid player made a Diplomacy check of 37 and my bad guy turned Friendly, dangit" moments.  I'm not likely to game with anybody here any time in the near future.  I don't really rack up any street cred by talking about how fair and impartial I am.  I mean, I guess I could be holier-than-thou about stuff, but a lot of people already know what stuff I'm good at (villain motivations, character builds) and what stuff I'm lousy at (environment-building).Your comment about being prepared, though, is interesting.  In many cases, 3.x requires LESS preparation.  I mean, assuming that you have the sheet for a particular character or monster, you don't HAVE to come up with a number on what it'll take to bluff or diplome him.  You can just say, "Okay, he's Unfriendly, because he doesn't like humans, and, since his Sense Motive score is +3, a Take-Ten average will net out to 13, before plausibility modifiers."  The book already has the charts in there for the levels of plausibility -- if you try to bluff this guy with something that's really hard to believe, he gets a +10 on his check, so all I have to do is listen to your bluff and then decide whether it puts him at any risk, and if so, how much.   I don't have to pull a number out of thin air.And if the issue here is what modifiers your DM puts on it, then the real issue here is DM trust.  If you don't trust your DM, then you shouldn't be playing with him.  It's not going to be fun for you, and it's not going to be fun for the DM once he senses the waves of irritation and distrust flowing toward him from your direction.But in earlier editions, where the were no hard and fast rules, the DM could simply say "He convinces you to go excavate the haunted ruins," and you wouldn't even have numbers to back you up when you said, "Uh, don't I get a Sense Motive check or Will Save or something?"Now, for a DM to railroad you, he has to essentially admit that he is bending the rules -- he has to give the villain some enormous bonus on his Bluff check, or he has to say "And you believe him, regardless of what you roll."  Everyone is constrained by the rules here.  It becomes pretty apparent to most experienced players when the DM is breaking the rules in order to force a particular plot event.  Your hands might be tied by the new rules, but so are the DM's, and while the DM can choose to break the rules at any time, he knows that the players know that he's doing it most of the time, and won't put up with it if it takes away from their enjoyment of the game.I can see that you feel very strongly about this, and I hope you're having fun in some group, whatever edition they're playing.  I just don't see how the edition you're playing is leading to the bad-DM behavior.  In any event, I wish you the best of luck.</blockquote>

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