AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

As it is, there's really no point in wasting skill points in social skills for roleplay.

Bluff, Intimidate, Persuade... 3 costly skills that really don't have any effect on PCs (who are free to ignore them, which is fine), but perhaps the most silly thing is this unwritten idea that people go by that Listen and Spot thwart them. This is wrong and needs to stop and be changed. Here's why.

First off, it's an insane amount of double-dipping. Spot and Listen are mechanically viable skills you'd buy already to thwart Stealth and Pickpocket. You're buying them regardless of who you are (unless you're building rather poorly). Every decent build has at least one of these skills and either of them does a great amount for your character mechanically.

In PnP to counter a social skill, you need to spend points on an entirely different skill to thwart it. No one in PnP has ever said, "Roll Listen to thwart Diplomacy," but people try to get to double-dip by having their Listen and Spot be silver bullets for six skills? This is silly, wrong and why almost nobody takes social skills to begin with.

I propose we make things more fair. If you really want to oppose a social skill, you need that social skill. You'll have to be a better liar to catch a good liar. You'll have to be more intimidating to intimidate an intimidator. And you'll need to be a better diplomat to out-persuade a diplomat.

Maybe then buying something like Persuade would be seen as worthwhile. As it is, wasting 90+ skill points on social skills (+ feats) to try to roleplay a social butterfly or con-man is an exercise of annoyance when Random_Everybody simply starts rolling their "skill I'd buy anyways because it does things mechanically" against your pointless skills.

Hearing or seeing "good" doesn't make you more learned in the ways of deception or making arguments... Nor should 1 skill be a silver bullet for 6, especially when it already gives you 1 or 2 mechanical benefits.

I have a blackguard with Persuasion skills. Which means he could totally say "the darkside has cookies" and roll persuasion to turn/convert people. PC to PC skill-rolls don't really include the characters knowledge and/or personality in my honest opinion.
I do like it if quests would yield higher rewards for people with a certain social skill. Like the singleplayer campaign does.

MightNMagic wrote:

I propose we make things more fair. If you really want to oppose a social skill, you need that social skill. You'll have to be a better liar to catch a good liar. You'll have to be more intimidating to intimidate an intimidator. And you'll need to be a better diplomat to out-persuade a diplomat.

I like this idea, it sure makes more sense to me than Spot/Listen being the answer to any and all social skills as far as rolls are concerned. This has always concerned me as well but as these are not enforced to begin with, its never seemed like much of an issue. I think that's just so people can keep their power builds and still RP as something like a daring con artist with a whopping 8 charisma and no points invested in bluff. This sounds like a reasonable compromise for those that do want to invest and RP those skills.

this wont change anything about the people playing an Earth Genasi with 6 CHA as a "pretty as hell girl who has problems fitting in" but sure, I'm all for it.

Anything that hurts CHA-Dumpers who refuse to play their dump stat

At which point do we have to ignore IC knowledge that your character has just to act according to the Roll even if the other person gave them self away already by saying something wrong (Which your character knows)

The thing with Social skills is that I have huge issues with them outside of a DM / P&P Environment, There are plenty of cases where the DM (If one was around) would say: Your throw is going to be made harder because X knows certain things and it would be much harder to convince him/her of the "truth".

We can't just take Skills into consideration, because otherwise we are basically tossing everything that makes a character (What he/she experienced and what he/she knows) away in favor of a roll that should have small bearings on the overall situation.

What would stop a person with high persuade (+80) from walking up to a high ranking Demon, who's earned it with his martial prowess and not his cunning, to lie about all kinds of stuff? I know this is an extreme example but I am trying to get my point across, people with high social skills would become above god-level in terms of "Power" if the ruling was like that.

My point is: As long as we don't have a permanent DM around that knows literally everything about all character so he/she can say that the roll is made more difficult for the liar, then I don't see how this will ever really work out.

And depending on how you want to see it you can Hear (Listen) the voice quiver a little bit when the other person says something or you can See (Spot) a twitching hand or eye while he says something, my character has neither of that if I remember it correctly so I am not saying this to defend this notion, I am saying it to remind all of you that some people see things differently, and unless there's a DM ruling on what does what we won't have a correct answer to this.

If you look at the dice widget, you'll also see that spot/listen only counters bluff, not the other two rolls. For exactly the reason Karradon's saying. You can actually hear or see the "tells", since most liars would have some way of showing they're lying.

I thought, myself, that int and persuade were countered by spot and listen, but they aren't. Yeah, it makes bluff far inferior to persuade, then again, they are distincly different things.
And yeah, social skills are always hard to pull off, sometimes even with DMs there. I've always seen it much along the lines of PnP spells. The amount of havoc that could be wreaked if we make rolls mandatory is pretty immense. As an aside, it's always hard for people to know what a character -knows-. Would you believe someone really persuasive that the sky is purple? That the earth is flat? That a particular deity is the strongest/exists/doesn't exist? It depends strongly on the individual. And it's tough even for a DM to call that, let alone some random person you just met.

Problem with social skill rolls: At the core, they could be mis-used by players to do / get whatever they want ("Give me all of your epic - rolls 20 on a +100 persuade check"). For that reason, they tend to be ignored by players and thus barely if ever skilled (since they cannot be used for the absolutely insane use these things should be used for, for good obvious reasons). On the other side of the balance, these skills need to be recognized by the DMs.

There is a small base of players that care about their characters' RP representation, and will waste points in those skills anyway. Then comes a time when said players will meet a low intel, low charisma, low wisdom guy with loads of listen / spot (because it's mechanically advantageous to put points in those), and they will simply get shrugged off by a roll that is lopsided and, as draco mentions, isn't fair nor right. While it is "justifiable", I also do not consider that rolling listen or spot against bluff / persuade / appraise / intimidate is optimal or fair.

Saya has a very decent bluff score. I chose bluff over concentration.. I chose bluff over listen.. I chose bluff over spot.. I chose bluff over a lot of stuff I could have chosen that would have given mechanical advantage to the character. However, bluff needs to be part of this character's skill sheet. So why am I penalized, on a RP server, for making choices that best serve my characters' RP? In fact, I have been in several events where listen / spot was required to be rolled left and right, and also have been in multiple fighting events with critters going hide in plain side (because everyone and their grandmothers is a shadowdancer, including kobolds). However, the number of times I have been able to roleplay my bluff and get rewarded for it have been.. well it's never happened yet. This means, that even in events, Saya's social skill has proved itself to be a waste of skill points.

I believe Draco's solution is the most fair we can get to solving the first part of the problem (shit skill rolled versus highly sought after skill), to be perfectly honest. At the same time, while we cannot allow anyone and everyone to just randomly harass people with bluffs / persuade / intimidate rolls, I think we should have the DMs acknowledge these skills more often when it comes to events. Not by requiring people roll these all the time, but simply by perhaps trying to recognize when a character has these skills and let the NPC react to those (I've tried to scam / lie in events before to sly my way to avoiding a fight or solve a problem, and I either got ignored, or automatically failed and the event ended up with fighting the npc anyway).

Persuade is a bastardized version of Diplomacy as there is no "persuade" skill in dnd but rather a diplomacy one that does the same thing and more.
Diplomacy can only be used on nonplayer characters, not players. So.... no counterroll is ever needed for that one and it can't be used to influence PCs. It CAN however freely be used to do so if both players agree to it, but it's never going to be enforced as a thing one way or another. it does however have it's uses in DM events more often than people might realize because DMs sometimes do hidden rolls. (we can see your character sheet and skill investments :mrgreen:

)

Bluff is countered by sense motive, which isn't a skill we have in NWN so it's pretty much up to the player if they find it believable or not or want to counter roll with another wis based skill like listen or spot or something, and it's why spot or listen have been chosen by so many people. There is no sense motive skill to counter it, which is why it's not unfair for people to roll either spot or listen for it, especially considering how powerful sense motive can be in pnp and that a large number of players would likely heavily invest in the skill for the benefits it can give. HOWEVER by rolling bluff as a player against another player, you're shooting yourself in the foot because whatever you said would likely be far more believable WITHOUT the bluff roll (which is why hidden rolls are a thing in pnp or DM events) and instead have the skill be represented in how they talk/present themselves or lie to people. Yeah it sucks but that kind of unintentional metagaming isn't really something you can work around or assume people are always doing if they don't believe the bluff, which would open up a can of worms on player vs player accusations of metagaming and it's not just a conjecture that it would happen. It has happened far too many times in the past, which is why I recommend never rolling bluff against other players but instead using the skill as a guideline to your own character or exclusively rolling it in DM events (or having the DM do a hidden bluff roll in a DM event if you don't want people to know your character has a ton of bluff for whatever reason). It's for the same reason that I also recommend having the character name listed on your character be the one they go by outside of when they are in disguise, as people might meta that as well without intending to, which can lead to conflicts and arguments.

Intimidate is counter rolled by 1d20+HD+Wismod+Savesbonus to fear (This includes universal will saves btw not just vs fear specifically as universal saves also raise saves vs fear) Which is why it's one of the stronger skills if you're going with the bonus as you can easily raise it beyond anything anyone can ever roll ever, as the highest possible counterroll on a "viable" build for someone to make on Amia is 20+30+16+20 = 86 and you can boost the intimidate skill above that with 33 skill investment, 50 intimidate on gear and +12 cha gear (+6 intimidate) for a total of 89. As such I'd say it's up to each individual player to counterroll or react on intimidate stuff. Especially since intimidate mirrors diplomacy in a lot of ways and are generally only used to shift an NPCs attitude to friendly for a limited amount of time. Players don't have attitude categories and as such wouldn't be affected the same way and it'd be left up to each player to decide how they want to react. Some might be intimidated into silence or to not aggravate the intimidator( flight instinct), others might stand their ground or become violent if they feel sufficiently threatened (fight instinct).

As has been stated in the past, the DM team doesn't officially police rolls like this or enforce people make those rolls or make the counter rolls, and as such one player can't force another to make a roll or counter roll, it's up to each player individually to choose how they want to deal with it. Grapple is a good example of this, as it's on the widget but the rolls for grapple & counter grapple aren't actually accurate and doesn't represent the system properly or in it's entirety, and that has caused issues in the past when someone demanded you make a countergrapple roll and the other party demanded it be done properly as per PnP rules. Sometimes people make the rolls, and that's great, other times they don't, and that's fine too. To take one side or another in how it should be treated is bound to create conflict or discontent with X numbers of players as not everyone is on the same page here, and as such rolls aren't enforced outside of DM events where DMs say so and I don't think that attitude is going to change because it's not really needed and wouldn't enrich the server. Either you enjoy rolls and the potential they bring (and those that do generally build for it) and then use it, others don't and don't build for it.

People that want to use rolls all the time, even if they don't build for it, are completely free to do so. But it's never going to be something that's forced upon a player by a DM or allowed to be forced upon one player by another UNLESS it's with specific DM oversight for a particular/unique situation and/or related to an event of some sort where the DM has been using/enforcing rolls when people try something or have been using hidden rolls without players knowledge. How someone deals with your social skill rolls or grapple rolls are entirely up to them.

I personally never roll Bluff/Persuade/etc when just dealing with other PCs. And I only roll Bluff/Persuade/etc with NPCs when a DM asks me to. This is because of everything Grave said above, and I agree with the way this works on our server.

Don't roll your bluff skill and announce that it's a lie. Just use your words and take your skill into account to help you RP it. And when someone feels like you might be lying and someone asks you for a Bluff roll, you hit them with that 80 Bluff. Or give them a cheeky grin with your 12 Bluff.

Lies and persuasion work best without inadvertent OOC metagaming. Make me believe it with your RP, not your dice bag, but save the dice bag for DM events where you may need it.

Speaking more personally here than as a DM...
Try not to use your rolls like a bludgeon. It's annoying to established players and highly discouraging to new players that don't know what's going on. A roll here and there to establish your character is good at what he does and is saying the best possible version of it is fine, but clubbing people over the head with a roll every single time you say something is not fun in the slightest.

When people do not start metagaming by fidning out who you are, no matter how you dressed, by just looking at the name over your head, is already good thing. As I lately found out that many tend to ignore the disguse completely and go strait to "finding out" who you are no matter what, even if they have no IC reasons to do that, only cause your character has certain name flowing over the head.

Yin wrote:

When people do not start metagaming by fidning out who you are, no matter how you dressed, by just looking at the name over your head, is already good thing. As I lately found out that many tend to ignore the disguse completely and go strait to "finding out" who you are no matter what, even if they have no IC reasons to do that, only cause your character has certain name flowing over the head.

I honestly think that happens more because... How does one make clear that it /is/ in fact a disguise, not simply a new outfit?

EDIT: To be fair, I usually default to: "If they wear a helmet or a hood, and do not wear their go-to outfit, my Characters are gonna at least take a moment to recognize them, if at all"

Yeah, I've been on both ends of this, personally. And it's a tough call. There are so few people who actually use disguises, and the ones that do... Well, you usually wouldn't expect them to. And it's much the same with Alter Self. Honestly, that's a widget I almost wish I could get back, because it doesn't really lend itself to the environment of amia. Hell, I'm still salty about the deal that got Mez fucked, and it's related to this, I'm pretty sure. But I don't think it's done maliciously, and even calling it carelessly is a stretch. But it's just a tging that, given the floaty name and lack of other features that define people in NWN, it's hard to tell whether you'd recognise people.

In real life, I can generally tell my friends apart from small details. Their height, skin color, hair color, and general body shape, perhaos some recognition of voice, cell phone, maybe even the way they walk and hold their bodies all play into account when I see people. Even if I can't see their faces, I can generally tell people apart from another. Even easier when they talk.
Now, what do we have in NWN? Lots of people like helmets/hoods. Which often means, at best, we can tell by their outfits. Yeah, the bio exists too, but there's a lot of people with somewhat ambiguous bios, or even a blank one, and others with bios so long, I find it hard to remember them. That leads to the lazy human mind going "has floaty name, isn't wearing really weird armor; it's that person". And as soon as you say "Oh, hi [name]", correcting them is awkward.

Honestly, I don't think there's a good way to do it without, like you would have in PnP, a DM with all the information, but regulating the flood of it, to tailor each PC to what they would know.

Well, disguises are a completely different matter. Anytime I've mistakenly recognized someone in a disguise, it's been because I can't just know that that person isn't wearing what they normally wear. I generally don't zoom in and look (or care to look) at what a person wears. I stay zoomed out and barely pay attention to that. But I always amend it if I'm notified about the mistake. It's the same thing I have to deal with whenever I play Mary and she's not in her usual form. Before her name change to Illunamaeryx, she was called Rook. Sooo many people greeted her with "Hey, Rook!" even though she'd never introduced herself as Rook. But I know that's an easy mistake. Remembering everyone's quirks is a nightmare!

It's not always obvious to both parties that one is wearing a disguise one encounter, and not the next. Especially when it comes to IC talking behind someone's back. Usually, since it's IC, it's fine, but in cases of mistaken identity, the mixup is hard to resolve.

Take this example: We have on person, I'll call them Steve, in a disguise, with a very loud mouth about how fun it is to hunt hin, especially since they can't run as fast with their short legs. A few days later, Steve, out of his disguise, wants to befriend people in the Dale. After Steve leaves, people talk about things. Peter, who didn't get the fact that Steve was in a disguise the first time around, says that Steve is an evil man, and how he likes to hunt hin for sport. People believe Peter, because why wouldn't they?
At this point, the damage is done. Maybe, after a while of frustration why people suddenly hate him, Steven might find out that someone said he liked to hunt hin. But by now, from being a friendly encounter, people will be sceptical, and want him to prove that he's not evil.

Peter wasn't malicious. In this specific example, he was just too dim-witted to understand that disguises are a thing. And yet, a character's... character is called into question, over a stupid mistake.

The whole "rook" deal, I even see as a bit different. As someone who actually writes down the names of people he meets, people like that -really- annoy me. It can hardly be my job to tell you that the characters haven't met, for example.
And that's a mistake is is rather easy to fix. It doesn't rely on you recognising that someone is in a disguise, it relies on you literally reading the server rules and adhering to them. That exact, specific example is written in there.

I don't think it's quite fair to get annoyed that people don't remember everything perfectly. "I know I've met you, but I forgot that you introduced yourself as Mary instead of Rook." Everyone I ever nudged about the mistake immediately corrected themselves because it is easy to forget. And I know when I forget, I don't mean to.

But it's up to you if you get annoyed, I suppose. xD I just think we all need to work together a bit to mitigate the awkwardness these situations create.

On that front I will also state that the notion that people will tend to wear something that has an inclination to be used as a disguise half the time and roleplay as if it is obvious whom that person is in others.

A perfect example is hoods/helmets. A good number of people will use a helmet/hood as an item to conceal one's identities whilst another group will act as if whom that person is, is relatively obvious.

it's not exactly a set in stone thing that people HAVE to roleplay that one using a helmet equates to their identity is masked. Therefore it is easy to confuse one situation as the other and/or vice versa.

As for the persuade/bluff social contexts speaking from personal experience and personal witness I have seen many an occasion where a persuade/bluff skill has altered the path an event has a tendency to lean towards.

The issue with persuade/bluff in NWN is the same issue that it has in DnD that whether a roll fail or succeeds can win victory over a conversation regardless what is said.

So one could say: "my ass is green so the wall needs to be painted green" and despite any logic to the statement if the roll can succeed than it passes by all technicality.

Which is why Amia for the most part survives off the principle that if you want to convince someone to do something actually make a logical arguement and attempt a viable persuasion.

That being said this situation alone gives the DM the ability to go for or ignore your promotion towards a certain intent. The use that persuade/bluff has in this scenario is to further persuade the notion that your argument path is the one best traveled.

So in a gist you still need to give a viable reason, but persuade/bluff do already give the added benefit of making it more likely that what you are trying to talk someone into in an event (an NPC) will succeed.

However like most everything else I also believe that if you willingly handicap yourself for RP-flair than OOC mechanics should not be manipulated to balance the fact that you decided inentionally to cripple your character as to ascertain dramatic RP effect.

So if you make that choice willingly to cripple your characters build for RP-flair, you should very well live with the consequences of that decision. As you loose mechanical ability in favor of RP utility.

Which in this case: You loose viable use of skills that are particularly useful on a mechanical level in favor of persuade/bluff which are useful and viable in a Roleplay utility level.

Which given the notion of checks and balances in builds? Seems like a fair trade in my personal opinion.

Angelis96 wrote:

However like most everything else I also believe that if you willingly handicap yourself for RP-flair than OOC mechanics should not be manipulated to balance the fact that you decided inentionally to cripple your character as to ascertain dramatic RP effect.

So if you make that choice willingly to cripple your characters build for RP-flair, you should very well live with the consequences of that decision. As you loose mechanical ability in favor of RP utility.

Which in this case: You loose viable use of skills that are particularly useful on a mechanical level in favor of persuade/bluff which are useful and viable in a Roleplay utility level.

Which given the notion of checks and balances in builds? Seems like a fair trade in my personal opinion.

Except, no, it's not happening. In several events I've been and tried to derail said event through bluffing, the result has invariably ended up the exact same initial route, with varying degrees of ignoring. Which is why I opened up my thread in the conversation section - to try and find something that would in fact make this trade "fair". Because right now, despite what you say, it isn't.

Someone going for bluff / persuade cripples their characters for the sake of RP presentation, but get absolutely nothing in return. All the while, many suggest "let's ignore these and just RP it out!", aka "I can do everything as good without investing in the skills" and no DM's challenging them on it. To me, that is a clear indicator that something is wrong with these skills - it is not enforced, it is not recognized. The idea that it is also not encouraged to take these skills is, to me, a pretty big problem considering Amia is supposed to be a RP server and these skills are meant for RP (since they provide jackshit mechanically).

Again, that is why I opened my thread - I am trying to see if we can all collectively find something to make these skills have a use. Not a godlike-level of use (like listen / hide+move silently skills and such), but just some use / perk given. Something minor, yet noticeable that would NOT require haks nor scripting. When/if we find something like that, I'll open up a thread here to suggest it as an improvement to Amia.

By the way, I am -absolutely- not advocating for DMs to start asking for bluff/persuade rolls left and right, nor am I implying players should be allowed to use them against other players.

Two other quick things to mind, first, different people always experience different things. There's cases where I've played somewhat frequently, and was in game quite a lot of my possible time, and I didn't see certain DMs, or even players online, like -ever-. And yet, those people, in some cases, were the most active in a certain time zone. Just not mine.
That alone means that you're likely to experience a certain style of events, by a certain set of DMs. Add that to the fact that even though Amia is weird with their characters and who they tolerate, a feytouched, isn't something that people are likely to trust that quickly. (I don't want to go in detail too much, but I don't feel like the 'Amia is weird anyway' argument flies...)

The second problem is another. Unless I am mistaken about the abilities DMs have, they can see what your skills are. Even without you rolling. So, even though you might not have ever rolled, it doesn't mean your bluff never made a difference.

I'll try to convey this as best I can. There are different sorts of events. Depending on your character, or playstyle you might not see every kind. Let's use large server event's in which a gold flavor tag is broadcast, and everyone alts out to an appropriate character and runs toward the action. These quests are generally combat oriented and meant for the entire population. No one gets turned down. These are usually chain events...so yes, the outcome to a certain point might loosely follow a script. After all, a DM poured hours into generating unique NPC'S with fleshed out details and personality, areas, bosses, loot...ect. These are most likely not going to end with one persons conversation skills. It would be boring for everyone else.
Then you have faction quests. Generally a smaller group and context sensitive to the RP of that faction. Conversation skills are often allowed to determine the outcome. It doesn't effect most of the server's weekend afternoon.
Requested, personal quests. The DM's often give you liberty at how you want to handle things, as this is your show.
So while some nifty stuff can be added to make NPC's more utilized with these skills, and it would be cool, I don't think it's as much of an issue as it seems.
I might be off the mark a little, but I hope it helps clarify the position the DM's are in when it comes to determining whether or not something should be viable.

NWN's Limitation and Social Skills

Who is online