Limits of certain skills: Bluff, Persuade and intimidate.

[Krell Himmler]

Avoiding the semantics of what versus what roll, I just want to ask, what is the limit of each skill, could one approach a corathite with a high persuade and demand conversion to Toran? What exactly are approximate limits to these skills and appropriate RP theron.

[miltonyorkcastle]

The limit is to realize that none of these skills can actually force a PC or an NPC to do something. In all cases, there is a choice, even if the character doesn't believe or see all the available choices. A high intimidate, bluff, or persuade check is never an "I win" situation. Rather, they are but one set of means to accomplish a goal. Because one character cannot know the beliefs and experiences of another, you can never truly predict how another character will respond to your attempts to bluff, persuade, or intimidate.

Unfortunately, there is no hard ceiling for what will work and what won't, for the very reason that each character and situation is unique. Listing out every probable scenario and trying to determine realizeable boundaries is, for all practical purposes, impossible. You'll have to rely on common sense, respect for your fellow player, and a sense of story. If you and the other party involved cannot come upon an agreement (i.e. "My character has a silver tongue, he can persuade your character to lick his own shoe." "Whatever, my character would never lick his shoe, no matter how persuasive another character is."), you may want to end the encounter to save OOC feelings and OOC arguments. It may not be the best IC way to handle it, but neither is trying to force something IC that another player doesn't agree to OOC. The best thing is to try and find another creative way to address the issue, instead of relying on your skill modifiers, which already have a hard time representing the abstract concepts they're meant to quantify.

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

And just to make matters worse, unless your a mouse facing an elephant, you will never be able to intimidate a dragon in to fleeing from you in terror when it wants to eat your entire city (unless you HAPPEN to be a WELL known Dragon Slayer, at which point the Dragon is either There for teh express purpose of killing you and is therefore NOT that scared of you, or REALLY stupid).
 
 And FYI, Elephants are not scared of mice.  They are aware it is alive, and therefore do not want to kill it.  Therefore why they avoid them

[lonnarin]

Total conversion to a god would never happen just because of one check.  If it did, the person in question wasn't a very firm believer in the faith anyway.  More practically, you could get them to concede on a point in a theocratic debate, or feel pangs of guilt for a singular action... but one single uttered sentance is hardly going to rewrie somebody's personality and faith.

Generally I save social skills only for GM quests and people I really know well who I know would respect them... since most others just ignore and metagame through the rolls outright anyhow.  Ie: Farros: Hello, I am Lord Domino... Character B: *looks up at the floaty text oocly hovering above his head* "I DOUBT that!"  Basically if I know somebody to be the type to metagame, I start messing with their heads by stating outright turths followed by a bluff check, then laugh at when they start adamantly believing in lies as a reflex action. Ie: Farros: "Oh that's Tegan, she's married and she hates it when you slap her on the tush!" *bluff*  Character B: "Oh really?  Heya hot stuff!" *slaps her tush and gets mauled by Salloran* or conversely Farros: "Hey if you keep that up, Trent's going to toss you in jail!" Character B: "Oh really?" *keeps throwing rocks at people and gets beaten down by Trent*

But still, there are plenty of opportunity to use these skills properly when you have the party cohesion of good friends and RPers that you trust by your side.  The goblins are hilarious for example, since Grovel persuades, Mangle-Or intimidates and Nonac and War Singer bluff.  Whenever Grovel gets too bossy, Mangle growls at him ferally and keeps him in check, Nonac and War Singer are blameless for everything they do except they rarely believe eachother, and Grovel is constantly calling for peace for the greater goal of goblinkind.  Then when we come across an NPC on a quest, we can do a round robin of Good cop/bad cop/bald faced liar cop on the subject.  Mangle growls at them and threatens to eaat their toes, Grovel tries to convince them its in their best interest to talk and Nonac tells him lies like we have their children held captive in a burlap sack when its really War Singer inside pretending.

When using social skills, one has to remember to keep the roll in line with the context of the attempt.  A 12 Intimidate is little more than a glare or maybe an unrealistic threat, a 43 intimidate is more like a monologue by Hannibal Lecter describing the many ways he's going to prepare your corpse before he eats you.  A 12 persuade is like a cute girl scout asking you to buy her stale cookies, a 3 persuade is when a smelly homeless drunk yells at you "HEY! Gimme a dollar, I need some food!" with 6 empty beer bottles beside him on the curb, while a 40 persuade is when the hot neighbor girl next door asks for a ride to the mall and you had a crush on her since grade school.

There will be situational modifiers to the roll as well, namely in how believable the lies are, how enticing the persuade is, how vulnerable the person is to harm or flat out how much they like you to begin with.  So if Farros tells Barion a lie like "oh forsooth, I could get that mithral weapon for half that price!" *bluff check* Barion might get +5 vs that check for knowing how much they usually sell for, another +10 for simply not liking Farros and not wanting to do buisiness with him anyways, and at least a +20 bonus if he just got an offer from somebody willing to pay more... in fact that might even outright destroy the bluff's effectiveness, because even if Barion does believe Farros could buy the mithral weapon elsewhere for less, Barion knows that somebody else is willing to buy his sword for more than what Farros is offering anyhow.  Perhaps Farros could persuade Barion to give him a deal... Farros: "Come on Barion ol buddy, ol pal.  Give your old friend uncie Farros a deal!" *persuade check*  Well Barion would likely get +10 for not liking Farros, +5 for cringing when he heard the term "uncie farros", +20 because he stands to lose out on some serious gold if he sells to Farros instead of the other buyer, and maybe another +15 if the other buyer happened to be his daughter Abigail.  So while Farros has around a +38 bluff, it really boils down to a -12 or so. On heck of a long shot.

So while social skills are the force of an attempt to influence somebody, force alone does not yeild effectiveness.  One must set the stage so to speak for the show to be truly convincing.  Bluff checks work much better and sometimes are wholley unneccessary if you have collaborators in a lie.  Like if Hrothgar nodded while Barion and Farros were bartering and said "ah yes, I saw Arkolio only charging 40,000 for one of those" and Berak, his future son in law said "40,000?  that's way expensive" Barion might lower his price a little just through peer pressure effect.  Spreading a lie by successfully bluffing other people works much to this end too... Nonac could convince Grovel and Mangle that he just saw a jabberwocky, then 3 minues later they all run up to War Singer ranting about what "they" just saw.  With three of his closest friends telling him about the beast (+15 mod), two of them honestly believing (+10) and no real reason not to believe there is a monster nearby he had never seen before, since it happens often while adventuring (+5) Nonac's getting a +30 or so to the roll vs War Singer trying to bluff him.  

How polite or impolite you are to people when you interact, how you appear to them and what your reputation is thus far from previous interactions is a huge point of focus too.  Say Earl, who hates Trent with a passion, always challenges him to fight and heckles him when he tries to enforce the law saw a vampire and ran to tell Trent.  Well, Trent hates Earl (-10), he knows that he's a toublemaker (-5), smells heavy alcohol on his breath (-10) and just last week Earl cried wolf and told him there was a hydra in the sewer and locked him inside as a prank (-20)... so with Earl's 8 charisma, he's making a roll with a -47 modifier.  Perhaps somebody else other than Earl should warn Trent!

So in conclusion, the roll itself is only a small part in gauging absolute effectiveness of a social skill.  You need to factor in all the interpersonal, situational an historical factors behind the rolls as well.

[merlin34baseball]

Um... Shiff... what in the world are you talking about?

*reads the question, reads Shiffs post... goes back to the question... rereads the response, reads Shiffs response... walks off scratching head*

[ycleption]

I agree fully with everything Milty said, but would add that rolls using the "social skills" don't have to have to be a win/lose kind of thing. A high persuade roll might not convince you to do something, but might leave you with an impression that the persuading character somehow has an intuitive understanding of you, that they really are looking after your best interests, that their arguments carry a certain weight and you may have to think about them further...

Alternatively, if you are the persuading/bluffing/intimidating party, you may make a skill roll not to actually try and let the dice force the other player, but just to give yourself an idea of how your character acts, and then emote appropriately: a high bluff roll might be "both her voice and her demeanor speak with an innocent sincerity, a genuine tear rolling down her cheek..." a  middle roll might be "he manages to keep a straight face, but a gleam lingers in his eye," while a critical failure might be "collapses in a fit of helpless laughter, barely managing to get the words out between breaths."

[The too slow typing edit]: Yeah, what lon said too.

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

Um... Shiff... what in the world are you talking about?
 
 *reads the question, reads Shiffs post... goes back to the question... rereads the response, reads Shiffs response... walks off scratching head*
 
 

 
 SHHH!!!
 
 I'm trying to drive people insane...

[Nehetsrev]

SHHH!!!
 
 I'm trying to drive people insane...

Emwonk cognates Shiff singular equals insufficient for causal cognitive dysfunction, alternate, Emwonk additionally cognates Shiff entity suffers cognitive dysfunction singular.

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

Shiff cardiovascular device beats at optimum frequency for Emwonk  *laughs*  Optimum Emotional Cognition Infinitum Emwonk!

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Lonnarin said everything I was going to say. Go Lon.

And tell them it's not Ionnarin! >/