fixing Diplomacy (PEACH)

[Orion]

As many of you know, I've been tinkering with a superhero system for quite some time (see my sig), and I've recently run up against the Diplomacy problem. I know others have taken a good whack at the problem and I'd love to see what they've come up with (toss up a link if you feel like it!), but here's my preliminary attempt. Tell me what you think.

Diplomacy
(Cha, Use Untrained)
You can change the attitudes of others (non-player characters) with a successful Diplomacy check. 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. To resolve a Diplomacy check, you must make an opposed test, either Diplomacy vs. Diplomacy, or Diplomacy vs. a modified level check (d20 + HD/level + Wisdom modifier). The defender can choose between these two options.

Consult the table below to see how much you influence someone using Diplomacy based on how well you rolled on your opposed test. Look down the left-hand column for the defender's current attitude, and then read along the row to find the DC for the check. The numbers are listed as "+X," where "X" is the defender's total roll. To shift someone from Hostile to Unfriendly, for example, would require that you win the opposed test by 10 points (i.e., "+10"). To shift someone all the way from Unfriendly to Fanatic would require that you win the opposed test by 120 points.

Initial Attitude  Hostile       Unfriendly    Indifferent   Friendly     Helpful      Fanatic
Hostile               -                +10           +20          +30          +50           +150
Unfriendly           -20              -              +10         +20          +40           +120
Indifferent         -30              -20           -             +10          +30            +90
Friendly             -40             -30           -20             -           +20            +60
Helpful               -60             -50           -40            -30           -              +50
Fanatic              -150           -120          -90            -60          -50              -

Note, also, that if you lose a Diplomacy test by a significantly large number, you can make shift someone's attitude into the negative, as well. If you were to attempt a Diplomacy check against an Indifferent person and lose by 10 point, you could make that person

Changing someone's attitude with Diplomacy takes a full minute (10 consecutive full-round actions). You can make a rushed Diplomacy attempt as a full-round action, but you take a -10 circumstance penalty.

You can attempt to retry Diplomacy, but the attempt has a -20 check. Either the subject is already as convinced as she's going to be, or he has gotten wise to your attempt at fast-talk and is even more entrenched in his position.

So what I was going for, here, was a relative DC (based on opposed tests), and I added the ability to screw up so that, if you try to fast-talk someone who's far, far, far better at it than you, then you can make yourself an enemy pretty easily. I'm not entirely sure about that last idea, but I'd like to see how it plays out. Of course, all of this can be over-ruled by a GM for story reasons, but it's great as a guide-line. I'd also like to come up with some kind of duration for Diplomacy, but at the same time, it represents not some kind of magical effect, but the ability to convince someone that you're actually on their side. So if you make good on your claims, and the person you convinced doesn't independently discover that you were lying or something, then Diplomacy should last more or less forever. However, "forever" is a word I do not like to put into RPGs.

So as I said, tell me what you think, and if there's something better that's already been posted somewhere, I'd love to see it.

[SiggyDevil]

Diplomacy should never be a Save Or Die effect, or in social combat's context a "Save Or Friends".

Bard: "I'm gonna befriend the shit out of you."
NPCs: "Oh CRAP"
*friend'd*

Why use the same 1-hit social K.O. concept from d20 when you could use, say, resource depletion, or varied success (as by Exalted/WoD)?

[Jradd7]

I have a link to someone else's fix that has been around a while and is fairly good, but the site is down right now. I'll edit later with the link posted.

[Orion]

Diplomacy should never be a Save Or Die effect, or in social combat's context a "Save Or Friends".

Do you have a suggestion, then? I agree with you in principle, but I'm not sure what else to do.

[veekie]

Diplomacy should never be a Save Or Die effect, or in social combat's context a "Save Or Friends".

Bard: "I'm gonna befriend the shit out of you."
NPCs: "Oh CRAP"
*friend'd*

Befriend people with KO LASERS!

Why use the same 1-hit social K.O. concept from d20 when you could use, say, resource depletion, or varied success (as by Exalted/WoD)?

The latter is my preference, tie social combat success to degrees of the desired outcome. And the failure similarly. You'd be best off working incrementally to achieve the desired outcome over a period of many back and forths, rather than a single check, in which time the opponent similarly can bend you from your objective. If you try for too much, it could backfire on the desired outcome, or against you in general.

[RobbyPants]

I have a link to someone else's fix that has been around a while and is fairly good, but the site is down right now. I'll edit later with the link posted.

I wonder if you're thinking of Rich Burlew's Diplomacy Fix.  I really liked it.

[Nanshork]

Edit: Ninja'd.

Damn you Robby, I had just found it!   

[RobbyPants]

Buwahahaha!

[Orion]

The latter is my preference, tie social combat success to degrees of the desired outcome. And the failure similarly. You'd be best off working incrementally to achieve the desired outcome over a period of many back and forths, rather than a single check, in which time the opponent similarly can bend you from your objective. If you try for too much, it could backfire on the desired outcome, or against you in general.

I like that! Every Diplomacy check becomes a "rhetorical attack," and can move someone one space over on the table. A particularly good roll is like a "crit," it moves someone two spaces. That way, it might take a few tries to win someone over.

That said, the Burlew Fix looks pretty good, too.

[SiggyDevil]

Do you have a suggestion, then? I agree with you in principle, but I'm not sure what else to do.

Sure I do. Thought it was implied in my post, though.
I'll elaborate.

Say you have a concept of resource depletion. For instance, a video game in which your avatar has a little bar that goes down or icons that vanish when they are injured by an enemy.
When mixed with the context of "winning a social interaction", imagine that bar or health amount as the resistance an "other" puts up towards having their attitude changed.
This amount could vary by number, language, and environment of the Other, but essentially it's a resource you need to knock down to zero before you get shit done.

Now, how will you go about this? Social environments are abstract to the max.
You can't 'jump on heads' to defeat enemies, but you might be able to 'outflank' or 'stealth' your way around. Perception and Stealth, Power and Armor, different opposed values of Attack/Defense could work in a diverse setup of opposed rolls.

Rather than swords and horses the PC will be using verbal assaults. Some must be trained, some come natural.
Social attacks reduce social resistance to nothing, after which they may influence the Other temporarily and only in that context (say, change a market deal, or end a fight)

The exact number of successes for PC to win over the Other would be determined by difficulty of the situation, but IMO should be no less than 3.
More Others, greater respect on their part (and less of the PC's), and prejudice could all drive up the number of successes required to near-impossible amounts.

Social interactions would, ultimately, need to be understood by both sides before taking effect, requiring a common language between PC and Other rather than rely on physical circumstances such as distance, position, or blocked passages.
Offense vs. Defense would need to be all about Pass/Fail with multiple successes needed, almost as if each social encounter were its own little quest.

You'd have to decide the power of words over actions and , but in summation I find the 1-hit K.O. setup to be very bland and one-sided (in favor of twinked out skill monkeys, etc)

[Orion]

I decided to go with Rich's proposed fix (with a tweak or two). It takes care of most problems and it creates a situation in which it's not the PC pulling one over on an NPC. It's a mechanic to determine if, given the available information, an NPC would go for something that a PC proposes. Detecting a con or a lie is, then, relegated to Sense Motive, where it belongs.

Thanks for all your help!

[SiggyDevil]

I decided to go with Rich's proposed fix (with a tweak or two).

Eh. Good luck.
You'll need it.

[Orion]

I would still like to incorporate some kind of "condition monitor" effect into the in-combat version, but at that point, I'm basically looking at rhetorical combat rules, and I'm not sure if I'm ready to get into all of that.

[Jradd7]

I wonder if you're thinking of Rich Burlew's Diplomacy Fix.  I really liked it.

Yes, that's the one. Great fix, overall. I would tweak it a bit, too but definitely great work.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

I have a link to someone else's fix that has been around a while and is fairly good, but the site is down right now. I'll edit later with the link posted.

I wonder if you're thinking of Rich Burlew's Diplomacy Fix.  I really liked it.

Really?  I hate it.

A level 20 wizard can't convince his level 20 cleric wife to pass the salt.

[JaronK]

An easy solution is to say that diplomacy lets you have the other person treat you as though you were that for the duration of what you're trying to do only, but their overall attitude only changes in response to how you behave towards them.  For example, you could use diplomacy while trying to convince an ogre not to eat you.  If you make the Ogre friendly, it will only eat you if it would do so to a friend (which is quite possible for a hungry ogre!).  However, this doesn't make the ogre permanently your friend... it just doesn't eat you right now (probably!).

Meanwhile, Fanatic should grant a save (10+1/2 Character level + Charisma mod).

JaronK

[SiggyDevil]

Really?  I hate it.

A level 20 wizard can't convince his level 20 cleric wife to pass the salt.

CONVERSATION BROKEN
Dinner... lost!

I'm thinking that the Emotion spell (3.0, I can't remember what it became in 3.5) effects would do nicely as repercussions and bonuses granted by social combat.
For instance, once a PC defeats another character's resistance, they could (depending on the social method) assign a buff or debuff of an appropriate Emotion until the character rests again.
For instance, Intimidate would cause Fear or Rage.
Diplomacy would cause Crushing Despair (if an agenda has failed for one side) or Good Hope (if agreement is met, or won)

[Orion]

A level 20 wizard can't convince his level 20 cleric wife to pass the salt.

If an NPC is already disposed to help you, then why bother with the check? As Rich explains, the point is that he wanted a mechanic for those situations where it could go either way. Asking someone to pass the salt and rolling Diplomacy is like asking for an attack roll to sheath your sword. Technically, you have to nail the opening on your scabbard or else you'll stab yourself in the kidneys, but does the game really benefit? Not so much. I actually really like his rule patch because it doesn't create a nigh permanent loyalty in a single roll. It adjudicates a specific negotiation, which is far more in-line with what I think of as "Diplomacy."

Now, as SiggyDevil says, if you're going to use it a lot, especially in combat, then you'd want to make some kind of a defence against it or make it not a "save or agree" effect, but that's potentially outside of the scope of what most people (GMs in particular) are looking for with that skill.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

I was just giving it as an example where the alternate rules break down in a stupid manner. 

If there's no reason to bother with the check when an NPC is already disposed to help you, why bother with quantifying relationship modifiers below -5?  Or risk/reward modifiers below -0?

If the DCs given are unobtainable for situations where they should work (IE: one would that expect asking your wife/husband to do something trivial like pass the salt would be pretty much guaranteed by any sane rules), why should I trust the mechanics to work in any situations beyond trivial?  It doesn't pass basic sanity checks to begin with.

"I have a more specific problem with these rules: Let's say I walk up to someone and offer to trade them my very nice castle for the piece of strings they're carrying. And there's absolutely no strings attached here (ho ho) -- the castle isn't haunted, I don't secretly know that the string is a magical artifact of incredible power, etc.

For some reason, the wiser and more powerful the character I'm talking to is, the less likely I am to convince them to take this stellar deal I'm offering."


Basically, if common sense says the request should be automatically a success, then the rules need for the character to succeed a check by taking 10.   You know, the mechanic that was put in place to deal with those sorts of things?  Sheathing your sword is equivalent to taking 10 most of the time - if you, I dunno, were being rushed through an underground river at 20 m/s with no lights, heavy turbulence, and rapid changes in direction, I'd make you roll to sheath your sword without impaling your kidney.

[RobbyPants]

Really?  I hate it.

A level 20 wizard can't convince his level 20 cleric wife to pass the salt.

It models marriage perfectly!

In all seriousness though, Rich said that he was trying to make this to work off people who are really trying to use Diplomacy, not make an untrained check.  So, insead of a wizard, using someone with Cha as a good skill and Diplomacy as a class skill would make a better comparison.

So the base DC is 15 + level + Wis mod, so the 20th level cleric has a base DC of 35 + Wis mod.  Now, if we assume the husband has an equal Cha to the cleric's Wis, then you can factor those two out of the opposed check.  The DC is lowered by 20, both -10 for an intimate relationship and -10 for low risk, bringing the base all the way down to 15 (+Wis).

So, the husband only needs to pull off a 14 (+Cha) to succeed.  Someone with max ranks and an equal Cha score to her Wis would be able to auto-succeed at level 11.

Now, I'm assuming you picked the wizard so he wouldn't have Diplomacy as a class skill or Cha as a good stat to model the weakness of the system.  In this case, he's not good at Diplomacy, so we wouldn't expect the wizard to succeed at any level-appropriate cases.  Although, not all things need to be modeled with the dice.  Asking your wife to pass the salt shouldn't require a check.

"I have a more specific problem with these rules: Let's say I walk up to someone and offer to trade them my very nice castle for the piece of strings they're carrying. And there's absolutely no strings attached here (ho ho) -- the castle isn't haunted, I don't secretly know that the string is a magical artifact of incredible power, etc.

For some reason, the wiser and more powerful the character I'm talking to is, the less likely I am to convince them to take this stellar deal I'm offering."


Basically, if common sense says the request should be automatically a success, then the rules need for the character to succeed a check by taking 10.   You know, the mechanic that was put in place to deal with those sorts of things?  Sheathing your sword is equivalent to taking 10 most of the time - if you, I dunno, were being rushed through an underground river at 20 m/s with no lights, heavy turbulence, and rapid changes in direction, I'd make you roll to sheath your sword without impaling your kidney.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the point of the system.  I don't really bother with Diplomcay rolls unless I as a DM am unsure of the result.

For example: if a PC goes to a merchant to do some trading, I assume they can sell stuff at market cost without making any kind of a check.  They can try to haggle the guy down a bit, and Diplomacy (or Intimadate or Bluff) seems like a good way to handle this; so long as their request is reasonable.  The more they're trying to get the merchant to budge, the higher the DC.  At some point, they're going to ask for too much, and the merchant simply won't cave in.  It's at this point, that I wouldn't let the check succeed.

So, bascially, I use the skill when the PCs might succeed.  If I feel success or failure is certain, then there's no point in rolling.