Quote from: Benoist;513642You fail at understanding what I am saying, beejazz.

You claim context's importance for the analysis of rules. I don't totally disagree.

But context is claimed in defense of specific rules unfairly again and again. A DM shouldn't have to build a campaign around a character who can talk down literally any hostile foe. Sauron is an extreme example. Sub in the phrase "any hostile foe" and try it on for size.

It's an extreme case that points out holes in the rule. Uncontroversial holes that most people have a problem with. Or rather have "fixed" by using some other ruling. For example:
1) RAW diplomacy doesn't include roleplaying in the DC, when instead it should be central (see again: bluff as a comparison case).
2) There's a cap on DCs in the RAW, which can be surpassed in skill ranks trivially.
3) Sauron is used as the example both because it is game-disruptive and because people probably have the impression that higher level NPCs should be tougher to convince in their games.

The fact that the DM makes rulings is taken into account. But if there is a rule that is frequently overruled, maybe the common DM rulings are more valid than the rule as written.

My main point is that assuming the party will never have a conversation with the villain, that there will always be deadlines or wandering monsters, or that you're going to have 4+ fights per day are all assumptions. Assumptions that are often not borne out in the context of real play. Same as any other spherical cows.

Then there's the fact that rules issues aren't obvious. It's obvious that the gnome giant hunter is for your giant campaign (there you go). It's obvious that the 12d6 weapon should be left out. It's not obvious that toughness won't make you tough, and isn't really for any particular circumstance ever. It's not obvious that diplomacy offers a method for defeating foes with no scaling difficulty ever. Assuming that the DM will resolve conflicts at the table and run a cool session is fine. Assuming system mastery to fix the game makes the game shit for new players.

There are those who shine a spotlight on ridiculous edge cases, yes. Pun-pun isn't showing some core failing of the game. The find city nuke is a dumb combo technicality. No one actually wants to play as a psychic sandwich. But that doesn't mean that you can't read the rules and say "well... looks like these are shit and don't do what they are intended to do" on the basis of the rules themselves now and again.

Treat diplomacy DC as guideline rather then ironclad rule.

WHOAH WORLD DISAPPEARS.

Then again I agree that the presentation of the rule is broken in the game. But it's same to presume that in Warhammer 1e, you can persuade everyone to anything, because it's just the test of Fellowship, rather then the GM should consider proper modifiers

QuoteThe main problem with the fighter is that it doesn't have anything to do outside of combat. Give him the option to sneak and notice things and be diplomatic and the class would be fine. You're still going to have to deal with the bad math of the 3e system, but you can work around that. If the fighter had six skill points per level and the Weapon Focus line didn't suck so much, I'd be completely fine with the class as-is, even if did wind up weaker than the spellcasters. (Although the feats in the 3.5 PHB desperately need rebalancing.)

Fighter is John Galt.

Quote from: beejazz;513668It's an extreme case that points out holes in the rule. Uncontroversial holes that most people have a problem with. Or rather have "fixed" by using some other ruling. For example:

Extreme cases are where the whole argument breaks down.  They're meant to be a reduction ad absurdum which reveals the faults in a rule when applied to their logical extreme.

The problem here is that:

1) Absurd problems are easy to deal with - they are obviously absurd, you can expect agreement that there is a problem which needs overuling at the table.

2) Extreme situations usually require extreme effort to become actual in game situations.  4E has similar problems with Intimidate which can be completely broken at high enough levels of optimization.  Yet I'm relaxed about it because:  it would need both players who are madly and obviously optimizing; and collusion on my part to give them the correct magic items.  (The real problem for newbie DMs, I feel, is to feed them the expectation that they can always trust the rules.)

A rule is more a problem when it doesn't work in the situations in which it is most likely to be used.  This is what needs to be demonstrated.

Quote from: B.T.;513666They weren't my goalposts to begin with, but the point is that Sauron should be ruthlessly implacable and hateful.  He should be unable to be reasoned with because he is the embodiment of evil who desires to rule over Middle Earth with the free people enslaved to his will.  Diplomacy should automatically fail against him in all circumstances.

To use Sauron in a 3e game, you have to stat him up.

Sauron as a monster, 3e style writeup:

Implacable Will. (Ex) Sauron is wholly dedicated to his own goals and desires. No one, not even Iluvatar, can dissuade him from his goals. Sauron is immune to Diplomacy checks and all spells, spell-like abilities, and extraordinary abilities which act in a similar manner.

(Rough first draft, and I haven't looked at 3e rules in 6 years or so, but that's the essential idea. If this particular being needs to be immune, make them immune. That's why monsters have abilities, to tailor them within the mechanics of the game.)

EDIT: Also, this isn't meant as a defense of the Diplomacy skill rules. Just an explanation of how to use the extant mechanics of the game to model a monster that can't be Diplomatisized.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;513672To use Sauron in a 3e game, you have to stat him up.

Sauron as a monster, 3e style writeup:

Implacable Will. (Ex) Sauron is wholly dedicated to his own goals and desires. No one, not even Iluvatar, can dissuade him from his goals. Sauron is immune to Diplomacy checks and all spells, spell-like abilities, and extraordinary abilities which act in a similar manner.

(Rough first draft, and I haven't looked at 3e rules in 6 years or so, but that's the essential idea. If this particular being needs to be immune, make them immune. That's why monsters have abilities, to tailor them within the mechanics of the game.)

EDIT: Also, this isn't meant as a defense of the Diplomacy skill rules. Just an explanation of how to use the extant mechanics of the game to model a monster that can't be Diplomatisized.

I thought of that earlier.  However this is basically the same as the DM simply ruling that "you fail".  It just has the added factor of "here's something I prepared earlier".

Of course if you have a real dick player it might help shut them up, but if a player believes you are making things up on the spot purely to spite them, then you have a real world diplomacy problem.

Quote from: Dog Quixote;513673I thought of that earlier.  However this is basically the same as the DM simply ruling that "you fail".

Then so are all the monster abilities which grant immunities. Like Elf immunities to Sleep spells and the like.

Which doesn't make them invalid or bad. Those are perfectly valid abilities which exist for a good reason.

Like I said, I wasn't defending the Diplomacy rules. Just pointing out that, if you have one specific monster who needs to be immune to Diplomacy checks, they can be and it's well within the rules.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;513675Then so are all the monster abilities which grant immunities. Like Elf immunities to Sleep spells and the like.

Which doesn't make them invalid or bad. Those are perfectly valid abilities which exist for a good reason.

Like I said, I wasn't defending the Diplomacy rules. Just pointing out that, if you have one specific monster who needs to be immune to Diplomacy checks, they can be and it's well within the rules.

Yes.  Which is why it was a poor example for trying to demonstrate the Diplomacy rules are broken.  

Now if you have to apply that immunity to every monster when dealing with a non corner case twinked out character then you really do have a problem (but you're example should be an Orc Chief, rather than Sauron).

I can't remember well enough how Diplomacy worked in 3E to say if that is the case or not, but the example of Frodo vs Sauron doesn't really illustrate anything.

(Or if Diplomacy is both a big enough part of the game, and hard enough to fix to make a real fuss about, I doubt it's anything like at the same level as overpowered wizards.)

Quote from: Dog Quixote;513677I can't remember well enough how Diplomacy worked in 3E to say if that is the case or not, but the example of Frodo vs Sauron doesn't really illustrate anything.

That I agree with. If there is an underlying problem, this specific case is a useless formulation of it.

"Explain the problem better", I would say to people advancing this example.

(And, while I haven't looked at the 3e rules in 6-ish years, the Diplomacy skill may well have problems. Which using Bluff as a guideline could well fix. I refuse to have an opinion, because I lack the necessary information. Strange, I know, especially on the Internet. But there it is.)

Well, I whipped up the "Epic Levels Handbook" (which I actually bought because it is really fun to read, never used it) and it says that:

"Diplomacy can turn someone into a Fanatic" (if you make a supercheck). Once someone is "Fanatic", the Diplomacy skill will not influence him anymore.

Couldn't we just say that Sauron is Fanatic about himself and move on?

(Real world examples abound: I think that mentioning Hitler here doesn't violate Goodwin Law).

Still, Frodo von Bismarck is an epic name & concept for a halfing character.

Quote from: Reckall;513679Well, I whipped up the "Epic Levels Handbook" (which I actually bought because it is really fun to read, never used it) and it says that:

"Diplomacy can turn someone into a Fanatic" (if you make a supercheck). Once someone is "Fanatic", the Diplomacy skill will not influence him anymore.

Couldn't we just say that Sauron is Fanatic about himself and move on?

(Real world examples abound: I think that mentioning Hitler here doesn't violate Goodwin Law).

For you, it's Mussolini.

Quote from: Rincewind1;513296Perhaps this is a money problem. The "old schoolers" had grown up, they have about 30 - 50 years now. They have their own money, as they work, and they can spend it on the hobby. The age that 4e was marketted - the 15 - 25 range, are people who are mostly at school & college/university etc. etc. People who are too busy either educating themselves, or usually making it in small jobs, to have money to spend on frivolities such as RPG books.

It's true that us old grognards have way more money to spend on RPGs than do the newbies in their late teens/early twenties.  OTOH as a 4e GM, at my game table I do quite like looking out over a sea of attractive young ladies, new players attracted to 4e - a sea of crusty old grognards would not be so nice.

Quote from: Ladybird;513593"The game" isn't what you buy when you buy an RPG book, though; what you buy is the rules. If the rules aren't functional, then the product that you have bought isn't functional.

Sure. But that's a silly strawman of what Benoist is actually saying.

If we take this in the context of what Benoist is actually saying, what you're saying here boils down to, "If Toon doesn't work for a gritty cyberpunk campaign, then it's a completely nonfunctional product."

Quote from: beejazz;513615That covers the absence of a rule. Not a bad rule.

Rules that exist should still be held to certain standards.

The pertinent question, however, is: What standard?

Claiming that a rule is completely worthless because it breaks under extreme hypothetical circumstances that 99% of the people playing the game will never see at their gaming table... well, ok. But does it really matter?

This was, IMO, WotC's biggest miscalculation with 4E: They enacted radical revisions of their ruleset in order to fix problems that the vast majority of their players were not experiencing.

It's not that the problems weren't real. It's that the problems were roughly the equivalent of saying, "Huh. The rules for Monopoly don't really work if the board is laid out in a straight line instead of in a loop." I mean, it's true. It just doesn't matter to the vast majority of Monopoly players. In fact, it probably wouldn't matter to them even if the Monopoly community was made up of people who spent a lot of time making and playing on customized boards.

People like Trollman think that 3.5 and Pathfinder players are all just self-deluded masochists. But the reality is that they just don't play Monopoly on linear boards.

Quote from: Reckall;513659Re: Diplomacy. I agree that it is an example to a rule that, took to its extreme, is broken. Without molesting Sauron, does anyone think that having +50 in Diplomacy will steer a Forgite from his delusions? I guess not, and I agree that a DM that allows that is a sign of a broken DM, not of a broken rule (since all rules, soon or late, break up).

To return to an earlier point, however: Where, exactly, is the rule useful then?

The entire structure of Diplomacy in 3E is "make a skill check against a flat DC to permanently modify an NPC's relationship with you". Once you've said "well, that's stupid and the DM should never let that happen", what guidance or utility is the rule providing?

Zilch. That's why it's a craptacular rule.

I obviously agree with you that rules that only break down under unlikely and extreme conditions are not inherently problematic. But Diplomacy isn't like that. Partly because you can get broken results from a PC who just drops a skill point into it every level. Mostly because the rules don't actually provide utility at any level. The mechanic is fundamentally broken at a conceptual level.

Quote from: One Horse Town;513629If you can quote some that no-one in the ether disagrees with, then i'll concede the point.

3E Diplomacy is actually a pretty good example. The only defense I've ever heard for it was some variation of "no decent DM would ever use those rules". Even two_fishes is just using a variant on that theme.

Quote from: two_fishes;513637

QuoteAt which point, you can take a -10 penalty to make a Diplomacy check as a full-round action and turn Sauron from hostile to indifferent (DC 25) fairly easily.

Shouldn't a talented and trained diplomat be able to soothe his enemies, especially if he's using magic to help him? This doesn't sound horrible to me, at this point. If a player is spending his resources to be good at diplomacy, he should be good at it.

I'm not sure you're fully appreciating what this means: It means that your PCs will never fight a battle against intelligent foes again. It is, quite literally, the ultimate "win button".

And that's before your relatively low-level PCs can automatically start turning gods and demi-gods into helpful or even fanatic allies. (How could they possibly get access to gods and demi-gods? Well, you have toremember that they can automatically turn everyone else into a helpful and/or fanatical ally, too. They just have to climb the ladder.)

Quote from: StormBringer;513658Maybe set up some kind of limit and try dividing the damage by the distance or something.  For missile weapons, as range approaches zero, the formula approaches undefined (can't use missile weapons under a certain range).  For melee weapons, as range approaches 3 or 4, damage approaches 0.  Something like that.

If I'm understanding the point of the exercise correctly, I suspect the difficulty is that you then have to factor in average encounter starting distances vs. the speed at which opponents will close and the degree to which ranged combatants can attempt to control or limit that closing speed.

If you could get DMs to actually use the spotting distance rules, you could start calibrating for some of that.

(OTOH, it probably simplifies out considerably if you simply assume that ranged combatants will try to stay at range and melee combatants will try to stay in melee. As long as you don't make either state particularly "sticky", you can probably assume that enlightened self-interest and random chance will tend to even these things out.)

Quote from: xech;513514Benoist could you please explain what is your point?
You keep repeating one that judges rules should not take them out of context, over and over and over.

This is the origin of what you see in this thread:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=18653

Quote from: Justin Alexander;513586With that being said, I think the point Benoist is trying to make is that the rules are only one part of the game. Of equal importance is (a) the scenario and (b) the rulings made by the GM (because RPGs are inherently open-ended game structures).

And yet neither (a) nor (b) are important to assess the coherence of a rules system. See thread linked above.

As for Frank looking at 'the rules' in total isolation of a social context, his critique (and remedy) of the SR matrix rules give that the lie, as does much else in his work. I have my personal ad hominem explanation for much behaviour in this thread, but I'll not contribute to dragging it down further than other people already have.

QuoteTo return to an earlier point, however: Where, exactly, is the rule useful then?

The entire structure of Diplomacy in 3E is "make a skill check against a flat DC to permanently modify an NPC's relationship with you". Once you've said "well, that's stupid and the DM should never let that happen", what guidance or utility is the rule providing?

Zilch. That's why it's a craptacular rule.

I obviously agree with you that rules that only break down under unlikely and extreme conditions are not inherently problematic. But Diplomacy isn't like that. Partly because you can get broken results from a PC who just drops a skill point into it every level. Mostly because the rules don't actually provide utility at any level. The mechanic is fundamentally broken at a conceptual level.

Which is why they probably should had printed with really big bold letters

"All the DCs are guidelines rather then ironclad rules"

Then, after peopel'd start the ridicule with Diplomantomancers, they could just say "Okay, so the guideline is flawed. Ignore".

Quote from: Windjammer;513706I have my personal ad hominem explanation for much behaviour in this thread, but I'll not contribute to dragging it down further than other people already have.

I would be very interested.

Also: the Sauron example is especially trying to provide the context that allegedly is not there.