Has anyone actually seen a "Diplomancer" in play?  Either as a DM or fellow player?

Quote from: Spike;513966I can handle it just fine. I don't want to.

Your problem in a nutshell.

Quote from: Spike;513960As a GM I sit there while one of my players repeatedly 'breaks' the game by having almost 20 points more in Spot and Listen checks than any other player. THings that can 'attempt' to sneak up on her characters are essentially invisible to every other player. Things the others can detect might as well be wearing bells as far as she's concerned.

How do the other players feel about this?

It seems that this discussion is mostly from DMs or people that are making characters without actually using them in an actual game.

I've found that players can deal with these issues among themselves.  A "Diplomancer" would not last a single session with a group of gamers that have spent just as much time optimizing their characters for combat.

Quote from: Spike;513960tl;dr: As I've said, the value of looking at the Diplomancer 'problem' is not looking for solutions for a problem that doesn't exist, its in seeing the problems that lead to diplomancer style issues in the first place clearly.

Quite so.

Allow me to quote myself in order to head off the disingenuous arguments that my position is something like "OMG Dimplomanser wins the game!  D&D is borken LOL!!eleven!!!" or that the Diplomancer is some actual case that needs to be addressed:

Quote from: StormBringer;513476Of course, no sentient or conscious DM is  going to let Frodo get anywhere near Sauron, let alone talk to  him.

I am clearly not concerned about a Diplomancer popping up in every game and ruining the fun.  The Diplomancer, like Pun-Pun, is a thought exercise that can illuminate potential problems very early on, for certain values of "problem".  It is certainly valid to just ignore the edge cases and worry about the little cracks as they come up.  You may end up chasing a dozen cracks that all have the same origin, however.

On the other hand, my argument (as Spike has perceived from my postings) is that you can look at the overall issue of unlimited DCs and unlimited modifiers and conclude there are some potential problems there, if careful attention is not paid.  The modifiers don't even have to be in the 75+ range for a problem to crop up, as Spike points out.  A mere 20 point difference means five party members are almost always getting extra damage from monster Sneak Attacks, while one party member almost never gets the extra damage.  

As he mentioned, this can cause a problem with scaling encounters, or just in setting up a reasonably challenging encounter to begin with.  Assuming the one player has even the faintest concern for her comrades, no monster can ever sneak up on them.  If that one player is absent or incapacitated, almost every monster will sneak up on them.  One player essentially makes or breaks the party.

Diplomancer isn't a realistic problem that needs to be addressed.  But the underlying arms race between unlimited bonuses and unlimited DCs that leads to this case should at least be investigated by each group.  Even if the group is not malicious or virulent min-maxers, it can have unintended consequences just from normal play.

The 3e Diplomacy skill is just fine, considering the DC equivalent for Balance allows a character to stand on a cloud.

Quote from: Rum Cove;513968Has anyone actually seen a "Diplomancer" in play?  Either as a DM or fellow player?

I had a Player attempt this, but he would step on his own dick and failed often. Common sense and good role-playing are paramount in this.

The guy would insult and denigrate the target of his diplomacy and then roll, thinking that the skill bonus trumped the actions of his character in game. He was surprised when the NPC he had just treated like total shit was not disposed to be friendly to him because of a high die roll.

The Diplomancer, like Pun-Pun, is an intellectual masturbation exercise that fails when used in Actual Play.

Quote from: StormBringer;513971But the underlying arms race between unlimited bonuses and unlimited DCs that leads to this case should at least be investigated by each group.  Even if the group is not malicious or virulent min-maxers, it can have unintended consequences just from normal play.

Which should be able to be handled by the GM. If not, the GM isn't worth a damn.

Quote from: Spike;513966Let me say it slowly then: I should not HAVE to force situations where the 'fighter pilot with Vacc Suit 6 and Pilot 0' can feel like a boss with his bad ass but otherwise probably unrolled skill.  Likewise, I shouldn't HAVE to go around making exceptions to character creation for people who wind up with an idiotic and illogical skill set like that.

Agree.  As far as I can tell, 'Vacc Suit' has about as much use as 'Business Suit'.  If you are jetting around the galaxy in a spaceship, you really ought to know how to wear one.  It would be like having an 'Eating' skill to check at every meal; "Nope, sorry, you missed your mouth at dinner, you can try again at breakfast".  If there is some emergency that requires a roll to put a Vacc Suit on, use Dex if you want to simulate quickness or Edu if you want to simulate experience.  Failure means you have a slow leak to track down, not that you blow up like a miner on Io.

Because let's face it, in some situations, "Save or Die" really is shitty.  Not all of them, but there are cases where it can end up being a real dick move.

Quote from: jeff37923;513974The Diplomancer, like Pun-Pun, is an intellectual masturbation exercise that fails when used in Actual Play.

Which is why no one has suggested that it is a problem in actual play.

QuoteWhich should be able to be handled by the GM. If not, the GM isn't worth a damn.

And the first time you sat behind the screen, you were instantly aware of every potential problem, no matter how small it was starting out, right?

Quote from: Rum Cove;513972The 3e Diplomacy skill is just fine, considering the DC equivalent for Balance allows a character to stand on a cloud.

Yes, so you are beginning to see how the problem of not capping modifiers leads to inflationary DCs, which leads to ever increasing absurdity in the results.  Diplomancer is an easy way to demonstrate this, but the underlying problem leaks into all the other skills.

Is the Diplomacy skill in 3e "broken"?  Well, depends on who you ask.

For some, they reason that Diplomacy simply can't work like that, no matter what the rules state, so they houserule it like everything else they do, and don't see the rule as "broken", because no rule anywhere has never been altered on someone's table, that's just the way the hobby rolls.  Table A uses the rule, Table B doesn't.

For some, if you can't play the game as written without houseruling it so it becomes sane, then it is obviously "broken" as it requires fixing via houserules.

The problem starts when both sides become radicalized.  

The CharOp culture is way out of control IMO, to the detriment of the industry as a whole, as well as WotC and FFG bringing their non-RPG style of rules creation to RPGs.  At the same time, being someone who has enjoyed rules-heavy crunchy systems, it's important that those crunchy rules do what they claim without me having to reverse-engineer them all to double-check.

If there are people out there with the skills and inclination to reverse-engineer the systems and double-check, more power to them.  If they could do it from a design/troubleshooting standpoint as opposed to a min/max CharOp standpoint I would prefer it, but whatever.

I like to see a system red-lined to see where it cracks, for me that is extremely useful information, regardless of its direct applicability.  However, the MMOGification of gaming culture, and the effect that has on memes which become "common knowledge" on boards like WotC's are much less useful and serve to simply obscure the useful info out there.

Quote from: StormBringer;513975Agree.  As far as I can tell, 'Vacc Suit' has about as much use as 'Business Suit'.  If you are jetting around the galaxy in a spaceship, you really ought to know how to wear one.  It would be like having an 'Eating' skill to check at every meal; "Nope, sorry, you missed your mouth at dinner, you can try again at breakfast".  If there is some emergency that requires a roll to put a Vacc Suit on, use Dex if you want to simulate quickness or Edu if you want to simulate experience.  Failure means you have a slow leak to track down, not that you blow up like a miner on Io.

Because let's face it, in some situations, "Save or Die" really is shitty.  Not all of them, but there are cases where it can end up being a real dick move.

Then you miss the possibility of using that skill to increase the immersion of your Players in what is really a different world. It doesn't always have to be "Save or Die" unless you are unimaginative and only think in binary.

Quote from: StormBringer;513976And the first time you sat behind the screen, you were instantly aware of every potential problem, no matter how small it was starting out, right?

While I am awesome in my greatness (and thank you for recognizing that), I did not have all the answers. However, even as a neophyte GM, I knew that I could solve whatever problems came up in game without throwing up my hands and screeching that the entire game is broken.

Quote from: jeff37923;513969Your problem in a nutshell.

I agree this is the problem. "I can handle it just fine. I just don't want to." It's basically abdicating the development of skill in game mastery to the game designer and forum pundit. It could be kind of sad or funny, depending on my mood, if it didn't become a trend that ends up altering entire game designs just for the sake of the theoretical argument.

So now we have game systems basically searching to make adjudication, common sense, and skill on the part of the GM really, completely moot. "I could get better at what I do, but I don't want to." No wonder then that games end up sucking ass with these marvellous games designs we've been so graciously given from on high over these last few years. Blimey, it's a wonder game systems still need GMs to operate nowadays. Hey, why not fix that, too? I can handle GMing just fine, it's just... I shoudn't have to, really...

You know, that makes me think, if such a thing as a perfect game system was ever possible to achieve, I don't think I would touch it with a ten-foot pole. I value my and other participants' skills with RPGs way too much to let a game system take charge of everything for me and my buddies at the table, thank you very much.

Quote from: CRKrueger;513978The CharOp culture is way out of control IMO, to the detriment of the industry as a whole, as well as WotC and FFG bringing their non-RPG style of rules creation to RPGs.

It is one thing to have a player cleverly discover the loop holes in a game system and another to have a player hand you a print out of forum posts declaring "this is my character"  (Sadly, this has happened to me as the DM).

This thread (and similar ones) just seems like a waste of time worrying about something outside of the actual game and more of an excuse to continue personal attacks and feuds.

To give my opinion on the original topic of this thread - I agree with Frank Trollman's misuse of the term "vaporware" when describing 5e.  4e was intentionally designed to be in a constant state of flux, the "last edition" that would have exceptions constantly amended.  No doubt, 5e will be the same with (a more reasonable goal) of having a more basic core.

Quote from: jeff37923;513973The guy would insult and denigrate the target of his diplomacy and then roll, thinking that the skill bonus trumped the actions of his character in game. He was surprised when the NPC he had just treated like total shit was not disposed to be friendly to him because of a high die roll.

He might have a high skill check, and the DC might be limited, but situational modifiers are a bitch.

Quote from: Benoist;513980I agree this is the problem. "I can handle it just fine. I just don't want to." It's basically abdicating the development of skill in game mastery to the game designer. It could be kind of sad or funny, depending on my mood, if it didn't become a trend that ends up altering entire game designs just for the sake of the theoretical argument.

I see what you're saying, but; the more the group has to patch up a game system, the less worthwhile buying the books was for them. Eventually they'll reach a point where the group would have had a better game if they'd been playing or developing a different system instead.

Take Rincewind spending ten minutes fixing the diplomacy rules and explaining the fix, from upthread; that's ten minutes of session that could have been spent in play instead. And sure, it's only ten minutes this time, but those mount up over the course of a campaign.

But the important thing is, that isn't a problem. There's nothing wrong with ditching a system that doesn't work for the group and getting something else instead.