Social Skills
Dec 24, 2015 21:32:24 GMT
Post by Tweek on Dec 24, 2015 21:32:24 GMT
It's kind of a struggle to deal with social skills (Bluff, Intimidate and Persuade) in Neverwinter Nights since Bioware did not see fit to implement Sense Motive. Historically we had people rolling Concentration checks to oppose these skills, probably just because of the word "Concentration" - it doesn't make much sense given that it's Constitution-based. Recently we've had people rolling Listen or Spot since they are Wisdom-based, but that's still pretty unsatisfying; they're not social skills in the slightest and have entirely non-social uses. Moving forward, we're going to provide two options to roll opposed social skill checks.
UPDATE: For simplicity's sake, I added an "Opposed Social Skill" dicebag option. It will automatically determine what your best social skill option is (either it'll get your bluff/intimidate/persuade skill, whatever's highest, or it'll use Option 2 described below). Please choose this option to roll against bluff/intimidate/persuade checks.
Option 1: Roll any social skill as an opposed check to another social skill
At first this sounds strange for a number of reasons. These aren't wisdom-based, and it's unusual to think about rolling a bluff check in response to an intimidate check. Here's how we see it though.
Charisma is the determinant for a character's force of personality, and also their ability to empathize. Your force of personality includes your self-confidence and your ability to be socially-swayed. Empathy at its core is being able to understand other people. An evil charismatic character doesn't have to act on this empathy, but at the very least they can understand where the other person is coming from and use that to their advantage. For these reasons, we feel it's a great ability score to determine both a character's ability to be swayed, and also their ability to read others.
When using a social skill to oppose a check, it's no longer the use of that skill directly. You aren't intimidating your way out of being lied to. Instead it represents your character's familiarity with social situations and reading others. Someone with good social training is going to have a better idea of whether or not someone is actually intimidating, or if they're just puffing up. They're going to know what to look for if someone's skirting the truth, and can recognize whether or not someone is speaking with followable conviction.
Option 2: Roll our new homebrew "Sense Motive" check
For an intuitive character who is not socially trained, we still want to provide a Wisdom-based alternative. This will manifest in the form of a new dicebag option that is:
Will Save + Wisdom Modifier
Saving throws are at a disadvantage when it comes to opposing skill checks but essentially doubling Wisdom's impact on the save can give socially-untrained perceptive characters a way to deal with social situations. It's not something you can invest in, but it's a metric of your character's raw intuition and general perceptiveness.
Outcomes of Social Skill Rolls
While there's nothing we can hard enforce about character reactions to social skill rolls, we strongly encourage being at least slightly swayed in the event that your character fails against a social skill check. Against NPCs, this usually shows up as changes in changes in attitude (more info here). It's impossible for the opposer to dictate exactly how your character would react, but there should probably be some influence on their behavior.
Failing against a bluff check means you have no reason to doubt what was said unless faced with an obscenely outlandish lie.
Failing against an intimidate check means that your character should be shaken in some (potentially small) way.
Failing against a persuade check means that your character should be more amenable to an idea that was put forth, so long as that idea is not diametrically opposed to your character's beliefs.
UPDATE: For simplicity's sake, I added an "Opposed Social Skill" dicebag option. It will automatically determine what your best social skill option is (either it'll get your bluff/intimidate/persuade skill, whatever's highest, or it'll use Option 2 described below). Please choose this option to roll against bluff/intimidate/persuade checks.
Option 1: Roll any social skill as an opposed check to another social skill
At first this sounds strange for a number of reasons. These aren't wisdom-based, and it's unusual to think about rolling a bluff check in response to an intimidate check. Here's how we see it though.
Charisma is the determinant for a character's force of personality, and also their ability to empathize. Your force of personality includes your self-confidence and your ability to be socially-swayed. Empathy at its core is being able to understand other people. An evil charismatic character doesn't have to act on this empathy, but at the very least they can understand where the other person is coming from and use that to their advantage. For these reasons, we feel it's a great ability score to determine both a character's ability to be swayed, and also their ability to read others.
When using a social skill to oppose a check, it's no longer the use of that skill directly. You aren't intimidating your way out of being lied to. Instead it represents your character's familiarity with social situations and reading others. Someone with good social training is going to have a better idea of whether or not someone is actually intimidating, or if they're just puffing up. They're going to know what to look for if someone's skirting the truth, and can recognize whether or not someone is speaking with followable conviction.
Option 2: Roll our new homebrew "Sense Motive" check
For an intuitive character who is not socially trained, we still want to provide a Wisdom-based alternative. This will manifest in the form of a new dicebag option that is:
Will Save + Wisdom Modifier
Saving throws are at a disadvantage when it comes to opposing skill checks but essentially doubling Wisdom's impact on the save can give socially-untrained perceptive characters a way to deal with social situations. It's not something you can invest in, but it's a metric of your character's raw intuition and general perceptiveness.
Outcomes of Social Skill Rolls
While there's nothing we can hard enforce about character reactions to social skill rolls, we strongly encourage being at least slightly swayed in the event that your character fails against a social skill check. Against NPCs, this usually shows up as changes in changes in attitude (more info here). It's impossible for the opposer to dictate exactly how your character would react, but there should probably be some influence on their behavior.
Failing against a bluff check means you have no reason to doubt what was said unless faced with an obscenely outlandish lie.
Failing against an intimidate check means that your character should be shaken in some (potentially small) way.
Failing against a persuade check means that your character should be more amenable to an idea that was put forth, so long as that idea is not diametrically opposed to your character's beliefs.