Charm Anything
The social interactions that take place within RPGs are, at best, questionably plausible. You see it most commonly with Bluff attempts, resulting in something I’ve termed the “RPG lie.” This is a special class of lie that no one in the real world could possibly believe. Within the world of dice and DM screens, however, these are often just dumb enough to work. It’s stuff like this:
“Who goes there?”
“I’m a goblin guard just like you. I started this morning.”
** rolls a nat 20 **
“Wow. You look an awful lot like one of those elf rangers to me. Meh. Nobody’s perfect. Carry on then.”
These lies range from the implausible (“I’m the real king! He’s an impostor!”) to the bald-faced (“You can read, can’t you? The ID says John Fakename. That’s me.”) to the utterly bizarre (e.g. the epic of Sir Bearington). But as weird as the lies can get, there is nothing stranger than the seducto-mancer. Most often bards, these arch-sluts respond to adversity by sleeping with it. They’ll max some kind of Diplomacy score, roll impossibly high, and pillow talk the lich/orc warlord/dragon of the week out of their evil plot. It’s amusing the first couple of times, but the wise GM will bring the banhammer down swiftly. After all, donkey is not an acceptable player race.
So how about it? What’s your best just-crazy-enough-to-work act of diplomancy?
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One of our players in our latest pathfinder campaign, when the GM specifically forbade Glibness as a spell, took it upon himself to raise his Bluff score as high as possible.
Turns out you can get that Bluff score impossibly high quite quickly, with a Sorcerer Raksasha bloodline and some rogue levels. His +47 blew away the -20 “impossible lie” penalty. Thank Eshsalqua he didn’t abuse it, but there were several situations where we pushed him in front of the intelligent enemy and let him talk his way out of our conflict.
He never ended up taking the rogue talent that let others who believed his lies use his bluff score when spreading them. Otherwise by the rules he could have walked up to the high chancellor, said “I am the real king, the one on the throne is an imposter”, and conquered the kingdom within the week.
Dr. Colin recommends a heaping spoonful of, “Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion).” Of course, being medicine, that stuff tends not to go down to well, and certainly isn’t any fun.
So, in a past run of Rise of the Runelords (Anniversary Edition) we had a run in with a disciple of a runelord (I think it was necromancy) that was pretty much living forever. He asked what was going on. However our party was stumped, they tried to tell said of current events but he was not pleased. Then Turlug steps up, quick note: Turlug is an idiotic, hulking, and ditzy buffon. He is the only character that has not died throughout this entire campaign. So he remembers a character that another person had that used future tech. So he steps up and starts talking with said disciple, disciple loves it, Turlug and Disciple of Necromancy start having a conversation like best buds, Turlug has no idea what he just did.
“Turlug suggest you ionize the dorsal impulse collector casing. Otherwise, entire biogenic laser spinner could destabilize.”
“Especially the 80’s” BECAUSE 80’s was the best decade EVAR! WOOO
1980s dragon keeps an unconventional hoard: https://helentowrieillustration.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/d4.png
I’m pretty sure donkey would be a perfectly acceptable with my GM. We’ve had a hooloovoo and a “warrior-thief crescent roll” whose profession was mage.
I miss the warrior-thief crescent roll. He retired at the end of a campaign because his pastry wife had a bun in the oven.
I’m sure that the character was able to rise to the occasion. It was the yeast he could do.
Also, I choose to believe that you were playing “Big Eyes, Small Mouth,” or possibly “Toon.”
Believe it or not, it’s a homebrew AD&D. We have a player who keeps trying to break the homebrew system, and a DM who thinks this is an endless source of entertainment. He made the guy cast with the no-hands penalty the whole campaign, plus he had to research and constantly keep a “protection from filth” spell on himself or suffer a penalty from all the dirt/gunk that stuck to his dough.
“I Am Bread” the RPG.
(And on the off chance you’re not familiar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tlvrd6gt7Vg)
I had a face-rogue in the 5th ed. beta, and we were doing some campaign in a big city. And my character bore a passable resemblance to some child from an ancient family that was annihilated when my character was a child. And he had a signet ring and a jacked up Bluff skill (at level 1, no less). He’d B.S. his way around the city, and as soon as there was trouble, he’d ask to speak to the guy in charge, and tell them that he was the son of Lord Whatshisname, and he was the rightful heir to a massive fortune, that he would be willing to share with anyone who would help him reclaim it. It was basically a giant Nigerian prince scam, and more than once, he frequently used it to talk people out of their gold, weapons, and magic items.
Oh that had to come back and bite him at some point. People demanding their pay, trying to use his family ties for political purposes, sending assassins to make sure this “ancient family” didn’t reclaim the throne….
We were in a small town when the local guard found us (we were wanted for an act of terrorism… Not completely our fault mind you…).
To cover our escape, our magus of questionable alignment lot the stables on fire so they wouldn’t be able to follow easily. We spotted a covered wagon near by, but there were two guards at the gate. A lightbulb went off in my head.
I told everyone to hop in and my character started pulling the wagon as fast as he could.
When they shouted “HALT!”, my character quickly responded with “THIS WAGON’S FULL OF GUNPOWDER! HELP ME GET IT OUTSIDE OF THE GATES BEFORE IT CATCHES FIRE!”
The roll was a success and the two guards helped him get it up to speed. Only after did they have time to wonder why he wasn’t stopping.
Some say that wagon is still rolling even to this day…
*clatter clatter*
…and the guards believe it.
Not really an act of diplomacy, but our bard insulted a goat, in goat, despite not speaking goat. Shame they never use their skills to help. Anything that requires talking usually requires one of us forcefully removing the bard from the room.
Your bard should learn to harness his powers for good. I’ve got just the feat for him: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/antagonize
My human War Cleric, rocking 11 Charisma and with +0 to all of her social skills, managed to befriend a Beholder. We were exploring a wizard’s tower, looking for a powerful Ioun stone we wanted to borrow (really!). The wizard rejected my offer to trade a use of Rod of Awesome Magical Vacation (Rod of Security) for borrowing the stone, but he did USE the Rod, so I took that as agreeing to the deal.
In his lab was a beholder mixing up chemicals, and it was surprised when we walked in, hiding its work. Initiative was rolled and I go first, but I’m not in a fighting mood this session. Instead, I start talking to the Beholder. Her name is Poozer’na, and she’s not supposed to be in here, but neither are we. I apologize and tell he we are just looking for an item the wizard agreed we could borrow (true, in my eyes) and took a wrong turn.
She asked where the wizard was. I told her (again truthfully) that he was “on vacation.” This incensed the Beholder. “On vacation? Without ME? I’M HIS GIRLFRIEND!” I sympathized with her. Men, right? One lucky diplomacy check later, and she’s leading us through the tower to find the item.
We get to the vault, which is built in a ring. She said we should split up and meet back at the middle. We find the stone first, but the wizard is back and he is ready to fight us. I urge the party not to kill him, but the party Barbarian promptly tears him in half. Thinking quickly, we grab the stone, and I stuff the wizard’s body in a box, casting Glyph of Warding on it with Raise Dead as the stored spell. The condition for activation is one hour elapsing.
We head back out of the particular vault room and meet up with Poozy. We explain that we found the stone, and that it is unfortunate that we can’t stay but our business is very important. Poozy seems sad, so on the way out I offer to be her pen pal.
Throughout the rest of the campaign, we write to each other regularly, and she even helped us out again near the end.
Good times all around. =)
Holy crap… I hope my players don’t find this comment. They’ve got a rod of security too, and they’d monetize the crap out of their Rod of Awesome Magical Vacation if the thought ever occurred to them.
I recall a time when Doctor Asklepio, my middle-aged medical man, had to roll Bluff against his own Sense Motive to convince himself that he liked his Half-Giant nurse cohort’s dog schnitzel. He aced the bluff check, of course, despite his usual iron will.
Nothing on those other guys above, but still a fun time. 😀
lol. Is Doctor Asklepio perchance a psion? Because it sounds like the dude has mastered the art of autohypnosis.
Aha, no he’s a god-hating Cleric (also that super-serious guy from my other comment). Luckily 3.5 Clerics can be easily reflavored as non-magic in comparison to their Pathfinder fellows, as much as I usually prefer Pathfinder.
Wait… never mind, he’d have pretty easily been a Vivisectionist/Chirurgeon Alchemist in Pathfinder. With levels in Vigilante, knowing him. And point-buy because MAN did I roll poorly on stats. I had to use the age rules just to turn him into an acceptable healer.
Once I was playing a Gargoyle Rogue, wonderfully cheesy and minmaxed to hell and back, but playing it like an actual rogue, sneaking around and not fighting people (despite having a DEX of 6 and a STR of 24) using the gargoyle’s natural bonus to hide while standing still. So I was sneaking into a bandit camp, just freezing any time I heard anyone coming. Finally, I walk around a corner, nearly running straight into a bandit. We both stare at each other for a second. I say; “This isn’t real. Your friends spiked your drink.” Natural 20 on Bluff. The moment stretches, I wonder if my GM is going to strangle me, or just have him not believe me anyway. The bandit turns around. “I think I need to lie down for a while.” He walks away.
In that moment, I don’t think it was the bandit talking.
GM: “I think I need to lie down for a while.”
It just occurred to me that there might be an undercurrent of “If you amuse me I’ll allow it” in these situations. Should that lie have worked? Probably not. Is it funny? Depending on your delivery, it can be freaking hilarious. GMs want their games to be awesome, and if you’re funny enough that it improves the quality of play, you can get away with murder.
I remember a Dtd 40k 7th ed. game I ran. One of my players was playing a Dryad werewolf. She managed to charm two orks (think warhammer orks) into a drinking competition with tranquilizer… Even though the rest of the party was in a great brawl with their allies in the same room.
Another character was a techpriest. Somehow every device he spoke to tried to commit suicide. Good times.
I have that power in real life. Pity me.
Love the Dryad example. I’ve seen it a time or two in play myself, and there’s nothing goofier than half the party talking while the other half continues to punch dudes.
I’ve got three examples, two from the same player (all in different games tho’).
First one was in an Exalted game. We were sky pirates and had accidentally wandered into Autouchthon. Not a lot of the ‘sky’ part going on there, but that hardly dissuaded our circle from piracy. Found ourselves in one city renown for its thaumaturgalogical research university at the center, and needed a way into the secured research lab at its center.
So instead of doing something logical like have the Night Caste sneak in or something, the Twilight Caste flagged down a passing student, and asked if he could borrow the student’s shoe for an experiment. Student said why not, he was curious.
The Twilight Caste proceeded to throw the shoe at one of the guards he needed to get past, and then pointed at the missing-a-shoe student and said
“he did it” to get the guards to chase after the guy and away from their posts.
Shockingly, it worked. Somehow.
Second example was the same player in a Carrion Crown campaign. In Broken Moon the party pretty quickly figured out that – in spite of what the guests and staff of the hunting lodge claim – the woods are full of werewolves, and it’d be best to keep the guests out of the goddamned woods.
So while the (actual werewolf, who’d been born in these woods) ranger PC was playing forest guide to the wealthy nobles, the vampire PC shaped into a Wolf, being ridden by the Soulbound Doll PC, both hidden vaguely under a sheet, ended up jumping in when the wood’s werewolves showed up to tear the NPCs apart, and proceeded to mainly use the ‘Hand of the Apprentice’ to throw a Bane Humanoid (Shapechanger) at the werewolves to scare them off.
When the nobles afterwards were all ‘what the heck was that thing throwing knives at the werewolves?’ the party made up this ridiculous series of lies about how that was a ‘ghost werewolf’ and how ghost werewolves are well known to look like wolves under sheets and attack by throwing daggers at creatures. Their bluff checks weren’t exactly so abysmal they failed (the Bluff checks were too good for that) but the Lodge’s guests didn’t really buy the story until later when the module’s actual werewolf ghost started attacking visitors.
Best part was the PCs didn’t even know about the ghost werewolf waiting in the wings, ‘ghost wolf’ was just the first place their brains went.
Final one was from a Marvel Superheroes campaign. About… 50% homebrew, the players had stumbled upon an A.I.M. base and decided to infiltrate it. One of the players in question was actually a former A.I.M. scientist who left after he found himself ‘volunteered’ to be the test subject for an extremely risky procedure. In the PCs case it did give him powers, but the near-death bit made him sour on the whole ‘mercenary mad scientist’ thing.
Anyways, his past experience with A.I.M. and matter creation power (which let him literally magic up an A.I.M. uniform out of thin air) meant that he was the one selected to sneak in.
It was mostly working, until I asked the PC for an Intuition check to detect a sneaky person. PC failed. Then I asked for a roll to generally be unobtrusive and move like he belonged. Sort of a hybrid bluff and acting roll. The player succeeded this role… but tied with the superpowered security guard A.I.M. had hired, the same individual they’d failed to spot earlier.
So Deadpool dropped down on them out of the rafters.
Deadpool hadn’t actually rolled high enough to beat the acting roll, but he’d tied, so I figured something the PC had done was unknowingly either unusual or attention getting for Deadpool.
Still, it’s Deadpool. So of course when he drops down the first thing he starts doing is making jokes, breaking the fourth wall, and being generally ridiculous.
The PCs basically decide that at this point infiltration is already screwed, so they just need to distract Deadpool for a moment and catch him flat-footed before the fight starts.
And then we get to the player’s idea. He looked me dead in the eye and said “[Sightless-Raiton], I am not saying this in character. My next sentence is out of character only. . . Look Wade, it’s Mickey Mouse! Right behind you!”
…It was too brilliant, so I let it work, but before Deadpool turned away in-character I had him say something about “You son of a bitch” before he was distracted.
Either way the distraction worked, but it sticks in my head as a particularly clever way to talk oneself into advantage.
One of the foremost reasons that one of my first rules as a DM is that there is no “critical success” on Skill Checks.
Some things are just impossible, and should remain such.
But that’s not fair! Mine is the drill that will pierce the heavens! WHY CAN’T I TRY TO SEDUCE THE CATFISH!?