Tacgnol9001's page

Thanks everyone for your suggestions, they are extremely helpful.

I think ultimately I'll give people plenty of warning if they are heading in a direction that seems as though it might require a skill check, maybe give opportunities for face characters to jump in.

I'll probably also use a mixture of circumstantial bonuses where appropriate, such as when a character may have expert knowledge or has used a particularly good line of argument.

I also like the idea of allowing characters to use non-social skills in certain contexts during a conversation.

Hm, I understand your issue.

It's a matter on how you phrase things when speaking to NPCs.
If they're talking about an issue and the non diplomatic PC has a question, and the NPC refuses to answer, the diplomatic PC could take the lead and rephrase the question in a more diplomatic way.

This won't affect the roll, and everyone is able to participate.

If you give skill points for everyone, the diplomatic one might feel his efforts are not rewarded, after all she might have spent quite a bit on buffing diplomacy to no avail, when everyone else is getting it for free.
I believe PC should be able to contribute to the conversation, but if they don't have diplomacy they shouldn't be demanding things. They will bring new ideas to the conversation that the Lead can use.
It creates a more dynamic conversation

Yes good points.

I like the suggestion about allowing another PC to rephrase a question/statement. A lot of games I've been part of the GM forces the character that made a statement to immediately roll the skill check. Allowing another character to jump in and make the skill check allows people to contribute but also allows for "face" characters to feel valuable.

Hey all,

I'm going to be running a Hell's Vengeance game soon and I was hoping to get some advice on an issue I've seen in quite a lot of games.

Often I find characters without social skills (intimidate, bluff or diplomacy) are often reluctant to get involved in dialogue as they fear being forced into a skill check they will likely fail. The result is often one or two players hogging the majority of social/talking encounters despite other players wanting to take part but being scared to.

I was considering a few different approaches:

1. Roll intimidate, bluff and diplomacy checks in secret and give players large circumstantial bonuses if they say something that chimes especially well with the NPC. My biggest concern with this is whether it would damage player agency, it also has the ability to invalidate certain class abilities like inspiration.

2. Treat group social skills as communal, so if a diplomacy check is required the highest diplomacy check in the group would be rolled. This is often an approach you see in CRPGs, but I'm not sure it translates very well to the tabletop.

3. Give every character some extra skill points per level to spend purely on social skills, so every character has a social niche they can fill. Biggest downside here is probably giving certain characters too many skill points, but that may not be the end of the world.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Does the tatterman's fear aura ability work from the nightmare creature template rules:

All creatures within a 60-foot radius that see or hear a nightmare creature must succeed at a Will save or be shaken for as long as they are within the aura. Whether or not the save is successful, that creature cannot be affected again by the same nightmare creature’s fear aura for 24 hours. This is a mind-affecting fear affect.

Or does it work based on the universal monster rules:

Fear Aura (Su) The use of this ability is a free action. The aura can freeze an opponent (as in the case of a mummy's despair) or function like the fear spell. Other effects are possible. A fear aura is an area effect. The descriptive text gives the size and kind of the area.

The former seems more logical (and also fairer, considering the fight is already quite hard), but confirmation would be nice.

Yeah, the wording certainly doesn't make things clear.

It's the kind of thing that could be solved very easily with a minor change as well.

Hopefully someone can shed some light on how Lesser Restoration works in regards to sanity healing and lesser madness reduction.

On the Sanity Rules it states:

A single casting of lesser restoration reduces sanity damage by 1d2 points up to once per day;

Further down it states:

Certain spells can also aid in recovery from madnesses or cure them outright. Lesser restoration has no effect on greater madnesses, but reduces the current DC of one lesser madness afflicting the target by 2, up to once per day.

My question is, do we get both effects from a single cast? It seems unclear due to how it is written and how lesser restoration normally works. I'm assuming the intent is you get both from a single cast.