Diplomacy to prevent combat

[Mark Hoover]

So, last game I entered a bit of a quandry and I'm looking for advice for when it comes up again. One of my players has a LG male human paladin(Iomedae) 1 with a skill focus on Diplomacy. The opening fight scene of the entire campaign I had a trio of custom fey descend from a tree to claim a corpse they were guarding. The Gravesworn Piskies (re-skinned sprites with the Simple: Giant template applied) led off coming out of the shadows of a rainy night and demanded the corpse as they used their powers to weaken one of the characters.

Long story boring, when he could finally act the Paladin PC took a full-round action to use Diplomacy and attempt to talk the creatures down. He rolled really well getting a 26 exactly - technically enough to lower them from Hostile to Unfriendly. However, since the fey and another party member had already begun combat I basically had one of them turn to the paladin and say "We have no quarrel with YOU tall one; but we will make mincemeat of any who stand in our way!" and had them continue the fight. The party ended up winning anyway, but it got me thinking: Is this the right way to handle such a check? I'm open to any advice on how to handle when a player wants to use Diplomacy to defuse a combat, especially when said combat is under way.

[Democratus]

It takes a full minute of Diplomacy to shift the attitude of an NPC. So a full round action is not sufficient.

Furthermore. The rules state: "Diplomacy is generally ineffective in combat and against creatures that intend to harm you or your allies in the immediate future."

So I think that once the fight starts you are outside the purview of diplomacy to stop things.

[BzAli]

You were actually being overly kind.

From the diplomacy description:

Diplomacy is generally ineffective in combat and against creatures that intend to harm you or your allies in the immediate future.

and futher on:

Influence Attitude: Using Diplomacy to influence a creature's attitude takes 1 minute of continuous interaction.
Make Request: Making a request of a creature takes 1 or more rounds of interaction, depending upon the complexity of the request.
Gather Information: Using Diplomacy to gather information takes 1d4 hours of work, searching for rumors and informants.

Edit: Ninja'ed by another user with an orange-bearded avatar. :)

[Mapleswitch]

Doesn't combat grant an immediate -5 to any diplomacy rolls?

[Lawful Evil GM]

this is why bluff is better

[Akerlof]

This is the kind of situation where you'll want to work with your player and also decide for yourself just how powerful you want the skill to be.

As written, this kind of thing flat out won't work: It takes a minute and can't be done in combat, also you only shift attitudes by 1 step and can only try once a day. If you follow the basic principle of DC 25+Cha plus maybe a static penalty to shift attitudes in combat, you open yourself to having one character dominate your campaign since he'll eventually auto bypass any encounter where he gets a chance to talk.

I would suggest a couple things:

1.) There are some enemies that, for whatever reason, are just going to fight. No matter how good the roll, no matter how good the reasoning, they're going to attack your PCs. (Conversely, there should be some that really, really don't want to fight.)

2.) Talk with your player and come up with a way to let him use diplomacy to talk people down without giving him a path to completely dominating the game. Something like 25 + CR + Cha + Modifier for starting attitude (10 for hostile, 5 for unfriendly, down to -10 for helpful) + Modifier based on the enemy CR verses party APL (CR+2 = 0, CR+3 = +5, CR=APL = -5, etc) plus situational bonuses (In the enemy's stronghold = +10, in your own stronghold = -10) Give him a chance to potentially end the fight if he rolls really, really well. I would also force him to roleplay out (or at least give good reasons) the follow up, along with making rolls, don't have your bad guys surrender unless you think they'd be convinced by the argument. Otherwise he loses a round. Make sure your other players are OK with that.

Think of it this way: If a barbarian can one shot the BBEG by critting on a 19 or 20 if he rolls better than average damage, that's no more disruptive than the paladin talking the BBEG into surrendering on a 19 or 20 if he can follow up with good logic and rolls. The difference being, the BBEG surrendering can lead into other, interesting situations (just biding his time until the odds are in his favor, the good guys having to deal with rescue attempts, the opportunity to gain information, etc.)

I like to let characters do what their players build them to do. But I also want to ensure that they don't prevent other characters from doing their thing on a regular basis, and a diplomancer can effectively remove combat characters from the game if you allow them to end combats based on a static DC.