What differentiates NPC's from monsters?
You can attempt to reason with an NPC.
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Sometimes the NPCs are monsters. Sometimes the monsters are NPCs.
Big difference is when they're supposed to fight the PCs and die:
Monsters gain their AC by having lots of natural armor, NPCs need to wear armor, which the PCs can then sell. ^^
But seriously, as was already mentioned, there's not much difference. Usually, those character under the GM's control that belong to PC races are called NPCs while anything else is called a monster.
Also, NPCs can be friendly persons the PCs interact with and get information from, while monsters only rarely fit that role.
My issue is with the diplomacy skill. It says you can use it to make requests of an NPC with an attitude of indifferent or better. So this means if anything is an NPC, then as long as your character is an awesome diplomat, then you can change the attitude of the demilich to indifferent and then make another roll to ask it a favor, such as please stop your evil scheme. This seems ridiculous to me. However, if everything else is not an NPC and rather many things are monsters, and you can only use diplomacy this way on NPC's, then the problem has been alleviated
My issue is with the diplomacy skill. It says you can use it to make requests of an NPC with an attitude of indifferent or better. So this means if anything is an NPC, then as long as your character is an awesome diplomat, then you can change the attitude of the demilich to indifferent and then make another roll to ask it a favor, such as please stop your evil scheme. This seems ridiculous to me. However, if everything else is not an NPC and rather many things are monsters, and you can only use diplomacy this way on NPC's, then the problem has been alleviated
I've always thought by RAW diplomacy was pretty OP. The DC is incredibly low as well, as I've seen people pushing 30+ by level 7 or 8, which is an automake for nearly any diplomacy check. I just solve it by not letting them talk the bbeg whose spent 20 years plotting this plan to be talked out of it with a check, he'll just nicely kill you now.
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What differentiates NPC's from monsters?
Nothing at all.
Here's the important part:
Some requests automatically fail if the request goes against the creature's values or its nature, subject to GM discretion.
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Monsters are NPC's. An NPC is any character that is not a PC.
Diplomacy is not some non-magical version of mind control.
1. It takes some time.
"Action: Using Diplomacy to influence a creature's attitude takes 1 minute of continuous interaction. Making a request of a creature takes 1 or more rounds of interaction, depending upon the complexity of the request."
Also:
" A creature's attitude cannot be shifted more than two steps up in this way,...."
In addition:
"You cannot use Diplomacy to influence a given creature's attitude more than once in a 24-hour period. "
So if they are hostile you can at best get them to Indifferent, and for evil creatures that just means they don't dislike you. It does not mean they won't kill you.
Even if you get them to friendly that is their "attitude towards you", not the nature of your relationship with them, so while it might make them more inclined to listen to you, it does not make them your buddy. An evil person might not kill a real friend if they can help it, but you are not on that level yet, and since they are evil, even being a friend does not make you safe.
My personal situation was a bit more reasonable, but it still seemed like they were stretching diplomacy. Basically one of the party members dropped and another was grappled, the other 2 were fighting the good fight. They were all mythic hasted. The grappled pc got a plane shift off and went to one of the upper planes. Being mythic hasted and having a ridiculous move speed, he tracked an angel down in like 6 rounds. He then rolled a diplomacy 50 on it and asked him to not only take him back to the exact location of his friends, but then to resurrect his fallen compadre. That use of diplomacy just substituted for a rather large chunk of gold. What are everyone's thoughts, legit?
My personal situation was a bit more reasonable, but it still seemed like they were stretching diplomacy. Basically one of the party members dropped and another was grappled, the other 2 were fighting the good fight. They were all mythic hasted. The grappled pc got a plane shift off and went to one of the upper planes. Being mythic hasted and having a ridiculous move speed, he tracked an angel down in like 6 rounds. He then rolled a diplomacy 50 on it and asked him to not only take him back to the exact location of his friends, but then to resurrect his fallen compadre. That use of diplomacy just substituted for a rather large chunk of gold. What are everyone's thoughts, legit?
Planes are really big, and finding an angel is one thing, but finding a specific angel type is something else altogether. Even with him being fast (let's say 140 ft normal speed) he is not going to get that lucky, expect by GM Fiat.
In addition he needs at least one minute to make the check, and at least another round to make the request so that is 11 rounds for the diplomacy section alone before he even find the angel, so no it was not legit.
Tier 3 mythic haste actually brought his movement to 100ft, plus grants an additional move, so with a double move his speed was 300ft per round. The 1 minute diplomacy didn't matter cuz the fight was over by the time he got back, it was just the free resurrection that I was questioning. Although I think yur right, I should have rolled randomly to see which angel he found. But even so, with his speed that high, do you think he found an angel to easily?
300 feet is only the length of one football field. He would still need a long time to find a specific angel. That is still only 35 miles per hour, which is fast for running, but not searching an a plane. That would still not likely work in a small city, assuming celestials build cities. I would have had him roll for it.
Then you have to factor in that higher level angels likely have duties they attend to, and are not just walking/flying around doing nothing all day long. In addition that angel still needs the material component for the spell since it is not an SLA so he also had to talk the angel out of the money or go buy the component for the spell.
edit: My number crunching is only to show that teleporting to a metropolis would have likely been faster.
I did roll for it. Off the top of my head I gave him a generous 20% chance he would he within a half mile of a settlement, which he made. I wound up giving him an angel that agreed to it if they would donate 10,000gp to an orphanage within 1 week. The reason I came here to ask advice is because they were trying to talk me into haveing done it for free, which I thought was absurd, but I wanted to make sure
Also, they're playing wrath of the righteous so with such a high diplomacy and the fact that theyre fighting demons, I let the angel show sympathy for their cause, which is why I told them to donate the money that the spell would cost and plane shifted for free. Now since conversing here I am even more certain that their request was ridiculous, but the question that remains, givin all the info now, do you think I handled it ok or could it have been done better?
It is hard to handle sudden request like that sometimes so I understand your position.
I agree the "free" argument was nonsensical for a spell that cost that much money to cast.
I would rolled for a chance of an angel above CR X to even be in the settlement. Then if there was I would let him find the angel after making a diplomacy check to gather information.
If not he could ask where he could likely find such as angel and starting running again, but moving at double speed for extended periods of time is exhausting so some of that time would be normal speed.
There I go rambling again. You did ok under the circumstances, but I would make it more difficult to find the angel next time.
PS: I think the 20% was too high, and making then take a lot of time to find the angel keeps plane shift from invalidating the planar ally spells, which gets you an outsider much quicker than 1d4 hours + other circumstances.
Yur right, I thought 20% was way to much as well. If it comes up again I'm going to roll a d100. That will be how many miles they appear from a settlement, and they will have to come up with a way to find it still
Since they are on another plane they might need a knowledge plane check to know where they are on the plane.
PS: You should roll the d100 behind the screen.
An NPC is any character controlled by the GM.
A monster is an evil or mindless character.
Some NPCs are monsters. So are some PCs.
