Yup, I agree with Lemmy. This came up at the office with respect to intrigue games that have lots of Bluff, and the consensus was that the successful Bluff check at least means the NPC thinks you genuinely believe what you're saying, even if they might have other reasons to think that you are mistaken (like maybe someone else just Bluffed them with something contradictory to your Bluff and rolled even higher!)
I'm confused about where this whole "NPC thinks you genuinely believe what you're saying" thing is coming from. Bluff is pretty clear on what it does. And what it does is not make the other person think that you genuinely believe what you are saying is true. It makes the NPC believe what you are saying is true. Exactly like what bluffing does in real life.
For reference Bluff:
If you use Bluff to fool someone, with a successful check you convince your opponent that what you are saying is true. Bluff checks are modified depending upon the believability of the lie. The following modifiers are applied to the roll of the creature attempting to tell the lie. Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion).
Retry? If you fail to deceive someone, any further checks made to deceive them are made at a –10 penalty and may be impossible (GM discretion).
The target either believes your bluff. Or does not. With a sufficiently high Bluff the only way for the second to occur is via the "some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true".
But that's it. Success or Fail. And making a person only believe that "you think what you are saying is true" is a fail.
Note: The above post is just how the rules work, and should not subtract from the advice offered.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Also, even if you're fully convinced something is impossible, a successful Bluff check should at least convince the listener that the Bluffer honestly believes in what he said.Yup, I agree with Lemmy. This came up at the office with respect to intrigue games that have lots of Bluff, and the consensus was that the successful Bluff check at least means the NPC thinks you genuinely believe what you're saying, even if they might have other reasons to think that you are mistaken (like maybe someone else just Bluffed them with something contradictory to your Bluff and rolled even higher!)
But that makes Bluff completely meaningless.
PC: I bluff the guard to think I'm the royal messenger with an urgent message for the king. I rolled a 72.
GM: The guard says "Wow, you REALLY believe you're the royal messenger? Of course I don't believe you. What a dimwit. Get out of here before I have you arrested."
Or even with the simplest and most obvious case:
Poker Player #1: I bluff that I have a good hand by placing a large bet. I rolled a 72.
Power Player #2: Wow, you REALLY do believe you have a good hand. Of course, I don't believe you. So I call.
Poker Player #1: I have a queen high.
Poker Player #2: I have a pair of fives. I knew you were bluffing. I take the pot.
(yes, 72, the guy is AMAZING at bluffing)
In other words, you're saying a successful bluff CAN result in the target still believing whatever he used to believe. His beliefs are unchanged, you didn't convince him of anything. But now he also thinks you believe whatever you said. Maybe you're crazy. Maybe you're just a half-wit. Maybe you're just very mistaken. Whatever the case, he doesn't believe a word of what you said; he just knows that you believe it. If this is how it works, then there is no reason to EVER roll a Bluff check. Nothing will ever change except the NPC's opinion of your sanity, wit, or character.
This CANNOT be an acceptable way to handle Bluff.
(Yeah, yeah, I get it, a decent GM wouldn't screw his players like that - but if you even make this an optional interpretation of Bluff, it then becomes GM's option to completely negate the skill entirely, and many GM's may not recognize the fact that they're doing it.)
The way that works is if your bluff is "I have a good hand" but the other guy knows you have queen high (because he's cheating, probably), he'll think you don't understand poker.
If, on the other hand, your bluff is that there's an obscure rule that says there's a special hand called "The Queen Stands Alone" and so you won despite your hand, he'll believe that. You would get a penalty for that being silly.
If he had a poker rulebook on hand, he'd not find it and conclude that was a house rule somewhere that you used to play. You could claim his rulebook is outdated or something like that, which would be another bluff. It might lead to a diplomacy to use the "new rules" you know rather than the rules as written.
The other part to that particular bluff is that "good hand" in poker is subjective, so if your claim is good hand, he might still decide he has a chance at having a better hand. Unless you claim to have a better hand and somehow back it up with some convincing lies, that might not intimidate him.
The other thing that's hard here is that, as a social skill, Bluff acts differently for PCs and NPCs. "He seems honest" is about as much as Bluff gives NPCs when they're opposed by PCs. But I'm pretty sure that's in the rules that PCs get to choose what they believe. Just like how NPC Diplomacy can't change their opinions.
Yup, I agree with Lemmy. This came up at the office with respect to intrigue games that have lots of Bluff, and the consensus was that the successful Bluff check at least means the NPC thinks you genuinely believe what you're saying, even if they might have other reasons to think that you are mistaken (like maybe someone else just Bluffed them with something contradictory to your Bluff and rolled even higher!)I'm confused about where this whole "NPC thinks you genuinely believe what you're saying" thing is coming from. Bluff is pretty clear on what it does. And what it does is not make the other person think that you genuinely believe what you are saying is true. It makes the NPC believe what you are saying is true. Exactly like what bluffing does in real life.
I suspect it comes from the Bluff roll being opposed by the Sense Motive roll. Sense Motive detects whether the speaker thinks he is lying, not whether the speaker is right or wrong.
And that brings up a good point about Bluff. As Mark Seifter said, sometimes you know a bluff has to be wrong, no matter how sincere the bluffer sounds. Imagine my character is in Israel and a shady merchant offers to sell him a rare map to the secret location of the lost Ark of the Covenant in the mountains of Turkey. But my character was good friends with Prof. Indiana Jones and knew that the Ark had been discovered in Egypt, not Turkey. No matter how sincere the merchant acts or how much evidence he provided that the map is real, my character's Knowledge(History) will trump his Bluff roll.
Perhaps Pathfinder should have opposed Knowledge rolls before the Bluff vs. Sense Motive roll in order to determine whether the bluffer invented a good story that could fool the target. But I think that inventing good stories would be part of the Bluff skill.
What would work better would be a successful Bluff check against someone who would never believe your story will let you abort the story before you establish yourself as a liar and give you clues as to which story might fool the target. Bluff would become a series of contested rolls, probing for the target's weakness.
Edit: I also like how your argument about skills being able to do impossible things is supplemented by haste and a ki point, a magical and a supernatural ability.I also like how you ignored every other post I made and only concentrated on the one time I used Haste and a Ki point. Nothing to say about perception then hmm?
Okay, my monk alone has a 30 Acrobatics. He's level 11 so has a 60 move speed. that gives him a 42 jump without a single bit of magic or Ki at all. that means he can, without any type of running start, just straight up 10', and that's assuming he rolls a 1 on the d20. It also means that he can, again with no running start just stand in one spot swing his arms and leap 43 feet, or 40 feet in game terms, on a roll of 1 on the d20. So without magic or supernatural ability, or even a running start, I can destroy the world's record for long jump by 10' on a 1. Make it an average roll, and I beat it by 20'. Take out his extra movement and he still beats the world record by 1 foot, again without a running start, and just for the record, the longest standing long jump is 11'. But okay that's a monk, he's mystical. So let's take a Rogue with a 30 Acrobatics. Roll a 1 and he beats the world's record by 4 feet. Average roll (10)he beats it by 9 (for a standing long jump).
Or we can go back to perception if you wish.
I'll spoiler the Logical Fallacy argument, and your incorrect use of irony (which actually is ironic) so as not to further derail.
** spoiler omitted **...
High jump is a Ki ability even when it does not use a point of Ki. This is not different than a monks unarmed attacks being counted as magic. To say you are not using Ki is false. While the original monk does not state this explicitly both the Quinggong Monk and the Unchained Monk do state this. To say you are not using Ki or magic is false.
I think the real problem with Bluff is that there are too many ways to buff it to insanely good levels. I think that needs to be cut out, and then maybe we can add in a degree of success. Based on how much you beat the person's sense motive by you can determine (in a very general sense) how they would be willing to help/act/respond to your statements.
Bluff is not a skill that has much direct use. Don’t get me wrong it can be very useful, but by itself it is not going to do much. All it does is affect what you believe, it does not affect your perceptions or directly control your actions. When you use bluff to make the guard believe you are a friend of the king what does that do. So he believes you are the kings buddy. To get him to do something would require either diplomacy or intimidate. The bluff would significantly lower the difficulty for either of those skills.
Bluff also does not prevent you from using any ability you have. So the person claiming the sky is purple can convince someone it is purple, but when the person looks he still is able to see it is blue. You could pretend it just changed back and will change to purple soon, but you can’t change his perception of color. If this was the case bluff becomes the ultimate power. All you now need to do is to roll a high enough bluff and you can convince any creature he is dead. I guess this answers the question of how to kill the Tarrasque. Now I understand why DM Blake is so worried about this thread.
To those who argue that skills at this level should be fantastic you are right, but they should still be doing what the skill does. Bluff changes a person’s belief, not their perceptions or actions. The person convinced they were a chicken still has all the abilities of a human. He does not forget how to talk or drop things he is carrying. He does suddenly lose the ability use reason and logic. He still has all the skills and abilities he had before.
Also, even if you're fully convinced something is impossible, a successful Bluff check should at least convince the listener that the Bluffer honestly believes in what he said.Yup, I agree with Lemmy. This came up at the office with respect to intrigue games that have lots of Bluff, and the consensus was that the successful Bluff check at least means the NPC thinks you genuinely believe what you're saying, even if they might have other reasons to think that you are mistaken (like maybe someone else just Bluffed them with something contradictory to your Bluff and rolled even higher!)But that makes Bluff completely meaningless.
(stuff)
Does it?
Because that's basically how Bluff works IRL, since most of the time we have no evidence to back it up... You convince someone that you truly believe in what you're saying. The listener takes that belief as evidence that the statement is true (the stronger the speaker's conviction, the stronger the evidence. which is why we are more likely to believe someone that speaks confidently than someone who stutters) and deduces it's true (or at very least, that it's more likely to be true than it is to be false).
We may not realize it, but when someone successfully bluffs us in Poker, our brain uses something similar to the following logic "This guys seems honestly satisfied with his hand. The only reason for honest satisfaction is truly having a good hand, therefore, his hand must be good."
In any case, notice that I said a successful Bluff check should AT LEAST convince the listener that the Bluffer honestly believes in what he said. Maybe I should have said "AT VERY F##%ING LEAST" to add more conviction to my statement...
High jump is a Ki ability even when it does not use a point of Ki. This is not different than a monks unarmed attacks being counted as magic. To say you are not using Ki is false. While the original monk does not state this explicitly both the Quinggong Monk and the Unchained Monk do state this. To say you are not using Ki or magic is false.
LOL Seriously? That's what you got out of that conversation? Let me help you out then I'll shorten it to the last couple of sentences:
But okay that's a monk, he's mystical. So let's take a Rogue with a 30 Acrobatics. Roll a 1 and he beats the world's record by 4 feet. Average roll (10)he beats it by 9 (for a standing long jump).
Or we can go back to perception if you wish.
So basically nothing you said refutes my point at all and you're just picking at semantics.
The way that works is if your bluff is "I have a good hand" but the other guy knows you have queen high (because he's cheating, probably), he'll think you don't understand poker.
If, on the other hand, your bluff is that there's an obscure rule that says there's a special hand called "The Queen Stands Alone" and so you won despite your hand, he'll believe that. You would get a penalty for that being silly.
Seriously, don't overthink it. I was simply talking about the common ordinary bluffing that happens constantly during games of poker. You know, the "I want you to think I have a good hand so you fold and I get the pot" bluff that everybody does all the time when they play poker. No cheating, no trying to convince the guy of a new obscure rule - just bluffing as per normal poker bluffing.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Seriously, don't overthink it. I was simply talking about the common ordinary bluffing that happens constantly during games of poker. You know, the "I want you to think I have a good hand so you fold and I get the pot" bluff that everybody does all the time when they play poker. No cheating, no trying to convince the guy of a new obscure rule - just bluffing as per normal poker bluffing.The way that works is if your bluff is "I have a good hand" but the other guy knows you have queen high (because he's cheating, probably), he'll think you don't understand poker.
If, on the other hand, your bluff is that there's an obscure rule that says there's a special hand called "The Queen Stands Alone" and so you won despite your hand, he'll believe that. You would get a penalty for that being silly.
A successful bluff in poker makes the opponent think that you believe your hand is strong enough to beat whatever he has.
If you successfully bluff me, and I'm holding a royal flush though, I will call. I don't care how strong you think your hand is.
"True" doesn't mean a cosmological fact. When the rules say,
If you use Bluff to fool someone, with a successful check you convince your opponent that what you are saying is true.
that's just another way of saying that you convince your opponent you are being honest, that what you are saying is congruent with the facts. Perhaps the "truth" you are offering is at odds with the apparent truth, but is a plausible, deeper explanation.
There is no way to convince your opponent that "the sky is purple" because that is not something you can say that is true. It is obviously not true.
"True" doesn't mean a cosmological fact. When the rules say,
If you use Bluff to fool someone, with a successful check you convince your opponent that what you are saying is true.
that's just another way of saying that you convince your opponent you are being honest, that what you are saying is congruent with the facts. Perhaps the "truth" you are offering is at odds with the apparent truth, but is a plausible, deeper explanation.
There is no way to convince your opponent that "the sky is purple" because that is not something you can say that is true. It is obviously not true.
It is will vary from table to table.
Personally i would allow it with the -20 if the target cant see the sky at the moment.
Maybe it is purple now for some weird reason , who knows , when the target looks up and it is blue , then he will disbelieve it.
To me that is what the -20 means , while something trully impossible would be to do it while the person is clearly looking at a big blue sky.
I would allow it, if the target can't see the sky, and either this has happened before, there is a way it could happen, or the target isn't knowledgeable enough about skies to argue. I think it would be difficult to Bluff even a six year old of typical intellect that the sky is purple.
I would allow it, if the target can't see the sky, and either this has happened before, there is a way it could happen, or the target isn't knowledgeable enough about skies to argue. I think it would be difficult to Bluff even a six year old of typical intellect that the sky is purple.
Yes , i agree it would be hard or that it would be "impossible" even , but that is a -20 penalty :P.
If it works and the person isnt looking at the sky , then i would say they believe it , atleast until they just look up later and it is perfectly normal.
If it had happened before for example , then i would just reduce the penalty based on how often exactly does this happen really.
Seriously, don't overthink it. I was simply talking about the common ordinary bluffing that happens constantly during games of poker. You know, the "I want you to think I have a good hand so you fold and I get the pot" bluff that everybody does all the time when they play poker. No cheating, no trying to convince the guy of a new obscure rule - just bluffing as per normal poker bluffing.The way that works is if your bluff is "I have a good hand" but the other guy knows you have queen high (because he's cheating, probably), he'll think you don't understand poker.
If, on the other hand, your bluff is that there's an obscure rule that says there's a special hand called "The Queen Stands Alone" and so you won despite your hand, he'll believe that. You would get a penalty for that being silly.
A successful bluff in poker makes the opponent think that you believe your hand is strong enough to beat whatever he has.
If you successfully bluff me, and I'm holding a royal flush though, I will call. I don't care how strong you think your hand is.
This is really directed toward DM_Blake, but your response is a big part of my response.
Taking a step back and agreeing not to do an escalating and complicated series of bluffs, your bluff convinces me that you have a "good" hand. This is a little different than the other examples because inherent in something like this is a value judgment of what "good" means here.
You're unlikely to be claiming to have a better hand than I have since you're not claiming to be an authority on what's in my hand. What you're actually bluffing is, "My hand is better than the hand I think you have." In a standard poker game you're not claiming to know what I have.
Now, at the risk of overcomplicating things, you're highlighting a gap in the Bluff/Sense Motive rules. Specifically, there are two results when there should be three. Right now, there are results for "You're convinced" and "He's lying". To really simulate these kinds of interactions, there would need to be a "You don't get a good read" result. Ideally there would also be results where you would draw the wrong conclusion (or, better yet, a random conclusion since bad Sense Motive shouldn't be a sign flip from good Sense Motive). In reality, this is where poker bluffs live.
Now, imagine a world without phones, or internet...I'm willing to wager that magic is not a daily occurrence/spectacle for the vast majority of Inner Sea residents. The common citizen knows it exists, but they rarely ever see it in practice, and know little and less about how it all actually works.Dunno, personally I dont think it would be that hard to find an adept using magic on the village square/temple from time to time to heal those hurt during work or stuff like that.
And lets be fair, in our world, where there is no magic we have tons of different medias where we talk about it, now imagine in a world where there is actually magic.
Darn it! Now I'll never know what Ravingdork's point was!
You're unlikely to be claiming to have a better hand than I have since you're not claiming to be an authority on what's in my hand. What you're actually bluffing is, "My hand is better than the hand I think you have." In a standard poker game you're not claiming to know what I have.Seriously, don't overthink it. I was simply talking about the common ordinary bluffing that happens constantly during games of poker. You know, the "I want you to think I have a good hand so you fold and I get the pot" bluff that everybody does all the time when they play poker. No cheating, no trying to convince the guy of a new obscure rule - just bluffing as per normal poker bluffing.The way that works is if your bluff is "I have a good hand" but the other guy knows you have queen high (because he's cheating, probably), he'll think you don't understand poker.
If, on the other hand, your bluff is that there's an obscure rule that says there's a special hand called "The Queen Stands Alone" and so you won despite your hand, he'll believe that. You would get a penalty for that being silly.
A successful bluff in poker makes the opponent think that you believe your hand is strong enough to beat whatever he has.
If you successfully bluff me, and I'm holding a royal flush though, I will call. I don't care how strong you think your hand is.
I'd agree with that.
I guess if I wrote mine parsing more carefully, it'd be that the bluff is 'I think that it is statistically unlikely your hand is better than mine,' which is pretty much what you said.
I still stand by my main point though. If I'm holding 'the best hand' or even 'a hand you have a 2% chance of beating,' no amount of or skill at bluffing will get me to fold.
I still stand by my main point though. If I'm holding 'the best hand' or even 'a hand you have a 2% chance of beating,' no amount of or skill at bluffing will get me to fold.
And yet, per the bluff skill, and per some posts in this thread, your poker opponent could say "My hand is better than yours" and, if he makes his Bluff check, you have to believe him. AT which point, folding is your only reasonable option to prevent losing more money than you've already bet.
Or the guy could just say "You are a chicken" and then take all the money and stroll casually out of the casino while you scratch and peck and cluck and, who knows, maybe even actually laying an egg.
Because the rule says that the successful bluff makes you believe what the bluffer said. No amount of reality can enable you to overcome that Bluff check.
The first scenario is silly, as you suggest - if you've got your royal flush you shouldn't have to fold. But the Bluff skill says you do.
The second scenario is even sillier - the rules say you must believe the guy when he said you're a chicken no matter how preposterous it is.
Now, I think a reasonable GM would say "Bah, neither of those were actually bluffs so they're not eligible for a Bluff check. They're closer to insane rambling than bluffs, or at best, really bad jokes."
Or, actually, that's what I thought reasonable GMs would say but this thread has raised doubts.
Lemmy and Mark suggested that it's OK for a GM to say "Your successful Bluff check causes the target to think YOU believe your bluff, but he still doesn't".
Which, of course, completely neuters the entire skill.
I made a poker analogy to demonstrate that this ruling ruins the skill but maybe poker was a bad analogy because that really is a case of convincing your opponent to believe that you believe. In poker, you're not trying to convince your opponent of a fact because it's a double blind; you only know half of the facts yourself because you don't know his hand; all you can do is try to convince him that you think your hand is good.
But in non-gaming situations, bluffing to actually convince a target to believe a fact that is not true should be possible. It should be possible to convince a guard that you're the king's long lost brother. Sure, that could be very very hard. You might need to fabricate evidence to support the bluff, or maybe get the guard drunk, or whatever. But it should be possible.
With Lemmy and Mark's angle, every GM in the game could say "Yep, the guard thinks YOU believe that, but HE doesn't believe it at all."
And thus the Bluff skill is completely neutered.
TL;DR: If you roll a successful Bluff check, it MUST work; any other "Your successful roll fails" scenario neuters the skill. The target MUST believe your bluff. However, not all the garbage you might say is worthy of or eligible for a Bluff check in the first place.
Lemmy and Mark suggested that it's OK for a GM to say "Your successful Bluff check causes the target to think YOU believe your bluff, but he still doesn't".
Which, of course, completely neuters the entire skill.
What happens if you make a Ride check, but conditions are not what you think they are?
You know, I think I agree with your tl;dr. I think we're just bickering about your last sentence. Let's agree that we're talking about convincing an NPC because I swore PCs explicitly got to choose what they believed/whether diplomacy works on them, but I'm not seeing it in my 5 minutes in the PRD.
First, the content of the bluff has to be a (yes, this is poorly defined. Live with it :-/) statement of fact. "I'm on a mission from the gods and it's in your best interests to support me" is fine. "You should give me 200,000 gp" is not. "Big Bad threatens your kingdom and that MacGuffin in your treasury could destroy it" is fine, but "You want to give me the MacGuffin" is not. This is in part to preserve the role of diplomacy and in part because you don't have a reasonable way to be an authority on what I want.
In order for the target to believe you, the lie has an upper limit on how improbable it is. This is explicitly in the bluff rules "Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion)."
Specifically, the target needs to see a path to it being true. If they see that path (perhaps with your help), you're rolling to convince them that it's true. This might include invalidating previous information they have. How convoluted and unlikely that path is determines what the modifier is to your bluff vs. sense motive roll.
If the target doesn't see a path to it being true, you're instead rolling to figure out whether their sense motive realizes that you're not being honest. This isn't actually you using bluff. You already failed that by having an impossible story. This is them using sense motive to figure out whether you're a liar or a loony. Now that I look at it, this doesn't seem to be explicitly called out. I think it's a pretty natural extension of the rules and a reasonable power for sense motive to have.
Thanks for digging in on this, DM_Blake. From my perspective we have looped back to somewhere interesting. I don't believe this is RAW, but I think it gives us a reasonable way of getting that middle ground I mentioned earlier (although still not "false reads"). There should be two modifiers. One is for how unlikely you think the story is. The other is for how believable the person is with respect to the story. The same sense motive should be applied to both. This sets up three possible results - believe the story (i.e. bluff succeeds)), disagree, and spot the lie. In some cases the DCs will be the same and in some (like the "impossible" stories) not all possibilities will exist.
What happens if you make a Ride check, but conditions are not what you think they are?Lemmy and Mark suggested that it's OK for a GM to say "Your successful Bluff check causes the target to think YOU believe your bluff, but he still doesn't".
Which, of course, completely neuters the entire skill.
I'm not sure I understand the question.
If a player says "I make a ride check" and tosses a d20 on the table, I ask him "What are you doing? I didn't call for a ride check."
Otherwise, if I want a player to make a Ride check, I evaluate the conditions and establish the DC and then tell him to attempt a ride check. At the very least, I WILL know the conditions even if the player is not sure. But, I think a character with any ranks in Ride at all would be able to evaluate the "conditions" for himself, and even if the player has not looked those conditions up and calculated the DC, I will make sure to explain the conditions to him and I will calculate the DC for the roll (although I might not tell him until after he rolls - some class abilities need to be decided upon without knowing the outcome).
None of this answers your question, probably, but I already said I don't understand your question.
Lemmy and Mark suggested that it's OK for a GM to say "Your successful Bluff check causes the target to think YOU believe your bluff, but he still doesn't".
Which, of course, completely neuters the entire skill.
You're just being willfully obtuse now. I already gave my answer to this argument.
1- More often than not, we believe stuff just because other people claim it to be true. We don't require scientific evidence for everything that is told to us. Or do you ask for birth certificates every time someone introduces themselves to you?
2- If the person speaking seems honestly convinced of what they are saying, listeners will take this as a very strong evidence that whatever he's saying is true, and will likely believe it too.
3- As I pointed out, that is the least the skill should do. Not all it can do.
If you won't read the replies to your argument, at least be honest enough to not willfully misconstrue what was said.
If I'm holding 'the best hand' or even 'a hand you have a 2% chance of beating,' no amount of or skill at bluffing will get me to fold.
In all the years I've been playing poker -- draw, Texas hold 'em, you name it -- I've never seen a royal flush (chance of getting: 0.15 thousandth of a percent). Yeah, I know there's one in the final hand of poker in every movie ever made that has ever involved poker, but for all intents and purposes, it doesn't exist, and we can pretty safely ignore any corner cases of Bluff that hinge on someone actually having one. If someone doesn't know the odds against, then, sure, you might be able to bluff them that you do have one.
Well I think we can all agree that the extreme interpretation on either side is unworkable, so the answer should lie somewhere in the middle. The effects of a social skill are much more circumstantial than we can plan for. Beyond this, I believe the thread has outlived it's usefulness.
3- As I pointed out, that is the least the skill can do. Not all it can do.
I got that the first time you said it in your original post that said it.
Fine.
Let's say a new-ish GM sees your post and says "Oh, wow, sometimes the least it can do is convince the target that you believe your falsehood without convincing that target that the falsehood is true."
Great. Now what does that new-ish GM do with that when his player tries to bluff a guard? Any bluff?
At best the GM decides whether the drama works best if the guard falls for it or if the guard is too clever to fall for it but believes the bluffer is crazy. And what if the GM likes the latter answer? Those poor players might never have a useful bluff.
As I said in my most recent post, if the OPTION to make this ruling which is, in essence, "Your successful Bluff check fails" exists, then Bluff is neutered. But I'll amend that to give you full credit to say Bluff is neutered each time the GM chooses this option.
Better?
If I'm holding 'the best hand' or even 'a hand you have a 2% chance of beating,' no amount of or skill at bluffing will get me to fold.In all the years I've been playing poker -- draw, Texas hold 'em, you name it -- I've never seen a royal flush (chance of getting: 0.15 thousandth of a percent). Yeah, I know there's one in the final hand of poker in every movie ever made that has ever involved poker, but for all intents and purposes, it doesn't exist, and we can pretty safely ignore any corner cases of Bluff that hinge on someone actually having one. If someone doesn't know the odds against, then, sure, you might be able to bluff them that you do have one.
I agree, a royal flush is rare. I can't remember if I've actually seen one or not. I've seen more than a handful of straight flushes when playing (especially in Texas hold 'em), though, and plenty of four-of-a-kinds. Regardless, the point I'm making is you don't throw out everything you know about reality just because someone bluffed you.
Thanks for digging in on this, DM_Blake. From my perspective we have looped back to somewhere interesting. I don't believe this is RAW, but I think it gives us a reasonable way of getting that middle ground I mentioned earlier (although still not "false reads"). There should be two modifiers. One is for how unlikely you think the story is. The other is for how believable the person is with respect to the story. The same sense motive should be applied to both. This sets up three possible results - believe the story (i.e. bluff succeeds)), disagree, and spot the lie. In some cases the DCs will be the same and in some (like the "impossible" stories) not all possibilities will exist.
Thanks.
I'm glad I'm making some sense.
I think you and I are on pretty much the same page, although I wouldn't make it compound rolls. I would make it one roll with compound results. Because my game philosophy is that rolling dice and figuring out results is both time-consuming and roleplay-limiting. To that end, I believe that fewer dice rolled is better than more dice rolled.
Take your very fine idea and set it up more as follows:
If your bluff is stupidly impossible, you get no Bluff check.
Otherwise GM decides on a DC using pretty much the Core guidelines. Those are pretty loose and up to the GM anyway.
If you beat the DC, the target believes the bluff.
If you fail by 5 or less, the target doesn't fall for it but he thinks you believe it.
If you fail by more than 5, the target thinks your a lying sack and reacts accordingly to the situation.
I'd go for that as a house rule.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As I said in my most recent post, if the OPTION to make this ruling which is, in essence, "Your successful Bluff check fails" exists, then Bluff is neutered. But I'll amend that to give you full credit to say Bluff is neutered each time the GM chooses this option.
Better?
Yet in all your other posts you've insisted that the GM should have the "option" to declare "this bluff fails and doesn't even get a check, period", which neuters the bluff skill substantially more than what Lemmy does.
So, no, not better.
Actually, it's right there in the skill:
Deceive or Lie
If you use Bluff to fool someone, with a successful check you convince your opponent that what you are saying is true. Bluff checks are modified depending upon the believability of the lie. The following modifiers are applied to the roll of the creature attempting to tell the lie. Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion).
So I didn't neuter the skill; the devs did.
And I agree with them. You simply cannot convince a guy that he's a chicken.
3- As I pointed out, that is the least the skill can do. Not all it can do.I got that the first time you said it in your original post that said it.
Fine.
Let's say a new-ish GM sees your post and says "Oh, wow, sometimes the least it can do is convince the target that you believe your falsehood without convincing that target that the falsehood is true."
Great. Now what does that new-ish GM do with that when his player tries to bluff a guard? Any bluff?
At best the GM decides whether the drama works best if the guard falls for it or if the guard is too clever to fall for it but believes the bluffer is crazy. And what if the GM likes the latter answer? Those poor players might never have a useful bluff.
As I said in my most recent post, if the OPTION to make this ruling which is, in essence, "Your successful Bluff check fails" exists, then Bluff is neutered. But I'll amend that to give you full credit to say Bluff is neutered each time the GM chooses this option.
Better?
Better. But not good enough...
The problem you're pointing out is already present in the rules.
If you use Bluff to fool someone, with a successful check you convince your opponent that what you are saying is true. Bluff checks are modified depending upon the believability of the lie. The following modifiers are applied to the roll of the creature attempting to tell the lie. Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion).
The GM can already say "No. The guard doesn't believe you because what you claim is impossible." and be done with that. My point is that on a successful Bluff check, at very f%+~ing least the listener should be convinced that the speaker is telling what they honestly believe to be true. So the guard might not let you in, but at least he won't throw your ass in jail for impersonating a member of the royal family. And you won't get a penalty to future Bluff checks for being caught in a lie.
Additionally, should more evidence (including similar claims/Bluff checks from different people) be presented (legitimate or not), the guard would be more inclined to believe it, therefore adding the possibility of reducing the DC of the next Bluff check.
Because of how vaguely-worded and open-ended social skills can be (specially Diplomacy), GM interpretation can cause them to range from absolutely useless to extremely overpowered. Bluff is no exception.
A good GM shouldn't stop character abilities from working just because it would be more dramatic. The fact that new GMs might make that mistake doesn't stop it from being a mistake.
I think you and I are on pretty much the same page, although I wouldn't make it compound rolls. I would make it one roll with compound results.
I'm glad you called that out because that's what I was shooting for. :-)
I would think about making that gap different more or less than 5 at times, although it's a good baseline. Other than that you have a better-phrased version of what I was thinking.
As I said in my most recent post, if the OPTION to make this ruling which is, in essence, "Your successful Bluff check fails" exists, then Bluff is neutered. But I'll amend that to give you full credit to say Bluff is neutered each time the GM chooses this option.
Better?
Better. But not good enough...
The problem you're pointing out is already present in the rules.
The GM can already say "No. The guard doesn't believe you because what you claim is impossible." and be done with that.
If you use Bluff to fool someone, with a successful check you convince your opponent that what you are saying is true. Bluff checks are modified depending upon the believability of the lie. The following modifiers are applied to the roll of the creature attempting to tell the lie. Note that some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true (subject to GM discretion).
You're right. I quoted that rule too.
I was assuming that this whole discussion (except the junk about the chicken bluff) was referencing Bluff checks that the GM does allow.
Additionally, should more evidence (including similar claims/Bluff checks from different people) be presented (legitimate or not), the guard would be more inclined to believe it, therefore adding the possibility of reducing the DC of the next Bluff check.
That's what Aid Another is for.
"Evidence" that might help with a bluff that IS NOT just an Aid Another check might be a (forged) document showing your "royal birthright". Etc.
I have been told before that "...my bonus is so high, that I'll probably pass my bluff check, even with the -20 for being impossible", like that would work. The scenario was being able to bluff a wyrm dragon about something it already knew was false.
Now, the rules plainly state, that if he passes, the dragon believes the lie. However, that is actually impossible, not a -20 impossible.
So, as DM do I:
1)Not even offer a roll.
2)Let the player roll, and say they fail anyway.
3)Another option that involves the player.
That's what Aid Another is for.
"Evidence" that might help with a bluff that IS NOT just an Aid Another check might be a (forged) document showing your "royal birthright". Etc.
Uh... Who said anything about it being just an Aid Another bonus?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Ok seriously, what happens is really straight forward.
To repeat (for the third time):
The target either believes your bluff. Or does not. With a sufficiently high Bluff the only way for the second to occur is via the "some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true".
But that's it. Success or Fail. And making a person only believe that "you think what you are saying is true" is a fail.
What does that mean for bluff? Well, it means that some skills are allowed to be pseudo-fantasy at high levels, and some skills are not. Skills in pathfinder are not created equal, and it's up to each table to decide the pseudo-magicalness of a high modifier bluff.
Why? I mean I get every GM gets to decide how things work in their game, but why are the social skills considered broken because they allow impossible things, but Survival isn't? Why do we accept one but not the other? Why does it seem fair that someone who focuses on getting a high Survival skill do everything that skill allows, but someone who focuses on Bluff can't?
I have been told before that "...my bonus is so high, that I'll probably pass my bluff check, even with the -20 for being impossible", like that would work. The scenario was being able to bluff a wyrm dragon about something it already knew was false.
Now, the rules plainly state, that if he passes, the dragon believes the lie. However, that is actually impossible, not a -20 impossible.So, as DM do I:
1)Not even offer a roll.
2)Let the player roll, and say they fail anyway.
3)Another option that involves the player.
In my opinion you're arbitrarily limiting that skill as GM fiat, and you should probably tell the player, "You're pretty sure the Dragon will never believe that" not not even roll.
EDIT: Something I think people are forgetting, is that there is a defense against Bluff: Sense Motive.
A lot of the people who argue that because other skills allow things that are impossible in the real world bluff should also. This has a lot of validity but the thing they are forgetting is that the other skills have limits and so should bluff. Jodokai used acrobatics as an example stating that with a high enough bonus you can jump 20’ straight up which is clearly impossible in the real world. In this he is absolutely correct, but what acrobatic will not allow is jumping from the floor of the bottom of a 1000’ cliff to the top. Bluff like any other skill should be able to do amazing things with a high enough roll, but there are still limits. Too many of the people here don’t think there should be any limits. The limits on bluff should be about the same as other skills.
The other thing people seem to think is just because you bluff someone that the person will continue to believe you. No other skill works this way so why should bluff. If I make my stealth roll and you fail your perception roll you don’t see me. But if circumstances change you may be able to spot me even though I made my stealth roll. For example if I make my stealth roll and then move through an area with no cover or concealment you spot me. Bluff should work the same way. If you successfully bluff me to believe the sky is purple it works until I get a look at the sky and see it is no longer purple. I don’t become color blind because you were able to bluff me anymore than I become blind because you were able to use stealth against me.
Uh... Who said anything about it being just an Aid Another bonus?That's what Aid Another is for.
"Evidence" that might help with a bluff that IS NOT just an Aid Another check might be a (forged) document showing your "royal birthright". Etc.
I did. In response to your suggestion that if you're bluffing someone and someone else is bluffing them too, it might make the bluff easier. That's (paraphrased) what you said. I said that this is what Aid Another is for.
Ok seriously, what happens is really straight forward.
To repeat (for the third time):
The target either believes your bluff. Or does not. With a sufficiently high Bluff the only way for the second to occur is via the "some lies are so improbable that it is impossible to convince anyone that they are true".
But that's it. Success or Fail. And making a person only believe that "you think what you are saying is true" is a fail.
I agree with you. Mark disagrees. And further according to Mark, the devs playing at Paizo disagree too. At least some of them.
I did. In response to your suggestion that if you're bluffing someone and someone else is bluffing them too, it might make the bluff easier. That's (paraphrased) what you said. I said that this is what Aid Another is for.Uh... Who said anything about it being just an Aid Another bonus?That's what Aid Another is for.
"Evidence" that might help with a bluff that IS NOT just an Aid Another check might be a (forged) document showing your "royal birthright". Etc.
Not necessarily. Someone might make a similar claim at a different time, for example. In that case it wouldn't be represented by Aid Another.
A lot of the people who argue that because other skills allow things that are impossible in the real world bluff should also. This has a lot of validity but the thing they are forgetting is that the other skills have limits and so should bluff. Jodokai used acrobatics as an example stating that with a high enough bonus you can jump 20’ straight up which is clearly impossible in the real world. In this he is absolutely correct, but what acrobatic will not allow is jumping from the floor of the bottom of a 1000’ cliff to the top.
Bluff like any other skill should be able to do amazing things with a high enough roll, but there are still limits. Too many of the people here don’t think there should be any limits. The limits on bluff should be about the same as other skills
No, but with a high enough roll you could jump back up that 1000' cliff to the top. Falling is not a limitation of the skill, it's the addition of falling rules. Acrobatics saying you can negate 10' of falling damage isn't a limitation of the skill if you take damage from falling more than 10' it's just the rules. Acrobatics is limited though, but your movement speed, and really, the only example of this is in acrobatics. None of the other skills are limited at all.
What's the limits on Perception? You could be an invisible statue that makes absolutely no sound at all, and with a high enough perception, I'll know you there. What's the limit on stealth? As long as I bet your perception and make it to concealment before the end of my turn, I can walk right in front of you in the middle of the desert at high noon, and you won't see me.
The other thing people seem to think is just because you bluff someone that the person will continue to believe you. No other skill works this way so why should bluff. If I make my stealth roll and you fail your perception roll you don’t see me. But if circumstances change you may be able to spot me even though I made my stealth roll. For example if I make my stealth roll and then move through an area with no cover or concealment you spot me. Bluff should work the same way. If you successfully bluff me to believe the sky is purple it works until I get a look at the sky and see it is no longer purple. I don’t become color blind because you were able to bluff me anymore than I become blind because you were able to use stealth against me.
I don't think anyone is saying Bluff is a permanent effect (at least I'm not, but I haven't read every post), but what you're suggesting is like the GM saying to the person using stealth, "You moved, your situation changed, so you not stealth anymore"
The way I feel Bluff should work, I convince someone standing outside that the sky is purple, they look up during the conversation in their attempt to prove I'm lying, but I'm so good at lying and convincing people he accepts my rational for why what he is seeing is actually purple. I walk away. He starts to mull it over in his head and the lies start to unravel, and eventually he realizes he's been duped.