New OOTS products from CafePress
New OOTS t-shirts, ornaments, mugs, bags, and more
Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Results 31 to 36 of 36
  1. - Top - End - #31
    Colossus in the Playground
     
    Segev's Avatar

    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location

    Default Re: Unbelievable Lies and the Liars Who Tell Them

    There are, too, real-world reports of people so good at fast-talking that they can get people to just hand them their wallets after a few minutes of conversation. Not because they've persuaded the person on a conscious level that giving them their wallet is a good idea, but because they're playing on distraction and social cues to get the reaction they want without the mark consciously thinking about it. I think you can find youtube video of it, though I'm too lazy to bother right now. And, of course, any video is arguably staged, so it's hard to use it as 100% proof.

    Still, if it's even marginally believable that such things could happen in the real world, a sufficient bluff check could arguably believably achieve similarly outrageous results. Maybe you don't overtly convince the guard to let you past. Instead, you've got him so discombobulated or distracted looking for what you're "up to" that when you shake hands and part ways casually he doesn't even notice that he's let you by. Maybe you achieve this by inverting, at least momentarily, whether he's letting you in or out, so you "give up" and "go back in" as he takes a minute or so to realize, wait, you went the wrong way.

  2. - Top - End - #32
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Flumph

    Join Date
    Apr 2016

    Default Re: Unbelievable Lies and the Liars Who Tell Them

    Quote Originally Posted by Jormengand View Post
    Again: if you don't like the idea of people making people believe stuff that defies all common logic with a simple bluff, maybe a game where people can climb completely flat walls, hide people behind nothing at all and balance on clouds isn't for you.
    Not really worth repeating since it was just as much of a false equivalency the second time as the first to assert something like this, as well as literally adding nothing to the conversation because you already said this.

  3. - Top - End - #33
    Banned
     
    Jormengand's Avatar

    Join Date
    Oct 2012
    Location
    In the Playground, duh.

    Default Re: Unbelievable Lies and the Liars Who Tell Them

    Quote Originally Posted by Pope Scarface View Post
    Not really worth repeating since it was just as much of a false equivalency the second time as the first to assert something like this, as well as literally adding nothing to the conversation because you already said this.
    You can't just shout fallacy names at people until they go away. You have to explain why "Skill checks can do overtly impossible things in 3.5, so skill checks can do overtly impossible things in 3.5" is a false equivalency.

  4. - Top - End - #34
    Ettin in the Playground
     
    GreenSorcererElf

    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Oregon
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Unbelievable Lies and the Liars Who Tell Them

    The irony is strong.

    The false equivalence has already been shown, you're just ignoring it with your most recent "example" of climbing a completely flat wall. Which is not a single check, but a series of checks based on the distance required, with increasing penalties for failure that require an even higher skill and prepared equipment to avoid.

    Oh, and it's also against the rules,
    Quote Originally Posted by Climb DCs
    A perfectly smooth, flat, vertical surface cannot be climbed.
    Unless one involves the Epic Level Handbook, which (as always) you simply assume is a mandatory part of the game. Even with the ELH, Balancing on clouds is DC 120, Climbing a perfectly smooth vertical surface is DC 70, and Bluffing someone so hard they just do exactly what you say because skill check (for a single round) is Sense Motive +50. None of these results can be achieved by non-epic characters short of a couple specific spells (Glibness) that violate the base skill rules and have nothing to do with how the skills themselves work. Even rolling a 20 vs a 1, you need a skill modifier of +30 to break past impossible lies and into Suggestion territory, and that's the easiest one available. Climbing the smooth surface without a climb speed requires a check for every 7.5' you want to move. How high was that wall?

    You're using the "a 9th level spell can do this so any spell can" argument, except replacing 9th level spells with ridiculously char-op'd skill results and/or actual spells. So both of those are wrong. Meanwhile hiding behind nothing requires supernatural effects except in the possible edge case of a particular version of Hide in Plain Sight is marked as both Ex and not requiring any particular terrain or lighting, so that one's wrong too.

    *A specialized 10th level character with a +10 bluff item (assuming there's a printed one) can land the 20 vs 1 suggestion bluff, at around the same level domination magic appears, the point at which bluffing your way past something should no longer be viable anyway. Against someone with an actual Sense Motive rank they're still doomed, and as always an encounter bypassed without significant risk or resources spent no longer qualifies as an encounter. A creature with a climb speed still needs a total +52 (then +8 from climb speed and auto-take 10) in order to climb a perfectly smooth surface.


    If a table actually has characters rolling skill checks high enough to hit epic DCs, then they're probably past the point where a 1 round bluff is going to invalidate anything, and sure the DM should probably have some results for them. That is literally the whole reason they wrote epic skill DCs into the ELH, for epic characters that make epic skill checks. These are not normal characters and have no bearing on the rest of the system. The vast majority of people getting the "lol sure you rolled a 20" result are not hitting these DCs, I'm pretty dang certain. That, or the other disconnect of only considering specialized characters of 10th+ level with highly statistically improbable rolls when they talk about "the game."
    Last edited by Fizban; 2018-01-08 at 02:43 AM.
    Fizban's Tweaks and Brew: Google Drive (PDF), Thread
    A collection of over 200 pages of individually small bans, tweaks, brews, and rule changes, usable piecemeal or nearly altogether, and even some convenient lists. Everything I've done that I'd call done enough to use in one place (plus a number of things I'm working on that aren't quite done, of course).
    Quote Originally Posted by Violet Octopus View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Fizban View Post
    sheer awesomeness

  5. - Top - End - #35
    Banned
     
    Jormengand's Avatar

    Join Date
    Oct 2012
    Location
    In the Playground, duh.

    Default Re: Unbelievable Lies and the Liars Who Tell Them

    I mean, sure, some bluffs have outrageously high DCs and rolling a 20 doesn't automatically pass. That doesn't magically mean that you need gather information to roll a bluff check or some crap.

  6. - Top - End - #36
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Crake's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2011

    Default Re: Unbelievable Lies and the Liars Who Tell Them

    {Scrubbed}
    Last edited by Roland St. Jude; 2018-01-09 at 01:01 AM.
    World of Madius wiki - My personal campaign setting, including my homebrew Optional Gestalt/LA rules.
    The new Quick Vestige List

    Quote Originally Posted by Kazyan View Post
    Playing a wizard the way GitP says wizards should be played requires the equivalent time and effort investment of a university minor. Do you really want to go down this rabbit hole, or are you comfortable with just throwing a souped-up Orb of Fire at the thing?
    Quote Originally Posted by atemu1234 View Post
    Humans are rarely truly irrational, just wrong.

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •