Leonine Roar

Your characters’ social or interaction skills are flexible tools and creative weapons against the monsters and opposition you face throughout your adventures. 

It’s important to remember that you can and should flex your reputation, physical presence and silver tongue to influence not only complex situations and help make critical greater-scope decisions, but to apply those same ideas in influencing the starting conditions or makeup of encounters. 

Armed with Bluff, Insight, Diplomacy and Intimidate, you can directly affect the odds and victory conditions of the encounters that stand between you and victory, glory or even simple survival – before an encounter begins or combat even breaks out.

Consider the classic kidnapping and ransom situation.  A friend, relative or someone who has heard of the party’s heroic deeds asks the party for help in rescuing their daughter from bandits who have demanded a sum of gold the NPC simply cannot afford, and is too afraid to go alone and deliver it himself.  This opens up a few different approaches the PCs might take – maybe they’ll pay the ransom, maybe they’ll deliver the NPC’s ransom money, maybe they have no intention of anyone paying the ransom, and so forth. 

Perhaps the PCs try to learn more about these bandits and learn that they are indeed just that and nothing more, or perhaps they’re working for someone greater.  When they learn this could happen at any point in the adventure.  If they learn more about their simple, greedy nature and that they have no powerful connections, they may be more susceptible to intimidation, for example.  Whenever and however the PCs learn more about the kidnappers, it’s important that there’s clues dropped and available as to their nature, and more directly, clues that other means of dealing with the kidnappers and rescuing their hostage exist.

When the PCs meet at the designated exchange location in the hills or forest nearby and the encounter begins, the bandits might say some things that provide clues and invite opportunities to ‘attack’ with your social skills.  For example, if your reputation precedes you in the local area, one bandit may mutter something nervously about recognizing and hearing about the deeds and might of the party.  That’s your cue as a PC, especially one trained in Intimidate or Bluff, to start warning them they’ll die like the rest or that the rumors aren’t complete – they’re missing your conquests over dragons, demons and even the gods and primordials themselves.

Now suddenly, some of the kidnappers take off, terrified and unwilling to throw their lives away for some coin.  In game terms, perhaps a Hard difficulty encounter now becomes Standard or Easy, as a number of minion or standard enemies flee.  Perhaps the one holding the dagger to the kidnapped daughter’s throat even takes off if the party even hits the Hard DC. 

What if the PCs decide they have bigger fish to fry but want to deal with this as quickly and cleanly as possible?  Perhaps the party learns through investigating the settlement the kidnappers are from (a Streetwise check works nicely) that most of the bandits are simply starving, having recently been part of a now defunct merchant’s guild, their bodyguarding skills no longer needed.  Further Streetwise or History checks might reveal more, including major players and names involved.  Again, introducing or making these sorts of simple, but rich clues available based on PC actions in researching the bandits and kidnappers can make for a wonderful quest and encounter situation with multiple approaches. 

Here, the party pursues a diplomatic path, trying to pursuade the kidnappers that what they’re doing is wrong, and that they know someone (a different merchant contact of theirs) who might be able to use them on an upcoming trade expedition from Fallcrest to Winterhaven.  Maybe there’s a Bluff here, maybe there’s not, but there’s certainly an opportunity for Diplomacy.  And a chance no intelligent, civilized adversaries and men die.  And even a chance to help and redeem some folk who have lost their way due to desperate circumstances and poor choices.  For some characters, especially good aligned ones, Diplomacy might be exactly what they’re looking for.

Finally, remember that Insight is the social equivalent of Perception – you “listen” and “spot” certain social cues or emotions through Insight.  That can be very helpful at the start of an encounter to get a sense of how much fight the opposition have in them.  Learning that most of the bandits look or are acting nervous, determined, dumb as doorknobs, cocky, unusually athletic, twitching, scratching similar scars or dark blemishes on their arms, or so drunk you can smell it all over them inspires or changes some of the party’s potential approaches, doesn’t it?

You may or may not want to use skill challenges for such situations.  Personally, I recommend you avoid a full-on skill challenge or if you must use one, use the simplest complexity.  Skill challenges can be a bit too intrusive, gamey and create a lot of slowdown when used as part of or as a precursor to potential combat.  Often, all you need is a simple skill check from a player or two to keep good pacing during a tense moment and move on with the encounter and story.  The other consideration is skill challenges normally take a lot more prep time, while all the possibilities of ‘attacks’ via social skills rely more on roleplay and improvisation by both players and DMs; there’s a more natural and organic flow with the latter.

Talk to your DM about using the social and interaction skills to influence encounters – let him or her know it’s something you or your playgroup would enjoy.  And as a DM, make sure you introduce the clues and circumstances that make such encounters’ possible victory conditions more dynamic than “just kill everything.”  Make ‘attacks’ via social skills directly impact encounter difficulty or sometimes avoid bloodshed altogether.  This will only make your world and adventures feel more dynamic and real, creating truly engaging atmosphere.

Like this article?  You might also like Trained Skills Need Stage Time and Rituals Re-Organized.

by Kilsek on May 23, 2011

This entry was posted on Monday, May 23rd, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under Design, Mechanics & Efficiencies, Storytelling & Roleplaying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.