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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 7:35AM
#331
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Date Joined:
Feb 22, 2012
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I use absolutely 0 will power to avoid charging the guy taunting me
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 7:35AM
#332
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Date Joined:
Nov 12, 2012
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Here's the thing, though. The DC to succeed at causing a character to do something that they would not ordinarily should be set extraordinarily high. A character that doesn't charge, even when enraged, should not be taunted into charging. An archer probably isn't going to charge a character, but may target the taunter from afar. The rogue merely "influences" decision making, rather than determines it. The rogue may be able to trick an ogre into charging into a trap easily because ogres are often not very smart. However, the rogue shouldn't be able to trick a character into complete and total stupidity that they would not ordinarily do. The closest may come on a natural 20, but even then it probably shouldn't happen. The important thing to recognize is that the DM still has control over the game...
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 7:36AM
#333
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2008
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Only the unwise reds. The rest of them will just breath weapon you to death or cast a spell. Have you ever seen an Ancient Wyrm Green Dragon go crazy with Magic Missiles?
It works like this:
30 magic missiles or 30d4+1 damage...
Average of 105 damage. Probably enough to kill a 12th level fighter with 14 Con. Probably not enough to kill the same fighter one level higher.
On the other hand, a dragon's full attack routine almost certainly does less damage.
You're kidding, right? Dragons have insane attack bonuses and POWER ATTACK. A CR 13 Young Adult Red Dragon is doing 2d8+29, 2d6+24 x2, 1d8+24 x2 damage and still has a +18 to hit against 12th level armor classes.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 7:38AM
#334
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- Forum Guide
- Hero Craftsman Gold Medalist
- Master Dungeon Master
Date Joined:
Jun 23, 2005
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wrecan If you need a contest to resist something it is either 1)physical - getting grabbed or pulled etc or 2) magical.
That has never been the rule in D&D. Way back in AD&D you would roll a Charisma check to determine if a NPC reacted favorably or unfavorably to you. In 2e, the non-weapon proficiency Persuasion (a general Non-Weapon proficiency) was used to improve someone's reactions to you. In 3e, opposed Diplomacy checks replaced the opposed Charisma check, and characters could take feats that allowed them to taunt creatures into acting the way they want. And of course, 4e had this in the form of numerous martial exploits.
D&D always allowed the player's dice to affect the NPCs reactions to them.
This isn't a 4e thing. This isn't a martial powers thing. This is absolutely consistent with how Charisma has been described since 1978 (at least). At a minimum, if you were willing to house rule that out of prior editions, you can do so just as easily here. Just tell your players that rogues can't use skill dice for opposed Ability checks relying on Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 7:40AM
#335
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Also Ill continue to say taunt until someone provides a better way for a rogue to trick an ogre to charge.
Feigning weakness.
Bluffing the ogre into thinking charging is a good idea tactically.
Issuing a culture-specific challenge.
Throwing your voice.
What exactly the rogue does is specific to the situation and enemy at hand. It's misleading to focus on the specifics. The underlying general concept is simply that the rogue is especially practiced at manipulating enemies and situations to his advantage through trickery. He's not just good at taunting - he's good at figuring out that taunting is (or isn't) likely to accomplish what he wants. And if it isn't likely, he does something else.
Does a con man always run the same con? No; not every con works on every mark. He's good at running cons in general, not at running the same con in every situation.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 7:40AM
#336
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2008
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Heh. You're equating verbal responses with mind control? Provoking someone to words is a lot different than forcing them to do something against their will.
That is how I see it. There is a reason why court outburst or sports fights make news headlines when they are physical. When the situation is known and wits are steeled its almost impossible to get someone to do something physical. They know their environment and the stakes. A slick talking prosecutor would love to goad someone into a rage. They will often lie and use snarky false accusations yet how often do you hear about someone charging someone in a courtroom?
Strawman. Big, huge, flaming strawman. We aren't talking about the modern "civilized" era. We are talking about a sword & sorcery fantasy setting. I don't recall ever seeing a dragon being cross examined in court. Or an ogre getting a bad ruling called against them in a sport (except, of course, in Blood Bowl).
We're talking about tricking people, period. There is no difference between a modern human and one from a fantasy setting when it comes to falling for tricks. Technology doesn't somehow make you wiser and less prone to being tricked. He also didn't twist any argument. You really need to learn how to recognize a Strawman before you go around accusing people of it.
But if you want to talk about more appropriate era "humans", at least we should get closer to the setting we play, let's look at the olden days: the Dark Ages. Where, if you said the wrong thing to the wrong person, you got a sword in the gut for your troubles.
Yes, and the person CHOSE to do it. He wasn't mind controlled into it by the words. The only Strawman here is you. You have twisted our arguments into fantasy only (which really makes no difference to our argument) and argued your own fiction.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 7:43AM
#337
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I use absolutely 0 will power to avoid charging the guy taunting me
It's easy to say that when talking about "taunting" in the abstract. And obviously I'm not going to state specific examples of taunts here. But in the heat of battle, with your blood up, against someone who really knows how to find and push your buttons, is it so inconceivable that you might have to exert some effort at self-control?
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 7:44AM
#338
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Date Joined:
Feb 22, 2012
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If you Feign a weakness the ogre isn't going to charge you and probably no longer cares about you since he has to deal with the fighter who is actually trying to kill him
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 7:45AM
#339
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Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2004
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For me, the bigger question is not so much "can i make sense of these abilities" as "would i as a player be ok with being compelled in this way"? And indeed mostly I would, but I've met several players who refuse to let their characters be manipulated (by rules) psychologically, though they are quiet fine being compelled by game physics or magic. I'm not really sure I understand why.
I might be able to explain that one for you: western philosophy has a long history of playing up the notion of "free will." The Judeao-Christian religions talk about it terms of what god gave us so that we can choose to do good or bad. Humanism, one of the big contributions of the renaissance, is all about defining humans via the essential quality of free agency. Hell, in posthumanism we have so much of this agency (though the notion of essential qualities falls by the wayside) that we can change our own human natures! Meanwhile, western philosophy also has a history of disembodying the mind. From Platonic philosophy we get idealism (in the formal sense, as in the philosophical belief that reality is derived from ideas and not the other way around; as I thought exists before matter). In texts by Kant or Hegel you get a hint of it via the notion that the defining human trait is cognition, and cognition is somehow separate and more important than physical reality—it is what makes us human as opposed to animals (again, see humanism). Really, it is not until Feuerbach that anyone seems to argue anything the other way around, and Nietzsche is the first instance that I have found where someone actually says reality presupposes thought. Now, science and neuroscience tend to agree with Nietzsche’s perspective. But as a culture we often find ways of framing science in such a way as to reify our philosophically subsumed cultural belief systems. You can find a great example of this in The Human Use of Human Beings. Norbert Wiener understands the importance of sensory organs to the information exchange process. He explicitly argues how important human biology is to our thought process. Yet, somehow, he still defines the human as a message. Metaphorically speaking, there are some ways in which that claim makes sense. But, he then gets lost in his metaphor and prophesies that one day we will be able to telegraph people (ala Star Treck) just like any other message. Once again, information/thought/the mind get framed as more important, more essential, than our bodies. Despite being intellectually bankrupt (which is fairly obvious when one actually analysis how information works scientifically—and is explained by theorists such as Wiener, despite some of their metaphoric framings), this philosophical concept has been so prevalent for the last 2000 or so odd years that it has bled from the realm of philosophical musings and academic discussion into popular fiction across multiple ages. One need only look at a recent vidogame like Halo 4, where information can be given a direct hard material form that does not require any hardware, or which believes that an AI programmed from DNA and left to operate in a non-human environment will continue to exhibit a human personality, to see an example of this. Meanwhile, futurists like Hans Morovek or Ray Kurzweil preach the reality of this situation and claim that within our lifetimes we will see human minds downloaded into machines. These futurists are not dumb guys either. They, like Norbert Wiener, are intellectual prodigies. So, our culture continues to inherit a sense that physical reality is less real and important than our minds, that the two are somehow distinct and separate, and that humanity's (perhaps last) defining feature is free agency. As a result, I believe what we are seeing is the subconscious sense that a characters body is less important than what we perceive as their mind. Pushing their body around upsets certain people’s sense of agency less than pushing around their mind. The irony is that this is the result of thousands of years of philosophy pushing around minds to create a very distinct western cultural perspective. From the point of view of neuroscience and information theory, it is definitely possible to push around minds with feedback (via our senses), and that sort of push is (at least in some sense) mind-control. That is what makes the mind-programming by people like Derek Brown both believable and scary.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 7:46AM
#340
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Date Joined:
Feb 22, 2012
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wrecan i am fine using dice in situations where the npc would actually do an action not in situations where the npc simply would not take an action.
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