Prove it. Please go to your original rule description and show me where, anywhere in it, you give the gamemaster or player any concrete rule of the magnitude of the bonus for a given act besides "1 apple = +1 bonus." The fact is you have provided no numerical guideline for awarding a bonus and no numerical cap for how high the bonus might be. You have left it entirely up to the gamemaster, and without so much as a suggestion as to what numbers to apply. This leaves the system open individual interpretation, yes, but also misuse and abuse.Zak S wrote:Incorrect. If there were no rule, then the bonus would not be static with a specific expiration time for all requests.Ancient History wrote: The fact that the gamemaster determines a bonus based on their own judgment with no guidelines according to their understanding of the situation - or the phase of the moon, the tightness of their underwear, or any other factor - is not a recommendation for this rule; indeed, it is undistinguishable from not having a stated rule at all, where the gamemaster applies whatever modification they feel appropriate to any roll based on the circumstances at the table.
False argument.
Nothing you've posted is an argument that your rule works. Show me in the rule you wrote anywhere that says 1 apple always gives a +1 bonus, or otherwise explicitly tells the gamemaster to always apply the same bonus for the same action. You said that consistency is a hallmark of a good GM, and I agree; but your rule as written doesn't explicitly include consistent rulings.NONE of that is an argument about the rule I wrote.
I would completely agree. I would also probably include other options, like what constitutes a proper threat for a bonus from fear or something. I'm not asking you to complete the rule, I'm only pointing out a deficiency in the rule and one way you might have avoided it.If you want (in the theoretical imaginary published version of this rule) examples of what different kinds of people would consider a significant gift, that's a whole separate request.
As you appear to admit here, the rule you have written has the potential for abuse because of the overwhelming bonus. You are arguing that this is not important because you perceive the effect to be negligible; we can argue that point some more if you want, but I'll point out a significant difference between the rule as you wrote it and charm: the spell has a saving throw. The spell allows the target at least a slim chance to avoid being compelled to do something they might not otherwise do. Your rule, if abused, does not allow that. No saving throw. If somebody has an automatic win, then someone else has a corresponding automatic loss.You're repeatedly missing the point: that "overwhelming bonus" has no more effect on the game than if someone cast Charm and the other guy failed their save. So even if the bonus is GIGANTIC--the worst you can do with your gigantic bonus is something you could already do with Charm.
Again, you're focusing on the outcome; I'm looking at how we arrive at the outcome. Saying that the outcome is not important doesn't mean that the mechanics that get you there are sound, it just means that there's an exploit in the system so minor that you don't care enough to patch it.Therefore….what? In that example, the worst the guy can do is kill the other guy. In my example, the worst a guy can do is…get one thing they ask for (just like Charm only less). So you're missing the forest for the trees.For example, if you have two 1st level fighters identical in every respect except that one has a Hackmaster +12 sword, then obviously that fighter has an uncharacteristic and overwhelming advantage to hit (and damage, but that comes later).
Actually, you really haven't answered this one. Feel free to quote yourself somewhere up above if you disagree.answered….And again, it's beside the point - the whole reason to have a soak roll or saving throw is to give a character the chance to mitigate their fate and not be at the mercy of a single roll initiated by another character in which that character might have a huge advantage.
I said, at the outset, that I was looking at the mechanical faults in your rule. I want to look at the numbers and evaluate the numbers and determine if your rule sucks, and if so how. Because this isn't about you, or how you do things in your home game, or the names you call people when they don't agree with you. This is about what you wrote, and how the numbers fall out of that. Those restrictions which you emphasize so strongly have no numbers attached to them; their effect cannot be measured because there's no objective value to them. They're subjective restrictions that depend entirely on the gamemaster. I'm not picking apart your example because there's no math in it to pick apart.#2 "Competing interests" covers this functionally. If the NPC target sees competing interests, those mitigate. Already said that.
#3 If there are no competing interests (the only time there'd be no mitigation) then why wouldn't the NPC grant the request?So you're not arguing just giving up. If you're too stupid to make your arguments don't start them. This is moronic--you start a thread, poke holes that aren't there, then when you get called on it you claim you won't address the huge mistake you made?I'm not going to pick apart your example,
And this gets to the heart of it: your rule relies almost entirely on the individual attitudes, capabilities, and judgment of the gamemaster to actually implement it. You don't provide any guideline on the size of the bonus to be granted, or any limit on said bonus, or any limit on stacking said bonus. This is a rather significant omission.
I don't think that I should require a gamemaster to come up with their own stat or rule just because I couldn't or didn't provide enough information or guidance. Do you think your rule requires the gamemaster to place a quantifiable value on an intangible characteristic like self-interest?So a GM making up 6 stats and a class and a race and associates for an NPC is normal, but a GM making up a 7th stat is somehow outside your ability to consider?because frankly (and again) "competing interests" is a strictly subjective argument. It's not part of the mechanics, and it relies solely on the whims of the gamemaster as to when and if it applies.
We're allowed to disagree over our opinions of human nature, I think.An argument that assumes no competent GM is as stupid as assuming no dice. It is invalid, we already went over this.And sure, the gamemaster should be consistent about it - but that can just mean that they're a consistent asshole,
Don't disassemble; gamers buy game products in part to save themselves some of the effort of building their entire system or world from scratch. One of the objective arguments for how good a system is how well it works right out of the box, without the gamemaster having to sort out every number and die roll.If you haven't noticed: D&D also leaves building whole imaginary worlds with underground complexes in them to the GM and parsing through lists of monsters so long they constitute one of the literally longest Wikipedia articles and deciding which to use to the GM.you've essentially left the hard work of determining every such interaction up to the gamemaster to adjudicate on their own, with no reference or guide that GMs can maybe base their decisions on or PCs can expect to deal with.
Consider: what is the difference between your rule, and if the gamemaster just decided on their own to award a situational bonus to CHA-linked tests? What is the benefit that your rule provides to the game? It doesn't make the GM's job any easier, it doesn't particularly make the players more or less likely to engage in any activity - well maybe less likely, in some circumstances, because we've observed in your own example that in at least some cases there's no reward for altruism. So aside from a bit of extra bookkeeping, how is it different from a gamemaster deciding just to apply bonuses according to their own judgment?
I'd argue your rule doesn't decide any possible decision that a GM might make. There is no guideline for what constitutes an act deserving of a bonus, and the guideline for when a bonus might be denied is so subjective you might as well call it arbitrary.Saying my rule decides some but not all possible decisions the GM has to make is not a valid criticism since it applies to all rules.
All this rule ultimately tells player and gamemaster that if you do certain acts, which aren't defined, you might get a temporary bonus of unknown size which doesn't apply in certain cases depending on whether or not the gamemaster feels like it.
I'm going to point you towards the d20 Diplomacy rules again, not because that's the specific system you had in mind when writing this rule but because it is exemplary of ways this rule could potentially be abused. The DC check for a Diplomacy roll is unopposed, and static. At level one, a character with max ranks in Diplomacy (4) and no bonus is going to have a range of values (4+d20 = 5-24) which determines their full range of possible success and failure. Look at that table! A character at that level without bonuses is never going to turn a Hostile NPC into a Helpful NPC (DC 50) - it's straight outside the range of rollable numbers. But if the character had a suitably overwhelming bonus (say, +50)...then they could befriend fucking Orcus, and Orcus would have no say in the matter, because Orcus doesn't get a saving throw against Diplomacy.You keep getting stuck on this. Again: even if the player gets the maximum bonus…then what? A thing of no more consequence than a failed Suggestion save.For you in your game, it's +0 to +10; for someone else it might be -100 to +100. We can only say, based on the original rule, that the potential for abuse exists.
So while you like to play down the effect of an overwhelming bonus, the potential for real abuse is there...and not just from the player characters. What if the gamemaster keeps track of bonuses from little favors that NPCs do for players, and then one day the NPC cashes those bonuses in and asks to borrow the character's magical sword for a bit, or sleep with their wife? How would the player feel if they were told that sorry, the NPC made their roll and their character has just handed Edward Kelly the keys to the master bedroom, Mrs. Dee is all ready for him? Bad rules cut both ways, especially if the gamemaster is inexperienced or just being a dick.
Actually, I think we're making a little progress. You have already admitted, at least by dint of not bothering to argue the point any further, that your rule can lead to an overwhelming bonus (though you allege a real gamemaster would never allow this to come to pass), and that this is potentially subject to abuse; your current shift in the argument has not been to argue the mechanics but that the effect is minimal and within the standard range of what to expect in a game.And then the argument goes right back where it started.
So from a strict mechanical standpoint, I'm fairly confident that we've come to basic agreement that your rule as written has at least the potential for abuse. You're still holding out on whether or not the "abuse" is significant since you feel it is within the range of normal game effects, but I hope I've demonstrated that in the given circumstances an overwhelming bonus to a skill check that decides another character's action with no save allowed is not necessarily a desirable thing, and that it can be abused.
