No, the NPC is not 'immune to bluffs'

[efftem]

Short and sweet:

Group of PCs is trying to take down a big bad villain. Said villain has taken a member of the group hostage. One character (let's call her Princess Twinkletoes, since she's a runaway princess and a dancer and... yadda yadda yadda), having high charisma and ranks in diplomacy and bluff, goes to negotiate. She rolls VERY WELL.

Now,

Comments

[dave_littler]

Nice. I love pulling that trick with PCs as well; letting them succeed wildly in a pusuit that they're not quite bright enough to realize is not actually in their best interests and then letting them look upon the fruits of that success in horror.

Some years back, I was running a Mage: The Ascension game, and two of the players were playing Cultists of Extacy. There was this jackass film producer they were trying to get out of their way, and they slipped him a magickal mickey whose intent was to relax him. They put WAY too much magical oomph into it, though, and scored about three times as many successes as they needed. I decided it would succeed, but go too far; his muscles relaxed to the point that his heart stopped beating. They freaked out in a big way, and resolved to think these things through a little more carefully after rescuing him from cardiac arrest. :)

[efftem]

The cherry on top for me, personally, was that the hostage PC crying was totally not my doing! I just looked at the player and asked if they wanted to roll a sense motive. She chuckled, rolled, and failed miserably. Then she gleefully described how Princess Twinkletoes made her character cry.

I'm so happy when the players cooperate in ICA = ICC.

[dave_littler]

Oh, that does sound wonderful. I love it when players deliberately deicde to act upon their characters' faulty understandings of things. I would have loved to see that scene play out (minus the OOC outburst from the all-too-successfull bluffer there).

Just out of curiosity, what game was this?

[efftem]

D&D 3.5e, using a generic fantasy setting for kicks and to allow the PCs to go wild. (Some went a little TOO wild, like Princess Twinkletoes, but hey! At least having a system in place means they can't abuse powers like in a lot of freeform settings.)

[pyrephox]

Wow, that sounds about as fun as the warrior getting a great critical hit on some wild and improbable stunt...and then the GM deciding that the forces of inertia mean that he just broke his arm in three places, knocked the villain into a load-bearing column, which caused part of the roof to cave in and fall on their party's head

[sagelylegs]

I disagree, on the grounds that diplomacy in these things is a dangerous game even if you are good at it. The player chose the angle they were working from, I'd sooner buy letting them use the dice to talk for them if they didn't give specifics. Also, while you can count on the dice to convince someone of something, you really can't control how they'll act on that.

[sagelylegs]

Addendum: combat can be summed up to a series of yes/no questions, hence why it's so much simpler by comparison. Very rarely do you have a conversation that has such straightforward steps.

[pyrephox]

Except, of course, that 'diplomacy' in these situations is a cinematic, abstract construct, the efficacy of which is largely represented by the dice, with the roleplaying added to give a framework to the successful (or unsuccessful) action.

And 'you can't control how they'll act on that' is, in my opinion, kind of a cop out. The GM /does/ control how they'll act on that. That's the whole point of being a GM. And turning a good roll into a bad roll is just not particularly fun. Especially since the strong impression I'm getting is that it was meant as 'gotcha' to a player that the GM already viewed with veiled contempt.

[epicbishophazel]

I feel your pain, I had a PC in one of my campaigns who used diplomacy, bluff and intimidate for no reason, fortunately he was pretty dumb and once tried to intimidate Onyxia when we switched over to D20 Warcraft for a while (if you're not familiar with the fandom, Onyxia is the queen of the Black Dragonflight, the most insane and dangerous flight in the WoW-verse)...He was a gnome. Apparently they taste like french fries. Maybe making Princess Twinkletoes dragon-chow is a good way to go.

[cygnia]

"Onyxia! Broodmother of the Black Dragonflight! Say hello to...GNOMISH BATTLECHICKEN!"

[epicbishophazel]

Pretty much, the party's other gnome, who was actually intelligent, said to the party's healer 'You know, if he managed to survive her innards, we gnomes are given surnames for our accomplishments, I think Dumbfuck is appropriate.'

[irrisia]

...I play social classes, and I am not smart. Even I know better than to convince the hostage taker that the hostage is worthless, because then the hostage is pretty much dead. Negotiation is mostly a matter of convincing the other guy that you have what he wants, he'll get what he wants, and what he really wants is to let the hostage go.

[youngwilliam]

"Just give me the hostage, then we'll go into town and I'll write you a money order for the ransom. Oh, and can we stop by the police station on the way to the bank? I need to drop something off."

"Sure! Should we take my car?"