Why do Sorcerers get Bluff as a class skill?

[AscendantMadness]

Are they meant to be pared with rogues? If you took a level or two of rogue could you add sneak attack damage to your spells?

[KKDragonLord]

Not without the PrE Arcane Trickster (which doesn't exist in DDO)

Sorcerers are charismatic laid back individuals who go about life charming people with their personality and not doing much with their time besides partying and enjoying their natural mutant powers. (while wizards and fighters are studying and training hard)

The bluff skill is important for them because they often have to get out of embarrassing situations for burning down someones barn, and because people who are gifted are usually hated by society so they have to deal with that on their own (until Charles Xavier finds them and they become X-men)

[Zachski]

Getting Bluff as a class skill is more for its non-combat uses than anything else.

Which doesn't translate well to DDO

[Halock]

because they got it in pen and paper, where it has alot more uses, same reason paladins have diplomacy ( here a way to shred agro ) when they 'should' have intimidate ( a way to gain and keep agro )

Its one of those things that should have changed in the crossover but hasnt.

[Razcar]

It's a great skill in PnP, so there it is nice. But in DDO the Bluff implementation (like many other skills here) leaves a lot to be desired

[TazMan098]

Bluff causes my wife to laugh.

I mean, come on, can you picture something funnier than the big, bad kobold running towards you, and then stopping and turning its back for a couple of seconds while you toss off that Niac's...hilarious!

[EatSmart]

Legacy issues of converting a pen and paper RPG into a MMOCG. 3rd Ed PnP was designed to support a spectrum of roleplayers ranging from the "lots of talky, gumshoe investigating" to the "lots of dungeon crawly tomb raiding". So some classes got social skills, some got research skills, others got support skills. As others have said, DDO is an action game and originally was trading on the 3rd Ed DnD franchise. The skills were ported over and used for things that met the needs of an online action game.

Knowledge (arcana) and Spellcraft were dropped, although I'm sure i remember wizards originally using spellcraft for spell inscription at launch... (there used to be a fail chance)

Would be nice to see more social oriented objectives appearing in content. Partycrashers was welcome in that regard.

Anyway, back on topic - because wizzies are the bookworms who went to look legends up in the library and sorcs were the shmoozers who went down the tavern with the rogue to find out what the locals knew. The social skills got used as AI agro management tools when the game was ported from PnP to MMO.

[Mindspat]

It's a poorly translated feature from the pen & paper rules.

If Bluff allowed a Sorcerer to recieve the next direct spell dmg as a crit it would be nice. Being this has not been changed it could only be assumed that the process to change this is overly complicated to program, why wouldn't it have been fixed otherwise?

Oh Eladrin...Bluff grants next spell an automatic crit?

[Spiffyspiffy]

Are they meant to be pared with rogues? If you took a level or two of rogue could you add sneak attack damage to your spells?

Answer A) Because PnP does.

Answer B) Because otherwise there are no CHA based class skills.

[TreknaQudane]

Bluff was useful when your typical sorcerer relied on summons to fill in the gaps in their magical skills.

Bluff would allow them to get a summoned creature that would normally not work with or cooperate with them to play along.

[Pugsley]

Instead we get gimped Diplomacy.

Does it even work at high levels? I mean, our high Charisma can only make up for it being a cross-class skill for so long.

[AscendantMadness]

I played PnP, I get the social usage when you actually get to roleplay but yeah it doesn't mesh in a MMO very well. I like the concept of allowing a pet or other player to get aggro from it though!