Bluff skill oddness post u34.2

[blerkington]

I did some more playing around with bluff today to see how achievable the scores are now after the recent downward adjustment. With a cannith ring for +22 CHA and a LGS CHA skills necklace, my score is 24 points higher than the last time I looked at this.

The first thing I did was go into an EE Haunted Halls, where I found 100 was the magic number for success with the ghosts after the trap ramp. They are CR 70 and the quest level is 30, so at that point I thought the DC multiplier of 1.5 for elite had been removed completely. Monster CR + quest level is also 100, so that seemed to make sense.

Later on I had no trouble bluffing CR 58 hobgoblin warriors and archers in EE Cabal even without my new swap gear, with a base score of 90. However, when I tried to bluff the shaman (regular monster also CR 58 and not a champion) at the start I had two very strange things happen.

An early attempt on the shaman (not the first) succeeded on a total of 132 (base 114 + a roll of 18). Rolls close to but below that were failing. Maybe 'wise' monsters get a bonus to resist, I don't know, but it seemed very high for a quest of that level. I have trouble imagining even a well-geared rogue making that bluff reliably at level for the quest, though I'm sure it's possible for someone very heavily invested.

The second strange thing was a later roll of 20 (for a total of 134) failed. Now until a little while back I thought failing bluff rolls made it harder for subsequent attempts to succeed, until a developer told us recently that was no longer the case. So I'm really not clear on how I could fail with a higher roll than one which I succeeded with earlier.

Anyway, I'm curious what other people using bluff think about this, and if they have noticed any other oddness with it since the most recent changes. If you have something useful to say to about this, please post, as it might not be working properly right now.

Thanks.