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.

[Morroiel]

So I don't know exactly what's going on but its convoluted.

Things I've noticed -
1) Bluffing while sneaking unnoticed and out of line of sight of any mobs -> higher success
2) I've failed and succeeded on the same number before on the same mob under different circumstances -> hidden (fail), aggro (success).
3) I've succeeded on a natural 20 on a mob when I definitely shouldn't have (granted this was prior to the latest changes)

Which leads me to suspect one or more of the following things:
1) situational modifiers -> hidden provides +x, out of line of sight provides +y, aggro provides +z, etc (where the numbers could be positive or negative; and multiplicative multipliers can't be ruled out)
2) The system uses something akin to the AC/to-hit where there is a rolling % for total check vs DC.
3) Bluff is simply bugged in some way that is giving conflicting results

Lastly, I've found that the scaling has been moved to 1.4 on elite from my tests (this was determined with 1500 data points on variety of mobs/quest crs). This doesn't preclude the possible complications above.

It would be great if we could get a dev to confirm that everything is working as intended - and possibly clear explanations of criteria for a successful bluff (as in if there are situational bonuses, enumerate them).

[blerkington]

Thanks for your reply, Morroiel.

I thought when they reduced bluff requirements after the initial hike, the new formula might just have been CR + QL for all content. That would still mean scores were higher on harder content, but not nearly so high as they were.

But the odd things I've noticed and what you've observed makes me think it's either broken or more complex than I thought. It would be good to hear from more players and a developer as well.

Even if SSG doesn't want to spill the beans about some new mechanic they've added for us to figure out, it would be reassuring to hear that these odd results are actually WAI.

I gave you some rep earlier today for another post of yours, so I can't give any more now. +1 in spirit, and take care.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

I bluffed one guy. Did not get seen.
Yet all of his friends came looking for me and were all actively attacking the air and moving to my last location....forever.

They really have killed stealth.. or at least messed it up very badly.

Also had one guy apparently get close enough to me to agro on me (a different group at a different time) and all of his friends instantly turned on me and killed me so fast that I was dead before I even knew I had a problem.

This is just plain not fair and no fun.

I do not want a return to unagroed range attacks. But I want to be able to use stealth and not rick instant death.
I want a method of single pulling a target.
I want to fight one group and not the next two or three (or more) groups of monsters at the same time.

Not all of us play Warlocks with Auras that do 5K damage per tic.
Not all of us want to fight everything at once.

Fun was when I could use tactics.

And there was a time when shooting things with arrows did cause nearby monsters to agro; yet all of this other stuff worked correctly too.
I do not understand why they cannot return to that version of the agro method.

[blerkington]

Thanks for your reply too, Talon. There are three things I'd really like to see fixed very soon with the current interaction of stealth and aggro.

1. Monsters should not telepathically locate a stealthed player. Examples of this include monsters homing in on the character's location even when they have not been able to spot or hear their enemy, accurately attacking that location with arrows, spears and spells, and worst of all even moving straight to the character's new location when that character has pulled back and left stealth well outside of line of sight and hearing range.

2. Monsters with tremorsense seem to have a larger detection radius with that sense than they do with their hearing. So they appear to be able to detect characters approaching in stealth further away than other party members armoured in plate and moving at a run. I noticed this in a Slavers group when I was moving in stealth towards a group of enemies out of their line of sight, to join another party member who had just run there. He wasn't noticed by the spider on the other side of the column, but I was.

3. Stealthed characters should not move to the top of the aggro list of tremorsense monsters (including reapers) and their allies when the character is sighted. What we have now makes the enemy group run past other party members, who can attack the monsters and be ignored until the aggro tables update, towards the stealthed character. This is a bad tactic for the monsters and can be exploited by players to kill enemies with little or no danger as a no-fail intimidation tactic. It also feels like a bit of a 'screw you' to stealth players.

Anyway, let's hope the developer who expressed an interest in improving stealth gets around to it soon. What we have now can be played around fairly easily once you understand how to counter it, but lots of it doesn't make much sense, it isn't particularly enjoyable, and it could sure use some polishing.

Thanks.