[Wids]

So this might hold less true at higher Levels (and higher levels of Notoriety), but if you're going to walk around Thay and tell random townies how great your god is and/or milk information out of them, then you're best off building on at least two of the five social skills if you want to win them over more often than not. Persuade's a given; most classes have it as a Class Skill, and its DC takes a pretty sharp nosedive as you level up higher and higher. If you're a Bard, then Perform's a given too, for obvious reasons. For everyone else, you're probably going to need to invest in Bluff, Intimidate and/or Taunt if you want to consistently land those coveted "Anything for you!" reactions.

Until recently, I assumed that those last three skills kept their DCs around 20 for the purposes of winning the townies over. Corella's two social skills of choice are Persuade and Bluff. Persuade's DC is so low that Corella can roll a Natural 1 and still get a good reaction from the townie. But even though she's built up Bluff to where she can fool a townie most of the time (not bad, considering that she has to cross-class points into it), Bluff's DC is still right at 20, the same as it was when she was Level 1.

So imagine my surprise when I ran into one of those townies who wasn't interested in hearing about any gods (and didn't have the option for it). Without really looking, I got into my Dial-a-Convert routine: 11111,51412. Only after the fact did I notice that 5 had keyed Intimidate instead of Persuade. And Corella's Intimidate attempt passed...with a 16. Her Intimidate score sucks (because I've already cross-classed a heap of points into Bluff; no way I'm doing that for Intimidate or Taunt too), so she just rolled a little bit high that time.


So it got me wondering a few things:

1) If Intimidate's DC declines over time, what exactly determines the DC?
2) What determines the DC for Persuade, for that matter?
3) Do the DCs for Taunt, Bluff and Perform ever decline, and how or why not?

That's it. Enlighten me, peeps.