this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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I once played with someone who argued that Diplomacy would never be usable on any important person because, since it requires 1 minute of uninterrupted conversation to use, everyone who is important enough would have a jester or aid or someone they'd hire specifically to interrupt every conversation they were involved in every 9 rounds. Absolutely infuriating person to play with. This anecdote is completely unrelated to this post, but your suggestion just made me remember it again, and it irritated me all over again.
That could make for a fun gimmick(tie it to a roll behind the scenes) for a session, but beyond that, fuck no. Not only would it be an absolute drag timing out each conversation, eventually the party will start working out ways to get around it, be it a graceful zone of silence to the more likely "Gut the loudmouth and use the corpse as a puppet".
Why would anyone want their diplomacy interrupted, even as the one being affected? It's not like diplomacy is some evil spell. A successful diplomacy check means you were able to have small talk, relate, and do all the normal things strangers do to put each other at ease. You don't "defend" against diplomacy!
Imagine trying to agree on a treaty with some jester interrupting every 54 seconds...
They never really went into detail, their whole argument was that if you wanted to use Diplomacy, you did so by default at a -10 penalty (for doing it 'rushed'), or it would guaranteed fail, for the above reason. :(
Why a -10? That seems arbitrary in 5e that almost does nothing with incremental modifiers.
This was pre-5e; we were playing 3.5e, where that's actually an official thing you can do:
So they were arguing:
"come with me if you want to live" ~a successful diplomat, or something.
Exactly that. I wish I was kidding.