[RPG] Using Intimidate and/or Diplomacy to kill enemies

pathfinder-1eskills

This question came up during another question regarding the use of cursed items as offensive weapons; however, I think there's a more general question that's otherwise identical:

If a PC X succeeds on an intimidate/diplomacy check against NPC Y, and proceeds to instruct Y to perform some seemingly harmless action, does Y have to do it? What if the action will actually result in Y's swift and messy demise, though Y would have no obvious way of knowing?

Like I said before, I'm try not to play rules lawyer, just curious about this. Some examples follow:

  1. Cursed item: PC intimidates enemy, instructs enemy to interact with item. Enemy is temporarily friendly towards PC, uses item, and suffers curse.
  2. Trap: PC persuades enemy, instructs enemy to move into position. Once in position, PC springs the trap.

In both cases, an objection might be that you'd need to use bluff if the NPC asked for an explanation. This seems to be easily countered:

  1. Intimidate: Because I said so; Don't test me; Do it or I kill you.
  2. Diplomacy: I though we had a deal; Don't you trust me; All he cool kids are doing it.
  3. Even bluff: It's a surprise!

One addendum: in many, likely most circumstances, there's some skill check the NPC could try to realize the danger. Some of these are passive – perception, sense motive for bluff, etc. – and some are active – casting, etc. The premise is that the treachery is something that gets by passive detection. If the NPC were in the habit of casting detect and dispel magic, remove curse, etc. on his boots every morning, then your cursed boots would also need to beat that; however, for most people that aren't dysfunctionally paranoid, having a friend (or boss) tell you to do something (apparently) harmless isn't going to prompt you to be very cautious.

Best Answer

I would say Y has to do it since Y does not see or know the danger involved in doing what you are suggesting. The only thing that I can see wrong here is that if Y somehow knows that what you are suggesting is 'eventually' dangerous to him.

I base this on the description of charm/dominate where it clearly states that the effected will perform any action that does not pose a threat to his own health. Literal copy of the RAW (I used the 3.5e rules here since they offer a nice example which the Pathfinder version does not) for charm person:

An affected creature never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, but a charmed fighter, for example, might believe you if you assured him that the only chance to save your life is for him to hold back an onrushing red dragon for “just a few seconds.”

The suggestion that you made to have Y move to a certain square sure seems to be a lot less dangerous than what is described above, so if it works with charm it should work with dominate/diplomacy in my opinion.

Related Topic