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Greetings fellow adventures!!

In regards to bluffing PC's (Bluff Skill check),to what limitation does that affect the bluffed PC's actions.

I will give an example to help portray the question; some adventurers are standing around doing some checks on a mystical looking fountain. Whilst this is happening one of the adventures decided to walk inside a room, noticed a trap and then rejoined the team at the fountain. The team then decides to progress to the next area, the lone adventure attempts to bluff the other adventures. The bluff being something along the lines of "I have already been through here a found a trap never fear however as I have already disabled it". Lets say the bluff passes and the adventures believe the he has already disabled the trap. Does this mean they are bound in a way to try and go through the trap without attempting disable device or attempting a perception check on the device? Can you believe something to be true in this case the trap is disabled and still not pass through the trap for different reasons? e.g. I don't want to go this way.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Why roll this back to the less coherent version? \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk
    Dec 16, 2014 at 4:06
  • \$\begingroup\$ Given the past few days, probably just misunderstanding the concept of post ownership at SE. \$\endgroup\$ Dec 16, 2014 at 4:29

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You have three major issues here.

The first is the use of social skills on PCs. Approaches here vary, but I would say in general the way people play is that PCs are somewhat immune to social skills (whether used by PCs or NPCs) - they may get shaken by Intimidate but their behavior is not directly controlled by Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate. The GM may tell them "you believe that" or "it sounds good" but it's considered too impactful on players' choices to use them to direct their actions (short of spells or feats or something that implement game conditions).

See also Can a PC use his Charisma to influence other PCs?

The second is that your PCs are obviously metagaming. The other PCs would generally trust another PC and not balk at walking through a disabled trap, but because they know or suspect it's not by the checks being made at the table, they are "deciding to walk around." Again, tables vary, but metagaming is generally considered poor form. In fact, it works directly against the goal of immersing yourself in a fantasy world and some groups penalize it pretty harshly. In my groups, in the interest of the story, players put their PCs into harm's way when the players knows darn well there's something wrong but the character doesn't.

See also How do you discourage "player knowledge" as a GM? and other questions with the tag.

You have a third issue, which is the question of PvP conflict - discussing whether that's allowed (some groups allow it and some don't as part of their social contract), and the role of metagaming in PvP (or instituting strict information compartmentalization options like passing notes to facilitate it).

See also How can I create within-party intrigue without destroying group cohesion? and other questions with the tag.

All of these are things your group should agree on their approach to before play starts, ideally. This would be a good time to pause and get everyone on the same page in terms of their playstyle before proceeding.

See also Specific items in a group social contract?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thank you, you have given me much to think about and discuss with my group in regards to boundaries. \$\endgroup\$ Dec 14, 2014 at 4:55

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