The problem I see here is that a player wouldn't know that the polite decline could be an option in either case. They'd see that they rolled low and got turned down, then reload until they got a high roll where their offer was accepted. That approach only works with meta knowledge. Also, just in general I feel like it's kind of cheating for succeeding a check to lead to a bad outcome. As least for a check to lead to a bad immediate outcome. I feel like
I was worried I maybe didn't explain my thoughts the best. I didn't mean that actually in the game the polite decline could be either a success or failure, I meant that when you got a polite decline, since it's pretty neutral, you wouldn't actually know. From MY perspective, the party can accept that response, or decide to attack, kill and loot the polite deniers. But I don't personally see reloading a save as an option.
I think if the game had many different dialogs like this, save scumming would be a less attractive option for the exact reason you mentioned. If the result of a dialog with skill check isn't definitively good or bad, then hopefully the player(s) will choose to continue on with the results as-is, rather than reloading and rerolling until they get a different result, which just might not be a better one!
... I reloaded on several occasions when I "succeeded", because I wanted to fail (to get a fight). There are only very very few checks in the EA in which I wanted to succeed 100% of time......
.....but the following fight against the alerted bandits is not more difficult than if you succeeded in the dialog, I find it even easier to a certain extent. The more the player has such experiences, the more he/she may be inclined to accept dice rolls.
I think you have the wrong idea about what Gaela is doing here. I see what he's doing as another extension of role-playing. At this point he's very likely done EA content to death story wise. So now he's using the capacity to choose in the game to make HIS OWN personal story that he can see play out uniquely, based on what he what he wants to see. If he's already at a point where he knows the possible outcomes, then the natural next step is leveraging that knowledge to make unique stories. I know that for games like Pillars of Eternity or Pathfinder, after my first or second time through, I start planning out my characters and their arcs so I can see them run through and experience all the little variations and such. That's usually when I get my favorite playthroughs. And where most games only give you one story, RPGs give you room to create a whole bunch of stories.
That does make more sense now. I suppose I was thinking more so for first time play throughs. Like, "I guess I'll go ahead and look like the good guy by and try to persuade her not to do the thing, and hope that I fail persuasion, so she does the thing and attacks me, then I can kill her like I really wanted to" as opposed to just doing the thing you actually wanted to do, which was kill her, even though there might not be a way to do that and still look like the "good guy".
