@Maugan Ra how does the Bribery skill work? Do we need to begin talking to them first or can we do it from our current position?
The Bribery skill in WFRP 4e is used for judging whether someone will accept a bribe and how best to offer it to them so that they'll accept it
Mechanically if you want to bribe someone you roll Bribery and if you succeed the GM tells you whether or not they can be bribed
If they can be then get 1 + SL guesses as to what the minimum amount of money you should offer them is, with the GM responding with "higher", "lower", or "equal"
(The minimum of money they're looking for is based on their Income, modified by how risky or irregular the bribe is)
After using up all your guesses to narrow the price, you then name the amount of money you'll slip them, if it is over the minimum then you've successfully bribed them
So for example:
If you want to bribe a watchman into letting you pass without trouble the GM might roll for 4d10 pennies (the guard's income), and get 21
If you got 2 SLs on the bribery roll then you get 3 guesses. You guess a Shilling (12 pennies). "Higher". You guess 3 Shillings (36 pennies). "Lower". You guess 20 pennies. "Higher"
You must now offer an amount of money, you only know that the target is between 20 and 36 pennies.
You decide to be safe and bribe the guard with 2 Shillings and 11 pennies (35 pennies). He smiles, takes your money and waves you through
If you were trying the same bribery roll while the watchman's fellows are nearby the costs might be higher, since he's worried about getting caught and needs a sweeter deal to tempt him
If you were trying the bribery roll while his employer was standing right beside him it might be impossible
If they cannot be bribed for whatever reason then they cannot be bribed, and a successful bribery roll just means that you correctly intuit that they cannot be bribed
Trying to bribe the bandits that are robbing you for instance is probably doomed to fail, because why would they accept some cash to leave you alone when they can just take everything?
A failed bribery roll means you either have no idea, or if you fail badly enough you might have horribly misjudged things
This kind of granularity is not a very good fit for forum questing, so Maugan will probably modify it
Most likely a successful Bribery roll will just equal a successful bribe, with the amount of SLs being used to determine how affordable it is, or how many people are swayed by it, and a failed Bribery roll means Markus messes it up somehow
And when the target cannot be bribed it just won't be offered as an option
And/Or Markus will make a Bribery test unprompted to determine whether someone can be bribed, the same way he makes Perception tests unprompted
So with the Persuade Them action. I'd probably guess that Markus tries to just walk up and pay them off, and if it fails then they attack and combat ensues
Especially since bribery at a distance would mean rehashing the same vote again about whether to charge or sneak
Trying to dissuade people from attacking you with cash is usually a Hard (-20) roll, because it's usually taken as an admittance of weakness, and why would they accept a little bit of money to not hurt you when they could hurt you and then take everything?
The odds might be better than that here if Markus can convince them that they really don't want to be part of whatever is going on inside that building, but it's hard to say
Maybe a Combined Charm/Bribery roll?
(Combined rolls are when you roll once and the result is used for two different Tests, this gives better odds than having to roll twice separately)
) of cult-hunting in the Empire requires us to be creative, in order to scrape by and accomplish the impossible. Like Harry Dresden the wizard detective, if anyone has read Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files. A Dresden that is so personally self-righteous that he does not kill Justin DuMourne is a dead Dresden, and so many bad things would follow from that.
