Meissa wrote:
I think the monetary cost should be higher, particularly when there's very granular information being given out. A scaling system seems appropriate: Less money for kingdom, more for city, most for specific room (and the success rolls might scale with difficulty here, too). I also feel that it would be appropriate for the time required to "convince" someone to give you information to be lengthened.
At the inception of this skill, I argued that it doesn't make any sense to have the informant alert the target, even on a critical fail. I stand by that position. You're not going to get a law-enforcement NPC to cooperate, after all. There is no implied loyalty to the target simply because the requester somehow manages to insult the streetwise informant. That said, I'd be okay with fails having some consequence, like bad intel.
I haven't really seen this skill in action but just know the theory behind original implementation. I do still think there are times when the alleged informant WOULD give intentionally bad information AND times when some would consciously choose to alert the target. For instance, deep-elf rogue comes to town looking for a paladin, tries to streetwise a principled NPC who ostensibly knows something about the target and the nature of the fellow standing before him now... that principled NPC absolutely could have reason to provide bad info, to provide no info, and to potentially warn the target of the impending threat. Likewise, some light aura goes to Menegroth looking for a member of the Legions and tries to streetwise a diabolic NPC who could conceivably have reason to double-cross the light aura for his own purposes, or to earn some favors by warning the Legion target. Or maybe the target just has a higher charisma and the informant just plain likes the target better than the inquiring rogue.
This wouldn't be the case for all such situations, of course, but it seems perfectly reasonable that it would be one possible outcome.