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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Frostmarrow" data-source="post: 1536492" data-attributes="member: 1122">Pretty often on these boards the age old question of dice rolling versus social interaction comes up. Recently I've come to the realisation that many of us don't play by the actual rules when it comes to this, and that that might be the reason behind the need to constantly challenge this aspect of the game.It really is pretty simple. You use your social skills such as Diplomacy to influence the attitudes of NPCs. When you have an encounter the DM assigns an initial attitude that the NPCs have. If you try to influence their stance you roll a check. This establishes the mood for the encounter. Sometimes the NPC will be hostile and attack (or flee), sometimes they will not give the characters any of their time or effort, and yet at other occasions the NPCs will chat or even help the characters out.You still need to role-play these situations. The roll is only used to set the attitude. If the NPCs are friendly (or have become influeced to that attitude) you can expect the NPCs to chat, advise, offer limited help or advocate. This still leaves plenty of room for wittisms, bravado, or showing off your legendary poker face. -It even leaves the field open to blatant attempts of bribery.So even if His Royal Highness has a helpful attitude towards the party, the king will not free your imprisoned friend no matter how high the check might  be - unless of course the proper evidence of your companion's innocence can be presented. The king will probably free the companion when presented the evidence even if he is unfriendly, though. The difference is that if he is helpful he might point out what kind of evidence he needs or even grant the party some kind of writ, to ease investigations.How many have tried this approach? Hands up!  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid    :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" /></blockquote>

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