Going to try to field a few things right quick and answer with brevity:
My guess is that was because the roll was successful, but @
Manbearcat can probably give you more information there. (My intent was: "I want to know if the Lord Chamberlain is directing these beasts against the people here.")
This goes to GM principles and role in conflict resolution as I outlined above. My responsibility is to heed player intent while observing fictional positioning, genre conceits, and the guidannce and constrains of the mechanics (resolution engine and PC build tool deployed). I think if you put all of those things in the hopper, that I faithfully resolved the situation in accords with those things. The "possessed" flesh golem was either incapable of defending itself (eg leveraging the Court Mage's powers) against the troll onslaught or he didn't attempt to (thus willingly giving its covert plot up). If he was incapable of defending himself, then it seems likely that he was impotent in using magic to set the beasts (dogs, troll) against the people there. I would let the players make their deduction.
To the extent that the player was able to infer the truth of their intent from the resource deployed and the fictional positioining surrounding the situation, I would hope they were satisfied. If not, it would be discussed at the table for clarify. In a PbP it makes such exchanges difficult.
Given our discussion is supposedly framed around answering the question of balance between spellcasters and nonspellcasters, but in a broader sense balance between characters, your comments above lead to a fairly obvious (in my view) question - do some skills (which I expect are linked to certain types of characters) lend themselves to broader application, thereby granting characters who would normally focus on those skills a greater, broader and/or easier means of influencing the narrative? The two skills which leap to mind are Arcana and Religion, which would be the two skills associated with the major spellcasting classes. Meanwhile, your examples seem to relegate my knowledgeable Bard to the sidelines in that three of your four "Don't be stupid!" examples relate to knowledge and Performance skills. The fourth would be Religion, where you have indicated a different use might easily be successful.
You also noted you specifically wrote in elements which would provide Sheadunne the opportunity to use his major skill, Nature. This doesn't seem like a technique unique to Indie gaming, but simply a tool designed to allow each character their time in the spotlight, highlighting their special skills. Presumably, a similar approach wold be adopted to provide opportunities for the knowledge-based Bard. By writing in challenges suited to being addressed by the warrior's skills or abilities in a 3e game, do we not effect balance in a similar manner? I don't think designing scenarios, scenes and challenges with the specific abilities of the various PC's in mind is a unique innovation of Indie games - it's a standard GMing technique which has existed for as long as RPG's have existed.
[MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION], just going to try to address a few things here right quick:
1) You posited that it is impossible to have a social conflict not escalate to violence under this model. I believe that I provided one from my home game in this thread (amongst many others I could break out...I just had one in the Abyss with a demon [!] in my homegame); the PCs requesting aid from the clan of Rangers and being rebuffed. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] provided one and has a few floating about on these boards.
2) You asked if some skills seem better than others. I think that is highly dependent upon the style of game and challenges run. I run a considerable number of skill challenges, including exploration, combat, and social. I would say that I'm not sure that there are "apex" skills that are demonstrably more versatile than the others. However, (and others can comment with their own anecdotes), from an open/broad descriptor perspective, I find that the Heal and Thievery Skills suffer the most. Their utility is definitely contracted with respect to all of the other skills. I think it might be interesting to do a post on the functional utility of each of the 4e Skills from an open/broad descriptor perspective.
3) The 4e Bard definitely doesn't suffer from contracted options in dealing with situations. They would definitely be able to resolve Theron's plight with the dogs from both a symmetrical perspective (take or give the blow) and from an assymetrical perspective (eg; Dungeoneering to notice the compromised load bearing of the pillar and undo it such that it interposes itself between the dogs and the servant girl). Bards gain Arcana + 4 skills, have a broad swath of skills, gain an encounter power that gives them + 5 to Diplomacy, have + 1 to all untrained skills, can take multilple (big bang for the buck) multiclass feats (giving them multiple trained skills that they wouldn't have access to otherwise), easily qualify for Jack of All Trades (+ 2 to all untrained skills), and they're a primary Cha/secondary Int/Con/Wis class (which gives them considerable base functionality in a broad swath of skills).
4) I wonder if you partook firsthand if this would be an easier conversation. If you'd like, we can easily contrive a fictional positioning to your liking (obstinate chamberlain in a very formal Court setting), I can compose a character for you if you give me an archetype and you and I (+ another player if they would like to be involved) can do a quick complexity 1 Social Skill Challenge. If you'd like to do that and you think it would be instructive, let me know. It would be trivially easy to accomplish.
