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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 5727952" data-attributes="member: 386">In my 4E hack it works like this:1. There aren't really "social skills", though some skills lend themselves to social situations.  (One PC made good use of "Upper Middle Class" and "Snooty" in social situations.)  What happens is that one PC tries to get another PC to do or believe something that he doesn't want to do or believe; there's a conflict there, so we go to the dice to resolve the action.I'm not sure if I spell out who has the authority to say if there's a conflict or not.  That should probably be the DM's job.Once the action has been resolved, the player has to decide if his PC goes with that or against; that is, if he's been "successfully" convinced of something - a specific course of action or statement - the player can decide not to take that action or believe that statement.  If that decision goes against the result of the die roll then modifiers get applied to the next actions that are relevant to the situation.  This allows the roll to matter while still allowing players agency over their characters.There are some other fine points to be made here.  I specifically allow metagame decisions to be made.  If one PC is lying to another, then the roll needs to be secret - both the result of the check and the fact that a roll is made!  (I make a lot of secret rolls because of this so it's usually not a problem.)  This could get complicated but I've never seen it be a problem.2. NPC vs. PC basically works the same way, though in game play the players are less likely to go along with what an NPC has proposed.  Using modifiers if the PC goes against the result of the die makes it work out rather well.In most cases, though, this doesn't come up; usually I run a social skill challenge for social conflicts, and in those NPCs don't make any rolls.  Modifiers do get added based on what the characters are doing/saying, but usually it's to the defence of the NPC in question.This usually comes up in combat; the NPCs try to intimidate the PCs or something like that.  Players don't usually want to surrender, which means that the NPCs get a bonus on their next attack.I'm playing in a 3.5 game now and this is how it works:1. I don't think we've ever made checks against each other.  I could see using Intimidate to impose the "Shaken" condition, but that's about it.2. NPCs have lied to us before and we've fallen for it.  The DM makes a check behind the screen for the NPC and for us.  Then she plays it out.  I don't think the NPCs have ever made an Intimidate check against us; maybe once?  I don't know what would happen if the NPCs would succeed on their check.</blockquote>

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