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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MechaPilot" data-source="post: 6880990" data-attributes="member: 82779">I think it's important to step back and ask how your DM handles social interaction.  Is success/failure determined entirely on the roll of the dice?  Is it entirely determined by what you say in-character?  Does your DM use a mix of the two where the roll controls success or failure, but what is said can grant modifiers or determine the degree of success?Also, does your DM allow peripheral checks to benefit your social interaction?  Here's an example from one of my games in one of my homebrew settings.  The party was going to negotiate with a human baron whose territory bordered one of the great forests inhabited by the elves.  In the relatively recent history of that world, about 50 years prior, the border humans and elves had been at war.  The humans were rather soundly defeated, and they still tell stories of evil elf magic killing and bewitching their soldiers (some of whom were never seen again, and were actually traded to fey lords/ladies as servants by the elves).I allowed the humans in the party to make Int checks to see if they knew about the superstitions and resentment of that region toward elves; if any of them had been border humans, they would have automatically known this.  I allowed the Dwarf a check as well, because his people trade with humans, but he was not a travelling merchant so he rolled with a penalty.  They made at least one of the checks and were able to recall that humans in that region feared and resented elves.  Consequently, they knew that openly bringing an elf to the meeting would not be a great idea.  The elf went anyway, in disguise as a human.  Most humans haven't seen an elf at all at this point, so it went off mostly without a hitch.  Although, at one point the Baron noticed the elf character's accent and asked where she was from.  Fortunately, the group didn't panic, and they were able to play it off as an accent from a faraway land.I also used that same Int check to determine what the party knew about the region in general.  The Dwarf recalled overhearing craftsmen drinking in his home town and saying that wealthy border humans of that region were fond of jade, which were often exchanged as gifts.  When the party met with the baron, they presented him with a small bag of jade figurines they'd previously found in a bandit fortress.  I was prepared to either give them a bonus to the check, or to have it positively affect their degree of success.  Since they succeeded on the check without the bonus, I applied it to the degree of their success.</blockquote>

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