Social Interaction Rules

Social interaction is one of the three pillars of play alongside combat and exploration. It covers any attempt to influence NPCs through conversation, negotiation, or roleplay.

NPCs have one of three basic attitudes toward the party:

• Friendly: Inclined to help, takes risks or makes sacrifices for the characters, provides information willingly.
• Indifferent: Has no strong feelings; may help if it costs nothing, but won't go out of their way.
• Hostile: Actively works against the characters; won't help unless forced. A hostile creature doesn't necessarily attack on sight, but it won't cooperate.

The DM determines the starting attitude based on circumstances. Social skill checks can shift an NPC's attitude one step: hostile to indifferent, or indifferent to friendly. Shifting hostile directly to friendly typically requires extraordinary effort or roleplay.

• Persuasion: Appeal to reason, diplomacy, or goodwill. Works best on indifferent or friendly NPCs. Unreasonable requests may auto-fail regardless of the roll.
• Deception: Mislead through lies or half-truths. Contested by the target's Insight. Suspicion or implausibility raises the DC.
• Intimidation: Compel through threats or force. Produces short-term compliance but may create long-term hostility. The target cooperates out of fear, not loyalty.

The DM may lower DCs or grant advantage when a player delivers a compelling in-character argument. Conversely, demanding an absurd outcome ("I persuade the dragon to give us its hoard") may simply be impossible regardless of the roll. Skill checks adjudicate uncertain outcomes, not guaranteed miracles.

For complex negotiations (e.g., convincing a council), the DM may require multiple checks from different characters, or a skill challenge where the group needs a certain number of successes before accumulating too many failures.