Nuanced Negotiations: Advancing Social Encounters in 5E
If you have run a social encounter in 5E, I am sure you have run into some difficulties. It might feel like the character with the highest charisma will always win. The trigger-happy warlock can burn down the nearby inn and follow it up with a cheerful speech to smooth things over, with little to no struggle. Meanwhile, the socially awkward fighter may struggle to get a better bargain from the merchant whom she just saved. Your players might feel under-challenged or over challenged in these situations. But there is some hope. In this Raw Review, we are going to look at the rules the Dungeon Master’s Guide provides for Social Interactions, and then discuss ways of tailoring them to our specific needs.
As they are Written
Whether you are aware of it or not, 5E has rules around social interactions. Though they are more stated as guidelines than fast rules, the game offers them for DMs that want to resolve interactions mechanically instead of through roleplay. In Chapter 8, running the game, The Social Interaction section outlines a four-step mechanic for interacting with NPCs. The steps are:
Determine Starting Attitude
Play out the Conversation
Call for a Charisma Check
Repeat as needed with diminishing returns.
Attitude Problem
First off, we want to decide the starting attitude of a creature the adventurers are interacting with, choosing friendly, indifferent, or hostile. These three terms are all based on the willingness for a character to want to work with (or for) the party (or player).
Friendly creatures want to help and wish for the adventurers to succeed. If a request requires no significant risk, effort, or cost, friendly creatures will usually help without question. The adventurers might need to make a Charisma check if there is a risk involved.
Indifferent creatures may help or hinder, but it depends on the specifics of the situation and what the creature wants. Not necessarily standoffish or disinterested creatures can run the gambit from polite to irritable. Almost any request will require a Charisma check to get them to do it, and they will want something in return.
Hostile creatures oppose the adventurers and their goals. They do not attack them on sight, but do not want them to succeed, sometimes even being willing to put effort into hindering their choices. Charisma checks will be needed almost always, but will be challenging. Sometimes even a Charisma check will not sway a hostile NPC.
Once this has been determined, the actual conversation can begin.
Talk it Out
Now that the starting attitude has been chosen, the conversation can begin. The party can start making their points, trying to sway the creature or NPC they are talking to through any means at their disposal. This involves two parts: changing the attitude of the creature and determining their wants and needs.
We can think of this as the offense and defense of social interactions. Changing the attitude is how your party “attacks” the situation, and the results. As the party tries to appeal to the creature they are interacting with, they can move the creature’s attitude anywhere along the three-part range. An indifferent character might become friendly with some strong rolls, or hostile with some poor choices.
Defensively, the characters can determine more information about their social adversary by determining their characteristics. This section, per the rules in the book, can be done via a Wisdom (Insight) check after interacting long enough with the character in question. A successful check will reveal an ideal, bond, or flaw that can gain an edge in the conversation. A failure will cause determining no information, with a failure of 10 or more possible providing a false or inverted characteristic. The rules also briefly talk about how this can be done over longer durations than the actual conversation. A party might learn about the hidden lover of the local sheriff by spending enough time at the tavern and listening to gossip, which will give them an edge.
Once the characters have done what they can to sway their target or learn as much as possible, it becomes time for them to make their last check.
Check Yourself
Once the characters reach the point of their conversation, and are trying to get what they want from their target, the rules dictate that there should be a Charisma Check. This last check takes the previous steps into consideration.
First, you choose a range based on what the final attitude was. These charts have three DCs: 0, 10, and 20. Any character who took part in the interaction can make this check, using either Persuasion, Deception, or Intimidation.
The Conversation Reaction tables have options ranging from the target accepting a significant risk or sacrifice as part of the request to having them actively try to oppose the actions of the party, possibly taking risks to do so. This section also notes that the roll can be made with advantage or disadvantage based on how other characters interacted. If another character really pushed their point across, the roll gets advantage. If another character hinders the situation, then the check gets disadvantage. If a social interaction has multiple goals, this might need to be done multiple times for each request.
Repeat at your own Risk
This social interaction, as written, can be repeated but with diminishing returns. This section gives the example of the party rogue making a noble hostile, with another character stepping in to return their mood back to indifferent. You can keep trying at this situation, but each subsequent time will be more difficult, and with less potential rewards.
Thoughts
The existing social interaction rules in 5E are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they offer a skeletal structure that could, theoretically, make role-playing more predictable. But let’s be honest, who’s actually using these often-ignored guidelines from 2014? The system is cumbersome, especially for newbie DMs. You’ve got to prep attitudes and traits for NPCs that your party might never even chat with (hello, lonely tavern goblin).
Plus, the system’s pretty limited—pick from three attitudes, end up at one of three outcomes. It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure book with only three pages. And yeah, the charisma-heavy characters still steal the show, leaving your lower-charisma crew sidelined.
But I think this system has a decent structure, and with some tweaks can be a great outline for how to handle social encounters. Now that we have an understanding, I can share my thoughts on how to adjust things a bit, and of course, I have some thoughts from playing Baldur’s Gate 3.
Social Revisions
So one of the first things I wanted to address was the limits of the Starting Attitudes. To me, these tables seem too cut and dry. I see the benefit, but I would rather have some information added to allow for complications because of rolls. Looking back, a little earlier at the Resolution and Consequences section, the book itself has some recommendations on how to add success at a cost and degrees of failure. Read my article for a full breakdown of how these work, but it moves the game away from a pass/fail system, and embraces the improvisation philosophies of “yes, and” as well as “no, but” and everything in between.
Looking back at our RAW Rules, we have two main areas that we can implement these checks into. The first I want to look at are the Wisdom (Insight) checks meant to give the party more information about the target of the social interaction. The options here just give basic information, and offer a potential for failure. I want to go further that provides some potential complications or consequences depending on the results of the roll.
Wisdom Checks
Success at a Cost
| Creature’s Attitude | Insight Check Range | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Friendly | Fail by 1-4 | Uncover sensitive bond; using it might have repercussions. |
| Indifferent | Fail by 1-4 | Learn an ideal the NPC considers a personal failing; makes them more complex to deal with. |
| Hostile | Fail by 1-4 | Discover flaw tied to their antagonism; usable, but they’ll redouble efforts against you later. |
These options provide some minor complications for just barely missing the DC of a check. Now a failure gives no information, but it will hand the party a choice. For example, the local constable has taken a shine to the party, and they need help to clear out a local thieves guild. In talking with the sheriff, they uncover evidence that they tried to bring them in long ago and failed, causing them great personal shame. Do they use the information they found to gain the advantage now, or do they avoid risking such a complication?
Degrees of Failure
| Creature’s Attitude | Insight Check Range | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Friendly | Fail by 5-9 | Misread them; believe an enemy to be a friend, complicating future interactions. |
| Indifferent | Fail by 5-9 | Misread them; acting on this false info may make them hostile. |
| Hostile | Fail by 5-9 | Confirm their worst assumptions about you, making them even more committed to opposing you. |
Here, we see extra consequences for larger failures, which can lead to more complex interactions. So now larger failures can have larger results.
We see the rules for Insight checks state “You set the DC”. For that I would say a good baseline would be 8 plus their Charisma modifier plus proficiency if they are proficient in either Persuasion, Deception, or Intimidation. This represents the character’s personality and specifically how well they fare in social encounters. You can further adjust this by specific characteristics and the starting attitude. A Friendly NPC that is inherently trusting will be a bit easier to read than one that is inherently guarded about their feelings.
Charisma Checks
We can now look at the Conversation Reaction tables that rely on the end Charisma check and provide some flair.
Success at a Cost
| Creature’s Attitude | Charisma Check DC | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Friendly | Fail by 1-4 | Expects a specific favor in return, even if risky. |
| Indifferent | Fail by 1-4 | Might gossip or spread rumors about you. |
| Hostile | Fail by 1-4 | Expects a future favor involving risk or moral dilemma. |
Now the result will often have a modifier attached to it. The local lord may loath the party, but sees that helping them now will give him some valuable services in the future. You could take this a step further and have the Noble see this to cause the eventual downfall of the party, pushing them to do something morally dubious that will get them caught.
Degrees of Failure
| Creature’s Attitude | Charisma Check DC | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Friendly | Fail by 5-9 | Becomes Indifferent due to disappointment or offense. |
| Indifferent | Fail by 5-9 | Becomes hostile, sharing negative opinions that could make social interactions more difficult. |
| Hostile | Fail by 5-9 | Actively plots against you or escalates conflict. |
For Degrees of Failure, this simply just made sense to have large rolls change the attitude of the NPC they are dealing with, which can set the party up to need to do more for the NPC just to get back in good graces. The local priest was indifferent to the party before the Bard made some sacrilegious comments about their deity. Now the priest despises the party, enough to spread their thoughts to their followers. The party will need to work to get themselves back into the NPCs’ good favor or see themselves become less welcome.
While I mean these tables for that final check, a more difficult option would be to apply them to the earlier stages as well. Now a party can rack up complications and run into challenges because of their rolls.
Simplify Things
While the previous option expands the Social Interaction, it makes it take longer. What if you are looking for the opposite, a more streamlined approach? You can easily distill down these rules into a faster system that is better for conversations that have less at stake.
The first way to streamline is to rely on passive scores, particularly Passive Insight. I got this idea while playing Baldur’s Gate 3. The game automatically would provide more information based on automatic rolls, mainly Intelligence or Wisdom. Seeing a religious statue could give the player interesting information if they had enough inherent knowledge.
To implement this, you can compare the player's Passive Insight to the target's Passive Persuasion, Deception, or Intimidation. This provides the fastest way to represent the inherent deductive skills and social skills of the parties involved. These checks can be made after each active roll, or once each player has had time to interact. This method will be the fastest and provide information the quickest, but also have the least amount of variance. If a player’s Insight is higher, they will always learn something. Alternatively, this could be a roll the target makes each time, using one of their Charisma scores.
The Whole Character Sheet
The only option left to tackle is making sure that all characters might gain some sort of bonus when making these checks. This is another option that came to me while playing Baldur’s Gate 3. When picking interaction options, sometimes options would have modifiers next to them. My character is a Cleric of Selune, so often I would get these for religion-based checks. This could mean anything from a small bonus of +1 or +2 to getting advantage on the roll. My character has relatively low charisma, so it was nice to have a way to get advantages based on my character features. Such implementations would work well in 5E but especially in social interactions by adopting a method similar to Skill Challenges.
When running Skill Challenges in 5E, the question asked is “What can this character contribute in this specific situation?”. Players trying to navigate rough water might want to focus on Athletics, but they could also use their perception to see hidden dangers or knowledge of the area. This method rewards creativity and knowing your character. In social interactions, you can encourage your players to find elements about their character that could be beneficial. Maybe they share a similar background with the target, or are both of similar occupations (represented by classes). Then, depending on how beneficial it seems, you can give some sort of bonus. For a simple, easy to remember rule, offering an additional proficiency bonus is an easy to remember representation of how a character’s experience and understanding in an area gives them a slight advantage.
While this might be inherent to some players, not everyone is used to this. It might be useful to initially suggest this to players or to incorporate it as a part of a roll or a passive score like Insight.
Final Thoughts
These options, along with the original Social Interaction rule, provide a mechanical method for handling the social pillar of Dungeons and Dragons. To me, these rules make sense and level the playing field for all, doing a powerful job of avoiding bonuses based on out of game talents. That being said, these rules won’t be for all tables.
Some tables enjoy focusing more on the role play side of things. Players would rather use their own wits to navigate social situations in a game. The result can lead to a more theatrical version of the game that allows for significant memories at the table. While I suggest using some mechanical elements, it really comes down to what you and your players want, and as always, it is important to take that into consideration. As always, talk to your players before implementing any rules.
Conclusion
The benefits and drawbacks of the social pillar in 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. While not used very often, this system creates a solid framework of back and forth coupled with attitudes that can make it easy to determine if players would get what they want. I find the system itself lacking a bit and have a few different ways to adjust the system as needed. To achieve a comprehensive system, I use Success at a Cost and Degrees of Failure to replace the existing pass/fail structure. If need a faster system I replace some of the active rolls with passive systems, balancing between efficiency and variance. If I want to reward creativity, I will let players try to lean on elements of their character’s life, be it background or class, to make a better connection with their target.
How do you handle social encounters in your games? I would love to know below!