Social Interaction

Talking to someone is played like everything else: you say what your character does, and the DM decides whether the outcome is in doubt. What makes conversation different is how often it is not — most of a social scene is settled by what is actually said at the table, and only some of it by a roll.

Willing, unwilling, hesitant

Trying to get a creature to do something is the Influence action. Describe how you are going about it — a threat, a bargain, flattery, a lie — and the DM sorts what you asked for into one of three cases:

• Willing. The request lines up with what the creature already wants. No roll. It does it, in whatever way suits it best.
• Unwilling. The request is repugnant to it, or against everything it stands for. No roll. It refuses.
• Hesitant. It might, and it might not. This is the only case that reaches the dice.

Two of the three never touch a d20, which is worth remembering before reaching for one. An argument that a creature already agrees with does not need a check to land.

The check, when there is one

For a hesitant creature, the DM picks the ability check from how you are going about it.

The default DC is 15, or the creature's Intelligence score if that is higher — the sharper the mind, the harder it is to talk around.

Fail, and you cannot urge that creature the same way again for 24 hours. That rule is there to stop the party queueing up to roll the same request until somebody succeeds. It does not stop you trying a different approach, and it does not stop you changing the situation and coming back.

Attitude tilts the odds

A creature's attitude is how it regards you before you open your mouth. It moves the check rather than replacing it:

• Friendly — you have Advantage on the check.
• Indifferent — nothing changes. This is where most creatures start.
• Hostile — you have Disadvantage.

Reading the room

Insight is the other half of a social scene, and it is not an Influence check. It is what you roll to work out whether you are being lied to, or what someone is really after — a question about them, not a request of them.

What the rules do not decide

None of this settles what your character says. A high Charisma measures how well your character carries an argument, not a switch that overwrites another person's mind, and the DM can let a request land or fail on its own merits with no dice at all. The mechanics are for the cases where nobody at the table actually knows which way it should go.