Social Interactions And How They Work In D&D 5e

Create slick social interactions with rules and advice for social encounters.

D&D isn’t all about combat. That is only a single pillar of D&D with exploration and roleplaying being huge aspects of the game too.

What many people may not realise is that social interactions actually have some very specific mechanics. These existed in the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide (p244-246 to be precise) but many weren’t aware of them and they are quite long-winded. The 2024 revision places them in the Player’s Handbook making them simpler and more concise. These mechanics are there to help DMs determine the success of player’s interactions with NPCs. They also weave in nicely with mechanics of certain social spells.

To help you get to grips with these mechanics, I’ve explained the 2024 versions of them for you below with some advice. You can also find them in the D&D basic rules.

When encountering social interactions, you may attempt to influence other creatures. Such attempts can be resolved in one of 2 ways; roleplaying or ability checks (or both).

Roleplaying

When attempting to convince through roleplaying, you use your words to do the convincing for you, attempting to appeal to the various morals, vices and interests of the creature you’re speaking with. It is then up to the DM to determine whether you have been convincing enough to persuade the creature.

For example, you might flatter a particularly vain government official to allow you to accompany them to a ball. You might use a display of strength to intimidate a local guard into giving you key information. Or you might tell an incredibly convincing and plausible lie to a troll to let you pass by unharmed. It might even be as simple as doing favours for one another.

The DM will then determine the success of your roleplaying attempt to influence the creature.

It’s worth paying attention to the personality of the creature as this might give clues as to how they might be influenced by you.

Ability checks

At times, the DM may determine that the success of a social interaction should be determined a little more randomly or is both possible to have been successful or unsuccessful. In such cases, this will be determined by an ability check with the DM asking that you perform the influence action.

The influence action

There is a specific action you can take to attempt to influence someone called (appropriately) the influence action. This involves attempting to convince a creature to do something.

For this action to succeed, the DM must first determine how willing the creature is to do what’s been asked. The DM should determine whether the creature is:

Willing: The creature wants to do this anyway and needs no convincing. No ability check is required.
Unwilling: If the request goes too far against a creatures own alignment or desires, no amount of convincing will get it on board with what you ask. You don’t make an ability check, the creature simply refuses your request.
Hesitant: Some requests may be within the realms of what a creature might be willing to do, but it may be hesitant to do so and require convincing. In these cases, you make an ability check. The ability check typically has a DC of 15 or the creature’s intelligence score (whichever is higher). The DM chooses which influence check is required and a success means that the creature will do what you’ve asked while a failure means they’ll refuse. You also can’t repeat the check for 24hrs (or longer if the DM chooses).

Influence checks

There are 5 different skill checks that might be used when attempting to influence someone. These are collectively known as influence checks which I’ve summarised below:

Deception: You attempt to deceive a creature that can understand you.
Intimidation: You attempt to intimidate the creature.
Performance: You might try to amuse or entertain a creature to sway it’s attitude. Perhaps the creature is bored and likes a good story or song.
Persuasion: You articulate something persuasive to convince the creature.
Animal Handling: You might attempt to gently coax a beast or animal that can’t understand you (imagine Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts, possibly with less dancing, or more depending on your inclinations)

The DM determines which of these skill checks is required for the influence check, though this will likely be influenced by your approach to influencing the target. Sometimes an influence check might merge multiple skill types (like using a lie to persuade or displaying your dominance to an animal might be intimidation or animal handling). Again, the DM chooses which skill check is required.

Attitude

A final aspect that will influence the outcome of the interaction is the creature’s attitude towards you. With a fairly flat DC of 15, there needs to be variables that influence how easily an amicable creature can be convinced over one that is actively hostile. For this, we have 3 possible attitudes that a DM should determine for the creature being influenced:

Indifferent: This is the default view of most creatures towards characters and means they have no desire to help or hinder a player. There is no impact on the influence check.
Friendly: You are viewed favourably by this creature, and as such, have advantage on your influence checks.
Hostile: Such creatures view you unfavourably and are hostile towards you (this doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll attack you, though they might). Such creatures are harder to convince and incur a disadvantage on influence checks.

How do these mechanics interact with other rules?

Things like attitudes actually have mechanical implications for certain spells and other abilities. For example, the charm person and charm monster spells specify that creatures under these spells become friendly towards the caster making them easier to influence. Calm emotions on the other hand, can make creatures feel indifferent towards a creature they previously felt hostile towards.

If you’re a player, you could use some of the approaches below to enrich and improve your social interactions:

Play to character strengths: Mechanically speaking, you may want to lean on character strengths when attempting social interactions, especially those requiring influence checks. A highly persuasive bard is good for persuading while you may want your barbarian to switch on their rage for some intimidation.
Fit the approach to the NPC: A good DM will let personality traits shine through an NPC and you can use these clues to help determine the best course of action. A nervous, inexperienced guard might be easier to intimidate than a hardened mercenary, as might someone on their own as opposed to a whole group of guards. Similarly, this is unlikely to work on a powerful dragon, but you might appeal to their sense of vanity or seek to alleviate their boredom.
Explain your approach: Roleplaying isn’t always easy and it may be hard to find convincing words for your hugely articulate bard. If you find this difficult, you could also tell the DM the essence of what you’d like your character to say. Perhaps they tell a tale of a brave warrior with a moral implication or they explain the geo-political intricacies of inter-city politics, then allowing the DM to determine success based on the merits of what your character would have said.

For DMs, you can also use techniques to make social interactions more interesting:

Have characters that are many shades of grey: Characters with very fixed moral views of extremes are often boring to interact with and can rarely be persuaded differently. Most people are not this way and neither should your characters. Giving them ranges of what they’re willing to do under various circumstances gives players more scope to be inventive and influence through social interactions.
Reward excellent roleplaying: It can be tempting to have fairly fixed outcomes for social interactions, but what you don’t want to do is have social interactions become meaningless for players with predetermined outcomes. Instead, reward inventive and compelling roleplaying and high ability checks with successes.
Give your NPCs personality: By giving NPCs different personalities, it gives players clues to what might work on them. One guard might fidget nervously while another might speak boldly of treasure they’ve accumulated in their days as an adventurer. These give clues to how players can influence them.