Rolling social skills when PCs interact with each other?, Fork of sotrs from the SR4.5 thread Options

[Fuchs]

From the other thread:

Rolling the dice for face skills vs. another PC is hard to do because it is hard to quantify what penalties and bonuses should apply. If the PC is, say, a frugal miser, then what should the penalty be for the face trying to mooch a meal off of him? For most other characters, it probably wouldn't even require a roll, but for this guy - if he's a total hardass about not spending money, why should he suddenly change 180 degrees? Do you give the face -4 to his roll, -12 to his roll, or flat out tell him that his face senses warn him getting this guy to part with his nuyen would be a waste of time?

Social skills are "on" all the time. If the GM doesn't put reasonable limits on them, then you can wind up in a situation where the other players feel like they aren't getting to play their own characters. Or they can feel like their character is ruined - if their background can get overruled by a dice roll with arbitrary modifiers, then why even bother giving the character a personality in the first place?

We handle it like that: We use skill checks if something is in doubt - when a player is not sure his or her PC would do something or not when asked or influenced by another PC - but there's some ooc control too - the social control of "You're not allowed to ruin someone's fun".

With NPCs it's the same, or very similar - they too get to roll against PCs, with similar checks and balances.