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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide
GM Core / Chapter 1: Running the Game / Running Encounters / Running the Encounter / Social Encounters

Measuring Success and Progress

Source GM Core pg. 31 2.0
You'll need to decide how to measure the characters' success in social encounters because there's no AC to target or HP to whittle down. Page 55 includes guidance on setting DCs for social skill actions, often using a target's Will DC. If you need a DC for people who don't have stats, such as a crowd or an NPC for whom you haven't already generated statistics, use the guidelines on setting DCs, found on page 52. You can either pick a simple DC or use a level-based DC, estimating a level for the subject or how challenging it should be to sway them.

The attitude conditions—hostile, unfriendly, indifferent, friendly, and helpful—provide a useful way to track the progress of a social encounter. Use these to represent the attitude of an authority, a crowd, a jury, or similar. A typical goal for a social encounter is to change the attitude of a person or group to helpful so they assist you or calming a hostile group or person to defuse a situation. Try to give the players a clear idea of how much they've progressed as the encounter proceeds.

Another option is to track the number of successes or failures the characters accrue, either using a subsystem like Victory Points (page 184) or Influence (page 187), or else something more ad hoc. For instance, you might need to trick four guards into leaving their posts and count each successful attempt to Lie or Create a Diversion toward a total of four necessary successes. You can also combine these two methods; if the PCs need a group of important nobles to vote their way, the goal of the encounter might be to ensure that a majority of the nobles have a better attitude toward the PCs than they have of a rival—all within a limited time frame.

Bypassed Encounters

What happens if you've planned a fight or challenge and the PCs find a way to avoid it entirely? This could leave them behind in XP or cause them to miss important information or treasure.

In the case of XP, the guidelines are simple: if the player characters avoided the challenge through smart tactical play, a savvy diplomatic exchange, clever use of magic, or another approach that required ingenuity and planning, award them the normal XP for the encounter. If they did something that took only moderate effort or was a lucky break, like finding a secret passage and using it to avoid a fight, award them XP for a minor or moderate accomplishment. In an adventure that's more free-form, like a sprawling dungeon with multiple paths, there might be no reward for bypassing an encounter because doing so was trivial.

You'll have to think on your feet if information or items get skipped when players bypass encounters. First, look for another reasonable place in the adventure to share the information or item. If it makes sense, move the original encounter to another part of the adventure and give the PCs a major advantage for bypassing the encounter in the first place.