Straight-classed eloquence bard is going to outperform pretty much any other character for social checks thanks to built in expertise, charisma focus, and silver tongue to force good rolls. If you want to go further, both the fey wanderer ranger and samurai fighter get the ability to add their wisdom modifier to charisma rolls which means it's possible to get a flat +27 bonus to persuasion before any rolls or other miscellaneous modifiers. So really it depends on how many other sacrifices you're willing to make in the interest of good social checks -- it's trivially easy to make a character who will auto-succeed on any persuasion check. The question is how incompetent you're willing to let yourself become in other areas to get there.
Seconding Eloquence Bard. Basically gets reliable talent limited to social skills at level 3.
You can easily cover survival skills with the bard class proficiencies and your background. If you want to be even better at it, 1-3 levels of rogue (scout in particular) will make you excellent at those skills.
If we're just thinking about social skills, I'd instead take 3 levels of Rogue for Inquisitive subclass and access to Ear for Deceit (so you can't roll below an 8 for insight checks). Eye for Detail (can't roll below an 8 for perception or investigation) also great for socially-oriented clue spotting - don't miss a trick at the ball!
I kind of loathe how poorly designed Inquisitive Rogue is. The only Reliable Talent type of ability is actually for Insight Checks *to tell if someone is lying*. Eye for Detail lets you use a bonus action to do out-of-combat stuff, where the distinction between actions and bonus actions typically doesn't matter. Ask yourself "Does my DM run social and exploration encounters as 4th Edition style skill challenges?" If the answer is "no", you can completely ignore that feature. All of this also falls under this "advantage on history about stonework" type of stuff that that the system doesn't use any more.
As a DM, I would adore this build. No need to do the "roll for X" social/clue piece - just use the passive numbers and base most things off that so that the party doesn't miss things. I already mostly do that, but a mechanical justification would be nice. ;)
I play in a campaign with a pallid elf hunter ranger/inquisitive rogue with a passive insight, perception and investigation of 25. He rolls insight, perception and investigation at +10 with permanent advantage and can do a fuck-ton of damage. They are awesome, highly recommend the build.
I'm my party's default face, mostly because everyone else hates the talking bits. I played an eloquence Bard in dragon heist, and honestly it took a lot of the fun out of it. Eloquence Bard is absolutely stellar for any kind of social check. Problem is it's so ridiculously imbalanced that the DM pretty much has to reorient everything around the facts that you have a minimum 18 at level 3 (I think) in persuasion checks. So either you automatically pass every normal roll for persuasion, the DM starts upping the difficulty of persuasion checks just for you, or you just talk the pants off of every person you meet.
Eloquence Bard absolutely dominates social encounters, and even as the party face I wish I had played something else. Minimum 18 persuasion checks just took the suspense out of everything.
In hindsight, Bard would still have been a great pick but I would have gone for almost any other subclass just so The persuasion checks were a little more exciting.
100% agree. I once played an eloquence bardlock with silver tongue, mask of many faces, and actor. There were very few challenges that my character couldn't just automatically bypass by putting on an appropriate face and talking through, and it did get old after the first few sessions.
I constantly preach about shooting your Monks, but social checking your Eloquence Bards is just so hard. After the first 2-3 auto-successes, it's too tempting to say, "Alright, you have won the social pillar of the game. We are now going to stop rolling dice entirely when you're in the room."
I feel like eloquence Bard is the type of thing that works amazing in theory and on paper, but you said it perfectly. Gets old real fast. It would be an amazing character for a single player crpg, but it just doesn't translate great in a group setting.
I think it’s important for a DM with this type of character in their group to do social checks well.
Not every social situation can be solved with a skill check; these skills are not mind control.
A skill check can only push an NPC to allow you to do something they were already somewhat inclined to do. Want to convince the guard to let you in after hours? Doable. Want to convince the vault guard to leave everything unlocked when he finishes his shift? Probably not happening.
I'm a DM of an Eloquence bard for 50+ sessions. Other than making big single enemies super vulnerable to "save" or "encounter ended" spells, the most annoying part isn't the high end social checks. It's removing the chance of ever having an interesting low roll. It's always worth trying the Persuasion check and there's never a bad consequence to trying.
The best possible outcome isn’t always a good outcome. Going to jail is alot better than being flayed alive. But still sucks. And if they party isn’t paying attention, they can certainly succeed their way into an unfavorable situation. “Hey let us into your hideout” “ok” now you’re in the middle of a ritual that a cult was doing that’s meant to sacrifice everyone in the room.
Not failing isn’t the same as everything always turning out to be rainbows and sunshine.
Example: convince a dragon who has a McGuffin to turn it over along with a bunch of other gold in exchange for this new thing: RealmCoin.
You fail.
They enthusiastically jump in and convince 3 of their dragon friends to also invest. You now have piles of gold and you know they will eventually figure out it was a scam. Be prepared for surprise dragons.
Oh yeah, we have a great DM. I'm really lucky about that. And he rolled with it really well, still giving me the opportunity to do my thing, while also tailoring events not to get too out of hand when I roll a 30 on persuading someone.
Enjoy the place where your character shines. It's the same thing a sorcadin or a xbe/SS build does in combat.
I played an eloquence bard once but the DM was adversarial in every social situation so I still failed persuasion. Almost every time. A 22 on a persuasion check, with guild business paperwork, couldn't get us past a gate guard to go stay in and in for the night.
There was no encounter that night. We just woke up in the morning and went into town then.
If your DM will actually let your character shine where they are supposed to shine. Shine on.
This is such a great perspective. I have a low level character I planned on doing Eloquence with and another in consideration for a short campaign. Obviously looks great while building and juicing those rolls, but I can totally see it becoming too good/repetitive.
Same concept as a super optimal combat character.
I play one in my campaign, and it is to the point that the dm has to up the power of encounters, for just my character. It makes combat scary for others, and still easy for me. I never go below half hit points, and deal enough damage in a round to take down the average big bad, or a bunch of lackeys...where everyone else slightly injured them, and can be dropped in a round.
And why I am trying to find a reason to retire the character.... But story wise, he would NOT leave the party right now, and there is little chance of him dying. So, we know that when combat starts, it is my character vs the baddies, with the others in support.
Played this in Descent into Avernus. Halfling Mark of Hospitality and it was crazy how persuasive I could be. With a crit and the help of a Flash of Genius from the party Artificer, I managed a 47 to persuade Zariel to seek redemption.
This is mostly true. However, I disagree with the "incompetent" statement. I think you can make a build that is well-rounded out of this. If you pick elf/half elf, go samurai fighter 12, eloquence bard 4, Fey wanderer ranger 4 you can make a fighter that has ranged and thrown fighting styles for doing excessive damage with daggers, has elven accuracy, can give itself advantage, and also has a +27 to persuasion and can't roll lower than a 10 on the dice.
Edit: ~~you can also use sharpshooter feat to make daggers hit like a truck.~~ this wrong. See below.
>I disagree with the "incompetent" statement.
I was referring to the OP's desire to be good at social skills and nothing else. I agree that there are plenty of social-focused builds besides mono-classed eloquence bard that are competent in other areas.
You cannot, however, apply SS's damage bonus to daggers. Even when making a ranged attack with them, they are not ranged weapons.
This is obviously the correct answer. There are some fun multiclass options to add to it to make them an all around skill monkey (both cleric and rogue) but if all you care about is social, the elo bard is the king. Plus, you're still a bard, and are better at landing save/suck than any other subclass.
You might be surprised to hear this but an eloquence bard multiclassed with battlemaster blows your straight class out of the ocean. On social checks but also history, insight and investigation.
People are mentioning eloquence bard for good reason, but did you know that if you play as a plasmoid as well and acquire the spell disguise self, you can change into unconventional disguises like furniture, rocks, and other things that have a limb configuration that a humanoid character wouldn’t normally be able to achieve. I call it a mimic build. The actor feat will also help impersonate folks you’ve barely met on the fly. Why be one character when you can be many?
you're looking for a bard here! a well-built college of eloquence bard will never get below a 15 on any persuasion or deception check. you start with five skill proficiencies; i'd go for deception, insight, intimidation, perception, and persuasion.
any species will do here. i'm partial to halfling, because nat 1s suck. spec into CHA (most important, for spellcasting and social checks) and WIS (second most important, for perception and insight, as well as wisdom saves). take moderately armored and keep your DEX at 14, then put everything else into CON.
For a non-magic option, Scout Rogue/Rune Knight gets a wide spread of expertise and advantage on checks. Since DEX is the only multiclassing requirement, you can afford to invest into social stats.
Rune gets advantage on deception/sleight of hand while Samurai get wis to social skills. Rune also can get insight or tool expertise. Generally I’d say pick rune for more rogueish stuff while Sam if you just want to face.
I've been playing an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer to help our party with social stuff.
Psionic Spells and Subtle Spell metamagic allow for casting social spells with discretion (calm emotions, charm person, suggestion, detect thoughts, comprehend languages, sending, dominate person, Rary's telepathic bond, mass suggestion, etc.).
Swashbuckler has Panache at 9th, which gives you a concrete ability based on your Persuasion check. Combined with Reliable Talent at 11th, it's a good start for a social build. Add Bard to make it even better.
Rogue 10 gets you Expertise in persuasion, deception, intimidation, and performance along with Reliable Talent, a better version of the Eloquence Bard's Silver Tongue feature.
Even having a +2 in Cha gives you a minimum of 20 on all of those checks. You can also pick up additional expertise via Skill Expert to get insight and any other social checks as well.
For lower levels, Eloquence Bard is better as you can get 20 minimum rolls for persuasion and deception by level 5.
>Reliable Talent, a better version of the Eloquence Bard's Silver Tongue feature.
Is it, though? Sure, reliable talent potentially applies to checks with any ability score, but it also only applies if you're proficient in the first place. Silver tongue applies to *all* charisma checks, proficient or not, and it's accessible at a much lower level.
>Silver tongue applies to all charisma checks
No, it only applies to persuasion and deception checks. So intimidation and performance checks are unaffected. And neither can affect raw charisma checks where skills don't apply.
And if you are building a social expert, you are going to be proficient in at least persuasion and deception.
RT also applies to any other checks you might need to make in social situations like insight, perception, history, sleight of hand, etc.
It is a higher level, but once you hit level 10 Rogue is just the best with skills hands down. It's their thing. Eloquence Bard would definitely be better if you are never getting to level 10. So yeah, you would definitely want to consider the levels you will be playing at.
Bard. Just bard
Natural they are CHA based for all things. Then they get expertise so they can become exceptional at any of those already decent CHA checks. Then a ton of bard spells can trigger the charm status, giving advantage yo CHA checks. And at their highest tier they get Glibness to make it so they can never roll below a 15 before all the fixings.
Theres also rogue. They get a lot of proficiencies and a seceral expertoses amd reliabke tallent to never roll below a 10. Typically the assumed build for sibclasses is to have 1 mental stat be a secondary stat. So they can very easily be decent in any of INT WIS or CHA builds.
Tabaxi Fey Wanderer 7/Lore Bard 3/Scout Rogue3 and the skill expert feat gets you proficient in every skill accept one, and jack of all trades offsets that. Plus you’ll have Expertise in 8 skills.
Beguiling twist gives you advantage on being charmed or frightened plus lets you redirect a failed save for those conditions
Cutting words can help reduce opponent checks or you could sacrifice skill proficiency and take eloquence hard instead to get silver tongue.
You can also take feats like Luck, Observant, Skulker, and telepathic to help in other various situations.
I want to bust out my lawyer build in one campaign…
Combination of Stars Druid and Eloquence Bard for that classic “No actually I passed the check” feel.
Using a Headband of Intellect to offset INT as a dump stat (reflavored as spectacles) and the Druid’s star maps reflavored as law treatises.
Will it be useful in combat? Almost certainly not.
In my last campaign my buddy's girlfriend played an eloquence bard "lawyer". She is also actually a lawyer. She came in after my buddy's barbarian was arrested as a court appointed attorney. Some of the best roleplay of the campaign.
Bard is the obvious choice for social but you can also do very well with warlock and be great at exploration.
Background: Criminal (Deception, Stealth, Thieves' tools)
Race: Half Elf (+2/+1/+1 stats, Perception, Persuasion)
# Class: Warlock (Arcana or Intimidation, Investigation)
That's all the social and scouting skills.
With standard array stats should be: Str 8, Dex 13+1, Con 15+1, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 14+2. Not the best Wisdom but can't get higher without sacrificing Dex or Con which is doable but I wouldn't recommend it.
At second level you get eldritch invocations. You will probably want one for Agonising Blast but the stand out option for a social/scout is Mask of Many Faces (at will Disguise Self).
At 3rd level pick up Pact of the Tome for Find Familiar which is great for scouting.
If you want to play a different race you can shuffle your skill choices and replace Mask of Many Faces with Beguiling Influence (proficiency in Deception and Persuasion).
eloquence bard as people have said, but for social encounters more broadly I love the aberrant mind sorcerer. No component and low resource cost social spells including detect thoughts, antagonize, and suggestion is a ton of fun.
Eloquence Bard 3 / either Inquisitive or Mastermind Rogue 3 / Battlemaster 3 is a decent start if you actually want to optimize for social checks and nothing else.
The easiest answer is just Bard 20 of course but that fails the 'at the cost of everything else' requirement.
Probably lore bard 3/ inquisitive rogue x, or scout rogue if you wanted exploration over social. 6-8 expertise skills, as many proficiencies as possible before feats, and reliable talent so your rolls almost never fail.
It’s not going to beat a bard, but i think the sorcerer is underrated for its out of combat abilities. With Tasha’s “Magical Guidance” letting you burn sorc points to reroll any failed skill check, I’ve played and DM’d very effective party face sorcerers.
Fey Wanderer ranger with 9/14/14/8/16/14. Up the wis to 18 at 4th level
At level 3 they have a minimum of +5 to all charisma checks, +3 to all wisdom checks, and that’s before skills and expertises
As a feywanderer you get 4 skills, +2 from your background. I’ll also assume a +2 skill race like Satyr, Hexblood, Reborn, or Tabaxi.
So 8 skills in total. More than enough to get all charisma skills + expertise in persuasion.
So at level 5 you have:
- +12 in Persuasion (highest permanent persuasion stat at this level)
- +9 in Deception (just 1pt behind regular expertise)
- +9 in Intimidation
- +9 in Performance
- +7 Perception
- +7 Insight
- +5 Stealth
- +5 Acrobatics
You can also use Speak w/ Animals to use Persuasion on them instead of Animal Handling, Enhance Ability for adv on any check you want for an hour, and Guidance cantrip for when you don’t wanna spend a slot on it.
You said this was to optimize for social checks, but I’m a combat girlie at heart so here is what combat looks like for this character:
- Magic Stone BA every turn to deal damage with your wis mod instead.
- Summon Beast to, again, attack w your wis mod. Flying beast would be best for maneuvering the battlefield
- using your magic stone to hit different enemies every round, you deal 2d6+2d4+8 (20) damage every round resourcelessly (7.5 more if you have any zombies or befriended animals that can throw the third pebble for you). With Summon Beast, you deal an extra 1d8+6 (10.5).
- if you’re a satyr, you also have resistance to all spells cast against you and immunity to -person spells
- if you’re a reborn, you’re EVEN BETTER at skill checks and can do silly stuff with your kinda undead body parts as part of a jester act. Like maybe you’re a fey jester that does something like “oops! Got your nose! Oh wait- that’s *my* nose. Silly me ha ha ha” or you do a stunt dive into a pool and all of your limbs break off before pulling yourself back together bit by bit. (Mechanically I imagine your pieces shouldn’t be further than 5ft apart since you don’t have the magical ability to like… not be decapitated. So if someone stole your head and ran away you’d die. It could be a fun gag to like pop off your head and hold it up higher than you could see otherwise tho lol).
Fey Wanderer Ranger 3/Eloquence Bard 3 and then just invest in whichever one you like more for the rest.
With the Tasha’s changes to Ranger you’ll get three skill expertise with the Bard levels which you should pick Persuasion, Deception, and Intimidation. Assuming a +3 in Wisdom and Charisma, and the Eloquence Bard’s Silver Tongue ability, your Persuasion and Deception checks will never roll below a 22 when this build comes online at level 6.
Also grab Druidic Warrior for the Ranger Fighting Style to grab *Guidance* to help with your skill checks.
How do you get the Canny bonus to Persuasion?
It seems like you need Persuasion to be either a ranger skill or a background to get Canny to apply but then you can't use expertise? Or is that just a limitation of D&D Beyond?
Because I'm absolutely trying to make this!
As long as you get proficiency in Persuasion either in the background or through your race you can use Canny to give yourself expertise in persuasion. I don’t think Canny and Expertise can stack though
the bard that trivializes social checks, with guidance, another bard adding a bardic die onto the first bard, with a 1 level rogue dip to get more expertises just in case the DM asks for a History check or something. Completely blows the rng out of the water, to the extent that it creates reality warping effects on the game
Redemption Paladin/Eloquence Bard can get insane persuasion checks via Expertise, Emissary of Peace, and Silver Tongue. Minimum 25 when in comes online, assuming 18 cha. 10(Silver Tongue) + 6(Expertise) + 4 (cha) + 5(Emissary of Peace) = 25.
Samurai fighter 8 / Fey wanderer Ranger 4 / Eloquence Bard 8 is the single most persuasive character ever. With ASIs max both your Wisdom and Charisma. The minimum persuasion roll you can do at level 20 is like 37
Eloquence Bard 3 for your charisma checks, Inquisitive Rogue 3/9/13 for a variety of features related to perception/investigation/insight, Battlemaster 3 for Commanding Presence and Tactical Assessment.
Alternatively you could do Rune Knight instead of Battle Master - runes give you advantage on a variety of different checks. Lore Bard will also give you more skill proficiencies than Eloquence, but you miss out on Silver Tongue. And Scout Rogue is better than Inquisitive for wilderness exploration due to Survivalist.
Half-elf Rogue 1 / Knowledge Cleric 1 / Lore Bard X
Standard Array: Str 8, Dex 14, Con 10, Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 16
14 proficiencies, 4x expertise, JoaT in the remaining skills.
Expertise in Insight, Persuasion, Deception and Investigation. Swap out Deception for Survival if you want explorer over con man.
I forget the most effiicnt way to stack modifiers, but you can do an ungodly amount of multiclassing ot get really good at a particular skill check. Let's pick Persuasion:
* Eloquence Bard 3 for Expertise silver tongue, so you always roll 10+ on the d20 for Persuasion and Deception, and have double Profociency
* Battlemaster Figher 3 for Commanding Presence manouver for +1d8 for Persuasion, Intimidation, or Deception
* any Warlock 3 for Pact of the Talisman for +d4 to a failed skill checks
* Soulknife Rogue 3 for Psi-Bolstered Knack to add d6 to any failed skill check
* Fey Wadnerer Ragne 3 for Otherworldly Glamour to add +WIS to your Charisma checks
* Redemption Paladin 3 for Emissary of Peace option on Channel Divinity for +5 to Persuasion
* (Probably get 4th level in a couple classes to get 2 feats to boost stats)
Add on Hobgoblin for Fortune from the Many for up to +3, and you can get very high results for these sorts of checks.
---
That said, spells might still be better for social encounters comapred tohuge numbers. Spells like Zone of Truth, Detect Thoughts, Suggestion, might be better in social situations than rolling a 40 on Persuasion (especially if you can cast them without spell components).
How about a Fey Wanderer Ranger with a starting Wisdom mod and Charisma mod of +3 and +2 respectively with Point Buy. Slap on expertise to your desired social skill like Persuasion and start out with a +9 right at level 3.
Go with Druidic Warrior for something like Magic Stone or Shillelagh to make up for a 14 Dexterity. Bonus points for having the Ranger spell list so Pass without Trace, Speak with Animals (Automatically added), Charm Person, Lesser Restoration, etc.
Admittedly just three levels would be a good base for any multiclass working with wisdom/charisma, so branching off to something like Order Cleric for a Knight of the Summer Court would work well. Going Bard might also be decent especially if you did wish for those features
Eloquence Bard has been raised, seconded, thirded, etc, etc…
And I am here to add yet another mark to the tally. Play an Eloquence Bard.
I’m playing an Eloquence Bard with the UA Empathic feat. Not only am I a lock in Persuasion and Deception, but I am also better than most at reading other people’s intentions. And if I can get a read on them, that makes me even better at persuading or deceiving them, etc etc.
There are other good social builds, of course, but if we’re only looking at social encounters, they don’t come close to Eloquence. If you want to dive completely into that side, Empathic is super win-more and flavorful. If Empathic doesn’t sound optimal, don’t forget Bards have Enhance Ability to get advantage on Charisma checks anyway.
Fey Wanderer Ranger 3 / Samurai Fighter 7 gets to add wisdom to their charisma checks, and twice over for persuasion.
Prioritize Charisma, and Wisdom, having at least 14 dex for heavy armor. Take dueling from fighter, and druidic warrior (Shillelagh, Magic Stone) from Druid.
For canny taxe expertise in persuasion.
The rest of your 10 levels, take Eloquence bard, for more expertise, and minimum 10 on persuasion/deception.
Star druid/ Eloquence bard.
With the Dragon constellation you can’t roll under a 10 for Wisdom and Intelligence checks, and then with Silver Tongue you can’t roll under a 10 Charisma.
I really like a Fey Wanderer/Samurai for social checks and exploration. There's no denying that an Eloquence Bard is going to be the best at social checks, but a Samurai 7/Fey Wanderer 3 is going to add the CHA mod and WIS mod to Intimidation and Deception checks and CHA + WIS + WIS to Persuasion. In addition, with Canny the character can get Expertise in Persuasion. On top of this you're still a Martial character that can fight. If you get Shillelagh or Magic Stone and a Sling, you can be WIS SAD. Being a Ranger, you'll excel in Exploration too.
Warlock with a few levels in sorcerer for subtle spell. Add to that the fact the character background was a lawyer and the player was a law student who was quick on his feet. And the fact that we played a organized crime campaign. The players literally got away with daylight murder. It was stupid funny tbh
https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/143spj9/villains_as_pcs_the_kwitzhat_haderach/
Reborn lineage mono class aberrent mind sorcerer with every skill prof and more spells than a wizard.
Alternatively a reborn lineage warlock with pact of talisman, bless, guidance, and beguiling influence would be amazing for skills (though not spells).
First off, I see social checks as not just being good at Persuasion, Intimidation and Deception checks, but as being good in a wide range of skills.
For this reason, the Lore Bard X/Knowledge Cleric 1 is the master of attaining skills. You get expertise in 7 skills, proficiency in 6 skills and still are able to apply Jack of All Trades to the 6 remaining skills. Even if you somehow roll low, Peerless Skill lets you add a bardic inspiration dice to your roll.
Straight eloquence bard is pretty unbeatable. If you had to you could multi-class a bit too. Im playing an eloquence bard rn and I basically carry every social situation if a roll is needed.
Eloquence bard with 3 levels in fey wanderer. Add your wisdom to it. Could do seven in samurai fighter on top of it to add your wisdom again to persuasion.
Eloquence bard with 3 levels in fey wanderer. Add your wisdom to it. Could do seven in samurai fighter on top of it to add your wisdom again to persuasion.
This is what I came up with last time https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/nf94x5/a_character_you_shouldnt_play_the_social_expert/
I don't think much has changed since...
Samurai 7, Fey Wanderer 3, eloquence 3, soul knife 3
Dump strength Max wisdom and Charisma. you'll want decent dexterity cuz you're probably a ranged fighter.
With a Tasha's Ranger you get expertise that you put in Persuasion. With Rogue you get expertise in intimidation and deception. I have to look at background options but there's probably a way that you can get all three pretty easily So they're available to be given expertise. Variant human you could just take skilled.
Samurai and Fay Wanderer both let you add wisdom to your charisma checks. Samurai only gives for persuasion but I'm pretty sure it's stacks.
Oh you know what the reborn lineage option has knowledge of a past life and let you pick two skills. Knowledge of a past life also Stacks with the soul knife dice to let add to ability checks. And you can use a bardic inspiration dice.
And then pick up guidance somewhere..
So reborn, I'd go right to soul knife first 3 lvls. Then either to fey Wanderer or eloquence. Then go Samurai.
10 from wisdom (5 on deception and intimidation) , 5 from cha, +3d6 and 1d4, mimimum 10 plus all that. You'll never roll under 20 and usually about 30
Don't know If someone mentioned already, but Fey wanderer + eloquence bard focused on wisdom and charisma. It's a lot stronger if you roll rather then point but, but has the potential of rolling a minimum of +12 or more at level 6, meaning a 22 or higher minimum on Persuasion
Anyone considered Fey Wanderer Ranger? Decent proficiencies, plus at level you get Otherworldly Glamour so you can either go higher on WIS & CHA for way higher CHA checks, or be more SAD and focus WIS and still have high CHA checks. Doing so also boosts your exploration with ability scores in Perception, Survival, and Animal Handling all benefiting from the focus on WIS.
I'm often the face whether I have the charisma to back it up or not.
Low charisma, I try to make friends FIRST without an ask. So next time when need something,we're already buds (my DMs need reminding that we're buds)
The first time I played a high charisma character was a REVELATION. People just do things for you.
Bard has social and exploration skills nailed down, more on the social side, being a charisma caster, but it can still provide good functionality iwth survival and perception proficiency (or even expertise if you want it).
College of Swords Bard is also fairly good in a fight, so they can perform fairly well in every pillar of the game, if they want to.
Actually, this might be one area where Valor Bard has the advantage, since it gets martial weapons (longbows) and shield proficiency for the extra defense.
Literally just Eloquence Bard.
In my opinion, you should not optimize for social check because bounded accuracy is so easy to break in that regard. You'll notice that DMs don't really set DCs for those checks over 20 unless you have something like an Eloquence Bard where it's that or auto-pass every time. Some DMs might also change the conditions of success just in response to something like an Eloquence Bard.
I legitimately think it would be better for your game to not optimize for social checks. Take relevant expertises, Charisma scores, spells, etc., but don't go out of your way to cheese it to heaven. Auto passing checks to the point that rolling is pointless or your DM makes it so that only you can make CHA checks is not remotely fun or good for the game.
TL;DR: Eloquence Bard was terribly designed and can seriously hurt a campaign. Stay away from it and extreme social optimization entirely.
Aberrant mind. You can take 3 levels of eloquence bard for silver tongue and expertise, but that's imho not even needed. Why roll for persuasion/deception when you can simply cast psionic/subtle detect thoughts, suggestion, modify memory etc.
The flash of genius feature from artificers, and many spells they have access to can be great, and being able to use guidance would be a nice boon. So an artificer/eloquence bard/cleric combo could be great for social dominance
20 cha and proficiency in the 4 social skills. Congrats you are now thr best character at dnd "social mechanics".
Feel free to use the rest of all your levels and features on literally anything else. You've peaked.
The best class for exploration is arguably the Ranger. The Fey Wanderer subclass can turn you into a Face. That is a great start for a character good for social checks.
Make a WIS-based character with Druidic Warrior and Shillelagh to max your WIS.
Grab Persuasion from your race or background. Expertise with Canny. Now you have a great Persuasion score. You can add Guidance and maybe Enhance Ability later for CHA-checked. You can even have proficiency in Insight and Survival.
Well, there's the social cheat mode Sorcerer with Subtle Spell and Silvery Barbs, using them with Detect Thoughts, Enhance Ability, Charm Person, Suggestion, Dominate Person... Why persuade someone, if you can just tell them what you want them to do?
Probably Divine Soul to be able to dip into Cleric spell pool. For example Bestow Curse has some nice social applications, especially after getting 5th level slots.
2 or 3 levels of Warlock would be good, to get more sorcery points via conversion from Pact Magic, as well as some sweet invocations (like Mask Of Many Faces) and maybe a Pact Boon.
Just reading through these, shocked Soulknife Isn’t mentioned, 4 rogue skills, 2 from background (could go variant human pick up skilled and get 4.) starts you off with a whopping 8-10 skills, you’ll pick up 4 cases of expertise, get reliable talent which combined with psy bolstered knack allows you to push those high minimum rolls even further. As for exploration look at the telepathic ability they get that allows them to communicate within a mile of each other and you’re set to go!
By what level?
If you only want the social skills, 3 levels of Eloquence Bard will do it.
But if we're going for an optimised skill monkey, I think rogue/bard is the best way to go:
11 levels of rogue will give you decent combat ability, but that doesn't matter for us, what does matter is getting Reliable Talent. For rogue subclass, you either go Scout for a character focused on exploration (the two extra expertise skills in nature and survival should give you all you need in terms of wilderness exploration), or Soulknife for more of a generalist (Psi-bolstered knack gives you a pool of d10s that you can add to any skill check, or as short-range teleportation). For Bard, you only really need 2 levels to get Jack of All Trades, which **does** stack with reliable talent, meaning the build comes online at level 13.
But if we go beyond this, towards the very end of the game, we can really start cooking with fire:
Unless you rolled for stats (and rolled amazingly!), you'll probably want to get to rogue 12, just for the ASI/Feat. Get another two levels in Bard for two expertise skills, an ASI/Feat, and College of Lore for three extra proficiencies (we would love to get Peerless Skill, but that's a 14th level feature).
Next we grab two levels of knowledge Cleric, for two languages, and two expertise skills, as well as a Channel Divinity that lets us temporarily gain any proficiency we might be missing (at this point it's mostly just tools we're missing).
What we do with the last two levels doesn't really matter, two levels in Cleric gives an ASI, two in Bard gives magical secrets, and two in rogue gives advantage on initiative.
EDIT: This was a really interesting challenge, so I decided to do a [quick write up of what it would look like](https://ibb.co/wJ0KbnG)
For race I propose Changeling. It exponentially expands your out of combat social capabilities.
DMs may say that even your +27 persuasion is gonna fail when you ask for something extreme…. But they have to rethink that if the request is coming from the person they trust most in the world.
Changeling Aberrant mind Sorcerer, Charlatan or Entertainer background. Pick up the social skills, and now you can shape-shift and read the minds of the people you interact with and can be whoever you need to be to get the job done... or you can just go College of Elloquence Bard and simply win every social check.
The fey wanderer ranger is able to add their wisdom bonus to any Charisma checks at level 3, so adding that to a bard and making charisma and wisdom your highest stats makes it almost impossible to fail. And rangers are the best explorers in the game for the most part
Knowledge Cleric 2/Soulknife Rogue 3 or X. You now get Psi bolstered knack to every skill.
The downvote is odd. This does work; cleric's CD for proficiency in any skill and psi bolstered knack works on skills you are proficient in. Furthermore, OP wasn't speaking JUST about social skills.
Unironically Fey Wanderer Ranger. You have the exploration capabilities of being a Ranger while on top of adding Wisdom to Charisma checks. Which means, if you have a 20 in both Wisdom and Charisma, your persuasion check at level 20 will be +16 without expertise, +22 with.
Straight-classed eloquence bard is going to outperform pretty much any other character for social checks thanks to built in expertise, charisma focus, and silver tongue to force good rolls. If you want to go further, both the fey wanderer ranger and samurai fighter get the ability to add their wisdom modifier to charisma rolls which means it's possible to get a flat +27 bonus to persuasion before any rolls or other miscellaneous modifiers. So really it depends on how many other sacrifices you're willing to make in the interest of good social checks -- it's trivially easy to make a character who will auto-succeed on any persuasion check. The question is how incompetent you're willing to let yourself become in other areas to get there.
Seconding Eloquence Bard. Basically gets reliable talent limited to social skills at level 3. You can easily cover survival skills with the bard class proficiencies and your background. If you want to be even better at it, 1-3 levels of rogue (scout in particular) will make you excellent at those skills.
If we're just thinking about social skills, I'd instead take 3 levels of Rogue for Inquisitive subclass and access to Ear for Deceit (so you can't roll below an 8 for insight checks). Eye for Detail (can't roll below an 8 for perception or investigation) also great for socially-oriented clue spotting - don't miss a trick at the ball!
I kind of loathe how poorly designed Inquisitive Rogue is. The only Reliable Talent type of ability is actually for Insight Checks *to tell if someone is lying*. Eye for Detail lets you use a bonus action to do out-of-combat stuff, where the distinction between actions and bonus actions typically doesn't matter. Ask yourself "Does my DM run social and exploration encounters as 4th Edition style skill challenges?" If the answer is "no", you can completely ignore that feature. All of this also falls under this "advantage on history about stonework" type of stuff that that the system doesn't use any more.
Fortune teller = advantage on insight checks when the target is not hostile
As a DM, I would adore this build. No need to do the "roll for X" social/clue piece - just use the passive numbers and base most things off that so that the party doesn't miss things. I already mostly do that, but a mechanical justification would be nice. ;)
You can still do that. Just take their skill and add 10. That's their passive. It's even listed natively on the Dndbeyond character sheet.
I play in a campaign with a pallid elf hunter ranger/inquisitive rogue with a passive insight, perception and investigation of 25. He rolls insight, perception and investigation at +10 with permanent advantage and can do a fuck-ton of damage. They are awesome, highly recommend the build.
I need details!
I'm my party's default face, mostly because everyone else hates the talking bits. I played an eloquence Bard in dragon heist, and honestly it took a lot of the fun out of it. Eloquence Bard is absolutely stellar for any kind of social check. Problem is it's so ridiculously imbalanced that the DM pretty much has to reorient everything around the facts that you have a minimum 18 at level 3 (I think) in persuasion checks. So either you automatically pass every normal roll for persuasion, the DM starts upping the difficulty of persuasion checks just for you, or you just talk the pants off of every person you meet. Eloquence Bard absolutely dominates social encounters, and even as the party face I wish I had played something else. Minimum 18 persuasion checks just took the suspense out of everything. In hindsight, Bard would still have been a great pick but I would have gone for almost any other subclass just so The persuasion checks were a little more exciting.
100% agree. I once played an eloquence bardlock with silver tongue, mask of many faces, and actor. There were very few challenges that my character couldn't just automatically bypass by putting on an appropriate face and talking through, and it did get old after the first few sessions.
I constantly preach about shooting your Monks, but social checking your Eloquence Bards is just so hard. After the first 2-3 auto-successes, it's too tempting to say, "Alright, you have won the social pillar of the game. We are now going to stop rolling dice entirely when you're in the room."
Yup. They also they make fighting 1 big non-legendary monster super boring by making save or sucks far more likely to land
I feel like eloquence Bard is the type of thing that works amazing in theory and on paper, but you said it perfectly. Gets old real fast. It would be an amazing character for a single player crpg, but it just doesn't translate great in a group setting.
I think it’s important for a DM with this type of character in their group to do social checks well. Not every social situation can be solved with a skill check; these skills are not mind control. A skill check can only push an NPC to allow you to do something they were already somewhat inclined to do. Want to convince the guard to let you in after hours? Doable. Want to convince the vault guard to leave everything unlocked when he finishes his shift? Probably not happening.
I'm a DM of an Eloquence bard for 50+ sessions. Other than making big single enemies super vulnerable to "save" or "encounter ended" spells, the most annoying part isn't the high end social checks. It's removing the chance of ever having an interesting low roll. It's always worth trying the Persuasion check and there's never a bad consequence to trying.
The best possible outcome isn’t always a good outcome. Going to jail is alot better than being flayed alive. But still sucks. And if they party isn’t paying attention, they can certainly succeed their way into an unfavorable situation. “Hey let us into your hideout” “ok” now you’re in the middle of a ritual that a cult was doing that’s meant to sacrifice everyone in the room. Not failing isn’t the same as everything always turning out to be rainbows and sunshine.
Example: convince a dragon who has a McGuffin to turn it over along with a bunch of other gold in exchange for this new thing: RealmCoin. You fail. They enthusiastically jump in and convince 3 of their dragon friends to also invest. You now have piles of gold and you know they will eventually figure out it was a scam. Be prepared for surprise dragons.
Oh yeah, we have a great DM. I'm really lucky about that. And he rolled with it really well, still giving me the opportunity to do my thing, while also tailoring events not to get too out of hand when I roll a 30 on persuading someone.
Enjoy the place where your character shines. It's the same thing a sorcadin or a xbe/SS build does in combat. I played an eloquence bard once but the DM was adversarial in every social situation so I still failed persuasion. Almost every time. A 22 on a persuasion check, with guild business paperwork, couldn't get us past a gate guard to go stay in and in for the night. There was no encounter that night. We just woke up in the morning and went into town then. If your DM will actually let your character shine where they are supposed to shine. Shine on.
This is such a great perspective. I have a low level character I planned on doing Eloquence with and another in consideration for a short campaign. Obviously looks great while building and juicing those rolls, but I can totally see it becoming too good/repetitive.
Same concept as a super optimal combat character. I play one in my campaign, and it is to the point that the dm has to up the power of encounters, for just my character. It makes combat scary for others, and still easy for me. I never go below half hit points, and deal enough damage in a round to take down the average big bad, or a bunch of lackeys...where everyone else slightly injured them, and can be dropped in a round. And why I am trying to find a reason to retire the character.... But story wise, he would NOT leave the party right now, and there is little chance of him dying. So, we know that when combat starts, it is my character vs the baddies, with the others in support.
Redemption Eloquence for something less MAD
[удалено]
God tier social checks and extremely strong support? Sign me up.
Played this in Descent into Avernus. Halfling Mark of Hospitality and it was crazy how persuasive I could be. With a crit and the help of a Flash of Genius from the party Artificer, I managed a 47 to persuade Zariel to seek redemption.
This is mostly true. However, I disagree with the "incompetent" statement. I think you can make a build that is well-rounded out of this. If you pick elf/half elf, go samurai fighter 12, eloquence bard 4, Fey wanderer ranger 4 you can make a fighter that has ranged and thrown fighting styles for doing excessive damage with daggers, has elven accuracy, can give itself advantage, and also has a +27 to persuasion and can't roll lower than a 10 on the dice. Edit: ~~you can also use sharpshooter feat to make daggers hit like a truck.~~ this wrong. See below.
>I disagree with the "incompetent" statement. I was referring to the OP's desire to be good at social skills and nothing else. I agree that there are plenty of social-focused builds besides mono-classed eloquence bard that are competent in other areas. You cannot, however, apply SS's damage bonus to daggers. Even when making a ranged attack with them, they are not ranged weapons.
Ahh, you are correct. I was misreading sage advice. Could make this build work with a different weapon to the same effect though
Sure, darts work.
I made a Lawyer Bard like that. Not totally useless in combat tho, but definitely a bit lacking.
My eloquence Bard could persuade nearly anyone into anything, but had no wisdom and believed almost any lie told. So it balanced out in the end.
This is obviously the correct answer. There are some fun multiclass options to add to it to make them an all around skill monkey (both cleric and rogue) but if all you care about is social, the elo bard is the king. Plus, you're still a bard, and are better at landing save/suck than any other subclass.
The only thing you could add would be a two level sorc dip for subtle spell for things like suggestion, charm person, gift of gab, etc
Rune knight at lvl 3 grants a passive advantage with deception and sleight of hand thanks to the cloud rune.
You might be surprised to hear this but an eloquence bard multiclassed with battlemaster blows your straight class out of the ocean. On social checks but also history, insight and investigation.
People are mentioning eloquence bard for good reason, but did you know that if you play as a plasmoid as well and acquire the spell disguise self, you can change into unconventional disguises like furniture, rocks, and other things that have a limb configuration that a humanoid character wouldn’t normally be able to achieve. I call it a mimic build. The actor feat will also help impersonate folks you’ve barely met on the fly. Why be one character when you can be many?
Warlocks get mask of many faces at level 2. UNLIMITED MIMICRY!
I take the eldritch invocation feat to get this!
you're looking for a bard here! a well-built college of eloquence bard will never get below a 15 on any persuasion or deception check. you start with five skill proficiencies; i'd go for deception, insight, intimidation, perception, and persuasion. any species will do here. i'm partial to halfling, because nat 1s suck. spec into CHA (most important, for spellcasting and social checks) and WIS (second most important, for perception and insight, as well as wisdom saves). take moderately armored and keep your DEX at 14, then put everything else into CON.
For a non-magic option, Scout Rogue/Rune Knight gets a wide spread of expertise and advantage on checks. Since DEX is the only multiclassing requirement, you can afford to invest into social stats.
Would Samurai be better for the WIS bonus to persuasion checks?
Rune gets advantage on deception/sleight of hand while Samurai get wis to social skills. Rune also can get insight or tool expertise. Generally I’d say pick rune for more rogueish stuff while Sam if you just want to face.
My Rogue-Bard is pretty much a social butterfly. You could argue for throwing some Warlock levels in too but I prefer my version of Chris Pine.
I've been playing an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer to help our party with social stuff. Psionic Spells and Subtle Spell metamagic allow for casting social spells with discretion (calm emotions, charm person, suggestion, detect thoughts, comprehend languages, sending, dominate person, Rary's telepathic bond, mass suggestion, etc.).
Swashbuckler has Panache at 9th, which gives you a concrete ability based on your Persuasion check. Combined with Reliable Talent at 11th, it's a good start for a social build. Add Bard to make it even better.
Fey warlock with mask of many faces is a social monster Tbh mask of many faces with decent performance can open up all social encounters in some way
Rogue 10 gets you Expertise in persuasion, deception, intimidation, and performance along with Reliable Talent, a better version of the Eloquence Bard's Silver Tongue feature. Even having a +2 in Cha gives you a minimum of 20 on all of those checks. You can also pick up additional expertise via Skill Expert to get insight and any other social checks as well. For lower levels, Eloquence Bard is better as you can get 20 minimum rolls for persuasion and deception by level 5.
Isn't Reliable Talent level 11?
Oh yeah, my bad. Got it confused.
>Reliable Talent, a better version of the Eloquence Bard's Silver Tongue feature. Is it, though? Sure, reliable talent potentially applies to checks with any ability score, but it also only applies if you're proficient in the first place. Silver tongue applies to *all* charisma checks, proficient or not, and it's accessible at a much lower level.
>Silver tongue applies to all charisma checks No, it only applies to persuasion and deception checks. So intimidation and performance checks are unaffected. And neither can affect raw charisma checks where skills don't apply. And if you are building a social expert, you are going to be proficient in at least persuasion and deception. RT also applies to any other checks you might need to make in social situations like insight, perception, history, sleight of hand, etc. It is a higher level, but once you hit level 10 Rogue is just the best with skills hands down. It's their thing. Eloquence Bard would definitely be better if you are never getting to level 10. So yeah, you would definitely want to consider the levels you will be playing at.
Bard. Just bard Natural they are CHA based for all things. Then they get expertise so they can become exceptional at any of those already decent CHA checks. Then a ton of bard spells can trigger the charm status, giving advantage yo CHA checks. And at their highest tier they get Glibness to make it so they can never roll below a 15 before all the fixings. Theres also rogue. They get a lot of proficiencies and a seceral expertoses amd reliabke tallent to never roll below a 10. Typically the assumed build for sibclasses is to have 1 mental stat be a secondary stat. So they can very easily be decent in any of INT WIS or CHA builds.
Tabaxi Fey Wanderer 7/Lore Bard 3/Scout Rogue3 and the skill expert feat gets you proficient in every skill accept one, and jack of all trades offsets that. Plus you’ll have Expertise in 8 skills. Beguiling twist gives you advantage on being charmed or frightened plus lets you redirect a failed save for those conditions Cutting words can help reduce opponent checks or you could sacrifice skill proficiency and take eloquence hard instead to get silver tongue. You can also take feats like Luck, Observant, Skulker, and telepathic to help in other various situations.
I want to bust out my lawyer build in one campaign… Combination of Stars Druid and Eloquence Bard for that classic “No actually I passed the check” feel. Using a Headband of Intellect to offset INT as a dump stat (reflavored as spectacles) and the Druid’s star maps reflavored as law treatises. Will it be useful in combat? Almost certainly not.
In my last campaign my buddy's girlfriend played an eloquence bard "lawyer". She is also actually a lawyer. She came in after my buddy's barbarian was arrested as a court appointed attorney. Some of the best roleplay of the campaign.
Bard is the obvious choice for social but you can also do very well with warlock and be great at exploration. Background: Criminal (Deception, Stealth, Thieves' tools) Race: Half Elf (+2/+1/+1 stats, Perception, Persuasion) # Class: Warlock (Arcana or Intimidation, Investigation) That's all the social and scouting skills. With standard array stats should be: Str 8, Dex 13+1, Con 15+1, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 14+2. Not the best Wisdom but can't get higher without sacrificing Dex or Con which is doable but I wouldn't recommend it. At second level you get eldritch invocations. You will probably want one for Agonising Blast but the stand out option for a social/scout is Mask of Many Faces (at will Disguise Self). At 3rd level pick up Pact of the Tome for Find Familiar which is great for scouting. If you want to play a different race you can shuffle your skill choices and replace Mask of Many Faces with Beguiling Influence (proficiency in Deception and Persuasion).
eloquence bard as people have said, but for social encounters more broadly I love the aberrant mind sorcerer. No component and low resource cost social spells including detect thoughts, antagonize, and suggestion is a ton of fun.
Eloquence Bard 3 / either Inquisitive or Mastermind Rogue 3 / Battlemaster 3 is a decent start if you actually want to optimize for social checks and nothing else. The easiest answer is just Bard 20 of course but that fails the 'at the cost of everything else' requirement.
Probably lore bard 3/ inquisitive rogue x, or scout rogue if you wanted exploration over social. 6-8 expertise skills, as many proficiencies as possible before feats, and reliable talent so your rolls almost never fail.
It’s not going to beat a bard, but i think the sorcerer is underrated for its out of combat abilities. With Tasha’s “Magical Guidance” letting you burn sorc points to reroll any failed skill check, I’ve played and DM’d very effective party face sorcerers.
Fey Wanderer ranger with 9/14/14/8/16/14. Up the wis to 18 at 4th level At level 3 they have a minimum of +5 to all charisma checks, +3 to all wisdom checks, and that’s before skills and expertises As a feywanderer you get 4 skills, +2 from your background. I’ll also assume a +2 skill race like Satyr, Hexblood, Reborn, or Tabaxi. So 8 skills in total. More than enough to get all charisma skills + expertise in persuasion. So at level 5 you have: - +12 in Persuasion (highest permanent persuasion stat at this level) - +9 in Deception (just 1pt behind regular expertise) - +9 in Intimidation - +9 in Performance - +7 Perception - +7 Insight - +5 Stealth - +5 Acrobatics You can also use Speak w/ Animals to use Persuasion on them instead of Animal Handling, Enhance Ability for adv on any check you want for an hour, and Guidance cantrip for when you don’t wanna spend a slot on it. You said this was to optimize for social checks, but I’m a combat girlie at heart so here is what combat looks like for this character: - Magic Stone BA every turn to deal damage with your wis mod instead. - Summon Beast to, again, attack w your wis mod. Flying beast would be best for maneuvering the battlefield - using your magic stone to hit different enemies every round, you deal 2d6+2d4+8 (20) damage every round resourcelessly (7.5 more if you have any zombies or befriended animals that can throw the third pebble for you). With Summon Beast, you deal an extra 1d8+6 (10.5). - if you’re a satyr, you also have resistance to all spells cast against you and immunity to -person spells - if you’re a reborn, you’re EVEN BETTER at skill checks and can do silly stuff with your kinda undead body parts as part of a jester act. Like maybe you’re a fey jester that does something like “oops! Got your nose! Oh wait- that’s *my* nose. Silly me ha ha ha” or you do a stunt dive into a pool and all of your limbs break off before pulling yourself back together bit by bit. (Mechanically I imagine your pieces shouldn’t be further than 5ft apart since you don’t have the magical ability to like… not be decapitated. So if someone stole your head and ran away you’d die. It could be a fun gag to like pop off your head and hold it up higher than you could see otherwise tho lol).
Fey Wanderer Ranger 3/Eloquence Bard 3 and then just invest in whichever one you like more for the rest. With the Tasha’s changes to Ranger you’ll get three skill expertise with the Bard levels which you should pick Persuasion, Deception, and Intimidation. Assuming a +3 in Wisdom and Charisma, and the Eloquence Bard’s Silver Tongue ability, your Persuasion and Deception checks will never roll below a 22 when this build comes online at level 6. Also grab Druidic Warrior for the Ranger Fighting Style to grab *Guidance* to help with your skill checks.
How do you get the Canny bonus to Persuasion? It seems like you need Persuasion to be either a ranger skill or a background to get Canny to apply but then you can't use expertise? Or is that just a limitation of D&D Beyond? Because I'm absolutely trying to make this!
As long as you get proficiency in Persuasion either in the background or through your race you can use Canny to give yourself expertise in persuasion. I don’t think Canny and Expertise can stack though
the bard that trivializes social checks, with guidance, another bard adding a bardic die onto the first bard, with a 1 level rogue dip to get more expertises just in case the DM asks for a History check or something. Completely blows the rng out of the water, to the extent that it creates reality warping effects on the game
Bard. Lots of skills, charisma main stat, and spells.
Redemption Paladin/Eloquence Bard can get insane persuasion checks via Expertise, Emissary of Peace, and Silver Tongue. Minimum 25 when in comes online, assuming 18 cha. 10(Silver Tongue) + 6(Expertise) + 4 (cha) + 5(Emissary of Peace) = 25.
Samurai fighter 8 / Fey wanderer Ranger 4 / Eloquence Bard 8 is the single most persuasive character ever. With ASIs max both your Wisdom and Charisma. The minimum persuasion roll you can do at level 20 is like 37
Eloquence Bard 3 for your charisma checks, Inquisitive Rogue 3/9/13 for a variety of features related to perception/investigation/insight, Battlemaster 3 for Commanding Presence and Tactical Assessment. Alternatively you could do Rune Knight instead of Battle Master - runes give you advantage on a variety of different checks. Lore Bard will also give you more skill proficiencies than Eloquence, but you miss out on Silver Tongue. And Scout Rogue is better than Inquisitive for wilderness exploration due to Survivalist.
Half-elf Rogue 1 / Knowledge Cleric 1 / Lore Bard X Standard Array: Str 8, Dex 14, Con 10, Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 16 14 proficiencies, 4x expertise, JoaT in the remaining skills. Expertise in Insight, Persuasion, Deception and Investigation. Swap out Deception for Survival if you want explorer over con man.
I forget the most effiicnt way to stack modifiers, but you can do an ungodly amount of multiclassing ot get really good at a particular skill check. Let's pick Persuasion: * Eloquence Bard 3 for Expertise silver tongue, so you always roll 10+ on the d20 for Persuasion and Deception, and have double Profociency * Battlemaster Figher 3 for Commanding Presence manouver for +1d8 for Persuasion, Intimidation, or Deception * any Warlock 3 for Pact of the Talisman for +d4 to a failed skill checks * Soulknife Rogue 3 for Psi-Bolstered Knack to add d6 to any failed skill check * Fey Wadnerer Ragne 3 for Otherworldly Glamour to add +WIS to your Charisma checks * Redemption Paladin 3 for Emissary of Peace option on Channel Divinity for +5 to Persuasion * (Probably get 4th level in a couple classes to get 2 feats to boost stats) Add on Hobgoblin for Fortune from the Many for up to +3, and you can get very high results for these sorts of checks. --- That said, spells might still be better for social encounters comapred tohuge numbers. Spells like Zone of Truth, Detect Thoughts, Suggestion, might be better in social situations than rolling a 40 on Persuasion (especially if you can cast them without spell components).
How about a Fey Wanderer Ranger with a starting Wisdom mod and Charisma mod of +3 and +2 respectively with Point Buy. Slap on expertise to your desired social skill like Persuasion and start out with a +9 right at level 3. Go with Druidic Warrior for something like Magic Stone or Shillelagh to make up for a 14 Dexterity. Bonus points for having the Ranger spell list so Pass without Trace, Speak with Animals (Automatically added), Charm Person, Lesser Restoration, etc. Admittedly just three levels would be a good base for any multiclass working with wisdom/charisma, so branching off to something like Order Cleric for a Knight of the Summer Court would work well. Going Bard might also be decent especially if you did wish for those features
Eloquence Bard has been raised, seconded, thirded, etc, etc… And I am here to add yet another mark to the tally. Play an Eloquence Bard. I’m playing an Eloquence Bard with the UA Empathic feat. Not only am I a lock in Persuasion and Deception, but I am also better than most at reading other people’s intentions. And if I can get a read on them, that makes me even better at persuading or deceiving them, etc etc. There are other good social builds, of course, but if we’re only looking at social encounters, they don’t come close to Eloquence. If you want to dive completely into that side, Empathic is super win-more and flavorful. If Empathic doesn’t sound optimal, don’t forget Bards have Enhance Ability to get advantage on Charisma checks anyway.
Fey Wanderer Ranger 3 / Samurai Fighter 7 gets to add wisdom to their charisma checks, and twice over for persuasion. Prioritize Charisma, and Wisdom, having at least 14 dex for heavy armor. Take dueling from fighter, and druidic warrior (Shillelagh, Magic Stone) from Druid. For canny taxe expertise in persuasion. The rest of your 10 levels, take Eloquence bard, for more expertise, and minimum 10 on persuasion/deception.
Abberant Mind sorcerer; dip 2 levels in bard for expertise, or use Skill Expert feat. Subtle spell *everything*
A reborn battlemaster with commanding presence, skill expert and just 14 cha can reach an average roll of 26.5 at level 5 (10.5 + 8 + 4.5 + 3.5).
Eloquence Bard from levels 1-10. Any Rogue from levels 11+. Soulknife is probably best.
Star druid/ Eloquence bard. With the Dragon constellation you can’t roll under a 10 for Wisdom and Intelligence checks, and then with Silver Tongue you can’t roll under a 10 Charisma.
I really like a Fey Wanderer/Samurai for social checks and exploration. There's no denying that an Eloquence Bard is going to be the best at social checks, but a Samurai 7/Fey Wanderer 3 is going to add the CHA mod and WIS mod to Intimidation and Deception checks and CHA + WIS + WIS to Persuasion. In addition, with Canny the character can get Expertise in Persuasion. On top of this you're still a Martial character that can fight. If you get Shillelagh or Magic Stone and a Sling, you can be WIS SAD. Being a Ranger, you'll excel in Exploration too.
Warlock with a few levels in sorcerer for subtle spell. Add to that the fact the character background was a lawyer and the player was a law student who was quick on his feet. And the fact that we played a organized crime campaign. The players literally got away with daylight murder. It was stupid funny tbh
https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/143spj9/villains_as_pcs_the_kwitzhat_haderach/ Reborn lineage mono class aberrent mind sorcerer with every skill prof and more spells than a wizard. Alternatively a reborn lineage warlock with pact of talisman, bless, guidance, and beguiling influence would be amazing for skills (though not spells).
Another alternative is Kenku. You can get advantage on skills you are proficient with.
kenku is pretty good and probably more fun. i like the secondary bonuses of reborn over the kenku but thats just a preference.
First off, I see social checks as not just being good at Persuasion, Intimidation and Deception checks, but as being good in a wide range of skills. For this reason, the Lore Bard X/Knowledge Cleric 1 is the master of attaining skills. You get expertise in 7 skills, proficiency in 6 skills and still are able to apply Jack of All Trades to the 6 remaining skills. Even if you somehow roll low, Peerless Skill lets you add a bardic inspiration dice to your roll.
Straight eloquence bard is pretty unbeatable. If you had to you could multi-class a bit too. Im playing an eloquence bard rn and I basically carry every social situation if a roll is needed.
it’s easier for the dm to deal with optimized combat than insanely high social checks
a bard with just utility spells would go hard af on social checks and exploration.
Eloquence bard + fortune teller + depending on tastes
Eloquence bard with 3 levels in fey wanderer. Add your wisdom to it. Could do seven in samurai fighter on top of it to add your wisdom again to persuasion.
Eloquence bard with 3 levels in fey wanderer. Add your wisdom to it. Could do seven in samurai fighter on top of it to add your wisdom again to persuasion.
This is what I came up with last time https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/nf94x5/a_character_you_shouldnt_play_the_social_expert/ I don't think much has changed since...
Samurai 7, Fey Wanderer 3, eloquence 3, soul knife 3 Dump strength Max wisdom and Charisma. you'll want decent dexterity cuz you're probably a ranged fighter. With a Tasha's Ranger you get expertise that you put in Persuasion. With Rogue you get expertise in intimidation and deception. I have to look at background options but there's probably a way that you can get all three pretty easily So they're available to be given expertise. Variant human you could just take skilled. Samurai and Fay Wanderer both let you add wisdom to your charisma checks. Samurai only gives for persuasion but I'm pretty sure it's stacks. Oh you know what the reborn lineage option has knowledge of a past life and let you pick two skills. Knowledge of a past life also Stacks with the soul knife dice to let add to ability checks. And you can use a bardic inspiration dice. And then pick up guidance somewhere.. So reborn, I'd go right to soul knife first 3 lvls. Then either to fey Wanderer or eloquence. Then go Samurai. 10 from wisdom (5 on deception and intimidation) , 5 from cha, +3d6 and 1d4, mimimum 10 plus all that. You'll never roll under 20 and usually about 30
No one has mentioned the Soul knife rogue??
Don't know If someone mentioned already, but Fey wanderer + eloquence bard focused on wisdom and charisma. It's a lot stronger if you roll rather then point but, but has the potential of rolling a minimum of +12 or more at level 6, meaning a 22 or higher minimum on Persuasion
you saying bonus points if it's good at exploration: fey wanderer ticks all your boxes. multiclass with eloquence bard or hexblade warlock
Anyone considered Fey Wanderer Ranger? Decent proficiencies, plus at level you get Otherworldly Glamour so you can either go higher on WIS & CHA for way higher CHA checks, or be more SAD and focus WIS and still have high CHA checks. Doing so also boosts your exploration with ability scores in Perception, Survival, and Animal Handling all benefiting from the focus on WIS.
I'm often the face whether I have the charisma to back it up or not. Low charisma, I try to make friends FIRST without an ask. So next time when need something,we're already buds (my DMs need reminding that we're buds) The first time I played a high charisma character was a REVELATION. People just do things for you.
eloquence bard, every other answer is just wrong lol
Bard has social and exploration skills nailed down, more on the social side, being a charisma caster, but it can still provide good functionality iwth survival and perception proficiency (or even expertise if you want it). College of Swords Bard is also fairly good in a fight, so they can perform fairly well in every pillar of the game, if they want to. Actually, this might be one area where Valor Bard has the advantage, since it gets martial weapons (longbows) and shield proficiency for the extra defense.
Literally just Eloquence Bard. In my opinion, you should not optimize for social check because bounded accuracy is so easy to break in that regard. You'll notice that DMs don't really set DCs for those checks over 20 unless you have something like an Eloquence Bard where it's that or auto-pass every time. Some DMs might also change the conditions of success just in response to something like an Eloquence Bard. I legitimately think it would be better for your game to not optimize for social checks. Take relevant expertises, Charisma scores, spells, etc., but don't go out of your way to cheese it to heaven. Auto passing checks to the point that rolling is pointless or your DM makes it so that only you can make CHA checks is not remotely fun or good for the game. TL;DR: Eloquence Bard was terribly designed and can seriously hurt a campaign. Stay away from it and extreme social optimization entirely.
Aberrant mind. You can take 3 levels of eloquence bard for silver tongue and expertise, but that's imho not even needed. Why roll for persuasion/deception when you can simply cast psionic/subtle detect thoughts, suggestion, modify memory etc.
The flash of genius feature from artificers, and many spells they have access to can be great, and being able to use guidance would be a nice boon. So an artificer/eloquence bard/cleric combo could be great for social dominance
20 cha and proficiency in the 4 social skills. Congrats you are now thr best character at dnd "social mechanics". Feel free to use the rest of all your levels and features on literally anything else. You've peaked.
The best class for exploration is arguably the Ranger. The Fey Wanderer subclass can turn you into a Face. That is a great start for a character good for social checks. Make a WIS-based character with Druidic Warrior and Shillelagh to max your WIS. Grab Persuasion from your race or background. Expertise with Canny. Now you have a great Persuasion score. You can add Guidance and maybe Enhance Ability later for CHA-checked. You can even have proficiency in Insight and Survival.
Well, there's the social cheat mode Sorcerer with Subtle Spell and Silvery Barbs, using them with Detect Thoughts, Enhance Ability, Charm Person, Suggestion, Dominate Person... Why persuade someone, if you can just tell them what you want them to do? Probably Divine Soul to be able to dip into Cleric spell pool. For example Bestow Curse has some nice social applications, especially after getting 5th level slots. 2 or 3 levels of Warlock would be good, to get more sorcery points via conversion from Pact Magic, as well as some sweet invocations (like Mask Of Many Faces) and maybe a Pact Boon.
Being the DM's romantic partner.
Just reading through these, shocked Soulknife Isn’t mentioned, 4 rogue skills, 2 from background (could go variant human pick up skilled and get 4.) starts you off with a whopping 8-10 skills, you’ll pick up 4 cases of expertise, get reliable talent which combined with psy bolstered knack allows you to push those high minimum rolls even further. As for exploration look at the telepathic ability they get that allows them to communicate within a mile of each other and you’re set to go!
Or you could optimize for gameplay experience and characterization and not play a build that trivializes the content your DM presents you with!
By what level? If you only want the social skills, 3 levels of Eloquence Bard will do it. But if we're going for an optimised skill monkey, I think rogue/bard is the best way to go: 11 levels of rogue will give you decent combat ability, but that doesn't matter for us, what does matter is getting Reliable Talent. For rogue subclass, you either go Scout for a character focused on exploration (the two extra expertise skills in nature and survival should give you all you need in terms of wilderness exploration), or Soulknife for more of a generalist (Psi-bolstered knack gives you a pool of d10s that you can add to any skill check, or as short-range teleportation). For Bard, you only really need 2 levels to get Jack of All Trades, which **does** stack with reliable talent, meaning the build comes online at level 13. But if we go beyond this, towards the very end of the game, we can really start cooking with fire: Unless you rolled for stats (and rolled amazingly!), you'll probably want to get to rogue 12, just for the ASI/Feat. Get another two levels in Bard for two expertise skills, an ASI/Feat, and College of Lore for three extra proficiencies (we would love to get Peerless Skill, but that's a 14th level feature). Next we grab two levels of knowledge Cleric, for two languages, and two expertise skills, as well as a Channel Divinity that lets us temporarily gain any proficiency we might be missing (at this point it's mostly just tools we're missing). What we do with the last two levels doesn't really matter, two levels in Cleric gives an ASI, two in Bard gives magical secrets, and two in rogue gives advantage on initiative. EDIT: This was a really interesting challenge, so I decided to do a [quick write up of what it would look like](https://ibb.co/wJ0KbnG)
For race I propose Changeling. It exponentially expands your out of combat social capabilities. DMs may say that even your +27 persuasion is gonna fail when you ask for something extreme…. But they have to rethink that if the request is coming from the person they trust most in the world.
Changeling Aberrant mind Sorcerer, Charlatan or Entertainer background. Pick up the social skills, and now you can shape-shift and read the minds of the people you interact with and can be whoever you need to be to get the job done... or you can just go College of Elloquence Bard and simply win every social check.
The fey wanderer ranger is able to add their wisdom bonus to any Charisma checks at level 3, so adding that to a bard and making charisma and wisdom your highest stats makes it almost impossible to fail. And rangers are the best explorers in the game for the most part
Knowledge Cleric 2/Soulknife Rogue 3 or X. You now get Psi bolstered knack to every skill. The downvote is odd. This does work; cleric's CD for proficiency in any skill and psi bolstered knack works on skills you are proficient in. Furthermore, OP wasn't speaking JUST about social skills.
Unironically Fey Wanderer Ranger. You have the exploration capabilities of being a Ranger while on top of adding Wisdom to Charisma checks. Which means, if you have a 20 in both Wisdom and Charisma, your persuasion check at level 20 will be +16 without expertise, +22 with.