Overpowered social builds?

[TheNavyBlues]

Hey y'all, I'm new. The wonderful world of D&D has given me great joy. However my rolls are always terrible. My groups know me as the cursed one. I try to be creative but my plans are always foiled by a bad roll. I tend to engage in social situations often, I like playing evil manipulative characters. I like lore bard, but do you have any good builds to make up for my misfortune?

[KillingTime]

Lore Bard is ideal, but you can also consider a 1 level dip into rogue to get early access to 4x expertise.

Pump Cha as high as possible. Don't dump Wisdom.
Make sure you're proficient in Insight, Persuasion, Deception, Intimidation.
Then take expertise in all of these as soon as possible.

Also take the Friends cantrip.
And remember that you can use Cutting Words to muck with opposing insight checks.

[hymer]

Rogues get Reliable Talent, which means you won't roll under 10 for the selected skills. the Lucky feat might help. Remember to spend your Inspiration (and play to get it). And halflings get to reroll some 1s.

[Ganymede]

In social situations, you can often obviate the need for rolls if you work to determine an NPC's personality before you try to change their mind on anything. If you can appeal to an NPC's ideal or manipulate his or her flaw, your DM might let you succeed in your attempt to sway them without a roll.

[alchahest]

Glamour bards have an intensely potent non-spell version of charm, which can assist with all those sweet sweet social skills you've got.

[Talionis]

Warlocks are social creatures. GoO gets the thrall at level 14, but many of the invocations are very nice social buffs... disguise self at will with Friends allows you to charm people when you look like someone other than yourself. Chainlock can get an invisible familiar. Tomelock can pick up Guidance cantrip and a normal familiar.

Warlocks are solid choices and work well with Rogue and or Bard dips, since both probably want good Charisma and Dexterity.

[Malifice]

Lore Bard is ideal, but you can also consider a 1 level dip into rogue to get early access to 4x expertise.

Whispers Bard and Mastermind Rogue seem better.

[sophontteks]

Glamour bards and Shepherd druids.
Multiclass rogue 1 for expertise or multiclass sorcerer 3 for subtle spell.

Glamour bards have a nuclear charm thats undetectable, and they can command charmed creatures with no save 10 times.

Shepherd druids can talk to animals at will. Combine with companion buffs and animals charms and you have a very powerful social build of a totally different kind

[Lunali]

Rogues get Reliable Talent, which means you won't roll under 10 for the selected skills.

Lots of good general suggestions, but if you really have terrible luck with rolls, this is the one to focus on.

[Mercurias]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?490505-The-Social-God-A-guide-to-an-optimized-party-face

The above link I should to Specter’s Social God guise, which should give you some good ideas. It has a lot of info on building social characters.

I’d personally go with a Lore Bard that has a one-level dip in Rogue, the earlier the better, for extra expertise and an itty bitty bump to your non-spell damage via Sneak Attack when you’re forced into a melee situation. You get a LOT of useful spells and skills for being a social character.

[Randomthom]

Don't underestimate the Sorceror's Silent Spell metamagic alongside charm/suggestion type spells. They're also a cha-based class so shouldn't be slack on non-magical interactions.

[LudicSavant]

Much is made of Charisma when it comes to socializing, but social encounters in 5e have more going on than simply making a Persuasion roll (which is a good thing too, because it'd be a pretty poor "pillar of the game" compared to Exploration and Combat if only one roll mattered). As such there's another stat that's pretty darned good for social encounters:
Wisdom.

Why Wisdom? Because of Insight. If you check out the rules for Social Interaction in the DMG (they're on page 244), you'll notice a few things.

1) Creatures have attitudes. These attitudes affect the DC of your Charisma roll, as well as the extent to which the target can be influenced. A creature with a sufficiently hostile attitude can't be influenced by Persuasion at all, regardless of roll.
2) The attitude of a creature can be altered during the course of a social encounter, before you have to make that final Persuasion roll to see if they'll do what you want.
3) These attitudes make really significant differences. Changing an attitude 1 step decreases the DC of all the previously available persuasion options by a whopping 10, and increases the number of options available. Or, in the case of a sufficiently hostile person, makes them persuadable at all in the first place. As such, altering the target's attitude before making the Persuasion roll is really important. Like, more important than having a +5 Charisma bonus important.
4) The most straightforward way given to alter a creature's attitude in your favor during a social interaction is to touch on their ideal, bond, or flaw. The most straightforward way given to find out a target's ideal, bond, or flaw is with an Insight check.

So, having someone who can do Insight in your party is a pretty big boon to social encounters.

And that's not the only thing either. All forms of information gathering are very useful to social encounters, as well as a variety of spells (such as Zone of Truth or Detect Thoughts). All of these things really help you get leverage and advance your social goals.

You also don't have to have all these abilities on the same character. Indeed, there is quite a lot to be gained from players cooperating in a social encounter. The rules note that the final Persuasion roll can be made by anyone in the party who contributed to the conversation, for example, and if anyone besides them contributed anything useful to the conversation the roll gets Advantage. Annnd whoever has Insight or the proper information gathering skills can touch on the character traits to make the target receptive, or can communicate such details to their comrades who can do so. And of course there's all the possibilities of spells to change the rules and conditions of a social encounter. Pretty much all of the mental stats are good in the Social pillar of the game. The best party for a social encounter will contribute in various roles and capacities, just like the best party for the Combat and Exploration pillars will.

If you want to be as good at the social pillar of the game as you can possibly be, only looking at your Persuasion roll is only going to get you so far.

[Laserlight]

Hey y'all, I'm new. The wonderful world of D&D has given me great joy. However my rolls are always terrible. My groups know me as the cursed one. I try to be creative but my plans are always foiled by a bad roll. I tend to engage in social situations often, I like playing evil manipulative characters. I like lore bard, but do you have any good builds to make up for my misfortune?

Is this Arundel the Accursed? Because if it isn't, you should know that you're not alone in your situation. Well...Arundel got dragged off to Hell and not one member of the party lifted a finger to stop it, so presumably you're doing a little better...but on the other hand, the Harpers published a play which showered him in (unearned) glory, so he still had something of a happy ending. There's hope for you!

Generally speaking, you should operate in such a way that one flubbed roll won't kill your chances.
In a social situation, don't just throw down a demand and hope for a d20=20 on your Persuasion. Instead, find out what the NPC wants. Ask a theoretical question ("if someone cast a spell to make your crops grow better, would that help you?") and see how they respond. Use Insight to see how they feel about it. Then ask another question ("If I were to cast a spell like that, how much would that be worth for you?") and then make a proposal ("Okay, I'll cast the spell tomorrow at dawn. Give us free lodging for the night and breakfast, and that'll knock off 5gp from the total. You want to save that 5 gold?") and you should be okay. Once again: find out what they want and figure out a way to give it to them, and don't be greedy on what you ask in return.

In a combat situation, again, don't push into situations where one bad roll can kill you. Don't charge out ahead and tackle all the monsters on your own...particularly if you're down to 4hp. Don't go off on your own where the rest of the party can't support you.

Don't scheme against other party members.

Ask other party members for advice and help. "Hey, you know my character abilities. Is there a better tactic I can use when we're fighting? Can you give me Guidance while I try to con the innkeeper? And Ashok, maybe you could use your Intimidate to support my Deception?"

[Oramac]

I've actually been looking into real-world Social Engineering recently. Had an idea for a character based around Social Engineering and Physical Penetration Testing (head out of the gutter, it's a real thing).

Basically, go Mastermind Rogue up to 4th level, then grab 4 levels of Lore Bard, then back to Rogue for the rest of your days.

You get Expertise in 6 skills (Persuasion, Insight, Deception, Intimidation, plus 2 more), Reliable Talent (a bit late, sure, but it's worth it imo), all of the Bard-y goodness with spells, and you don't lose any ASI's.

I personally prefer Aasimar, but it would work with any race that gets a Charisma bonus.

You could also pick up a level or two of warlock if you wanted, though I don't really think it's necessary.

[Talionis]

Don't underestimate the Sorceror's Silent Spell metamagic alongside charm/suggestion type spells. They're also a cha-based class so shouldn't be slack on non-magical interactions.

I 100% will second this... When everyone in the room knows you are casting a spell, the value of your enchantment spells (or any spell for that matter) in social settings goes down dramatically. Sorcerer 3 is easy to dip, a little bit of ability to metamagic subtle spell goes a really long way. And the dip into Sorcerer is very easy for Bards and Warlocks who are both casters with Charisma as their only requirement to multiclass and as their casting stat.

I would prioritize a sorcerer dip for subtle spell for any casting social focused character.