Lost in PC-NPC social skill interaction

[roxas]

At the moment I'm still lost in 2 rules in the rulebook that, in my opinion, compete with each other and the book doesn't show a direct solution (at least I can't find one).

As I said, I have already thought about it a lot and looked it up, but I keep coming back to this point. It revolves around opposed skills and how to use them properly in the NPC-PC relationship. I would like to briefly present my conclusions up to this point, perhaps the error can already be found there:

When the player meets an NPC and wants to interact with him, a conflict quickly arises with the social skills. In the following I will deal with the social skills + psychology. So, let's start with my example.

William would like to persuade the NPC he meets. Now, in my opinion, you have to consider the following things:

***1. The attitude***  

* If the player has recently done the NPC a favour, the NPC is open-minded towards the player and will probably let his persuade attempt pass without rolling the dice. (E.g. if you suddenly have to ask the homeless man, whom you recently gave a decent tip, for something).
* However, if the player is unknown to the NPC and he sees no reason to be persuaded, a roll of "Regular" is necessary. (E.g. one wants to persuade the librarian to help him intensively in the search for a book, although the NPC has better things to do - i.e. is rather unwilling).
* If the NPC is very negative towards the player, the roll is even made more difficult by 1 to 2 levels. (The policeman should let the player escape caught in the act).

***2. Social skill values***

In addition to the attitude, however, there are the social skills, which, as I understand it, are applied to every social attempt. So if the player wants to persuade an NPC, the skills Persuasion or Psychology of the NPC are used. (You all know exactly how, I don't need to explain that)

# Now to my question:

How do I decide how difficult the roll is?

In principle, I have 2 factors that influence the value - one is the attitude towards the player and the other is the difficulty of the attempt itself (values of the NPC).  
So what would be the interpretation of the difficulty in accordance with the rules?

Example 1:
The player tries to persuade an NPC who is neutral towards the player. This would set the difficulty to "Regular". The respective skills of the NPC are also below 50% (which, according to the rulebook, should be assumed for simple NPCs). The difficulty therefore remains "Regular". Simple.

Example 2: Now, however, the player meets an NPC who has a negative attitude towards the player. I set the difficulty to "Hard". Now the respective skills are added and the NPC has a value over 50%, ergo I would have to increase the difficulty one more?

Are both things added together? What if the NPC already sets the difficulty to extreme because of his setting? Would making it harder again with the skills then be an impossibility?

I hope I have expressed myself well enough. 🙂
I thank everyone for help on the subject!

[Psullie]

I don't see any errors in your logic. I assume too that when you say 'negative attitude' you also refer to requesting NPC's to do thing contrary to their own belief. I would not see any issue with making a task extremely challenging should the investigators have a 'double penalty' if the story justifies it. Such situations require at lot of Luck or a miracle, however these should be rare and clear to the players that they are in a serious bind.