An Idea: Social Proficiencies

I have a bit of an issue with social skills (Intimidate and Persuasion) - by and large, what happens is that the party has a 'face' character, who has a high Charisma and will take proficiency in one (or even both) of these skills. That character will then stand front and centre in all social interactions the group faces, and basically run the entire Interaction pillar of the game.

My idea to fix this, which I'll grant you is currently half-baked at best, is to remove those skills in favour of Social Proficiencies - these work much like Tool proficiencies, in that they apply every time the character is interacting with a particular group. For instance, the Noble might have proficiency in 'nobles' (surprisingly enough), meaning that he applies the bonus in all social interactions of that sort. The Warlock might have a higher Charisma, but without the proficiency he may still not be the optimum choice. (Indeed, if you combine that with rules that there are some things you can only do if you have the proficiency, it's an even stronger mechanic.)

Once that's in place, the next step is "Social Expertise", where a character will be considered an expert in certain social environments - parties, command, negotiations, gambling, and so on. When in an environment where the character has expertise, double the proficiency bonus applies... provided it applies at all, of course!

The net effect of all of this should be that the Interaction pillar becomes at least a bit more spread out - it becomes much harder to have a single nominated 'face' character. Additionally, since the Social proficiencies are less tightly tied to ability scores than the existing skills, that at least potentially gives rise to using Intelligence and Wisdom in place of Charisma as the key characteristic (or even other attributes... though Charisma is likely to be the default).

At the moment, it's little more than a half-baked part of an idea. But I'm definitely of the opinion that the game would be better for having as many characters as possible involved in all three pillars (Combat, Interaction, Exploration). At the moment, the Combat pillar is quite good, the Exploration pillar isn't quite so good, and the Interaction pillar is worse still. So if this helps redress that somewhat, so much the better.