What happens when a PC gets charmed. Do I just say ," your charmed. Act like it!", do I force them to do something they don't want.

Either. Generally, if they can act as they wish, but going directly against the influence of a successful social skill check should cause some Strain. Because Strain is so easy to recover (and we don't want to be able to get over being Charmed just by shooting someone in the face and spending Advantages), one possible solution might be that it lower the Strain Threshold by an amount equal to the successes on the roll, but only if the character is acting against the intent of the social skill check. So, if someone uses Coercion to intimidate you or Charm to fascinate you and the check gets three successes, you can still act against the other person's wishes, but your ST is lower by three for the remainder of the encounter.

Another option is to force a Destiny Point flip on any action that goes against the results of a social skill check. This DP counts as being spent--and thus prevents other DP spends on that roll--but it gives no bonus to the roll, it just allows it to happen.

To be honest, I'd hope the player in question was mature enough to ropleplay it properly. To reinforce that, I'd vary my description of the NPC's appearance, words and actions depending on the result of the roll. If the Charm roll is passed, then the NPC is clearly friendly, shares interests and sense of humour with the PC and their suggestions make good sense. If it's failed, then they're clearly sycophantic, trying to ingratiate themselves by pretending to agree and their plans clearly benefit the NPC more than (or at the expense of) the PCs.

You could remind the player that there are benefits to being "charmed." Someone using Charm isn't really looking to deceive you. They might want something from you, but that's how friendships often start. So if someone charms you , you should both get "bonuses" to social interaction with each other.

Keep in mind that Charm is *not* a mind-control effect as per the typical fantasy RPG use of the word. While it can be used to convince people to do things, it's far more limited than the out-and-out mind control that is often associated with it in other systems.

One other suggestion that I'd make is to turn the check around: Cool (PC) vs Charm (NPC) rather than Charm (NPC) vs Cool (PC). This has a small effect on the die pool and odds, but more importantly it makes the PC the 'active' character in the interaction and therefore the player probably less reluctant to go along with the results.

8 hours ago, Garran said:

One other suggestion that I'd make is to turn the check around: Cool (PC) vs Charm (NPC) rather than Charm (NPC) vs Cool (PC). This has a small effect on the die pool and odds, but more importantly it makes the PC the 'active' character in the interaction and therefore the player probably less reluctant to go along with the results.

The problem with this is that it makes talents like Nobody's Fool worthless since they rely on being targeted by those skills.

Even if you house-rule it otherwise, personally I think that never having NPC's roll against PC's in social checks would be a bit odd, it would be like allowing the PC to roll the dice when their being shot, but that's just my thought process.

One of the best rules to remember is that the pc isn't the player. Even if the player is not fooled they should be engaging with the failed checks to push along a compelling narrative. The characters are more complete when they aren't infallible

18 hours ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

The problem with this is that it makes talents like Nobody's Fool worthless since they rely on being targeted by those skills.

Even if you house-rule it otherwise, personally I think that never having NPC's roll against PC's in social checks would be a bit odd, it would be like allowing the PC to roll the dice when their being shot, but that's just my thought process.

Nobody's Fool still works as-is. It just means that the upgrade is to the player's green/yellow rather than the player's black/red.

Attacks aren't a contested roll in this system. If they were then it would be doable there too, although bullets and blasters don't usually have the same feels-off-to-the-player issue.

4 hours ago, Garran said:

Attacks aren't a contested roll in this system. If they were then it would be doable there too, although bullets and blasters don't usually have the same feels-off-to-the-player issue.

Hopefully making attacks be contested is something that they will change in 2e.

On 6/25/2017 at 5:58 AM, Garran said:

Keep in mind that Charm is *not* a mind-control effect as per the typical fantasy RPG use of the word. While it can be used to convince people to do things, it's far more limited than the out-and-out mind control that is often associated with it in other systems.

One other suggestion that I'd make is to turn the check around: Cool (PC) vs Charm (NPC) rather than Charm (NPC) vs Cool (PC). This has a small effect on the die pool and odds, but more importantly it makes the PC the 'active' character in the interaction and therefore the player probably less reluctant to go along with the results.

This is what I do. When I GM I don't target my players' characters with social rolls: I give them the roll to resist, with the difficulty set by the opponent's ranks and stat (generally with whatever setback I can justify--there's nothing like the smug joy in a player's voice when I say "and there's a setback because--" and they inform me that, due to the talent they purchased, they can remove that setback).