When it comes to social conflict there's the balance between role playing and roll playing.
Example: Tom's PC Bill has no social skills above average - but boy is he great at tossing fire around. Tom's an amateur actor and when confronting the Warlock, Tom's PC goes deep into character- role playing it out. Bill has the Warlock examining his true motivation and he eloquently counters every argument the Warlock can come up with.
Dick's PC Ted has Rapport at Great and the rest of the social skills at Good. Dick is going for pure escapism here because Dick's own social skills are almost non-existence - for him having Great Rapport is as big of a leap as Tom's PC being able to call fire from his hands. When Dick's PC confronts the Warlock it's "Um, killing is wrong - I mean killing with magic is wrong, blowing someone away with a gun is okay. Um, well, not okay but not against the law. Um, I mean the laws of magic.".
In short, because of who they are in real life, Tom's unskilled PC is much better than Dick's skilled one when in comes to role play.
Compare it with Roll Play social conflict:
GM: "Okay, if you want to talk the guy down you'll need Rapport against his Deceit because he's going to be lying to convince you that he's a godling. To save time we'll just compare attack to attack."
Tom: "+4! A Great result!"
GM: "He got +2, but he has Deceit at Good, so you take two stress."
Tom: "Shit! Someone else try."
Dick: "Okay, I'll try. <rolls> +2, plus I'll tag my 'Silver tongue' aspect."
GM: "He rolls a 0, making it 7 stress on him, so he needs to take a consequence or be taken out."
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This way the character with the skills wins regardless of how social his player is.
Um, actually, the example above doesn't fit the RAW. What should happen is Character rolls his <attacking social skill> while Character B rolls his <defending social skill> then (if B wasn't taken out) B rolls his attack and A rolls his defense. They go by social initiative order.
And here are the pros and cons of each approach:
Tom: "We're rolling dice? Um, I come here to role play with an E, not roll dice. This sucks."
Dick: "Talk him down? Um, I don't know what to say, but my character does. Can't I roll it?"
Then there's the middle way - or ways. Assign modifiers based on what the players do OR saying "Tom, get into character. Either act like someone with mediocre social skills or switch things around at the next milestone". Sometimes you do both.
Richard