How would one create a character with social skills, if their class isn't one that has Bluff/Diplomacy/Sense Motive as a class skill? A wizard/sorceror for example?
In 2e, such matters were mostly a matter of your Charisma score, and perhaps the Etiquette proficiency. In 3e, 'social skills' (Bluff, Diplomacy, Sense Motive) are class skills for only specific classes.
That just... bothers me. I know one can cross-class the skills, but still... it's a gimped skill. Is it really as unbalanced for a mage to have high ranks in those skills as it would be for a plate-wearing warrior to cast arcane spells, or for a priest to have the full set of rogue skills (sneaking, hiding, picklock)? Heck, I'm sure there are already prestige classes for the latter two.
I only have a smallish set of 3e/3.5 material (player's handbook, dm's guide, motp, some FR rulebooks, Eberron main sourcebook, a few other things), so there may be a kit or prestige class that already covers this.
There's a few feats that allow you to add such skills to your character as class skills from the get go.
But honestly, in most groups I play in - we rarely fall back on those skills and instead tend to let the players do their own smiling sweetly. It's just not... relevant to us.
The points where we let those skills come into play is for very nervous players or players who - themselves - have trouble with it. In those cases we have a roll in advance, and use the results of that roll to affect the conversation, after all you won't get better without practice so you still have to try... It allows GMs to offer suggestion and tips mid RP'd conversation, or allows players a "wait - that was dumb, can I rewind and try that again?". It provides a safety net essentially. I've DM'd one game where the mere existence of that safety net was enough by itself to get a nervous player to go from scared/meek/unhappy to sneaky wheelin'dealer - cause she knew she *couldn't* screw it up.