Is Charisma needed?

brfritos

brfritos

Humma Kavulaaaaaaa
This is bugging me from some time: is Charisma really needed?

The game states that the charisma skill will influence how other people will react to you, along with the associated skills (barter and speech) and the nerve of your companions.
I finish two NV playthroughs, one with a 6 charisma and other with a 2 charisma character.

The only difference I saw, except the "nerve thing", is the way that your companions react to you.
For example, in the first playthrough Cass was much more receptive and polite with me, but with a low charisma she complains a lot when I talk to her, usually replying if I want to ask something other than ordering her around. LOL
The rest of the world reacted exactly the same way to me, nothing changed.

That's it? That's what charisma do?
I'm disappointed.
 
The SPECIAL stats are relatively less important in Fallout 3 and New Vegas compared to Fallout 1/2. Skills are more important. This is true for all of 'em, not just charisma, which is what makes intelligence so tempting.

I really don't know what that video is supposed to prove, Reconite. When the dialog says it is testing only for speech skill, it is testing only for speech skill. Shocking, right?
 
Honestly, I just feel Charisma and Intelligence should take more effect on Speech checks, seeing as it is one of the main skills affected by them. Passing Speech 100/100 checks with 1 Charisma is silly.

Charisma really should be worked on in future Fallout titles, it's always been the dump stat.
 
They should just dump the 1 human 1 non-human companion limit and make Charisma limit party size like it did in Fallout 2 while still increasing effectiveness as in New Vegas.

Characters with high Charisma would be a force to be reckoned with.
 
Brother None said:
The SPECIAL stats are relatively less important in Fallout 3 and New Vegas compared to Fallout 1/2. Skills are more important. This is true for all of 'em, not just charisma, which is what makes intelligence so tempting.

I really don't know what that video is supposed to prove, Reconite. When the dialog says it is testing only for speech skill, it is testing only for speech skill. Shocking, right?
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Maybe this explain then the "put 9 in inteligence" builds I came across.
The majority of them have a very high inteligence.

I mean, I tried a "dumb" build with only 2 points in inteligence but with the exception of dialogs when talking to scientists and doctors, the rest of the game is pretty much equal as I have 5 or 10.
I was expecting something different too.

I guess Obsidian forget the roleplaying part of the SPECIAL, hun? :roll:

[ ]'s
 
brfritos said:
Brother None said:
The SPECIAL stats are relatively less important in Fallout 3 and New Vegas compared to Fallout 1/2. Skills are more important. This is true for all of 'em, not just charisma, which is what makes intelligence so tempting.

I really don't know what that video is supposed to prove, Reconite. When the dialog says it is testing only for speech skill, it is testing only for speech skill. Shocking, right?
Click to expand...

Maybe this explain then the "put 9 in inteligence" builds I came across.
The majority of them have a very high inteligence.

I mean, I tried a "dumb" build with only 2 points in inteligence but with the exception of dialogs when talking to scientists and doctors, the rest of the game is pretty much equal as I have 5 or 10.
I was expecting something different too.

I guess Obsidian forget the roleplaying part of the SPECIAL, hun? :roll:

[ ]'s
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Despite the abundance of low intelligence options, it's hard to re write the entire games dialog for that purpose, in the time they had.
 
The only use of Charisma in dialogues i've seen was at the Boomers Airfield - with 7 Charisma you have some special dialogue options with the children there.
 
Reconite said:
Honestly, I just feel Charisma and Intelligence should take more effect on Speech checks, seeing as it is one of the main skills affected by them. Passing Speech 100/100 checks with 1 Charisma is silly.

Charisma really should be worked on in future Fallout titles, it's always been the dump stat.
Click to expand...

They could make that Charisma lowers any dialogue skill Check. For example a skill check that with 5CH is 90 with a CH of 10 becomes 85 and so on. That way you would be a better diplomat even in skills you aren't well versed in.

But yeah, the way it is now is completely useless. It's worse than in FO1-2 because at least in those games you had a handful of events that needed higher-than-average Charisma.
 
Reconite said:
Honestly, I just feel Charisma and Intelligence should take more effect on Speech checks, seeing as it is one of the main skills affected by them. Passing Speech 100/100 checks with 1 Charisma is silly.

Charisma really should be worked on in future Fallout titles, it's always been the dump stat.
Click to expand...

I think inteligence alone for it self should be a lot less important as how BN says its pretty tempting to go with it all the time ignoring other aspects. Its from a roleplaying point of view I think.

I never concentrated much on either Charisma or Luck in either F3 or Vegas and it didnt hurted my gameplay in any way, luck of 2 and Charisma of 2 never had any issues for me.

I mean inteligence is used for some checks and in a very simple way sadly. I would like more a combination of skills here like inteligence with either charisma or spech (what ever is higher), just cause you KNOW the answer to some issue doesnt mean you can convince someone ! Thats what charisma or spech is for with charisma beeing the more important skill here. So to say that even with a very low inteligence a charismatic character with high spech should have a chance to convince someone. I dont know why the game seperates spech, inteligence and charisma so much in checks. It would also encourage roleplaying because how it is now by the level of 20 or 25 you can max out EVERY important stat from science, to lockpick, spech, guns, energy weapons and even get a decent skill in barter, medicine and sneak ...
 
Stanislao Moulinsky said:
They could make that Charisma lowers any dialogue skill Check. For example a skill check that with 5CH is 90 with a CH of 10 becomes 85 and so on. That way you would be a better diplomat even in skills you aren't well versed in.
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This sounds like a pretty good idea. Wonder if something like this could be modded. But this would also need a lot of the skill checks beeing adjusted too, as a lot of them aren't very high already anyway.
 
would it be very hard to simply use the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skill checks how it was applied by the pnp ruleset in Fallout 1/2 ?
 
No, you could add them here and there pretty easy. But if one is going to do it, he could only do this additionally to the speech checks, else you need to add new npc answer lines, etc.
 
Crni Vuk said:
I think inteligence alone for it self should be a lot less important as how BN says its pretty tempting to go with it all the time ignoring other aspects. Its from a roleplaying point of view I think.
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I don't know. I think NV has a decent balance in terms of skill points given to the player. The difference between 5INT and 10INT is 72 Skill Points which isn't THAT much considering that reaching the level cap is a relatively long process and in the meantime you have to use whatever skills you chose to raise first.

I'd remove the Educated Perk, though.

But this would also need a lot of the skill checks beeing adjusted too, as a lot of them aren't very high already anyway.
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They are? I don't know, I remember most of them being higher than 50. I'm wrong?

What should definitevely be raised, instead, are the pathetically low Stat requirements for Perk&Checks.
 
Honestly, I don't think that it's ridiculous for someone with low CHA to be able to pass speech challenges. If someone is fairly intelligent or even just skilled at arguing (equivalent to putting points into speech) they can still convince you of their point of view, even if you don't like them or think that they aren't very charismatic.
 
What should definitevely be raised, instead, are the pathetically low Stat requirements for Perk&Checks.
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Yup, get rid of level requirements and increase the stat and skill ones, like in Van Buren.
 
Stanislao Moulinsky said:
I don't know. I think NV has a decent balance in terms of skill points given to the player. The difference between 5INT and 10INT is 72 Skill Points which isn't THAT much considering that reaching the level cap is a relatively long process and in the meantime you have to use whatever skills you chose to raise first.
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I would agree with that if you could not shift the checks to a later point in the game when you increased your skills. To many times you found your self in a situation where you might do a check with your skills be it spech or barter and can simply return later to do it again particularly since you know exactly how much is needed to succeed here. Also its no problem to get most skills up to level 50 quite early which most of the time enough for most checks and when you really encounter some high checks you either do a few more wandering killing criters and exploring or you even use one of those wonderfull magazines. ~ one rare situation is with Lainus in the end game where yo ucan convince him to retreat which needs 100 in spech if I remember correctly but since that chapter of the game was closed you had not much chance wandering around in that part of the game so if you had not the needed skill, well.

To say that. The kind of how the skills are used is much more important as in Fallout 3. But that doesnt say much.

Little Robot said:
Honestly, I don't think that it's ridiculous for someone with low CHA to be able to pass speech challenges. If someone is fairly intelligent or even just skilled at arguing (equivalent to putting points into speech) they can still convince you of their point of view, even if you don't like them or think that they aren't very charismatic.
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Well someone looking like the hunchback of notre dam would still have a hard time becoming the president even with the best skills in conversation ever. I always had the feeling past Fallout games somewhat tried to give that impression with the skills and all hence for the low-inteligence dialogues not just simply for the luzl but giving you a chance to guide a mentaly handicaped character trough the world if you know what I mean.

How skills should be applied correctly is of course a point that can be argued. But fact is that the previous Fallout games got very much inspirations from the PnP way of roleplaying which is many times working with archetypes. The archetype of a genious, rambo, monks or wizard if you want. And those are represented by the skills. It is very unklikey to have a extremly inteligent warrior with the ability to succeed in everything. Of course knowing the game mechanics you could at some point exploit that in F1 and more important in F2 but not with your first playtrough usualy. You do need a bit of experience. And the most important part is that a few situations need extremly high skill checks like geting the robobrain where the best version with a human brain would require from the player 160% in science if not even more (cant remember exactly). Though for me it was not much of a problem to get till the end of the game a character that would face no chalange anymore when it comes to skill checks. No door, computer or person was save anymore.
 
UncleSlappy said:
They should just dump the 1 human 1 non-human companion limit and make Charisma limit party size like it did in Fallout 2 while still increasing effectiveness as in New Vegas.
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On Gamebryo where all your companions would constantly be shooting eachother in combat and falling through the floor?

I wouldn't count on it.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Well someone looking like the hunchback of notre dam would still have a hard time becoming the president even with the best skills in conversation ever. I always had the feeling past Fallout games somewhat tried to give that impression with the skills and all hence for the low-inteligence dialogues not just simply for the luzl but giving you a chance to guide a mentaly handicaped character trough the world if you know what I mean.
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Although someone with low Charisma may have a very difficult time become president, most of the speech checks in Fallout aren't on that level. If I was not very charismatic (probably because of my crippling agoraphobia), you would probably not be willing to hear what I had to say. But if I had spent years practicing by debate skills I would probably be able to bring you around eventually.

I do agree that CHA should provide a boost in some other way, though, because if superman and a hunchback were in a debate (each with the same speech level) I think that we all know who would win. It's difficult to appease every possibility, though, when developing play mechanics like that.
 
Crni Vuk said:
I would agree with that if you could not shift the checks to a later point in the game when you increased your skills. To many times you found your self in a situation where you might do a check with your skills be it spech or barter and can simply return later to do it again particularly since you know exactly how much is needed to succeed here.
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Well, that's subjective. For example I rarely postpone a quest only because I can't use the resolution I want. Also here and there there are checks in dialogues that show up only once.

Showing exactly the skill needed for a check is a bad simplification, anyway.
 
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