Charisma level

[TheMagicMan]

If my character has charisma at 8 and my companions top charisma score is only 10. Is this a bad idea with such low scores and should I raise mine to at least 10 or can I go ahead with these charisma scores?

[Detective Costeau]

Just go ahead with it. You'll fail some persuasion checks, but that hardly makes the game unplayable.

[TheMagicMan]

Anybody else

[fulf]

up to you
you're not gonna make the game unbeatable but if you're one to get frustrated by failed persuasions you might want to either raise it or pick up a couple proficiencies

[Unn4m3d (♥AUT♥)]

Originally posted by TheMagicMan:

Anybody else

What else is there to say? If you care about persuading people put more into charisma.
If you dont, then dont.

[ahsanford]

You will stink at a couple social skills, namely Persuasion and Deception. That -1 can be offset with a cleric's Guidance, a Bard's Inspiration, etc.

A LOT of dialogue leverages other stats, your class, your origin, your race, etc. I wouldn't sweat it.

The game isn't about winning all rolls or seeing all dialogues. If you want to prioritize your character's class / combat needs over RP and dialogue, go for it.

- A

[Nightmarian]

Funnily enough, Charisma talky skills makes you skip out or shortcut through gameplay content more often than not. It can still sometimes get you certain outcomes or avoid combat, but not always. You can still pass a lot with 10 and even 8 CHA, especially if you get proficiency in whatever talking skill you want (like intimidation).

Also, failing is sometimes a good thing. In one instance, you only get a quest from an NPC when you fail their initial skill check.

Originally posted by TheMagicMan:

If my character has charisma at 8 and my companions top charisma score is only 10. Is this a bad idea with such low scores and should I raise mine to at least 10 or can I go ahead with these charisma scores?

Also, are you playing now...? Realize the full game isn't out and your saves will be wiped in 2 days when the game releases on Thursday.

[BigAlzBub]

Each +1/-1 only makes a 5% change. So the difference between 8 and 10 is negligible.
When the full games hits, you can respec both yourself and your companions, which we have been told includes stats, so there is no reason why you can't dumps some stats on someone and boost their charisma to make them better at social skills, or gain proficiency with the skills you need, while keeping everything else about them. For instance you could dump Astarion's Int and load it into charisma if you were so inclined, it would make him worse at being an Arcane Trickster, but if you don't go down that path, who cares?

[Arani]

Originally posted by Unn4m3d (♥AUT♥):

Originally posted by TheMagicMan:

Anybody else

What else is there to say? If you care about persuading people put more into charisma.
If you dont, then dont.

This. But don't forget you can also just pick skills and background (which comes with 2 skills). If you pick persuasion / deception / intimidation, you get your proficiency bonus on those checks (+2-4 depending on your level). Additionally, the game has spells and abilities and doubtless items too that can add further bonuses. You could also just choose one of your companions that doesn't really need extra skills etc. and over time with levelups focus on making them the dialogue specialist. And finally, you can spend inspirations to reroll the whole thing. So if you run into any vital dialogue choices you *really* want to pass, with a bit of fiddling around and maybe some occasional savescumming you should have enough options to pass it.

That said, of course a character built for dialogue will be able to pull it off much more easily. If we take, say your charisma 8 with no dialogue skills, they will have a -1 modifier to all charisma-based dialogue rolls (deception, intimidation, performance, persuasion). But if you take something like a sorc, at level 8+ they will have Cha 20 so a +5 modifier by default, and at level 9+ a +4 proficiency bonus to skills. So a total of 6-10 higher base score than your Cha 8 with no skills, and they still have all those options of bonuses from spells, abilities and items and inspirations on top of it. Speaking of those spells:

• Guidance: cantrip (Cleric/Druid) - Get 1d4 bonus to chosen ability checks.
  
• Enhance Ability: lvl 2 spell (Bard/Cleric/Druid/Sorcerer) - Get advantage on chosen ability checks. (advantage means you roll 2 dice, and choose the better one, it's a *massive* bonus)

So to sum it up, iirc an average difficulty check is DC15 (some are easier, some harder). So you need to get that or higher to succceed. A max charisma character with no related skills needs to roll 10 or higher to succeed (55% chance). With skills like persuasion, they need 6 or higher (75%). With either Guidance or Enhance Ability, success becomes a near guarantee. But with a charisma of 8 and no skills you need 16 or higher (25%), and with skills 12 or higher (45%). But if you had a charisma of 8, and no skills, but used both Guidance *and* Enhance Ability (and idc about math so I will assume the Guidance will give its average of 2.5) your chance to succeed would be around 45%, which is still pretty decent. Especially with inspiration.

Of course, mods do exist. So if you're not averse to it, you can just up and give you whatever charisma you want while really going for some other build and abilities entirely. I'm probably going to do just that with some later runs because I always play maxed out dialogue characters.

[.Master Jiren, The Strongest]

it just means that some of the conversations you wont be able to convince the npcs to do something special for you, so you will have to be more indirect about things.

For example, maybe a bard would walk up to the goblins and just talk their way past the guards. but if you have such low charisma, fairly good chance you wont be able to pull this off and will need to find another way around them, like disguise self or invisibility.

[Foolswalkin]

Originally posted by BigAlzBub:

Each +1/-1 only makes a 5% change. So the difference between 8 and 10 is negligible.
When the full games hits, you can respec both yourself and your companions, which we have been told includes stats, so there is no reason why you can't dumps some stats on someone and boost their charisma to make them better at social skills, or gain proficiency with the skills you need, while keeping everything else about them. For instance you could dump Astarion's Int and load it into charisma if you were so inclined, it would make him worse at being an Arcane Trickster, but if you don't go down that path, who cares?

Kinda on the 5% - I mean, yes, but that’s absolute, not relative. So if you would only succeed on a skill check one in five times with Cha 8 and therefore one in four times with Cha 10, you have both increased your success percent additively by 5% and multiplicatively by 25%.

5% matters in D&D.

But all the people saying “you can progress even if you fail at socializing” are also correct. You’ll have to find different ways forward, is all.

I intend to play high charisma in my first game so I get a sense of what it’s like to have smooth sailing, and then play Durge and… not.

[Indure]

It is what it is.

You're going to be bad at charisma based checks and won't be able to seduce the dragon. But with a point-buy system there isn't enough free points to dump into charisma without shooting yourself in the foot in your class primary tasks and roles.