Why are you (kind of) forced into charisma main?

[ApathicAlpaca]

Alright, clearly you CAN play any main class you like.
But chosing charisma leader (naturally) means a lot less effort spent on MANY MANY MANY ability checks related to persuasion, deception etc.
This is so annoying because, contrary to Larian's promises, you can NOT chose any group member for a conversation, it's always the one currently selected. And some especially critical conversations are even FORCED onto your main, like convincing your companions to use tadpoles, for example.
There is a button at the left bottom of dialogues that says 'chose group member' but all it does is select that one, not make him the discussion leader. Crap.


What I am getting at is, if you are serious about shaping the outcomes of discussions and the opinion of NPCs your way, you are forced into a charisma lead. Bard is the best, clearly, but stuff like sorcerer works almost as well.

I find this disappointing. I wanna play that nature-loving ranger and let smoothtalkers like warlock/bard/sorcerer take over conversations. Is that too much to ask for?

What are your thoughts on this?

[Morgian]

You are doing it wrong then. You need only click on your CHA team member and let him initiate the conversation.

[teksuo]

im doing fine with 8-8-8 in the dialog stats so far. buffs/elixirs and a whole lot of savescuming covers pretty nicely for now.

i dont regret it yet lol

[Poop King]

You are and its why paladin, sorceror and warlock are the top 3 classes. Larian said it was impossible to implement handling charisma checks during talking cutscenes from companions in your party, so if you want to pass conversation rolls you need a CHA main.

Bard also works.

[Poop King]

Originally posted by Morgian:

You are doing it wrong then. You need only click on your CHA team member and let him initiate the conversation.

Then you don't get approval from other companions.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Because persuading your way through encounters is deliberately a different playthrough than swording your way through encounters.

[Kebabmaster5000]

You're not really forced into it, but it does make sense that you need high charisma to be an effective leader.

[Jaggid Edje]

Y ou aren't forced into a charisma main, at all. There's other paths beside charisma for a good chunk of the dialogues where a charisma check could help. Race specific choices, class specific choices, other skills (such as Intimidation, for which Karlach rolls with advantage), etc. etc.

My first playthrough I had Karlach as my front man and it was fantastic. I never once switched to another character with more charisma for dialogue. Didn't need to.

On my second playthrough I'm maining a paladin, so I've gotten to see the differences between having a charisma front-man vs. not. It does play 'differently'. But I would not call it "better". Hence my conclusion that you are in no way forced to have charisma for your main.

[Poop King]

Originally posted by TheDeadlyShoe:

Because persuading your way through encounters is deliberately a different playthrough than swording your way through encounters.

Incorrect, you get EXP from both, so you get the persuation / deception / intim EXP, then you kill everything still.

[Kamiyama]

Originally posted by Morgian:

You are doing it wrong then. You need only click on your CHA team member and let him initiate the conversation.

Not if the guards see you. They'll stop and DC 20 deception check every character.

Doesn't matter if you're really a criminal or not. Mol hates you for no reason.

[Myth Alric]

Everything you said is true, though you could also just fail half your rolls. Most rolls are not that important to start with. So you could get by without charisma, and just fail some of the rolls.

[Poop King]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Y ou aren't forced into a charisma main, at all. There's other paths beside charisma for a good chunk of the dialogues where a charisma check could help. Race specific choices, class specific choices, other skills (such as Intimidation, for which Karlach rolls with advantage), etc. etc.

My first playthrough I had Karlach as my front man and it was fantastic. I never once switched to another character with more charisma for dialogue. Didn't need to.

You lose loads of EXP without CHA. Larian and most newbs think its just for avoiding combat so they gave it EXP. What you actually do is get the CHA skills EXP then kill everything on top as you normally would and get kills EXP.

[Nanami]

F5 then F8.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Poop King:

You lose loads of EXP without CHA. Larian and most newbs think its just for avoiding combat so they gave it EXP. What you actually do is get the CHA skills EXP then kill everything on top as you normally would and get kills EXP.

Except you don't. Like I said, there are usually OTHER paths in those dialogues to the same results. You get xp for many of those as well, without needing charisma/persuasian.

We're all going to be level 12 at the end of the game, btw, so wasting time worrying about that 25 xp here, and that 15 xp there is not particularly relevant and certainly not something I would consider as an enjoyable way to play the game.

[Damedius]

The way they have the conversations is awful design. They should take the best member of your party for each role instead of relying on the main character for everything.

On top of that some of the rolls are ridiculous even if you have a high stat. Why am I rolling so much for in conversations. Just let me pick a dialogue. I shouldn't have to roll for it to succeed every single time.

It makes conversations a lot more tedious and less enjoyable than they need to be.

[PaloG]

Been playing a 10 CHA Barbarian custom Tav(without prof in Intimidation) for over 100 hours now without savescumming my CHA checks and still enjoying it af. Guidance+Charm Person/Friends Scrolls+Inspiration rerolls+the extra d4 from the lvl 6 Barb skill are usually more than enough to succeed the very important rolls. For the rest you just roll and go with.