Is persuasion worth it?

[Tokage]

I'm at the Junkyard and so far I've found very few dialogue options where persuasion matters, and in none of those cases it would seem to have mattered much more than simply killing everyone - and worse still, actually trying to persuade fails most of the time in spite of me keeping the skill maxed.

Will there be more uses for persuasion later, ones that would actually affect the game in a meaningful way? And more to the point, do I also need to have higher than 4 will and take advantage of every single synergy in order to have a chance of actually managing to persuade anyone?

[mindless]

Sometimes, but better invest in combat skills and crafting cuz endgame is very grim.

[living_one]

Originally posted by mindless:

Sometimes, but better invest in combat skills and crafting cuz endgame is very grim.

Grim? It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nightmare.

[Nagumo]

I got the same feeling till junkyard and stop putting points into it. But i read that it could be that more persuasion options are opened if your skill is high enough.
I don't know if this is true, because i only have a few points (skilllevel around 20) skilled. Did you have it the whole time on max (from beginning which is imo 15 or 10 and than 5 more with every level)?

[Tokage]

Yeah, the whole time. And for the record, intimidation also came up, about equally often, even though I never put any points there. That'd mean that if having the skill higher would open more options, either this doesn't apply to intimidate, it requires far higher skill than I had at the time, or the difference is negligible anyway.

[feliscon]

Originally posted by Tokage:

Yeah, the whole time. And for the record, intimidation also came up, about equally often, even though I never put any points there. That'd mean that if having the skill higher would open more options, either this doesn't apply to intimidate, it requires far higher skill than I had at the time, or the difference is negligible anyway.

What is your Will? No point maxing it if you have Will 3 and end up 'losing' points from it.

[Tokage]

Originally posted by feliscon:

What is your Will? No point maxing it if you have Will 3 and end up 'losing' points from it.

4.

Does this mean persuasion is completely useless unless I minmax it? This seems to apply to a lot of skills in this game, actually - either I max them out with the corresponding attribute as high up as I can, or I shouldn't even bother. Kind of a design flaw, if you ask me.

[Hazard]

It's difficult to predict how high persuasion/intimidation skill checks can go in the late game, but in my experience with a heavy armor/assault rifle build (probably the only one with enough extra skill points to do this) it's very much worth it to max them every level, even with Will 3. So far there's been only one situation where I didn't have enough Persuasion, and that was easily fixed with Junkyard Surprise Will boost.

[nerdcommando.gamestudios]

My problem with diplomatic skills in the Underrail is that the outcome they give is usually worse than the combat/stealthy one. For example, why you may perform some rat diplomacy in one place, that just doesn't give you as good a reward as a battle approach does - you gain no bonus feat (which is very convenient for some character builds). And even in options that are supposedly pretty cool flavor-wise (like putting the Junkyard under the SGS influence) the reward is not quite as obvious.

[bati]

Originally posted by Tokage:

Originally posted by feliscon:

What is your Will? No point maxing it if you have Will 3 and end up 'losing' points from it.

4.

Does this mean persuasion is completely useless unless I minmax it? This seems to apply to a lot of skills in this game, actually - either I max them out with the corresponding attribute as high up as I can, or I shouldn't even bother. Kind of a design flaw, if you ask me.

Afaik the only thing that matters is skill's effective level. There are some stat checks as well but they should not be confused with skill checks. Ie, if an intimidate checks requires 45 intimidate you should be able to pass it with 3 will and ~50 points invested in intimidate (there will be some penalty to your effective skill level for having low will).

From what I've seen in the early access build most skill checks topped out at ~120 effective level.

[Hazard]

Originally posted by nerdcommando.gamestudios:

For example, why you may perform some rat diplomacy in one place, that just doesn't give you as good a reward as a battle approach does - you gain no bonus feat (which is very convenient for some character builds).

Fortunately, in the current version you can get the Hunter feat even if you choose a diplomatic solution.