Charisma is a strange Attribute

[Mr Nightmare]

Leadership seems to be the only Skill affected by Charisma so if i basically make a Squad without this Skill does it even make sense to spend points in Charisma? I wish that Barter would also be affected by Charisma, i mean who wants to give a discount to a bunch of "Jerks" lol the only positive side of Charisma not Skill related seems to be in recruiting NPC's to your Squad even though the game doesnt tell you what the required amount is for each NPC which i find odd in a game thats all about Numbers, Attributes. If i would create a Squad from a "role playing" point (evil Jerks) and give everyone only 1 Charisma, i would probably be playing the entire Game without being able to recruit anyone which is really annoying and disappointing - so yeah i find this Attribute the strangest among them all, they could have done so much more with this.

[Radiac]

Charisma is totally a dump stat. I gave my leadership guy like 3-4 in it I think, everyone else got the hard 1, along with a 1 in Luck. That is what most people do. Even with charisma that low, you'll get to like level 38-40 by the end.

[Du-Vu]

Some companions have no Charisma requirement, but depend on the choices you make. Of the ones that do have a requirement, the lowest is 12 and the highest is 25. You can use items and equipment for the last few points. But there are enough options to make a full party even without much Charisma.

It can affect dialogue and NPC responses. At one point I think it affected quest XP and rewards, but that might not be the case in final version.

Not the best balanced, it's true.

[Zod Rau]

If you're only concerned with keeping your 4 rangers alive, charisma is a dump stat. If you want to add up to 3 other npcs to your team and keep them alive, you'll want the attribute on your leader. At least 5 and probably 7. They'll run off and get themselves zeroed otherwise.

[Radiac]

Charisma does not determine NPC chance to disobey. That stat is tracked in the Leadership skill. You may need some Charisma to recruit certain NPCs in the first place, notably Pizepi, but once you have them on the squad the only thing that affects chance to disobey is your Leadership skill. I'm not even sure it matters whether or not the NPC strays outside of the Leadership buff radius during combat. I had crap Charisma on my Leader, for the most part, and by that I mean like a 3 to start which I later raised to a 4 at level 10 or something, and even that felt like a waste.

[Zod Rau]

Charisma increases leadership range. So unless you want to keep NPCs in your leader's backpack, it'll be a useful attribute. To answer your question, yes, if they go out of range they're off the leash and thus subject to self determination. I guess it's usefulness depends on what a player uses their NPCs for. Next run I might go with nothing in charisma and make them all melee tanks. Make it a challenge to myself to kill the enemy before they kill my NPCs.

[Radiac]

Does Leadership range actually matter in terms of the NPCs going rogue on you? I thought it only affected whether or not people get the Leadership skill's combat buffs. I can't recall ever having anyone go rogue on me when I had Leadership of like 8 and a Cha of 3-4, and I had melee NPC people who were generally the ones that were out of range, if anyone, e.g. Taktyuki, Chisel, and Angela. Angela sometimes goes rogue on you in the early game because you haven't had the levels to get your Leadership skill up high enough to prevent it, but after that it was always a matter strictly of Leadership score and not Charisma range, as far as I could tell.

Vulture loves animals so much that she'll leave the team if you unnecessarily kill too many "innocent" animals, and Pizepi will leave if you rat out her friends and tell anyone that there are mutants living in Darwin. Neither of these results are in any way dependant on Charisma or Leadership, as far as I know. Different NPCs just have different personal quirks like that.

[Mr Nightmare]

Originally posted by Radiac:

Does Leadership range actually matter in terms of the NPCs going rogue on you? I thought it only affected whether or not people get the Leadership skill's combat buffs. I can't recall ever having anyone go rogue on me when I had Leadership of like 8 and a Cha of 3-4, and I had melee NPC people who were generally the ones that were out of range, if anyone, e.g. Taktyuki, Chisel, and Angela. Angela sometimes goes rogue on you in the early game because you haven't had the levels to get your Leadership skill up high enough to prevent it, but after that it was always a matter strictly of Leadership score and not Charisma range, as far as I could tell.

Vulture loves animals so much that she'll leave the team if you unnecessarily kill too many "innocent" animals, and Pizepi will leave if you rat out her friends and tell anyone that there are mutants living in Darwin. Neither of these results are in any way dependant on Charisma or Leadership, as far as I know. Different NPCs just have different personal quirks like that.

Lexcanium had a rogue chance of 0% and still went rogue on me multiple times (i dont know if fighting against robots causes this, since he hates them)

[Radiac]

Interesting.

All cyborg and android NPCs will get taken over by Cochise at the end of the game, if that's what you're talking about. Not sure about Lex, as I didn't really ever play with him on the team.

[Du-Vu]

I think situational rogue chances are a thing for certain characters, yeah. Lex is definitely one of the people who can get hijacked by Cochise.

[persocom01]

Originally posted by Mr Nightmare:

Lexcanium had a rogue chance of 0% and still went rogue on me multiple times (i dont know if fighting against robots causes this, since he hates them)

Lex is programmed to go rogue whenever robots are involved, regardless of your leadership.

There is one other thing about him as well, that others have mentioned through spoiler tags.

[Mr Nightmare]

Originally posted by persocom01:

Originally posted by Mr Nightmare:

Lexcanium had a rogue chance of 0% and still went rogue on me multiple times (i dont know if fighting against robots causes this, since he hates them)

Lex is programmed to go rogue whenever robots are involved, regardless of your leadership.

There is one other thing about him as well, that others have mentioned through spoiler tags.

he seems like one of the worst companions then and his personality (comments) are so annoying after a while

[OH! MY CAR]

Yeah they kinda screw up balance in Wasteland 2... I backed the game, but have not ever been able to bring myself to play through it.

At least they kept the mechanic from 1, where you can make new characters whenever you want, in Wasteland 3.

Wasteland 3 actually looks like a lot of fun. I will pick it up on sale after it has been patched a bit more.