persuasion & pet pal

[Hugo]

Is it very important that your "main" charachter has a good value in persuasion and that this character has the "pet pal" ability as well? ... at fort joy it seem like as theese abilities are linked...

Also,

It is important that your "main" character is good at theese skills? Or can it be anybody in your group? Like the wayfarer (can't remebers his name) has good skills in persuassion AND the pet pal skill as default.. so should I allow him to lead the party instead of my main character?


(this is a q from someone who have played a lot of the prior game...400 h or so)


I feel very confused right now ... I have played the game for a while now, and the more I play, the more I get a feeling of that I should know what I'm doing prior to launching a new game ...

The main problem seem to be the civil abilities ... since after level 2 you won't get any increase to theese skills untill level 6, and by this time... it is too late to make any adjustments ...

[jack_of_tears]

You don't need to have PetPal and Persuasion on your main character, the first time I played through I did not, but for the sake of convenience it is very useful. PetPal is more important than Persuasion, in fact, since the latter isn't particularly reliable I would say focus on PP first because it is invaluable - you'll miss out on a lot if you don't talk to all the animals but Persuasion rarely works anyway so it's barely worth spending your points on.

[Hugo]

The reason I'm asking is that, while on forth joy, there are quests that require both pet pal and a good level of persuasion at the same time.

You can always pick up that archer (that lone wolf, cannot remember his name, that has both skills) .... so it's okay if my main character focus on something different and that this archer-guy is my "talker" ?

(the civil abilities are a bit strange anyways, as you will want to have minimum value in most of theese ... but only failure tend to teach you what civil abilities are important) .. and since your companions civil abilities are set in stone until you reach a very high level for your characters.

Perhaps, as a veteran DOS I player, I would not like to start a game on an easy level ... as I fear, that after I get to know the combat mechanism, the game will be too easy ... but the civil skils does seem like an arificial way to force anyone to start over..

(note: I will, in any case, rather play a too difficult game, so that is's not possible to win rather to play an easy game, for the sake of the story) ...

But I would like to know the rules of the game.

Reason for editing: spelling

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Hugo:

The reason I'm asking is that, while on forth joy, there are quests that require both pet pal and a good level of persuasion at the same time.

Yes, it is very useful to have both Pet Pal and Persuasion on one character. Because Persuasion checks are sometimes made on animals as well as humans. But it does not need to be your main character, it can be any member of your party. All you need to do is start dialog with the animal in question with that chararcter.

Originally posted by jack_of_tears:

PetPal is more important than Persuasion, in fact, since the latter isn't particularly reliable I would say focus on PP first because it is invaluable - you'll miss out on a lot if you don't talk to all the animals but Persuasion rarely works anyway so it's barely worth spending your points on.

Um, I wouldn't say that's strictly accurate. Either from the relative importance standpoint or the reliability of Persuasion standpoint.

If your Persuasion score iis higher than the NPC's you will pass the check 100% of the time. If it lower you will fail 100% of the time. If it is equal then a dice is rolled and the diice is loaded if you try a dialog option with an attrbute stat modifier flag. For example if you choose the Finesse option then your Finesse score is compared to the NPC's finesse score and the odds of the dice roll adjusted accordingly.

Generally speaking if you assign one of your charcters as the diplomat and pump Persiasion every time you get a new civic point until lthey've maxed it out you will pass 100% of Persuasion checks in the game. If that charcter also has Pet Pal then you will get the maximum (successfull) dialog options available with both animal and human alike.

The main advantage of setting your main character as the diplomat is that you can assign a Persuasion point for sure at the beginning of the game and therefore have maximum success with Persuasion in early Fort Joy. The disadvantage is that you would also want to give ytour main Pet Pal and you may not want to do that. One charcter, Ifan, comes with Pet Pal as standard for example. But the early advantage is marginal, there are some things you can do early game with dogs that make pumping Ifan's Persuasion (amk9ing him your diplomat) or giving yourself Pet Pal and Persuasion advantageous.

But note that not all diaolog option checks are driven by Persuasion checks per se - some are driven by your previous actions and decisions and others are driven by tags such as Scholar, Hero, Villain etc. Note also that the game tells you if you have a tag based option available but only if you have that tag on the charcter that is doing the talking. However you can try initiating the dialog with all your charcters in turn to see if one of them has a tag that triggers an option.

[Hugo]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by Hugo:

The reason I'm asking is that, while on forth joy, there are quests that require both pet pal and a good level of persuasion at the same time.

Yes, it is very useful to have both Pet Pal and Persuasion on one character. Because Persuasion checks are sometimes made on animals as well as humans. But it does not need to be your main character, it can be any member of your party. All you need to do is start dialog with the animal in question with that chararcter.

Originally posted by jack_of_tears:

PetPal is more important than Persuasion, in fact, since the latter isn't particularly reliable I would say focus on PP first because it is invaluable - you'll miss out on a lot if you don't talk to all the animals but Persuasion rarely works anyway so it's barely worth spending your points on.

Um, I wouldn't say that's strictly accurate. Either from the relative importance standpoint or the reliability of Persuasion standpoint.

If your Persuasion score iis higher than the NPC's you will pass the check 100% of the time. If it lower you will fail 100% of the time. If it is equal then a dice rolled and the diice is loaded if you try a dialog option with an attrbute stat modifier flag. For example if you choose the Finesse option then your Finesse score is compared to the NPC's finesse score and the odds of the dice roll adjusted accordingly.

Generally speaking if you assign one of your charcters as the diplomat and pump Persiasion every time you get a new civic point until lthey've maxed it out you will pass 100% of Persuasion checks in the game.

But note that not all diaolog option checks are driven by Persuasion checks per se - some are driven by your previous actions and decisions and others are driven by tags such as Scholar, Hero, Villain etc. Note also that the game tells you if you have a tag based option available but only if you have that tag on the charcter that is doing the talking. However you can try initiating the dialog with all your charcters in turn to see if one of them has a tag that triggers an option.

Thanks for the tip. So you are saying, persuasion is not always "lost" even if they are spent on more than one character? (like lucky charm is lost as far as I undedstand, since only the highest value counts.. ) ...

So any charater can try different option if the main character fails and makes a bad choise .. and perhaps, by luck, choose a better option .. ?

[Hobocop]

No reason to pump more than a single civil skill on any one character. Only exception is Bartering/Persuasion since they play off of each other when buying and selling stuff (higher attitude = better prices which stacks with Bartering), and Persuasion has more uses than just shopping.

Pick one person to be your party face and give them Persuasion/Pet Pal. If you make a bad choice i.e. threatening a group of Magisters with violence isn't going to end well no matter how good your Persuasion is, just roll with it.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Hugo:

Thanks for the tip. So you are saying, persuasion is not always "lost" even if they are spent on more than one character? (like lucky charm is lost as far as I undedstand, since only the highest value counts.. ) ...

So any charater can try different option if the main character fails and makes a bad choise .. and perhaps, by luck, choose a better option .. ?

Um, no not quite. Gated diaolog options are governed either by Persuasion OR tags OR previous actions/decisions. These are mutually exclusive. You may find a dialog with an NPC were one option is governed by a Persuasiob check and another by a tag for example, and the outcomes for each option may or may not be different. But the tag option will not be dependant on a Persuasion check and Persuasion option with not be dependant on the tag.

It follows that there is no advantage in having Persuasion pumped on more than one charcter.

The one situation you cannot reasonably cover is where you need Pet Pal to initiate dialog with an animal and then have a specific tag to get a particular result on top of that. There is one such situation in the game I know of where that happens, but there are very few, if any, more. To get round this you would have to give every charcacter Pet Pal and that IMO is not worth it.

[RealHuhn]

I feel like this is a design flaw of the game.
In an RPG I want to control the party and initiate dialogue with my main character and I feel forced to take pursuasion and pet pal on him/her because many quests and story elements are locked by pursuasion checks.

I've seen a mod on nexus which makes pursuasion work like lucky charm though. Should fix it.

[Pyromus]

Neither one is necessary really. There are a few instances where persuasion would help, but you can usually fight your way out just fine. Pet pal is more important, but again, not a necesity. It's nice, you can pick up a few extra quests and get clues on main quests, but not a requirement. If you use the standard 4 person team though, there is no reason not to put them both on one character.

And as someone stated above, don't focus more than one civil ability per character. By the end of the game, you can get one stat maxed and another at I believe 2. Maybe 3 with all skilled up. Point is, if someone starts with 1 point in a civil skill you don't want for them, you have enough points total to max another skill instead.