How do you feel about Charisma?

[JustKneller]

Context: I'm building my characters for a Fallout series run. Particularly for the first game, I have two builds in mind. One requires dumping Charisma (which actually has virtually no use in the first game), the other involves taking a trait I don't like but having adequate Charisma for the concept.

The kicker for me is that I can build a low Charisma character concept, but (per the lore) the protagonist in the first game ends up going on to start his own tribe and is revered to be both a hero and great leader to his people. I feel like you can't really get away with that with bottomed out Charisma. Even if you do save the world, nobody likes you well enough to give you the credit you deserve, right?

I'm not a powergamer or min-maxer, but it does kinda irk me when a game has a mechanical element that connects to nothing meaningful. Charisma is often the culprit here. At least, in Fallout 2, it affects you companion count. But I digress. If something like CH is useless, but you're doing a RP run, what do you do?

 

[OrlonKronsteen]

Put points in it, anyway. I always do.

But you make a good point that it would be nice if games made a better effort to incorporate it mechanically.

 

[WarChiefZeke]

Charisma is a real life trait with real life effects, and some people are simply born with or without it, so I think it's important to keep as a part of character building.

However, it is easily the hardest to quantify the effects of Charisma in the same way as, say, strength or intelligence, even if the effects and the trait itself are visible.

 

[Skatan]

I dump it. SPECIAL is just to tedious without minmaxing at least to a degree. Literally everyone uses Gifted and plan ahead w.r.t. to the ways you can up the SPECIAL stats later to get the most out of a build.

I mean, you can clear out both games with basically any build as long as you have 10 AP and a high weapon skill, but you'll miss out of content or other ways where you can leverage certain stats in conversations, quests etc. There just isn't enough points to have high points everywhere, so EN, CH, PE and/or LU are the ones to lower. You can still have high charisma on a melee build since you can go low on Luck instead, which you shouldn't otherwise.

The RP aspects aren't dependent on charisma IMHO. There's no lore that I can remember where the vault dweller were said to have particularly high charisma. The tribe could have just as well been built on their "power" rather than their personality. You could just RP using the Karma system instead of charisma. With high enough Karma, people would/could follow them just as well as just based on charisma.

So in summary, dump charisma, go for high karma and minmax to get the most out of your run. And remember boys and girls, if you are lacking in any area, there's always chems

 

[JustKneller]

The RP aspects aren't dependent on charisma IMHO. There's no lore that I can remember where the vault dweller were said to have particularly high charisma. The tribe could have just as well been built on their "power" rather than their personality. You could just RP using the Karma system instead of charisma. With high enough Karma, people would/could follow them just as well as just based on charisma.

If that's the case, then what is Charisma?

Actually, I might have answered my own question. According to the wiki, Charisma is "a combination of appearance and charm. A high Charisma is important for characters that want to influence people with words."

So, a low CH leader could work as they are influencing people more with their actions and ability. It's a little paradoxical that you can totally gloss over CH with a high speech skill, though. Then again, that's not my problem.

I guess my low CH non-Gifted build can work with the lore. Speaking of:

Literally everyone uses Gifted

I actually don't use Gifted and intentionally avoid it. It's a bit munchkiny and I like toying with the other traits and exploring other types of builds.

 

[Skatan]

"It's a little paradoxical that you can totally gloss over CH with a high speech skill, though. Then again, that's not my problem."

I guess charisma can be seen as a person's natural personality, looks and charm, but Speech is knowing what to say, how to say it and when to say it to persuade someone to do/think/feel what you want them to feel. Being good looking helps, but is not necessary. Neither in real life, nor in the game. In-game Charisma gives a speech boosts and there are a few checks that are stat dependent rather than Speech skill dependent, but not that many.