I created a build around high charisma (10) and pacifying as many enemies as possible with the animal friend, wasteland whisperer, and intimidation perks. My intention was to be a pacifist character who tries to go through the wasteland with minimal combat. I have invested a point in each of these perks and I am now level 12, but I have only seen 1 opportunity to pacify an enemy so far in 14 hours of playtime. 1 of 2 things must be happening: (1) I am doing something wrong, or (2) these 3 perks are the most useless perks on the whole list. I even upped my perception and invested in awareness to see if all of the enemies that I am encountering are above my level (and therefore not able to be pacified), but many of the enemies I encounter appear to be lower level than me.

Could a kind soul please explain how pacification works? Do I need to be in VATS, and if so, is there something special I need to be doing in VATS to pacify? Do I need to be outside of VATS, and if so, is there something special I need to be doing to pacify outside of VATS? I use VATS about 50% of the time, and the only successful pacification was in VATS very early in the game.

Thanks for any help that you can provide on this.

I imagine it has to do with them not being 'below level'.

THe description is vauge as to how far 'below level' they have to be.

I expect it means in your case, you just have yet to run into many below your player level.

Just guessing, based on descriptions of said perks.

As for rest, I have no idea I have yet to try those perks, and if I do, it will be months from now once we have full toolset for great mods, and time for

Bethesda to maybe patch obvous things that need patching.

Thanks for the reply. However, it seems that you are just as confused as I am. Is anyone else able to shed light on this topic at all?

Thanks.

If I had to guess, as your level gets higher, you'll get the option more and more. are there multiple ranks of those perks that you can upgrade to?

It works on a percentage chance, and I believe the chance is tied to HOW far below your level the enemy is. So at Level 12, the enemies that are lower level than you aren't much lower leveled. So you have a smaller chance.

I have all the Rank 1 perks for Intimidation, and I'm Level 23. It works probably 50% of the time. I usually do it from Stealth - don't know if that makes a difference or not. I've gotten it to work on Legendary enemies too.

The only thing I know is you have to aim down sites to do it - not just look at the enemy. The success rate is very low - less than 50% for me, so they seem pretty useless.

It's saved my butt many times in combat against a group of enemies. It is super fast to strafe across everyone hitting 'E' to pacify, and it usually takes at least a couple out of the fight. It is only more useful once you get Rank 2 and can get them to attack their fellows.

Thank you very much for your responses. So if you ADS outside of VATS you can do try to pacify? Can you also pacify in VATS? If so (on both), does anyone have any sense of whether the probabilities of success differ between VATS and non-VATS?

It's a bit discouraging that together we are only able to cobble together an incomplete understanding of pacification. It fundamentally underlies a charisma-based playthrough. I wish I had known that pacification was so opaque before I decided to dump 10 points into Charisma...

Can't help you with understanding pacifism unfortunately, but I do like the concept behind your build. Was considering a "Morgan (Walking Dead)" style build and how that would look. I guess you could also focus on blunt melee weapons as opposed to guns and just sort of 'pretend' you're knocking out the enemies as opposed to killing them.

So I did some testing and tried to scan the entire screen to ensure that I wasn't overlooking any commands to pacify. Here's what I found:

If you are outside of VATS and you aim a gun at an enemy that is below your level, you can try to pacify them by pressing A on Xbox One. Pacification appears to work on approximately 1 out of every 3 attempts. If you are holding a melee weapon, there does not appear to be any way to try to pacify an enemy either in or outside of VATS. If you are in VATS, there does not appear to be any way to try to pacify an enemy with any type of weapon.

To conclude, you appear to only be able to attempt to pacify an enemy if you are doing all of the following: (1) using a gun (and not a melee weapon), (2) aiming down sight, (3) not in VATS, and (4) pointing at an enemy who is below your level. It's possible that I have overlooked something in my testing, so if anyone has found any additional knowledge about pacification then please post it here.

This is a bummer for people like me who would like to use the pacification perks but would also like to use VATS. I don't see why it should not work in VATS. I also don't see why it shouldn't work with a melee weapon.