I'll probably play a very social oriented character with a lots of charisma, so I'll probably take the Charisma perks.

But then I remembered that many of them need you to aim at a animal/creature/PNJ to work, but the problem is that I'm really not an shooter games player and planned to play the game full VATS.

So I just wondered, does anyone knows if you can use those perks in VATS, of do you need to be an shooter games player to be able to play a social character?

You just need to aim your gun at them, not shoot them. I doubt it will be as involved as actual FPS gunplay.

Actually I don't see the difference in difficulty for the player doing it between aiming at something in Fallout 4 and shooting at something, minus a button push (and pushing the trigger isn't exactly what I'm bad at in shooter games).

It's the aiming I'm bad at, not pressing the trigger.

Just imagine that I'm so bad at aiming that the idea that VATS isn't stopping motion anymore but only slow it stress me a lots and you'll have the picture.

Frankly, you don't HAVE to take those Charisma perks, and considering they wasted like three perks for basically the same thing (point at X, make X do your bidding), I have little problem skipping all of them since that mechanic ---- threatening with guns ---- doesn't strike me as particularly charismatic.

I would suspect though, that it does not work in VATS. When you entered VATS in the old Fallout games, time would freeze and you could pick your targets (or not) and then you could "release" VATS time-stop and time would flow normally. With this new time-slow VATS, I am not sure if time remains slowed until you "release" it, or if action points burn WHILE VATS is slowing time, not just when you execute attacks in VATS.

I would imagine that to use the Charisma intimidation perks you have to point at a foe and ~not~ shoot them (obviously) and somehow trigger this Intimidation ability. Not sure how THAT will work --- previous Fallout did not have "hotbar" abilities that you could activate. If they have a dedicated melee button, and a dedicated Fire button and a dedicated Aim button, perhaps they have other "dedicated" buttons that you can press to activate abilities. Or perhaps just aiming at a foe (if you have Intimidation) will pop up context-sensitive button-prompts.

I fear, though, that you will have to put your cursor on the foe and hold it there at least long enough to trigger the Intimidation effect. Which can be hard if the foe is running around and darting behind cover, etc. Not a fan of this new trick, me.

You can use your social skills only when you can talk to someone, you do not need to take those 3 perks to play as a social character, because those perk are oriented to hostile towards you characters/creatures, i.e. they won't want to talk to you.

PS: You might taking them to avoid combat, but they are to weak for that, even if you can target a group of creatures/people there are some requirments:

- you need to be a higher level

- there is always a chance it won't work

If you want to avoid combat altogether i'd recommend going with stealth.

Well, that's a shame that charisma's perk tree is wasted if the only social use of it's perks are the low charisma ones (like ladykiller).

You could indirectly use VATS to your advantage though.

In the past games I've used VATS to find enemies that I don't know where they are.

If you hit the VATS button then cancel out of VATS then you are left aiming at the last thing you target.

So you can use VATS to aim at the target and then cancel out of it.

Boom, no FPS skill required.

Quite a useful tip indeed.

Thanks!

Yes, if you want to play social and non combat char i would not go higher then 6 in charisma, sneaking as much easier when you are alone, you can simple tell your followers to wait somewhere, and since you will want to avoid combat you won't need charisma 7 perk for your companions.

If you don't want to fight and will use your companion for that, you definitely will need 7 charisma.

PS: In that case i would go for charisma of 10 just for role-play purposes, you will fight only when combat is unavoidable. (when you tried to pacify someone but failed)

remember though that charisma special is basically the speech stat now.. so having 10 in charisma is still required if you want to attempt to talk people down outside of combat (its just not a perk that does this.. its the special stat itself so rather than having to level up speech skill to talk people down you can start the game with maximum ability of persuasion minus the special dialogue from ladykiller ect)

Only 3 of the Charisma perks actually work that way, so Charisma is far from wasted without them. And I can't imagine aiming your gun to pacify something will be nearly as fast-paced or challenging as aiming to kill - they might even widen the activator box so that it's comparable to just hovering your crosshair over an actor to talk.

You might be right, i wonder if there are certain people we could persuade/intimidate only with high charisma or intimidation perk.

The question is, are those 3 perks will be used in dialogue interactions? If they will be used, then social character will have to take them all to experience all social content.

I too decided to go for social but also combat oriented char, i might have to review my build now.

I'll probably go that way because I don't want to fail a persuasion check because of not high enough charisma.

It's just that I think that it will be kind of wasted because high requirement charisma perks are kinda meh.

i dunno about that.. the ability to control enemies with charisma is a really interesting idea... and since they have one for monsters... perhaps we could manage to control a deathclaw for example *drools* i would love a deathclaw servant... even if its only temporary intimidation was confirmed to be able to control people at max level and give them orders.. if the other perks work the same way it could be a very powerful tool.

I think its going to work like the conjuration from skyrim the zombies... but instead of raising the dead you control someone into fighting on your side and following orders as a temporary follower.

This would fit with the requirement to be a higher level than the enemy you are controlling.. exactly the same for skyrim conjuration. This might also be why you only have 1 follower in fallout 4 at a time instead of follower + dog.. because the controlled creatures might use the "dog" slot or something