I hope high CHA allows pretty cool stuff, because it has been a dump stat for every Fallout so far.

it would be nice to see a throwback to older rpg's and stuff where charisma/leadership/whateversomenextgamecallsthisskill increased the amount of followers you could have. Having more than one companion ahd to be modded in, but with Beth apparently taking hints from the most popular mods and implementing similar features maybe we will actually see someting like this.

i'm starting to see what the problem is here:

people seem to take "pacifist" synonymous for "whimp".

if i may explain the difference:

a pacifist can defend himself.

that's just totally not what it's about.

it's about not killing when you don't need to

killing only when you need to

and being able to tell the difference.

i hate to break it to you, but charisma and persuasion alone was JUST EXACTLY how adolF (!) hitler came to power

all the known rest happened when he already HAD that power.

(and at NO POINT he "roamed the land shooting people himself". hitler actually was the classic whimp. big mouth and let others do the dirty work. the only person he ever confirmedly shot himself was himself)

High Charisma should get you a lot of ass in the wasteland.

I'm quite sure I'm alone on this, but I'd be okay if they brought back the speech wheel from Oblivion, but tweaked to be a lot faster and not as boring. A simpler, but more fun version of it used only for the dialog choices that are meant to convince somebody. Of course it doesn't even have to be the wheel. The higher your Charisma, the better your chance at solving that 3 second mini-game. Charisma, actually, doesn't feel like you've ever learned anything to gain any skill with it. It's only natural that the more you talk, the better you become at it. Same should apply for not god-mode-talking your way out of things. RPG's should be challenging without you being able to skip anything unless you got really lucky.

Actually no. Hitler's charismatic methods of speaking are definitely ONE of the reasons he gained power, but also because he had the support of a political party. WW2 never would have happened if Hitler tried to 'talk poland into surrending in the blitzkreig.' The nazi party gained power when Paul Von Hindenburg GAVE control of Germany to Hitler via the enabling act of 1933. And pretty much everything after that is a direct result of taking [censored] by force. Which is not using charisma to win the war. And I never claimed Hitler was 'roaming the land shooting people' thats a ridiculous notion. About as realistic as Obama fighting on the front lines of battle against ISIS or something.

all this true, but he started long BEFORE 1933, and what he did in his years between being rejected as an art student and being successfull as a homicidal psycho, was standing on friggin' soap boxes at vienna (first) and munich (later) street corners or taverns, just another of countless shabby dropouts holding racist speeches. the nsdap wasn't even founded then, and hence couldn't be supported by whoever at this state - other than the person hitler himself, who was introduced to ever increasing audiences and supported by various antisemites of his time (being just the kind of puppet these people needed as a front man) - for his speeches and ability to infiluence an audience (= charisma)

Why is this devolving into a history spat?

People talk to drug addled psychos all the time. Think of all those good priests you see on TV that are in some way so powerful a presence that you can't help but listen to them. If you have 10 charisma, most people should be SAD when they realise that they need to kill you.

Sorry for starting a tangent ^_^' my point was that charisma and persuasion are very powerful. A person can use them to brainwash, manipulate, make alliances, etc...Which was in response to this: "In no way shape or form would anyone ever accomplish any of the crap that any of the characters in any fallout game ever did if we went around just talking to people making them our friends." A lone cowboy with a gun can't accomplish nearly as much as a charismatic, master manipulator.

You should not be able to talk your way through the whole game. You should reasonably expect to have to sneak, steal, pick locks, and hack computers to make it through the game. Come to think of it, I think I'm going to do a playthrough as a Bond-esque spy now.

I pacifist character could work but being a pacifist could be more than just a good talker. You might have to scare some people into avoid killing them(which could tie into strength or a combat skill), sneaking around them,ect.

A dude with a gun always beats the master manipulator.....hhmmmm the master, president richardson, president eden, mr. house. All foiled by a dude with a gun.

President Eden could be talked into blowing itself up with a speech check.

Nah man, a master manipulator could convince the gunman to shoot himself.

Yes but you cant get to that point by talking your way through the story.

Edit

Lemme rephrase that. You can convince Eden to blow himself up, but you cant convince the Enclave soldiers not to do everything they can to kill you. There is no possible way, and should be no possible way to talk yourself out of that.

Fair enough. Something they could do is a add bullets that don't kill and have melee and unarmed option to knock out your enemy. Maybe they can add a tranquilizer gun and tasers or a Revere blade sword(I know it never existed and was only a anime thing).

Absolutely. I 100% believe non-lethal weapons should be up in this biatch. Taze some raider and leave his fate to the wastes or whatever. Maybe you could see that tazed dude in a nearby town later, a little worse for the weather, but perhaps a little more reflective on his former lifestyle? That would make more sense then going up to a raider and saying "Hey kids, drugs are bad mmmmkaaaaay" and him totally thinking "You know what, this Random dude in a vault suit is right! Praaaiiiiiiseeee the Eternal Atom!"

Because that's how the game was designed. Realistically one person shouldn't be able to kill hundreds of armed opponents alone any more than they should be able to make friends with the deathclaw who is trying to eat them.

You're not thinking of the potential there. Speech and persuasion could be used to trick enemies into fighting each other, even in large groups. Example: getting a band of raiders to attack a different band of slavers or mercenaries because you convinced one group that the other had cheated them. You could convince the poor and hungry to riot against the authorities, convince a bounty hunter who is hunting you that you're somebody else, or impersonate someone important so you can infiltrate a group or building. You could convince different groups to ally with you and help you by providing a distraction, combat support, or various other things. Obviously the dialogue will be much better than your example. Besides, even in the scenario you gave it doesn't matter who's saying the words, it matters that they're the right words said to the right person. Sometimes people have already made up their mind about something and all they need is someone else to enforce it (raider drug addict at the end of his rope wants to leave that life behind, I can easily see it). Sometimes all someone needs is a different perspective or more information. A bodyguard might be completely loyal to her employer until she learns he's selling children as slaves, etc...

I think it is more likely for a dude with a gun to get past 100 armed dudes over an unarmed guy talking his way past 100 armed dudes. Now to be fair a master manipulator is not necessarily a charisma based character. He could also be a tech savant and make a bomb and threaten to destroy said 100 armed dudes or to surrender. That I could see. Or a robots geneious holds the threat of destruction at the hands of an army of Buttun Gwinnetts. I also could see that happening over using charisma alone. I even would buy into the PC figuring out how to reverse the FEV virus through medicine skill and offering to bargain that in return for the raiders assimilating into city life or whatever. But charisma alone will not save the day.

Edit

And the over topic of this thread was using the ability to charisma through every situation. That to me is infeasible.

I think it's much more likely for someone to be able to talk their way past 100 people than to kill them. (I mean unless you use a bomb or something?) All you have to do is convince one person to take you to their leader and he will escort you past the rest. "I want to join your cause" "I have ___ valuable information your boss was looking for" etc...

I definitely hope that what used to be skills will have dialogue options associated with them still, but with skills gone, who knows

what actually was my reply's main point was, that just that's mixing up totally different things. a peace run is not the same as a pacifist playstyle is not the same as a peaceful playstyle.

and the "never shooting anything at all and talking your way through everything" you're talking about, that's a peace run. (and to complete my definition set , not attacking anything that didn't attack first, that's pacifist playstyle, and not attacking what there's no point in attacking, just because you can, that's just peaceful.

and not only is it perfectly possible in fallout to, you know, like sneak into the fiend's vault, kill the boss dude and sneak back out without one further casualty (if they're not so unlucky as to detect you), but i also think that, in a real setting of that likes, this kind of behaviour would WIDELY increase your odds for survival, compared to the how-the-hell-do-i-put-my-finger-off-that-trigger berserker type, for the simple reason that less attacking unaware armed people = less shooting at you = less risk of bullet holes

A raider junkie would be more likely to to torture that information out of you than to sit down and pop a couple nuka colas and discuss a mutually beneficial situation. These dudes have a history of using chopped up prisoners for bedroom decorations.

And what if you disguised yourself as one of them and convinced him to let you in?

The point of the thread is not about a peaceful/pacifist run though. It is about a Charisma based character. These are 3 different types of characters. You should read the description of charisma.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Charisma

Charisma has nothing to do with being a pacifist or peaceful play style. Charisma factors into using speech to intimidate, influence, charm, bribe, etc.

and it's easiest to get past the 100 armed dudes for the guy who does NEITHER shoot NOR talk, just because they just don't know he's there...

(btw, your real odds as 1 man with a gun to get past 100 gunmen is zero. odds for talking your way by them can't possibly get any lower than this.)