Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention but can you explain to me how exactly charisma, speech and clothes work together? Clothes influence your charisma and charisma influences your speech right? So I have speech at level 11 and I have noble clothes where the pants give me 14 Charsima, Stephanie’s shirt that gives me 16 charisma I think and boots that give me 20 charisma. Altogether they give me a speech level of 14 when I try to persuade someone. I don’t really get how all those stats influence each other so I hoped you could clear things up for me.
The state of the clothes is also important.
It’s almost always 100 since I only use the noble outfit for speech checks.
I don’t have the exact algorithms, but after over 200 hours of play, I think I know how it works:
Speech is independent - you get better as you train it (by speaking with people, etc.) .
Charisma is based on an average of how fancy your clothes are, how clean they are and how well repaired they are. There also seems to be some sort of inner element (because naked Henry’s charisma does rise), and people have suggested that the inner element of charisma is based on speech. So the higher your speech, the higher your charisma, but only to a degree.
And of course, both can be further modified by perks and other status modifiers. For example, you have more charisma when you’re drunk, or some perks give you extra points, for example when you’re wearing clothes that you’ve repaired yourself.
To understand these scores better, use the stats page in the player tab, because it gives you all the numbers. My second Henry is currently 13+5 because I gave him all the charisma boosting perks.
A few final notes about clothing: Only clothes that you can see affect your charisma rating, but it depends on the individual pieces - some gambesons are long enough to be seen under some outer layers and some aren’t, for example. Also, clothes can be dirty even when they don’t yet have the dirty icon. Use the trough every time you see one. And repair everything regularly with kits. It will get easier as your maintenance level grows.
Well I always try to keep my clothes clean (even if there is no icon you can see that they got a bit dirty) and repaired (although I rarely repair them myself) and they usually are. I also wear nothing else than my noble outfit when I have to use speech. I just don’t get how clothes that give me 14, 16 and 20 charisma only give me 14 points in the actual speech check. With that I mean 14 points under the mouth symbol, not the crown or swords symbol, just to be clear.
That’s because clothes do nothing for your speech. As I said above, speech is independent. Like strength or agility.
In a conversation, if you pay attention, there are sometimes one or more symbols next to a speech option. One symbol is that of a talking mouth - whether that works or not depends on your Speech skill. A second symbol is that of a crown - that is influenced by charisma level. and the third is a symbol of two swords, which is influenced by your intimidation level.
So there are three ways you can persuade someone in a conversation:
- Speech skill (improved by talking to people, mostly)
- Charisma (based on your clothes, and how clean they are)
- Intimidation (based on armor, weapons, and I believe having blood on them improves this)
So, your clothes don’t influence your “speech skill”. They just boost charisma, which is independent.
Oh I didn’t know that the mouth symbol was speech and that the crown was charisma. Now it’s clear, thanks!
Clothes are crucial sometimes. Have you noticed, that you have different prices for weapons and armor when you dressed up like a knight and a regular person?
1 Like
But does charisma influence speech options?
No. Speech influences speech options and charisma influences charisma options. I took that perk that makes the other people’s values visible and I’ve been experimenting with it for a while. They are definitely separate.
So if your speech is high enough you can come in broken clothing and stinking without that influencing the speech options?
I dont know, but maybe relationships need to be involved?
That’s right. But sometimes NPCs have 15 or more speech but only 10 charisma or less, etc., so the dialogue options would have been easier to win after a simple bath.
1 Like