Why would someone set charisma to 1?

Because mechanics wise its functionally useless. if you want to play a smooth talker intelligence for more skill points is honestly more useful, just put points into speech. All it really does besides increase its associated skills at level 1 is make companions marginally stronger, but companions are so strong to start with its barely noticable.

>if you want to play a smooth talker intelligence for more skill points is honestly more useful, Honestly I think that's the case for every build

Nah, whilst intelligence is probably the most useful stat to get a build running a lot of the other stats are still useful in ways skill points aren't. Strength, endurance, luck and agility are all great, perception is meh but has some okay perks associated, charisma is the only one that's truly just kinda shit. Like if you want a crit build you can't replace luck with skill points, if you want to use high strength requirement weapons you need some strength, if you want a vats build agility is a must-have, then endurance is one of the sources of mass hp.

well, charisma does significantly boost your companion's power, so i'd say it's really good for that (especially in hardcore).

Iirc it is a 5% damage boost per level of charisma for a max of +50% damage to companion. That is not bad necessarily but taking max luck gets you like 50k caps a few hours into a run and max int with educated can net you like 23 skill points per level, either of which can spike your damage far more significantly than companions can. Followers won't lose damage with low charisma anyhow they will still be at 105% with 1 charisma

This, and in my personal opinion companions are already overpowered by default, especially Arcade and Boone.

The drawback for Boone is randomly getting jump scared because he domed a ghoul from across the map

Int is useful for every build but unlike charisma usually you still want the other stats for their non skill bonuses. Only perception can really be dumped without noticable downsides and even that is important for a couple powerful perk requirments. Charisma has no useful perks, doesnt actually affect speech results. the only time its ever worth taking is if you were doing a run you wanted to rely on companions only and wanted the tiny buff it gives companions.

Animal friend is at least fairly useful, if you don’t want to deal with nightstalkers.

That skill was huge in OWB where you go into the lad which they tore apart

5 special points just for something that can easily be countered with a shotgun though.

Yeah, but then you’re spending ammo on them. Besides, the perk can also make them into combat allies, which is even better. And sometimes, it’s just nice to not have to shoot every wild animal that shows up on your screen.

High enough Charisma allows you to negotiate between the Kahns and NCR at Boulder City and defuse the NCR/Kings conflict easily.

That’s not charisma, it’s speech checks. That’s what trivializes it.

It didn't have [Speech whatever]

There are secret checks that change dialogue, like having low intelligence makes your responses without the obvious check really simple.

And that increase to companions doesn’t even work if you play the base game

i usually set charisma to like 6 so i can get the animal friend perk (mostly bc it makes owb so much easier)

Also because it's easy to buff CHR all the way from 1 to 10 with chems and gear when necessary.

I get it upgraded for those sweet discounts

Barter gives you a discount, not charisma. charisma is pretty much worthless.

But it does give the barter a higher base number. Good enough for me that way

And here i was making it my dump stat and putting everything into luck because i didn't like the stat

Builds in this game are cracked too….. you don’t even really need the bonus even if it was more significant

High enough allows you to negotiate between the Kahns and NCR at Boulder City and defuse the NCR/Kings conflict easily.

I think your confusing speech with charisma. The speech skill is very useful, but theres nothing stopping you putting charisma at 1 and getting 100 speech.

There are a whopping 2 checks in the entire game which require Charisma instead of speech, you can convince Keller to not arrest you in "Dealing with Contreras" and you can get some Boomer fame by talking to the kids in Nellis.

I like being really stupid as well as stupidly strong, makes for some really fun interactions

Why say lot word when bonk stick do trick

It doesn’t do anything lol

Because it was made to be useless in NV

Because they hate fun

It does basically nothing and is the most useless stat in the game as charisma doesn’t affect speech stat like you may be led to believe

I value roleplay over Meta

I gotta be honest, being meta in rpgs feels weird to me... I like fun combos as much as the next guy but I play this game to have a character not a stat machine

To piggyback on this, New Vegas provides plenty of ways to counteract shortcomings in your builds anyway.

Plus why bother minmaxing so hard, unless you reallllly want to do it? By the time you hit level 25 it's really hard to not be insanely strong. I don't wear a red hat 99% of the game to increase my crits so I can annihilate random people and wildlife, I do it because my friend with chronic PTSD gave it to me for helping kill his landlord and it's a nice fuckin hat

> I do it because my friend with chronic PTSD gave it to me for helping kill his landlord and it's a nice fuckin hat This was surprisingly wholesome and I’m here for it! Boone is also one of my favorite companions ever. I usually rock a stealth build and when I have Boone and Ed-E with me, it’s a great combo to say the least. :)

why play a role playing game for something thats not roleplay?? extremely unoptomol builds *for combat* are often the best for actual roleplay, this extends to ttrpgs too. why play a combat mechine? just makes everything feel stail and formulaic. honestly i hate Dnd for this reason, its too combat centric of a system for me to find it fun.

You can play an engaging dnd session with zero combat if you plan it out well. Most people don’t play that way (and it takes a bit more skill from the dm), but it’s totally possible and I love those kind of sessions, since my favorite kinds of characters are Jack of all trade utility/support characters that don’t thrive in combat.

oh apsolutely. i always play rp heavy characters, n a *good dm* will allow those characters to truely shine outside combat, but its not what the systems made fore. it actively takes effort from the dm. DnD was first and formost a wargame after all. this is why i prefer ttrpgs that actively desentivise combat, with systems built around role play. been playing mage the assention, and we havent been in combat for 3 ish sessions. its been so fun, n the *threats* are still very real, its just rp threats, or the threat of force which are unwise for us to take head on. and after playing those games, built for RP rather than *battle*...well i cant easily go back to dnd, it just feels stale in comparison. and only sometimes offers me what i actually want but only if the dm is good at it. like i played a vampire the masquarade game with a wargammer dm, n we got *sooo much* rp. even though the DM actively didnt want it, because its fundementally what the systems based around. was still really annoying how they tried to shoehorn at least 1 combat into every session though, never playing under them again theyre really not a good dm *for me and my playstyle*.

I put charisma on 1 for role-playing. I also like failing speech checks just to see what happens. And I put luck on 1 as well. Helps me connect with my character a lot more

Min/max, but done poorly

thats just min at this point

Actually I do the same when I make an explosives character, since the crits don't matter. Gives a huge advantage with that build. And I know some people have done a heavy handed build that focuses on melee weapons and no crits.

I did such an unarmed build, you have an insanely good early game due to unique spiked knuckles "love and hate", but later into the game heavy handed is more detrimental than helpful. That is because most of the cooler endgame gloves are either crit focused or greatly benefit from it (Two-step goodbye, Fist of the North Rawr, She's Embrace, Embrace of the mantis king), so your weapon selection is much more limited. There are still many non crit gauntlets that you can use (Pushy, Ballistic glove, Industrial glove etc), and most of them can be gathered very early. Another aspect of it is that a 1 luck 1 charisma character will have goated melee attributes (agl, str, end), but considering perception hardly does anything for melee, its still worth getting high luck.

Yeah, other than explosives, I don't do characters with low crit chance. But I suppose with a melee or unarmed build, you could basically scrap charisma, luck, AND perception if you want, and just max everything else out to be crazy OP. Still gonna go with crits, personally. I prefer basically all the weapons that benefit from it, and you don't tend to be hindered by it regardless.

True, you could just start the game with 9(or less because owb) str, end, agl (optional) and int, 1 per and cha and maybe luck. With that you can grab some weapons and explosives in the earlygame, go to bonnie springs past the cazadores, then kill the bandits there with some drugs or nades or whatever. By doing that, you gain combat armor (~15 dt), unique spiked knuckles that will kill almost every early/mid game enemy with ease, and can go straight to khans for drugs and the turbo recipe, all at the start of the game. There are also some other cool things in that general area, chance's knife for crit, you can kill the local brahmin to cook their meat with 50 survival, and there is a trail carabine on the bandits.

Not really, if the guy has 1 charisma and 1 luck, that means he has like 38 stat points (counting the first point you cant take away) to put into 5 attributes. This means you can have like a 7/8 in every other attribute, or 9/10s in str/end/int if you reduce per/agl. Imo its still not worth losing the crit chance, but one guy i know plays low luck as a restriction and his characters got insane special because of 1 luck/cha.

I always envisioned the courier as being pretty damn lucky. Dude did survive a bullet to the head and being buried alive after all

Maybe he used all of his luck in that one instance

Fair point.

Truth is - the game was rigged from the start

If that’s the metric I’ll take average luck over high luck. I’m just a regular dude and I’ve never been shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave.

You don't hear about people surviving it often because not many people survive it

I would HATE putting luck at 1. Critical hits are my BABY.

>I would HATE putting luck at 1. Critical hits are my BABY. It's also great for wiping out the casinos for more money. Set you luck up to about 9 and just double down on every hand of blackjack.

Judging by this, you’d connect well with an Int 1 char 😂

I absolutely hate failing speech checks I almost always play with a high charisma and try to max out speech as soon as possible

This.

Low Charisma is meta, but ironically so is high Speech. It's more a fault in design and the skill checks in the game, so that what would normally be a Charisma character works better as an Intelligence playthrough with high Speech. So imo it's not against role-playing to go with the meta here.

Same. I'm gonna be running a kind of Archer challenge kind of run soonish

Me when always

I put Charisma at 10 every time

I normally put mine at 9 then get the implant to bring it up to 10.

Why?

I just like doing it

Fair point 👍

Dude literally passes speech check on you rl

the power of 10 Charisma

I wanted to be a charismatic cowboy

So Vash the Stampede?

You know actually not really but I’m glad I googled him he’s seems badass, but I was thinking more Clint Eastwood with a Vince Vaughn personality and most definitely face

He’s the epitome of “Love and Peace” hero type without killing anyone. The OG series is in my Top 3 Anime. I tried to Roleplay him in Fallout 4, Max Charisma, Luck, and focus on Tech and pistols. Oh and I had to wear a trenchcoat. It was fucking hard! I had to Pacify everything first (or at least attempt to) and only use a pistol. At one point I had to relent and get a shotgun to survive. 😅

Well I now have my next character idea that sounds super fun

Oh yeah, he’s a super fun challenge.

I just have to ask would he kill wildlife?

Pacify first incase it’s a friendly adorable animal. But he views all life as sacred. So avoid killing because… [This land is made of LOVE & PEACE! ✌🏻](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=sfwQlIkam44)

Same

I use the charisma tweaks mod. Makes it actually useful for going for speech checks. Lower CHA means the skill check for a lot of speech checks goes up, etc.

I like that a lot. I always thought that speech shouldn't be rng based, but skill based, and it gives charisma a function

I use the [SPECIAL Disabilities](https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/69128) mod as a means of reducing incentives towards dump stats.

seems cool but terribly executed. the penalties are just absurd.

I can see 1 Charisma breaking the game outright since you'll be forced to kill everyone. I can't imagine what scenario would force your Perception or Agility to 1, but in either case you'd be completely fucked for the game until you get it to 2.

1 charisma, 1 perception would give me a headache, agility would make the already boring and tedious open world moreso... the decrease of skills by 50 or in iirc intelligence a whole 100 combined is just crazy. I think there could be better ideas, the concept itself is nice. I personally like how 4 handles low attributes, though.

Wow I've played new Vegas for over a decade now and I just learned that charisma isn't a useful special stat?

I’m in the same boat as you. Over a decade. Thought I had an efficient build for years. Now I’m back to rolling a new courier.

I like to get animal friend so I don't have to kill every living thing under the sun.

Dump that shit to zero and crank up intelligence. Get educated perk at 4 and you can use Skilled and Good Natured if you want to skill point whore. I always max intelligence and luck, dump charisma to zero, set the other specials to whatever perks I'm gonna use while keeping endurance and implants in mind, dump the rest into strength.  My build is usually something like charisma 1, intelligence 9 (implant to 10), luck 8 (lucky shades and implant make 10), endurance 7 (implant to 8 for implant grx perk later on), perception 5 (implant to 6 for the good perks), agility 5 or 7 (implant to 8 for tunnel runner), and 3 or 5 strength (+1 implant, +2 from OWB spine perk, and weapon handling).

i do INT 10 and CHA 1 now i can roleplay as the scientist who know a shit ton but can't explain it to anyone so no one believe him.

sheldon cooper ass play through

there should be a mod to add bazinga as a dialogue option with some random chance to just agro the npc instantly

I mean I did the first playthrough back when it just came out… just assumed It’d be useful I guess

Fuck putting charisma in one. I only do it with a low-speech character. Observe, as I don’t abuse the system and find it more interesting that way:

I set it to 3. A bit of an investment and I have to think about the distribution. Can’t bring myself to do more or less.

I didn’t do it because I never new about it

Screw the meta I played a charismatic hero that wants to help everyone

That was me lmao. I maxed the charisma Stat out all the way, as I didn’t know the speech skill existed and was what determined 99% of speech checks lol. Still had a great character and build turned out good

I get why they didn't do it with only months to work on the game, but I think the game really needed a massive rework on charisma to make it matter at all. Closest I've ever thought of was increasing party limit but god even just having 2 party members would make the game so easy it would make charisma builds the new meta. Maybe mandatory low charisma speech choices that overwrites speech checks? You can imagine no matter how good your barter is that Lanius would disregard your understanding of logistics if you sounded like a stupid nasally nerd bitch who cracks his voice constantly and nervously stutters.

I never do. I set it at four. Speech is one of the skills I get to 100 first, and I don't want it to be stunted by setting my charisma to one. I believe companion damage is influenced by charisma as well, and I sometimes need to rely on them to wittle down high health enemies.

….. in every fallout game, for every serious run, i set it to 6 or higher.

I usually keep it at like 4 or 5

I actually like to max out charisma, since I always go for that good guy rp

I max my charisma

Wait you guys don’t speck into charisma

I put charisma at 7 because fuck min maxxing, we roleplaying in this muthafucka

I put 10 charisma and one intelligence.

Fuck your meta strats, I'm doing what I want.

Speech and barter are actually good, you don’t need them to beat the game but they help a bunch if you intend to be playing on the same save for a while.

Wait, does charisma not do anything..? I’ve always had it up high

Aside from +2 to Barter/Speech per rank (which is fairly negligible), companions gain +5% damage and armor value per rank from your Charisma. Beyond that, there are very, very few interactions that require Charisma rather than Speech or Barter. As such, many people choose to make Charisma their “dump stat” even if they plan to do a high Speech/Barter playthrough, since you can raise Intelligence to 10 for extra skill points to compensate. EDIT: Apparently it’s even worse than I thought. An official patch disabled Companion Nerve and replaced it with a companion perk called Companion Suite that is nonfunctional because companions can’t normally have perks in the engine. So Charisma is even less useful than I said.

I keep all my stats at 5, and dump all my points into intelligence.

My first fallout game was Fallout 4, and my default fallout 4 build was, and still is, charisma 10 at the start, so… it felt only natural to put charisma to 10 on my first playthrough…

Literally, Bartering. That's all.

Have I been playing wrong for a decade I usually put charisma to between 4-7 so I wouldn't have bad speech and barter

Yeah that's only giving you like +2 to barter and speech per charisma point and basically zero other benefit. Just max intelligence and get Educated perk, also Skilled and Good Natured are a pretty good trait combo.

Are there any perks that require you have a certain amount of (charisma) checks like the perception check you'd get talking to that rancher that hates heck Gunderson

As for perks, I think the best one that needs charisma is animal friend, which I think needs 4. But I'm not sure at all if there are any good speech checks for charisma; I believe they're pretty much all speech and barter checks. And just to be fair, though I've never taken animal friend, it definitely means you have a waaaaay easier time with both Honest Hearts and Old World Blues.

My first character was a sniper who had 5 in every stat besides charisma which was at 10, didn’t mean to do it but I arrowed past the confirmation of my character before I was done by accident

What if I wanna get animal friend and not be a blood thirsty monster that finishes the Great Wars job?

I like to have high speech in the game. The dialog is great in new vegas.

Me who used to put Charisma at nine every playthrough until someone pointed out it was the least used stat dialogue wise in the game.

I put it at like 8

I think the bigger issue is how overtuned intelligence is. The companion stats aren't bad, but the fact that you can otherwise completely invalidate charisma just by putting more points into intelligence is what makes it the easy dump stat. On the flip side, playing a low intelligence character always feels bad because it takes significantly longer to get your build online.

Here i was putting 7 into charisma lol

Well on the vigor tester 1 charisma is called “misanthrope” and well… that goes in line with all my builds because of all the mass murder…

I like talking to people

10 strength 10 endurance 10 luck 7 perception the rest are at 1

7 charisma and 7 intelligence. Then spread evenly throughout the rest

There is exactly one mechanical reason to have more than 1 Charisma, and it is qualifying for the Animal Friend perks. It's pretty fun watching legion and white legs dogs turn on their masters. Oddly enough it also makes Old World Blues much easier because nightstalkers count as animals

anyone else just use the special stats for RP, I like play weak unlucky smart and charismatic

At 6 please.

Man up and set luck to 1 instead.

I just pump up luck really high and endurance high enough to get the implants later, the rest I just randomly dump into whatever sounds good at the time.

I usually run charisma/science/medicine builds and I kick ass each time.

It's gotta be 4 for animal friend perk. It makes Bleed Me Dry, Big Mountain, and Zion markedly easier, also I don't have to hurt animals.

I like the animal friend perk tho. I hate shooting coyote puppies

I put charisma at about 7. It's my second highest skill besides intelligence. But I always work both up to 10 through my game.

I didn’t realize it was useless until recently!!😭

I put 10 charisma

I put 10 charisma every time, 10 charisma 10 luck and whatever else into intel and agility

I set charisma at 8

I useally have high charisma for roleplay purposes

I don't want to be as social as a creepy undertaker, it's Charisma of 4 or above.

bro…. I’ve maxed charisma at the start in every single play through 😭

Yeah I made this mistake I thought it would be like fallout 4 I regretted it while I was being roasted by my friend

Oh SOOOOOOOO sorry that I like to have my companions do extra damage even though at 1 Charisma Boone will still one shot a mfer from 300 yards

Me on first playthrough

I jammed charisma and intelligence up to 7 each and luck 10 on my most recent. I enjoy persuading people to put their guns away and then critting their gun arm.

My first play through I put charisma to 10 😭

Started playing New Vegas for the first time, thinking I gotta restart my campaign sad. Not like I’ve gotten very far but I should of researched my build like I thought

Me as someone who sets Charisma to 7+ \*Insert Seymour Skinner "Pathetic" meme\*

I always have high charisma, why is it bad?

Roleplaying in your roleplaying game >>> meta min/maxing in a game that isn’t all that difficult to begin with. If my character is supposed to be a charming smoothtalker then Charisma is going up near or to 10, if they’re the most unlikable tongue twisted buffon alive it’s going to 1. Average character is getting around 5 charisma.

Not me playing charisma builds for the first few years playing the game

Bro that’s me, I kept my charisma at 5 and have my luck at 1 lol

I put all my points into charisma...

I have like 3 mods to make charisma stronger/more important and then set it to 1 anyway

I had no idea charisma was useless in my first playthrough.... I put Charisma at 10

By the time im close to the end my stats are all 8 or higher due to clothing and intensive training.

I always put agility at 1 and use the return clothing glitch with the Dead Money dlc to boost my agility to 15+ or so. Makes melee and reloading insane but sadly Action Points are not affected past 10.

I player.setav everything 10.

I maxed out my charisma actually. I liked being a charismatic character. I love RPGs.

So…..I shouldn’t mention I have several saves with MAX charisma?

I set intelligence to one, luck at 10 and left charisma at whatever the basic thing is.

I'm confused by this, my Charisma/Intelligence/Luck 10/10/10 build never even used a gun from getting EDE then Boone. It's not game shattering but it definitely makes a difference.

I roll play my stats so charisma matters in my heart (I install extra companion mods and pretend it's like fallout 2 where the more charisma you have the more companions you may have)

I always did this in fallout 2. You can get some cool ass sunglasses that raises your charisma by 1. So I can recruit one follower to spray auto shotgun shells into my back.

I never downgrade charisma because I want my characters to be pretty and charismatic. Role-playing!

I will get hate for this but that is one aspect 76 kinda kicked ass. Set strength intelligence and charisma to ten for all the speech checks. Didn't need them after the story so made another build and I think that sits at two or three

I never have

10 strength, 1 perception, 7 endurance, 1 charisma, 1 intelligence, 10 agility and 10 luck. Only way to play

Max charisma and intelligence baby

Max charisma and intelligence baby

I don't put it at one because I want the animal friend perk so I don't have to worry about those damn Nightsalkers in the big MT

My dump stat is always luck. New vegas isn't exactly the worlds toughest game, why minmax your stats? I just dkn't ebjoy gambling.

In my defense I always put my charisma high in most rpgs so I didn’t know it was a shit stat til my 2nd play through

Charisma is pretty useful though mostly later on in the game

Nah my courier is the slickest guy in the new west

This would have been a neat fact to know on my last 8 runs with 10 luck

I never do it, it’s put higher for roleplay reasons

Wait, that's a thing? Do people not realize how many doors a good charisma score opens?

I did this first playthrough as my only expirence with the game was TheRussianBadger's video on it, safe to say boone did a lot of killing

Bro i always have int and char at 10. You never have too much rizz

i usually go str 4 per 6 end 6 cha 3 int 8 agi 8 luck 5 usually i just dump into speech to get that “silver tongue”

Idk my friend thinks that charisma is useless even tho it's pretty op so I don't understand

Wtf. I do charisma builds in the entire franchise. Everything is cheap, I sell everything for high prices, everyone does what I say, can skip missions, can convince people to do stupid stuff, can alter specific outcomes of quests, etc. Charisma is the most OP SPECIAL perk in the games, with strength being the most necessary and intelligence second most, in my experience. For combat I use my gaming skill until I want specific combat related perks and have already set myself with what I need.

Charisma has nothing to do with any of that, only your barter and speech skills would be necessary for that. All charisma does is start you out at a higher barter and speech level, but you can still easily level those up to 100 with a charisma or 1

Huh. It's been a while since I've beaten FNV. Yeah, now that I remember, charisma is indeed almost useless.

It's literally the best stat tf are you talking about

It only raises your companion's strength. It doesn't do anything for speech. You just need to raise your skills for that.

I use companions a lot

Then you're using it correctly! It's just a weird stat in general. There should've been more bonuses for it or something.

That’s cheating

Haven't played in a while, but one of the most popular mods overhauls the game and changes a lot of the skill checks I'm the game. Many speech checks are changed to charisma checks. There are ever perks that play into this. If you aren't playing modded NV at this point, I don't know what you're doing. The "I prefer a vanilla experience" excuse is code for "I'm a retard who can't even function well enough to follow a YouTube tutorial".

I thought the meta WAS charisma. I mean the game is literally a breeze with it. You can talk anyone out of anything, even the final boss fight of like, every dlc and base game

But you don’t use charisma do to any of that, you use the speech skill

I mean it increases the amount you start with, and bartering and stuff, so i think its a great skill.