Hello. As I wrote earlier this week, I'd like to throw up some ideas for broader applications of what are often called "Charisma Boy" or "Diplomacy Boy" skills. In Fallout and Fallout 2, such characters could focus on two skills with good, but fairly limited, applications: Barter and Speech. Barter affected buy and sell prices, Speech affected dialogue options (along with attributes).
Combat boys not only have skills but tools to help define their characters. Three characters who focus on Melee can all use different weapon sets for different purposes. This gives a level of depth to match or exceed that character type's skill breadth.
In my opinion (though some may [read: will] disagree), the Charisma Boy has neither depth or nor breadth in character development. He's got two skills, one with no depth, one with slight depth. Barter is pretty flat. It's just a score that goes up and changes store prices. A player can't do much with it to change his or her gameplay experience other than dump points into it and save money. Even the perks available for Barter don't really allow the player to do anything new with the skill.
Speech opens up a lot of dialogue options, but that's its whole point. It doesn't go beyond that. Attributes can be checked with Speech in dialogue, but ultimately those static checks are just pass/fail. Randomized checks in speech are easily overcome by the ol' "uncontested reload", so there's not much point to them -- they need to be static checks because of the environment in which they appear.
For these reasons, I would like to keep Barter, but divide Speech into two skills: Deception and Persuasion. However, this division is harmful unless the Deception and Persuasion skills have a broader application in the game outside of standard dialogue.
Barter: As in Fallout and Fallout 2, this skill does affect store prices. However, it also represents a certain level of knowledge about the caravan houses and trading in general, giving it a small role in dialogue. The intended depth to Barter development comes in the perks available at higher skill ranks. Though I have previously posted ideas for a few of these, I'll repost them here for ease.
Bulk Trader
Prerequisites: Barter 100
Ranks: 1
Benefit: Quantity is the name of the game, and you're holding all the cards. When you buy and sell goods, you get a better deal for larger quantities of a single item.
E.g.: John has Bulk Trader. When traveling, he notices that all of the Blackspear tribals carry spears along with their assorted equipment. He goes out of his way to save up a few dozen of them for a rainy day. When he has about fifty, he and his companions haul the load down to the weapons dealer for a bag of cash.
Junk Merchant
Prerequisites: Barter 75
Ranks: 1
Benefit: All items you find that have a base value of 1-5 bottlecaps are worth three times as much when you trade them.
E.g.: Frank searches every damned container and corpse he comes across. A lot of them have tidbits of old world nostalgia or technology that's effectively worthless and practically only worth a few caps. However, most bits weigh almost nothing, so he collects it all, knowing that he can sell even a broken little doll to some poor sap for a decent amount of money.
Mental Catalogue
Prerequisites: PE 4, Barter 150
Ranks: 1
Benefit: You can get the identified name and description of any item you examine, even if you don't meet the other skill requirements.
E.g.: The Fallout world is a big cesspool of ignorance unless you're part of the FotA, BoS, the Enclave, or a similar group. Though you can get the basic statistics and description of any item you pick up, more detailed and useful descriptions often appear for characters with right stats (Science for energy weapons, Medic for super stims, etc.). This is especially helpful for builder characters who pick up random pieces of salvaged technology in the wasteland. To know what tech elements make up any given piece of equipment, characters need the right statistics. However, a character with Mental Catalogue has so much experience with and knowledge of trading that he or she always gets the detailed description of an item.
Deception: This skill is used in dialogue, but it is also used as a limited building skill as means to an "alternate" stealth route. As with Speech in Fallout, Deception is checked in dialogue along with stats. But Deception's dialogue options all take the form of bluffing, misleading, or otherwise flat out lying to the other person in the conversation.
Deception can also be used to "sneak in plain sight" through the use of disguises. Disguises can be either found or created with a Disguise Kit. A disguise is a single item that a character wears, though it may occupy several equipped slots when necessary. Disguises may include things like: NCR Ranger Outfit, Hubologist Outfit, Viper Raider Outfit, etc. When a character uses a disguise, the character's effective reputation and identity become invisible. As far as AI is concerned, the character is part of that disguise's "team" as long as the NPC's PE doesn't see through the character's Deception skill (affected by range, lighting, etc.). Of course, for practical/gameplay purposes, a character's disguise does not hold up once he or she enters combat or attempts to initiate dialogue. And some disguises just don't work for some characters (no super mutants in BoS Scribe disguises, no humans in Night Kin disguises).
Characters can also manufacture disguises from individual disguise elements through the use of a disguise kit. Placing all the elements of the intended disguise into the kit creates the disguise if the character's Deception skill is high enough. E.g.: Joe wants an NCR Ranger Outfit. This requires an NCR Ranger uniform, NCR Ranger boots, and an NCR Ranger pin (I love that pin). He finds the uniform on a dead Ranger, buys the boots at a surplus store, and trades for the pin with a group of unpleasant but businesslike raiders. Dump them in the kit and -- voila -- NCR Ranger Outfit.
Sample Deception perk:
Body Snatcher
Prerequisites: Deception 100
Ranks: 1
Benefit: A few blood stains and bullet holes never stopped you from making a proper disguise. When critters with outfits die near you, you will often be able to salvage a piece of their outfit for use with a disguise kit.
E.g.: Ted has his own Blackspear Tribal disguise, but he wants to take his CNPC pal, Destructo, into the bunker as well. A random encounter finds him watching a group of Blackspears fighting raiders. Ted and Destructo sit the combat out until the Blackspears get annihilated. Ted then walks up and gingerly searches the bodies, finding a Blackspear headdress, gooey black facepaint made of... something, and one of their patchwork brahmin-skin outfits.
Persuasion: This skill is the other half of what Speech encompassed. It is used for friendly diplomacy, subtle manipulation, and outright intimidation. Also, as previously discussed, I believe it could be used to good effect for attempting to control CNPCs (companion NPCs) during combat. Though CNPCs would be computer-controlled by default, I believe that giving the high-Persuasion character a chance to control their followers is sensible and good for the purposes of expanding Persuasion's usefulness throughout the game.
NOTE: CNPCs SHOULD STILL HAVE IMPROVED AI. IN FACT, IT SHOULD BE MUCH BETTER THAN FO AND FO2. THIS IS NOT INTENDED AS A SUBSTITUTION FOR GOOD AI, SIMPLY AS A WAY TO REWARD CHARISMA BOYS FOR A HIGH PERSUASION SKILL.
Some CNPCs are really agreeable, and some are belligerent jackasses who don't listen to anything. Some also go crazy when they see certain types of creatures or otherwise are annoyed by local behavior. A wounded CNPC can also be extremely difficult to control, as their life tends to take precedence over your desire to be a big winner. Persuasion can be used to offset a CNPC's tendencies to do exactly what they want, when they want. The higher the Persuasion, the more likely it is that the CNPC will allow the player to control them, even under duress.
Sample Persuasion perk:
Suicide King
Prerequisites: Persuasion 150 and CH 8
Ranks: 1
Benefit: When standing within your area of influence, CNPC allies always ignore how wounded they are when you attempt to control them in combat.
E.g.: Ted and Destructo are fighting deathclaws. Destructo's got nothing against deathclaws, but he isn't too fond of the gaping wound that's left him with 28/100 hit points. Normally, he would head for the hills, even if his enemy was pretty wounded. However, Ted's a Suicide King, so Destructo knows that his pal will get him out of this mess somehow if he just follows his lead. (i.e., Destructo ignores his wounds for purposes of comparsion to Ted's Persuasion). Ted exercises manual control over Destructo. He has him attack the deathclaw, killing it, then has Destructo move down next to Ted. On Ted's next turn, Ted uses a Super Stim on Destructo, and everyone is happy until the other three deathclaws get in melee range.
Comments are welcome.
Seriously though, it's scary how quickly FO3 turns into a BG clone. I wonder why Tim Cain expressed his confidence in JE's abilities to handle FO3. Either JE is making an incredible game and I'm too stupid to share his brilliant vision or he's fucking Fallout to the ground. Somehow I don't think it's the former.
