Oblivion talk:Speechcraft

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How does hovering the mouse over the wedges show you how they feel about it?
Is the wedge position random? Are the fill ins random?
I did not intuitively pick up how the mini game works when I tried
it a couple times.
-Synapse001 11:02, 8 August 2006 (EDT)

I took a stab at rewriting the guide, with your questions in particular in mind. If something is still not clear, ask again! --Nephele 12:46, 8 August 2006 (EDT)

how is the bribe cost exactly determined? it seems to me that when i first played the persuasion minigame, bribes costed only a few gold, now they cost 500 gold or something :S

Contents 1 Speechrant 2 minor clarification worth a mention 3 Persuasion mini-game cheat sheet 4 Max disposition 5 Utility 6 Bug on PS3 Version? 7 Determining Reactions 8 Maxed dispotion? 9 pick a fight

[edit] Speechrant

Speechcraft is the most useless skill in the game. Master it and all you get is a reduction in bribe cost. What? Unless you are having trouble understanding the mini-game the bribe command shouldn't be necessary even for a Novice. In fact, other than the benefit of being apprehended by a guard with a high disposition towards you, there is little importance in how you are regarded by the average NPC. Love you or hate you they still spout the same useless drivel.--OGRastamon 16:31, 20 November 2006 (EST)

[edit] minor clarification worth a mention

gp=gold piece(s) ... seen after the speechcraft minigame on the display.

[edit] Persuasion mini-game cheat sheet

I'm building a Persuasion mini-game cheat sheet at User:Basophilous/Persuasion.

The 6 tables comprising the entire Love/* tree are online and usable as of 2007-July-18.

Let me know if this would be useful and I'll try to complete it over time. Basophilous 16:37, 18 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Max disposition

This has been marked as a question that needs to be answered.I'm wondering what exactly determines the maximum disposition of an NPC -Quetzilla

Doesn't it have to do with how high your Personality is? Figgy 01:32, 30 May 2008 (EDT)

Yes, but how? Is there a formula? –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 01:34, 30 May 2008 (EDT)

Sorry, I'm not good with formulas. I have no idea how you guys come up with them. Figgy 01:35, 30 May 2008 (EDT)

It's always 100. Of course, that's with Charm effects, but even someone who plans on leaving their Illusion skill below Apprentice level the whole game can make a simple Charm spell that should raise an NPC's disposition to 90-100 long enough for anything they need. 71.243.134.121 10:57, 1 August 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Utility

Depending on some NPC, you can use the persuasion to gain trust from them.

I got illegally in a house at night where a NPC was still awake.

He asked me to get out, I didn't want to so i tried persuading him. After setting his disposition to the maximum, instead of asking me to leave again (or calling the guards) he just got to his bed and went asleep.

I think I gained his trust by speaking to him, and so he considered me as a friend, and went to a happy sleep.

Of course, when he woke up the next morning, his house was empty, but that's his problem.

[edit] Bug on PS3 Version?

This probably should be marked as a "question that needs to be answered". Several people have reported that, on both the GOTY and non-GOTY PS3 editions of Oblivion, a Boast NEVER results in a positive response. It isn't just rare, it just plain does not happen. I'd like to know if this is true--and if so, why does it only affect the PS3? --BFG^Talk 21 December 2008

Umm... what exactly do you mean? Each NPC has a fixed response to each of the four types of comments. So certain NPCs will always have a negative response to a boast, no matter what platform, no matter what expansions you have installed. That's not a bug, but just the way that the game is designed to work. Furthermore, since I don't know where in the gamefile those predetermined NPC responses are stored, I can't easily search to see who responds in any given way. In other words, there's no easy way to check which NPCs hate boasts, which ones dislike boasts, and which ones like or love boasts. It's possible that no NPCs like or love boasts, but even so it wouldn't be a bug. As long as each NPC has one "hate", one "dislike", one "like" and one "love", the speechcraft minigame will work the way it's supposed to work. --Nephele^Talk 12:29, 1 January 2009 (EST)

On both PS3 versions, no NPC has ever been observed to have a Like or Love response to Boast. Hate and Dislike responses have both been observed, however. My point is this: don't you think it odd that Like/Love NEVER seem to be options on the PS3, yet they are frequently observed on both the PC and (presumably) Xbox platforms?

To have behavior on the PS3 version that differs from the other platforms, seems to me to be a bug. It's either this, or Bethsoft modified the PS3 version in this one area for unknown reasons. --BFG^Talk 17 January 2009

One question is, which NPCs exactly have you checked? Because "never" is a pretty broad statement. From what I can see about how the reactions are determined, it's very possible that every merchant in the game might have a similar boast reaction, because aggression is the most important factor in determining reactions, and most merchants (in fact, most townspeople) have pretty similar aggression. You really need to check a wide range of different types of NPCs: guards, enemies (bandits/dremora -- yes, they can be persuaded), etc. Also, the reactions can be influenced by your character's level, so if all of your tests are using a high-level character, I'd suggest also checking with a level one character. With a level one character, I got a "like" reaction on boast with an Imperial Watch guard (specifically, the one standing to your right when you fast travel to the Imperial City Market District). --Nephele^Talk 00:13, 22 January 2009 (EST)

I'd definitely want to have 2-3 others test this claim before it's considered "confirmed". That said, my tests have been on four different characters of every level (1-51) and variety spanning roughly 800 game hours, and have been on merchants, guards, bandits/marauders, townspeople, guild members, and every other type of character in the game. I've Speechcrafted every non-generic NPC available to PS3 players, and have maxed Speechcraft the slow way (ie no Skill Books or Training) on two of my characters, so have played the Speechcraft game several thousand times. And I have never seen a positive response to Boast.

I should mention that, the only reason I didn't report this sooner, was that I thought the lack of a positive Boast had something to do with the difficulty setting I was playing on. Once I purchased the game for the PC, boosted the difficulty, and started getting positive Boast responses 50% of the time (as should be expected), I finally realized it could be an error. --BFG^Talk 22 January 2009

[edit] Determining Reactions

As far as I can tell, an NPC's specific admire/boast/coerce/joke reactions is calculated dynamically based upon the NPC's aggression, confidence, energy level, respsonsibility, intelligence, personality, strength, and willpower. In other words, there are no construction set entries associated with an NPC saying that the character, for example, loves jokes. On the other hand, there are a long set of GMST values with names like fPersBoastAggr that, I would assume, specify how sensitive a boast reaction is to the NPC's aggression. What I can't figure out is how all those GMST values are actually used to calculate the reactions: my first guess at how the parameters might be used didn't seem to work for the handful of NPCs who I tested.

One important implication is that an NPC's admire/boast/coerce/joke responses are not fixed. Leveled NPCs attributes will change as your character's level increases -- and I was able to confirm that the same NPC's responses were different for a level 20 and a level 1 character. Also, it seems likely that a variety of spells could change responses (frenzy, calm, rally, fortify attribute, etc).

It's not really information that can be used to the player's advantage (the NPC will always have four different reactions; it's not as if somehow the NPC would end up with four "love" reactions). However, it does mean that the article is currently incorrect: "A given NPC's reaction to each of the four actions is predetermined, and will be the same every time you talk to that particular NPC" is not true. I'm not sure that I'm ready to fix the article right now, though, given that that I'm not sure what can be really be said in its place. --Nephele^Talk 00:13, 22 January 2009 (EST)

[edit] Maxed dispotion?

Tip when you have maxed dispotion: It's not hard to find people with low dispotion really, go to Hackdirt. Everyone there has like 20, even if you have a really high fame. This should be added to the article, very usefull.

[edit] pick a fight

Should there be a little how-to on how to minimize disposition here? Perhaps how to pick a fight? Different NPC's react differently to disposition. So how do I get NPC X to attack me, and what are the consequences? Are they similar to Morrowind? Can I make a guard attack me with no bounty penalty? Is this the right page to use for that info?