Am I right in deducing the following? Rogues are the only character types worth making party spokespersons, because only rogues can possess full ranks in the 5 interpersonal skills - bluff, diplomacy, gather information, intimidate, and sense motive. Furthermore, am I right in assuming that the game doesn't handle the above 5 skills the way it handles appraise, for example? (i.e., any member of the party with a high rank in that skill automatically contributes it, whether he's talking or not.) If I am right, then there's no point in having a "spokesperson-by-committee" type approach, unless you know what skill is going to be needed ahead of time and select the appropriate character to do the talking for that encounter. The reason this all comes to mind is that I typically use a fighter as a spokesperson and party leader (just a thing of mine). Of course fighters only have class skills in intimidate. I thought all along that I was getting by, until it dawned on me that I've never gotten any dialogue out of Mother screng beyond the "potions and herbs, herbs and potions" stuff. And a check of the voice soundsets shows that MS has a large number of dialogues that go much further into the plot. :suprised: If all this is true, it kind of sucks imo. Why should only rogues be able to communicate effectively across the board? :no:
Bards (love 'em or hate 'em) have 4 out of 5 talking skills as class skills (intimidate is cross class for bards) Personally I love bards and I use the bard as my spokesperson in most of my games. For the simple reason that I also take a rogue with all the sneaky thief type skills, and I have a blast! If I do need to intimidate someone, I'm sure even the fighter can do that.
I use a fighter as a party leader but I cheat - I give him 40 charisma to boost his social skills and then chuck a few skill points on sence motive which is a wisdom thing. cos saving throws are dex, con and wis - I don't think it over powers him just makes him useful in the role I want to use him in.
Some of Liv's modified encounters will automatically speak to the party leader or the person with the appropriate skill, but as a default the game only recognizes the person you have selected when you initiate dialogue (or the closest person to the NPC, if you have everyone selected.) Which sucks, but there you go.
I always use the rogue as spokesthing because you have to, yeah... but Paladins get a couple (sense motive and diplomacy for memory) plus they get their detect-evil factored into a few of the dlgs (Zert, Darley etc). Monks also get sense motive and diplomacy. There isn't that much use for gather information (KotB will change that!) that I know of and intimidate often comes 'paired' with diplomacy so u can either finesse the moment or use brute force. Otherwise, theres only the bard.
A human sorcerer with high intelligence will have enough points to spread around, and her charisma bonus can pretty much make up for the non-class skills. There will be a slight problem with sense motive (unless you can roll a high wisdom stat too), but on the rare occasions you absolutely need it you could always buff up with spells or potions. This is how I ran my first game and it worked fine.
