“Charisma is your ability to charm and convince others. It affects your success to persuade in dialogue and prices when you barter.”

Can you say dump stat? Yeah, another Fallout game, another lacklustre showing for Charisma. That’s not to say there aren’t good perks in the Charisma tree, but you can easily start out with one point in Charisma and ignore it for most of the game. If you have no interest in traveling alone or delving deeply into settlement building, you can safely ignore Charisma however. Why? Well, the one thing that your Charisma score does (aside from providing access to Charisma perks getting you better prices with merchants) is determining how easy it is to succeed at speech checks. Important enough for an RPG, sure, but you have a percentage chance to succeed and you can quicksave during dialogue, so you can just save/load with as low of a Charisma score as you wish and you’ll eventually succeed. More damning, however, is the fact that you can find plenty of clothes you can wear to artificially boost your Charisma score for when you go shopping or really need to pass a speech check. There are plenty of suits that give +2 Charisma, hats and glasses that give +1 each, and chems and alcohol that can further boost Charisma. This won’t get you the perks, but it will make investing in Charisma for the sake of passing speech checks unnecessary.

Cap Collector¶

You can spend some perks picks in this, or you can just kill and loot more critters. Critters respawn, perks less so. And on the plus side, if you kill more, you’ll gain more XP, and hence, more perks! Seriously though, laziness aside the only reason you’d need to invest in this is to build third-tier shops in settlements, which itself is a fine way to earn money - but more on that when you get to the “Local Leader” perk. Two ranks in this perk are all you need for shop building, as the third rank only adds more money for shops to barter with, something you won’t need if you’re building plenty of shops in settlements.

Grade: ****

Black Widow/Lady Killer¶

You’ll never need help boosting your speech success odds besides gear you can equip, which largely renders these perks obsolete. Sure, the damage boost is fine, and there’s not much of a gender preference in Fallout 4, so call the damage boost halfsies, but Bloody Mess does the same thing against everything you attack, not just humans of one gender. Oh, the third rank also increases your odds of pacifying characters of the opposite gender, but nobody is seriously considering wasting that many perks, right?

Grade: ***

Lone Wanderer¶

Let’s face it, followers are stupid. They’re of dubious help in combat, alert enemies to you while sneaking, and generally just get in the damn way. Wouldn’t it be nice to just get rid of them, but enjoy the benefits of having them around? Enter Lone Wanderer, for all the introverts out there, or for people who find companions wanting in Fallout 4.

At rank one you’ll take 15% less damage and increase your carry weight by 50, which is decent enough. Rank two doubles these bonuses, but rank three is the real appealing boon: +25% damage. If you have the Far Harbor DLC you can also get rank four, which further incentivizes your reclusiveness by giving you +25 Action Poitns while you travel alone. If you want to travel alone and enjoy a hefty offense, defense and utility boost while doing so. Good stuff. On the downside, you need to reach level forty to get the third rank in this perk, and level fifty to get the third - so perhaps the early steps of your adventure need not also be lonely ones.

Grade: ******

Attack Dog¶

If you love Dogmeat, this perk will make Dogmeat somewhat more effective in combat. Of course, since you can’t really control when and who he bites, this is of dubious utility much of the time. Companion randomness is generally not a good thing, and the more you have to rely on companions for a perk’s effectiveness, the less appealing that perk is. V.A.T.S. accuracy, crippling enemy limbs and bleed damage are all good things, but three perks of good? And with having to rely on Dogmeat as a delivery vehicle? Not so much.

Grade: ***

Animal Friend¶

Aim your gun at an animal (L2/LT) and press [X] or [A] and you’ll attempt to intimidate them into compliance. At rank one this just takes them out of the fight, at rank two you can make them fight against nearby hostiles and at rank three you can give them basic companion commands (follow, wait, attack, etc.). It’s kind of neat, as it gives you the ability to remove a target from combat with an aim and a button press, but it requires you to waste an awful lot of points on Charisma along the way.

Some other notes on how this works: there is a maximum range to your intimidation attempt, so don’t think you can just aim at foes from a sniper scope and manipulate them. There is a maximum number of animals you can have intimidated at a time, and attempting to intimidate from stealth will reveal you (if not to [DANGER], at least enough to get a [CAUTION] rating). This perk only affects Mole Rats, Dogs, Yao Guai, Rad Stags, Mutant Hounds and Brahmin, which, while not uncommon, are hardly much of a threat, and definitely not worth three perks to mitigate.

Grade: ***

Local Leader¶

There’s only one reason to get this perk: Settlement Building. You’ll need this perk to build any shops or crafting stations, and since you need rank two for this, that should be your goal. Rank one has the nice boon of allowing you to link your settlements (enter build mode, target a settler and hit [R1] then assign them to another settlement, which will then share workshop contents), which is entirely a convenience perk, since it will save you from having to drag resources from one settlement to another, so long as you link them. But if you want to improve happiness much beyond 80%, to turn a profit from building shops, or create your own crafting stations, you’ll need to invest in this perk. That being the case, its usefulness is determined solely by how much time you’re willing to invest in settlements, and since settlement building is awesome, it’s a pretty nice perk.

Grade: *****

Party Boy/Party Girl¶

The first rank of this gives you the boon of never getting addicted to alcohol. Wasn’t there another perk like this earlier? Oh well, it’s garbage. There are plenty of ways to cure addiction, and there’s rarely a good reason to drink alcohol in the first place. The second rank doubles the effects of alcohol, which, aside from the odd Charisma boost, it’s hard to imagine why you’d bother drinking it anyway. Third rank gives you +3 Luck when you’re under the effects of alcohol, which will boost the rate at which your critical bar builds a bit. Not a bad thing, but worth three perks? Not a chance.

Grade: ***

Inspirational¶

If you like companions, this perk is for you. By investing in this perk your companions will do more damage (too bad they’re still unreliable in combat) will become immune to your attacks (how are you going to punish them for getting in your way then?) and can carry more stuff (which is honestly the best part of this perk). If you’re married (figuratively, not literally - that didn’t work out so well last time) to the idea of having companions, you might want to boost their stats. Or not. Because companions are annoying. Get their companion-specific perks and dump them.

Grade: ****

Wasteland Whisperer¶

Aim your gun at an irradiated mutant monstrosity (L2/LT) and press [X] or [A] and you’ll attempt to intimidate them into compliance. At rank one this just takes them out of the fight, at rank two you can make them fight against nearby hostiles and at rank three you can give them basic companion commands (follow, wait, attack, etc.). It’s kind of neat, as it gives you the ability to remove a target from combat with an aim and a button press, but it requires you to waste an awful lot of points on Charisma along the way.

Some other notes on how this works: there is a maximum range to your intimidation attempt, so don’t think you can just aim at foes from a sniper scope and manipulate them. There is a maximum number of animals you can have intimidated at a time, and attempting to intimidate from stealth will reveal you (if not to [DANGER], at least enough to get a [CAUTION] rating). This perk affects Feral Ghouls, Super Mutants, Mirelurks, Deathclaws, all insects and Synths, making it by far the most interesting and diverse of the intimidation perks. Granted, pacifying foes is secondary to being able to simply kill them, but if you wanted to command a Deathclaw, Mirelurk Queen or Super Mutant Behemoth, this perk is for you. In fact, that’s awesome enough to score this perk some stars on its own.

Grade: *****

Intimidation¶

Aim your gun at somebody (L2/LT) and press [X] or [A] and you’ll attempt to intimidate them into compliance. At rank one this just takes them out of the fight, at rank two you can make them fight against nearby hostiles and at rank three you can give them basic companion commands (follow, wait, attack, etc.). It’s kind of neat, as it gives you the ability to remove a target from combat with an aim and a button press, but it requires you to waste an awful lot of points on Charisma along the way.

Some other notes on how this works: there is a maximum range to your intimidation attempt, so don’t think you can just aim at foes from a sniper scope and manipulate them. There is a maximum number of people you can have intimidated at a time, and attempting to intimidate from stealth will reveal you (if not to [DANGER], at least enough to get a [CAUTION] rating).

Grade: ****