Low Charisma and NPCs

Nem

I'm considering rolling an evil thief/mage for my next playthough and it's looking like he's going to have a whopping 3 charisma so I can have the stats I want everywhere else. From what I understand, some NPCs will not even join if your charisma is too low (I believe Xar, Montaron, and Viconia are some of those?). Is there any way around that? (without cheating). Or am I going to have to sacrifice my other stats just to get the NPCs I want?

On another note: Will low charisma have a huge impact on anything else in the game for me? Or am I just going to miss out on some extra gold as a quest reward?

Thanks.

Shin

Possibly you can offset the bad charisma by having a very high reputation (also grants a bonus to reaction rolls), but that may be tricky unless you could be a little less, uh.. evil.
You can also for instance cast the spell friends on yourself and wear Algernon's Cloak for critical moments like NPC-joining. It doesn't have a big impact beyond these things.. some dialogues are slightly different.

MurrayConfederacy

I believe that you can just get other characters to talk to NPCs like Viconia. I don't recall any places in the game where you can't use another characters reaction bonus to get anything, be it Quest Rewards, NPCs or any other part of the game.

The_New_Romance

@MurrayConfederacy has it right, I believe. Just make Imoen or Dorn or someone with higher CHA your party leader if you need to interact with an NPC.

kilroy_was_here

Also remember that if someone with a very low CHA is party leader any inter-party homcides will happen almost instantly.

Michail

@kilroy_was_here
Indeed... It happened in my first game all these years ago, when i played with a fighter with only 10 Cha.

Khalid and Jaheira against Montaron and Xzar, and later Misnc against Edwin

CaptRory

Take a look at the Friends spell for a stopgap measure for higher Charisma.

kilroy_was_here

Michail said:

@kilroy_was_here
Indeed... It happened in my first game all these years ago, when i played with a fighter with only 10 Cha.

Khalid and Jaheira against Montaron and Xzar, and later Misnc against Edwin

@Michail

My first playthrough I had Brawen killing... I can't remember if it was Quayle or Tiax, but one of them pushed her too far and she just snapped. At the time I had no idea something like that could happen... good times

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Mansen

Yes you are going to miss out on quests - a lot of sidequests use a gauge of your reputation (and charisma?) ((NPC reaction score)) to figure out whether they want to offer you a quest, attack you, or simply refuse your help.

The_New_Romance

Mansen said:

Yes you are going to miss out on quests - a lot of sidequests use a gauge of your reputation (and charisma?) ((NPC reaction score)) to figure out whether they want to offer you a quest, attack you, or simply refuse your help.

However, a CHA of about 12 should be enough for most anything, especially in combination with a good reputation. There are only very few quests in BG1 where your reward is actually tied to high CHA, and even then you can get lucky with a good roll.

AHF

kilroy_was_here said:

Also remember that if someone with a very low CHA is party leader any inter-party homcides will happen almost instantly.

Since I never dump the charisma stat, I am actually dissappointed with the low intraparty conflict. I'll have to run out a plug ugly to let this play out in a more entertaining fashion!