Bleak Walker

[SwanRonson]

If I want to intimidate constantly, do I need to take Bleak Walker?

[Undesirable]

Your Faith and Conviction bonus will be impacted if you choose a paladin whose beliefs go against your choices, but I don't think this applies to party members so if you choose something other than paladin for your main character then you can do as you please.

Edited June 13, 2018 by Undesirable

[zendingo]

Many intimidate conversation options give the aggressive disposition, but not all of them. Bleak walker has aggressive as a favored disposition, so intimidate options would benefit him. You'd want to avoid Shieldbearers and Goldpact Knights since aggressive is a disfovored disposition for both. Darcozzi and Kind wayfarers should be neutral for most intimidate dialog options, although there may be a handful that also give cruel which is disfavored for these last two orders.

[Nemesis7884]

i played a goldpact knight and couldn't take intimidate options often due to that, i think 80% of the intimidate options are aggressive

[SwanRonson]

Thanks for the responses, guys.

[Ichthyic]

it's both intimidate and cruel that are favored, diplomacy and benevolent that are not, for bleakwalkers.

there are a LOT of intimidate dialogue options in the game, often giving you the best results in many dialogues, which was nice.

there are far fewer cruel dialogue options, but I have to say that most of those are quite amusing.  just don't kick any puppies in front of eder.

on the flip side, there are also a LOT of diplomatic options in dialogue, and sometimes they are hard to avoid without starting a fight, or perhaps getting a result you might not like otherwise.  and again, fewer benevolent choices, and almost all of those can be avoided.

basically, the thing I found hardest to deal with was avoiding diplomacy boosting options. 

you will max out at +21% bonus to your defenses (patch 1.02 anyway), and will not lose any so long as diplomacy and benevolence stay below 3 each.  you lose 1.5 points of defense for every 3 points either of those goes above 3.  so, if your diplomacy is "4" say, you will lose 1.5% defense, 6 will lose you 3%, etc.  that's a rough estimate, btw, and it also combos with the other score for benevolence to some extent, though not directly multiplicative.

bottom line, you can afford to pick a small handful of diplomacy/benevolent dialogue options without worrying too much.  diplomacy of 6-9 would be about right if you picked some of those options by the end of the game, and that ends up only bringing your defenses down by about 3% from 21 to 18, so not much to worry about.

 

Edited June 16, 2018 by Ichthyic

[omgFIREBALLS]

@Ichthyic: IDK what you're talking about with these values. What's 6 diplomacy? I only see the circle filling up a quarter at a time, so for me there exists 0-4 for each disposition. Also why involve %? Perfect Deep Faith is +15 to all defenses in 1.1. If memory serves it's 11.4 with no dispositions and +0.6 per point in positive ones (up to 3 out of 4), unsure about negatives.

 

@OP: As someone constantly playing Shieldbearer paladins it seems to me aggressive is more associated with choosing to attack unprovoked in dialogue than with threatening. But you can threaten people without being a Bleak Walker or a paladin at all. I doubt they get many unique conversation options to threaten people. I get one unique option as a Shieldbearer and it's pure lore.