Disposition numbers - do we know how they work?

[wanderon]

I'm playing a paladin (Shieldbearer) and I have the dialogue hints turned off so my disposition scores are all over the map - is there a formula for how and when any negative effects are implemented?

[Luckmann]

Afaik, you start accruing penalties the second you actually get a Disposition that goes against your Order. Note, however, that you don't get a point of Disposition as soon as you've taken just a single dialogue choice in the vein of a Disposition. I'm not sure if different answers have different weights in regards to dispositions (which I doubt, but which would be cool and make the most sense) or if it's something more simple like "Answer Aggressively five times, get a point of Aggressive" (which I believe it is, but I'm not sure at all).

 

I highly advise turning on the Disposition answers in the Options, because otherwise, dialogue choices are all over the place without any indication. Yes, it is frustrating as hell, and I think that they should've been clearer on the Dispositions and clearer when it comes to dialogue choices, rather than rely on a spoilerish automated system, but you will often have no idea what way you are phrasing something unless it's turned on and it will lead to frustration, because you have no idea if you're saying something threateningly or benevolently without it.

[wanderon]

Well my favored are honest (3) and diplomatic (2) and disfavored are cruel (0) and aggressive (2) and then I have 7 points scattered about the others including (2) in both benevolent and stoic and (1) each in clever, passionate, & rational.

 

Looks like you have to gain a "rank" in a disposition (not just a point) to have it either help or hinder Faith and Conviction (rank 1 - 4 = 4/12/25/45 points respectively) so no changes yet on either side of the ball - looks like I might want to discuss my aggressiveness with my counselor (GM) 

 

I had the tattlers on in the beta and didn't like the way I was more or less forcing myself to choose the "correct" answer and now I'm good leaving them off - it works from an RP standpoint for me - I can choose the one I think my character would choose and even if that's not what I thought it would be disposition wise that's OK as different people/factions read your actions/words differently anyway. So I make my choices and they help to define my character even if that's not where I thought he/she was going to end up. Feels much less "gamey" to me.

[Luckmann]

Well my favored are honest (3) and diplomatic (2) and disfavored are cruel (0) and aggressive (2) and then I have 7 points scattered about the others including (2) in both benevolent and stoic and (1) each in clever, passionate, & rational.

 

Looks like you have to gain a "rank" in a disposition (not just a point) to have it either help or hinder Faith and Conviction (rank 1 - 4 = 4/12/25/45 points respectively) so no changes yet on either side of the ball - looks like I might want to discuss my aggressiveness with my counselor (GM) 

 

I had the tattlers on in the beta and didn't like the way I was more or less forcing myself to choose the "correct" answer and now I'm good leaving them off - it works from an RP standpoint for me - I can choose the one I think my character would choose and even if that's not what I thought it would be disposition wise that's OK as different people/factions read your actions/words differently anyway. So I make my choices and they help to define my character even if that's not where I thought he/she was going to end up. Feels much less "gamey" to me.

 

I wish I could do that, but I just can't. I'd really prefer it, for the same reasons as you, but not knowing whether an option is threatening or joking when I pick it is infuriating. I think the automated display of the dispositions in dialogues became a crutch from the developers side, not putting out the appropriate cues such as [Lying] or [Threaten] and so on; instead we got the option to either display or not display dispositions, and if you don't want to see the Dispositions and the qualifiers, well, you're SOL.

[Nobear]

I'm playing a paladin (Shieldbearer) and I have the dialogue hints turned off so my disposition scores are all over the map - is there a formula for how and when any negative effects are implemented?

 

 

I'm also playing a Shieldbearer. I also got 3 Honest pretty quickly, and 3 is the highest rank that will affect your Faith and Conviction, so you don't have to worry about that one anymore. Just keep in mind that Dishonest can affect certain quests, where an NPC might focus on 1 rank of Dishonest and distrust you even if you have 4 in Honest.

 

Diplomatic I was so unsure about that I started my own thread about it. What I gathered is that, in general, it's more often about telling people what they want to hear than about playing some heroic role in averting a conflict (which is what Shieldbearers are supposed to be about). The way I see Honest and Diplomatic coexisting is that Honest is about telling verifiable factual information above and beyond what most people would consider necessary or expedient (i.e. even when you could potentially suffer negative consequences for it). Diplomatic is about hiding or lying about your emotional reactions to other people.

 

So an honest diplomat, in this game, is someone who offers up more details than they need to about verifiable factual information, while mostly being a yes-man and stating they agree with people even when they don't. The game usually considers it Diplomatic rather than Dishonest if it's about your personal feelings about someone, as opposed to about a verifiable fact.

 

A high Might score tends to open more Aggressive dialogue options. One of many considerations that went into giving my Shieldbearer tank/support paladin "only" 10 Might, giving preference to other useful stats instead, is that I could do without even the temptation of responding aggressively.

 

That said, to make sure, I keep saves at certain milestones throughout the game, and check my dispositions frequently. Typically, if I made a choice that I was afraid might be Aggressive and it turns out it was, I can just go back to the auto save from entering the map. Another option, if you don't want to restart or backtrack in your game, is to take the Untroubled Faith talent, although this comes with its own set of pros and cons.

 

Best to you!

[PrimeJunta]

I didn't have much trouble sticking to my favored dispositions (and avoiding the disfavored ones) when playing "blind" as a Shieldbearer. Just needed to read carefully and think about the context as well. Didn't get a perfect score but close enough.

[Luckmann]

I didn't have much trouble sticking to my favored dispositions (and avoiding the disfavored ones) when playing "blind" as a Shieldbearer. Just needed to read carefully and think about the context as well. Didn't get a perfect score but close enough.

 

Shieldbearers are probably about the easiest and the least prone to mistakes when playing blind; Diplomatic/Honest vs. Aggressive/Cruel. They're pretty hard to mix up, and it doesn't matter to the Shieldbearer if some Passionate, Rational, Clever and Stoic slips in there. The issue really is which constitutes what. Rational and Diplomatic are all over the map sometimes, and Passionate/Benevolent gets mixed up a lot.

 

Shieldbearers basically comes down to don't be a douche and you'll be fine.

[wanderon]

 

Well my favored are honest (3) and diplomatic (2) and disfavored are cruel (0) and aggressive (2) and then I have 7 points scattered about the others including (2) in both benevolent and stoic and (1) each in clever, passionate, & rational.

 

Looks like you have to gain a "rank" in a disposition (not just a point) to have it either help or hinder Faith and Conviction (rank 1 - 4 = 4/12/25/45 points respectively) so no changes yet on either side of the ball - looks like I might want to discuss my aggressiveness with my counselor (GM) 

 

I had the tattlers on in the beta and didn't like the way I was more or less forcing myself to choose the "correct" answer and now I'm good leaving them off - it works from an RP standpoint for me - I can choose the one I think my character would choose and even if that's not what I thought it would be disposition wise that's OK as different people/factions read your actions/words differently anyway. So I make my choices and they help to define my character even if that's not where I thought he/she was going to end up. Feels much less "gamey" to me.

 

I wish I could do that, but I just can't. I'd really prefer it, for the same reasons as you, but not knowing whether an option is threatening or joking when I pick it is infuriating. I think the automated display of the dispositions in dialogues became a crutch from the developers side, not putting out the appropriate cues such as [Lying] or [Threaten] and so on; instead we got the option to either display or not display dispositions, and if you don't want to see the Dispositions and the qualifiers, well, you're SOL.

 

 

Well I do still see (lie) when it differentiates the reply from a truthful one (opening the door to use truth later) - only the dispositions are hidden (and the qualifiers like lore etc whether I qualify or not but IIRC that's a separate option)

[wanderon]

So are penalties or bonuses to Faith and Conviction from dispositions shown on the character sheet or elsewhere? I don't see anything that would indicate them currently.

[Nobear]

 

I didn't have much trouble sticking to my favored dispositions (and avoiding the disfavored ones) when playing "blind" as a Shieldbearer. Just needed to read carefully and think about the context as well. Didn't get a perfect score but close enough.

 

Shieldbearers are probably about the easiest and the least prone to mistakes when playing blind; Diplomatic/Honest vs. Aggressive/Cruel. They're pretty hard to mix up, and it doesn't matter to the Shieldbearer if some Passionate, Rational, Clever and Stoic slips in there. The issue really is which constitutes what. Rational and Diplomatic are all over the map sometimes, and Passionate/Benevolent gets mixed up a lot.

 

Shieldbearers basically comes down to don't be a douche and you'll be fine.

 

That last statement basically sums it up. The only difference will come in how fast you gain Diplomatic if you sometimes confuse it with others. Personally, I find I can sometimes confuse it with either Benevolent or Stoic. For example, there are certainly cases where telling someone what they want to hear can be considered Benevolent; and "I see" I have read is considered Stoic, even though you could imagine it said with the intent of purposefully hiding one's feelings to not offend someone. But these mistakes won't hurt you in the long run, they will just make you gain Diplomatic more slowly.

 

So are penalties or bonuses to Faith and Conviction from dispositions shown on the character sheet or elsewhere? I don't see anything that would indicate them currently.

 

Bonuses and penalties aren't shown separately, but are factored in when you click on Faith and Conviction on your character sheet. The base values IIRC are 5/10/10/10.

[wanderon]

Well I have 8/16/16/16 currently (level 7 with about 1100 to go for level 8 ) I wonder if that represents any penalty for the 2 aggressive - or bonus for the 3 honest/ 2 diplomatic?

 

Anyone know how the numbers shake out for calculating the penalties and/or boni?

Edited June 29, 2015 by wanderon

[Nobear]

Well I have 8/16/16/16 currently (level 7 with about 1100 to go for level 8 ) I wonder if that represents any penalty for the 2 aggressive - or bonus for the 3 honest/ 2 diplomatic?

 

Anyone know how the numbers shake out for calculating the penalties and/or boni?

 

Yeah, they add and subtract as follows: 5/10/10/10 (base) + 3(1/2/2/2) (Honest) + 2(1/2/2/2) (Diplomatic) - 2(1/2/2/2) (Aggressive) = 8/16/16/16. So you are gaining 5 ranks of bonus minus 2 ranks of penalty, which would be the same result as if you had just 3 ranks of bonus. Another way to think of it is that your Diplomatic and Aggressive are canceling each other out, currently.

Edited June 29, 2015 by Nobear

[wanderon]

 

Well I have 8/16/16/16 currently (level 7 with about 1100 to go for level 8 ) I wonder if that represents any penalty for the 2 aggressive - or bonus for the 3 honest/ 2 diplomatic?

 

Anyone know how the numbers shake out for calculating the penalties and/or boni?

 

Yeah, they add and subtract as follows: 5/10/10/10 (base) + 3(1/2/2/2) (Honest) + 2(1/2/2/2) (Diplomatic) - 2(1/2/2/2) (Aggressive) = 8/16/16/16. So you are gaining 5 ranks of bonus minus 2 ranks of penalty, which would be the same result as if you had just 3 ranks of bonus. Another way to think of it is that your Diplomatic and Aggressive are canceling each other out, currently.

 

 

So if I didn't have the 2 aggressive it would be 10/20/20/20 ?? - that's a pretty good hit for being a little aggressive 

[Nobear]

So if I didn't have the 2 aggressive it would be 10/20/20/20 ?? - that's a pretty good hit for being a little aggressive 

 

That's exactly what it would be. Yeah, hey I've made so many mistakes or suboptimal choices playing this game. Personally, I'm OCD enough that I feel compelled to restart each time, or at least go back to a previous save from before I made the suboptimal choice. You should probably consider yourself fortunate if you're not that compulsive. You might consider taking Untroubled Faith and acting as aggressively as you want, but you would of course be giving up another talent to do this, so it would be its own tradeoff.

 

If I were giving advice to myself, I'd say to just beat the game first on Hard, then seek perfection on a subsequent PoTD play through. I don't listen to myself, though, so I insist on getting it perfect on PoTD before I even played much into Act 2 on Hard .

[wanderon]

 

So if I didn't have the 2 aggressive it would be 10/20/20/20 ?? - that's a pretty good hit for being a little aggressive 

 

That's exactly what it would be. Yeah, hey I've made so many mistakes or suboptimal choices playing this game. Personally, I'm OCD enough that I feel compelled to restart each time, or at least go back to a previous save from before I made the suboptimal choice. You should probably consider yourself fortunate if you're not that compulsive. You might consider taking Untroubled Faith and acting as aggressively as you want, but you would of course be giving up another talent to do this, so it would be its own tradeoff.

 

If I were giving advice to myself, I'd say to just beat the game first on Hard, then seek perfection on a subsequent PoTD play through. I don't listen to myself, though, so I insist on getting it perfect on PoTD before I even played much into Act 2 on Hard .

 

 

It doesn't really bother me I just wanted to get my head around the numbers to make sure I wasn't overly gimping myself by not paying too much attention to my responses.

 

I'm not much of a min-maxer altho I don't usually overly gimp my characters either. I play on normal unless it really gets too easy which wasn't the case with PoE for me except in the Beta which I mostly played on hard - in fact in the release version I found it pretty easy to get into situations I just couldn't handle until the last update (1.06?) which seemed to nerf the normal setting by removing some of the enemy assets. Now I have to pay some attention but can almost always prevail in the end without a reload. 

 

My current game I have progressed farther than ever before - still in chap 2 but close to level 8 and cleared 8 levels of Od Nua so far with only a handful of reloads.

 

I almost never reload except when the game forces me and accept whatever happens but then I am a chronic restarter so another game with the opportunity to do something differently is often right around the corner anyway. (I've started maybe 2 dozen characters that have gotten at least to Gilded Vale so far) 

[Nobear]

I almost never reload except when the game forces me and accept whatever happens but then I am a chronic restarter so another game with the opportunity to do something differently is often right around the corner anyway. (I've started maybe 2 dozen characters that have gotten at least to Gilded Vale so far) 

 

lol me too! And made it to Defiance Bay a few times even .