Pretty self explanatory. Google hasn't really helped, so I'm running to the assumption charisma is the more important one since it actually affects persuasion checks and how many levels of persuade. Beauty only does first impressions (and things like store prices?). Does it reduce the charisma check level (so high beauty characters need persuade 2 instead of 3 for example?) or does it open up more/different options (if it's high enough you don't have to persuade most people, they'll do it if you just ask?)

I don't know all the answers to your questions. I don't know if anyone here does; you may be the first to find out.

Here's what I do know.

1) If you choose a background which starts you off with a boost to either BE or CH (or both), you will be able to increase that stat above 20. The reverse is also true; if you make yourself ugly and/or boorish on purpose, you will never be able to max out those stats with that build.

2) High enough BE negates the racism you'd otherwise receive from being a Half-Orc or a Half-Ogre; nobody ever gives you grief about it. Depending on your roleplaying goals, this could be a benefit or a disadvantage.

3) Beauty affects initial reactions and purchase prices (including at the train stations, believe it or not). If the initial reaction is negative (below 0) shopkeepers may refuse service and certain other NPCs may attack on sight.

4) Haggle (which is tied to WP) affects selling prices.

5) You can never sell for better than cost, or buy for better than 1% above cost, no matter how high your BE stat goes. Exception: if you sell an unidentified magical item (mostly daggers, though there are exceptions) you may get far better than cost than if you'd bothered to have it identified (or done so yourself).

6) The spell Purity of Water gives a +4 boost to BE while it's active. It stacks, so most PCs can start out with a +8 boost right off the bat.

7) The elegant or Sunday's Best dress (for women) or smoking jacket (for men) gives a +20 boost to reaction while worn. This is also the approximate equivalent to adding 4 to BE, even though that stat doesn't change.

8) The only Large smoking jacket in the game is worn by Gilbert Bates's manservant. It's possible to pickpocket it off of him, possibly using a Fate point to guarantee success.

9) Completing Arbaleh's quest at the very beginning of the game gives a permanent +5 boost to reaction. This is also about the same as adding +1 to BE, even though (again) the stat itself doesn't change.

10) Getting BE to 20 or higher increases NPC reactions by +100%, +10% more for each point above 20.

11) Getting CH to 20 or higher means that you can recruit any follower (even those who wouldn't normally join due to your alignment) and followers will never abandon you, regardless of how you behave.

12) Persuasion is tied to CH. Most persuasion-related quests require one rank in the skill. (One also requires good IN, to call up the best answers; if you know it well enough to do it fast enough, a potion of IN will do the trick.) A few require two or three; only the master quest (and a potential endgame quest) require you to have all five.

13) The Haggle Master is located in Tarant, in the bar. Even if you choose not to complete training, he has a ring (which again, you can pickpocket) which gives a huge +3 boost to both BE and CH, as well as a boost to both Persuasion and Haggle.

14) You can get a permanent +1 boost to BE by helping the priestess in Stillwater (which you will need to do anyway, if you plan on following the elaborate Gods Quest side quest; see below).

15) You can get a permanent +1 boost to CH by helping the Tarant fortune teller take revenge upon her rival. The secret (MINOR SPOILER) is to a) find out about the stolen painting, b) introduce yourself to her after you've been given that quest, c) complete her crystal ball quest, d) complete the other quest WITHOUT returning to her for the clue she promises you, and then e) getting the CH boost as a reward instead, because she feels obligated to give you something.

16) If you pursue the Gods Quest, you can get a "temporary" +1 boost to BE twice during it: once early on, and once near the end. (They're temporary, because you'll lose them as you pursue the quest further.) The Gods Quest is convoluted and has to be followed exactly; I recommend a walkthrough if you plan to go that route.

As for the rest of it, play through and tell us what you discover.

That's a really good rundown! Just wanted to correct, the large smoking jacket is available from clothing shops, but at higher levels once large size armor starts appearing on the storekeepers' inventory lists. Don't use a Fate Point, unless you really must have the large smoking jacket ASAP. Other than that, this is excellect advice.

Basically, what you want to do is prioritize Charisma over Beauty. There are a few Backgrounds that give you a boost to Beauty but at a penalty to Intelligence, which can make you end up with the "idiot" dialog. You want an Intelligence of 5 or better to speak normally. 4 and below gives you dumb dialog, however, you can raise it to 5 and the game will adjust from there on out like you write and speak normally. Take into consideration that some races start with higher Beauty than others. Please note: Beauty has no long lasting effect in terms of quest resolution, just initial dialog. Your level and mastery of Persuade will determine everything. however, it is REALLY fun to be high or max Beauty and have people kiss your butt and grovel. Being a master of Persuade with the Beat with an Ugly Stick background is a totally viable RP play style as well.

You'll definitely want Pickpocket, as there's like two major pieces of stealable gear that give you a bonus to Reaction. Without spoilers, you can use pickpocket on NPC's to view their gear, and back out without risking being caught. Some have incredible stuff!

My favorite background for "talky" characters is Charlatan's Protégé. You'll start with a considerable boost to Charisma, which will allow you to pump Persuasion early, and from there you can start gaining Beauty bonuses at around mid level.

I will say this, if you want to hit the hardest of Persuade checks, you will have to have Master level training, which is a major quest in and of itself.

That's all I can think of, atm. Good luck!

Having just played as a "talky" character i can give some tips.

I played as a max charisma/persuade tech. No combat skills, just using grenades to cause damage and get a little more experience in battles. Lockpicking of course, you'll want to get max charisma and persuasion to get your max followers asap, so they level up as you do having 6 companions, remembering you need to level up since followers require you to be at a certain level, and some require having tech skills, positive alignment, etc.

Beauty isn't that important. If you have a lower reaction to people usually they have a speech line that will let you be "nice" and builds up your reaction to them until it reaches neutral status. Plus you can get the +20 smoking jacket as soon as you can find one to help.

I started as a dwarf, grabbing the +6 charisma background and having lesser strength, combat stats, etc. Once I had my charisma/persuade up and had my initial 6 packmules (Virgil, Sogg, Jayna, Magnus, Gar, Dante ) and Dog of course. Followers are there just for carrying the tons of loot, plus it actually gives you something to spend money on, otherwise you'll have 150k before you know it, and realize absolutely nothing to spend on.

Magnus is just for making a auto-skeleton key, and making balanced swords to keep everyone with nice weapons. Jayna for her healing/fatigue items. Max out explosives and electrical, chemistry is useless, guns just 1 to make basic flintlocks for some money, just buy small tubes from merchants you'll find parts around.

After your charisma and persuasion, get intelligence up and your tech skills, lockpick, and repair. Approaching level 35-40 you'll realize your where you want with skills and such up. At this point, its very good to pick throwing skill and switch over to being a thrown character. Bump up your dex and throwing, this will get you up in lockpick more also. Grab every haste potion you find in stores. Will help with tossing grenades beyond point blank range also. Most other tech skills, useless. Really i found only electrical and exploisves useful, your followers provide basic tech functions in the other catagories. Grab tech manuals from the library to make any schematic items you want.

I thought it would be more fun with a full party because being a combat character lets you level up way to fast normally, its better being a non-combat you'll level up at a much better pace. You'll be a talky master in every way, you'll be a grenade tossing little craftsman on the side. And even with this build, you'll be a throwing master blaster chugging haste potions leveling easy later on when you've maxed your charisma/tech skills to where you want.

Thanks for sharing your experience, I really like it.
But I've some different feedback on some tech disciplines. Chemistry can be useful :
- strong poison : melee effect that reduces ST and DX -2 and apply up to 290 poison.
- corrosive acid : is a thrown weapon which deals splash damages.
Equip Jayna with some strong poison and see the difference. Smithy 6, to craft some feather weight chainmails because there are not so many tech armors.
Hint : with a large leather armor, you can craft a large feather weight chainmail. Same with a small leather armor.

Smithy 6 also allows you to craft a Helmet of Vision, combo with an Electric Light (crafted for free from Sebastian), you can equip everyone with a Miner's Helmet.

all that tech points put into smithing to make feather light chain, elite plate, etc worthless. There are plenty of armors in the game that are good, since the best defense is a good offense, you want to kill stuff fast, not take 5 minutes in a fight letting stuff beat up on you. At lower levels your 6 guys will chop up almost anything, and the few things that cause problems you can simply grenade. At level 40+ you'll be a throwing champ and chop up everything yourself with hasted throws, racking up the levels faster, to raise dex and throw more to be MORE of a throwing god.

What use is defense. You can laugh and kill stuff wearing rags if you want. Featherweight light chain and elite plate are worthless for an offensive character. You can buy bronze plate from the store, you can find a set of good tech plate in a simple quest. You can make your own electro plate if you want with schematics. Wasting 6 points in smithing for such stuff, not useful. No need for corrosive acid bombs when your making explosive grenades. No need for strong poison when your team and you are chopping down foes easy, or bombing them, or later just throwing them to death.

Chemistry is explosives lite. Smithing would be great IF there wasn't decent armor already in the game, or tons of schematics that anyone can use to make slightnly better platemail, and shields, etc. Really, since you want to be offensive not defensive, its easy to surive wearing store bought chainmail/platemail along with your helm/boots/shield/gaultlets. Nothing in the game remotely requires elite platemail with 6 points into smithing when regular platemail does just fine.

I've not payed attention and blew through dungeons hasted with my talky guy wearing his smoking jacket because i forgot to re-equip his chainmail after being in-town. Nothing is going to hurt you if its dead already.

Currently playing a diplomage with high beauty, mainly to see the effects of beauty on certain dialogue. I'm starting to think that having a high haggle might have been a good idea early on.

Anyway, one effect of beauty is that, as a woman, you can turn down Wellington's offer and still get into his club. Beauty can do a few other things (like get Min Gorad to call off the vendetta on you if you sleep with her) There's bound to be more but I am not sure. I mentioned Haggle, because I am wondering if 300 is the set rate you can get working as a one-time callgirl for Madam Lil.

Ultimately though, I found that beauty is a dump stat. The situations where it does apply are sparse, and the positive reactions matter little when it comes to critters and the like. You're better off using a combination of the Jewel of Hebe and a smoking jacket/elegant dress if you want positive reactions. Alternatively, and if you're the technomage type, you can boost beauty by 8 points with a combination of Energizer + Revitalizer + Purity of Water (just the two potions alone boosts it by 4).

... and Lilian Misk.

For M'in Gorad, I think you need to be elf?

Beauty is mostly for the stores. Haggling and Beauty are for buying/selling stuff for better prices. Not needed at all for normal gameplay. Helps with reactions, but still not a huge deal. You can get a smoking jacket or dress for any normal character, and even ugly characters can talk up dialogue to raise reactions to neutral status pretty easy. A pure merchant will roleplay with max beauty and max haggling. All in all, beauty is useless unless you want to roleplay, or make the game harder with non-combat character. Think its too easy even on difficult, make up a max beauty/charisma character and roleplay as the ultimate leader, throwing some tech in there also.

trouble is, its very easy to make money later anyway, so having very high beautly to make money even faster = ick. I dont even have haggle on any character unless it was my mage, might as well max it due to high willpower. half way through the game lugging around 150k with nothing to spend on, even with a offensive character.

There are things big money can buy. A boat, if you don't feel like destroying the Bangellian scourge and/or don't want to kill Pete, and you can buy Gill Bates big house in Tarrant. Which is technically a glorified inn but can serve as your storage unit (and, if you're using the mind control trick, you can "staff" the mansion with "servants")

I also found that money is a very, very useful thing to have for one main purpose - if you're running a neutral or mage character, and have a full mage party, having a lot of money helps if you want to fit out all your part members with Arcane items. In-game they are rare (since you'll have to explore the map to find them), and in the wild, you'll get at most one copy of each Arcane item (I remember combing the entire map for the Arcane Staff to no avail) Buying all arcane items for two people is a bit draining, though, so I can see the benefit of having a lot of money to kit out all your mage and neutral characters with arcane items bought fro gypsies

true, but unless your playing a party mage, buffing your party, etc you dont need any of that stuff. Any offensive mage, the strongest character build, even on hard difficulty is going to blast through dungeons solo before your party has any chance to kill anything. Hasted, fatigue slower, maxed dex and wp, your going to just be spending money on fatigue items to keep yourself going in the slaughter-everything mode. You'll be level 50 before you even leave the right side of the map, running into a room of 5 fire elementals...5 disintegrates... room clear.. onto the next room.

So yea it's fun having arcane stuff on everyone, but that is only really useful if your playing a non-combat party support character, merchant, leader, what ever. Take off all their gear except a good weapon, you'll pretty much get the same out of them. Muscle build the pack mules, even easier.

Wise Woman, outside of towns (Shrouded Hills, Tarant, Ashbury, Caladon) have 1-5% chance to have an arcane item. With patience and money you can get your whole team fully arcaned without running all over the world.

Thats....what I said lol. If you read, I mentioned arcane items bought from gypsies. Thats what I call those four wise women, lol But yeah, an absurd money makes sense if youre' buying arcane items from them to kit out your party

Agreed there. Magic can get pretty absurd in this game. Its why high beauty and haggle only maters if you're playing party mage that is going for full arcane items for all 5 members.

I must have missed that part where you're talking about the gypsies. My bad.

More precisely about the cost :
- with 0 Haggle, a full arcane set (1 gloves +1 helmet +1 armor +2 rings +1 weapon +1 shield = 7) costs roughly 56.000 gold
- with 3 Haggle [Expert], the cost is down to 48.000 gold roughly
- and 40.000 gold with Master Haggle

So, speaking of what to do with 150k gold? , this sounds definitely like a way to spend all this gold.

Have you tried a mage with 100 MA and Succour Beast?

1) If you choose a background which starts you off with a boost to either BE or CH (or both), you will be able to increase that stat above 20. The reverse is also true; if you make yourself ugly and/or boorish on purpose, you will never be able to max out those stats with that build.