Alternative Persuasion (LE1)

CONCEPT AND FEATURES

The number of points invested in the Charm and/or Intimidate skills still determine the availability of the corresponding persuasion options (as in vanilla), but in a less systematic manner. The vanilla difficulty of each Persuasion Check is rebalanced to account for player level (e.g. the infamous Feros check is easier if Feros is played early on). And a random element is introduced, similar to a typical "Roll for Persuasion".

This allows to:

• []Eliminate the strong vanilla incentive to go all Paragon or all Renegade. Paragade and Renegon are just as viable.
  • []Reduce the rather un-immersive and arbitrary by-the-numbers gameplay element ("I need X points for this, or Y points for that"). Investing more points in Charm or Intimidate or both will always be beneficial (including if one is already maxed out), but is not always a guarantee of success. On the other hand, neglecting those skills will still leave some persuasion doors open. Either way,  no need to plan the order of missions depending on where the harder persuasion checks happen.
    • []Create interesting role-play situations where for example a Paragon Shepard must choose between an optimal solution via a Renegade choice or action, or accept a sub-optimal solution to preserve her/his own moral standards.

     
    • []Create some situations where there simply isn't any optimal (Charm/Intimidate) option available, and Shepard must face the hard (and arguably more interesting) choices of sub-optimal solutions.

     
    • Increase replayability and differences between playthroughs.

      There are 3 difficulty options to select from during installation (Easy, Normal, or Hard). The easier settings will result in more Persuasion options being available, at least on average and for the same skill points investments. The fourth difficulty option (Auto) is basically a cheat that makes all Persuasion dialog options automatically available, no matter your Charm/Intimidate skill points.

      DETAIL OF THE CALCULATIONS

      This is what is going on under the hood. It's not necessary to know this to play the mod. The basic gist of it is that each skill point invested in Charm or Intimidate increases by 5% the chance to have any given Charm or Intimidate dialog option available, and the base chance depends on vanilla difficulty of that persuasion check, and on player level. For full disclosure in case you are interested:

      1) The difficulty of each persuasion check is rebalanced to account fo