How does the Starfield persuasion system work? RPGs are getting more interactive than ever, with multiple characters to meet, converse with and even fall for. You can change your experience and endings with varying decisions, and even RNG plays a part. Starfield’s persuasion system is a part of all of the above.
Whether you’re looking to fire up a Starfield romance, steal a Starfield ship, or avoid a fight with on of the Starfield Crimson Fleet pirates, you need to master the art of persuasion – or at least try to. In an all-new Bethesda dialogue system, you can take your chances on a more fiesty response or play to up to the character in question… and then hope. Here’s what we know about exactly how the Starfield persuasion system works.
What is the Starfield persuasion system?
While some Starfield dialogue contains fairly run-of-the-mill options, others will appear with numbers and a colored key and these are your persuasion dialogue screens, and your chance to try and convince a character to act how you wish.
How does Starfield Persuasion work?
At some points in conversation, you may seen an option tagged [PERSUASION]. You can avoid this option entirely, but by selecting it you give yourself the chance to sway an NPC’s actions. In the top image in this guide for example, you can try and offer the Ballistic Weapon Specialist a lower payment and save yourself some Starfield credits.
The next dialogue box contains a list of options of varying ‘difficulty’, as it were. A colored key shows which options are more likely to succeed and which are more daring, with green indicating the former and red the latter. Again using the screenshot above, you can see the easiest option is to play nice and try to make a truce with the Crimson Fleet pirate. While this option is more likely to succeed, it’s also only worth one point, which counts towards your persuasion bar for this conversation. Once the bar is full, you’ll get the outcome you’re after, so the quicker you fill it, the better – hence the value in trying the trickier options. This is where luck comes in. Don’t fill the bar before the conversation is over, and you might just find yourself in unwanted combat – or worse. Of course not everything is this life or death, and losing your persuasion dialogue could just leave you out of pocket.
Auto-persuade
You might spot the auto-persuade option at the bottom of your screen when trying to bring someone round to your way of thinking. This can only be used if you’ve filled the bar, which also happens upon a successful dialogue choice. Using auto-persuade fills up the rest of your conversation bar to successfully end the discussion in your favor.
Starfield persuasion skill
If you want to increase your chances of success, just like in real life you can work on your communication skills, leveling your persuasion skill up in the Starfield skill tree.
The Persuasion skill can be found in the social tree when browsing your Starfield skills. Just one point will start giving you a greater chance of success, but increasing this skill all the way up to rank four gives you a 50% greater chance of persuading the person in question.
That’s everything you need to know about the persuasion system as you approach the Starfield release date. There’s plenty more to explore about the space RPG though, so be sure to check out our latest on the Starfield Game Pass release date, our look at the Starfield factions, Starfield Crimson Fleet and Starfield Constellation, and all of the Starfield cities we know about.
Still looking for more? While a good Starfield wiki can be a handy source of information, our new Starfield Database goes further, offering you daily news, searchable databanks, and even interactive tools.