How does interlocutor skill affect dialogue

Question

Background

As far as I understand, if you have a choice in the dialogue, you can opt to influence its outcome by Speech (presumably crafty argument), charisma (something like charm) or strength, which appears to equal intimidation. You often get to see the interlocutor‘s skill.

Now, with intimidation it is not completely unreasonable that an intimidating knight should be harder to intimidate. But why should a charming woman be particularly immune my charms? Perhaps men try to charm her a lot, so she levels skill, but my charm seems to work quite well on Lady Stephanie. Hence my question:

Question

How does the interlocutor‘s skill - not Henry‘s - affect dialogue outcome or difficulty? Is it simply so that charming people are harder to charm, strong people harder to intimidate, eloquent people harder to win over by argument? Is there an influence of sex?

Answer 1

Regarding Charming attempts, it’s more about Charisma/behaving like a noble/looking like an important person than making compliments and being attractive. So put on your best burgher clothes and jewelry before trying to impresse Lady Stephany : she deals with nobles on a daily basis and won’t easily get fooled ! :-)

If you have the Speech/Empathetic perk, you’ll be able to see the Speech/Charm/Intimidate value of your interlocutor. Otherwise, it’s rumoured that you might be able to see the values for people you’ve interacted with (a lot) in the past.

You’ll then notice that lords/nobles are hard to charm, warriors hard to intimidate, and learned people hard to convince, but I don’t think there’s any hard rule.

Your reputation with the faction is taken into account too, but again, it’s not clear how much. Having the Speech/Troubadour perk gives you a +50% reputation bonus with women.

Be aware, though, that there might be an invisible modifier to either your or the other’s value, depending on the answer you choose (some are obviously better/worse, and give a corresponding bonus/malus). That’s why you may fail a 17 vs 15 Speech check, for instance.