The art of persuasion

Coercion in Dragon Age is a weird skill. I suppose the main problem I have with it is that "ability to persuade someone to act in your favour" is an incredibly vague talent, since it basically comes down to talking, and everyone can talk. It makes sense that you can't make traps if you have no idea about trap-making, but whether you can convince someone of something is hardly completely dependent on special training, even if it might help a little.

On my first character I maxed out the coercion skill as soon as I could, and as a result of that many conversations felt... odd. If there was an option with the word "persuade" next to it in brackets, I knew that it was basically my "I win" button, regardless of what I said. Cocky mercenaries would turn into gibbering cowards after a single line, and confident knights instantly started to doubt all their beliefs at my word. The fact that the player character shows little emotion on her face and has no audible voice only added to the strangeness. If there had actually been an animation and voice-acting showing my character's amazing delivery of relatively plain lines, I might have been more willing to buy it, but as it was, the reactions I got just felt awkward and disjointed from the way the conversation had been going previously.

As a result I decided to go in completely the opposite direction on my second playthrough and forbade my new character from having any persuasive skills whatsoever. She was about as impressive as a wet sock. At first I was pleased to see the NPCs not be cowed quite so easily anymore, but it didn't take long for the pendulum to swing the other way.

For example I hadn't realised just how many times being able to be persuasive or intimidating had been the only alternative to combat. I suddenly ended up having to solve a lot more conflicts with violence than before, and I wasn't always pleased with the results. What's worse, after a while my lack of persuasive powers became just as ridiculous as the opposite extreme. I could tell people that the sky was blue and they'd still find an excuse not to believe me if the sentence had the word "persuade" next to it. I remember the werewolves in the Brecilian Forest as a particularly striking example. "Kill the elves!" I told them, and Swiftrunner growled at me, saying that he didn't trust me. And what does he say ten seconds later? "Let's just kill the elves!" Isn't that what I just bloody said? I was literally wringing my hands at that one.

I suppose the problem is that the Warden talks people into doing what she wants all the time, throughout the whole game, and it works regardless of coercion skill because the game supports it. Having some reactions suddenly tied to a skill when so many others aren't just seems kind of arbitrary, especially when the results can be as extreme and disconnected from the way the characters were acting before, such as during the werewolf conversation.