Speech

Speech is a Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout 3 skill. In Van Buren, it was divided into two skills - Persuasion and Deception.

The ability to communicate in a practical and efficient manner. The skill of convincing others that your position is correct. The ability to lie and not get caught.

Fallout and Fallout 2
Initial Level: Starting Speech skill is equal to 25% + (2% x Charisma). Average characters will have a 35% skill.

Speech skill was in the first draft of Fallout Tactics skills, but was eventually left out.

Fallout 3
Occasionally, you will be presented with a Speech Challenge. A Speech Challenge is a response preceded by the word “Speech” and the percentage chance of success (e.g., [Speech 25%]); the higher your Speech skill, the greater the chance of success.

Succeed in a Speech Challenge, and you’ll achieve the results indicated by the response. Fail a Speech Challenge, and future Speech Challenges with that character will be more difficult.

Having a weapon draw will influence your percentage to succeed at a speech challenge.

From time to time you may also be presented with dialogue options where a word appears with no percentage (e.g., Strength or Lady Killer/Black Widow). In this case, this is a dialogue option that is available to you because of the level of the indicated S.P.E.C.I.A.L. statistic, Skill, or Perk and you will always be successful when selecting it. You only get one chance at each Speech Challenge, so if encounter one has a low percentage to succeed, you may want to exit dialogue and try the Speech challenge at a later time, after you’ve raised your Speech skill.

In order to gain a 100 in the speech skill, without directly putting skill points into it, it is necessary to only have a -2 to start with. 102 points can be obtained in game from items, perks, and quests.


 * +10 to your speech skill can be earned as a possible reward from the quest Oasis.
 * +10 for the Speech Bobblehead.
 * +50* collecting all 25 Lying, Congressional Style books.
 * +15 for the Speech perk. (+5 for each level of 3 total.)
 * +2 for the Paradise Lost book from Tulip in the Underworld.
 * +15 for the Tag! perk
 * (+2 per book with the Comprehension perk. Normally +1 without the perk.)

NOTE:

Since many Speech challenges are predictable (when talking to specific NPC's, or when specific NPC's approach you at set locations), devoting skill points or choosing Perks to increase Speech skill may not be necessary or advisable. A savvy player can save the game before triggering the conversation, reloading the game and retrying the Speech Challenge until successful. Even with a chance of success in the mid-20's, most characters can most probably succeed in five or six attempts.

For characters who present multiple Speech Challenges (such as Bryan Wilks), it is at least sometimes possible to succeed in the first challenge, stop talking to the NPC (with the "Goodbye" or similar option), save the game, then speak to the NPC again and attempt the second Speech Challenge.

These strategies will allow even beginning players to work towards the Silver-Tongued Devil achievement quite effectively early in the game, without sacrificing valuable skill points or designating Speech as a Tag Skill.

=Appendix=

List of Fallout 3 Speech Challenges
For the Silver-Tongued Devil achievement, you need to win 50 speech challenges. For this purpose this page will contain a list of those speech challenges. Please continue to add challenges here.

Cheat
There is a glitch on the xbox 360 version where you can talk to pappy and keep performing the speech challenge over and over again, this will help you gain the achievement Silver-Tongued Devil and also get you unlimited exp. note. you have to speak to Bittercup first.