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I wonder how important the communication skill is rated by you players. I mean, the importance of most of the skills is obvious, e.g. the sword skill for combatants or the theology skill for priests, but how valuable is the communication skill and what is it really good for? Let me make some statements based on my observations to start with.
1. The communication skill affects the merchants' prices for buying and selling. But are there some hard numbers how much communcation really does on this? Is it a real save of money?
2. Communication should affect how NPCs/RPCs treats your party and if they answer your questions. I never noticed a difference in their behaviour to my different parties. I mean, when I meet them the first time, they are green dotted (friendly) and stay this way until I attack them or try to steal from them and get catched. Antone sometimes gets rough when I hassle him to much ("Listen, I am not your friend ..."), but IMHO this only adds some flavour to a talk with a Rapax. Otherwise, at keywords, each NPCs/RPCs give the same answers regardless of my current partie.
3. Communication determines the NPCs/RPCs attitude after an unsuccessful shoplift/pickpocket. I don't have enough experience with that, but my valkyrie made Burz friendly again (thus raising her poor communication skill, 15 or so), after he turned yellow dotted when catching my thief. Additionaly, this is the only way I know to raise the communication skill - a training combination of pickpocket, charm and diplomacy (communication).
4. When meeting an NPC/RPC the first time, there is a good chance for every party member to increase communication one point. But the number of NPCs/RPCs in this game are limited.
5. The bard gets a 25% bonus on her/his communication skill. Is it worth to put points in it when leveling up?
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