Shattered Kingdoms

Persuasion offers the same dangers as Charm person or Dominate (being attacked if you fail), and can't even be used while the bard's in combat (unlike the spells).

Why are there commands that can't be used? A Hellion or Mage would be able to make them do that with their spells, both of which are stronger, and less risky than persuade.

Persuade has been needing a Buff for a while.

Well, now that there's that nice new trainer that gets it up to superb, I feel like using it, so I hadn't really noticed before.

It fails 70% of the time even at mastered I heard, so luck using it.

pfft, like a dwarf is really going to part with his booze.

I think you may have answered yourself? In most fantasy genres, magic always wins. Of course, its also true that in most fantasy genres, magic is assumed to have a cost.

The cost of using persuade is far higher than the cost of using either spell, and whenever it's brought up on the forums the general consensus is that it is a form of magic as well. Your reasoning doesn't apply.

I've never played a bard, so I'm not exactly arguing from anything other than considering the fact that the question admitted a spell with more options was stronger.

Less risky, sure, but also stronger.

Based on what I know, I wouldn't call Persuade a spell. I'd call it:

Persuade (Spell-like Ability): As Suggestion. (A level 3 spell)
Charm Person, of course, functioning more like Dominate Person. (A level 5 spell)

But then, its a different system. I could be mistaken in applying it here.

That's relatively close on the Persuade side, but it's a little closer to this VtM discipline at level 1.

EDIT: With one exception -- the Persuaded side will always react aggressively on a failed roll.

Just wanted to throw that out there, in case somone else didn't know about it too.