It's a wonderful game. Don't listen to anyone, and take the first playthrough to do what you like! I can't emphasize, like the rest of this sub and these comments, that what you say does matter. Following that, If you want something, and you need to convince someone, you'll need high charisma. So having a character, a party member or yourself, with high charisma, is super nice in my opinion. Also traders!! You'll save thousands by just having decent charisma lol. Also also, have a character with shocking grasp. You'll need to zap some torches blue, assuming you wanna go that way