Shattered Kingdoms

Does int or cha judge your chance for a successful taunt?

That'd be charisma, or I'll eat my shorts.

Charisma makes your taunt more likely to land. Also, the higher your charisma, the more INT the person you've taunted loses as a result of taunt.

Also, you need at least a little INT as a swashbuckler because with very low INT, you will lose concentration on the taunt, and your victim will get away.

Yeah, all that crap too.

Does this mean I should max out CHA? or just throw a few points in it?

You can either max it, or keep it a certain amount (about 4 shy of max) and use an item to max it out. The important that is that charisma is maxed one way or the other.

Usually when I advise someone to either max or use items to max specific stats I tell them to take into consideration their own knowledge of the game and where they can obtain items that increase specific stats. For example, if you're not certain whether you want to modify dexterity or charisma or even intelligence with items, see if you know where to obtain items that would increase specific stats and choose according to that. If you know of plenty dexterity modifiers, then don't max it, or if you know a lot of charisma ones then don't max that, etc.