Confused... can't invest a full CP?

Good afternoon ladys and gentlemen.

I'm a lvl 31 Half-Elf Mage now, 100MA, didn't bother so far to invest even a single CP into something else than spells and some WP an DX. Good alignment (+54), just arrived in Caladon. UAP installed.

The Question is: I tried to invest 1 CP into Persuation, yet it just grants me a half of a point on that red scale indicatig the skill. Same for Haggle, but not for Heal, Gambling, Melee, Bow, Dodge, Throwing, all the Thieves skills, all normal behavior.

But the Tech skills (Firearms, Repair, ...) go up just 3/4 of a point. That makes kinda sense to me, since I'm a full blown mage and such, but Persuasion? I don't get it.

I'm not carrying any Items that hinder my abilities.

I do want the Persuasion skill for the negotiations between Caladon and Tarant, so i'll freeze CP distribution for now, until I gained more wisdom about that matter.

Should mention that I have never gotten that far before, both in level and story-wise. Always started a new char, experimenting skills , y'know.

Enlighten me.

Pics, or it didn't happen:

 

What's your background? They are the only things in the game that carry penalties to Persuasion. In any case I think you rectify it with a blessing (Kerlin's or Velorien's) or you can stick one point into to Therapeutics to make a Potion of Persuasion, which will give you the +2 skill (half a character point) you seem to be down by.

If it's not a background thing then it's a bug I've never seen before, but hopefully blessings still would solve it.

 

I think it was "Only Child", for that sweet WP bonus. Now I see... -2 Persuasion, -2 Haggle. That makes sense.

Is it hindering just the, say, first two points here or will this continue to the end? In other words: will I need 10 Points to max it out?

Edit: Forget the last sentence, had a no-brainer

 

You can only ever invest 5 points in a skill, so you'll only hit 4.5/5 character points or 18/20 in that skill (there's different and slightly confusing metrics unfortunately).

I think the easiest way to solve the problem is to get a Blessing to sort it out, either 5 character point investment + Kerlin's Blessing or 3 character points and Velorien's (however, I'm not 100% sure on this, attribute penalties on backgrounds don't affect attribute caps if you use boosters but I've never tested if it's a hard cap for skills that applies). Only Child makes it trickier to hit CH 20 too, but the Ring of Persuasion, Jewel of Hebe, Gypsy Blessing and Vivifier provide +6 to hit 20 - which offers some benefits in quest resolution (vs. the end boss and during the Persuasion Mastery quest).