A Disconnect with CHR?

[Water Bob]

You can be low Cha and skilled at things like bluffing or intimidating- just take ranks in those skills.

I said naturally good at feint. Ranks in skills denote learned experience. Bonus from stat denotes natural ability.

I'm saying that I think a person can be not be a good leader (low CHR) but be good at the melee feint, and not having trained in either. Not naturally gifted with a powerful personality but naturally gifted at performing the feint.

Neither circumstance speaks to skill ranks.

Explain to me why they later introduced "trait" mechanic doesn't handle the scar in a way that comports with your sense of how it should work?

Trait mechanic? You mean the circumstance bonus?

 

[Arrowhawk]

I said naturally good at feint. Ranks in skills denote learned experience. Bonus from stat denotes natural ability.

I'm saying that I think a person can be not be a good leader (low CHR) but be good at the melee feint, and not having trained in either. Not naturally gifted with a powerful personality but naturally gifted at performing the feint.

So my response is that what you are lobbying for is a change in how the feint mechanic works or the attribute it's based on.

Since you want it to be "natural" it still could be based on a "trait." A trait is like a personality or physical quality in the character which permanently affects one or more skills. It would make someone "naturally" better at something than someone without the trait. For fairness purposes, the trait has to have positive and negative modifiers on logically related/opposed skills.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I said naturally good at feint.

Which is why I brought up my experiences as a guitarist. I have a natural gift for the instrument.

But that natural gift only takes you so far: to actually be good- good enough for people to remark on your ability, to make money at it- that all takes training.

Despite his natural gifts, MJ didn't just walk off the streets and wow the world with his basketball skills. Jimi Hendrix didn't just pick up a guitar and revolutionize rock & roll. Conan wasn't born with the stamina, strength and blade mastery to enable him to kill dozens of men in a given combat.

All of that took practice.

If you want a PC who is naturally good at something, give him the high(ish) stat and no training, and he'll be better at the skill than most of his contemporaries...but eventually, he'll be forgotten as a failure if he doesn't train.

Besides, its arguable whether you can truly call a high Cha PC a true leader without the Leadership Feat in D&D. Sure, a PC may have a talent for it, but without that last ingredient, he just doesn't quite have what it takes.

 

[Water Bob]

So my response is that what you are lobbying for is a change in how the feint mechanic works or the attribute it's based on.

"Lobbying" is a not the word. I'd use "questioning".

I'm am questioning if the rules is good the way it is or really needs to be changed.

Which is why I brought up my experiences as a guitarist. I have a natural gift for the instrument.

But that natural gift only takes you so far:

I think it's a function of the stats having too wide a reach.

A high DEX, for example, makes you naturally gifted at getting loose after being hog tied (Escape Artist), Hiding, Balancing, and at Opening Locks. Yet, all those functions are widely different requiring different physical dextrous skills.

I guess we're back to the granularity issue you spoke of earlier.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I guess we're back to the granularity issue you spoke of earlier.

As one of my Norherner buddies would say, "Ayup."

2Ed had some optional rules that split each stat in two, but it never gained any real support with the D&D crowd.

 

[jasper]

Why after 3 pages has no one suggested switching the 7 out with 9, or 12, or x?
And I disagree with your "paladin" view of Cha. Remember the EGG pt out that Hitler would have an 18 in Cha. And he looks like a wimpy manager of local gaming store.

 

[Water Bob]

2Ed had some optional rules that split each stat in two, but it never gained any real support with the D&D crowd.

I remember that. I wasn't a fan of those optional rules either.

Why after 3 pages has no one suggested switching the 7 out with 9, or 12, or x?
And I disagree with your "paladin" view of Cha. Remember the EGG pt out that Hitler would have an 18 in Cha. And he looks like a wimpy manager of local gaming store.

It very well could be that my view of CHR was skewed then, too. The paladin view of CHR is just always how my group has viewed the stat. Because the earlier editions didn't do much with stats, and the description of the stat (as it does now) mentions physical beauty, we never thought of an evil necromancer leading a horde of cultists as having an 18 CHR.

That's the one thing about my view of CHR that has changed since I started this thread.