Again another example of CHA as dump stat

[Lamoni]

But give someone an 8 Cha, and all of a sudden they're a cross between Urkel and a Uncle Fenster? Please. They're perfectly functional members of society that are slightly below average when it comes to one aspect of their personality.

I agree that they are very functional members of society. In fact, a player with an 8 Charisma probably wouldn't really care that they had an 8 charisma. Everything changes when you want to make that person a leader. People with an 8 charisma can definately get around, but they aren't leaders... at least not until they spend several ranks in leadership skills.

Comparing it with strength again, a person with 8 strength probably wouldn't do very well as a wrestler, or a boxer, or a football player. If they didn't care to do anything that demanded a lot of physical activity, they would function just fine in society. It only becomes a problem when you get really low like 4 or 5. Then you have trouble doing some basic tasks at home like moving your furniture over to clean behind it. The same thing goes with charisma. With a 4 or a 5, not only would you not be in any leadership role, you would have trouble making anyone like you enough to hire you, and you wouldn't be able to sell anything you made if you worked for yourself.

 

[DarkMaster]

The same thing goes with charisma. With a 4 or a 5, not only would you not be in any leadership role, you would have trouble making anyone like you enough to hire you, and you wouldn't be able to sell anything you made if you worked for yourself.

With charisma 8 and an average product you would also quickly be out of business, if your product is clearly superior you can afford to be rude and "weird" to your customer. You might even become an attraction (the soup guy (was it soup or Ice cream) in Seinfeld)

 

[mmu1]

For the people who've seen Happiness (by Todd Solondz (sp?)), how much CHA would you say Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character has?

If I start a story hour for the aforementioned adventurers (btw, their average CHA has dropped to 8.5), I'm going to call it "the CHA-as-a-dump-stat adventuring company".

AR

Not exactly the best example, considering that the character in question (along with several other people in that movie) is seriously mentally ill.

That's part of my point of why Charisma is a questionable stat - generally, the people who we notice as being significantly uncharismatic either a)Have sub-normal mental attributes across the board or b)Are, at the very least, nuerotic. (if not worse)

 

[DarkMaster]

Not exactly the best example, considering that the character in question (along with several other people in that movie) is seriously mentally ill.

That's part of my point of why Charisma is a questionable stat - generally, the people who we notice as being significantly uncharismatic either a)Have sub-normal mental attributes across the board or b)Are, at the very least, nuerotic. (if not worse)

What, you probably don't know half of my University teachers, some of them were extremely Intelligent, but when it was time to teach a class or animate a gala (they were not nuerotic either)

They could walk in a room full of people and at the end nobody would remember they were there

 

[Hardhead]

Your confusing hero with epic, mythical hero. You can be a hero with regular stats, but you aren't going to be Persesus, Sir Launcelot, Arthur, Aragorn, or Beowulf on 32 points. At least no version I would call true.

Maxing at out 32 point buy shows the game designers haven't really a clue how a good a real human being can be much less one that is a Hero of Legend.

I strongly disagree. Let's take Beowulf. He fought a dragon and other assorted monsters. Sounds like any D&D character to me. I don't see what's so special about that. My characters do it every day.

A 16th level fighter, using 28 point-buy can mow through a horde of 1-3 level "normal" warrior NPCs, without taking hardly any damage. In fact, he'd probably be able to literally wipe out an army that had no high level guys on their side. That sounds mythical-epic to me!

Stats aren't everything.

 

[FireLance]

It prolly depends on playing style - in high combat chr will always be a dump stat.

My house rule for avoiding Charisma as a dump stat in my high-combat game is to use a variant action point system from Unearthed Arcana. Characters get action points equal to 5 + 1/2 level + Charisma modifier at 1st level and every time they gain a level, and the maximum number of action points a character can have at any one time is capped at Charisma + level.

 

[Abisashi]

My house ruleCharacters get action points equal to 5 + 1/2 level + Charisma modifier at 1st level and every time they gain a level, and the maximum number of action points a character can have at any one time is capped at Charisma + level.

I was planning on doing something like this, so I think I'll just steal this wholesale.


Adventurers having a low charisma in general doesn't bother me; since they don't fit into society as well, they go adventuring. I would agree that a great leader should have a high cha, however.

 

[mmu1]

My house rule for avoiding Charisma as a dump stat in my high-combat game is to use a variant action point system from Unearthed Arcana. Characters get action points equal to 5 + 1/2 level + Charisma modifier at 1st level and every time they gain a level, and the maximum number of action points a character can have at any one time is capped at Charisma + level.

Wow. That's really... awful. Just penalize everyone who's not a Bard, Paladin or Sorcerer for not making their characters conform to your idea of what the right way of assigning stats is.

If you so desperately want everyone to have a good Charisma, just give everyone at least a 12, and boost the dump stats of people who already picked high Charisma scores the same way.

 

[Enkhidu]

Darkmaster touched on Seinfeld earlier with his soup guy comment, and it occured to me that sitcoms are a very good way to get some common ground on CHA - the characters are well known and easily read. I'm going to strectch back afew years and use Cheers.

Let's look at some of the cast:

Sam - This guy is basically a doofus, and in a lot of ways he knows it. But, everyone seems to like him, and he's everyone's hero, so much so that people often expect more out of him than he's actually able to give. I'd peg him at 13 or 14.

Diane - Loud, opinionated, aloof - she's everything that you'd think of as having a low CHA, right? Wrong - no how much people might dislike Diane, the notice her. People pay attention to her, just not in a good way all the time. CHA 12.

NORM! - To me, Norm is the epitome of a high CHA character. Everyone knows him, and its like he's immediately everyone's best friend. That people shout his name the moment he walks through the door only reinforces his CHA. 15.

Cliff - Cliff the mailman is an obnoxious know it all, and I always had the distinct impression that if he didn't always chime in with an inane comment now and then he'd be much forgotten. Cliff used CHA as his dump stat - CHA 9.

That other guy - you know who I'm talking about. Heavy set, glasses, had a line in almost every episode. The guy was completely forgettable, so much so that I doubt anyone knows his name. He had absolutely no presence. To me that means CHA 7

I'd suggest trying this with other well known characters, to develop consensus.

 

[mmu1]

I strongly disagree with that one. What would you replace it with? Charisma represent your ability to influence people around you. an 8 charisma character is able to live in society but has no charm he can enter when he talks people get bored, people will usually ignore his comment. Yes he can live in society but he has a hard time influencing it without using physical ability. Like any other character he can train to become better at those things (by taking skills) but will always be behind someone with higher charisma and similar training.

I started to game in pbp one with a sorcerer with 20 CHA and the other with 8 charisma. I try to roleplay them accordingly and I have fun with the two of them. The sorcerer can actually could actually sell the Grand Canyon to a resident of the place and the others has a hard time expressing his opinion in the group.

Concerning the 80 pounds you have to take into consideration that the average person can lift 107 pounds, and that 10-11 Charisma is for average person. Taking old measures from older editions for intelligence :10-11 was 100-110 IQ which is the average person now Int 8 is 80 IQ. Don't know if you know some people with 80 IQ but let me tell you that they are pretty dumb, they can live in society but barely, I used the same measured for Charisma.

I wouldn't necessarily replace it with anything, because the system is based around, and it'd be more trouble than it's worth - too many classes depend on it for special abilities and spellcasting. I just don't believe in making people jump through hoops for the sake of a flawed game mechanic.

Still, my idea of a better system is one where Charismatic is an advantage and Uncharismatic a flaw. Or, if we're still sticking to d20, a system in which you take, for example, a feat called Born Leader that gives you a +4 bonus on all social skills related to leading people, one called Master Merchant gives you a +4 bonus on checks relating to using social skills in doing business, etc.

This, because I don't believe (if we're sticking to real life examples) that the idea of having a "golden boy" who's charismatic and as a result good at seduction, diplomacy, threatening people, bluffing in combat, cheating at cards, dancing, singing, playing an instrument, and using magical devices makes any sense whatsoever.
The world's best violin player is not also the greates ladies' man of all time, and a big hollywood star with a million dollar smile doesn't necessarily have what it takes to lead soldiers into combat any better than the next guy. Your invisible professor might be the center of attention when surrounded by colleagues in his field, instead of teaching undergrads because he has to.

We're stuck with this crappy system mainly because in 2E, charisma did almost nothing, so instead of saying "what's the best way of fixing this ability system?" the 3.0 designers said (it seems to me): "We want to keep the same six stats for the sake of continuity - how can we make Charisma as important mechanically as some of the other stats?"

Not to mention that your examples continue to be absolute caricatures and exaggerations of what it means to have a Charisma of 8 or 20. A 20 means you can convince someone black is white? Get serious, he has the same skill modifier as a 1st level character with maxed ranks and 12 Cha - in other words, nothing special. Someone with an 8 charisma can't stay in business? It's gonna hit the mousy Indian guy who barely speaks a word of English that I've been buying coffee from every morning for the last few years really hard when I tell him he's destined for failure. :\