Alternate Charisma Uses

[ARandomGod]

I meantion my personal fav method for increasing the importance of charisma anytime I see someone asking, so I'll repeat myself here.

^_^

I suggest changing which saves are tied to which stats.

Keep fort on Con. That seems the best place for it and the stat is used for little else (Few skills, mostly just HP's and fort saves)

Remove reflex from Dex. Dex is one of the most full stats in the game. It's overloaded in my opinion. Tons of skills are tied to it, AC, ranged attack, potentially melee attack. Plus how are you supposed to make that reflex save when you don't know what you're making it against (ie when you're flatfooted).

Move the Reflex save to Wisdom, after taking away will saves. Wis is about perceptions. If you *percieve* the best spot to stand in a fireball where you'd only take half (or sometimes where you'd manage to completely avoid) damage... if you just have a hunch to move in just this way... if you pull back from a trap before you know that it's a trap. That's how I see this reflex save working. On the other hand, wisdom is no longer about will at all. Charisma is your force of will, your personality.

Give the will save to charisma. It really makes the most sense there. AND it gives every class a reason to want at least SOME charisma.

 

[Felnar]

if someone with low Charisma always relies on the rest
of the party for Charisma actions, the DM should occasionally
have the party be serperated, or maybe everyone gets captured
except for the low Charisma (who's going to have troubles
talking the sheriff into releasing them)

 

[Technik4]

ARandomGod: Actually, if you move both Reflex Saves and Initiative to Wis (allowing for one class, like Rogue to use Dex for Wis), then that makes a lot of sense. Rogues will still have high Reflex saves inherently, but their main stat (usually Dex) won't contribute, sorta like Wizards Int doesnt make their will save any better (but clerics and sorcerers will get save boosts).

Technik

 

[ARandomGod]

ARandomGod: Actually, if you move both Reflex Saves and Initiative to Wis (allowing for one class, like Rogue to use Dex for Wis), then that makes a lot of sense. Rogues will still have high Reflex saves inherently, but their main stat (usually Dex) won't contribute, sorta like Wizards Int doesnt make their will save any better (but clerics and sorcerers will get save boosts).

Technik

Initiative too.
Yess... that would be a very *powerful* move, and makes a lot of sense. Too bad we couldn't justify giving initiative to Charisma.

On the other hand, you're correct in noting that Clerics and Sorcs would get a boost. Not really an issue with the not too powerful (IMO) sorc, but the cleric's already pretty powerful, and this would only increase it's power further, as they traditionally benifit from wisdom and charisma, and traditionally don't rely on dex. Yet on the gripping hand, I don't have a real problem with increasing the general power of the cleric.

 

[Terath Ninir]

Initiative too.
Yess... that would be a very *powerful* move, and makes a lot of sense. Too bad we couldn't justify giving initiative to Charisma.

Go back up and read my first post, then. I *did* justify giving it to Charisma, and I think my case is stronger than the Reflex-to-Wisdom case.

 

[ARandomGod]

Go back up and read my first post, then. I *did* justify giving it to Charisma, and I think my case is stronger than the Reflex-to-Wisdom case.

Hrmm... you did. And it's an ok point there too. Charisma being the force of personality, how well you inhabit your body, how quick you are to react, how witty you are, etcetera.

I started out with the moving the willpower to cha, but I had a similiar problem with thinking that underpowered Wis... but taking away reflex from dex doesn't underpower that.

Would taking away both reflex and initiative?

No, I think instead that would move initiative back down to the level of the other stats.

 

[CM]

In all my campaigns, a Charisma of 13 or higher gives you 3 action points per level rather than 2. This helps add a mechanics advantage to Charisma, without giving a huge benefit to paladins and sorcerers.

In addition, I make sure that Charisma comes into play often in other situations. For my new Dark Sun campaign, I gave the players each a wild talent, a generous point-buy total and lots of bonus feats to offset the scarcity of magic. I also warned them not to make one-sided characters since everything will be new and different. The tarek melee monster began to regret his 6 charisma pretty quickly when the pack of zhackals started to ego whip him.

I'm running the Freedom module currently. Negotiations and intimidation are gravely important in places. The PCs need to make as many allies as possible, and I've had even fighter-types begin putting cross-class ranks in bluff, diplomacy, and sense motive.

 

[Al]

However, if a character with an 8 Cha blusters about and is arrogant (which could be defined as low charisma, if it generally led to poor reactions) and I ask him to roll a Diplomacy check to not insult someone (or some similar social roll) and he rolls a '20', he has effectively negated that low score in that situation.

Whilst I fully appreciate the tired old dead horse that Charisma is not equivalent to Appearance, I would strongly refute the assertion that Charisma cannot be readily gauged. Most people could hazard an intuitive guess upon first meeting someone what ball-park figure their Charisma would be: the way they convey themselves, pride in their appearance, self-confidence, tone of voice, mannerisms, body language, appearance itself*, warmth in their handshake, eye contact, intonation, speed and flow of speech, etc. ad naus.

* Appearance remains a component part of Charisma even if it is not the totality.

The point that I was making is that the DM should raise appropriate non-mechanical bonuses and penalties to make Charisma a worthwhile option. Needless to say, it will never achieve equivalency with all ability scores for all classes: the barbarian is almost likely to choose Str over Cha. Yet the point is to ensure that someone is foregone if a low score is placed in Charisma, or a positive benefit derived if a high score assigned to it. The problem at the moment - the reason why it screams dump stat - is because for many characters there is absolutely no detriment whatsoever in slapping a pitifully low score in Charisma. It is the role of the DM to ensure that there is a tangible negative to having a low Charisma, in order to bring it in line with every other ability in the game. I would argue that this is best achieved through social mechanisms rather than alterations in the mechanics (cf. initiative, Will saves) since it more closely models the underlying notion of the ability score itself in my view. Of course, Charisma is a thorny issue itself, since people define it differently. To my mind, Charisma is the ability to shape the world to one's desires in a non-material fashion, primarily through social interaction, but also manifested via the Charisma-based spellcasters.

 

[Technik4]

Most people could hazard an intuitive guess upon first meeting someone what ball-park figure their Charisma would be: the way they convey themselves, pride in their appearance, self-confidence, tone of voice, mannerisms, body language, appearance itself*, warmth in their handshake, eye contact, intonation, speed and flow of speech, etc. ad naus.

I agree to an extent. I was told in a class that statistics show that most people make judgements about someone they meet in the first 3 seconds. 3 seconds! This is where the blustering is most pronounced, you decide immediately how you feel about someone (without knowing their stat sheet) in the first 3 seconds (or 10 seconds, or whatever, but nearly immediately) and if they are acting in a way not reflective of their Charisma (or, better yet, perhaps they are just in a different mood), they will be innaccurately judged. First impressions are lasting.

For instance: The social mastermind rogue is feeling down. His girlfriend was kidnapped while he was dungeoneering and when they arrived in full force to free her, the villain had already killed her. The villain plead for mercy, saying he had been possessed by a demon at the time. They spared the villain who was currently awaiting trial.

The LG fighter had argued fiercely for mercy against the villain, and was pleased when the party agreed not to kill him (and give him a fair trial). Generally people don't pay attention to him, but thanks to the less coarse words of the druid they were able to convince the mostly indifferent wizard.

After all this, they are invited to see the mayor/king/guy-in-charge. The rogue is melancholy over losing the love-of-his-life, and almost refuses to go, but finally acquiesces since he knows it would be bad form to not be there. The guy-in-charge announces they are heroes of the land/kingdom/town and gives them a big reward, then would like to speak to them privately about the next mission/job/problem.

Would you give a circumstance negative to the rogue (and possibly a positive to the fighter)? The fighter is exuberant over his latest moral 'victory', and while he feels bad for his friend, the rogue, he knows in time the pain will fade. Meanwhile the rogue is not himself, feeling extremely glum and not the outgoing diplomat he usually is.

This is a fictional scenario (and rather poor, I made it up on the spot), but my point is there are many conditions under which NPCs could get the entirely wrong impression of a PC. Would this happen in every encounter? No. I'm just pointing out that Charisma will always be a dump stat unless it is given mechanical signifcance because you can overcome it through roleplaying and lucky dice rolls. How/why?

There are many average charisma landowners, entrepaneurs, politicians, etc etc. They got there using their brains, brawn, or economic status instead of their 'natural personality'. These people may not always rise to the very top (although I would contest that they never do), but they have almost as much chance as someone who is a little more people-person/outgoing/savvy/what-have-you.

Technik

 

[iwatt]

What if people with low charisma are more likely to be attacked in combat? Lots of times the enmy has choices of whom to attack, so they now attack the low charisma guys first.

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