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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5337674" data-attributes="member: 4937">Under my rules, charisma does all of the following for you:1) Spells for Sorcerers, Shamans, Feyborne, and Bards.2) Channel divine power for Clerics.3) Base stat for most Champion class powers.4) Base stat for a wide variaty of social skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Empathy, Intimidate, Leadership and Performance.5) Determines your bonus number of destiny points.&nbsp; Destiny points can be spent in a variaty of ways to mitigate the effects of bad dice rolls.6) Basis of combat feats that focus on intimidation, aggression, trickery and providing leadership.The basic problem with charisma is that if all it does is enhance social interaction, only one person in the party needs it.&nbsp; Everyone else can pull dark cloaks over their heads, stand back and let the party negotiator handle in of the tricky stuff while they play the part of the ugly nasty looking stupid looking henchmen (and in some cases, looks need not be decieving).&nbsp; The secondary problem with charisma is that it depends on the GM to make charisma relevant.&nbsp;&nbsp; Too many DMs take the tact that what you are supposed to do is fight.&nbsp; If you don't fight, you aren't rewarded with XP.&nbsp; If you try diplomacy when you aren't supposed to, it inevitably fails to yield a meaningful result.&nbsp; I basically think D20/D&amp;D handles charisma all right.&nbsp; The basic problem is hard to overcome.&nbsp; The secondary problem can't be overcome by rule changes alone.&nbsp; The trick I think is not to focus on making it never a dump stat, but making it a stat that can be rewarding for players of every class so that it doesn't have to be a dump stat.&nbsp; The core of my approach to that is destiny/action points and a reasonably useful combat feat tree that depends on charisma.&nbsp; The secondary approach to that is to make the list of skills that end up as class skills for your character somewhat more flexible, so that it requires relatively little sacrifice to end up with social skills on your class list.&nbsp; It's not necessary, and probably not even desirable, to have a charisma based fighter be as effective as a strength based combat brute, all that is necessary is to provide ways for a fighter to get some advantage in combat out of high charisma to go along with the large out combat advantages he gains.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 5337674, member: 4937"] Under my rules, charisma does all of the following for you: 1) Spells for Sorcerers, Shamans, Feyborne, and Bards. 2) Channel divine power for Clerics. 3) Base stat for most Champion class powers. 4) Base stat for a wide variaty of social skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Empathy, Intimidate, Leadership and Performance. 5) Determines your bonus number of destiny points. Destiny points can be spent in a variaty of ways to mitigate the effects of bad dice rolls. 6) Basis of combat feats that focus on intimidation, aggression, trickery and providing leadership. The basic problem with charisma is that if all it does is enhance social interaction, only one person in the party needs it. Everyone else can pull dark cloaks over their heads, stand back and let the party negotiator handle in of the tricky stuff while they play the part of the ugly nasty looking stupid looking henchmen (and in some cases, looks need not be decieving). The secondary problem with charisma is that it depends on the GM to make charisma relevant. Too many DMs take the tact that what you are supposed to do is fight. If you don't fight, you aren't rewarded with XP. If you try diplomacy when you aren't supposed to, it inevitably fails to yield a meaningful result. I basically think D20/D&D handles charisma all right. The basic problem is hard to overcome. The secondary problem can't be overcome by rule changes alone. The trick I think is not to focus on making it never a dump stat, but making it a stat that can be rewarding for players of every class so that it doesn't have to be a dump stat. The core of my approach to that is destiny/action points and a reasonably useful combat feat tree that depends on charisma. The secondary approach to that is to make the list of skills that end up as class skills for your character somewhat more flexible, so that it requires relatively little sacrifice to end up with social skills on your class list. It's not necessary, and probably not even desirable, to have a charisma based fighter be as effective as a strength based combat brute, all that is necessary is to provide ways for a fighter to get some advantage in combat out of high charisma to go along with the large out combat advantages he gains. [/QUOTE]

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