CHARISMA: Is it a dud score?

[ForceUser]

Charisma is the only stat that people cheat with. Hear me out on this one. Players will place a low stat in Charisma annd then not role play it out that way. And then DMs let them get away with this type of cheating. I've seen it plenty of times and games I've played and in conversations on these boards.

But it does depend on the type of game. If I run a heavy role playing game I as DM can make strength a useless stat. Or if I let player play dumb character smart, I can make Intelligence a useless stat.

Charisma is only a dud stat when the players cheat and the DMs allows them to get away with it. Or if the DM is just not a good DM and allows characters with negativbes that don't matter.

When I role-play NPCs, I keep a player character's Charisma score in mind as a filter on the conversation. A well-spoken player protraying a barbarian with an 8 Charisma is going to fare poorly when interacting with NPCs compared to a poorly-spoken player portraying a bard with an 18 Charisma. I've noticed that this tends to frustrate players of low-Charisma characters and delight players of high-Charisma characters. Thems the breaks--IMC, Charisma and Charisma-related skills matter. Of course, IMC I use dungeons sparingly, and I use a lot of NPCs.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Charisma is the only stat that people cheat with.

Indeed-e-do! I've never seen someone put an 8 in int and play their character as a scholar, or a 10 in Wis and want to be a deep and insightful type, but the number of folks who think they can be the center of every roleplaying encounter with an anemic cha is mindboggling. I think Cha is a weak stat because even if diplomacy and such does figure into a game, theres a decent chance that your DM will focus adjucation purely on "roleplaying" and as you say, let the cha dumpers cheat.

To look at it another way, very rarely will a player find himself in a situation where his specific character is depending on cha for a crucial situation when his character wasn't designed around cha. That is to say, while a player can choose to make Cha important by playing a sorcerer, he cannot choose to make Con unimportant in the same character. He cannot choose to play a character who doesn't need wis because he never makes will saves or one who never cares if he does well on an initiative roll and doesn't care about dex. So Cha is a score that (in most campaigns) a character can choose to have matter or not as opposed to one that will matter for every character in almost every campaign. By that reckoning, its definitly at the bottom of the ability heap.

 

[WayneLigon]

It used to be the dump stat because maybe one or two things ever used it, unless you were a Paladin. Since 3E, I think anything that continues to think of it as a dump stat is just not on the same page anymore. It's useful for every character class, really.

 

[Aeson]

It's not the size of your CHA, it's how you use it.

 

[Andor]

Agreed, but let's talk in more general terms, leaving class out of it.

There are at least two threads in House Rules at the moment that talk about making Charisma more useful, generally, but I really don't think it needs to be made more useful, no matter what class you are playing.

But leaving class out of it is missing the point of why it is a dump stat. Historically it was a dump stat in 1st and 2nd ed because it didn't really do anything for you. Sure a Paladin needed it, but only because the rules said so, not because he actually used it for anything. Mechanically CHR was almost meaningless.

This changed in 3rd edition where it effecs certain skills for all characters, but (here is the important part) not for skills all characters need. In the generic campaign the party really only needs one 'face' character. Since certain classes make use of a high charisma mechanically in 3e it makes perfect sense leave public interaction to the pretty boy character while your 1/2 orc barbarian lurks in the shadows and shuts up. Indeed if you think of each character from the stand point of party resources, it is wastefull of your 1/2 orc barb to put a high stat in Chr unless you have good rolls to burn. Otherwise he is less usefull than he could be at his primary job of chopping things to pieces and not dying. This is metagaming be sure, but it is the kind of metagaming that leads to sucessful parties.

So there are times in 3rd ed where CHR is your lowest priority stat because A) Your characters class makes no mechanical use of it and B) Bob is playing a Bard.

Nonetheless I don't think it's truely a Dump stat the way it was in prior editions. Then nobody really needed it, and the 'cheating' Crothian mentions was the order of the day. Now it's pretty much a certainty that at least one charatcer in the party and maybe half of them will have high charisma, even in the most dungeon crawly of campaigns.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

I've been tossing around a house rule for CHA....

Characters don't get action points normally.... they get action points equal to their charisma bonus, each time they level.

ForceUser, I think that looking at the characters relevant social skills is a better way to go than looking at the character's CHA. We don't take raw DEX into account when someone's trying to sneak, for instance.

Ken

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I completely agree. I like PCs to trie and RP their mental ability scores (paticuarly if they get to point buy them and decide what they are). Having a 6 charisma and expecting people to react just as they will to a guy with a 10 is like describing a strength 6 character as muscular.

In RP situations I try to keep the character's charisma in mind in addition to his appearance, relavent skill check if any and what the player actually says.

I also add a PCs charisma modifier on to the number of action points he gets so there is a mechanical combat edge to charisma for any PC.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Linking Action Points to CHR is clever. After all, those things are all about STYLE.

I make sure there are instances IMCs where the PC's really suffer if they don't have a high Cha. A high Cha will avoid encounters, get them treasure, persuade peasants to revolt, and enemies to flee. A low Cha will get them attacked, get them banned, make them poor, and make them hated.

Though I do think the biggest problem with CHA is that you can get things if you try for it, but if you don't try for it, you really don't suffer much most of the time.

 

[ForceUser]

I've been tossing around a house rule for CHA....

Characters don't get action points normally.... they get action points equal to their charisma bonus, each time they level.

ForceUser, I think that looking at the characters relevant social skills is a better way to go than looking at the character's CHA. We don't take raw DEX into account when someone's trying to sneak, for instance.

Ken

Cha skills are simply an extension of one's Charisma. How often do you see a low-Charisma character put points in Cha skills? Not that often. Thus, it's a valid yardstick in most cases.

 

[painandgreed]

Indeed-e-do! I've never seen someone put an 8 in int and play their character as a scholar, or a 10 in Wis and want to be a deep and insightful type...

Is that sarcasm, because I see that at least as much as I've seen people "cheat" with Charsima? At least for Charisma, there can be an excuse as no matter how friendly a player plays their character, they still can look ugly, smell bad, or come off as a perv. However, I've seen plenty of low Int and Wis players come up with detailed plans and brilaint tactics while taking meticulous notes so they can contribute more to the mystery solving than the magic-users or clerics.

All in all, however, I rarely see anybody go 8 or lower in any stat who doesn't plan to role play it. Most character generation systems are geared towards avoiding such low scores and most DMs will simply let you role up a new character if you ask.

Even then, how do you police something like that? How do you tell when a character is being played at a higher ability than what is roled besides what is taken in account due to the game mechanics? Fell like argueing with some player that he's being too friendly, intelligent, or wise and therefore couldn't come up with the idea he just had or say what he said? That sounds like that would be a worse source of DM/Player conflict than alignment.