CHARISMA: Is it a dud score?

[Justin Bacon]

Core, the Diplomacy skill is GREAT for breaking the game. The fact that the DC doesn't change or scale means after a while, you can make friends of enemies and the like. The RAW don't much give GMs help for adjudicating a PC who can very often take a Hostile creature and make it Helpful.

Frankly, I consider the Diplomacy skill by RAW to just be flat-out busted. Key failings include:

- If you have even a single rank of Diplomacy, you will NEVER make a situation worse. Ever. Your friends will be your friends forever. Negotiations will never turn sour.

- The rules implicitly state that a simple Diplomacy check resolves negotiations as an opposed check. But there are absolutely no guidelines or insights given into what that means. Did the guy who "gains the advantage" have to make any concessions? Or do they just get what they want?

- More generally, the skill lacks any way to model firmly held beliefs and the like. Whether you're Dr. Phil or a member of the KKK, Oprah Winfrey is equally likely to make either one of your friendly. It doesn't matter if the person is hostile towards you because you killed their family; they'll forgive you 25% of the time (even if you're completely unskilled and have an average Charisma).

- No provisions are given for truth and falsity. It doesn't matter whether you're arguing that Jeffrey Dahmer was secretly the Easter Bunny or if you're arguing that George W. Bush is the President of the United States... your chance of convincing the other person is exactly the same!

What I would prefer to see is a Persuasion skill. You would use the skill to convince people of things that are true. (If you're trying to convince them of something that's false, that would be a Bluff check.) The person you're trying to convince would make a Sense Motive check against DC 20, and if they succeed you'd gain a +2 circumstance bonus to your check (because they can sense your honesty).

Justin Alexander Bacon
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[ForceUser]

I see it all the time in D20 Modern. I started a Three Kingdoms campaign recently, and the most diplomatic character is a Fast/Dedicated Hero with Diplomacy as an occupation skill - and a Charisma of 12. He achieved Diplomacy scores of 30 at least twice in the second session.

I think our ideas of what constitutes a low score differ--in my world, if you don't have a negative modifier, it's not low.

 

[Squidibus]

It occurs to me that one way to make Charisma a lot less of a dump stat is to have plenty of Charisma damaging/draining attacks about. While players can deal with their characters being killed or immobile with a mere "Crap. Make sure he gets rez'd, guys", they deal with the impetus-lacking, totally persuadible CHA-0 condition in a much less composed manner.

 

[Justin Bacon]

Prompted by this thread, I took a look at the character sheets in the two games I'm GMing at the moment: among nine player characters, only one took CHA as a dump stat (which I'm defining as CHA <10 ).

I think it would be more useful to look at how many characters Charisma is either the lowest or the second to lowest score.

Justin Alexander Bacon
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[Andor]

And I should mention that while chr is the most dumpable stat, in my last game out of a party of 5 my character had the second lowest charisma, with a 16. My highest stat (tied with con) even though I was the party meat shield. Why? Because my monk/hexblade/Initiate of the draconic mysteries could use a high Charisma. It added to my saving throws vs spells. It determined class ability DCs and even radius for dragon fear. It was the base stat for used skills.

The rest of the party? Warlock, Paladin, Cleric, Druid. Only the druid dumped chr.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I think our ideas of what constitutes a low score differ--in my world, if you don't have a negative modifier, it's not low.

He could have done the same thing with a Charisma score of 8.

 

[Crothian]

Diplomacy owns Charisma hands-on when it comes to social skills. Ranks just give you a much higher bonus than your ability score. I'd rather take 5 ranks in Diplomacy with Charisma 10 than no ranks in Diplomacy with Charisma 15.

Well, I imagine most people would perfer to get +5 to diplomacy then +2

 

[ForceUser]

He could have done the same thing with a Charisma score of 8.

My point is, he probably wouldn't have. IME players ignore most skills in their non-optimized stats. I would argue that your player is the exception, not the rule.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, depends very much on the campaign - the last time that I ran a game for an 'all ugly' party they wondered why all the NPCs were so stingy, mean and uninformative - and I run a game that is heavy with such skills as Gather Information, Diplomacy, and Disguise... not getting the info hurts.

The Auld Grump

 

[The Shaman]

I think it would be more useful to look at how many characters Charisma is either the lowest or the second to lowest score.

The initial poster specifically mentioned the practice of taking CHA as a dump stat. I don't know what the consensus opinion among d20 gamers is, but taking an average or better score in any ability doesn't qualify as a dump stat: the players are saying they may not emphasize CHA, but it's important enough mechanically and/or as a roleplaying marker to warrant an average score at minimum.

Also, "lowest to second lowest" is rather meaningless if a character has three 10s, for example.

I think your point is, that more players take a lower score in Charisma than in other abilities. My response is, so what? My feeling is that's pretty reasonable if you look at game-world demographics - rough-and-ready types become adventurers, high CHA folks go into business or civic affairs rather than take up a life of sweating a lot and getting shot at quite often.

In any case I'm not seeing CHA as what I consider a dump stat.