Charisma, still the poor stat!

[Victim]

Re: Re: Re: will saves man, will saves

Um... no.

Wisdom is used in a lot of very important skills. Heal, Innuendo, Intuit Direction, Listen, Profession, Sense Motive, Spot, and Wilderness Lore are ALL based on Wisdom. Sense Motive, Spot, and Listen are among the most-used skills of all.

Wisdom is used as the casting stat for clerics, druids, rangers, and paladins.

Wisdom sets the AC bonus for monks.

Even without the Save Bonus coming from Wisdom, that stat has a lot going for it.

CHA is used in a lot of important skills. Diplomacy, Bluff, Gather Info, USE MAGIC DEVICE, Perform, Intimidate, and Disguise are ALL based on CHA. Use magic Device opens lots of doors for bards and rogues. Without Intimidate, the bad-ass adventurers don't get the respect they think they deserve.

Cha is the basis for sorcerer and bard spellcasting.

CHA is the primary stat for paladin Lay on Hands, Smite, and Divine Grace. CHA affects Turn Undead. It can affect a rogue's ability to sneak attack. CHA also indirectly aids the potency of bardic fascination and hence suggestion.

CHA also helps the Leadership feat, which is probably the single most powerful feat in the game.

 

[EOL]

Re: Re: Re: will saves man, will saves

Um... no.

Wisdom is used in a lot of very important skills. Heal, Innuendo, Intuit Direction, Listen, Profession, Sense Motive, Spot, and Wilderness Lore are ALL based on Wisdom. Sense Motive, Spot, and Listen are among the most-used skills of all.

Wisdom is used as the casting stat for clerics, druids, rangers, and paladins.

Wisdom sets the AC bonus for monks.

Even without the Save Bonus coming from Wisdom, that stat has a lot going for it.

Um... yes.

As Victim already pointed out all of the things you mentioned with respect to wisdom are equally true for charisma, if not even a little more so. It might be tempting to thing that trading the will save modifier to charisma is a quick and easy fix, but it's not. The only way to make charisma important is for the DM to make an effort in game, and for the other players to make an effort.

Any game which is merely hack and slash and charisma becomes a non-issue.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Re: Re: Re: Re: will saves man, will saves

Um... yes.

As Victim already pointed out all of the things you mentioned with respect to wisdom are equally true for charisma, if not even a little more so. It might be tempting to thing that trading the will save modifier to charisma is a quick and easy fix, but it's not. The only way to make charisma important is for the DM to make an effort in game, and for the other players to make an effort.

Any game which is merely hack and slash and charisma becomes a non-issue.

Making Cha the Will save would more evenly split the combat related rolls.

Spot, Listen, and Will are the most valuable mental skills for a hack & slash machine.

If you want to discourage dumpstating, then it is logical to split these skills up from a balance perspective.

I am not a fan of Cha for Will myself. I think a better route would be to have Intimidate affect some NPC decisions in combat, not all the time just when it would more or less be a flip of the coin.

 

[Schmoe]

Another trick I use regards negotiations gone sour. If, during negotiations, one player yells out that he wants to attack, I have him make a Bluff check opposed by the opponents' Sense Motive checks. Those opponents who successfully sense the character's intention to attack are not surprised.

If only one player yells it out, his fellow players must also make Sense Motive checks to see if they could sense the attack. If they fail, they are also surprised.

If the players had worked out beforehand that they would all attack on a given signal, none of them need to make Sense Motive checks, but they all need to make Bluff checks, and the opponents need only beat the lowest roll to prevent being surprised.

This works in reverse, giving characters a chance to not be automatically surprised when an NPC suddenly attacks during negotiations. If there are many NPC's (say, a tribe of 20 orcs), I will assume that most or all of the NPC's take 10 on the Bluff or Sense Motive checks.

Regardless, in these situations I always play the first round as a surprise round, ie partial actions only.

 

[CWD]

I say Charisma should also represent LUCK, not just a winning smile.

How about using Charisma to modify rolls used for random treasure determination?

Average the party's Cha score, and multiply the corresponding stat modifier by 5 (this may require some tweaking), and apply that as a modifier to treasure rolls (this means low Cha groups will have a negative modifier to treasure rolls). Now, most importantly... TELL THEM ABOUT IT.

Of course, this only works if you use random treasure...

 

[LostSoul]

One interesting idea might be to use Cha for the initiative bonus (instead of Dex).

This gives me an interesting idea. What if you put some kind of "Social Combat" into the game? This would be a way of handling social encounters just like the combat mechanics handle physical ones.

I have no idea how it would work or what effects it would make on the game, but it's an interesting idea (to me, at least ).

 

[Ace]

Some things should be obvious from the rules I've posted:

1. It really pays to have a high-charisma PC cultivate a long-term relationship with an honest merchant. A 17th level paladin with a 33 charisma with 21 ranks in Diplomacy can probably convince a samurai to loan him his ancestral sword for a couple of days, so it wouldn't be too surprising that he can get credit from most merchants if he needs to (especially since not paying back may cost him his paladinhood!).

2. Low-charisma groups with no Diplomacy ranks will quickly run out of people to sell to unless they make a habit of saving their daughters from orcs and such (and even then they may have to deal with suspicion and "unfriendly" status).

3. Only one high-charisma PC is really required. I normally require that PC to enter the shop alone, or the extra PC's automatically attempt "Hinder Other" maneuvers (-2 to main PC's Diplomacy for each other PC who fails a DC 10 Diplomacy check). About 1-2 times in the campaign, this separation is taken advantage of (not so often as to seem unfair).

4. The rules don't account for dishonest merchants or those on the "lower planes" level of the alignment chart. I figure these are special cases where the DM will rig specific results anyway. Nailing the merchant down to "unfriendly" with no real chance of changing it seems to be a good start.

Those are decent suggestions but I prefer to use a carrot and not a stick when dealing with the charisma as a dump stat issue

Wht I do is give a small bonus on haggling and in general treatment to high charisma, high social skills characters. I give a small penalty to the low ones.

The reason I don't go for "NPC's treating the low CHA PC badly" is that stuff like that is not a good idea past low levels.

If NPC's treat the PC's like dirt when they didn't act like dirt there will be consequences later on

Good PC's will just go elsewhere, proably back home where people at least know them and when the Dragon raid comes well, the PC's are too busy with the harvest, shoe shop whatever

Neutral PC's will eat the loss than if a time comes either get soft revenge (Not an Evil act IMC) by gouging the heck out of the needy villagers IE "Please help us defeat the dragon good sir"
"Ok it will cost you half of the the valuables in your village"
or the dread word "No, deal with Brazamaal yourself." followed with "next time try being nice to people"

Evil PC's may just lay down a curse or kill all the village livestock or if they are far enough away from civilizaton and high nough level, kill everyone in the village

As far as citys, there is always another Smith....

 

[Humanophile]

I say Charisma should also represent LUCK, not just a winning smile...

I've been wanting something like this, for a couple of reasons. Charisma is also your "cinematic" stat, and while the mooks get shot by the dozen, the star seems to get left unsupervised in an easily escapable deathtrap.

Hmmm, anyone want to help make up DC's for typical "luck checks" for when the players want something to happen and the DM hasn't made his mind up?

 

[LostSoul]

Hmmm, anyone want to help make up DC's for typical "luck checks" for when the players want something to happen and the DM hasn't made his mind up?

I don't know about "luck checks"... but you could give PCs an extra 1d6 for each Charisma bonus they've got. They could add a d6 onto any d20 roll during the adventure. Something like that might encourage high Charisma PCs.

 

[reapersaurus]

I've been wanting to contribute to this thread for a couple days, but it took this long to get to my computer at home to dredge up this thread I saved last year on this same exact topic.

There are some good ideas, if anyone wants.
In my eyes, the Fate Points approach is quite appealing, and switching the Will save to CHA and the initiative bonus to WIS is also interesting.

Giving re-rolls a CHA-bonus times per day also looks good.
I disagree that it would unbalance anything.
IMO, the Luck domain power of re-rolling once per day is VERY underpowered.

P.S. I apologize that I can't attach the original html file.
It doesn't allow html files to be added - that sux.