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Message: <blockquote data-quote="procproc" data-source="post: 6862349" data-attributes="member: 6791328">I'm really surprised no one in this discussion has brought up the drift in the definitions of Wisdom and Charisma since OD&D days.I don't have my books in front of me, so I can't provide quotes, but I can provide impressions. Until 3e, Chr was supposed to represent social skill. IIRC, in the early days, it was used as a proxy for general appearance/attractiveness, at least until Comeliness was introduced in Unearthed Arcana. There weren't any classes that really focused on using Chr, so the mechanical benefits were limited, and it was often the "dump stat" for a lot of players. Wisdom was a measure of being, well, wise and insightful -- a somewhat ambiguous definition, except as being the prime requisite for clerics. (I believe I remember a line in the BECMI basic player's guide to the effect that "Intelligence tells you it's raining; Wisdom tells you to come in out of the rain.") With the advent of 3e, Chr had a kind of "power grab" as far as mechanical utility, and with that came an expansion in the idea of Charisma. It was no longer just about being persuasive and socially competent; suddenly, Chr became a measure of the strength of your personality. At the same time, with Wisdom being keyed to 3e's frequently used Perception score, it moved away from having the sense of "wise and insightful" toward "perceptive and intuitive," with the added connotation of representing willpower. (Wis was the stat that modified 3e Will saves.) 3e also explicitly tied clerics to Chr by making the turn undead ability based partially off the cleric's Chr score.I can't speak for 4e, as I didn't play much, though I think Will saves were expanded to include the better of Chr or Wis modifier, tying Chr to willpower as well. 5e has continued Chr's power grab. There are now more characters who value Chr mechanically than there are Int, for example. I don't know what this means as far as the current definition of Chr, but it's well-cemented as being more than just persuasiveness.If I were designing the game from scratch now, and I had to choose between basing the divine powers granted by a god to a particularly devoted follower based on either "willpower/insightfulness/perceptiveness" or "strength of personality/persuasiveness/maybe also willpower", I'd... probably go with the latter? I think you could make a pretty reasonable argument for either of them, honestly.</blockquote>

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