comrade raoul
Explorer
(Bump, as explained in the subject line.)
DMG PrC 2.0: The Duelist -- Not Just Intelligence Anymore
- Thread starter comrade raoul
- Start date
Machiavelli
First Post
It seems you've done a nice job making the 3 mental stats useful here, exactly as you wanted to. However, I don't understand why you even want to add Charisma to AC and damage. I have a very hard time seeing how force of personality equates to force of arms or effective defense, and I can see how someone would ceate a character with high charisma who can talk himself out of a capital trial, but is also at least as effective as any fighter in a strait-up fight. Once again the fighter loses alot of appeal.
comrade raoul
Explorer
Machiavelli
First Post
It's a fine idea for Order of the Stick, yes, because OotS doesn't even pretend to match D&D (it would cause even more pissed-off, nerdly emails to show up in R. Burlew's inbox)
I just don't see how, in D&D, the Charisma attribute equates to any sort of combat ability. The rules address more issues than simply combat, and Charisma is there for those other issues. Perhaps you could argue that it is an abstract representation of tossing cuttingly witty banter to throw one's enemy off-guard, allowing for more effective assaults... but that's what the Bluff and feignting rules are for, IMHO. There are even plenty of feats that allow for a skill check to provide a combat bonus.
Adding Cha to damage rolls and armor class just feels excessively metagame-ish to me.
I just don't see how, in D&D, the Charisma attribute equates to any sort of combat ability. The rules address more issues than simply combat, and Charisma is there for those other issues. Perhaps you could argue that it is an abstract representation of tossing cuttingly witty banter to throw one's enemy off-guard, allowing for more effective assaults... but that's what the Bluff and feignting rules are for, IMHO. There are even plenty of feats that allow for a skill check to provide a combat bonus.
Adding Cha to damage rolls and armor class just feels excessively metagame-ish to me.
comrade raoul
Explorer
Charisma represents more than just social skills: it represents confidence, self-assurance, and a certain kind of inner strength. Bards, paladins, and sorcerers all draw on it. It's not too much of a stretch to say that for certain kinds of fighting traditions it can make a real difference. Maybe it represents a certain difficult-to-define virtuosic edge that you get when you completely believe in what you're doing, and give yourself completely to the flow of the fight.
If you don't buy it, though, it's just fine to limit the chosen ability to just Intelligence. There might even be very good mechanical reasons to rule out Charisma, since paladin/duelists could be very, very powerful. One of the nice things about the Int-based duelist is that apart from the duelist and the Int 13 prerequisite for certain feats, Intelligence is unique among the mental ability scores in having very few combat applications under the core rules.
If you don't buy it, though, it's just fine to limit the chosen ability to just Intelligence. There might even be very good mechanical reasons to rule out Charisma, since paladin/duelists could be very, very powerful. One of the nice things about the Int-based duelist is that apart from the duelist and the Int 13 prerequisite for certain feats, Intelligence is unique among the mental ability scores in having very few combat applications under the core rules.
