Eliminating charisma

[Gort]

I'm thinking of trying a new houserule for my next game - the elimination of the charisma stat and all charisma skills. The reason behind this is that a player with a strong personality will, in almost all cases, play characters with strong personalities, and shy players almost always play shy characters, regardless of how many ranks in charisma skills the character possesses, or what their charisma score is.

Charisma is also the weakest stat in the games I've played, as it lacks any unique effects, unlike the other stats. All the other stats do something other than simply adding to skills. Strength lets you lift things, hit harder and more accurately in melee, and so forth. Dexterity increases armour class and reflex saves. Constitution increases hitpoints and fortitude saves. Intelligence increases skill points. Wisdom increases will saves. Charisma doesn't do anything like that.

Sure, it's used by paladins for their abilities, and bards and sorcerers to fuel their spells, but wisdom could just as easily be substituted. ("force of will" and "force of personality" are pretty synonymous in book)

With charisma gone, dumping a stat is always going to have tangible negative consequences, without direct intervention from the DM. Low charisma was dumped so often simply because it's the least effective stat.

So, the short version of the house-rule:

The charisma stat is removed.

The bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate skills are removed, replaced by roleplaying.
The gather information, handle animal, disguise and use magic device skills now have intelligence as their key ability.
The perform skill now has dexterity as its key ability.

Sorcerers and bards now use wisdom to determine their spellcasting abilities.
Paladins now use wisdom for their class abilities.

Dwarves now suffer a -2 penalty to dexterity instead of charisma.

The feint action is now a combat maneuver, requiring an opposed attack roll between feinter and target, provoking attacks of opportunity. If the feinter wins, the target is flat-footed against their next attack. Improved feint now gives a +4 bonus on the opposed roll, and removes the attack of opportunity.

 

[Stalker0]

Do you still keep charisma for monsters?

If not, what stat will you base their spell like abilities on?

Other than that, as long as your group doesn't mind dumping the social skills, I don't think you'll have a problem.

 

[Herzog]

a player with a strong personality will, in almost all cases, play characters with strong personalities

That may be true in your campaigns, but it's certainly not a generic fact.

I'm not saying you shouldn't do this, but consider the following:

Clerics and Paladins are balanced in part by having to rely on multiple abilities (Str, Con, Wis, Cha)
Effectively, by removing one of these stats, you make it more easy for those classes to keep their key abilities high.

As a suggestion: you could also try to find a way to have charisma directly influence situations like the other abilities do.
Some things that come to mind:
-Use a 'reaction roll' in every encounter to determine the attitude of monsters toward each character individually, influenced by the charisma modifier. This can then be used in the introduction of those monsters. ('Although startled, the orcs do not seem very aggressive toward you. They might be considering not attacking you. Except for Toril. As soon as he comes into view of the Orcs, their eyes narrow and their hands go towards their weapons. It might be a good idea to keep Toril out of their direct sight...')
-Use the Charisma stat as a 'target seeker': 'The orcs seem to have made up their minds. letting Toril do the negotiations was not a good move. They go for their weapons and look you over, looking for the most probable leader'. (That would be the one with the high Cha)

Hope you can do something with this...

Herzog

PS: Come to think of it, I might start using this myself!

 

[hong]

Clerics and Paladins are balanced in part by having to rely on multiple abilities (Str, Con, Wis, Cha)

For clerics, only if they actually want to turn undead. Nowadays, they're as likely as not to just use their turn attempts to power divine feats.

 

[Gort]

Clerics and Paladins are balanced in part by having to rely on multiple abilities (Str, Con, Wis, Cha)
Effectively, by removing one of these stats, you make it more easy for those classes to keep their key abilities high.

I haven't actually seen a high-charisma cleric before - probably because turn undead becomes worthless at higher levels since undead get so many hit dice for their CR.

In my opinion, paladin isn't a particularly strong class.(people can point to smack numbers involving charging smites on horseback, but it's not that often paladins get to do that, and it requires a fair number of feats to do it anyway)

I don't think it'll affect clerics much, and I don't think paladins needing only four decent stats (str, dex, con, wis) is that big a problem.

('Although startled, the orcs do not seem very aggressive toward you. They might be considering not attacking you. Except for Toril. As soon as he comes into view of the Orcs, their eyes narrow and their hands go towards their weapons. It might be a good idea to keep Toril out of their direct sight...')

I don't really want to have to victimise my players if they put a low stat in charisma - once it's done, there's not really all that much they can do about it. Plus, victimising a player using something that's not actually in the rules. (low-charisma characters, like low-intelligence and low-wisdom ones, don't actually look any different than high stat ones)

 

[Li Shenron]

Just know that Charisma itself isn't a flawed idea. You could just reach the same conclusion with Wisdom:

Will saves could use Charisma (force of personality => force of will)
Profession, Heal, Listen & Spot could use Intelligence
divine caster's spellcasting could be replaced by Charisma
etc...

 

[Malhost Zormaeril]

Charisma is still used for reaction rolls (of course, now it's called "untrained Diplomacy/Perform/whatever skill check"). The DM can arbitrarily change Diplomacy and Perform to link to Dexterity, or Will save, or Character Level, but why? Charisma is perfectly all right.

As for not penalising players who use CHA for a dump stat, I argue my wizard shouldn't be penalised for using STR and CON as dump stats. Who ever heard of robust wizards, anyway? They're all sickly and frail from reading indoors rather than exercising outdoors.

 

[GreatLemur]

Charisma (and Wisdom, too) is amazingly poorly defined in D&D, so I can totally understand the desire to drop it. I think a lot of us have sort of an instinct against it, but really, your solutions do sound reasonable (except that I'd have Bards and Sorcerers--arcane casters--use Intelligence, rather than Wisdom). I think your biggest hassle will just be running into unexpected Charisma-using mechanical situations, and ending up in disputes over which ability score should be substituted this time.

 

[Bagpuss]

So, the short version of the house-rule:

The charisma stat is removed.

The bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate skills are removed, replaced by roleplaying.

How do you roleplay a feint, and demoralise in combat?

Dwarves now suffer a -2 penalty to dexterity instead of charisma.

Ouch that's gonna hurt. Still probably fair, and at least Sorcerers are viable for them now.

What's Turn Undead going on now since making it Wisdom seems to make Cleric get double the bonus for increasing one attribute. It's not like they aren't strong enough already...

 

[GreatLemur]

How do you roleplay a feint, and demoralise in combat?

It was always pretty debatable that Charisma ever should have been involved in those situations, wasn't it? Feint seems like a BAB-based thing, to me. Although some kind in Intelligence or Dexterity involvement wouldn't be illogical.

Demoralize is a slightly tougher question. Maybe it should be a feat instead of a skill use, with a check based on level/HD?

What's Turn Undead going on now since making it Wisdom seems to make Cleric get double the bonus for increasing one attribute. It's not like they aren't strong enough already...

Limiting 'em to the base 3 attempts per day doesn't seem bad. It's not like the class can't spare the power. Or, alternatively, have attempts per day based on level instead of an ability score (which, honestly, feels better to me, anyway).