Help beef up mental stats

[Felnar]

thanks for the responses, here's some ideas me and a friend came up with,
hopefully they make sense, we typed them at 5am

Charisma

Leadership. PC can use his ability bonus to give +1 to another character's die rolls during combat. This represents the PC's ability to lead and coordinate his allies in battle. The PC can give a bonus to the following (for one round): AC (vs one enemy), attack bonus (vs one enemy), saving throw bonus (vs one attack), or initiative bonus. The PC can give one +1 bonus for each point of his charisma modifier, but a character cannot recieve more than one identical bonuses in a single round. For example, a character cannot recieve a total +2 AC bonus against a specific opponent, but can recieve a +1 AC against two different opponents. The PC "expends" his charisma modifiers in this manner, and does not gain them back again for 2 rounds.

For example, Taurg, the highly charasmatic half-ogre barbarian, has a +2 charisma modifier. In the first round of combat, he gives a +1 saving throw bonus to help his orc ally evade a dragon's breath. In the next round he could not give out 2 bonuses because the one he spent in the first round has not regenerated yet.



Intelligence/Wisdom

These stats both grant experience point bonuses of +3% for each point of stat modifier. For example, a character with 12 intelligence (+1 ability modifier) and 16 wisdom (+3 ability modifier) has a total of 12% bonus (3% x +4)


any thoughts on those?
underpowered? overpowered?
we were thinking constitution needs a boost as well

 

[Arkhandus]

The following is what I would suggest......

1. Make Charisma the key ability modifier for Will saves, instead of Wisdom. Reason: The stronger your personality and self of self, plus the greater your own skill at manipulating people and understanding their minds, the more likely you are to resist effects that would mess with your own mind or try to supplant your personality. Charisma already modifies Intimidate, so why shouldn't it also make you more difficult to intimidate and such? Besides, Wisdom tries to cover too many things at once.

2. Have Charisma modify how much the character earns from tasks, sales, and trades, and how much the character pays for stuff. Say, each point of Charisma bonus increases earnings by 5%, so a character with 12 or 13 Charisma makes 5% more money when selling something or completing a task for pay (when being paid individually, rather than when the whole party is given the same reward). Likewise, each point of Charisma penalty reduces earnings by 5%. These modifiers to the amount of wealth earned would also apply as modifiers to how much the character pays for stuff when trading or purchasing. Making each point effectively a 10% difference of sorts, when the character buys something worth 100 gold they only pay 95 gold, then sell it later for 105 gold. Say that these modifiers only apply though to one purchase per week and one sale per week by that character, to keep things under control (rather than having them buy and sell like crazy and make a ton of extra money in mere days; with this limitation, they'd need months or years in-game to accumulate any appreciable amount of extra wealth through such tactics).

3. Allow characters to use Wisdom in place of Dexterity for purposes of Armor Class and Initiative, on any round desired, but following the same restrictions and such as with Dexterity (such as an armor's max Dex/Wis to AC, uncanny dodge, trap sense, and so on; also, being immobilized would still deny the character their Dex/Wis to AC). Reason: the character's perceptiveness and ability to quickly process what they observe allows for prepared and swift reactions to certain threats.

4. Allow characters to use Wisdom in place of Strength or Dexterity for purposes of grapple checks, trip attempts, bull rushes, and so on. Reason: mind over matter, brains over brawn, age and treachery beat youth and strength, tricky techniques and using terrain or other environmental conditions and character positions, judo-style techniques based on anticipating the opponent's movement, or what-have-you.

5. Have Wisdom modify the character's number of attacks of opportunity per round, but retain the same base of 1 AoO per round. So unwise characters fail to notice or react quickly enough to an opening in the defenses of a foe, while wise characters are perceptive enough to instantly notice the opening start to appear, so react before the opening is even fully there, allowing them to take advantage of openings more often..... Or something like that. Characters/monsters with low Wisdom can still take Combat Reflexes to boost their number of AoOs if needed, though it may not help much if their Dex is mediocre or their Wis totally pathetic.

6. Allow characters to use Intelligence in place of Strength or Dexterity for purposes of melee and ranged attack modifiers, respectively, on any round desired, but following the same restrictions and such. Reason: the character's keen knowledge of combat principles and ability to think fast when noticing openings allows them to strike with precision, even if they don't hit quite as fast, gracefully, or forcefully.

Note that anything improving the usefulness of Intelligence or Charisma will make the Half-Orc substantially worse, while making Dwarves a tad more balanced. So I'd suggest that if you boost Charisma and/or Intelligence, give the poor Half-Orcs at least a bonus feat like Humans get, and perhaps the multi-class flexibility of Humans too.