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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Epametheus" data-source="post: 1318449" data-attributes="member: 719">Tel, would it be wrong to surmise that you're DMing for a group of relative strangers rather than for a group of friends?  I'm all for allowing player input in my games, but I actually know my players.If the player himself is rather bad at social skills but is counting on his character's skills to make up for it, you should tell him to just play another class.  A poor speaker trying to play an uber-diplomat simply doesn't work.  I should know; I've tried to do it before.  The 13 Cha cleric with 5 ranks of diplomacy (they were required for a prestige class; otherwise, the cleric would've had 0) that was being played by a radio DJ wound up being a far more effective as a diplomat than my 30 Cha Bard.  If he can't rely on his die rolls to get through it, he's going to choke and screw up every damn time he's required to be diplomatic, instead.I can fully understand why he wants "kewl powerz" for his super-diplomat; his character is not going to pull its weight in combat, and he's hoping to find someway to compensate, and to some extent he's going to be competing with the party wizard.  There's disturbingly little that a +50 to diplomacy can do that a simple Charm Person can't.Charisma is the dump stat because it doesn't matter, neither mechanically nor in terms in roleplaying.  Individual PCs aren't going to be more or less appealing as characters than their players actually are, and a generic human with five ranks in the diplomacy skill is just as good at influencing people as the 20 Cha sorcerer with no ranks in the skill.  It's very easy to compensate for low charisma when rolling matters, and there's often no reward for having high charisma when rolling doesn't matter.It's okay to let the die rolls emulate inhumanly high wisdom and intelligence scores.  But the instant you allow that with charisma, it's "rollplaying," not "roleplaying."  Blech.</blockquote>

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