Should charismatic players have an advantage?

[S'mon]

Even if that's so S'mon, it doesn't counter my point. If your character is high Cha and focused in intimidate, the player doesn't get to become all suave and debonair just because intimidate is the wrong skill to use at this point.

Conversely, Face being all scary isn't true to the character. That's not what Face does. There's a very good reason Christopher Walken doesn't play Face in the movie.

Eh, as far as I'm concerned it is for the player to decide what their PC is like. If you want to play a suave but scary guy, fine. If you want to play a big muscly guy who can be charming and debonair, fine. There are umpteen different valid interpretations of a PC's stats & skills, it's not for the DM to determine which one is correct. Limitations come in the d20 mechanics - if you play your no-Intimidate skill guy as scary, you have less mechanical support than if you put skill training into Intimidate, so you will succeed at fewer checks.

IMC a player should focus mechanical resources on areas they want to be good at, the synergy of roleplay & mechanics is very important for in-game success. But that is very different from the DM saying "You're doing it wrong".

 

[S'mon]

During our last session two PCs disagreed with each other.
Player A is a well-spoken and charismatic individual. He wanted to have dialog to resolve the issue.
Player B is a quiet guy who enjoys a good evening of dice-rolling. He said "let's roll opposing diplomacy-rolls. If you win, obviously you have made your point and my character will back down".
Player A looked like Player B had just pooped on him and he insulted Player B by saying that he simply doesn't know roleplaying. Player B took this in stride (which is a quality that highly admire him!).

It all seems a bit odd and dysfunctional. I can imagine being annoyed by player A, and I can imagine being annoyed by player B.

You don't get to demand a dramatic interaction scene if the other PC doesn't want to talk to you. OTOH, you don't get to demand "You can talk to me, but only via a die roll, no actual roleplaying!".

IMO: either they should have roleplayed it out, then B could ask A for a diplomacy check if B is unsure how his PC would react to the actual spoken words. Or else B's PC could in-character refuse to talk to A's character, no scene and no roll.

I guess it would be acceptable for A to summarise his argument rather than give a long IC speech, if everyone wants to keep the game moving on quickly. Then A could make the Dip roll. And B is under no obligation to talk back, he could have his PC listen quietly to A.

It's fine to play a non-communicative PC. What I really don't like though is when the player insists his PC is a loquacious high-CHA type, but the player himself refuses to talk in-character at all, and just demands skill checks. That disconnecy is a huge fun-sink for me. If you want to be non-communicative at the table, play a non-communicative PC.

 

[Hussar]

Let me take a different stab at this.

If you were statting up James Bond for d20, would you give him a 10 Cha and no ranks in diplomacy or intimidate? Why or why not?

If you were statting up Einstein for d20, would you give him a 10 Int? Why or why not?

If you were statting up Stephen Hawkins for d20 (since he just came up here) would you give him an 18 Con? Why or why not?

Now, if you answered no to all those above, then obviously you believe that stats matter. I'd love to see the justifications for those who tell me that stats don't matter telling me that yes, it's perfectly acceptable for James Bond to have a 10 Cha and no ranks in Diplomacy or Intimidate.

This should be interesting.

 

[billd91]

If you were statting up Stephen Hawkins for d20 (since he just came up here) would you give him an 18 Con? Why or why not?

Considering Hawking has has the usually fatal ALS MUCH longer than anyone else, this may not be so far-fetched.

 

[LurkAway]

If you were statting up James Bond for d20, would you give him a 10 Cha and no ranks in diplomacy or intimidate? Why or why not?

Bond is good at everything. He's strong, fast, tough, smart, strong-willed, and charismatic. That doesn't give him 18 at everything, but can he be fairly statted using standard ability point buy?

 

[S'mon]

Let me take a different stab at this.

If you were statting up James Bond for d20, would you give him a 10 Cha and no ranks in diplomacy or intimidate? Why or why not?

If you were statting up Einstein for d20, would you give him a 10 Int? Why or why not?

If you were statting up Stephen Hawkins for d20 (since he just came up here) would you give him an 18 Con? Why or why not?

Now, if you answered no to all those above, then obviously you believe that stats matter. I'd love to see the justifications for those who tell me that stats don't matter telling me that yes, it's perfectly acceptable for James Bond to have a 10 Cha and no ranks in Diplomacy or Intimidate.

This should be interesting.

Are you asking how I as GM would stat them as NPCs, or how I as a player would stat them as my PC in a point-buy-based game where I have limited resources to allocate?

If my PC in the point buy game is James Bond, but I know that the game will focus on small arms combat with a high risk of PC death, I'll put most of my resources into small arms combat skill, not into seduction skill.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

Considering Hawking has has the usually fatal ALS MUCH longer than anyone else, this may not be so far-fetched.

Nothing to do with ALS. That disease with similar diagnosis actually comes with different variation of lethality. They are called ALS but there are different catagories. My mum got ALS with fast lethality and lasted 4 years.

So as far as real life goes, there are multiple factors.

 

[Voadam]

It's powergaming pure and simple. You are taking a weakness, spending the character resources in an area that makes you more powerful, and then ignoring the weakness because it would be inconvenient.

That's the textbook definition of power gamer as far as I'm concerned.

Nonsense.

I find the argument that it is powergaming to play an Alexander the Great style fighter in 3e D&D with a decent fighter build instead of as a more powerful cleric or druid with pretty much any build to be faulty.

Diplomacy excellence mechanically as a nonresource allocation is simply a matter of whether a class has diplomacy as a class skill and how important charisma is to the class.

It is trivial for a paladin or a bard to be excellent at diplomacy without significant investment or sacrifice.

Rogues, clerics, druids, and monks, can be decent with no significant sacrifice because diplomacy is a class skill.

Fighters, barbarians, rangers, wizards, and sorcerers are poor at it as a default but can become mediocre by investing a bunch in their cross-class skill.

Should an Alexander the Great fighter, a Conan style barbarian, an Aragorn style ranger, or a Merlin or Gandalf type wizard or sorcerer, have to sacrifice and invest character power resources (ability point buy and feats) away from their class competencies to roleplay those character concepts correctly?

Is it preferential they play clerics and druids instead to effectuate these concepts so that they are powerful at combat and mechanically easily get high diplomacy modifiers? And not powergame or roleplay incorrectly.

Should fighters ideally be instead ars magica grogs, rangers be silent trackers, and wizards never be scheming advisors or meddle in matters of state?

 

[Janx]

Let me take a different stab at this.

If you were statting up James Bond for d20, would you give him a 10 Cha and no ranks in diplomacy or intimidate? Why or why not?

If you were statting up Einstein for d20, would you give him a 10 Int? Why or why not?

If you were statting up Stephen Hawkins for d20 (since he just came up here) would you give him an 18 Con? Why or why not?

Now, if you answered no to all those above, then obviously you believe that stats matter. I'd love to see the justifications for those who tell me that stats don't matter telling me that yes, it's perfectly acceptable for James Bond to have a 10 Cha and no ranks in Diplomacy or Intimidate.

This should be interesting.

This is a good question, sort of the inverse direction I've put things.

Bear in mind, I've been advocating a hypocritical position. I do play my lower CHA PCs differently than my high CHA PCs.

If I was making a Bond style PC, I would probably give him better than average CHA. I might not put an 18 in it.

But I also accept that somebody else might make an 8 CHA PC that acts like Bond. The difference is, every pick-up line will require a skill check and that'll mean he likely fail and come across as cheesy/sleazy, rather than suave and debonair like Bond.

For me, the skill system takes care of the charisma mis-match problem. Just roll checks on everything. In fact, these threads may have convinced me to not give circumstantial bonuses for well-spoken speeches, so as to not artificially inflate the PCs skill from the player's.

For GMs who like to encourage role playing (and thus speaking/acting in character), giving out an XP bonus might be better practice than giving out a skill check bonus. If you act "in character" during an encounter, get some extra XP. But you can't player-charisma-tize the encounter to success where your PC-charisma would fail.

A reason for that, as I think [MENTION=2209]Voadam[/MENTION] said in one of these threads, is that of 2 low CHA PCs, a player who correctly RP's his PC as a jerk would get his base CHA penalty on the check AND the GM would naturally interpret things against him (or apply a situational performance penalty). Whereas the player who only rolled, never roleplayed would just get the CHA modifer, and never have a performance penalty applied.

There would be a perverse effect, where "correctly" role-playing your PC as low CHA would result in more failures and problems, than just roll-playing your PC with the same low CHA. That's a disincentive to role-play (to play in character).

 

[Gentlegamer]

Something that no one has so far addressed is why do charismatic players get to ignore their character sheet? Why is it a good thing that someone with a good gift of the gab can ignore the weaknesses of the character that he or she made?

The low Cha character still faces mechanical drawbacks, such as limited number of henchmen (in legacy D&D), or negative modifiers to Will-based saves (like in Castles & Crusades), negative initial reaction rolls, etc. There are plenty of mechanical effects that mental and social attributes can affect without requiring players engage in the 'double-think' required to 'play down' to low ratings in those areas for the character.

Do you also allow players to do maximum damage or automatically kill opponents if they describe it really well? Can my character sprout wings and fly if I make it sound really cool? Can I automatically do anything else covered by the rules just because I can say it really well?[

No, and I find it hard to believe you really think these things lie in the same realm as mental and social tasks performed by the players of the game.

Why are social interaction mechanics treated differently?

Because (as I keep saying) role-playing games are a mental and social activity. Those attributes of the *players* are the ones being challenged in the game. A group may desire to add 'additional' challenge in the form of role-assumption or play-acting requirements, but that is not intrinsic to the game-form.