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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 5748022" data-attributes="member: 3887">Sure... however, there's more to being a successful negotiator than merely being charming. For example: Henry Kissinger. Stats and social skills model the character's superficial charm and social graces. But they say nothing of the caliber of their arguments. That stuff is left to the player.I've come around to the idea AD&D gets this exactly right: CHA sets the initial reaction to a PC. But everything after that depends on what the player actually says and does. High CHA is definitely advantage, in everything from haggling with a shopkeeper to parleying with a hungry ogre, but there's still space for clever play (from the real, live players) to affect the outcome. Or declare you're INT 9 fighter is savvy in the ways of small-unit tactics but otherwise not very learned nor intellectual. The mental stats in D&D very broad and nebulously defined, and there's ample evidence they're not meant to reflect uniform ability ie a CHA 10 can be physically beautiful and an INT 10 PC can be quite smart about some things.Face it, there are no guidelines establishing what sort of tactics an INT 9, or 14, or even 18 PC is capable of. None. Any criteria you use is going to be arbitrary. So you can wade into these waters, pulling more determinations of what ideas and speeches PCs with varying mental stats are capable of out of your posterior, or you can, wisely, like Bartleby, choose not to. Again, in many situations, persuading people and engaging in successful negotiations is more than merely "talking pretty". "Talking pretty" is certainly an advantage, but it's not the sole determinant -- in fact, in certain circumstances, it's not an important one.</blockquote>

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