D&D 5E The Misrepresentation of Charisma

[marcelvdpol]

Charisma represents the force of your personality. It also represents likeability, believability etc.

Intimidation represents threat (not just physical threat) to do something nasty against the person being talked to. This could take the form of beating the person, reveiling a harmful secret or cast a nasty spell ("do this or ill turn you into a newt"). The believability of the threat depends on the strength of your personality, hence depends on charisma.

 

[GreenTengu]

I understand how the game mechanics compels many players to use Charisma as the dump stat. And I understand how the combat nature of D&D may encourage the favoring of constitution (which influences no skills) to be favored over charisma (which influences four skills – which also makes it the third most influential ability score).

Unfortunately, it is too common a misunderstanding that Charisma equates to beauty, and that is simply not the case. Certainly, attractiveness is a factor, but seldom the entire story. And a character can be described as beautiful but with low charisma.
The mechanics of the game does assert some penalties for having low charisma, affecting charisma saving throws as well as four skill checks: deception, intimidation, performance, and persuasion. Unfortunately, most players dodge those penalties by simply not investing in those skills.

You know, it would be a lot easier to sell that this was a "misconception" if one couldn't open the monster manual and flip through it and see that... well, well... the assigned Charisma stat is directly related to the stated beauty of the creature-- save for cases where all attributes are really, really high in order to avoid them getting destroyed by failing certain saves.

If we see WotC consistently assigning Charisma scores to NPCs, particularly "non-human" NPCs, based on how much a typical human would want to sleep with them rather than accounting for commanding presence, being deviously deceptive or being blustering and scary, well...it kind of sets the precedent for what those stats represent, doesn't it? Do you really suppose an Orc or a Hobgoblin or an Ogre lacks the ability to influence the emotions of others to the extent that the monster manual pegs their Charisma scores?

 

[Ancalagon]

5e has done away with the gather information skill, these are now straight up charisma check. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it's a big change.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Willie the Duck]

I think charisma is a horribly misunderstood ability score in the game. And I think that misunderstanding leads to flawed roll playing.

I understand how the game mechanics compels many players to use Charisma as the dump stat. And I understand how the combat nature of D&D may encourage the favoring of constitution (which influences no skills) to be favored over charisma (which influences four skills – which also makes it the third most influential ability score).

Unfortunately, it is too common a misunderstanding that Charisma equates to beauty, and that is simply not the case. Certainly, attractiveness is a factor, but seldom the entire story. And a character can be described as beautiful but with low charisma...

Who are these people doing this misunderstanding? How has it made their roleplaying flawed? What gave you the insight that lets you see the truth, where so many others have fallen to the wayside of wrong thinking? Do all the half-elf sorcadins know that they should be boosting their charisma instead of constitution?

 

[pdzoch]

You know, it would be a lot easier to sell that this was a "misconception" if one couldn't open the monster manual and flip through it and see that... well, well... the assigned Charisma stat is directly related to the stated beauty of the creature-- save for cases where all attributes are really, really high in order to avoid them getting destroyed by failing certain saves.

If we see WotC consistently assigning Charisma scores to NPCs, particularly "non-human" NPCs, based on how much a typical human would want to sleep with them rather than accounting for commanding presence, being deviously deceptive or being blustering and scary, well...it kind of sets the precedent for what those stats represent, doesn't it? Do you really suppose an Orc or a Hobgoblin or an Ogre lacks the ability to influence the emotions of others to the extent that the monster manual pegs their Charisma scores?

There is a lot of that in the monster manual. Especially in the demons and devils where the charisma score tends to tie in with human sexuality. But the monster manual doesn't ignore the forceful presence or ability to influence others capacity of charisma also. Dragons have high charisma, though it could be argued that they are beautiful in their own way. However, I'm not sure that the same could be said for the Aboleth. I would be hard pressed for an argument that the Aboleth has any attractiveness other than a forceful presence.

 

[Willie the Duck]

5e has done away with the gather information skill, these are now straight up charisma check. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it's a big change.

Isn't that now Investigation?

 

[Yunru]

Are group checks still a thing?
I could see charisma group checks being a thing to penalise dumping charisma, such as when meeting royalty.

 

[GreenTengu]

There is a lot of that in the monster manual. Especially in the demons and devils where the charisma score tends to tie in with human sexuality. But the monster manual doesn't ignore the forceful presence or ability to influence others capacity of charisma also. Dragons have high charisma, though it could be argued that they are beautiful in their own way. However, I'm not sure that the same could be said for the Aboleth. I would be hard pressed for an argument that the Aboleth has any attractiveness other than a forceful presence.

But, as I said, those sort of things are generally a case of "it would be too easy to defeat this monster if had any bad attributes". Well, apparently except Dexterity and even their Dexterity is at or slightly above that of an average human.

 

[Yunru]

those sort of things are generally a case of "it would be too easy to defeat this monster if had any bad attributes".

Or... they could not be.