D&D 5E Where does "Willpower" lie... Wisdom? Charisma? or someplace else?

[Hriston]

I'm going to agree with those who have said that a character's willpower resides in the decisions (i.e. roleplaying) of its player.

A character's will can be exerted through any of the six abilities. Does the character have the willpower to roll that heavy rock up a hill? Make a Strength check to find out.

 

[jgsugden]

Willpower is the ability to exert control over impulses. Wisdom, per the PHB, reflects how attuned you are to the world around you and represents perceptiveness and intuition. Charisma, per the PHB, measures your ability to interact effectively with others. It includes such factors as confidence and eloquence, and it can represent a charming or commanding personality.

Neither Wisdom or Charisma reflect willpower under RAW directly. However, there are a lot of Wisdom Saving throws that conceptually align with things that could be seen as willpower based. As a result, there is a bit of incongruity.

In my campaigns, I resolve this with the following approach:

Magical Willpower: When someone makes a Wisdom saving throw that sounds like it would be willpower based to fight, I describe it as willpower based when describing how it resolves - usually. Sometimes I tie it to the subject intuiting themselves through the problem.

Mundane Willpower: When the situation is not based upon magic, I don't require a die roll at all. It is up to the player to decide how their PC fares against their willpower. They are self determinitive.

 

[payn]

I'm going to agree with those who have said that a character's willpower resides in the decisions (i.e. roleplaying) of its player.

A character's will can be exerted through any of the six abilities. Does the character have the willpower to roll that heavy rock up a hill? Make a Strength check to find out.

Yeap, this seems to be the way 5E should work. Whether or not you want players always coming up with reasons to use their best stats for every situation is likely up to taste.

 

[Redwizard007]

Willpower, per se, is Charisma in 5e. That's the raw strength of will to impose your will on the world.
Wisdom, at least for saving throws, is more about identifying thought/feelings as originating externally.
Intelligence is used for puzzling through a situation.

 

[Scribe]

The analogies are pretty solid:

Strength and Charisma are the ability to project power.
Constitution and Wisdom are durability.
Dexterity and Intelligence are speed, coordination and flexibility.

It can become much more obvious if you have a psionic system that uses them as such.

Snip. Into the memory banks this one goes.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Other: Both, if we're going to keep both as stats.

4e did its non-AC defenses much better than 3e or 5e. There aren't too many of them (just 3), they draw on multiple stats (so it's rare for a character to be bad at too many of them), and they were difficulty values hit by attacks, rather than bonuses to rolled saving throws. These are all significant improvements, and obviate any need to worry over whether "willpower" comes from Wisdom or Charisma.

If I had my druthers, though, I would reshuffle the stats themselves. Strength and Constitution would merge together as Might. Dexterity would be mostly left alone, but decoupled from Initiative, which would just be a separate stat (perhaps Agility or ). Intelligence would absorb any remaining academic characteristics of Wisdom, while Charisma would absorb the "willpower" angle. That would leave Wisdom reduced to just Perception, which is perfectly acceptable given how powerful Perception is as a characteristic.

Might, Dexterity, Agility, Perception, Intelligence, Charisma. Perhaps swap the second and third positions there, and it can be abbreviated as MADPIC. Might breaks free of restraints and powers on despite fatigue. Dexterity is precision, grace, fluidity of motion. Agility is speed and dodging. Perception is your ability to detect what is real and reveal what isn't. Intelligence is everything about academics and reasoning. And Charisma is willpower, sense of self, and manipulation (friendly or unfriendly).

Alternatively, if one is willing to abandon the six-stat model, make Initiative and Perception completely decoupled from ability scores, and reduce it to Might, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma.

 

[Charlaquin]

Willpower is a pretty vague concept, and 5e doesn’t directly tie it to any of the six abilities. To quote the player’s handbook, “Wisdom reflects how attuned you are to the world around you and represents perceptiveness and intuition” and “Charisma measures your ability to interact effectively with others. It includes such factors as confidence and eloquence, and it can represent a charming or commanding personality.”

Some effects that would have been resisted with a Will save in 3e or the Will defense in 4e are resisted with a Wisdom save in 5e, some are resisted with a Charisma save, and a few are even resisted with an Intelligence save. Wisdom, as the character’s perceptiveness, is used to resist illusions and charms - not because it represents “willpower” but because it represents the ability to see through deception, even magical deception. Charisma is used to resist possession, again, not because it represents “willpower” but because it represents the character’s force of personality being able to overcome that of the possessing entity. Charisma is also used to resist forced teleportation, mostly because they needed something to save against such effects, and Charisma was a bit under-utilized as a save. Intelligence is really only used to save against effects that directly assault the mind - mind whip, feeblemind, the Devour Intellect ability of an intellect Devourer, etc. There are very few such effects, and I suppose you could argue that’s “willpower” since, again, it’s such a vague concept.

 

[Seramus]

If I had my druthers, though, I would reshuffle the stats themselves. Strength and Constitution would merge together as Might. Dexterity would be mostly left alone, but decoupled from Initiative, which would just be a separate stat (perhaps Agility or ). Intelligence would absorb any remaining academic characteristics of Wisdom, while Charisma would absorb the "willpower" angle. That would leave Wisdom reduced to just Perception, which is perfectly acceptable given how powerful Perception is as a characteristic.

Can I interest you in some Pillars of Eternity?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Can I interest you in some Pillars of Eternity?

I tried to get into it--I even own it. Perhaps I didn't give the systems enough time to present their case, but I got rather turned off by an accidental spoiler while looking up information. To whit, the fact that the gods are just machines created by an ancient race that went insane from realizing there were no gods....just wasn't a very interesting story to me, and rather undercut any interest I might have had in the "a god chose to incarnate as a mortal" plot that undergirds the rest of the story.

 

[Horwath]

Willpower: wisdom+charisma

then we would get:
Fortitude: strength+constitution
Reflex: dexterity+intelligence

but, problem with wisdom alone, is that is really complicated stuff.

It has willpower and cunning part of it.

All skills based on wisdom have almost nothing with "willpower" just cunning, awareness and practical intelligence.

seems it would be better to rewrite intelligence, wisdom and charisma into Cunning and Willpower.