The Gaming Den

I'm trying to work Charisma into not being a dump stat, and I don't know how.

Wisdom has a Will Save
Intelligence has skill points

So what does Charisma have? Nothing. Nil. It benefits magic (occasionally) but doesn't do crap for anything else. This makes it a dump stat for everyone except the guy who uses it for casting, and optimized groups look really stupid with everyone except the party leader having 8-3 charisma.

Ideas I've got for a Charisma mechanic:

Healing Surges

1. expend a Healing Surge to roll half your HD (10d12 for a level 20 barbarian)
2. expend a Healing Surge to increase your HP by 1/4 max
3. Heal yourself from your Healing Surge Pool

The first two ideas for a Healing Surge work off of some flat value (based on your class) plus your Charisma modifier--this makes your Healing Surge Value. You can use these surges a certain number of times per day equal to your Healing Surge Value.

The third idea runs off your Charisma modifier and works by adding your flat value to your Charisma modifier and adding that to your current Healing Surge Value (eg. A barbarian has a flat value of 10 and a ChaMod of -2. At level 1, he has a Healing Surge Pool of 8. At level 2, he has a Healing Surge Pool of 16, etc. If he takes a level of Druid (flat value 4), his Healing Surge Pool at level 3 is 17. At any given point, as an Immediate Action, he can heal as much of his HP as he wants by subtracting those points from his Healing Surge Pool.).

Alternate Attack Bonuses

This is pretty simple. Any time you perform a bullrush, covering fire, disarm, feint, or grapple check, add your ChaMod. I dislike this idea (not that I like my first idea any better) because it only applies to combat and has limited use. Skills and Will Saves are still more prioritized.

-----------
So what ideas would make Charisma a useful stat... or at least one that people don't want to drop?

The best idea for that is just to combine charisma and wisdom into one stat.

It's also generally advised you combine strength/con as well.

...Because the best solution is always to reduce granularity, instead of making mechanics do what you want, yes?

-Crissa

Crissa wrote: ...Because the best solution is always to reduce granularity, instead of making mechanics do what you want, yes?

Because Constitution and Charisma shouldn't exist as stats in the first place, or at least not weighed as heavily as STR/INT/WIS/DEX.

Yo, let your Charisma bonus determine how many magic items you can use at once or something.

Dr_Noface wrote:Yo, let your Charisma bonus determine how many magic items you can use at once or something.

Yo, let's not make fighters even worse, aight dawg?

For Valor wrote:Healing Surges

How is your Charisma healing you, exactly?

The original intention was to have it limit hirelings. That seems like the most logical use. Unfortunately, most people don't make use of such things nearly as much any more.

I once thought that'd be a good idea, making it more important. A friend had the idea of making Charisma "the other Dexterity" - you use it for dancing (Perform). So the idea was that you added your Cha bonus to your Dex bonus to AC, which was great for Sorcerers (no armour, high Cha) and Rogues (light armour with high max Dex, generally a Cha above 11).

And it meant nothing for Clerics (above average Cha, but heavy armour so they probably already have a Dex of 12) and meant fighters and so on would be penalised if they didn't take a Cha of 10 (because core fighters need to be kept in check, clearly! Not that anyone ever played them in our group). Also it meant Barbarians that liked doing the Intimidate-RAA! thing (or played by people who just wanted a high Cha so as to be pretty/likeable but were pissed off that they were buying a flavour stat with real points) could get a small benefit.

Then we decided "Nah. So what? Some people don't need a high Charisma. Great. Casters who aren't Clerics don't need a high Strength. Characters who don't care about skills and aren't Int-casters don't need a high Int. That's just how it is."

Or you could just get rid of it in D&D. The only reason why it's in the game, like psionic points or plussed swords, is because it's a sacred cow.

It just doesn't work for D&D. People will accept heroes lifting buildings over their head or being able to hear conversations from a mile away, but instantly winning over The Lord of Darkness with a smile is one of those things that causes people to cry baby tears.

Charisma is an okay stat for people to have in games where stats top out at a low level, like Shadowrun, but for D&D? The expectations of the fanbase render it a dump/dumb stat before we even find uses for it.

Getting rid of it would mean that finally people could just fucking say how pretty their characters are without getting hung-up about stats meaning things.

Then "I am the talkative one" could just be limited to skills without there being the sense that there is really a stat that determines it (because as small a role as Cha plays in Diplomancy, Intimidate and Bluff, people still feel that they are linked strongly to it, that it is the key part). Or a feat, "I'm the face!", that gives random bullshit abilities related to talking and being the one everyone likes.

Really, anything that can be assumed to be standard for heroes should just be a given, without needing to buy it up at the expense of character-specific traits. It's just like the bullshit of EP where the stats are only useful for skills, except for one which determines going insane (the real Player-Killer), which should really just be at maximum for everyone who is a player character.

Yes, I'm bitter and angry. About both of the above.

Can't get rid of it. D&D without the six stats? Heresy, I say.

If you're doing any sort of "luck" mechanic or "action points" or whatever, I've found it's not a bad idea to either let characters with high Charisma have either more action points or get a bonus on the roll. But that is really more of a "Charisma exists. For anything other than Cha-based casters, it is total shit. Find a way to make it slightly less non-shit" solution than anything else. If you were designing a new edition or game right from the start, I do agree that just eliminating Charisma (and Constitution) is the better option.

Depending on how you define the other two mental stats, it would be easy to slip "being persuasive" into one of their definitions.

I play in campaigns where social interactions play a larger role, in that situation having charisma and social skills are very useful. If you want to prevent charisma from being a dump stats give players a reason to use it, you may even want to allow interaction skills to be usable on other PCs in certain situations.

If you want to keep your game as a dungeon crawl then axe it, for instance Savage Worlds has 5 regular stats and charisma is just a modifier to certain die rolls. Doesn't have to put points into it, making it cheaper to buy social skills because you just have to buy skill and not skill + attribute.

Juton: at first level, the Sorcerer with his awesome Charisma can have 2 ranks in Diplomancy and a Cha mod of say, +3. He gets a +5 bonus. A Rogue can put 4 ranks in and equals it with a +1 Charisma.

Next level, the Rogue pulls ahead (another rank. Oh, and +6 Synergy), and never looks back. By level 2, you can have a bigger bonus from skill ranks than you could from starting with 18 Charisma. You would actually need to search for some bullshit +2 Cha race for your Charisma to mean as much as your skill ranks do. At second level.

So saying "Make a lot of use of Charisma skills!" doesn't fix anything. Skill ranks are way more important. And synergy bonuses for Diplomancy/Intimidate.

So yeah. Making a new edition? Just fucking remove Cha and Con. Hell, name the stats ATT, DEF, SP. ATT and SP. DEF if you want, be all Pokemon. Modifying your D&D? Yeah, it kind of sucks that your important stat (for a Sorcerer) is also totally irrelevant. Oh well. If Tome feats aren't in, then at least you take Leadership and get the best Cohort.

Charisma should be scrapped because no one is even sure what having a high charisma score means. It is a weird mixture of attractiveness, empathy, willpower, self-assuredness and "inner strength" (whatever that is supposed to mean). Intelligence vs Wisdom And Strength vs Constitution are already too confusing.

However if you want to stay with 3E and thus need to keep Charisma around, having it give healing surges, rerolls or something else to represent your heroic determination is not a bad idea.

I always think of Charisma as just being force of personality. Your ability to affect the emotions and thoughts of those around you (seeing as though all the social skills center around it). Seems simple enough to go by.

I am curious though. Why do you care if its a dumpstat or not? If people aren't interested in Charismatic things, as any barbarian isn't likely to be interested in doing intelligent things, why do I care if they don't put points into it?

I think the reason Charisma gets singled out as "that dump stat that we wish weren't a dump stat" is because it's associated with social skills and is therefore associated with "real roleplayers." A wizard who dumps Strength might someday need to make a melee attack roll and regret their decision. It will possibly have a measurable effect on the game sooner or later. No player will complain if they are penalized on a to-hit because they dumped Strength. On the other hand, DMs who penalize players for taking low Cha by making NPCs hate them on sight tend to piss people off--somehow it seems less "fair." There's the sense that the low-Cha character should suffer some sort of penalty because of their weakness the way a low-Str character does, but they rarely ever do unless your DM has a hard-on for random NPC reaction rolls.

So the wizard who dumps Strength or Con is playing to his archetype, but the fighter who dumps Cha is just being an evil min-maxer, no matter how little sense that argument actually makes.

MGuy wrote:If people aren't interested in Charismatic things, as any barbarian isn't likely to be interested in doing intelligent things, why do I care if they don't put points into it?

Archmage wrote: I think the reason Charisma gets singled out as "that dump stat that we wish weren't a dump stat" is because it's associated with social skills and is therefore associated with "real roleplayers." ... There's the sense that the low-Cha character should suffer some sort of penalty because of their weakness the way a low-Str character does, but they rarely ever do unless your DM has a hard-on for random NPC reaction rolls.

Actually, that's precisely the reason why I despise Charisma as a stat in D&D. Charisma is your 'seduce your preferred sex and become a well-loved hero' stat. Which means that if you're a fucking fighter or a rogue you need to make the choice between being effective and getting in-universe attention.

Where D&D is especially hypocritical is with its insistence that 'if you'd rather be effective, then tough cookiepuss' for the fighter and the rogue but lets the paladin and sorcerer have their cake and eat it, too.

Just get rid of the fucking stat.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Where D&D is especially hypocritical is with its insistence that 'if you'd rather be effective, then tough cookiepuss' for the fighter and the rogue but lets the paladin and sorcerer have their cake and eat it, too.

Just get rid of the fucking stat.

Trust me, Sorcerers wish they were tied to another stat. They'd love to cast off Int (skill points), Wis (Will saves) or something crazy like Dex (RTAs, AC, Ref saves, Initiative, WIN STAT IS WIN) or Con (Con-based castan? Oh shit yeah, HP and Fort saves all the way! See what happens when you turn into a Shambling Mound...)

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

MGuy wrote:If people aren't interested in Charismatic things, as any barbarian isn't likely to be interested in doing intelligent things, why do I care if they don't put points into it?

Archmage wrote: I think the reason Charisma gets singled out as "that dump stat that we wish weren't a dump stat" is because it's associated with social skills and is therefore associated with "real roleplayers." ... There's the sense that the low-Cha character should suffer some sort of penalty because of their weakness the way a low-Str character does, but they rarely ever do unless your DM has a hard-on for random NPC reaction rolls.

Actually, that's precisely the reason why I despise Charisma as a stat in D&D. Charisma is your 'seduce your preferred sex and become a well-loved hero' stat. Which means that if you're a fucking fighter or a rogue you need to make the choice between being effective and getting in-universe attention.

Where D&D is especially hypocritical is with its insistence that 'if you'd rather be effective, then tough cookiepuss' for the fighter and the rogue but lets the paladin and sorcerer have their cake and eat it, too.

Just get rid of the fucking stat.

I disagree. All charisma means in my games is that you're more naturally accepted. Unless your charisma happens to be phenomenally high all it does is give you a bonus to trying to seduce and trying to win favor. It sounds like you're angrier at the diplomacy skill existing than you are at having charisma as a stat.

The point is, MGuy, you still have to invest to get that high Cha at the expense of other important stats. So, either you dump Cha to be effective, or you invest in it to become "more naturally accepted" or get "a bonus to trying to seduce and trying to win favor".

This has nothing to do with Diplomacy at all.

Everyone needs a dump stat unless you are allowing straight 18's. Charisma is just too many people's dump stat. Would it make sense to work out who needs more multi-stat dependency and who doesn't and make Charisma do something attractive to characters that are currently SAD? That would seem to be mainly casters. Could it do something spell related?

Perhaps all the casters should be made a bit more MAD. Rather than the current system where bonus spells and max spell level run off the same stat, what if they were split between 2 stats?

Red_Rob wrote:Everyone needs a dump stat unless you are allowing straight 18's. Charisma is just too many people's dump stat. Would it make sense to work out who needs more multi-stat dependency and who doesn't and make Charisma do something attractive to characters that are currently SAD? That would seem to be mainly casters. Could it do something spell related?

Perhaps all the casters should be made a bit more MAD. Rather than the current system where bonus spells and max spell level run off the same stat, what if they were split between 2 stats?

MAD just punishes people that want to force saves. For classes that aren't based around SoD and similar (such as the Tome Monk), there's always just adding other class features that run off of multiple stats. A good example of this is IGTN's Paladin.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Actually, that's precisely the reason why I despise Charisma as a stat in D&D. Charisma is your 'seduce your preferred sex and become a well-loved hero' stat. Which means that if you're a fucking fighter or a rogue you need to make the choice between being effective and getting in-universe attention.

Yeah, same here. Having to make that choice is something you should never have to do in D&D... or probably any RPG for that matter.

RobbyPants wrote:The point is, MGuy, you still have to invest to get that high Cha at the expense of other important stats. So, either you dump Cha to be effective, or you invest in it to become "more naturally accepted" or get "a bonus to trying to seduce and trying to win favor".

This has nothing to do with Diplomacy at all.

He stated he hated specific people getting to lay the women and be welcomed in town. A charisma score generally nets you ONLY a -1 to +4 blah blah blah to do that. IF you care about doing that stuff (which you don't need a high bonus at all to do it. You can achieve it by investing in spells (which charisma helps you get in some cases) or putting ranks in the skills. I'm saying that a measly -1 to +4 hardly aids you or hinders you from doing those very simple tasks which make Lago rage if he can't do with his fighter.