You and your GM might want to look into how Shadowrun and CyberPunk deal with the concept of 'Cyberpsychosis'. Basically, in those games as you add more and more tech to your body, you lose your touch with humanity.
While the Charisma drain of a Succubus isn't quite the same as getting your limbs replaced like the bionic man, the way those games handle the concept can be brought over into Pathfinder fairly easily.
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So, skipping the parts on DC's, lets see what the book says:
Charisma (Cha)
Charisma measures a character's personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance. It is the most important ability for paladins, sorcerers, and bards. It is also important for clerics, since it affects their ability to channel energy. For undead creatures, Charisma is a measure of their unnatural “lifeforce.” Every creature has a Charisma score. A character with a Charisma score of 0 is not able to exert himself in any way and is unconscious.
You apply your character's Charisma modifier to:
Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Perform, and Use Magic Device checks.
Checks that represent attempts to influence others.
Assuming that you have no ranks in the skills
Bluff: You character is almost incapable of telling a lie. Not that you have to tell the truth, but you are unable to fool anyone with a lie (unless you have ranks in bluff, but even then, you are going to be pretty bad at it).
Diplomacy: you would have the misfortune of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time or are not very good at speaking to people. You may stutter, or get strong "stage fright".
Handle Animal: Animals are going to react badly to you. And punching that horse may not be the best way to get it to calm down.
Intimidate: you are going to have a hard time scaring people. If you go back to that stutter, think of the movie "A fish called Wanda". "I am going to k-k-k-k-k-k-k-kill you" just is not that threatening. This also goes back to the bluff. Your threats are just not very convincing.
Perform: I would not even try.. :P
Disguise: I am not sure how to rule this one.
this is the way that I have worked out how to RP low stats in the past. By taking a look at what skills are effected and playing those up.
You're a robot.
There are many different ideas already posted, and obviously your going to have to talk with your DM about which you'll be playing, but I have to say there is one thing that keeps bugging me...
Yes a low CHA means that you have a personality akin to Milton...but the party most likely would never treat you like that!!! I mean it was mentioned above that if you were knocked unconscious that they'd leave you lying there and keep moving, not realizing your injured?!?!?! What about all those days, months, years you have traveled with them? I don't know many details about your game, but mine tend to go on for years RL and decades IG.
The idea that someone you've known for even weeks; that you've bled with; that you trust to watch over you when you sleep at night; now suddenly means nothing is kind of scary... I think they'd probably drop everything and care for you! Especially since they dumped hundreds of GP into keeping you above 0 CHA until they bought you a 4,000 gp magic item (remember that’s the value of 400 cows...you could but a small village or Thorp for that).
All in all, the only thing that this situation should do is be awesome! How often do you get to have this kind of a bonding experience with the other PCs...? And if your DM says you HAVE TO BE a vegetable... well whose to blame you what you do? I mean, it’s rare that you have a license to "Chaotic Stupid" fun with little to no consequence!!!
I am a Barbarian/Alchemist mix who focuses on dealing massive amounts of damage in a single hit (mutagen + rage + large size = death). Because of this, I took a 7 in charisma to maximize my strength. Sadly, I got into a fight with a succubus who permanently drained 8 charisma.
I don't see you mentioning this in your post, but the only way you were going to lose Charisma is if the succubus has the time to to bestow her Profane Gift on your character and also removes the gift herself:
Profane Gift (Su) Once per day as a full-round action, a succubus may grant a profane gift to a willing humanoid creature by touching it for 1 full round. The target gains a +2 profane bonus to an ability score of his choice. A single creature may have no more than one profane gift from a succubus at a time. As long as the profane gift persists, the succubus can communicate telepathically with the target across any distance (and may use her suggestion spell-like ability through it). A profane gift is removed by dispel evil or dispel chaos. The succubus can remove it as well as a free action (causing 2d6 Charisma drain to the victim, no save).
If you were just hit in combat by the succubus, then you would have suffered energy drain and received a negative level. And this would only happen if she grappled your character.
Someone with a huge penalty in bluff isn't incapable of expressing their motives, in fact they are incapable of hiding it. They can't act and they're easy to read. When they're frightened, everyone knows it. If they dislike something, everyone, can pick up on it. Everyone will know when they have a dirty thought on their head.
So instead of a robot which is meh, and doesn't have any feelings. You should do the opposite and overly express your character's feelings, always have a stupid look on your face. You can't actually get people to do things you want them to though, so your attempts at intimidation would be more like, "I don't like you. Go away! *pouty face*" or something like that. Have the behavior of a child but you lack the cuteness and forgiveness given to children.
I removed a post and a reply to it. Don't be a jerk.
Why the hell are people arguing that having a charisma of 1 makes party members treat you evilly, regardless of their alignment?
Being struck so low will mess you up, but it doesn't fundamentally alter the fact that the party knows who you are and is likely to recognise the fact that you are impaired.
How would you treat a friend that suffered a personality-damaging brain injury?
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Why the hell are people arguing that having a charisma of 1 makes party members treat you evilly, regardless of their alignment?
Being struck so low will mess you up, but it doesn't fundamentally alter the fact that the party knows who you are and is likely to recognise the fact that you are impaired.
How would you treat a friend that suffered a personality-damaging brain injury?
Steal all his crap and then leave him bleeding to death in a dark alley?
How I treated him would change. But it would change to deal with the new reality and my affection for that friend. I would not take advantage of him and would try to help him get along in life.
Have you seen how Disney likes to portray nerds? Intelligent, probably even wise, but quiet and no one gives a crap about them. That's you.
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Think Data from star trek NG, but without the Pinocchio syndrome. imagine in a flat dead pan voice and no body language going... "i'm going to kill you." nobody would take it seriously. then you do it.... Situation bonus on the next guy you say it to, if he saw you kill the first one. Also, You can express emotion, but it's over the top, or way understated. usually not connected to what your saying. This may actually limit your ability to use rage properly.
Happler has the skills mostly right. Animals find you odd/creepy/scary and you can't know which way to act regarding them (or people for that matter). As for disguise, Disguise is also a matter of acting like the person your supposed to be. If your supposed to fit in great, except now you have no ability to relate to what "fits in." So your not believable. pretty much means you stick out as a huge sore thumb in any crowd.
rain man is a good start, but honestly, people took him for normal until they interacted a little with him. pretty much Cha: 7 IS rain man. keep that in mind next time you think of Charisma as a dump stat. (and INT: 7 is about a 70 IQ BTW, which is about 10 points inside the mentally challenged range.)
Something to remember is that speech and communication are two different things in this regard. Intelligence is what determines if you can speak or not. If you're at a 3 or higher, you're good for talking. The higher above 3, the more precise you can be with your words.
Charisma is all force of personality. You can speak to your teammates just fine, but maybe you feel more insecure (in your case, INCREDIBLY insecure!) and when something comes to mind, maybe you just don't say it? Maybe when you have a really good idea, and you explain it to the group, you realize you've been talking to yourself, inside your head, the whole time. And then even after you realize you haven't said your idea out loud, you just stay quiet.
Maybe you were outgoing, and suddenly you're very timid. When someone bumps into you in the tavern, maybe you just mumble an apology so quietly you can't even hear yourself. Maybe when you would normally get angry or get into a fight, now you back down from almost any confrontation.
You'll have a LOT of troubles ahead until you can recover your Charisma, but being a turnip shouldn't be one of them. ;)
If you have one in Charisma it means you are socially awkward. Whats difficult with Charisma drain is that, at game creation you decide that you low Charisma comes from bad body odour, that you look mentally disabled etc, thats hard to justify when Charisma is drained (you dont usually get ugglier by drained Charisma).
What it might be is that you find yourself unknoingly step into other people comfort zones, standing way to close to people, or overcompensate by standing to far away, touching people at the wrong times etc.
Its hard to coem up with good examples as what we in real life know as Social awkward people probably doesnt have any less than 3 (and they probably suffer from some kind of mental handicap) and most are probably around 5-6.
An axample might be Stephen Hawkings. If you didnt know who he was you would write him off as just another handicapped person, and if he tried to bluff or threaten you, you might laugh at him and walk away, not taking him seriously. Same if he tried to tell you about his ingenious plan. But he is still one of the smartest people on the planet despite his low charisma.
Whats difficult with Charisma drain is that, at game creation you decide that you low Charisma comes from bad body odour, that you look mentally disabled etc, thats hard to justify when Charisma is drained (you dont usually get ugglier by drained Charisma).
Says who? If you translate low charisma as body odor, then what's wrong with assuming that your character stops taking care of his hygiene when his Charisma is drained? (Even if you consider low Charisma as being some sort of mental handicap, I see no problem with assuming your character took sufficient mental trauma to affect how he cares for himself.) And physical appearance isn't set in stone. Studies have shown that people who feel better about themselves are more physically attractive to members of the opposite sex- just because they carry themselves differently. By having a drained Charisma, it could be that the mental trauma (resulting in whatever handicap your character now has) has made it so that he has a semi-permanent scowl without realizing it, or he drools and doesn't seem to care anymore. Or he walks with an abnormal gait, since he's no longer aware of how people look at him. That limp he's been hiding ever since getting stabbed by that rogue last month? Yeah, he isn't hiding it anymore, because what's the point? That itch he has? He's gonna scratch it whenever he gets a chance. The few times people try to talk to him, even if he's hanging on their every word, he gives such a little reaction that people are likely to assume he's fallen asleep while listening. Or however you want to describe it.
Honestly, almost every time someone has difficulty justifying a particular game mechanic, it's an issue with the justification, not the game mechanic.
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Other people should damn near regard you as a non-entity. When you attempt to have a conversation with someone, they should walk off...not because they're trying to be rude, or they dislike you, but because they really don't even notice you. The rest of the party, if they acknowledge you at all, should refer to you as "...that guy that's sometimes around...what's his name?" And they should do that while you're sitting right there.
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An axample might be Stephen Hawkings. If you didnt know who he was you would write him off as just another handicapped person, and if he tried to bluff or threaten you, you might laugh at him and walk away, not taking him seriously. Same if he tried to tell you about his ingenious plan. But he is still one of the smartest people on the planet despite his low charisma.
I kind of think that anything that has been attributed to Stephen Hawking over at least the past decade or so has almost certainly been the work of grad students, etc. Stuff that would be completely ignored if it came from Joe Smith, grad student; but gets lauded as absolutely brilliant since it comes from Stephen Hawking, figurative brain in a jar.
A low Charisma doenst make you invisible to other, its just that people do not take what you say seriously. I would kick A GM's leg that simply ignores what i say just because i have a low Charisma.
If a character with low charisma have been travlling with a party for an extended period of time, and shown that his plans work over and over again, the Charisma wouldnt affect their realtionship as he does not need to convince the other that its a good idea.
But one you meet for the first time will have a hard time taking you seriosuly for warried reason, be that stuttering, lack of selfesteem, odd behavior etc.
A real life example in my group of friends has to be our compulsive "creative-storyteller", who always have done the same as you when u tell a story, just that he has don it better/bigger/stronger version of it. He sure aint invisible, takes more "space" than most people i know, but do we take what he says seriously? Nope. (He is a rather good GM however as he then uses his Creative storytelling for a Good purpose).
A lot of really good examples of how to play, say, a 5 CHA, but not a 1.
In my opinion, on their core level, Wisdom is your ability to assimilate information from the outside world, Intelligence is your ability to process that information and make reasoned decisions, and Charisma is your ability to communicate your thoughts to others.
So, info coming in, processing info, and info going out.
A 1 CHA is only a single increment above comatose. Regardless how you define Charisma, bear in mind you're only slightly more "charming" than a coma patient, but not quite as "personable" as a snake.
IMO, an individual with a 1 CHA would not be able to communicate on a meaningful level.
As others have said having a Charisma stat of 1 does NOT leave you unable to function, you just have a bad time relating or explaining yourself to others, which manifests as a penalty to your social skills as people percieve you are unfriendly, unapproachable, or you just plain say the wrong things to people that offend them despite how well your intentions are.
Tourette's does not always mean random obscenities. I think Asberger's would be just as fitting.
I wouldn't use Asbergers. People who have it have low Charisma, no doubt, but I wouldn't put them so low as to have a 1. I can still make friends and convince people of things, even if I am not the best at it. My case of Aspergers makes it a bit harder, but by absolutely no means bad enough for a -5 penalty to all Charisma checks. I'd put someone with Aspergers as maybe a 6 or an 8 in Charisma. I'd look towards more disabling forms of Autism than Aspergers for an example of a 1 in Charisma.
I see that there is some common misconceptions when in comes to Asberger's. Just because you have Asberger's doesn't mean you have the incapability of making friends and have no social presence what so ever. Someone with Asberger's doesn't have a cha of 1. Unless we're just exaggerating. If we are then my int is 47.
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I see that there is some common misconceptions when in comes to Asberger's. Just because you have Asberger's doesn't mean you have the incapability of making friends and have no social presence what so ever. Someone with Asberger's doesn't have a cha of 1. Unless we're just exaggerating. If we are then my int is 47.
It's Aspergers, folks, with a P.
Other than that, I agree with this post, actually. Speaking as someone with Aspergers, it's not really even necessarily a low Charisma (or Wisdom, or whatever) score. The best D&D/Pathfinder equivalent would be a template of some sort, probably involving a Charisma penalty among other things. But, like all such penalties, it can be more than compensated for with a high base score.
I've met eople with Aspergers who were well-liked by almost everyone, and if perhaps a bit awkward, were considered charmingly so. I've also met people with Aspergers who were annoying as hell. It's a spectrum just like anything else.
A charisma score of 1, means that you can't use charisma based skills.... PERIOD. Your other mental scores are practically meaningless because you're barely on the edge of sentient because of your severe mental imbalance. You're nonfunctional in the sense of charisma based skills and at best, marginally functional with anything else as you're essentially teetering on the edge of catatonia.
Unless you're speaking figuratively, I'm going to have to disagree with your statement. There's nothing stopping you from making a Diplomacy check or a Bluff check or even a flat Charisma check with a 1 Charisma, you're just taking a -5 to whatever you roll. A higher-level PC, such as the one the TC has, could feasibly (and easily) have enough skill ranks to turn that penalty into a positive number. A 10th-level PC, for example, could easily have a +8 or higher in a Charisma-based skill. That's like night and day compared to someone with, say, an 20 in Charisma (difference of +10 for the win) but there's nothing stopping you from using the skills.
Having a CHARISMA score of 1 means you suffer a -5 penalty to CHARSIMA based skill tests, NOWHERE in RAW does it say you CANNOT use the skills anymore, you just suffer a penalty to do them.
Now as to how CHARISMA 1 should be roleplayed, by no means does it require the character/player to act as if they are 'socially invisible', it just means they have a knack for offending people every time they open their mouth and when trying to express themselves they tend to do so in an offensive or negative way.
Charisma measures the characters personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance.
Thats the definition under RAW.
It basicially implies you are uncouth, are unable to adequately express yourself to others and are less able to make people follow your orders or suggestions. Basically you dont exert yourself socially very well and in roleplaying terms, the character likely keeps their mouth shut, and whenever they DO speak they tend to say things that just plain annoy or aggrevate everyone.
This is totally off-point, but in doing some lookups for this thread I came to appreciate how more or less arbitrary assigning charisma scores to vermin is. Why does a clam have 8 more charisma than a jellyfish? Why does a wasp have so much more charisma than a centipede? How come sometimes a swarm of something is more charismatic than a giant version of that thing and sometimes less? If stag beetles are so charismatic, how come they're still going stag? (Well, Giant Stag Beetles are moderately charismatic; Goliath Stag Beetles are considerably less so.) The rules seem to be something like "Maggots get a 1. Water stuff gets a 2. Arachnids and other stuff with tons of legs get a 2. PROPER insects get something between 4 and 13, chosen more or less at random."
Looking at the breakdown of mental abilities, we can see:
Intelligence governs the ability to process data, whether it be memorized, like history, or analytical, like math.
Wisdom covers both the ability to process sensory stimuli in you surroundings and social interactions.
Charisma is a poorly defined ability covering the last, and very broad, category: social output.
Just as it doesn't make sense that Wisdom governs both sensory stimuli and social stimuli, it doesn't make sense that Charisma equally governs: how attractive you are, how sly you are, how charming you are, how scary you are, how relatable you are, and how convincing your rhetoric is. So, we must pick and choose what parts of the definition apply to you.
It doesn't make sense to make you more ugly. Saying that you would have an abrasive personality doesn't cover it for several reasons. First, you are only one step above having no personality at all. Just as an INT 8 is somewhat dumb (but in a more normal range), and INT 1 isn't even thinking on a human level (it's the dumb side of animal intellect), a CHA 8 is more consistent with an abrasive personality. Also, let's remember that CHA 22 is just as much "super scary undead" as it is "super charming and attractive", so we know that if an abrasive personality is coupled with an intimidating figure, it would merit a higher CHA, rather than a lower one.
So we know that you're personality is extremely low-functioning, and it isn't going to create a personality that people might follow out of fear or charm or whatever. You're wisdom is fine, so you can process social ques, you just don't know how to react to them. Just because you know someone is sad or lying doesn't mean you know what to do about it.
Your social output is crippled, so you probably resemble a very low functioning autistic person. You know what's going on around you, and you're not mentally handicapped, but you don't know how to react to anything socially demanding of you... at all. You don't talk, unless you absolutely must, then maybe. If you feel cornered, you would either shut down or lash out. Other ways to express this are numerous, but I think that low-functioning autistic sums up where you are. Do some research on it, and you might find it to be an interesting character option. You'd need to fudge some stuff, since such a person wouldn't adventure, but it might give you something cool to work with.
It is very easy to determine what ingame consequences, apart from those clearly stated in the rules, a very low Ability score has:
Just look at what skills the ability influences and then assume that the character is exceptionally bad at them unless he really tries (when rolling for the skill) and even then the results are often bad (due to the -5).
So what Skills do we have:
Bluff
You say what you think. You are not polite in the slightest.
Diplomacy
Your first and second impression will always be negative. You can't win people even though you might impress them with your feats of Strength, Wits and/or Wisdom they still think you are an oaf.
Disguise
You can fool noone about your personality. You will be known for "that terrible person" everywhere.
Handle Animal
You creep animals out. They really don't like you at all.
Intimidate
You can't respond to other people. You do not know what moves them or freaks them. You sound silly and stupid even when saying intelligent and wise words.
Perform
Your performances (if any) may possess a technically high standard but they are soulless. You seem to act ooc. You miss that spark.
Why don't you just have someone cast Restoration on you?