Quite some while ago, the folks I game with instituted a house-rule that had an ancillary effect of adjusting the mechanical value of characters/creatures having a higher Charisma score.
I have added a small incentive toward not dumping charisma completely - by making will saves dependent upon wisdom or charisma, depending upon the effect.
For example: If someone casts a 'Dominate Person' the target must make a charisma based will save. This is because the caster is trying to overcome the target's own force of personality, seems logical to me that charisma, not wisdom, is the key attribute there. Similarly for most Enchantment [Mind-Affecting] spells.
If someone casts an illusion however, that is more of an attempt to beguile the target's senses, in this case they must make a wisdom based will save.
It seems to result in a reasonable mix of the two types of save being made.
I can lend some perspective on Fractal's position.
For years, our gaming group merrily went along with the Player's Handbook (PHB) rule that prescribes Wisdom as the talent behind characters’/creatures’ Will saving throws. But the descriptions for both Wisdom and Charisma (as presented in Chapter 1 of the PHB) just seemed... well... a bit disjointed when read in light of the description of Will saves under Combat Basics (“[Will] saves reflect [one’s] resistance to mental influence as well as many magical effects”).
If “Wisdom represents being in tune with and aware of one’s surroundings” and Charisma “represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting”, then Charisma seemed – at least to us – to be the better well-spring of willpower. On several occasions we sat around the gaming table debating the value and potential effects of moving Wisdom out of the way and instilling Charisma as the root of willpower, but it wasn't until one of us picked up WotC’s Complete Adventurer from a local hobby store, and we became aware to its Force of Personality feat, that our group voted to actually make the switch.
Our implementation of this universal house-rule had nothing to do with Charisma being a “dump” stat for everyone except the Sorceress and Bard. Additionally, it wasn’t made with any consideration relative to Single- vs. Multiple-Ability-Dependency (SAD vs. MAD). Instead, we just wanted to correlate the strength of one’s personality with his/her/its willpower and until we saw that the game’s designers were open to the idea of Charisma as the driving force behind Will (or, put another way, that there wasn’t some sublime mechanical reason behind Wisdom contributing its modifier to Will), we weren’t willing to alter such a fundamental aspect of our game for fear of creating unexpected negative consequences. (Which is funny in and of itself, because now we play a heavily modified rule-set.)
Last session, we began play-testing an evolution of our previous Willpower-flows-from-Charisma house-rule by incorporating an idea reinvigorated by Kirth Gersen's "Mechanical Tinkering Thread".
Possible topics include…
- How to make Charisma something other than an auto-dump stat
I have always thought it was a bit unfair that there were two saves for physical effects and only one for mental effects. Will saves cover a wide range of effects, but I have never really liked that they were all lumped together in the way they interacted with the target (basically by calling for Will saves.)
Why not split will saves into two types. Will saves can handle effects that trying to deceive (i.e. illusion) and a second mental save handle effects that try to coerce (i.e. enchantment.) Let us call this second mental save the Individuality save.
The individuality save is based on charisma and handles any effect that tries to coerce the target to act contrary to how they would normally act.
A will save would still be based on wisdom, but would only handle the effects that target the subject's senses.
This idea is still in its rough draft form, so I am sure there would need to be some tweaking, but it would be a step in helping to solve the Cha dump stat issue.
Oh man, I love this one.
I suggest the terms Suspicion and Defiance to represent saves vs. deception and coercion, respectively.
Willpower and Insight (for Charisma and Wisdom, respectively) could also work.
I am not sold on Willpower and Insight. Both words suggest wisdom and I already have mixed them up in talking through this idea.
Defiance is at least charisma sounding.
However, toe-may-to/toe-mah-to. The names themselves don't really matter.
What does matter is:
- What each one covers.
- What stat each one is tied to.
- Arranging the good and poor saves for class.
To be honest, I think that shouldn't be too much work to do. We have the basics of the first point, the second point is decided, and the third one just needs work and play testing.
While we all liked the idea of having two mental saves to compliment characters’/creatures’ two physical saves, and we agreed to split up mental saves according to affects that result in deception vs. affects that result in coercion, we – like Kirth’s contributing posters – struggled with what to name the new mental saving throw.
We discussed the merits of naming the new mental saving throw ‘Individuality’ like CalebTGordan suggested, but there was some strong opposition based on the fact that while a Fortitude saving throw can be quickly requested at the table by calling it a “Fort save”, and the terms “Reflex save” and Will save” are similarly concise phrases, no one could come up with a truncated form of “Individuality” that didn’t sound odd stumbling off the speaker’s tongue (calling for an “Indie save” just wasn’t very evocative).
Evil Lincoln’s suggestion to call the mental saves “Suspicion and Defiance” seemed quite promising, especially since we’d agreed that one mental save should address deception and the other coercion. Then someone in our group brought up two good points:
- (1) getting rid of the term “Will” as it relates to all possible mental saving throws puts the kibosh on more than 10 years of common language in our continuing game and
(2) there is a definition of “Defiance” that is basically a synonym for “Willpower”: willfulness.
Ultimately we smooshed together CalebTGordan’s and Evil Lincoln’s naming ideas, resulting in us keeping the term “Will save” (to denote the defensive effort one can attempt to mitigate the effects of a coercive magical effect) and gaining a new mental saving throw, named “Suspicion” (to denote the defensive effort one can attempt to mitigate the effects of a magical effect designed to deceive a victim’s senses).
No one has yet come up with a good at-the-table truncation for a “Suspicion save”…
Any help on this point (in addition to the main request of this post) would be appreciated.
Having named our house-ruled mental saves, we went thru the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and the Advanced Player’s Guide agreeing, in congress, as to which distinct mental saving throw would be the most appropriate mechanism for defending oneself against each Rules-as-Written (RAW) Will save magical affect. It took nearly a whole evening of fire-side debate, but at the end of it all we’d eaten a ton of s’mores and everything seemed good.
Then, last weekend, as part of the celebrations associated with my son’s 14th birthday, he wanted the whole crew to get together and began a new campaign; we decided it would be a good opportunity to begin testing this new house-rule. Just as the GM brought us to the night’s finale, we five adults - who’d all invested so much time and energy in working thru the planning of this house-rule - tripped on our collective faces when one of my son’s friends - a kid that’d never played a table-top RPG (with us or anyone else) – asked simply, “Can I use my Sense Motive ranks in place of my Suspicion save to shrug off the Wizard’s (that night’s Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG’s) Phantasmal Killer spell?”
Hmmmm. A quick review of the Core Rulebook by my son revealed to his friend that Phantasmal Killer does operate (in part) by deceiving its victim into being literally scared to death. Accordingly, my son – supporting his friend – opined that the BBEG’s magical deception was, therefore, essentially a lie. Lying in-game is normally a task of the Bluff skill. And Bluffs are opposed by Sense Motive.
We’d set up this evolution of our saving throw house-rule so that Suspicion follows either the good or bad saving throw progression; just like Fortitude, Reflex and Will do. But, after just 4th level, the bonus provided by the good saving throw progression begins to lag behind the bonus a character can have in Sense Motive, even if it’s a non-class skill, as long as he/she assigns maximum ranks at each promotion. (If Sense Motive is a class-skill, that initial +3 bump makes the good saving throw progression lag as early as 1st level…)
And even though we’d already built a +2 to Suspicion saves feat (“Highly Suspicious”, mirroring the mechanics of Great Fortitude, Iron Will and Lightning Reflexes), the scalable bonus to Sense Motive that a character can get from taking the Alertness feat again outstrips the best possible saving throw progression.
The long and the short of it is that my son’s friend intuitively recognized that skill check bonuses can be higher than saving throw bonuses pretty easily. And since making his save was so important, using the bigger number was better for his character.
During the game, the best reason any of us could come up to explain the difference between needing to make a Suspicion check against the BBEG’s (admittedly deceptive) spell and a Sense Motive check to oppose someone’s Bluff was this: Illusions - being magical affects - are much more subtle and innately convincing than merely being confronted by an untruth (not matter how exceptional). Even though my son and his friend took that explanation and we successfully moved on with the climax of the episode, I don’t feel that that was an especially good answer – at least not flavorwise.
Since the community here has so much experience and brings incredible diversity and creativity to this forums’ many posts, might someone help me out by providing a better (more flavorful) way to address this disparity?
Even though my son and his friend only argued along the thought cascade of illusions-are-deceptions-deceptions-are-lies-lies-are-challanged-via-Sense Motive, I could foresee someone using the same logic to argue that Perception checks should counter Illusions. (Essentially, if illusions aren’t lies, per se, they could be understood as something being magically disguised as something else; and Disguise checks are opposed by challengers’ Perception.)
None of the adults in our game want to wander so far away from Pathfinder ruleset as to necessitate totally re-working all of the myriad RAW will save affects that exist in print just so our table can take into account the kinds of oppositional effort a character/creature could generate by using a maxed-out skill check to counter magic. So, we’re not going to.
Still, I’d like a better way to explain the difference between what triggers a Suspicion saving throw vs. an opposing skill check.