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The design issue they're talking about is that Charisma is an easy pick for dump-statting for most classes. If you're not a paladin, bard, sorcerer, etc., then charisma actually gains you very little and a low charisma doesn't hurt much. It's not like strength, which is useful for all characters (melee & carrying capacity) and a far cry from constitution, which is very useful for all characters. Or, perhaps to put it more succinctly, almost everyone can dump charisma and still be great at what they do. They can even be pretty good at social interaction!
I do agree that it's a design flaw, but it's not a very big one and it can easily be compensated for with a little ingenuity.
Now let's please get back to the practical optimization!
Two things I wanted to drop in and say:
1. Thank you Ashiel for an excellent thread. I'm very much enjoying it, and I think it will have a significant effect on how I build chars.
2. Kirth and Vuron (and others that are interested), I've started a thread in the house rules section on adding mechanical benefits to CHA, as I agree that it's bad game design to have one of six primary statistics not be as valuable as the other 5.
Threadjack over.
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I just want to chime in and say how much I've enjoyed reading this thread.
Hi Ashiel,
This is a very interesting thread you have started here.
First of all, let me say that I don't actually agree with your terminology. I do no consider what you are describing as 'practical optimisation', to be optimisation at all. To me it appears simply to be skilled building of an organic, concept driven character, which is not, in my experience what Optimisation with a capital O is about. It is my observation that the mind set of many optimisers is one that pushs away options and concept elements because they are sub-optimal, rather than finding ways to make them work as well as they can. Which does not seem to be what you do.
The point being that if I wish to be able to play keln the worlds greatest swords man, I should be able to make a swordsman who is a mechanical reflection of that concept. If my concept is to play leshi, the bumbling mage school dropout however, I should be able to make that character in such a way that the mechanics reflect the character concept in a believable manner. If I make an arch-mage of utter awesome, I have not followed Leshi's concept.
The usual complaint would be that Leshi is not 'contributing. Well that only matters if the rest of the party is made up of 'Keln the greatest swords man in the world, Pherm the voice of the gods(worlds most powerful cleric), and lobex the shadow(worlds most successful rogue). In such a party Leshi is an inappropriate character. But along side Ovid Varn, alchemist and alcholic misanthrope, Jobba the illiterate brute, and Novad Rolt, branded theif and wanted murderer, Leshi is contributing propotionally to the group. In fact, in such a situation, the inclusion of Keln, would make the group less effective, not because their combat effectiveness would be less, but because the net fun would be less.
Next, I have a suggestion for a build I should like to see you give a bash at.
Anya Zendrana
Concept: Mystic of Free Movement.
Anya is a Korvosan native who grew up in the shingles of bridge front, in the years before the rise of queen Illeosa. As a practitioner of shingle running from an early age, Anya makes a living from delivery of messages and packages for the lest savoury members of the Korvosan underworld.
So focused on her art has she become that she has found a way to reach an ecstatic state while running which she calls 'flow', that allows her to access supernatural abilities related to movement and perception. Anya does not fight in the conventional sense of the word, standing still or slowing down long enough to trade blows would get her dead, nor does she really use magic to blast foes, or any of the nonsense an adventurer might attempt,rather she uses her environment, dirty tricks and her movement to put her foes at a disadvantage, so that her allies may get a killing blow.
Please try to make anya so that she contributes roughly as much as sigfried.
Thank you Ashiel for your treatment on Rodge.
It was enlightening to see the spell choices and the class choices you picked, and I certainly agree with many here that you have opened up my eyes to the world of the 15 point buy!
If you have time, at some point the witch battlefield controller would be an interested option to see, as I have never played the class myself, but if you don't have the time or inclination, no worries!
Thank you so much for what you do!
Me.
dot
another request here :-)
it's a character I already started but I'd be curious how you'd built this one:
a halfling who had bad experiences with necromancers (maybe the local mageocracy LE rulers? ),
the halfling specialized in hunting down mages (especially necromancers) as a result,
sooo... this one should be good with skills related to bounty-hunting and good at duelling mages, preferrably those who summon skeletons and use save-or-die spells
I'd rather avoid item-shopping lists to protect against spells. I made the choice of getting spell resistance through class features, maybe there's other means?
Make me a 15 point buy necromancer that knows how to sow.
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8 in charisma is a normal value, it would be a normal person speaking to other normal person, if you do not say anything that make the princees angry why she would not speak with you? (unless you are a commoner ahnd she hate commoners and bla bla bla).
If people with 8 of charisma could not communicate with each other i suposse there would not be societies .
Lots of the posters here seem to operater under the theory that every time a PC starts to open his/her mouth - BAM! - you gotta be rolling some kind of nameless CHA check. Talk about putting the roll into roleplaying.
I think the dice come out when it's time to convince an NPC to do something that they're not already inclined to do. But that's just me.
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LOL...Numbers represent your character....PERIOD. If you want to be strong put points in STR, if you want to be dashing and charismatic, add points in CHARISMA or skill focus (Diplomacy).
You can write all the long winded denials and justifications you want as to why your 7 CHA fighter should be the party leader ( good role-playing, numbers don't fit my character, he just has buckteeth, etc) but in the end you are just trying to exploit the system.
There's nothing wrong with exploiting the system, min/maxing, optimizing, etc. but I just hate it when people do it, and they try to deny it...Just embrace it if that's your thing.
You can write all the long winded denials and justifications you want as to why your 7 CHA fighter should be the party leader
Why couldn't he? Did Hannibal have a high CHA, or did he delegate the Face role (haha) to someone else? You know the answer of course. And if Hannibal didn't have a dumped CHA per se, he certainly could have had a mere 10.
LOL...Numbers represent your character....PERIOD. If you want to be strong put points in STR, if you want to be dashing and charismatic, add points in CHARISMA or skill focus (Diplomacy).
This is exactly the sort of wrongness that the thread was created to dispute. A lot of people who fancy themselves roleplayers who would never drop a stat below 12 or whatever because they don't want to play someone who isn't smart and charismatic or whatever fail to understand what the numbers on the character sheet acutally mean. Characters do not walk around town with their character sheets floating over their heads. A character with 8 Charisma and +4 diplomacy is EXACTLY as good at diplomacy as a character with 14 Charisma and +1 diplomacy. They will get favorable and unfavorable responses exactly the same amount of the time. The game world does not know what is written on your character sheet. Your character sheet is not reality. The results of your checks are reality. People who care about roleplaying in a game need to care about making a character sheet that will modify rolls in a way such that their character will come off mechanically how they imagine him being. The only people who care how you get there - what's in the little boxes on the sheet - are people who think that 14 Int/14 Cha Fighter makes you automatically the champion roleplayer.
Guys, don't necro two-year-old threads. Theos, there's no point in dotting a two-year-old thread. >_>Unless the topic is still relevant, you mean.
I think the state of CHA will always be relevant. It's one of a handful of touch-stone issues. Whichever way they lean, people feel strongly that their way is the right way.
I have no problem with CHA being the weakest of the 6 Ability Scores, because that really speaks to the nature of the game. We're not playing Dungeons's & Courtisans or Courtfinder. We're playing a game where violence is a very real option and where might often times does mean right. CHA takes a back seat to that much of the time. That's not to say that there is no social interaction and the game accounts nicely for it. You can and do come out of the wilderness and interact with people in civilized lands. But the heart of the beast, the soul of the game, is in the doing of Heroic deeds.
We are men of action, lies do not become us!
@laoba,
If, as you assert, Charisma is less important than the other stats, and intentionally so, then why is it worth the same amount in a point-buy stat system? Why is it treated as a full stat, along with the other 5, instead of being separate, or (better yet) subsumed entirely into the Cha-based skills? That would be seem to me to be monumentally poor game design.
@laoba,
If, as you assert, Charisma is less important than the other stats, and intentionally so, then why is it worth the same amount in a point-buy stat system? Why is it treated as a full stat, along with the other 5, instead of being separate, or (better yet) subsumed entirely into the Cha-based skills? That would be seem to me to be monumentally poor game design.
I will happily pay 13 points for a 17 point battery in whatever my chosen class happens to be. Very rarely is CHA that battery. That's why it's the weakest stat and why it costs less (sometimes more than less) in PB.
I will never play a Bard and I probably will never play a Sorcerer either. If I play a Paladin, I'm still not sure that CHA gets that 13pt resource.
Kirth - I never said CHA was intentionally designed to be the weakest stat, but I did say that it's naturally that way.
I don't particularly think of CHA being the weakest stat, but then again, I browse regularly and have seen the "diplomancer" build. The fact it's also a prime casting stat for a couple of classes, and has relevance in a few more for mechanics purposes alleviates some of that.
So, you've demonstrated that it's relevant for 1 person per party -- especially if the said diplomancer takes one of the Cha-casting classes. No one else needs it, given the RAW.
Now, if hp could be "shared" freely among party members (e.g., through some workable "aggro" thing, or just an "I automatically take all the hits against my friends" mechanic), and if the whole party went on the best initiative total, then Cha would be exactly as relevant to the group as the other stats. But as it is, it's relevant to 25% of the group or less, and everyone else can freely dump it, which is most especially not true of Dexterity, Constitution, etc.
That's why it's the weakest stat and why it costs less (sometimes more than less) in PB.
Charisma costs less in point-buy than the other stats? Can you cite me a reference for that? Because that would seem to be very good design.
That's why it's the weakest stat and why it costs less (sometimes more than less) in PB.Charisma costs less in point-buy than the other stats? Can you cite me a reference for that? Because that would seem to be very good design.
My point is that CHA's inherent value is so low (to me anyway) that I don't need to spend points on it at all (10). See what I mean? CHA costs me nothing, because I don't invest in it. Because I don't have to.
My point is that CHA's inherent value is so low (to me anyway) that I don't need to spend points on it at all (10). See what I mean? CHA costs me nothing, because I don't invest in it. Because I don't have to.
And my point that if its value is near-zero, then so should its cost be. If a 6 or a 16 makes little actual difference according to the rules, then the point-buy values should reflect that, not pretend it matters.
My point is that CHA's inherent value is so low (to me anyway) that I don't need to spend points on it at all (10). See what I mean? CHA costs me nothing, because I don't invest in it. Because I don't have to.And my point that if its value is near-zero, then so should its cost be. If a 6 or a 16 makes little actual difference according to the rules, then the point-buy values should reflect that, not pretend it matters.
In the rare occasion that you have call for it, like if you're a Sorcerer, then you should pay for CHA. My point is that there just isn't that much call for it, period.
This is exactly the sort of wrongness that the thread was created to dispute... Characters do not walk around town with their character sheets floating over their heads. A character with 8 Charisma and +4 diplomacy is EXACTLY as good at diplomacy as a character with 14 Charisma and +1 diplomacy. .. The game world does not know what is written on your character sheet. Your character sheet is not reality. The results of your checks are reality... The only people who care how you get there - what's in the little boxes on the sheet - are people who think that 14 Int/14 Cha Fighter makes you automatically the champion roleplayer.
I already said if you want to be the leader either get high charisma or skill focus Diplomacy, so I agree on that point. However, it is extremely rare to see someone take the Skill Focus (Diplomacy) feat with low CHA.
The STATS ON THE SHEET represent your character in the game world. I don't know why people try to dispute this fact. If you intend on playing a party face you should take the appropriate feat or attribute points, if not DON"T PLAY YOUR CHARACTER THAT WAY.
People want to have it all. They want to be able to play a smart and dashing character but don't want to pay the price in feats, attributes or skills - to me that is cheese. I don't have a problem with optimizing, but don't show up at the game table with 7 INT and 7 Cha and try to pass yourself off as highly intelligent and articulate while concentrating all your skills and feats on STR and CON in order to deal damage.
Obviously everyone is entitle to their own opinion and can play the game however they want, but I can't pretend like their is a valid point when I don't see one. Again a low CHA doesn't mean you have to be a ugly troll or low INT mean you are borderline special, but playuing the other extreme is petty.
People want to have it all. They want to be able to play a smart and dashing character but don't want to pay the price in feats, attributes or skills - to me that is cheese. I don't have a problem with optimizing, but don't show up at the game table with 7 INT and 7 Cha and try to pass yourself off as highly intelligent and articulate.
A character with 7 INT who maxes out the Linguistics skill actually is highly-articulate, even though he's not at all bright. That's what skills do. A character with CHA 7 and a Diplomacy bonus of +20 (through skill ranks, feats, and magic bonuses) is highly-diplomatic. That's what a high Diplomacy bonus means.
Saying that an INT 7 character should not be played as articulate, or that a CHA 7 character should not be played as diplomatic, is ignoring how the rules actually work. Now, if your stance is that the rules should be re-written so that base stats count for more, and maybe magic bonuses to skills are a lot harder to come by, I wouldn't disagree. But those are houserules, and don't reflect how the Pathfinder game is written.
"Doesn't anybody give a $#!T about the rules!!!"
LMAO, no but seriously I see the point of some of you all, and that's why I said skills, feats, or attributes. I have no problem with a 8 CHA fighter with skill focus (diplomacy) and the trait that makes diplomacy a class skill being the party face. He has paid the price to have his character that way.
Basically, I'm saying that role-playing is not a substitute for character design. I don't care how mart you are in real life, In the game, if your character is built as a dummy play him like one. To not do so is an attempt to exploit the rules. YMMV
My point is that CHA's inherent value is so low (to me anyway) that I don't need to spend points on it at all (10). See what I mean? CHA costs me nothing, because I don't invest in it. Because I don't have to.And my point that if its value is near-zero, then so should its cost be. If a 6 or a 16 makes little actual difference according to the rules, then the point-buy values should reflect that, not pretend it matters.
I kind of agree with Kirth here -- back in 1st and 2nd edition your stat spread didn't really matter as much. There was little to no difference between having a stat of 9 and having a stat of say 14 (some of the stats could have a much larger spread with it making little difference for the average character). These days there is a three point bonus spread between the two and it supposedly counts for a lot more.
However charisma, on average is simply less useful than the other stats are. Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and to a lesser extent wisdom all have direct and wide spread serious effects on multiple subsystems:
Strength is going to impact your martial skill, your carrying capacity (and thereby your encumbrance and how much Dexterity you can use as well as penalties on skills) and the likelihood of success with several skills that have an active impact on your adventuring lifespan (climb for example). It also impacts your CMB and CMD making you more or less easier to grapple among many other things.
Dexterity is going to affect your initiative, your reflex save (probably the most common save throw to make), your AC, several skills and CMD. It has such a wide impact that is hard to minimize if it is low.
Intelligence has a direct impact on all your skills. A high intelligence can help make up for low stats when it comes to skills by virtue of giving you enough points to surmount low scores on those skills. It also has a direct impact on your ability to communicate due to bonus languages coming from intelligence. Several key skills in making magical items directly reference intelligence as does figuring out magical effects you see.
Wisdom has less over all impact but what it does impact is fairly significant -- will saves carry some of the worse consequences if failed and perception is probably the single most used skill in the game with sense motive also being highly valued. As a stat it is easier in many ways to replace but it is also one that generally needs replaced or accounted for if it is low.
Constitution is in many ways in a same boat with wisdom. It has no effect on skills but has a direct impact on your ability to continue living due to its influence on both hit points and fortitude saves.
Charisma has no vital function attached to it. It's sole impact is on skill checks and it is the only stat that has multiple magical items designed to augment your abilities without directly impacting your stat (circlet of persuasion I'm looking at you in particular). It has importance for some specific classes, but even there it can be bypassed to some degree for each of them (with the sage sorcerer and empyreal bloodlines specifically, but even a paladin can make due with a low charisma score and a bard can and will do fine with only a 13 at level 1).
My point is that CHA's inherent value is so low (to me anyway) that I don't need to spend points on it at all (10). See what I mean? CHA costs me nothing, because I don't invest in it. Because I don't have to.And my point that if its value is near-zero, then so should its cost be. If a 6 or a 16 makes little actual difference according to the rules, then the point-buy values should reflect that, not pretend it matters.I kind of agree with Kirth here -- back in 1st and 2nd edition your stat spread didn't really matter as much. There was little to no difference between having a stat of 9 and having a stat of say 14 (some of the stats could have a much larger spread with it making little difference for the average character). These days there is a three point bonus spread between the two and it supposedly counts for a lot more.
However charisma, on average is simply less useful than the other stats are. Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and to a lesser extent wisdom all have direct and wide spread serious effects on multiple subsystems:
Strength is going to impact your martial skill, your carrying capacity (and thereby your encumbrance and how much Dexterity you can use as well as penalties on skills) and the likelihood of success with several skills that have an active impact on your adventuring lifespan (climb for example). It also impacts your CMB and CMD making you more or less easier to grapple among many other things.
Dexterity is going to affect your initiative, your reflex save (probably the most common save throw to make), your AC, several skills and CMD. It has such a wide impact that is hard to minimize if it is low.
Intelligence has a direct impact on all your skills. A high intelligence can help make up for low stats when it comes to skills by virtue of giving you enough points to surmount low scores on those skills. It also has a direct impact on your ability to communicate due to bonus languages coming from...
Re: Charisma has no vital function attached to it -
Respectfully disagree. I think talking to people is a much more important ability than strength.
What you're talking about is combat. Out of combat, a bad diplomacy or bluff roll can doom a party as surely as a failed will save. And this is no rare or unusual circumstance in my RP experience, though your mileage may vary.
Contrast the Cha-dumping brute with a Str-dumping wizard. A clever wizard has any number of ways to insure that he never has to worry about his carrying capacity, never has to make a melee attack roll, and almost never has to worry about being grappled. He's probably a pretty interesting character. The Brute that NEVER has to make a diplomacy roll? So, what he's just off in the corner for every social encounter? Certainly the potential for RP magic is there, but to me, the smart money says he's probably going to be less interesting than his wizzy pal.
But that's totally subjective. Can we build a party that totally dumps Cha and Charisma-based skills? Even with spells to buff those skills temporarily or get around the problem, that party strikes me as handicapped. Now a party that completely dumps Strength and the strength based-skills? We're talking about high-dex ranged attackers and spellcasters. Personally I think that party has a better chance of surviving in the long run, especially if we read Treantmonk and are prepared to fill in the Tank gap with a summoned beastie or two (it's much more difficult to solve social encounters this way, I think).
Factor in the fact that Cha is the prime requisite (magically) for at least 5 spellcasting classes (even Int only has 4, including pseudo-casty Alchemists and not including sorcerer archetypes), generates a Cleric's channel ability, and boosts a Paladin's saving thows, I'd say 3.X, and Pathfinder in particular, has done an awful lot to make Charisma relevant.
Thinking back to 2E games in my high school days, EVERYONE dumped Charisma. To the toilet. DMs that warned "you better watch out, no Charisma will come back to haunt you" were laughed at, and the occasional "meanie" DM who made good on this threat got tomatoes thrown at him.
I won't say that it's a more vital skill than Dex, Con, or even Int. I do think it's almost on par with Wisdom (Will saves and Perception do make this more important) and more important overall than Strength for most of my characters. I would say that this is largely due to how much Dexterity has marginalized Strength.
It's important to have a melee character in your party, but it's sooo easy to do it without Strength (Weapon Finesse+Agile Weapon+26 Dex=win). Haversacks, horses, muleback cords, and Ant Haul make carrying capacity pretty much a non-issue.
I think that over the course of an adventuring career, Diplomacy rolls will have more of an impact than Climb or Swim checks. So could UMD, if you're into that sort of thing.
"Doesn't anybody give a $#!T about the rules!!!"
LMAO, no but seriously I see the point of some of you all, and that's why I said skills, feats, or attributes. I have no problem with a 8 CHA fighter with skill focus (diplomacy) and the trait that makes diplomacy a class skill being the party face. He has paid the price to have his character that way.
Basically, I'm saying that role-playing is not a substitute for character design. I don't care how mart you are in real life, In the game, if your character is built as a dummy play him like one. To not do so is an attempt to exploit the rules. YMMV
This is why I never play a character who dumps Intelligence. It's just too difficult to hold back and not metagame when I see the solution to a problem and need to share it with the group. So simply avoid this; even my Barbarians have an Int of at least 12. It helps that so far in my PF games stats have been rolled rather than point buy.
The importance of charisma has more to do with group playstyle than almost anything else. Charisma can be bypassed with skill ranks though, and maybe even skill focus.
If you intend to use strength in order to hurt someone, which is how it is mostly used in the game you can't dump it. Well it can be replaced with wisdom and dex, but the resources needed to do so are normally more valuable than skill ranks.
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What you're talking about is combat. Out of combat, a bad diplomacy or bluff roll can doom a party as surely as a failed will save. And this is no rare or unusual circumstance in my RP experience, though your mileage may vary.
The difference there is that if you want a high diplomacy and bluff intelligence gets you there better than charisma does in the long run. The +3 or whatever difference between your 7 and 12 charisma can be made up for with a three measly skill ranks.. granted by either raising your int or raising your con so you can put the favored class bonus into skills.
I disagree with what many people seem to think about a CHA 20 with no ranks in diplomacy being the same as a CHA 8 with 6 ranks in diplomacy. I especially disagree with CHA having no impact on the ranks put in diplomacy.
First of all, a cha 8 would be the kind of person that avoid social situation: putting ranks in a skill imho requires a constant use of the skill and/or an active effort to improve one's ability in it.
I can imagine the cha 8 son of a noble that is pressured into tanking ranks in diplomacy: it makes sense, his father does not care if his son is not naturally inclined toward being a leader, he will make sure that his son will learn how to properly behave and how to be persuasive. However, a cha 8 commoner with high strength that earns his gold with a sword will not spend his time taking lessons on how to position his body to give weight to his words or on how to effectively introduce an argument, discuss it and clearly expose his conclusions. He will have no ranks in diplomacy.
Think about a cha 8, cha 12 and cha 16 in real life.
I know people with cha 8: none of them actively tried to improve their ability to persuade people. Also, they had fewer interactions in life than charismatic people, due to less people wanting to interact with them, to less social activities because of not feeling at ease in social events with unknown people and to the choice to specialize in fields requiring less social skills than others (for example informatics or chemistry). These people do not have ranks in diplomacy.
I'd put myself around cha 12: I've had more interactions with more people than the cha 8 above. This was due to people wanting to interacting with me more and some active effort to get to know people (like going to more parties, going out often for drinks and such in groups with a lot of unknown people). Due to not feeling awkward in a social contest, I choose to pursue a management career: this led me to actively trying to improve my social skills, like reading about body language or taking lessons in courses about how to keep the audience focused during a presentation. I still think the main ability for my work is intelligence, but I recognize the relevance of decent to good social skills and I mildly worked for improving them. As a result I have a few ranks in diplomacy (or I would in game terms if I had a few levels).
One of my friend could be described as someone with cha 16: from youth he was always at the center of attention. He really loves to have an audience and the audience loves to listen to him. He not only goes to social events where he is out of place (something the CHA 8 people above would simply not do), but does his best to be at the center of attention there too (while I would interact far less). He decided to specialize in communication, he read a lot about body language, presentation skills and such and actively try to create opportunities to practice: if we are out he is always the one to try to get to know new people, he reads about seduction techniques and actively experiment with them (now that he has a girlfriend he does not even follow through, he just like the thrill). Recognizing that charisma is his best asset, he choose to work as a commercial and of course he does one hell of a job at it. The result in game terms would be having full ranks in diplomacy, maybe even the skill focus feat in it.
Of course there are exceptions: the scenarios I presented above however are quite common.
In addition, consider that we live in a world where the impact of relationships (and thus diplomacy) are enormous: I’d say that CHA is the single most important ability in real world, tramping even INT. There is pressure from society to invest heavily in diplomacy, and yet shy or unsocial people do not.
In a game world, where interaction is less frequent, those who are not social to begin with would be even more unlikely to invest in improving their ability to interact with other people. This is even more true for adventurers, misfits by definition. So, Brog the half-orc barbarian may well have CHA 7 and full ranks in diplomacy, but there better be a background reason for it.
You can write all the long winded denials and justifications you want as to why your 7 CHA fighter should be the party leaderWhy couldn't he? Did Hannibal have a high CHA, or did he delegate the Face role (haha) to someone else? You know the answer of course. And if Hannibal didn't have a dumped CHA per se, he certainly could have had a mere 10.
As for Hannibal, he was the son of a Carthaginian leader, so he probably had ranks in diplomacy exactly because of this. Also, Carthaginians where not barbarians, he took his brother place as the commander after his brother’s death (who took it after their father’s death), not because he was diplomatic.
Finally, why are you deciding that his CHA was not 14 or even more? There are no such thing as point buy in the real world, he could have easily had had all 18s.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
LOL...Numbers represent your character....PERIOD. If you want to be strong put points in STR, if you want to be dashing and charismatic, add points in CHARISMA or skill focus (Diplomacy).This is exactly the sort of wrongness that the thread was created to dispute. A lot of people who fancy themselves roleplayers who would never drop a stat below 12 or whatever because they don't want to play someone who isn't smart and charismatic or whatever fail to understand what the numbers on the character sheet acutally mean.
Actually I fear it is you who misunderstands.
Attributes represent raw talent.
While skills represent trained ability.
If your character has an intelligence of 8, they are of below average intelligence. With an appropriate education, such as being an expert, they can develop coping mechanisms which allow them to perform better than say a more intelligent, but untrained commoner.
Characters do not walk around town with their character sheets floating over their heads. A character with 8 Charisma and +4 diplomacy is EXACTLY as good at diplomacy as a character with 14 Charisma and +1 diplomacy.
Yes, but what your missing is that despite the bonus being identical, how they get to it is not the same. The difference tells us about the character.
For instance:
Mr Mike ChrEight is dull, perhaps even fairly annoying, but he has been taught by long hard work to be unwaveringly polite.
Miss Milly ChrFourteen however is socially alert, capable of moving with the flow of social interaction and would with training be a capable social actor. However, her life experience is such that she makes social gaffs simply because she does not know the customs. But she can recover from those gaffs easily and naturally, and people are willing to forgive them.
The fact is, with training identical to Mr 8, Miss 14 will be more capable.
So she is more charismatic, it's just that raw charisma is not the only factor involved.
They will get favorable and unfavorable responses exactly the same amount of the time.
Yes, but in both cases that amount of time is heavily biased towards failure. Like Sigfried from the initial post, these characters are not very social. They fail more than half the time when dealing with people indifferent to their cause, while they have only 20% chance of convincing an average unfriendly person to do something for them, before situational modifiers are applied. When they start dealing with individuals who are themselves charismatic, that chance quickly dwindles.
Sigfried, our 'hansome and charming' example for the OP, fairs worse still. At level one, which mike and mill could easily be, Sigfried needs a natural twenty to achieve the same, and is level 5 before he has the same chance as Mike and Milly.
He is not a guy who will be dropping into the princes window, while escaping his fathers guards before talking his way into the princes bed and getting the evil kings plans out of him
The game world does not know what is written on your character sheet. Your character sheet is not reality. The results of your checks are reality.
Humans did not know what the force of gravity was for most of human history, gravity however was still very much part of reality.
Attributes are much the same, part of the equation that predicts outcomes.
People who care about roleplaying in a game need to care about making a character sheet that will modify rolls in a way such that their character will come off mechanically how they imagine him being.
Yes, but I do not think this means what you think it means. What this means is that if you want to marry concept and outcomes, you must be capable of understanding and manipulating the system to achieve a character that fits its concept. It in no way makes your next statement true.
The only people who care how you get there - what's in the little boxes on the sheet - are people who think that 14 Int/14 Cha Fighter makes you automatically the champion roleplayer.
No, lots of people may care without thinking such a ridiculous thing. I do not think for a moment that playing 14 Int/14 cha fighter makes you makes you a good roleplayer. Nor do I think that playing Sigfried makes you a bad roleplayer.
What I do think however is that you are a bad roleplayer if you play Sigfried the same way as Marco the Fox, rogueish adventurer, and lover of hansome princes. Sigfried is near autistic with some great coping mechanism, while Marco in the upper levels of baseline human social skill, with years of educations in the courtly arts to back it up.
Marco is a social force of nature, while Sigfried is barely socially compitant, by the level of a major LOTR's character.
You can then add to that the fact that thinly attributes coupled with suboptimal produce characters which have far greater levels of verisimilitude. A level one fighter/ level one rogue with most stats in the 12th is going in general to produce a character that is better rounded and more believable (and more importantly still like a well written and 3 dimensional fictional character).
There is a problem, short of DMs which work very hard to hit PCs from all possible angles, with challenges that require all members of a party to be able to perform reasonably well in multiple fields, there is little in the system that intrinsically rewards the creation of well rounded believable characters.
I don't particularly think of CHA being the weakest stat, but then again, I browse regularly and have seen the "diplomancer" build. The fact it's also a prime casting stat for a couple of classes, and has relevance in a few more for mechanics purposes alleviates some of that.So, you've demonstrated that it's relevant for 1 person per party -- especially if the said diplomancer takes one of the Cha-casting classes. No one else needs it, given the RAW.
Now, if hp could be "shared" freely among party members (e.g., through some workable "aggro" thing, or just an "I automatically take all the hits against my friends" mechanic), and if the whole party went on the best initiative total, then Cha would be exactly as relevant to the group as the other stats. But as it is, it's relevant to 25% of the group or less, and everyone else can freely dump it, which is most especially not true of Dexterity, Constitution, etc.
What happens when events force a split in the party? Or a complex social scene involves multiple party members having to do well at charisma based endeavours?
I am not sure I entirely buy that charisma is a trait that can be freely shared. Certainly when the group is together, the best diplomacy or buffer expert can do the heavy lifting, but surely the same can be said to a degree for intelligence based skills.
I am not saying their isn't an issue, only that some of the issue is with adventure design rather than the system itself...though there is plenty wrong with the system ;)
Imho there is one little thing that many adventuring characters might never notice depending on the campaign/DM:
diplomacy is short-term negotiation...
bluffing is quick lies, it's not longterm espionnage where you try to pass off as somebody entirely different (including faking habits and such)
trying to win the local beauty's heart might be hard for somebody who has low charisma but high diplomacy/bluff/skills
simply because attraction is not only about looks/diplomacy, it's the general behavior, which is underconscious.
Sigfried can be as dashing as he wants, he'll never have a longterm relation, unless he finds a girl that's only interested in his money. ;-)
That girl will probably have a really low int or wisdom, if we want to dip into clichés. 8-)
Also, in our groups the DM tends to have NPCs that want to develop long-term relations with our charismatic PCs (without requiring the Leadership feat, which is often simply banned)
People (ie NPCS) would rather work for a nice boss (= high charisma), instead of a good-looking selfish politician (= high diplomacy).
Imho:
low charisma + leadership feat + high diplomacy = politician ;-p
high charisma + decent skill = comedian/actor/showbusiness person
8-)
I disagree with what many people seem to think about a CHA 20 with no ranks in diplomacy being the same as a CHA 8 with 6 ranks in diplomacy.
Sure, you can disagree all you like, but in this case you're describing the rules as you imagine them to be, not the rules as they are. By the RAW, Cha 8, 6 ranks (+5 bonus if not a class skill) is exactly equal to Cha 20, 0 ranks (+5 bonus) in Diplomacy. And if Diplomacy is a class skill, then Cha 8, 6 ranks > Cha 20, 0 ranks (because +8 > +5). That's not an opinion, it's simple math, based on how the rules are written.
Understand that I'm not defending the rules as written -- in this case, I think they're lousy, and I'd like to see raw Cha stat count for more than it does, without having to imagine it doing so and handwaving the rest.You can change the rules to fix this issue -- it's called houseruling, and I in particular do a LOT of it! -- but your argument is not based on the rules in the Core Rulebook.
Re: Charisma has no vital function attached to it -
Respectfully disagree. I think talking to people is a much more important ability than strength.
What you're talking about is combat. Out of combat, a bad diplomacy or bluff roll can doom a party as surely as a failed will save. And this is no rare or unusual circumstance in my RP experience, though your mileage may vary.
Contrast the Cha-dumping brute with a Str-dumping wizard. A clever wizard has any number of ways to insure that he never has to worry about his carrying capacity, never has to make a melee attack roll, and almost never has to worry about being grappled. He's probably a pretty interesting character. The Brute that NEVER has to make a diplomacy roll? So, what he's just off in the corner for every social encounter? Certainly the potential for RP magic is there, but to me, the smart money says he's probably going to be less interesting than his wizzy pal.
However you don't need a high Charisma in order to be an effective face. It can help, but it isn't really needed. Social rolls are almost exclusively skill rolls and are easily surmounted.
I've yet to see a wizard that never gets grappled, or encumbered at some point.
You can change the rules to fix this issue -- it's called houseruling, and I in particular do a LOT of it! -- but your argument is not based on the rules in the Core Rulebook.
How do you address it, Kirth?
/genuinely want to know. :)
So who wants to bring back Comeliness, eh? That would be an actual measure of just how beautiful your PC is. For me, for certain characters, I'd dump COM and take CHA all the way up to 9 or 10.
How do you address it, Kirth?
/genuinely want to know. :)
It started with a simple shift, and then got a bit unwieldy:
First I redefined Wis and Cha. The former represents caution, awareness, etc.; the latter is willpower and force of personality. Neither one has anything to do with appearance or odor or whatever.* This was a necessary first step, to ensure that all stats were clearly-defined and had obvious places to hang mechanics from them.
After that:
1. In keeping with the re-defining of Charisma, Will saves are modified by Cha, not Wis. (We eventually added a 4th save category, "intuition," modified by Wis. Intuition saves apply against illusions and such.)
2. All spell save DCs are Charisma-based (even for wizards and clerics).
3. Action points, instead of adding +Xd6 to a d20 roll, and +Xd6 + Cha modifier.
4. Attacks with projectiles, rays, etc. were stolen from Dex and given to Wisdom. I don't care to explain why again, except to reference a lot of what Wyatt Earp said about gunfights, and awareness and shooting carefully trumping reflexes and speed by a very wide margin. Also, Dex already had too many things going for it.
Disclaimer: Yes, we shuffled a lot of functions around, and some people disagree with what got moved where, which is cool with me. Alice Margatroid, for one, moved ranged attacks back to Dex and assigned Wisdom to initiative, which also works very nicely. Kudos to her group!
* (Comeliness can be rolled or just hand-waved at the player's option, but it's separate from the main six stats, and is specifically excluded from the attribute determination process. You can't "dump" it to boost the others.)
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First of all, a cha 8 would be the kind of person that avoid social situation: putting ranks in a skill imho requires a constant use of the skill and/or an active effort to improve one's ability in it.
I can imagine the cha 8 son of a noble that is pressured into tanking ranks in diplomacy: it makes sense, his father does not care if his son is not naturally inclined toward being a leader, he will make sure that his son will learn how to properly behave and how to be persuasive. However, a cha 8 commoner with high strength that earns his gold with a sword will not spend his time taking lessons on how to position his body to give weight to his words or on how to effectively introduce an argument, discuss it and clearly expose his conclusions. He will have no ranks in diplomacy.Think about a cha 8, cha 12 and cha 16 in real life.
No, you do not get to tell other people how to play their characters. If they want to be the 8 cha who avoids social situations, that's their business. If they want to be someone who had trouble but with training and practise became a confident conversationalist, that is also their business.
You have no right to tell someone what their character's personality is.