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Currently, my players and I are running through Reign of Winter. I have a Bard, Fighter, Cleric, Ranger, and a Wizard. The Bard is my father, and he has stated that he isn't really getting much recognition as a Bard when meeting new NPCs.
He said and I quote, "Charisma is the ability to motivate or influence people." Keep in mind that he is nearly a 40 year veteran to role-playing games.
So, when he strutted upon this issue, I remembered first opening up the Core Rulebook five years ago and reading in Charisma that it was your force of personality, and I hit this seemingly accurate idea.
Charisma is the focus on both the Character's physical appearance and/or beginning and recurring traits.
This hit me, and it's the best thus far, for example if one were to act snobby in the beginning, it would represent a greater focus of body language and voice to being snobbish.
Hence, this grants the idea that a Barbarian with a relatively high Charisma would be more overbearing and exaggerated in the focus to intimidate.
What are your thoughts on this conclusion, where might the flaws be?
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I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "beginning and recurring traits."
I've agonized over what charisma means and what kinds of characters it translates to, and influence is, indeed, the best definition or description I've seen or come up with.
A high Cha character can influence others. People need/want to follow him, to obey him, to please him - out of fear or admiration. The character just carries the confidence and air of knowing what's up and that draws people in.
A low Cha character cannot easily influence others. People brush him off as being too unimpressive, too pessimistic, too timid, or too whatever. People simply don't look to this person for direction.
My 2 cents...
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I agree with wildebob's post. Also curious what "begining and recurring traits" means.
This may be wrong on my part but I don't tie physical appearance to Cha. If somebody wants to be very handsome or beautiful with low cha I let them. The low cha just means they lack presence and ability to lead, motivate, gather attention. Many gamers assume cha score relates directly to how attractive physically a character is and that is something I have never agreed with.
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For example, a character that displays, at the beginning of meeting somebody an obnoxious attitude, charisma will further that to being more noticed and seeing it more often than not.
This also stands for leaders, leaders can pronounce themselves with a more diplomatic focus in personality, and the high charisma when introduced will stand out more dominantly and pleasingly rather than those with a low Charisma where their first impression would focus on a less dominant greeting and would continue to be that way unless the character tries harder to make it so, while a high charisma dies out more fluidly and naturally than that of the low.
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The World of Darkness had a great breakdown of attributes, and it applies well to other games. You have three physical stats; raw power, fortitude, and grace. Same with mental stats. Charisma is grace of will, presence, and intellect. Overbearing, stoic and regal is the same posture with increasing charisma. I should be, potentially, any characters greatest attribute when utilized. And if you have a player and DM that are up to it, classes with leadership-like class abilities would reflect this.
Sometimes, though, it's nice to simply crit for a lot of dmg instead.
I agree with wildebob's post. Also curious what "begining and recurring traits" means.
This may be wrong on my part but I don't tie physical appearance to Cha. If somebody wants to be very handsome or beautiful with low cha I let them. The low cha just means they lack presence and ability to lead, motivate, gather attention. Many gamers assume cha score relates directly to how attractive physically a character is and that is something I have never agreed with.
charisma and appearance aren't connected, every culture has different standards of beauty. i prefer linking appearance to the 3 physical stats, and to a point, it makes sense to customize appearance within reason of the stats, not to say that every character with high strength looks like Arnold Schwartzenegger, but there are different types of muscular developments that could still leave a character with a wiry appearance if desired. there are many kinds of ways strength could manifest.
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It seems to me nobody ever reads page 17 of Core. If more people did, they'd KNOW how the game defines Charisma and would not have to speculate or take sides in something that is intended to be more unified and universal.
Page 17:
Charisma measures a character’s personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance.
It seems to me nobody ever reads page 17 of Core. If more people did, they'd KNOW how the game defines Charisma and would not have to speculate or take sides in something that is intended to be more unified and universal.
Page 17:
Charisma measures a character’s personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance.
if charisma was a measure of appearance, then night hags must be pretty darn attractive.
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No, but their appearance is certainly memorable.
It seems to me nobody ever reads page 17 of Core. If more people did, they'd KNOW how the game defines Charisma and would not have to speculate or take sides in something that is intended to be more unified and universal.
Page 17:
Charisma measures a character’s personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance.
I was responding under the assumption everyone had read it in the CRB, but was wanting to expand on it, and talk about it.
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1. Personality (The higher your Charisma, the more dynamic your personality is)
2. Personal Magnetism (Ability to draw others in)
3. Ability to lead (Ability to inspire others)
4. Appearance (Grace)
5. If 0, you may not exert yourself (not quite sure how this distinguishes from the other scores being at 0)
So, according to the book, what is Charisma NOT
2. Intuition
3. Awareness
2. Your ability to use magical items
3. Most creatures ability to cast SLAs
4. A Sorcerer's, Bards, Paladin's, Summoner's, and Oracle's ability to cast spells
5. The Ki-Pool of a ninja
6. The duration and effectiveness of a ninja's, paladin's, and a bard's abilities
7. A Druid's and a Hunter's ability to influence animals
8...... the list goes on
Charisma, not per the dictionary, but as I see it applying to Pathfinder, measures Self-Actualization as well. Now, while this seems much more appropriate for Wisdom, but the Paizo definition of Wisdom refers almost exclusively to one's interaction with their surroundings, and with information.
Now, when I say Self-Actualization, I'm referring to the idea of someone working toward understanding themselves, and reaching their full potential. For example, why do spontaneous casters and SLA's (primarily) depend on Charisma? Because it requires the creature to be in touch with what they are innately, what it is they have inside of themselves. They need to understand what's inside of them before they can adequately express it externally, in this case, Magic.
Now lets apply this same principle to the idea of "personal magnetism", it's the same thing. Understanding your potential, and who you are gives you a significant advantage in your ability to influence and inspire courage in others. After all, what wise man ever truly believed in someone who did not believe in themselves?
Now, a bit more of a stretch, how could Charisma possibly enhance your AC? The way I look at it, it can be interpreted as follows: a creature with a high Charisma can channel their self confidence and self understanding into a physical advantage in combat. After-all, there is nothing more attractive than a woman who is not only physically sexy, but who is confident in her... own assets. Regardless of how "hot" or fit her body is, she cannot reach her full potential (physically) if she does not understand what it is she is working with, and isn't confident in what that is. Another example would be a man stepping into a yoga class. It takes a special kind of confidence for a man to get himself to move like that. Even individuals who aren't perfect physically, but are confident and comfortable with who and what they are are better company than shallow or insecure individuals.
Anyway, I've been working a melee class which incorporates some of these ideas, such as "AC Bonus" as Monk but with Charisma instead of Wisdom, bonuses to social skills, bonuses to certain acrobatics or escape artist rolls, charisma-based abilities that help you push a physical ability to the next level.
I think it is sound advice to keep the charisma of the PCs in mind at all times as a GM. Some one with a High charisma is gonna feel it all the time when interact with NPCs.
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I told my kids to think about the teachers at school - some can seemingly effortlessly control a classroom full of 30 hyperactive juniors, some struggle to control an empty classroom.
Charisma in action.
1. A nymphs AC due to her "unearthly grace" as a deflection bonus
-- The idea here is that she has such a force of personality and confidence that she can dodge attacks more often through sheer confidence.
2. Your ability to use magical items
-- ...without knowing the spell. If you have enough gumption, you can override actual magic with force of personality
3. Most creatures ability to cast SLAs
-- Comes from their sense of self, otherwise they would not be spell-like abilities, but would instead be spells.
4. A Sorcerer's, Bards, Paladin's, Summoner's, and Oracle's ability to cast spells
-- Again, the ideas is that the magic power is not coming from an outside source, but it being generated internally
5. The Ki-Pool of a ninja
-- Not sure here, never played or thought about ninja mechanics
6. The duration and effectiveness of a ninja's, paladin's, and a bard's abilities
-- The more confidence they have, the longer they are able to persist in what they are doing.
7. A Druid's and a Hunter's ability to influence animals
-- This one seems to obvious to actually comment on (personal magnetism and force of personality).
Charisma is force of personality that stems from an inner confidence in oneself.
If Charisma is indeed a "force of personality that stems from an inner confidence in oneself" then why Will saves are tied to Wisdom?
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I told my kids to think about the teachers at school - some can seemingly effortlessly control a classroom full of 30 hyperactive juniors, some struggle to control an empty classroom.
Charisma in action.
Have to differ here, based on experience (former high school teacher -- remedial 9th graders). Classroom control is a learned skill, not an innate quality. Maybe your Cha score modifies the skill check, but your number of ranks (and the +3 for having it as a class skill) count a LOT more than your base Cha.
If Charisma is indeed a "force of personality that stems from an inner confidence in oneself" then why Will saves are tied to Wisdom?
Because the game rules make no sense.
I liked Victory Games "Perception" and "Willpower" stats a lot better than "Wisdom" and "Charisma." It was a whole lot clearer which stat was doing what, and why, and it left the social stuff like Diplomacy as skills, which they should be.
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Will should be tied to Charisma. James Jacobs agrees and argued to have that change made, but it "didn't stick." A strong, confident leader-type is going to be much harder to dominate and deter with charm spells, illusions, etc. than a low-charisma character.
That said, the best definition of Wisdom that I've been able to come up with is FOCUS, and that also makes sense when tied to Will saves. A focused character is going to recognize more details than an unfocused one (perception, sense motive, survival skills), be less distracted by illusions, charms, and fear effects (Will saves), be better at all monk abilities (Wis to AC, etc.), and be less tempted to wander from his deity's tenets (clerics). Thinking of it this way cleans things up nicely in my mind.
At home and in my mind, I actually call Wisdom "Focus" and Charisma "Spirit." These are more tangible, descriptive terms to me and I like thinking of my high-Wisdom character as "focused" as opposed to "wise"...which is different to me. And I like to think of high-Charisma characters as "spirited" more than "charismatic." YMMV.
@Kazaan, I like that appearance=presence thing. Well said.
My one hiccup with Charisma being defined by confidence is that dwarves have a racial -2 penalty. Does this mean dwarves are generally more timid and/or defeatist than the other races? That doesn't quite vibe with me. I think of dwarves as very confident, driven, persistent...which could all be linked to Charisma. My personal explanation for the penalty is that they are blunt, a little surly, and impatient - not the qualities of a natural-born leader. People don't wanna take orders from that guy.
Hm. Well said.
Have to differ here, based on experience (former high school teacher -- remedial 9th graders). Classroom control is a learned skill, not an innate quality. Maybe your Cha score modifies the skill check, but your number of ranks (and the +3 for having it as a class skill) count a LOT more than your base Cha.I told my kids to think about the teachers at school - some can seemingly effortlessly control a classroom full of 30 hyperactive juniors, some struggle to control an empty classroom.
Charisma in action.
I stand (sit?) corrected : )
Intelligence is mental Dexterity. It describes how well you are able to manipulate information, and how quick and agile you are with purely internal mental things, like thoughts and ideas. A perso with high Intelligence willbe able to think quickly, understand information better, be better at manipulating pure data (like math) and have a better memory (better at handling and soring data.)
Wisdom is mental Constitution. It describes how well your mind resists the intrusion of the outside environment, and just how well your mind overall interacts with the outside environment in a reactive manner (percieving it, resisting it, etc.) A person with high Wisdom will be more perceptive, will be harder to manipulate, more "stubborn" (or strong-willed), and more resistent to mental duress.
Charisma is mental Strength. It is the force of your internal self. It describes how well your mind projects force into the outside environment, and how well it interacts with the outside environment in a proactive manner, such a social manipulation, "luck", channeling internal power,etc.) It is your ability to project your inside self to the outside world (or acting ability.) A person with high Charisma will be able to alter others' emotions and opinions easier (subject to the others' Wisdom), will be more "lucky" and plucky, and will be seen as more forceful and confident (and therefore more attractive.)
I have a friend who role-played the best loss of Charisma I have ever seen, and inspired my entire way of thinking about Charisma and how to portray its loss. He was playing a Cleric with a 6 Charisma, and was hit with something (I forget exactly what it was) and lost 9 points of CHA, going from 16 to 7 in one fell swoop. He went from a daring, confident, outspoken holy warrior who was always at the front and suggesting actions, to a meek, diffident, retiring weenie who didn't have enough motivation to do much of anything, no longer had the confidence to suggest anything anymore, and mostly just hung in the back until another of us prodded him to do something. I was truly in awe of his performance. He became an entirely different person.
I should also note that this person would have actually have a relatively high Charisma score himself if he were given game stats. He has always been outgoing, charming, persuasive, confident, and fun to be around (as well as being popular with the ladies.) Because he had a real high Charisma score he was better able to project his ideas to the rest of us (IE he was good at acting it out) and I think that, at some level, he inherently understood what Charisma meant (he damn well must have, to have been able to pull it off the way he did.)
Near the end of the gaming session, his character got his Charisma restored and quickly became himself again, becoming charming and confident again. Once the session was over began applauding, and everyone looked at me funny. Then I told them just what our friend had been doing the whole game, and I saw everyone's faces light up with understanding, as they thought back over everything that had happened and just how different his character had been, and everyone else started clapping, too.
I have another example of real-life Charisma affecting our game; my younger brother started playing with us when he was 12. He is 4 years younger then myself, and our DM is 4 years older than me, with the other players being roughly my age, around 16 at the time. Well, my brother began playing, and made a Paladin (and this being 1st Edition, his character of course had a high CHA.) Within 4 sessions his Paladin had become the undisputed leader of the party, without any kind of discussion or planning, or even any though about it. My brother has always been a very Charismatic individual, and definitely the most Charismatic of the rest of us (with the exception of the DM.) So he just began by making suggestions and coming up with plans, showing initiative, and being confident, and very soon the rest of us just automatically followed.
It was at this time that our campaign started becoming rather a long string of minor disasters and fumbles, as we would stumble along behind my brother's Paladin (named Lord, by the way, after Lord Bowler from The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr.) Someone would die every few sessions, but never Lord himself because he was always tough enough to survive his mistakes, but most of the rest of us weren't as tough (which was fitting, as he had a high CON and CHA, middling INT and the lowest possibe WIS for a Paladin. I was lucky, my 1st Ed Ranger Malachi had an 18 CON and 18 DEX, 15 INT and 14 WIS, but looking back on it, his 9 CHA made his following of the 18 CHA Lord perfectly believable.)
And none of us understood why we kept stumbling into one disaster after another. That campaign was spectacularly fun and we all still remember it as the most fun we ever had gaming, but it was also a spectacular series of goofs, mistakes, and just barely surviving by the skin of our teeth (which is probaby a big part of the reason why it was so much fun!)
In fact. the only time Lord WASN'T the undisputed leader of our party was when the player I mentioned at the beginning (Brad) was able to play, who was older (my age) and just as Charismatic (or more) as my brother. When he joined us, his mysterious Magic-User, The Summoner (Valen Jenner) easily took command (and my brother happily let him lead) and we would actually succeed without our usual mistakes. But The Summoner was only abe to join us every so often, so the rest of the time Lord happily lead us from one disaster to the next.
It wasn't until just earlier this year, about a decade after that 8 year campaign ended, that I talked to my now 33 year old brother about it and finally realized what had happened. He told me that he had NEVER understood why everone always followed him and took hs suggestions seriously. He always thought that we would tell him to shut up and listen to the grown-ups, as he was only 12 while the rest of us were 16 and up. He just wanted to give some kind of input, and then happily be quiet and do what he was told. But instead, he was amazed that we started actually DOING everything he said, stumbling around behind him as he bumbled through one trap after another, surviving only by the grace of his high hitpoints and Paladin saving throughs, and quickly became our leader, and then blessed king and champion of his god.
And then it hit me; THAT was why we kept falling into one trap after another, stumbling from one ambush or mistake again and again; because we were a bunch of 16 to 20 year olds meekly following a very Charismatic 12 year old who had no idea what he was doing in his very first D&D game (he had watched us play for months and totally knew what he was doing role-playing-wise, but his problem-solving skills and the like weren't that developed. Plus, he was only 12.) And as we talked and realized just what had happend and how it had all come togeher back then, we both laughed our asses off about it.
So anyway, I guess that is my definition of true Charisma: a 12 year old who took control of our gaming group without even trying or meaning to, and lead us from one bumbling adventure to another, in a series of minor catastrophes that was the best D&D campaign I ever played.
Here's an example I use.
This is an episode of Solitary, a reality competition show where everyone is on their own.
Who has the highest charisma?
I think the "appearence" reference in the Core Rulebook concerns how a creature customizes its own appearence, from trimming a beard to going with a particular haircut, chosen style of clothing, worn adornments, countenance and so on. Basically, everything that physically manifests the inner view one has of him/herself.
Certainly a mental stat doesn't affect your vysage outline, the width of your mouth or the length of your nose.
Like all character abilities, they are somewhat constrained by the player themselves. For Charisma?
Problem scenario (not saying the OP was a situation like this):
Player X is talking about how his CHA 24 character is talking to the NPCs. Problem is, the player himself (with maybe a Charisma 10, if we had stats in real life) is describing it in a way that you as another player/GM makes you think "He's being kinda a douchebag."
Consequently there's a disconnect between the intent of the char, who may be genuinely wanting to win over the crowd, vs the player, who is doing a bad job articulating it.
The closest approximation I tend to use is the psyche.
In terms of skill checks, it's the raw untrained intuitive ability that sits as a base under the trained skills.
I always looked at it as how much you stand out and can get people to pay attention to you.
Low Charisma is that guy in the corner that nobody sees who mutters to himself. Even at a table with others he has a hard time making his presence felt. He has a soft voice and his body posture is curled up on itself. Limbs close to the body, head down, shoulders hunched, etc...
High Charisma is the guy everyone notices. Body posture is open. Legs wide, hand on hips head held high and looks everyone directly in the eye.
He might not be a nice guy, he might be a truly evil ugly and scary SOB, you might even hate his guts but there is no way you can ignore him. Even if he is 4 foot nothing he just seems to fill the room just by standing there.
Low Charisma = Introvert
High Charisma = Extrovert
Gretlurker: an extrovert can have low charisma and an introvert can be extremely charming.
Extrovert/introvert is about how much social interaction one can have without getting exhausted, not about how charming one is (or even whether one is shy or not).
Kazaan i do not agree with that at all. I'm introvert, and while i spend more time thinking than most i do not consider it more "real". What you value is a question of opinion, whether youre introvert or extrovert is a matter of brain function. It has to do with what exhausts you and how you rest best.
I cant link here but i sugggest googling "DNews introvert extrovert".
He said and I quote, "Charisma is the ability to motivate or influence people." Keep in mind that he is nearly a 40 year veteran to role-playing games.
If you wanted to condense it down to the briefest possible accurate summation:
Charisma is force of presence.