You're spot on in your analysis of the issue...
But why can a deaf oracle not speak? Deaf means you can't hear. You can still call out for help if you're being dragged away, you just won't know that help is coming until you happen to notice them.
because her name is Hellen and shes Kellish, duh.
jokes aside,shes a blind/deaf oracle and her backstory is as follows:
deaf at birth=inable to speak, and as an extension of that unable to shout "the wolves have me, help help" i didnt say she wasnt making noise, only that they couldnt help until they realized what had happened, be that through finding me gone or hearing my unintelligible screams through the din of a late-night ambush, so i guess im FURTHER crippling her for flavor, oh well shes still the funnest and quirkiest pc ive ever played. sorry for being unclear.
I play sorcerers most of the time (second most common is oracle followed my magus) I hate dumping str and I never dump chaProbably a good plan. Dumping Charisma as a sorcerer or oracle generally seems like a really bad idea. ;)well, for sorcerers
there is the sage bloodline and the empyreal bloodline, both of which, remove any penalties for a low charisma by making everything ride on intelligence and wisdom respectively. except skills.
Sage comes with wizard-esque skill points, amazing knowledge, spellcraft and linguistics, and decent crafting
empyreal comes with clericesque perception and will saves, an amazing sense motive, decent heal, and excellent profession bonuses
the charisma sorcerer merely has a better diplomacy, UMD, bluff, intimidate, disguise, handle animal, and planar binding ability, the last of which is spell specific and the others can all be replaced by feats or skill ranks. the Wis Sorc has amazing will saves and saves feats on perception and the Int Sorc will have double, possible triple or even quadruple the normal amount of skill points a Sorc would normally have
It's possible that may have been a joke ...
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Back to the OP's question of 7 versus 8, AND the subsequent argument re: roleplaying low stats....
If you've decided to give yourself an 8, and then worked out a way to role-play that 8....well, you might as well make it a 7 and get the extra points! You'll take the appropriate extra mechanical penalty, and you've already decided how to play this low stat.
Which one of us is an Olivier or a Streep? Which one of us is so good an actor that all observers would be able to tell from our play that the PC's score is definately a 7 and not an 8?
I just made a character that dumped cha to 7. I feel dirty.
I just made a character that dumped cha to 7. I feel dirty.
Maybe poor hygiene contributes to your character's lack of personal magnetism? Role playing!
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Depending on the nature of your campaign, getting that extra +1 in a primary may be all the difference in survival. There's nothing wrong with playing a hero with that flaw.
Agreed. The problem is the nature and degree of the flaw.
The bad taste I get is because the game system almost mandates having a 7 not for roleplay, but rather for effectiveness especially with MAD classes.
I disagree with this, with a noteable caveat for game style. The APs are officially designed around 15 point characters and a four-person party. If you have 20 point characters and/or a larger party, then you're already more effective than the game's mandate. Obviously, your mileage may vary depending on what your GM designs and runs, but if he's running stock APs, 20 point characters are already "overpowered."
You don't need a casting stat of 20 at first level; you don't even need a casting stat of 16 at first level. A "good" save for a CR 1 monster is around +4, so you have about a 50/50 shot of landing your first level spell even if you picked the wrong save. Yes, you get another 10% if you rock your casting stat, but that difference isn't going to make you "ineffective."
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You don't think having only a 50/50 shot of having your class feature work (on an encounter not meant to be challenging in teh slightest, no less, since it's CR=APL) is ineffective?
Freals?
You don't think having only a 50/50 shot of having your class feature work (on an encounter not meant to be challenging in teh slightest, no less, since it's CR=APL) is ineffective?
Hmm. 50/50 is ineffective, but 60/40, all of a sudden, is effective?
Class features aren't supposed to be "I win" buttons. That's why you get multiple spells.
You don't think having only a 50/50 shot of having your class feature work (on an encounter not meant to be challenging in teh slightest, no less, since it's CR=APL) is ineffective?Hmm. 50/50 is ineffective, but 60/40, all of a sudden, is effective?
Class features aren't supposed to be "I win" buttons. That's why you get multiple spells.
60/40 is a lot better than 50/50 Orfamay.
And no, they're not supposed to be "I win" buttons, but neither are they supposed to be exceedingly unreliable.
A martial character who can't hit average AC at least 75% of the time is failing miserably. Likewise a caster whose spells don't work more than half the time is failing.
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I think part of the problem is this:
1. Mechanical advantages should not be "balanced" by role-playing opportunities; nor should mechanical penalties. If you said, "You get a free +1 to attacks and damage if you talk in a Lou Ferigno voice," no one will take you seriously. But if you say, "dump Int for Str," no one has a problem with it, presumably because there's a mechanical penalty counteracting the mechanical benefit.
However, then we have this:
2. Mechanical advantages/disadvantages for stats are wildly unequal, even though the costs to buy up/sell down the stats themselves are the same. No one will argue that someone really gets hurt by a -2 to Cha-based skills in the same way he/she will be hurt by -2 to Wis-based skills and Will saves. But most people have an innate sense of "fairness." If stat B has fewer mechanical penalties, they look to RP in order to make up the difference. Unfortunately, that runs directly counter to the lesson we learned in (1), above.
Compounding all of this, we have:
3. Some stats are nebulous mish-mashes of stuff that is in no way quantifiable or even logically connected. "Wisdom" is effectively a meaningless term, given how the game defines it. So is "Charisma." That means that trying to get any two people to "role-play" them the same way is doomed to failure, because no two people can agree on what they even mean. The only thing they can agree on are mechanical penalties/bonuses, which brings us back to (1).
The only solution I see has to address all three problems: (1) Make sure that mechanical benefits are balanced by mechanical penalties, and keep role-playing out of it as a "balancer," except as it depends on the underlying mechanics. (2) Rebalance the stats so that Charisma is equally important to a wizard as Dexterity or Constitution, for example. (3) Redefine the stats so that they actually mean stuff that is amenable to clear-cut bonuses/penalties.
Until such a solution is implemented, threads like this one will continue ad infinitum, because there is no way to resolve them given the current state of the game rules.
Kirth, another compounding factor is that not all stats have equal worth to every character. Charisma may be a dump stat for a barbarian, but not for a bard or paladin. Strength isn't a dump stat for the ranger, but it is for the witch.
Anyway, I don't think there's an inherent problem with stats not all having the same worth. Balance across stats shouldn't be the important thing; it should be balance across classes. I think the problem is that some classes are advantaged over others by dumping stats. A wizard can dump Str and Cha down to 7 and get 8 extra points in the point-buy. A paladin doesn't have that option.
But really, the root problem here is that some classes are SAD and that makes the other classes MAD. That's what needs to be solved.
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@Kirth agree very strongly that "role-playing" penalties should not be used to balance "mechanical" advantages. (cf. 2nd edition kits).
Kirth, another compounding factor is that not all stats have equal worth to every character. Charisma may be a dump stat for a barbarian, but not for a bard or paladin. Strength isn't a dump stat for the ranger, but it is for the witch.
That's absolutely true, but it's more egregious in some cases than others. If you're not a bard, paladin, sorcerer, or oracle, Intelligence is almost universally 100x more useful than Charisma -- you make up enough skill points to overcome all the Cha penalties and then some. Whereas Dex and Con are important for just about everyone; dump Con and you die a lot, regardless of class.
But really, the root problem here is that some classes are SAD and that makes the other classes MAD. That's what needs to be solved.
Yes, that does need to be added to the list of things that need to be solved, because you're of course entirely correct. My approach is more oblique, is all: if all stats were of more or less equal worth (assuming it's not a prime requisite), then all classes would be more or less equally MAD. For example, if wizards took Str damage for casting powerful spells, and based their spell save DCs on Cha, they wouldn't be able to dump either one (in case anyone's not sure, that's totally off-hand hypothetical spitballing, not a real proposition, but it makes the point, I think).
It's reasonable to assume that no matter how eloquently I play a 7 cha alchemist, I can expect the GM to have the NPCs still be put off by my candor.
It's reasonable to assume that no matter how eloquently I play a 7 cha alchemist, I can expect the GM to have the NPCs still be put off by my candor.
No, it's not. Not without concrete guidelines for how "put off" they are, vs. how low your Cha is. And, using skills, not if your 7 Cha alchemist has 10 ranks in Diplomacy for a +8 modifier, compared to the wizard with 0 ranks and a +0 modifier. (A lack of "off-putting candor" is already modeled in the game by a skill, not a stat; in this case, the stat merely modifies the skill.)
You can ignore that, if you want, but then you're not playing Pathfinder; you're playing Magical Tea Party. You can change it, by eliminating all Cha-based skills and calling for a straight ability check, or by eliminating Charisma as an attribute altogether and replacing it with skills entirely (not an unreasonable proposition). But you can't start ignoring skills in favor of raw attributes at will, with no rhyme or reason to it, just as I cannot say "Your BAB is +15 and you have Weapon Focus, but your Str is only 7, so despite your +14 total attack bonus, I just don't think it's realistic that you can possibly hit AC 19."
If balancing stats requires you to actively break rules, then there are rules problems with the system. All the role-playing in the world won't change that.
After playing some high Cha characters lately I really don't like to dump it anymore. But sometimes I just have to.
Yeah, I really enjoy playing high-Cha characters as well, but the stat gives you very little bang for your buck, so you often end up getting hamstrung by the choice. That's something I'd like to see change.
It's reasonable to assume that no matter how eloquently I play a 7 cha alchemist, I can expect the GM to have the NPCs still be put off by my candor.No, it's not. Not without concrete guidelines for how "put off" they are, vs. how low your Cha is. And, using skills, not if your 7 Cha alchemist has 10 ranks in Diplomacy for a +8 modifier, compared to the wizard with 0 ranks and a +0 modifier. (A lack of "off-putting candor" is already modeled in the game by a skill, not a stat; in this case, the stat merely modifies the skill.)
You can ignore that, if you want, but then you're not playing Pathfinder; you're playing Magical Tea Party. You can change it, by eliminating all Cha-based skills and calling for a straight ability check, or by eliminating Charisma as an attribute altogether and replacing it with skills entirely (not an unreasonable proposition). But you can't start ignoring skills in favor of raw attributes at will, with no rhyme or reason to it, just as I cannot say "Your BAB is +15 and you have Weapon Focus, but your Str is only 7, so despite your +14 total attack bonus, I just don't think it's realistic that you can possibly hit AC 19."
Sure he can. Just because I could be skilled in social skills does not mean I ooze charisma. I could have +10000 to diplomacy and still give a bad first impression until I open my mouth.
Also by play eloquently I meant me talking not me rolling skill checks.
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I could have +10000 to diplomacy and still give a bad first impression until I open my mouth.
But with absolutely no guidelines or support for that "bad impression," the number of mutually-contradictory opinions on how that impression manifests itself is exactly equal to the number of participants in the game. That's what I mean when I say you're playing Magical Tea Party at that point. Playing eloquently by talking and ignoring skill checks is like playing Cowboys and Indians.
Me: "Bang! I shot you!"
You: "Did not! You missed!"
Me: "Did not, you're dead!"
You: "Am not!"
Billy: "Can we say you just grazed him?"
Me: "Okay, then you can't walk from now on!"
You: "No, you only hit my left hand, so I can still run and shoot!"
This can go on forever.
In D&D/PF, some people try to "solve" it by appointing Billy the sole authority on hits and misses and their effects, but that just changes the game to Billy-May-I; it still has no actual rules. You might love Billy, and always trust his ruling to make a fun story, but it's not really a game with rules at that point, and it's dishonest to pretend like it is.
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2. Mechanical advantages/disadvantages for stats are wildly unequal, even though the costs to buy up/sell down the stats themselves are the same. No one will argue that someone really gets hurt by a -2 to Cha-based skills in the same way he/she will be hurt by -2 to Wis-based skills and Will saves.
I would argue that point actually, but I don't really think this is the place for it so I'll spoiler it
str has climb and swim, that's it unless you take intimidating prowess, which gives you intimidate, but unless you routienly get a str of 22 or above, you'd be better off with skill focus which is rather sad
dex has slight of hand, acrobatics, stealth, disable device and ride (the last of which almost no one uses, the first two of which only specific types of characters use)
con: nothing
int: knowledge skills, spellcraft, regular craft, linguistics, now then knowledge sklills and spellcraft, useful, but the mundane craft system sucks, and when is the last time you've actually seen a linguistics skill check,
wisdom has profession, heal survival, sense motive and perception, I've listed them in order of usefulness (least to greatest), profession is a waste, by the time you have a high enough bonus to get anything decent your WBL completely eclipses it, heal, same thing (except spells instead of WBL) one of the big things heal does can be substituted with a cantrip, and if you have enough time to get full bed rest, you probably have enough time for the cleric or oracle to hit you with a cure light+) survival is useful, but only the highest bonus in the party matters as your characters don't know how high they rolled and you have to pick who to follow (of course you can meta game but that would be wrong) plus there's a trait that lets you always know which way is north
now then perception and sense motive, they are arguably the most useful skills in the game, so useful that the thing is, those skills are generally passive skills not active, and should one of the characters pass they can tell the others what they saw, so you having 2 less than the party ranger won't matter all that much, so long as someone has it (preferably with backup wisdom person)
Cha has amongst the highest numbers of skills associated with it in order like the wisdom skills: preform, handle animal, UMD, disguise, intimidate, bluff, diplomacy
preform for most people is just a more fun version of profession, but for bards it becomes the most useful skill, some of your class features depend on it, and you can use it for several other skills,
handle animal doesn't come up very often, and so long as you have a pair of casters you don't need UMD, but it's useful if you use wands of CLW,
disguise is situational, but in some campaigns (particularity evil/monstrous ones) it's one of the more important skills allong with your dex skills, perception and bluff (more on bluff in a bit)
intimidate is quite useful early game, and with feats/traits, it can remain so later on, the thing is, the DCs for intimidate are very low, so you don't exactly need to max it out,
bluff and diplomacy are brokenly powerful mid-late game if you max them out
with a sucessful bluff check you can convince them that you ate the moon, feinting is quite useful for ninjas and rouges, and is situationally useful for bards, you can bluff your way through a failed disguise check, you can bluff for a bonus to stealth, you can lie so well that you can convince them that you are a god and that you eat the moon every day only to spit it out in time for night, I've done that in an actual game (I rolled an 18, though I forget the mod DM rolled a 1 (I was never told the modifier)) you can can convince people that you are a surprise inspector of their military unit, you can say "I'm probably just your imagination acting up" basically any noncombat heavy game and bluff is one of the most useful skills, one that will have your DM pulling his hair out over
diplomacy can get just about anybody to not kill you, you can use it to gather information, and you don't have to max it out to make it go crazy, especially as a human, change their attitude 3 steps, it's because of the fixed DCs)
plus I've seen strait ability checks,
I've seen str checks, int checks, con checks (drinking and exhaustion mostly), and plenty of cha checks
what I've not seen are wisdom (and dex) checks
It's a roleplaying game dude. The GM is allowed to roleplay his NPCs noticing your bad cha just as much as he can roleplay NPCs noticing you appear sickly (low con) or weak (low str).
It's a roleplaying game dude. The GM is allowed to roleplay his NPCs noticing your bad cha just as much as he can roleplay NPCs noticing you appear sickly (low con) or weak (low str).
If it's a roleplaying activity in which the DM is free to ignore the rules, then it's a story, not a game. The words are not synonymous.
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It's a roleplaying game dude. The GM is allowed to roleplay his NPCs noticing your bad cha just as much as he can roleplay NPCs noticing you appear sickly (low con) or weak (low str).
Except...how do you "notice bad Cha"?
Seriously, think about that for a second.
"Man, that guy just doesn't look very persuasive to me".
You can tell by appearance, SOMETIMES (since, as we've determined, Charisma does not always dictate your appearance, just how memorable it is, basically), but everything else is basically manners, leadership power, etc. which isn't something you can just look at and tell whether someone has or not.
And even with appearance, you can have high Cha and still be ugly as sin. So that's a wash too.
It's terrible roleplaying for you to read a character sheet and go "Well he has low Cha (or Int or Wis), it puts a bigass neon sign above the guy's head that says so"
It's a roleplaying game dude. The GM is allowed to roleplay his NPCs noticing your bad cha just as much as he can roleplay NPCs noticing you appear sickly (low con) or weak (low str).If it's a roleplaying activity in which the DM is free to ignore the rules, then it's a story, not a game. The words are not synonymous.
The rules support the roleplaying. There is no distinction between game and story in PF. If anything PF falls more on the story side because there is no "winning".
It's a roleplaying game dude. The GM is allowed to roleplay his NPCs noticing your bad cha just as much as he can roleplay NPCs noticing you appear sickly (low con) or weak (low str).Except...how do you "notice bad Cha"?
Seriously, think about that for a second.
"Man, that guy just doesn't look very persuasive to me".
You can tell by appearance, SOMETIMES (since, as we've determined, Charisma does not always dictate your appearance, just how memorable it is, basically), but everything else is basically manners, leadership power, etc. which isn't something you can just look at and tell whether someone has or not.
And even with appearance, you can have high Cha and still be ugly as sin. So that's a wash too.
It's terrible roleplaying for you to read a character sheet and go "Well he has low Cha (or Int or Wis), it puts a bigass neon sign above the guy's head that says so"
APs make mention of how NPCs will address the character with the highest Cha
In RotRL a special side quest is given to the party member with the highest cha by a local village girl.
NPCs notice your cha score.
I can see the point you are trying to make but cha skills are useful, and there's a lot of them.
Absolutely true! But the number of them is a strong argument in favor of Int mattering more than Cha, because higher Int = more skills.
If you have a +2 Cha bonus and 1 skill that depends on Cha (2 skill points/level, -2 Int penalty), and I have a -2 Cha penalty and 4 skills that depend on Cha (2 skill points/level, +2 Int penalty), and we're 8th level, our Cha-based skills might look like this:
You: Bluff +2, Diplomacy +2, Intimidate +2, Sense Motive +13.
Me: Bluff +9, Diplomacy +9, Intimidate +9, Sense Motive +9.
You are somewhat better at sensing motives, and WAY worse at everything else that's Cha-based. Unless the DM ignores the rules and just makes me auto-fail at all of them, to "teach me a lesson."
The rules support the roleplaying.
Ideally, that would indeed be the case. I'd love for it to always be true, but in the case of the current topic, the rules are actively running at odds with the roleplaying. That's less than ideal.
I think part of the problem is this:
1. Mechanical advantages should not be "balanced" by role-playing opportunities; nor should mechanical penalties. If someone said, "You get a free +1 to attacks and damage if you talk in a Lou Ferigno voice," no one will take you seriously. But if you say, "dump Int for Str," no one has a problem with it, presumably because there's a mechanical penalty counteracting the mechanical benefit.
Except that this is simply not true; the paladin is a classic example. One of the key features of a paladin is that there are certain actions that are simply out of bounds for a paladin; he must, for example, refrain from lying. A cavalier similarly has his code, and a cleric is beholden to his god. ("A cleric who grossly violates the code of conduct required by her god loses all spells and class features, except for armor and shield proficiencies and proficiency with simple weapons.")
The rules support the roleplaying.Ideally, that would indeed be the case. I'd love for it to always be true, but in the case of the current topic, the rules are actively running at odds with the roleplaying. That's less than ideal.
They aren't though. Some people just want to pretend they don't have 7 cha and any GM who thinks otherwise is cheating.
Except that this is simply not true; the paladin is a classic example.
And I've laid out well-reasoned arguments in the paladin threads why that bit of "balance" not only didn't work in 1e, but works even less well in 3e/PF.
NPCs notice your cha score.No, NPCs notice the difference between your character and others. They don't actually notice the score.
Same difference.
APs make mention of how NPCs will address the character with the highest Cha
Name one, because I've never seen it.
In RotRL a special side quest is given to the party member with the highest cha by a local village girl.
"Pick a PC, preferably one who fancies himself a ladies’ man or a popu- lar fellow. The combination of his good looks, fame, and heroic quali- ties sends ripples through town, and now and then the PCs should overhear rumors and whispers about this PC’s 'availability.'"
Nope.
NPCs notice your cha score.
Maybe, sometimes, if you do something to draw attention to your low Cha score. But your purely mental abilities are not something someone can just look at you and see.
I think part of the problem is this:
1. Mechanical advantages should not be "balanced" by role-playing opportunities; nor should mechanical penalties. If someone said, "You get a free +1 to attacks and damage if you talk in a Lou Ferigno voice," no one will take you seriously. But if you say, "dump Int for Str," no one has a problem with it, presumably because there's a mechanical penalty counteracting the mechanical benefit.
Except that this is simply not true; the paladin is a classic example. One of the key features of a paladin is that there are certain actions that are simply out of bounds for a paladin; he must, for example, refrain from lying. A cavalier similarly has his code, and a cleric is beholden to his god. ("A cleric who grossly violates the code of conduct required by her god loses all spells and class features, except for armor and shield proficiencies and proficiency with simple weapons.")
Please don't tell me you actually think A.) The Code is well designed and B.) It's well designed because it uses RP to balance mechanics (that don't need to be balanced).
Even the devs don't think B is true (if some of SKR's posts and ones he's liked are any indicator...) they just copied over the Paladin as-is due to time constraints and potential player uproar about how they "ruined" the Paladin.
Some people just want to pretend they don't have 7 cha and any GM who thinks otherwise is cheating.
No one is pretending; see the numbers above. If we actually follow the written game rules, a Cha 7/Int 14 character is objectively better at social interaction than a Cha 14/Int 9 character, all other things being equal. (I totally agree with you that he shouldn't be, by the way, but by the rules he is!) If we ignore that, we're ignoring the game rules. I wouldn't call it "cheating" -- I'd call it not actually playing the game.
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I actually love the idea of playing a 7 score.
The only one I have yet to do, is constitution.
I love both the RP possibilities, and the process of minimizing the hurtful nature of the low score through mechanics.
To me, this is a hero, who succeeds, in spite of the low score.
It is a game of fantasy, and these are fantastical people, with attributes out of the norm, even in this fictional setting.
I see both the 7, and 20, as things that play into this role, and not work against it.
Not every PC will have a 7 or 20, but no player should be scorned by DMs and fellow players, simply because he/she does, or does not, have one of these scores.
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My second PFS character, Naimh Snowmane the halfling Dawnflower Dervish, has 5 20 8 7 7 20. It's not that I wanted her to have 7 7 7 8, it's that I wanted two 20s and that was the only way to get them.
Then I had to work out what she's like. I found something that worked and had a blast playing her.
It's not that I deny her weaknesses, it's that I try to play in such a way that I minimise them while maximising her strengths, which is exactly what I do with every single character and what I do in real life.