Hi there. I have been wondering how people describe to a player when ability score damage is inflicted as a result of abilities or poisons. Examples I have heard or considered are listed.
Strength: Muscle spasms, muscle cramping, involuntary relaxing or numbness across the body.
Dexterity: Muscles becoming stiff, numb, loss of hand/eye coordination due to dizziness or something similar to when drinking too much ale.
Constitution: Feeling sick, rapid heartbeat, feverish, difficulty breathing or something similar.
Intelligence: A mental stupor where things just don't click accompanied with a headache, possibly mental fatigue or sleepiness.
Wisdom: A mental fog and the person's attention span is lessened, dizziness or the other mentioned symptoms of Int damage.
Charisma: I really have no clue how this would be described unless a person suddenly feels socially awkward, timid, or unable to read social cues.
Thanks.
Maybe connect it to force of personality and ability to lead?
Charisma: The person's self-confidence slowly disappears, and a sense of dread fills them as they begin to doubt their previous decisions.
"Giant pustules form on your face. Your tongue swells to twice it's normal size."
That's Charisma damage.
Maybe connect it to force of personality and ability to lead?
Charisma: The person's self-confidence slowly disappears, and a sense of dread fills them as they begin to doubt their previous decisions.
Thanks, that's a pretty good description for Charisma loss.
I describe loss of charisma as loss of personality. Listlessness, humorless, no eagerness. As you approach 0 charisma you just take orders and don't enact your own desires.
I feel this is in the spirit of some cha draining monster's fluff, but no real support.
Charisma drain I would fluff as you becoming losing your personality. Your will to fight on or do anything drains away.
Describing Cha damage is tricky, since so many factors tend to account for it - your vocabulary, your personality, and your appearance to name a few. A player who's made it a point to associate his Paladin's high charisma score with dashing good looks and long flowing locks of hair wouldn't likely consider a loss of quick wit to be thematically appropriate. Likewise, the rogue whose unassuming appearance combined with his silver tongue makes for an easily identifiable charismatic character would consider an outbreak of boils on his face unfortunate, but not necessarily the end of his social career, and his Wand of Magic Weapon certainly shouldn't care about said boils.
With this in mind, the Paladin and the Rogue both accidentally inhale a few doses of Ungol Dust. Their symptoms should match their individual sources of Charisma, yet it's the same poison, so they should have the SAME symptoms.
My answer is to sort of combine the two. I don't know all the different sources of Cha-based damage/drain, but from poison specifically, I'd say it affects the victim's ability to speak, verbally manifesting as a stutter. This would affect a creature's verbal source of Charisma, and explain why his Use Magic Device checks are suffering, as most checks involve playing around with different words. Meanwhile, the poison's influence over a creature's vocal chords or tongue spread to the surface, creating ugly sores or boils around the throat, cheeks and lips. This covers the beauty-source of charisma.
Intelligence poison robs away your ability to reason.
Wisdom poison robs away your ability to consider.
Charisma poison robs away your ability to express self?
Also I should say Unchained Poison rules spells it out for you OP if you are interested in that. The serious stage of Charisma poison is labeled "pliable" and I think that is the right way to go. You lose your power of self, your self-determination. You become absolutely open to any suggestion. This does not mean stupid, pliable character is not mind controlled. The rules make it very clear that hostile enemies cannot persuade you to do what you want, because you do not become stupid or reckless.
Also this might be the most subtle poison. How can you ever know you were poisoned to begin with? All the sudden you lost confidence and other people seemed to be right all along. Then when you back from that, it might take a while to understand what happened.
I appreciate the feedback for the Charisma damage. Envall mentioned the Pathfinder Unchained, which I just looked at. (Thanks for the reminder, I almost forgot about those rules.) I am now curious as to how people would describe the fluff for the other stats being damaged. Another idea I saw for the physical ones was to have something like a burn under the skin, feeling weak, sluggish or dizzy. The mental stats would be a mental fog. Any thoughts?
My GM's described some Wis damage my character took as her being extra-jumpy and skittery, reflecting the lessened Will saves. (Yay.) This also would fold into the hit to Perception checks, what with her mind not being quite as focused on the task at hand and jumping at shadows.
Cool, thanks for the idea for Wisdom. Fortunately, that one is fairly straight forward to explain when it is damaged. For some reason, when I think of a character who has taken Wisdom damage, I think of the dogs in the movie Up.
For the Dexterity or Strength symptoms, I think of the scene in Ace Ventura 2 movie when Ace is hit by the blow darts and is stumbling around before he passes out.
Dex damage stiffens your joints
Str damage cramps your muscles