A stat of 7 is not extraordinarily impaired. It just means you get a -2 malus on checks. To give some numbers:
A character with a stat of 10 (mod +0) and a stat of 7 (mod -2) try to do the same task:
57,25% of the time the 10 will be better
4,5% of the time they will be equal
38,25% of the time the 7 will have a better a result than the 10
The 7 still has a more than 1/3 chance of beating the 10.
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I think it's important to not exclude a player from RP just because of their PC's low Cha. Maybe some NPCs prefer a rather quiet counterpart, and be it only for the reason that they seem easier to manipulate. Ideally the player picks a fitting personality and demeanor by themselves. If it's someone who prefers rollplaying over roleplaying anyway, they might actually be open to ideas which allow them to be only second-rank in RP.
As usual with mental stats, probably the biggest source of issues is a large difference between a PC's score and their player's 'score'. A very charismatic person might want to play an obnoxious weirdo, rather than a shy whisperer. But, of course, that's up to them...
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Ah, another one. When someone dumps charisma, they somehow consider their 7 an average of the component parts of charisma. This means that they can look like a f@@@ing supermodel, but if so, they have to act like a belligerent troll creep on speed. This leads to them playing their wank fantasy character AND get to act like swine to the other characters. And eventually they ALL say (insert nasal whine here) "but I'm just playing my character!!!"
Yeah. No. Not at my table. A player chooses who their character is. Blaming your character is blaming yourself. And if you dump charisma, your LOOKS will suffer for it. If looks matter to you, prioritize that. And no, I don't care in the slightest what charisma a night hag has.
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I mean I don't like people dumping charisma but I find it quite hard to justify it effecting their appearance when its a mental stat. Not a physical one.
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My basis is this: Allow this moronity of compensating for being literally the Worst person ever by being supremely beautiful and ending up with a 7 charisma, and you get players actively being rude. This makes the character a GM problem to solve before the group breaks down.
Better not to go there.
How to solve it? Well, if these people can't be beautiful, they reconsider, in my experience. If they do not, enforce a no dumping charisma or intelligence below 10. My solution is to make each part of charisma reflect the stat directly. Also, note that "I compensate for my lack of carrying capacity by causing extra damage and to hit with melee weapons" is an obviously stupid argument. This division of components only happens with charisma.
Also, so long as physical attractiveness is part of charisma (it is), it is at least partly physical as a stat.
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I think it's worth keeping in mind that NPCs low score of 8 can go as low as 6 with racial penalties (technically 4 with Kobold tier Strength). So while 7 charisma is low a fair number of dwarf NPCs probably have 6. This doesn't stop them from singing loud drunken songs and doing plenty of backslapping rowdiness. Heck, Dwarves are known for their stubbornness and uncompromising nature, yet take a charisma penalty.
So if Dwarves are forceful, uncompromising, loud, stubborn, and the complete opposite of shy what does Charisma represent?
In my opinion, a lack of charisma can mean a lot of different things. Much the same way that a high intelligence investigator could be book smart, street smart, or a combination of both. In dwarves the low charisma comes off as stoic or gruff. In basic tieflings low charisma represents how their heritage lowers their ability to influence others despite their intelligence.
Basically? Look at his other mental scores! Just like how a characters appearance should be determined by all 3 of their physical scores, a characters mind should be represented by all 3 of their mental skills. TC, if you want to list your players Wisand Int I could give you a better idea as to how you could help your player play their stats.
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If players think its okay to be actively rude to people then thats a player problem, not a stat problem.
I don't like the idea of enforcing no dumping. Especially not no dumping int, lots of beloved characters both in fantasy and in DnD games I've played or seen played include characters that are really stupid.
Attractiveness is charisma, Physical attractiveness isn't. The fact its a mental stat is a exactly that. A fact.
Keep in mind that this is what someone with a high charisma looks like. Or would you force a player's character with high charisma to look differently?
@ShroudedInLight
I'd say Charisma and Wisdom are the hardest stats to define in terms of what they actually do.
If I had to choose a consistent thing it represents though I'd say Charisma is the ability to influence people. Whether this be through charm (diplomacy) manipulation (bluff) or being loud and threatening (intimidate) and that isn't to say those are the only ways those skills can be used). Its all charisma.
You can have a loud person who people completely ignore because he's annoying or whatever. Thats loud low charisma. Just like you can have someone who tries to talk people into doing what they want all the time, but if they have low charisma they're probably boring or rude by accident or a really obvious liar.
The reason for not allowing dumping int is that if the charisma dumpers can't get their points from charisma, their next choice is intelligence. What you can do is seeing the stat score not as an average, but as a cap. You have a 7 charisma, your manners, looks and personality are all capped at 7. You can of course choose to have a lower component, but this gains you nothing. Voila, unsmart character with 10 intelligence.
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Charisma measures a character’s personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance.
So, yes, appearance is quite literally part of charisma. Making charisma at least partly a physical stat.
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Or you could just NOT have vapid and insufferable supermodel anything.
So make them look it. For some reason, dumping charisma isn't so much fun anymore then.
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Appearance could mean bad dress sense as much as physical appearance.
Amiri being the obvious example of beautiful humanoid with dumped charisma. If Paizo can justify it I'm pretty sure its not their intention that Low charisma = ugly.
You'll note Charisma goes up with age, typically physical attractiveness doesn't.
You shouldn't ignore low stats, but you do need to accept that the character can deviate from them, whether it be through past experiences or being "lucky".
I think a good example of a low charisma character is Hooks from Police Academy. Sure, she's quiet and meek and fades into the background. But ever so often, she'll give a scumbag a piece of her mind.
One could argue that any stat has an impact on appearance. High Str results in obvious muscles, high Dex in smooth movement, high Con in healthy looks, high Int in smart face expressions and high Wis in body language that shows attention.
The division between physical and mental stats is just a model - good enough for play (most of the time), but too simplistic for real life.
Disguise Self doesn't alter your charisma score. At all. No matter how it's used.Neither does any polymorph effect. Or Reincarnate.
There is really very little basis for ascribing any physical characteristic to Charisma
There's a fair bit.
Charisma (Cha)
Charisma measures a character's personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance. It is the most important ability for paladins, sorcerers, and bards. It is also important for clerics, since it affects their ability to channel energy. For undead creatures, Charisma is a measure of their unnatural "lifeforce." Every creature has a Charisma score. A character with a Charisma score of 0 is not able to exert himself in any way and is unconscious.
The stats are an abstraction that don't always work together. For example, being overweight will make you worse at forced marches, have no effect on holding your breath, but actually better at resisting poisons. But they all run off of the constitution score.
Police academy has a ton of low charisma characters...
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When the CHA dumped character suddenly takes center stage and starts try persuade NPCs to do something I don't have an issue with it.
I just smile and have them roll Diplomacy. Who knows, maybe the low CHA character made an investment in the skill.
The point of stats is to have characters good and bad at things. If everyone dumps charisma and it just benefits them, that's the GM's bad campaign. If a guy dumps charisma and another dumps con and they fill eachother's weaknesses, that seems fine.
Why people are getting hung up on what he imagines he looks like is very strange to me. It has *literally* not-even-a-little-bit of in-game impact. None! There are 60 posts or more of people worried about whether or not a player can look what they look like when it won't have any impact on anything in the entire campaign, other than some fakery the GM would apply for maybe "she's not that into you" as a circumstance negative.
Yes, the player *could* be attempting to game the system stat wise; that's the GM's job to make that relevant. The GM needs to find ways to make that occasionally come out and play.
Secondly, did he choose this based on perceived attraction or do you think he just likes Jake G's eyes or something? It could be the dead stare, or the goofy outfit is what he's looking for and this entire thread is a bunch of people assuming motive.
Pro Tips:
* Don't assume motive, it has no bearing on arguments and it usually dissolves into a grey-area moral argument
* Don't argue about things that have **absolutely zero impact on the game whatsoever**. It just doesn't make sense why there's this much concern over what a PC looks like when they *will still roll at a -2* for any and all charisma checks. The player should have *something* that helps explain the Cha 7, but that's still flavor for you guys to play with; not rules stuff.
* Don't control the PCs. If players are meta-gaming, that's the GM's fault for enabling the meta-game. The entire point of the game is for players to control their PCs in your world. If your world is predictable and easy to optimize against, that's your fault.
Except they want to look good for description reasons, not mechanics. So it is not enough to enforce stat modifiers to cauterize this particular disease.
More "pro tips":
* Learn from your mistakes. If several players have done exactly the same thing and it hurts the game, stop them before it happens again.
* Every bad habit players have and try to carry into your game is not your fault as a GM.
* Some players can be perfectly good players if they get a bit of a framework, i.e. control. It isn't as simple as deciding on a limit and kicking them if they cross it. Horrible characters can be avoided with a bit of thought.
If you are going by Charisma-affects-looks, shouldn't a low Charisma just have VERY plain looks, like forgettably plain?
No. Just like the average guy blends into the crowd better than the small guy or the big guy the bad personality sticks out more than the wall flower.
Keep in mind that this is what someone with a high charisma looks like. Or would you force a player's character with high charisma to look differently?
I personally would have posted a picture of a kraken to illustrate the appearance point but to each their own.
In all seriousness, Charisma is a mental stat and in theory shouldn't represent physical attractiveness (even if the butt ugly cha 07 martial is one of the time honored gags in the hobby).
The problem is the rules annoyingly say this about Charisma:
"Charisma measures a character’s personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance."
Bold or emphasis. So the rules do say your looks are a component of charisma never mind the mental stat status of it or the goofy examples of cha 20+ krakens (Life of the party as the table says) or how someone who looks like Amiri is cha 08.
Easiest thing to do is just ignore those two words in the description and have your inspiring paladin with the looks of Quasimodo or your vapid and insufferable supermodel barbarian.
Pathfinder is based in fiction. If movies have shown us anything, it's that heroes are generally attractive unless it's important that they are unattractive. Taking it to RAW, if Charisma measures personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance, we can assume that it's a composite score, made up of these four qualities with each at their own respective levels. So a low appearance person could rank high in other categories. Likewise, a high appearance person could rank low in other categories. Maybe think of it as 10*Pr*Pm*Al*Ap where Pr, Pm, Al, and Ap are positive real numbers which are 1.0 on average.
That prevents having an instance of "Chairman Mao-wow-wow!"
...And I suppose that this would have been a better example of low (8) Charisma.
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Except they want to look good for description reasons, not mechanics. So it is not enough to enforce stat modifiers to cauterize this particular disease.
Are you trying to be combative? Everyone else here is able to have a reasonably civil discussion without badwrongfun
Yet you think its okay to call stat dumping a 'Disease' when its a popular style of play on these very boards.I don't even do it and I'm finding your tone abrasive.
Not everyone who dumps is going to play an obnoxious a$*&+++ and not everyone who doesn't isn't going to. If your player is being a dick thats a player problem not a stat one.
Sometimes people just want their character to work well mechanically. And honestly other than it being justification to be a dick is there really any problem at all with dumping?
Un-charismatic character played by charismatic player who likes roleplaying? I'd put that firmly in the not a problem category. Their roleplay doesn't define how NPCs react to them unless you do away with social skills.
The other version of this is, you can't make your character the way you want because I think it will turn you into an a+%*#*! or you can't play the character the way you want to because his charisma stats aren't the same as yours. The latter is literally a tyranny of verisimilitude over fun.
A stat of 7 for a human is 'extraordinarily' low (not necessarily extraordinarily 'impaired,' which is different) compared with everyone else. Ordinarily, 'bad' ability scores are an 8 (based on NPC guidelines). I would argue that it's probably best described as 'slightly impaired.'A stat of 7 is not extraordinarily impaired. It just means you get a -2 malus on checks. To give some numbers:
A character with a stat of 10 (mod +0) and a stat of 7 (mod -2) try to do the same task:
57,25% of the time the 10 will be better
4,5% of the time they will be equal
38,25% of the time the 7 will have a better a result than the 10The 7 still has a more than 1/3 chance of beating the 10.
- You fail about 10% of the time on some tasks that are so trivial that an 'average' person would never fail at them.
- You are much less likely to succeed at 'hard' tasks for than an average person (they are two or three times more likely to be successful than you).
- An 'average' person will be more likely to succeed at you at any task.
- Some tasks that an average person would have a low chance of success at are simply too hard for you to succeed at.
Think of all the people you don't like and think about what you dislike about them. Up it to elevnth and there you go. Once I rules a pretty lady with bad hygienic habits, snorts, talks like a sailor and has a very strong body odour.
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Face like Jake Gyllenhal, voice like Gilbert Gottfried.
I play my low Charisma characters as socially awkward or unintentionally abrasive.
Except they want to look good for description reasons, not mechanics. So it is not enough to enforce stat modifiers to cauterize this particular disease.Are you trying to be combative? Everyone else here is able to have a reasonably civil discussion without badwrongfun
Yet you think its okay to call stat dumping a 'Disease' when its a popular style of play on these very boards.I don't even do it and I'm finding your tone abrasive.
Not everyone who dumps is going to play an obnoxious a$*!#*@ and not everyone who doesn't isn't going to. If your player is being a dick thats a player problem not a stat one.
Sometimes people just want their character to work well mechanically. And honestly other than it being justification to be a dick is there really any problem at all with dumping?
Un-charismatic character played by charismatic player who likes roleplaying? I'd put that firmly in the not a problem category. Their roleplay doesn't define how NPCs react to them unless you do away with social skills.
The other version of this is, you can't make your character the way you want because I think it will turn you into an a#%~@~@ or you can't play the character the way you want to because his charisma stats aren't the same as yours. The latter is literally a tyranny of verisimilitude over fun.
It is just a lesson I have learned. Every time a player dumps charisma, AND claims that their character is really, really good-looking AND that their low charisma comes from being rude, the character has been an unmitigated disaster. No matter who the player is, it has turned the game into conflict-filled garbage until I have somehow removed or had that character changed. So, these days, whenever someone dumps charisma BUT their character looks good AND is rude, I tell them to make a new character or change what they have. Enforcing low charisma means bad looks is the most effective deterrent, and by doing this I have gotten a variety of great characters instead. That is why I don't buy the idea that it is a player problem.
Since you consider me combative, how about reading what I actually wrote: The disease is not stat dumping, it is dumping charisma and good looks and rude. My comment about intelligence dumping is because having a barbarian with extremely low int is another pretty recipe for disaster, in my experience: "I didn't understand that the king wouldn't like being head-butted." Again, if it leads to "But I was just playing my character", it's disruptive and stupid.
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The whole "low charisma = rude" thing requires a major lack of self-awareness on the part of the character. A low strength character does not go around trying and failing to lift heavy objects -- he generally knows better than to try.
Similarly, a low charisma character with no compensating social skill bonuses should know better than to try to act as the party spokesman or to actively sabotage whoever else is acting as the party spokesman.
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Of course there are plenty of good posts already, but this is a fun topic for me.
First, I'd say Cha is purely about personality. Ernest Borgnine had a high Cha, and Jack Nicholson's is about a 25... so was Hitler's(sad but true); none of them win in the looks department. Furthermore, why would a Sorcerer spell be different (better or worse) for and ugly person vs an attractive one?
So the Gyllenhall pic is OK, but the PC has some sort of major social disorder - it's not just that he's shy, but people actively dislike being around him.
On that note, my favorite PC right now is a goblin with Cha 6 - he follows people around talking literally constantly about whatever... bragging about purely (and obviously) made-up stories, what boogers taste like, how heavy the dwarf's hammer (or anatomy) is, how many days ago it rained, how a drawing stole his cousin's soul, how many dragons it would take to eat a mountain, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. He won't shut up, and he has no concern that he's bothering anyone (he's got a decent Sense Motive, and knows it perfectly well).
Every now and then he gets totally quiet - a bad sign, because he's invariably scurried off to do something destructive and/or murderous.
I'm not usually a fan of people playing complete jerks at the table for any reason, low Charisma or not.
Low Cha doesn't necessarily mean someone is rude. They could just be that kind of person who everyone overlooks for whatever reason. (Like Kellam from Fire Emblem: Awakening. The running joke is that no one ever notices him.)
I'm not usually a fan of people playing complete jerks at the table for any reason, low Charisma or not.
Low Cha doesn't necessarily mean someone is rude. They could just be that kind of person who everyone overlooks for whatever reason. (Like Kellam from Fire Emblem: Awakening. The running joke is that no one ever notices him.)
That makes me modify a point I was making earlier, and to agree with Meraki - lacking the personality to even get noticed is probably just as good an expression of low Cha as being unlikable, and maybe even better; unlikable people can still have significant force of personality.
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That makes me modify a point I was making earlier, and to agree with Meraki - lacking the personality to even get noticed is probably just as good an expression of low Cha as being unlikable, and maybe even better; unlikable people can still have significant force of personality.I'm not usually a fan of people playing complete jerks at the table for any reason, low Charisma or not.
Low Cha doesn't necessarily mean someone is rude. They could just be that kind of person who everyone overlooks for whatever reason. (Like Kellam from Fire Emblem: Awakening. The running joke is that no one ever notices him.)
We talk about "strength/force of personality" a lot. But charisma is fundamentally not the strength of your personality. It's about the ability to influence others. These aren't necessarily the same.
I work in natural science. The building I work in is full of strong, memorable personalities. Few of them are charismatic.
Or consider Starfinder where anyone can take a cheap serum of appearance change and permanently give themselves whatever looks they want. But the serum doesn't change your charisma score.
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I view the Charisma stat as the ability to influence others in the way you want them influenced. This ties directly in how all the Charisma-keyed skills, and all of the game's denoted Charisma ability checks (charm person, planar binding, etc).
An attractive person can be better suited to influencing others, but only if they know how. Pretty wallflower types are just as unimposing as ugly wallflower types. Both of them stay out of the limelight. By forcing the player's character to be ugly because of a low Charisma when the reverse is desired, a GM is actively hurting that player's enjoyment of the game for no benefit.
A rude person can make a strong impression, but will not be able to influence others well. This is why rude is keyed towards low Charisma over high. That doesn't stop it potentially being a strain in a game between friends when players act their characters this way.
It is just a lesson I have learned. Every time a player dumps charisma, AND claims that their character is really, really good-looking AND that their low charisma comes from being rude, the character has been an unmitigated disaster.
Do you have not an 'unmitigated disaster' in any situation where your players describe their characters as "rude and abrasive" to explain away their low Charisma, or is it just when they are also attractive? Is it because the player feels the need to be even more abrasive than necessary to make up for being attractive? Decouple attractiveness from Charisma. If this doesn't solve the problem, then it seems likely that the player doesn't care about how attractive their character is, they just wanted an excuse to be disruptive.
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It is just a lesson I have learned. Every time a player dumps charisma, AND claims that their character is really, really good-looking AND that their low charisma comes from being rude, the character has been an unmitigated disaster.
I mean that isn't even whats happening in the OP though for one the picture isn't "really really good looking" its actually a bit weird, and the player in question is not good in human relationships that doesn't mean rude.
No matter who the player is, it has turned the game into conflict-filled garbage until I have somehow removed or had that character changed.
I think regardless of circumstance if the player intends to be rude its going to end badly at most tables that is a given in my book.
So, these days, whenever someone dumps charisma BUT their character looks good AND is rude, I tell them to make a new character or change what they have. Enforcing low charisma means bad looks is the most effective deterrent, and by doing this I have gotten a variety of great characters instead. That is why I don't buy the idea that it is a player problem.
How exactly is players being rude to other players not a player problem? Most of the people I know who play this game have the common sense to know being a dick to people will be a road to failure.
Since you consider me combative, how about reading what I actually wrote: The disease is not stat dumping, it is dumping charisma and good looks and rude.
Charisma is the most often dumped stat and the one we were talking about so I thought it went without saying that when I said stat dumping I meant charisma.
The disease is being rude
My comment about intelligence dumping is because having a barbarian with extremely low int is another pretty recipe for disaster, in my experience: "I didn't understand that the king wouldn't like being head-butted." Again, if it leads to "But I was just playing my character", it's disruptive and stupid.
Or you can get characters like Grog from critical role. Who is hilarious and wonderful.
Its players who look for an excuse to headbutt kings.
If you are going by Charisma-affects-looks, shouldn't a low Charisma just have VERY plain looks, like forgettably plain?
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Actually I do the opposite, a low charisma makes a character stand out and be remembered (in a negative context)...Yes I remember that guy he gave me a "creapy" feelings... Modifier on being remembererd
I am playing a cha 7 character (a monk 1/sorcerer 6/EK 1 dwarf) currently. I role play her charisma by having her stay quiet much of the time, not explaining her actions, and not attempting Cha skill checks, except once when I made a bluff check and succeeded. Unknown to me it was very nearly the truth.
She has Wis 20 and ranks in sense motive, so being rude would not fit.
I thought you had to have a CHR 10 to be a Sorcerer
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I thought you had to have a CHR 10 to be a SorcererI am playing a cha 7 character (a monk 1/sorcerer 6/EK 1 dwarf) currently. I role play her charisma by having her stay quiet much of the time, not explaining her actions, and not attempting Cha skill checks, except once when I made a bluff check and succeeded. Unknown to me it was very nearly the truth.
She has Wis 20 and ranks in sense motive, so being rude would not fit.
No class has an ability score restriction. However, in order to cast spells, one needs an ability score (X+10) in order to cast a spell of level X. With a 20 Wisdom, it seems likely that this character has the Empyreal Wild Bloodline, whose bloodline power replaces Charisma casting score with Wisdom.
I thought you had to have a CHR 10 to be a SorcererI am playing a cha 7 character (a monk 1/sorcerer 6/EK 1 dwarf) currently. I role play her charisma by having her stay quiet much of the time, not explaining her actions, and not attempting Cha skill checks, except once when I made a bluff check and succeeded. Unknown to me it was very nearly the truth.
She has Wis 20 and ranks in sense motive, so being rude would not fit.
She probably has the Empyreal bloodline, or something like it.
...I work in natural science. The building I work in is full of strong, memorable personalities. Few of them are charismatic.
Yes, but do they get their way?
High Cha doesn't necessarily mean "charismatic," at least in my book. Many will disagree, of course.
BTW, I work in the natural sciences also (Physics) - yes, it can be quite a collection of "memorable personalities." Some of ours need to be kept in a broom closet :p
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I've seen different things in regards to a low charisma. There are definitely ways to play a low charisma character that adds personality to them and to your story, charisma is malleable as are people just have to play it in the right way.
For some it is lack of personality; A laconic, dull or shy person who makes little impact on the world around them. They might talk to you at a party and an hour later you couldn't remember their name. Which is what it sounds like your player is going for. A bland person with a lacking personality does work but the player themselves might find it boring after a while.
For some it is simply physical beauty; ugly scars, burn marks, deformities that despite whatever articulation they might have simply leave a person uneasy.
Another way is an off-putting personality or lacks in social recognition; Someone without personal space boundaries, creepy stalker types, overly bubbly over sharing types.