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There is a thing I've been doing in my house rules for my campaigns for some years now to make Charisma more useful to everyone. I allow it to give the players contacts in the world. I'm just going to quote from the latest version of my house rules doc.
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You have a number of friendly contacts equal to . When you meet an NPC in play, and that NPC is not of truly elite rank nor unfriendly or hostile, you may “spend” one of your contacts to designate that this NPC is someone you’ve previously met or corresponded with. When you do so, suggest how you came to know each other. If your story for this is reasonable and the GM does not object, you start on good terms with the NPC and they are more directly useful to you than usual.
If the NPC is important or has valuable and unusual services, like a magistrate or a trader in rare goods, this gives you a starting reaction of friendly. This is the equivalent of a casual or professional acquaintance, a drinking buddy at the pub, a pen pal, a one-time friend who drifted due to time and distance, or the like. This kind of contact will be happy to help you with things that don’t put them too far out of their way and that don’t risk consequences for them, and can put in a good word for you. A friendly contact of this type who offers goods and services won't give you a discount, but they may do things like make sure to get in and set aside an item they know you want, or "find" a slot in their schedule to help you even when booked up with appointments.
If the NPC is of only moderate importance or the services they offer are uncommon rather than rare, such as a blacksmith or guard, they instead have a starting reaction of helpful. This is equivalent to a friend, a long-time colleague, one person being the best customer of the other, or so forth. This kind of contact is willing to go out of their way for you once in a while, offer small discounts (about 10%), and otherwise help you out so long as you aren’t abusing the relationship. They will similarly risk minor trouble for you, and might on very rare occasions be potentially willing to risk serious consequences if the likely benefit to them is correspondingly large and you make a very good case for it.
If the NPC is relatively mundane and unimportant, like a farmer or laborer, they instead have a starting reaction of fanatic. This is equivalent to a beloved family member, someone who owes you their life or looks up to you with hero worship, or similar. They aren’t your slave, and will not leave their family and employment behind without an actual contract or an extremely compelling reason of immediate benefit to them and theirs. However, they’ll otherwise do anything they can for you, as often as they are reasonably able to, even if it is often a bit risky – so long as you are still taking care of them as a friend and they feel they can trust you.
Contacts are finite, and designating one permanently expends that “slot.” You get an additional contact at every even character level. Also, each time you spend two cumulative months of downtime in civilization, you get back one spent contact as a bonus on top of your other activities. Time spent in substantial contact with the public, such as political work or bartending, counts double toward recovering spent contacts.
If you are 6th level or higher, you can spend two contact “slots” to gain a moderate contact as fanatic, an important contact as helpful, or an "elite" contact like a noble or veteran hero as friendly. At 16th level or higher, you can spend three “slots” to gain an important contact as fanatic or an elite contact as helpful.
I think this is a much better way to give Charisma some extra use to everyone. It suits the nature of Charisma. It doesn't take away the "magic" of a magic item by making them just a "magic feather" or other such placebo vessel for a character's own personal power, the way that Resonance seems to do.
Anyway, I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on this.
Not a fan of the specific design of the system (mainly I don't like how you're naturally more likely to have a more friendly relationship with a less important person, regardless of your background) though I really like the overall concept. It's a cool way for all characters to be able to declare power over the narrative and interact with the world.
Not a fan of the specific design of the system (mainly I don't like how you're naturally more likely to have a more friendly relationship with a less important person, regardless of your background) though I really like the overall concept. It's a cool way for all characters to be able to declare power over the narrative and interact with the world.
Mostly that was to prevent everyone from making the "obvious" choice of spending all their contacts on all the merchants and most important people in the world. But having great starting relations with such people is still an option at higher levels. :) And yeah, I love this sort of things where I can give the players some sense of agency in helping develop a little bit of the world.
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I like the way that Shadowrun did contacts. You have to barter favours with them (using your charisma), trying to get the better deal. This covers the level of assistance they are willing to provide and the level of returned favour you have to provide in return. They are stated for the level of your relationship with them and their level of influence.
Limiting the number and relationships by an means would not help the system. Those that don't care for it (or role playing in general) would not use it and not be affected by it. Those that want to use it may feel unnecessarily limited. In the way pathfinder runs, the Contact system should be a function of how you play the game with reference to the three pillars.
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I honestly like charisma's more mystic parts being emphasized over it being just "how liked you are". Its kind of what I found to be weird thing with relationship subsystem in 1e "So wait, only thing that matters relationship wise is how charismatic you are(and how many gifts you give) and not your relations, background, interests etc with each other?"
Like, just because charismatic people have easier time with influencing people doesn't mean introverted people don't have social life or friends at all :D They just aren't likely to convince complete strangers to do what they want