Assuming it's not your casting stat, 90% of social encounters can be solved by just talking to npcs like a normal human being. Only spergs view interactions in the black and white intimidate/seduce dichotomy
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Charisma's the ultimate dump stat
Charisma is such a dump stat that I don't even use it for my games.
Your dump stat will be your lowest stat, which means that using the bare minimum for your communication skill is going to turn you into a mouth-breathing moron. That's fine if you ignore using the stat outside of mandatory checks, but if you ever actually...I don't know...role play, having minimum charisma is going to make basic human interaction less than simple.
You don't just do role play as a series of charisma rolls, do you anon?
No, but I still consider my character's stats. If I have a low stat, I'm not gonna act like it's baseline, I'm gonna treat it as low. if my charisma stat is shit, it'll be reflected in my character.
If I may use an analogy for a moment:
>What you roll for your character
This is like your to-hit roll and damage roll in a combat.
>What you say your character is saying, either directly "Forsooth, what devilry is this?" or indirectly "Chaddicus asks what this is.".
This is like choosing targets, moving to advantageous squares, using the right weapon, etc.
You can't have a decent encounter without both sides of the coin. No stats, you'll lose. Keep trying to kill a ghost with a wooden club? You'll lose.
>only good post in the hole thread
>no replies
>You don't just solve all the puzzles yourself? That's why I dump INT
As a DM, this is mostly always true. When I have an NPC with information, I WANT you to find it out. I don't want vital info locked behind a failed save.
Just give a modicum of effort into your roleplaying and I'm more than happy to give you the information you seek.
As a player, I had a 6 Cha dwarf. I had fun motivating the rest of the party into RPing in interactions by telling them they better start talking or the dwarf would. And the dwarf was a blithering idiot who was (in addition to being constantly drunk) a massive butthole and was convinced everyone was a goblin in disguise.
That is, if anyone could understand me through my horrible Scottish accent slurred to sound even drunker.
>if anyone could understand me through my horrible Scottish accent slurred to sound even drunker
One of my favorite things to do as a Dwarf is use the most horrible, mangled accent as possible, until someone finally tries engaging me in my native language, at which point I speak to them like a gentleman with perfect syntax.
That's basically what I do with Orcs, except it's Yorkshire dialect.
>Roleplays a very convincing argument but the pc has charisma 6 or something less
"Your argument is sound HOWEVER your character can't help himself acting involuntarily shifty and creepy because he's fricking autistic with people, give me a persuade roll for avoiding a complete shut-down of future interactions with this specific npc"
This. Charisma is everything. Your argument, no matter how logical, no matter how emphatically delivered, no matter how "normal" you try to play, it all falls apart if people think you're gross and weird.
What about the opposite. The player is a fricking autistic moron and the roll is a 20 so your forced to see him as Uber charming as he talks about Sonic lore irl
>Player raves about Sonic OOC
>Doesn't affect roll
>Player raves about Sonic IC
>Affects roll (no roll), this is a Star Wars campaign so whatever you think you say; you don't; because there's no way your character would even know what a Sonic is.
>Player raves about Sonic IC and the setting allows for the character to know what Sonic is
>Affects roll, the guard thinks you're mentally ill and that there must be an animecon nearby
If you are tall and handsome and charming people will listen to you no matter what bullshit you're spraying.
Have you seen those posts where women are like "wow I love it when a guy is passionate about something" and it's a hot dude ranting about the difference between dragons and wyverns or some other nerd shit?
Looks like this
You can't crit a Skill roll.
Depends on if daddy DM is using that optional rule, now doesn't it?
>90% of social encounters can be solved by just talking to NPCs like a normal human being
I agree. And this is precisely why we need numbers to 'roleplay' as charismatic characters who can convince people with the roll of a die. Otherwise, if you actually expect the majority of tabletop gamers to act it out at the table, failure the usual result. Just as often as they fail at social interaction away from the gaming table.
>player has a low charisma stat but doesn't want to roleplay it properly, thinking they can just talk to NPCs normally and it won't affect them outside of Charisma rolls
If they wanna play like that I make them adjust their Strength to the maximum amount they can lift in real life
Nah, bro, just let them talk normally. Some people are just a turn-off even if they are able to express themselves normally. Sometimes, it's just non-verbal things that are a turn off to people. So maybe you can interpret said character as always smelling bad, always has some kind of aggressive expression on their face ("resting b***h face"), their tone of voice is always negatively interpreted regardless of the actual intention, they have a bad habit of looking away from people the person they are talking to when spoken to, they have bad flatulence, they're a manlet, etc.
>>If they wanna play like that I make them adjust their Strength to the maximum amount they can lift in real life
I fully support this
as GM, I'm flexible. If you have a poor CHA stat and don't want to roleplay, I'll just abstract it and assume a socially maladjusted or awkward character. If the player doesn't want to do social aspects of the game, they will simply be dismissive conversations. If a player wants a conversation and actually wants to socially roleplay, it can be fixed through time.
Be creative, allow players to grow. It was a great nuance in one campaign where our fighter decided he was ashamed of being stupid, and we went full "flowers for Algernon" trying to fix his low int stat, with him actually roleplaying the subtle gains that int and cha potions gave him, the moments of understanding and clarity.
In the end that fighter died, because the player acknowledged that while he as the player knew how to defeat a trap, the fighter in his natural, and addled state, would not. He met his end like a true moron, and then rerolled a warforged with low int.
honestly, whatever your games equivalent of a pure intelligence stat (I mean actually logic and reason / not in-game knowledge) is the biggest dump stat, and I've read some games that drop it entirely.
these are roleplaying games.
it's possible to roleplay a character that is physically stronger and more agile than you are IRL. It's even possible to RP a character who is more charismatic than you present IRL.
however, it is impossible, like literally impossible, to RP a character that is more creative than you are. the ceiling for how well a character you play can reason through things / come up with ideas is limited by your real-life ideation.
INT, CHA and WIS are all sacred cows that have permeated games because thats how DnD has done it. CHA shouldnt be a mainline ability score. Having a single stat govern 99% of social interactions, which should be a huge part of the game, is a terrible design decision. In what world is excluding everyone at the table but the so called "face" good? Especially since social interactions are something that normal people just do? Anything CHA does mechanically could be pushed down to the skill level and it would both be more accurate (it is a learned skill and as much as I fricking hate Hollywood slop, the movie Nightcrawler is an excellent example of this) and more reasonable to allow the whole table to participate. You already said why INT is a shitshow of a stat. Nobody wants to be told their character is too moronic to solve a problem they figured out. And like you mentioned, your character cant be smarter than you are. Its best just to leave it to the players own efforts and determination and doesnt need statistical representation. And finally, wisdom is defined as the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment. Why is that a mainline ability score that needs to be actively invested into? If we are talking accumulation of knowledge from books and shit, again that can live on the skill level and if we are talking any other way, players already have a way of measuring their experience and good judgement - its called their character level. I also hate DEX and CON. One for being a complete misnomer and usually governing entirely too much and the other for falling into a weird vestigial state. Ive long since given up on the big six ability scores.
okay good read so what do you use instead of the trad 6 scores?
I use:
Strength (STR), how hard can you hit/much can you lift, etc;
Agility (AGI), how well you can use your physical instrument in full-body motions;
Dexterity (DEX), Your fine-motor skills;
Stamina (STA), how long you can go without fatigue;
Durability (DUR), how hard of a hit you can take, basically a con score;
Perception (PER), how well you can notice things around you;
Volition (VOL), how hard you can push yourself mentally or resist the will of others;
Acquisition (ACQ), how good you are at absorbing/remembering information;
Logic (LOG), how well you can reason through something;
Manipulation (MAN), how well you can exert your will on others
No luck?
lmao I forgot the last one:
Charisma (CHA), how well you can get people to like you
no we don't have luck or communication on there, you think we should?
No Communication?
I think the problem is that the way people think of intelligence is far too broad. It simultaneously represents memorisation, problem solving, and the actual volume of knowledge a PC has. I reckon systems that limit what "Intelligence" covers suffer less from the problem of player and PC intelligence overlap.
For example, TRoS has Mental Aptitude. MA very specifically represents the ability to learn new information and not much else. Mechanically, this means you get better skills at character creation and can increase in your skills faster. By forming a proper distinction between PC and player intelligence, it avoids the overlap.
Then get rid of it.
I could decribe in detail what my character says and what angles and facts he presents, or I can tell my DM I try to persuade the NPC.
Same result, dice roll.
Got to many Belkars in your game, huh?
Okay, no henchmen for you then.
The reason RPGs will never be for me is charisma and le diplomatic solution. Simply anti-fun.
You should only ask your player to roll dice if both outcomes move the game foward in some direction.
If you reward your player for good description of how they try to do something, they will be more immersed in the game world.
As a ruling, I lower the difficulty of a task with a good description or idea.
Easy tasks are done without rolls, medium tasks are now easy, hard tasks are now medium and impossible tasks are now hard.
The opposite is true. If you try to do something in a stupid way, I ask you to roll higher than if you just did it properly.
Extreme results (silly failures, impossible sucesses) are exactly what they are: odd glimpses of chance.
>this homie can only have 2 hirelings and they've got a 20% chance of actually listening to him
SAD
>Charisma as a casting stat
Have you tried not playing DnDogshit?
>trying to act smarter or more charming than your character is
okay, now translate that into grug-talk, or an autistic fit, as these are your primary means of communication.
>Assuming it's not your casting stat
Which is the case for literally half the caster classes.
>his DM doesn't use reaction rolls
FOE GYG
>like a normal human being
Yeah, but players don't do that. They tend to fall into one of two camps when talking
>give me what I want because I'm right and better and stronger
Or
>Ha you casually agreed to owing me a favor when I did x easy task for you so now I'm going to take you for everything you got because you "owe" me
You're supposed to talk in-character and then role to see how well your character talked. If you just move along like a good citizen and never get into any prickly situations and you also don't want to influence NPCs then you'll never need to role a charisma check. Conversely if you have good social skill mods you get to act like a dastard and get away with it.
You're still going to have to make the roll if you want them to do anything resembling a favor for you, that or you'll have to do something in exchange for it. But I'll give you a bonus if you chat them up nicely enough ahead of time.
"Charisma" as a stat is stupid for two major reasons:
1. In the context of the improv theater that most people call games nowadays, a higher charisma character cannot be represented by awkward nerds who sequester themselves in insular groups and don't interact with very many people offline; you only have as much charisma as you have, you can't properly portray someone who has more charisma than yourself, especially a fantasy character who has at least twice as much persuasive power and leadership skills as the average socialite.
"Intelligence" has a similar issue to this in that a character who is more intelligent than yourself will come up with solutions you yourself cannot come up with. They will retain information that you can't, they will process new information in ways that you can't, and they would know things that even your daddy DM won't/can't tell you about the world, and would be able to come up with practical solutions or draw better conclusions.
2. In the context of using it as a game mechanic, it's still moronic, because "charisma" as a stat is treated as a lump sum of things that are irrelevant to charisma. Much like how "dexterity" is a lump sum of agility and equilibrium, and much like how "intelligence" and "wisdom" have numerous factors in how they're measured, instead of being one linear sliding scale each.
So yeah, "charisma" IS the ultimate dump stat, just like D&D (and those like it) is the ultimate dump system; play an actual game.