Making charisma worth those extra points

ID:3822
 
Sep 13 2005, 12:02 pm

Well, we all know Charisma has pretty much become a standard ability score in most RPGs today, but what does it ever really amount to? A discount in shops? Luck? (that's one I've never understood) Well, charisma DOES have a little bit to do with looks, so I figured, hey, with dynamic portraits, why not show that? For all you powergamers out there who like to max your str, con, and dex and say adios to the rest, you'll be paying through the nose on looks, and if you're an orc, it will be quite literally.

I don't think anyone's responded to my posts in the forum about cleaning the cache. I'm still having graphical errors at runtime. Hopefully someone can help me out and make this all more of a reality.
Sep 13 2005, 12:04 pm
Ha, reminds me of Fallout 2. =p In Fallout 2, the more charisma you had, you sexier you were (literally, you could bang whores for free!).
Sep 13 2005, 1:57 pm
Charisma is a completely redundant statistic in any role playing game. In a game with social interaction, it is very difficult to roleplay a different charisma. Socialy adept people will tend to be more convincing and likable regardless of their character's charisma (even if they are trying to be gruff or whatever) while less charismatic players will not be able to pull off a beautiful, silver tongued character. It's the same problem as intelligence. A dolt cannot play a genius.

It also underscores why stats should be limited to ratings of the character's abilities that have bearing on the game. Who cares how intelligent your character is? The player comes up with the ideas. It's the character's skills and knowledge that will limit this. Same with charisma.

Generally for game effects all you need to track is physical adeptness and resistance to sickness, injury, etc., awareness, and mental resistance to fatigue, psychosis, etc. Some games abstract it to Mind, Body, and Spirit. Personally, I like Awareness (does he notice things? often used for finding things and avoiding bad situations), Brawn (how much can he lug around? often used for feats of strength and hurting stuff), Deftness (how smooth is he? often used for accuracy), Endurance (how tough is he? often used for resisting injury and fatigue), Knowledge (what does his character know and remember? often used to gain information and decipher puzzles), and Personality (how strong is his will? often used to resist magic and battles of wills). YMMV
Sep 13 2005, 3:39 pm
Most of those words are pretty much synonyms for the standard D&D ability scores. Giving them a different name doesn't affect what they represent within the game. Wisdom is effectively awareness, and intelligence, knowledge. In Maeva, charisma has more to do with leading a party of NPCs and interacting with others than it does with "willpower". You might not be able to influence others very well, but you can still be a stubborn bastard when it comes to will. So I don't group the two.
Sep 13 2005, 3:50 pm
Adolf Hitler, Mousollini (sp? I'm tired), Winston Chirchill, George Washington...all had incredible charisma, but they weren't good looking.
Sep 13 2005, 3:53 pm
Heh, how are they the same when 1 attribute corresponds to 3? As I said, you can boil it down to a few or jack it up if you want to map alot of detail. Conceptually, I think Charisma, Wisdom, and Intelligence are very weak as implemented as per D&D. The standard Strength, Constitution, Dexterity seem to work well, though, since they directly map to ingame abilities.

I am glad that you decided to split Charisma out to better reflect your game. I think that is the most important thing- make stats do what they need to do in *your* game.

Generally, I like an attribute+skill systems, so for leading troops it might be Personality+Leadership. Resisting a magical charm might be Personality+Willlpower. Noticing something might invoke Awareness+Observation. Want to shoot a target with a bow? Deftness+Archery. Simple and effective.

As to the mechanic, I don't like straight adds to a largely variable dice roll as it still leaves results far too random where they shouldn't be. I much prefer dice pools, or, as one system I saw does it, the superior side gets to reroll results based on the margin of difference. Many options!
Sep 13 2005, 4:33 pm
I like the idea of limiting physical appearance choices by the Charisma score. I don't think I've ever seen a game that's done that, even though it seems like such an obvious idea (once you hear it!).

I was going to suggest that it could also influence the number and loyalty of henchmen (as in AD&D) but it sounds like you have that tackled already. So just keep up the good work!
Sep 13 2005, 6:49 pm
Maybe you could use your low Charisma as a weapon? >:)

Butt-ugly orc walks up to a group of merchants. Merchants scream with the sound of pure horror and run away. Orc collects any dropped valuables. :P
Sep 13 2005, 8:34 pm
Acutally, it's not the low charisma, it's a "fearsomeness" factor. As charisma is only loosely linked to appearance. There will be other things that affect how scary a mob is, and some of them will be physical appearance, but high charisma will actually add to their ability to scare people. Charisma is a measure of one's... potency of personality I guess, good or bad. Not everyone is going to be scared, obviously, and I don't think the guards would take too kindly to you pushing everyone around.

In response to Jmurph, I just mean I'm still calling them by their standard D&D names, but they each are definitely linked to in-game use. In fact, Maeva uses a lot of skill+ability for different systems. As for the ability points, players are given 30 points to spend in all the different stats. Humans, by default, start with 8 in each score and cannot go below this, other races start with 6 or 10, likewise. The first couple ability points only cost one from your pool, but as you get up to 16, or 18, or their modified equivelants for the other races, it starts costing 2 and 3 points per ability point. This is to allow more well-rounded characters, or power-played characters that should have obvious shortcomings in other areas. I've never been a fan of "rolling" a character unless you're only given one roll, otherwise I feel the purpose of "random" is defeated.
Sep 14 2005, 6:32 am
Sounds like a solid approach. I, too, dislike random character gen, but for a different reason- it doesn't allow players to play a character they want and simply encourages deleting and recreating and so doesn't work anyway.
Sep 17 2005, 1:28 pm
I love it!
Sep 17 2005, 2:31 pm
If you're going to make it affect appearance, call it "Appearance" instead of "Charisma". As Elation pointed out, charisma is *not* a function of good looks. (I personally know people who are not good-looking and who have great charisma, and the opposite.) Calling it one thing and having it affect the other thing just plays to gaming cliches and detracts from your game's value.

Charisma has no place as a stat in a *true* roleplaying game. In a faux-roleplaying game, where interactions with NPCs happen in dialogue boxes, charisma has a place in that it affects the chances of successfully persuading or dissuading an NPC's opinion. Appearance may -also- have an effect, but charisma should be kept separate.
Sep 17 2005, 4:42 pm
I would disagree about Charisma not having a place in a true roleplaying game (at least for PnP games or small, private online sessions--that being where you're most likely to get anything approaching true roleplaying). Should the fact that in real life you're an overweight weakling with sweaty palms and no coordination in real life prevent you from swinging a claymore effectively in the game world? I would say not. Just as the physically inept should be allowed to have an impact in the game world that they cannot have in real life, the socially inept should be allowed to have an impact in the game world that they cannot have in real life. Part of true roleplaying is the ability to suspend disbelief at will--the jerk in real life may have just clumsily blurted out a socially inappropriate remark while trying to sway another character's opinion, but the character in-game is a silver-tongued diplomat. You react to the character, not the player.
Sep 17 2005, 5:03 pm
I'll accept that, Leftley. Good point.
Sep 18 2005, 7:58 am
I agree that it *should* work that way, but realistically, I think that is not the case. Consider that if personality is a tracked game stat, it should be used for everything from bluffing, to shopping, to seeing if the advisor slips some hints. But most RPG groups I've seen don't do it this way, instead judging these activities based on what the PC says the character does or says. Yet, when it comes to combat, the dice roll and players aren't required to dictate complex combat strategies. It's the same thing with riddles, puzzles and the like. How often can a smart character just dice off to figure out the puzzle? Usually the players must discern it, effectively sidestepping their character's intellect.

It all boils down to level of abstraction and uncertainty, I guess. Most groups want more abstraction and uncertainty in combat, and less in social interactions, I guess.
Sep 19 2005, 2:09 pm
Interesting points, I think it comes down to the fact that I'm making charisma a stat for gameplay, not for realism. I just want there to be a reason for people to have it. I generally don't like the idea of people totally dumping all their points into 2 stats to make the "ultimate" fighter, mage, etc. The appearance side is just to give the game a little more flavor, and I don't want "appearance" as an additional stat to the standard 6. Appearance will still be tracked seperately, it is just that charisma, at least in Maeva, will have it's own suddle effect on it.