I have open on my lap at this very moment chapter one of the Players Hand 3.5 book of DandD page 9 chapter ones titles is called abilities

Charisma (CHA)

Charisma measures a characters force of personality,persuasiveness,personel magnetism, ability to lead,and physical attractiveness. This ability represents actual strength of personality not merly how one is percieved by others in social setting. Charisma is most important for Paladins,sorcerors, and bards. It is also important for clerics since it affects there ability to turn undead. Every creature has a Charisma score.

This is what the creators of DandD said about what charisma is if you dont believe me go to your local bookstore and look in the Players Handbook chapter 1 page 9.

I believe this has been quoted several times on debate threads of similar topics in the past.

It is also stated in page one of Ladocicea's handbook in how to play properly:

"Charisma is not a stat to scrimp on for benefit of STR. It is a stat that is paramount to the survival of your character in a social environment. Having a low charisma score can lead to any kind of disadvantage, such as self exile (Nurtle in the entry tunnel), shyness and unthreatening behaviour, poor social skills when attempting to persuade or lie or get your way, ugliness or hatefulness etc."

If your CHA score is below 10, you will suffer from (but not limited to) any of the above, or several, depending on how far below 10 it is. If you give no clear indication of which you suffer from by either your actions, emotes or examinable description, I will choose the most suitable from the above list and apply them myself when possessing NPCs that come into contact with your character!

A poor charisma score should be an intentional feature of your character and bring about a desired negative social experience for your character, in the same way you might want your effeminate Half Elf to have rubbish strength and run away girlishly when faced with an Ogre instead of facing it down.

Lastly, there is nothing wrong or against server policy with having 6 CHA and you will not be disadvantaged OOCly (For example, have your exp docked or something along those lines), so long as you understand, acknowledge and expect to encounter the difficulties associated with the low score, in the same way there's nothing wrong with taking 8 STR, as long as you don't then complain to a DM when you're absolutely rubbish in combat and keep getting killed by the monsters on the server. Not playing your stats i.e. being super threatening, having leadership, etc. when you have 6 CHA is also very poor play and will be viewed, at least by me, as no different from somehow having huge AB and damage despite having 8 STR. In other words, your behaviour is exploitative as the sum of the benefits reaped from your stat scores are totally beyond that which one of your level should receive.

BURNED

But what if you had a low Charisma but a high Persuade check?

That'd be an exception, I think.

It'd be a character who was naturally awkward with social instances, but had specifically worked on certain social skills.

Charisma is charisma. It's got a definition and everything. What's the debate?

I like how Duergar can run around with Cha 4, lol.

And still, we seem to be more concerned with the low Cha humans and half orcs. Maybe dwarves don't stand out so much, so their low charisma is not so obvious and hence less of a drawback.

Well, it's a lot less of an issue because Humans/Half-orcs are about 200% more commonly played that Duergar.

As for Duergar, I dont know. CHA is also a representation of how other characters/people percieve you.

Inquisitor

As for Duergar, I dont know. CHA is also a representation of how other characters/people percieve you.

Ibeholder Yes, but we have a tendency to treat them [Duergar] good because they're all over the place. When they are actually even more repulsive than Half-orcs and Shield Dwarves. And I still like how they can have CHA 4. That's a winner.

For PCs, it's a matter of playing your stats. Even the crappy stats. Doing anything less will earn you the ire of every player on the server with ranks in Nerd.

Not playing your stats is cheating. <-- If a DM wants to correct this assertion, please do. I have no interest in excuses for why it's okay for a PC whose charisma is the dump stat to assume leadership of a group.

For NPCs, consider: Duergar are evil slavers with typically-low charisma, but Sanctuary as a town isn't afraid of them. Newcomers and wanna-be adventurers are routinely sent into a Duergar clan's mine to deliver letters. Why anybody would treat Duergar well would be, I hope, an alignment or bio-related thing for the PC.

EDIT: Emphasized "DM." At the time of this edit, no DM has commented on this point. Please bear this in mind as you continue reading.

CHA is a natural ability. Skills are a learned talent. I'm willing to accept a character with a six charisma may not be a natural leader, but if he has 20 ranks in persuade or bluff or intimidate I'm willing to guess people follow him all the same.

Everyone agrees that charisma 6-9 is low, and charisma 13-16 is high - but what is the grey area of 10-12? Thanks Lado for indicating what should a low charisma character suffer from, but what is the average zone like? I've been told its average - but that's rather vague, what should a character be able to do and shouldn't do with charisma 10? I'm probably asking a question on the behalf of many other people than myself.

Actually, 10-11 is average, 12-13 is above average, which is why you get a +1 modifier at 12.

Average Cha is basically someone who is one of the crowd. They likely aren't leaders, but they aren't as offensive or repulsive to others like a cha 6-9 char is.

And as Howland or one of the other DMs said a CHA of 15+ is generaly beautiful.

but.. what I dont get is why is it linked to beauty; Charisma and Beauty are generally two completly different things!!

I assume it could have.. a link, but dont expect that higher charisma = higher physical attraction, an elf could be magneficient and still have a charisma of 10.

Think about it; -the handicap person who struggles and achieve to become a productive member of society.

-the athlete who succeeds and have a great attitude in life.

-The old man that holds a huge history of important deeds, and holds a great attitude toward the future.

-The little kid that is somewhat less fortunate physically than his peers, but still shows great wisdom and a good attitude toward life in general.

These have nothing to do with beauty, yet they all show strength of character: i.e. Charisma.

anyway, Charisma is already a word, it's not some obscure term invented for D&D.

There used to be a set of alternate rules, creating a seperate stat rating for beauty called Com. It basically was used in some rolled games so that a persons physical bueaty was represented. However, this never realy caught on because realy who needs to worry about balancing another mostly unneeded stat? I'm my opinion Charisma has nothing to do with physical looks. Even for games like this one, I judge their beauty by their race/sex/protrait/description and let their roleplaying show their charisma. Hasnt hurt yet. The people that want to be bueatiful but anti-social, can be. And the people that want to be disfigured but charismatic are more then welcomed to.

The to stats are vaguely combined when you consider that most people would rather gawk at the beautiful people, and pretend the others dont exist. And in some ways that might influence how a person's charisma develops in the first place... but I'm stretching things here.

Harlstar And as Howland or one of the other DMs said a CHA of 15+ is generaly beautiful.

Some people will take a hard line here and tell you CHA does not pertain to beauty at all.

I have sympathy for this position, despite what it says in the manual. The manual does mention physical attractiveness, though some may say this alludes to beauty, others can say it is not beauty. It is possible to be ugly, that is to say, you aren't clinically what people would consider "beautiful", but your unusual appearance may make a lot of people attracted to you.

My personal opinion is to keep beauty as the lowest on the list of things CHA effects. I'm fine with physically beautiful 9 CHA characters so long as they're shy/slobs/rude/hateful etc.

Charisma represents whatever you want it to represent, as long as it is a viable choice - as in, something that can be represented by Charisma.

My take on charisma is pretty simple:

It determines how good your character is at engendering favourable, intended responses from those he/she interacts with.

In this sense, it covers all the bases, including sexual allure, intimidating prescence, leadership, smooth dealing, wonderful lying etc. It's up to you which traits they excel at, and which they don't. I played a rogue who had 14 CHA, but was for the most part shy and reclusive, yet a great liar and very attractive. However, I also played a 14 CHA thug/brawler who was hideously ugly, but at the same time a solid leader and an intimidating/commanding figure.

That's my interpretation of it, and by no means the 'right' one. :)

Charisma is a stat that depends almost completely on the ability to roleplay it out. If you have a high charisma but don't roleplay it out then no one will know in game. Dezria has a very high Charisma and I play it out by having her be extremely social. She also does a number of things in game that shows she keeps attention on her looks such as tending to her hair, keeping a dress smoothed down, things like that. This implies she cares about her beauty and how she apears. It's like anything else in game, stats need to be roleplayed out wether high or low.

Anyway just my input :P

o_kanivalos But what if you had a low Charisma but a high Persuade check?

I had a character with 8 charisma and thanks to a maxed out score and several items he had around +16 intimidate. (at one point it due to almost half of that bonus's from equipment)

How I handled it was. He was anti social, and a complete ass. He was a lackey to several very powerful villians in his time. When he was forced into leadership from time to time his general attitude was:

"Do it or I'll kill you, mess up and I'll kill you, piss me off and I'll kill you"

He was insulting rude and extremly intolerant. But he was scary. Those who did accept his leadership generally did so because they were afraid of him. In all other cases he was a lackey to a more powerful highly charismatic character.

My opinion of ow charisma is generally completely unable to function in social activities without the aid of somebody with high charisma.

In other words low charisma either makes you an outcast or a lackey.

I'm playing a character with very low charisma at the moment, and apart from the description of him I'm having trouble really roleplaying it out.

My first thought was to give my char a speech impediment, but I got into a roleplay situation sooner than I expected to and I wasn't able to some up with something I liked soon enough.

I've tried doing other things. My guy never leads, never makes sendings and vary rarely starts conversations, he is perfectly content being alone, which is fairly counter productive as it also means he has very few friends and I very rarely get to do any serious roleplaying. Occasionally he will say something really insulting without meaning it, which can be fun but I rarely think of anything good to say.

Apart from those ideas I really have no other way to roleplay it.

That sounds like a pretty good start, Nitrax.

You may have it pretty much already, but I think a good rule of thumb for playing low charisma is something like this:

Ask yourself what reaction your character wants to invoke in people around him-

Do something to invoke the opposite reaction.

Charisma is your ability to invoke the desired reaction, so low charisma is the inability to do so.

What if the reaction you want is rejection, disdain, hatred, distrust & disgust?

With low charisma you can do that without trying :)

If those are the sort of reactions a character with low charisma is going for, then they're more like to make a mockery of themselves in the eyes of others.

chaosprism What if the reaction you want is rejection, disdain, hatred, distrust & disgust?

With low charisma you can do that without trying :)

Not the reaction you want.

The reaction your -character- wants.

If your character purposefully WANTS to be rejected, disdained, hated, distrusted, or looked at in disgust, then he should probably have a higher Charisma.