Now, what could possibly be wrong with the base stats, aside from my obvious inability to roll highly for any of them?
Well let's see. Strength, Dexterity, Constitution are all fine. These are fairly basic to any system, no matter what you call them. You're always going to need something to determine how well you can hit, how hard you can hit, how well you can take a hit. The main issue I have with any system is the mental stats. These are a lot trickier. You'll need SOMETHING for mechanically dealing with stuff like perception, willpower, spellcasting ability and so on. And it might seem like a reasonable idea to have Intelligence and Wisdom as statistics from which you can derive the various necessary numbers. But let's be honest, no matter what number you write next to INT, if you behave like a total moron then your character IS NOT INTELLIGENT. Put simply, whilst there is a need to represent various characteristics mechanically, there is also some things that need to be represented through roleplaying. That's why they call them roleplaying games.
Wisdom is even more off than Intelligence. I mean, what exactly does that mean? One possible meaning for wisdom would be knowledge gained through experience. But we already have Experience. It's what we level up with. Another definition is
Anyway, the point is that INT and WIS are little dubious, but arguments can just about be made in their favour. Were everything really falls down of course is when it comes to Charisma.
I'm not going to come right and say that there is no reason to CHA to ever exist as a statistic in any system ever, although I AM going be implying it pretty heavily. We all know what the reason for having CHA is. It's the dump stat. It exists purely to put your lowest roll in so that maybe you don't die instantly. What it is not meant to be is actually USED for anything. If there is any one statistic that has no buisness being a statistic it's charisma. This should be purely down to roleplaying. If you gibber like a tourettes addled simpleton, I don't care what the hell you rolled, the NPC should react accordingly. The most the GM should have to determine is perhaps the NPCs attitude and current mood. Which in the case of a major NPC they should already know, and in the case of a random bod, well
And that's all it takes.You can't have a statistic for personality anymore than you could for attractiveness. That being the other commonly listed "use" for a Charisma statistic. Of course, we'll leave aside the fact that physical beauty is an entirely subjective factor. And hell, I won't even bring up the obvious fact that just because someone is allegedly attractive it doesn't necessarily correlate with them having even the slightest trace of an actual personality, but skip straight to the next big problem. How can I put this delicately? If you're casting spells with your sexual magnetism then this is probably not the sort of game I, or indeed anyone with the slightest trace of sanity would ever want to play.
Especially considering you're probably playing a Necromancer.
See, this is where D&D in particular falls down. They keep trying to USE Charisma. And use it for things that, frankly, have no sane reason being based on anything that could possibly fall under the label Charismatic. As a case in point let's look at the Grim Necromancer class. If I might quote from the rulebook
Now, I know this is all magic and fantasy and shit, but can I just ask HOW? How does that even work? This is class of magic user who spends all day poking around in graveyards, and as a FEATURE OF HIS CLASS turns into a walking corpse! He looks like, smells like, and in all probability has the conversational skills of the dead. Charismatic is not, let's face it, an appropriate descriptor here.
To make things worse, once we'd started updating to Pathfinder I'm told that undead base their bonus hit points on... their Charisma?
Again, What? How does a festering zombie even HAVE a charisma? I've had it rationalized to me that it's sorta like the force of personality needed to hold an undead together, which is all very well except that mindless undead don't HAVE a personality. If you mean willpower you should just say willpower. If nothing else it would cut out all the boner jokes that basing the undeads abilities around charisma creates.
The problem here is simply that the stat has been around forever, and in any of the various editions no one seems to have thought to say "This... This doesn't work. We should ditch it or replace it." It's there only because it always has been. To say that it is descriptively, mechanically and functionally unsatisfying is an understatement of epic proportions.
So, what's to be done. As I said, you do need SOMETHING to model certain mental aspects of a character in the mechanics. But INT, WIS, and especially CHA simply don't work for me. So let's think, what is it that we need to model exactly? Well, Willpower and Perception seem to me to be obviously necessary. All that having these as base rather than derived stats does is cut out the middleman. Something to plug into a magic system aside from pure willpower might also be handy, so lets call it Mysticism. No need to bugger about with all this ridiculous business of having every class base their spellcasting on a different stat. Between these I think you've got most of the necessary bases covered, and any gaps can be filled in with skills and feats as appropriate.
Or at least they could be, if such things weren't also rather dysfunctional....
the quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight.Quite how or even why this should be represented numerically I'm not really sure. Again, this is something that is roleplaying decision. What it basically come down is actually just INT for priests. Why priests can't just use INT is not something I fully understand, but then I guess just don't have the INT for these sort of things. Or maybe the WIS. Depends on your class.
Anyway, the point is that INT and WIS are little dubious, but arguments can just about be made in their favour. Were everything really falls down of course is when it comes to Charisma.
I'm not going to come right and say that there is no reason to CHA to ever exist as a statistic in any system ever, although I AM going be implying it pretty heavily. We all know what the reason for having CHA is. It's the dump stat. It exists purely to put your lowest roll in so that maybe you don't die instantly. What it is not meant to be is actually USED for anything. If there is any one statistic that has no buisness being a statistic it's charisma. This should be purely down to roleplaying. If you gibber like a tourettes addled simpleton, I don't care what the hell you rolled, the NPC should react accordingly. The most the GM should have to determine is perhaps the NPCs attitude and current mood. Which in the case of a major NPC they should already know, and in the case of a random bod, well
And that's all it takes.You can't have a statistic for personality anymore than you could for attractiveness. That being the other commonly listed "use" for a Charisma statistic. Of course, we'll leave aside the fact that physical beauty is an entirely subjective factor. And hell, I won't even bring up the obvious fact that just because someone is allegedly attractive it doesn't necessarily correlate with them having even the slightest trace of an actual personality, but skip straight to the next big problem. How can I put this delicately? If you're casting spells with your sexual magnetism then this is probably not the sort of game I, or indeed anyone with the slightest trace of sanity would ever want to play.
This has NEVER been a good idea. NEVER.
Especially considering you're probably playing a Necromancer.
See, this is where D&D in particular falls down. They keep trying to USE Charisma. And use it for things that, frankly, have no sane reason being based on anything that could possibly fall under the label Charismatic. As a case in point let's look at the Grim Necromancer class. If I might quote from the rulebook
Charisma determines how powerful a spell a dread necromancer can cast, how many spells she can cast per day, and how hard those spells are to resist.
Now, I know this is all magic and fantasy and shit, but can I just ask HOW? How does that even work? This is class of magic user who spends all day poking around in graveyards, and as a FEATURE OF HIS CLASS turns into a walking corpse! He looks like, smells like, and in all probability has the conversational skills of the dead. Charismatic is not, let's face it, an appropriate descriptor here.
To make things worse, once we'd started updating to Pathfinder I'm told that undead base their bonus hit points on... their Charisma?
....Ladies.
Again, What? How does a festering zombie even HAVE a charisma? I've had it rationalized to me that it's sorta like the force of personality needed to hold an undead together, which is all very well except that mindless undead don't HAVE a personality. If you mean willpower you should just say willpower. If nothing else it would cut out all the boner jokes that basing the undeads abilities around charisma creates.
The problem here is simply that the stat has been around forever, and in any of the various editions no one seems to have thought to say "This... This doesn't work. We should ditch it or replace it." It's there only because it always has been. To say that it is descriptively, mechanically and functionally unsatisfying is an understatement of epic proportions.
So, what's to be done. As I said, you do need SOMETHING to model certain mental aspects of a character in the mechanics. But INT, WIS, and especially CHA simply don't work for me. So let's think, what is it that we need to model exactly? Well, Willpower and Perception seem to me to be obviously necessary. All that having these as base rather than derived stats does is cut out the middleman. Something to plug into a magic system aside from pure willpower might also be handy, so lets call it Mysticism. No need to bugger about with all this ridiculous business of having every class base their spellcasting on a different stat. Between these I think you've got most of the necessary bases covered, and any gaps can be filled in with skills and feats as appropriate.
Or at least they could be, if such things weren't also rather dysfunctional....
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