Monday, October 24, 2022

The Least Important Attribute

I was recently poring over a number of different RPGs to see how they defined and handled ability scores. One of the games I examined was Chaosium's 1981 game, Stormbringer, written by Ken St. Andre and Steve Perrin. Section 2.1.7 of its rulebook says the following about the attribute of Charisma:

This is a measure of leadership, charm, and of personality. It is not necessarily a measure of physical beauty, although it may be used as such from time to time. CHA helps your character in dealings with other player and non-player characters. In reality, it is the least important attribute. (italics mine)

Charisma (or its equivalent) is regularly deemed a "dump stat" in many RPGs, but I think this is the first time the text of a game explicitly makes this claim. The irony is that, while Charisma isn't as broadly useful as many other attributes in Stormbringer, it nevertheless plays a role in demon summoning and binding – significant activities in the world of the Young Kingdoms. Still, I find this section of the rulebook fascinating, since it would seem to be a rare instance of the designers speaking directly to the reader about the relative utility of some aspect of the game's rules.

19 comments:

  1. Always found it strange people though the attribute tied to social influence and interaction with others was the lead important in the game. Years back in a middle-school D&D game I rolled a character with all average scores except CHA (and that wasn't very exceptional) the DM offered to let me re-roll the character but I was satisfied with the character as was. Turned out to be the only character to survive from the first session to the last session and I leaned heavily on the only thing going for the character was his sparkling personality (He was an Elf but if he ever cast more than 3 or 4 spells over the life of the campaign I'd be surprised). Maybe it was my own amazing personality and playing skill but in a game where there are NPCs has an attribute dedicated to socializing with and influencing NPCs how can anyone think it to be the least important attribute?

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    1. Because there are basically no rules for doing so (depending on the edition). I agree that it should be very important. As should INT and WIS for that matter.

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  2. Intelligence is the true dump stat. Even for a wizard a high DEX and CON add more survivability than INT.

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    1. agreed, and all puzzles are solved by the player, not the character.

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    2. Oh, that's so different from INT in RuneQuest (at least 1st and 2nd editions) where INT is a strong (-10 to +10 or better) contributor to almost every ability bonus and it is the amount of battle magic you can memorize. Because of that, I don't see a workable way to do point buy in RQ1/2. Yea, you want good STR, DEX, CON (and SIZ), but those all can be improved at least somewhat, especially DEX that can be improved to 21 with the rules as written (my house rules limit STR, DEX, and CON to 1.5 the original roll in conjunction with the other limits). On the other hand, yea, as long as you have a good enough STR to use decent weapons and not get a damage penalty, DEX is more important.

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  3. Unfortunately it really depends on how the game is played. When "role playing" is champion, and folks don't want any mechanics involved in social engagement, then Charisma is almost useless since it doesn't matter what's on your sheet, it matters what the player's ability is.

    I'm not sure all of why they did it, but RuneQuest Glorantha changed the attribute that limits how many spells you can memorize from INT to CHA. There may be something there that makes sense from a "game world" perspective, and INT is overloaded in RuneQuest, but it feels like an attempt to make Charisma not a dump stat.

    One of my house rules for RuneQuest is to take the "Oratory" bonus and make it a "Communication" bonus with Oratory one of the Communication skills. I then move spoken language from Knowledge to Communication and add a few more Communication skills.

    But I still run into the problem that there are few game mechanics that really make rolling for social engagement feel anywhere as effective to the game as combat. I think one thing that helps combat is that we can abstract a bunch of stuff into ability ratings and die rolls, while still allowing strategy and tactics to be important. This means players don't have to know anything about real life combat to be effective in the game, though it does give a boost to those who understand strategy and/or tactics, on the other hand, the abstracted stuff is important enough that a character with good ability can shine via the mechanics and die rolls despite the player's lack of strategy or tactics ability, especially if there is another player who can do the strategizing for the group.

    Another factor is that games tend to actually provide multiple ways to excel in combat.

    But social stuff gets left to the wayside, and there is a legitimate desire to NOT totally abstract it since doing so in most peoples minds would remove the role playing. And that's the challenge. We want to be able to say the right things in the right way to make role playing fun, but doing so is counter to mechanics and die rolls.

    One thing that's nice about rolling attributes in order is there are no dump stats.

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    1. I think the rationale in RQ:G is that spirit magic comes from the Spirit World where CHA is the most important attribute.

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  4. I am reminded of bidding for stats in Amber, where each stat up for auction is "THE MOST-IMPORTANT stat" in the game" :D

    I use CHA heavily in my AD&D 1e Greyhawk campaigns, across a wide variety of situations beyond just reaction adjustment rolls.

    Allan.

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  5. I played Stormbringer only once, so I can't really comment on the utility of Charisma, but it's an important stat in AD&D. The player decides what to say (and if he says something relevant to the NPC that's a bonus) but then a Reaction Roll or Loyalty check determines the result. A smart player can stack modifiers to get around a charisma deficit, but every social interaction is a lot easier for the Charisma character.

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  6. Even as a fan or RPGs, I must admit this is their biggest flaw; they under value charisma. Real life has taught most of us that charisma is the single most important trait of all.

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  7. I think Charisma was of significant value in Blackmoor and early D&D for the number of hirelings and henchmen the player character could attract and retain, along with its impact on morale and encounter tables. Being able to persuade the odd troll and gang of orcs to not bother with the party (or even join) was a real boon and if that didn't work then having a few extra spear carriers around could be helpful. Then its always handy to have somebody to carry the expedition's supplies down into the dungeon and carry the loot back out afterwards!

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    1. You beat me to it. My memory was the number of hirelings/henchmen/followers was tied to your charisma score as well as your level.

      Also, and it's not something you see all that often now I guess, but as I recall from decades ago adventuring parties were pretty much expected to have a few retainers on hand to tend the pack mules, carry stuff and/or act as support in combat.

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  8. Interesting. In our little home game, I consider Charisma to be one of the three 'Role-playing stats' (Int, Wis, Chr). As opposed to the 'Roll-playing stats' (Str, Dex, Con.). And of the Roleplaying stats, Charisma is the workhorse, since it is often the launch pad for certain encounters in the world, both in town and among NPCs, as well as conflict encounters. I'd say they avoid about 1/3 of dungeon encounters with anything above animal intelligence by virtue of their Chr and encounter rolls. I seldom let a single roll override their actual playing of the encounter, but the roll becomes the template through which their actions and statements are filtered. That doesn't count how Chr plays into henchmen and such. So Charisma useless? I can't imagine.

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  9. CHA was the dump stat back in the day for most. Other times, depending on the class you played something else was. Fighter: int was the dump stat for example

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  10. I've found many sets of rules that make CHA very important by providing rules for social interaction that are as interesting and useful as combat - and certainly less dangerous! "On the Non-Player Character" by Courtney Campbell for D&D is excellent as is "Social Class" for Traveller (link escapes me, but I can email it to you). Even Traveller5 has some interesting rules on social interaction. It would be great if these were included in the core rules and I think their lack explains the hack-and-slash nature of a lot of roleplaying, but there are alternatives.

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  11. Charisma is no dump stat in my AD&D games. I constantly make reaction rolls for NPC's and monsters, and the uncharismatic suffer as a consequence.

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  12. I may be misreading the quote, but it seems to be referring to actual reality, i.e. the real world. It comes across as a joke, and it could be with St. Andre as one of the authors.

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  13. The other issue I run into with Charisma is, the high Charisma character does all the talking, purchasing, etc. so it's not a big penalty to the low Charisma character.

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    1. That can be a problem, or it can be a feature. If the effect is to make a high charisma a way to make a different character from the usual, then it can be OK.

      But there should also be situations where the high CHA character isn't around and talking needs to happen...

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