Changing Will save from Wis to Cha

[Grim Reader]

Just a thought that occurred to me.

I've known many wise people who were fat, or out of shape, or smokers or had self-destructive habits. Who had the wisdom to see what they were doing to themselves, but not the will to change, even if they sometimes tried.

On the other hand, I have known people with great charisma, and it rarely comes without willpower. Force of personality and force of will overlap quite a bit in my experience.

In D&D terms, it also seems more reasonable to me that spontaneous casting is an act of will, where you dominate reality with your personal force. Rather than Divine casting, where you rely on another concept or being to load you up.

What do you think? Would this be really unbalancing?

[PallentisLunam]

There's actually a feat for it. Called, only enough, Force of Personality. It's in Complete Adventurer I think. One of the completes for sure.

[Beheld]

There's actually a feat for it. Called, only enough, Force of Personality. It's in Complete Adventurer I think. One of the completes for sure.

Technically the feat only applies to Mind Affecting effects, but I certainly houserule it to everything.

[Zaq]

4e and Legend both let you base your Will on the higher of your WIS or your CHA anyway. (They also make Fort based off either STR or CON and Ref based off of DEX or INT.) I don't think it hurts anything to base your saves off of either stat, but I'm in favor of pairing all of them (so that every stat can be a save stat, rather than half being save stats and half not). Doesn't mean everyone has access to all good saves (plenty of characters will have low scores in both stats tied to a given save, and if both of your highest stats are tied to the same save, you lose some of the benefit), but it does make things a tiny bit more egalitarian, I think.

Sticking to 3.5 canon, there is the Force of Personality feat PallentisLunam mentioned (though it only applies to mind-affecting effects, which is annoying, because then you have to effectively keep track of two different Will saves instead of just having one number to use), and the Crusader has the ability to add their CHA to their Will in place of their WIS.

If you were to just universally change Will to be based on CHA instead of WIS, eh, I don't think it would make any game-smashing differences, but I also don't think it would automatically improve the game. Obviously, classes that favor WIS would get weaker and classes that favor CHA would get stronger (as should go without saying), but changing which stat controls one of your many defenses (an important defense to be sure, but still, just one of many) isn't likely to make a strong class weak or make a weak class strong. Clerics and Druids are still going to be T1, even if they're a little weaker. Bards are still going to be T3, even if they're a little stronger. As I said, I'm in favor of pairing all the save-stats (Fort = STR or CON, Ref = INT or DEX, Will = CHA or WIS, no questions asked, no resource investment required), but even if you don't do that, this change isn't going to break anything. (Sure, there are a good handful of abilities that add CHA to all your saves, but even with those in play I don't see this making a previously unplayable character playable or vice versa.)

[PallentisLunam]

Technically the feat only applies to Mind Affecting effects, but I certainly houserule it to everything.

Huh, I never noticed that part before.