Idea: replace Charisma with Empathy.

[Anarchic Fox]

This is a nomenclature suggestion, not a mechanics one. The skills and powers that fall under the rubric of Charisma are diverse. However, charisma (in the non-D&D sense) is the ability to bring others under the sway of your personality, whereas empathy is the ability to perceive and understand moods, emotions and passions. I'll go through the pertinent skills and classes to show how/whether the concept of empathy or charisma fits them better, then tally the outcome.

First, classes.

Bard: A musician makes the audience feel what she wants to feel, so Charisma better fits this class. That being said, empathy is also immensely important to a performer of any type; gotta be able to read your crowd, after all. Charisma.

Paladin: Barring the "obnoxious rule-enforcer" type of bad player, it's more important for paladins to understand the needs of those they're helping than to impose their own will. Empathy.

Sorcerer: The idea (ignoring the "draconic blood" silliness) is that sufficient force of personality can bend even the laws of nature to your will. But there's another way you could design the fantasy metaphysics. Suppose the world is animistic: everything has a soul, though much more primitive than a sentient's soul. Perhaps a sorcerer's magic comes from their ability to perceive and understand these protosouls, and then nudge them in the right direction. Make the paper want to burn. Tie.

Warlock: When you're communicating with the extraplanar creature, you can either sway it using charisma, or intuit its preferences via empathy, so this can go either way. Tie.

Skills, now.

Deception: You can put this one down to charisma, but I think empathy fits better. If you're trying to use force of personality to alter someone's opinion, they can feel you trying, whether or not they can resist. But deception goes unnoticed, as the deceiver intuits the best lies and misdirections based on what they perceive. Empathy.

Intimidation: Make them feel scared, who cares what they felt before. Charisma.

Performance: Like with bards, charisma is more important here. Charisma.

Persuasion: Who cares what they wanted to do before, if you can make them do what you want instead. Charisma.

The total outcome is... Charisma 4, Empathy 2. Oops. I didn't expect that when I started writing this post; then again, if you started with Empathy rather than Charisma, you might have designed different skills. The 3rd Edition skills would have fared far better.

Anyway. That's embarrassing, but I'm still curious what y'all think of the idea. Of course I don't expect an official rules change, but perhaps I can inspire a house rule or two.

[Pandamonium]

Disregarding the outcome I think it is a neat idea.

I was thinking that maybe we don't need to change the nomenclature but you bring out some valid points in which areas a character with high empathy would excel :)

[Lupine]

I disagree with your deception and persuasion analysis. In deception, the most insideous and successful lies play off of what a person already wants to believe. In other words, it is impossible to tell a lie unless the other person is —to some extent— willing to be lied to. Empathy tells you how far those boundaries are, and can suggest what a person wants to believe.
Likewise with persuasion. The most brilliant truth can be stifled, if the other is unwilling to listen. It too plays off of what a person wants to believe, to an extent. You can be the most well spoken individual, but it takes more than that to convince a crowd. It takes empathy.

[Anarchic Fox]

I disagree with your deception and persuasion analysis. In deception, the most insideous and successful lies play off of what a person already wants to believe. In other words, it is impossible to tell a lie unless the other person is —to some extent— willing to be lied to. Empathy tells you how far those boundaries are, and can suggest what a person wants to believe.
Likewise with persuasion. The most brilliant truth can be stifled, if the other is unwilling to listen. It too plays off of what a person wants to believe, to an extent. You can be the most well spoken individual, but it takes more than that to convince a crowd. It takes empathy.

Hehheh, I'm not going to pretend to have a deep understanding of deception or persuasion. You make good points though, so maybe those two should have been "Tie." But then we'd have Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Tie, and that would just be confusing. :smalltongue:

[MaxWilson]

This is a nomenclature suggestion, not a mechanics one. The skills and powers that fall under the rubric of Charisma are diverse. However, charisma (in the non-D&D sense) is the ability to bring others under the sway of your personality, whereas empathy is the ability to perceive and understand moods, emotions and passions. I'll go through the pertinent skills and classes to show how/whether the concept of empathy or charisma fits them better, then tally the outcome.

First, classes.

Bard: A musician makes the audience feel what she wants to feel, so Charisma better fits this class. That being said, empathy is also immensely important to a performer of any type; gotta be able to read your crowd, after all. Charisma.

Paladin: Barring the "obnoxious rule-enforcer" type of bad player, it's more important for paladins to understand the needs of those they're helping than to impose their own will. Empathy.

Sorcerer: The idea (ignoring the "draconic blood" silliness) is that sufficient force of personality can bend even the laws of nature to your will. But there's another way you could design the fantasy metaphysics. Suppose the world is animistic: everything has a soul, though much more primitive than a sentient's soul. Perhaps a sorcerer's magic comes from their ability to perceive and understand these protosouls, and then nudge them in the right direction. Make the paper want to burn. Tie.

Warlock: When you're communicating with the extraplanar creature, you can either sway it using charisma, or intuit its preferences via empathy, so this can go either way. Tie.

Skills, now.

Deception: You can put this one down to charisma, but I think empathy fits better. If you're trying to use force of personality to alter someone's opinion, they can feel you trying, whether or not they can resist. But deception goes unnoticed, as the deceiver intuits the best lies and misdirections based on what they perceive. Empathy.

Intimidation: Make them feel scared, who cares what they felt before. Charisma.

Performance: Like with bards, charisma is more important here. Charisma.

Persuasion: Who cares what they wanted to do before, if you can make them do what you want instead. Charisma.

The total outcome is... Charisma 4, Empathy 2. Oops. I didn't expect that when I started writing this post; then again, if you started with Empathy rather than Charisma, you might have designed different skills. The 3rd Edition skills would have fared far better.

Anyway. That's embarrassing, but I'm still curious what y'all think of the idea. Of course I don't expect an official rules change, but perhaps I can inspire a house rule or two.

I'd say it's

Bard: Charisma.

Paladin: their role is to stand as an exemplar of virtuous behavior, to strengthen the feeble knees and lift up the hands that hang down. Charisma. (I'm going off the paladin archetype and game history here - - Oath of Vengeance doesn't really fit this model but I consider that a flaw in Vengeance, not a reflection on paladinhood.)

Sorcerer: even if the world is animistic, you still have to persuade the paper to burn. Empathy would be appropriate only if sorcerer magic were situational--determining whether the paper will burn, or if it prefers to be soggy. Since you get to impose your will instead, it's Charisma.

Warlock: all about forbidden secrets and lore. Sometimes patrons aren't even aware the warlock exists. Intelligence would be more appropriate (and would eliminate the glut of Cha casters dipping warlock). You could also argue that high Intelligence lets you write tighter contract legalese so your patron gets less wiggle room to deny you power, but frankly 5E doesn't do much with patrons anyway so better to just play up the "forbidden lore" angle. Int.

Deception, eh, I can see it either way. Empathy will help, but Freud wasn't necessarily a great liar, and some liars lie successfully to large numbers of people at once, even if those people have different feelings. If you view stage- or movie-acting as deception, it's less important to empathize with the audience than to (somehow) make the audience empathize with you. I don't know how it's done but we call that real-life quality "charisma" , and so in-game Charisma is a reasonable way to model it. I think I'm going to go with the traditional empathy (Insight) to read your target (know what they want) and charisma (Deception) to falsely claim to be able to supply it. If it's not false then that's Persuasion instead. Anyway, I think that makes Deception Charisma, not empathy.

So, bottom line, the only thing I would change is warlocks, although animistic sorcerers who can only access magic situationally could be cool, and if so you could make them Wisdom- (empathy) based.


Likewise with persuasion. The most brilliant truth can be stifled, if the other is unwilling to listen. It too plays off of what a person wants to believe, to an extent. You can be the most well spoken individual, but it takes more than that to convince a crowd. It takes empathy.

It's not enough to know why someone is refusing to listen to reason. (They're scared, they hate you, they're engaged in motivated reasoning, they're not thinking things through, whatever.) You have to know how to push the right buttons, if they exist, to put them in a different mindset before making your pitch. See e.g. Cialdini's book on Presuasion for interesting examples of how context and framing change decision-making. Persuasion is more than just empathy, it's clear communication that reaches the right part of the person as well.

Intelligence may tell you that the smell of smoke in a classroom cannot possibly be caused by anything other than a building fire, Wisdom will tell you to get up and leave the class even if no one else is showing signs of concern, and might even tell you that they're not concerned because humans often don't respond to firsthand evidence of threats (they respond to others' responses, such as the teacher shouting "fire!")--but without Charisma you have poor odds of getting anybody else to leave class with you, as opposed to just thinking you're a weirdo. You have to do certain things, both before and during the event, to be someone who will be believed.

And some people do that naturally, and we call it charisma.

[Kane0]

This is a nomenclature suggestion, not a mechanics one.

Anyway. That's embarrassing, but I'm still curious what y'all think of the idea. Of course I don't expect an official rules change, but perhaps I can inspire a house rule or two.

Don’t feel bad, I applaud the scientific approach. It take a certain strength of character to admit you Weren’t as correct as you thought you were even before subject to scrutiny.

[Lord Vukodlak]

This is a nomenclature suggestion, not a mechanics one. The skills and powers that fall under the rubric of Charisma are diverse. However, charisma (in the non-D&D sense) is the ability to bring others under the sway of your personality, whereas empathy is the ability to perceive and understand moods, emotions and passions. I'll go through the pertinent skills and classes to show how/whether the concept of empathy or charisma fits them better, then tally the outcome.


Okay nomenclature time, if you are using the umbrella term Empathy its the ability to perceive, understand and share moods, emotions and passions of others. If you want to be more technical there are two kinds of empathy, cognitive and emotional. Cognitive is the ability to perceive and understand while emotional is the ability to share in that emotion.

Cognitive
Taking another person's perspective

Imagining what it's like in another person's shoes

Understanding someone's feelings
Emotional
Sharing an emotional experience

Feeling distress in response to someone's pain

Experiencing a willingness to help someone

Now to be charismatic you need cognitive empathy, but as Matt says its more then knowing what they're feeling its knowing how to push the right buttons.

The Joker from "The Dark Knight" is charismatic but would you really say in D&D terms he has a high empathy score?

[Anarchic Fox]

Paladin: their role is to stand as an exemplar of virtuous behavior, to strengthen the feeble knees and lift up the heads that hand down. Charisma. (I'm going off the paladin archetype and hands history here - - Oath of Vengeance doesn't really fit this model but I consider that a flaw in Vengeance, not a reflection on paladinhood.)

Let's look at some examples of paladins close at hand. O'Chul and Big Ears (https://www.goblinscomic.com/) seem more empathetic than charismatic. Lien seems more charismatic than empathetic. Hinjo seems equally empathetic and charismatic, while Miko is neither. Empathy wins out. True, "paladin as exemplar" is a thing, but so is "paladin as crusader," who gets out there and solves whatever problems he can. In the latter case empathy helps more than charisma, for the reasons given in the original post.



Sorcerer: even if the world is animistic, you still have to persuade the paper to burn. Empathy would be appropriate only if sorcerer magic were situational--determining whether the paper will burn, or if it prefers to be soggy. Since you get to impose your will instead, it's Charisma.


In an animistic world you have to be able to perceive the emotions of physical things before you can influence them, so empathy is more important, though both are required.



Warlock: all about forbidden secrets and lore. Sometimes patrons aren't even aware the warlock exists. Intelligence would be more appropriate (and would eliminate the glut of Cha casters dipping warlock). You could also argue that high Intelligence lets you write tighter contract legalese so your patron gets less wiggle room to deny you power, but frankly 5E doesn't do much with patrons anyway so better to just play up the "forbidden lore" angle. Int.


Huh, I agree entirely. We need another Int-based class, anyway.


Deception, eh, I can see it either way. Empathy will help, but Freud wasn't necessarily a great liar, and some liars lie successfully to large numbers of people at once, even if those people have different feelings. If you view stage- or movie-acting as deception, it's less important to empathize with the audience than to (somehow) make the audience empathize with you.

I don't view acting as Deception, I view it as Performance. :smalltongue:


Don’t feel bad, I applaud the scientific approach. It take a certain strength of character to admit you Weren’t as correct as you thought you were even before subject to scrutiny.

Thanks. :smallredface: I had a cool idea for a post, then realized two-thirds through that I had lost my own argument. Then I decided that it was better to have a cool post than win my argument.


Okay nomenclature time...

Thanks for the information!


The Joker from "The Dark Knight" is charismatic but would you really say in D&D terms he has a high empathy score?

Yes, very high empathy, but he's also a psychopath. Empathy without sympathy, you could say. In D&D terms I'd peg him as an overpowered Rogue, with high Dex, high Int and natural-18 Cha.

[Satinavian]

For me empathy has most of the time fallen under Wisdom. And skillwise it would be most related to insight.

So no, no reason to change Charisma. Charisma -> influencing others, Wisdom -> understanding others works fine.



Let's look at some examples of paladins close at hand. O'Chul and Big Ears (https://www.goblinscomic.com/) seem more empathetic than charismatic. Lien seems more charismatic than empathetic. Hinjo seems equally empathetic and charismatic, while Miko is neither. Empathy wins out. True, "paladin as exemplar" is a thing, but so is "paladin as crusader," who gets out there and solves whatever problems he can, and in the latter case empathy helps more than charisma, for the reasons given in the original post..Those are all 3E, when paladin casting worked via WIS and paladins were truly MAD. 3E also had sense motive as WIS skill and represented the empathy part of convincing people by having sense motive giving a synergy bonus to diplomacy.

[Clistenes]

I think Empathy falls within Wisdom's purview... it does help influence others, yes, but before that, it helps you understand others, and that is Wisdom...

Abilities have always been messy, anyways... the same stat, Charisma, helps you both charm and scare others (and it is very common for people to be able to do only one of these...); Wisdom helps you both to listen sneaking foes and to understand people's hearts (a panther would be very good at the first, and can't do the second at all...); Dexterity helps shooting arrows, making acrobatics and doing fine manipulation... etc.

Honestly, to make the system kinda realistic you would need like a dozen abilities and an overly complex system of skills that linked every skill roll to several abilities...

[Jon talks a lot]

I 100% disagree.

Strength is the strength of your muscle

Dexterity is the strength of your agility

Constitution is the strength of your body

Intelligence is the strength of your mind

Wisdom is the strength of your will

Charisma is the strength of your personality.

Empathy is caring about others, not how immutable your personality is.

[Anarchic Fox]

I think Empathy falls within Wisdom's purview... it does help influence others, yes, but before that, it helps you understand others, and that is Wisdom...

It does right now, for sure. But if you move Insight over to the Empathy set, then maybe fold Intimidation into Persuasion, you'd have a nice, thematic set of skills. That does require rules changes though, and I wanted to restrict my attention to nomenclature in the OP.


Empathy is caring about others, not how immutable your personality is.

Empathy is the strength of your care for others.

If you can say "Dexterity is the strength of your agility" then the criterion is a bit haphazard. Also, "strength of will" hardly defines Wisdom. Willpower doesn't benefit Insight, Medicine, or Perception, to start with.

[Unoriginal]

Empathy doesn't mean you care about others, it just means you can understand how they feel.

Charisma, meanwhile, is about imposing yourself, on way or another. Pretty much the opposite process of empathy.

[Jakinbandw]

I 100% disagree.
Wisdom is the strength of your will


I cannot find a single definition of Wisdom that has anything to do with willpower. Wisdom is a person's ability to understand the world. Since others are part of the world, empathy would fall under wisdom.

[Sandeman]

Charisma is your personal magnetism/radiance that can be used to influence others.
(Persuasion, Deception, Intimidation)

Wisdom is how well tuned you are to the world around you. Often expressed with gut feelings (intuition) about people or places.
(Perception, Insight, Survival)


Empathy clearly belongs to the Wisdom area.

[Willie the Duck]

I 100% disagree.

Strength is the strength of your muscle

Dexterity is the strength of your agility

Constitution is the strength of your body

Intelligence is the strength of your mind

Wisdom is the strength of your will

Charisma is the strength of your personality.

Empathy is caring about others, not how immutable your personality is.


I cannot find a single definition of Wisdom that has anything to do with willpower. Wisdom is a person's ability to understand the world. Since others are part of the world, empathy would fall under wisdom.

And strength of your agility doesn't seem to mean much, and strength of your body and mind are so broad as to be unhelpful in distinguishing which of charisma or empathy (which, as others have pointed out, is more about understanding others than necessarily caring about them) would be better for the game.


Charisma is your personal magnetism/radiance that can be used to influence others.
(Persuasion, Deception, Intimidation)
Personally, I always thought Champions/Hero System had it right with having a Presence stat instead of Charisma -- The stat thus stays as the 'influencing others' stat*, but makes sure that the big intimidating general can have as high a score as the con artist or handsome prince(ss).
*of which I still think is the sixth stat's primary purpose, although I recognize that that's hardly clear in this edition where it might more commonly just be 'the casting stat of ______'

[Valmark]

Imo it shouldn't be changed- don't get me wrong, Charisma isn't a great word either for it either, but when you consider that it's used to resist stuff like forced travel and the like Empathy strikes me as less suitable. Tecnically possessions too but between Wis saves and Cha saves there's a strange differentiation.

That said, it is just a name change so there's be no issue to speak of with changing from Cha to Emp. Unless you're a warforged.

[KorvinStarmast]

For me empathy has most of the time fallen under Wisdom. And skillwise it would be most related to insight.

So no, no reason to change Charisma. Charisma -> influencing others, Wisdom -> understanding others works fine. That is similar to my take on this.

Empathy doesn't mean you care about others, it just means you can understand how they feel.

Charisma, meanwhile, is about imposing yourself, on way or another. Pretty much the opposite process of empathy. That's another way to see it that fits into play well enough.

Personally, I always thought Champions/Hero System had it right with having a Presence stat instead of Charisma -- The stat thus stays as the 'influencing others' stat*, but makes sure that the big intimidating general can have as high a score as the con artist or handsome prince(ss). Yep.
{My usual moaning about Charisma as a spell casting stat will not be available on this channel}

[Anarchic Fox]

Heh, looks like the forum consensus is solidly against the idea. Good thing I didn't try to rig my tally. :smallbiggrin:

[Wildstag]

I know it wasn't mentioned, but traditionally Undead have high Charisma because of the "force of personality" aspect of the ability score. Undead should almost be expected to have Apathy, the opposite of Empathy. But a lot of their abilities are also keyed off of Charisma.

It'd mean completely redesigning the mental ability score landscape for undead.

P.S. Also because Empathy (and other such emotional values) shouldn't be tied to a physical score on the sheet. They should be left for the player to determine through personality and role-play.

[Anarchic Fox]

P.S. Also because Empathy (and other such emotional values) shouldn't be tied to a physical score on the sheet.

Oh, that's a good point. Kinda like how matters of alignment and relationships should be left up to the DM's discretion in most cases, or why you don't have a "Sense Bad Decision" skill or power. :smalltongue:

[Nifft]

I'd be down to replace Wisdom with Empathy, but not Charisma.

Might make Divine casters a bit more like their tropes.

[Anarchic Fox]

I'd be down to replace Wisdom with Empathy, but not Charisma. Might make Divine casters a bit more like their tropes.


Hmm. That's a thought. I'll try repeating my original test for it.

Classes:

Cleric: Could go either way, wisdom for sound decisions or empathy for aiding your god's followers. Tie.
Druid: Plants don't have many emotions, but wisdom helps one understand an ecosystem's balances. Wisdom.
Monk: I think Wisdom ties into the class because mastering one's body requires self-knowledge. No such need to perceive others' emotions. Wisdom.
Ranger: Same reasoning as Druid. Wisdom.

Skills:

Animal Handling: Empathy, for sure.
Insight: Empathy.
Medicine: Looks like a Intelligence skill to me. :smallconfused:
Perception: I guess self-awareness also entails being more aware of your surroundings. Wisdom.
Survival: Seems like this would be a mix of Constitution, Intelligence and Wisdom. I'll say "Tie."


So this time it's Wisdom 4, Empathy 2. Similar result to before. As others pointed out, the realm of empathy is divvied up between Wisdom and Charisma, in D&D mechanics.

[quinron]

There have been a number of "experimenting with/analyzing ability scores" threads that I've kept an eye on lately, and I always draw the same conclusion: D&D's ability scores are both really bad at covering the range of human experience and really inconsistent from edition to edition about what skills they govern.

Personally, I don't think the fields of "intuition," "woodcraft & animal handling," "situational awareness," and "medical procedure" belong in one skill; I'd agree that at least the latter belongs more under Intelligence, and I'd say that "deception" and "persuasion" both depend pretty heavily on the first to be successful. And that's not to mention "scaring someone into compliance" feels like a weirdly specific skill when we already have "convincing someone to comply with your wishes (i.e., "persuasion")". That list should probably have at least 4, maybe 5 governing traits, but they've all been squeezed into 2.

[MaxWilson]

Oh, that's a good point. Kinda like how matters of alignment and relationships should be left up to the DM's discretion in most cases, or why you don't have a "Sense Bad Decision" skill or power. :smalltongue:

Kender (N)PCs obviously have an infallible Sense Bad Decision ability. How else can they always make the worst decision possible? ;)


And that's not to mention "scaring someone into compliance" feels like a weirdly specific skill when we already have "convincing someone to comply with your wishes (i.e., "persuasion")".

Hot take: Persuasion is not "convincing someone to comply with your wishes," it is "convincing someone to accept reality and act in their own best interest." Convincing someone to comply with your wishes requires both arranging circumstances to favor your chosen course (e.g. offering money for a job) AND framing those circumstances in such a way that the target acts accordingly, doing what you planned okays of cutting off their nose to spite their face (face). Only the latter involves an ability check (Persuasion). The former involves saying or especially DOING stuff to arrange circumstances to point in a certain direction, before attempting Persuasion.

A Persuasion roll of 10 million still can't persuade a farmer to sell his land to an evil corporation for a dollar--but it's traditional for movie villains to flub their (effective) Persuasion rolls so badly that the farmer digs in and refuses to sell for any price no matter what. You can recognize a good persuader by the hypothetical farmer's apologetic tone when rejecting them: "Say, y'all are real nice folks and I wish I could help you out, but I PROMISED my granddaddy I'd never sell the family farm no matter how much money, and a promise is a promise." The persuader is asking for an emotional concession ("please feel sorry for me for having such a tough job") and the farmer grants it ("I do feel bad for you") even though he isn't granting the procedural request because reasons. However, if you can satisfy those reasons (EvilCorp arranges to modify the farmer's memory to believe Grandpa's ghost visited him and told him to sell in order to help that poor young EvilCorp executive out of a jam), then emotions and reason will both align again and he'll do the thing you wanted him to do.

Persuasion isn't mind control, no matter your bonuses.

Deception... sort of is mind control, sometimes. But it has lasting side effects on relationships.