Do you penalize your players for low charisma?

[sikyon]

I don't mean penalize them like throw charisma draining attacks, but more like penalize them on interactions in a town. For example, the 6 charisma wizard walks into a store to buy reagents. The store owners don't pay attention to him when he walks in, and when he asks for service they dismiss him. They almost refuse to serve him.

He goes to have an audience with the king with the rest of his party, and he can't enter the throne room because he's just flat out disgusting.

Force rolls for diplomacy, even (this is a slippery slope given how broken diplomacy is)

Basically, do you let your players do the talking, or do let their characters do the talking?

This applies for int and wisdom too. If someone comes up with a genius plan to get out a situation with an int 6 fighter... do you tell them "No, you are too dumb to think of that."

[Solo]

I don't mean penalize them like throw charisma draining attacks, but more like penalize them on interactions in a town. For example, the 6 charisma wizard walks into a store to buy reagents. The store owners don't pay attention to him when he walks in, and when he asks for service they dismiss him. They almost refuse to serve him.

That makes no sense for several reasons.

[Sleet]

I don't penalize them for low attributes, but I expect them to roleplay their characters. A charisma 6 character would have a hard time getting along in town; my players know that, and act accordingly.

[Cuddly]

I thought most RPG players had low charisma.


*rimshot*

[sikyon]

That makes no sense for several reasons.

I take it you've never worked in customer service, have you?

[VeisuItaTyhjyys]

You remember Haley talking about Elan's charisma bonus under the hood?

You're damn right it's a penalty.

[Solo]

I take it you've never worked in customer service, have you?

So you work for the DMV, eh?

[Nebo_]

If a customer doesn't have good social skills, you don't refuse to serve them. If they start making threats and being a general jerk, then you might, but that's an entirely different story. What kind of a stupid shopkeeper would throw someone out of their shop for being timid?

[Solo]

If a customer doesn't have good social skills, you don't refuse to serve them. If they start making threats and being a general jerk, then you might, but that's an entirely different story. What kind of a stupid shopkeeper would throw someone out of their shop for being timid?

More to the point, what shopkeeper would throw out a timid person who can tell the laws of physics to sit down and shut up several times per day?

[SomethingElse]

I expect players to roleplay low charisma, but I don't outright try to penalize them - rolls for charisma-related things obviously are harder but I don't like to ever "penalize" players.

[sikyon]

A low charisma person is not neccesairly timid. He may also be brash, abrasive, or outright rude. Timid doesn't really cut Charisma 6 in my opinion, maybe Charimsa 8.

But yeah, if I try to make small talk with someone timid, it's pretty rude not to talk back. If I ask him if he needs help and he jumps back and almost knocks over a shelf of potions I'm gonna be mad. But most importantly, if he is timid, he's not cut out to be a PC. If he's just "timid" low charisma, then he should be running away from combat.

More to the point, what shopkeeper would throw out a timid person who can tell the laws of physics to sit down and shut up several times per day?

A shopkeeper would throw out someone who's rude. His shop, his buissness, he reserves the right to serve. It's not like he's a large chain store, and you're an outsider. He can treat you like crap and even if you're famous, people will still trust him over you.

And yes, he can throw out even a high level wizard. If the wizard outright attacks him, that's mutually assured destruction. Sooner or later the wizard is going to be hunted down by good wizards, more powerful than he is (yes, I know it's hard to conceive) because he attacked an innocent man.

If he tries to do something like trash the shopkeeper's reputation, well, it's like a politician singularly going after someone. It just tarnishes your own reputation.

Besides, anyone who actually meets/sees the charisma 6 person is going to understand why exactly this happened, and D&D typically doesn't' have mass second hand communication.

[Solo]

A shopkeeper would throw out someone who's rude. His shop, his buissness, he reserves the right to serve. It's not like he's a large chain store, and you're an outsider. He can treat you like crap and even if you're famous, people will still trust him over you.

And low charisma people are rude, are they?

By the way, you seem to have misread my post. I said "throw out a timid person", not "throw out a rude person".

[de-trick]

It's expected to when your roleplaying. A 6 Chr character should not try and be the great leader of the world or a low INT be a master mind inventor, or a low WIS character be a elder in a village

[Timespike]

What if he's just ugly? A fire mage may have some NASTY burn scars and a raspy, gravelly voice from an accident during his apprenticeship, for instance. That -2 to charisma can be timidity, rudeness, ugliness, social cluelessness (annoying, but friendly and sincere) grumpiness, autistic non-responsiveness, icy detachment, or a number of other things.

[Darkantra]

I find that the best way of dealing with low charisma is to just ask the players how they'd like it to manifest. They could be meek, come off as annoying, has no presence, be genuinely unpleasant to look at or any number of negative traits. As long as the player can roleplay it well and you can match them, then there shouldn't be any problem.

If the wizard was plain ugly and entered the shop then it's more likely that he wouldn't be served quickly and would receive sub-par service since everyone just wants to look away from him. If he was exceptionally bossy then the owner would approach him like a regular customer and then sour when the stream of demands came out from the wizards mouth.

[SomethingElse]

It's expected to when your roleplaying. A 6 Chr character should not try and be the great leader of the world or a low INT be a master mind inventor, or a low WIS character be a elder in a village

Which leads me to one of my biggest pet peeves - players who think that just because they know how to describe some given action their character can, would, or should do it. I once ran a Star Wars game where one of my players insisted that his character could build a handmade semiautomatic rocket launcher or something, despite the fact that I told him the way he wanted to do it was completely out of genre, and besides something better already existed in the Arms & Equipment Guide and was within his skill level to build. He insisted that he had to do it the way he described or I'd be ruining his fun...

[sikyon]

And low charisma people are rude, are they?

By the way, you seem to have misread my post. I said "throw out a timid person", not "throw out a rude person".

No, I said that there are rarely timid PC's, just timid doesn't represent 6 cha anyways, and that you can still dislike someone who won't answer your questions. Furthermore, people who read into very timid body language tend to assume more aggressive body postures, etc.

[Solo]

Your grammar makes my head hurt.


I'll write more if I manage to make better sense o what you said.

[an kobold]

It depends on how the player is acting out their character. If they min/maxed so int is the dump stat yet continually come up with clever ideas in character, they're going to be penalized. On the other hand, if the player gets a look of revelation upon their face, gives the DM a sour look, and reluctantly declares "Thog charges and attacks," they shouldn't be penalized. Low cha is admittedly harder to draw the line. Are they playing the suave type with 6 cha, or are they playing the overly conceited type? Ask them ooc if you're not sure, then take appropriate action.

TL;DR-Good role playing penalizes for low (mental) scores already, the DM shouldn't have to do it unless bad role playing is involved.

[sikyon]

Your grammar makes my head hurt.


I'll write more if I manage to make better sense o what you said.

You must have o'really weak head.

[Solo]

Technically, it's my spelling that's poor, not my grammar.

[Behold_the_Void]

I've had a player suggest that another player be penalized for making a highly unoptimized character with HIGH charisma once, saying that they should get attacked more often because they're more noticeable. That was a bizarre episode.

But in general, I require it to be roleplayed, and I have ways of smiting people who don't play their ability scores.

[Orzel]

I make the PCs do Mob checks every week in a town which is a CHA check to see if a local community forms an angry mob and runs you outta town. It's an easy check but if you talk a lot with a CHA penalty... watch that DC rise.

[marjan]

I make the PCs do Mob checks every week in a town which is a CHA check to see if a local community forms an angry mob and runs you outta town. It's an easy check but if you talk a lot with a CHA penalty... watch that DC rise.

Can you take ten on that check?

[horseboy]

I've had a player suggest that another player be penalized for making a highly unoptimized character with HIGH charisma once, saying that they should get attacked more often because they're more noticeable. That was a bizarre episode.

Sounds like he played too much Everquest. (Clerics draw more aggro because of their higher cha stat)

[Orzel]

Can you take ten on that check?

Sure, if you sleep the whole week.
But if you "sleep" the whole week, you might get a penalty or two.

[Sonofaspectre]

I have one basic rule when it comes to roleplaying the stats for a charcter:
- if you play it lower than its rolled, I'll drop it to what you are playing
- if you play it higher than its rolled, I'll remind you of your stat, but not penalize you.

For Charisma in particular, my group has a bad habit of dumping charisma then expecting to be able to do Charisma based things well. While penalize isn't the right word, I will call for a diplomacy check once a session as needed, to remind them, or just have fun with the scenario, by taking what they say and "translating" into CHAR 5.

Other than my barbarian being pissed that I wouldn't allow him to Intimidate well (as Intimidate is a CHAR skill, and he dumped it and put very few ranks in it, but I'm the bad guy for not letting him sub in STR ... ::shrug::) we haven't had any problems with my handling on it. If they had a problem with it, I would call it penalizing. Since they don't, I'll go with ... reminding.

[SomethingElse]

I have one basic rule when it comes to roleplaying the stats for a charcter:
- if you play it lower than its rolled, I'll drop it to what you are playing

This seems like it could be very problematic, given that some of the Cha/Int/Wis things a character with 16 or higher in said stat would come up with shouldn't even be conceivable to us mere mortals....

[Hallavast]

I make the PCs do Mob checks every week in a town which is a CHA check to see if a local community forms an angry mob and runs you outta town. It's an easy check but if you talk a lot with a CHA penalty... watch that DC rise.

Isn't this a bit much? It takes a lot to get an otherwise peaceful town up in arms about anything. Why is the check made every week?? Why make this a mechanic? Why not just use regular cause/effect reasoning? If the characters actually do something to upset the majority of the townspeople, then form a mob. If they don't really do anything to get on people's nerves, then don't run them out of town for no reason. It's like rolling gygaxian random encounter tables. It doesn't make a lick of sense!

Also, aren't you double penalizing the PCs on the check? A low charisma character already has a penalty to his roll. So why would you further penalize him by increasing the DC? His disadvantage is reflected here twice.

[Rumpus]

Low Charisma can manifest in a number of different ways, from awkwardness, scars, bad breath, humpback, inability to hold eye contact, male pattern baldness, nervous tics, smarmyness, or simply always standing in other people's personal space. A player designing his character should figure out what it is that causes his low Charisma score. Of course, a character could manifest several negative traits and still have a positive score if he had some massive positive ones to balance it out.

I let my players roleplay it, and have NPCs react appropriately. For example, if a character with a really low Charisma doesn't RP it, I assume that the character thinks he's much cooler than he actually is (ie "The Sherminator" from American Pie), and NPCs treat him like a moron.