From: Loren J. Miller (MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu)
Date: Fri 11 Jun 1993 - 07:27:01 EEST
Sorry for not putting this in a long message, but...
Nick says that he's opposed "on principle" to Charisma.
What is the principle?
Someone else complained about diplomats wanting a bunch of skills rather
than just CHA. I don't think this is true at all. My characters in RQ2,
before Bargain skill was generally available, got by with some Oratory
and a lot of CHA rolls, and they were by no means just stand up fighters.
One of them was an Issaries priest by the end of it, and the lack of a
large complex of bargaining and interaction skills didn't slow him down
a bit. And then look at all the games that are supposed to be roleplaying
intensive that you see out there on the market. Amber. How many skills and
stats do you see? 4 stats. No skills, per se, other than the cosmic abilities
expected of Amberites. Does that make it hard to play diplomatic characters?
On the contrary, the simplistic rules/non-rules make it easy to bend
characters as you want, rather than make them slaves to a skill list.
Also, a player in my current campaign under the playtest rules wants to play
a diplomat character. Unfortunately the current rules do not support such a
concept. Everyone else has taken some communication skill or another, and
everybody else is just as good as he is. The player is not glib or pushy,
so his character gets overwhelmed by other characters, and he has no recourse
in the game rules, for they make someone with 20 points in multiple comm
skills equivalent to someone with 4 points in one of them. If CHA was
available, then he would have boosted his CHA and those who didn't want to spend
points on CHA would have left their CHA low and he would have an advantage.
The current system doesn't have a way to differentiate between someone with
60% in oratory and someone with 60% oratory, 60% bargain, 60% etiquette,
and all the rest. The multiplicity of poorly defined skills, which should
not even be used in a properly run game, or so the roleplaying snobs tell
us, discourage people from buying such skills for their character. Which
ones are useful in what situations? Who knows.
Anyway, I want to hear rational arguments against CHA if you have them,
rather than just "I don't like it." Tell me how CHA ruined your RQ
campaign and having APP and 6 Comm skills made it better.
expectantly yours,
Loren
0,,
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