People have argued about this since first edition, but the discussion never gets old. At dinner last night, I was chatting with the fembot about the d20 System (she claims it isn’t broken, I think it’s got severe flaws, but not ones that make it unplayable) and one of the things I started talking about was Charisma.

Now, clearly the 3e designers thought there was something wrong with Charisma, because they more firmly defined both conceptually and mechanically. Conceptually, they defined it as “actual personal strength, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting.” Mechanically, they tied it into the sorcerer’s spellcasting and made it integral to cleric and paladin abilities.

That’s all well and good, but it’s a shame they didn’t take the other necessary step of making it a secondary stat instead of a primary attribute. Charisma should be defined by not only what your character can do, but how good at it he is.

Let’s take a look at Raistlin, the gold-skinned archmage from the Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends (and more, I know). When the books start out he was a Level 5 mage, I believe, and he was universally mistrusted and/or loathed. Only his brother and the ever-bright Tasslehoff could stand to be around him. That’s clearly a low charisma, but he had a whole lot of credibility and “personal strength” whenever he cast a spell, solved a problem, or as we found out later, took on the test at the Tower of Wayreth. Think about obviously bad leaders of the past and present…even though we may joke about them or look upon them with disdain, their words and actions have great power.

As Raistlin goes up in level (grows more powerful), we know he wasn’t putting his stat bumps into Charisma, and even if he was it wouldn’t have made a significant difference. Yet, he goes on to challenge gods and become leader of the Tower of High Sorcery…but mechanically, how?

If Charisma was a secondary stat, based on a mixture of class abilities, feats, spells, ability scores, titles, fame, accomplishments, and character level, then we’d see a number value that made more sense. Of course, this would mean that someone would have to go through the entire game and come up with Charisma values for every feat, spell, and accomplishment out there. That sounds tedious at best for 3.x, but with 4e right around the corner, maybe it’s time to make that change?

Why yes, I am a bard, and my name is Larry, and this is a leisure suit.