Extremely Low Charisma Character

[AlfarinIcebreaker]

Just wanted to hear your opinions, I'm not planning on actually rolling a character like the one being discussed :

So here it is : Duergar, Battlerager. Starting Charisma of 4 and with Gruff (-2 to Charisma) ends up at Charisma of 2, a modifier of -4. How would one portray so low Charisma, is that even possible?

[Sun Wukong]

You could just add the following line to your character bio, examine, whatever it is called:
'This deep dwarf has charisma of 2, you probably would find a gelatinous cube a more appealing company.'

Done did done, and you can just put points into social skills...


Anyhow, -4 is not that big of a penalty to a maxed out skill.

[illithid]

I have a low cha orc, I often use the premises of "intolerant", "inopportune", "callous", "rude", "obnoxious", "foul" to depict her low charisma in terms of actions.

It tends towards either an adjective description of looks, i.e "ugly" or a adjective description of personality i.e "rude".

[Zanniej]

I used to play my dwarven battlerager as an obnoxious, loud mouthed, (lore appropriate) racist. He was ofcourse ugly, but apart from that hard to get along with, since he'd quite often resort to offensive remarks.

I think playing someone that's hard to not get a fight with, is pretty low charisma

[Vogar Eol]

Charisma 0 means that the character is withdrawn into a catatonic, coma-like stupor, helpless. So at two charisma? Hmmmmm.... drools a lot and has long awkward silences?

[izzul]

i once entered the game with a -4 charisma toon.

a DM send me tell and said, "OMG, your charisma is low, you either an ugly person, possibly limping, lose a limb, or have smelly Odor" (i exaggerated some of the description)

[Planehopper]

This is my dwarven battlerager/bear warrior's description. I see a few typos now that I share it publicly but you get the gist.

Hidden: show

[Calodan]

Honestly? Charisma is not just looks. However it does have a lot to do with social skills specifically. Leadership traits and such.

I get my thoughts and ideas for how to play my PCs from this schematic on Stats.

http://dmingwithcharisma.com/2011/10/dd ... -language/

EDITED FOR COMPLIANCE.

[aaron22]

without delving into a philosophical debate here. i think looks and attractiveness can enhance or hinder leadership effectiveness. it is not the end all either. mentioning hitler gives a good example. he said what his people wanted to hear at a time they wanted to hear it. he may not have actually been that charismatic as much as he stood out in front and told a willing audience what they wanted to hear.

i played a low cha character as well and had to combine that with a high wis which made it more difficult. i would pretty much try to get a feel of the character you are conversing with and tell say all the WRONG things. toss in some bad looks and you got yourself a winner.

is your character smart or wise?

this will be a determining factor in how to play this as far as i can tell.

smart: brutally honest and without any sort of filter. makes people feel inferior without looking like a leader.

wise: annoying. talks about self quite a bit. tells too many stories without pushing the adorable button. also acts like they know it all, but derive that from past experiences.

not smart: idiot. not funny idiot. more a i dont want to hang out with you idiot. gets people in trouble by doing and being stupid.

not wise: very misguided. stands fast on ideals that oppose cultural norm. this character would be offensive in a deep way.

this is how i would do it. you can any way you want of course. be careful though. to really pull this off. players may not enjoy playing with you on him. but would be GREAT RP if that was true.

[Calodan]

without delving into a philosophical debate here. i think looks and attractiveness can enhance or hinder leadership effectiveness. it is not the end all either. mentioning hitler gives a good example. he said what his people wanted to hear at a time they wanted to hear it. he may not have actually been that charismatic as much as he stood out in front and told a willing audience what they wanted to hear.

i played a low cha character as well and had to combine that with a high wis which made it more difficult. i would pretty much try to get a feel of the character you are conversing with and tell say all the WRONG things. toss in some bad looks and you got yourself a winner.

is your character smart or wise?

this will be a determining factor in how to play this as far as i can tell.

smart: brutally honest and without any sort of filter. makes people feel inferior without looking like a leader.

wise: annoying. talks about self quite a bit. tells too many stories without pushing the adorable button. also acts like they know it all, but derive that from past experiences.

not smart: idiot. not funny idiot. more a i dont want to hang out with you idiot. gets people in trouble by doing and being stupid.

not wise: very misguided. stands fast on ideals that oppose cultural norm. this character would be offensive in a deep way.

this is how i would do it. you can any way you want of course. be careful though. to really pull this off. players may not enjoy playing with you on him. but would be GREAT RP if that was true.

Oh for sure being a good looking person with large stature is what we call a natural leader archetype in outdoor leadership courses. What we see though are over 7 different types of leadership archetypes. This is often governed by Charisma. Not even speaking in D&D language either that is literally from my books when I was going for outdoor recreation and education degree a few years back!

I was basically giving an example of a ugly person with high cha in D&D standards. To prove that CHA is not exactly JUST your looks. Though it could be a major part of your abilities!

As far as the not wise stuff that is connected to your D&D WIS score. He could be incredibly autistic but not being able to communicate with others does not mean they are not wise! A very high INT person with extremely low CHA could be a genius autistic person. I.E. Wiress from Catching Fire. She is incredibly smart but can not communicate. This makes her a high INT low CHA PC in our world. Along with other stats being low. Her CON seems average. STR is low and I would say WIS is actually quite high for her.

[aaron22]

@cal

so we agree. very nicely described and explained. (must have a pretty good cha score)

and there are many possibilities for you to take your stats and tailor your persona upon. i did not want to encroach upon autism really as it may be offensive to some. but then that would really drive a nail into your low cha now wouldnt it?

[Calodan]

@cal

so we agree. very nicely described and explained. (must have a pretty good cha score)

and there are many possibilities for you to take your stats and tailor your persona upon. i did not want to encroach upon autism really as it may be offensive to some. but then that would really drive a nail into your low cha now wouldnt it?

Check out that link I posted! It literally says at some point you are probably autistic. The best example I could come up with was a character I simply love in Catching Fire. I tend to gravitate towards some of the static characters in stories some times. They are the back bone of a story. Without them the world does not shape the dynamic ones.

[Planehopper]

Plenty of people on the internet prove that CHA, leadership and likeability, isn't all looks... I mean, we don't know what half of each other look like and I am sure we all have formed opinions on one another's leadership and likeability.

But to say that it has nothing to do with it, even if you put it all in caps, is leaving off a lot of real life studies that prove that "ugly" and "beautiful" people are perceived differently in all manner of ways. I'm not going to debate the point further, but most of us have probably experienced a situation where someone has used their looks and/or appeal to influence a situation to their advantage. Trying to do the same with poor hygiene, obvious physical defects, or other appearance-based flaws would usually be at a severe disadvantage.

The ability to influence is made up of a number of things, and appearance is definitely one of them.

[Calodan]

Plenty of people on the internet prove that CHA, leadership and likeability, isn't all looks... I mean, we don't know what half of each other look like and I am sure we all have formed opinions on one another's leadership and likeability.

But to say that it has nothing to do with it, even if you put it all in caps, is leaving off a lot of real life studies that prove that "ugly" and "beautiful" people are perceived differently in all manner of ways. I'm not going to debate the point further, but most of us have probably experienced a situation where someone has used their looks and/or appeal to influence a situation to their advantage. Trying to do the same with poor hygiene, obvious physical defects, or other appearance-based flaws would usually be at a severe disadvantage.

The ability to influence is made up of a number of things, and appearance is definitely one of them.

Right I was probably a bit harsh with nothing to do with looks. It can have to do with looks but it is not a major governing factor of looks. My second post in response to another post showed that. There are examples though of those that are not good looking. They are homely at best being quite charismatic and the opposite is also true. Where that persons abilities are connected to being soft on the eyes.

Yeah if you are missing both eyes and have a odd scar across your mouth you are not likely to be high CHA in our world and there is that. So again I would restate my original statement to more show that CHA is not always just looks. I was merely trying to point out that we here on this player world tend to tie CHA directly to ugly and beautiful on a scale with the mod factor and that, that is not exactly true. My apologies for being so absolute in my statement.

[aaron22]

on another topic i detailed why I (and maybe many of us) turn high cha into looks. dont recall what post it was, but basically i said because "force of will" is really hard to project in the game looks good is easy. too many players do not want to respect your "force of will" RP. but they will respect your hot dude/chick play.

this is probably a usable "easier" mode of play with very low cha as well. a very ugly but somewhat likable guy will be in convo and adventure groups or guilds. a HUGE a-hole would be despised by all and outcasted from any group convo or play. even if they are a mildly attractive a-hole.