Charisma and You

[selhan]

Hi folks.
A discussion came up in regards to Charisma abilities scores and their definition or representation of the numbers. Too often enough, players tend to power build and use CHA as a dump stat, however still engage in RP quite wrong with their numbers. Server Rules tells us "To Play your Sheet." So for those that often misunderstand or new to things, you can check out this guide below. No I didn't put it together cause honestly I'm quite lazy like that. I simply copy and pasted from other peoples work and cut out the stuff not really needed. I ain't scared to admit it! At least I'm honest.

**This is by no means me saying you must follow the chart. Its only to help out with ideals and if your a player that likes to follow your sheet. I will never be a person to tell you how to RP your character. Once I did fall in to the trend of a power build and used an ability score for a dump stat, however I like to RP, and I had often found myself in bad situations due to the dump stat .

Charisma
1 (–5): Barely conscious, incredibly tactless and non-empathetic
2-3 (–4): Minimal independent thought, relies heavily on others to think instead
4-5 (–3): Has trouble thinking of others as people
6-7 (–2): Terribly reticent, uninteresting, or rude
8-9 (–1): Something of a bore or makes people mildly uncomfortable
10-11 (0): Capable of polite conversation
12-13 (1): Mildly interesting, knows what to say to the right people
14-15 (2): Interesting, knows what to say to most people
16-17 (3): Popular, receives greetings and conversations on the street
18-19 (4): Immediately likeable by many people, subject of favorable talk
20-21 (5): Life of the party, able to keep people entertained for hours
22-23 (6): Immediately likeable by almost everybody
24-25 (7): Renowned for wit, personality, and/or looks

Charisma 6-7: You have low social skills and limited emotional affect. You avoid others, and they avoid you. You have difficulty relating to people and a weak sense of self.

Charisma 8-9: You’re gruff, brusque, rude, irritable, just some person most people don’t like very much. People don’t like paying attention to you and look forward to escaping a conversation with you.

Charisma 10-11: You’re average, competent, can carry on a conversation, and are kind of forgettable. Many stranger don’t keep track of you if you don’t hang out a lot.

Charisma 12-13: You are sunny, interesting, charming. You’re the one people want to be friends with. There are things about you that others want to learn or experience, such as your excellent singing voice or your inspiring bravery.

Charisma 14-15: You are magnetic, compelling. You’re the popular one in the class. You set trends, even without meaning to. You are a competent leader, but you don’t inspire fanatical loyalty. People trust and admire you and try to emulate you. You have your moments of greatness.

Charisma 16-17: You seize people’s attention without doing anything. You might be the beloved leader of an entire community, a great hero, or perhaps a person of great faith or principle. People may get flustered trying to talk to you, and you who can talk most people into doing whatever they want. You can lead a fellowship into battle and they will follow you into peril.

Charisma 18-19: You are a star. People grow happy at seeing you and start crying when you’re upset, people can’t help but love you. You’re the beloved king of a nation. People have a hard time focusing on anything else while you’re there, and often people lose track of what they were saying when engaged with you. You can lead armies into battle.

Charisma 20-21: You have an unnatural appeal and power that exudes from you like nothing most people have ever experienced. Yours is an otherworldly presence that makes most people either nervous or distracted around you. It takes a similarly strong sense of self to question you or argue with you.

Hope this is useful , enjoy!

[izzul]

Hi folks.
A discussion came up in regards to Charisma abilities scores and their definition or representation of the numbers. Too often enough, players tend to power build and use CHA as a dump stat, however still engage in RP quite wrong with their numbers. Server Rules tells us "To Play your Sheet." So for those that often misunderstand or new to things, you can check out this guide below. No I didn't put it together cause honestly I'm quite lazy like that. I simply copy and pasted from other peoples work and cut out the stuff not really needed. I ain't scared to admit it! At least I'm honest.

**This is by no means me saying you must follow the chart. Its only to help out with ideals and if your a player that likes to follow your sheet. I will never be a person to tell you how to RP your character. Once I did fall in to the trend of a power build and used an ability score for a dump stat, however I like to RP, and I had often found myself in bad situations due to the dump stat .

Charisma
1 (–5): Barely conscious, incredibly tactless and non-empathetic
2-3 (–4): Minimal independent thought, relies heavily on others to think instead
4-5 (–3): Has trouble thinking of others as people
6-7 (–2): Terribly reticent, uninteresting, or rude
8-9 (–1): Something of a bore or makes people mildly uncomfortable
10-11 (0): Capable of polite conversation
12-13 (1): Mildly interesting, knows what to say to the right people
14-15 (2): Interesting, knows what to say to most people
16-17 (3): Popular, receives greetings and conversations on the street
18-19 (4): Immediately likeable by many people, subject of favorable talk
20-21 (5): Life of the party, able to keep people entertained for hours
22-23 (6): Immediately likeable by almost everybody
24-25 (7): Renowned for wit, personality, and/or looks

Charisma 6-7: You have low social skills and limited emotional affect. You avoid others, and they avoid you. You have difficulty relating to people and a weak sense of self.

Charisma 8-9: You’re gruff, brusque, rude, irritable, just some person most people don’t like very much. People don’t like paying attention to you and look forward to escaping a conversation with you.

Charisma 10-11: You’re average, competent, can carry on a conversation, and are kind of forgettable. Many stranger don’t keep track of you if you don’t hang out a lot.

Charisma 12-13: You are sunny, interesting, charming. You’re the one people want to be friends with. There are things about you that others want to learn or experience, such as your excellent singing voice or your inspiring bravery.

Charisma 14-15: You are magnetic, compelling. You’re the popular one in the class. You set trends, even without meaning to. You are a competent leader, but you don’t inspire fanatical loyalty. People trust and admire you and try to emulate you. You have your moments of greatness.

Charisma 16-17: You seize people’s attention without doing anything. You might be the beloved leader of an entire community, a great hero, or perhaps a person of great faith or principle. People may get flustered trying to talk to you, and you who can talk most people into doing whatever they want. You can lead a fellowship into battle and they will follow you into peril.

Charisma 18-19: You are a star. People grow happy at seeing you and start crying when you’re upset, people can’t help but love you. You’re the beloved king of a nation. People have a hard time focusing on anything else while you’re there, and often people lose track of what they were saying when engaged with you. You can lead armies into battle.

Charisma 20-21: You have an unnatural appeal and power that exudes from you like nothing most people have ever experienced. Yours is an otherworldly presence that makes most people either nervous or distracted around you. It takes a similarly strong sense of self to question you or argue with you.

Hope this is useful , enjoy!

with the availability of items in the shop, one can roll 6 charisma or 10 charisma(when item equipped) with 0 modifier towards another.

i got few PC's
-22 and 26 charisma(item equipped) - i RP him super friendly and likes going to crowd place and getting attention. sense of belonging to the land and proud. with a little humble to add up to the toppings. Give higher respect to people having 30++ charisma and perceive them as allies or formidable foe.
-6 and 10 charisma mage(after cast eagle splendor) - i RP hasty adventurous and annoyingly wants to experiment and casting spells towards enemies without waiting for team mates. still normal person if perceived after modifier.
-9 charisma(using +3 cha item) - talks in 3rd person and stating blunt statement that might hurt/unhurt people. low wisdom as very slow learner towards changes.
-10 and 14 charisma(+4 cha glove from epic shop) - wooing ladies and hitting on them while being respectful. charming surrounding people with looks.

[Almarea90]

What if someone has CHA 8 but Diplomacy maxed?

[JustAnotherGuy]

I kind of like this chart. Too often, I see people use Charisma to define their looks, when that is not what it is at all. In my opinion, almost every time I see a Charisma roll on the server, it's used in the wrong way.

I'm going to quote someone from another conversation. I will leave the quote unattributed since it was said in a private conversation. These are not my words, but I agree with them wholeheartedly.

The core of Charisma is the ability to distinguish one's self from other things. High Cha reflects self-confidence, self-actualization, being your own person regardless of the pressure of those around you

I really love this take on it. A low charisma person can still be very liked. And even seem to be high-cha on the surface. But it could be an act to cover up their insecurities.

What if someone has CHA 8 but Diplomacy maxed?

This one is a tough, but interesting one. I had a toon like that, and for me, I played them as somewhat sociopathic. They had learned to read people, and respond the right way. They were good in negotiations. People generally liked them, but they were not very empathetic.

If we follow the quote I posted above, this person could be very good at speaking and such, but could be very insecure about themselves and always second guessing themselves.

[Hoihe]

What if someone has CHA 8 but Diplomacy maxed?

This one is a tough, but interesting one. I had a toon like that, and for me, I played them as somewhat sociopathic. They had learned to read people, and respond the right way. They were good in negotiations. People generally liked them, but they were not very empathetic.

If we follow the quote I posted above, this person could be very good at speaking and such, but could be very insecure about themselves and always second guessing themselves.

I would argue sociopathic is the wrong term, albeit the rest is correct.

Empathy is a bit of a term that's often misrepresented and misunderstood due to differences in scientific and layperson meaning.

For sake of clarity, I am writing this post

What you are speaking of would what is today called "Cognitive Empathy". Cognitive Empathy is the ability to read other people's mental state using a combination of body language, non-verbal cues and tone of voice. It's a communication skill, in essence. Cognitive Empathy can suffer across cultural divides, or across neurotypes (The Double Empathy Problem). The presence, or lack of it for cognitive empathy does not affect an individual's ability to feel compassion. Although, it can hinder effective communication of "I feel down, need help" and understanding said communication. Finally, Cognitive Empathy tends to be associated with "Theory of mind" - the ability to understand others have different needs and wants, and this can cause issues with Affective Empathy.

However, what most people understand by "empathetic" is actually "Affective Empathy." Affective Empathy is the ability to imagine and share in the sensations and emotions of another person, animal or even fictional entity. Affective Empathy is not a communication skill. Affective Empathy IS a perquisite of compassion, and indeed certain neurotypes which are stereotyped to have low empathy (due to misunderstanding Cognitive as Affective in scientific jargon) can have immense affective empathy, to the point of impairment.


Two contrasting examples to help clarify.

Consider a man who has no qualms about hurting others, but always knows what to say to get ahead. This person has a deficiency in Affective Empathy, as he lacks the ability to viscerally understand how his actions will make someone feel either physically or emotionally. He might understand logically, through a learned action, but he likely won't care and maybe even use it to his advantage. Chances are, this person will be in some political position of power.

This man has a strong sense of cognitive empathy, but lacks affective empathy. This is, in laypeople terminology, a sociopath.


Compare our man with a lady who sees her friend clearly suffering emotionally, but as they're of different neurotypes she cannot understand the communication of "I am feeling sad", so she does nothing to help. However, let's assume they've been friends for a long time, and the lady's friend knows of this communication barrier, so she clearly communicates, "I'm sorry, I don't feel good and would like some cheering up." Our lady's affective empathy then triggers, and she too starts to feel as bad as her friend as she imagines how the situation she was told must feel like. Now, lacking in Cognitive Empathy still, our lady will default to "Well, when I feel sad I want a big dark room with no sounds and a heavy weighted blanket." And this would be her first reaction too, had she been new friends with our sad person. But, since she has strong affective empathy, and realized that in the past her assumption of "everyone is just like me" caused her friend to be hurt, she compensates for her communication/ToM impairment and asks, "You know I'm bad with this. Is there anything I can do to help you feel better?" and being good friends who help each other, with clear low-context communication, they manage to help each other.

The lady in this scenario is someone who is neurodiverse. She may be autistic, or she may only have Pragmatic Communication, Monotropic Mindset and Information processing issues only - not enough for a diagnosis (after all, she may have no issues with neuro-motor differences and may even be an amazing gymnast for all we know), but still exhibiting the stereotypical behaviour expected. She is a very compassionate, loving person - just lacks the ability to recognize when that compassion is needed, and the knowledge of how to express it in a way others are helped.




Bit off topic, but I hate the conflation of Cognitive/Affective Empathy as I tire of the media's misrepresentation of people like the lady in my example as cold and emotionless robots just because of a communication breakdown.


If we really want to force describing empathy with stats,

wisdom represents cognitive empathy as it's about being perceptive of the world around you and of others (sense motive is after all a WIS skill).

charisma may represent affective empathy, but it's kinda forced. It only sorta works because charisma can be seen as an "intensity of emotions and personality", which with strong affective empathy can be impairing (as an example: inability to watch movies with death due to imagining how much the loved ones of the dead person must suffer, and ending up simulating that suffering IRL).



edit:

Affective Empathy is tested fairly well by the Toronto Empathy Quotient test

Cognitive Empathy is likewise tested fairly well on the generic Empathy Quotient test.

The Toronto was kinda specifically made to deal with this conflation

[yyj]

Would be really interesting to see a chaotic good sociopath.

But on a serious note, this can also mean physical appearance, charisma includes personality but it's not limited to it, people are superficial even in Faerun.

[Hoihe]

Would be really interesting to see a chaotic good sociopath.

But on a serious note, this can also mean physical appearance, charisma includes personality but it's not limited to it, people are superficial even in Faerun.

Amos Burton.

Has no moral compass of his own, so he attaches to people he knows are good guys.

[YYA]

What if someone has CHA 8 but Diplomacy maxed?

Your character is not usually the first to approach people, your character might appear boring and grey upon first glance, and then all of it is changed when you start to talk. So if your character ends up in a peace meeting, people might have thought they can just walk over you, and then walk away themselves wondering how they agreed whatever they agreed.

[Almarea90]

Thank you for the insight and the interesting perspective. It has many points in common with how I try to depict that particular trait.
Tentatively, I assume my character learnt diplomacy through examples in books and personal experience and would make attempts to copy such models in a mnemonic way.
She would then appear well spoken and learned (also combined with her high lore skills and high INT), however she would often fail at saying the right thing to do on an emotional and empathetic level, in favor of more logic arguments that often obtain the opposite effect.
Not to mention when something piques her academic curiosity, in which case she would shamelessly ask question to the poor soul who displays the particular traits. As an example she once asked Emmanuel (very politely) to turn into a chameleon and precisely measure the time it took him to master the ability of changing color.