You cannot use charisma to force someone to do something he wouldn't do

Those are predicated on cults of personality, however.
user, you are looking at this in a confusing light.
If you can't see the difference between convincing someone to willingly give up their life savings after a few minutes of conversation for no personal gain, and putting someone in a position where their life is in direct jeopardy in exchange for their wealth... well, yeah, man.

But you could probably convince them to stop fighting. Unless they're the sort who's in it for the fighting and not doing it to survive.

No one is saying that.
There is a difference between doing such a thing in 6 seconds to one minute flat, and doing it over the course of time.

That's what hypnosis is though, knowing what they secretly want to do and telling them to do it.

>Those are predicated on cults of personality, however.
A lot of long standing religions just started off as cults of personality, Christianity with Christ, Islam with Mohamed and Buddhism with Gautama Buddha. Just look at how North Korea's simple cult of personality has gradually transformed into a full blown religion with miracles and everything, the distinction isn't nearly as clear as you want it to be.

Yeah charisma checks should be lengthy and involved and maybe actually require some creativity from the player beyond "I ask them really nice" but at the same time won't upset the person if they fail and aren't necessarily illegal while intimidation rolls are quick and dirty and easy to do ("See this sword? Give me the fucking gold cunt") but much higher risk in terms of retaliation from the target and the governing authorities in the area (assuming there are any, hence the popularity of forest banditry).

There is actually a large distinction, in that each of the those religions had almost from the beginning focused on maintaining public peace and prompting orderly society, and had use greater than satisfying the personal whims of the movement's by necessity charismatic leader.
The cult of personality's goal was not simply slavishly serving the personal desires of it's figurehead.

>There is actually a large distinction, in that each of the those religions had almost from the beginning focused on maintaining public peace and prompting orderly society
Yeah and if you asked any practicing scientologist (started as a cult of personality around L. Ron Hubbard) they'd say the exact same thing about their group, it's never about personal advancement it's always about "helping society". You've just bought into the propaganda of some of these cults of personality, that's all.

Also obviously they get a bit weird after the center of that cult of personality dies, but that doesn't change their fundamental origins. Look at how much more shit mormons and Scientologists get even though their religions aren't any wackier then any other simply because their founders (ie centers of the original cult of personality) were alive fairly recently and those origins are very apparent and not obscured by thousands of years of intervening history.

>You can't use charisma to force someone to do something.

The hell you can't.

>You've just bought into the propaganda of some of these cults of personality, that's all.
>their written coda revolved around managing and enforcing orderly society and each was widely accepted as a superior alternative to what was currently being offered
>brings up Scientology
user, shit that works is generally what gets around. Scientology maintains too many flaws in it's approach to the populace and it's own application of laws to ever get anywhere.

Yeah Christianity spread because of how great it worked, not because it was adopted as a tool for enforcing state power by Constantine in the waning days of the roman empire and then violently spread by crusaders to the remaining parts of europe, it spread because it was just better. And mohammed spread his religion by convincing people, he wasn't a warlord who slaughtered huge numbers of people and started an empire that would go on to control a huge chunk of the world, his religion was spread solely because people independently decided that it was a superior alternative.

Maybe you'd have a point about buddhism though, that's a weird one.

Sounds like you need a game with non shit social mechanics.

The phrase "You cannot use charisma to force someone to do something he wouldn't do" means that no matter how good your Persuasion or Intimidation is, there are lines people won't cross.

Those lines are different for everyone, but for example you can't force a loving father to kill his daughter or sell her to you, no matter what your roll is or how much he likes you.

DND has no social combat, so it's not like Exalted where you could, in the previous example, spend days/weeks and abuse your social charms erasing the man's steadfast love for his daughter and replacing it with love for you until he would gladly sell her to you if it would help.

Not that guy, but that distinction doesnt seem 'large' so much as it seems to be splitting hairs.

And hell, I'm not really sure that distinction works for Muhammad at all. He was a warlord - his religion was used as a too of his conquest. Also of note is that while the Quran was written first, the Hadith's that come afterwards start adding things in that make that whole war thing easier (earlier segments discuss jews and christians as other people of god and therefore generally okay, later ones give a distinctly more negative slant on them presumably as he had to keep warring on them - and the whole 'people who die for our religion get 72 virgins' thing pops up from fucking nowhere).

>>maintaining public peace and prompting orderly society
>early christians
>in the roman empire

reley
mak
u
tink

>he believes in the Islam spread by the sword meme
user, stop feeding into what Europe desperately wanted others to believe. I mean, the Phillipines became the largest muslim population in the world because rampaging arabs took it over, right?

And I bring up scientology because it's such a recent and well documented example of a cult of personality gradually morphing into a religion, we've even got video of the man and surviving people who knew him personally and saw how it worked, we don't have that for any other religious figure. Instead we have to rely on sources that were produced by their religion, and if you want to get an idea of how accurate that would probably be go look up what the church of Scientology's official history of L. Ron
Hubbard is compared to what actual reality is.

So because there's one exception none of those other conquests ever happened? They (by which I mean the Umayyad Caliphate specifically, ever heard of them?) didn't gain control over the mid-east and north africa by asking nicely to take control of those regions, read a fucking history book some time.

Yes the Umayyads were very peaceful.

Shhh user don't be Islamophobic! Those are hate facts.

Your presentation of your opinion makes you seem like a moron.

It's so shitty it distracts from your actual question, which could have been interesting but has all the gas siphoned out of it because your framing statement is such a shaky and misleading troll.

My general rule is that any sort of "persuasion" roll is not mind control. No matter how scary, charming, or sexy you are, you can't literally convince someone to do *anything*. So, you're fairly likely to be able to intimidate someone to give you their gold, but you're much less likely to intimidate someone into murdering their own family or doing something suicidal at your behest. Context matters, and, as others have said in this thread, a long term plan involving a series of checks can achieve much more dramatic results. Slowly building a cult of fanatics over a series of in-game months and many Charisma checks will get you people willing to do crazy shit out of their love for you, but you can't just walk up all flirty to the Emperor's chief bodyguard and convince him to give you the keys to the royal bed chamber on the spur of the moment.
Failing by a lot, generally. But someone should only resort to violence if it makes sense. Threatening an Orc warlord in his hold is likely to get you an ax face, but threatening a knight at court when you're clearly too feeble to back up your words will only get you mocked.

Yes I could try, but not even on the greatest success you can convince a random enemy to commit suicide.

True, but my point was that charisma cannot make someone do anything.

The user implied it through.

That's hypnosis in real life, not in a magical setting. In a magical setting you can use hypnosis to make people do anything.

Islam spread to the Philippines in the 1300s, that's long after it very literally spread by the sword all over the middle east, northern Africa, and India.

A very simple google search would have told you this. Learn some history before talking about things you don't understand.

>high strength, low charisma
big huggable teddy bear who could never hurt a fly despite cracking orcs on a dialy basis, no one fears him even after bench pressing a rock the size of himself
>low strength high charisma
you look scary and can get people to fear you, even if you are a weedy scarecrow, you know just how to deathglare anyone into doing your work

But the thing is that intimidation naturally passes over those normal barriers. Using persuasion and sweet words messes with the other character ego or feelings, but intimidation is something more animalistic. The threat of life or pain seems to bring a new level to the discussion.

The Philippines doesn't even have the world's largest muslim population, that's Indonesia. Also the Philippines is listed as being over 90% catholic! What a fucking moron, they either mixed up those two south-east asian countries or are even more shockingly ignorant then I first thought.

Intimidation changes the stakes, it doesn't necessarily change those lines.

The one important thing is that many people have a lot of self-interest, so when forced to choose between something they value very deeply or suffering/death, some people may value themselves more than their property, family, country, etc.

But others are more self-sacrificing. A true patriot might spit in your face as you threaten his life to try to get him to open the gate to let in dissidents. A devoted father may very well rather suffer or die than hurt his darling daughter.

Don't be blame if you are stupid. What part of 'you cannot use sweet words to make people give their money' didn't you get.
>inb4religiousleader
Except that those people work for a lot of time into the same person, or ingrain values into people since birth. That's nowhere comparable to a simple charisma roll.

Not to mention Indonesia was another victim of spread by the sword.

Maybe charisma rolls would represent telling people convincing lies? Con artists use sweet words to make people give their money all the time.

I actually have to go against those statements.

Even a true patriot may end up spilling the beans if they are tortured, scared or intimidated sufficiently. Unless they have the trait 'immune to fear', their bodies start taking over their minds. There is a point where the person does anything to make it stop.

And in a few cases they can get mind-break.

You can use Law to take away money from poor whites and give it to other poors while the Rich.. well...

Time to end Afirmitive action.

What would be a logical first step in ending Afirmitie action?

The idea of a con is to make people believe they are going to gain something, but they aren't going to do something that's put into risk their very being.

With fear however you can put at stake things that you cannot offer gaining. Promising 'you will get healthy' doesn't have the same effect as 'you will get dead'.

Improve the quality of schools in majority-black areas so that it's no longer necessary? If the test scores of the students from these schools weren't so shit they wouldn't need to be artificially inflated.

Well that's the trade off: intimidation is overall more powerful but also higher risk. You're a lot more likely to physically retaliate or go to the authorities over an attempted mugging then some dodgy guy trying to sell you a "genuine" diamond ring for a good deal because he needs the money fast.

The idea of a con is a Politicial making Romantic promises, this is a Theory but some claim that politicians have already done it to us atleast once in the history of White culture.

How do we get rid of Afirmitive action?

Well we weren't exactly talking about a long term interrogation/torture, just flat out intimidation attempt.

Any time you invest a ton of effort like that into something, it goes beyond the mild constraints of the DND charisma skill check.

But in any case, having so deep a principle such as to be immune to persuasion or intimidation that violates/endangers that principle is pretty rare. As the saying goes, everyone has a price.

>Well that's the trade off: intimidation is overall more powerful but also higher risk.
That's actually good compromise.

Hitler fixed the German economy and rallied everyone against a common enemy. The people of Germany sincerely believed they had something to gain by fighting and destroying.

Charisma isn't so much a tool to make people do what you want, but a tool to make people want what you want.

Example: "Give me your gold so I can defeat the dragon!" -- fail
"PEOPLE!! THE DRAGON HAS TERRORIZED YOU! YOU CANNOT FIGHT, BUT WE CAN!! GIVE US YOUR SUPPORT!" -- pass

If you're talking about dnd specifically where skills don't really have systems beyond making one roll then you kind of have to allow both. Sure it doesn't make much sense when you sit down and think about it but it's one of dnds primary flaws, it's a nice combat system with some extra bells and whistles. Since all social interaction is blanketed under either rp it or make one roll, allowing one skill to do it straight up better than the others makes things weird.
Also even if we allowed intimidation to do more than straight talk, it also usually makes whoever you use it on hate you and look for the nearest opportunity to either run or get you killed.

No, but you could theoretically bully them into offing themselves. Happens all the time.

Wounderful, very political and perfectly said.

Now listen here Nigger, How do we begin to get rid of Affirmitive action.

Very Exquisite and Marvelous.

Rid of Affirmitive action and I go away forev.... erm I will be Ultra nice.

Still, for example, you can intimidate an enemy so much he wets himself. You cannot do that with persuasion.

My point is that fear messes with a part of yourself that is irrational. While persuasion you deal with the rational part, even if you get clouded by greedness or love or whatever.

uck it, these niggers can have hot sex.

Right. And I agree with you that persuasion and intimidation might be able to compel people to do different things. Fear of suffering and death is somewhat of a motivator for someone who might otherwise not be very greedy or ambitious and therefore lacked a good in for persuasion.

But both could potentially run into something that a person holds too dearly to ever back down on. But not everyone would have such a thing.

Would you kindly fuck off? Not only are you not even trying to be on-topic you're barely even coherent at this point.

...

While I mostly agree with you, there is a problem:

>But not everyone would have such a thing.
Still, consider a PC character. A PC character, by his own free will, can choose between accepting or refusing an offer. Nobody would make the NPC roll charisma against the character. The PC is literally immune to bad deals, unless he accept the deal.

Intimidation however there is no such thing. If you fail you will at least get scared, unless you have 'Immune to Fear'.

That seems kind of circular. If you're going to let NPCs roll intimidation against the PCs why not let them roll charisma?

>You cannot use charisma to force someone to do something he wouldn't do.
Well, that's obvious. You use charisma to persuade someone into doing something they would do when it's properly explained to them that that's the correct thing to do.

Haven't you ever persuaded a suicidal person to get down off a ledge, user?

If you intimidate someone, they're scared, and they can roleplay scared.

If you use charisma to persuade someone then you actually have to explain why the person is going along with something they ostensibly don't want to do, or the player isn't going to know how to roleplay it, or want to roleplay it.

> If you're going to let NPCs roll intimidation against the PCs why not let them roll charisma?
Because PCs are susceptible to being scared? Intimidate isn't just a roleplay thing, it has a real effect into combat.

Are you saying just the PCs being scared or actually doing something? Because I still don't see any difference between 'you listen to what he says and do what he wants' and 'youre scared of him and do what he wants'

Of course not in the level of doing anything, just that an intimidation movement can leave a PC with the 'scared' penalty. While persuasion doesn't offer any sort of penalty.