>High-level sorcerers are all the most charming, intimidating, attractive figures that anyone could possibly know of
>This is only because their primary casting stat is also the stat for social graces
Why is this a thing? Are there any good systems that have Magic as its own stat?
Talislanta.
It also has combat skill as his own distinct stat.
MR magic rating
CR combat rating
If you can't bend people to your will, how can you expect to bend the universe to it?
But, if you want to use other stats, there's plenty of other casters who use different stats for magic. Sorcerers use charisma because it's largely about their ego and force of personality, but you can also go the Wizard route where it's all about how smart you are, or the Cleric/Druid route and use magic based around your understanding and atunement with the universe.
My main problem is that linking magic to a stat makes every caster the same. Every Wizard will be a book-savvy guy that knows everything, every Sorcerer and Warlock will be the most charming person in history, and every Cleric will be able to see around corners because their Wisdom is so high, and therefore their perception score is boosted through the roof.
It also creates the problem where the Wizard will almost always know more about religion than the Cleric, because Religion is an Intelligence-based skill.
For example, in Dungeons and Dragons elves are supposed to be an inherently magical species. However, inherent magical ability is linked to Charisma, and high elves get a boost to Intelligence. Wouldn't the mechanics be able to be more in line with the fluff if there was simply a Magic stat?
I've never really looked into sorcerers specifically, but what is the reasoning behind CHA being their driving force? What forces are they pulling on that cause this?
The book says it's because CHA represents "force of personality".
It's actually because wizards were INT and clerics/druids were WIS and they wanted CHA casters to fill the gap.
The ones that draw from int are fine, because they do sort of make sense, in most forms of magic you need to be a smart fucker to understand it.
However, it kinda falls apart because unless youre smooth-talking a god I see no other way CHA makes sense for casting magic, and wisdom should be tied to say, druids, whos magic is the utmost form of practicality, you understand the world and how it works from being in-tune with it, not reading about it in a book, so your wis/perception SHOULD be high.
Warhammer Fantasy does this better than I've seen any other system do it. You get a magic stat, and the higher it is the more dice you get to roll for casting a given spell. You don't have to use all of them, and it's often a good idea not to because the more dice you roll the higher the chance you have of fucking up and bad things happening to you.
Anima gurps, warhammer rpgs...
I can go on. But!
Stop playing fucking D&D.
>high charisma means you're attractive and well spoken
Ah, another shitposter who hasn't read the rulebook
Not only have I read the rulebook, but this shit is on page 9. Are you sure YOU'VE read the rulebook?
>My main problem is that linking magic to a stat makes every caster the same.
Similar, but not the same. And, making casters of a particular group similar is good and thematic. If you want to be different, there's other classes, and even withing a class there's room for variance by working with the other ability scores.
>because Religion is an Intelligence-based skill.
But, a cleric is more likely to be trained in religion than a wizard, and in 3.0 its a trained-only skill, in 4e you get +5 for being trained in it, and in 5e you add your proficiency modifier. It's only if the wizard also decides to trained in religion that they can really outperform a cleric that's trained in it.
>elves are supposed to be an inherently magical species.
But, they are. Inherent magical ability isn't solely tied to Charisma, it just tends to be. Keep in mind creatures like Mind Flayers, who have magical abilities tied to intelligence. In the case of elves, while they have a fair amount of innate magical abilities (resistances, trance, etc.) that aren't directly tied to any stat, the ability to manifest them as things like the cantrips that High Elves can cast may be tied to Intelligence.
It can certainly be all of those, individually or together, but it doesn't necessarily include them all at once.
It says "and", not "or", in that highlighted sentence there.
Right, but that doesn't mean each trait is high if you have high CHA, or all are low if it's dismal. It would be a balance between them all. You could have an ugly character that ranks high in the other aspects of charisma.
It's just one of five components of charisma. You don't need all of them at once.
>le bend the universe to your will face
When will people stop regurgitating this fucking term?
Jesus Christ it's so fucking bad. Please stop saying it.
Never, and now I will say it more -specifically- because I know it bothers someone, somewhere, out there.
The answer is always the same.
Make your own.
It's something real-life mystics say all the time because it implies magic/spirtualism enables you to be in control and take charge. It's used so frequently because it sounds attractive.
I honestly don't know why you'd get so upset about it.
probably because it's kind of shallow and meaningless, like a lot of things mystics say.
must be the massive hyperbole
Ability score increases were a mistake.
Can someone post a chart showing how powerful you get the more you level up? Ive seen that meme once and now I hate myself because I cant find it again
Because they can't actually do it. It has a much more tangible meaning in the context of a fantasy sorcerer who actually can bend the universe to his will pulling fire out of thin air and commanding spirits with his thoughts.
Eleanor looks like some cracked up fish spawn from a Lovecraft story.
How would charisma rate for a character who isn't very attractive and pretty shy and anxious, but one hell of an actor?
Because it's inaccurate. The 'bending reality to your whim' only really works for extremely powerful reality warping characters, and "bending reality" is more something a psychic or super hero would be doing in a modern day setting with an otherwise rigorously scientific world.
What actual Wizards, Witches, and other casters are doing is applying well known magical formulas to create certain results. They may be appealing to supernatural creatures and get them to act for them. All of the magic is an implicit part of the setting and most good fantasy settings do not adhere strongly to the laws of physics.
Depends on the force of his personality
Except Sorcerers are explicitly not that, since all of their magic is based on intuition and how well they can get that energy inside of them out into the shape of a fireball.
Except it's still caused by some sort of energy or innate magical power or bloodline.
No, there is some definite bending going on here.
to be fair in chivalric literature sorcerers and especially sorcereresses are pretty sexy dudes and dudettes
You can be a likeable person even if you're a ugly bastard, Charisma is force of personality, not physical attractiveness.
>Every Wizard will be a book-savvy guy that knows everything, every Sorcerer and Warlock will be the most charming person in history, and every Cleric will be able to see around corners because their Wisdom is so high, and therefore their perception score is boosted through the roof.
But that's fucking wrong you mongoloid. In literally every edition, ability score modifiers account for a solid bonus at low levels, But actual skill points are what solidifies how great each class is at these things. It's perfectly possible to have a Cleric who doesn't invest in Perception, and is routinely beat by the fighter who has been doing it every level. And in fact the Cleric doesn't even get any perception skills in their class list, at least for PF.
Sorcs don't get Diplomacy, the social skill of being charming, which is far more important than the couple points contributed by ability modifiers. The Warlock esque class for PF, the Witch, only gets Intimdate, so they can be scary but not charming.
And the wizard is literally meant to be the book savvy class. It's literally their theme, from all knowledge skills being on their class list, to their magical power stemming from them, and all of that.
And besides this, in PF at least, all of these classes get various archetypes that often change what stat they use, how their magic function, what skills are on their skill lists, and all kinds of things, which can change the way these classes will be played or even work, vastly expanding their thematic bases.
And elves get innate magic by way of Int bonuses, and in at least 4e, literal magical powers like a short teleportation power.
Pretty sure the Wizards bend the universe due to not being limited like the sorcerer plebs.
On a wider note it's your responsibility to roleplay your character and make them realistic.
Your ability score is just a number that represents . Just because you have an 18 in charisma doesn't mean you have to roleplay your character as some over the top mary sue. They can still have flaws, they could be attractive but hate public speaking, or gruff and unapproachable but amazing at orating. Or whatever the fuck you want.
We've unfortunately lost the Roleplaying in roleplaying games as people just look to power game and min-max everything literalyl to death.
>magic based around your understanding and atunement with the universe.
Does that mean that /pol/ would make the best druids?
Psychics don't bend reality, they just read minds and other things.
Psychokinesis is just moving objects. There's no bending there.
Sorcery actually changes the laws of nature, that's bending.
Every skill rank, every ability point, and every part of the mechanical aspects of your character informs what your character can do and is like. That role playing should be bound by the limits imposed by your character's stats, by the game aspects of the roleplaying game.
Unless your character has lots of ranks in Diplomacy, there is no way they could be considered to be a great orator, even if they had a Charisma score of 30.
Sorcery, in the D&D sense, is the calling upon of spells through sense memory tied into your character's bloodline. There is no rewriting of local reality, no silly bullshit like that. They do not will reality to change, but call upon spells that are tied to their families bloodline. A lot of people have been very fuckign dumb about the class for a long time.
Psionics, at least of 3.5 and Dreamscarred Press for PF, is explicitly rewriting reality by will alone. It's literally called out in the lore in the books for these casters and spell system.
Bad, bad, horrible things.
>It also creates the problem where the Wizard will almost always know more about religion than the Cleric, because Religion is an Intelligence-based skill.
Why the fuck is this a problem
The cleric reads one holy book and the wizard reads them all
And what do you have to say about Epic Magic which is taking the building blocks of the cosmos (Epic Spell Seeds) and mashing them together to make a frankenstein's monster of pure magic that does pretty much whatever the fuck you want?
>Making ill-thought out pacts with beings that will fuck them over eventually
Pretty sure they're warlocks tbqhfampai
Making a thing propel itself through the air completely unpowered and unsupported is pretty reality bending. The normal laws of physics simply stop working in that little pocket of space you're projecting your desires onto.
technically the ability scores only give you a percent chance to succeed on checks and saves, you could play as a hideously ugly foulmouthed character with high CHA, or a burly hulking character with low STR. Maybe whenever you succeed on a check, it was luck or a coincidence, or your character never applies themselves
Other books even give an examples of people like Hitler or Napoleon who weren't super fucking attractive but would still have high Charisma.
This is you taking everything too fucking literally, or most likely looking for a reason to bitch.
>an automatic +10 to your roll, before skill levels, doesn't make a great anything
Charisma (as in the word) initially meant something more mystical, and was something which allowed someone to naturally influence and command others. This was before we realized all charisma actually is boils down to "being a cunt and knowing how to lie to the less advanced part of a person's brain".
>3e
kek
t. Incel
go outside
Play Warhammer Fantasy instead. It has the added benefit of a functioning magic system that isn't overpowered.
The most ridiculous attribute is still Dexterity.
You can use it for some melee, most ranged, for turn-order, movement speed, dex saves, lockpicking, etc.
Attributes are dumb in general.
Why not just have skills with the attributes just being the name of their category? Instead of you adding int modifier + religion + 1d20, just have it be religion + 1d20. Instead of int attribute being something that you add to all of your int stuff, have int just be something that averages/add-up the skills you have under the category of int.
Attributes as they are make it so that if you want to be optimal, then a archer must also be really fast, you're discouraged from being a super strong dude who using his strongness to shoot bows, clerics have to be wise, etc.
It makes alot of types of characters that should be totally valid inefficient.
>Are there any good systems that have Magic as its own stat?
Pretty much all the ones that aren't shit.
The Sword & The Sorcerer!
One of the two semi-good films ever made by Albert Pyun!
>if you can't push things with your arms, then how can you push the universe?
>if you can't withstand the power of the universe, how can you hold it?
>if you can't precisely manipulate the universe then how can you manipulate it?
etc. etc.
Charisma is a shit ability that takes a bunch of unrelated things and mashes them together. Ditto Wisdom. Although maybe is Gould just try not playing D&D...
Your ideas intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I don't have a newsletter, but I'll dump some stuff from my WIP homebrew system.
To be entirely honest, then I started it I was sure is would be much simpler than d20, but now not so much.
There's 4 categories: Combat, Defense, Movement, and Utility.
Combat includes melee weapons, shooting weapons, throwing, unarmed, and misc weapons (misc being shields, torches, and protective holy objects).
Defense includes resist normal, resist special, and recover.
Resist normal increase difficulty of enemies successfully using physical attacks and grabs, while special covers fire, poisons, void, etc.
Recover is used to get rid of debuffs and heal more when healed.
It's possible to give you character more health, but the option is seperate from the defense skills.
Movement includes running, jumping, and climbing; everything else movement (swimming, crawling, staying on an unsteady object like a tightrope or horse), and stealth.
So a total of 3 movement skills.
Utility is for a shitton of different things, most of which are more of an occasional use thing.
There's perception, repair/crafting, history/law/religion, reading/writing/drawing (mostly useful for estimating what an unfamiliar or damaged script says), and some more which I'm not going to list.
WFRP 2e.
Upgrades to the different skills is based on category. Upgrading weapons is most expensive, and upgrading utility is least expensive.
In character creation once you choose a class, you're given a series of x or y options.
At the end you get to choose 1 of 2 abilities/passives, except for the caster who gets a bunch of abilities and gets to choose multiple.
The concepts of fighters and barbarians are combined into a class called warrior, thieves and rangers are combined into seekers, all casters are combined into the caster class, and then there's a few weirder classes like mimic and the supplier.
Whether your warrior ends up feeling more like a barbarian or fighter depends on the options within the class that you pick.
It uses only a d6, and each roll has 5 results which I'll just copypaste.
Critical Success
If your attempt score is 3 higher or more than the challenge then you succeed, and get another turn OR you can choose to add a minor effect to your action/task that the GM agrees is reasonable.
Success
If your attempt is 1 or 2 higher than the challenge then you succeed, which means that you do what you were trying to do.
Complication
If your attempt score is equal to the difficulty you get two options to choose between. The options can be things such as succeeding but there being a downside or simply a piece of bad luck, or failing but getting to try to do something different with your turn. Options are given by the GM.
Fail
If your attempt is 1 or 2 lower than the challenge then either what you has no effect, or you do nothing.
Critical Fail
If your action score is 3 lower or more than the challenge then you will be given 2 possible consequences to choose between, each being very bad.
If a non-player gets 3 lower or more attempting something on you then you choose which of the 2 options the non-player picks.
Sorcerers are uncircumcised. They would lose their natural powers if their foreskins were removed.
This can be fixed by not playing d&d
none of those people were charismatic other than maybe Churchill, having a cult of personality does not require charisma
> getting mad because the party sorcerer gets all the wenches and you don't
It's literally "Magical Aptitude", and has no function other than helping you cast and on occasion resist spells.
Why not just house rule a magic stat in there. Casters need a nerf anyways
it increases your ability to be Diplomatic and lie though so it clearly DOES reflect on how you've perceived in social settings, fluff be damned
Because houseruling a new stat into the game isn't easy to balance? They're spellcasting stats, but they also provide abilities like arcana, insight, deception, persuasion
So? Keep skills where they are, just stick a magic stat in there for everyone and tie it to all the caster features. If you're a martial class, you can just dump it completely. All casters put their points into it and end up with lower ability scores, which I'm totally fine with personally.