Post/Author/DateTime	Post
KyoMamoru 01-11-08, 04:08 PM	Ever had a player that was so determined to have a min-maxed character, that he somehow ended up with the lowest possible Charisma in the world? In our group, we have a player that uses a Cat with the Monster of Legend template. He currently is proudly utilizing 1 charisma. That's right, just ONE. Needless to say, we have a good bit of fun with in in game. Once we saw his stat, I pulled everyone aside and we made a pact revolving how we'd interact with his character. One thing to note is, the cat is actually decently smart, around a 14 or so [don't have the sheet with me right now], and my own character is barbarian of sorts that merely has an 8... Anytime the Cat attempts to say anything of merit, we reply with something along the lines of: "Shut up, you're just a cat." However, my imagination won't let it end at just that. We have nicknamed his character the Sewer Rat, and anytime he walks around around nonparty-members, there is a chance that he might be hit by a broom, or some other improvised weapon. Needless to say, this originally brought on protests from the cat's player, who argued that his character shouldn't be threated in such a fashion. However, I explained to him that Charisma is one's ability to articulate their thoughts into a manner that others can appreciate and understand, as well as a descriptor of how physical attractive you are in game. In future secessions, he cannot go into a store without being thrown out. If he manages to get a merchant to sell him anything, it is grossly overpriced. He cannot enter a town unless he is hidden, or they'll round up a posy to attempt to chase him out with pitch forks and torches. Anytime we have a helpful NPC, it might confuse him with the enemy and attack him unless the situation is explained properly. Eventually a religious sect will attack the entire party for harboring a demon. Needless to say, the Min/maxed character has become a rather potent device for making the world come alive. Has this happened to any of you before? Any suggestions how to make this even more fun?
Dalzig 01-11-08, 04:51 PM	A cat with the charisma of a zombie, golem, and a type of fungus. He takes one point of charisma damage and he's comatose. I don't have any personal experience with this, but it seems you're group is handling it pretty well. You might be giving the cat a bit more credit than it deserves, but if you're having fun, go with it. So... does the character actually do anything useful? I can imagine this character being the insanely smart cat that always manages to get the party out of trouble. The party blunders ahead while the cat absentmindedly disables the trap that releases a sphere of annihilation. :cool:
KyoMamoru 01-11-08, 05:13 PM	Well, whether his character is truly legitimate or not is a question that I need to answer on the next gaming secession. On the first day, he had forgotten his sheet, and we allowed him to 'wing it' since he had been the very first DM of our group, before I took over. However, being a min/maxer he couldn't help but brag about his character, so I was forced to look things up. 1. He claimed to have almost every special property from the Monster of Legend [MM2 p213] template, where it specifically says Choose TWO. [He said he had damage reduction /10 magic, fast healing +5, regrow limbs, haste, spell resistance, and dark vision.] 2. He was using an Aboleth Mucus Projector. [The Book of Aberrations, page 216.] He stated that it allowed him to do a ranged touch attack on a foe, and that if they failed the save, they'd begin to suffocate in 1d2 rounds. He also said it had no need for ammo/recharging. In truth the item has a recharge of 1d4 rounds, and functions the same as Aboleth's Slime. Slime (Ex) A blow from an aboleth’s tentacle can cause a terrible affliction. A creature hit by a tentacle must succeed on a DC 19 Fortitude save or begin to transform over the next 1d4+1 minutes, the skin gradually becoming a clear, slimy membrane. An afflicted creature must remain moistened with cool, fresh water or take 1d12 points of damage every 10 minutes. The slime reduces the creature’s natural armor bonus by 1 (but never to less than 0). The save DC is Constitution-based. A remove disease spell cast before the transformation is complete will restore an afflicted creature to normal. Afterward, however, only a heal or mass heal spell can reverse the affliction. Much, much different from what he stated. Furthermore, the item falls off of a nonaboleth in 1d4+1 days, and requires a regeneration spell to be casted to restore the body part that was destroyed for the graft to be placed. So, I don't really know if the character has much to offer the party anymore, once his errors are going to be corrected. So he is in fact, just a 'stupid cat'.
MoltenDm 01-11-08, 05:25 PM	Charisma is the dump stat at most player's heads Once had a group of 5 with 4 of them having 4 of cha or less, so it happens. I'd recommend ignoring him and if he argues just answer in character - look i dont like you and you smell so f off - may sound harsh but characters that "use" the system like that should be punished
Arcane-surge 01-11-08, 05:38 PM	I usually stick to the CharOp boards, but I'll weigh in here. I think the OP is generally hilarious though, if Kyo's second post holds true, I object to the player in question being referred to as a min/maxer. I'm a min/maxer myself (Though I prefer the term optimizer or powergamer). My characters are min/maxed, and when I GM (Which is most of the time), my NPC's are the same way more or less. It's about placing efficiency first, and ultimately, working within the written rules. Lying about what your character's abilities do is just plain old cheating, which is no fun. Molten, I don't know about that. I've had some player's who had some pretty fun characters, despite having a low charisma, often a stat they dumped on purpose. I'd say that it's a dump stat for most people because it has the most narrow focus. Unless you're a Cha-based spellcaster, all it affects is a few skill checks, and people's general opinion of you. Dumping another stat could seriously reduce survivability. I think dumping it is more often pragmatism than carelessness. I'm curious about what you meant about using the system. Are you referring to the player's min/maxing, cheating, or players' propensity for putting their garbage numbers into charisma?
KyoMamoru 01-11-08, 05:45 PM	I think I was implying that he was 'trying' to be a min-maxer [and failing rather hilariously], but it seems I wasn't clear enough. To be a Min/maxer you need to have a vast knowledge of the game, and how individual skills, items, and classes all stack with each other. Originally, the character looked to be a Min-Max, until I started to read up on the items/templates that he had selected in preparation for the next game. It was a character built around a narrow focus, such as Sneaking+Mucus Projector. Of course, there was a measure of truth in the player, since he was once a DM for the group. I'm just glad I caught him, and by no means, am I trying to say that min/maxers are like him in the least. This has become a clear case that the player attempted to circumvent the rules in order to gain strength. With hilarious in character interactions that have grown out of it.
wrecan 01-11-08, 05:48 PM	Man, one dose of ungol dust (inhalded DC 15, 1 Cha/1d6 Cha +1 Cha drain) or a bad run-in with a ghost or vargouille and that cat is permanently comatose!
I_roll_ones 01-11-08, 06:06 PM	I am in a campaign where me and the other player both have a CHA score of 8, and no social skills. We can barely get along with EACH OTHER, let alone get NPC's to like us. An NPC paladin cast detect evil on both of us after about ten minutes. And we're both neutral. And to boot, my character is so focused on the survival of herself and her clan, which means getting money, that she often appears to be evil or at least a jerk. However, in her mind, she's in a hostile world where no one will help her and her culture is based on surviving by strange means(Not enough to be evil, but biased towards CN, certainly, not CG) that it's just second nature to her. Of course she asks for more money, she has no clue as to where her next meal is coming from, and the order of paladins with shiny armor probably have plenty. It's not greed, but more not wanting to end up starving and desperate. If she got a steady job that was likely to last, this behavior would cease, but until then, she's hitting up the paladins for as much money as she reasonably can. I personally have trouble communicating myself, lying and acting. So a low CHA score comes pretty naturally to me, actually. I wouldn't make it lower then 6 without a good reason, but it can be fun.
necrom99 01-11-08, 06:07 PM	in my humble opinion, charisma is THE most important stat, as it is how well ure character is received by others, initial reactions and all that, and beware anyone in my campaign who dump stats it....... Rolelaying in my campaigns is key and if you can play bad charisma fine, but in the end it turns out that players get fed up of people treating them like social Pariahs, and really ugly inbred hicks
DyloniusFunk 01-11-08, 09:27 PM	From your OP it sounds like you and the rest of the players are trying to find ways to make this players gaming as miserable as possible. First off i think you are misunderstanding Charisma Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. This ability represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting A 1 in Charisma is a person with no personality at all, they are less then a wallflower, they are barely even awake. Charisma 0 means that the character is withdrawn into a catatonic, coma-like stupor, helpless NPCs would not attack him on sight, they would not even notice he was there. He has absolutely nothing about himself worht noticeing. Now if the player is having fun then it's all good but it sounds like you and the others decided to torment him for making a perfectly legitement decision in how he built his character. In future secessions, he cannot go into a store without being thrown out. If he manages to get a merchant to sell him anything, it is grossly overpriced. He cannot enter a town unless he is hidden, or they'll round up a posy to attempt to chase him out with pitch forks and torches. Anytime we have a helpful NPC, it might confuse him with the enemy and attack him unless the situation is explained properly. Eventually a religious sect will attack the entire party for harboring a demon. Now this would require someone with a very high charisma, somewhere around 12-14. They would draw attentioin to themselves and make people notice them. A 1 in CHA should not draw that kind of bile from NPCs unless as i stated you bas DM have decided to make then NPCs act that way towards him. You cna do that but don't do it thinking it's supported by how CHA is supposed to work by RAW.
KyoMamoru 01-11-08, 09:40 PM	and physical attractiveness. Now, if 10 is considered the norm , and 0 is the point in which you become an object since it triggers your Will to be 0, I look at it as a sliding scale of attractiveness. This is well within the rules. 1 is the [b]absolute lowest stat any living entity can have in terms of appearance. This means, that a 1 is the most hideous a creature can be, period. There is no arguing this fact, it is a simple observation of the rule. There are no decimal points in D&D, and so we know that the most gruesome of appearances is defined by a 1. You can use this for every other descriptor of Charisma as well. This is the lowest one can POSSIBLY EVER BE. This horrible creature is of course, going to draw the attention of the local women and the squeamish of the town. Imagine if you will, them seeing a creature that has just walked out of a sewer, a rat. They would treat the cat as such. Now, throw in the fact that he is a Monster of Legend, and you have a hideous cat that isn't dieing whenever it is hit by normal means. This means it must be a monster! The town gathers up it's posse, and attacks the demon cat. This are the consequences for having a 1 as Charisma. If he was a biped, he'd be treated as Frankenstein [as depicted in movies, not the literature]. The player has come to terms to this, and realizes that this is far more entertaining that he had originally thought it would be. He's come to a new understanding of the power of the stat, and fully embraces it.
1red13 01-11-08, 09:40 PM	Who would want to play a cat? I guess different strokes for different folks. I think its perfectly reasonable to think a poor charisma would yield bad social reactions. Wouldn't the ultra wallflower analogy be rife for abuse by rogues who want to remain unnoticed. I'm thinking thats not quite what you meant but i can see some pcs trying to work that idea into play. I would think what would make more sense is that a person with a 1charisma is equivalent to someone who was catatonic, not that they are catatonic. That would be the realm of other stats.
pigknight 01-12-08, 01:01 AM	Its funny how even though Cha is a dump stat all the characters in my group have 12+ Cha.
I_roll_ones 01-12-08, 04:30 AM	The problem with saying that a low Charisma means that it is harder to notice them is that it makes it harder to notice them. Otherwise, you could make a character with a CHA hit, such as half orc, make it a rogue, and waltz into the treasure room. They can't notice you! Who needs hide if they won't pay attention to you?
ChaoticGood 01-12-08, 04:52 AM	On the issue of the aboleth mucus projector: he may be using the aboleth graft found in Lords of Madness, which is quite costly and leaves one hump-backed and with a squirming, tentacle-like mucus-tube slung over their shoulder... More than enough to justify your party's reaction to this evil little monster. :)
Sildatorak 01-12-08, 10:09 AM	Here is something close to my mental image of this cat. http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2005/11/22/314319/SamUgliestDogLulu.jpg
Divokej 01-12-08, 10:23 AM	When DyloniousFunk said a character with low charisma wouldn't be noticed, he meant in a social setting. People wouldn't talk to the character. They would know he existed but they wouldn't talk with him. They can still see him.
Radijs 01-12-08, 12:22 PM	Sildatorak: That picture is absolutely disgusting. Have a :cookie: because I don't want it anymore.
I_roll_ones 01-12-08, 05:11 PM	When DyloniousFunk said a character with low charisma wouldn't be noticed, he meant in a social setting. People wouldn't talk to the character. They would know he existed but they wouldn't talk with him. They can still see him. But that is what the party is doing. They don't listen to the character. So, they are doing what he suggested pretty well. But in the NPC's defense...He was a WHAT now on his back? Oh just git the pitchforks, ma, we'll figure it out later. The guy is a monstrous cat. People are going to hate it, and I think it is a justified use of CHA. For half-orcs don't get the CHA hit just because everyone ignores them, but because they are often hated and experience prejudice, often in people casting them out. Same thing with tieflings. People don't ignore the devilblooded person who walked in, they try to get it out of where they are so it'll go harass someone else.
Etarnon 01-12-08, 09:29 PM	Sounds like you are doing a good job. I like it. Go Smellyuglycat.