Making Ability Scores Useful

The uses for Strength, Dexterity and Constitution are obvious - you never need to worry about making them relevant to players. Similarly, Intelligence is of relatively high importance due to its impact on skill points. However, Wisdom and Charisma tend to be underused, and as a result become the dump stats for powergamers.

Of these, Wisdom is the less-abused stat, because of its role in Will saving throws. However, Will saves tend not to come up too often, as you never see a lone spellcaster as an opponent, but always with melee minions, and yet you can see a lone melee opponent, rendering spellcasters less common as a threat. Since they are the most common source of Will saves, this becomes the weakest of the saves, and hence Wisdom a less important stat.

Now, there are some DMs who will suggest that you should enforce low-Wisdom play by giving XP penalties to players who consistently fail to play their characters correctly. Personally, I disagree with XP penalties on principle. In fact, I hesitated before assigning an XP award for character backgrounds, but then decided that if I didn't I would never get such a thing from the players.

As far as Charisma is concerned, I think an opportunity was definately missed in D&D, in that it should be hardwired into the rules that Charisma affects the price of objects, perhaps by as much as 5% per +1 modifier. So, a character with a Cha of 7 has to pay 110% for every piece of equipment, spell and service that he purchases, whereas the character with Cha 18 pays just 80%. Once you get to buying and selling magic items, this can mean quite considerable savings.

Of course, you then need to watch that the group don't just give all their money and treasure to the high-Cha person to deal with, and then assign the resulting cash. I guess the way to do that is to say that a character cannot judge the quality of adventurer's gear outwith his own speciality. So, the paladin simply cannot tell masterwork thieves tools from normal ones. This then leaves characters with two choices - either their high-Charisma guy gets lots of Craft skills (or multiclasses a lot), or characters sell their own gear.

The other thing to watch out for is NPC reactions to the low-Cha guy. When playing with friends, it's reasonably easy to fall into just letting everyone who meets the PCs like them right away. This is, of course, a mistake. Instead, it's important to ensure that law enforcement is always on the back of the low-Cha barbarian, that no-one takes the low-Cha halfling at all seriously, even when he's reporting that Timmy has fallen down the well, and that the low-Cha fighter is utterly incapable of leading the troops he's been assigned to command.

The Munchkin's Guide to Power-gaming suggests that a modern-era character doesn't need Charisma, but can simply use his skill in Gun to intimidate all NPCs into silence. There is a danger that the hulking half-orc barbarian with the Cha of 3 might attempt exactly the same with random shopkeeper, or that he might use his sheer size to extract information from the captive kobold. This must also be disallowed. Sure, the shopkeeper will hand over his goods, but in a lawful society will then proceed to have the legions kick six shades of shit out of the half-orc. In a lawless society, the shopkeeper either has underworld contacts, or pays his protection money. Either way, the half-orc is in for a world of trouble.

Oh, and the notion that NPCs are there for high- (or even moderate-) level PCs to push around also needs to be confronted. The way to deal with this is likewise quite simple: firstly, the watch confronts the PC normally, and get their asses handed to them. If there's a death, so much the better; the PC is now wanted for killing a member of the watch. On the second encounter, the watch wait until the PC is asleep, and then jump him. Or they have an assassin slip him a sleeping potion. Or they get their pet wizard to Charm the half-orc, taking advantage of his low Wisdom as well :-)

Once the PC is in custody, it must be made clear that such niceties as Miranda are modern concepts. In the fantasy realm, the PC is beaten to within an inch of his life, and is probably tried and executed in short order. If he killed a member of the watch, you can guarantee that the PC won't even reach the jail alive. If the PC is going to be casual with the lives of the city watch, you can bet exactly the same treatment will come their way in return.

Of course, all of that applies to the low-Cha PC. The high-Cha PC won't even get into this problem in the first place. The shopkeeper will bend over backwards to accomodate him, tax collectors will simply go away (or charge a nominal amount), and the town watch will investigate properly. Sure, the high-Cha PC might be every bit as rude and inconsiderate as anyone else but, gee, there's just something about him that people can't help but like (or at least respect). Surely this must all be a misunderstanding?

That's not to say that the law doesn't apply equally to high-Cha characters, but it does mean that such characters should have an all-around easier time of it. And that scared villager that the low-Cha characters just can't get to calm down? No problem for the high-Cha character.

Just some thoughts.