Low charisma characters and Tips for RPing them
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I mean, I said in the beginning of the post that it was just how I went about it when I make characters. Charisma is one of those things that while you should take note of you shouldn't stress it so much that its all consuming, since it means something different to so many peoples.
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Certain concepts wouldn't rely on charisma as leaders anyway. Druids for example are based around the wisdom of the leader. They can have monsters like hags or ogres or orcs leading a circle of many races. While not charismatic, these are often very wise and canny leaders with great insight into nature.
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Due to NWN engine limitation the normal minimum range for stats is 8, with the occasional 6 for some races, so it pretty much represents the absolute bottom of the possible stat ranges before you start taking into account other penalties.
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The whole "8 INT characters can't speak properly" is only a thing in DnD video games where 8 INT is literally the lowest possible INT score without accounting for racial malus. It does not exist in any DnD products that do not have this limitation. And personally I think it does not really make very much sense.
A bit simple? Sure. But more like Sylvester Stallone's portrayal of Rocky than a freaking cave man. Use down-to-earth words and phrases, don't use too complicated or fancy words.
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The whole "8 INT characters can't speak properly" is only a thing in DnD video games where 8 INT is literally the lowest possible INT score without accounting for racial malus. It does not exist in any DnD products that do not have this limitation. And personally I think it does not really make very much sense.
A bit simple? Sure. But more like Sylvester Stallone's portrayal of Rocky than a freaking cave man. Use down-to-earth words and phrases, don't use too complicated or fancy words.
Personally, I think if you want to have 8 int and not being human, it is interesting to role play your character being able to speak his racial language all broken but common comes off as an obscure blur of communication. this forces the character to find other ways of trying to communicate or another player who can translate.
beside the point, it is up to the player to interpret what there character can and cannot speak as well as how good they speak it. Example, Sturdy Ragefist had an Int of 12 but he chose to speak like a cave man to fool people into thinking he was dumb, and this allowed him to get away with a lot of things.
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To me, if you have any stat that gives you a penalty you need to actively, consistently, and clearly rp some sort of negative trait or disadvantage. Perhaps put something that is clear in the description as well. Like Polaris said, 8 is not some crippling infirmity but should be noticeable in some way. Sometimes I wonder when I see the general description of how a character is unsettling, creepy, weird etc if that is a above or below average cha or low cha and I want to play off it as I am able.
I'm a fan of doing so for the mechanical ones as well. Grab a thesaurus and get cracking friends!
It's going back awhile but there was a dwarf in v3 that represented a 6 Cha by constantly farting, smelling like rotten eggs, picking his nose and saying the worse possible thing at the worse possible time. I certainly could have never pulled that off consistently. I always laughed OOCly and prepared for the worst ICly when he wandered up to my Fezznick retainer with a question or idea…....
That all said, what CF presented sounds good.