this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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That's why I went with a longer stat list in my home brew system. Made more sense to keep stats from doing unrelated jobs. The simplicity of the six stat system is nice, but it breaks the ability to have stats reflect something like a powerful magic user that's also horribly ugly/unpleasant.
Mind you, it also made things get a bit extra when trying to still keep stats to a reasonable list in terms of display on a sheet of paper. Depending on who you ask, that may not have been successful lol.
I really don't like how 5e made all social skills charisma based, too. Like you're always simultaneously good at persuasion, intimidation, and deception. It feels to me like most of the time one of those should be your go to strategy, not pick whatever is best for the moment and you're good at all of them.
That's what proficiency and expertise is for. Higher charisma makes a character more naturally adept at those skills, but limited to no more than +5 unless you specialize in one of them. A +5 is nice, but when you start running into higher DC checks, like 15-20, a +5 isn't super reliable.
I still think it's too generalized, but I get your thought process. A giant muscley barbarian should be good at intimidation, as should a spooky necromantic wizard, but it's not designed to make that easy to do. 3.5 did a better job at skills I think.
You can always just ask the dm. Intimidate via strength for the barbarian isn't all that uncommon
I am the dm, but yeah I get your point. There's always ways to homebrew things.
As a DM, the rules-as-written are more a suggestion than rules. As long as you're consistent with applying your modified rules, give that Barb an Intimidation bonus based on STR or whatever you like. I have a pretty decent sized list of rules I treat differently than RAW, because some spells and abilities are never used - why cast anything else when you have access to Fireball?
I think part of this is a misunderstanding of what charisma actually represents. It's literally just real-world charisma. There are only a couple instances of official materials mentioning appearance as being related to charisma in all five editions put together. Danny DeVito has 18 charisma. Sloth from The Goonies is lovable enough that he's probably rocking a 14 or so. Ted Striker from Airplane has a 4 in CHA. Sure, he's handsome, but he literally bores people to death. Prince Valium from Spaceballs is similarly low, being dull enough that he puts himself to sleep.
Eh, when it's tied to spell casting, appearance is the least factor, and not every dm uses it for that (I didn't and don't for regular d&d)
And it is tied to spell casting in multiple ways, across multiple classes. So that means it isn't real world charisma. Mind you, that's also ignoring how much real world charisma is appearance based. And it is a major factor in the real world, which may explain why you used so many characters as examples.
D&d, RAW, says charisma is a stat that allows people to use magic. Same as wisdom and intelligence. That is a huge issue. Intelligence is explained as being the tool because the characters learn magic using the mind, and cast magic via mental skills. Wisdom gives the character the ability to interact with a source of power by attuning/worship/"grokking", and thus use magic.
Charisma? They charm the magic out of the air? At least with warkocks, that makes thematic sense. Their personality allowed them to convince something to give them power. But bards blow that out. How the heck does their personality make magic happen? It doesn't.
So, opinion here, either the decision was made, and was a bad decision, or the decision was made for a reason, but the stat no longer represents a real world ability at all, just like wisdom doesn't (and never did, really, imo). At least with int, you can pretend they're learning the underlying forces and techniques to allow what they do.
It's force of will combined with self-confidence. Sorcerers cast magic using "The Secret," basically. They believe in themselves hard enough that they manifest power into being. That's the idea of charisma spell-casting. It's okay if you think that's dumb, but that's the idea at play here.
edit for an analogy: where a Wizard has a magic book full of spells, the Sorcerer has a glitter-dusted vision board.
second edit: added links to give context for anyone unfamiliar with relevant terminology