Charisma:  This is the "dump" stat.   This is why I listed it first.   And  yes, for years, I treated this like a non thing.   Lately, I have been calling for more and more charisma rolls.
   First, let me explain how I see charisma.  It is the "strength of one's personality."   It is not their looks, or beauity.   So ugly people can have high charismas, just as beautiful people can be ciphers.
   It is both inward and outward.  Its that effeffable trait that makes people gravitate towards you,  and instills you will some inner self worth.    Due to this,  charisma is the hardest attribute to use, describe, and role play.

Here are some of the things I use it for.

Cool:   Sometimes things may get a bit hairy, especially in a fight.  The GM can make a call that the player must make a cool roll.  They add their Charisma and Experience level and roll against a die 20.   If the die roll exceeds their "cool" score, then they start to panic.   Each die roll higher than their cool score gives them a minus of one for the rest of that turn.

Example,  Joe is in a fight, he makes a cool roll.  His charimsa is 10 and is first level.  So his "cool" score is 11.  He rolls a die 20 and rolls a 13.  He failed by 2 and suffers a -2 on ALL die rolls until  he gets another cool roll on his inbetween phase.   ( That roll also suffers a -2, its harder to regain your composure when you are panicking!)  Hope he rolls well, as these penalties are cumulative!

If you are called to make a cool roll and roll a natural 1, then you are Resolute and are immune from any other cool rolls for the rest of that scene.  Furthermore you get a Charisma bonus roll.
  Unfortunatly, if you roll a natural 20 on a cool roll,  you are so freaked out that you can't do anything for the rest of the scene, and will only fight to defend yourself from direct attack at the worst penalty your score allows, and with no dodge, tumbling, or level modifiers!   Since this is really bad,  Karma is allowed to avoid it.  So if you roll a natural 20 and fail at your Karma roll,  be prepared to sit this fight out.

Snap out of it!  A comrade can calm down a panicking buddy by making a Charisma roll vs their own score.  They roll a d20 and if the roll is lower  than their charisma they can add the number of successes  to the poor guy freaking out.   This will temperarliy higher the guy loosing his cool's "cool score" for the purpose of that save.   This takes an action to do.

Intimidate  You want to scare someone into giving up a fight, or to give you some information then you try to intimidate them.   You are then forcing the other guy to make a Cool roll.   
      The Intimidator then rolls Cd20.  If he succeeds ( rolls lower than his charisma score) then he get to take the amount UNDER his score and add it to the die roll of the sucker he is trying to scare.
Badass tries to intimidate Fred.   Badass's charisa is 17. He rolls d20 and gets a 5.  He succeed by 12!   Fred must add 17 to his die 20 roll to stay cool.  Fred's charisma is only 9.   He rolls a 3. He would have succeeded but Badass forced his die roll to be increased by 12.   This means he "rolled" a 15 which is higher than Fred's charisma.  Fred looses his cool, AND suffers a -6 on all his die rolls.  Fred would be smart to give Badass what he wants!

Inspire:  By spending an action talking to his troops, a great leader can inspire his teammates to "go for the gold"!    The formula is this.
Charisma-20d20.  This means unless your charisma is atleast 21 you can't do this!
Ok,   Captain America calls Avengers Assemble and then tells them they can do it.   His charisma is 35.   35-20=15.   He rolls d20.  He rolls a 7
So he succeeded by 8!   All those on his side, get a bonus of 8 free Karma points for their next action.  This cost the good Captain his action, but  it should be worth it.

Agility:  Most of us have a good grasp of what aglity is.  Its not just the physical dexterity of the person, but how gracefull they can be.
 
Initiative: Same as rules, 1d10 + Aglity score.

Jump:  This is to land where you want to.   If you failed the jump roll, then your jump went ary.

Catch:  This is to catch an un resisting non animate thing, like a baseball, or a falling friend.

Strength:  We all know what strength is.

Most strength challenges can be done by a simple  carrying capacity check.    For anything else, I roll Sd20. ( arm wrestling, two people pulling on a sword, etc...)   This is the simplest of the attributes to use.

Rule of thumb,  if it deals with Emotion use Chariama.

Physical stress or pain,  Endurance.

Mental resistance, or mental fortitude,  Will.

Very well done, John.  I especially like what you've done with Charisma and the various uses you've given it!

For Endurance, I don't suppose the rolling to see if somebody is going to die thing comes up very often.  Seems a bit skewed, too, in that your average character with a 14 or 15 E is going to live to the ripe old age of 140-150! 

I don't think there's anything in the rules, either, about being able to hold your breath for a number of minutes = E (the rulebook proper, anyway).  I think that was in the addendum that came out for Underwater rules (we were just using it when we played last night).

Well done!   

I hear you on the fatigue.  In fact I can not even think of the last time it happened, so exhaustion in a theoritical thing.

And believe me, no one has ever made it to test out the old age rules.  These are things   I think about when I am on the subway.  I have lots of rules that I never used, like  surgery.

Oh, i might be using the exhaustion AND surgery rules real soon...

I thought you used the Surgery rules once but I can't remember when.

Channel had the surgery knowledge area and rolled an 01 at some point and became a "super surgeon" and I think I performed surgery on someone but cant remember who/when.

Actually, I don't even know if it was Channel lol. It might have been one of my other characters.

John wrote on May 16^th, 2011 at 3:28pm:


I can only think of once or twice that we've used Surgery (it's one of the skills in our game), when a character has been forced to do a battlefield operation.

Ok here is some further reflection.   

Since this game likes to use things in groups of three* I will do the same with cool.

So if you fail your cool roll  you get a -1 if you fail by a 1-3.   A -2 if you fail by 4-6, and a -3 if you fail by 7-9 etc...   This balances failed cool rolls out a bit.  It makes them not so devastating, but it could hinder you and add tension to the game.

* the regular stats give you modifiers in groups of three so I have stuck with this model.

I don't understand.

Oh, it doesn't really matter, as I use the roll as a gauge  to role play.  Its not like there is a +/- to a die roll after a reaction roll.  I just look and see "oh he got a positive 15 on reaction, he really likes him..."   so there is no need for that.

Yes  at least  once a game.  Its ok, as they use ALOT of experience points.  So it serves its purpose of keeping the levels low but still giving them a chance to succeed tough things.

And  I base karma on a  new stat called Humanity.  And most of my players have low humanity so its not much of a problem.

Just a rhought, charisma is the only stat that can change, up or down, after character's death.

Humanity:  This is a new attribute I added to the basic to be rolled at the creation of the character.  To make it simple, this is how good you are.  This is your conscience telling you to do what is right.   The higher the number, the more moral, just, kind, good, you are.   

When faced with a moral decision, such as, should you not save that child in the burning building because you could get harmed,  the GM will tell you to save Hd20.  If you roll under your humanity score, your conscious bugs you to do the right thing, which is to save the child.   So being the super dude you are, you rush in,  braving danger, taking fire damage, till you save that child, or die trying!

As a reward, you get bonus experience and potential Charisma save for this.   If your Humanity is 10, and you rolled an 8, you get 200 bonus experience right then as you make the choice to do the right thing.  If your success, the number difference from your Humanity score and the save roll, is higher than your Charisma, then you get a CD20 roll to see if your charisma increases IF YOU SUCCEED in doing what you rolled your humanity to do.


So really good heroes will get lots more bonus experience, BUT they will have  more situations that they have to do dangerous things, risking life and limb.

Now if you just don't want to do what your conscience says, and leave that child to burn, you can decided to lose a Humanity point and just press on.

So as you see, Humanity can lower over time.  If your ever lose your last humanity point,  you lose your character and they become an NPC.



Humanity doesn't contribute to hits, power or movement.  But it is the go to stat for Karma.

I think your Humanity stat is a really cool idea.  I don't have any players right now that would need encouraging to go rescue a kid in a burning building (just to use that as an example), but I have had them in the past.

I'm curious, John, before you came up with the Humanity stat, did you have some players that would tend to do the more selfish thing, and might choose not to go into the proverbial burning building?

In any event, I like the idea, and it makes a lot of sense the way you reward players (or penalize them), based on their choices for their character.

Plus I wanted to make goodness something different than charisma.

THE ONI wrote on Sep 3^rd, 2016 at 12:08am:

There is that...