Two small suggestions for Charisma and Reputation

Lions_fan

I think they should translate into better performance in battle. When you got a strong leader everyone does better.

I also think chaotic evil shouldn't have a limit on charisma (if I remembered that correctly), and it should affect prices the same way a highly charisma lawful good would. I don't think whether someone is 'good' or 'evil' has any bearing on how charismatic they are.

TheIronRose

CE Characters don't have a limit on Charisma.

LadyRhian

TheIronRose said:

CE Characters don't have a limit on Charisma.

No, just reputation. I believe Evil Characters max out at Rep 16, or something like that. If you have a Rep of 18, other evil characters will leave the party, claiming you are too goody-goody.

Heinrich

I would also tweak the performance of Charisma so you can get better quest rewards without having a unrealistically high charisma and relying heavily on reputation scores. For example, a couple NPC's give rewards depending on your charisma. However, you need to have a very high charisma to the point of maxing it out the stat in order to get the better reward and I don't believe that you would have to be the most charismatic person to walk the earth in order to convince some townsfolk to give a little extra after completing a quest.

TheIronRose

LadyRhian said:

TheIronRose said:

CE Characters don't have a limit on Charisma.

No, just reputation. I believe Evil Characters max out at Rep 16, or something like that. If you have a Rep of 18, other evil characters will leave the party, claiming you are too goody-goody.

Not that either - they have a lower starting reputation, but can bring it just as high as any other character. It's the evil NPCs that will leave at reputation 18 and over.

LadyRhian

Ah. Well, I never had that low a Reputation (Usually started as a Neutral Good or Lawful Good character), so I don't know about the lessened rewards for quests thing. I only remember that if you had a High rep in Candlekeep, you got a +1 dagger from one of the minor quests, otherwise, you got just money.

Grumpwagon

The important thing to consider is how can this be done simply and still be fun?

Does my Paladin's high reputation help my CE NPC's combat performance? Is it just the leader's CHA that applies a bonus to the party or the protagonist's or is the entire party's CHA calculated to determine the bonus? This will just make the game easier, which is fine if there's a counterbalance -- probably combat penalties for low CHA or mismatched rep. If done well, I can see all this working, but I can see it going very wrong, particularly by making balance issues with CHA based classes and mixed-alignment parties would be even less viable.

I like the idea of the leader position having more important details to consider when assigning someone to it, but I also think this deviates pretty wide from the original game's interpretation of the AD&D rule set -- and I don't know how I feel about that. Just my two cents, but I'm on the fence for this one.