Intelligence is knowing tomatoes are a fruit

Wisdom is knowing never to add it to a fruit salad

“Charisma is about sex appeal” is funny, but that’s not really entirely accurate. It’s about motivating others towards your goals whatever that may be, having a presence that commands attention and being a good communicator. That’s why charisma helps disparate skills like lying, persuading, intimidating, and performing. Sex appeal may superficially help some of those things, but so does a half-giant that makes you piss yourself with their mere presence, or an old fat guy who speaks with clarity of conviction and intelligence. Ain’t nobody want to fuck Winston Churchill, and he was an asshole as well. But he was a very charismatic figure, still.

Constitution is when you have to eat the fruit salad and there’s tomatoes in it.

But the little cherry tomatoes rock in fruit salad!

What about fruit salad served in a tomato?

Charisma is being able to sell a tomato-based fruit salad. That’s how we got salsa.

I was more a 00’s kid into consoles, so this was introduced to me via Fallout 3, then Dark Souls

Charisma is framing salsa as a tomato-based fruit salad

Dex is clearly green though

Int is knowing what you’re talking about

Wis is knowing when to talk

Cha is when people listen to you

5e commoners are 10 across the board.

My Constitution is 0.

Charisma is essentially Social Skills.

Social Skills definitely help you get laid, but also convince a shopkeeper to give you a discount, persuade a guard to look the other way, etc.

One of the things I liked about the Chronicles of Darkness system is it cleared this up nicely. Stats were in a 3x3 grid.

One axis was physical, mental, social

The other was Power, Finesse, Resistance.

Want to shove something? Physical + Power. That’s strength.

Want to figure out a riddle? Mental + Finesse. That’s Dexterity Wits. (Edit: wrote dexterity originally, meant Wits)

Command attention? Social + Power. That’s the Presence stat.

Lie and misdirect? Social + Finesse. Stat was called Manipulation.

Now you can have a character that’s commanding without also being a natural liar and flirt. DND doesn’t help let you do that because the concepts are bundled together into a single stat.

(You could invest separately into like Expression for making speeches and Deception for lying, of course)

Humans are rated 1 to 5, where a 5 is the peak of human capability. Presence 5 is like AAA movie stars and great leaders.

Of course, if you add supernaturals to your game a starting chump vampire could have seven presence if they take Majesty as their power, and become a nearly irresistible magnet of attention.

I have never seen Intelligence contrasted with Wisdom in a way that felt fitting. Does an intelligent person not know when not to speak?

My prime example would be Donald Trump. Hideously looking and true evil while dumping strength, dexterity, constitution (unfortunately not enough), intelligence and wisdom, but he undeniably has at least an 18 in charisma.

i like how according to this everyone just has a big stick stowed away somehere

edit: wait now that i looked again, those are the exact stats for a fist in pf2e if you were level 0 and trained in unarmed attacks

assuming dnd fists work similarly, why didn’t they just put in a fist instead of a club?

12.5 is average for an adventuring hero using the standard array plus typical adjustments for race.

Even if you roll 3d6 across the board with no adjustments, old school, 10.5 is average.

Not really. It’s more broad and includes it’s original meaning of divine grace or presence. Why would sorcerer’s spellcasting ability be charisma? It’s broader than social charisma since sorcerer’s cast with their innate abilities.

Wisdom is such a weird attribute in ttrpgs, it is often overloaded with the concept of perception. But at the same time I don’t necessarily think it should be split to it’s own thing, more attributes aren’t necessarily better.