Discipline and Charisma, off the top of my head.

http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/Main_Page

>Charisma only helped up to 30 points in it though and that was it

I'm going to freak out if that's true. The extra 20 charisma I trained certainly was useless for everything else, I was hoping it would work well for shifting. Never heard of disc helping before.


~Purehand

>>I'd be very surprised if there were absolutely zero benefit to Charisma over 30, that's not how anything else in the game works.

>>And I've found very solid benefits in classes from having Charisma above 30, so those points are far from useless.

I'd be surprised if CHA as relates to shifting stopped at 30 as well, but you have to filter the replies through the relevant points of discussion. If someone says "There's no benefit to having more than 30 charisma" in the shifting folder, they're probably making the inference of shifting benefits, not the broader charisma stat which gives benefits to classes, spirit health, thief confidence, bardic mojo, and a ton of other things in no way related to shifting.

J'Lo, I'm a ranger.. I'd believe anything.....
The Manipulation List -- http://symphaena.com/index.html

>I had a bugged character with insane concentration once. I didn't find a single thing that concentration definitely aided by itself except ways travel.

Was this with an empath character? I find a lot of things rely on concentration.

>I think most of the time when people think concentration is involved its really a discipline check.

I think being able to do something one second, taking a concentration hit, and then not being able to do it - does indeed involve concentration checks. Unless I'm misunderstanding, telling folks (in an empath folder, especially) that they don't know the difference between discipline and concentration may not be the best way to get a point across.

~Chris

PS - That came off a little snappier than it was intended, but I couldn't think of a way to re-word it, so just know that it was said in a sincere way, and not in a harsh, OMG you must think we're dummies! sort of way.

My advise would be to train Charisma very conservatively for shifting purposes. It did appear to have a small to modest impact on your ability under the old system, however I'm not sure if things are weighted differently under the new system. I never considered Disc to be a shifting modifier, but if it is, I'd go exclusively with that (I really don't think it was a modifier, but I could be wrong).

I wanted to untrain charisma as it was, let alone if it really wasn't helping my shifting past 30. I really haven't noticed any benefits for teaching insofar as I learn more teaching skill or more of the skill I am actually teaching. I guess your students learn more and people who are teaching you learn more, which is good, but I'd like to see some better returns for myself. I never use more than a second of my 8 hour depart time, and have never had anything assault my spirit health otherwise so not too much help there.

My fines from stealing are sooooo low though.


~Purehand

Having been at 45 charisma at some point. I can say over 30 has its benefits. Shifting aside, it was awesome for teaching and manipulating.

-Desperado Clemency Apollonia, Vagrant of Elanthia

******************
SEND[Reexa] :::whine::: go awayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
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>high concentration does not seem to aid you in much

>I had a character with tens of thousands on concentration... he wasn't particularly good at anything. No he was not an empath.

Okay. That's why I was curious. Concentration affects manipulate and healing - two pretty big things for me. I'd put being able to do those two things as aiding quite a bit for an empath. I may not know much about any other guild, but I try to keep on top of the Empath stuff.

:P
~Chris

<I'm going to freak out if that's true. The extra 20 charisma I trained certainly was useless for everything else, I was hoping it would work well for shifting. Never heard of disc helping before.>

cheaper fines when you're put in front of the judge...
manipulating harder critters...


Druid Wheller Herbmaster, Con Artist of Elanthia

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When in doubt, reinvent the wheel!

>cheaper fines when you're put in front of the judge...

I think that's already been covered.

>manipulating harder critters...

It doesn't effect upstart costs or maintenance costs, so just how valuable is Charisma in regards to manipulaiton if it really does have any effect at all? Your TDPs are clearly more valuable in discipline. Does it effect the % that attack instead of wander off? Maybe, but mine still wander away with some frequency.

~Purehand

>>It doesn't effect upstart costs or maintenance costs, so just how valuable is Charisma in regards to manipulaiton if it really does have any effect at all?

Nothing that goes into Manipulation affects upstart costs or maintenance. Not even the one stat that goes into the concentration calc. I don't think they have any specific benefits but seems to me that magic skills/wisdom would benefit you more when dealing with magic resistance, charisma would help to present you as a non-threat (most beneficial against animals I guess), and discipline would be most important when dealing with intelligence.

J'Lo, I'm a ranger.. I'd believe anything.....
The Manipulation List -- http://symphaena.com/index.html

>How many circles did you gain during that same period?

Just to clarify my question - the window of being able to manipulate a critter some of the time, but not every time is very small in my experience. If you had the TDPs to raise charimsa 12 times, and gained 15 ranks in empathy, I'm thinking you gained 2-3 circles during this period. That's going to boost your concentration, and the 15 ranks of empathy won't hurt. Those two things alone would push you over that cusp in my opinion. I'm not saying charisma isn't checked, but I'd say Disc is a better stat to raise if you're looking to manipulate.

I am somewhat of a charisma tank, and I regret it.. I'm telling you that its effects are totally underwhelming outside of fines. Train it conservatively. If I could move my charisma back to 20 and my agility up to 70, i'd do it in a heartbeat.

~Purehand

<Nothing that goes into Manipulation affects upstart costs or maintenance.>

ok, i'll admit it, i'm lost as to what you are talking about here.


Druid Wheller Herbmaster, Con Artist of Elanthia

---

http://robertdell.dyndns.org/DR_Scripts/
click YASSE.dmg
http://sourceforge.net/projects/yasse/

---

P.S. no good deed goes un-punished!

---

When in doubt, reinvent the wheel!

Purehand, funny you should bring up hatchlings here, earlier you speculated that Charisma may have an effect on critters wandering off vrs attacking critters around you... do you actually get hatchlings attacking one another? whenever Im in Throne City, hatchlings just run away when they are manipulated, I have never seen one attack another. Just wondering.


Got Body Parts?

ahh I was just wondering it Hatchings were broken in Plat, since they seriously never... not once for me, have attacked one another. It also may be a feature of the Hatchings too. If that is the case, I wonder if there are other critters that are more or less likey to attack vrs flee.


Got Body Parts?

aye it was about three circles, but I would doubt very much that charisma isn't checked there too. For further I submit the following title:

Compellor
At least 910 in Empathy
At least 45 in Charisma
Must be able to Manipulate

why else would that be there instead of say discipline?

>manipulate friendship barmaid
A barmaid is not interested in your manipulations at this time. Perhaps later...

>>charisma HAS been tested by me and sophrona, as far as i know, and it has a definite effect on manipulating and shifting.

I never said it didn't, just that it doesn't affect the concentration costs and I don't know if it has a specific effect (ie, charisma benefits you more than discipline when manipulating animals and less than discipline when manipulating a swain or some other "intelligent person") or just bonuses the ability in general.

If you can show otherwise, great. Nobody has, though.

J'Lo, I'm a ranger.. I'd believe anything.....
The Manipulation List -- http://symphaena.com/index.html

>Per Charisma Overall: Train it conservatively - the effects are mostly underwhelming.

I think it's wrong to unilaterally claim that without any qualification, Pure. Like just about everything when it comes to training stats, it boils down to your own priorities and playing style. Identically with every other stat, the benefits diminish per point as the number increases, but it's not zero.

The benefits of Charisma to Spirit health, shop prices, justice fines, teaching/class EXP, etc are considerable, and it's up to each individual player to decide how important they are to him or her.

As far as Manipulating and Shift is concerned, you just flat out can't do either, or even learn how, with Charisma below 15 (give or take a point). In my opinion increasing to a minimum of 20 is a good idea. 20 is a pretty good barebones number for all the stats, actually. 30 is better.

http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/Main_Page

>just a weird thing about those specific critters

which begs the question then, is this a specific aspect of critters that can be set when they are created and if so, are there critters more or less prone to attack creatures of thier own kind? That would be a very cool list to have.


Got Body Parts?

>I think it's wrong to unilaterally claim that without any qualification, Pure.

Well, within the last few posts I have qualified my opinions or admitted where I do not know where charisma stands on Shifting, Manipulation, Fines, Spirit and Teaching. The only thing unilateral about my coments is that I'm the only one telling people charisma's effects aren't going to make you awesome at shifting and other things it effects.

Let me clarify AGAIN, I am not saying don't train it, or that it doesn't effect these things people claim. I am saying in my experience, you are not getting a huge bang for your buck on most of the things it effects. I'll review my experience with charisma in the context of an empath's use - take that bard enchante, thief confidence, roar effectiveness and trader stuff to another forum. I'm sure I'm leaving things out here, but you'll get the idea.

Shifting - Small to Moderate impact under the old system, as I have said. I'm in no position to comment on the current system. I was only able to compare my findings with another empath on gaining build shifts and the month shift. In the end it looked like 1 point in charisma was granting somewhere between 2 and 3 general lore ranks towards build shifts. It did not have any noticable impact on when we both got the month shift - empathy seemed to be a clear winner there. This test wasn't near perfect for a number of reasons, however one thing was clear - as the gap in our respective charismas widened our respective skill did not widen nearly as significantly. Insofar as it helps initiate a shift that is not on your list, I can not comment. I have no doubt I got as many as two extra build shifts by raising my charisma 40 points, and probably would have seen the effects more clearly had I been in the rapid-fire face/eyes/nose/hair/feature phase of my training. But then raising it 40 points cost me 3540 TDPs. You make the call - was 2 extra build shapes worth that investment? It's borderline for me.

Manipulate - I learned manipulate from Deme the week it came out (thank you Deme). I had 10 charisma. I'd have to have someone else confirm this, but I do not believe there is any charisma check for learning the skill - just 100 empathy and 20th circle. I wouldn't be surprised if charisma did a number of things that I have already mentioned for manipulate, but I have never seen it field tested or quantified. If someone wanted to know what stat to raise for manipulate, i'd direct them to discipline. I'd love to see a few empaths test charisma and manipulate.

Teaching - A student with high charisma is awesome. A teacher with high charisma is awesome. That's all fine and well, but what is the benefit to the Teacher? People say it makes it much easier to learn, and they can get mindlocked in the actual skill their teaching off of one student. For me, it depends 100% on the students I'm teaching, not my charisma. I still have problems getting to high mindstates and the skill i'm teaching has never gone past thoughtful. In my opinion, if you training charisma for teaching, then know you are training it for the benefit of others. For me, I call that a low personal return.

Spirit Health - Okay... What the hell am I going to do with an 8 hour depart time. I've gone through 6 pretty conflicty years without anyone assaulting my spirit. If someone wants to battle clerics with chill spirit or hold on to graverobbed items all day long, go nuts on charisma. Otherwise, I don't see any point to taking it past 20 or 30.

Shopkeepers - I guess this depends on how many expensive items you're purchasing at a shop. With a 40 point gap between my war mage and my empath, my empath saves 20-30 copper on hisan salve. I might save a few silver on that 100 count origami envelope. If that kind of savings is worth 3540 tdps, then go for it. Charisma does NOT effect pawn prices. Pawn shops are being looked at, whatever that means.


Justice System - Large impact on fines, as I have said before. I literally still get the stocks in crossings, and haven't had a fine over 5 silver. Insofar as the charisma check with guards capturing you - I have only passed the check once since coming back to the crossings. The justice system is being rewritten.

Spell Vs Stat - You lose these. Being rewritten.

>it's up to each individual player to decide how important they are to him or her.

I agree completely, but I'm happy to be the devils advocate so they don't go nuts on it for a few circles thinking that it's going to really give them an overwhelming advantage in the things it effects. I did that to the tune of 50 charisma, and it was not wise. So I'll say again - train it conservatively.

~Purehand

Ssra, I believe, long ago broke this down when players were still asking questions about the "overskilled" retreat mechanics (don't bother looking, it was at least a couple years ago). He didn't give us any lists of critters except for maybe some examples, but every aggressive critter fell into like one of four categories:

don't attack anything (bison, antelope, Inkhorne)
attack anything
don't attack friends (critters of the same type)
attack if you'll win (goblins, kobolds)
attack if you'll lose

J'Lo, I'm a ranger.. I'd believe anything.....
The Manipulation List -- http://symphaena.com/index.html