an addendum to a really old post on Cha-based magic

Here’s another post on things to do with Charisma, aside from it being a dump stat. And it’s an addendum to this very old post about anthropological theories of magic and why CHA or POW makes sense as the magical potential stat.

Charisma is your “gifts from the gods,” right? How beloved you are by the gods.

Let’s take that literally. As discussed in the link above, Charisma represents your persuasive genius – the degree to which men and the Fates are willing to follow your lead. CHA is your spiritual mass, your tangible presence to the gods; your importance, legibility, and traceability. Your Destiny stat, and also how visible you and the trace of your actions are to supernatural entities.

Followers orbit around you, responding to your distortion of the fateluck continuum

High CHA makes you persuasive and authoritative, but also easy to scry or forecast. When you learn to focus your CHA into magic-working, it makes that magic more powerful and also more distinctive. Low CHA is like a magical stealth bonus – you’re easily forgotten, your acts have no strong spiritual odor.

Under this schema, CHA is the stat you roll against to turn undead, just like persuading living people (unless, in fact, you’re channeling some other supernatural entity to do the turning, in which case maybe high WIS and low CHA helps you invite the god-entity in – if spirit possession is a CHA v CHA battle, having low CHA is an advantage for a medium: you’re (a) easily displaced and (b) relatively unbruised by having the other entity act through you). But you have to roll over CHA to save vs. magic, curses etc – the magic is drawn toward you. Roll over CHA also to use or sense someone else’s residual magic – you can’t hear their static over your own.

This is why technomancers traditionally have low CHA: their goal is not to imprint their own will on the world but to open a space for a mechanical will to be propagated.