Turn Undead

[Aveline]

I've been working with my priest character a bit lately and normally when I type abilities it has 4/4 for turn undead. Now the other day I noticed that she had 6/6, I just thought maybe she had improved at it without my noticing so I did a little happy dance and didn't think much of it after that. Now today I get on and she has 4/4 again and I got all conflustered, so I tried to figure out why she had more before. I went through her prayers one by one and after using friends, and having her charisma magically raised she is back to 6/6 well atleast for the two whole seconds that spell lasts. I had no idea charisma would affect her abilities. Are all abilities affected by charisma, because I know on my bard, her sing skill is affected by charisma. I'm just curious. To me if something was going to affect this particular ability it would make more since for it to be her wisdom...or even her favor level. Not complaining, I realize this would probably be on the end of the priority list of things to change and it really doesn't bother me...I just think it is a little funny that the prettier she gets, the more undead she can fry. Mobs on this game should really be coded to run from pretty people. This is just a surprise to me since I hadn't noticed before today that things affected the number of times you could use the ability.

[Tavik]

That's actually correct. As per the source books, the number of times you can cast turn undead is equal to 3 + CHA modifier. I've never quite understood this, but my best guess is that charisma isn't just your physical appearance. It's how well you can influence people or how willing people are to follow your lead and such. Being pretty DOES help that quite a bit, but even some freak that looks like they've been hit by a bus can still have a powerful enough personality to be defined as 'charismatic'. All that said, the way I've always assumed this translate into turning is that you need that strength of personality and convincing in order to present yourself as something frightening to undead. I kind of think of it like Gandalf facing off with the Balrog with the light, firm stance, and demanding tone. Hopefully that helps.

[Kregor]

Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. This ability represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting. Charisma is most important for paladins, sorcerers, and bards. It is also important for clerics, since it affects their ability to turn undead. Every creature has a Charisma score.

So yes, Charisma is a measure of your total presence. This is why Charisma is primary stat for bards, and all their abilities, why clerics must use it for turning undead (literally a battle of personality between the cleric and the undead, Tavik's illustration of Gandalf being a pretty good one.), Paladins use it for laying on hands (The best IC explanation I have heard is, akin to "faith healing", they are encouraging the recipient to heal themselves through an exercise of faith.)

It is also the primary stat for Use Magic Device (because the rogue has to use his own force of personality to "trick" the device into ignoring his lack of qualifications).

In some tabletop settings, it is also used as the stat to determine luck, whereas FK has a separate stat for that. D&D does not. Charisma is the most logical stat of them for such, as it implies favor, charm and the ability to make things turn out the way you want them to.