View source for Talk:Tome of Prowess (3.5e Sourcebook)/Transformation

Charisma?  Why does this skill use charisma.  This skill is about crafting mechanical devices!  --[[User:Parakee|Parakee]]<sup>[[User Talk:Parakee|Talk]]</sup> 22:01, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

:This is more of a "make the walls blend to you, not you to the walls" sort of disguise and that is better tied to Charisma than Intelligence. It's about selling yourself in a disguise (though not as a specific person, which requires more complex lies), and that disguise may or may not be a contraption filled costume. It happens to include building them since not including them is mean and makes people take two skills to be able to walk around convincingly as a bone devil.

:There's also two background things going on here. The first is tied up in the ToP knowledge treatment. Knowing things, even technical things, is not solely the domain of Intelligence. As far as I'm concerned, Intelligence isn't the "know stuff" attribute, it's the mental analogue of dexterity and better described as your ability to take what you know and apply it in odd places. Since force of personality is better suited to selling yourself than being able to apply a random bit of knowledge, it's Cha here. The second thing is that there's two benefits coming from the roll here, and one of them is minor and only happens at the really high end. Your check result is used to set the DC to pierce your disguise, and that part of it is easily fluffed as Cha. The part where your stuff lasts longer without an error is arguably an Int thing, as you would see ways to better craft them, but it's an extremely minor benefit since you get the disguise stuff at the start and it only affects duration. It's the lesser of the two things the check does, and so it's not as strong a motivator of attribute assignment.

:Lastly, I want Cha characters to be good as disguising themselves. - [[User:Tarkisflux|Tarkisflux]] <sup>[[User talk:Tarkisflux|Talk]]</sup>  22:57, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

::You've balked at a few skill-> attribute assignments now, and I feel like adding that they're not set in stone. If you have alternate assignments that fluff well and meet the other concerns I have regarding attribute and archetype assignments I'm willing to consider shuffling them around.