Le Stat d'Dump

There seems to be some discussion going around about good old Charisma and its -- mostly unjustified -- reputation as a useless statistic in Dungeons & Dragons-likes. Here's a blog post by Richard about it, that I saw about two days after a Discord group was also discussing the matter. I assume there's some blog or video somewhere that kicked off people's interest, but I'm not hip enough to know where that is.

In the aforementioned Discord group I pondered for about 20 seconds, then blurted this nugget, or something like it:

Charisma represents your character's strength -- small s -- of personality, which among many other useful functions, also manifests as bloody-minded tenacity. When you reach 0 Hit Points, instead of collapsing into unconsciousness, you can fight on for a number of Rounds equal to your Charisma score before dying.

And there you have it!

EDIT: In hindsight, this is ridiculous, and not in the way I tend to like either. So maybe this is better:

Charisma represents your character's strength -- small s -- of personality, which among many other useful functions, also manifests as bloody-minded tenacity. When you reach 0 Hit Points, instead of collapsing into unconsciousness, you have temporary Hit Points equal to your Charisma score. Once these have run out you are properly dead.

That's a bit better. Charisma still has an effect, but doesn't make you invincible for 3-18 Rounds.