Charisma is different. It's different than the other five stats, hanging out there at the end like Inky from Pac-Man. I'm not going to go into the evidence for this because I'm not pedantic and you can find your own examples, but suffice it to say it goes back to OD&D; the mechanics of Charisma were always just different from Strength and Intelligence and their brethren in the canonical six.
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| Useful but also incomplete. (Source) |
For this reason, it's almost a mistake to group it with the other five sisters. It's almost a completely different animal, like it should be in its own section - like THAC0 and Saving Throws are put in their own sections. Maybe it should be grouped with Alignment?
Anyway, Charisma is different both mechanically and practically from the other stats.
Practically, a group of players is not actually compelled to role-play. We do it because it's fun. But there are probably times for the sake of expediency that your DM just makes a roll to see what happens rather than having a conversation. Certainly it would be crazy to play out every detail of a long dinner party or series of high-level negotiations. Some amount of time is saved with the die roll.
Mechanically, this is the difference between the other stats and Charisma. The dice do come into play, but we use them differently. Usually the result of the stat checks on other stats is binary - either you can bend the bars, or you can't; you remember this particular demon's weakness, or you don't. But with Charisma, it's much better to use the dice as an oracle. The 2d6 Reaction table is the single most useful tool in the Referee's arsenal. And in its main use here, it gives a relative rather than a binary result, which is a much more useful tool when the goal is to have fun.
