In Dungeons & Dragons and many other games that use similar attributes, players often use Charisma as a ‘dump stat’. They go for low charisma because they know it rarely has much value in combat or other life threatening situations and use any good rolls for other more ‘important’ attributes like Constitution, Strength, or Dexterity.

When I first saw Free League’s SRD for the Year Zero Engine I was pleasantly surprised at how they overcame this problem.

The Year Zero Engine has four attributes:
Strength
Agility
Wits
Empathy

These more or less equate to the more common Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Charisma. But Free League did something clever with Empathy that means most players won’t want that attribute to be low.

Empathy is described as ‘personal charisma and ability to manipulate
others.’ Pretty standard.

The skills in the Year Zero Engine that use the Empathy attribute are:
INSIGHT
Your character’s ability to read other people and see
through lies.

PERSUASION
Your ability to trick or convince others.

Again, pretty standard, but the third is really cool…
HEALING
Used to get a broken character back on their feet, or save their life if they suffer a critical injury.

‘If only I had more empathy, I could have saved him!’

In the most combat heavy game most players will be unlikely to dump bad attribute rolls onto their Empathy (or Charisma) attribute if it means their healing skill will be compromised.

It’s a simple, elegant solution to a common RPG problem.

You can check out Free League’s Year Zero Engine SRD at this link. It’s free and it’s quite likely you’ll find something cool you can use there…
Year Zero Engine Standard Reference Document