Heh, you can say that again Fortune. Other than melee damage, strength serves no purpose.

Unfortunately, the only proper way to make Str important is to bring back encumbrance rules, and nobody likes those after the fiasco over weights in SR3.

Agreed. Someone with a low Charisma and an average or better Willpower will just be a stubborn twit that you want to throttle until his teeth come jingling out of his head.

Well, now that high Str adds a bit of recoil compensation, it's a teeny bit better.

Also, I house-rule armor encumbrance limits to Bod+Str, rather than 2xBod, to make Str a little less dumpy in my game.

Throwing Adepts? Yah you can put points into Power Throw, but that's been errated to no more than level 3... and you can put points into boost str... but all the tasty adept powers suck up your powers quick enough.

Another way is to change the damage threshold for knockdown from Body to Strength. Then you'll see a lot of "Strength is my dump stat" characters spending a lot of time lying down.

Or to change the armor encumbrance attribute from Body to Strength.

There's a lot of things that didn't make sense to run off of body. Armor encumberance never made sense to me being off of body, for instance. It doesn't matter how big you are or how easy it is for you to shrug off damage, that's not really going to affect whether you can lift your arm while wearing that armor. That's strength, the whole way. Whether you can move fast is strength and agility in my mind. So if I did anything, I'd house rule it that way. They brought recoil comp back for high strength, which I'm happy for, but there should have been *some* encumberance rules, or at least guidelines for general carrying and lifting. Sometimes you just need to know if you can throw X or lift Y or whatever. *shrug* oh well.

Sign up for the Shadowrun Missions Scramble at Gen Con, and you will. =i)

I'd always read Body as the "endurance" stat, which is a little more what you're looking for than Strength when you shrug into body armor and wear it for any real length of time. Moon-Hawk's house rule (body + str, rather than body x 2) would actually be ideal for involving Strength without discounting endurance.

I tend to feel the pain once CHA drops below 3. CHA 1 is nice for theoretical builds, because some don´t profit from CHA directly, and tweaking is always done to personal taste.

The original question was when Charisma 1 became okay;

I think the answer is partly... when SR4 came out. In SR3, you could sit down and throw together a character who was reasonable at several things. Your stat minimums were higher if I recall correctly, and you weren't dealing with an overal fixed pool for ALL your stuff; you assigned priorities, then if you had extra money, it couldnt be translated to more stats.

In SR4, "throwing together" a character will end up with something ... that might be OK at one thing, usually not to the level that SR3 felt, and not usually decent at multiple things. Seriously. I have yet to put together a character where I didn't get to 390 build points and go "Crap, he still cant do X, Y, or Z, and those are fraggin important! Where can I get more BPs???". So to come up with a character who's pretty good at several things you start getting seriously munchy.

Add to that, the BP system uses fixed costs for raising skills/attributes (until final point before cap), and the karma system afterwards uses increasing costs. So, it's less expensive to totally dump a stat and buy your important stats to where you want them, then raise the dump stat after creation.

To me, THAT is why we see all these 1 CHA characters.

Um, no. The answer is, quite literally, the Shadowrun 1st edition Street Samurai archetype, which had a Charisma of 1.

I still hold that D&D created Cha as the dump stat. It's just a feeling that's carried over from one game to another.

Can you direct me to that errata? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Charisma one is just a somewhat socially dysfunctional character. I've meet plenty of people with 'weak' social skills who hold down solid jobs and make solid money in the workplace.

In game terms, if he has chr 1 and the influence skill group 1, he's not hopeless, just not that social point man. If he doesn;t have the skillgroup he's pretty screwed because he has a pool of 0 when he defaults which may not work so good.

Synner has announced its inclusion in the next scheduled Errata, due out any time now.

One of the big problems that I see with Charisma is that it's such a weird nebulous stat. Charisma means different things to different people. Using the Serenity example from before. Say you have Jayne and Inara in your group and you need to do some negotiating. Jayne is a brutish thug, more accustomed to solving problems with his fists or a pistol than talking about them. We'll say he has a charisma of 1 and an Intimidation of 3. Inara on the other hand is educated, cultured, can read people like a book and probably talk circles around any member of the crew we'll say she has a Cha of 6 and all her social skills were probably 5 or 6. Inara seems like the obvious choice right? But what happens if you need to negotiate with a bunch of hard bitten rimworld mercenaries? Inara wouldn't last two minutes. They'd see her as a piece of meat. Jayne on the other hand would buy everyone a round, swap a few war/crime stories and have them eating out of the palm of his hand after 20 minutes.

For a Shadowrun example I'll use one of my previous characters. He like Inara was well educated, well spoken, polite (almost to a fault) and very cultured. He was also fresh off the boat (or plane as it were) from Osaka Japan. He didn't know the first thing about Seattle culture, society, taboos ect. Whenever we had to deal with the Yaks, he was front and center. Anyone else, he was a wallflower.

Simmilarly your Cha 1 Ork would be just the guy you'd want dealing with the guards at the entrance to the Ork underground, not the Cha 7 Elf.

Not only that but GM's I've found tend to be more willing to let low Cha characters slide simply because of the way adventures are written. If you need 4 successes to get a critical piece of information from an informant and no one makes the roll the GM almost always either fudges the target number or offers a way out (bribe ect.). This is just to keep the game moving. Players who don't know what they're supposed to do will either go off on a tangent that the GM hasn't prepared for (very rarely a good set of circumstances unless you're one of those rare GM's who's VERY good at thinking on your feet) or they'll get frustrated and start lashing out at the NPC's who didn't dish the dirt. Even the lowest Cha group is going to start getting information if they say screw the dice and start cutting off extremities until NPC #42 tells them what they want to know. Sure the GM can give them false information, or push the I Win button and wipe the party out when the Yaks or whoever takes revenge for the PC's torturing one of their members to death but that's never fun for anyone and I'll tell you this much. The Players are not going to "learn their lesson" and decide that the GM was right, and that they should all make social adepts next time. They'll blame the GM, get pissed off, frustrated and probably walk away from the table.

Just like how the player of the Str 1 Face is going to get frustrated if you put him in a boxing match with a troll, the Cha 1 Streetsam is going to get frustrated if you send him to a state dinner. It's all about adapting your campaign to what the Group (and yes this does include the GM) wants. If none of the players want to deal with intense negotiations, or convoluted legwork and haven't built characters to include those activities then really there is nothing a GM can do to force them.

Actually, that's not unreasonable. Let's say you're a rambunctious ork, and you've been drinking. When you leave to drain the tusk, there are two empty barstools. When you come back, they are both filled. In one is the meanest, hardest looking guy you've ever seen. You can smell the chrome. In the other is a squirly elf in dirty clothes, with a high-end datajack. They don't look like friends. You want your seat back.

The same is probably true of social tests. If you're a pool shark, who's your mark going to be? Well... probably still not the guy opening beer bottles with his cyberspur, but also not the elf chatting up half the bar.

Edit:
As for Str being a dump stat, I wonder how everyone would feel if armor encumbrance was bod + str instead of bod x 2? Seems a simple enough change, and would probably make at least a few points in str necessary.

the whole social system in SR is fragged up beyond recognition in my eyes anyway . . why the heck does CHARISMA come into intimidation and interrogation/torture? such things are just bloody stupid . . if i wanna intimidate or torture someone, who's going to be better at this? the charisma 7(or heavens forbid 11) elven bitch? or the 3m tall charisma 1, intelligence somewhere below 5 troll with the strength and body of 15+ and a big fucking knife or something else appropriate to the task?
it was the main dump-stat in SR3 beacuse first: the attributes had nothing to do with the skills, aside from karma cost to improve skills . . so even with charisma 1 you could still start with etiquette/street 5/7 as a Troll with Charisma 1 if you were ready to pay the price in points . . the elf with the charisma of 7 could not start with more than you in that matter, there would just be the point difference in cost again . . and second: it's waaayy easier to rise from 1 to 2, from 2 to 3, and from 3 to 4 than say rise your natural strength from 9 to 10 . . some might call it metagaming if you speculate about the useage of any karma the character might make in that way . . i say it's a good incentive to see the character live to do it at all . . because it might be just as easy for the elf to rise his body that way, but because he has a higher natural body than the troll has in charisma he will be paying more in the end to rise up to maximum . . and in the mean time with the low body, who say's he's even going to stay long enough for that? the troll on the other hand will most likely shrug of any damage below full auto weapons and actually get to spend the karma instead of making a new character again . . and if it wasn't so hugely expansive to raise natural strength if you have racial bonuses later on, strength would be a dump-stat in SR3 too, because aside from allowing you to carry/lift gear, giving you a little recoil compensation and doing the damage in close-combat and with bows it doesn't do anything at all . . imagine, if you will, a troll getting his strength instead of agility for close combat . . and yep, we're right back where the devs somehow did not want us to go but made us go anyway . . huge dicepools and unbelievable feats and trolls being actually good at what they are meant to be good in . . doing lots of ouchies . .

because my clock seems broken, i will go by that post to determine that it is time for me to go to bed . . feel free to dis/agree with anything i've written

Word. That'll fix the problem of the Adept in my runner group who throws ball bearings harder than I can shoot with a Walther 2100...

What happens if I suggest that the average charisma at GenCon, or any other RPG gathering, is noticably lower than the average charisma at, say, almost any trade convention? I don't have hard evidence on that, but I've known a lot of RPGers who were unskilled at reading body language, or making good impressions on strangers, or at socializing in mainstream venues. The "Summoner Geeks" video is a humorous exaggeration, and it's funny because we recognize the reality that it exaggerates.
youtube.com/watch?v=zng5kRle4FA

If your GM has a real-life charisma of 1 on the SR scale, then whether you play your character as smooth and graceful, or blunt and confrontational, won't matter, because the GM doesn't know the difference.

I was thinking of CHA and Negotiation yesterday when I was with a group setting up cones to mark an Ultimate Flying disc game in a public park, and one of the people setting up corner cones got into a pissing match with some people who had already set up a nearby soccer game. I'm often the Ultimate group's "face" because usually I can persuade the other group to shift their field a little so that there's room for both games side by side. There are a few of us, unfortunately, whose behavior all too often results in the other group becoming stubborn and uncooperative. We tolerate them, and not necessarily because they're particularly skilled players.

Ditto those who suggest Jayne as a good example of a viable low-CHA shadowrunner. Simon also has low-CHA moments, in which he tells people what he wants, but not in a way that motivates them to comply. On another hand, he pulls off some good impersonations, and he's well-dressed and well-groomed and articulate.

What would be the CHA stat of Case from "Neuromancer"? Or Neo from "The Matrix"? or Deckert from "Blade Runner"?

A charisma of 1 makes perfect sense for a shadowrunner - if you had a decent charisma, you would have been able to talk your way out of the mess that got you into a profession where you get shot at for a living.
And a decent willpower means you can stay quiet while the dandelion eaters fawn over the Johnson (how you'd see it).

And yes, Charisma for interrogation and intimidation makes perfect sense. Sure, the big troll can hurt you. He gets bonus dice for that. But can he persuade you to tell the truth? Can he persuade you not to call security/the star the moment your back is turned? That requires playing mind games, and brawn doesn't help much there.

Think about a woman with permed blonde hair, a cutoff sweatshirt top, leg warmers, sneakers and mismatched socks who is firing an uzi in one hand and gripping a keytar in the other.

That's Charisma 1. And it's sexy.

What should a 1 Charisma mean to a Shadowrunner, practically speaking?

- hard time negotiating fees, so that impacts income

- Less ability to use contacts/do legwork

- Johnson more likely to consider the runner expendable:

Bad Guy: "So what we need is a team to hit the facility *here* and take the brunt of the defense... you know, fodder, expendables. You got anyone can do that Johnson?"

Johnson: "Hmmm, I think I have just team for that... yes, perfect, won't be missed."

- and finally, the Johnson has no qualms about betraying someone with 1 Charisma

...

I will say this from the real-life perspective: I know some people who are very *good*, but I just don't *like* them... so "professionalism" isn't going to trump "charisma" or lack thereof. I will never use those people's services, and whats more, no one else does either - eventually they just go away, or go out of business.

Low charisma is ALWAYS going to be bad for business, regardless of your "skillz"... and the GM should reflect this in how the game world reacts to characters using it as a dump stat.

...

Note: "Uncouth" does not equate with "Low Charisma" - for a couple of examples consider the Danny Devito character in "Taxi" and the Toshiro Mifune character in "Seven Samurai". Both decidedly uncouth, but both "likeable" - they have charisma.

At my table we mostly free form everything but actual tactical situations. We don't generally roll knowledge skills. We just take it as a measure the level of obscurity and detail you know on that subject. On the charisma front this actually let's us play out the nuances imperialus was talking about. Background, Race, and skills build up people's impression of you, and the social rolls represent your ability to tweak and capitalize on that.

About people taking CHA 1, people don't like to feel like they are literally throwing away points. The benifit in social performance you get from a die or two is so small that it often gets hand waved. I CHA 2 will not let you talk your way out of really sticky situation. It will not get you discounts on gear. It will not let you smoose people who don't already like you etc. So that 10 BP FEELS like a total waste, and roll-playing at the fidelity where it would matter is just tedious.

"if i wanna intimidate or torture someone, who's going to be better at this? the charisma 7(or heavens forbid 11) elven bitch? or the 3m tall charisma 1, intelligence somewhere below 5 troll with the strength and body of 15+"

Stahseele, I'm so, so tempted to question your personal experience with interrogation, or with high-CHA people. I've known a guy who was a US Army interrogator. He was not a big guy, nor menacing. He could make most people laugh. But I can easily see him, back in Vietnam, convincing an NVA captive to provide information. Once you've got someone tied down, you don't need to be big or intimidating to threaten them with nasty consequences. But it's helpful if you can read their body language well enough to tell if they're lying, or close to cooperating but not quite over the edge, or broken.

Your theoretical troll with implausible stats* will result in scared prisoners who are screaming incoherently and begging for mercy, or lying their asses off, or passed out, but not actually giving you the information you need, because he doesn't have the ability to recognize and encourage when they *do* try to cooperate. They'll start to mumble the Johnson's real name, and he'll interrupt them with "Speak up, loser!" and smack them again, and they'll just give up on trying to cooperate.

The CHA 7-11 elf playing "good cop", in charge of the interrogation, can use almost anyone else as the "bad cop", and not only will the subject answer questions, they might even provide additional information, because the elf is clear about what information is valuable to her, and she rewards cooperation, and the subject's situational movation of "make her happy so she stops burning my fingertips" stacks with his instinctive motivation of "make her happy because she wants to cut a deal with me and everyone likes her, and she can tell that I'm cooperating".

*Troll augmax BOD is 15; 15+ possible only with Genetic Optimization or Exceptional Attribute. The only ways I know to increase BODY are Parathyroid implant and Improved Attribute adept power. Troll adepts who have Exceptional Attribute: BOD then put four or more points of Magic into augmenting BOD have got to be rare. As in, out of billions of metahumans, maybe a few of them exist. Maybe.

While I'm fairly new to the rules of Shadowrun, I've been playing RPG's for far longer than is good for me. Here's my take on the matter:

Having charisma at the lowest possible score (in any game system) can be a problem, but that isn't what the OP asked--he asked when it became okay. The answer is: The moment the rulebook didn't forbid it. The rules leave things like that open so that we, as the players, can decide how we want to play the game.

There are many times when a rules-compliant character can be wrong for a game (a combat specialist in a intrigue-heavy game, for example) but this has to do with the individual opinions and playing styles of the people involved. I hear the "Roll v.s. Role player" thing get brought up a lot in these debates, but a role-player who's interested in the complexity of a stat-handicapped character is just as likely to go for Charisma 1 as the min/maxer who wants a higher firearms dice pool. Ultimately, "Role-Player" and "Min/Maxer" are just styles of play, and there's nothing wrong with either of them. Personally, I enjoy both, and simply go with whatever playing style fits that of the people I'm playing with.

Bottom line, don't confuse your preferences for the rules of the game, and don't try to force everybody else to play your way. That goes for all of us.

Characters with a Charisma of 1 are likely to suffer from "charming good looks" or a "cultured accent". (See the ork street samurai archetype in the Street Samurai Catalog).

Seriously, though, Charisma can be used as a dump stat by combat-oriented characters, but taking a Charisma of 1 is hardly a meaningless choice. A character with a Charisma of 1 will have a harder time getting gear or information, and will have to use Edge to even be able to default on social skills.

There are enough real, tangible penalties in the game for a low Charisma - the GM doesn't make stuff up or deliberately set out to screw over the character.

As far as the personality issues go, the qualities listed are a non-exclusive list of possible reasons that a character could have a low Charisma. Remember that Charisma can be improved fairly quickly, especially at low levels, so I wouldn't make it too dependent on innate character traits. The troll with a Charisma of 1 is only 27 Karma points away from a Charisma of 4.

I would also suggest that your business, whatever it may be, does probably not rely on highly trained, rare people to do it. And probably doesn't mean the difference of millions of dollars if you succeed or fail. And probably doesn't mean you get fed to the proverbial wolves if you hire someone who makes a royal mess of something.

His troll is a SR3 beast. You know SR3. The edition where Intimidation tests benefit aggressors with low Charisma and penalize high Charisma. Where size and physical stats of the trollish variety also benefit the intimidator.

How ok low stats are depends on the GM.

Strength a dump stat? Means the GM never has tasks like "carry the knocked out target out" or "Pull the team member up before he loses his grip on the rope".

Charisma a dump stat? That works, if the GM doesn't let NPCs react to people based on circumstances and stats or doesn't really have many social encounters.

If the game semi-regularily has some arm wrestling or other strength related tasks, and has the best looking NPCs got for the high-charisma characters in a bar when they want some company, then Strength and Charisma won't be dump stats for long.

every single character I've ever made (thank God for Daegann's Chargen program) has always had some stats put into every stat. Heck I know that it may not be normal, but my Street Sammies all have stats at a minimum of 3... ALL Stats (even Charisma). Sure I don't have 7's in body, strength and/or reaction, but I do have the ability to do other tasks other than shoot people.

I am going to add my 2 nuyen at this point.

I have to say that first off, I play in ToreadorVampire's game (irc.otherworlders.org #sr4e Sundays at 4PM GMT) and I have a charisma 1. It means that in any kind of situation that I will have to argue about anything I have a high chance of losing.

Sonya Asics is a cold character and behaves at times more like a machine than well human. You give her an order and she will follow it. Problems appear when conflicting orders are given...

Anyways I noticed the hard reality of having a charisma of 1... this is from a summary of what happened during one game session:

[18:10] <~ToreadorVampire> Sonya overhears some staff speaking with other about something, and withdrawing to a private meeting room ...
[18:10] <~ToreadorVampire> ... she follows and tries to covertly eavesdrop on their conversation by leaning against the door to the room.
[18:11] <~ToreadorVampire> She fails to realise they hadn't put the door on the latch and stumbles/falls through the door into the meeting
[18:11] <~ToreadorVampire> She hears the words "a fortnight" before they all turn and draw guns on her, and start barking orders/threats in japanese
[18:11] <~ToreadorVampire> Dreamer translates for her via commlink and she tries a bluff, which fails.
[18:12] <~ToreadorVampire> They lock her in the room on her own for a moment as Dreamer turns up and tries a distraction. She thinks this is a lost cause though and ends up throwing a bomb into the room ...
[18:12] <~ToreadorVampire> ... actually, the bomb is her purse, filled with foam explosives
[18:13] <~ToreadorVampire> The explosion stuns the Yakuza inside, and in the confusion all hell breaks loose. Sonya kicks one yakuza to the ground, killing him outright, and takes his gun[...]

Chuck Norris-like chaos ensures. If Sonya had somehow bluffed her way out it could have worked, and she failed miserably. Physically she was a street sam who walked in on a party and was looking for a fight.

Having a 1 in any stat in my games will bite the PC's.
Only about 20 a 25% in my games is spent on an actual run, the rest is character driven roleplay so a lot of social situations come up.

Low charisma can have a lot of repercussions.
Most PC's have personal contacts, which means they have to negotiate with them directly.
People with low Charisma rarely get to make the proper connections for the well paying contracts.
(Even if they are pro's in their field they will make social blunders along the way)
Insulting a powerful or well connected NPC could have serious consequences.

Strength a dumpstat? Most athletics tests use strength!
In the last few games I played, the PC's had to:
* Jump/climb over walls
* Evade/dig/jump under or over electrified fences
* Run for their lives through the compound hallways, before the HTR arrived
* Climb down/up in an elevator shaft that had no power
* Carry 2 immobilised people up a steep slope, while being chased
* Rooftop chase over the catwalks/railings/fire escapes
* ...

A str1 PC will have a very hard time keeping up with all that, while carrying body armour + weapons + other equipment.

Same for me. I'm not trying to be an ass about it but a character with a 1 in any particular stat might have to make checks in my games which I'd handwave to other players. But then I try to make my players create more well-rounded characters rather than one-trick ponies.

The Attribute only makes up half the equation though. What is the big deal if a character has a 3 Charisma and a 3 Negotiation, or has a 1 Charisma and a 5 Negotiation? Both characters are still technically as effective as a professional salesman

Just had to highlight those couple of points because they're really good ones. Bravo.

Strength is important by itself for a number of checks.

For charisma - I think anyone using charisma as a dump stat won't be spending BPs on negotiation 5. Or maybe he plans to raise charisma first thing in game.

And to expand the example, what about the Cha 7 character with no negotiation? Or the Cha 5, Negotiation 1 character? All four characters have a dice pool of 6, right?

They could ultimately achieve the same results (assuming they got the same # of successes), but the NPCs would walk away with slightly different impressions of the encounter... assuming the NPC being negotiatied with isn't a rapid, unreasonable jerk (as most Mr. J's and Fixers are presented), of course. Something like:

Cha 3 + Neg 3: That guy had his act together. Reasonable bargainer. Probably ought to add him to my contacts.
Cha 5 + Neg 1: Nice guy, not much of a talker though. Probably ought to add him to my contacts.
Cha 1 + Neg 5: Kind of a prick, but he knows his business. At least he's professional.
Cha 7 + Neg 0: I hope that guy gets his stuff together soon. He'll make a great Face if the shadows don't eat him alive first.

For me, its just flavor. It might color the NPC's reaction in the future, but I'm not going to go and out penalize any of those characters.

One could also rule charisma as the "unconscious" part of making an impression. The charisma 1 negotiation 5 type would be leaving a much different impression if he's not being actively using that negotiation, but just "being social" and hanging out than the 7 charisma character.

The tally is in: the twinks win this one

Though I think that playing flawed characters, while it might be munchy build-wise, is often a lot more fun than playing a regular person. I AM a regular person. Well, no I'm not. But I know lots and lots of regular people, and am pretty good at acting like one. It's not a challenge. A character who is just a person without anything unusual about them is just no fun. I'd rather play someone who's really strong, or really fast, or really smart, because that's a hook that makes them worthwhile. And because they have that hook, they'll also have some kind of weakness. I think that good RP can incorporate people with both strengths and weaknesses. In fact, playing someone without either strengths or weaknesses, who is more or less average in everything, is much less conducive to RP. If you're an average person playing as an average person, guess what you're doing: you're playing yourself, more often than not. And that's not good roleplaying.

Here's my 2 cents on it: Charisma 1 means that you will automatically fail all social skill checks of normal difficulty you are untrained in. It also means you might have to roll skill checks for social encounters that most people succeed at automatically, such as asking for directions or the time.

That said, such characters can still be playable if they have sufficient skills, influence skill group 1 should suffice for most interaction. Fluff wise, charisma 1 characters aren't that rare and doesen't have to be unbearable. Lof self-esteem, shyness, or lack of social antennas can all be represented by cha 1.

I think it's kind of unclear at times exactly what an attribute of 1 means. It's open to interpretation and might vary (hopefully based on mutual consensus between players and GM) from game to game. In my mind, Forrest Gump was a good example of a Logic=1 stat - clearly deficient, gets him in trouble a lot of times, but not entirely non-functional. There are lots of people more severely retarded than Forest Gump, but they don't get to run the shadows as player characters.

Similary, in my mind Charisma = 1 might be equivalent to someone with Asperger's syndrome. People with Asperger's hold down jobs and accomplish plenty in the real world, but have difficulty connecting with others, are singled out as weird/different almost immediately, etc.

Any character with a 1 in any of their stats is going to run into significant challenges sooner or later (at least roleplaying challenges if nothing else). But so is the guy who chooses Uncouth, Uneducated, Passifist, Gremlins, Hunted, or any number of other qualities. Sometimes that's what the player is looking for.

charisma 1 is NOT aspergers! if anything aspergers syndroms would be a negative quality with multiple levels of severity. you can have a charisma 6 person with aspergers. i would define it as a situational penalty, with an increased xp cost to raise social skills. the syndrome is a spectrum with a wide range from almost normal to full on autism.

The elf.


She can get paid to do it...by the victim...and he'll thank her.

Yes, but you should also keep in mind that the troll will get positive modifiers. His dice pool won't be as high as the charisma 7/11 elf's but he'll have some dices to roll even with his extremely low charisma.

Oh yeah baby!

i can see it now . . the elven dominatrix . . *shudders*

The elf, hands down, every time.

Big and strong doesn't mean smart, able to improvise, or adept at reading people. It doesn't mean confident (deep down inside), capable of self-control while torturing someone, it doesn't mean slick and able to adjust tone just right. It doesn't mean able to ask the right question the right way at the right time (while working with your hands). It doesn't mean able to tell when the subject is about to break, about to pass out, about to snap completely. Strong muscles don't mean you've got the deep-rooted certainty of someone with a genuinely high (perhaps too high) sense of self, the cold, calculating, ability to command someone to spill their guts to you, perhaps while literally physically spilling their guts yourself.

You don't want the looming troll to listen to you, or like you. You don't want to please them. You don't trust them to know what you're saying, to listen to the truth behind your pain. You just want them to stop punching you in the face. An elf with an 11 charisma? You want them to stop hurting, you trust them completely when they say the pain will end as soon as you talk, and the only reason in the world you want the bleeding to stop is so the pounding in your ears will die down and you can hear her whisper something soothing to you after you've answered her questions.

Some of that comes from other attributes elves tend to have over trolls (like intelligence/perception), and some certainly comes from skills instead of attributes at all. But the point stands.

Trolls and orks and high strength and body scores might be handy for short-term, quick fix, "outta the way, Peck!" intimidation tests.

But to really fuck someone's head, to peel them open and learn what you're after and maybe even leave them alive at the end of it, I'd go with the inhumanly charismatic elf every single time.

Unless you're dealing with someone who so distrusts Elves that they lose what dice their race gives them in the test, and then some.