The game’s Basic Rules (the ones they just give away for free) say the following:
Intelligence, measuring reasoning and memory
Wisdom, measuring perception and insight
Charisma, measuring force of personality
and the DMG says:
A character with high Intelligence might be highly inquisitive and studious, while a character with low Intelligence might speak simply or easily forget details.
A character with high Wisdom has good judgment, empathy, and a general awareness of what’s going on. A character with low Wisdom might be absent-minded, foolhardy, or oblivious.
A character with high Charisma exudes confidence, which is usually mixed with a graceful or intimidating presence. A character with a low Charisma might come across as abrasive, inarticulate, or timid.
Combining these descriptions, I believe
Intelligence is about learning facts, recalling them, and analyzing situations
Wisdom is about intuition and feelings, noticing people and things, and understanding the relationships among them
So if Charisma is, as it’s described to be, the ability that has the most to do with someone knowing what they’re about then why do statuses and effects like Charmed and Frightened call for Wisdom saving throws?
Why is Forcecage - an evocation spell (“powerful elemental effects”) - a Charisma save?
What about the illusion spells that have Intelligence saves?
Phantasmal Force: it pulls an Inception on the target and plants a delusion directly into their mind, making them believe something that isn’t real
Mental Prison: doesn’t affect targets immune to being Charmed, which is (bafflingly) a Wisdom save. And, hey, half-elves have advantage against being charmed, does that apply on these saves?
Illusory Dragon: a straight-up illusion; saving against it lets a character notice that it’s not real. Not “deduce”, not “reason”, just “notice”
There are about a dozen each of 5e spells with Intelligence or Charisma saves, and 4-5 times that many that have Wisdom saves. What gives?
Something I’ve been thinking way too much about that doesn’t make sense to me is intimidation being a charisma check. If you’re a fighter or barbarian who is an intimidating figure but isn’t very charismatic, you take a hit to your ability to intimidate.
I feel like certain classes should use strength to intimidate.
Also I’ve been playing a fighter with low charisma and that’s why it’s bugging me
Oh buddy you have stumbled into the splash zone of one of my TED talks tentatively titled 5e’s Skills are Coupled too Tightly (and Inappropriately) to Abilities
I started writing a whole long thing and decided to scrap that would-be blog post.
Poor Sara has had to hear this one too many times, but I have a similar issue with the notion of lockpicking: it’s always presented as a DEX (Sleight of Hand) to bypass the lock, or a STR (Athletics) to try breaking it. That’s it; it’s just one of those two things.
There’s never any mention of using INT to investigate whether the latch can be manipulated with the medieval fantasy equivalent of a Bic pen cap (this is a real-world exploit!), WIS to spot a weakening defect in the materials, or even some point of leverage to break it apart. And if there’s no explicit rule listed for it, a lot of DMs are going to “default to closed” and rule it out as an option.
So the core game loop really matters here:
The DM describes the setting
The players take turns describing what their characters are doing
The DM determines what, if any, dice rolls are needed to resolve those actions
So for your Intimidation attempts, maybe your DM isn’t getting the right information from you, or maybe they’re just making the wrong call. There’s a big difference (to me) between these two situations:
Himbo the Fighter gets in the guard’s face and snarls a threat at them
and
Himbo locks eyes with the guard as he menacingly flexes his biceps and does that “bouncing pectorals” thing to show how strong he is
YMMV but, for me, that second one is going to get me asking you for a STR check because it narrated a specific way that the character used their physique and athleticism, not their social presence
**Edit to add: I would love to hear other players and DMs’ opinions on this one and I really hope I don’t come off like I’m saying anyone is “playing it wrong”
