Charisma (Insight)

Quote from Erokow32 >>

Quote from MidnightPlat >>

It's pretty obvious the skills assigned to charisma are, yes, social but projectively so.  There is an imposition being done in every instance of a skill bound to Charisma.  Again, charisma in the English language is not associated with understanding but able to influence.*  Wisdom skills are all based on receptive deliberations, and predicated on understanding.  You assess the environment, the immediate situation, a person's manner, or an injury and you respond accordingly through a mix of intuition and experience.  

*Really, do a deep dive into a dictionary, because it's not so much rules lawyering you're coming up against so much as it is folks with a better grasp of what the words mean and how they've played out in every edition of the game.  

 Why couldn't you just leave it at your first paragraph? It's a great arguement, and one that I don't have a good retort to. The personal attack at the end, though. Jerk move bro.

Because this whole discussion seems predicated on what words mean, and the OP's neglect of that in favor of some real broad brushes on what social skills are.  Talking the advice to get at the deep roots and grammar behind "words we live by" or at least "words we play by" is something everyone should do.  I'm sorry you're too fragile to criticism to recognize that.

I must say, I kinda agree with the OP on this one.  Insight does "feel" more of a charisma based skill due to it being a social skill.  But practically it needs to be wisdom.  

However, with it being Wisdom based allows for the shenannigans where two high charisma + low Wisdom characters can tell each other more and more outlandish lies without either of them knowing that the other is not telling the truth.  To tell a lie is charisma, to determine if someone is lying is wisdom can create for some better roleplay as otherwise a high charisma bard can just be a "truth seeker" and will always be able to determine every lie from NPCs.  

The best liars are often the most easily deceived.

Well, since the five years dead corpse of this Topic has been subjected to Animate Dead, it might be worth looking at what the 2024 rules say. 

For the general descriptions of the six abilities:

Wisdom: Perceptiveness and mental fortitude

Charisma: Confidence, poise, and charm

Examples of when ability checks might use those abilities:

Wisdom checks: Notice things in the environment or in creatures’ behavior

Charisma checks: Influence, entertain, or deceive

The 2024 rules thus make it more explicit that Insight is about perceiving a creature’s emotions and intentions, whereas Charisma is about projecting the character’s own will onto the creature.

Additionally, Insight now uses the Search action, whereas other social skills, like Persuasion, use the Influence action.

That is worded much nicer than previously.  I do appreciate the work they did on making the language clearer across most areas in 5.5e.  

It’s important to remember that the mental stats are all pretty qualitative abstracts and the division of those skills is partly arbitrary for the purpose of allowing different characters/classes to fill different niches, as previously noted. Yes, one can attempt to make an appeal to realism that a high INT character can Sherlock scan others for cues and tells, but that lies outside the scope of 5e’s intended design.