[MunchkinMan]

If charity could be avoided because you just wanted to discard cards in the middle of your turn, then it wouldn't have to exist. The whole point of the hand limit is this: At the end of your turn, you must have 5 cards or less. It's not that at any given time you must have 5 cards or less. This means that, during your turn, you can play any cards, legally of course, until you've run out of things you can (or want) to do. At that point, if you're over 5 cards, you must give the excess away unless you're lowest (or tied for lowest) level, at which point you can discard the excess. So, no, you can't just discard cards with the excuse that you have to get your hand size down because it doesn't matter until you've decided that your turn is over, at which point you enter the Charity phase.