Any way for ntlm_auth + winbind to not use ms-chap?

I'd like to use some other auth mechanism to pass the user/pass combination to the radius server and have it test there without having to go through the MS-CHAP challenge-response rigmorale. Main reason being getting Perl on the NAS side to manage all the MS-CHAP stuff appears to be a new problem to solve, somehow. How can this be done, and why shouldn't it be? Thanks, Mike