I don't think people get how bad a 3 is. 3 INT is not Forrest Gump, it's a wild animal. 3 CON is someone who is extremely unlikely to survive to adulthood at all even living a peaceful life at home. 3 STR or DEX is severely physically disabled.
An 8 in a stat can present every one of the "I'm bad at this" roleplaying opportunities short of an actual disability (which is distasteful for its own reasons on top of requiring everyone to suspend disbelief as to why you're adventuring at all).
I might roll stats for a goofy one-shot, but for a game with any seriousness it just has no appeal to me. Stats too low are either glossed over or end up making light of RL disabilities. Stats too high leave no room for growth. Both lead to power imbalance within the party. I get that it's fun to roll for things, but you have the whole rest of the game to do that.
Someone else put it well. A character with TRASH stats generally forces the game to be played/balanced around them instead of around the party as a whole.
But a lot of my issue comes down to the RP. I'm not going to let the player who is functionally brain dead, be played like your standard 9-11 INT character who at least understands what is happening around them. I'm also not super into rewarding my players with magic items (real or homebrew) to compensate for them being flaming dog shit terrible at something. But again it comes down to how well it's roleplayed. Like if you get a player who CAN roleplay the character who's very existence is offensive to man, woman, child, inanimate objects then sure i'd allow that. But if you choose to keep a 3-5 and play your character like they are the passable or even good at that skill, then i'm going to come down like an cartoon anvil.
There's a built in mechanic, where the character takes a -4 on a check for something they've got a 3 in. As long as they play the character with poor memory, pattern recognition, etc. they're good in my book. If they role-play a character who can exhibit complex thought, you can say at the table "do you really thing the character can conceive of that?" Let's also remember that in terms of common sense INT and WIS can overlap. INT is basically intellectual capacity. WIS is arguably emotional intelligence, but also reasoning through feelings/intuition, like when to use and when not to use all caps. I could see a perfectly functional character with a low INT but modest WIS being able to perform just fine in "the real world" outside of the being able to recount their actions. If a player wanted to play an impulsive brute type, INT/WIS dump stats are acceptable. But if one reaches the floor and the other is middling, a DM who uses the flexibility inherent in the RAW shouldn't find such a character the wretch you're laying out here, unless the player wants to play such. wretch.
Back to my earlier comments in this thread. A wolf has an INT of 3. A wolf understands hierarchies to the point that they can coordinate to fight in combat with advantage through the use of pack tactics (a capacity to work together that's often lacking in many first time players). I'm not going to flip through the MM for you, though I'd encourage anyone prejudiced to low stats to actually check it out and read it generously rather than an effort to support prejudice on what you think the numbers mean. I'm pretty sure a read through would support the contention that there is a broad range of cunning that can be exhibited with precedent in an INT of 3. Again, nothing in RAW harms a PCs languages because of low INT (I'll grant stripping "literacy" from the character if a DM feels it's "right"). So the character may be simple, and isn't the one you want doing arcana checks, but they aren't any more dysfunctional than a mechanical -4.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I don't think people get how bad a 3 is. 3 INT is not Forrest Gump, it's a wild animal. 3 CON is someone who is extremely unlikely to survive to adulthood at all even living a peaceful life at home. 3 STR or DEX is severely physically disabled.
Where in the rules is your base move compromised by a 3? Yes, they should role-play significant muscular weakness or some sort of nerve disorder. Their body is broken, like some canonical D&D characters. But folks really over interpret what's actually there. They have a -4. Lifting capacity would be low. For example in Delta Green, if you got a 6 in STR, let's presume you got a bad. back.
An 8 in a stat can present every one of the "I'm bad at this" roleplaying opportunities short of an actual disability (which is distasteful for its own reasons on top of requiring everyone to suspend disbelief as to why you're adventuring at all).
Didn't "Bromm the Broken" win the Game of Thrones. Let's not put our personal prejudices ahead of a broad understanding of the ways a human body can present itself in the world, including a fantasy world.
I might roll stats for a goofy one-shot, but for a game with any seriousness it just has no appeal to me. Stats too low are either glossed over or end up making light of RL disabilities. Stats too high leave no room for growth. Both lead to power imbalance within the party. I get that it's fun to roll for things, but you have the whole rest of the game to do that.
Before gaming embraced a lot of players not wanting to feel their stats are bad, stats were sort of like "the hand you were dealt" and it's the players job to play the hand. Adaptation can be fun. I can understand folks wanting their characters "on the path to excellence" ... because there's a lot of ideological and cultural presumptions to unpack there. However I think folks with a broad range of human experience with a broad range of experiences among a broad range of human beings, with sensitivity, can play any hand their dealt by dice. "the whole rest of the game" does that anyway, right? But if you want to start privileged, as "normal or above", the rules allow that too ;). If a DM isn't comfortable with low stats and what that may lead to in the game (possible a character that becomes a liability, but not necessarily), sure boost them.
You are looking at it through the lens of "what do the mechanics say/ how would this effect my rolls?" which is the exact opposite of what the core question asks. The whole point of the question is RP based. If the only thing you care about is how the modifiers play out, one could easily play a character with a 1 in a stat. Sure it means a -5 but if the only thing that matters is how it effects your roles, there is no reason you couldn't play the character as if they are a genius who uses flowery language and is prone towards figuring out complex puzzles.
You are looking at it through the lens of "what do the mechanics say/ how would this effect my rolls?" which is the exact opposite of what the core question asks. The whole point of the question is RP based. If the only thing you care about is how the modifiers play out, one could easily play a character with a 1 in a stat. Sure it means a -5 but if the only thing that matters is how it effects your roles, there is no reason you couldn't play the character as if they are a genius who uses flowery language and is prone towards figuring out complex puzzles.
First off your question isn't well put in the first place. You ask "how bad do you allow your players to be?" when a much better and accurate formulation is "how low do you allow your players' scores to be?"
As for your reply, on the contrary rather than strictly looking at mechanics, I am offer ways low scores can still produce functional human beings despite your prejudices as to what is and isn't a "good" or "bad" character. I highlighted your typo because it's sort of my point. Of course a 3 in character generation affects the _roles_ as well as the rolls, but does need not in the way in which you dictate that such a character would be "character who's(SIC) very existence is offensive to man, woman, child, inanimate objects" (weird word choice, by the way, Mismeasure of Man much, bro,?). A 3 INT may not be _academically_ gifted or thrives in a _rote_ learning environment, but if they had more moderately stetted WIS and CHR, they could be what you'd probably recognize as a functional human. I also provided speculation on how someone who did dumpster WIS/INT could nevertheless function. You're over-reading what INT determines. Again, where do the rules quantify any of the stats outside of what they do in game performance. Basically, your presumptions about what INT is in the game is leading you to reject low stats. Again, you can play "on the path to excellence" track, most seem to. But a player and DM with some imagination, and also versed in RL theories of intelligence, and human performance can allow low stats. Will such a character succeed in skill checks as well as others? Of course not, but I'm not the one insisting such a character can't be played because of faulty assumptions of what stats allow in terms of role playing. Low INT? Sure very unlearned, bad memory, not able to follow or aritculate complex ideas or procedures. Low WIS? Impulsive, maybe pathologically so. Low CHR perhaps lacks affect. Low STR? Perhaps due to injury or condition at birth. Low Dex? Same thing. Low CON? Prone to illness. Those are just off the top of my head (informed by playing plenty of systems which allow for a broad range of possible ability scores, including the game we're talking about). This isn't hard. I'm just saying your impasse is perhaps too much a hard line.
It's funny you think I just focus on mechanical possibility when I actually referenced a game that uses a similar point spread (6 scores of 3-18) that requires the player to explain _why_ any of their stats are below 9 or over 12. Role playing and mechanics are best when integrated, I think your problem isn't so much that the option to have low stats exist are presented in the rules but you don't seem to be able to fathom a way to read low stats besides the presumptive character get euthanasia you impose when such "offensive" numbers are generated. Again, you want everyone at your table to have an easy path to champion, nothing wrong with that. But adventuring is often done by those who are trying to lift themselves up from adversity, and sometimes that adversity is contended how life's dice rolled out. Some players enjoy figuring out those characters.
Look at what the rules say, look to see how the character is penalized. Realize the game stat INT is very limited in comparison to the myriad way "intelligence" is identified in real life, and RP from there. Or just hold onto your presumption, though I think that's short sighted.
If they want to go low, let them play low. If the way they're playing low seems to conflict with your understanding of how the stat is supposed to work, you talk about. Or you can canvas the board for people who agree with you. Again lots of people playing who find sub 10 unthinkable ... yet the option is there and people play it. Some quite well, IMHO having DM'd them.
I offered my players the chance to reroll their characters once, and also to reroll any number of times if the stats they got gave 3 or more scores below 10. They decided they wanted to randomly roll, but I don't want people to have to run characters which feel weak when they are supposed to be heroes.
As a result, we have just 2 characters with a stat that's really high ( a 20 in constitution for the tank and an 18 in strength for a half-orc artificer from a tribe of orcs who favour strength over all things) so it worked out reasonably well!
The first roll someone did had 4, 5 and 7 as 3 of the stats, which is where the reroll was introduced. In all cases, if you choose to reroll, you're stuck with the new roll.
I don't see any need to be super strict with character creation, as players will need to enjoy playing as them, and as DM I can know their weaknesses and play to them if I want to give them a decent challenge! I'd far rather have a couple of players with overly high stats than a couple of players with overly low stats. If one player has huge strength and takes all the strength checks, I'll introduce puzzles which require multiple people to attempt strength checks at once, perhaps allowing them to shine by single-handedly lifting something whilst two people have to take the other, but not leaving the person with 16 strength always on the sidelines to the one with 18 strength!
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
I have played a lot of D&D over the years and have not seen anything lower than a 6 or 7. Of course now that I've said that my next bunch of PCs are going to be terrible!
A three in a mental stat requires a bit of RP. A 3 in a physical stat doesn't require much RP, you're already limited by penalties.
mmmm Ability scores: 161512101511
If a player rolls that low and they want to play it, then you play it. You can't forbid it unless they become overly disruptive to the game.
I don't let my players roll for stats, just because I want neither overpowered nor inferior characters as a starting point in my campaigns. I have been playing since the eighties, and I have never seen a player have fun with a stat-crippled character more than a few hours. It's a concept gimmick, nothing more. Point buy or array make for a better game in the long run, imho.
I don't let my players roll for stats, just because I want neither overpowered nor inferior characters as a starting point in my campaigns. I have been playing since the eighties, and I have never seen a player have fun with a stat-crippled character more than a few hours.
Like many I too have been playing since the 80s and often did the "my player becomes a farmer, so I'm rolling another one" thing that Steven Colbert once talked about too. I was a kid in the 80s. I couldn't figure being anything other than being a hero made sense in the game. Of course I wanted to be a winner. It's way subsequent and the present editions accommodate the vast amounts of players that want to player "winners" too by making at least basic if not superior stats more accessible. It's the "upward and onward" style I described. Before I go I'll pause here to address
It's a concept gimmick, nothing more. Point buy or array make for a better game in the long run, imho.
"concept gimmick" pretty much describes pretty much every aspect of the game, I think. I'm not sure what you're getting at other than an effort at being derisively dismissive. Point buy and array certainly narrow the expectations of play to a type of fun. That's not to disrespect that type of fun. It's just to point out you're talking a "mode" of play that I think in this thread is being mistaken as a universal.
Anyway back to folks wanting to play the winner all. the. time. Maybe you're through line from the 80s till now is an ever increasing prize that gleams brighter and brighter each time you play the winner. I, and others, appreciate the game's design also accommodates the ability to play .. the loser. I think it makes for a better player to play "low" sometimes.
I'm not gas bagging here. Almost every art form I've grown to appreciate or dabble in has either a full on school of thinking if not exercises in the path to mastery which involves disabling the artist's technique, stripping down what's taken for granted, to develop a closer relationship with their practice. The most infamous exercise is a writer who can't use the letter "e". Hamstrung this way the thinking goes you really learn how to think through language when you're frustrated by it. Samuel Beckett specialized in fiction that reduced the taken for granted notions of character in fiction, or really every element in fiction. And he won the Nobel Prize. There's lots of other examples in music and the visual arts, concrete arts is related to this. In martial arts, particularly the. practical ones, or rather just fight training there are scenarios one's put through where they put a limb in a tournequette type imobility, hit you in the face with pepper spray etc. To teach you to fight in diminished capacity, you walk, limp or are carried away from such trainings with a greater appreciation of human performance in stress. Same with shooting, there pistol exercises where you're taught to do the course of fire one handed (usually off handed), including the reloads (usually. allowed, but kydex holsters are sometimes considered "cheating"). Will probably be the worst training shoot of your life, but you walk away with a better appreciation of the practice.
Besides the above quasi-gnostic deep game appreciation I contend low stats allow you to dwell in (yeah that sort of "dwell" art people who read stuff like "Building, Dwelling, Thinking"), I'd also say just look at most modern/contemporary or even historic hero narratives. The hero is almost always brought low and audiences tend to learn much more about the hero in those moments. Why not make that "low" the character's nature? I guess I like playing like I like living, unfiltered and I want to see all of it, not just the stuff set in the best light.
If you and everyone else doesn't see it, that's fine. It doesn't mean it's not there though.
I allow my players to choose among the standard stat generation methods. If you choose to roll stats, you take what you get. It might be an 18; it might be a 3.
I think it’s a mistake to overload ability scores to force role play. If you look at them through the lense of game mechanics, they only affect doing something when a check is required. Most everyday actions don’t require checks, so it’s implied that even the lowest score is not debilitating.
If you insist someone RP to a 3, you implicitly can’t allow an 18 (at least for int/wis/cha), because only a handful of humans on the planet could actually play that.
Ability scores are a very crude abstraction that are used for resolving non trivial attempts to do things. While I wouldn’t discourage a player from role playing to a low score, I think the more interesting RP comes from the effects and interactions as they attempt and fail actions more often.
I think it warrants a discussion with the player. The worst I have ever rolled in all my years of playing was a 5 (3,1,1,1). I ended up playing a "Friar Tuck" like cleric who was VERY overweight so the 5 went into Dex. I think the one stat that is low is okay. If they rolled 2 stats at sub 8, we would melt those dice down as a warning to the others.
I played a 4 Wisdom for a one-shot once. I really did play the character as impulsive. He didn't really know how to tell friend from foe. The quest giver had said, "These areas are off limits." Of course my character went right there. And when caught, he made a flimsy excuse. And tried to sneak in again when the guy was out of sight.
That said, there was another recent thread about how the player has to be responsible for certain aspects of the game, and the character is responsible for others. 18 Int doesn't mean you get to roll for the answer to the puzzle or to guess the BBEG's secret plans. By the same token, 4 Int doesn't mean you don't get to participate in solving the puzzle.
There are ways to get around this narratively. For example, I was on a solo adventure and my 10 Int character was presented with a rather difficult codebreaking challenge. I, the player, solved it, and then we rolled an Int check to see how long it would take my character to solve it. Generally when you're with your group you can just pretend the 18 Int Wizard came up with the solution solo, when really it was a group effort by 12 - 14 Int players who couldn't have solved it on their own, at least not in a few hours.
I do think it's fun to role-play a low stat and to make that part of the challenge. It really shouldn't be impossible to survive, when you have friends to help you out. Got really low strength and can't possibly jump the chasm? That's okay. Your barbarian friend can throw you, or the wizard can cast Floating Disk and go first.
My players roll their stats, and then I take a view on what they rolled. They all roll stats in front of one another during session zero.
For my current players, the first player rolled stats and got a fairly reasonable set, with a highest score of 15 in one stat. Not bad, not amazing.
The second player then rolled, and their rolls were absolute disasters. Two stats were 7s, with no stat higher than 12. So I allowed them to reroll their stats... and they then scored two 17s and a 16. So I said "Ok, so in order to be fair on player 1, we agreed to change one of the 17s to one of the 7s that they rolled originally.
This has been the best campaign that I've run since I started DM'ing 24 years ago. What really makes the difference is having players who want the game to be the best it can be.
I have, because of events in my life that aren't worth going into, a highly overdeveloped sense of fairness. I speak out the moment I see something I perceive as incorrect or wrong, and I will go on and on. Usually, I'm trying to help. I see myself as just doing what I should do when I point out the flaws. People have taken the time to speak to me specifically, and tell me I wouldn't be welcome in their games, and that's really fair enough, given my own sense of fairness, I should just listen and go away. I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread again, but again, here I am. I will allow people to do anything they choose, all that bothers me is that when they roleplay, and they ignore the consequences of their choices, it upsets me.
There is a thread about "Rolling to Think", and it's said to be a terrible thing. It's asking that people be handed things because "my character would know that, and I don't. They have better scores than I do, they are more familiar with the setting than I ever could be." And then they want to roll dice to let their character take advantage of what they can't do themselves.
As was mentioned, physical stats usually enforce their own penalties just fine. Mental stats can be very hard to use and petty much require that you roll to think or whatever. If you use your own ability to solve a puzzle and let your character use the solution, (I mean no insult to you Pavilionaire, it's just that you gave a great example of the problem) you have just given your character the ability to think as well as you do. Unless your character has the same intelligence as you do, is that right? I can't judge it, that's the kind of call I'm worst at. It's the same with all the scores.
I feel like Int and Wis are the hardest ones to deal with. And are often the ones where I’m forced to ask myself (really? Would your character really be able to know that?…). Like give me a character with 3 STR or 3 Dex and I’ll say they are basically paralyzed, but use there teammate (a Goliath or Orge) as a mount, that they are strapped into.
I think my big issue is that most people I’ve seen play a character with a bad stat, don’t really play the stat. Like a character with 5 STR deciding “yup I’m going to jump that gap, just like everyone else”. I’ve seen a few pull it off, but most act like their character wouldn’t already know they are not built to handle the issue. I can see a 10 INT character eventually figuring out the complex puzzle. I can’t see the 3 INT character doing that.
There are ways to get around this narratively. For example, I was on a solo adventure and my 10 Int character was presented with a rather difficult codebreaking challenge. I, the player, solved it, and then we rolled an Int check to see how long it would take my character to solve it
What I tend to do in those situations is Columbo it a bit. If I've figured out something my dumb character hasn't, I'll go to one of the smart characters and ask leading questions to try and guide them to the solution. "Hey wizard, I really can't wrap my head around this. If we know A and B, why hasn't C happened?" That sort of thing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
The method my group of friends use is extremely forgiving. When we roll for stats, if your average is below 13 you can reroll the lowest stat until your average is 13 or higher. Usually this will end up with a stat array that is stronger than Standard Array or Point Buy, so its understandable if thats not the route you wanted to go. You could also use a similar approach, but with a lower average (like 10) to try and make the final array have a few weaknesses
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews!Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I don't think people get how bad a 3 is. 3 INT is not Forrest Gump, it's a wild animal. 3 CON is someone who is extremely unlikely to survive to adulthood at all even living a peaceful life at home. 3 STR or DEX is severely physically disabled.
An 8 in a stat can present every one of the "I'm bad at this" roleplaying opportunities short of an actual disability (which is distasteful for its own reasons on top of requiring everyone to suspend disbelief as to why you're adventuring at all).
I might roll stats for a goofy one-shot, but for a game with any seriousness it just has no appeal to me. Stats too low are either glossed over or end up making light of RL disabilities. Stats too high leave no room for growth. Both lead to power imbalance within the party. I get that it's fun to roll for things, but you have the whole rest of the game to do that.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
There's a built in mechanic, where the character takes a -4 on a check for something they've got a 3 in. As long as they play the character with poor memory, pattern recognition, etc. they're good in my book. If they role-play a character who can exhibit complex thought, you can say at the table "do you really thing the character can conceive of that?" Let's also remember that in terms of common sense INT and WIS can overlap. INT is basically intellectual capacity. WIS is arguably emotional intelligence, but also reasoning through feelings/intuition, like when to use and when not to use all caps. I could see a perfectly functional character with a low INT but modest WIS being able to perform just fine in "the real world" outside of the being able to recount their actions. If a player wanted to play an impulsive brute type, INT/WIS dump stats are acceptable. But if one reaches the floor and the other is middling, a DM who uses the flexibility inherent in the RAW shouldn't find such a character the wretch you're laying out here, unless the player wants to play such. wretch.
Back to my earlier comments in this thread. A wolf has an INT of 3. A wolf understands hierarchies to the point that they can coordinate to fight in combat with advantage through the use of pack tactics (a capacity to work together that's often lacking in many first time players). I'm not going to flip through the MM for you, though I'd encourage anyone prejudiced to low stats to actually check it out and read it generously rather than an effort to support prejudice on what you think the numbers mean. I'm pretty sure a read through would support the contention that there is a broad range of cunning that can be exhibited with precedent in an INT of 3. Again, nothing in RAW harms a PCs languages because of low INT (I'll grant stripping "literacy" from the character if a DM feels it's "right"). So the character may be simple, and isn't the one you want doing arcana checks, but they aren't any more dysfunctional than a mechanical -4.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Where in the rules is your base move compromised by a 3? Yes, they should role-play significant muscular weakness or some sort of nerve disorder. Their body is broken, like some canonical D&D characters. But folks really over interpret what's actually there. They have a -4. Lifting capacity would be low. For example in Delta Green, if you got a 6 in STR, let's presume you got a bad. back.
Didn't "Bromm the Broken" win the Game of Thrones. Let's not put our personal prejudices ahead of a broad understanding of the ways a human body can present itself in the world, including a fantasy world.
Before gaming embraced a lot of players not wanting to feel their stats are bad, stats were sort of like "the hand you were dealt" and it's the players job to play the hand. Adaptation can be fun. I can understand folks wanting their characters "on the path to excellence" ... because there's a lot of ideological and cultural presumptions to unpack there. However I think folks with a broad range of human experience with a broad range of experiences among a broad range of human beings, with sensitivity, can play any hand their dealt by dice. "the whole rest of the game" does that anyway, right? But if you want to start privileged, as "normal or above", the rules allow that too ;). If a DM isn't comfortable with low stats and what that may lead to in the game (possible a character that becomes a liability, but not necessarily), sure boost them.
I
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
You are looking at it through the lens of "what do the mechanics say/ how would this effect my rolls?" which is the exact opposite of what the core question asks. The whole point of the question is RP based. If the only thing you care about is how the modifiers play out, one could easily play a character with a 1 in a stat. Sure it means a -5 but if the only thing that matters is how it effects your roles, there is no reason you couldn't play the character as if they are a genius who uses flowery language and is prone towards figuring out complex puzzles.
First off your question isn't well put in the first place. You ask "how bad do you allow your players to be?" when a much better and accurate formulation is "how low do you allow your players' scores to be?"
As for your reply, on the contrary rather than strictly looking at mechanics, I am offer ways low scores can still produce functional human beings despite your prejudices as to what is and isn't a "good" or "bad" character. I highlighted your typo because it's sort of my point. Of course a 3 in character generation affects the _roles_ as well as the rolls, but does need not in the way in which you dictate that such a character would be "character who's(SIC) very existence is offensive to man, woman, child, inanimate objects" (weird word choice, by the way, Mismeasure of Man much, bro,?). A 3 INT may not be _academically_ gifted or thrives in a _rote_ learning environment, but if they had more moderately stetted WIS and CHR, they could be what you'd probably recognize as a functional human. I also provided speculation on how someone who did dumpster WIS/INT could nevertheless function. You're over-reading what INT determines. Again, where do the rules quantify any of the stats outside of what they do in game performance. Basically, your presumptions about what INT is in the game is leading you to reject low stats. Again, you can play "on the path to excellence" track, most seem to. But a player and DM with some imagination, and also versed in RL theories of intelligence, and human performance can allow low stats. Will such a character succeed in skill checks as well as others? Of course not, but I'm not the one insisting such a character can't be played because of faulty assumptions of what stats allow in terms of role playing. Low INT? Sure very unlearned, bad memory, not able to follow or aritculate complex ideas or procedures. Low WIS? Impulsive, maybe pathologically so. Low CHR perhaps lacks affect. Low STR? Perhaps due to injury or condition at birth. Low Dex? Same thing. Low CON? Prone to illness. Those are just off the top of my head (informed by playing plenty of systems which allow for a broad range of possible ability scores, including the game we're talking about). This isn't hard. I'm just saying your impasse is perhaps too much a hard line.
It's funny you think I just focus on mechanical possibility when I actually referenced a game that uses a similar point spread (6 scores of 3-18) that requires the player to explain _why_ any of their stats are below 9 or over 12. Role playing and mechanics are best when integrated, I think your problem isn't so much that the option to have low stats exist are presented in the rules but you don't seem to be able to fathom a way to read low stats besides the presumptive character get euthanasia you impose when such "offensive" numbers are generated. Again, you want everyone at your table to have an easy path to champion, nothing wrong with that. But adventuring is often done by those who are trying to lift themselves up from adversity, and sometimes that adversity is contended how life's dice rolled out. Some players enjoy figuring out those characters.
Look at what the rules say, look to see how the character is penalized. Realize the game stat INT is very limited in comparison to the myriad way "intelligence" is identified in real life, and RP from there. Or just hold onto your presumption, though I think that's short sighted.
If they want to go low, let them play low. If the way they're playing low seems to conflict with your understanding of how the stat is supposed to work, you talk about. Or you can canvas the board for people who agree with you. Again lots of people playing who find sub 10 unthinkable ... yet the option is there and people play it. Some quite well, IMHO having DM'd them.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I offered my players the chance to reroll their characters once, and also to reroll any number of times if the stats they got gave 3 or more scores below 10. They decided they wanted to randomly roll, but I don't want people to have to run characters which feel weak when they are supposed to be heroes.
As a result, we have just 2 characters with a stat that's really high ( a 20 in constitution for the tank and an 18 in strength for a half-orc artificer from a tribe of orcs who favour strength over all things) so it worked out reasonably well!
The first roll someone did had 4, 5 and 7 as 3 of the stats, which is where the reroll was introduced. In all cases, if you choose to reroll, you're stuck with the new roll.
I don't see any need to be super strict with character creation, as players will need to enjoy playing as them, and as DM I can know their weaknesses and play to them if I want to give them a decent challenge! I'd far rather have a couple of players with overly high stats than a couple of players with overly low stats. If one player has huge strength and takes all the strength checks, I'll introduce puzzles which require multiple people to attempt strength checks at once, perhaps allowing them to shine by single-handedly lifting something whilst two people have to take the other, but not leaving the person with 16 strength always on the sidelines to the one with 18 strength!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
I have played a lot of D&D over the years and have not seen anything lower than a 6 or 7. Of course now that I've said that my next bunch of PCs are going to be terrible!
A three in a mental stat requires a bit of RP. A 3 in a physical stat doesn't require much RP, you're already limited by penalties.
mmmm Ability scores: 16 15 12 10 15 11
If a player rolls that low and they want to play it, then you play it. You can't forbid it unless they become overly disruptive to the game.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I don't let my players roll for stats, just because I want neither overpowered nor inferior characters as a starting point in my campaigns. I have been playing since the eighties, and I have never seen a player have fun with a stat-crippled character more than a few hours. It's a concept gimmick, nothing more. Point buy or array make for a better game in the long run, imho.
For the average game, I require my players to have a minimum stat total of 70. For a higher-level game, I set it to 75.
Like many I too have been playing since the 80s and often did the "my player becomes a farmer, so I'm rolling another one" thing that Steven Colbert once talked about too. I was a kid in the 80s. I couldn't figure being anything other than being a hero made sense in the game. Of course I wanted to be a winner. It's way subsequent and the present editions accommodate the vast amounts of players that want to player "winners" too by making at least basic if not superior stats more accessible. It's the "upward and onward" style I described. Before I go I'll pause here to address
"concept gimmick" pretty much describes pretty much every aspect of the game, I think. I'm not sure what you're getting at other than an effort at being derisively dismissive. Point buy and array certainly narrow the expectations of play to a type of fun. That's not to disrespect that type of fun. It's just to point out you're talking a "mode" of play that I think in this thread is being mistaken as a universal.
Anyway back to folks wanting to play the winner all. the. time. Maybe you're through line from the 80s till now is an ever increasing prize that gleams brighter and brighter each time you play the winner. I, and others, appreciate the game's design also accommodates the ability to play .. the loser. I think it makes for a better player to play "low" sometimes.
I'm not gas bagging here. Almost every art form I've grown to appreciate or dabble in has either a full on school of thinking if not exercises in the path to mastery which involves disabling the artist's technique, stripping down what's taken for granted, to develop a closer relationship with their practice. The most infamous exercise is a writer who can't use the letter "e". Hamstrung this way the thinking goes you really learn how to think through language when you're frustrated by it. Samuel Beckett specialized in fiction that reduced the taken for granted notions of character in fiction, or really every element in fiction. And he won the Nobel Prize. There's lots of other examples in music and the visual arts, concrete arts is related to this. In martial arts, particularly the. practical ones, or rather just fight training there are scenarios one's put through where they put a limb in a tournequette type imobility, hit you in the face with pepper spray etc. To teach you to fight in diminished capacity, you walk, limp or are carried away from such trainings with a greater appreciation of human performance in stress. Same with shooting, there pistol exercises where you're taught to do the course of fire one handed (usually off handed), including the reloads (usually. allowed, but kydex holsters are sometimes considered "cheating"). Will probably be the worst training shoot of your life, but you walk away with a better appreciation of the practice.
Besides the above quasi-gnostic deep game appreciation I contend low stats allow you to dwell in (yeah that sort of "dwell" art people who read stuff like "Building, Dwelling, Thinking"), I'd also say just look at most modern/contemporary or even historic hero narratives. The hero is almost always brought low and audiences tend to learn much more about the hero in those moments. Why not make that "low" the character's nature? I guess I like playing like I like living, unfiltered and I want to see all of it, not just the stuff set in the best light.
If you and everyone else doesn't see it, that's fine. It doesn't mean it's not there though.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I allow my players to choose among the standard stat generation methods. If you choose to roll stats, you take what you get. It might be an 18; it might be a 3.
I think it’s a mistake to overload ability scores to force role play. If you look at them through the lense of game mechanics, they only affect doing something when a check is required. Most everyday actions don’t require checks, so it’s implied that even the lowest score is not debilitating.
If you insist someone RP to a 3, you implicitly can’t allow an 18 (at least for int/wis/cha), because only a handful of humans on the planet could actually play that.
Ability scores are a very crude abstraction that are used for resolving non trivial attempts to do things. While I wouldn’t discourage a player from role playing to a low score, I think the more interesting RP comes from the effects and interactions as they attempt and fail actions more often.
I think it warrants a discussion with the player. The worst I have ever rolled in all my years of playing was a 5 (3,1,1,1). I ended up playing a "Friar Tuck" like cleric who was VERY overweight so the 5 went into Dex. I think the one stat that is low is okay. If they rolled 2 stats at sub 8, we would melt those dice down as a warning to the others.
This is what happens when you taunt the gods of fate:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/play-by-post/115275-waterdeep-dragon-heist-campaign#c3
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I played a 4 Wisdom for a one-shot once. I really did play the character as impulsive. He didn't really know how to tell friend from foe. The quest giver had said, "These areas are off limits." Of course my character went right there. And when caught, he made a flimsy excuse. And tried to sneak in again when the guy was out of sight.
That said, there was another recent thread about how the player has to be responsible for certain aspects of the game, and the character is responsible for others. 18 Int doesn't mean you get to roll for the answer to the puzzle or to guess the BBEG's secret plans. By the same token, 4 Int doesn't mean you don't get to participate in solving the puzzle.
There are ways to get around this narratively. For example, I was on a solo adventure and my 10 Int character was presented with a rather difficult codebreaking challenge. I, the player, solved it, and then we rolled an Int check to see how long it would take my character to solve it. Generally when you're with your group you can just pretend the 18 Int Wizard came up with the solution solo, when really it was a group effort by 12 - 14 Int players who couldn't have solved it on their own, at least not in a few hours.
I do think it's fun to role-play a low stat and to make that part of the challenge. It really shouldn't be impossible to survive, when you have friends to help you out. Got really low strength and can't possibly jump the chasm? That's okay. Your barbarian friend can throw you, or the wizard can cast Floating Disk and go first.
My players roll their stats, and then I take a view on what they rolled. They all roll stats in front of one another during session zero.
For my current players, the first player rolled stats and got a fairly reasonable set, with a highest score of 15 in one stat. Not bad, not amazing.
The second player then rolled, and their rolls were absolute disasters. Two stats were 7s, with no stat higher than 12. So I allowed them to reroll their stats... and they then scored two 17s and a 16. So I said "Ok, so in order to be fair on player 1, we agreed to change one of the 17s to one of the 7s that they rolled originally.
This has been the best campaign that I've run since I started DM'ing 24 years ago. What really makes the difference is having players who want the game to be the best it can be.
I have, because of events in my life that aren't worth going into, a highly overdeveloped sense of fairness. I speak out the moment I see something I perceive as incorrect or wrong, and I will go on and on. Usually, I'm trying to help. I see myself as just doing what I should do when I point out the flaws. People have taken the time to speak to me specifically, and tell me I wouldn't be welcome in their games, and that's really fair enough, given my own sense of fairness, I should just listen and go away. I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread again, but again, here I am. I will allow people to do anything they choose, all that bothers me is that when they roleplay, and they ignore the consequences of their choices, it upsets me.
There is a thread about "Rolling to Think", and it's said to be a terrible thing. It's asking that people be handed things because "my character would know that, and I don't. They have better scores than I do, they are more familiar with the setting than I ever could be." And then they want to roll dice to let their character take advantage of what they can't do themselves.
As was mentioned, physical stats usually enforce their own penalties just fine. Mental stats can be very hard to use and petty much require that you roll to think or whatever. If you use your own ability to solve a puzzle and let your character use the solution, (I mean no insult to you Pavilionaire, it's just that you gave a great example of the problem) you have just given your character the ability to think as well as you do. Unless your character has the same intelligence as you do, is that right? I can't judge it, that's the kind of call I'm worst at. It's the same with all the scores.
<Insert clever signature here>
I feel like Int and Wis are the hardest ones to deal with. And are often the ones where I’m forced to ask myself (really? Would your character really be able to know that?…). Like give me a character with 3 STR or 3 Dex and I’ll say they are basically paralyzed, but use there teammate (a Goliath or Orge) as a mount, that they are strapped into.
I think my big issue is that most people I’ve seen play a character with a bad stat, don’t really play the stat. Like a character with 5 STR deciding “yup I’m going to jump that gap, just like everyone else”. I’ve seen a few pull it off, but most act like their character wouldn’t already know they are not built to handle the issue. I can see a 10 INT character eventually figuring out the complex puzzle. I can’t see the 3 INT character doing that.
What I tend to do in those situations is Columbo it a bit. If I've figured out something my dumb character hasn't, I'll go to one of the smart characters and ask leading questions to try and guide them to the solution. "Hey wizard, I really can't wrap my head around this. If we know A and B, why hasn't C happened?" That sort of thing.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
The method my group of friends use is extremely forgiving. When we roll for stats, if your average is below 13 you can reroll the lowest stat until your average is 13 or higher. Usually this will end up with a stat array that is stronger than Standard Array or Point Buy, so its understandable if thats not the route you wanted to go. You could also use a similar approach, but with a lower average (like 10) to try and make the final array have a few weaknesses
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!