Eh, a 6's -2 modifier is already a pretty harsh penalty in 5E. I'm not a fan of turning a character into a Bohemian Failure Monkey, as Yurei1453 called it, for the sake of roleplaying.
Actually, I like that because now I'm thinking George Costanza on Seinfeld or Ross on Friends could easily be archetypes for a 3 WIS. There's a probably a Big Bang Theory character equivalent but can't think of it.
Sometimes folks play just to see what happens.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I guess that is the disconnect I have with the discussion. I would consider those fellows to have a Wisdom between 6 and 9, no lower. Wisdom three is walk into highway traffic to see the birdie in the median wisdom.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Wisdom 3 isn't just lack of observational ability, it's also a complete lack of ability to resist most mental affects like being Charmed. The character basically has no ability to say no to anyone who asks something from them or to control their emotions.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Wisdom 3 isn't just lack of observational ability, it's also a complete lack of ability to resist most mental affects like being Charmed. The character basically has no ability to say no to anyone who asks something from them or to control their emotions.
Taking the Resilient Feat quickly brings wisdom saves up to neutral, dropping the -4 to a -3, and then adding proficiency to it, making it a +0 on wisdom saves at Level 5. Many characters aren't any better than that. The character really doesn't need to be treated like it's constantly Feebleminded. There are options.
But having an acceptable Wisdom save still leaves the PC with a Wisdom of 4 and this would still be "chase anything shiny", "play with the squirrel in traffic", and "pet the strange Beholder" kinda decision tree.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
But having an acceptable Wisdom save still leaves the PC with a Wisdom of 4 and this would still be "chase anything shiny", "play with the squirrel in traffic", and "pet the strange Beholder" kinda decision tree.
You're conflating low wisdom and low intelligence. Low wisdom may suggest being compulsiveness, but the character's intelligence factors in to what sorts of things the character would be compulsive about. The character might compulsively collect something worthless. Or the low wisdom might be an inaccurate assessment of the relative strength of an enemy, and consequently not judging when it's wise to change tactics and flee.
Even an average intelligence should rule out trying to pet a Beholder. Maybe something fluffy and dangerous, but not a Beholder.
I joined a campaign recently we were all rolling together and I rolled a 3, So now I’m playing a kobold enchantment wizard with 3 wisdom
Literally unplayable, so don't even try. It's easier than roleplaying Int 3, but that's not a high bar, and accurately roleplaying a 3 in any of the mental stats isn't just a challenging task, it's so cripplingly awful it will ruin the fun of everyone else at your table. Your numbers are your numbers mechanically, but you should basically roleplay a wisdom of 8 and call it a day for the sake of fun. There's no actual rule telling you how to roleplay your character, and there's no way your DM genuinely wants a Wisdom 3 PC in the party. It's antithetical to having a campaign plot, for one. Wisdom 3 means you're genuinely incapable of understanding what's going on around you, which means you can't follow plot threads or boop plot buttons or the like.
But having an acceptable Wisdom save still leaves the PC with a Wisdom of 4 and this would still be "chase anything shiny", "play with the squirrel in traffic", and "pet the strange Beholder" kinda decision tree.
You're conflating low wisdom and low intelligence. Low wisdom may suggest being compulsiveness, but the character's intelligence factors in to what sorts of things the character would be compulsive about. The character might compulsively collect something worthless. Or the low wisdom might be an inaccurate assessment of the relative strength of an enemy, and consequently not judging when it's wise to change tactics and flee.
Even an average intelligence should rule out trying to pet a Beholder. Maybe something fluffy and dangerous, but not a Beholder.
Intelligence can be viewed as the stat that helps you figure out if you can do something.
Wisdom is the stat that helps you figure out if you should do something.
So "I'm gonna pet that beholder" is an action better associated with low wisdom than low intelligence.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I agree an intelligent character would know beholder are dangerous and with wis 3 would not notice it until it is right in front of them and even then might not make the connection tonight that being very dangerous means you should not approach it.
With humanoids however they would be totally unable to read whether the NPC will treat 5hem as a friend or try to cut their head off.
It is possible to role play a wis down to about 6, and you can do that while having a -4 modifier but the rest of the group need to be on-board with the im0lication of that.
D&D's rules are abstractions. Thinking about it mechanically,A character with 3 wisdom is only 20% less observant than a character with 10 wisdom (It's a -4 on a d20, so each side having a 5% chance, the total is 20%). And if the character has the Resilient Feat and proficiency in Perception/Insight, they can get their wisdom save and observational skills up to a +0, which is what a character with 10 wisdom, without proficiency would have.
I'm all for house-rules on re-rolling stats below 8, but for a table that's not doing that, you can make it work, and there's plenty of ways to roleplay low wisdom without making the character Mr Magoo its way around or do overtly stupid things.
The Insight/Perception DC to figure out that a Beholder is not something to be petted (even if the character has no information on Beholders) should be low single digits. Like a DC1. There shouldn't even be a roll unless it's a table that delights in the absurdities of the unlikely results on rolls that defy common sense.
D&D's rules are abstractions. Thinking about it mechanically,A character with 3 wisdom is only 20% less observant than a character with 10 wisdom (It's a -4 on a d20, so each side having a 5% chance, the total is 20%). And if the character has the Resilient Feat and proficiency in Perception/Insight, they can get their wisdom save and observational skills up to a +0, which is what a character with 10 wisdom, without proficiency would have.
I'm all for house-rules on re-rolling stats below 8, but for a table that's not doing that, you can make it work, and there's plenty of ways to roleplay low wisdom without making the character Mr Magoo its way around or do overtly stupid things.
The Insight/Perception DC to figure out that a Beholder is not something to be petted (even if the character has no information on Beholders) should be low single digits. Like a DC1. There shouldn't even be a roll unless it's a table that delights in the absurdities of the unlikely results on rolls that defy common sense.
Low perception is Mr Magoo. Low insight is Sheldon Cooper.
Sheldyn knew that the Gorns were bad and his 5e counterpart might know the same of beholders, but this would be mainly based on his recall of knowledge. You could tell a Sheldon that he was good at insight but, unless he had knowledge to the contrary, he probably wouldn't notice the sarcasm/lie. It's also possible that a Sheldon might realise their shortcomings with regard to weak insight and develop coping strategies.
I'm wondering whether a more extreme case might go into Rain Man territory.
Ooof......not to be mean but you have a crappy DM. No good DM should let that stand. A 3 in wisdom means you are barely aware of your surroundings. Most animals have more common sense than you.... You are literally an idiot savant and honestly have no business in an adventuring party. You are as likely to cast firebolt at an enemy as you are to make dancing lights go around their head because "pretty lights" in the middle of a fight.
From the popular "D&D Stats in Simple Language"
Wisdom
1 (–5): Seemingly incapable of thought, barely aware
2-3 (–4): Rarely notices important or prominent items, people, or occurrences
4-5 (–3): Seemingly incapable of forethought
6-7 (–2): Often fails to exert common sense
8-9 (–1): Forgets or opts not to consider options before taking action
10-11 (0): Makes reasoned decisions most of the time
12-13 (1): Able to tell when a person is upset
14-15 (2): Can get hunches about a situation that doesn’t feel right
16-17 (3): Reads people and situations fairly well
18-19 (4): Often used as a source of wisdom or decider of actions
20-21 (5): Reads people and situations very well, almost unconsciously
22-23 (6): Can tell minute differences among many situations
24-25 (7): Nearly prescient, able to reason far beyond logic
As others have said, a 3 in wisdom is not an adventurer. They would literally be handicapped and need someone to take care of them 24/7. You can do all the unwise roleplaying you need to with an 8 in wisdom. I'll say it more clearly for those in the back - point buy with a min score of 8 in each attribute can provide every single roleplay possibility that rolling can with the exception of the truly useless character who is bad at everything.
This is just one of the many reasons I dislike rolling for stats - at nearly every table that does it, truly bad rolls are either reasoned away as being much more competent than they actually could be, or just outright rerolled due to DM pity.
Ooof......not to be mean but you have a crappy DM. No good DM should let that stand. A 3 in wisdom means you are barely aware of your surroundings. Most animals have more common sense than you.... You are literally an idiot savant and honestly have no business in an adventuring party. You are as likely to cast firebolt at an enemy as you are to make dancing lights go around their head because "pretty lights" in the middle of a fight.
From the popular "D&D Stats in Simple Language"
Wisdom
1 (–5): Seemingly incapable of thought, barely aware
2-3 (–4): Rarely notices important or prominent items, people, or occurrences
4-5 (–3): Seemingly incapable of forethought
6-7 (–2): Often fails to exert common sense
8-9 (–1): Forgets or opts not to consider options before taking action
10-11 (0): Makes reasoned decisions most of the time
12-13 (1): Able to tell when a person is upset
14-15 (2): Can get hunches about a situation that doesn’t feel right
16-17 (3): Reads people and situations fairly well
18-19 (4): Often used as a source of wisdom or decider of actions
20-21 (5): Reads people and situations very well, almost unconsciously
22-23 (6): Can tell minute differences among many situations
24-25 (7): Nearly prescient, able to reason far beyond logic
I would actually like this table, except there are way too many Beasts that are incapable of forethought but that have an 8 or 10 Wisdom attribute.
Ooof......not to be mean but you have a crappy DM. No good DM should let that stand. A 3 in wisdom means you are barely aware of your surroundings. Most animals have more common sense than you.... You are literally an idiot savant and honestly have no business in an adventuring party. You are as likely to cast firebolt at an enemy as you are to make dancing lights go around their head because "pretty lights" in the middle of a fight.
From the popular "D&D Stats in Simple Language"
Wisdom
1 (–5): Seemingly incapable of thought, barely aware
2-3 (–4): Rarely notices important or prominent items, people, or occurrences
4-5 (–3): Seemingly incapable of forethought
6-7 (–2): Often fails to exert common sense
8-9 (–1): Forgets or opts not to consider options before taking action
10-11 (0): Makes reasoned decisions most of the time
12-13 (1): Able to tell when a person is upset
14-15 (2): Can get hunches about a situation that doesn’t feel right
16-17 (3): Reads people and situations fairly well
18-19 (4): Often used as a source of wisdom or decider of actions
20-21 (5): Reads people and situations very well, almost unconsciously
22-23 (6): Can tell minute differences among many situations
24-25 (7): Nearly prescient, able to reason far beyond logic
I believe you're confusing Wisdom with Intelligence.
BEAST WISDOM
Allosaurus 12
Almiraj 14
Amphisbaena 10
Ankylousaurus 12
Ape 12
Auruch 12
Baboon 12
Badger 12
I could go on, but you get the drift. "Popular charts" like what Jayne is reproducing to back their claim can easily be popular misconceptions, because taking just the A and dipping into B portion of the alphabetized available beasts in DDB would indicate that anyone playing a WIS under 10 is somehow "subbeastial" in whatever WIS is supposed to take into account. I don't think anyone really believes that animals are somehow all around keener than more sapient beings. But they are often said to have "primal instincts" etc. that give them an ability to "read their environment" that's analogous but probably very different from how a high WIS PC would read a situation.
I remember a thread about INT where a lot of folks apparently didn't have the IRL intelligence to understand that the INT stat doesn't mean a character with a INT of three would in vegetative state or unable to wear clothes without soiling them. If you want to play a 3 INT or a 3 WIS (I'd say knowing when you're body feels like using the bathroom seems to fit more under WIS than INT as far as their mechanical functions go) like that, you can, but there is nothing in the rules that actually specifies that. Jayne's cute chart is simply some players attempt to insist the stat numbers mean certain obligations to role playing a character when they just don't. Maybe a character has a low WIS and blows Perception all the time because they're literally myopic, but don't have the impulse control issues some posters and players think are mandatory.
The ability stats only ultimately matter in the controls they put on certain game mechanics, beyond that there actually is no mandatory way of interpreting a stat along the lines of IQ for INT or EQ for CHR or some legal definition of judgement capacity for WIS. Children in D&D can have high WIS ... just rewatched Aliens last night, Newt's got a higher WIS than a lot of the adult characters. We usually associate WIS with maturity, but we don't have to ... because we don't have to associate with anything (and animals tend to have middling to high scores in the stat). We can be creative and decide why the character has a faculty that leads to whatever keenness or lack of keenness the character may have.
The sort of chart introduced in this thread are supposedly designed to give a quick understanding of what stats "mean" do a disservice to inspired play. It produces lazy interpretations of what one can do with what's on paper, and I've come to think that using them is largely "unwise."
wisdom, charisma, and intelligence need to be lumped together for "what does the character act like" - in the same way that Strength, Dexterity and Constitution are lumped together as "doesn't affect what the character acts like".
Animals have high wisdom because they can sense danger effectively, and notice things which they need to notice to survive. They also have low intelligence - despite some animals being on par with or even exceeding the dimmest humans by some margin, they all get universally low intelligence scores.
So how does this make them act? Like animals. High wisdom low intelligence has you knowing exactly where to root around for delicious roots, or how loud a twig snap needs to be to be something bigger than you. It doesn't tell you that the twig was snapped by a friendly farmer who is currently a bit concerned about being lost - that would require intellience to interpret. I feel like the table presented is somewhat incorrect there.
Wisdom = what you can detect, as raw data. The smells or sounds on the wind, that sort of thing. Intelligence is how you interpret those things - Low intelligence says "I smell men on the wind, we may be being followed" and high intelligence says "I smell men on the wind, perhaps Dave needs a bath".
Then charisma comes in to see how tactfully you tell Dave that he needs a bath!
So low wisdom high intelligence means that when you notice things, you know what they mean - but you generally don't notice things!
Actually, I like that because now I'm thinking George Costanza on Seinfeld or Ross on Friends could easily be archetypes for a 3 WIS. There's a probably a Big Bang Theory character equivalent but can't think of it.
Sometimes folks play just to see what happens.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I guess that is the disconnect I have with the discussion. I would consider those fellows to have a Wisdom between 6 and 9, no lower. Wisdom three is walk into highway traffic to see the birdie in the median wisdom.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Wisdom 3 isn't just lack of observational ability, it's also a complete lack of ability to resist most mental affects like being Charmed. The character basically has no ability to say no to anyone who asks something from them or to control their emotions.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
And so, perhaps a familiar turns the tables? 😈
Taking the Resilient Feat quickly brings wisdom saves up to neutral, dropping the -4 to a -3, and then adding proficiency to it, making it a +0 on wisdom saves at Level 5. Many characters aren't any better than that. The character really doesn't need to be treated like it's constantly Feebleminded. There are options.
But having an acceptable Wisdom save still leaves the PC with a Wisdom of 4 and this would still be "chase anything shiny", "play with the squirrel in traffic", and "pet the strange Beholder" kinda decision tree.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
You're conflating low wisdom and low intelligence. Low wisdom may suggest being compulsiveness, but the character's intelligence factors in to what sorts of things the character would be compulsive about. The character might compulsively collect something worthless. Or the low wisdom might be an inaccurate assessment of the relative strength of an enemy, and consequently not judging when it's wise to change tactics and flee.
Even an average intelligence should rule out trying to pet a Beholder. Maybe something fluffy and dangerous, but not a Beholder.
Literally unplayable, so don't even try. It's easier than roleplaying Int 3, but that's not a high bar, and accurately roleplaying a 3 in any of the mental stats isn't just a challenging task, it's so cripplingly awful it will ruin the fun of everyone else at your table. Your numbers are your numbers mechanically, but you should basically roleplay a wisdom of 8 and call it a day for the sake of fun. There's no actual rule telling you how to roleplay your character, and there's no way your DM genuinely wants a Wisdom 3 PC in the party. It's antithetical to having a campaign plot, for one. Wisdom 3 means you're genuinely incapable of understanding what's going on around you, which means you can't follow plot threads or boop plot buttons or the like.
You know when there's something seriously wrong with your character? When a non-Polymorphed FROG literally is wiser than your PC.
Intelligence can be viewed as the stat that helps you figure out if you can do something.
Wisdom is the stat that helps you figure out if you should do something.
So "I'm gonna pet that beholder" is an action better associated with low wisdom than low intelligence.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
You don't. No DM in their right mind would let you. Unless the entire campaign was ment to be a farce.
I agree an intelligent character would know beholder are dangerous and with wis 3 would not notice it until it is right in front of them and even then might not make the connection tonight that being very dangerous means you should not approach it.
With humanoids however they would be totally unable to read whether the NPC will treat 5hem as a friend or try to cut their head off.
It is possible to role play a wis down to about 6, and you can do that while having a -4 modifier but the rest of the group need to be on-board with the im0lication of that.
D&D's rules are abstractions. Thinking about it mechanically, A character with 3 wisdom is only 20% less observant than a character with 10 wisdom (It's a -4 on a d20, so each side having a 5% chance, the total is 20%). And if the character has the Resilient Feat and proficiency in Perception/Insight, they can get their wisdom save and observational skills up to a +0, which is what a character with 10 wisdom, without proficiency would have.
I'm all for house-rules on re-rolling stats below 8, but for a table that's not doing that, you can make it work, and there's plenty of ways to roleplay low wisdom without making the character Mr Magoo its way around or do overtly stupid things.
The Insight/Perception DC to figure out that a Beholder is not something to be petted (even if the character has no information on Beholders) should be low single digits. Like a DC1. There shouldn't even be a roll unless it's a table that delights in the absurdities of the unlikely results on rolls that defy common sense.
Low perception is Mr Magoo.
Low insight is Sheldon Cooper.
Sheldyn knew that the Gorns were bad and his 5e counterpart might know the same of beholders, but this would be mainly based on his recall of knowledge. You could tell a Sheldon that he was good at insight but, unless he had knowledge to the contrary, he probably wouldn't notice the sarcasm/lie. It's also possible that a Sheldon might realise their shortcomings with regard to weak insight and develop coping strategies.
I'm wondering whether a more extreme case might go into Rain Man territory.
Ooof......not to be mean but you have a crappy DM. No good DM should let that stand. A 3 in wisdom means you are barely aware of your surroundings. Most animals have more common sense than you.... You are literally an idiot savant and honestly have no business in an adventuring party. You are as likely to cast firebolt at an enemy as you are to make dancing lights go around their head because "pretty lights" in the middle of a fight.
From the popular "D&D Stats in Simple Language"
As others have said, a 3 in wisdom is not an adventurer. They would literally be handicapped and need someone to take care of them 24/7. You can do all the unwise roleplaying you need to with an 8 in wisdom. I'll say it more clearly for those in the back - point buy with a min score of 8 in each attribute can provide every single roleplay possibility that rolling can with the exception of the truly useless character who is bad at everything.
This is just one of the many reasons I dislike rolling for stats - at nearly every table that does it, truly bad rolls are either reasoned away as being much more competent than they actually could be, or just outright rerolled due to DM pity.
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
I would actually like this table, except there are way too many Beasts that are incapable of forethought but that have an 8 or 10 Wisdom attribute.
(h)wiCH
which
I believe you're confusing Wisdom with Intelligence.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
BEAST WISDOM
Allosaurus 12
Almiraj 14
Amphisbaena 10
Ankylousaurus 12
Ape 12
Auruch 12
Baboon 12
Badger 12
I could go on, but you get the drift. "Popular charts" like what Jayne is reproducing to back their claim can easily be popular misconceptions, because taking just the A and dipping into B portion of the alphabetized available beasts in DDB would indicate that anyone playing a WIS under 10 is somehow "subbeastial" in whatever WIS is supposed to take into account. I don't think anyone really believes that animals are somehow all around keener than more sapient beings. But they are often said to have "primal instincts" etc. that give them an ability to "read their environment" that's analogous but probably very different from how a high WIS PC would read a situation.
I remember a thread about INT where a lot of folks apparently didn't have the IRL intelligence to understand that the INT stat doesn't mean a character with a INT of three would in vegetative state or unable to wear clothes without soiling them. If you want to play a 3 INT or a 3 WIS (I'd say knowing when you're body feels like using the bathroom seems to fit more under WIS than INT as far as their mechanical functions go) like that, you can, but there is nothing in the rules that actually specifies that. Jayne's cute chart is simply some players attempt to insist the stat numbers mean certain obligations to role playing a character when they just don't. Maybe a character has a low WIS and blows Perception all the time because they're literally myopic, but don't have the impulse control issues some posters and players think are mandatory.
The ability stats only ultimately matter in the controls they put on certain game mechanics, beyond that there actually is no mandatory way of interpreting a stat along the lines of IQ for INT or EQ for CHR or some legal definition of judgement capacity for WIS. Children in D&D can have high WIS ... just rewatched Aliens last night, Newt's got a higher WIS than a lot of the adult characters. We usually associate WIS with maturity, but we don't have to ... because we don't have to associate with anything (and animals tend to have middling to high scores in the stat). We can be creative and decide why the character has a faculty that leads to whatever keenness or lack of keenness the character may have.
The sort of chart introduced in this thread are supposedly designed to give a quick understanding of what stats "mean" do a disservice to inspired play. It produces lazy interpretations of what one can do with what's on paper, and I've come to think that using them is largely "unwise."
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
wisdom, charisma, and intelligence need to be lumped together for "what does the character act like" - in the same way that Strength, Dexterity and Constitution are lumped together as "doesn't affect what the character acts like".
Animals have high wisdom because they can sense danger effectively, and notice things which they need to notice to survive. They also have low intelligence - despite some animals being on par with or even exceeding the dimmest humans by some margin, they all get universally low intelligence scores.
So how does this make them act? Like animals. High wisdom low intelligence has you knowing exactly where to root around for delicious roots, or how loud a twig snap needs to be to be something bigger than you. It doesn't tell you that the twig was snapped by a friendly farmer who is currently a bit concerned about being lost - that would require intellience to interpret. I feel like the table presented is somewhat incorrect there.
Wisdom = what you can detect, as raw data. The smells or sounds on the wind, that sort of thing. Intelligence is how you interpret those things - Low intelligence says "I smell men on the wind, we may be being followed" and high intelligence says "I smell men on the wind, perhaps Dave needs a bath".
Then charisma comes in to see how tactfully you tell Dave that he needs a bath!
So low wisdom high intelligence means that when you notice things, you know what they mean - but you generally don't notice things!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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