What does it mean to "Challenge the Character"?

Fenris-77 said:

Exaggerating my post for rhetorical effect isn't terribly helpful. Also, while I didn't mention STR dumps, I didn't exclude them either. I'm curious if you actually read my post, or if this is more of a knee jerk reaction, because what you say I said, and what I actually said really aren't the same. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, I believe I was pretty clear that my issue was a philosophical one about the feel of the characters created using the standard point buy system. Maybe I wasn't as clear as I hoped...

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In my experience Int 8, Str 8 and Cha 8 are frequently seen on various characters, as are 12s in some others. I tend to view both as "slightly below/above average but well withing "normal range". That tends to play out fine as far as our "philosophies" go. 8 int vs 10 Int vs 12 int isnt "kinda dumb" at all, it's more akin to the difference one would see in a modern school system between somebody who went to the underfunded rural high school system vs the higher end capital high schools. Maybe the diff between someone born into an affluent household with lotsa books and parents who encouraged reading vs poorer ones where books were not readily available and were not part of the day-to-day life. For strength, it's more akin to the difference between someone who drives a cab or runs a cash register vs doing carpentry and hanging dry wall or even yard work for a living.

I think for some the "problem with the 8" stems in large part from the exaggeration of the 8.

A technique I tend to use, borrowed ages ago from "other systems" is to encourage the players to give one adjective for each plus or minus in stats.

"give the plus a name or a face"

This is like "puuting a face on the plot" as one is often encouraged to do in fiction.

So, two characters with a -1 Cha and -1 Str and +3 dex might get entirely different adjectives and be very different people in play. Its not uncommon for those adjdetives/descriptors to play a role in advsntage/disadvantage either.

Yeah, I know, some might object cuz its using stuff "from other game systems" and not playing 5e purely how they think the designers intended, but it works for us.

Fenris-77 said:

Exaggerating my post for rhetorical effect isn't terribly helpful. Also, while I didn't mention STR dumps, I didn't exclude them either. I'm curious if you actually read my post, or if this is more of a knee jerk reaction, because what you say I said, and what I actually said really aren't the same. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, I believe I was pretty clear that my issue was a philosophical one about the feel of the characters created using the standard point buy system. Maybe I wasn't as clear as I hoped...

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I wasn't referring just to you. Your post just brought this recurring pattern to mind. So, no, I wasn't saying that "you said" anything specific.

Fighting monsters (or anything really) you can also gate appropriate knowledge behind passive checks at levelled DCs. You can write it right into encounters - passive DC 15 Arcana (or whatever) - you remember x about stone golems, DC 20 the knowledge is more specific. I wouldn't go to the effort of writing this into every scenario, but it is an effective way to gate information behind what feels a little more like "hey, you remembered this thing....".

Elfcrusher said:

I wasn't referring just to you. Your post just brought this recurring pattern to mind. So, no, I wasn't saying that "you said" anything specific.

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Fair say. The issues I have aren't the same as most people's, in this instance anyway. Unless you're thinking of people who are also existentially bothered by the public optics of standard character builds.

Fenris-77 said:

Fair say. The issues I have aren't the same as most people's, in this instance anyway. Unless you're thinking of people who are also existentially bothered by the public optics of standard character builds.

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No, I was just referring to the fact that you called Int 8 "dumb" and Cha 8 "socially inept". Mathematically that should be "5% less smart than average" and "5% less charismatic than average".

Or, to put it another way, would you call Int 12 "smart" and Cha 12 "socially adept"? I think most people view 12's as "a bit above average, but nothing to write home about". So shouldn't an 8 be the same, but in the other direction?

Setting the bar at average seems low for heroic roleplaying. To me anyway. Plus that math doesn't scale going all the way to 20. A fighter with 18 STR is more than 40% stronger than average.

Fenris-77 said:

Setting the bar at average seems low for heroic roleplaying. To me anyway. Plus that math doesn't scale going all the way to 20. A fighter with 18 STR is more than 40% stronger than average.

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Given that a Commoner in the MM has 10s across the board, that is a pretty good standard for average in 5e. I hadn't really thought about it this way before but, yeah, according to 5e math, 18 STR actually means 20% stronger than average. Then again, the heroes of the story are so much more than their ability scores and modifiers.

DM Dave1 said:

Given that a Commoner in the MM has 10s across the board, that is a pretty good standard for average in 5e. I hadn't really thought about it this way before but, yeah, according to 5e math, 18 STR actually means 20% stronger than average. Then again, the heroes of the story are so much more than their ability scores and modifiers.

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Sure, if you're counting mods not stat points. Neither really makes sense as straight scaling math compared to an 'average' 10, at least not in the context of anything else we've ever seen about what an 18 means in D&D. Mind you, I'm not convinced that talking about the stats in percentages, whether points or mods, makes much sense anyway. Agree with the second point completely.

Tony Vargas said:

It's not a problem, just an example illustrating the latitude given players in declaring actions under one interpretation.

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Although D&D doesn't have an explicitly defined proposition filter, I imagine that in practice any PC proposition that is nonsense will be rejected.

So, "I set my phaser on 'kill and shoot the Klingon!", probably receives the error response, "You have no phaser, and there is no Klingon in the environment."

And, "I catch butterflies!", probably receives the error response, "There are no butterflies in the immediate vicinity, so you should probably specify a bunch of other steps before you try to catch any. For example, where are you planning to go to catch them, and how do you plan to get there?"

Propositions like, "I invite everyone in the grand ballroom to play an RPG that doesn't suck!", while not errors, in that a player could start inviting everyone, probably require clarification, "By invite, what do you mean? Are you going to go to each person individually or are you planning to shout out your invitation?" Once the clarification is made however, the player's statement is probably going to be seen as some sort of nonsense by everyone in the grand ballroom, who are likely to have no idea what an RPG is and may not understand the idiomatic phrase "suck" either. At best, their going to treat this as some weird joke which they don't get. At worst, the PC is likely to be treated as drunk or insane.

Whereas, "I apologize for my friend's aberrant behavior, and explain that their still recovering from a Mindflayer's psionic blast.", might possibly be actually good RPing at a grand ball in a typical D&D setting where a PC is going on about "RPG's that don't suck!"

I'm struggling to understand the point you are trying to make with these examples.

Fenris-77 said:

Fighting monsters (or anything really) you can also gate appropriate knowledge behind passive checks at levelled DCs. You can write it right into encounters - passive DC 15 Arcana (or whatever) - you remember x about stone golems, DC 20 the knowledge is more specific. I wouldn't go to the effort of writing this into every scenario, but it is an effective way to gate information behind what feels a little more like "hey, you remembered this thing....".

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While you can use such gates to feed players more information than they have, once the information is past the gate for whatever reason, including the player owns the Monster Manual and has read it, there is no effective way to put the information back on the other side of the gate. If the player knows everything about stone golems, it doesn't really matter what the player character knows, his play will be inevitably and unavoidably colored by his knowledge of stone golems. The player can, if he wishes, try to pretend he is the character who doesn't know anything about stone golems, but no person can exactly pretend to act as if he did not have knowledge that he has. No person can predict how they would behave if they didn't know something.

Even cRPGs with limited player choice and tightly constrained proposition filters can't perfectly deal with that. For example, the old RPG Planescape: Torment gates certain multiple choice dialogue options behind the player character having sufficient INT, WIS, or CHR. Thus, even if the player knows the choice exists and wants to take it, the player can be prevented from making that choice. However, this wall is still imperfect. The player can still select INT, WIS, or CHR specifically to pass certain challenges or receive certain rewards, and the player can still acting on his knowledge of the game solve certain puzzles the first time through without error based on past play throughs or a published walkthrough. Once you know the 'spoilers', you can't ever know how you'd play without them. If the player has the 'spoilers' before the first play through, he'll never know whether his choices are based consciously or unconsciously on the knowledge or consciously or unconsciously trying to avoid basing the choices on the knowledge.

There is no way to accurate fake ignorance. If reading a mystery novel, if you have spoilers, you'll have no way of knowing whether without the spoilers you would or wouldn't have figured out the mystery before it was revealed. It just can't happen.

As such, there is no real way to stop players from metagaming even if you wanted to. Even if they want to cooperate with your goal, they will be at some point unable to do so.