I realize you are very confident on your stance and that trying to bring enlightenment to the unenlightened but if you stopped for just a moment and actually considered his posts as not wrong but from a different correct viewpoint you might actually see that point of view(not agree with it perhaps or want to play that way but at least see that his view isn't based on fallacy but a different view on the rules and spirit of the game).
What it all boils down to for the Skills are rolled verse other players crowd is role playing.
See there just are not any/many rules on role playing. Yes I think maybe somewhere there might be a paragraph about you are supposed to try and actually play your character as not you but instead as a different person and try and keep that personality as different than yours. Like being a actor. Actors do not play a character how THEY want that character to behave but instead how that CHARACTER would react. If the actor is anti-gun in political views the pro-gun character doesn't suddenly change views because he is being played by that particular actor.
In D&D there is little to help a player do this. Almost nothing.
So a great many players do not do this. They run those characters as just basically themselves. Oh sure they might realize and have to deal with different physical capabilities because the game mechanics make them but mental ones? There aren't many at all. A save mod for certain things ect is about it. So it's no wonder they do not think very much about those stats at all. Why not dump your lowest scores into those slots as there is very little drawback! In the vast majority of games they can have a 6 int and still be the brain of the group! Still come up with all the plans and be the one to figure out all the riddles and puzzles ect... It's a game like Poker man, just chill out and lets hack some stuff.
And you know what? if that's what your table wants to do and is having a blast doing then .....there is nothing wrong with that.
Different strokes for different folks.
At my table however, I would like players to not be themselves playing a pen and paper video game. I would rather them role play there characters and that means doing NOT what their players would do but what there characters would do. If one of my players created a extremely foolish pampered dandy PC and wanted to play out his slowly changing over time to a battle hardened veteran soldier, then at 2nd level when the bard of the party tried to con him into doing something foolish and using the Dandies ego to do so i would expect that player to role play that out. Probably with a persuasion roll contested by insight and if that Dandy failed the roll I would hope the Dandy would be role played appropriately.
This is one of the best things about playing rpg's.
It isn't about the DM telling anyone what they think. It isn't one player trying to get over on another. It's role playing.
Now as I said. If you and your group don't have fun doing that and do things totally differently then I'm fine with that. You do YOU! I don't say that while secretly looking down on your point of view. I get it. Your all good man.
I have played this dang game for 41 years this Christmas. I know from experience there are a VAST many ways to play the game. None of them wrong.(ok thats a lie, I have seen a few that are wrong but only because they were unfun for the people playing or predatory towards some of there members, but other than those few cases none of them wrong).
I guess my mistake when I got frustrated the other night and came to post this thread was not aiming it at one particular set of gamer.
As a topic for discussion to the entire play style arena at large of course it was bound to draw ire and fire from styles that just do not agree with the entire premise of my style(of the moment).
That style currently appreciates(at times) inter-party conflict on a wide range of levels as long as those arise from role playing reasons with an eye kept strongly on what is fun for all parties.
In my original post I should have made all this more clear and also mentioned motivation. At the time the player at issue was not a strong role player(but he is coming along slowly in that direction) who suddenly refused to take another players role playing in character into account and refused to role play the fictional character HE had built but instead just wanted to go hack stuff and ignore the role playing portion of the game.He also had a bad week and was a very moody player at the game table as sometimes happens to us all.
