D&D General You Were Rolling Up a New Character, and Just Rolled a 3. What Is Your Reaction?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

A wizard with 2 hp + 1 per level. Who should never get hit.

I think con should not be a stat anymore. Or at least not influence total hp. There are no skills attached to it. Maybe it should affect starting hp and recovery. Not HP each level.

Maybe I will try at some point:
HP = max hd * level + con modifier only at level 1.

Level 1 will still be hard for a wizard, but at later levels, it will be ok. Although recovering hit points with short rests will be hard.

Draw Steel got rid of Constitution, for example. It has only Might, Agility, Reason, Intuition and Presence.

4E had Endurance and 3E had Concentration as Constitution skills, I think that was it.
4E used Constitution for some classes (Warlock for example), however. (I think 3E did for some of the Psionic Classes or powers, IIRC?)

 

[Clint_L]

If there isn't, there 100% should be...or at least an extremely strong suggestion.

And IMO the role-playing needs to suggest the bolded.

To add context, I wrote, "Also, plenty of dumb people think they’re smart, bores think they’re charismatic, wimps think they’re tough, fools think they’re wise, and so on. The rolls will be what the rolls will be."

Let me build on that: I don't think policing whether players are properly RPing according to their ability scores is a good idea, but I also think that, with the type of extremely low scores this thread is about, the scores police themselves.

Let's imagine a player who decides to play their barbarian, Int. 3, like they're Sherlock Holmes. Every time they roll an investigation check, they are going to fail. There will be a massive disjunction between what they are saying and what their character is actually doing, and they will know it and so will everyone else at the table.

Sherlock the Barbarian: "This lock can probably only be opened by solving this series of cleverly interlocking tiles. I'm on it!"

Watson the Wizard: "You bet, Sherlock. Ummm...let me just "assist" you a bit with that..." [Both players roll. Sherlock rolls a -2, Watson rolls an 18].

Party: "Way to go, Sherlock! You've done it again!"

Everyone knows what just happened. All laugh. "Oh, that Sherlock!"

 

[ECMO3]

Looks like I have a 3 Intelligence .... unless I am a Wizard and then it is a 3 Charisma.

 

[Lanefan]

Sportsmanship? Seriously? It's not sportsmanlike to play a character the way you think they should be played?

Seems like you have it backwards.

The ability scores are convenient game numbers that don't accurately reflect anything about how humans really are (example: according to ability scores, a human can be stronger than an adult male gorilla, or dumb as a cow or a dog but still be an adventurer with multiple languages, social functioning, and a complicated skill set).

It's a flaw in the rules that allows very-low-Intelligence characters to know three languages when in reality they would barely know one.

If you're not willing to roleplay a dumb or clumsy or weak character then don't put the low roll there.

Also, keep in mind we're talking about the extreme-outlier ends of the bell curve here. Further, 3-4-5e with their linear bonus structure suggest a far greater practical difference between a 8 and a 14 in any stat than do the IMO much more reasonable 1-2e setups where the bonus is j-curved at each end to better match the bell curve and has a big +0 region in the middle.

 

[Lanefan]

To add I context, I wrote, "Also, plenty of dumb people think they’re smart, bores think they’re charismatic, wimps think they’re tough, fools think they’re wise, and so on. The rolls will be what the rolls will be."

Let me build on that: I don't think policing whether players are properly RPing according to their ability scores is a good idea, but I also think that, with the type of extremely low scores this thread is about, the scores police themselves.

Let's imagine a player who decides to play their barbarian, Int. 3, like they're Sherlock Holmes. Every time they roll an investigation check, they are going to fail. There will be a massive disjunction between what they are saying and what their character is actually doing, and they will know it and so will everyone else at the table.

Sherlock the Barbarian: "This lock can probably only be opened by solving this series of cleverly interlocking tiles. I'm on it!"

Watson the Wizard: "You bet, Sherlock. Ummm...let me just "assist" you a bit with that..." [Both players roll. Sherlock rolls a -2, Watson rolls an 18].

Nitpick perhaps, but if Watson is assisting Sherlock doesn't that merely give Sherlock a small bonus on his roll rather than giving Watson a roll of his own?

Also, your point is valid if-when things are decided mostly by rolls. In a less-structured setup where things are more driven by actual roleplay (i.e. most social situations, planning and tactics, and some exploration) then the dice can't cover this off nearly so well.

Party: "Way to go, Sherlock! You've done it again!"

Everyone knows what just happened. All laugh. "Oh, that Sherlock!"

Sure, and that works in this case as an ongoing amusement piece.

 

[Clint_L]

Nitpick perhaps, but if Watson is assisting Sherlock doesn't that merely give Sherlock a small bonus on his roll rather than giving Watson a roll of his own?

It would give him advantage, except the other option is that both players attempt the roll separately, and that's what Watson is doing here, but calling it an "assist." Because everyone knows Sherlock is dumb.

Also, your point is valid if-when things are decided mostly by rolls. In a less-structured setup where things are more driven by actual roleplay (i.e. most social situations, planning and tactics, and some exploration) then the dice can't cover this off nearly so well.

Yeah, and that's where I don't like forcing players to RP to the arbitrary concepts loosely represented by attribute scores. What it can mean is players or the DM policing each other's RP choices and contributions to strategy, etc.

I run a weekly game with teenagers, 13-17, mostly novices. I think it's wonderful when they RP even a little, and I am not going to quash their choices (well, unless they violate our session 0 agreements, but that's a different thing). My home game has different levels of experience, but IMO any RP is good RP, again as long as it is within our agreed upon boundaries. If a player wants to play their character as kind of dumb (the atribute that mostly gets RPed) then that's awesome. But I'm not gonna enforce it (though, full disclosure, I love playing my Int. 8 monk as kinda clueless).

IRL, intelligence is not a single thing. All folks are brilliant at some things and hopeless at others. An Int. 3 character is still a functional, highly skilled person, per the rules, so obviously a 3 is not meant to represent someone incapable of being an adventurer. Instead, it represents their facility with specific D&D functions, like casting spells or (in the case of 5e) Investigation checks and the like. Maybe they're a math savant as well (c.f. The Hangover) - that would be fine with me. I would never tell a player "No, you can't play your character that way" because of some arbitrary numbers.

The rules already take care of what happens in the cases where the attribute is meaningful in a game sense. A character with Int. 3 is not going to make a viable wizard or investigator. But they can act like they are all they want.

 

[TwoSix]

IRL, intelligence is not a single thing. All folks are brilliant at some things and hopeless at others. An Int. 3 character is still a functional, highly skilled person, per the rules, so obviously a 3 is not meant to represent someone incapable of being an adventurer. Instead, it represents their facility with specific D&D functions, like casting spells or (in the case of 5e) Investigation checks and the like. Maybe they're a math savant as well (c.f. The Hangover) - that would be fine with me. I would never tell a player "No, you can't play your character that way" because of some arbitrary numbers.

The rules already take care of what happens in the cases where the attribute is meaningful in a game sense. A character with Int. 3 is not going to make a viable wizard or investigator. But they can act like they are all they want.

Because time is a flat circle, and every topic at ENWorld has been discussed before.

G

D&D 5E (2014) Thread 'Geniuses with 5 Int'

Apr 6, 2016

Obviously inspired by that other thread, the goal of this thread is to describe characters who are geniuses, but for whatever reason they often fail at tasks that, in game terms, require a dice roll with an Int modifier.

How might you roleplay it?

My offerings:

Milton von Schlumberg the wizard is a genius, but he is also nearly crippled with self-doubt and insecurities. He'll often be halfway through casting a spell when he'll suddenly have an irrational fear that he's doing it wrong, and he gets so distracted by this fear that he actually bungles the spell, causing it to miss...

• Guest 6801328
• Replies: 601
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

 

[Clint_L]

To make my position perfectly clear, I am saying that all D&D attributes are is a measure of that character's facility with the specific situations described in the rules, like spellcasting, making attacks, using skills. Things you roll for. That's it. An Int. 3 means that your character is really bad at those specific rolls. It does not means that your character has to be bad at everything that involves thinking or...they'd actually be bad at everything.

So a score only has to coincide with your RP as far as you, the player, prefer. If you want to play your Int. 3 character as briiliant in ways that aren't covered by the rules, then thats fine! It's fun! Go for it! They'll still never be a wizard, but maybe they are a genius at other things. Which mostly won't be relevant to your adventuring day, or they'd be covered in the rules, but might be very impactful on the story.

We have MANY examples of such people in popular culture. How intelligent is Doc Brown? He's obviously a super genius in some ways, but a total idiot in others. And you can say the same for every other attribute. It's all a matter of context. The attribute scores only apply to the context covered, specifically, by the rules.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, and that's where I don't like forcing players to RP to the arbitrary concepts loosely represented by attribute scores. What it can mean is players or the DM policing each other's RP choices and contributions to strategy, etc.

The character's attributes are defined by its stats, and one of the challenges of roleplaying is playing to those stats in some sort of believable manner.

For the physical stats - Str-Dex-Con - the dice largely can take care of this. For the non-physical - Int-Wis-Cha - not so much.

I run a weekly game with teenagers, 13-17, mostly novices. I think it's wonderful when they RP even a little, and I am not going to quash their choices (well, unless they violate our session 0 agreements, but that's a different thing). My home game has different levels of experience, but IMO any RP is good RP, again as long as it is within our agreed upon boundaries. If a player wants to play their character as kind of dumb (the atribute that mostly gets RPed) then that's awesome. But I'm not gonna enforce it (though, full disclosure, I love playing my Int. 8 monk as kinda clueless).

Personally, I'd posit that a club catering largely to new players is exactly where such things should be enforced, in order to make it clear to the players that the stats on the character sheet matter beyond pure game mechanics.

IRL, intelligence is not a single thing. All folks are brilliant at some things and hopeless at others. An Int. 3 character is still a functional, highly skilled person, per the rules, so obviously a 3 is not meant to represent someone incapable of being an adventurer.

That to me is where 5e (and some other e's as well) completely get it wrong.

I subscribe to the idea (and have always thought it excellent) that your character's Int score vaguely reflects 1/10 of its IQ*; and someone with an IQ of 30 - as reflected by Int 3 - isn't going to be nearly as capable as 5e would have it. Intelligence 3 should be at best barely functional, and keep in mind that 3 is supposed to be the extreme end of the bell curve.

That said, I suppose if you look at it that the 3-18 bell curve applies to adventurers only then the 5e paradigm holds a bit more water. For me, though, the 3-18 curve applies to the whole population; adventurers get the benefit of rolling more than 3d6 and are thus skewed a bit toward the higher end, but that's it.

* - and before anyone comes in saying IQ isn't a good measure of intelligence, I'll just say that for these purposes it's good enough to be good enough.

Instead, it represents their facility with specific D&D functions, like casting spells or (in the case of 5e) Investigation checks and the like. Maybe they're a math savant as well (c.f. The Hangover) - that would be fine with me. I would never tell a player "No, you can't play your character that way" because of some arbitrary numbers.

Where I say the "arbitrary numbers" are there to inform roleplay in addition to their purely game-mechanical functions.

The rules already take care of what happens in the cases where the attribute is meaningful in a game sense. A character with Int. 3 is not going to make a viable wizard or investigator. But they can act like they are all they want.

This is where the 1e idea of having hard-minimum score requirements in order to be or become a class make boatloads of both in-fiction and game-mechanical sense. A character with Dex 5 will never be a Rogue if for no other reason than nobody in their right mind would bother training such a character and learning those skills on its own with that Dex would be out of the question.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

What an opportunity! I've never played a character as a player with a stat that low.

The real question is where to put it? Sickly or sorcerer, with it in CON or STR? Clueless & distracted wizards with it in WIS? Clumsy fighter with it in DEX? Dumb but worldly wise cleric with it in INT? Or stereotypical rude half-orc barbarian?