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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7962400" data-attributes="member: 7006">Because the stats themselves are actually pretty useless in "defining" what a character is.  And that's why all this talk about "dump stats" is kind of stupid too in my opinion.The problem is that all of you are just looking at the stats themselves and using those as definition of what a character is... when it truth, when you stop looking at a character sheet and only concern yourself with what occurs at the table... the difference between an 8 WIS and a 12 WIS character is 2 POINTS DIFFERENCE in all the rolls that occur.  That's it!  An 8 WIS character is only just 10% less wise than a 12 WIS character.  The 8 who makes a Wisdom check will be receiving numbers between -1 and 19, while the 12 will get numbers between 1 and 21.  Where exactly does this illustrate the 8 WIS is somehow all this less wise than the 12 WIS character?  That supposedly unwise 8 WIS character will be making moderate DC 15 checks a full quarter of the time.THIS is why I say it's ridiculous for any DM to look at their players character sheets and become bothered by the numbers scribbled down, as though those are what the characters are.  Because they aren't.  What the characters are is what happens to them at the table.  The way the characters are roleplayed and then what occurs to them defines the character, NOT the character sheet.  When the 8 STR character makes the 3 Athletics checks in a row you asked of them... it sure doesn't seem at that point at the table they've "dumped STR" now, does it?  And if you had never looked at the character sheet to begin with, you'd probably never guess that the player had "dumped STR".Worry about how your players actually roleplay their characters and take THAT as your cue for the kind of person they are and have your NPCs react accordingly-- not the stereotypical vision of what they should be based on the numbers you remembered seeing written down on their sheet.</blockquote>

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