Character ability v. player volition: INT, WIS, CHA

[ProfessorCirno]

I'm a lot more interested in if people are playing interesting characters with fleshed-out personalities and motives than if they're perfectly portraying the random numbers on a sheet of paper.

Why do you think those two can't coincide...?

 

[Nai_Calus]

I gave a couple of examples in the very post you quoted - There are plenty of concepts that just plain aren't supported by the way attributes are with their all or nothing setup.

No idiot savants, no perceptive but unable to read others people, no people who know exactly how to act in public but are completely loathesome in private. Rules don't support it. So sod them. Less worrying about if you're properly roleplaing 4/8/14/18/whatever INT/WIS/CHA, more worrying about if your character would pass muster as an actual being with actual flaws and strengths that don't involve being utterly perfect or utterly terrible in all aspects of one arbitrary category. Much of what is lumped into WIS I strongly disagree with it all being in there; same with CHA and INT. True, nobody wants a dozen mental attributes, but still.

I'd like to see them re-purposed/eliminated in favour of something more useful. Instead of INT you buy/roll for an attribute that determines your book learning and your wizard spellcasting ability. Instead of WIS you get an attribute that determines your resistance to magic and your cleric/druid spellcasting ability. Instead of CHA you get an attribute that determines your social standing and your ability to get people to work for you as well as your Bard/Sorceror spellcasting ability. Your ability to percieve things is divorced from WIS and thrown into a stat/a skill to be bought.

Divorce personality from it entirely, divorce social skills from it entirely and have those rely solely on how much you've bought into them. So you can be an antisocial jerk who can, if he needs to, dazzle everyone around him with his charm, as well as being blindingly brilliant but refuses to ever study anything, reads people like books but can't find his glasses to save his life, without worrying about 'uh wait what the hell do I do for stats for that am I doing it wrong if I give him high CHA but then play him like he has none uh...'

tl;dr INT/WIS/CHA do not even remotely accurately reflect personality and should not be the determining factor in such.

 

[Celebrim]

No idiot savants

Well, you could always do something like this:

Intelligence 7, human expert level 3, max ranks in Knowledge (Arcane) (or whatever) skill focus (Knowledge (arcane), educated (+2 bonus in knowledge (arcane)), academy educated (+2 bonus in knowledge arcane and spellcraft).

Knowledge Arcane skill at +12, and virtually no other skills.

The choice of skill was arbitary. Similar design could be used for virtually any skill to produce a prodigy in one skill who was inept in all others.

..no perceptive but unable to read others people

Expert level 3, wisdom 8, max ranks in spot, search, and listen, skill focus (spot), skill focus (search), no ranks in sense motive.

no people who know exactly how to act in public but are completely loathesome in private. Rules don't support it. So sod them.

Charisma 16, max ranks in bluff, diplomacy, and perform. Chaotic evil alignment and appropriate personality description, ei, "In public, Lord Danmarl uses his considerable charm to play the role of a witty, compassionate, philantropist who has only the interests of the public in mind. In private, he is a hard drinking foul mouthed misogynist sadist and sexual pervert."

Less worrying about if you're properly roleplaing 4/8/14/18/whatever INT/WIS/CHA, more worrying about if your character would pass muster as an actual being with actual flaws and strengths that don't involve being utterly perfect or utterly terrible in all aspects of one arbitrary category.

Poppycock. This is one of those lovely rationalizations people throw around, but if you get back to the behavior they are actually defending its easy to see that it haas nothing to with playing 'an actual being with actual flaws' that don't involve being 'utterly perfect'. It's high minded psuedo-intellectual sophistry, since no one in this whole thread has actually stated that they disagreed with me on the grounds that it would prevent them from playing a character with flaws. Rather, every single argument against my point of view has - whatever the stated reasoning - been used to justify playing a character without flaws.

I'd like to see them re-purposed/eliminated in favour of something more useful. Instead of INT you buy/roll for an attribute that determines your book learning and your wizard spellcasting ability. Instead of WIS you get an attribute that determines your resistance to magic and your cleric/druid spellcasting ability. Instead of CHA you get an attribute that determines your social standing and your ability to get people to work for you as well as your Bard/Sorceror spellcasting ability. Your ability to percieve things is divorced from WIS and thrown into a stat/a skill to be bought.

All of this customization can be done in the D20 system by simply arranging your feat and skill selection. If you want to be a skillful wizard but not have alot of book learning, buy a high int and not alot of knowledge skills. Buy a trait like 'spellcasting prodigy' that gives you spell ability in excess of your intelligence. If you want high wisdom, but not high perception skill, don't buy ranks in spot, listen, search, sense motive and the like. Conversely, if you want to be alert but not particularly wise, take an average wisdom and buy the Alertness feat and ranks in spot, listen, search, sense motive and the like.

Is it a perfect system? No, but I don't know one that is and I've tried alot of systems. There are always tradeoffs.

Divorce personality from it entirely, divorce social skills from it entirely and have those rely solely on how much you've bought into them. So you can be an antisocial jerk who can, if he needs to, dazzle everyone around him with his charm...

Nothing in the rules prevents this. 'House' (the TV character) is an exellent example of a character which is a jerk but who also has high charisma, and who can, if he needs to, dazzle everyone around him with his charm. That he more often uses his charisma to belittle, decieve, and taunt is a personality quirk.

as well as being blindingly brilliant but refuses to ever study anything...

Easily handled under the rules.

reads people like books but can't find his glasses to save his life

Not much of a stretch under the rules.

without worrying about 'uh wait what the hell do I do for stats for that am I doing it wrong if I give him high CHA but then play him like he has none uh...'

You have a very narrow idea of what charisma means that is not at all supported by the books. You seem to think that 'high charisma' means 'likeable, nice guy', but then how do you explain the charisma score posessed by fiends of the lower planes?

To this extent, and to this extent only, I think that your rant has a point. D&D does not out of the box support disadvantages like 'bad eyesight' or 'autistic'. You do have to cludge a little to create the equivalent of a disadvantage using just the core rules. However, there are plenty of supplements that allow you to buy disadvantages to go with your 'perks' (feats), and these are fairly easy to create if you want them.

But for the most part, your rant is just not at all grounded in the rules.

 

[Voadam]

Poppycock. This is one of those lovely rationalizations people throw around, but if you get back to the behavior they are actually defending its easy to see that it haas nothing to with playing 'an actual being with actual flaws' that don't involve being 'utterly perfect'. It's high minded psuedo-intellectual sophistry, since no one in this whole thread has actually stated that they disagreed with me on the grounds that it would prevent them from playing a character with flaws. Rather, every single argument against my point of view has - whatever the stated reasoning - been used to justify playing a character without flaws.

Nah, I don't like tieing the roleplay into the mechanics, class archetypes, and character balance. I want characters to be combat balanced regardless of their roleplay.

Want to roleplay smart and be mechanically effective? Play these classes but not these other ones.

Aesthetically I prefer not limiting it that way.

 

[Celebrim]

I want characters to be combat balanced regardless of their roleplay.

This is an entirely tangental issue. Saying this neither disagrees nor agrees with the points I've raised here. I can fully agree with "I want characters to be combat balanced regardless of their roleplay" without in the slightest changing my position. (In fact, I don't fully agree with it, but I'm very sympathetic to the concern and if I was allowed to agree or disagree in a 'fuzzy' way I'd say I 80% agreed with the statement.) If I can fully agree with something without any fear, how is it a point of argument against me?

The statement also doesn't support the one you made that immediately proceeded it except in a limited way. We may or may not choose to tie roleplay to mechanics and class archetypes without really effecting their combat balance. Combat balance is probably the area of the game least effected by the personality of the character, and at least in 3e, int, wis, and chr only impact most character's combat ability in very indirect ways. It's not like 4e where you can use mental attributes almost interchangably with physical ones provided you are of a particular class, and conversely virtually all classses are 'forced' to particular builds emphasising one or the other attribute ('brawny' rogue vs. 'trickster' rogue, for example) (at least until we get builds for every attibute).

Want to roleplay smart and be mechanically effective? Play these classes but not these other ones.

Aesthetically I prefer not limiting it that way.

Which is an odd statement to make considering how little the roleplaying influences the issue you raise. If you don't want to limit your mechanical effectiveness with a low attribute, you will need to play these classes but not other ones for far more tangible and unavoidable reasons than roleplaying. If you want to play Wizard, you are pretty much forced not to be Int 6 because the mechanics strongly enforce the flavor of wizard which is, "You must be really smart to do this." If aesthetically you prefered that not to be true, your bone of contention would not seem at all to be with how you roleplayed Int 6. Afterall, if the rules allowed you to base your Wizard spells off of Wisdom or Strength, you could be a mighty wizard while simultaneously roleplaying your character in a way that conveyed 'not too bright upstairs'.

So again, I'm not at all seeing the connection between what you say is the source of your disagreement with me and your disagreement with me.

 

[Voadam]

This is an entirely tangental issue. Saying this neither disagrees nor agrees with the points I've raised here. I can fully agree with "I want characters to be combat balanced regardless of their roleplay" without in the slightest changing my position. (In fact, I don't fully agree with it, but I'm very sympathetic to the concern and if I was allowed to agree or disagree in a 'fuzzy' way I'd say I 80% agreed with the statement.) If I can fully agree with something without any fear, how is it a point of argument against me?

The statement also doesn't support the one you made that immediately proceeded it except in a limited way. We may or may not choose to tie roleplay to mechanics and class archetypes without really effecting their combat balance. Combat balance is probably the area of the game least effected by the personality of the character, and at least in 3e, int, wis, and chr only impact most character's combat ability in very indirect ways. It's not like 4e where you can use mental attributes almost interchangably with physical ones provided you are of a particular class, and conversely virtually all classses are 'forced' to particular builds emphasising one or the other attribute ('brawny' rogue vs. 'trickster' rogue, for example) (at least until we get builds for every attibute).

Social and mental stats are either tangential and not important mechanically or they have significant mechanical impact in 3e. Intelligence is usually only important if you are a class with powers tied to intelligence (wizard, psion, etc.) Same for Charisma. Wisdom has both classes powered by it (cleric, druid, Monk, Ranger, Paladin), but is relevant for all for the will save modifier.

If you are a melee fighter in 3e int and charisma are not as important for your combat ability as is your strength and constitution or your dexterity and wisdom.

If you make a fighter who is a capable leader and you tie this in with stats you put points into his charisma with no combat effect and therefore fewer stat points into his combat relevant stats. To get 14s in cha takes 6 points in 3e point buy cost. For a 24 point buy game that is one quarter of your points right there with four combat relevant stats to go. If you are a smart and intelligent leader (say Roy from Order of the Stick) that is half your points.

His buddy the paladin gets some combat bonuses for every point his charisma goes up. Bonuses that the fighter does not get. Spending a quarter of his point buy on charisma is not wasted as far as combat effectiveness. He still needs all the physicals that the fighter gets because they do similar front line physical things but his points spent in charisma are not wasted when you evaluate his combat value.

Their companion the sorcerer however is primarily powered by charisma spells. He can sacrifice strength without problem as he is not a melee combatant, and con, dex, and wis are not as important for him because he is not a front line melee combatant and he has a strong class will save. He can spend the majority of his point buy points on charisma and dump stat str and be fairly combat optimized.

You could say leadership is a charisma trait (as the srd does) and sorcerers should generally be leaders followed by paladins as decent ones while fighters should generally not lead. If a fighter wants to be a good leader he should sacrifice his combat stats to get the charisma of an optimized paladin even though he gains nothing mechanically for combat from this choice and takes away from his combat power to do so. To be as good as a sorcerer at leading he should have a stat array similar to a sorcerer and pay the combat price for doing so. This is a class archetype argument in favor of tieing stats to roleplay.

I have no aesthetic preference for making fighters pay such a combat value tax to roleplay as good a leader type as a paladin much less pattern his stat build on a sorcerer one.

 

[Oni]

Poppycock. This is one of those lovely rationalizations people throw around, but if you get back to the behavior they are actually defending its easy to see that it haas nothing to with playing 'an actual being with actual flaws' that don't involve being 'utterly perfect'. It's high minded psuedo-intellectual sophistry, since no one in this whole thread has actually stated that they disagreed with me on the grounds that it would prevent them from playing a character with flaws. Rather, every single argument against my point of view has - whatever the stated reasoning - been used to justify playing a character without flaws.

I thought I had given a pretty even handed and fair review of my take on the different approaches. I don't recall at all trying to justify a character without flaws and to be honest I find myself slightly annoyed to have such thoughts attributed to me. I think based on your posting that you are a style 1 roleplayer through and through (which is a fine way to do it), but consider for a moment that your approach is not the only acceptable approach to good roleplaying. Just because I didn't sit down before the start of play and say my character has flaws ABC and strengths XYZ doesn't mean it's my endeavor to play Mr. Perfect. Indeed the more organic personality that is created at the intersection of mechanical and player input is never going to be perfect and frankly in my opinion his flaws are more likely to be subtle and realistic. And I think there is a lot of good fun to be had discovering the nature of characters' personalities over the course of play.

 

[Celebrim]

I thought I had given a pretty even handed and fair review of my take on the different approaches.

I thought I'd indicated I thought so.

I don't recall at all trying to justify a character without flaws and to be honest I find myself slightly annoyed to have such thoughts attributed to me.

Ok. I probably should have posted that response to your even-handed and fair review I thought about writing.

Just because I didn't sit down before the start of play and say my character has flaws ABC and strengths XYZ doesn't mean it's my endeavor to play Mr. Perfect.

No, I didn't say that. What I did say was that the objection to what I said was only non-trivial, if you were trying to justify not playing your flaws.

This is where that missing response I didn't write comes in. I liked your treatment, but what you failed to note that I thought you should have was that, from the perspective of an observer watching a role-player play the game, in the case of a good role play it would be impossible to tell if any particular proposition or characteristic was motivated by the roleplayers careful forethought during the creation of the character, or by the organic and extemporaneous creation of character as a result of game events. The two things, pretty much by definition, have to appear to be harmonious if the observer is to believe the character has a consistant personality. This nitpick over the technique by which we establish that the int 6 character is stupid, really has no bearing over whether or not an int 6 character is stupid unless you are trying to say that the int 6 character is not in fact stupid despite both the implied value of the attribute 'intelligence' and the mechanical impact of that intelligence.

In short, while there are some real differences between the role players you group in type 1 and those in type 2, most of those differences have to do more with the pitfalls that a particular style is more likely to land you in if you aren't careful than they have to do with any functional difference in play. As you yourself said, pretty much all real world cases are going to lie on a spectrum between the two extremes. Both techniques can and probably certainly do inform good roleplay. None of that establishes that an int 6 character being played in a way that communicates high intelligence is anything but bad roleplay.

Indeed the more organic personality that is created at the intersection of mechanical and player input is never going to be perfect and frankly in my opinion his flaws are more likely to be subtle and realistic.

So you would agree then that if the player tried to play his character as if he had no flaws, it wouldn't be particularly subtle/realistic/good roleplaying?

It then follows that we have very little disagreement. If we observe a player playing his character as if he had no flaws, then we'd be observing bad role play.

And I think there is a lot of good fun to be had discovering the nature of characters' personalities over the course of play.

I can just as easily say that no well conceived personality is going to fail to grow or deepen in response to events over the course of play and that no personality, no matter how well realized to begin with, is going to be fully complete and so new ideas, depths, and attributes will develop over the course of play. However, this growth in the character is unlikely to be however we approach roleplaying 'the character gets smarter' unless there is some mechanical justification for it.

 

[Celebrim]

Social and mental stats are either tangential and not important mechanically or they have significant mechanical impact in 3e.

Woah. Woah there. Do you literally mean that, or do you mean:

"Social and mental stats are either tangential and not important mechanically to combat or they have significant mechanical impact on combat in 3e."

Because I can agree that social and mental stats generally don't have a significant impact on combat expect for certain classes, but I certainly don't agree that they don't have a signficant mechanical impact.

If you are a melee fighter in 3e int and charisma are not as important for your combat ability as is your strength and constitution or your dexterity and wisdom.

Yes, hense the temptation to 'dump stats' in order to maximize your combat ability.

If you make a fighter who is a capable leader and you tie this in with stats you put points into his charisma with no combat effect and therefore fewer stat points into his combat relevant stats.

Ok, I see where you are going with this.

You could say leadership is a charisma trait (as the srd does) and sorcerers should generally be leaders followed by paladins as decent ones while fighters should generally not lead. If a fighter wants to be a good leader he should sacrifice his combat stats to get the charisma of an optimized paladin even though he gains nothing mechanically for combat from this choice and takes away from his combat power to do so. To be as good as a sorcerer at leading he should have a stat array similar to a sorcerer and pay the combat price for doing so. This is a class archetype argument in favor of tieing stats to roleplay.

I have no aesthetic preference for making fighters pay such a combat value tax to roleplay as good a leader type.

Ok, fine. This would appear to be an objection that all possible builds (charismatic fighter, weak barbarian, dumb wizard) should have equal combat ability, so that no matter how I concieve my character they should be balanced with all other possible builds. But that's not an objection to what I've said directly. To see why, let's imagine for a moment that I agreed with you that this was terribly unfair, and hense your 3 INT and 3 CHR fighter should be allowed to be role played as a smart charismatic leader.

What would the actual result of this concession be? Well, to begin with, while a 3 INT and 3 CHR might have very little mechanical impact on your attack rolls and damage, they have a pretty huge mechanical impact on play outside of an attack roll. At precisely the time that you are supposed to be showing off as the smart or charismatic character you claim you should be, the rules of play would say that you should consistantly fail on these occassions. How then are you to actually appear to be a smart and charismatic leader? The rules as you've already said demand otherwise. And, if we are to ignore the rules and allow you to appear to be a smart and charismatic leader (or if you are finding/arguing for some way to get around those rules by virtue of your superior roleplay), then how are you doing anything but arguing that your characater should be strong, fast, hardy, clever, wise, and charismatic - that is to say without flaw?

Therefore, my concession is of no value. Whether I conceed to you the right to roleplay your INT 3 CHR 3 fighter as a clever and charismatic leader or not, it doesn't make it good role play.

Moreover, if what you are really going for is bringing your character conception to life, why should it matter to you that your character isn't perfectly combat optimized? Why should it matter to you that you are sacrificing a bit of strength or dexterity for more intelligence or charisma?

I really only have two sympathies for the argument you make here.

First, the D20 system doesn't do enough to make intelligence and charisma impact the game outside of combat (or even in it for that matter). Intelligence should certainly not be a dump stat for as many classes as it is.

Secondly, D&D in general historically has not encouraged DM's to make what happens outside of combat matter.

But these objections have to do ultimately with the limitations of D20 as a rules set, not whether or not it is good role playing to play a character at the low end of the intelligence scale as if they were on the high end of the intelligance scale. We can address the limitations of the ruleset. It is quite beyond anyone's ability to make bad roleplaying into good roleplaying.

 

[Ariosto]

There's a divide that was remarked upon at least as far back as a piece, "The Vicarious Participator", in Dragon #74 (June 1983).

In the early days of fantasy role-playing (FRP) gaming, many players did not roleplay in any significant sense of the word; that is, they did not pretend or imagine that they were in a real world different from our own. Instead, they made a farce out of FRP, and their characters tended to act like thugs or gangsters, if not fools. Pursuit of power, without regard for anything else, was typical.

In reaction and rebuttal to this, some players went to the other extreme. They believed that characters, through their players, [sic] should imagine themselves as fulfilling a role in the real world, and further declared that each character should be a personality completely separate from the player, so that the player becomes more of an actor than a participant in a game. For several years these people were voices crying out in the wilderness, but as more people gained FRP experience or heard about this “improvisational theater” (or “persona-creator”) school of role-playing, and as the more articulate and vociferous of the “persona” extremists found an audience for their views, this extreme attitude about roleplaying has spread so widely that it, instead of not role-playing at all, seems to have become the standard.

Unfortunately, because initially they had to express their views about roleplaying with maximum emphasis just to be listened to, many of the people in this second group have become intolerant of other views. One occasionally runs into remarks at conventions or in articles which disparage anyone who does not create an elaborate persona for each of his
characters, each different from his own personality. The most hard-line advocates of this school of thought refuse to believe that there is any other “proper” way to play, and they measure the skill of a roleplaying gamer in accordance with how closely he or she meets their notions of role-playing as theater.

There is a third group, with an attitude that lies between the power-mad, thug character players on one hand and the persona-creators on the other. The viewpoint of these people, who may be called “vicarious participators,” reflects the original intent of role-playing gaming. They (and I number myself among them) believe that the point of a role-playing game is to put oneself into a situation one could never experience in the real world, and to react as the player would like to think he would react in similar circumstances.

In other words, the game lets me do the things I’d like to think I would do if I were a wizard, or if I were a fighter, or perhaps, even, if I decided to take the evil path. Consequently, it would be foolish for me to create a personality quite different from my own, because it would no longer be me. The game is not a matter of Sir Stalwart does so-and-so” but “I do so-and-so.” In my imagination, I am the one who might get killed — not some
paper construct, however elaborate it may be. (Of course, because these are games played by people with adult mentality —even if not of adult age — no one ever becomes overinvolved emotionally.)

The most important point I want to make is that there is nothing superior about the persona-creation method of role-playing. Vicarious participation is neither less mature, nor less intelligent, nor less “true blue” than persona creation, though all these claims have been made at times. Persona-creators should accept that many players simply do not want to become actors. Refereeing requires quite enough acting for most of us, for the referee must separate himself completely from his non-player characters or he cannot be objective and impartial -- he must be a persona-creator in order to be a good referee. Perhaps this is the clearest indication that persona creation is no better than vicarious participation:
Many excellent referees, who are necessarily excellent persona-creators, nonetheless prefer vicarious participation when they play. The vicarious style is a matter of choice, not of inability to act.