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

[Oni]

I thought I'd indicated I thought so.

Which was appreciated btw, it was nice to know it was read if not necessarily agreed with.

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.

I'm not sure I conveyed what I was trying to say as clearly as I might have, because if I am reading you correctly (and I am trying to make sure I don't misrepresent you if I can help it) you haven't quite grasped what I was getting at. As we start heading more toward the extremes of the second style, the evolution of character through play, we can discard the character stats as being nothing but mechanics. Our pure type 2 roleplayer does not look at his 6 int and immediately assume his character is stupid he just understands that he has a poor chance of success whenever that mechanic is tested. Instead the personality is formed at the point where mechanics and player meet. The player offers personality, the mechanics dictate results where the come into play, the player responds. This give and take over the long run sculpts a unique personality and presence in the game world. So yes, I guess I am in fact saying that it is entirely in the realm of possibility to have an int 6 character that is not stupid, that the type 2 approach at its purest forms a kind of alchemy in which a character is greater than the sum of its parts, player and mechanics.

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.

I would agree that someone that declares there character is perfect or good at everything is hardly on the right track. However I think it extremely difficult, maybe even impossible, to actually play a character without flaws. Consider the fact that such a player, despite any declarations on his part, is in fact not going to be good at everything, especially when mechanics come into play. Suddenly the dice start unveiling a compensating braggart. What the player does with this and his willingness to interact with the game world I think is more telling.

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.

Well depending on how firmly your views rest on the stats dictate personality end of things, it seems quite possible to me your opportunities for character growth could be limited by those same mechanical strictures. And on the flip side of that, if you divorce personality from mechanics it is entirely possibly that the character could become smarter, as the player themselves becomes more adept.

 

[Voadam]

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.

I was talking about combat ability.

I was responding to your quote that "at least in 3e, int, wis, and chr only impact most character's combat ability in very indirect ways."

Out of combat the mechanical impact of the social and mental stats is on the skill system and straight charisma checks plus certain class specific features (sorcerer and bard max spell level being tied to charisma, etc.).

The significance of the three mental stats out of combat for most characters is thus tied to the importance of skill and charisma checks in a game which can vary widely from game to game.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not sure I conveyed what I was trying to say as clearly as I might have, because if I am reading you correctly (and I am trying to make sure I don't misrepresent you if I can help it) you haven't quite grasped what I was getting at.

No, I think I do. Of course, as I say that, your explanation leaves me somewhat baffled, so that I find it hard to credit that you mean what you say.

As we start heading more toward the extremes of the second style, the evolution of character through play, we can discard the character stats as being nothing but mechanics.

With you so far.

Our pure type 2 roleplayer does not look at his 6 int and immediately assume his character is stupid he just understands that he has a poor chance of success whenever that mechanic is tested.

I don't you are expressing yourself clearly here. There is not semmantic difference between between "look at his 6 int and immediately assume his character is stupid" and "understands that he has a poor chance of sucess whenever that mechanic is tested". These are the same approach. I can make an elaborate argument to prove it, but I don't think there is a need in your case. I think you'll see there is nothing organic about the latter approach that fits the definition you supplied earlier, nor does it match the description you must made of the 'extreme of the second style' or the sentense which follows after it:

Instead the personality is formed at the point where mechanics and player meet.

Ok, back with you.

The player offers personality, the mechanics dictate results where the come into play, the player responds.

Surely you mean the that the mechanics dictate results where they come into play, and then the player responds by offering a personality to match the results?? If the player offers the personality first, then its a type 1 approach of making the results fit the personality rather than a type 2 approach of making the personality fit the results.

This give and take over the long run sculpts a unique personality and presence in the game world.

Ok, now we are back on the same page.

So yes, I guess I am in fact saying that it is entirely in the realm of possibility to have an int 6 character that is not stupid, that the type 2 approach at its purest forms a kind of alchemy in which a character is greater than the sum of its parts, player and mechanics.

I think your argument is being somewhat led astray by the particular mechanics of a particular system. I think you'll want to agree that if we are going to describe an approach to roleplaying, that the two approaches need to be general enough to adapt to any fortune system we might adopt. In this case, I think you are looking at the D20 system with its initially small bonuses and high degree of randomness as saying, "Hypothetically speaking, its possible that even a low int character could pass a series of skill checks", and while this is true, it wouldn't make him 'intelligent' as far as the D20 system is concerned because intelligence manifests itself in various other ways in the D20 system (number of skills, access to literal feats of intelligence). But, even more, we can easily device hypothetical games where ones score was itself the fortune mechanic (a bidding system, for example), in which case its clear that even these wierd edge cases go away and we can look at the two approaches without being distracted by the mechanics of a particular system.

Consider the fact that such a player, despite any declarations on his part, is in fact not going to be good at everything, especially when mechanics come into play. Suddenly the dice start unveiling a compensating braggart. What the player does with this and his willingness to interact with the game world I think is more telling.

If the device start unveiling a compensating braggart against the wishes and perhaps without even the knowledge of the player, then it is because the player is a compensating braggart - not the character. And if the player is unconsciously playing himself, then he's just being himself. He might be roleplaying in the sense used in psychology (but likely not even that, in as much as when you role play in that sense you are aware that you are practicing with yourself and not playing an outsized ego driven version of yourself because you are a compensating braggert), but he's not really imagining an alternate self or taking on a persona informed by the game in any way. And in this sense, the player isn't either a type 1 or type 2 role player, because he's not role playing. He is failing in his role play. He is trying to play something, but portraying quite unconsciously something else. And the thing he unconsciously creates is likely as not to be annoying - probably even more so than the player is annoying because he's playing a pretentious outsized unhibited version of himself.

This brings me back to the central point of my responce to you. If I am a player at the table, and I being observed in my play by other players and the DM, and if I am being a good role player it will be impossible for you to tell whether I am a type 1 or a type 2 role player. You will not be able to tell from my play, whether, when a waiter comes to me and says, "Can I bring you your favorite dish?", and I rattle off, "I'd like a mushroom ragout with beef and a bottle of good madiera.", whether I made up my favorite dish on the spot or whether I already knew my favorite dish because I brainstormed up a bunch of personality traits for my character days ahead of beginning play and have them all wrote down on note cards that I study between sessions.

I have personal experience with this effect. I once played a character who was a professor of English Literature who was an expert in Shakespeare. To play this character convincingly, I spent a few hours each week memorizing passages of Shakespeare that I thought would be likely to pertain to something that might come up in play. As a result, when I played the character, virtually everyone I played with became convinced that in real life I was an English Literature major and that I was simply spouting off Shakespeare quotations as they occurred to me.

Other than to demonstrate that you can't tell whether something is type 1 or type 2 by observing it when it is done well, the other point of bringing up one of my triumphs as an example is I think it shows clearly that there is certainly some aspect of portraying an intelligence and knowledgable character that has no real bearing on the mechanics. Knowing alot of Shakespeare was a convincing personification of the character I was animating, but if the character I was animating had no ranks in 'Knowledge (Literature)' (or whatever it would be called in whatever system) and a low intelligence, my elevated diction and extended quotations would be completely out of character regardless of whether we ever even made a skill check. Whether I am type 1 or type 2, I won't make a character know lots of Shakespeare unless there is a mechanical basis for that knowledge. All that will differ is the extent to which I have preinvented the excuses for my successes, but in practice my preinventions should be indistinguishable from my postinventions.

Well depending on how firmly your views rest on the stats dictate personality end of things, it seems quite possible to me your opportunities for character growth could be limited by those same mechanical strictures.

Well, surely this is true of both type 1 and type 2 approaches to play. If adopting a type 2 approach where the dice dictated how you percieved the character, surely this puts a limit on how your character could grow every bit as much as prejudging where those dice would be likely to lie.

And on the flip side of that, if you divorce personality from mechanics it is entirely possibly that the character could become smarter, as the player themselves becomes more adept.

And again, surely if you divorse personality from mechanics and leave it up to the dice, there is a real danger that the randomness of the dice will dictate you will never have a personality all, but have an unfixed nature that is tossed about by every whim of chance. Surely the only certain path to character growth in a particular area of skill is mechanical, whether we leave our judgement of player skill and interpretation of the intersection of skill and luck to before or after the fortune mechanic because if we are leaving the dice to determine our growth we won't see any until the dice start to consistantly portray it.

 

[Celebrim]

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

Ariosto, I agree that 'persona creation' is not superior to 'vicarious play' and I feel - quite unlike the original author - that both are 'role-playing' and are within the original intention of the game. If I imagine what I would be like if I were a plains dwelling barbarian from a wild tribal culture that values martial virtue above all other merits and talents, its really only a matter of how far I want to take that imagination that determines whether I'm doing 'persona creation' or 'vicarious play'. I don't think the contrast is as great as Mr. Pulsipher seemed to think it was. One says "What would it be like to be a plains dwelling nomadic warrior?", and the other is only a matter of saying things like, "If I truly was a plains dwelling barbarian, I would likely not be as much of a pacifist as I am in real life nor would I likely follow the same moral code that I do now. I would have learned a whole different way of looking at the world." Both explore the world in the first person, treating the interaction between the player and the world as direct and personal as if you were doing these things yourself, rather than you moving or controlling a game peice on board.

And both are entertaining to both the player and his fellow players, including the game referee, provided that they are undertaken consciously and thoughtfully. As the original author notes however, 'persona creation' is essential to the game - the DM must do it - where as 'vicarious play' is merely a choice.

And for that matter, there is nothing inherently superior to playing a 'role-playing game' and playing a tactical wargame with only minimal role-playing elements. If you want to dispense with this role-playing nonsense entirely because you don't think it is for you, then whom am I to judge. Have fun with that.

 

[Voadam]

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.

Not quite. I want any class to be able to do any social or mental (not magical) roleplay concept.

Take the concept of a smart tactics master. In 4e a tactical warlord build would have int based power mechanics for this in combat. No game mechanics are attached in 3e. The closest is the description of intelligence including reasoning. I want a player of any character to choose to have his character focus his roleplay on analyzing the battlefield, and making suggestions on tactics.

In the 3e PH only wizards gain significant combat power from int.

I don't want this character concept to be reserved for wizards or characters that sacrifice combat competency to pump up their int stat for this purely roleplay aspect.

I want a player in my game with a MAD paladin to be able to play this role and not further water down his stats.

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.

Nah. They would give a -4 on skill checks. Depending on level those numbers can be overwhelmed by skill ranks, feats, and items or the vagaries of a d20 roll.

Besides, if we are talking 3e let's stick with the normal rules, where the lowest end dump stat is 8, 6 for racial penalty cases like a half-orc with dump stat charisma.

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?

If we ignore the description of the mental stats for nonmechanical purposes then we are declaring it is the player's realm, not the character stat realm. The character will have the mechanical flaws or merits of his stats.

I'm usually the DM.

As a DM it allows me to say it is the player's choice for how to play their character, they have no recourse to have me play their smart/wise/charismatic character for them and override their poor decisions or ideas.

Player: "What do I think, is this a good idea? Will it work?"
DM "I don't know, you tell me."

I'm more interested in what my players think and come up with for ideas and social interactions than in what their characters stats should result in.

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.

Right, it does not make it good roleplay. It is irrelevant to the question of whether it is good or bad roleplay.

 

[Voadam]

If I understand Oni's Types correctly it could go like this.

Suppose you have a dwarf fighter with a charisma of 6.

Type 1 says he has a charisma of 6 so I play him gruff and unpersuasive.

Type 2 says he has a charisma of 6 I will have a -2 on charisma checks.

Type 2 can attempt to be super persuasive and expect to have a -2 on his checks and deal with the mechanical results he gets. His personality will grow from this interaction of attempt and consequence.

Type 2 can also decide the mechanical penalties are too much and he avoids attempting to persuade people. His personality will then develop from his avoidance of attempting to persuade.

Type 1 will say he is unpersuasive and try to convey that by not trying to be super persuasive. His personality will develop from his avoidance of attempting to be persuasive.

An outside observer can note the differences in styles if type 2 does not mimic the type 1 style.

 

[Oni]

Yeah, that's basically what I was trying to get at, only a thousand times more succinctly.

 

[Nai_Calus]

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.

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

I stopped reading your wall of 'no you're wrong' here, because seriously. No, SERIOUSLY.

Expert. Skill focus. In 3.5. The edition where gods help you if you screw up once making your character with a suboptimal choice because you will then suck mechanically forever, gods help you if you make perfectly valid choices with a crappy class? I had a Bard/Swashbuckler once in a game with a Fighter and a Marshal, and while we were all pathetically awful, he was the most pathetically awful, because Two Weapon Fighting, while thematically appropriate, is not exactly a useful thing to do. And that's merely using low-tier *PC* classes, not god-awful NPC classes.

3.5 I've found teeters forever on this thin edge of being a miserable time, and whether it falls off that edge into suckitude or not depends a lot on mechanical effectiveness. Largely combat mechanical effectiveness.

(For further amusement, Mr. Bard/Swashbuckler was built partially around being slightly pathetic at combat, and making up for it somewhat with being a master of persuasion with a cheerful happy little +20 Diplomacy modifier. He wound up under a railroading DM who never once let any of us actually use social skills. No, not even after negotiating in-character for 40 minutes as a way to represent that my character's ability as opposed to my own.

Five minutes into the next session, the Marshal, using the exact same lines of negotiation that I had been using, accomplished what we were trying to do. Because the DM liked him more and 'Well he's more diplomatic than you IRL'. No, he didn't mention before we started that he didn't use them or provide opportunities to use them, or I would have just built the character for mechanical effectiveness, or saved him for a campaign he had a place in and made a damned Wizard.

Helped to put me off giving a damn about having my character's stats slavishly match his personality. No point to it. Get close enough and then do whatever, since chances are good it won't matter anyway. Just make a character who's good at fighting and then fudge the rest, since otherwise you're just going to go utterly mad.)

Come back with actually playable suggestions and then maybe I'll care about your hyperbole and One True Way.

 

[Vegepygmy]

I stopped reading your wall of 'no you're wrong' here, because seriously. No, SERIOUSLY.

Expert. Skill focus. In 3.5. The edition where gods help you if you screw up once making your character with a suboptimal choice because you will then suck mechanically forever, gods help you if you make perfectly valid choices with a crappy class?

Dude, SERIOUSLY. You ask for an idiot savant, and then complain that it's suboptimal?

WTF were you expecting?

 

[Celebrim]

I stopped reading your wall of 'no you're wrong' here, because seriously. No, SERIOUSLY.

Seriously, it sounds like you had a really crappy DM and are blaming the game for it.

Expert. Skill focus. In 3.5.

It should be quite obvious that expert was chosen simply as a generic class. The same build could easily apply to a variety of classes.

The edition where gods help you if you screw up once making your character with a suboptimal choice...

Wait a minute. You claimed that certain character types couldn't be created. I just set out to show that they could, which evidently I did, because you aren't claiming here that I didn't.

You didn't say anything about certain character types being suboptimal. If you ask me to make an idiot savant, pretty much by definition you are asking for a suboptimal character because of that 'idiot' clause. You can't make an idiot savant who isn't at least a little suboptimal in GURPS for crying out loud with a full point buy system and more options than the game really requires, becuase INT is such a huge stat that you generally do not dump INT ever if you are min/maxing.

...because you will then suck mechanically forever, gods help you if you make perfectly valid choices with a crappy class? I had a Bard/Swashbuckler once in a game with a Fighter and a Marshal, and while we were all pathetically awful...

Wait a minute. If you were all relatively the same power level, how can you say you were pathetically awful? Surely if you were all the same power level, you were then still some of the most powerful mortals in the campaign world? Because if you weren't, then the problem is the DM - not the game system. I'm guessing that the problem is that the DM didn't readjust the power level and challenges to deal with a party of 3 low powered character concepts. That's a DMing issue, not a game issue. The DM is primarily responcible for challenge balance - not the game.

...he was the most pathetically awful, because Two Weapon Fighting, while thematically appropriate, is not exactly a useful thing to do.

Well, it isn't really in the real world either, so I'm not entirely sure about the 'thematically appropriate' part, but on the other hand twf is not completely useless particularly if you bring in some 3rd party feats.

And that's merely using low-tier *PC* classes, not god-awful NPC classes.

No one was suggesting you play an expert, much less one that was 3rd level (as if you level was never going to change). I was just merely showing you how to build characters of a certain type. The same ideas could be applied to any class that had access to the skills.

3.5 I've found teeters forever on this thin edge of being a miserable time, and whether it falls off that edge into suckitude or not depends a lot on mechanical effectiveness. Largely combat mechanical effectiveness.

This tells me alot about the sort of games you've been playing, and I do feel sorry for you.

(For further amusement, Mr. Bard/Swashbuckler was built partially around being slightly pathetic at combat, and making up for it somewhat with being a master of persuasion with a cheerful happy little +20 Diplomacy modifier. He wound up under a railroading DM who never once let any of us actually use social skills. No, not even after negotiating in-character for 40 minutes as a way to represent that my character's ability as opposed to my own.

And this tells me even more, and the recount of your bad experiences just goes on and on and I'm very sympathetic. But seriously, stop blaming a game system for a bad DM. No game system survives a bad DM, and that's particularly true of game systems built with 'advanced' highly granular rules and lots of assumed system mastery on the part of all participants.

Look, you are clearly angry and have a grudge, and maybe you have a right to that grudge, but drop the grudge when you come into a thread and stop letting your feelings do all the talking.

Come back with actually playable suggestions and then maybe I'll care about your hyperbole and One True Way.

My hyperbole?