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

[Mallus]

Why do people care about 'dump stats'? I mean, at all.

Isn't a player actively participating in the game, contributing ideas, puzzle-solving, trying to influence NPC's through in-character speech, etc. more desirable than trying to nail that 8 INT or 10 CHR?

 

[Oni]

My opinion on such things tends to fluctuate, so if if I were answering this question a few weeks in the past or a few weeks in the future the answer might be totally different.

Currently however I've been going through and reading all the old entries on the Grognardia blog. While not always in agreement with some of the idea presented therein, and occasionally frustrated by the us versus them tone that seems to seep in at times*, I nevertheless find it interesting. At this point in time I'm rather fond of the idea of the player as the characters guardian angel. That is to say even if the character is dumb, it is still incumbent on the player to play intelligently. Those scores on the sheet are more a handy tool for the DM to decide the chance of success rather than a limiter on the actions a character may attempt. From a roleplay perspective I find them a decent suggestion of how that guardianship of the character might be present in game, but I don't like the idea that they limit the players actions.


*[slightly incoherent rant] Arg, there is so much good an interesting stuff related to old school games, why does the community have to be so insular, condescending, and pompous. I know that's not everyone, but it's extremely frustrating to visit forums and blogs for information or ideas and being left with the feeling that you're not welcome or somehow believed to be inferior due to age or matters of taste. This isn't leveled at Grognardia in particular, which is actually quite good in this regards, but ....ARG! [/slightly incoherent rant]

 

[Voadam]

By the way, I'm also a stat roller, so it's not true that every point spent on a fighter's intelligence is a point taken away from his strength/dex/con.

If you don't control how high or low your mental stats are then you don't get to choose how you play your character if your roleplay is tied to your mental stats.

 

[Dausuul]

Aren't the characters stats part of the character?

The stats, as currently presented, are an artificial representation of one aspect of the character - much like alignment. My experience is that they end up hindering the player's ability to really develop a character's personality. The more time you spend thinking, "My Intelligence is too low for me to do this, my alignment is too Lawful for me to do that," the more your character comes to be defined by those stats, at the cost of more interesting traits and quirks.

The thing is, in all of the default character creation methods in 3e, 4e and Pathfinder, the player gets to choose where to assign his character's stats. So, if the character has a low Int, it is because the player wants the character to have a low Int. That being the case, shouldn't they be playing the character accordingly?

Accordingly with what? As I said above, I think the most sensible approach is to restrict the impact of stats to the mechanical. A low Int score means you're going to fail a lot of knowledge checks. Maybe you're dumb, maybe you're smart but uneducated, maybe you're drunk all the time, that part is up to you.

What's the benefit of requiring players to "play their stats?" What does it add to the game?

 

[delericho]

Who gets to decide what 'accordingly' is?

I don't want to be put in the position of judging whether Grod the Unthinking is really smart enough to solve that chess board puzzle.

The difference between an Int 12 and an Int 14 is fairly minor, but the difference between an Int 5 and an Int 14 is not. It should be fairly obvious that, unless it's an ironic nickname, Grod the Unthinking shouldn't be able to solve the chess board puzzle - in fact, he might well not even realise there's a puzzle there to solve.

I'm happy just to have players participating, contributing and (hopefully) enjoying themselves.

Honestly, how is the game made more enjyable by trying to limit player contributions --in terms of ideas, speech, general role-playing-- to match the poorly-defined --if at all-- limitations of their characters?

It forces Grod's player to play his actual character, rather than simply seeking out the optimum way to 'win' the game. How would Grod actually react to the chess board puzzle? Would he blunder ahead and fall into the trap? Would he get angry and smash things up? Whichever it is, Grod should be doing that, rather than suddenly being revealed as a super-genius in disguise.

It's not that the player doesn't get to contribute to the scene - it's that he should contribute in a different way.

Many of the best memories I have of role-playing games past are not the heroic successes of the party - it is their comical failures that are remembered.

Why do people care about 'dump stats'? I mean, at all.

Because the player has assigned the points somewhere else, and is quite happy to enjoy the positive consequences of that choice. Oddly, the negative consequences are being brushed aside.

At its best, this is a mild form of power gaming. At its worst, it's cheating.

(Cheating? Hyperbole, surely? Consider: if Bob and Tom create their characters, Bob assigns his Int, Wis and Cha as dump-stats, and Tom does not, and then Bob happily ignores his character's weaknesses, Bob gets a much more powerful character for no effort. Bob may well be entirely happy with this arrangement, but I suspect Tom may feel differently when his Bard gets muscled aside in every combat encounter by Bob's more powerful Fighter... and then gets pushed aside in every roleplaying encounter by Bob's more assertive personality.)

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The stats, as currently presented, are an artificial representation of one aspect of the character - much like alignment. My experience is that they end up hindering the player's ability to really develop a character's personality. The more time you spend thinking, "My Intelligence is too low for me to do this, my alignment is too Lawful for me to do that," the more your character comes to be defined by those stats, at the cost of more interesting traits and quirks.

Then the question again must be asked: why do you roll stats, when you want to play a freeform RP?

I disagree with your statement that the character is defined by the stats. You're looking at it in the opposite direction. The stats are defined by the character. You're seeing "Well, the barbarian has low int, so he has to act stupid. I hate that." I see "Well, the barbarian should act stupid, so I'm going to give him low int."

Accordingly with what? As I said above, I think the most sensible approach is to restrict the impact of stats to the mechanical. A low Int score means you're going to fail a lot of knowledge checks. Maybe you're dumb, maybe you're smart but uneducated, maybe you're drunk all the time, that part is up to you.

What's the benefit of requiring players to "play their stats?" What does it add to the game?

And here I'm simply confused by "what does it add to the game?"

It adds the impact of stats.

Your statistics mean more when the players have to play them. Otherwise, they're just there for your Final Fantasy battle sequences.

Why do people care about 'dump stats'? I mean, at all.

Isn't a player actively participating in the game, contributing ideas, puzzle-solving, trying to influence NPC's through in-character speech, etc. more desirable than trying to nail that 8 INT or 10 CHR?

Then, and I mean this as an honest question, why even have stats? You're essentially saying that neither physical nor mental stats should matter at all - save for, perhaps, inside combat.

Or to go the other route - if a character is allowed to play the role of someone with high or low physical stats, why would you restrict them from playing the role of someone with high or low mental stats?

 

[Voadam]

Sure they do.

Characters with low strength aren't allowed to win at arm wrestling or kick down doors. Characters with low Con are going to be especially weak and susceptible to poisons.

I expect players to play their stats - they gave themselves those stats, after all. If you just shrug and go "Man whatever" then you're essentially telling the player "No, it's cool, just use those as dump stats - they don't matter at all to you."

In my opinion, the more you divide roleplaying away from stats, the closer you get to the point where you might as well just ditch the dice and freeform until the Final Fantasy-esque combat mode begins.

Characters with low strength have harder times making strength checks to kick in doors.

Characters with low cons are more susceptible to poisons.

Characters with low wisdom fail perception checks more often.

None of these are mechanics, not guides for roleplay.

Str and dex and con have no guides to roleplay.

 

[Celebrim]

This is a good question

What are the practical implications of including the "mental abilities" of a character during play?

One of two situations develop usually develop: either the player ignores what is written on his character sheet and plays as a full member of the party rather than as a fool member of the party, or else the rest of the party must deal with a member of the party whose play is fundamentally anti-social.

For this reason, I tend to frown on players taking excessively low mental attributes for their characters. It can be pulled off by a clever experienced role-player who is able to invent ways to excuse his characters insight and cleverness, but this is really rare. It's is however really funny when pulled off correctly and you have a good straight man playing the smarter character in the party.

Is it preferable aesthetically for a player to "play the stats" of the character?

Absolutely. I have no desire to game with people who don't play their character. If they can't help but be themselves in the game, they should play a character whose personality is much like their own.

Or should the player's choices be driven by the practical circumstances of the game and the guided by the player's ability as much as, or more than, what's written on the character sheet?

In my opinion, you have to carefully balance these things. You have to play what is written on the sheet and take a back seat in problem solving and NPC persuasion, but you also have to not keep yourself out of the game to the point that it becomes unfun for the other players. So, if you see a way through the problem, you need to come up with some excuse for solving the problem by accident or foolishness, or providing some hint under the veneer of stupidity.

For example, should a fighter with INT 5 be played as "dumb?"

As a brick. If you don't want to play a submoron with a 60 word vocabulary and limited ability to even dress themselves, then don't take a 5 as your INT. I'm not saying that a really good roleplayer couldn't make a very memorable and even sympathetic character out of a PC that was dumber than Forest Gump, but in my experience actually playing such a character was seldom the motivation of the player or even considered by the character during character creation.

If you do take a 5 as your INT (for whatever reason) and don't even try to play the character, expect to take an experience point penalty at my table. I find such behavior as offensive as cheating.

 

[The Shaman]

Characters with low strength aren't allowed to win at arm wrestling or kick down doors.

But they can try if they want to, and it's the mechanical results that determine in they're effective or not. They might even get lucky and succeed, though the odds are certainly against them.

Characters with low Con are going to be especially weak and susceptible to poisons.

Again, thatis a mechanical effect.

In the last three or four years my view on abilities has moved toward the idea that they need only influence the character's merchanics, not roleplay, as Voadam, Mallus, and Dausuul suggest. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, one of the problems I've found with trying to roleplay the "mental" stats or "soft" stats is that it breaks my suspension of belief after awhile. An INT 5 fighter at level one could very well be a rube, but what about that same fighter at level nine, or level twelve? He's seen a lot, done a lot, and yet some would have him continue to be that same rube because the stat didn't change despite the very obvious experience the character gained. That strains my credulity.

And no, I don't think sinking points into INT is the answer, if for no other reason than there are a number of systems where stats don't increase with experience.

For example, a 1e AD&D Fighter Lord (9th level) will know a thing or two about the threat presented by different monsters and how to fight them. He'll be skilled with a variety of different weapons. But he may not come across as cultured or cosmopolitan because he doesn't speak anything but common and his alignment language - never picked up languages very easily - and no matter how interested he may be in magic, he lacks the capacity to ever become a magic-user - he just doesn't have the smarts for that.

Second, for me it's preferable that the character's stats are reflected not in what the character does, but in how well she does it. For example, Boot Hill includes a Bravery stat. The character's Bravery score is reflected both in the character's Speed and Accuracy with various weapons, so a character with a low Bravery score will be slower and less likely to hit a target than a character with a high Bravery score. Some gamers might suggest that a character with a low Bravery score should be less likely to get into gunfights, but to me that's imposing a limitation on the player's decision-making about the character. The Bravery score will affect how well the character peforms in a fight, and that's sufficient: the character stands up to the rustlers (roleplaying choice) with sweaty palms, knocking knees, and shaking hands (ability effect). The Willpower score in Top Secret works similarly.

So I'm fine with the "mental" stats represented more-or-less exclusively by mechanical effects and I don't see the necessity of roleplaying them explicitly.

 

[billd91]

If you don't control how high or low your mental stats are then you don't get to choose how you play your character if your roleplay is tied to your mental stats.

Are you serious? There are many ways to play relatively low mental stats. I have plenty of choice in how I do it, just like I have plenty of choice in how to play high stats as well.