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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 4978526" data-attributes="member: 22424">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.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.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.)</blockquote>

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