D&D 5E Characters are not their statistics and abilities

[jasper]

A good point, and worth keeping in mind, but that's not the question I'm asking. I specifically want to know about personal tolerance toward mechanical effectiveness.

Imagine you're playing in a serious game, you've put a lot into your character (personality and backstory), you've explored and saved the day and made friends with NPCs, and you've lost one or two (PC) allies to nefarious enemies. You've been playing the campaign for six months and everyone is around level 10, when you get a new player to the game. The new player is playing a half-elf barbarian (also level 10) with a greataxe.

When the character joins the game and the new player describes their appearance, they mention that they have a Strength of X, which catches you off guard because you really would have expected their Strength to be higher, and now you're unsure about whether this new character/player is going to work out. It may not have been presented that way, but you can't help but feel that the character is going to wind up as comic relief, which doesn't at all fit the serious/gritty tone of the game you've been playing so far.

How high could X be, for you to still have this reaction? For the purpose of this question, assume the game isn't using feats.

Corwin and Saelorn laughed at Poor Rudolph The Red Nose Barbarian. You can't play our monster slaying team with your poor little 16 in your prime stat. This is " spreadsheets and DPR" not that loser D&D game you play. I have been in games with players like that. Not fun games. What you lost 2 pcs better tell those players to check their spreadsheet, we can't be having die rolls affect our game. I glad I not playing with spread sheet players. I have deal with some of them in my AL games but they can't tell others they doing wrong.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Sacrosanct]

I've played a lot of 3d6 roll in order games. Therefore, I've seen a lot of PCs with their prime stat be pretty low. And not once was it a major impact for me if another player had a low prime stat. It might have been more difficult for that magic user with a 10 INT to learn new spells, but it wasn't super major. Then again, we never approached the game in a "let's just move from encounter to encounter" way either. AD&D doesn't allow that, because you would die all the time if you did. You used the environment to your advantage as much as you possible could. For example, in ToEE, if you treated it like I see how most people play 3e or especially 4e, you'd have a really hard time surviving. Rather, you would leverage the various cults against each other to weed each other out. Not everything with stats needs to be killed.

I seriously will never understand this attitude by some people that unless you have a max'd or near max'd PC, they are an active detriment to the party. There's so much more that goes into a game outside of D (dpr, what where you thinking?) measuring contests.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Sacrosanct]

...and yet, you have to admit that when you first read Deities & Demigods, the thought crossed your mind.

I was like, 10 or 11 years old when I got that. I was too distracted by all the boob pictures to want to kill everything

 

[Sunseeker]

As others have been pointed out, it depends on how you play. For example, if you reduce the entire party to numbers, and assume D&D is akin to a baseball game, then perhaps you can assign a value to each PC, and "win shares" for each PC, and even have a VORP (value over replacement PC). From there, I am sure one can deduce whether or not a particular PC is producing enough win shares to be "worth it" as opposed to a generic PC.

Isn't that just called assigning XP?

 

[BoldItalic]

What would be the optimum next post for this thread? I need some help deciding. I don't want to waste people's time by posting something that isn't fun; people might think I wasn't posting hard enough.

My next post will be my 1000th, you see, so it's important to get it right.

 

[lowkey13]

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[hawkeyefan]

So all this discussion about barbarians and their expected role or abilities made me think of the First Law Trilogy. There's a whole crew of barbarian characters that travel together, and each one has a very distinct personality. One of them is called Forley the Weakest. He's one of the more interesting characters in that group, and certainly fits the description of what we're talking about here.

Now that is fiction, and what works in fiction doesn't always translate well to a game...but to say that such a character must only be a detriment to his group would be a shame. Yes, there were times where he was viewed as a liability by his companions. However, he had qualities that the others all lacked.

Playing a character like that can add a lot to a game in the form of dramatic tension. It also seems to be a far more unique and potentially interesting take on a type of character that's almost always played the same way.

Again, you have to know the table and what would be best. Such a character would not be the best fit for some tables, and not worth the trouble you'd go through to hear about it, and frankly a character whose strengths would be more about character and on the role he plays outside of combat would be wasted in a game that was more power gamer influenced. But to say such a character has no place in the game in general is just weak.

Such a character would bave have a ton of potential, and I think would be a nice change of pace for a barbarian. Also, for anyone not familiar, the First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie is really good. Highly recommended.


* Edited to correct the title of The First Law Trilogy, as opposed to lesser well known but equally awesome The Frat Law Trilogy.

 

[lowkey13]

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