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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6837953" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here is a passage from p 18 of the 2nd ed PHB:In truth, Rath's survivability has a lot less to do with his ability scores that with your desire to role-play him. If you give up on him, of course he won't survive! But if you take an interest in the character and role-play him well, then even a character with the lowest possible scores can present a fun, challenging and all-around exciting time. Does he have a Charisma of 5? Why? Maybe he's got an ugly scar. His table manners could be atrocious. He might mean well but always manage to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. He could be bluntly honest to the point of rudeness . . . His Dexterity is 3? Why? Is he naturally clumsy or blind as a bat? Don't give up on a character just because he [sic] has a low score. Instead view it as an opportunity to role-play, to create a unique and entertaining personality in the game. Not only will you have fun creating that personality, but other players and the DM will have fun reacting to him.There is nothing in there about Rath having goals, and the player having the mechanical capability and resource to pursue those goals, in play, via action declaration.Rather, the "roleplaying" of Rath is confined to making the character memorable and entertainin in terms of bad manners or clumsiness or other elements of characterisation (indeed, comic relief in the examples given).On the issue of contradiction in tone: at one-and-the-same time we are told that stats are irrelevant (with a side-helping of low stats being important for "roleplaying") and that good stats are a marker of heroism, in a game notionally at least about the exploits of heroes.Gygax, in his PHB (p 9), recognised the significance of stats to action resolution:The premise of the game is that each player character is above average - at least in some respects - and has superior potential. Furthermore, it is usually essential to the character's survival to be exceptional (with a rating of 15 or above) in no fewer than two ability characteristics. Each ability score is determined by random number generation. The referee has several methods of how this random number generation should be accomplished suggested to him or her in the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE.Ability scores don't have any special a priori importance: it's just that, in the context of AD&D, ability scores are at the core of action resolution. And so if players' PCs have low stats, they lack the ability - in AD&D - to impact the fiction via action resolution. (Except via spell-casting; but that's another, though related, matter.) Which also reduces the likelihood of conflict between GM and players over action resolution.</blockquote>

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