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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6838370" data-attributes="member: 42582">A player whose character is weak  is not able to impact the fiction in a reliable or consistent way. (I am assuming that the player is playing in a system, such as AD&D, which does not have the sorts of devices that I mentioned above. I am also ignoring spells in this context, which add a whole new dimension of player resources that are not stat-related, or at least not directly so.)In some circumstances, the player may try and the character fail. So action declaration occurs, but because the PC is not an effective vehicle, the player does not make his/her impact upon the fiction.In other circumstances, the player may hold back and weight for the GM to offer a way through. In this case, the ineffectiveness of the PC as vehicle leads the player to refrain from action declaration until cued by the GM. In my experience the 2nd ed AD&D style was particularly prone to producing this sort of player.The "conflict" is over who drives the fiction. Effective characters allows players to confidently declare actions for their PCs that will transform the shared fiction, taking it out of the hands of the GM.In a system whose overall orientation is away from the players as drivers, and is towards the GM as driver while the players "bring their PCs to life", having the PCs be comparatively mechanically ineffective helps, for two reasons: (1) it reduces the likelihood of the players, either deliberately or inadvertently, taking over via effective action declarations; (2) it makes it easier for players to identify aspects of their PCs to bring to life as quirks or comic relief.</blockquote>

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