Players keeping stats secret

[Buttercup]

I've played both ways, and I actually prefer it when the only thing you know about your fellows is what they tell you, or what you can surmise from their appearance, or what you guess from their actions.

All but one of my players are pretty good about this, but I do have one with meta-game tendencies, and this method really keeps a lid on the problem.

 

[Gunslinger]

In several campaings the GM forbds us from knowing each others stats, or even on knowing our own charactres stats. We of course have a background story behind each character, so we are not totally blind.

But I have also GM'd games where we did not have any character sheets whatsoever.

That seems totally alien to me. Almost the entire PHB is based on rules for numbers and the rolling aspect of D&D. How do you have battles, or handle situtations with skill checks? The difference between playing D&D and just going over to someone's house and roleplaying random scenarios is the rollplaying aspect. If you take it all away, what reason is there to waste money on the books when you can just do your own thing???

PS: If you don't know your stats, how do you know whether you can take feats such as power attack or expertise?

 

[takyris]

Put me in the middle ground.

On the one hand, I HATE it when players metagame the fact that they know the Wisdom and Intelligence of all of their friends.

On the other hand, so much of combats are dice-rolling without description that it's important to give the other players SOME information about how things look, even if you don't say it. I don't like players knowing MORE than their characters, but I don't like them knowing less than their characters, either.

Example:

Too much information:

This is Garn -- he's a rogue3/fighter2, and he's got dodge, mobility, spring attack, and weapon focus: Greatsword!

Too little information:

This is Garn. He's wearing a chain shirt and has a greatsword on his back.

About right:

This is Garn. After that last combat with the orcs, you saw that his fighting style is pretty fluid, and he's good at maneuvering around the battlefield. He didn't fight as well as Maurn, your dwarven warrior buddy, but he has obviously had some formal training with the greatsword he carries.
I dunno. Something like that. I like to create a bit more realism, both in MORE and LESS information.

In a related question: How do DMs here let their players communicate in terms of hit points?

Examples:

"Hey, Sir Healsalot, I'm at 13 of 58 hit points. Slap a Cure Crit on me, yah?"

"The Thumb" -- this is what my group has compromised on. Thumb up, thumb down, thumb at an angle. Ideally, the players add description, too, like "It's amazing that he's still on his feet (thumb way down)" or "No big wounds, but he's tired and moving a bit more slowly (thumb at about two-thirds up for a mid-to-high-level character, where hit points become more abstract)".

or even:

"Sarcein insists that he's feeling fine, though you can tell he's limping a little, and occasionally grips his left arm when he thinks no one is looking."

The problem with the last one is that the players don't know what that means, hit-point-wise, but the characters would. The cleric would know from experience whether that means that Sarcein needs the big-guns heal spells, or something lighter.

Thoughts?

-Tacky

 

[AngelTears]

That seems totally alien to me. Almost the entire PHB is based on rules for numbers and the rolling aspect of D&D. How do you have battles, or handle situtations with skill checks? The difference between playing D&D and just going over to someone's house and roleplaying random scenarios is the rollplaying aspect. If you take it all away, what reason is there to waste money on the books when you can just do your own thing???

PS: If you don't know your stats, how do you know whether you can take feats such as power attack or expertise?

It is dependent on the genre and style of the game. I think that all stats, and even the character sheet is nothing but a crutch to facilitate roleplay.

I played in a traditional AD&D style campaign (it was GURPS) where the players had to know how combat worked; meaning how the game system worked. I could not trust my character and the GM to be able to work on autopilot. It was exceedingly cumbersom, since I had to be initimately familiar with each step of combat and I hated every second of it.

Rarely do people herein Finland buy all the books. The GM might be the only one who has a copy. In our Exalted campaign, I was allowed with GM supervision to read only several parts of the book and that was it.

In another campaign I played a siege engineer whose purpose was to build a tower. I had no knowledge of my character's numerical abilities, nor did I have any kind of character sheet except for a background I wrote on the character and a brief from the GM . However, I did know what my character was good in and that was sufficient.

In our Call of Cthulhu campaign, each of us had our own character sheet and a developed past. We were not allowed to show each other our character sheets.

In an adventure I created and ran, called Sub-Culture, the character's were members of a local teen (ages 12 to 16) gang, with one special ability (like a boy in a goth gang, or brother with a car, able to get booze, etc.). No dice rolling, simply teens on a Friday or Saturday night trying to while away the time, sneaking into concerts, getting drunk etc.

In any game you simply react to what the GM is telling you. Group tactics and abilities unfortunately are never found on the character sheet, nor are ideas, and that is in the end what the GM wants from you. With numerical values hidden or secret, a character's true potential is slowly revealed only in game play, and players thrust into a world where they have to interact more fully. Just like in real life, you can only gauge your chances, not actually calculate your statistical chance on succeeding in a given task.

-Angel Tears

 

[Victim]

Rules are the framework for understanding an RPG. General statements are pretty much meaningless. I might define a grizzled veteran soldier as a 5th level character, probably with a few PC class levels. In your game, he might be statted as human warrior 2. So for the same guard, there'd be at least 2 mental images. But the characters would see the same guard. They wouldn't know the stats, but in my game, the wizard, unless trained in unusual isolation, would know that Merivia's hardened formations of knights can usually take a fireball, while in your game, he'd know that even elite soldiers stand no chance against his powerful magics. Same thing for the fighter, etc. But the metagame rules framework is the only thing that allows the players to share that knowledge.

 

[Sixchan]

Well, I'm pretty sure the players should know their own bare stats, since they will be able to work them out eventually anyway (wizard can't cast 7th level spells despite being the right level? Ah, he must have 16 INT). However a nice idea is granting skills based on what the adventurers did in the last adventure. After all, why should a rouge put another point in open lock when the fighter just smashed them all down? So the players don't need to know their specific skills (although I'd give them a list of their skills, in order of ability. That's only fair).

But the idea of a rouge unexpectedly pulling off a CLW spell is something that sounds so much fun in game.

 

[Hawkeye]

Stats and stuff

We tend to strike a balance in our group with stats. We have some people in the group that are new to 3e, so they are still in transition. To be honest, I don't know much about the other characters in the party. I know we have a Paladin of Torm, a scout, 2 arcane casters, an archer, a swordsman who can't hit the broad side of a barn (his last session he did not make one successful attack roll, really bad, bad luck) and I am a Cleric of Lathander. In reality we have a Paladin of Torm, a Cleric of Lathander, a Ranger, A Ranger/Rogue, a Wizard/Celric of Mystra, A Sorceror, and a Fighter/Wizard. Hard not to remind the Ftr /Wizard that he could fire off a spell or 2 during combat.

Regarding healing damage. Our DM insitituted a rule. Make a Healing check at DC 20. If it is made, then the healer has a good idea of how badly hurt the chracter is and can apply the proper healing spell.

Hawkeye

 

[takyris]

A few months ago, I was DMing an odd sidelight of our normal game, where disruptions to the timestream were causing some PCs to never have been born. Each time a PC vanished, I handed the player a new character who had, in the new timeline, joined the party. By the end of the night, only two increasingly panicked characters were originals -- and they had the memories of their old allies, and were desperately trying to get them back.

Each "new" character was 10th level, usually single classed, with really nice items. They were created using 32 point buy, and each one had at least one ability score below 10.

At one point, the player who had been given a fighter with a high intelligence but a wisdom of 8 said to the rest of the group, in-character, "Look, I don't have any opinion about this. You know, being wise, Wisdom-type stuff... that's not really my thing."

I swear to God I could have just strangled him.

That was his version of roleplaying, of NOT metagaming. He thought he was being good by not just telling people his scores. Instead of making any bad decisions, he opted not to decide, telling everyone that he didn't have the wisdom to do so.

For crying out loud, do you know anybody who you consider to be of below-average Wisdom who THINKS that he has below-average Wisdom?

Something like 85% of people asked said that they had an above-average sense of humor.

Everyone goes through times of thinking that they are shy and stupid around people, as well as times when they feel "on" and are really wowing their friends or the crowd.

Everyone has boneheaded moments, but nobody thinks, "Gosh, my intelligence is not as high as the average person."

In short, barring spellcasters who need scores to cast spells, the average character should NOT always be aware of his own stats, even if the player is. In fact, even an Int13 Wizard might just think, "I have a hard time with these incantations, but other than that, I'm a bloody genius. I mean, I got that Fireball off, didn't I?"

Consider this an argument toward NOT letting people swap stats in character AT ALL unless those stats are easily demonstrable.

-Tacky

 

[Sixchan]

I remember back on my first adventure in D&D we tried to get the NPCs to metagame with us.

"What level are you?"
"What?"
"Well, I mean lets say adventurers just starting off were called 1st level, and a Fighter who just built a stronghold was 9th level, what level would you be?"
"Level 347. Wierdo."
[NPC walks off]

 

[bret]

Put me in the camp where we seldom show other characters our sheets. I think it is a lot more fun where you aren't seeing the exact class combinations and such.

In my opinion, in general characters should eventually know approximate attributes. Someone with a 14 in an attribute is going to be significantly better than someone with a 10, people will notice. In general for D20, characters should know within +-1 what each attribute modifier is.

Str: Look at how much equipment they can carry and how strongly they hit with a weapon.
Dex: Look at how good they are at dodging blows, balancing, hitting with missles, etc.
Con: What does it take to kill this guy! They should be down by now.
Int: Smart boy. How is it that you've managed to learn all that?
Wis: Gotta get up pretty early to fool you. Shows very good judgement and is fairly resistent to mind control.
Cha: They certainly convinced me! I was impressed.

As an example: Two 30 pt characters.
Str 12 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 14 Wis 12 Cha 12

Str 10 Dex 10 Con 14 Int 17 Wis 12 Char 11

The first character would be blessed with better than normal abilities on all things, but nothing truely amazing.

The second character would be considered extremely bright and hardier than a normal person.

You would have trouble telling which of the two were stronger or more charismatic. It would be easy to tell which was more dexterous or smarter.

It should also be obvious when someone hasn't got any training in a skill vs. someone who has had some or a lot of training.

A person with Dex 20 untrained riding a horse is bouncing around, but still able to stay on the horse.

A person with Dex 8 but 6 ranks in riding knows how to move with the horse and stay in the saddle. They obviously had spent quite a bit of time riding.