POLL: Is how you Roleplay influenced by your character’s mental stats?

[Vinicius Lessa]

Personally no, not really.

But I do appreciate games with powerful social/mental mechanics. So if I make an intelligent or social PC, he/she will be able to exercise those qualities meaningfully in-game and not just by way of GM fiat. That's why I'm a big fan of PbtA and Cortex these days.

 

[cbwjm]

I definitely use stats to guide my role-play, but I'm not beholden to them. If I figure out the answer to a puzzle or riddle, I don't restrict my barbarian just because he has an 8 in Intelligence, I also expect my players to ignore stats if they figure out one of my puzzles.

In games I run, mental stats are used for hints for puzzles, so the wizard is most likely to get a good hint while a barbarian is not (though the whole group will actually end up with the hint when it comes down to it.) Of course, if no one has a good intelligence score, then they might miss out on hints. If it is somewhere they need to go, then they'll need to do some more exploring to figure out how to get past the puzzle.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Unless you only play one system, it seems like the answer would have to really vary by game, right?

For example, Shadowrun 5th ed. has four Mental Attributes: Willpower, Logic, Intuition, and Charisma. Only one more than in D&D, but kind of a lot to keep track of if you're trying to map your RP to stats.

Blades in the Dark, on the hand, only has three Attributes total, two of which (Insight and Resolve) might be considered mental. But in Blades the only purpose for Attributes is to help you resist consequences (getting tricked, ambushed, outplayed at cards, etc. in this context), and your Attribute is based on the number of related skills (called Actions in the rules) you have at least one point in. In other words, your Insight Attribute isn't really a measure of how smart or educated you are, but how good you are at avoiding or overcoming a wide range of problems that aren't physical or social. Plus, your Insight and/or Resolve are likely to go up relatively quickly during a campaign, so is that you really getting noticeably smarter, or just more experienced as a criminal who's been through different kinds of hard times?

 

[pemerton]

Unless you only play one system, it seems like the answer would have to really vary by game, right?

Absolutely!

As some astute poster upthread put it,

This thread seems to be in General, rather than D&D.

In my group, it depends on system.