But, when you are portraying a character that is different from the character you created, that breaks immersion for everyone at the table. It's inconsistent for one. If your character is described as X, but constantly fails at X, then it is not X.
I don't assume that everyone is privvy to the player's original description of their character, let alone their character sheet. Therefore, each PC should be judged by their behavior in game, nothing else. Anything a player says about his PC before and outside the game is just bravado.
Bear in mind, I pick role-models (existing fictional characters) and base my PC on them as a starting point. So I might say my half-orc barbarian is kind of like Sabretooth from the X-Men movie. But he's also different, because I'm not actually re-playing the X-Men movie, nor are there any X-Men or Magneto figures to connect with.
And, no, puzzles and riddles are not "perfectly appropriate" for the game. They might be for your games, fine. But, not for mine thanks. They're entirely meta-game, frustration building and about as much fun as having your scrotum shaved.
Too much has been made of riddles good/bad that it kind of misses the point. There are problems in the game that are generally solved by the player's intellect. Be it combat strategy, how to get through a stone door, actual riddles, etc. The word riddle was simply used to reflect a concept that the player can solve, independent of the PC's ability.
As a player, I do not want to play in a game where I roll to see if my PC thinks of the solution so my GM can tell it to me. That would break immersion for me and defeat one of my favorite tasks of RPGing which is to solve problems.
I do not want to roll to see if my PC "thinks" of the solution and thus is allowed to use the solution that I thought of. Nor do I want another PC taking credit for my idea. I am stingy with my ideas because I am an inventor. You may benefit from my solution, but it really makes me mad to not have credit.
This would break immersion for me. As a role-player, rest assured, I will come up with an in-character dialogue on how my PC comes to the solution.
I'm good enough at it I fooled somebody's trick question at an interview on the "3 light bulbs" riddle that I had already solved the night before in about 5 minutes of thought. You simply talk your way through the conclusion that you already know.
Funnily enough though, there are a number of spells which will do EXACTLY that. All the "DM questioning" type spells. Plus, I can make an Arcana check to know what the best approach might be to a given situation.
I look at those of ways the player can draw more information out of the DM. As actual spells, it's also a matter of dicing for answers requires actively expending game resources (spells). By being the exception, it is clearly not the rule that one should roll for ideas or information. And in fact, doing so as a standard resolution would remove the value of the spell (after all, normal practice is to roll and get answer).
But, you're still missing the point. It isn't that I know the optimum spell to cast. It's that in portraying my Int 18 wizard, I'm going to play to the best of my ability and choose spells that I believe will be the most optimum. OTOH, my 6 Wis barbarian probably won't be the one advocating checking for traps and setting complicated ambushes.
a 6 WIS PC would be unpalatable because of the penalties to saves and skill checks. Thus discouraging me from doing so.
The problem is, there is no metric by which we can consistently adjudicate "just how cautious" a 6 WIS PC should be.
Nor can we ensure fair repurcussions for having a 6 WIS and RPing it as uncautious and a 6 WIS that is meta-game cautious but hasn't violated your sense of RP (he never does anything uncautious, but he never advocates caution).
As somebody many miles upstream pointed out, if you RP your 6 CHA guy as a total jerk, you'll get double penalized compared to playing him as a guy who never talks and thus never makes any CHA checks, but also never suffers any NPC negative reactions.
What differentiates a tabletop RPG from a CRPG is role assumption. Acting, not based on what you the player think is the best course, but from a sense of actively trying to portray a character within an imaginary situation.
I like role assumption. Each PC I play, even of the same class is different from each other. Not everybody I play with hams it up as me. But I've shifted my interpretation of stats to accept that other players I game with may have a different interpretation than me.
A low INT PC is never mistaken as a truly knowledgeable individual because of the simple fact that they lack the skills to back it up. It's a learning problem, not an IQ problem. Thus, I'm OK if the Player still comes up with a good idea. But he will never out-gun me on skill checks because his penalty exceeds his base # of skills.
A low CHA PC may talk a good game, but will never be taken seriously because they cannot make a diplomacy check to save their life.
a low WIS PC is honestly the hardest to see. They get a poor WillPower save, and some skills that they probably won't even take are affected. That doesn't affect their daily life or street smarts. Just when they are affected by magic and other unseen forces.
It's good enough for me, and allows me to maintain immersion by NOT being disrupted by interpretting how somebody else plays their PC.
The whole point of this thread was whether you exert pressure on a player to play their PC a certain way because of their stat.
Once you start having an interpretation that somebody else is playin 6 WIS wrong, you start down the road of exerting pressure on them to do it your way (which may be the group's way).
I would prefer no dump stats. But then I would also prefer to not have stats that grossly "contradict" my vision of the PC, or my own capabilities.
While somebody called it a "choice" to play with the stats, it's more in a middle. A compromise. the player got the stats the system gave them and are trying to make the best of them.
The option to not play, while it exists, is too simplistic about the situation. It basically says, "if I can't have the exact stats I want, I'm going home." The player accepts what he has and tries to mitigate the negatives.
Now I'm totally against cheating if the PC has a 6 CHA and he's talking his way out of everything by not rolling skill checks.
