Should personality or mental stats exist?

[Tonguez]

That seems pretty standard to me for the definition of most stats in various D&D editions.

For instance in 3.5 D&D charisma is in part defined in the srd as "Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness."

None of these have to be in balance with each other. So if you have a DM who wants players to play their stats you can easily balance a mix of strengths and weaknesses in those attributes to get roughly any score you want. A really ugly character who is persuasive with a strong force of personality could arguably be a low or a medium or a high charisma character. So roleplay Cyrano de Bergerac with 4pany Charisma score.

Personally I think the ability scores should be directly linked to Skills so Charisma represents ability to Perform, to Persuade, Deceive, Negotiate or Intimidate others and similar interactions.
It should be entirely divorced from ideas of comeliness (ugly people can be charismatic and beautiful people can be dull) and even personal magnetism (though arguably that's an expression of the Persuasiveness skill).

Equally Intelligence is Knowledge and Investigation (and deduction) and that's broad enough to be enough (especially as Investigation needs to absorb active use of Perception)

 

[Tonguez]

(Ever notice that those who want to draw a parallel between mental and physical attributes ALWAYS use Strength as the example? "You don't ask the player to bench press a cow..." etc. Why don't they ever try to make similar arguments based on Dexterity and Constitution?)

Um the example I used was Acrobatics - ie why should my high Dex character be treated differently than my High Int one.
The lack of any meaningful Constitution Skills is more an argument for Con to be replaced with Stamina than it is a comment on mental skills

 

[mamba]

I've grown to dislike ability scores that indicate personality or the intelligence of PCs, for various reasons.

of course they should exist, they have just as much reason to exist as Strength and Dex, and I see no one arguing against those

 

[Thomas Shey]

Um the example I used was Acrobatics - ie why should my high Dex character be treated differently than my High Int one.
The lack of any meaningful Constitution Skills is more an argument for Con to be replaced with Stamina than it is a comment on mental skills

I wouldn't hesitate to use Con or Dexterity either; its just much easier to present Strength in a clearcut way, but I think the other poster is projecting.

(Con doesn't have associated skills in most games because it already tends to cover a lot of traits by itself, and its mostly passive in its impact).

 

[Thomas Shey]

of course they should exist, they have just as much reason to exist as Strength and Dex, and I see no one arguing against those

There are games that don't have attributes as such at all (most of the Third Eye Games designs for example), and where Strength only exists as, essentially, a skill.

 

[mamba]

There are games that don't have attributes as such at all (most of the Third Eye Games designs for example), and where Strength only exists as, essentially, a skill.

that is absolutely fine, I was talking in the context of D&D / games that have stats. I see no reason to limit stats to physical categories

 

[Bill Zebub]

Um the example I used was Acrobatics - ie why should my high Dex character be treated differently than my High Int one.
The lack of any meaningful Constitution Skills is more an argument for Con to be replaced with Stamina than it is a comment on mental skills

I missed your particular example, but I was speaking specifically about arguments that involve (hypothetically) asking players to perform what they are narrating. If that’s what you did in your post, then you get a cookie.

EDIT: but rereading what I wrote I was not very clear about that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

that is absolutely fine, I was talking in the context of D&D / games that have stats. I see no reason to limit stats to physical categories

As you note if you look at my other posts, I don't disagree, but I did want to note that stats aren't strictly necessary; note this isn't one of the D&D fora and outside of that it isn't a given.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I've grown to dislike ability scores that indicate personality or the intelligence of PCs, for various reasons. For one, it makes certain personality choices highly punishing for some characters. If you want to play a smart or charismatic fighter, you'll be punished by being less effective at your role. Of course, you can just roleplay your character that way regardless of stats, and I see this done constantly. Does that mean players roleplay their character "wrong?" Or is the stat wrong?

There's that situation where most of the party is silent, because they're afaid of screwing up some social encounter as they side glance at the party bard. "What are you doing, barbarian? Trying to role-play in a role-playing game?! Now make a Charisma roll. That'll teach you to make the bard do all the talking!"

Then there's the trouble with role-playing characters of different intellect than your own, which (hopefully) is never really enforced anyway. "Oh, you think you just did a clever plan to stop the ogre? Well, your Int is only 8, so your character wouldn't do that! And why haven't you come up with a brilliant idea no one else has thought of yet, Gundalph?! Your character has 18 Int! Start role-playing like it!"

If we separate things like charisma and intelligence from from ability scores and mechanics, the player no longer has to sacrifice "fun" to play a desired personality. But then we don't have a lot of stats left, do we? Well, if we look at D&D, Wisdom is not really a personality stat anymore. It's more of a Perception or Awareness stat. So maybe it's just a question of renaming, or looking at abilities through a different lens. Intelligence could be "Knowledge", reflecting study, observation and practical experience prior to adventuring, rather than reasoning and logic. This also makes sense in terms of additional skills and languages gained, which the ability does in some systems/editions.

I struggle more to get around some kind of social stat. For some classes, it just makes sense to have one. Like a bard or leader archetype, such as a warlord. Perhaps use a stat with a more neutral name, such as "Presence" and simply have it affect the initial disposition of NPCs. Interactions past that could be handled purely through role-play, rather than die rolls.

The problem of personality/intelligence stats goes double for systems (or tables) that emphasize "player skill" and seek to test the imagination and reasoning of the players.

Should some characters just check out of the role-playing game when it's time to role-play? Should the GM keep putting the shy player with the high Charisma score on the spot? Should the GM berate an average intelligence player for not coming up with genious plans all the time when playing his 18 Int Wizard? Should he make the Int 3 cleric walk blindly into the dark room and onto the pit trap? How many stats should there be at minimum? Do I even have a point, or am I just over-analyzing and rambling? Make up your own questions and add them to the list!

I could see something like a social standing ability, maybe even a sliding scale that goes from "The Street" to "The Palace" or something. And depending on the situation, there might be a minus or a plus...

 

[Voadam]

Anybody could roleplay Raistlin with a cough as a characterization, but still have plenty of mechanical con and hp. I vaguely remember the Raistlin stats in the modules not having a bad Con.

I just looked Raistlin up in the 2e Dragonlance Classics 1 which reprints the first four DL modules and as a 3rd level wizard he had an 10 constitution and 8 hp, so average hp for 3d4. This matches up with his 10 con in Dragonlance Adventures.