Should stats have any bearing on roleplay?

[Dausuul]

Do you expect a player to actually role play at all then or just say casually "I use my diplomacy skill to calm down the angry inn keeper" then throw some dice?

No, I expect them to roleplay, and then they'll throw some dice. The result of the die roll combines with the quality of the roleplay to determine success or failure. Make a reasonable and convincing proposal, and a good Diplomacy check will get you what you want, while a bad check means the other party politely declines but is open to further discussion. Make an unreasonable, insulting proposal, and your Diplomacy check is to keep the other party from walking away, punching you in the face, or demanding satisfaction at swordpoint.

The point is, I'm already factoring your Charisma into NPC reactions, by way of the Diplomacy check. I don't require you to factor it into your roleplaying as well. Your Intelligence is factored into your knowledge checks and your Wisdom is factored into your perception/insight. Beyond that, you play your character however you dang well please. If you're not doing a good job portraying the concept in your head, you're the one who suffers for it. The rest of us will just conclude, "Bob the Dwarf is a heck of a speechwriter but his delivery's not so hot," and move on.

If you want to use your stats as a roleplay hook, by all means do so; however, trying to make people "roleplay their stats" just leads to problems IME, because the books offer hardly any guidance on what any given stat means. At what point does the Sun Tzu of the local wargaming scene have to start dumbing down his tactics? Intelligence 8? 10? 12? 15? How persuasive are you allowed to be with Charisma 13? It's like adjudicating the paladin code, only without the well-defined rules and strong community consensus on what constitutes inappropriate actions*. In practice, I find it ends up being, "If you put a 9 in your mental stats, people will hassle you for doing anything smart, thoughtful, or polite. If you put a 10 in, you have carte blanche to do whatever you like."

[size=-2]*Yes, I'm being facetious.[/size]

 

[JacktheRabbit]

No, I expect them to roleplay, and then they'll throw some dice. The result of the die roll combines with the quality of the roleplay to determine success or failure.
The point is, I'm already factoring your Charisma into NPC reactions, by way of the Diplomacy check. You don't need to factor it into your roleplaying as well. Your Intelligence is factored into your knowledge checks and your Wisdom is factored into your perception/insight. Beyond that, you play your character however you dang well please. If you're not doing a good job portraying the concept in your head, you're the one who suffers for it. The rest of us will just conclude, "Bob the Dwarf is a heck of a speechwriter but his delivery's not so hot," and move right on.

If you want to use your stats as a roleplay hook, that's your decision; however, trying to make people "roleplay their stats" just leads to problems IME, because the books offer no guidance on what any given stat means. It's like adjudicating the paladin code, only without the well-defined rules and strong community consensus on what constitutes inappropriate actions*.

[size=-2]*Yes, I'm being facetious. But if you asked me to choose between having to judge the paladin code and having to judge whether players were RP-ing their mental stats, I'd take the paladin code any day.[/size]

Which is it? One suggests that if I roleplay well you will give some sort of bonus to my rolls. The second though says that my roleplaying has no effect at all on my skill checks.

 

[MinistryOfGame]

I think you're thinking a little too mechanically about what Dausuul is suggesting. If you play with bald DC numbers which you give to players before they roll the dice, explaining to them at what point their roll will succeed or fail, then yeah, you're going to have to explain to them beforehand how much of a bonus their RP was 'worth'.

But if, as I am suspecting Dausuul does (and I do), you just get players to roll dice, look at the result, judge their roleplay in your head, and give them the result based on your judgment of the factors involved, then you end up with a resolution that is based on a mechanical dice roll, on roleplaying involvement, and on DM arbitration. Best of all three.

 

[Dausuul]

Which is it? One suggests that if I roleplay well you will give some sort of bonus to my rolls. The second though says that my roleplaying has no effect at all on my skill checks.

I was tweaking my post while you were replying, and one of my changes fleshed out how this works in my games, as follows:

"Make a reasonable and convincing proposal, and a good Diplomacy check will get you what you want, while a bad check means the other party politely declines but is open to further discussion. Make an unreasonable, insulting proposal, and your Diplomacy check is to keep the other party from walking away, punching you in the face, or demanding satisfaction at swordpoint."

Basically, the quality of the roleplay determines the range of possible responses; whatever reactions I think are plausible, for this NPC, given what the player just said. The Diplomacy check is to determine which of those responses you actually get.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If it was able to derail the campaign then, IMO, it was a weak plot point.

Again, not really. It was the timing.

Essentially, by unscrambling the cult's symbology, I revealed the ID of the BBEG before he could pull off the scheme that would make him powerful & untouchable...while there was just enough evidence to make him hangable. With plenty of time to intercept his messengers, too. Kind of like what would have happened if someone had revealed Palpatine's schemes before he was a Sith on his way to being Emperor.

And trust me, I may have a high IQ, but I'm no detective- it was pure epiphany. I was sitting there, listening to an exchange between an NPC and a partymate and I suddenly saw it all unfold in it's entirety- I even said something to the effect of "Holy Crap I've GOT it!" before starting my monologue... It stopped all conversation in the room until the DM started cursing.

And months later, I couldn't even recreate my own chain if logic without help from the other players.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Again, not really. It was the timing.

Essentially, by unscrambling the cult's symbology, I revealed the ID of the BBEG before he could pull off the scheme that would make him powerful & untouchable...while there was just enough evidence to make him hangable. With plenty of time to intercept his messengers, too. Kind of like what would have happened if someone had revealed Palpatine's schemes before he was a Sith on his way to being Emperor.

[I apologize if I'm going too far off topic here.]

I still see many possibilities that do not include derailing the plot.

The BBEG has to accelerate his plot. While disadvantageous for him, it rewards the player's ingenuity/epiphany.

Those in power might not believe the characters, despite the evidence. This is a common trope on the show Merlin. Merlin has discovered many plots against Uther, but his station in life makes it difficult at best to accuse a noble.

You thought "Palpatine" was the one in charge, but it's actually someone or something much more dangerous.

The government that "Palpatine" is trying to overthrow secretly supports him and the characters are unknowingly revealing their knowledge to his allies, or at best to one of the few allies they have in the government.

Your early reveal should have lead to a twist, not a dead-end.

Edit: I apologize also if my comments seem insulting. I don't mean them that way. I've been caught off-guard by my players and let it derail my plot. But I've learned from that mistake and look to be more reactive to the crazy leaps of logic that my players spring upon me.

 

[Mallus]

The bearing a character's stats have on role-playing is up to their player.

As a DM, I have no interested in telling my players they're playing an INT of 17 or a CHR 8 wrong. I have enough to adjudicate without wading into those waters. Even if f I did, the only honest thing I could tell my players is if I liked their character or not --am I an expert on the practical limits of a WIS of 13?. All I could tell them is if they're role-playing sufficiently like me. Because, obviously, playing like me = good and proper. Dulce et decorum est and all...

In the systems I play, the stats take of themselves, advantage and disadvantage-wise. I prefer layers to be free to characterize/play their PC's in the manner that entertains them, without me butting in with nonconstructive criticism.

They are many examples of disruptive and/or undesirable play; almost all of them involve a failure of basic etiquette/being a prick, but not playing a character's stat 'right' in the eyes of the DM or fellow players isn't one them.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

[I apologize if I'm going too far off topic here.]

I still see many possibilities that do not include derailing the plot.

The BBEG has to accelerate his plot. While disadvantageous for him, it rewards the player's ingenuity/epiphany.

He didn't have a chance- we were in the building and arrested him within minutes of the reveal.

Those in power might not believe the characters, despite the evidence. This is a common trope on the show Merlin. Merlin has discovered many plots against Uther, but his station in life makes it difficult at best to accuse a noble.

Again, there was enough evidence to hang him- it wasn't merely my words of accusation.

You thought "Palpatine" was the one in charge, but it's actually someone or something much more dangerous.

That could have been done, yes- but it would have had to have been a foreign power of some kind, given the status if the BBEG. If so, that's still the end of this arc because PCs don't go to war with countries...and assassination attempts are best left to trained pros.

There WAS a power behind the BBEG, though. The problem was that it was extraplanar in origin: the evil being the BBEG and his cult worshipped. After the arrest of the BBEG, mopping up the cult was a dawdle...but we were NOT going into the nether regions of the cosmos. We were good, but we were nowhere near that good.

The government that "Palpatine" is trying to overthrow secretly supports him and the characters are unknowingly revealing their knowledge to his allies, or at best to one of the few allies they have in the government

.
The Prince would not have been complicit in the attempts on his own life and the lives of his family, for a wide variety of reasons.

Your early reveal should have lead to a twist, not a dead-end.

There really wasn't anywhere else for the plot to go. The reveal took in some of the false leads that the cult had planted.

Edit: I apologize also if my comments seem insulting. I don't mean them that way. I've been caught off-guard by my players and let it derail my plot. But I've learned from that mistake and look to be more reactive to the crazy leaps of logic that my players spring upon me.

It's not insulting- you weren't there, you didn't see it happen, and its damned unusual- you have a right to be incredulous.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

The Prince would not have been complicit in the attempts on his own life and the lives of his family, for a wide variety of reasons.

Not the prince or his family (though maybe), but his supposed supporters. But, I feel I've dragged this on long enough.

And in case someone is thinking of smacking a badwrongfun argument on me, the early reveal should lead to a clean ending if that's what the DM (and the players) wants.

 

[L1qw1d]

if you were a control freak, you'd make the door wrong

then note Fibonacci never existed

then ask them what time period they think the traps were made in lol