Stop me from obliterating him!

[DDK]

Taking a page from my own personal life you could suggest the bard has the fantasy equivalent of "Asperger's Syndrome". Its high functioning autism. Rigidly defined social guidelines, resistance to change (to the point of abusive behavior and tantrums), and a need for a daily set routine. His need for a daily set routine could be construed as a low wisdom since it fails to allow the character to change based on circumstance, thus giving him the appearance of no common sense.

This defines about half of the Greyhawk fanbase

 

[coyote6]

So he would make a good mount, animal companion or familiar

Hey now! A familiar has at least Int 6. He'd make a lousy familiar. Give the little guys credit, eh?

Heh. I think you should give the character a free special ability -- let him have a familiar, just like a wizard or sorcerer (but using his bard levels to determine its abilities). Then his familiar will be both smarter and wiser than he, and you can have the familiar help him avoid obnoxious behavior. Consider Jespo Crim and his cat Fras, from (contact)'s Liberators of Tenh story hour.

 

[Henry]

Err... no he didn't.

Yeah, I know. I was agreeing with a previous poster, and took him at his word, not bothering to double check.

Just kick him out. Seriously. Few people have the guts to do that, but at the end of the day, this guy is selfish and has exhibited a total lack of common sense and the ability to think about anyone else but himself which will only manifest throughout the game more and more causing even more problems down the line.

And you know this because...? You must obviously personally know brun's player and the circumstances involved in order to make this much of a character judgement?

Brun was asking for advice on how someone could properly play such a character. I was assuring him it is viable, because i've seen such done before in our games (albeit not with a 5 and a 7, but with a 6 and a 7).

Tyrant -- INT 5 and WIS 7 COULD truthfully be played as autistic - but it doesn't have to be. Anyone ever read the children's "Amelia Bedelia" series? Now THERE's a character with low INT and WIS! But she's not dumber than a post, and can be played for laughs as well as seriously. If it's a bard, it may well be better for laughs!

 

[Ysgarran]

But see, my problem lies here:
Str 11, Dex 17, Con 10, Int 5 , Wis 7 , Cha 16.

So, how is he gonna come up with somithing good?
Something that isn't annoying?
Something that I won't have to fight the urge to throw a GodSent lighting bolt at in the very first minutes of play?

All I can think of is the quote that Airwolf currently has on his signature line:

"Sundance is weird. The movies are weird - you actually have to think about them when you watch them."
- Britney Spears

Ysgarran.
p.s.
That quote also showed in the latest time magazine.

 

[Pielorinho]

Oops -- I was thinking a score of 5 gave a -4 mod, not a -3. Someone remind me to count on my fingers next time.

At any rate, if anyone has the books handy, could you check on the reroll threshhold? I know that a character with +0 modifiers can be rerolled, but I thought that wasn't the threshhold; I thought the threshhold was higher.

Of course, if the guy wants to play the PC, more power to him. I think I'd have trouble with it, but I admire the fellow's courage

Daniel

 

[jdavis]

From the PH (page 8)

If your scores are too low, you may scrap them and roll all six scores over. Your scores are considered too low if your total modifiers (before changes according to race) are 0 or less or if your highest score is a 13 or lower.
______________________________

By the books this would work, but I really don't think the books took into account a inteligence lower than 6, which seems to be the level of all the "idiot" races (ogres, trolls and such). If you combine the low wisdom score (below anything considered a race, well below the already mentioned Trolls and Ogres). I don't see this character as viable if it is played properly, You also have to look at the fact that this is not a half orc barbarian, this is a elvish bard. He has to have at least a 6 inteligence in order to even pretend to be just a moron, unless you want "Rainman" in your campaign I'd put my foot down and make him reroll. He doesn't have the Inteligence or the Wisdom to be a village idiot and he is supposed to be a 100 year old(+) Elvish Bard? If you can't win a riddle contest with a Ettin then you are not going to be a very good bard.

 

[Forrester]

I still say he'd make an excellent yodeler.

You don't have to win riddle contests with ettins to be a bard. Talk about yer stereotyping.

I think he could probably pull a town fool/jester character (though I'd put the 7 in Int and the 5 in Wis). Could be fun.

 

[mmu1]

I have to disagree here. Even an animal has an INT of 2, and an animal is not necessarily a "drooling idiot."

You're confusing self-suffciency with intelligence. An animal with an Intelligence of 2 can function perfectly well because it relies on instinct for a lot of its more complex behavior (like combat or hunting) and it does fine only because what you expect of it is very limited. And even that will change the moment you put it in a completely unfamiliar environment.

A human with Intelligence 5 is dumber than a whole slew of humanoids for whom the height of sophistication is using crude clubs, dressing in uncured hides, and setting crude ambushes. It really shouldn't be a playable character, "roleplaying challenges" nonwithstanding.

 

[Rel]

It really shouldn't be a playable character, "roleplaying challenges" nonwithstanding.

I don't really get this mindset. If it had been a Half-Orc Barbarian who rolled a 7 Int (using the 4d6-1 method) would we be saying that he wasn't a playable character because he was just too dumb to function? I don't think so. I think that the game clearly intends for a 5 to be a playable ability score for Intelligence. If it wasn't, then the scores would be capped on the low end.

So the problem must be with our interpretation of what a 5 Int constitutes. I can easily imagine a whole host of mentalities that would reflect a low intelligence but an ability to function within society. What about somebody who just does NOT understand math at all. They might be able to count to 10 and understand that 100 is a bigger number than 50 but adding and subtracting would be mechanics that eluded them. They could still function well enough to feed themselves and pursue a trade of some sort.

That said, I still have reservations about the Int 5 Bard because I think that his near total lack of skill points will hamper the character too much for him to be playable past the early levels. Then again, if Perform or Bluff is the only skill he ever really needs then maybe he'll be fine.

Ultimately, I think that it is up to the player to find a way to play the character in such a way that he has fun, AS LONG AS he does so in a way that is not incredibly annoying to everybody else.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

You're confusing self-suffciency with intelligence. An animal with an Intelligence of 2 can function perfectly well because it relies on instinct for a lot of its more complex behavior (like combat or hunting) and it does fine only because what you expect of it is very limited. And even that will change the moment you put it in a completely unfamiliar environment.

A human with Intelligence 5 is dumber than a whole slew of humanoids for whom the height of sophistication is using crude clubs, dressing in uncured hides, and setting crude ambushes. It really shouldn't be a playable character, "roleplaying challenges" nonwithstanding.

But then again, the bard isn't going to be responsible for learning how to tan hides, smith, build houses and the neolithic revolution. There's a lot more factors in the evolution of those humaniods then just intelligence. Sure, if you built a civilization out of 5 int bards, they'd all probablly sit around saranading each other and scratching, and probablly quickly go extinct. There are little to no doubts on this character's capacity to survive unaided. But having high scores in the "gets along well with others" stat and playing the people oriented bard points us at the fact thit this character wasn't really meant to survive on his own anyway.

And I don't know about the rest of you, but those stats definately remind me of at least one pretty girl who I helped cheat on a test.

To brun: Two things you're going to need to watch out for. The first is the guy not playing to his character's stats. You know, coming up with great plans, and so on. Depending on your campaign this may or may not be a problem. The secont problem area is, ironically, that he plays the numbers too much. If he uses his stats as a reason to do boneheaded things because he "couldn't see the consiquences" you could have another problem. Ultimately you and your group define the bounds of acceptable.