What is a character with a 6 INT, 6 CHA, and 8 WIS like?

Ave Rage said:
The one thing that this thread has made me think about is what's the use of playing a low cha character? In D&D you play as the hero. A champion of good who fights to better the world. Sure they may not be the prettiest but you can still look up to them. The shy guy who hides behind a big weapon because he doesn't use big words doesn't seem to fit that role.

Well said Ave Rage! I too played . I played middle linebacker.
we did have a few numb nuts on our team but we also had a couple of guys who were maintaing a 4.0 GPA
 

log in or register to remove this ad



There's a guy who rides my bus that I would stat out something like this:

Str 12 (he's fit, works as a groundskeeper, but doesn't look particularly big)

Dex 9 (stumbles and fumbles a lot, but not truly clutzy)

Con 12 (Hard to judge this one)

Int 6 (Hard to judge, but he seems limited.)

Wis 10 (Impossible to say)

Cha 4 (Almost completly inarticulate. His extreme speech impediment makes it an effort to understand what he says. Most people ignore him.)
 

Chun-tzu said:


Methinks Agback is quite right.

{...}

Any IQ test that took less than a couple hours to take is BS. It takes forever to get through a complete IQ evaluation.

Indeed. The one I took last winter (a friend's sister is about to get her PhD and thought it'd be "fun" to test some of us) took me four+ hours to take and a couple of hours to get the results back (she was used to testing "idiots", and quickly decided it wouldn't be so much fun to test everyone).

Whether or not we are geniuses or not really has little to do with this discussion, though.
 

MrZoink said:
No seriously, the thing I would be concerned about is why is he playing that character? ...

(T)he 6-8-6 combo is a bit extreme.

First, there's no reason to be "concerned" about a player's motivation. He'll play for whatever reason he wants to play. Ours is not the responsibility to poke around in his mind for his decision-making processes.

Second, the 6-8-6 combo isn't any more extreme, statistically speaking, than the 15-13-15 combo on the standard 3d6 distribution bell curve. And how many times have you seen that come up? It just looks bad because it's on the other side of the curve's average.
 

Jixan:
I imagine this PC to be the hulking, dexterous half-orc barbarian? Some things you might want to be aware of as this is your first time DMing:

If the player is a wiz at battlefield tactics, he is not playing his Int, no matter what he says. It might only take instincts to fight well alone, but to coordinate your actions with others takes practice, intelligence, and mental sophistication. An Int 6 PC will have none of these. Really, he should be able to do nothing more in a battle than run at the first baddie he sees, attack, kill, and move on to the next one. No maneuvering to flank or taking 5-foot-steps to avoid comprimising situations.

If the player concentrates for long periods of time, ie, he actually stays alert when it's his turn to take watch, he isn't playing his Wis. Tricked fairly easily, gullible, and a host of other things that have already been said. This guy looks gullible up in the dictionary because someone said it wasn't there. Maybe not twice, but at least once.

If the player ever has anything compelling to say, ignore it. Charisma is force of personality much more so than anything else.
-Not talking much in role-play doesn't do it: if Al Pacino doesn't talk much, do you cease to notice his prescence in the room?
-Being ugly doesn't do it: Cyrano DeBergiac (sp?) was ugly but a poetic genius; do you not listen to his verse because he has a big nose?
-Being shy won't do as an excuse either; one can be introverted and have a wonderful force of personality: my father hates cocktail parties and social functions (would rather read a book), but when the man speaks, you listen!
People are going to dismiss this person the first time he shakes hands and looks at his feet while doing it. He can't even be a brash barbarian: bragadaccio requires CHA!

If you end up with something other than a gullible, unfunny, dimwitted, anti-charming barbarian who is uninteresting to watch in combat (run up to, hack, next...), then your player is probably putting one over on you. The problem comes when you want the player to put one over on you because the character is turning out to be so bloody uninteresting. I'd say make him redo this. An 18 in anything with a 22 point buy is going to cost a whole lot; unbalances for the character, as well as role-playing adjudication and party cohesiveness problems.

Otherwise, good luck DMing!
 
Last edited:

Back on topic:

About eight years ago, I played a similar character. I'd just gotten the 2E green Vikings book and wanted to try out the Berserker in it.

Well, my rolls were reasonably good, but I wanted to see a real hulk of a berserk, so I took advantage of a (house) rule that I suspect a lot of long-time gamers have encountered: you can trade two points of one stat for one point in another.

By the time I was done, his stats were: S18 D16 C18 I4 W5 Ch13.

He was stupid, straightforward, aggresive, uneducated, crude, simplistic, and the absolute first person you noticed when you walked into a room -- especially if a battle was going on.

He was really only useful as a tool, and that's how most people (who weren't running it terror) viewed him. The good guys wanted him around because he was great at breaking things, like dragons. On the other hand, he was so astoundingly gullible, that anyone who got him alone for a moment might just as well have cast a Charm on him.

He had no concept of treasure and most often kept "trophies" rather than gold. Actually, I'm pretty sure the other PCs always had to buy his food, etc. because no one took hacksilver.

Overall, the character was a challenge and a blast to play and the other players enjoyed it, too. But even two low scores is a challenge.

A character with the scores you described would play similar, except with just enough Wisdom to realize that he was a bit gullible -- but usually after the fact. Kinda like "buyers remorse". I could see him constantly coming to the group, "Guys, I just done sumptin' bad, but I don't remember all of it."

His charisma would also put him more in the "fool" than "tool" category. No matter what he did, it would never come off as impressive. At best, it'd look like luck ("No, really, I _am_ the best swordsman in the Flanaess."). This guy could look like a goober if he killed a dragon single-handedly in under a minute. Depending on their disposition, NPCs will either patronize or mock him. Any threats he makes will be ignored, and if he follows through, he'll be labled a maniac rather than dangerous.
 

Jixan said:
Hi, I'm fairly new to DM'ing. I am starting a new campaign in a couple weeks. One of my players is rolling up a character with the following stats....

STR 16
DEX 14
CON 12
INT 6
WIS 8
CHA 6


My question is...what does this kind of player really act like? The player's handbook doesn't really give very much detail other than comparing a 6 INT to that of a Troll, and a 6 CHA to that of a Triceratops.

The player seems to think that a 6 INT means they are kind of dumb, but can learn to read/write and function fairly normally in society. I tend to think it's a lot worse than that.

Please help me figure this out!! Thanks in advance.

-Jixan

I forget if there is a minimum intelligence requirement to read and write in D&D.

OK so a 6 int is like a troll, trolls only really care about eating and breaking things, they don't generally use tools or have complex societies, so his character could function at that level of a society naturally with no problems.

I'd ask the player how he plans on roleplaying the character and portraying his below average stats. Find out what he means by "function fairly normally".

As a dungeon crawler in a beer and pretzels hack and slash campaign this can be fine, but if the campain is more on roleplaying or court intrigues it might not be an appropriate character concept.
 

Actually, Voadam is totally correct. My post assumes a role-play medium to heavy campaign. If yours will be a hack and slash, I might create a similar character. :)
 

Remove ads

Top