What is "railroading" to you (as a player)?

[Micah Sweet]

...err....because the low charisma comes with a penalty to die rolls.

Why wouldn't that penalty be reflected in behavior bad speech equals lack of success, at least most of the time. For it to be consistently otherwise makes no sense.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well there's the evidence where it says pretty explicitly that the player gets to choose actions for their character. A constraint on those actions...not on their success, but their declaration...based on scores would directly contradict that.

EDIT: That was a 5e reference. Forgot we are in the TTRPG General forum.

That doesn't have anything to do with what ability scores are defined as, however.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Why wouldn't that penalty be reflected in behavior bad speech equals lack of success, at least most of the time. For it to be consistently otherwise makes no sense.

I'm not understanding what you are saying here.

 

[Reynard]

I think this discussion is actually about immersion for some folks -- the dumb PC coming up with smart ideas by way of the player breaks that immersion. I get that. Folks should definitely play with people that support their personal preferred playstyles, including immersion.

That is different than a GM vetoing a player action because their "character is not smart enough to come up with that" -- which is where this tangent got started.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not understanding what you are saying here.

You said that good speech would still be reflective of a low Charisma somehow. I don't understand that.

 

[Bill Zebub]

That doesn't have anything to do with what ability scores are defined as, however.

By "defined as" you mean the descriptions under the headings in the PHB?

Assuming we ARE talking about D&D, I gave away my 5e PHB a while ago so I can't look it up, but if memory serves I don't believe that any of those descriptions are correlated to scores. So Dexterity might say (I don't think it does; this is just an example) something about your ability to dance smoothly. But it doesn't say, "At Dexterity 7 people start to laugh at your terrible dancing. At Dexterity 4 you literally cannot dance without tripping."

The interpretation of score...that is, how it is manifested in roleplaying...is left up to the player.

A score of 7 is a -10% modifier, which isn't much. Looked at another way, a score of 7 (rolling 3d6) is in the 16th percentile. The bottom 16th percentile of dancers are certainly not going to stand out for their excellent dancing...but they probably aren't going to stand out at all. They'll just look kind of normal. A 7 really isn't very far off from average.

So how do you want somebody to "roleplay" that?

 

[Bill Zebub]

You said that good speech would still be reflective of a low Charisma somehow. I don't understand that.

No, I meant there isn't necessarily a correlation. Somebody with low charisma could still speak eloquently.

 

[Reynard]

Since 5E (the rules) is silent on the subject, we should come up with a list of things that PCs can't think of if their Int is lower than a certain threshold.

Like: Minimum Int 6 required to stop pushing the pull door.

That sort of thing.

 

[Campbell]

Modifiers IMO aren't enough if the stats present themselves as part of the character's definition. Look at those name. Those are definitions, not simply modifiers, and without evidence I can't accept them as just that.

It's not up to you to accept the way other people and designers choose to design/play. You can handle your table however you want to, but like insisting people who handle things differently are not playing roleplaying games the right way is a bizarre choice for someone who spends most of the time on these boards lamenting that their playstyle is not getting the respect it deserves.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think this discussion is actually about immersion for some folks -- the dumb PC coming up with smart ideas by way of the player breaks that immersion. I get that. Folks should definitely play with people that support their personal preferred playstyles, including immersion.

That is different than a GM vetoing a player action because their "character is not smart enough to come up with that" -- which is where this tangent got started.

What’s the difference?