D&D General You Were Rolling Up a New Character, and Just Rolled a 3. What Is Your Reaction?

[AlViking]

Yeah. I've rolled a handful of 6s over the years, but never a 3. One time, on 4d6k3, I managed to roll a character whose high score was an 8, literally unplayable, because it didn't qualify for any player class.

Instead of giving me a mulligan, the DM bumped the 8 to a 9, so I could qualify for one class. I declined the game.

It's that attitude that I really don't understand. Does the DM not want you to play a character you'll actually enjoy playing?

 

[tetrasodium]

It's that attitude that I really don't understand. Does the DM not want you to play a character you'll actually enjoy playing?

It was probably ad&d2e or earlier, those editions had min starting attributes on classes for level 1 pcs. Attributes were not particularly important beyond qualifying for the ability to cast a spell of a given level and attribute bumping gear set them to a flat value making it even easier to rocket them up.

With that said though there was a lot of no true sportsman ""real GM" bickering in the day.

 

[Deset Gled]

In no way do the 5e rules say that (or the 1e rules as far as I can tell). Are you making inferences based on your preferences or is it spelled out in some other edition?

In 1e, the rules said "Intelligence indicates the basic equivalent of human IQ". Dragon Mag #8 went further, saying "To determine your intelligence, look up the results of the most recent IQ test you have taken and divide the result by ten. This number is your intelligence rating."

Source: How Does Intelligence Relate to IQ?

IMNSHO, 5e really is much more lenient than earlier editions in the hand-wavy-ness of ability scores.

 

[tetrasodium]

IMNSHO, 5e really is much more lenient than earlier editions in the hand-wavy-ness of ability scores.

Look how low an attribute needed to go before you started getting penalties vrs a lower minor bonus to what was mostly defined by your class. The shift from that 9 point 6-15 dead zone shifting to the 3.x to current 3 point 9-11 dead zone resulted in far more emphasis on attributes in modern editions.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I voted 'Gift', but it's really halfway between 'Gift' and 'Comic Potential' because it doesn't particularly actually matter to me all that much.

Cause here's the thing... a '3' doesn't mean anything to me. What actually has meaning is '-4', which is the modifier for the stat. And honestly the '-4' modifier doesn't actually mean much to me either... because what actually has meaning is '-3 to 16', which is what my stat ACTUALLY is... the 20 points of swing my stat can have once you take the d20 roll into account.

And is '-3 to 16' that a big deal? Eh... to me not especially. Not when I still have a 10% chance of passing any DC 15 check on the ability score alone, and a 35% chance of passing a DC 10. And this doesn't even take into account the additional 10% added from the proficiency bonus on skills where I have proficiency. So yeah... I won't be great at a lot of standard checks... but I'll know enough to deal.

And heck... even if the '3' got assigned to one of the more-difficult-to-work-around stats like Dexterity or Constitution... it still wouldn't be that massive a heartache. If it's DEX then I'm just playing a Heavy Armor warrior character that knows I'll be going late in most combats from a poor Initiative... but I've never found Initiative to be that much of a hurdle anyway. And if it's CON... I'd not only go Heavy Armor / Shield for the higher AC to avoid as many hits as I could... but also go with any set of abilities that could grant Temp HP as often as possible to use as a buffer.

Dex works well enough. Con is hard.

 

[DammitVictor]

It's that attitude that I really don't understand. Does the DM not want you to play a character you'll actually enjoy playing?

It's "funny". Characters with extremely low stats are good comic relief, right?

 

[Marc17]

Dex works well enough. Con is hard.

Well, you put it in Con and make the character a wizard so they die ASAP and you can roll up a new character. Funny thing, in 5E I can see trying that and making enough Death saves along with getting stablized that the character never actually dies.

Which is why I've never really seen a game force a person to take a character they rolled up, but if they wanted better they'd have to roll another one. I've seen people allowed to do so to much eye rolling by everybody else at the table. Still, probably saves time in getting that character killed, meeting the newly rolled up character, arguing over if we can trust the newly rolled up character as we've just met them in a tavern, and finally getting the newly rolled up character to agree to the general rules of the party.

 

[AlViking]

It's "funny". Characters with extremely low stats are good comic relief, right?

In a "Ha ha your character is pathetic" type of way I guess. I guess I just don't think it's funny to make fun of people that are less gifted.

 

[Deset Gled]

Look how low an attribute needed to go before you started getting penalties vrs a lower minor bonus to what was mostly defined by your class. The shift from that 9 point 6-15 dead zone shifting to the 3.x to current 3 point 9-11 dead zone resulted in far more emphasis on attributes in modern editions.

But that's also overlooking the fact that 3.x to current systems have much more unified mechanics. Without that, a given penalty has a lot less inherent meaning.

In Rules Cyclopedia compared to 5e rules you can make the claim that a 5 INT is only a -2 penalty instead of a -3, so it's not as big of a deal. But a 5 INT in Rules Cyclopedia also means your character is illiterate. I'd consider that a lot harsher than 5e even if the numeric penalty is less. YMMV.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Dumping Wisdom is always the answer!

Why?

Because you get to let loose your inner gonzo idiot for as long as the character lasts.

You don't need to dump Wisdom to do that though. Evidence: far more players than I care to count!