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

[TiQuinn]

Depends on the GM, the campaign pitch and the chemistry with the other players.

Light hearted romp through classic dungeons? Sure why not.

Serious character arc-building campaign? ehhhhhh I'll ask for a re-roll, unless I can make that terrible stat be an interesting trait.

Yeah, I tend to come up with character concepts first prior to die rolls, not the other way around. Sometimes I’m willing to adjust that concept, other times, I’d ask for the reroll. Honestly, it’s why for most games, I’m cool with standard array or point buy.

 

[Cadence]

Depends on the GM, the campaign pitch and the chemistry with the other players.

Light hearted romp through classic dungeons? Sure why not.

Serious character arc-building campaign? ehhhhhh I'll ask for a re-roll, unless I can make that terrible stat be an interesting trait.

I think this is one of the big question I have - is it a hopefully long term campaign with lots of combat and other rolls where failing them 20% more often might start being noticeable, or is it one that's more light-hearted?

To be honest, I don't think ability scores have much impact on how players roleplay. Nor should they, for the most part. I run a LOT of games, and players always come up with their character concept first. If getting a particular roll is inspiring for a player, that's awesome, but in practice I don't see that much. Except for intelligence, occasionally, and then it's usually predictable, and only done when convenient. Unless you're Travis Willingham...though even he broke character to have Grog come up with clever plans pretty regularly.

What’s wrong with playing a disabled character? Though I disagree a three is disabled.

And there’s nothing saying a three INT means a PC can’t put together a coherent sentence.

A lot of this seems to tie into the same issues as how the species ASIs weren't really meaningfully large to some and were huge to others. Thinking back, there have been times where the %-ile interpretation of a 3 going with being in the bottom 0.004=0.4% or with a z-score of -2.53 seemed like a popular thing, in which case a 3 would emphatically would be considered as having a disability.

The very act of putting ability scores on monsters and animals and trying to make them all fall between 1 and 20 or so on a scale where humans are typically 3-18 and the bonuses are linear -- and then vaguely describing the mental stats in ways that are kind of like what a psychometrician might come up with as a scale (no matter how flawed) -- also leans that way. Things like a lion or jackal have a 3 INT in 5e and an ape having a 5 INT. The physical stats are similar, but just less cringey. An Ape only has a Str 16 and a Tiger of 17. etc...

Looking at them as just the bonuses to game activities (and not as percentiles or being tied into things with descriptions related to strength and intelligence) dodges that and I think makes it much easier to play a low stat (for those who think the things on the character sheets should have anything to do with how a character is played anyway; those who don't should have been fine anyway I guess).

But then calls into question why bother having anything like the current abilities at all. (Which is another topic).

In any case, reading a lot of the replies above makes me much happier thinking about playing a character with a low stat.

Finally, comic potential from some low stats (especially INT) feels cringe to me. On the other hand I can see CHR going that way.