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

[Swarmkeeper]

It's a flaw in the rules that allows very-low-Intelligence characters to know three languages when in reality they would barely know one.

If you're not willing to roleplay a dumb or clumsy or weak character then don't put the low roll there.

Also, keep in mind we're talking about the extreme-outlier ends of the bell curve here. Further, 3-4-5e with their linear bonus structure suggest a far greater practical difference between a 8 and a 14 in any stat than do the IMO much more reasonable 1-2e setups where the bonus is j-curved at each end to better match the bell curve and has a big +0 region in the middle.

You do realize there's more than one way to play this game we all love, right? (well, maybe not all... but most of us)

 

[AlViking]

To make my position perfectly clear, I am saying that all D&D attributes are is a measure of that character's facility with the specific situations described in the rules, like spellcasting, making attacks, using skills. Things you roll for. That's it. An Int. 3 means that your character is really bad at those specific rolls. It does not means that your character has to be bad at everything that involves thinking or...they'd actually be bad at everything.

So a score only has to coincide with your RP as far as you, the player, prefer. If you want to play your Int. 3 character as briiliant in ways that aren't covered by the rules, then thats fine! It's fun! Go for it! They'll still never be a wizard, but maybe they are a genius at other things. Which mostly won't be relevant to your adventuring day, or they'd be covered in the rules, but might be very impactful on the story.

We have MANY examples of such people in popular culture. How intelligent is Doc Brown? He's obviously a super genius in some ways, but a total idiot in others. And you can say the same for every other attribute. It's all a matter of context. The attribute scores only apply to the context covered, specifically, by the rules.

If you have the intelligence of a standard house pet or a toddler, you should be bad at most things. Doc Brown? His wisdom may have been a bit lower than average but it was in no way a 3. In any case, it's just a matter of how we approach stats, a 3 is as low as humanly possible while still being basically functional. That's not a high bar. Meanwhile a 20 is higher than most mortals could hope to attain.

But it's a game. Play it your way but I disagree and people playing low stats for "humor" in my experience has been quite negative.

 

[Stormonu]

Anything below an 8 generally has gone in the "Unplayable Character" bin for the past 30 years.

Except when it's been Charisma, then you're stuck with the character.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

For the physical stats - Str-Dex-Con - the dice largely can take care of this. For the non-physical - Int-Wis-Cha - not so much.

Why the separation?

Why do mental stats need to be purely conducted by the player herself, while physical stats are left solely to the game mechanics?

This--this thing right here--is a huge part of why certain archetypes are punished and other archetypes are rewarded. It's why people see Fighters as the "stupid" class (hence the "Big Stupid Fighter"/"BSF" acronym), the kiddie class for clueless newbs, while Wizard is the class that unlocks the phenomenal cosmic power of the entire universe if you, the player, are already a mega-genius.

There needs to be an excellent, unassailable reason why we should allow one set of stats to have zero association with the human playing them, and the other needs to have near-lockstep 1:1 matchup between character actions and player actions. "That's what makes sense" is not an excellent reason, because it's literally just dodging the question. "Players should be creative and not rely on rules" is not an excellent reason--because it's circular reasoning, as physical stats somehow don't require creativity, but mental ones do.

 

[GrimCo]

Wouldn't be happy about it, but it's manageable. It would also highly depend on the edition, type of game and how good are rest of the stats. 5e? Easy. First off, most items don't give you +x to ability, they set ability to fixed number. Second, if it's combat light campaign, i'm going bard and dumping str. If it's more combat heavy or straight up H&S campaign, i'm going fighter and dumping CHA. Dumping INT also works, since outside skills, it's mostly useless.