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

[Clint_L]

Okay.

@AlViking, I had to calm myself before responding because you wrote something profoundly upsetting and derogatory about my child, but I know that you did not mean to do so and so I am extending you grace.

What I wrote about intepretations of the arbitrary attribute scores used by games like D&D being totally subjective? Your post could not be a more perfect illustration of what I mean.

Why is the intelligence of a mastiff or cat not an appropriate measure?

Because human intelligence is not remotely like the intelligence of a mastiff or cat, nor are they much similar to each other, for that matter. Their brains are all very different in size relative to mass, structure, and evolutionary function. This comparison is so nonsensical that it is not even wrong.

The stats have to mean something - and in the case of a 3 it's the lowest ability anyone anywhere in the world could have without being altered by accident or disease.

They do mean something, and I explained exactly what they mean: the characters competance at narrowly prescribed tasks described in the rules of D&D. Many of which are only tangentially related to the attached attribute and some of which, e.g. spellcasting, are imaginary and attached to different atributes for different reasons. These were arbitrary decisions originally made by game designers in the early 70s who had absolutely no idea of any science behind intelligence, or anything else, for that matter.

Look at how many people who have used a bow have argued, on this forum, that strength should be the most relevant attribute and not dexterity.

I would say that a 3 wisdom is someone who is pretty high up on the autism spectrum.

My son has autism and you don't know what you are talking about. It is classified under neurodivergence for a reason. Please do not play low wisdom characters as if they are on the autism spectrum. I'll leave it at that.

But we do have extremes, a 3 and an 18 represent those extremes.

No, they represent your character's competance at narrowly defined game mechanics. We do have extremes in human aptitudes, both physical and mental, and they are so much more vastly complex that they cannot remotely be represented by silly D&D numbers, so any interpretation of them derived from those numbers is necessarily vastly subjective and interpretative.

No, it means that I make different assumptions than you do.

YES! THAT IS MY EXACT POINT. That is why we should not use D&D ability scores to police each other's roleplay choices.

Someone with an 18 strength is the equivalent of a top tier athlete that has spent years in physical training.

But also, according to the rules, stronger than another species of great ape, such as a chimpanzee or gorilla. I refer you to the recent glut of YouTube videos examining what would happen if a "top tier athlete" human tried to fight an adult male silverback.

But that aside...strong at what? As it turns out, humans are much stronger than apes, at certain tasks. Walking, for example. We're faster than horses...over a long enough distance. And so on.

All D&D atributes are woeful simplifications of ill-defined concepts.

Someone with an 18 intelligence is at an Einstein or Steven Hawking level of intelligence, even if they're a Sheldon Cooper with an 8 wisdom and charisma.

In your intepretation.

Someone with a 3 intelligence is on the opposite end of that spectrum.

In your interpretation. And, again, at what tasks?

I have a very high tested IQ. I am dumb as a stump at all kinds of things. I am very good at the kinds of thinking that IQ tests measure. That is all.

Things like IQ tests are fundamentally flawed so we don't have a way to accurately measure it in the real world does not mean we can't assign a number to it in a game.

We can assign a number to anything in a game. We can take alll of the zillion variables that go into surviving a battle and call it "hit points." You're making my point for me.

I agree it's simplified but it still roughly equates to human capability and includes the entire spectrum of potential.

That can mean anything. Which, again, is my entire point.

I think ability scores should matter and affect your character's RP as much or more than adjustments to chance of succeeding on skill checks.

"And that's just, like, your opinion, man" (The Dude).

Which, again, is my point. But, crucially, unlike adjustments to rolls for skill checks and so on, taking ability scores into account for RP is not in the rules, which was all I originally stated.

They can I had to calm myselfplay into flaws or not depending on what I view as the character's strengths and weaknesses. But if my character had a 3 intelligence that means they're going to be severely limited in what they do because they are at the rock bottom of intellectual capacity possible for a human.

If they were at the rock bottom for human intellectual capacity they would be incapable of movement and on a ventilator.

What you actually mean is"they are at the rock bottom for D&D character capacity for narrowly prescribed game functions while still being fully capable of a thriving careeer as an adventurer."

I'm not judging how other people play and it's not like I ever measure players on whether or not they are "correctly" playing their character. I disagree with your point of view but I'm only talking about how I run my characters and games. I solved the issue in my games of someone with a character with a 3 intelligence playing a genius long ago by using point buy.

We all play with different assumptions and different reasons.

Which was my entire point, and why we shouldn't force others to RP according to our personal assumptions and reasons.

 

[CleverNickName]

For those who think a 3 doesn't really matter, what do you think it represents? Because to me it represents the spectrum of human capabilities. Some people are simply far more or less intelligent than others. That doesn't change their value as individuals and there's no way to measure it accurately in reality. But it's like not acknowledging that Peter Dinklage and Michael Jordan had very different career options.

My two cents: the range of 3 to 18 represents the full spectrum of an able-bodied and able-minded human.

So I would say that a 3 in Strength would be the lowest physical performance we could expect from a human being who is also considered fully able-bodied. A 3 in Charisma would be the lowest level of social ability we could expect from a human being who is also considered fully socially-functional. And so on, for all scores in between.

Any attempt to model a disabled person using numbers alone is probably going to come off as tone-deaf and ableist (at best) to me, so I avoid it.

 

[AlViking]

Okay.

@AlViking, I had to calm myself before responding because you wrote something profoundly upsetting and derogatory about my child, but I know that you did not mean to do so and so I am extending you grace.

Acknowledging that different people have different capabilities is not a judgement of their worth as a person. But I also acknowledge that given my height and general aptitude I will never be a basketball player. I apologize, I did not mean to offend.

One of the reasons I don't like rolling is you can end up with a 3 and some people will use that to play a stereotype that I find offensive. I was searching for an example to explain and f***ed up. I've removed the statement.

 

[TwoSix]

For those who think a 3 doesn't really matter, what do you think it represents? Because to me it represents the spectrum of human capabilities. Some people are simply far more or less intelligent than others. That doesn't change their value as individuals and there's no way to measure it accurately in reality. But it's like not acknowledging that Peter Dinklage and Michael Jordan had very different career options.

It represents someone who is much less likely (although not impossible) to succeed at tasks based around accumulated knowledge, and utilizing knowledge to make logical deductions. They're also generally poor at utilizing wizardly or artifice magic.

One of the big conceptual differences between earlier D&D and modern D&D is what exactly stats are supposed to represent. In earlier editions (1e and 2e, Basic), players rolled for stats first, and then used those stats to make a decision as to what race and class was even allowable to be played. For those games, the stats being innate characteristics was the default baseline.

For more modern D&D (3e and forward), point-buy and arrays became closer to the default, and ability scores became less and less of a gate towards choosing class and race. The modern assumption is that character will be created "concept-first", and then stats will be assigned based on mechanical priorities and desire to demonstrate the concept's strengths and weaknesses. (I note that contradictory concepts to this default still float around in modern D&D due to the game's long history and desire to maintain some legacy attributes.)

Crucially, stats in modern D&D aren't intended to render a default baseline for the entire population of PCs, NPCs, and monsters; they're intended only to apply to mechanical considerations, and be filtered for the narrative through the character's concept.

 

[payn]

For those who think a 3 doesn't really matter, what do you think it represents? Because to me it represents the spectrum of human capabilities. Some people are simply far more or less intelligent than others. That doesn't change their value as individuals and there's no way to measure it accurately in reality. But it's like not acknowledging that Peter Dinklage and Michael Jordan had very different career options.

I agree with @Clint_L in that I don't let the stats literally interpret the character. I let them mechanically represent what the character is good and bad at. The two reasons I have come to the conclusion is that I am annoyed when folks dictate how a person should role play and interpret their character and folks making offensive portrayals based on the feeling of a need to interpret the stat correctly.

I know there is some anxiety of somebody rolling a Dinklage and claiming they have a Jordan for a character, but its been decades since Ive seen that kind of cheesiness. Im more likely to move on from playing with such a person than to expect the stats to be policed by designers and the community. YMMV.

 

[AlViking]

My two cents: the range of 3 to 18 represents the full spectrum of an able-bodied and able-minded human.

So I would say that a 3 in Strength would be the lowest physical performance we could expect from a human being who is also considered fully able-bodied. A 3 in Charisma would be the lowest level of social ability we could expect from a human being who is also considered fully socially-functional. And so on, for all scores in between.

Any attempt to model a disabled person using numbers alone is probably going to come off as tone-deaf and ableist (at best) to me, so I avoid it.

I view the range of 3-18 as the spectrum of humanity barring disease or accident. An example that is hopefully not offensive is height. The tallest people ever had a disease meaning they never stopped growing so if they were measured on a scale of 3-18 they'd be higher than an 18, although there are some people without gigantism that are over 7 foot tall so that to me tells me what an 18 in height would be. Meanwhile I knew a guy in high school that was probably slightly under 5 foot tall and had to have accommodations made so he could see over the steering wheel to drive a car, but had no other signs of dwarfism, he was just on the low end of normal short.

But I'm going to drop this because it's obviously a touchy subject.

 

[saviirkad]

But it's like not acknowledging that Peter Dinklage and Michael Jordan had very different career options.

While I certainly don't think a 3 in stats "doesn't matter," I do think this example shows that there is a big difference to how I think of these stats than you do.

I just think there's more attention and importance given to these extremes than they actually warrant, simply because there's other factors. When a person with a 3 Int can mechanically beat a DC 30 Arcana check, it doesn't mean the 3 Int means  nothing, it just means that you should probably base your impression of their (lower case) intelligence off more than their Intelligence score alone.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I just rolled double twenties twice in my last session, once when the NPC was making an attack with disadvantage. I've also seen double ones. So like Han said - never tell me the odds.

Double 20s is a 1:400 event. That should happen 2.6x10^8 times for every on 3 on a character made with 4d6 drop low & drop lowest stat.

 

[TwoSix]

While I certainly don't think a 3 in stats "doesn't matter," I do think this example shows that there is a big difference to how I think of these stats than you do.

I just think there's more attention and importance given to these extremes than they actually warrant, simply because there's other factors. When a person with a 3 Int can mechanically beat a DC 30 Arcana check, it doesn't mean the 3 Int means  nothing, it just means that you should probably base your impression of their (lower case) intelligence off more than their Intelligence score alone.

Yep. A 18 Intelligence character will pass a DC 10 Intelligence check 75% of the time, assuming no other modifiers. A 3 Intelligence character will pass that same check 30% of the time. That means that 7.5% of the time (or about 1 time in 13), the 3 Int character will know or figure out something the 18 Int character doesn't. That's a lot! That's not the difference between Einstein and a housecat.

 

[TwoSix]

Since we use 4d6 (drop low) 7 times (drop low) it means rolling all ones on 4d6 twice. That's like one in ten billion odds. My quick math has 1 in 1.2x10^10.

I would have to keep it and then declare them the "character of destiny, a hero against all odds."

<pedantic> That doesn't seem quite right to me. The chance of all 1s on 4d6 (a 3 stat) is 6^4, or 1296. The odds of rolling all 1s twice in a row is only 1/1296^2, which is 1 in 1.680x10^6. The extra rolls would only increase the odds of getting getting more 3s, not decrease it.

My quick spreadsheet math for 4d6k3 7 times, keep highest 6 has getting 2 3s on a group of rolls at about 1 in 80187, or 0.00125%.

<end pedantic>