D&D General Your favorite low-stat character

[BookTenTiger]

Tell your take of your favorite character with a really low stat!

Mine is character in a one-shot Gamma World game I ran back in the days of d20. We rolled randomly for stats, and the player got a 3 in Strength. We rolled randomly for mutations, and the player rolled a Super Rage that gave him +5 to Strength! So normally this character was walking around with the muscular mass of a squirrel, but when he got really MAD he gained the strength of a child!

 

[DND_Reborn]

Hmm... well, not "low" for a single stat, but how about the average?

I played a cleric in 1E AD&D whose scores all ranged from 9-12:
STR: 10
INT: 9
WIS: 12
DEX: 10
CON: 11
CHA: 10

In 1E, with a WIS 12, I actually had a 5% chance of spell failure whenever I cast a spell!

Anyway, with all average scores, I was really forced to role-play him more on personality than any defining score. I played him up to level 9 before the campaign concluded.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Hmm... well, not "low" for a single stat, but how about the average?

I played a cleric in 1E AD&D whose scores all ranged from 9-12:
STR: 10
INT: 9
WIS: 12
DEX: 10
CON: 11
CHA: 10

In 1E, with a WIS 12, I actually had a 5% chance of spell failure whenever I cast a spell!

Anyway, with all average scores, I was really forced to role-play him more on personality than any defining score. I played him up to level 9 before the campaign concluded.

What was his personality?

 

[commandercrud]

Wizard. CHA 3 and at level 1 rolled just 1 HP. Only used it for a one shot, but they survived.

 

[DND_Reborn]

What was his personality?

Well, with a low(-ish) INT, I played him a little bit dim and forgetful, which was fun because it allowed me to kickback and relax instead of being a leader/ thinker as a player. I would purposefully recall game information incorrectly, to see if the other players corrected me, which they finally did-- and the DM realized it was intended to reflect him being absent-minded, etc. Since his second "highest" score was CON, I did play him more as a energetic and enthusiastic sort, gave him a very positive outlook, and courageous despite knowing he was "sub-par" compared to the other PCs whose average scores were 3-5 points higher than his. He couldn't wear heavy armor, so he was definitely more a support-role and used a lot of ranged attacks (I was so happy the staff sling was added to the cleric weapon list in Unearthed Arcana).

I even gave him a mundane name: Benson Miller. His family were millers, and he was literally "Ben's son".

 

[Stormonu]

Not “low”, but I recently ran a monk whose highest stat was 11. He was actually the most effective character in the group - I routinely dealt with enemies that the rest of the group would have been overwhelmed by. Made it to 5th level with him, before he died. I don’t remember exactly how, but I do remember I sacrificed him to save the group’s incompetent fighter, and got bad rolls on the death save (rolled a 1) before the ineffective Druid could get to me.

 

[DND_Reborn]

He was actually the most effective character in the group - I routinely dealt with enemies that the rest of the group would have been overwhelmed by.

I have a difficult time seeing how this is possible with such low stats in 5E.... Care to elaborate with a specific example or two? I am sure it's possible, but off-hand I am not seeing it.

 

[TwoSix]

I had a hexblade warlock fairly recently that had a Str 6 and an Int 7. I portrayed the patron as a Venom-like symbiote; it normally looked like a black cloak, but it would wrap around the character's axe when he was attacking, and a lot of the spells had a black gooey visual theme. (Like misty step, the cloak would wrap around him, plunge into the ground, and pop up again 30' away.) Anyway, a side effect of the symbiote was that it was slowly devouring his body and his mind, he only had fragmented memories of anything outside of the past few days (thus the low Int) and his muscle mass was almost completely gone (thus the low Str.)

I also had a sorcerer with a Str 7, I described him as having a crippled right arm that was only strong enough to hold his spellcasting focus. If I failed a Strength check, it would generally be described as his arm not being able to support him.

 

[Richards]

My current PC Jhasspok is a lizardfolk with a 6 Intelligence. His egg was stolen from the surface and he'd spent his entire life (at the beginning of the campaign) as a fisher slave to a city of drow. So he has very little experience of anything outside the little world he knew; after being reassigned as a surface raider he thought the sun was a fireball and he's still pretty sure the moon is just a Really Big Pearl. (He's also figured out the sky must be filled with slow-acting acid, as he's observed the moon slowly being eaten away over time.) The other PCs have already learned it's best to try to explain new things to Jhasspok in terms of fish: birds (something he'd never seen before in the Underdark) were described as "sky fish" and then suddenly they made perfect sense to him. And he gets new words mixed up all the time - he's still having a hard time remembering which one, "desert" or "mountain," is the one that looks like a fat, squashed stalagmite.

Johnathan

 

[Stormonu]

I have a difficult time seeing how this is possible with such low stats in 5E.... Care to elaborate with a specific example or two? I am sure it's possible, but off-hand I am not seeing it.

In short, the other players sucked at the (tactical part of) game.

<edit> Hard to remember specifics because I’ve given up caring about that specific campaign, but an example I do remember:

We were about 3rd level and surprised some gnolls in the jungle performing a ritual. As my first action, my monk ran/jumped up a nearby tree And got out his bow. The (Dragonborn Eldritch Knight) fighter charged directly into the five or so gnolls, waving his two-handed sword (and 13 AC)*. The Druid did what she always did - Poison spray or thorn whip a gnoll. The bard inspired ... someone.

The gnolls then proceeded to wail on the fighter, though the DM was kind enough that when the 3rd one had dropped the fighter to 5 hp, the other two moved off - one against the Druid, the other after the monk (instead of the bard on the ground). The latter gnoll had a bow, and took a shot at the monk, and I promptly used Missile deflection to negate the damage and shoot the arrow back at him.

Next round, the fighter continued battling (had to remind him he had Second Wind), the Druid healed the fighter instead of attacking (taking an attack of opportunity to evade the gnoll attacking her), the bard mocked the gnoll that had been attacking the Druid. My monk put an arrow through the Druid’s gnoll, killing it. On the gnoll’s turn, one attacked the fighter (and suspiciously missed), another the Druid, the third moved from the fighter towards the bard, and the last remaining spent his action climbing the tree towards the monk.

Next round, the fight continued as the previous round - fighter killed a gnoll, Druid healed, the bard poked his gnoll with a rapier. The monk used a flurry/way of the open hand and ended up kicking his gnoll out of the tree, killing it.

After the gnolls Attack, the monk moved down from the tree to engage the gnolls by the fighter, managing to flank and knock at least one down, so fighter could hit and kill the downed gnoll (the fighter was getting some crappy hit rolls that combat).

The rest of the fight was wearing the gnolls down - monk knocks them down or away from melee so the non-fighter characters could use their ranged cantrips (or the Druid use a Cure Wounds on whoever got hit) and wail on the target until dead.

* The fighter ran directly into melee, despite having a bevy of ranged attacks (and us noticing only one gnoll had a ranged attack - with our original plan to snipe them and force them to come to us) and without taking the time to cast any of his pre-combat buff spells.