Attributes confuse me

[Gnome on the Strange]

Something that's been niggling at me for a while RP of attributes, and where they actually count. Especially Charisma (for the many races with -2 to it) and Wisdom, which can represent anything from empathy to acute eyesight. All the rest are rather straightforward.

I've always thought a CHA penalty reflects both a PC's own attitude but also prejudices against  them. I've had dwarf clerics etc with 12 CHA that I've played more like 14 CHA in the company of dwarves, since the -2 CHA is based a lot of distrust of outsiders, unlike the more gregarious gold dwarves.  In a vaguely similar way  I'd not expect an 8 STR halfling to RP as "weedy" just "average build, but on 1/2 scale". Or , on the other end of the scale, a 10 Dex elf not to be say, crippled compared to other elves. If a race has a + or - stat modifier, I treat 12 or 8 as the baseline for them. Some players may differ on this though.

As for Wisdom, the question us where do most players consider it to end and Intelligence to begin, with respect to planning and insight? I've often seen Cleric players  RP Wisdom like Intelligence (in my opinion) but I don't trust my opinion alone as there's a grey area with how  scores count there.

It seems to me that there's an attitude that dropping something below 10 should always gimp your PC as if the stat  was important for the PC's build, and that low physical scores are easier to get away with. I like playing the occasional character with clear flaws, but also  ways to work around them in the right situation so it's not a one-dimensional "Look he cracks here, see, it's RP". The 8 WIS 16 INT guy who makes poor snap decisions but if given a mental run-up and a bit of direction has excellent judgement. The 10 CON frontline  cleric who occasionally turns into a deathmachine through divine power.

As a comparison, I have played two gnomish illusionists with a secondary focus in Evocation, and an 8 score. One has WIS as a dumpstat, and the other had STR (but would still occasionally use a dagger). Nobody's ever PMed me with "Why don't you RP that low STR more", or implied I should take every opportunity to shoot myself in the foot with it.  On the other hand, on Si, I have attempted to RP the low wisdom (Trading my necromancy gear away for SHINY GEMS, awful and creepy dress sense, going to fight spawns on a whim etc) and get criticised, I assume, because it didn't wipe him out so far. He would have easily  skipped the scorn by having 10 Wisdom, but I wanted 8 as a justification for his tendency to resort to uncomplicated, violent solutions, hoard all his magic for himself, and well, be a melee wizard.

D20, unlike a lot of RPG systems doesn't have a flaws/bonuses system, which is one of the reasons I love some of Mort's double-edged perks like City Slicker and Undead Turning replacements. They let you put a spin on your PC with an unambiguous set of positives and negatives, that isn't subject to "You're not RPing that downside well" cracks. If we get more perks, I'd like to see more of these.

[Paha]

Wisdom is the basic sense. Is it good idea to charge the big earth elemental necessarily when you don't know if you can beat it? Here, a low wisdom barbarian charges int, and the elder fella with wisdom would step back. It's the natural idea and perpective you have for what might happen, what might be the reason behind someones actions, what might result of this action before doing it.

Intelligence is often calculated moves, tactical insight of enemies numbers, weapons, supplies. Good leader should also have wisdom not only intelligence. High int and low wis, and you seem like your old half-nutcase wizard that might know how to put in a fireball, but he might accidently blow himself up.

Charisma is exactly that. Charisma. From the looks to how the society views the person. This can come out as force of nature, leadership, the kind of looks that speak to people and illuminate the surroundings, or what ever. Often certain races have negative statistic to charisma because they are generally viewed negatively or with distrust.

[RIPnogarD]

Wisdom can also be linked to self esteem. Somebody with a low wisdom might have a high IQ or be very strong but not be sure of what they can do with that or perhaps even the opposite (think they are stronger or smarter than they really are). They also may tend to be more gullible...

[TheImpossibleDream]

In the case of a wizard. Low wisdom might mean you forget to take crucial actions. Such as cast the spell you intelligently prepared but absent mindedly forgot about.

But anyway my suggestion would be not to discuss this further. The player hand book will tell you all you need to know about attributes.

In addition you could do a search for Wisdom, Intelligence, Charisma, Wis, Int, Cha and you'll likely get other obscenely long and drawn out arguments filled with DM's tuning in to correct people and disagreements over single stats galore.

Though on the subject of racial attributes. The average ability score is 10 10 10 10 10 10. For all races. 8 is below average. Just because a race has a ~difficult time~ raising an attribute. Does not mean its acceptable (even to others of your race) to be weak in that attribute.

A dwarf with 12 charisma is like a human with 12 charisma. Even though the dwarf has to technically be 14 charisma to get 12 charisma. You should not act more charismatic around your own race.
The DC's for persuade etc are usually modified based upon your race compared to the target IF that factors into to check at all. (Even some dwarves won't give a damn you're a dwarf also)

[Drakill Tannan]

Charisma is personal power, have you ever heard that phrase: "whoever  controlls himself, controls others?" A person with a good controll over himself, and a good knowledge of himself is naturally atractive: hence why charisma makes the looks, also a person that doesn't control or know himself well cannot really lead others, that is why charisma represents leadership.


Intelligence is the ability to know stuff. A very intelligent PC knows a lot of things, some of wich might be very usefull, others not. Would be easy to assume he can know several languages, that he knows combat strategies, etc. That is why intelligence is skills: it's about knowing stuff.

Wisdom is the ability to use the knowledge used above. A wise character is always right in the moment of taking decitions, an intelligent character is always right in objective meanings. A charcter with poor wisdom takes poor choices: he does not prepare before battle, nor does he wait for the others: he charges alone, etc. A person who travels though the wilds and is smart enough, will look arround, carefully, always examinating the road, that is why it is perception. A person that is wise can resist the urges of temptation because he knows it's a bad idea to give in to an enemy sorcer's spell, no matter how much the spell wants him to think otherwise, that is why it is will.

[RIPnogarD]

Low wisdom doesnt mean you are stupid. If you have a wisdom of 6 and see a dragon it doesn't mean you are going to charge that dragon. Low wisdom means you are more likely to be unsure of what to do, and would probably look for direction from others. A low int (<7) AND a low wis (<7) is probably mentaly challenged and might charge a dragon. Recklessness is more a personality trait than a characteristic stat. A person could also have a very high int & wis and charge a dragon simply because they love the thrill of challenging death.

i.e.; There are people in this world that need a hockey helmet and a drool cup but can count cards and do trigonometry in their head they just have no clue what trig is or why they know what card is next in the stack. Were somebody to tell them or give them direction they could do the tasks. There are also people in this world who have above average stats in all characteristics that climb mountains or jump out of perfectly good airplanes simply for the thrill.

As far as charisma goes, don't get charisma confused with comeliness. Just because I think Shania Twain is hot, has a friendly down-to-earth personality and can even sing fairly well thus having a high charisma (I'd say 16 or better), it doesn't mean I'm going to follow her into battle or vote for her for president.

[Talir]

Roleplaying Attributes

This is something that probably will help.

[Box]

Box tip of the day : Don't worry if other people are ragging on you about your stats. Only worry if a DM is saying that you are not playing your stats. Fuck the peons and their opinions.

[Dreadfang]

My view of stats:

Strength: Shows off your muscle and adds slighty to charisma and to increase the strength of your attention slaps.
Dexterity: Your speed and reflexes. Also helps you type faster.
Constitution: How much Mort DM events you can handle.
Wisdom: Nonexistent
Intelligence: Nonexistence
Charisma: Sexableness, looks, hawts, boosts how many girls want you, increases the amount of Dms that like you, awesomness, chuck norissness, cudosness, and greatness.

[RIPnogarD]

Role playing isn't all about attributes, alignment or character traits or flaws. It'a about the entire package.

[Gnome on the Strange]

Roleplaying Attributes

This is something that probably will help.

Actually, that's why I started this thread. The thread is useful, yes, but it was Mort claiming I wasn't RPing Si's attributes well, and he posted that list. I have pretty much given up on Si right now, but I'd like to run future PCs with low scores when they fit the concept, without underplaying them or overdoing it so much I torpedo myself.

The average ability score is ...10. For all races. 8 is below average. Just because a race has a ~difficult time~ raising an attribute. Does not mean its acceptable... to be weak in that attribute.

Actually, it does. It still means you're weak compared to the human average, just not your species average. Different population means. I shall prove it with... MATHS. Because I have a chance to outdo The Naga on numbers This is rare :P. Also I'm bored and in a statistics class.

[hide="Excusing 8 Int Halforcs using Statistical Distributions"]
So, you've bothered to read this. Oh dear... Well, luckily I'm NOT excusing 8 Int halforcs. I'm excusing 20 DEX Halflings because I like Halflings better. Hooray.

Anyway, distributions. They're going to be skewed heavily to the left, as the average score is close to the lowest possible value. This is an odd distribution, but we're doing statistics on fantasy populations, so it's cool.
Probably looks a lot like this:


Human Level 2 population.
STR: Minimum score is 8, maximum is ~18, mean is 10.
DEX: Minimum score is 8, maximum is ~18, mean is 10.
All adjustments to stat scores in NWN are made relative to Human.

Halfling L2 population.
Halfling attribute adjustments. +2 DEX, -2 STR. If you apply a change to every point on the distribution, the mean and limits of the data change by that amount. So...
STR: Minimum score is 6, maximum is ~16, mean is 8.
DEX: Minimum score is 10, maximum is ~20, mean is 12.

Kobold L2 population:
Kobold attribute adjustments. +2 DEX, -4 STR (-2CON but that's irrelevant). So...
STR: Minimum score is 4, maximum is ~14, mean is 6.
DEX: Minimum score is 10, maximum is ~20, mean is 12.

From this, we can see:
A halfling with 10 DEX is the lowest score possible at creation and is also below average for the population. Therefore a halfling with 10 DEX is relatively speaking, lame or clumsy.
A Human with 14 STR is an average soldier. A halfling with 14 STR is pretty ripped, halfling-wise. A *kobold* with 14 STR is the tiny lizard equivalent of Charles Atlas among his peers. If the average for everything was 10, it would make ability adjustments redundant, and Faerun would be full of incredibly buff kobolds and skinny halforcs who are still 10 STR because they're 7 foot tall and have as much muscle as a human.

This  makes sense, since an attribute change is meant to penalise or boost that attribute, not the other ones because "It's got to be 10 to be average".

[/hide]

[TheImpossibleDream]

An 8 str halfling is below average just like an 8 str human in the forgotten realms.

 Race does not factor into it. Though if you wanted to do complicated math based on it you may want to factor in commoner's and merchants get less stat points to allocate than adventurers (pc's) and npc foes sometimes get more stat points to allocate.

[Ebok]

Race must factor in. An 8 strength halfling is fucking beefed if you think about it. a three foot tall thing hitting as hard as a five foot tall slightly weak man? I mean damn. That's one scary little man. Putting that aside, most haflings have an 8, thats where the racial mods come from, racial averages, averaged. An 10 int half-orc is smarter then most half-orcs, thats why is costs more for then to get the ten. Most halforcs are not as smart as humans.

On the topic: Stats are actually crap, they suck. They simply fail to way to many ways to really support them for any other reason then it's a guesstimate. Stats represent things about people that are very fluid. If you're weak, fighting -will- making your stronger, it -will- tone your body. Pushing yourself through combat, learning how to breath, pushing through the pain, eating healthy will improve your endurance. Dexterity is a bit more tending to represent things of natural talent, however dexterity-- or hand eye coordination and reflexive timing is -exactly- what any fighting requires to fight with a blade. Its not about how heavy your swing, its about when and where and with what timing. Reflex and handeye coordination is everything for most weapons in this game. Of course DnD doesnt care, what neither should we.

Mental stats are entirely situational other the basis of IQ and attention span. There is some innate talent true, but motivation is a huge part of how they will be seen using any talents they happen to have. DnD simplified the situation, but if we want real characters then this simplification must be rejected through the game world.

I played a watchman with a serious selfloathing and lack of self esteem to represent his lack of personal strength that is represented by charisma. But after 6 month of being this way it was very very apparent that he was in a slump and the real issue was the lack of motivation. His low charisma however had to be played, so I left him there. Despite multiple poeple Caddies and lovethesuit included that -did- inspire him to be more then that. I was left looking at a stat as if it were a trap, it was too static, and my stubborn play the stat-ness therefore disappointed everyone involved.

If people bitch about your stats, ignore them. If they are Dms whatever, if they hate it too much they can ingore the character. If you have fun and the poeple around you do, thats a plus in my book.

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No, the above is not my version of excuse every powerbuild, nor am I telling you to roleplay like a god with your 8 cha. The poisnt is that you should not let the stat's limit whats IC. The character matters more then the basic stats used to represent them.

[scrappayeti]

I remember someone once said of the DnD system: Intelligence is knowing it is raining outside, wisdom is knowing not to walk out without an umbrella.

I think Si has been clearly portrayed as a Wis 8 character. For a start I have never seen him with an umbrella. Don't sweat it.

[Kotenku]

http://www.escapefromunderdark.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22883