Older editions actually reccomended that you use stats to help determine how the character should be roleplayed. And really, a guy with a subpar intelligence shouldn't be the one to solve all the riddles, and one with a low charisma probably shouldn't be the face of the group. So it makes sense.
The older editions were wrong. They make a whole generacion of gamers think like this and try to tell other people how to play! Just like alignments!
If a player need the ability score as a guide for himself, okay fine. If someone tell me I can't solve a riddle because "No, you have 8 int," that person is a jerk. All this 8 int means is I probably dont have a good chance of succeeding at some rolls or don't have enough Int to take a feat. That is it, nothing more.
Older editions actually reccomended that you use stats to help determine how the character should be roleplayed. And really, a guy with a subpar intelligence shouldn't be the one to solve all the riddles, and one with a low charisma probably shouldn't be the face of the group. So it makes sense.
The older editions were wrong. They make a whole generacion of gamers think like this and try to tell other people how to play! Just like alignments!
I'm going to guess you haven't actually read in detail the older rules about alignments. People still misinterpret their function in the game and distort or disregard the rules that were actually presented for them. Not saying alignments were perfectly conceived and presented - they weren't by even a great stretch. However, their purpose WAS and STILL IS to control how players have thier characters behave. The ultimate goal of alignment is to facilitate and promote better roleplaying, more consistent and believable character development, and thus make for a better game for everyone. You can argue how well you think any given edition has done that, but it doesn't make older editions any less correct than more recent editions on what they were trying to do.
Recent editions have taken a signficant turn in design regarding what stats are to be used for and how. There is absolutely nothing wrong and EVERYTHING right about suggesting that a player use his stats to assist him in determining how to roleplay his character. This approach which you are dumping on is a key part of what made the game popular in the first place. It is an outgrowth of how and why the game was even created - to go BEYOND the stats on a page to develop and play a character role as much, if not MORE than, simply manipulate a set of numerical mechanics. More recent editions have taken an approach closer to saying, "No, that's NOT where the fun really is. The fun IS in the numbers, in the mechanics, so THAT is what our new rules focus on."
As is so frequently repeated, however, every gaming group gets to play the game the way they want to. If you're having fun buying and poring over endless player splats searching for the next awesome character "build" then you should game and be happy. If you want to be the Meryl Streep of your kitchen table through your raw roleplaying skillz then good on ya. Some editions are clearly better for certain gaming approaches than others, but it isn't as if the older editions somehow polluted the game which only a more modern filter of rules could screen out. The OSR movement exists in large part because of a very valid perception that newer editions have LOST important elements that the game needs. I'd suggest you be a little more appreciative of what the old editions managed to create - like the edition that you play today.
If a player need the ability score as a guide for himself, okay fine. If someone tell me I can't solve a riddle because "No, you have 8 int," that person is a jerk. All this 8 int means is I probably dont have a good chance of succeeding at some rolls or don't have enough Int to take a feat. That is it, nothing more.
But there IS more when the game rules USE those scores to do just that - to quantify efforts at diplomacy, intimidation, problem-solving, comprehension, trickery, etc. THAT is what teaches players to think in the way that you seem to dislike.
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The older editions were wrong. They make a whole generacion of gamers think like this and try to tell other people how to play!
So telling other people how to play... you mean like telling people the older editions are wrong? That kind of ludicrous thinking?
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You say that, but how many characters have you ever seen do this as heavily as if they did act out their stats? For example. How many wizards who emulated stupidity(not just culture stuff). How many high strength barbarians have you see described without any muscle?
I've seen plenty of people roleplay their characters as less "intelligent" than their Intelligence score supposedly implies, regularly failing at mental efforts that, were the DM to actually apply a DC, the character could probably accomplish. I've seen plenty of people play high Strength halflings, who were not as musclebound as they "should" have been, or high Charisma characters who have been dark loners.
Strength, Dexterity and Constitution are worth thinking about in this kind of discussion, because there's no "practical" way to roleplay these. They're almost entirely descriptive, and if they're never described or otherwise interacted with, there's nothing to question about how they're represented. Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma are expected to be interpreted every time a character opens its mouth, and these are then given more weight. There's also a stigma regarding players who maximize Strength or Dexterity (garnering all their numerical advantages) while minimizing Intelligence and Charisma. People often feel as though someone who then doesn't play as a grunting dullard is cheating.
While there is a slight variance amoung players, they all tend for look at their stats for roleplay aids. The only time you find a wizard do something stupid is either because of the player not catching on, or the player pulling a stunt.
I've seen highly intelligent people not catch on. There's no DC for "catching on." Intelligence doesn't mean one gets everything right.
I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm just saying it's not practical.
There are creatures, and even some PCs, in the game who have Intelligence scores far beyond genius level, if one buys many of the common interpretations of the Intelligence stat. No human player could ever roleplay such a character as intelligently as they "should," unless everything the character attempts is given a DC, or is narrated (which is how genius characters in books are often operated).
Some monsters are lower intelligence than a human can really conceive, but operate on instinct, or orders, or magic that make them seem intelligent in a certain narrow range. Wolves are good tacticians, skeleton archers can pick targets, golems can protect their masters.
So, I'd say it's also not practical to roleplay low intelligence in some particular way.
Older editions actually reccomended that you use stats to help determine how the character should be roleplayed. And really, a guy with a subpar intelligence shouldn't be the one to solve all the riddles, and one with a low charisma probably shouldn't be the face of the group. So it makes sense.
It doesn't make that much sense. Things are extraplolated further than the rules require. No, you wouldn't want the low-Charisma PC to be the "face," but that doesn't mean he smells or drools or anything else. The low-Intelligence guy might actually be really good at solving puzzles, just not great at knowing the details of history, magic, and the gods.
In any case, someone who has a low stat is not debilitatingly bad at that thing. If they can take their time, they can probably succeed on most average things. Even in a pinch, they can sometimes succeed on really difficult things. If there's no DC for a given task, then it's really up to the player if he or she wants the character to succeed. That doesn't "make sense," according to how I think of people who are "dumb," or "weak," or anything else.
If a player need the ability score as a guide for himself, okay fine. If someone tell me I can't solve a riddle because "No, you have 8 int," that person is a jerk. All this 8 int means is I probably dont have a good chance of succeeding at some rolls or don't have enough Int to take a feat. That is it, nothing more.
Right. It's okay to play however you want. It's questionable, but probably acceptable to advise people on how to play (though check oneself for self-serving motives). It is not acceptable to out-and-out tell someone that they cannot play their character a certain way, because of some numbers on their sheet. If you have an issue with how someone is playing something, make your case without reference to those numbers, or you don't have a case.
You can argue how well you think any given edition has done that, but it doesn't make older editions any less correct than more recent editions on what they were trying to do.
There's no way to know exactly what they were trying to do, and it doesn't matter because of what alignment (and intelligence scores, and lots of other things about the game) has become. The "misinterpretations," if they are that, have become to ingrained. Sadly, trying to overcome the old, tired, argument-inducing tropes does not appear to be a good business model for Wizards of the Coast.
There is absolutely nothing wrong and EVERYTHING right about suggesting that a player use his stats to assist him in determining how to roleplay his character.
Not in suggesting that a player play their character how they want.
"Suggesting," easily turns into "telling." It's not right to tell other players how to roleplay, and suggesting is walking a fine line, depending on how the suggestion is made, and how the player is likely to take it. I "suggest" that no one ever tell a player to do anything other than play the way they feel like playing and backing that up by supporting that player's choices.
It is an outgrowth of how and why the game was even created - to go BEYOND the stats on a page to develop and play a character role as much, if not MORE than, simply manipulate a set of numerical mechanics.
That's all that's really going on when we say a low-Intelligence character "shouldn't" solve riddles. We're imagining that the numbers permeate everything, even when no roll is being called for. Allowing players to play their character how they want is moving away from number-centric play. Not that there's generally anything wrong with number-centric play.
More recent editions have taken an approach closer to saying, "No, that's NOT where the fun really is. The fun IS in the numbers, in the mechanics, so THAT is what our new rules focus on."
No. The "Yes, and..." philosophy is one key counter to this claim. "Interesting failure" is another.
As is so frequently repeated, however, every gaming group gets to play the game the way they want to. If you're having fun buying and poring over endless player splats searching for the next awesome character "build" then you should game and be happy. If you want to be the Meryl Streep of your kitchen table through your raw roleplaying skillz then good on ya. Some editions are clearly better for certain gaming approaches than others,
It's equally possible to roleplay in every edtion. One of the editions solved some long-standing issues with combat balance, but didn't touch roleplaying, except to enhance it by explicitly talking about "Yes, and...."
Numbers are not the opposite of roleplaying. I'll roleplay a roll, if I'm asked to make one, and I'll make it make sense in terms of how I want to roleplay my character. Is it easier to justify bad Intelligence-based rolls if one hasn't played the character as a genius? Maybe, or maybe the character IS a genius, just not at anything having to do with adventuring.
Oddly, there's no similar restriction on how a low-Strength character must be roleplayed.
If a player need the ability score as a guide for himself, okay fine. If someone tell me I can't solve a riddle because "No, you have 8 int," that person is a jerk. All this 8 int means is I probably dont have a good chance of succeeding at some rolls or don't have enough Int to take a feat. That is it, nothing more.
But there IS more when the game rules USE those scores to do just that - to quantify efforts at diplomacy, intimidation, problem-solving, comprehension, trickery, etc. THAT is what teaches players to think in the way that you seem to dislike.
We don't have any problem with the rules, or any problem with any way in which any particular player wants to think or play. The issue is with players telling other players how to play, which does happen and is a scourge upon the hobby.
Unless a problem calls for an Intelligence check, "problem-solving" has nothing to do with Intelligence. It might have to do with intelligence, but that's up to the player, and is not the same thing at all. The same reasoning applies to every other ability score and skill. Want the numbers to matter? Call for a roll. Otherwise, the numbers don't matter. Is the way someone's roleplaying wrecking immersion? Talk to them about it, without reference to numbers, so they can be away of exactly what hang-ups they have to deal with in their fellow players.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
Just want to pop in (without reading the long posts) with an example of playing a character "against" the stat: In one campaign I'm in our Hunter ranger (4e Essentials verision) has the stat 8 charisma, but still is the de facto party face. This is because he is roleplayed as being very talkative and social, but also egocentric and sometimes clumsy with words. In one situation he talked a lot with the highest ranking member of the local lord's guard, resulting in all present members of the party being forbidden from entering the castle (altough my character -- who has the stats and skills to be the party face -- did get a couple of bad rolls that helped making it worse). This is all playing the character against the sterotypical intepretation of the stat while still having the mechanical effect of the stat making sense.
Just want to pop in (without reading the long posts) with an example of playing a character "against" the stat: In one campaign I'm in our Hunter ranger (4e Essentials verision) has the stat 8 charisma, but still is the de facto party face. This is because he is roleplayed as being very talkative and social, but also egocentric and sometimes clumsy with words. In one situation he talked a lot with the highest ranking member of the local lord's guard, resulting in all present members of the party being forbidden from entering the castle (altough my character -- who has the stats and skills to be the party face -- did get a couple of bad rolls that helped making it worse). This is all playing the character against the sterotypical intepretation of the stat while still having the mechanical effect of the stat making sense.
A good example. I hope that being forbidden from entering the castle was not a complete dead-end.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
A good example. I hope that being forbidden from entering the castle was not a complete dead-end.
Unfortunately it was. In protest, the party priest immolated himself on the front steps of the castle. He will be missed (until such time as he is res'd)
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Just want to pop in (without reading the long posts) with an example of playing a character "against" the stat: In one campaign I'm in our Hunter ranger (4e Essentials verision) has the stat 8 charisma, but still is the de facto party face. This is because he is roleplayed as being very talkative and social, but also egocentric and sometimes clumsy with words. In one situation he talked a lot with the highest ranking member of the local lord's guard, resulting in all present members of the party being forbidden from entering the castle (altough my character -- who has the stats and skills to be the party face -- did get a couple of bad rolls that helped making it worse). This is all playing the character against the sterotypical intepretation of the stat while still having the mechanical effect of the stat making sense.
A good example. I hope that being forbidden from entering the castle was not a complete dead-end.
No, it was no problem at all. It was just after the Kobold Lair adventure from DMG, and Lord Warden was away from Fallcrest, so we had some time to do other things. Also, we had split the party and left our Fighter (Knight) and Swordmage to make sure we did not miss the wizard who was supposed to translate a letter we found in the lair. The defenders (in-game a couple of noble brothers in exile) were still very welcome in the castle and could sort everything out. So in the end we all just had a lot of fun, doing two or three sessions of non-xp-granting roleplay, almost triggering about 3-5 adventure hooks in the city and getting to know the group really well. Lastly, the group has now learned that if we want a person friendly to us, keep the ranger distracted and ALWAYS keep someone around to handle problematic situations (creating even more fun situations).
No, it was no problem at all. It was just after the Kobold Lair adventure from DMG, and Lord Warden was away from Fallcrest, so we had some time to do other things. Also, we had split the party and left our Fighter (Knight) and Swordmage to make sure we did not miss the wizard who was supposed to translate a letter we found in the lair. The defenders (in-game a couple of noble brothers in exile) were still very welcome in the castle and could sort everything out. So in the end we all just had a lot of fun, doing two or three sessions of non-xp-granting roleplay, almost triggering about 3-5 adventure hooks in the city and getting to know the group really well.
Lastly, the group has now learned that if we want a person friendly to us, keep the ranger distracted and ALWAYS keep someone around to handle problematic situations (creating even more fun situations).
But I take it that the player plays the character as talkative and social in general, despite the low numbers in that area? If so, that's good to hear.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
