Truly the nightmare is not having good stats or bad stats, it's having *painfully* average stats. I rolled up four 10s-11s and two twelves once. That's just a talented commoner.
Note that having mediocre stats or even really good stats doesn't prevent you have having entertaining character flaws. ;P Or at least, so far nobody's called me out for having a character with absurdly high int, wis, and cha who slightly resents everyone and is incapable of communicating clearly or politely.
@@zachfarrellEL They're called social Skills, not social Abilities~ The only Charisma based skill I have is Perform. Naturally, the high Charisma seems to let me *get away with* being a dick.
"Just a talented commoner" was a great character for me, I can say now. Joe Bungus the "fighter's" Barbarian Rage was reflavored to Panic. Being a trash Berserker Barbarian with shit Frenzy exhaustion was him absolutely flailing a weapon he was unwieldy with until it tore up his muscle because oh god big thing oh god oh fuck get it out get it off get it off
I rolled up a Barbarian and was pretty stoked that I had an 11 in INT. I don't really like dumb Barbarians. But, he got the raw end of an Intellect Devourer, and had his INT reduced to 5. This barbarian has quickly become my most loved character. The DM had me roll on a table to see what I forgot, and I actually rolled the only positive benefit, achieving a Zen like state. So, we've decided that my character has become awakened like Buddha, but all of his infinite wisdom is filtered through the mind of a moron.
I'm playing pathfinder right now, there's a full orc PC with a -3 INT modifier. He doesn't speak any languages. Every time we try to tell him something he has to roll INT to see if he understands. Right now he knows; Hit, Wood, Carry, and something in abyssal that means fuck you. I love Gugh.
I once played a barbarian in Pathfinder that had a 3 in intelligence ( -4 mod), a 4 in wisdom ( -3 mod), and a 20 in strength ( +5 mod). Still one of the most fun characters I've ever played
I once played a wizard with extremely low stats, intelligence being 14. So, I filled my spellbook with utility/no-rolls-required spells like Enlarge/Reduce, Featherfall, Levitate, Magic Missile, Identify, Detect Magic, and so on. If you've ever played pokemon, I basically made my character into the HM Slave, and it was surprisingly fun, cause I was the guy who got stuff done, if thugs messed with my character in town, pretty much my whole party would drop what they were doing and tell them to back off, cause "Don't mess with my boy here, he saved me from falling from a cliff" or "he found this magical bow for me!" or "he buffs me with Haste and Enlarge all the time and I'll rip you in half if you touch him" Everyone loved my wimp, and I kinda miss playing him :p
Yup. I'm currently playing a rogue with high Dext but super-low WIS. So I'm shit at finding traps, I'm easily lied to, and I can pick your pocket, but I might not realize that you picked it back. And I'm hoping to have a lot of fun with this shit-thief.
Neat. My character is a human fighter that looks physically imposing and has overall good stats. However, he never had an actual friend until 17, which is now. He looks similar to Ike from Fire Emblem but more physically imposing and dressed in black attire.
My favorite character I made is a pacifist wizard with low charisma. So my character tries to talk people out of fights which usually fails and then he doesn't do damage spells at all so in fights he has very little offensive capabilities. He buffs the party mostly and has great defensive spells so that makes up for the lack of damage.
As a GM, m favorite character was a an Orc barbarian that could barely talk. He was played by a player with great intuition IRL. He did a great job roleplaying him as stupid, but dropping some gems of wisdom at the same time -- in the most stupid/confusing way possible. My personal favorite was "Trogg no think ogre think what you think he think you think" - he was right.
The best character I've ever played was a ludicrously large variant human bard named Grug, who rolled incredibly well on charisma and constitution and nowhere else, with a particularly miserable intelligence stat. So, I ended up with a 7'6" bard who could only string a proper sentence together about 30% of the time, but was so charismatic that people listened to him anyways.
There was this rock gnome evocation wizard I played named Fritz Whizbang, who had nothing but 1st level spells. Everyone else thought he was useless. My +1 was EE. He got a lot of flak from the group's barbarian and rogue. We somehow got to level 16. I look at the list and find that I already had every 1st level spell I had access to. I spent the next hour fussing over what to take, and then it hit me. Fritz had all 1st level spells so that he could always cast whatever he needed to at any given moment, but now he couldn't do that anymore. This was the moment that made him crack. The next session, the party came together, and I inform the others that Fritz seems out of it. We get attacked by a cluster of archers 80 feet away. The DM knew I only wanted level 1 spells, and there really aren't any good ranged AOEs of 1st level. The barbarian and rogue rush over to them and attack. Then it was my turn. Fireball. 8th level slot. Everyone except the two party members caught in it were incinerated. The table was stunned. That night, the rogue "borrowed" Fritz's book and found all the pages after the 34 1st level spells torn out, and crudely carved into the inside of the back cover were the words "THERE ARE NO OTHERS!!!" A second book was discovered, containing Fireball and Melf's Minute Meteors. 17th level, Wish and Meteor Swarm are added to the second book. 18th, Power Word Kill and Time Stop. 19th, Shapechange and True Polymorph. All the while, Fritz got weirder and less stable. 20th, Gate, and he was gone, leaving nothing behind except his book of 1st level spells. I believe that party still has it to this day.
I will never forget the night my brother used Lightning Lure to taze the hell out of our buddy who was incapacitated, dealing damage to him but dragging him him 10 feet at a time so they could escape the burning building. With a strength modifier of -4, he knew there was no way he was dragging our man out with muscles, he had to get creative. He zapped to pull the poor dastard out of the building, forcing a second death save on our druid. Our cleric and the rest of us were already out of the building, unable to assist due to the choking smog and thick smoke that obscured our vision. The instant our Kobold Warlock emerged with our Druid, the cleric used Spare the Dying. That's the night we coined the phrase: "Taze them to save them!"
I mostly agree. . . but having 6 stats all between 10 and 12 is a bit rough to work with. Having one or two really bad stats can definitely bring a character to life but a painfully average stat line feels worse to me.
Yeah I know what you mean characters with good stats to show their strengths and then 1 or 2 poor 8 - 9 stats brings out the character and allows for character development as they learn to over come their challenges
Even boringly average stats allows for a lot of roleplay growth! Especially if you approach it with a "both me and the character don't know who they will be later in life" mentality and play off that, especially if you pick a relatively generic class that can specialize later like Bard or Fighter. Do they learn more from the Rogue, and start using finesse weapons or bows? Do they take a liking to the Wizard and study with them, picking up magic? Does the Barbarian introduce them to the fight-hard-party-harder lifestyle and they go strength and constitution, axe in hand? Maybe the Cleric's selflessness inspires you to focus on support (I'm currently playing a support fighter, she's badass), and you stick closer to the vulnerable members of the party. Your options are _open,_ and play your cards right and you'll be the one getting the cool stuff like that _Headband of Intelect_ or _Manual of Gainful Exercise_ as the party's adopted child they all dote on.
Ideally a character should have strengths and weaknesses. A character with no weaknesses is pretty boring, a character with no strengths is frustrating.
As a min-maxer: my lower stats is EXACTLY why I like to look at other people's characters as well, and give them some openings to do stuff their class is good at. My Barbarian might not be the most charming, but that Bard who keeps buffing me in combat might get Dark Lord M'Thulgamec to not attack the material plane. I'm just here to look scary as an extra deterrent, so that Bard has something to point to as an 'or else'. And I'm usually a darned effective 'or else'.
I appreciate you embracing the "min" part of your min-maxing. A lot of players I've met who call themselves min-maxers are more like mid-maxers (or even max-maxers). They don't want to be bad at anything, and they hate having a weakness.
My favorite weak character was from a player in a game I was dm’ing. He was a half orc bard, who was just the absolute worst at everything. But that all changed, in the BBEG lair, where the party’s dps was struggling to make their attacks land. That’s when Barry, threw down his lute, and just started punching the specters. He got 3 consecutive crits.
I was once in a dungeon and we tried to loot a treasure chest. It was locked so we tried prying it open. Turned out it was a mimic and it was pissed off at us so I tried to apologize and ask if it would give us its gold. I got a low roll so now I started saying a terrible apology where I was stuttering and stumbling over my words while the DM talked back to me as the chest. It was much funnier and a lot more fun than if it had simply opened and gave us what we wanted
My roommate and his GF rolled two characters using 4d6 drop lowest. She rolled 18, 17, 17, 15, 14, 13. He rolled 12, 10, 9, 9, 8, 7. She played 'The Chosen One', a dual wielding elf ranger, selected by her goddess to rid the world of evil and deliver justice unto her enemies. He played a dwarf who was in a horrible smelting accident as a child. His parents prayed to the god of the forge to save him, and the god, while skilled in metalwork, wasn't really cut out for healing, but tried his darndest anyways. He made it through, with horrible deformities, and decided to devote his life to serving the god as a cleric. I gave him a chance to reroll his character, but he loved his idea and stuck with it
My dad played the original D&D as a kid and he was a really dumb barbarian. Well there was a creature that sucks the intelligence out of humans that he said starved to death because my dad had such low intelligence and then he buried it and had a funeral while the rest of the party stared at him in amazement because His character was so heartbroken over the loss of his pet mind flayed thingy that would have killed anyone else
My turn! In AD&D my father's character died in combat. I know, great way to start a story. But the druid in the party had _reincarnation._ Using reincarnation brings a player back to life in a new form that is rolled worth a d100. If you roll in the mid 80s to 00 region it is a magic-user incarnation. Through dumb luck he came back as a bronze dragon. Now at first this seems ridiculous, but keep in mind that he draws a lot of negative attention to himself, and that he actually can't enter into smaller spaces where potentially important plot points may come to fruition. Another interesting and similar situation occurred in a game I played. 4th edition. My bard had forged an incredible bond with a Warlock in our party. The Warlock was killed during our travels, I didn't take my friend's death kindly. So I left the party on a personal quest to bring him back to life. The DM split our sessions in two. As the main party continued on their task to stop the big bad, I went to the plane of existence that the warlock's source of power came from, and I cut a deal to bring the strange entity the soul of the big bad in exchange for the life of my Warlock friend. Short version, I ended our world for friendship. It. Was. Glorious.
Had an old man fighter with incredibly low intelligence and wisdom, but good charisma. Had situations like Guard: "Why are you sneaking around the castle late at night?" Fighter: "It's night?!" Guard: "....Alright old timer, let's get you home."
In DnD, don't go in thinking you are the protagonist. Go in knowing you're going to be remembered as Brutus, the Pirate Tortle who sacrificed himself for the crew.
I once did a minicampaign where we put our 6 int half-orc cleric on guard duty for a long rest. A marauding band of orcs happened by and told him they were going to kill elves. That sounded good to him so he wandered off with them and the DM had this huge encounter set up where he was rolling like 15 NPCs for one player while the rest of us were sound asleep. It was honestly one of the funniest moments in a campaign i've ever had.
@@ricardotorrence6459 Yep! But then the DM attempted to herd us to his actual content by putting some CR 4 centaurs on the road behind us. We ended up trying to ambush them instead of running and he died in that battle, and the rest of us fled. Never did get to the actual campaign :'D
What's interesting about this video is that I've kinda taken it into my irl. I figured that if everyone is trying to be the hero, or the villain, what happens if you remain the goof? I've found that I take work a bit less seriously, I take more risks and overall I'm experiencing a bit more excitement in my daily routine. I think this video is more life advice than RP advice. If I ever get a chance to RP ima roll a character who's goal is to taste every poison in the world (without dying).
We recently had a one shot where my Drow cleric had a veeery low Intelligence Stat but his charisma was maxed out. So I made him a little goth surfer dude and eventually gained the favor of a death goddess for being “really dumb but you’re cute so have these treasures and maybe stay here as Entertainment for me.” He didn’t see anything wrong with that. It was VERY fun.
Back in the 3.5 days, my local gaming shop's player community (mostly younger players) had generally decided that Constitution was the best second stat for everyone, period. So when we started doing Living Greyhawk, I decided to show them something. It was a point-buy system with a hard minimum of 8, but elves got -2 to Con. And thus was born Himo Felyic, a gifted but aimless young wizard whose specialization was, in short, classclownomancy. Starting with 2 hit points (d4 back then!) and one spell of each school, but none that did any damage (and no sleep), the group assumed this was a bad joke and he'd be dead inside the session. Moreso when Himo turned out to be not a calculating self-preservationist, but a decisive actor and almost reckless in the face of danger. When combat started, he pulled out his bow (and with a lucky crit, killed something). When the enemy closed with him, he drew his sword and fought defensively. What good is weapon training if you don't use it? But then, when a pair of enemies charged the cleric, he calmly took a step back and hypnotized them. And was promptly knocked unconscious by the one he'd been fending off himself... but you know what? There was still a cleric around to heal him. Right out the gate, he did everything he could to set others up to succeed. Since he was clearly there for them, they couldn't help returning the favor, and nothing ever had a chance to finish him off completely. He was consistently useful, even in combat. He was consistently unconscious, but never without it being unquestionably better than what could have happened to the party if he'd been hiding behind a log like a proper glass cannon. Essentially, I managed to pull off all three of the stereotypes you mention in this video, and it was a blast for all involved. So when Himo finally hit level 2, gathered his precious third hit point, and retired back to the academy to publish his first book of memoirs (not a spontaneous excuse, he always packed paper and ink, and I took notes which on one occasion got the whole party an XP bonus), there was a small celebration. And, to my great personal joy, quite a few more interesting character concepts out of the younger players at the shop.
I'll always remember the party member that had an 8 or 9 for charisma, thrn took his negative trait (quirk? the lil rp bit) as something along the lines of 'Cannot keep his mouth shut'. Watching him dig himself a hole in an attempt to get around something was hilarious.
I am working on a bugbear barbarian, I’ve decided on point buy and came to a decision by having him look like this. STR: 16 DEX: 15 CON: 15 INT: 12 WIS: 8 CHA: 8 I was gonna describe him as the first thing you notice are his soft brown ox like eyes, they’re beautiful... then you see the pig face attached to it. He was a prankster bugbear from the Feywild and his above average intelligence was mostly devoted to coming up with new “pranks” and sleeping. Someone pleasure and thrill driven. Could be convinced to work with the party with the promise of crushing skulls, good food, and help with his pranks. Still considering if I wanna make him a wild soul barbarian or a berserker.
My first real DnD campaign, and I only had myself to blame, I made a horrible stat block based on misreadings of the game's systems using point buy. The rest of the party were committed minmaxxers who were excited to show me their extremely overtuned builds. My character's defining bond/trauma was survivor's guilt, and they constantly outlived the people they fought with. This became extremely apropos when I was the only player in that campaign to never need to roll a new character.
Its even more fun to play as an entire team with the same weakness. Like I once played a game with 2 fighters and a Barbarian. We had no stealth, diplomacy, or magic capabilities at all, but we'd still try to do things related to them. So we bumbled through the game, drinking potions we couldn't identify and attempting to talk to people but having no idea what to say. And we could tank damage. There were so many moments where we were shoulder to shoulder, holding back hordes of monsters with sheer hitpoints and AC.
In 3.5e, I played a cleric (later mystic theurge) who rolled a 4 for STR. Literally just wearing armor and a backpack was enough to partially encumber her. She needed a pack mule just to carry her starting equipment. Her backstory was that she self-experimented with healing magic and REALLY botched it, permanently weakening all of her muscles. Her CON wasn't great, either. She went down in combat fairly regularly. Once the party went up against a Nightwalker and a bunch of STR-draining shadows. She turned invisible only to end up dying on the floor a few rounds later to an AOE attack. The party panicked a bit trying to find this invisible dying cleric, but thankfully they saved her. Not only did she survive the entire campaign against all odds, she ascended to godhood at the end of the campaign, replacing her own deity.
I had a goblin barbarian called Skat. I had rolled absurdly well on stats. I had a 18, 17, and 16, but I had rolled a 6. That 6 defined the character as much as those amazing rolls. I put the 6 into intelligence and played an unkillable idiot who would do whatever came to mind and could not be stopped. I even one time while we were trapped in a maze made a joke that he would try to talk to the stone and the dm went with it and let me roll for it. Nat 20 and the stone talked back. That when the dm had an idea and now my character was blessed by stone giants, given an army of goblins, and became destined to be the goblin king! The dm would give me bonuses to make skat unkillable! He did this only because skat was so stupid that he could easily killed the entire party by accident. That character was my favorite one to play because his weakness was so fun to play with.
Rping a Paladin with an Int score of 7 was hilarious. The party found a fake rock used to camouflage a secret door. He stared at it for 10 minutes ,"Heeey, that's not a rock."
I once tried to fight a character but i just kept rolling low so i had my character break down onto the ground and start crying and my dm decided that was enough for them to stop hitting me
Oh I had a player that threw a tantrum because he rolled a 7 on one stat (they could assign stats at will) and said he "couldn't play a disabled character." We called him Minmaximus. We don't play with Minmaximus anymore.
@@Verbose_Mode I generally don't roll for stats to avoid these such situations. Point Buy all the way. Honestly, I don't get the appeal of rolling for stats. Point Buy is more customizable and more balanced.
One of my favorite 2nd edition D&D charters was Motte the Feeb Dragon Slayer, human fighter. 18/75 str. 17 con. 6 int. After a little complaining I learned to dive into that low int. My party would hate me sometimes. Some high level npc called my character a feeb. I was about to start a fight with him, which the party would have lost, and the wizard quickly explained that feeb meant I was a really good fighter. Yeah, that came back to bite him when we were meeting some noble and after Motte saw how well he fought, complemented him by saying he was a great feeb.
Share this with a power gamer. I took time understanding character creation and mechanics to add to the *PARTIES* strength. Sadly people viewed this as being competitive and fostered resentment. This video helped me realize there are many ways to add to the party. You can have just as much fun having your team cheer you out of your hermit shell rather than 1v1 the bbg. Remember to prioritize fun in all avenues! :)
One of the most famous and beloved D&D characters of all time came about because of a shit con and cha score. Instead of whining, his player ran with it... Crafting a sickly and disfigured mage with a rasping voice and wracking cough who would one day face off against the gods... *all of them*... and win. That gaming group was the playtesters for the, then, new Dragonlance setting including its designers, Margaret Wise and Tracy Hickman. And the character? Raistlin Majere. Source: The Annotated Chronicles by Margaret Wise and Tracy Hickman
Its not about having a weak character. Its about a character who has flaws either through a personality trait or a stat that makes them struggle with something to give them flavor and take the long road to a solution.
In my last game two characters with low con (Bard and Wizard) took some dream cakes (essentially weed brownies). They succeeded the roll and were in a good mood. My Ranger called them light weights (he had 18 con) and had some dream cakes due to peer pressure. He rolled a 3. He passed out for 8 hours. The Paladin tried to roll a medicine check to help my Ranger out. He rolled a 1. The GM said he tried to give mouth to mouth and accidentally inhaled some of my dream cake-and got knocked out for 8 hours too. Now the biggest characters had to be carried around by the Wizard, the Bard and the Rogue. It also meant the Paladin wasn't there to tell them "No, don't charm the store owner with a giant sword into giving you all his stuff for free." Needless to say, said very violent store owner has now sworn vengeance against us and we fear he will chase us to the ends of the earth. We're more scared of him than the villain Strahd we are supposed to be hunting/avoiding.
This is gonna come down pretty hard to how good your DM is, because a good one will encourage those bumbling glory moments and creative problem solving, while a bad one will often hang progression off of DCs or specific bottlenecks and your inability to do a thing at all without a lot of luck mean you're just... stuck. You have no way forward and the session is gonna grind to a halt while you figure your way around a problem that the DM really thought was going to be a simple round of skill challenges.
This. Thankfully it's somewhat hard to make absolutely horsesheit character with zero strengths. Sadly it takes a bit of rocket science on occasion to figure how to use that in near every situation... Still have had grand ol' time with even in Praedor with completely rolled characters (stats, where the random stats go, strengths, weaknesses, everything), but had to change once to an NPC we had with us when my character just didn't pass an easy fear test to enter a ruin and our DM was like: "Well, I guess your guy watches the horses for this adventure." XD
My absolute, all time favourite, character came out of a really mediocre serie of stat rolls. He's my first 5e character, a high elf divination wizard who started out with okayish Intelligence and Wisdom, however I had two totally abysmal rolls, a 6 and a 7, and not wanting to dump Charisma because I wanted him to be more of a 'social encounter' and manipulator kind of wizard rather than a big nuker, I did what everyone told me not to...I dumped Constitution. The result was an excessively fragile character, we often joke at how a single goblin could one-shot him, but more often than not that was the case! Jona the divination wizard is built to gather information, sometimes trick and deceive others with some Illusions and Enchantments, but he often has to hide behind his illusions (if not his teammates!) when combat inevitably breaks out. Most players at my table have pointed out he's the kind of wizard a party of adventurers would consult for advice, but who has no business adventuring himself. And yet I kept playing him, session after session developing his strengths in spite of his glaring weaknesses, and today Jona is a level 10 wizard, with a grand total of 19 HP, who died twice and was successfully brought back to life twice over the course of a Curse of Strahd campaign which we, as of writing this, are on the verge of completing...and I have no intention to stop playing him once we're done =w=
@@lennonturner2524 It can be a fun challenge! :P Just be sure to pick up some spells to avoid hits in the first place, like Mirror Image, Counterspell, Shield, Invisibility... I honestly tend to play Jona as if he only had one HP, because if he does get hit, odds are he's gonna fall unconscious, if not die outright :P
My friends will never forget my first, weakest shithead of a character, who developed into a hero of the story and one of the few survivors. I was named the Min-Minner.
I definitely agree with this, with one qualification: don't make your character suck at their actual job. A frail Wizard who can't punch their way out of a paper bag, or who's clumsy, or asthmatic is interesting. A stupid Wizard is just annoying. Worse, it breaks immersion. It's believable that a party of adventurers would be willing to adventure with someone who sucked at doing things that were not their job; it's not believable that they would adventure with someone who actually sucked at their job. "Fingerless Jimmy" - the thief who couldn't pick a lock to save himself - is an NPC, not a PC.
Well, yeah. If a player creates a character who is incompetent enough, the DM will need to nerf encounter difficulty to the point that the campaign isn't challenging for the other players. But that's not quite my point. A character with 3 in every ability score* is essentially a retarded cripple. It is just not believable that any sane party would allow such a person to tag along on their adventures. It's an NPC, not a PC. Contrast this with a character who is weak in an aspect that doesn't affect their role within the party. Now it can be believable. No one really cares if the Fighter is uneducated, or the Ranger has the personality of a brick. They aren't there to fill those roles. They can do the job they're there to do and other characters can compensate for their weak points. *Which would pretty much never happen anyway. You'd have to roll the most tragic series of ones in character gen to get that. Not even Wil Wheaton is _that_ unlucky.
in the pathfinder game i GM one of the PCs has a wisdom of 5. he plays the character as extremely trusting. though he also is intelligent enough to spot a foe when one is there. its trickery that's he's oblivious to. tends to walk into non obvious danger but he also is the most charismatic character in the party. so he needs to talk to people all the time. thus, the player character with the second best charisma, and a much better wisdom score, always goes with him when some diplomacy is needed, thus he can use his innocent charm to woo an ally and gather all the information they could want, while the other player is constantly vigilant for anything fishy going on behind the scenes and makes sure they're not being double crossed. its causes some great buddy cop movie style moments.
We just had a session zero where the DM had us roll for stats. I did monstrously well on every stat but ended up with a 7 for Dex. The DM kindly asked if I wanted to refill one of those 1s and I said “no way”. I can’t wait for Monday when I get my first session playing “Cuthbert the Clumsy, he whose forehead seeks doorsills”.
As a DM, a weak character with a deathwish that roleplays everything to dramatic effect always benefits of quasi-invincible plot armor. (that's what DM screens are for!)
Guess it depends on the rpg... I played Call of Cthulhu at one point, and rolled REALLY bad, and the GM was pretty much "Oh that's to bad" and I had to use those stats. In short, I couldn't do anything as that GM had us roll for so many things(even going down some stairs), and I never succeded in any roll. Makes it hard to rp if you can't really do anything. The only good thing I did was failing in a perception roll, so I wouldn't see the vampire that was standing in the dark and go insane.
@@boonxai Indeed, yeah most of the blame goes on the DM for not letting me reroll. Should point out that he made us roll DEX checks constantly, and my DEX was a mighty 3.
@@SaittaMicus not letting you reroll wasn't the issue, making you roll for everything in game when it was completely unnecessary is. Even if everyone has amazing stats, DMs who call for too many rolls just slow down the game and break up rp.
I had a tortle once with 7 dex so whenever we did anything I would always play into the slow turtle trope and either have to have someone else carry me or watch as he slowly picks up everything and starts waddling out
Years ago I had a campaign where I did a joke character: TL;DR it was a low-level version of Puffin Forest's character "Abserd" (level 1 in as many classes as possible at the time). The party had been tasked with sieging a castle and taking out the Wight that was the current ruler of the fortress. After the fighting was over the castle began to shake and collapse, but not from any power of the Wight: Because there was a freaking tornado outside, and we discovered that because as we rushed out thinking it was collapsing it was revealed the tornado was pretty much right on the doorstep. So everyone scrambles to rush back outside while the DM is tossing out d20s to try and beat ACs, I get unlucky that he hits me with some flying debris from the tornado and it renders me dying at some negative HP. He asks me to roll death saves, and I rolled a nat 20. He tells me that in my nearly dying state I manage to claw my way to the only form of cover I can find, the carcass of a cow that has been slammed into the stones of the castle courtyard and seems pretty stuck. I proceed to climb inside and pass out. Hours later, after the tornado has passed the party exits the castle and looks around at the ruins of the whole thing and hears a groaning sound. Looking over they find my unconscious character stabilized at 0HP and passed out in this cow carcass. The Paladin proceeds to grab my ankles and pull me free with a comment of "Jesus how much shit can this guy survive?" For context: That was the 8th time I'd been downed in a, at the time, 5 session campaign. Not quite in the realm of bad scores, but it definitely fell into the category of doing stupid things for funsies because I'm literally winging it based on what the dice give me.
In a game I'm running we have a Lizardfolk fighter that rolled a 4 on Charisma. He decided to roll with it and we came up with the idea that his tongue was cut out as a child when he was enslaved. This added a lot to his backstory and the RP because he now carries around a slate and chalk on a rope strapped to his belt, and has to spend a move action to communicate anything more complicated than a nod or head shake. This has made for some funny moments because he has an IRL whiteboard that he writes his statements on for added effect. He has 14 intelligence so he's pretty well versed in a lot of subjects like engineering so the party needs his opinion quite often.
My favorite character was a Bad Luck Battery. I worked this out with the DM. Any Party member may substitute their roll with mine, but my roll would become the lowest that anyone at the table rolled. However, whenever I had to roll to avoid a killing blow, everyone at the table got to roll and I'd get the best outcome. The end result was a perpetual screw-up who was notoriously difficult to kill. Even though he was probably the cause of whatever trouble befell upon the Party, he meant well and was usually the one to pull them out of the fire when things got really out of hand.
Good or bad situations, caused by ability scores or not, are only interesting if they have an equal number of the opposite situations. For everytime your Half Orc Barbarian Fighter stumbles through a conversation with the Dark Lord M'Thulgamec they should have the opportunity to toss around gnolls and or beat up a champion of Yeenoghu (or Yennoghu itself).
A stellar example of this is Grog in Critical Role (played magnificently and with great skill by Travis Willingham). Grog, a Goliath barbarian, had an intelligence score of 6, so he couldn’t read, but his other scores that weren’t critical for his class were average or okay. So many amazing RP moments came out of Grog’s low INT score, and Travis was really good at looking for those moments and seizing on them.
And more recently we have Nott the Brave, the goblin rogue played by Sam Reigel. Charisma score of 5, but always trying to lie to people and persuade them to do things and almost always failing in spectacular fashion. When Nott says that she will attempt anything involving talking to people, you know you’re in for a fun time.
On the STR/INT flipside, Taako from The Adventure Zone, played by Justin McElroy, has tiny little moments where Strength and Constitution are required assets for the task at hand. He takes the opportunity to analyze the situation, realize there is no possible way he can pull it off, and RP a comedic excuse as to why he can’t do, not right now. This is used beneficially in The Eleventh Hour arc, where the party save themselves a reset by revealing a trap, but is made horrifying in The Suffering Game arc when he has to nerf an already weak stat to continue the game. What people might not realize is that Taako, the heart and soul of the campaign, has a Charisma of 10. Same stat level as his non-existent Strength. The soft-spoken and headfirst in battle Magnus has a 12 and Rustic Hospitality. Old Man Highchurch has a 12. So, how does Taako take his worse stat and become the most charismatic of the bunch? Because his Intelligence is a 20. He’s not a charmer, but he is a thinker and an analyst. Looking back on certain campaign beats, he outwits some foes by his quick thinking, and wins friends with his cooking knowledge and sincerity. And Justin leans in at every chance to be that character of goofy yet earnest. Only by that measure of working around his flaws, past, and baggage does Taako rise to the occasion and succeed at being a charming person. I’m not saying The Adventure Zone is the most perfect example of DnD, and they more often than not play Calvinball with the ruleset for narrative sake, but I will fall on a sword for Justin’s roleplaying skills.
My DM gave us a great custom rule - you can use standard stat array, OR you can get an 18 in place of the highest and a 3 in place of the lowest Its so fun rocking a 3 strength character. Especially since it fit her backstory (waited on hand an foot, lived basically like a princess ).
Powerful characters can still have weaknesses. A lot of powergamers tend to specialize their characters and become absolutely beasts at a given role, but usually sacrifice their other abilities in order to boost their main ones. For instance, someone powerbuilding a barbarian might focus to make them the single best melee fighter there is; but they might disregard charisma or intelligence related skills or stats whilst doing so. There seems to be a belief that characters can either be incredible at everything or absolutely suck at everything, with little room for anything in between, I.E a character that's average or very good at a single task. I'm not sure what game they're playing, but in my DND campaigns, most gamers, even the power-gaming variety, tends to have to make a sacrifice that gives them a critical weakness that is ready to be exploited for some amusing outcomes. Also as a DM, I'm usually willing to offer players a chance to boost a certain stat of their choosing at the cost of significantly reducing a couple of their others; like offering the barbarian an option to increase their str score by a further 2 at the cost of tanking their int score and removing their ability to read for instance. I feel it allows players to play their powerful characters but still have flaws to counteract them as well in some instances.
You know, a character can have flaws in more ways that just sheet wise. As the player who roleplays, is up to you to make an interesting character independently of what you have rolled or picked as your stats. What if you have a score of 18 in everything but your character refuses to take certain actions as part of his background? Like, it has a phobia for blood so he will take a turn to clean its blade everytime it makes a significant attack? In the other hand, having a porpously poorly made character stat wise can get really counter productive for all the table and by itself it doesn't make the character good because a great chunk of being an "interesting or appealing character" comes from the roleplay. It's important to know what the other players and you yourself expect from the campaing. If they want to face combat challenges and do some other roll-heavy things you are going to be an absolute drag to them and probably you will end up not having fun yourself. Honestly, i think rolling dices to decide the stats is an awful method that ends up creating a big disparity between characters that might not be fun. Rather than "Stick with bad stat rolls as they made for interesting characters" i would say "Create characters and give them some flaws to make them more human".
i a hundred percent agree. it's awful playing a campaign where half the player's character motivation is becoming overpowered, and they either dont even think about flaws or they just consider the nerfs our DM has to give them as their flaws.
As a forever dm I've put party npcs in with shit stats like huna who was a commoner turned war cleric. He was romantically involved with the fighter and when huna died do to a sneak attack arrow the fighter said to me "I'd like to use that level up I've been holding back on and put it into barbarian as I'd like to rage." The fighter to angry and inconsolable with grief seeing his lover die as everything went red with him attacking the assassin in a state of vengeance in character. Out of character he was also crying as his character and huna had talked about getting married
My current main I rolled absolutey OP... except WIS, at a solid 5. So here we have a charming, strong and booksmart half-orc who could get manipulated by every two-bit crook in Waterdeep at the drop of a hat because he has the street smarts of a stray pug. Add a set of evil parents and a curse to the mix and we have an ongoing multi-month string of sidequests!
Now, you see, my Half-Elf Druid actually ended up in the reverse scenario where I rolled good for WIS (17) and CON (15) and terrible for everything else (12 for strength/dex and 9 for int/char). When we were rolling for stats our DM even had us roll an extra 2 dice and then discard the lowest two (they were a 5 and a 1). So I took that as my character was really good at understanding the intentions of simple things but not great at knowing what something means. In addition to this, one of the backstory events that I rolled and my DM assigned to me was that my character spent time and was paid to draw a map at some point so I decided my character was going to be a cartographer. Then, when we hit level two and started looking at Circles. I saw that their was an option called Circle of the Stars that have a book of Star Maps and knew it was destined that my character chose that option because, in my mind what happened, was that the person hiring me to draw maps used a bunch of flowery language and my character originally assumed they wanted a map of the sky in the area made which my character would be interested in doing since their entire Circle revolves around the Cosmos. By the time he figured out he was suppose to be drawing a map of the ground, it was already too late to back out and he wasn't charismatic enough to convince them to end the contract early so was stuck doing so XD
Player in my group rolled a Wood Elf Ranger with a positively ghastly Charisma score of 3. Yes it was 4d6 drop lowest and he rolled 4 1s. He leaned into it completely, depicting him as a complete savage who barely understood the concept of civilization. He wore mud instead of armor because it prevented him from being grappled or ensnared. He would shit in a corner whenever the urge took him, and we had to educate him on the concept of "surrendering" because sometimes bad guys have information that we need. After that, he would bluntly offer a hostile group the chance to surrender at the start of combat, and if they said no he took it as full permission to hunt them to the ends of the Earth.
The best example I can think of is grog from critical role, he was an absolute BEAST in combat but his soft stats weren't the best, he had an intelligence of SIX and he made some amazing roleplay scenarios based around that!
In my opinion, having low mental stats are more fun that just having low strength or dex. Grog is so fun to watch Travis RP not because he's clumsy or sickly, but because he's dumb. Low wisdom characters like Braad from just role with it are hilarious, never reading social cues and not noticing anything, and low charisma makes conversations almost like a puzzle in "how would my character fail in this".
Weakness is FAAAAAR more interesting than a total badass just flattening everyone. Reminds me of Sanderson’s laws of Magic systems in which one of the rules is that what the magic CAN’T do is more interesting than what it CAN do.
it's interesting up to their death at the first encounter. then it is REALLY interesting to sit around for about half an hour creating a new character while everyone else is adventuring
3 int 8 wis fighter was one of my favorites - in his first adventure he couldn't get through the magic warded door so took a step to the left and went through the wall and got into the same room. From then on he would take step to the left or turn to the left and go through the wall and assumed he was in the correct place. the party kept having to take butter and table knives from him because sharp objects are better weapons than the magical great club he had sharp better than blunt.
I had a very strong Rune Knight in 5e. I could hold the line with little help when fought. But one time i had to cause a distraction with a half orc so our bard could do a sneak. I rolled so low that I did an orc racism and got my ass beat. And the rest of my party was laughing and betting against me
the longest running campaign i've ever played, i'm playing an orc with -3 INT and a -1 dex. He expressed desire to learn how to read so he bought a book of phonics and another character has been teaching him to read common. Any time the DM asks for a Religion, Arcana, or History Check I am always taking part and quite often get a zero or a negative roll, in which I will make something up completely convinced that I am right, but obviously makes no sense logically.
This is why I almost always dump constitution on any non tank characters. I feel it helps add a lot more suspenseful moments while also giving me excuses to explore new characters more often.
I have a story few days ago our warlock a changeling, in the middle of the fucking run for his life enters into an alley, whitout any sloths to cast anything, remove his pants takes his shirt, pull a long scarf out of his bag makes a dress and change into a female elve, as a changelling speaks elvish and walks away in the middle of the fucking chase, a soldier asks him for directions and just decieve it saying sorry i don't speak common.
Our group has always enjoyed rolling 3d6 in order for stats. You can reroll once, but you reroll the whole set again and then pick between the two. We were able to finish Curse of Strahd and it was the most harrowing game weve ever had in 20 years of playing.
I came to realize after playing Exalted (basically Demigods the game) that powerful and well-rounded characters can be good too, it just takes the intent to do things with style. You have 20 dex? Cool, do flips and cartwheels as you escape the clutches of a monster, cling to rafters and dropstab people. High strength and wisdom? Become Buddha the Brick Wall, who resolves encounters through defense and persuasion, and turns enemies into allies. Many stat blocks can be made compelling with simple concepts
I was in a campaign recently run by my friend's older brother. Me and my friend were a few years younger than the rest of the group, and our characters were relatively newer, especially since I switched them out so often. We wanted to run a non-combat scenario for a change of pace, so our DM cooked up a fun heist that would ultimately help us build a spaceship (roll with it). The job was to infiltrate an auction run by a genie, sneak past his safeguards, and steal the objects we wanted. Sounds easy enough, so our two stealth characters could take care of that. That was the easy part. The hard part, and the FUN part, was what was happening upstairs. See, our DM decided to make this sort of an all-star mission: several people were playing their old characters ALONGSIDE their new ones, which meant I had control over trhee different entities of chaos-- There was Philip The Dull, a once wild mage turned regular guy when he gave up his power to said genie to save the party, and not the brightest tool in the crayon drawer, Kit Beerspinner, a Scottish dwarf woman who functioned better when she was drunk than when she was sober, and Chilgun Swampblood, a sentient swarm of bugs? Human? Hooded figure? who never spoke and whose motivations were a complete enigma. The thing was, I designed all three of these characters with one goal in mind: instigation. Now ALL of them were loose at a high society party with virtually no supervision. It was the best situation I could've ever hoped for. So, problems immediately showed themselves when we arrived at the gate. See, to get into the party, we had to claim we had something up for auction- a mysterious healing orb we found last session. But, since we had a history with the genie in question, he hated some of the members of our party, and we had to find another way in for those members. Most of them snuck past the guards, but Chilgun was having none of the "lay low" bullshit. He started circling the building, which had been magically erected in the middle of a desert for specifically this party, and found his way onto the roof, where he found a convinient skylight into a pool area. Philip, bless his soul, had already beelined for the pool, since, being a sorcerer with no sorcery who was abysmally stupid and not very strong or fast, didn't serve any purpose in the party and was just there to have fun. Philip noticed Chilgun, but couldn't let him in, because the whole building was being patrolled by archons, humanoid elemental creatures. The rest of the party set about doing their respective jobs. Our theives went downstairs to find the spaceship parts, while our tank, our wizard, and Kit all went to cozy up to the attending nobles. Kit was a drunken mess, and immediately befriended a R I C H motherfucker, some baron from down south who was there to buy high-value trinkets. Kit shared some of her magically refilling wine flask, and they began drunkenly running around, singing, and pissing off fire archons. Downstairs, something odd was happening. As it turned out, our tank's old bandit gang, who were modeled after metal gear characters, were ALSO at the party, trying to do the same thing we were. They were communicating with magical radios with one of their members, who was hiding in a big pile of ornamental boxes upstairs, underneath a christmas tree. Kit quickly sidled up to the box, as the auction began proper in the next room, and started passing notes back and forth with the bandit in the box, coming to something of a mutual agreement not to out each other for fear of ruining our own operations. Back in the pool room, though, Philip had seen an opening and decided to go open the balcony door to let Chilgun in. A fire archon got mad at Philip when he saw what was going on, but Philip splashed him with pool water, and opened the door. Chilgun slid down the glass dome and ungracefully hurtled past the balcony, only barely catching onto it via bug powers. Now, the fire archon gave chase, but had to stop so it didn't ruin the auction, and Chilgun and Philip got away scot-free. As the members in the basement found the piece they were looking for, the item we put up for auction went up for grabs. Nobody seemed too interested, so in an effort to make some money, all party members present started bidding higher and higher, which finally caused the previously mentioned noble to buy it for a whopping 1 million gold pieces, which we would get half of. In a drunken stupor, the noble went off to tell Kit about the orb he just bought for a ludicrous amount of money, but as he did, noticed some sounds coming from the box. Curious and drunk out of his mind, (Kit takes slightly stronger stuff than most,) he opened up the box while Kit was screaming at him not to, revealing a curled up cave troll with a tiny magic radio in his hands, looking like a deer in the headlights. With that, Philip and Chilgun bolted for the pool area, barely making it outside the building before the whole place was put on magical lockdown, meaning the whole building was coated in thick steel. They were being chased by the same fire archon, who was very much pissed, as was the genie we betrayed. Although the laws of geniedom prevented him from enacting his full wrath upon us, he DID have the wild magic he got from Philip a few years ago, and set about using that. With that, the other party members all arrived upstairs, as all the guests were surrounded by archons. As the genie tried to make sense of the confusion, Chilgun peeled back, Philip running distraction for the fire archon. See, Chilgun had a case of 5 fireball whiskeys, which, after stupidly downing one last session, he had determined to just be concentrated bottles of the SPELL fireball. He threw all of them, blasting a hole straight through the steel walls, and our party bolted with a surprise round. As we tried to run away, archons hot on our tails, the genie activated his wild magic, but since it was, you know, *wild* magic, he instead summoned the spectral image of a toad who leapt out of the ground, swallowed the genie whole, and blasted the whole place to smithereens. Could this situation have been avoided if my characters had slightly more intelligence, social grace, or if I had just made better decisions? Yes. Absolutely. But this was WAY more fun.
my warlock got two sixes, which i put in strength and dexterity. She was frail, had butterfingers, and was a terrible climber. Loved having those weaknesses! Especially loved that it made her strengths shine even brighter.
I live with mentality "If i can't play with good stats, i don't deserve them", bites me in the ass 200% of times, but hope to eventually live up to not needing good stats at all.
Have I ever told you the story of my favorite kobold paladin Pelius the Blue? I made him an awesome goof that had to work even harder than everyone else to do the crazy stuff they could do. Started with 13 STR (because of the neg 2 to STR) and just decided to play him as the most sincere and jovial person in the party. not very hard to do when you have a Drow cleric of Knock-off Loth, a half-elf celestial Warlock of Coralan, a skeleton glamour bard that shat out cloud-kill poison, and a bugbear fighter who only ever asked "fight?" very excitedly. His "holy symbol" to Tiamat was an arts and crafts macaroni-esque amulet depicting a rainbow colored Chinese dragon.
One of my favorite characters was a hobgoblin named Tog, who was an incredibly capable wizard with a charisma of 4. He also refused to use fire spells due to an incident in his background, meaning I'd effectively cut him off from some of the best spells in the game. He became my first true utility based character, and partnered up with the team's bard to form an absolute menace of a duo that was incredible fun to play. The two spellcasters of the group covered each other's weaknesses in stats to be a couple of chaotic neutral assholes that propped the rest of the team up by forming one effective unit.
we play dnd and my character is a grave cleric and basicly looks like the grimreaper , and has the personality of old old old geezer and is abit silly at times and has the charisma score of a unwashed potato that landed in horsedug, and he is the first one to talk to anyone, mostly becsuse others refuse because they are edgy that way. so we have creepy cleric fumbling through the dialogue, and it has been such fun and i get to roleplay 😊
Hmm, this gave me an idea for a plot curse: "You enter the next cave area. Two glyphs on opposite sides begin to glow, and you all suddenly feel wrong somehow. Everyone roll a d6 and tell me what you got." .. (I write them down) .. "Right. Your roll corresponds to a stat, 1 is for strength, 2 for dex, 3 for con, and so on. Your score in that stat is now halved (but rounded up) until you find a way to break the curse." Shortly afterwards, some stat-enhancing items may fall into the party's possession, and could alleviate some really bad stat, like 4-5 int on a fighter, 5-6 con on a paladin or something like that. Then cue a hunt for the villain who put up that glyph trap, fight to capture, not kill, and interrogation on how to break it. An accidental kill would prolong this to seek out other people who would know this.
Got to admit weak characters are fun if you have the mind and good players around you for it. One of my greatest characters was a female human fighter with an array of 12/12/12/13/04/12. I decided to dumpstat her Wisdom, rather than Charisma, going for a competent, friendlysoul almost completely oblivious to the concept of danger and deceit. In other words, supremely reckless and gullible. This proved not to be a great problem, however, because while she was just as liable to kick the sleeping monster's paw off that treasure as she was to gently lift it off, she wasn't wedded to any approach to any problem. Her teammates quickly figured out that she could be easily dissuaded from bad choices, prompting the team to consistently plan their approach to everything so Felicia the Lucky Fool didn't end up kicking the sleeping monster awake or upsetting the noble about his weight problem. Made for a great team dynamic so much so that when a god granted Felicia the chance to have divine wisdom, the party asked that it didn't because they liked their sweet-hearted bumbler as she was.
We have a kobold wizard that has 3 strength, is borderline tiny and was rule of cooled to say that 20 lbs of cute isn’t hampering an aaracokhra rogue that is carrying them.
I recently rolled for a new Monk. Put my highest roll, 17, into dex, and my lowest roll, 7, into int. It works out great for RP, because I was planning on him having a personality loosely based on Goku. "oh, a problem..... can I punch it?" "the door is locked.... can i punch it?" "the bartender is pissed.... can I punch it?"
I ran a game for my friends using the Star Wars RPG, Edge of the Empire. My buddy played a Gamorrean (the pig species from Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi) scholar who thought he was incredibly smart because he attended the top university of his people, but was actually dumb as rocks. It was incredibly fun to see him lean hard into that weakness and made for some really great story telling elements and fun situations. I absolutely agree with this. I've tried to have a character with some kind of major flaw or weakness ever since, just because it adds so much opportunity for great roleplaying elements.
I rolled a character that had one good stat and five terrible stats. I was so annoyed that I put her lowest stat (a 6 or 7) in Constitution and made her a Barbarian, figuring she would quickly die. But against all odds she survived and she's become one of my favorite characters. Like you said, it was freeing. I found my play style altering to accomodate her weakness. ("I use Reckless Attack because if I don't take the monster out this round, I'm dead anyway.") It's been a blast and every time I reach a "increase in ability score" level I dump it into Con. She is sooo close to reaching the point where she doesn't have a negative modifier in Con and I couldn't be prouder.
anything but average is fun :) getting the all 8s-12s char rolled is just.. an average joe, trying his luck at this adventuring thing which i find a little dull. extreme highhs or lows help accentuate flaws and strengths which leads to positive dramatic moments in play
This is why I like to use point buy. If you want to be good at something you have to be bad at something. When it works rolling should have the same effect, but it tends to end out without any weaknesses, and if it does most dms I’ve seen let the players reroll it.
The funniest short campaign I was ever a part of involved all five players involved rolling absolutely awful stats and deciding to run with it. (three sessions into a 5 session game, we'd all been TPKed by a random encounter and turned into undead.) It was liberating.
Whenever I roll up an amazingly op character I feel kinda bad because I really like playing underpowered characters but I’ll never forget the time I rolled a crit against a boss I was sneak attacking with the assassinate feature and downed him in my surprise round.
Something I can agree with. The same philosophy applies to acting and film, a character’s weaknesses are more interesting than their strengths. Flaws, be them mental, emotional, or physical, are interesting
2nd Ed. explicitly pointed to Raistlin from the original Dragonlance campaign as an excellent example of this. For those unfamiliar, the player in question rolled a character with stats of a 17, a 3, and a bunch of 11 or lower stats. The character he created was the human wizard Raistlin. Raistlin got an Intelligence of 17, which was the highest ability score of any of the original party members, but got otherwise crappy scores and a Constitution of 3. This was role played as a powerful wizard who had passed his order’s trials to become recognized as a fully fledged wizard, but in those trials was cursed and thus lacked any real physical ability, sometimes seemed on death’s door, coughing up blood and the like. It provided a direction for his character’s personality, and made him very distinct from Gregory Generico, Fireball Wizard #17. In 3E/3.5E the meta was to take any stats with reasonable scores but a 3 in there and make a half-orc, preferably a barbarian or fighter. The racial ability modifier was +2 Str -2 Int -2 Cha and because there was a minimum Intelligence score of 3 for unmodified humanoid PCs the Intelligence penalty wouldn’t hinder the character. I personally really like the former idea however, as it encourages players to embrace flawed characters, learning to play to not just their strengths but their weaknesses as well.
He must have known his DM would constantly fudge things to keep his character alive. Without that there is a 0.00001% chance the wizard would make it to level 5. 1hp per level, and there are common poisons which do con damage even if you make the save which would instantly kill a character with 3 con. 1 spell or 1 good hit and instant death.
"I know what I am doing. My intelligence is 6."
Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
Thanks, Grog.
My intelligence is the number that comes after 5 it's so high I can't even count to it I must be smart
2nd highest comment. Underrated comment.
"Never tell me the odds. I don't understand them."
"Ugh, I rolled terrible stats"
"Why, are they too low?"
"Worse. They're average"
:(
Ikr!
I just had a player roll 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 11 for his stat block
@@frostreaver1 That is just a powercreep commoner
Ugh!
Truly the nightmare is not having good stats or bad stats, it's having *painfully* average stats. I rolled up four 10s-11s and two twelves once. That's just a talented commoner.
Note that having mediocre stats or even really good stats doesn't prevent you have having entertaining character flaws. ;P
Or at least, so far nobody's called me out for having a character with absurdly high int, wis, and cha who slightly resents everyone and is incapable of communicating clearly or politely.
@@eclipserepeater2466 A character that's incapable of communicating clearly or politely is one with absurdly LOW charisma.
@@zachfarrellEL They're called social Skills, not social Abilities~ The only Charisma based skill I have is Perform. Naturally, the high Charisma seems to let me *get away with* being a dick.
"Just a talented commoner" was a great character for me, I can say now. Joe Bungus the "fighter's" Barbarian Rage was reflavored to Panic. Being a trash Berserker Barbarian with shit Frenzy exhaustion was him absolutely flailing a weapon he was unwieldy with until it tore up his muscle because oh god big thing oh god oh fuck get it out get it off get it off
That's why the best way to make a character is to use standard array and keep one stat at 8
we had an uncharismatic druid make an intimidation attempt, in his bear form. he rolled a -2, and became a carebear. it was the funniest shit.
They didn't intimidate even after attempting the care bear stare!? tragic.
I rolled up a Barbarian and was pretty stoked that I had an 11 in INT. I don't really like dumb Barbarians. But, he got the raw end of an Intellect Devourer, and had his INT reduced to 5.
This barbarian has quickly become my most loved character. The DM had me roll on a table to see what I forgot, and I actually rolled the only positive benefit, achieving a Zen like state.
So, we've decided that my character has become awakened like Buddha, but all of his infinite wisdom is filtered through the mind of a moron.
Sounds like they would have some funny dialogue.
"When there are clouds in the sky... the sun is shining."
I'm playing pathfinder right now, there's a full orc PC with a -3 INT modifier. He doesn't speak any languages. Every time we try to tell him something he has to roll INT to see if he understands.
Right now he knows; Hit, Wood, Carry, and something in abyssal that means fuck you.
I love Gugh.
Devon MacNaughton he can speak, he is to dumb to learn
@@marlinazul7786 well maybe not since he can say fuck you in abyssal.
Jeez I'm playing am orc with -2 int rn...he's pretty close to that
I once played a barbarian in Pathfinder that had a 3 in intelligence ( -4 mod), a 4 in wisdom ( -3 mod), and a 20 in strength ( +5 mod).
Still one of the most fun characters I've ever played
sounds like a glorious character
I once played a wizard with extremely low stats, intelligence being 14.
So, I filled my spellbook with utility/no-rolls-required spells like Enlarge/Reduce, Featherfall, Levitate, Magic Missile, Identify, Detect Magic, and so on.
If you've ever played pokemon, I basically made my character into the HM Slave, and it was surprisingly fun, cause I was the guy who got stuff done, if thugs messed with my character in town, pretty much my whole party would drop what they were doing and tell them to back off, cause "Don't mess with my boy here, he saved me from falling from a cliff" or "he found this magical bow for me!" or "he buffs me with Haste and Enlarge all the time and I'll rip you in half if you touch him"
Everyone loved my wimp, and I kinda miss playing him :p
Yup. I'm currently playing a rogue with high Dext but super-low WIS. So I'm shit at finding traps, I'm easily lied to, and I can pick your pocket, but I might not realize that you picked it back. And I'm hoping to have a lot of fun with this shit-thief.
Neat. My character is a human fighter that looks physically imposing and has overall good stats. However, he never had an actual friend until 17, which is now. He looks similar to Ike from Fire Emblem but more physically imposing and dressed in black attire.
My favorite character I made is a pacifist wizard with low charisma. So my character tries to talk people out of fights which usually fails and then he doesn't do damage spells at all so in fights he has very little offensive capabilities. He buffs the party mostly and has great defensive spells so that makes up for the lack of damage.
@@asyouwish6633 Sounds like a cleric
@@Miles300s minus the healing
As a GM, m favorite character was a an Orc barbarian that could barely talk. He was played by a player with great intuition IRL. He did a great job roleplaying him as stupid, but dropping some gems of wisdom at the same time -- in the most stupid/confusing way possible.
My personal favorite was "Trogg no think ogre think what you think he think you think" - he was right.
The best character I've ever played was a ludicrously large variant human bard named Grug, who rolled incredibly well on charisma and constitution and nowhere else, with a particularly miserable intelligence stat. So, I ended up with a 7'6" bard who could only string a proper sentence together about 30% of the time, but was so charismatic that people listened to him anyways.
@@AppleBiscuits Big Pump
There was this rock gnome evocation wizard I played named Fritz Whizbang, who had nothing but 1st level spells. Everyone else thought he was useless. My +1 was EE. He got a lot of flak from the group's barbarian and rogue.
We somehow got to level 16. I look at the list and find that I already had every 1st level spell I had access to. I spent the next hour fussing over what to take, and then it hit me. Fritz had all 1st level spells so that he could always cast whatever he needed to at any given moment, but now he couldn't do that anymore. This was the moment that made him crack.
The next session, the party came together, and I inform the others that Fritz seems out of it. We get attacked by a cluster of archers 80 feet away. The DM knew I only wanted level 1 spells, and there really aren't any good ranged AOEs of 1st level. The barbarian and rogue rush over to them and attack. Then it was my turn.
Fireball. 8th level slot. Everyone except the two party members caught in it were incinerated. The table was stunned. That night, the rogue "borrowed" Fritz's book and found all the pages after the 34 1st level spells torn out, and crudely carved into the inside of the back cover were the words "THERE ARE NO OTHERS!!!" A second book was discovered, containing Fireball and Melf's Minute Meteors.
17th level, Wish and Meteor Swarm are added to the second book. 18th, Power Word Kill and Time Stop. 19th, Shapechange and True Polymorph. All the while, Fritz got weirder and less stable.
20th, Gate, and he was gone, leaving nothing behind except his book of 1st level spells. I believe that party still has it to this day.
All strengths is boring, but so is all weaknesses. It's best to have a mixture.
So everyone can shine
My favorite is having like a 17 and an 8
I completely agree with you
Abomination 999 20 and a 5?
@@PureGoldNeverCorrodes 56 and -67
I will never forget the night my brother used Lightning Lure to taze the hell out of our buddy who was incapacitated, dealing damage to him but dragging him him 10 feet at a time so they could escape the burning building. With a strength modifier of -4, he knew there was no way he was dragging our man out with muscles, he had to get creative. He zapped to pull the poor dastard out of the building, forcing a second death save on our druid. Our cleric and the rest of us were already out of the building, unable to assist due to the choking smog and thick smoke that obscured our vision. The instant our Kobold Warlock emerged with our Druid, the cleric used Spare the Dying. That's the night we coined the phrase: "Taze them to save them!"
I mostly agree. . . but having 6 stats all between 10 and 12 is a bit rough to work with. Having one or two really bad stats can definitely bring a character to life but a painfully average stat line feels worse to me.
Yeah I know what you mean characters with good stats to show their strengths and then 1 or 2 poor 8 - 9 stats brings out the character and allows for character development as they learn to over come their challenges
Even boringly average stats allows for a lot of roleplay growth! Especially if you approach it with a "both me and the character don't know who they will be later in life" mentality and play off that, especially if you pick a relatively generic class that can specialize later like Bard or Fighter. Do they learn more from the Rogue, and start using finesse weapons or bows? Do they take a liking to the Wizard and study with them, picking up magic? Does the Barbarian introduce them to the fight-hard-party-harder lifestyle and they go strength and constitution, axe in hand? Maybe the Cleric's selflessness inspires you to focus on support (I'm currently playing a support fighter, she's badass), and you stick closer to the vulnerable members of the party.
Your options are _open,_ and play your cards right and you'll be the one getting the cool stuff like that _Headband of Intelect_ or _Manual of Gainful Exercise_ as the party's adopted child they all dote on.
Ability buy gang
"My intelligence and wisdom may be maxed, but that doesn't mean I have to use it" he said as he armed raccoons with spells
Ideally a character should have strengths and weaknesses. A character with no weaknesses is pretty boring, a character with no strengths is frustrating.
As a min-maxer: my lower stats is EXACTLY why I like to look at other people's characters as well, and give them some openings to do stuff their class is good at. My Barbarian might not be the most charming, but that Bard who keeps buffing me in combat might get Dark Lord M'Thulgamec to not attack the material plane. I'm just here to look scary as an extra deterrent, so that Bard has something to point to as an 'or else'. And I'm usually a darned effective 'or else'.
I appreciate you embracing the "min" part of your min-maxing. A lot of players I've met who call themselves min-maxers are more like mid-maxers (or even max-maxers). They don't want to be bad at anything, and they hate having a weakness.
My favorite weak character was from a player in a game I was dm’ing. He was a half orc bard, who was just the absolute worst at everything. But that all changed, in the BBEG lair, where the party’s dps was struggling to make their attacks land. That’s when Barry, threw down his lute, and just started punching the specters. He got 3 consecutive crits.
I was once in a dungeon and we tried to loot a treasure chest. It was locked so we tried prying it open. Turned out it was a mimic and it was pissed off at us so I tried to apologize and ask if it would give us its gold. I got a low roll so now I started saying a terrible apology where I was stuttering and stumbling over my words while the DM talked back to me as the chest. It was much funnier and a lot more fun than if it had simply opened and gave us what we wanted
My roommate and his GF rolled two characters using 4d6 drop lowest. She rolled 18, 17, 17, 15, 14, 13. He rolled 12, 10, 9, 9, 8, 7. She played 'The Chosen One', a dual wielding elf ranger, selected by her goddess to rid the world of evil and deliver justice unto her enemies. He played a dwarf who was in a horrible smelting accident as a child. His parents prayed to the god of the forge to save him, and the god, while skilled in metalwork, wasn't really cut out for healing, but tried his darndest anyways. He made it through, with horrible deformities, and decided to devote his life to serving the god as a cleric.
I gave him a chance to reroll his character, but he loved his idea and stuck with it
“Today I’m gonna talk about something I suspect won’t win me any viewers...”
*gets 1 million views*
They might not stick, however.
My dad played the original D&D as a kid and he was a really dumb barbarian. Well there was a creature that sucks the intelligence out of humans that he said starved to death because my dad had such low intelligence and then he buried it and had a funeral while the rest of the party stared at him in amazement because His character was so heartbroken over the loss of his pet mind flayed thingy that would have killed anyone else
My turn! In AD&D my father's character died in combat. I know, great way to start a story. But the druid in the party had _reincarnation._ Using reincarnation brings a player back to life in a new form that is rolled worth a d100. If you roll in the mid 80s to 00 region it is a magic-user incarnation. Through dumb luck he came back as a bronze dragon. Now at first this seems ridiculous, but keep in mind that he draws a lot of negative attention to himself, and that he actually can't enter into smaller spaces where potentially important plot points may come to fruition.
Another interesting and similar situation occurred in a game I played. 4th edition. My bard had forged an incredible bond with a Warlock in our party. The Warlock was killed during our travels, I didn't take my friend's death kindly. So I left the party on a personal quest to bring him back to life. The DM split our sessions in two. As the main party continued on their task to stop the big bad, I went to the plane of existence that the warlock's source of power came from, and I cut a deal to bring the strange entity the soul of the big bad in exchange for the life of my Warlock friend. Short version, I ended our world for friendship. It. Was. Glorious.
Dude that's fukin great
Had an old man fighter with incredibly low intelligence and wisdom, but good charisma. Had situations like
Guard: "Why are you sneaking around the castle late at night?"
Fighter: "It's night?!"
Guard: "....Alright old timer, let's get you home."
I work with the elderly and that guard is my mood 100% of the time.
In DnD, don't go in thinking you are the protagonist. Go in knowing you're going to be remembered as Brutus, the Pirate Tortle who sacrificed himself for the crew.
I once did a minicampaign where we put our 6 int half-orc cleric on guard duty for a long rest. A marauding band of orcs happened by and told him they were going to kill elves. That sounded good to him so he wandered off with them and the DM had this huge encounter set up where he was rolling like 15 NPCs for one player while the rest of us were sound asleep. It was honestly one of the funniest moments in a campaign i've ever had.
Did he survive????
@@ricardotorrence6459 Yep! But then the DM attempted to herd us to his actual content by putting some CR 4 centaurs on the road behind us. We ended up trying to ambush them instead of running and he died in that battle, and the rest of us fled. Never did get to the actual campaign :'D
Man i wanted him to have a long life :(
What's interesting about this video is that I've kinda taken it into my irl. I figured that if everyone is trying to be the hero, or the villain, what happens if you remain the goof? I've found that I take work a bit less seriously, I take more risks and overall I'm experiencing a bit more excitement in my daily routine.
I think this video is more life advice than RP advice.
If I ever get a chance to RP ima roll a character who's goal is to taste every poison in the world (without dying).
We recently had a one shot where my Drow cleric had a veeery low Intelligence Stat but his charisma was maxed out. So I made him a little goth surfer dude and eventually gained the favor of a death goddess for being “really dumb but you’re cute so have these treasures and maybe stay here as Entertainment for me.” He didn’t see anything wrong with that. It was VERY fun.
nothing wrong with having a death goddess sugar momma
Back in the 3.5 days, my local gaming shop's player community (mostly younger players) had generally decided that Constitution was the best second stat for everyone, period. So when we started doing Living Greyhawk, I decided to show them something. It was a point-buy system with a hard minimum of 8, but elves got -2 to Con. And thus was born Himo Felyic, a gifted but aimless young wizard whose specialization was, in short, classclownomancy.
Starting with 2 hit points (d4 back then!) and one spell of each school, but none that did any damage (and no sleep), the group assumed this was a bad joke and he'd be dead inside the session. Moreso when Himo turned out to be not a calculating self-preservationist, but a decisive actor and almost reckless in the face of danger. When combat started, he pulled out his bow (and with a lucky crit, killed something). When the enemy closed with him, he drew his sword and fought defensively. What good is weapon training if you don't use it?
But then, when a pair of enemies charged the cleric, he calmly took a step back and hypnotized them. And was promptly knocked unconscious by the one he'd been fending off himself... but you know what? There was still a cleric around to heal him. Right out the gate, he did everything he could to set others up to succeed. Since he was clearly there for them, they couldn't help returning the favor, and nothing ever had a chance to finish him off completely. He was consistently useful, even in combat. He was consistently unconscious, but never without it being unquestionably better than what could have happened to the party if he'd been hiding behind a log like a proper glass cannon.
Essentially, I managed to pull off all three of the stereotypes you mention in this video, and it was a blast for all involved. So when Himo finally hit level 2, gathered his precious third hit point, and retired back to the academy to publish his first book of memoirs (not a spontaneous excuse, he always packed paper and ink, and I took notes which on one occasion got the whole party an XP bonus), there was a small celebration. And, to my great personal joy, quite a few more interesting character concepts out of the younger players at the shop.
I'll always remember the party member that had an 8 or 9 for charisma, thrn took his negative trait (quirk? the lil rp bit) as something along the lines of 'Cannot keep his mouth shut'.
Watching him dig himself a hole in an attempt to get around something was hilarious.
“Cannot keep his mouth shut” 😂😂 oml
that sounds like my most recent (and currently favorite) character and she wasn't even from D&D XD
I am working on a bugbear barbarian, I’ve decided on point buy and came to a decision by having him look like this.
STR: 16
DEX: 15
CON: 15
INT: 12
WIS: 8
CHA: 8
I was gonna describe him as the first thing you notice are his soft brown ox like eyes, they’re beautiful... then you see the pig face attached to it. He was a prankster bugbear from the Feywild and his above average intelligence was mostly devoted to coming up with new “pranks” and sleeping. Someone pleasure and thrill driven. Could be convinced to work with the party with the promise of crushing skulls, good food, and help with his pranks. Still considering if I wanna make him a wild soul barbarian or a berserker.
My first real DnD campaign, and I only had myself to blame, I made a horrible stat block based on misreadings of the game's systems using point buy. The rest of the party were committed minmaxxers who were excited to show me their extremely overtuned builds.
My character's defining bond/trauma was survivor's guilt, and they constantly outlived the people they fought with. This became extremely apropos when I was the only player in that campaign to never need to roll a new character.
A story with adversity is always a lot more memorable than one with an easy conclusion
Its even more fun to play as an entire team with the same weakness.
Like I once played a game with 2 fighters and a Barbarian. We had no stealth, diplomacy, or magic capabilities at all, but we'd still try to do things related to them. So we bumbled through the game, drinking potions we couldn't identify and attempting to talk to people but having no idea what to say.
And we could tank damage. There were so many moments where we were shoulder to shoulder, holding back hordes of monsters with sheer hitpoints and AC.
In 3.5e, I played a cleric (later mystic theurge) who rolled a 4 for STR. Literally just wearing armor and a backpack was enough to partially encumber her. She needed a pack mule just to carry her starting equipment. Her backstory was that she self-experimented with healing magic and REALLY botched it, permanently weakening all of her muscles. Her CON wasn't great, either.
She went down in combat fairly regularly. Once the party went up against a Nightwalker and a bunch of STR-draining shadows. She turned invisible only to end up dying on the floor a few rounds later to an AOE attack. The party panicked a bit trying to find this invisible dying cleric, but thankfully they saved her.
Not only did she survive the entire campaign against all odds, she ascended to godhood at the end of the campaign, replacing her own deity.
I had a goblin barbarian called Skat. I had rolled absurdly well on stats. I had a 18, 17, and 16, but I had rolled a 6. That 6 defined the character as much as those amazing rolls. I put the 6 into intelligence and played an unkillable idiot who would do whatever came to mind and could not be stopped. I even one time while we were trapped in a maze made a joke that he would try to talk to the stone and the dm went with it and let me roll for it. Nat 20 and the stone talked back. That when the dm had an idea and now my character was blessed by stone giants, given an army of goblins, and became destined to be the goblin king! The dm would give me bonuses to make skat unkillable! He did this only because skat was so stupid that he could easily killed the entire party by accident. That character was my favorite one to play because his weakness was so fun to play with.
Rping a Paladin with an Int score of 7 was hilarious. The party found a fake rock used to camouflage a secret door. He stared at it for 10 minutes ,"Heeey, that's not a rock."
They also had to be very clear what he was supposed to do in certain situations. When they asked him to watch their back, he did literally that.
He once thought the Ale was funny tasting water.
mutegrab666 that sounds more like an intelligence score of 4 or 5
10 is base after all, like "normal" human.
+Dub Mic Step
Nah, an intelligence score of 4 or 5 wouldn't even be able to follow instructions.
I once tried to fight a character but i just kept rolling low so i had my character break down onto the ground and start crying and my dm decided that was enough for them to stop hitting me
Oh I had a player that threw a tantrum because he rolled a 7 on one stat (they could assign stats at will) and said he "couldn't play a disabled character." We called him Minmaximus. We don't play with Minmaximus anymore.
I don't think you know what minmaxing is.
@@DoctorLazers - This was one incident of many, he always wanted to have an optimal character in the most annoying way possible.
@@Verbose_Mode I generally don't roll for stats to avoid these such situations. Point Buy all the way.
Honestly, I don't get the appeal of rolling for stats. Point Buy is more customizable and more balanced.
I just rolled a character with the following stats: 18, 10, 9, 9, 7, 7. A friend linked me here and I don't feel quiiite as bad now.
That character is REALLY good at something though.
That could be fun
My dream stats tbh
Could be quite good for a character only dependent on one stat (Moon Druid or Hexblade for example)
One of my favorite 2nd edition D&D charters was Motte the Feeb Dragon Slayer, human fighter. 18/75 str. 17 con. 6 int. After a little complaining I learned to dive into that low int. My party would hate me sometimes. Some high level npc called my character a feeb. I was about to start a fight with him, which the party would have lost, and the wizard quickly explained that feeb meant I was a really good fighter. Yeah, that came back to bite him when we were meeting some noble and after Motte saw how well he fought, complemented him by saying he was a great feeb.
Share this with a power gamer. I took time understanding character creation and mechanics to add to the *PARTIES* strength. Sadly people viewed this as being competitive and fostered resentment. This video helped me realize there are many ways to add to the party. You can have just as much fun having your team cheer you out of your hermit shell rather than 1v1 the bbg. Remember to prioritize fun in all avenues! :)
One of the most famous and beloved D&D characters of all time came about because of a shit con and cha score. Instead of whining, his player ran with it... Crafting a sickly and disfigured mage with a rasping voice and wracking cough who would one day face off against the gods... *all of them*... and win.
That gaming group was the playtesters for the, then, new Dragonlance setting including its designers, Margaret Wise and Tracy Hickman. And the character? Raistlin Majere.
Source:
The Annotated Chronicles
by Margaret Wise and Tracy Hickman
Its not about having a weak character. Its about a character who has flaws either through a personality trait or a stat that makes them struggle with something to give them flavor and take the long road to a solution.
In my last game two characters with low con (Bard and Wizard) took some dream cakes (essentially weed brownies). They succeeded the roll and were in a good mood. My Ranger called them light weights (he had 18 con) and had some dream cakes due to peer pressure. He rolled a 3. He passed out for 8 hours. The Paladin tried to roll a medicine check to help my Ranger out. He rolled a 1. The GM said he tried to give mouth to mouth and accidentally inhaled some of my dream cake-and got knocked out for 8 hours too.
Now the biggest characters had to be carried around by the Wizard, the Bard and the Rogue. It also meant the Paladin wasn't there to tell them "No, don't charm the store owner with a giant sword into giving you all his stuff for free."
Needless to say, said very violent store owner has now sworn vengeance against us and we fear he will chase us to the ends of the earth. We're more scared of him than the villain Strahd we are supposed to be hunting/avoiding.
This is gonna come down pretty hard to how good your DM is, because a good one will encourage those bumbling glory moments and creative problem solving, while a bad one will often hang progression off of DCs or specific bottlenecks and your inability to do a thing at all without a lot of luck mean you're just... stuck. You have no way forward and the session is gonna grind to a halt while you figure your way around a problem that the DM really thought was going to be a simple round of skill challenges.
This.
Thankfully it's somewhat hard to make absolutely horsesheit character with zero strengths. Sadly it takes a bit of rocket science on occasion to figure how to use that in near every situation...
Still have had grand ol' time with even in Praedor with completely rolled characters (stats, where the random stats go, strengths, weaknesses, everything), but had to change once to an NPC we had with us when my character just didn't pass an easy fear test to enter a ruin and our DM was like: "Well, I guess your guy watches the horses for this adventure." XD
My absolute, all time favourite, character came out of a really mediocre serie of stat rolls. He's my first 5e character, a high elf divination wizard who started out with okayish Intelligence and Wisdom, however I had two totally abysmal rolls, a 6 and a 7, and not wanting to dump Charisma because I wanted him to be more of a 'social encounter' and manipulator kind of wizard rather than a big nuker, I did what everyone told me not to...I dumped Constitution.
The result was an excessively fragile character, we often joke at how a single goblin could one-shot him, but more often than not that was the case! Jona the divination wizard is built to gather information, sometimes trick and deceive others with some Illusions and Enchantments, but he often has to hide behind his illusions (if not his teammates!) when combat inevitably breaks out. Most players at my table have pointed out he's the kind of wizard a party of adventurers would consult for advice, but who has no business adventuring himself.
And yet I kept playing him, session after session developing his strengths in spite of his glaring weaknesses, and today Jona is a level 10 wizard, with a grand total of 19 HP, who died twice and was successfully brought back to life twice over the course of a Curse of Strahd campaign which we, as of writing this, are on the verge of completing...and I have no intention to stop playing him once we're done =w=
This makes me want to dump con on my next big spellcaster lol
@@lennonturner2524 It can be a fun challenge! :P Just be sure to pick up some spells to avoid hits in the first place, like Mirror Image, Counterspell, Shield, Invisibility... I honestly tend to play Jona as if he only had one HP, because if he does get hit, odds are he's gonna fall unconscious, if not die outright :P
My friends will never forget my first, weakest shithead of a character, who developed into a hero of the story and one of the few survivors. I was named the Min-Minner.
I definitely agree with this, with one qualification: don't make your character suck at their actual job.
A frail Wizard who can't punch their way out of a paper bag, or who's clumsy, or asthmatic is interesting. A stupid Wizard is just annoying. Worse, it breaks immersion. It's believable that a party of adventurers would be willing to adventure with someone who sucked at doing things that were not their job; it's not believable that they would adventure with someone who actually sucked at their job.
"Fingerless Jimmy" - the thief who couldn't pick a lock to save himself - is an NPC, not a PC.
Or it's a charity event for your 3 in every ability score character.
Well, yeah.
If a player creates a character who is incompetent enough, the DM will need to nerf encounter difficulty to the point that the campaign isn't challenging for the other players.
But that's not quite my point. A character with 3 in every ability score* is essentially a retarded cripple.
It is just not believable that any sane party would allow such a person to tag along on their adventures. It's an NPC, not a PC.
Contrast this with a character who is weak in an aspect that doesn't affect their role within the party. Now it can be believable. No one really cares if the Fighter is uneducated, or the Ranger has the personality of a brick. They aren't there to fill those roles. They can do the job they're there to do and other characters can compensate for their weak points.
*Which would pretty much never happen anyway. You'd have to roll the most tragic series of ones in character gen to get that. Not even Wil Wheaton is _that_ unlucky.
in the pathfinder game i GM one of the PCs has a wisdom of 5. he plays the character as extremely trusting. though he also is intelligent enough to spot a foe when one is there. its trickery that's he's oblivious to. tends to walk into non obvious danger but he also is the most charismatic character in the party. so he needs to talk to people all the time. thus, the player character with the second best charisma, and a much better wisdom score, always goes with him when some diplomacy is needed, thus he can use his innocent charm to woo an ally and gather all the information they could want, while the other player is constantly vigilant for anything fishy going on behind the scenes and makes sure they're not being double crossed.
its causes some great buddy cop movie style moments.
We just had a session zero where the DM had us roll for stats. I did monstrously well on every stat but ended up with a 7 for Dex. The DM kindly asked if I wanted to refill one of those 1s and I said “no way”. I can’t wait for Monday when I get my first session playing “Cuthbert the Clumsy, he whose forehead seeks doorsills”.
YES! I always encourage my players to have weaknesses, even if they rolled good for stats. I never force them, mind you, but I do encourage it.
As a DM, a weak character with a deathwish that roleplays everything to dramatic effect always benefits of quasi-invincible plot armor. (that's what DM screens are for!)
*benefits from OR gets the benefit of
Guess it depends on the rpg...
I played Call of Cthulhu at one point, and rolled REALLY bad, and the GM was pretty much "Oh that's to bad" and I had to use those stats.
In short, I couldn't do anything as that GM had us roll for so many things(even going down some stairs), and I never succeded in any roll. Makes it hard to rp if you can't really do anything.
The only good thing I did was failing in a perception roll, so I wouldn't see the vampire that was standing in the dark and go insane.
That's just an asshole DM like for me..
For me too
@@boonxai Indeed, yeah most of the blame goes on the DM for not letting me reroll.
Should point out that he made us roll DEX checks constantly, and my DEX was a mighty 3.
@@SaittaMicus not letting you reroll wasn't the issue, making you roll for everything in game when it was completely unnecessary is. Even if everyone has amazing stats, DMs who call for too many rolls just slow down the game and break up rp.
I had a tortle once with 7 dex so whenever we did anything I would always play into the slow turtle trope and either have to have someone else carry me or watch as he slowly picks up everything and starts waddling out
@@xRickAstleyx I know we just played into it for fun
Years ago I had a campaign where I did a joke character:
TL;DR it was a low-level version of Puffin Forest's character "Abserd" (level 1 in as many classes as possible at the time). The party had been tasked with sieging a castle and taking out the Wight that was the current ruler of the fortress. After the fighting was over the castle began to shake and collapse, but not from any power of the Wight: Because there was a freaking tornado outside, and we discovered that because as we rushed out thinking it was collapsing it was revealed the tornado was pretty much right on the doorstep. So everyone scrambles to rush back outside while the DM is tossing out d20s to try and beat ACs, I get unlucky that he hits me with some flying debris from the tornado and it renders me dying at some negative HP. He asks me to roll death saves, and I rolled a nat 20. He tells me that in my nearly dying state I manage to claw my way to the only form of cover I can find, the carcass of a cow that has been slammed into the stones of the castle courtyard and seems pretty stuck. I proceed to climb inside and pass out.
Hours later, after the tornado has passed the party exits the castle and looks around at the ruins of the whole thing and hears a groaning sound. Looking over they find my unconscious character stabilized at 0HP and passed out in this cow carcass. The Paladin proceeds to grab my ankles and pull me free with a comment of "Jesus how much shit can this guy survive?"
For context: That was the 8th time I'd been downed in a, at the time, 5 session campaign.
Not quite in the realm of bad scores, but it definitely fell into the category of doing stupid things for funsies because I'm literally winging it based on what the dice give me.
In a game I'm running we have a Lizardfolk fighter that rolled a 4 on Charisma. He decided to roll with it and we came up with the idea that his tongue was cut out as a child when he was enslaved. This added a lot to his backstory and the RP because he now carries around a slate and chalk on a rope strapped to his belt, and has to spend a move action to communicate anything more complicated than a nod or head shake. This has made for some funny moments because he has an IRL whiteboard that he writes his statements on for added effect. He has 14 intelligence so he's pretty well versed in a lot of subjects like engineering so the party needs his opinion quite often.
Really interesting, I'd love to having a character like that in the party.
My favorite character was a Bad Luck Battery. I worked this out with the DM. Any Party member may substitute their roll with mine, but my roll would become the lowest that anyone at the table rolled. However, whenever I had to roll to avoid a killing blow, everyone at the table got to roll and I'd get the best outcome. The end result was a perpetual screw-up who was notoriously difficult to kill. Even though he was probably the cause of whatever trouble befell upon the Party, he meant well and was usually the one to pull them out of the fire when things got really out of hand.
Good or bad situations, caused by ability scores or not, are only interesting if they have an equal number of the opposite situations. For everytime your Half Orc Barbarian Fighter stumbles through a conversation with the Dark Lord M'Thulgamec they should have the opportunity to toss around gnolls and or beat up a champion of Yeenoghu (or Yennoghu itself).
Wait, this is episode 5 of the animated spellbook, but this is the earliest video i can see on this channel
Several upon several videos where taken off the channel. You have to be in patreon to see all of them.
A stellar example of this is Grog in Critical Role (played magnificently and with great skill by Travis Willingham). Grog, a Goliath barbarian, had an intelligence score of 6, so he couldn’t read, but his other scores that weren’t critical for his class were average or okay. So many amazing RP moments came out of Grog’s low INT score, and Travis was really good at looking for those moments and seizing on them.
argella1300 I have an intelligence of 6, I think I know what I'm doing!
His charisma was also 7 for some time
And more recently we have Nott the Brave, the goblin rogue played by Sam Reigel. Charisma score of 5, but always trying to lie to people and persuade them to do things and almost always failing in spectacular fashion. When Nott says that she will attempt anything involving talking to people, you know you’re in for a fun time.
On the STR/INT flipside, Taako from The Adventure Zone, played by Justin McElroy, has tiny little moments where Strength and Constitution are required assets for the task at hand. He takes the opportunity to analyze the situation, realize there is no possible way he can pull it off, and RP a comedic excuse as to why he can’t do, not right now. This is used beneficially in The Eleventh Hour arc, where the party save themselves a reset by revealing a trap, but is made horrifying in The Suffering Game arc when he has to nerf an already weak stat to continue the game.
What people might not realize is that Taako, the heart and soul of the campaign, has a Charisma of 10. Same stat level as his non-existent Strength. The soft-spoken and headfirst in battle Magnus has a 12 and Rustic Hospitality. Old Man Highchurch has a 12. So, how does Taako take his worse stat and become the most charismatic of the bunch?
Because his Intelligence is a 20. He’s not a charmer, but he is a thinker and an analyst. Looking back on certain campaign beats, he outwits some foes by his quick thinking, and wins friends with his cooking knowledge and sincerity. And Justin leans in at every chance to be that character of goofy yet earnest. Only by that measure of working around his flaws, past, and baggage does Taako rise to the occasion and succeed at being a charming person.
I’m not saying The Adventure Zone is the most perfect example of DnD, and they more often than not play Calvinball with the ruleset for narrative sake, but I will fall on a sword for Justin’s roleplaying skills.
Let me tell you, playing my 19 int 5 wis artificer was an absolute blast =D
I am doing a campaign for a group of mostly new players and I have a wizard who’s most offensive spell is hideous laughter I am gonna love this party
My DM gave us a great custom rule - you can use standard stat array, OR you can get an 18 in place of the highest and a 3 in place of the lowest
Its so fun rocking a 3 strength character. Especially since it fit her backstory (waited on hand an foot, lived basically like a princess ).
Powerful characters can still have weaknesses.
A lot of powergamers tend to specialize their characters and become absolutely beasts at a given role, but usually sacrifice their other abilities in order to boost their main ones.
For instance, someone powerbuilding a barbarian might focus to make them the single best melee fighter there is; but they might disregard charisma or intelligence related skills or stats whilst doing so.
There seems to be a belief that characters can either be incredible at everything or absolutely suck at everything, with little room for anything in between, I.E a character that's average or very good at a single task.
I'm not sure what game they're playing, but in my DND campaigns, most gamers, even the power-gaming variety, tends to have to make a sacrifice that gives them a critical weakness that is ready to be exploited for some amusing outcomes.
Also as a DM, I'm usually willing to offer players a chance to boost a certain stat of their choosing at the cost of significantly reducing a couple of their others; like offering the barbarian an option to increase their str score by a further 2 at the cost of tanking their int score and removing their ability to read for instance. I feel it allows players to play their powerful characters but still have flaws to counteract them as well in some instances.
You know, a character can have flaws in more ways that just sheet wise. As the player who roleplays, is up to you to make an interesting character independently of what you have rolled or picked as your stats. What if you have a score of 18 in everything but your character refuses to take certain actions as part of his background? Like, it has a phobia for blood so he will take a turn to clean its blade everytime it makes a significant attack?
In the other hand, having a porpously poorly made character stat wise can get really counter productive for all the table and by itself it doesn't make the character good because a great chunk of being an "interesting or appealing character" comes from the roleplay. It's important to know what the other players and you yourself expect from the campaing. If they want to face combat challenges and do some other roll-heavy things you are going to be an absolute drag to them and probably you will end up not having fun yourself.
Honestly, i think rolling dices to decide the stats is an awful method that ends up creating a big disparity between characters that might not be fun. Rather than "Stick with bad stat rolls as they made for interesting characters" i would say "Create characters and give them some flaws to make them more human".
i a hundred percent agree. it's awful playing a campaign where half the player's character motivation is becoming overpowered, and they either dont even think about flaws or they just consider the nerfs our DM has to give them as their flaws.
As a forever dm I've put party npcs in with shit stats like huna who was a commoner turned war cleric. He was romantically involved with the fighter and when huna died do to a sneak attack arrow the fighter said to me "I'd like to use that level up I've been holding back on and put it into barbarian as I'd like to rage." The fighter to angry and inconsolable with grief seeing his lover die as everything went red with him attacking the assassin in a state of vengeance in character. Out of character he was also crying as his character and huna had talked about getting married
My current main I rolled absolutey OP... except WIS, at a solid 5. So here we have a charming, strong and booksmart half-orc who could get manipulated by every two-bit crook in Waterdeep at the drop of a hat because he has the street smarts of a stray pug. Add a set of evil parents and a curse to the mix and we have an ongoing multi-month string of sidequests!
Now, you see, my Half-Elf Druid actually ended up in the reverse scenario where I rolled good for WIS (17) and CON (15) and terrible for everything else (12 for strength/dex and 9 for int/char). When we were rolling for stats our DM even had us roll an extra 2 dice and then discard the lowest two (they were a 5 and a 1). So I took that as my character was really good at understanding the intentions of simple things but not great at knowing what something means.
In addition to this, one of the backstory events that I rolled and my DM assigned to me was that my character spent time and was paid to draw a map at some point so I decided my character was going to be a cartographer. Then, when we hit level two and started looking at Circles. I saw that their was an option called Circle of the Stars that have a book of Star Maps and knew it was destined that my character chose that option because, in my mind what happened, was that the person hiring me to draw maps used a bunch of flowery language and my character originally assumed they wanted a map of the sky in the area made which my character would be interested in doing since their entire Circle revolves around the Cosmos. By the time he figured out he was suppose to be drawing a map of the ground, it was already too late to back out and he wasn't charismatic enough to convince them to end the contract early so was stuck doing so XD
Player in my group rolled a Wood Elf Ranger with a positively ghastly Charisma score of 3. Yes it was 4d6 drop lowest and he rolled 4 1s. He leaned into it completely, depicting him as a complete savage who barely understood the concept of civilization. He wore mud instead of armor because it prevented him from being grappled or ensnared. He would shit in a corner whenever the urge took him, and we had to educate him on the concept of "surrendering" because sometimes bad guys have information that we need. After that, he would bluntly offer a hostile group the chance to surrender at the start of combat, and if they said no he took it as full permission to hunt them to the ends of the Earth.
The best example I can think of is grog from critical role, he was an absolute BEAST in combat but his soft stats weren't the best, he had an intelligence of SIX and he made some amazing roleplay scenarios based around that!
In my opinion, having low mental stats are more fun that just having low strength or dex. Grog is so fun to watch Travis RP not because he's clumsy or sickly, but because he's dumb. Low wisdom characters like Braad from just role with it are hilarious, never reading social cues and not noticing anything, and low charisma makes conversations almost like a puzzle in "how would my character fail in this".
Weakness is FAAAAAR more interesting than a total badass just flattening everyone. Reminds me of Sanderson’s laws of Magic systems in which one of the rules is that what the magic CAN’T do is more interesting than what it CAN do.
it's interesting up to their death at the first encounter. then it is REALLY interesting to sit around for about half an hour creating a new character while everyone else is adventuring
3 int 8 wis fighter was one of my favorites - in his first adventure he couldn't get through the magic warded door so took a step to the left and went through the wall and got into the same room. From then on he would take step to the left or turn to the left and go through the wall and assumed he was in the correct place. the party kept having to take butter and table knives from him because sharp objects are better weapons than the magical great club he had sharp better than blunt.
I love this. The realization that flawed characters are more fun to play and play with is what really takes an ok player to a great one.
It can be a lot of fun if everyone has reletively bad stats, but if your the only one it can be really demotivating.
I had a very strong Rune Knight in 5e. I could hold the line with little help when fought. But one time i had to cause a distraction with a half orc so our bard could do a sneak. I rolled so low that I did an orc racism and got my ass beat. And the rest of my party was laughing and betting against me
the longest running campaign i've ever played, i'm playing an orc with -3 INT and a -1 dex. He expressed desire to learn how to read so he bought a book of phonics and another character has been teaching him to read common.
Any time the DM asks for a Religion, Arcana, or History Check I am always taking part and quite often get a zero or a negative roll, in which I will make something up completely convinced that I am right, but obviously makes no sense logically.
This is why I almost always dump constitution on any non tank characters. I feel it helps add a lot more suspenseful moments while also giving me excuses to explore new characters more often.
I'll definitely be watching more of you. I mean RUclips, not stalking, just want to clarify.
oh good
I have a story few days ago our warlock a changeling, in the middle of the fucking run for his life enters into an alley, whitout any sloths to cast anything, remove his pants takes his shirt, pull a long scarf out of his bag makes a dress and change into a female elve, as a changelling speaks elvish and walks away in the middle of the fucking chase, a soldier asks him for directions and just decieve it saying sorry i don't speak common.
I've got a +1, four 0's and a -1. I'm basically a spicy commoner and I have a firey passion to keep this character alive.
"Spicy commoner" XD
I'm amazed by the lengths my DM is willing to go to to prevent me my justly earned Level 7.
Our group has always enjoyed rolling 3d6 in order for stats. You can reroll once, but you reroll the whole set again and then pick between the two. We were able to finish Curse of Strahd and it was the most harrowing game weve ever had in 20 years of playing.
I came to realize after playing Exalted (basically Demigods the game) that powerful and well-rounded characters can be good too, it just takes the intent to do things with style. You have 20 dex? Cool, do flips and cartwheels as you escape the clutches of a monster, cling to rafters and dropstab people. High strength and wisdom? Become Buddha the Brick Wall, who resolves encounters through defense and persuasion, and turns enemies into allies.
Many stat blocks can be made compelling with simple concepts
I was in a campaign recently run by my friend's older brother. Me and my friend were a few years younger than the rest of the group, and our characters were relatively newer, especially since I switched them out so often.
We wanted to run a non-combat scenario for a change of pace, so our DM cooked up a fun heist that would ultimately help us build a spaceship (roll with it). The job was to infiltrate an auction run by a genie, sneak past his safeguards, and steal the objects we wanted. Sounds easy enough, so our two stealth characters could take care of that. That was the easy part. The hard part, and the FUN part, was what was happening upstairs. See, our DM decided to make this sort of an all-star mission: several people were playing their old characters ALONGSIDE their new ones, which meant I had control over trhee different entities of chaos--
There was Philip The Dull, a once wild mage turned regular guy when he gave up his power to said genie to save the party, and not the brightest tool in the crayon drawer,
Kit Beerspinner, a Scottish dwarf woman who functioned better when she was drunk than when she was sober, and
Chilgun Swampblood, a sentient swarm of bugs? Human? Hooded figure? who never spoke and whose motivations were a complete enigma.
The thing was, I designed all three of these characters with one goal in mind: instigation. Now ALL of them were loose at a high society party with virtually no supervision.
It was the best situation I could've ever hoped for.
So, problems immediately showed themselves when we arrived at the gate. See, to get into the party, we had to claim we had something up for auction- a mysterious healing orb we found last session. But, since we had a history with the genie in question, he hated some of the members of our party, and we had to find another way in for those members. Most of them snuck past the guards, but Chilgun was having none of the "lay low" bullshit. He started circling the building, which had been magically erected in the middle of a desert for specifically this party, and found his way onto the roof, where he found a convinient skylight into a pool area. Philip, bless his soul, had already beelined for the pool, since, being a sorcerer with no sorcery who was abysmally stupid and not very strong or fast, didn't serve any purpose in the party and was just there to have fun. Philip noticed Chilgun, but couldn't let him in, because the whole building was being patrolled by archons, humanoid elemental creatures.
The rest of the party set about doing their respective jobs. Our theives went downstairs to find the spaceship parts, while our tank, our wizard, and Kit all went to cozy up to the attending nobles. Kit was a drunken mess, and immediately befriended a R I C H motherfucker, some baron from down south who was there to buy high-value trinkets. Kit shared some of her magically refilling wine flask, and they began drunkenly running around, singing, and pissing off fire archons. Downstairs, something odd was happening. As it turned out, our tank's old bandit gang, who were modeled after metal gear characters, were ALSO at the party, trying to do the same thing we were. They were communicating with magical radios with one of their members, who was hiding in a big pile of ornamental boxes upstairs, underneath a christmas tree. Kit quickly sidled up to the box, as the auction began proper in the next room, and started passing notes back and forth with the bandit in the box, coming to something of a mutual agreement not to out each other for fear of ruining our own operations.
Back in the pool room, though, Philip had seen an opening and decided to go open the balcony door to let Chilgun in. A fire archon got mad at Philip when he saw what was going on, but Philip splashed him with pool water, and opened the door. Chilgun slid down the glass dome and ungracefully hurtled past the balcony, only barely catching onto it via bug powers. Now, the fire archon gave chase, but had to stop so it didn't ruin the auction, and Chilgun and Philip got away scot-free. As the members in the basement found the piece they were looking for, the item we put up for auction went up for grabs. Nobody seemed too interested, so in an effort to make some money, all party members present started bidding higher and higher, which finally caused the previously mentioned noble to buy it for a whopping 1 million gold pieces, which we would get half of. In a drunken stupor, the noble went off to tell Kit about the orb he just bought for a ludicrous amount of money, but as he did, noticed some sounds coming from the box. Curious and drunk out of his mind, (Kit takes slightly stronger stuff than most,) he opened up the box while Kit was screaming at him not to, revealing a curled up cave troll with a tiny magic radio in his hands, looking like a deer in the headlights.
With that, Philip and Chilgun bolted for the pool area, barely making it outside the building before the whole place was put on magical lockdown, meaning the whole building was coated in thick steel. They were being chased by the same fire archon, who was very much pissed, as was the genie we betrayed. Although the laws of geniedom prevented him from enacting his full wrath upon us, he DID have the wild magic he got from Philip a few years ago, and set about using that. With that, the other party members all arrived upstairs, as all the guests were surrounded by archons. As the genie tried to make sense of the confusion, Chilgun peeled back, Philip running distraction for the fire archon. See, Chilgun had a case of 5 fireball whiskeys, which, after stupidly downing one last session, he had determined to just be concentrated bottles of the SPELL fireball. He threw all of them, blasting a hole straight through the steel walls, and our party bolted with a surprise round. As we tried to run away, archons hot on our tails, the genie activated his wild magic, but since it was, you know, *wild* magic, he instead summoned the spectral image of a toad who leapt out of the ground, swallowed the genie whole, and blasted the whole place to smithereens.
Could this situation have been avoided if my characters had slightly more intelligence, social grace, or if I had just made better decisions?
Yes. Absolutely.
But this was WAY more fun.
Oh yeah and our fuckin wizard stole the orb back too just to rub salt in the wound
@@nazibutterfly As you do.
my warlock got two sixes, which i put in strength and dexterity. She was frail, had butterfingers, and was a terrible climber. Loved having those weaknesses! Especially loved that it made her strengths shine even brighter.
I live with mentality "If i can't play with good stats, i don't deserve them", bites me in the ass 200% of times, but hope to eventually live up to not needing good stats at all.
Have I ever told you the story of my favorite kobold paladin Pelius the Blue? I made him an awesome goof that had to work even harder than everyone else to do the crazy stuff they could do. Started with 13 STR (because of the neg 2 to STR) and just decided to play him as the most sincere and jovial person in the party. not very hard to do when you have a Drow cleric of Knock-off Loth, a half-elf celestial Warlock of Coralan, a skeleton glamour bard that shat out cloud-kill poison, and a bugbear fighter who only ever asked "fight?" very excitedly. His "holy symbol" to Tiamat was an arts and crafts macaroni-esque amulet depicting a rainbow colored Chinese dragon.
One of my favorite characters was a hobgoblin named Tog, who was an incredibly capable wizard with a charisma of 4. He also refused to use fire spells due to an incident in his background, meaning I'd effectively cut him off from some of the best spells in the game. He became my first true utility based character, and partnered up with the team's bard to form an absolute menace of a duo that was incredible fun to play. The two spellcasters of the group covered each other's weaknesses in stats to be a couple of chaotic neutral assholes that propped the rest of the team up by forming one effective unit.
When my one-legged, one-armed, 4 Dex wizard is climbing the side of a tower because of an unfortunate timing on a polymorph spell running out.
we play dnd and my character is a grave cleric and basicly looks like the grimreaper , and has the personality of old old old geezer and is abit silly at times and has the charisma score of a unwashed potato that landed in horsedug, and he is the first one to talk to anyone, mostly becsuse others refuse because they are edgy that way. so we have creepy cleric fumbling through the dialogue, and it has been such fun and i get to roleplay 😊
Yeah, there was this friend. Lets play DnD togather we said. Okay I made my char in 3 minutes.
Then 3 Days later he finished his. Was fun.
You know a RUclips channel is TRUE QUALITY when you go through everything they've made.
Hmm, this gave me an idea for a plot curse:
"You enter the next cave area. Two glyphs on opposite sides begin to glow, and you all suddenly feel wrong somehow. Everyone roll a d6 and tell me what you got."
.. (I write them down) ..
"Right. Your roll corresponds to a stat, 1 is for strength, 2 for dex, 3 for con, and so on. Your score in that stat is now halved (but rounded up) until you find a way to break the curse."
Shortly afterwards, some stat-enhancing items may fall into the party's possession, and could alleviate some really bad stat, like 4-5 int on a fighter, 5-6 con on a paladin or something like that.
Then cue a hunt for the villain who put up that glyph trap, fight to capture, not kill, and interrogation on how to break it. An accidental kill would prolong this to seek out other people who would know this.
Got to admit weak characters are fun if you have the mind and good players around you for it. One of my greatest characters was a female human fighter with an array of 12/12/12/13/04/12. I decided to dumpstat her Wisdom, rather than Charisma, going for a competent, friendlysoul almost completely oblivious to the concept of danger and deceit. In other words, supremely reckless and gullible. This proved not to be a great problem, however, because while she was just as liable to kick the sleeping monster's paw off that treasure as she was to gently lift it off, she wasn't wedded to any approach to any problem. Her teammates quickly figured out that she could be easily dissuaded from bad choices, prompting the team to consistently plan their approach to everything so Felicia the Lucky Fool didn't end up kicking the sleeping monster awake or upsetting the noble about his weight problem. Made for a great team dynamic so much so that when a god granted Felicia the chance to have divine wisdom, the party asked that it didn't because they liked their sweet-hearted bumbler as she was.
We have a kobold wizard that has 3 strength, is borderline tiny and was rule of cooled to say that 20 lbs of cute isn’t hampering an aaracokhra rogue that is carrying them.
They also lost a leg the first session, they already had a prosthetic so they only lost a prosthetic
@@pandoratheclay So basically, the party has a pocket sized pet lizard wizard. Adorable and horrifying.
I recently rolled for a new Monk. Put my highest roll, 17, into dex, and my lowest roll, 7, into int. It works out great for RP, because I was planning on him having a personality loosely based on Goku. "oh, a problem..... can I punch it?" "the door is locked.... can i punch it?" "the bartender is pissed.... can I punch it?"
And that is exactly the point of the video!
I ran a game for my friends using the Star Wars RPG, Edge of the Empire. My buddy played a Gamorrean (the pig species from Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi) scholar who thought he was incredibly smart because he attended the top university of his people, but was actually dumb as rocks. It was incredibly fun to see him lean hard into that weakness and made for some really great story telling elements and fun situations. I absolutely agree with this. I've tried to have a character with some kind of major flaw or weakness ever since, just because it adds so much opportunity for great roleplaying elements.
I rolled a character that had one good stat and five terrible stats. I was so annoyed that I put her lowest stat (a 6 or 7) in Constitution and made her a Barbarian, figuring she would quickly die. But against all odds she survived and she's become one of my favorite characters. Like you said, it was freeing. I found my play style altering to accomodate her weakness. ("I use Reckless Attack because if I don't take the monster out this round, I'm dead anyway.") It's been a blast and every time I reach a "increase in ability score" level I dump it into Con. She is sooo close to reaching the point where she doesn't have a negative modifier in Con and I couldn't be prouder.
This is amazing, and everything I love about the game.
Another reason I hate attribute buy.
Fact: your worst fails are the most memorable moments
anything but average is fun :) getting the all 8s-12s char rolled is just.. an average joe, trying his luck at this adventuring thing which i find a little dull. extreme highhs or lows help accentuate flaws and strengths which leads to positive dramatic moments in play
This is why I like to use point buy. If you want to be good at something you have to be bad at something. When it works rolling should have the same effect, but it tends to end out without any weaknesses, and if it does most dms I’ve seen let the players reroll it.
The funniest short campaign I was ever a part of involved all five players involved rolling absolutely awful stats and deciding to run with it. (three sessions into a 5 session game, we'd all been TPKed by a random encounter and turned into undead.) It was liberating.
Whenever I roll up an amazingly op character I feel kinda bad because I really like playing underpowered characters but I’ll never forget the time I rolled a crit against a boss I was sneak attacking with the assassinate feature and downed him in my surprise round.
Then, don't roll up a character, just point buy?
Something I can agree with. The same philosophy applies to acting and film, a character’s weaknesses are more interesting than their strengths. Flaws, be them mental, emotional, or physical, are interesting
2nd Ed. explicitly pointed to Raistlin from the original Dragonlance campaign as an excellent example of this.
For those unfamiliar, the player in question rolled a character with stats of a 17, a 3, and a bunch of 11 or lower stats. The character he created was the human wizard Raistlin. Raistlin got an Intelligence of 17, which was the highest ability score of any of the original party members, but got otherwise crappy scores and a Constitution of 3. This was role played as a powerful wizard who had passed his order’s trials to become recognized as a fully fledged wizard, but in those trials was cursed and thus lacked any real physical ability, sometimes seemed on death’s door, coughing up blood and the like. It provided a direction for his character’s personality, and made him very distinct from Gregory Generico, Fireball Wizard #17.
In 3E/3.5E the meta was to take any stats with reasonable scores but a 3 in there and make a half-orc, preferably a barbarian or fighter. The racial ability modifier was +2 Str -2 Int -2 Cha and because there was a minimum Intelligence score of 3 for unmodified humanoid PCs the Intelligence penalty wouldn’t hinder the character. I personally really like the former idea however, as it encourages players to embrace flawed characters, learning to play to not just their strengths but their weaknesses as well.
He must have known his DM would constantly fudge things to keep his character alive. Without that there is a 0.00001% chance the wizard would make it to level 5. 1hp per level, and there are common poisons which do con damage even if you make the save which would instantly kill a character with 3 con. 1 spell or 1 good hit and instant death.
Raistlin is not a weak character by any definition. He's an obscenely strong one with an Achilles' heel.