The opposite of dumping stats is making a PC with the most average stats array possible within the rules.

20-point buy will give you : 5 abilities at 13 (+1 mod) and 1 at 14 (+2 mod). A racial adjustment of +2 will the give you 4 abilities at 13 (+1 mod), 1 at 14 and 1 at 15 (+2 mod).

Which character of any class can you make with this array that both :

- would be interesting to play (as in adds value to the party in most encounters)

- would not be significantly better at his role if he lowered some stats and raised others ?

I am really interested if someone can propose some good build here, because I do not think it feasible.

I am all for allowing a player to dump his PC stats as much as he wants, as long as he accepts the RAW consequences of doing so. And I see no point (except a frustrated or power-hungry GM's ego) in adding houserule penalties for low stats, even moreso if it is specific to some stats (say CHA) rather than a general rule and doubly worse if the GM does not warn the player before character creation.

Against all the current talk of "player's entitlement", I believe that being the GM is no excuse for being a jerk and spoiling your players' fun.

That's because odd stats aren't too useful. (Which is an entirely different problem.) Now, 5 stats at 12, and 1 at 16 before racial modifiers is perfectly playable.

If you really wanted to go 15, 14, 13, 13, 13, 13 after racial adjustment for some reason, I'd go bard. Put the 15 in cha, the 14 in int, or possibly dex. Pick up the helpful trait, and be a buffing/support bard. Not having 5 odd stats would help, but not as much as you think.

I am currently playing a half-orc two-weapon fighter in a campaign and accidentally made his point-buy a lot lower than it should have been (my old character died and she was made at level 11 as a replacement). Back-calculating, the lst level stats (before racial adjustments) was:

Str 15, Dex 15, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 7, Cha 7

This works out to a point buy of 4! Admittedly, I started assuming that I was going to need a high strength, dexterity, and a positive constitution mod, then dumped the rest to see what I had to play with, but somehow thought I was out of points after that, being distracted by other elements of character creation.

This has been a very interesting character to play and having no respectable mental capability, combined with a bite attack and relishing eating corpses (particularly elves) has made her a very distinctive character. Everyone has a clear view on what her capabilities are and it gets a laugh when my bad dice rolls reinforce the concept (She was charmed and for days later failed her saves, yet managed to pass all the saves the party threw at her to counter-charm - she was a bitey head poking out of a bag of holding for a while!)

Other such laughs were when she was feebleminded and no-one noticed for weeks.

To reinforce that stat dumps are not cheesy is to see how the low stat affects them. The classic of a dumped charisma is not limited to being ugly or a jerk. There is also the lack of leadership ability, lacking a respectable presence (so the character tends to get overlooked and ignored), shyness, social phobia, an inability to fit in, or undesirable mannerisms. Each stat has a broad range of concepts that fit into it - a character can be defined off of just six.

On the flipside, a high stat can be played more averagely by a character who doesn't force his full potential through his actions constantly. A very intelligent player can be subtle to be more socially normal to fit in, or just lazy.

Awesome build horselord. Dumping stats without power building.

That's because odd stats aren't too useful. (Which is an entirely different problem.) Now, 5 stats at 12, and 1 at 16 before racial modifiers is perfectly playable.

If you really wanted to go 15, 14, 13, 13, 13, 13 after racial adjustment for some reason, I'd go bard. Put the 15 in cha, the 14 in int, or possibly dex. Pick up the helpful trait, and be a buffing/support bard. Not having 5 odd stats would help, but not as much as you think.

Stats at odd numbers are not 'useless', there are plenty of feats with odd stat requirements like combat expertise, power attack and the two weapon fighting line. odd stats can save points at 1st level to make a character more rounded ,say going with a 19 at 1st instead of a 20 makes your character less of a 'one trick pony, then at 4th increase it to a 20 and boom, theres your even number for a bonus. Some of this is the instant gratification mind set vs. the long term planning mindset.

Perhaps but in DnD terms I am getting penalties to social skills to affect others, but a bonus to not be affected by others, AKA, you need a very high diplomacy score to convince me of something, but yet I couldn't sell free water to a thirsty man in a desert.

This shows DnD terms aren't very accurate, thus you have plenty of wiggle room to explain what and why.

More sense motive than cha or diplomacy then.

Dilvias wrote:

That's because odd stats aren't too useful. (Which is an entirely different problem.) Now, 5 stats at 12, and 1 at 16 before racial modifiers is perfectly playable.

If you really wanted to go 15, 14, 13, 13, 13, 13 after racial adjustment for some reason, I'd go bard. Put the 15 in cha, the 14 in int, or possibly dex. Pick up the helpful trait, and be a buffing/support bard. Not having 5 odd stats would help, but not as much as you think.

Stats at odd numbers are not 'useless', there are plenty of feats with odd stat requirements like combat expertise, power attack and the two weapon fighting line. odd stats can save points at 1st level to make a character more rounded ,say going with a 19 at 1st instead of a 20 makes your character less of a 'one trick pony, then at 4th increase it to a 20 and boom, theres your even number for a bonus. Some of this is the instant gratification mind set vs. the long term planning mindset.

Odd stats are a relic. Hopefully future DnDesque RPGs will get over this, and every stat point will be fully meaningful.

Jiggy wrote:

ciretose wrote:

It isn't vindictive to have something do what it says it does.

Well, maybe that's not what he's calling "vindictive".

I kid you not, I've had a GM say that if you had 6-7 CHA, he would have commoners mistake you for a troll and attack you on sight.

And that GM is an idiot and that isn't a strawman I would defend or fight.

I think the easiest parallel for all of the stats is Int to IQ and the bell curve both follow.

70 IQ is to 7 Int. Noticably slower than average, but not mentally retarded.

A 6 Charisma is pretty bad, but in your average high school there are probably 100 kids with that level charisma.

I would allow a 6 Charisma PC in my game, if they understood they were playing a character with a 6 Charisma until they did something about it.

The more i look at the 'bell curve' more and more, the less i think it makes any sense here.

So above some have shown that a 4-5 would be more likely a 70 IQ equivalent.

If that is the case, then to me it just makes absolutely no sense;
a '0' in a stat represents complete ability failure. So in Int, your brain is disfunctional that it cannot take care of itself or your body and you die. If a 10 is a 'normal' person, then i really cant see how a 5-6 is equal to a 70 IQ, which is the top level for being considered mentally retarded, but that level can still function in society fairly well.

So i fail to see how it makes any sense that 5-6 int functions fairly well to all of a sudden total brain death with just a few points drop.

If 10 is normal, then shouldnt that make a 70 IQ closer to 8-9 int stat?

There is people that have some serious mental malfunctions, they can't talk very well, they have a very hard time grasping new concepts or just understanding what someone might try to tell them in simple form. This to me much more so represents a 4-5 Int.

Idk, but just read wiki's on both IQ and mental retardation. 95% of people score between 70 and 130, anything below 70 is mentally retard, however, scores of 50-69 correlate to being able to function as a typical 9-12 year old child, learn to read and perform math and live independantly. So while a 70 is slower than average it is not retarded and even at 50 the person could learn enough to live on their own. I think the model of 1 int = 10 IQ is still sound and it is the model originally put forth by the predecessor of the game we are playing now.

the 35-49 range was pretty bad but still could learn a simple job, anything below 35 was "profoundly" retarded.

Going on the way an IQ test measures IQ, it is based on the distribution across the population. So 100 is average and the standard deviation is 15 points (according to WISC and WISE). Then if we use the probabilities of rolling 3d6 we get an IQ equivalents as listed.

The IQ's metric is measure that asks, "what fraction of the population has a lower IQ than me?" Then finds that probability on a normal curve and comes out with a number.

Going on the way an IQ test measures IQ, it is based on the distribution across the population. So 100 is average and the standard deviation is 15 points (according to WISC and WISE). Then if we use the probabilities of rolling 3d6 we get an IQ equivalents as listed.

The IQ's metric is measure that asks, "what fraction of the population has a lower IQ than me?" Then finds that probability on a normal curve and comes out with a number.

** spoiler omitted **

This looks far more viable and congruent with established game mechanics and prior uses of stats to convey relevant intellect than the last INT-to-IQ table I saw on the boards.

I dump stats in order to get bigger numbers on the stats I want.

I dump stats for the thrill.

The standard distribution of a 3d6 bell curve works okay for the central numbers within 2 standard deviations of the mean but doesn't work particularly good for the outliers as clearly there needs to be some gradiation between animal intelligence and human intelligence but 3 doesn't handle that very well.

Considering most PCs will be built with equivalent of 15+ point buy this just shows how much better the average PC is in comparison to a regular mortal using the equivalent of 3d6 for stats.

I'm currently playing a kickboxer/fighter who has an 8 for con and charisma. The weaknesses of the character really show, he can duck and weave prety well, attack and damage are impressive (IMO) but can't take much damage. Previous to this character, I played a paladin with one stat below 10 and that pally could not do s@@@. It was the most useless character I had ever seen and played. For stat dumping, it becomes the issue of being extra vulnerable to some things but make sure the caracter has a strength or two. As stated previously in the thread:"no one enjoys being Mr Useless." The game is all in all, not about creating the untouchable character but one with schticks.

This is why i prefer to roll stats instead of points buy
I think with all the choices players can make with character creation they have so much control over how the character will turn out that rolled stats represent the organic part of creation what the gods gave you and you have to work with

I put less points in attributes that my class doesn't need and more points in the attributes that it does need. If that's wrong, then I don't want to be right.

I think with all the choices players can make with character creation they have so much control over how the character will turn out that rolled stats represent the organic part of creation what the gods gave you and you have to work with

This is why I prefer point buy to rolled stats. I'm already working with what the gods gave me in real life, I'd rather not have to deal with it in my leisure activities.

Fair enough toz

*fistbump*

tony gent wrote:

I think with all the choices players can make with character creation they have so much control over how the character will turn out that rolled stats represent the organic part of creation what the gods gave you and you have to work with

This is why I prefer point buy to rolled stats. I'm already working with what the gods gave me in real life, I'd rather not have to deal with it in my leisure activities.

Yeah, none of my characters to date have ankle issues...

Although quite a few have made the same mistake as me in selecting music as their "career of choice".

*strange masonic style hand shake that ends with several dislocated fingers*