hey Kazaan, While i mostly agree with you, something you said earlier (that I can't seem to quote) was that Charisma is purely a mental stat. This is untrue. While I agree it is mostly fueled by your personality, and how you behave making it mostly a mental stat, there is critical hit on the iCrit app that says you get stabbed in the face and suffer 1 point of Charisma drain. Big ol scar that doesn't really heal. Partly Physical.
|
I've also seen critical hit tables that give you a scar which the ladies love, and actually increases your Cha.
The scar doesn't directly affect Cha because of it's physical effect, the psychlogical impact of 'having a scar' affects people in different ways depending on how it impacts their psyche (read: mentality).
|
The scar is a totem and constant reminder of failure that maintains the damage to your psyche. Str, Dex, and Con are defined as physical stats while Int, Wis, and Cha are defined as mental stats. Cha has some of the strongest connection to physical traits, but it's still using them as tools of action and is not inherently derived from them. In this case, it's just the reverse being done; instead of a tool through which Charisma is utilized for practical effect (intimidation, diplomacy, etc) it's a "negative-tool" through which the psyche has trouble coping with and performs at less than normal capacity and has an impact on your confidence because you remember taking such a critical shot to the face. In short, it's quite literally a blow to your ego.
Can you give a page number so I can read this in the CRB?
|
|
As a dev (SKR?) was quoted as saying earlier, the (Cha) score is the quantity of that ability, not the quality that is the role-play part.Can you link this? I'd like to see what he had to say in his words.
No. : (
My computer skill is minimal. You could search the thread or someone with more powerful search-Fu than I could help you.
If you find it, quote it. It seems relevant.
|
|
As a dev (SKR?) was quoted as saying earlier, the (Cha) score is the quantity of that ability, not the quality that is the role-play part.Can you link this? I'd like to see what he had to say in his words.No. : (
My computer skill is minimal. You could search the thread or someone with more powerful search-Fu than I could help you.
If you find it, quote it. It seems relevant.
Not really sure if its relevant or not, I'd just to see what some Dev's have to say on things since I rarely see them give an opinion.
|
|
Is this still going on? Can I get an update on what the actual debate is on now? It's been like eight pages.
Point 2 was just recently wrapped up by the efforts of Saltband and myself as we debated over the points of "what defines roleplaying a stat". His point was that if you have a low stat, particularly a mental stat, you're obligated to limit your character's mental faculties according to what the stat represents. My counter-point is that the stats represent quantity (amount) and are merely mechanical tools which work in tandem with the quality (type) of character you have in mind to make a matrix ranging corner to corner between having or not having mechanical capacity and having or not having personal inclination.
So basicaly what your saying is that the game system doesnt potray intelligence, wisdom, and charisma well enough, so you feel you dont have to follow them. You'll just use the game mechanic parts of the ability scores and then do how ever you want to roleplay the ability scores.
Its not PathFinder, its your homebrew version of PathFinder. Thats fine.
|
Is this still going on? Can I get an update on what the actual debate is on now? It's been like eight pages.
Point 2 was just recently wrapped up by the efforts of Saltband and myself as we debated over the points of "what defines roleplaying a stat". His point was that if you have a low stat, particularly a mental stat, you're obligated to limit your character's mental faculties according to what the stat represents. My counter-point is that the stats represent quantity (amount) and are merely mechanical tools which work in tandem with the quality (type) of character you have in mind to make a matrix ranging corner to corner between having or not having mechanical capacity and having or not having personal inclination.
So basicaly what your saying is that the game system doesnt potray intelligence, wisdom, and charisma well enough, so you feel you dont have to follow them. You'll just use the game mechanic parts of the ability scores and then do how ever you want to roleplay the ability scores.
Its not PathFinder, its your homebrew version of PathFinder. Thats fine.
Source please.
To go all the way back to the original topic, I don't associate any stigma with dumping a stat, any stat, to 7. It's a game, and a part of this game is making characters who are powerful. Not a required part, mind you, but if you said that you don't tend to play strong fighters, intelligent wizards, and wise clerics, chances are I'm going to call you a liar. Dumping to 7 is just a means to that end.
Now, on the other hand, a 7 can be alarming depending on the context. If I'm GMing for a group who has otherwise more or less recreated the elite array with their stats, a 7 is the roleplaying equivalent of demonstrating your best gogoplata in your mom's friday night Tai Chi class. It's not wrong, but it demonstrates that perhaps your level of involvement in the activity is very different from that of the people around you. If everyone around you is cool with that, no problem. If not, then you need to hammer out some sort of understanding between everyone. That's all there is to it.
Imagine you're out with some friends doing karaoke. None of you are professionals, some have more natural talent or maybe some years in the choir to fall back on, but everyone is just goofing around having fun. Now imagine that you just realized you're sitting next to Frank Sinatra. That's what a 7 is like, less the hyperbole. Now that you've realized it's Sinatra, what do you want to happen? If he goes up there and wows everybody, you might feel like a bunch of fools for even being in the same room. Maybe you just think it's cool to have someone really good at singing in your party. Then imagine that one of the guys feels completely outshone by Sinatra (and for good reason), and so Sinatra starts singing badly on purpose. Do you think he's having much fun? And does the rest of the group feel good about Sinatra just kind of humming along? Pathfinder's a little bit different, because if you're really good at optimizing, you can always just play a rogue, but that's neither here nor there.
As for roleplaying your stats, I try to reflect the hard limits represented by the mechanics, but otherwise ignore them. For instance, if you have an 8 in strength, do you ever fail to pick up your club because, well, you're weak and strength just isn't as easy for you weak people? If you're a bard with a 20 charisma, are people routinely bored by your Perform(Dance) because with a dex of 9, you just can't execute your moves well enough? If your constitution is 7, does the GM ever tell you that you have a day you're just too tired to even get out of bed?
If your charisma is 3, NPCs will pay you just as much attention as someone with a charisma of 20. A charisma of 3 doesn't mean you're an extra in someone else's story. NPCs will still treat you as an independent human being with your own complete existence. It's just that when it comes to things USING charisma that rolls happen and things change. A 3 charisma dwarf asking you for a small favor at work (a diplomacy roll) is going to probably somehow really offend you. A 20 charisma person doing the same thing is going to ask you to cover their shift and make you believe they're doing you a favor, or at least that they'll owe you one, and you really want them to owe you one. And either person is just as likely to act shy, or outgoing, or standoffish. Either one can hold a normal, everyday conversation. It's just that when it comes to pretending to be a powerful wizard, or begging the Duke to commute his sentence, the charisma guy is going to have a mechanical advantage.
As for int and wis, I've been at tables in my life playing complicated games, and seen someone not particularly bright, nor particularly interested in gaming bust out a masterstroke of genius. Sometimes people roll 20s, and that's totally allowed. If you're presenting a riddle out of character to the party (i.e. not having them make intelligence checks, but having the PLAYERS come up with the answer), nobody should be upset when it's the players, not the characters, who answer it.
And on things like battle tactics and adventure preparation, there's just no reason to dictate other people's roleplay for them. If your int is 7, there's no reason you can't suggest the wizard cast a Web in the hallway. Maybe you're particularly fascinated with web, maybe you have a thing about chokepoints, maybe the wizard was trying to decide if that's a basilisk or a greater basilisk and you just happened to be more focused on the situation at hand. Just as a low dex doesn't stop you from dancing, a low strength doesn't stop you from swinging a sword, and a low constitution doesn't mean you can't run, nor should low wisdom or intelligence stop you from suggesting good ideas. It just means that in certain mechanical situations, someone else is going to be better than you. You'll know less things, you'll have a lower will save, you're not as good a spellcaster, and so on.
More to the point, Pathfinder is game that happens to be about roleplaying. It's not an acting experience that uses game mechanics to resolve conflict. Maybe it's less realistic to have the 7 int/wis character come up with the answers to all the riddles, or set up an ambush, or diligently spend all day brute-forcing the safe combination, but it's more fun than making the 16 int player sit on his brain and watch everyone struggle. Letting players play at their full mental capacity is just a concession to the fact that Pathfinder, like almost everything else in life, is intelligence-based. There is, sadly, no legal way to use your OOC strength to help the party unless your GM is moving next weekend and needs a hand.
It's a game, and fun comes first. If you have fun roleplaying your characters' flaws, great, be the guy who charges the dragon, or the guy who trusts the devil, or the one who trips on the narrow pathway and falls to a grisly death. That's awesome and you're a better roleplayer for it. But unless that's what the entire group is interested in doing, don't expect that everyone else will or should do the same.
So tldr; taking a 7 is no problem at all, as long as everyone has already talked about and agreed to a general level of optimization.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Just because he uses jargon to get a point across doesn't mean he has to. If you think his diction somehow invalidates his ideas, let's try this:
The rules give bonuses and penalties to certain actions based on the score you have in an attribute. The rules do not limit what ideas you can have, or how you can communicate, or if you can make good decisions. Some people act as if their scores do limit their ideas or decision-making. When other people do not abide by the same self-imposed limits, this may make them upset.
Some people think more optimization means less role play.
In all fairness, it typically does.
Some people think more optimization means less role play.In all fairness, it typically does.
I've been told that a lot, but observing players over the years, have almost always found the opposite to be true, in real life. The players who care about the hobby tend to get really into optimizing their characters, and also get really into roleplaying them. The players who are more casual about the hobby don't know enough to optimize, and don't care enough (or aren't comfortable enough) to roleplay, either.
