I'm guessing that we just play differently. No biggie.
Responding to the original question:
I handle it all mostly this way:
- Dealing with Intelligence: The characters in the game have their intelligence. If it's high, they get the primary benefit of more skill points. If it's low, they get less skill points. I separate the players' knowledge from the character - I let my smarter players benefit from their own personal intelligence. So, the 7 INT fighter could make the pulley system in my game.
- Dealing with Wisdom: Every character benefits from not dumping wisdom due to will saves, but also perception checks and other certain on-the-fly checks I may need from time to time. I think this penalty is enough, and I haven't seen a situation where a player's wisdom was so intuitive that the character couldn't have figured it out, too.
- Dealing with Charisma: So the 6 CHA wizard makes the big speech, because the player has a thing for such things. Awesome. Roll Diplomacy. Oops! -2 modifier. No ranks? Too bad. Charisma is everyone's dump stat 90% of the time - really, only 3 core classes need it (Bard, Paladin, Sorcerer), and few others benefit from a decent score (Cleric, Druid, Rouge), and most martial classes (the type most played, in my experience) don't get any benefit, save the Paladin. So I don't give handouts for Charisma.
I'm not really sure how to sum things up, or provide a general "idea" for my thread. Basically, I don't penalize character's intelligence, Wisdom has been a non-factor, and charisma is poor enough without me mucking it up more by giving bonuses because you can talk well.
See, and I'm cool with most of that there. I run things slightly differently when I'm hosting, and tend to make multi-skill checks for complex situations. I base most of the checks off of various in game skills, and allow substitutions of "similar" skills at a slight penalty, as well as giving circumstance bonuses for lots of things including tools, things that the character has seen, and creativity of the player. If I gave any roleplaying bonus at all, it would be how well the character sticks to the skills he has at the level he has.. If someone with 0 ranks in engineering, 8 int, and no real concept of a pulley system goes about explaining in detail the concept of counterweights and leverage.. then yeah, I may not give much of a bonus as he's not sticking to roleplaying his character.
Either way, I never give enough bonuses from roleplay to completely invalidate having the skill.
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Do you think that the player should be able to play his way from level 1-20, in the same progression as your friend, and end up at the same place in the same situation, without ever raising intelligence, computer or mathematic skills, and getting the profession related feats?
If I understand you correctly, here and earlier in the thread, you're talking about is a form of the disparity between player knowledge and character knowledge. More specifically, the situations where the player's personal skills are at odds with those of the character.
My personal preference is that players role-play in a manner that represents the characters' statistics. As a gamer, I know I have limits to what I can carry off. Everyone does. I wouldn't want to be limited to stats I know I can carry off personally, nor would I want the high fantasy character, an escape from myself, to be limited by my own personal abilities or lack thereof.
Some gamers are fine thespians or impromptu speakers. Others aren't. And, unless players opt to limit their character choices to something fairly close to their own personal abilities, then there will be painful moments. Those can be either moments where the player of the bard with 22 charisma, a +20 in diplomacy and +15 perform oratory announces, "Um...I tell the king some stuff. Persuasively. (drops d20....)" They can also be the moments where the dwarf with a charisma of 5 with no social skills, played by a professional actor, launches into a stirring oratory, eerily familiar with phrases abound bands of brothers and St. Crispin's day, prior to charging the Hordes of Doom.
Play it the way you like. My take on it is to encourage players to stretch into an uncomfortable role when willing, to provide moderate circumstance modifiers for role play's influence on the dice, and to call foul when Joe-the-mechanical-engineer forgets that Brother Brighteyes doesn't have the knowledge to design Masterful Siege Engine Mk. VII. And then, to not let it get too deep under the skin when it happens yet again.
I've rambled on and on. Now time to just ramble on. :)
In a game that is 80% about killing stuff, getting to and from the places where you kill stuff, and so forth, the social aspect is obviously shirked.There's the problem.
Dunno about your GM hat, but mine comes equipped with the power to make house rules. I have several to mitigate some abuses, and make them as I go along, to create an experience that is fun for both me and my players.
I try to work with the principle of accommodation rather than alteration. Add to the system, instead of changing something people paid money spent years on developing. And usually only after testing things in play. Because knee jerk reactions are hardly ever accurate. Like Sneak Attack. There are still people coming around screaming "OVERPOWERED!11!!", while most people who have played a rogue knows that the fighting classes do more damage all the bloody time due to how hard it is to use sneak attack effectively.
So I am pretty sure that if all the people who rant and rave about something spent that time on thinking of solutions for their game instead, we would have more Kirth Gersens around :P
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Sorry that's all you got out of it. Not sure there's much room for discussion here. Good gaming!I like you.
Not that you care, but your anecdote is great, unjadedly inspiring, and well composed.
But it doesn't absolve players who stint their stats for better power attacks.
Thanks for the second effort, and my apology for having taken your original reply as being solely dismissive.
if a player wanted to juggle balls for me, I'd give him +5 to dexterity, yes I would.
Sigh... what world do some people play in?
I can juggle quite well. So if I were a player in your game I'd just dump dex and juggle for you. I'm also a pretty good speaker and have won many debate competitions, so I'd dump cha and debate it with you. I have a physics degree and understand special relativity, so I'd just perform a few differential equations so I could dump my int stat and boost it by "role playing" my math skills.
But I'm only average strength, so I'd pump all my game stats into strength and be a god.
I mean really. You would boost a character's dex because the player could juggle?
Seriously?
The idea of giving someone a +5 to dex for being able to juggle and show off every time they want to do something with dex, is almost as asanine as someone who is a trained martial artist kicking the crap out of another player or the DM to have their frail wizard fight like a monk without the feats/stats. :P
I know that is a very extreme example, and I don't often think that physical attributes can easily receive a circumstance bonus for roleplaying, but that is how something like that would work. My point on the whole, (poor example aside) is that the game is intended to be interactive storytelling and entertainment. Why not give some numerical bonus to a person who puts in the effort to further enhance the enjoyment of the group or who takes the immersive qualities to the next level. I'm not saying that this should be the norm. Maybe I was unclear when I said "+5 to dexterity" I would be referring to a single roll that was in some way relevant, not to the base ability score. This difference between single rolls and ongoing abilities is an important differentiation.
I know that is a very extreme example, and I don't often think that physical attributes can easily receive a circumstance bonus for roleplaying, but that is how something like that would work. My point on the whole, (poor example aside) is that the game is intended to be interactive storytelling and entertainment. Why not give some numerical bonus to a person who puts in the effort to further enhance the enjoyment of the group or who takes the immersive qualities to the next level. I'm not saying that this should be the norm. Maybe I was unclear when I said "+5 to dexterity" I would be referring to a single roll that was in some way relevant, not to the base ability score. This difference between single rolls and ongoing abilities is an important differentiation.
Yeah, OK, but I'd just keep the balls handy for anytime I needed a dex check.
I am all for making the game more entertaining and rewarding people for doing things that make it entertaining, but I simply don't believe in giving bonuses for people who "role play" in a manner that is directly contradicting their character as written.
But this is an old argument and is going on in spades in at least one other thread right now and I don't have any desire to have two threads going down that path, so I'll just say that I really don't understand how some people play this game.