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Just wondering.
Do you (whoever reads this and feels like responding) try to deliberately modify your character's decisions based on his or her stats?
For example: Og the Barbarian has a 7 Intelligence, therefore, he would never think to pull out the hinge pins on the door. He will just smash the door until it breaks.
Or...
Does Og do and think of anything you think of, and his low Intelligence score limits his access to valuable skills and the points needed to boost those skills?
Do you feel that players who do not roleplay low mental stats are somehow cheating, or does it not matter, because of the numerical penalties?
I starting thinking about this because I noticed that one of the BBEGs in a recently purchased AP has an 8 INT, yet his description gives no indication that he's dull-witted, ignorant, or even a "little slow."
It then occurred to me that I have two active characters, both with 10 INT scores that I roleplay very differently. One is an uneducated, peasant-class country bumpkin, who has little faith in his ability to think his way out of trouble. The other is clever and manipulative, and always looking for angles and opportunities.
So...any thoughts..opinions?
This is something that I pay very close attention to at the beginning of the campaign. Once the character has taken on a life of their own in my mind, I stop paying attention to this. The wisdom/intelligence is assumed to be an ingrained part of the character at that point.
Eh. To a certain extent I guess. It's really more a matter of "Would it be FUN to play the moron? Or would it just be a hassle?"
Also, while 8 Int is below average, it's nowhere near low enough to incur significant penalties to functionality. Int is really your measure of how easy it is for you to remember things and how easy it is for you to learn new things, not a measure of your actual intelligence.
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Best examples of this from my gameplay:
Armand the paladin has a good wisdom, but he takes people at their word. Therefore, I didn't put ranks in sense motive until level 8.
Rhoridan the sorcerer had a low wisdom, 7, and one day when my witch was going through some magic books, the teenage low wisdom rhoridan was drawing dicks in the books.
I use the stats as a basic guideline, and try to hold true to them as best I can. However, as Mystically Inclined said, after the character is more established, I stop thinking in terms of the stats.
For example, Thorngar is a dwarven fighter with Int 10, Wis 11, and Cha 5. I started off by attempting to misplay every social encounter possible, and holding his Int/Wis to be about average (not a genius, but not a dummy either). By now, I mostly ignore the stats. He is still horrible socially, but he means well and gets along with his other party members well (with the occasional mishap). His intelligence tends to fluctuate between genius in combat, and idiot savant out of combat. He also tends to be incredibly impulsive, but is sensible enough to know what he is good at and play to his strengths. At this point, the character of Thorngar is strong enough itself that I don't really roleplay his stats anymore, at least not consciously.
Most of the DMs I have played with care more about the character than the stats, unless there is a huge disparity. For example, there is a sorcerer in my Skull and Shackles campaign with a Charisma of 18 who is completely incapable of proper social interaction. She makes Thorngar look suave. This disparity has caused some DM frustration.
I do to a certain extent, as well. Generally, when I design my characters, I try to balance the personality with the stats so that they mesh.
For example, I ran a wizard with a high Int, moderate Wis, and low Cha. To reflect these stats, I played him as kind of a condescending jerk-- someone who knew he was the smartest person in the room, and never let anyone foreget that fact. When roleplaying him, I deliberately used as many obscure or flowery words as I could, and regularly broke into "magiobabble" when explaining stuff to his (in his opinion) well-meaning but dim-witted companions. At the same time, he knew how to flatter his way into the good graces of people in power, so I put a lot of ranks into Diplomacy.
Way back in the second-edition days, back when character classes were far less customizable, I was the first player in my group to buy "The Complete Warrior," which introduces PC "kits" (a precursor to archetypes). I brought in a rapier-wielding, lightly-armored flamboyant type, and all of the other players (and PCs) assumed she was a rogue. She was actually a fighter with the swashbuckler kit, and an 18-percentile Strength. The character's highest stats were Strength, Dex, and Charisma, and she had a 6 Wisdom-- which I played to mean that she tended to believe what people told her, and was generally oblivious to danger. She aslo didn't catch on that the rest of the party assumed she was a rogue. So, when confronted with a locked door, they turned to her to open it. Instead of pulling out a set of lockpicks and rolling a "Open Locks" check, she took a running start at the door and threw her shoulder into it and made a "Bend Bars/Lift Gates" check.