Playing Your Character’s Stats


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


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I was mulling over making a Fighter, with Guard background, which gets Intimidation as a trained skill, which is charisma based.

I was playing around with a 10 charisma or 12 charisma, and I started to wonder how much difference is there actually between a 10 or 18 in a character stat.

On the bonus for a d20 roll, it’s just a 20% difference. When I think of the difference between a 10 and 14 charisma or 18 charisma (or another stat) in playing a character, it does not progress linearly like the bonus on the d20 roll does.

A 10 charisma stat I play as an introvert. A 14 as the life of a party, and an 18 like a superstar.

Outside of strength, which is quantifiable, with carrying capacity the other five stat categories are not really.

For example, at what dexterity stat number does character gain the agility of a gymnast? Or can barely touch their toes?

I’m just curious on what people’s thoughts are how much the value of a character stat affects how you play your character.


It would come as no shock that you can't realistically recreate all aspects of your character, but really, I view the attributes as a means to demonstrate how successful your character is at the skills and abilities associated with the attribute.

As an example, my Wizard may have the Intelligence to know what questions to ask, and has an inquisitive mind, but since his Charisma is certainly not very good, his success at getting the answers he needs/wants is certainly subpar, especially when he has not trained in the skills that necessitate acquiring said knowledge.

For your Fighter character, he may try to act all tough (and probably has the Strength to back it up), but his lack of Charisma may make people think he is a pushover or a silly goof that can't be taken seriously at his job. It could be the reason he went adventuring; disliked how he was treated as a Guard and didn't get the respect (or paycheck) he deserved risking his life every day for the commonwealth.

Otherwise, I'd probably refer to previous "attribute expectancy" charts and simply bring it to scale for PF2 standards. For a starter comparison, 24 is the highest attribute you can reasonably achieve, and that's giving everything to it. This is the unparalleled bar; anything 24 or higher will be at this tier. Anything 18 or higher will be considered very awesome or powerful, anything 14 or higher would be decent, anything 10 or higher would be standard, and anything under 10 ranges from subpar to horrid.

Shadow Lodge

Well for pf1, 8-13 was average. Generic peasant npc stats were 13 12 11 10 9 8. It said so right in the crb.

For pf2, well it doesn't have that in the crb. You could look at the building creatures guide. For a level 1 creature it says low is +1, moderate is +3, high is +4, and extreme is +5. Pf2 stats scale a lot more with level though. Oh, also npcs are better than pcs in pf2 (where they were worse than pcs in pf1). So not really sure how to take that.

I guess in the end for me, I just play the character however I like and the stats are just numbers for the game mechanics to work around.


Mad Gene Vane wrote:

I was mulling over making a Fighter, with Guard background, which gets Intimidation as a trained skill, which is charisma based.

I was playing around with a 10 charisma or 12 charisma, and I started to wonder how much difference is there actually between a 10 or 18 in a character stat.

On the bonus for a d20 roll, it’s just a 20% difference. When I think of the difference between a 10 and 14 charisma or 18 charisma (or another stat) in playing a character, it does not progress linearly like the bonus on the d20 roll does.

A 10 charisma stat I play as an introvert. A 14 as the life of a party, and an 18 like a superstar.

Outside of strength, which is quantifiable, with carrying capacity the other five stat categories are not really.

For example, at what dexterity stat number does character gain the agility of a gymnast? Or can barely touch their toes?

I’m just curious on what people’s thoughts are how much the value of a character stat affects how you play your character.

Actually, ability score differences of 10-18 can be up a 40% difference in success rates because many checks have critical failure and critical success thresholds.

I'm also not sure "10 is the average ability score" idea holds up anymore, as PCs rarely dip below 10 and NPCs can have even higher ability scores if they are built with monster creation guidelines.

Still, ability scores rapidly become a much smaller part of your competency than proficiency pretty quick. So I think having the flexibility of a gymnast is probably more of a factor of being trained in acrobatics than your dexterity modifier. I think of ability scores more as your inherent ability and a final skill modifier as how good you've made yourself.

Grand Lodge

The average person is a noncombatant, so NPCs built with the monster creation rules should have higher stats.
If +0 doesn't mean "average" anymore, than... what the heck do the numbers mean at all?

Ability scores have always been a bit abstract, though. They summarize areas where a real person would have more specific strengths and weaknesses. Plus "Dexterity" includes agility. The same types of characters tend to be known for both in adventure stories, so it's fine, but those are very different things!


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Time to repeat the old joke, D&D Stats Explained With Tomatoes.

Strength is being able to crush a tomato.
Dexterity is being able to dodge a tomato.
Constitution is being able to eat a bad tomato.
Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad.
Charisma is being able to sell a tomato based fruit salad.

Followed by one commenter saying, "A tomato based fruit salad would simply be salsa," and another commenter responding, "Guys, I found the bard!"
The intelligence and wisdom lines apparently originated with British journalist Miles Kington without a connection to Dungeons & Dragons.

Mad Gene Vane's fighter with Guard background and Charisma 10 would fail often at trying to sell a tomato-based fruit salad. But Intimidation is an easier thing. His fellow guards were good at Intimidation, "Don't give me any trouble, or I will bash your face in." This fighter's attempts ended up as, "Please don't cause trouble. I would hate to bash your face in." He did not realize that his words were different and less persuasive. Sometimes the troublemaker realized that the fighter really would bash his face in and fell into line. Other times the troublemaker laughed in his face and made more trouble.

Mad Gene Vane wrote:
On the bonus for a d20 roll, it’s just a 20% difference. When I think of the difference between a 10 and 14 charisma or 18 charisma (or another stat) in playing a character, it does not progress linearly like the bonus on the d20 roll does.

Twenty percent difference in d20 rolls does not mean a 20% change. That sentence uses two different meanings of 20%. That is why I usually refer to d20 rolls as "out of 20" rather than as percents.

Suppose the fighter is trying to sell a tomato-based fruit salad at a town-guard fundraiser. Let's say he succeeds only on a Diplomacy d20 natural roll of 19 or 20. His bard guard buddy, on the other hand, suceeds on a roll of 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, or 20, because he has Cha +4 instead of Cha +0. The buddy sells 3 times (200% more) as much salsa as the fighter sells.

Suppose at the next year's fundraiser, they sell sausage instead. The fighter sells on a roll of 11 to 20, 10 chances out of 20, and the buddy sells on a roll of 7 to 20, 14 chances out of 20. The buddy sells 1.4 times (40% more) as much sausage as the fighter sells.

The difference between Cha +0 and Cha +4 is that the fighter is bad at difficult Charisma challenges. He might have trouble asking the pretty girl to dance. He might never give a rousing speech. But he can handle ordinary Charisma challenges fine. He can joke around with his brother. He can get the constable to believe his story about the barbarian who broke the town portcullis. He can intimidate the town drunk into cooperating. He is rough around the edges but an okay fellow.

Unlike the town drunk with Cha -1. The drunk always seems a little creepy.

Liberty's Edge

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Super Zero wrote:

The average person is a noncombatant, so NPCs built with the monster creation rules should have higher stats.

If +0 doesn't mean "average" anymore, than... what the heck do the numbers mean at all?

I think it's fair to say, looking at the level -1, level 0, and level 1 NPCs (who seem to represent the majority of the population), that anything between +0 and +1 is 'average' in PF2, with +0 being 'low average' and +1 being 'high average'. Scores higher than that are also fairly common, but usually something the NPC builds their life around (the Apothecary has a higher Int than that for their profession, the Commoner a higher Str for theirs, and so on).

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