Should personality or mental stats exist?

[Andvari]

what i don't understand is why they get this allowance, it's not like the mental scores are given different rules to abide by than the physical scores in the books yet so often they are treated like an entirely different mechanic.

There may be more reasons, but one reason is that the players are in charge of the PCs, and most would likely consider it rude to have the GM take control of them (I can't say I disagree). Another is that clever decision making and puzzle solving is considered fun, because it's a mental exercise, while moving a boulder isn't.

A clever role-player can usually come up with an excuse for how his low-Int character solves a difficult puzzle as a workaround. Ie. there are three levers and a cryptic message. The player understands the message and knows which lever is the correct one, but in the fiction, his character is impatient and just pulls one at "random", but it just happens to be the correct one.

You could of course say "you come across a logic puzzle. Do you want to solve it?" and just have the PCs roll, without explaining anything about the puzzle. But we don't do that, now do we?

I have sometimes seen players attempt to police each other when they feel a player is controlling his character very differently from what their mental stats might indicate, but I'd be loathe to do this as a GM.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

i don't see how making them roll for their outcomes stops them roleplaying? they still decided their own course of action, they knew there was a chance of failure to the actions they took when they attempted it and gambled their luck, that was still their choice to gamble, if they pick actions that match their strengths or are more logical to succeed then they are rewarded with higher odds, but they can't exactly choose to just succeed, atleast not without expending apropriate resources.

Well, there are quite a few reasons- but let's start with one easy one.

Lack of reciprocity.

Why are there combat rules in D&D, but not "social combat rules" with the same amount of detail? Well, there's a very simple, easy-to-understand, historical reason for this.

In D&D, player agency has almost always been considered inviolate. By player agency in D&D, I mean the ability of the player to decide what the character feels and does.

Combat is always reciprocal with monsters and NPCs. Characters do damage to the enemy, the enemy does damage to the characters using the exact same system.

Now, if you start to use any advanced social combat mechanic (for example), then you are left with the following outcome- either you preserve player agency, in which case players can engage in it, but the enemy cannot ... or you violate the fundamental design ethos of D&D (full player control of the player's thoughts and feelings).*

As it is, there is a limited social ability in 5e to influence NPCs with social skills, and the limitation is acknowledged by the lack of reciprocity.

As for the idea of making puzzle solving and tactical choices dependent on die rolls ... if I proposed that to any table I've run, I'd get run out of town.


*Yes, there are some limited exceptions, such as a monster or spell that causes "fear" will cause a physical response, or the possibility that an enemy could use dominate person ... but the use of dominate person against a PC, for example, is controversial, and should probably be cleared with the table.

 

[payn]

I have sometimes seen players attempt to police each other when they feel a player is controlling his character very differently from what their mental stats might indicate, but I'd be loathe to do this as a GM.

I have the same issue when a player looks over at your sheet and says, "you got 10 cha? Your PC is butt fugly lolololololololol..." Mind your own damn business.

You could of course say "you come across a logic puzzle. Do you want to solve it?" and just have the PCs roll, without explaining anything about the puzzle. But we don't do that, now do we?

Thing about those logic puzzles is they are for the players not for the characters. If the situation calls for only a character with high Int, then rolling for it is exactly what you should do. At that point its no more significant than a bolder, or a rope to climb, or a lock to pick. Let the abilities and skill system do what its supposed to.

 

[Celebrim]

I've grown to dislike ability scores that indicate personality or the intelligence of PCs, for various reasons.

I've long tried to convince people that there are fundamental differences between mental/social ability scores and physical scores that prevent them from ever being treated the same. That fundamental difference is that a person's/player's real body never intrudes into the imagined game world but that person's/player's real mind of necessity must intrude into the imagined game world, else we don't have a game to play we only have a simulation to observe.

It sounds to me from your complaint you have started wrestling with this problem and your solution you are considering is removing the mental stats entirely and just accepting that the player is always present in the character. Some games do indeed do that, and depending on the aesthetics that may be fine. But I do think that is value in the hybrid approach of traditional play.

For one, it makes certain personality choices highly punishing for some characters. If you want to play a smart or charismatic fighter, you'll be punished by being less effective at your role.

That's a game design issue. It's not really an attribute of the fundamental problem, but an attribute of there not being enough rewards for being a skillful fighter. I think we should set this aside as part of the well known "fighters can't have good stuff" problem and not a problem of mental attributes generally.

Of course, you can just roleplay your character that way regardless of stats, and I see this done constantly. Does that mean players roleplay their character "wrong?" Or is the stat wrong?

Not necessarily either one. If a player wants to play a "dumb lunk" who solves problems, he can lean into this by having his character be the guy who solves problems by not overthinking them or by accidentally hitting on solutions. It's still possible to give the impression of a character that isn't that bright but which still is "lucky" or who cuts gordian knots by simple and direct action. That's just a role-playing challenge. What happens though if you play a dumb character is the characters abilities don't help you. You won't be able to roll for knowledge, lore, insight, investigate, or whatever to get clues. Testing the character's skill will fail, so unlike the player of a Sherlock Holmes you can't lean in on your character's problem-solving ability to get around obstacles nor can you specify a character's intent and rely on their skill to implement a good plan to accomplish that intent.

There's that situation where most of the party is silent, because they're afraid of screwing up some social encounter as they side glance at the party bard. "What are you doing, barbarian? Trying to role-play in a role-playing game?! Now make a Charisma roll. That'll teach you to make the bard do all the talking!"

Unfortunately, this is not a solvable problem whether or not we have mental stats in the game. I talk about this a lot when explaining why RPGs have a combat focus and how that's just about impossible to get away from because combat has unique features shared by almost no other method of problem solving. If you do away with mental/social abilities in the game, you might actually make this problem worse, because now social interaction solely depends on player social skill and in that case why have anyone talk but the party "face" - that is whomever in the group is the most charismatic, social, and extroverted. At least when you have mental/social stats, you can use hybrid approaches and you might have different characters skilled in different social aspects - persuasion, deceit, intimidation, etc.

Then there's the trouble with role-playing characters of different intellect than your own, which (hopefully) is never really enforced anyway. "Oh, you think you just did a clever plan to stop the ogre? Well, your Int is only 8, so your character wouldn't do that! And why haven't you come up with a brilliant idea no one else has thought of yet, Gundalph?! Your character has 18 Int! Start role-playing like it!"

That would be heavy handed and incorrect, but this isn't a binary problem. There are hybrid approaches.

Should some characters just check out of the role-playing game when it's time to role-play? Should the GM keep putting the shy player with the high Charisma score on the spot?

I mean at some level, absolutely. A player who is shy but playing a high charisma character is asking for a fantasy of themselves as socially capable, so you should definitely be teasing that out of them. I always tell my introvert players to think of the situation like they are telling their character what they want them to say in terms of content, and then that character is taking their words and their intention and rephrasing them and saying them with confidence and savoir faire and as a result NPCs will react to the content of the words entirely differently. That difference is adjudicated through the social mechanics. Similarly, if you are a very charismatic person and playing a low charisma character, what comes out of your mouth won't exactly be what is coming out of the character's mouth - he'll say it wrong, he'll stutter, he'll mess it up. In both cases though I allow the player to set social "tactics" and correct tactics lead to better chances of success. The content of your message matters and will gain you bonuses and penalties based on correctly deducing what the motives and levers are in an NPC. If you can figure out what the NPC wants or what secret they are hiding, you are much more likely to succeed with a social check than if you say the wrong thing that would offend that NPC. That's where player skill comes in, and that's not only unavoidable but IMO desirable.

Should the GM berate an average intelligence player for not coming up with genius plans all the time when playing his 18 Int Wizard?

No, of course not. Having 18 Int doesn't mean you make genius plans all the time and besides which, how would that be fun or edifying?

Should he make the Int 3 cleric walk blindly into the dark room and onto the pit trap?

No, but functionally a 3 Wisdom character is blindly walking into things all the time just by failing perception checks.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've frequently seen that as well where one person is designated to speak on behalf of the party and the others prettyh much remain silent. It drives me a little nuts because I want more than one person to be able to participate. Years ago, I was running an L5R game and the PC's city was besiged. The enemy general gave the city a Mad Max Lord Humungus "Just Walk Away" speech to demoralize their forces. When I gave the PCs the opportunity to give their rebuttal the only thing I heard was crickets. One of the PCs was a monk who finally asked the others, "Are one of you samurai going to say something?"

This isn't just a problem with social skill/attribute capability; it comes up with any set of rolls where there's a single-point-of-failure in an event (i.e. where one person's misstep can create a failure state or at least pull down the success chance of the group as a whole seriously). It's the same reason in a lot of games you'll see people strongly avoid attempting stealth procedures with people who are bad at it.

 

[GrimCo]

I have the same issue when a player looks over at your sheet and says, "you got 10 cha? Your PC is butt fugly lolololololololol..." Mind your own damn business.

That was always one of my pet peeves. When people think CHA= looks. Charisma is more than just looks. For instance. Vincent Cassel is not really good looking man. But that man oozes charisma. So my fighter with 8 cha isn't fugly. He is socially uncalibrated, brash, blunt, sometimes cold and unsympathetic. In short, his lowish CHA makes him not really popular dude at the parties.

Thing about those logic puzzles is they are for the players not for the characters. If the situation calls for only a character with high Int, then rolling for it is exactly what you should do. At that point its no more significant than a bolder, or a rope to climb, or a lock to pick. Let the abilities and skill system do what its supposed to.

Yep. And as a DM, i try to balance it out. If the players have bad day and they can't figure out logic puzzle, i let the int 20 wizard or rogue just roll. Just because players cant make leap of logic, their significantly smarter characters just may do it. And just because their low Int characters cant figure something out, maybe smart player can and in game i justify it as moment of inspiration. TBH in 5ed, most characters won't have stat lower than 8, since there is no racial penalties.

 

[MGibster]

I’m fine with that in the same way that a 18 Dex character doesn’t have to be all slim, or a 18 Str character not being cut like a body-builder.

Cleary you've never had this guy as a GM.

"Brother, before you hit those goblins you need to hit the gym!"

 

[overgeeked]

technically you could also choose to roleplay a strong, tough or nimble character even if we didn't have STR, CON or DEX stats, but the games we choose to play have those stats and thus they matter, those games also have INT, WIS and CHA stats so they matter too,

Difference being that the player can’t lift something out-of-game and have that effect the game’s fiction, whereas the player can leverage their intellect and charm and have that effect the game’s fiction. That’s the crux of the question. Since the player can use their mental and social stats to effect the fiction, should the character have mental stats?

Unless the player is willing to be limited by the character’s mental stats, they shouldn’t exist.

 

[payn]

That was always one of my pet peeves. When people think CHA= looks. Charisma is more than just looks. For instance. Vincent Cassel is not really good looking man. But that man oozes charisma. So my fighter with 8 cha isn't fugly. He is socially uncalibrated, brash, blunt, sometimes cold and unsympathetic. In short, his lowish CHA makes him not really popular dude at the parties.

I take it even further than that. I dislike the idea that a low charisma means the character has to be an uncouth jerkwad. I view Cha as presence as its often been described. A butt fugly sea captain who is all scarred up can have a high Cha because he knows how to present himself. He strikes fear and command into his sailors. Alternatively you can be a very suave silver tongue that lowers folks defenses because of their dashing good looks from high Cha. It means you know how to draw attention and influence people.

Which means to me a 8 cha fighter (or any class) could simply be a wallflower. Unnoticeable in most rooms and situations when it comes to presence.

Largely, I let players define what the stats mean to them and how to describe their character. I let the mechanics balance it out with guidance from the GM. I only think the overstepping should happen in extreme cases where a player is attempting to game the system. For example, having an 8 Cha but saying their PC is super model hot and everybody just does what they say cause they want to bone them. Not even a high Cha PC can command that, they can only roll for it. Or a barbarian with an 8 int that wants to invent magitech armor because the setting doesn't have any. Essentially corner cases, that fortunately, I haven't encountered in many years.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Difference being that the player can’t lift something out-of-game and have that effect the game’s fiction, whereas the player can leverage their intellect and charm and have that effect the game’s fiction. That’s the crux of the question. Since the player can use their mental and social stats to effect the fiction, should the character have mental stats?

Unless the player is willing to be limited by the character’s mental stats, they shouldn’t exist.

Or if the GM is willing to set up things so the impact of the player's mental attributes are minimalist. Its not impossible; a lot of people just don't like doing it.