Ability scores and roleplaying

[Xerxus]

Since this has come up a lot recently I thought I'd make a thread out of it.

I know ability scores are abstractions with a lot of leeway, especially for charisma. A charisma of 6 could mean that you are very tactless or maybe very ugly. But since nothing ever calls for a pure charisma check, someone with a dozen diplomacy bonuses is better at being social than someone with a higher charisma and nothing else. That's fine by me, but I'm more interested in what ability scores actually represent if almost everything a given ability score implies can be emulated without it.

So I wonder: What is intrinsic, constant and unavoidable with every ability and a given score? Of course the mental stats are the most interesting, since if something is determined by your ability score then your character should be roleplayed according to it.

[Yora]

The whole system with minium 3 and 10 and 11 as average was based on 3d6 rolls. While it is now common to make PCs significantly above average, those numbers are still the average for global populations.

That being said, the chance to end up with a 3 (-4) or an 18 (+4) is about 0.5% each. Or 1 in 200 people.
The chance for a 5 (-3) or lower, and for a 16 (+3) and higher is already about 5%, or one person in 20.
So if a character has a score between 6 and 15, it's really nothing that special. It's "quite smart" or "really weak", but nothing extraordinary.

[TuggyNE]

Str is the easiest to figure out; just use carrying capacity tables as a rough guide. (Whether those are calibrated just so is not certain, but at least the designers believed them to be.)

Int can be mapped, distribution-wise, to IQ; it's a bit stickier, but if you go by standard deviations you get some useful stuff, IIRC.

Con you can try to map using breath-holding, forced marches, or whatever, but those are less common, so most people don't have a very accurate measurement of their capabilities.

The others are a lot harder to reliably calibrate, as you mentioned.

[Xerxus]

If my wisdom is up in the twenties, does that mean that I can intuitively realize a proper course of action in a given situation? Should the DM feed me clues or should I have to come up with a way to emulate that kind of wisdom (if the player is less able than the character)?

[TuggyNE]

If my wisdom is up in the twenties, does that mean that I can intuitively realize a proper course of action in a given situation? Should the DM feed me clues or should I have to come up with a way to emulate that kind of wisdom (if the player is less able than the character)?

That's kinda tricky, and good methods are likely to depend somewhat on the group preferences. However, most of them will probably be some combination of fiat cluing in, ability checks to gain hints/corrections/hunches, taking adequate time out of character to figure things out better than would otherwise be possible, and allowing after-the-fact fill-ins for things the character should have known about ahead of time, but that were only apparent to the player later. Maybe a player could read up on various proverbs, wise sayings, koans, whatever to get in a better frame of mind beforehand.

Most of that applies to Int as well, of course, and to a fair extent even Cha (it is, after all, a mental stat).

[BWR]

Since Wisdom is directly tied to all sorts of 'notice things' skills, I use Wisdom as 'notice things', how observant you are, how easily you read other people, attention to physical detail, how easily you connect the dots between vague (basically physical) clues.
Of course, since clerics use Wisdom, there has to be some sort of spiritual side to it, which I interpret as 'notice the vague underpinnings of reality from subtle nudges from your god'.

[Lazers etcetera]

The attribute bell curve is distorted by PCs.

Even with very few in the world, they break the mould.

A commoner is represented with stats between 8 to 11, yet a PC with Int of 8 is normally played as having learning difficulties.

Also, 3 is very much rarer than 18. 1 in 200 is not that uncommon considering the amount of people even an ordinary person would meet. Even in the classic d&d backwater village of suckers who constantly whine about being raided by the goblins there will, statistically, be a Cha 18 hot chick or a Wis 18 elder.

[Malimar]

When I have a character with very high Wisdom, I sometimes take that as leeway to be genre savvy (a habit which, if left unjustified, can sometimes be called metagaming, so this takes much care to do properly).

[Blackhawk748]

as i play characters that are both smarter and wiser than me, my DM lets me roll an Int or Wis check and then he gives me a hint, mainly because my character is smarter than i am

[Zombimode]

Also, 3 is very much rarer than 18. 1 in 200 is not that uncommon considering the amount of people even an ordinary person would meet. Even in the classic d&d backwater village of suckers who constantly whine about being raided by the goblins there will, statistically, be a Cha 18 hot chick or a Wis 18 elder.

Since NPCs, especially non-elite NPCs use arrays, not really.
8 seems to be the bottom of ability scores for humans (point buy floors at 8, focused array has 8 as its lowest score). Deviations from this are the exception.

(Its also worth to keep in mind, that ability scores, methods of distribution and arrays are tools to facilitate a range of situation typically expected to occur in the context of a fantasy role playing game - they are not meant to be nor written as demographic statements).

[Xerxus]

My problem with Int and Wis checks is the minor increase in success rate between a very smart person (Int 16) and an average person (Int 10). If the DC is 10, then the smart person will only see the solution 30% more often.

[Blackhawk748]

well you didnt get to do the Int or Wis check unless you had a minimum Int or Wis, usually 14 for my DM, because a normal person wouldn't see the connection. Think Sherlock Holmes and how he stitches stuff together, Watson who is pretty smart, just doesnt see it until after Holmes explains it