nonsensical ability scores

[pasko77]

Hi all,
about d&d (any edition) array of attributes STR, CON, DEX, INT, WIS, CHA, i've always had troubles justifying a character having max score in one attribute and min in another attribute, related to it.
For instance, having STR 18 and CON 8 (or vice versa). We can -barely- justify it with a particular phyisical conformation... but no, it is not realistic.
So, I often put this additional constraints to char creation:

abs(STR - COS) < 5
abs(INT - WIS) < 5

no particular bounds on CHA and DEX.
Racial modifiers added later, obviously.

This helps creating
1) more believable characters
2) less minmaxed casters.

Thoughts?
Anyone does anything similar?

[DeltaEmil]

Hi all,
about d&d (any edition) array of attributes STR, CON, DEX, INT, WIS, CHA, i've always had troubles justifying a character having max score in one attribute and min in another attribute, related to it.
For instance, having STR 18 and CON 8 (or vice versa). We can -barely- justify it with a particular phyisical conformation... but no, it is not realistic.
So, I often put this additional constraints to char creation:

abs(STR - COS) < 5
abs(INT - WIS) < 5

no particular bounds on CHA and DEX.
Racial modifiers added later, obviously.

This helps creating
1) more believable characters
2) less minmaxed casters.

Thoughts?
Anyone does anything similar?

If you can justify it, even if only barely, then it's okay for the attributes to diverge so widely. It's a game, after all, with magical unicorn, dragons, beings of pure good and evil, elves, gods and heroes.

I'd be more concerned if the game moderator demanded to roll the attribute stats because that would be more "organic"/"believable"/something-unfair-and-not-funny.

[Amphetryon]

I find High STR low CON relatively easy to justify, narratively, via muscular dysmorphia. Sickly kid gets picked on until he starts exercising regularly, 'regularly' becomes 'obsessively', etc. Insert your favorite medical imperfection that cannot be remedied by doing a few squat thrusts, and you've still got a character whose CON can be represented as low. Maybe the dysmorphic's a hemophiliac.

[Roc Ness]

If you had extremely high mental scores, and really low physical stats you could play an 8 year old and label your character as a child prodigy...

[Yora]

It's sensible, I think. But I think the situation becomes so rarely a problem, that I wouldn't bother making an etra rule for it.

[magic9mushroom]

High Int low Wis is acting like I do. I'd estimate myself in D&D stats as having Int 16 Wis 6-8.

So don't ban it.

[Eldariel]

There are some very common archetypes listed in the PHB that match no-Int high-Wis and high-Int low-Wis. They actually match classes you'd expect to find them in; Wizards can play the Absentminded Professor-part really well while Clerics are natural Tribal Elders.

[Volkov]

If you can justify it, even if only barely, then it's okay for the attributes to diverge so widely. It's a game, after all, with magical unicorn, dragons, beings of pure good and evil, elves, gods and heroes.

I'd be more concerned if the game moderator demanded to roll the attribute stats because that would be more "organic"/"believable"/something-unfair-and-not-funny.

It's not that it's not realistic, it's that it breaks the Suspension of disbelief.

[snoopy13a]

Strength and Constitution can be differentiated. Strength is simply physical strength. Constitution includes suspectiablity to injury and disease as well as stamina. Your hulking Barbarian could be prone to dread diseases or be constantly straining and pulling muscles.

A good example is Mark McGwire, the former baseball player. He was one of the strongest players in his era but he missed a signficant amount of games due to injuries. You could say that he had high strength but below average constitution.

[subject42]

Constitution includes suspectiablity to injury and disease as well as stamina. Your hulking Barbarian could be prone to dread diseases or be constantly straining and pulling muscles.

A good example is Mark McGwire

"Why does your barbarian keep getting injured when he's so absurdly strong? Also, why does he keep injecting those 'healing supplements' into his buttocks?"

[Spiryt]

It's not really a problem.

Such 6 simple stats are very abstract and unrealistic, so really many explanations can be aplied to pretty much any combination.

Guy with 18 strenght and poor Con can be just fat guy who is 360 pounds just beacuse of the way his body works.

He is very strong and have a lot of muscles and fat to throw around, but his metabolism, fat weight, diet and stuff are very bad for his stamina, resistance, organs, and stuff. If he was in better shape, he would be also absolutely powerful, but he like that he's still "only" pretty mundane 18 Str.

If you argue that such amount of body would make him damage resistant - give him Thoughness (or possibly better feat... ).

And that's just simple explanation.

[Tiki Snakes]

Brittle Bone Barbarian.
Hehe.

No, really, it's just not a problem. There are plenty of accident prone/injury prone sportsmen to illustrate high STR/DEX low con, and the mental stats are simpler even.

If it jangles your sensibilities, just make sure it's actually roleplayed.

[Lysander]

One represents strength, the other endurance. Look at Gandhi during a hunger strike. Stick thin guy weak from hunger, but able to survive weeks without eating.

[Godskook]

abs(STR - COS) < 5
abs(INT - WIS) < 5

....

Thoughts?
Anyone does anything similar?

Personally, I had a friend in college who did cross-country, track, and wrestling, but weighed ~140 lbs. I, on the other hand, did one sit-up a day*. I could still snap his little twig of a body in half with about as much effort as it took to put on my pants, that's not a comment on my strength being overly incredible. Seriously, ever hear of people having a glass jaw?

And then there's the wis/int one. Ever hear of the absent-minded professor? He's both real and common. I've also known wise men who weren't all that smart.

So yeah, I'm going with this being completely unrealistic.

[Saintheart]

And then there's the wis/int one. Ever hear of the absent-minded professor? He's both real and common. I've also known wise men who weren't all that smart.

Joel Rosenberg in The Sleeping Dragon explained it best.

"Who has low Intelligence and high Wisdom?"
"Edith Bunker."
"What?"
"Yeah, Edith Bunker. Not too bright, but wise as all hell. Or to take a counterexample, Richard Nixon."

[Dyllan]

One of the smartest people I ever knew was also probably the least wise. He was a downright genius in high school. Never had to study for any class. His mind worked so fast it was scary.

But when we decided to go on a walk through the woods, he decided not to bring his shoes... too lazy to put them on. Naturally he regretted that. He'd forget simple things. And he made the stupidest decisions of anyone I knew. Definitely a negative Wisdom modifier.

As for low strength / high con... try any woman who's not strong physically, and has made it through natural childbirth. When my wife went through it... I was honestly amazed at how well she handled the pain and physical stress on her body. Maybe she's a bad example, because she's not a weakling, but I've known women who are and who managed childbirth (and other pain) that I know I could never handle.

I really think the idea that any of the stats are necessarily related in a way that would prevent one being high while another is low to be a total fallacy.

[Indon]

This is already implicit in the point buy system by enforcing 8's in dump stats. An 8 (slightly below average) - 18 (Incredibly awesome) spread is the largest possible one.

And while there certainly is a point where it can get unrealistic - a 3 in one stat vs. a 20 in another, for instance, there still are character concepts that can support stats like that.

[truemane]

I think there's a place for this kind of rule. But I also tend to object to adding layers of complexity on an already layered and complex game just for the sake of something as semi-arbitrary as 'realism.' Once you start, there's really no ending point.

For example, I have very dexterous and clever fingers. I play piano. I'm a relatively talented card magician. But I have zero hand-eye coordination and there's not a sport in existence at which I do not suck. I tried harder to learn to juggle than I tried at any of my courses in university and I can't do it. I took Tae Kwon do for six years, training six days a week for most of that time and at the end of that time I only had my Green Belt (and even that was more of a reward for effort than it was an indication of any kind of skill or ability).

So 'realistically' I should get the Dex bonus to skills like Sleight of Hand and Open Locks and Disable Device but not the ranged attack bonus or the AC bonus.

And you can do that for just about any abstract number in a game since abstract numbers are, by definition, abstractions.

I just don't think you need a rule for this. If you think someone's twinking on you, you tell them to knock it off. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. Resist the urge to complicate things.

I find that reasonable application of the 'Don't be a Jerk' rule fixes things up most of the time.

[Keshay]

A couple of thoughts on the OP, without consideration for the reasons why it does not necessarily work.

Cha and Wis are much more closely related according to game definitions. If ther is going to be a correlation between two mental stats, it should be between Wis and Cha.

There is a very clearly identified relationship between muscle mass and agility. As such there shoudl be an inverse relationship between Str and Dex. The greater a character's strength, the greater their muscle mass, and therefore the lower their Dex. As an example, look at NFL Quarterbacks, Donovan McNabb in particular. Seasons where he showed up weighing more (due to increased muscle mass) he had more difficulty with agility-related moves, and decreased foot speed.

There is also a reletionship between having greater will power and the number of times a person is likely to exercise. Therefore there would need to be a relationship between Wisdom and Str/Con. Ergo a relationship between Int/Cha and Str/Con, ergo an inverse relationship between all mental stats and Dex.

So as you can see if one tries to apply real-world logic to attribute scores, all you actually end up getting is a feedback loop where all stats are required to all be near each other, resulting in... The basic array! 11, 11, 11, 10, 10, 10. Which as we all know is for the meaningless NPCs of the world. PCs are supposed to be outlying heroes with amazing abilities, if the way those attributes do not appear to make sense from a logical point of view, who cares? As mentioned before, this is a world of unicorns and dragons. A sickly strong guy or foolish scholar is hardly less belivable.

[Crow]

"Why does your barbarian keep getting injured when he's so absurdly strong? Also, why does he keep injecting those 'healing supplements' into his buttocks?"

HAHAHAHA!!! =)

[lesser_minion]

No, intelligence isn't connected to wisdom.

The PHB goes some way towards explaining what different scores in the mental ability scores mean.

[Telonius]

Regarding STR and CON...
Do olympic powerlifters also typically run the marathon? Training the muscles for one sort of activity (short bursts of great strength) is very different from training them for another (long feats of endurance). I can understand someone having both, if they're specifically training for something like the decathlon. But I can also see training for one and not the other.

[Lysander]

As for wisdom and intelligence, intelligence is information processing while wisdom is common sense.

A intelligent character entering a tomb recognizes an inscription as belonging to a 5th century sorcerer king, a wise character remembers that tombs are dangerous and looks around and spots a gang of wights sneaking up on them.

[Nerdanel]

I had an interesting practical experience with Str and Con scores one time when my family was demolishing a big old brick fireplace to make room for a new one.

Me: Low Str, high Con. I can't swing the hammer with enough force to do much more than chip the bricks a little, if that, but I can keep carrying bricks to the pile outside for a long time without stopping to rest.

My brother: High Str, high Con. He did the biggest part of the actual demolition work.

My father: High Str. low Con. He was effective with hammer and chisel but got tired really quickly due to his health problems and spent most of the time sitting and recovering. There was no question of him doing something so demanding of endurance as carrying bricks.

My mother: Medium Str, medium Con. She had enough strength to knock bricks loose but she got tired noticeably quicker then me when carrying the bricks.