Lowest Stat Penalties

[Serania]

Just out of curiosity, what are the lowest stat penalties that there are? For example, a race with -28 to Str to a minimum of 2. That would be such a race. Simply reducing it to an arbitrary number doesn't count. I wonder what the record is. Perhaps there's a race with -20 to all stats? Makes up for it in some insane way. I'm speaking only of WoTC material by the way, there's probably plenty of homebrew stuff that would rocket you into the negatives simply because some writer was trying to be clever.

[Nohwl]

do you plan on using it just to see how bad it is?

[Mewtarthio]

Because of the way racial adjustments are calculated, I think it would be impossible to get any worse than a -10. That being said, I know of no race with that kind of penalty. I could do it with templates, though. The werecat gets a -8 to Str in hybrid and cat form, though. It's only legally applicable to Small, Tiny, or Diminuitive creatures, so a Gnome or Halfling Werecat gets a -10 to Str.

[UglyPanda]

There are no singular templates that reduce things that low. It just doesn't make sense to create anything with a penalty higher than -8 because that's going to be a dump stat in that case, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a penalty higher than -6. You have to find a bunch of templates that stack. For example, Half-Ogre Orc Huecavas get -10 to Int.

Of course, being venerable reduces each of your physical stats by 6 and increases each of your mental stats by 3.

[Serania]

Huh... what about constitution? Intelligence, charisma, dexterity, etc.?

I think that with enough templates to apply you could probably get your stats way into the negatives. But that'd get a bit strange. So, say no templates with LA or racial HD. There's only a couple of those that I can think of, not sure if they change abilities at all. Oh, and I think half-ogres are a race, not a template. If they're a template somewhere, I'd love to know where.

[UglyPanda]

The version I used is a template, but there are a couple versions of half-ogre. Half-Troll & Half-Scrag give the same penalty, they're both in the Field Folio. Half-Golem Ogre gives the same penalty as well.
You can't go into negatives. Unless the template states otherwise, you can't reduce your base stats to lower than 1 and you can't reduce intelligence to below 3. Templates generally have LA, that's why they're templates and not simply character options.

So, um, why do you want to know this?

[RTGoodman]

Derro isn't a template or anything, but it's a race that has a huge penalty to Wis (-6 or so, I think) since they're all completely insane. They get a bonus to Cha, though, so that makes up for it.

(I only know this because we modified the Derro for a "comedic" campaign a year or so ago to make it LA +0 so one of my friends could play a completely insane Derro Dread Necromancer.)

[Serania]

Just out of curiosity. To be specific, I was looking at the back of Savage Species, where there's some nice charts, to pick a race for a high level game. I decided I'd go with something interesting, so I was looking there. I saw that Small Elementals have a -6 to Int and I thought "... how dumb can a race get?".

So now I'm wondering. Supposedly if you believe the MM, a fine creature would have a ridiculous penalty to Str. Play an awakened fly?

[UglyPanda]

Flies are vermin and can't be awakened. You would want a bat, or a toad.

Dex: Half-golem arctic Dwarf (UA) -4
Con: Half-fey elf -4
Wis: Mineral warrior orc -4
Cha: Half-golem deep gnome -10

[Patashu]

Not to be a pedant, but shouldn't the title read 'Greatest Stat Penalties'?

[Serania]

Hmm... You're right on that.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Jermalaine. -8 Str, +6 Dex, -2 Con, -2 int, +6 Wis, -6 Cha. They're the perfect race if playing a Druid just isn't cheesy enough for you.