Hardest high stat to roleplay...

[canuckkane]

Jul 22, 2012 18:41:15 GMT -5 Thrym said:

*points at above posts*

See what I mean.

An epic fighter has enough hp to survive terminal velocity. Likely multiple times in a row. Being hit by a meteorshower barely fazes him! He gets critted by frost giants and lives! All in game, and no one bats an eye at it.

But some players will say the same guy can't lift a metric ton. That'll snap his bones and stuff.

Strength = Hardest Stat to Roleplay because people try to forbid you to RP it.

+1

[mastersenge]

I think most everyone is guilty of comparing the fantasy setting to real life to some degree at one point or another since we want it to seem real. You just have to keep in mind that fantasy and reality aint the same.

[Trollfiend]

Jul 22, 2012 21:11:47 GMT -5 mastersenge said:

I think most everyone is guilty of comparing the fantasy setting to real life to some degree at one point or another since we want it to seem real. You just have to keep in mind that fantasy and reality aint the same.

It was more a using reality as a frame of reference. That's.... what this whole thread's been about from intelligence to charisma. I think the post that set people off was when I commented on something Dawn of the Ages said which I did to better explain what they said. Rest assured, I didn't say in there anything that should be taken in game. I also mentioned Superman several times which should have been an indication that I'm aware this game is not based on real life.

Anyway, back on topic We all know that this is a fictional game with super powers.

[Pithirendar]

I find them all challenging as I try to look for subtleties rather than the obvious.

One of my PC's has a Wisdom of 8 and Charisma of 8.

Wisdom - She is headstrong and stubborn. She doesn't have the foresight or sense to know when to keep her mouth shut. She will butt heads with some people not knowing when it's time to let something go. Often times she doesn't have the filter between mouth and brain - blurting out things she probably should have kept to herself. She also lacks self worth. She doesn't have the sense of self that I think those with a high wisdom have. She doesn't know who she truly is and why those close to her value and love her.

Charisma - There were two sides to this but now there is just the one. Originally she had horrific scarring to some of her body but this has since been healed. The other side is that she can be very arrogant. Especially when it comes to her prowess with her blades. Personally I see arrogance as a character flaw - thus making her less charismatic to others (and myself sometimes!). Sometimes it's just really hard to like her even if you're not sure why. Sure she is no super model either, I see her as being 'normal' looking, nothing spectacular but no Lucille Ball either!

[Carpe]

Real Life weightlifters do not have Gauntlets of Ogre Power.

Welcome to Magic! Please leave Reality and your Coat with the doorman.

[Andros]

Yeah Strength is a though one because although the more subtle actions (like say, blocking a Giant's club with your shield) are accepted easily yet the more direct ones like lifting giant rocks to throw at your opponents are somehow more unbelievable

As for the comparison with Olympics I did earlier, I don't know about strength but the article talked about the Dexterity score needed to consistently hit the Archery target at the same distance as in the Olympics and it came out to about 24-26 Dexterity to reach the same consistency level across the same number of shots (it think the sample was 100 or so)

So while strength scores seem to be wildly over the human norm, dexterity ones are the opposite and seem to be under the human norm ;D, guess those pesky elves aren't as amazing after all

[ritefoot]

For me stats are what they are.

I believe that anyone with str 26 is as strong as a hill giant who has the same strength and should be able to lob boulders about. I do not believe that stats should be viewed as what you bought with your points and then you play as you want.

I enjoy RPing low stats too but high stats can go anywhere.

A stat at 8, 10, 12 15, 18, 25 and 35 put you in different worlds of RP.

For STR you are talking about
dweeb,
normal,
fit,
passed boot camp easy,
all ready for London,
able to walk home with your motor cycle on your shoulder,
able to rip a safe apart like a packet of peanuts.

for Dex it goes
clotz,
normal,
hold your own on the dance floor,
five ball juggler,
hope you don't have to fly to London with that STR guy,
Move through a Lazar field like that guy in Oceans 11,
make your way across a trapped room by crawling across the ceiling without taking your hands out of your pockets.

Con
nose bleed,
normal,
enjoy a mountain run,
3 hour marathon,
Looking forward to the airline food on your way to London,
that guy that catches cannon balls in his chest for fun,
Chuck Norris.

Int,
You use the word Awesome more than full stops,
normal,
Likes a good crossword,
Mate in 7, 6, 8, 11 and 3,
People knock at your door cos you got a nobel,
nobody understands a word you say in the same week you say it but you always get there in 20% of the time with an apple,
you like to read the paper in your pajamas while nations work for you without knowing that you even exist,

Wisdom,
'look what I almost stepped in',
normal,
turns your tax in on time,
people come to you for advice,
was the one that put the Who put the bomp. In the bomp bah bomp bah bomp,
reached enlightenment,
'look what I almost stepped in'.

Chr,
'look what I almost stepped in',
normal,
hold your own on the dance floor,
'how YOU doin'
'I had a dream'
'these are not the droids you are looking for'
My wife!
(Still have never met anyone that was not crazy about her in 2 minutes. I don't think I would like that person)

For me STR is a doddle.
Dex is a chance to describe grace.
Con is why people play dwarves.
Chr CAN be viewed in many ways and many go with the looks.

It is Int and Wisdom that are hard.

For me Wisdom is not something you can RP past your own wisdom. Int can be viewed as the speed of your skills in problem solving. A smart person will arrive there in time but wisdom is your talent in seeing what others only look at.

I have played high Int in the 30's and to make it work I took a page from Oscar Wilde. I used to plan my chat RP for about 3 days ahead. I would have answers and side answers and reply answers.
I did not always win but I put up one hell of a fight.

Wisdom for me can not be RPed why out of normal stats.

Rite.

[lucid]

Jul 23, 2012 16:31:26 GMT -5 ritefoot said:

<stuff>

;D Excellent

Jul 23, 2012 16:31:26 GMT -5 ritefoot said:

For me Wisdom is not something you can RP past your own wisdom. Int can be viewed as the speed of your skills in problem solving. A smart person will arrive there in time but wisdom is your talent in seeing what others only look at.

I have played high Int in the 30's and to make it work I took a page from Oscar Wilde. I used to plan my chat RP for about 3 days ahead. I would have answers and side answers and reply answers.
I did not always win but I put up one hell of a fight.

Wisdom for me can not be RPed why out of normal stats.

Rite.

*Snaps fan open*
Hold, hasty finger!
The Enter Key grants Wisdom
By not pushing it
*Snaps fan shut and lowers head*

Oh, would that I had an Enter Eey to push in real life before crap leaves my mouth....

[Andros]

Was just looking at some stats on Olympic records given the olympics have just began and I came across a site listing 580 pounds as the Olympic weightlifting record, now using the strength rules from D&D that state that a PC can lift above his head as much as the maximum carrying capacity we can see that it takes a PC a strength score of 23 to get that Olympic record, toss in a +5 strength item on those athletes and there is your strength 28 superhero

The sites:

Olympic record: www.iwf.net/results/olympic-records/

DnD Wiki rules: www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Carrying_Capacity

The point I'm trying to make is that below all those nifty magics, our pcs are just people, something that is easy to forget sometimes thanks to the crazy stuff they make everyday ;D

[Deleted]

"A character can generally push or drag along the ground as much as five times his or her maximum load. Favorable conditions can double these numbers, and bad circumstances can reduce them to one-half or less."

So in normal conditions, a character with a score of 30 in Strength, can drag along a flipped over Ford F-150?

In Favorable ones, he can stack a dodge on top of it.

Nice.

[Savoie Faire]

Something said by Gary Gygax at a GenCon in the early 80's:

3-18 was picked for abilities for a very good reason: Bell Curve.

The die rolls toward average though outliers are common with only three dice. For more average stats 6D3 would give 6-18 as potential results, but more average, while a D12 and D6 would give 2-18, but result in more erractic results and fewer 'average' scores. 3-18 gives a well-formed bell curve if you graph the results over many throws.

He then equated Int score to IQ, and by simply adding a 0 behind the number rolled you could derive a character's IQ in comparison to real life, with adventurers having a 10 point advantage over commoners in the real world. Einstein with an int of 18 would have an IQ of 180, placing him comfortably in the 99th percentile of the population, while a character with an Int score of 8 would be noticeably impaired by our standards.

When you place this bell curve over any stat you can derive what percentile of the population is that smart, strong, wise, or whatever. A result of 20 would be 'impossible without magical assistance' and the character with this stat would be unrealistic in our world. If you expand the bell curve by two in each direction, with lower than 3 and higher than 18 being in the 'under 1 percentile' range, meaning that fewer than 1 in 100 persons would have such stats, a score of 20 in any stat would be in the range of 1 in 10000 persons in the population with such a score. (This was the reasoning behind the percentile die roll for strength exceeding 18 in AD&D.)

Given that we have billions from whom to choose, and those athletes are trained by technologies far exceeding anything available to the typical person, it is not quite unreasonable to think that scores above 20 would exist in the real world. (I once heard of a kid who was reported to have an IQ over 200, but I can't verify this was anything more than hype.) But such people are exceedingly rare and generally well known because of their superior abilities. How many Michael Jordans are there out there?

[elysiumfields]

The hardest stat is always the one you as a player are least mentally equipped to support.

That can be any one of the six for everyone depending on what character they are playing and trying to achieve.

Generally I would say it's a toss up between wisdom and intelligence.

[Trollfiend]

I rarely rp my saves... ever since I cast hold person on a rogue only to have them dodge all of my sells afterwards

[warmaster]

For me, it is the leading aspect of Charisma. This is the hardest to role play.

I say this because, in my experience, when you try to organize your party into formation or even so that they are using basic strategy, people are prone to ignoring it. There are ways around this, naturally, but it has always been hard for me. That is until Duva got a reputation of getting the job done anyway.

[mastersenge]

Jul 26, 2012 21:57:13 GMT -5 elysiumfields said:

The hardest stat is always the one you as a player are least mentally equipped to support.

That can be any one of the six for everyone depending on what character they are playing and trying to achieve.

Generally I would say it's a toss up between wisdom and intelligence.

maybe the topic should have been whats the easiest because of that I would have to say dex because emoting acrobatics seems like a pretty common way to do it and even doing i dice roll for tumble although not necessary

[NineCoronas]

Charisma, hands down.

[Deleted]

Jul 27, 2012 0:59:08 GMT -5 warmaster said:

For me, it is the leading aspect of Charisma. This is the hardest to role play.

I say this because, in my experience, when you try to organize your party into formation or even so that they are using basic strategy, people are prone to ignoring it. There are ways around this, naturally, but it has always been hard for me. That is until Duva got a reputation of getting the job done anyway.

The first thing you have to do if you want people who actually cooperate in a strategic way is to pick your party. Some people cooperate, some people don't. (Some people don't even play to be effective, but to portray a personality which doesn't happen to be cooperative.) My own characters even vary in that from character to character, and I'm the same player behind them. But that's just like life. Just ask an HR manager what they *really* look for in a candidate for a job, and you'll find out it's often interpersonal skills, basic responsibility, and ability to act in a team-minded way that separates one person from another, and not their job skills. Corresponding to that, my ranger, Erynne, would rather work with a panther and a black bear over and above certain adventurers, and it's not just because they're furry and live in the woods. (The panther and the bear being furry and living in the woods, not the ... yeah, you get it.

The second thing I am learning from experience is that the more you can simplify what you ask of people, generalize your "instructions," and get people into a repeatable groove, rather than directing every single move they make individually step by step, the less likely people are to simply get tired of listening to you and stop listening half way through the adventure.

As someone who doesn't have stellar natural charisma IRL as a player, I find that wisdom and intelligence can pick up a good deal of charismatic slack if you figure out how to apply them in place of natural charisma.

[Deleted]

Charisma isn't so much "likeability" or popularity. (Clooney vs. Depp, etc.) It's more a personal magnetism that results in being able to get people's attention and follow your lead. Supposedly, Saddam Hussein had incredible personal charisma. I think he looked pretty unattractive. He wasn't very morally likeable, if you ask me. But supposedly, if you were in the room with him, even in the courtroom when he was on trial and he wasn't actually in control anymore, he still just had this ability to make it feel like he was the complete center of attention, all things revolved around him, and he was in command of all things. I never met him face to face, but people say that he just had this force of presence that you could not ignore, and which was very hard to resist. That's really a good picture of what charisma is.

[elysiumfields]

Hitler had an amazing charasmatic skill set and his public speaking skills were second to none at the time. Ted Bundy, David Koresh and Charlie Manson also had the gift in that respect.

None of them, in my opinion, were attractive in a conventional sense.

This ideal relates directly to Sharauvyn's HR notion. It's not what you look like, it's how you can interact with others and persuade them to do the things that give them power.

[Mister Cicerone]

Hardest stat to roleplay is In-tell-uh-gence. Perhaps I'm just not very smart.

A brainy PC has to have its "smarts" be applicable to the setting they are in, and this involves reasoning and learning based on their surroundings - a fantasy setting. Sometimes it's hard for players to disassociate what they know IRL with what their PC should/must know (and even then, there's always a question of limit and other taboos). So in short, having to "think" correctly in a fantasy setting where physics and the like all don't much add-up, just happens to be a nice challenge.

Also, bumped this thread:

frc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=lore&action=display&thread=14198

[TermaForever]

I've never had to RP and exceptionally high stat here, but I would agree that the Charisma/Wisdom/Intelligence triangle is the tough one for me UNLESS - I RP them all at the same time.

This was part of my Druid epiphany I had shortly before leaving the server. I made a druid with average (10 - 12) in physical stats but 12 - 16 (I think it...) in Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma. Best character I ever RPed and one of the more fun ones mechanically as well. Basically an insightful young man who hid his wisdom behind a wisecracking sense of humor. Someone actually commented (ICly) that they had 'never heard of a druid with a sense of humor'.

Priceless experience.