STR is way too high, INT is presumably too low, and for a typical Cute Baby, the CHA is way too low.Equally unsurprisingly, I can't help but continue the spiral of geekiness. Or at least, it inspires me to reconsider ability scores and what they mean. And to argue. Which is probably a given.
- STR too high: if I had to guess, I'd say these are ye olde Edition of the First stats, where 3 is the minimum. But assuming that a modern baby would be at least 3.5ed, a more appropriate STR would be 1 (same as a toad or bat), 2 at the outside (According the PH, equivalent to a...rat swarm? How am I supposed to interpret that?) Dammit, this whole "arguing with Jacob" plan seems to be falling apart.
- INT too low: ah, now the argument will begin in earnest! D&D INT is sometimes described as "IQ", but it's not potential for learning, reasoning and knowledge. How many languages does a baby speak? What bonus should they get for Knowledge checks? The obvious answers to these questions suggest INT of 6 is far too high, not too low. Animals have INT scores of 1 or 2 (Camels, 1; dog, tiger, horse, 2. Apparently some game designer had a bad camel experience and is exacting retribution.) When the kid's old enough to learn tricks like smiling or the cute waving/fist clenching thing, you can proudly proclaim them to have a 2 INT. Don't fret: it'll go up like a point every 6 months. Then they'll be smarter than you, but don't fret about that either: puberty'll hit and dumb 'em down to your level again. And that's my point -- a little more on that in a sec.
- CHA way too low: regardless of ye olde "18 max" rules (you could argue that babyhood is some sort of demigod status), this cuts to the complicated heart of what CHA is supposed to represent. Are babies charismatic? Well, heck yeah: they're fascinating, everyone can't keep their eyes off them, and their powers of persuasion and influence are legendary. But (except family members -- huge circumstance bonus!) do they attract followers? Do they inspire morale in those they lead? Do they lead at all? If I were forced, I'd say CHA of 18 is justifiable (not least because being cute is basically the only thing babies have going for them, and that's half the point of the joke), but more is just going down the "No, you've got a Charisma of a million zillion billion, yes you do!" path of treacly silliness.
From this we derive two observations of possible worth. The first is that the D&D ability system is really designed with the short term in mind -- ability scores would dramatically change over a character's whole lifetime, but we generally only see them for a snapshot of a few years or less, and typically the ones whose ability scores matter are in young adulthood, when score changes would be slower than youth or old age. Although the DMG of my youth did have a piece about score changes as one advances through age categories, it almost never got referred to...unless I was trying to abuse the system to generate unreasonable ability scores.
The second is that ability scores are couched in terms that suggest they represent some weird amalgam of many different features, but in game terms are used to represent a relatively small number of effects. "Strength" is supposed to represent how much ya bench, but its greatest game effect is on battle prowess, which presumably involves more than just literal strength. And it's the clearest one. INT, WIS, and CHA are all representations of a host of features, often overlapping: is the ability to present a well-reasoned argument because of INT or CHA? Moreover, all the abilities encompass properties that don't have much correlation: an excellent lockpicker can easily be clumsy or slow, a person's field of knowledge can be deep but narrow, and as has been pointed out a thousand times, ugly people can be powerful leaders.
A fair bit of the time, this "fuzziness" of what the abilities really mean is fine in game terms - we just need a little plus or minus to dice rolls, and the player can describe the source of that little bonus or penalty however they like, whenever it comes up. But every once in a while it exposes the "gaminess" of the rules. It can be hard to countenance when PC A fails at a strength check that NPC B succeeds at due to the luck of the dice, when A is "stronger" than B.
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3 comments:
I don't check trollkien often enough; it amuses the hell out of me that you responded to this in this depth...
yeah, I was treating INT as IQ-- and you're right about what's wrong with that. INT=1. As for CHA-- I dunno, it might be that actual *leadership* requires having a greater-than-animal INT in order to actually have plans and purposes. The baby's got a million zillion CHA-- but no way to put it to use. (Like having a high STR and a DEX of 1, maybe.)
WIS is the weirdest 3.0/ 3.5 stat. For non-clerics, its primary game effect is on spot and listen checks, which makes very little sense. It seems like an attempt at rebalancing for the hell of it-- "WIS has to have *some* game-mechanical function"-- but somehow it seems to me to devalue the alleged meaning of WIS in the first place.
Hey, what can I say -- I don't have the right priorities to make it a viable "check every day" blog, but when I geek out, I geek out HARD. Yo.
I'm just glad someone appreciates it. :)
Regarding Charisma, I agree -- DAMMIT! I need to stop doing that! Where's the dramatic tension??
Anyhow, your point is well taken - essentially all the ability scores only make sense if the other abilities are minimally functional. At the ridiculous extreme, consider genius intelligence in a body too weak to speak or communicate. Stephen Hawking's INT score would be pretty freakin' large (I avoid saying "astronomical", because it's an oft-misused term that means something, and I wouldn't want Stephen to think I don't know that. What, you don't think Stephen Hawking reads Trollkien?)
Where was I? Oh yeah, in the middle of a sentence (crap. Now Stephen Hawking thinks I'm illiterate.) Hawking's brilliant, but in a D&D milieu unless someone casts some kind of voice synthesizer spell, it's not INT that he can actually use for most game purposes (stupid somatic components!).
Also cf. Phil Foglio's joke about the evillest creature in the universe being an anchored clam. Doesn't do anything, but pure EVIL!
Fair enough observation about WIS also -- Spot and Listen are clearly the new analogues of the "Perception" ability (which makes more sense than stupid Comeliness, but was painfully kludgy.) Using Wisdom as a Perception fill-in does seem very "insert stat balance here". If forced, I could vaguely justify Listen checks as being predominantly about mental focus and/or recognizing what the sounds you hear must mean. Spot checks, on the other hand, are a stretch too far, especially when there's the almost-but-not-quite-same thing in Search, with its INT stat. (Maybe someone thought both WIS and INT needed some extra purposes?) Personally, I think WIS would make more sense as the base for Search (typical Search checks are about recognizing the practical implications of what you're seeing, which seems Wisdom-y to me.)
The other place WIS shows up is in Will saves, which makes abundant sense. The one facet of Wisdom that everyone grasps is the notion that it's willpower, self-control. When the siren's song or the vampire's hypnosis threatens to take control of the PC out of the hands of the player, clearly WIS should be the governing stat.
Other than that, however, WIS has problems fulfilling its original meaning, even more than CHA or INT, because it tries to describe a personality trait almost impossible to replicate in game terms. How can a player with impulsive and poor judgement play a character with good judgement?
I have flirted with the idea of having INT and WIS checks in response to proposed actions: if a player says "I use sleight of hand to steal the wand from the magic shop", perhaps they deserve and INT check to see if they know that the wizard running the shop probably has surveillance magic, followed by a WIS check (if the INT check was successful) to see if they realize that trying to steal from a magic shop is a VERY risky proposition. Then the DM could warn the player, who can either go ahead or change their action.
Such notions could make INT and WIS extremely important, but makes the roleplaying seem more railroaded.
"The other place WIS shows up is in Will saves,"
what are these "Will saves" of which you speak?
Oh, yeah-- those are the moments when any random carrion crawler with a fraction of a decimal point of psionic baby makes Acavel bark like a seal and stand on his head...
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