A comparison was attested in our last
session, and it bears expanding. When all the players rolled new characters,
one who reads this blog faithfully but has not yet commented made the
assertion, after rolling a ranger character, that his ability scores in real
life are higher than those of this character. I think this is an unfair claim
and bears examination in detail. I would like to counter that if ordinary
humans were equal to the task of adventuring, they might spend their spare time
actually doing adventurous things instead of role-playing about doing them.
Let me preface this by saying that I know this isn’t what RPGs are
about. It’s just that don’t seem to realise what these scores really mean, or what
a big difference a point or two makes in a scale of 3 to 18.
In rolling NPCs, I give medieval peasants
2d6 for each of their ability scores. I give my players the chance to create superior characters by rolling 4d6 and
discarding the lowest roll. Being merely superior, however, seems to have left
someone unsatisfied. I would like to question the veracity of the claim of
further superiority of player over PC by inviting everyone to evaluate
themselves. If you have reasons to believe your ability scores really would
make the grade, let me hear them. As I know myself better than anyone, the
following will be an exposition of the reasons why I personally would make a
rather poor adventurer.
Strength. The Player’s Handbook
gives numbers for ‘heaviest weight a character can pick up and lift over his
head’ according to each STR score (p. 13). When I do the overhead barbell press
I can normally do between 6 and 8 reps at 50kg. The equivalent ‘max. press’ of
a STR of 12 listed in the handbook is close to the 72kg clean that VinceDelMonte has notoriously called, ‘good if you’re 15 years old…and a girl’. (This
is not as obnoxious as it sounds. I visited the weightlifting club at a local
high school the other day and watched little 15-year-old Japanese girls clean
heavier than that and barely break a sweat.) I don’t normally go that heavy for
fear of injuring my shoulder even more than it already is, so it’s hard to know
how close my one-rep maximum is to that. The parameters from one point to the
next in the rules for D&D, though, are wide. With a ‘Max Press’ somewhere
between the given parameters of 115 lbs. and 140 lbs. but closer to the former
than to the latter, I have a STR of 11.
Intelligence. Since the time this conversation took place I have read that the
creators of D&D envisioned INT as IQ divided by 10. By this measure I place
slightly closer to 13 than 14. At the time of our conversation, it was
suggested that we simply use the number of languages we ‘know’ as a
quick-and-dirty means of determining intelligence. I would want to qualify that
as rather how many a person can know
if he’s interested in learning them—another player in our campaign has the same
tested IQ I have and doesn’t speak any foreign languages at all—and that still
doesn’t address the question of what it means to ‘know’ a language. I’ve had a
passion for languages since childhood and an MA in linguistics, but I’ve
forgotten almost everything I’ve studied. At the moment, I would guess that my
command of Japanese, in terms of the combined four skills, is about 80% that of
my native tongue. According to Duolingo I can read nearly 80% of all Italian
text, but my listening isn’t quite that good, and I almost never get a chance
to speak it. (Duolingo also says I can read more than 20% of all French text,
but I can just about guarantee that this is an exaggeration.) I’ve been
confidently conversant in Spanish and German, but not at the same time, and not
anymore. Three is probably my limit for simultaneous fluent languages. My INT
is 13.
Wisdom. Most of what we see in the official rules relates to priestly
magic, so it’s hard to get an accurate grasp of what this stat means. The best
concrete description is on page 17 of the Player’s Handbook: ‘enlightenment,
judgment, guile, willpower, common sense, and intuition’. In all of that I
would guess I’m about average for a man my age, since I’m about equal
proportions of the time impressed and disappointed by demonstrations of these
attributes in my peers. Looking at how my application of wisdom has fared, the
only member of the ‘local elite’ that I could count on for any favours isn’t
involved in politics anymore, but on the other hand I haven’t fathered any
bastard children that I know of, and I’m not missing any limbs as a result of
my own foolishness. I’ll somewhat nebulously award myself a WIS of 10 or 11.
Constitution. I’m not terrible on this regard, but I’m not particularly hardy
either. I catch cold about twice per year on average, and feel blessed not to
have been seriously ill in several years. I’m very strict about what goes into
my body, I take a cold shower every morning, and I travel by bicycle whenever
possible; all of this surely boosts my health, but doesn’t mean I can
necessarily survive very long in a hostile environment or sustain that much
abuse without injury. As certain Navy SEALs are fond of saying, ‘It’s not how
hard you can hit, it’s how hard you can be hit’. I can’t be hit very hard.
In our house rules, hit points are half of
a character’s constitution score, rounded up. Considering that the punch of a
character with 18+ STR can cause up to 4 HP damage, and a well-placed punch by
any number of blokes at the local gym would more than incapacitate me, I award
myself a CON of 8.
Charisma. I have a faithful wife and a handful of good friends, and I count
myself lucky for that; I don’t have any henchmen. When I meet people for the
first time, the majority of them forget me immediately. Perhaps another 10-20%
take kindly to me, and another 10-20% treat me with avoidance or ill-concealed
antipathy. As a general rule, I’m not overly fond of human contact, especially
in large doses (INTJ on the Myers-Briggs) and I always need time alone to
recuperate after prolonged periods of contact, or any contact at all with a
crowded place. This is why I far prefer the countryside to the city. I do fine
with one-on-one contact, usually, but in my far more exaggeratedly introverted
youth my first feeling on seeing someone new was the hope that they wouldn’t
try to talk to me, and it probably showed in my demeanor. I would place my CHA
score slightly below average, at 10. (It might even be lower, but I’ll give
myself the benefit of the doubt, because the players in our campaign consider
even 10 to be a low roll for a PC).
Dexterity.
Whether this is manual dexterity or a measure of
reflexes, I rate worst of all on this score. I have a decent collection of
musical instruments in my music studio at home, and I can even play some of
them. In spite of 25 years of practice on the guitar, though, my chances of
impressing someone with my amazing skills is pretty low. It has happened on
occasion, but not more often than 5 on 1d20. I practise the flute every morning
before work, and after several years I still can’t make my fingers go fast
enough to play ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’ half as fast as it’s meant to be
played without making it sound dreadful. I stretch my entire body for about
half an hour every day as well, and yet I’m not particularly flexible. If my
life depended on picking pockets, I would be slain after the first attempt. Yesterday
morning, on entering the kitchen to make breakfast I loudly knocked over an
ashtray and sent ashes and cigarette butts all over counter, waking up my wife.
This morning I stubbed my knee on the living room table. I give myself a DEX of
5.
Now, as I take care of my diet and
lifestyle, and put quite a bit of effort into both mental and physical fitness,
I probably have better stats in a few areas than the majority of lazy 21st-century
suburbanites. But compared to the average pre-industrial fantasy adventurer,
whose life and livelihood depends on doing dangerous things for wealth, power
and glory, I just wouldn’t measure up.
I could be a mage. That’s all. I suspect
the same holds true for most D&D players: Few are athletes or labourers; fewer
still are acrobats or skilled purse-snatchers; and not many are professional
actors or politicians. Most are geeks, which means that, like me, INT will be
the stat they should bank on.
There are high-profile individuals who
might qualify for some of the prestige classes, to be sure. Certain
politicians, for example, who are particularly charismatic and physically fit
as well as prudent and circumspect in their judgments—Vladimir Putin comes to
mind—might possibly have chosen to be paladins. Thích Nhất Hạnh could have been a druid. Judge Holden of the
Blood Meridian cast mentioned earlier gives indications of possibly having the
requisites for a ranger, but John Glanton would not have been more than a
mid-level fighter.
If you, the player, can indeed boast of
stats that qualify you for one of the ‘special’ PC classes, then let me shake your
hand and buy you a drink. You’re a better human being than I am. What a shame
you missed your chance to join the Special Forces.
Could we generate me by rolling sets of 4d6
and discarding the lowest roll? Sure, but the player would grumble that he’d
had pretty unlucky rolls, and rightly so. If you still want to claim your stats
are superior to those of the adventurers we generate by this method, please
comment and say so. Silence will be construed as concession.
Me, I’m just about ready to go. As soon as
I finish remodeling my kitchen, I’ll be sure to add a spellbook to the shopping
list.
