"Have you ever suicided a lame D&D character?" Topic

Back in the day… Back when we played the white box.
Roll 3D6 6 times.
Highest is a 9. Can't even cheat and switch numbers and attributes around.
It might be interesting to play it for laughs for a week or so but you can't do anything!
What did you do? Me? I charged every monster I met until I met an honorable death.

So.
1. It's a good chance next day I can roll up a decent 16 or 17 something.
2. That's dishonorable! Not in the spirit of the game at all!
3. This is ridiculous.
4. Whine and complain.

What was that Mine Detector class called, Oh yeah Bard.

we always had a viability rule one score of 14 or better no more than 2 below 8

We either rolled 3D6 eight times and picked the best six..or rolled for each attribute with 4d6 and kept the three highest results for each roll. Still ended up with stinkers. Usually the DM would take pity and let us turn the character into an NPC suitable for spearcatching duty and roll up another.

My group played The Fantasy Trip. As you gained experience you could improve your base stats, which is why we liked it over D & D. We did however have a policy of death being permanent for characters.

Does Traveler count? If so, yes.

Yep.

No. If we rolled a below average character, we would scrap him right there and roll again. Some of my character's henchmen were less than great. As I progressed to high level it became obvious that some of my henchmen were too weak and would bring down the party. Our DM (my Dad) killed off some of these weak henchmen and had us meet up with much more powerful npc's who would become new henchmen. I remember a particularly weak fighter got turned to stone by a Medusa, and then got knocked down and crumbled to pieces. No way to bring him back.

We would just re-roll until we got a minimum, usually that was at least one 16 stat. The other cool thing we used to do was after you had placed your scores and selected Race/Class we would go back through and roll 3d6 against reach stat taking the higher roll. That is how I ended up with a Fighter with 17 Cha, too bad his high Charisma didn't help with PC's as two of them turned on the party killing him for his loot.

Chris

We did the 'roll once extra, drop the lowest score' thing. Still ended up with some low attributed characters, but we played with them anyways. Our games we much more story driven and less combat driven than most. Of course, with weaker dudes we wanted to avoid combat when we could. Switched to Traveller (yes, we even used it for fantasy). where combat was WAY more deadly…

I always liked 2D6+6 put them where you want.

In one of the early D&D magazines, there was a great article about using XP to "level up" less than heroic attributes for characters. Kind of like training.

We used a lot of the above methods (and others) to avoid outlier values for attributes.

Never killed a character or deliberately risked their life. Never had to. Usually, our adventures were good at weeding out characters with very low attributes without our behavioural assistance. We usually started with two characters and a few henchmen/hirelings who could be "upgraded" if necessary.

We did 3 rolls per category. I think that was a Judges Guild suggestion.

Not in D&D, but I had a character die a particularly gruesome and heroic death in Paranoia. Involved rocket boots, a Molotov Cocktail and a very confined hallway.

Well now. Seriously.
If you are going to such dice tricks to guarantee a "strong" character, why bother to roll dice at all?
Why not roll 3D10, and cut it off at 18?

Half the fun was dealing with inferior or flawed characters. We can't all be Gandalf or Rambo. So you have a lame character. Deal with it, or let him die.

I had a wheezing elderly wizard with a strength of 3, and a fighter with an intelligence of 5.
Playing your flaws is often more fun than playing your strengths.

You wouldn't have gotten away with that so easily if I was the DM. No one and done. You'd have played through all your resurrections!

I never got around to suiciding a character, they all died too quickly even if they had good stats.

We used "dice tricks" because apparently most people DON'T think that limping through an evening with a totally unviable character is fun.

House rules that make a game fun for a particular group are more important than a slavish devotion to the official rules.

While you don't have to have every attribute above average,
a really weak character is not much fun play. We always went with the 4d6 method.
On a side note, I have always been amazed at the number of players I've come across with 18/00 strength. As an old 1E player, the odds were too great for the multitude that existed.

3.6 top value Yahtzees.

You wouldn't have gotten away with that so easily if I was the DM. No one and done. You'd have played through all your resurrections!

In my group, resurrections were expensive. If I died early and my pockets were picked by goblins, who was going to pay for them?
Corrupt clergy…

I've had two teens play dwarves with stunningly low Intelligence (5 and 7, respectively), but high Strength (20 and 18, using 5e rules that boost Mountain Dwarves by 2 in Strength). They had a blast. One announced that he didn't understand doors, so he just walked through them— as in, didn't open them, just smashed them apart. (One of these went on under their teen DM to become Otis, God of War and Teddy Bears in their world. )

Back in my day we used the 3d6 for each ability six times, choose the best in each row method (from 1st Ed.). Tended to produce some high stats, but at the same time, we wanted to be heroes, not poor slobs making do.

5e gooses things quite a bit through racial bonuses, especially if you go into sub races, as the Mountain Dwarves mentioned above. But even so, we had teens generate 7s, 8s and 9s in at least one stat (sometimes two), and play these characters according to those limitations. We had wizards who were super-geniuses, but not enough wisdom to look both ways when crossing a street. We had a rogue with a Charisma so low he'd have a hard time convincing a half-broke barmaid to sell him an ale. They played 'em, and loved it!

As for suicides, in my early days of Blue Book D&D, the stats didn't matter, as my first three characters died in their first three encounters…killed by berserkers, goblins, and rats (respectively). All 18s or all 3s, that edition was a death trap for characters! Even if you planned to stay alive, you probably wouldn't.

@Parzival,
Interesting comments. I would never have thought to roleplay a character based on his stats. Stats to me were just limitations or enhancements to your characters abilities and had nothing to do with the character's personality. For instance, if my character had a low intelligence, that would restrict him from using certain magic items, etc, but I would never intentionally play him dumb which would put the party in jeopardy of success. I would play him as smart as I could and just realize his low intelligence places certain game rules limitations on him. I guess we each had our own way to play the game. As long as your group is having fun that is all that really matters.

@USAFPilot
Well, the stats from the beginning were intended to display a broad range of human (and humanoid) ability, similar to IQ, with 10-11 being average human ability. So, rather obviously, in game a stat of 3 put one at the bottom of human potential for that ability, while 18 put one at the maximum unaltered human ability. So a human with an Intelligence of 3 was as dumb as they come, absent actual mental damage. (Notably, "Animal Intelligence" was typically Int 2 or less, though certain species might be a bit higher). I recall reading (possibly in Gygax's PH) that the Int stat corresponded to IQ at a rate of 10 to 1 (so Int 18 was IQ 180), and the Strength stat was the bench press at the same rate (so Str 18 could bench press 180 lbs.) But that's so obviously a later tack-on as to be silly.

As it is, yes, in D&D the stats have always been assumed to guide role playing (indeed, in editions prior to 3e, IIRC, an Intelligence stat of 7 or less meant that the character couldn't read, and apparently couldn't learn to do so.). A low Intelligence stat meant, yes, your character was fairly stupid (but could still be quite wise), a low Wisdom stat meant your character was foolish or foolhardy (but could be quite intellectual), a low Charisma meant your character was unimpressive or even off-putting or unpleasant in person, and a low Dex meant you were clumsy, etc., beyond any influence on dice results. And that was assumed to be the way you would imagine and play the PC!
Nothing wrong with your approach, but yes, the original game concept was to let the stats guide the persona as much as the actions.

I never believed that an intelligence of 3 made the character stupid. Just functional. A Jay Leno or Jesse Waters interview classic.
Not stupid. Dumb. He just votes the wrong way. Doesn't know the name of the Vizier but does know who the Prince is.
Nor did a strength of 3 make him a palsied wreck. He could still do useful work. I wouldn't put him to work on a construction site, because it would take two of them to carry a his. Which is a strange visual…

However, intelligence of 17, with a strength of 3 just called out for role playing.
We want our characters to be a little bit gifted. Ok. Ok. More than a little. We rolled for and took the numbers by the book. The dice tricks came after I left. I only played for about 2 years at most and never joined another group.

After reading several comments about playing characters I've come to realize that my group never really "role played" our characters. We had lead figures, and maps, and explored dungeons, and fought combats, and found treasure, and became powerful; but we may have missed one of the main points of the game, which is to "role play". Sure we talked to NPC's, and made decisions on which corridor to explore down, but we just played being a fantasy version of ourselves and never role played the character on the character sheet. We still had fun but it would be interesting to go back in time 40 years and play D&D again they way you all play.

I tend to but not always play some type of fighter/barbarian type so they are all suicidal regardless of stats – seeking glorious death in battle
Doing so I tend to have intelligence and possibly wisdom as dump stats and do role-play them as being thick

I once had a barbarian called Isore the Immortal – his reasoning being that he hadn't died yet and was therefore immortal

Although currently I'm playing a GOO warlock with really high charisma but terrible wisdom. Perfect for ripping the secrets man(or tiefling) was not meant to know from the fabric of reality

My experience is the same as USAFpilot. I played from 1976-1979. We did dungeon crawls, but role-play? Not in the current sense of the word.

At the dawn of D&D, I'm not sure if many of us quite understood the concept.

My first go around with characters (not counting the three dead ones) was all about maxing out the power level, to the extent one could do that in D&D/AD&D 1e. So I had a High Elf Fighter/Magicuser with 18 Int that got magically boosted to 19, 17 Dex, and I'm certain an absurdly high Strength— and no, I will not attest to the honesty of the "rolls" which produced the same (but I'm certain it was based on the 3d6 six times for each stat, with favorable fudging). He had a pseudodragon familiar (not likely an honest roll there, either), despite being Lawful Good (which called for a brownie familiar, which teenage me thought would be just goofy), In short order he acquired Bracers of Defense, a Ring of Protection, a Robe of Scintillating Colors, a Girdle of Giant Strength (Storm, of course), and a vorpal sword, which he used to decapitate Asmodeus in the bottom layer of the Nine Hells. And there was about as much roleplay involved in that character as one would expect.

But AFTER him (and I really did like him), I began to consider the possibilities of actual role play, as did my group. So I created a Neutral Wizard only interested in the acquisition of arcane knowledge, a Neutral Good Fighter who was a barbarian (before it was a class) who would only fight with a double-edged battle axe and wore furs, a Paladin with a humble sense of his own nobility, and an elf Fighter/Magicuser/Thief, emphasis on Thief, with a streak of independence so big he was willing to risk being a lone wolf operator in the City of Greyhawk, under the noses of the Thieves' Guild. He also favored being a 'second-story man," and eventually found a secret lair in the sewers (quite comfy, really) from which to pursue his thieving.
Now, none of that was as intensely roleplay as others have done, but I did endeavor to give each character his own persona, motivations and values, guided both by their stats and my conception of their identities as I created them. So, even class set aside, none of them would have approached the same adventuring situation in the same way.

So I still like both approaches. A good, straightforward dungeon crawl is a lot of fun, but so is a rich fantasy world with character roleplay. The beauty of D&D is, it can be all of these.

I've never 'suicided' a character. But my second ever D&D character was an elven ranger, with normal stats, who always seemed to attract missile fire.

One of our DMs gave her a magical vest which afforded her +6 magical protection, but she still was a missile magnet! She had reached fifth level by then if I remember correctly, but I just got fed up and stopped playing her!