Found a bunch of dudes on the internet willing to play some old-school D&D using Basic Set rules. I remember hating the shit out of this game back when it first came out, but whatever. Thought it might be a nice experiment.
Like good old-school faggots we rolled at random for characters, 3d6 six times in order. I remember never being able to produce a functioning human being (much less PC) with that system but surprisingly, ended up with pretty good results... except one.
Str 17 Int 5 Wis 15 Dex 16 Con 12 Cha 14
As you can see, what we're looking at is someone with all the markings of a great hero... and the intelligence score of a moderately gifted orangutan.
A. What class do you give this poor retard. B. How do you even play it? How does it make sense for someone to have Wis and Cha so high and Int so low?
Connor Wilson
Fighter or cleric are both fine. The 17 str may entitle you to extra benefits for being a fighter if you go with that.
Jason Stewart
Dumb as a brick, but knows how to make his way in the world. And no one ever said being able to talk well and inspire others with your force of will and good looks had anything to do with how smart someone is.
Grayson Jackson
he dont have that book learnin, but hes still a fairly functional human bean. 15 wis and 14 cha is pretty good, and basically means you can sway commoners to your cause. so just play it like anytime actual academics come in, go, "I unno"
Anthony Perez
>cleric >5 int >can't read, can't remember the bible by rote, just makes shit up based on general feeling >the gods approve
Joseph Reed
i assume he met his wife via tinder?
James Smith
Be a bruiser thug (thief).
Mason Rogers
Inteligence and wisdom are two diff things senpai.
The first one is about creativity and solving problens. The second one is about knowledge and collected data.
Christian Murphy
Old school D&D tends to be a bit more about you trying to outsmart the dungeon and a bit less method acting / character study. When you confront a difficult obstacle in a game, do you give it your all as a player, or do you filter it through the personality of your character and make decisions not on what you think is the optimum course of action but on what you think your character would do? It's not an entirely black-or-white choice, but old school campaigns tend towards the former.
Further, I would suggest that having mental abilities that define your play-style is a mistake. It's not like if your character is smarter and wiser than you are, you can adopt tactics that you aren't clever enough to come up with. What your mental abilities should define are things in the game that you, as the player, don't directly control. Does your character know a language or can he decipher something? Does your character notice that, based on body language, the informant he's paying seems to be lying? What are people's nature reaction to your character--do they find him grating or inspiring? These are things you don't directly play out and won't interfere with your play style.
If you want to tweak your characters approach a bit based on his attributes, maybe being a bit more impulsive for a low wisdom character, that's fine, but I would say not to go too far. You could maybe let this sort of thing be the deciding factor when you're conflicted about two course of action.
Aiden Young
Life... is like a box of chocolates.
Thomas Jackson
>What class do you give this poor retard. In Basic? Literally anything but magic-user or elf.
17 str, 16 dex make him a powerful fighter. His average con means he isn't getting a bonus to his hit points, which is his only "weakness" (if you define weakness as not being better than most people in a particular area), but he'll do great damage and he'll be really hard to hit. And, of course, he'll be getting a 10% bonus to all earned experience.
Dwarves rely on the same stats as fighters, so a dwarf would work just as well. Halflings are like fighters, but have both strength *and* dexterity as prime requisites, which you fortunately have, so you'd still be getting +10% XP. So they work great too.
A cleric's prime requisite is wisdom, and your 15 just misses the mark for +10%, so you'd end up with +5%, which is still pretty good. You'd also have the strength and dexterity to make you formidable in battle, like a fighter. So cleric is a good fit too.
As for thieves, you have a high enough dexterity to get +10% XP, and your strength and dexterity would help you in battle. So that's another good fit.
Honestly, you rolled ridiculously well. You could roll dozens more characters and not end up with anything this good. So as long as you stay away from magic-users and elves, who want high intelligences, you should be fine.
Julian Myers
If you aren't sure about how the group will play, I'd stay away from thieves. They have really low chances of success with their thief skills (10%, 15%, 20%...) and unless they are used as an emergency fallback for something else (you just describing how you do things correctly, or maybe an attribute check or something), you will be fucking worthless.
Halflings work pretty well, and if you're starting off at 1st level, you're probably fine, but realize that their level cap is really low (only 8th level, the lowest in the game). So if you anticipate a very long campaign (or a slightly shorter one where the DM just hands out levels), realize that you might eventually be left behind.
If you're playing B/X (Moldvay Basic), which only really covers through level 14, the level caps for the other two demihuman classes are honestly appropriate for that. A 10th level elf or 12th level dwarf is going to be about as powerful as a 14th level human character in a similar class, so that's no concern. And if you're not playing B/X, the chances of your campaign getting far past level 14, even if the DM is handing out levels like candy, aren't all that likely.
In B/X, fighters get a bit limited at higher levels, as they can't do much to increase their damage output, while monsters get more and more hit points. If, however, you're playing a version of Basic with weapon mastery rules, that can be a significant help. Of course, fighters start off really strong, so unless you anticipate a long campaign, it's probably not much of a worry. I will, however, warn that in order to be interesting to play, fighters require a descriptive DM who improvises bonuses based on your descriptions in combat. Otherwise, things can devolve into just blandly rolling to-hit over and over.
William Reed
Magic-users, on the other hand, can have a lot more decision-making going into the way you play them, but only once you reach mid to high level. They are next to worthless most of the time at low level and are very vulnerable to boot. So if you're starting off at 1st level and don't foresee a long campaign, don't expect to have much power as a magic-user.
Clerics aren't too far behind fighters when it comes to combat prowess (until you get to higher levels, where there inability to use magic swords, the most commonly found magic weapon by far, and their slower to-hit progression causes them to lag), and get spells to make things interesting. Of course, they don't start out with any spells at 1st level, and their spells aren't as interesting or powerful as a magic-users, so there's that to consider.
Dwarves have the same basic considerations as fighters.
Jace Ortiz
Don't demihumans continue to improve their combat abilities after their "maximum" level in Basic? Pretty much the only thing their maximum level really affects is Hit Dice (which nobody gets anymore of after like level 9 or so, IIRC) and elves not getting any more spells.
Jaxson Rodriguez
>yfwy realized halflings were among the most powerful classes back then.
Dylan Jackson
We made a joke about our low INT cleric using a pop up jesus book.
Christian Sullivan
>Don't demihumans continue to improve their combat abilities after their "maximum" level in Basic? Depends on the edition. They don't in B/X. They do in RC. I think they do in BECMI, though I'm not sure which set those rules get introduced in.
>Pretty much the only thing their maximum level really affects is Hit Dice (which nobody gets anymore of after like level 9 or so, IIRC) Non-spell casters get 2 hit points per level after name level, while other classes get 1 hit point per level. So it's a bit less than half of what they were getting before, but it's not nothing. Also, saving throws continue to progress (though dwarves and halflings in particular have pretty fantastic saving throws to compensate for that... even if halflings cap out at a lower rung than dwarves do). And even though they're still increasing their to-hits, halflings and elves lag significantly behind fighters. Dwarves remain competitive, however.
Logan Barnes
Eh. Maybe. For a while. They certainly aren't at high levels. And some of it depends on how your DM hands out magic armor and weapons, as they're considerably less likely to get stuff properly sized for them. Aside from this, they do a bit less damage than fighters and have a bit less in the hit point department. They make up for this with fantastic saves, and getting a -2 AC bonus vs. large creatures and an ability to hide that's passable in a dungeon and great outdoors. But that level cap is murder, assuming you play that far.
Alexander Clark
Made me chuckle bud, gud jorb!
Anthony White
Play a literal orangutan.
You're stronk as fuck, know how to find tasty fruits, can brachiate like a motherfucker, can take a pounding and everyone fucking pays attention to the orangutan in the room. It fits your stats.
Leo Perry
If it was Wis that was low, we would have our Cleric have a Cookbook instead. Our DM gave that cookbook Prof. in Bluffing
Jordan Sullivan
>can't read, can't remember the bible by rote, just makes shit up based on general feeling Uh... just... be excellent to each other and... uh... party on, dudes!
Samuel Williams
>because of his high charisma, they buy it >because of his high wisdom, his simple words are considered profound and inspirational, rather than just stupid
