Session 17C: Shilukar’s New Friends
The illusion might not have fooled Shilukar if he had been in his right mind, but at this point he was far from it due to the debilitating spells Ranthir had cast upon him. The elf waved his wand in the direction of the illusion (which, of course, had no effect) and banked sharply to the right – flying away from Dominic and Tee.
When characters suffer ability score damage, it’s an awesome opportunity to lean into a roleplaying challenge. This is particularly true of damage to the mental ability scores, which will directly affect the character’s personality and decision-making.
You can see that in this session, where Shilukar’s dwindling Intelligence score not only resulted in increasingly muddled decision-making, but also a growing sense of panic as Shilukar felt his mind slipping away from him: In a fantastical equivalent to HAL-9000, you have a character getting more and more desperate to solve a problem as it becomes more and more impossible for them to figure out how to do so.
Existential horror as a combat tactic.
But that’s just one option. Back in Session 15, we saw that ability score damage can also be played for comedic effect:
Tor, in his befuddled state, was becoming completely entranced by the Ghostly Minstrel’s performance. He began to dance and then to sing along – vigorously and loudly.
Tee, seeing what was happening, excused herself from Mand Scheben and pushed her way through the crowd to Tor’s side. “Tor! Tor!” She finally managed to get his attention. “Calm down! Look, I don’t really think you should be doing that right now.” She looked meaningfully at Tor’s acid-burned and blood-stained clothes.
Tor seemed to think about his seriously for a few moments… and then diligently began stripping off his clothes. Cheers went up from various people around the room.
“No!” Tee grabbed at him, but Tor was intent on getting his clothes off now. Looking around, Tee spotted Agnarr and urgently waved him over. Between the two of them, they were able to get Tor back up to their rooms and settled down.
If you’re feeling uncertain about how to play a modified ability score, consider querying your character by way of the game mechanics: Make an Intelligence test to see if your character is capable of thinking their way through a problem at the moment. Make a Wisdom test to see if they’re able to inhibit their impulse to take off their clothes. Make a Charisma test to see how short-tempered they are.
Note that these same principles apply to physical ability scores, with modifications to those scores being reflected in both action selection and description. Getting hammered by a 10 point loss of Strength must feel as if your body has just been brutalized by a chemotherapy treatment. Think about how a loss of Constitution would leave your character gasping for breath and struggling to wheeze out words. Describe your characters clumsily fumbling with a formal tea service or tripping over the furniture as a result of their reduced Dexterity score.
Keep in mind both the absolute rating of the ability score AND the relative change: Someone who has been knocked down to Intelligence 10 from Intelligence 18 isn’t suddenly a dithering idiot (they have a perfectly average intellect), but from their perspective it’s as if the entire world has been wrapped in gauze. (Although if the loss is permanent, it’s likely that they’ll eventually adapt to their new acuity.)
These moments also offer us an opportunity to reflect on how ability scores define our characters and what their normal ability scores really mean, although this begins to transition us into a broader discussion how we can roleplay characters with abilities – particularly mental abilities – vastly different from our own (which is, perhaps, a topic for another time).
There’s also a flipside to this: What do magic items and buffs that increase your ability scores do to your character?
Just as there should be a change in your character’s behavior if they’re blasted from Wisdom 10 to Wisdom 5, so, too, should reading a tome of clear thought that boosts your Wisdom from 10 to 15. Think about how your character’s perception of the world changes; think about how the decisions they make (and choose not to make) will change; think about how their personality will shift as a result.
Note, too, that I think there are differences between short-term buffs (which are shocks to the system, but fade relatively rapidly) and long-term alterations (which will become integrated into the character’s personality).
And while tomes are one thing, there’s actually something really fascinating about a worn magic item that permanently alters your state of consciousness (i.e., modifies your mental abilities). As you spend more and more time wearing such an item, the existence you know with that item will increasingly become your perception of self. What happens to you when you take off the item? Or have it taken from you?
There’s a transhumanist quality here, as if Vernor Vinge’s True Names would be a good source text for this: Like the character for whom part of their personality and thought process now exists in the networked computing devices, so too does the wizard with a tiara of intelligence +4 have an important part of their mind – of themselves! – tied to that item. Are they even the same person without that item? If they lose that item and they replace it with a talisman of intelligence +4, will that restore who they were? Or will they become someone else? Are all +4 boosts the same? Can you just swap out parts of your brain? Or does granting the Ship of Theseus sentience transform the paradox?
I started writing a reply but realized it had more to do with how I roleplay ability scores in general. And while that might be a topic that comes along later I thought I’d go and just post it. It’s still tangentially related. Here we go:
There was a point where I simply gave up trying to roleplay mental ability scores or incorporate them into my character’s personality. It was just too exhausting to tiptoe the line of playing who I wanted and being good at what I wanted to do. I hit a breaking point and just stopped bothering for a few characters. And from that I discovered something interesting.
Having high or low mental ability scores will change your character’s personality whether you intend it to or not. As long as a character is aware they have strengths and weaknesses, they will organically shift their problem solving methods to account for them. A high intelligence character with low wisdom will be better at knowledge skills, search checks and things that involve memory or deduction. And their low wisdom will make them weak willed, slow to notice things or read people. That character would be the type to plan ahead, utilize their knowledge and try and deduce what a person might be up to without even meeting them in person. And they might prefer it that way, since they’re unobservant and easily beguiled.
The opposite character, with high wisdom and low intelligence, might not bother to plan ahead as much. Instead preferring to dive into things head first and relying on their ability to take in and process a lot of information really quickly and react to things on the fly. (Which is why I find it amusing that low wisdom characters are stereotyped as overly impulsive. If I’m playing the character the opposite is true!)
And when you start thinking things this way you’ll find it applies equally to physical ability scores. A character with high strength may rely on it to break their way through all their problems with a “when all you have is a hammer” mindset. And it isn’t because they are stupid, quite the opposite. They have a strength and they use it to their advantage.
None of this is a straight-jacket either. You can try and make your character’s personality completely contrary to their ability scores, ignore all of the above and act like a know-it-all with 7 intelligence. But you know what? That’s also going to affect your personality, because the moment the dice ask for an intelligence based test that character probably wont be good at it. And from that point on the character’s refusal to accept their limitations is now a personality trait. Or the fact that they completely lucked out despite being incompetent is now a personality trait. Or the fact that they succeed because they keep putting ranks into Knowledge because they want to be smart whether or not they have any talent for learning is a personality trait. It’s all good.
So, a long story short is that I don’t think mental ability scores are as simple or direct as “hit < x charisma to gain ‘Bad Temper’.” They’re more nuanced than that. A character with 6 charisma might have a bad temper, but it’s probably because they can’t make a good impression even on their best behavior so they have long since stopped caring what other people think of them.
I admit I’m a bit off topic at this point. I haven’t played in a game where any character of mine has taken significant mental ability damage, but I can’t imagine my approach being much different. There would be some shock and a period of confusion. The character would try to keep doing their usual methods (personality has a lot of momentum) but eventually realize they can’t and struggle to adjust or come to terms with it.
“Just as there should be a change in your character’s behavior if they’re blasted from Wisdom 10 to Wisdom 5, so, too, should reading a tome of clear thought that boosts your Wisdom from 10 to 15.”
I’m reminded of the original series Star Trek episode “Spock’s Brain” where Doctor McCoy uses the device to learn how to replace the brain in Spock’s head. “Of course! It’s so simple, a child could do it!” and then as it slips away from him and he forgets…
Good post
“As you spend more and more time wearing such an item, the existence you know with that item will increasingly become your perception of self. What happens to you when you take off the item? Or have it taken from you?”
You know, it occurs to me that this is actually something we see in real life, though in a more subtle fashion. We’ve all heard the jokes about “not being yourself till you’ve had your coffee” or needing to drink coffee to turn back into a person in the morning, and there’s a kernel of truth in there. If you spend most of your time caffeinated, then the person you become under the influence of caffeine is increasingly your “real” or “baseline” self, and your decaffeinated self becomes an aberrant state.
And on a more sobering note, I believe this is also part of how addiction works. The addict starts out taking booze or drugs for the “high”, but if he isn’t stopped he eventually becomes used to living at the “high” and the absence of the drugs becomes crippling depression and despair even without true withdrawal symptoms.