Chebucto Regional Softball Club

He couldn’t handle the strongest potions.

I actually love playing low Intelligence high Wisdom characters because of this. Wisdom dictates your Perception, but Intelligence dictates how smart you are. As a low Int high Wis barbarian, I have often noticed things way before the rest of the party. And if I’m trying to role play that (especially if my Charisma is low,) I may not be able to eloquently explain what I have noticed. So it leads to a lot of “I get tired of listening to the party ramble about what we should do next, and smash my way through the hidden door cuz that seems like the obvious next thing to explore” moments. There’s nothing quite like the party wizard initially being horrified that you took your axe to a random bookcase, only to be pleasantly surprised afterwards when he notices the passage behind the splinters and wreckage.

>That said, even with -1 I regularly get through conversations because my DM rewards good roleplaying by not making us roll for *everything*. And that’s something to be applauded. Many tables seem to forget that checks are called by the DM, not the player. There’s a huge difference between **_role_** play and **_roll_** play. Lots of players will try to take the Observant perk, min-max their Perception, walk into a room, and immediately go “I want to make a Perception check!” Okay… What _specifically_ are you looking at with that check? Because if the answer is just “I look around the room” then that doesn’t require a check; That’s just using your passive Perception, and if you had waited just a moment I was going to describe the room to you anyways. If you want to look under the bed, I may call for a check to see if you notice the trap door under the rug, while you’re on the ground looking under the bed. Or if you want to search the wardrobe, I may call for a check to see if you notice the false back with a hidden compartment. But if you just want to glance around the room, my only description is going to be the obvious things that you notice around the room with your passive Perception. I won’t mention the slightly askew candelabrum (it’s a lever for a hidden door), the scratch marks on the floor (where the door rubs it when it opens), or the slight draft from the seam around the door unless your passive Perception is high enough, or you’re specifically looking at something near one of those things where you would be able to notice it. I used Perception as an example, but many players try to do the same with Charisma skills like Deception or Persuasion. Sure, there may be times where you’ll need to lie to some NPC. But don’t just say you want to make a Deception check. Lie to me (as the NPC) and if the NPC’s passive Insight is high enough (or the lie is bold enough) I’ll call for a Deception check. But if it’s a small lie that would be reasonably believed, I usually won’t even bother calling for a check, *because you as the player made it believable*. Same with Persuasion or Intimidation. If you as the player drop some sort of stone cold line to intimidate a character, I likely won’t even bother calling for an Intimidation roll. Or if I do, (maybe it’s an intimidating line, but the NPC isn’t easily intimidated), I’ll be sure to at least give the player advantage. I have also done things like allowing a barbarian to add their strength modifier to an Intimidation check, because they were trying to use their strength to intimidate. Intimidation is classed as a Charisma skill (which Barbarians usually dump) but sometimes it makes sense for people to be intimidated by things other than words. If a barbarian single-handedly takes out six goblins in one turn, I may have that barbarian roll Intimidation against the rest of the group to see if any turn and flee after seeing it happen. Because I want to be sure to reward good role play, not just leave players at the mercy of RNGesus.

Magic damage doesn’t scale based on your magic stat. The only thing that changes is that the spell uses less mana to cast. So the only difference between a level 1 mage and a level 100 mage is that the end game mage can cast the same spells *more*. But by the end of the game, those spells are only doing small amounts of damage because their damage hasn’t increased as enemies have gotten stronger.