So You Want to Play a Stupid Character

WARNING: NSFW ART

Maybe you’ve seen countless posts about bards who just roll to seduce everyone. Maybe you’ve heard about players who derail a campaign for shits and giggles. Maybe you’ve heard about how characters with low stats can be really fun.

Maybe you think this is how D&D is supposed to be.

Confession: that’s what I thought. And boy did I learn my lesson.

Low stats should never be your primary stats.

Each class in D&D relies on different stats: wizards must be intelligent; rogues must be dextrous; bards must be charismatic; barbarians must be strong.

If you have a low stat, that can make for an interesting character. A low-intelligence fighter who is gifted at using her weapons but needs her friends to tell her when to use them. A low-dex sorcerer who trips over his own feet. A low charisma cleric who just can’t get the good word of their god out eloquently enough to convince people.

You know where that low stat shouldn’t go? In your primary stat. A paladin with low charisma will never successfully use their magic. Same deal with a low-intelligence wizard. A fighter with low strength and dexterity will never land a hit.

It’s time to tell the story of my first D&D character, Waywocket Gonk, the gnorc (half-orc-half-gnome) monk.

Waywocket grew up in a gnomish town with her father. While working as a barkeep, she accidentally squished a guy (because of her low dexterity), so she had to go to the monastery to get out of being sent to prison.

She became a monk. With low dexterity and wisdom. Monk feats rely on dexterity and wisdom. Her ki save DC was ridiculously low and she used her strength for all of her attacks, despite dexterity-based melee attacks being a special monk feature. Her unarmoured AC was lower than it would be if she weren’t a monk, because she not only had to subtract her dexterity, but also subtract her wisdom.

She was straight up a bad build for a monk. If I replaced monk with paladin, she could have been great, with her high charisma and strength. But nope. I just had to make her be as shitty as possible.

After completing her training, she just kind of … appeared in the party, and never knew what was going on. She tried and failed to seduce everything and constantly rushed into areas. She did a lot of impulsive crap (that was just me making ADHD outbursts), and it changed the game for my fellow players.

I gathered some testimony from the friend who liked Waywocket most, and from the friend who hated her the most.

First, from Megan:

As a new player, it’s hard to find ways to move the story forward. But often times, when you think of a plot and you get stuck, you think, “What’s the worst that could happen?” and then Waywocket went and made that happen! Super exciting.

So Waywocket was my favourite character!

Super memorable, lovable in the way that you hate her, and relatable [in] that I too cannot do anything right. Also how she had such bad stats for what she was supposed to be good in. [She] had a background that fit. Since she became a monk after running away. So it wasn’t like she was that serious.

Megan Lee

Then, from Taylor:

Me being nice:
“Oh boy.”
“A bane on humanity’s existence.”

Me being brutally honest:
“Fuck that bitch.”
“Why is she adventuring when she just wants to open a tavern?!?!”
“Kathleen please stop crying. It’s 8:30pm, we’re all tired, and you’re screaming at the top of your lungs. Why.”
“Oh lord, could she just not.”
“Waywocket don’t fuckin’—she did it anyways. God damnit.”

Taylor Wong

The answer to that screaming question is that I have ADHD and get really into the acting sometimes. I need to improve on actually acting less when I’m roleplaying, haha. Waywocket had just found out she’d eaten some children, and I reacted as if I’d found out I ate some children.

A stupid character might turn into a stupid you.

Your Dungeons and Dragons character is an extension of yourself—especially your first character. Your fellow players will associate that character with you for the rest of your life. And if your fellow players fucking despise your shitty character, it’ll be impossible to not take it personally.

I have gone to the “bathroom” in the middle of a session just to cry under my blanket more times than I can count. I thought of just having Waywocket kill herself, but it didn’t feel right. I wanted her death to be by random chance. I was projecting my own depression onto Waywocket so hard by the end. D&D stopped being any fun because I felt like a piece of shit all the time.

So, if you think you might be sliding into shitty stupid character territory, do something to get out of it. It’s not worth your own suffering or the unhappiness of everyone around you. If you hate your character, tell your DM that you want to bring in a new one. Everyone will enjoy that a lot more than you trying to stick through with your shitty character.

When it comes to being a player, you only have one character. You gotta make it one you like.

When done right, stupid characters can be great.

Low stats can be really fun—just not as your primary stats. The character has to be useful. A strong and constituted barbarian is very useful, and his low intelligence score doesn’t subtract from his value as a character.

Several million people have watched Critical Role, and thus, several million people know about Travis‘s character, Grog Strongjaw, the goliath barbarian.

Grog has a low intelligence score, and he’s a good character. And it isn’t just because he has value as a combatant in the party (due to his good barbarian stats): it’s because Travis Willingham is a fantastic player.

When you are playing a cooperative game, you need to remember that there are other people. The game isn’t all about you. Which means, if your character is dumb, they shouldn’t take the spotlight for every second of gameplay in order to do dumb things. Let them come up periodically. Maybe once in a while they rush into an area and trigger combat, but not at every single opportunity. Maybe they accidentally insult important dignitaries, but not in every single encounter. Maybe they waste all of their money on an obvious scam, but not all the time.

I remember one instance of Grog attacking an NPC because he broke his ale cask, which was a great moment, because it’s not something he does every single second.

And all the other players accepted this moment; they didn’t berate Travis for Grog’s action. Playing a dumb character requires acceptance from everyone at the table. If people are directing complaints to you, the player, instead of the character, then it’s time to rein it in. (But also consider that maybe this isn’t the right D&D group for you—the onus to not get made fun of by your friends shouldn’t be on you to not act like a weirdo.)

The key to balancing characters with low attributes is to make sure that you don’t derail the entire campaign with your character’s dumb things. Let other players have a time in the spotlight.

Do you have any experiences with characters with low stats? Please share them in the comments!