Episode 3: How the Attributes Contribute

Armor class, hit points, and the six core attributes. These were the three mechanical ingredients needed to make the perfect role playing game, but professor podcast accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction: descriptive conteXt!

This episode explores these components and ways to tie them into your narrative in a way that keeps the descriptions fresh, and it doesn't plagiarize any cartoons in the process!

Episode Transcript

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Hail traveler and welcome to the podcast where I give you all my D&D thoughts, advice and insight, even if you don’t want to hear it. I’m like a nerdy grandmother who just cares for the well-being of your campaign! In this episode, I’ll be addressing some core character elements and ways to better understand what those elements mean in a role playing context, rather than a number on a character sheet. I’m talkin’ bout HP, AC, STR, DEX, INT; that’s right. We’re going over all the letters. So pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup of tea, and let’s get to it. I’m your nana, Allen Niles, and this is Outside the Dice!

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There are a lot of little components that go into the makeup of a player’s character. Building a character starts with picking a name and gets as intricate as deciding (or rolling for) their weight, their height, their age, the character’s moral alignment, and even solidifying personality traits like flaws and bonds. All of these details are solely for the purpose of roleplay, which I think is great. They help the players understand their characters even if they don’t have much purpose mechanically speaking. Except for your alignment allowing you to use certain magical items, and your height being used for how high above your head you can reach when you jump and a couple trivial things like that, but I rarely see those uses come into play.

There are, however, these 8 components that play a huge part in the character’s makeup, and are majorly used for mechanically playing the character. These are the 6 character attributes, that is, the character’s strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma, and the character’s armor class and the character’s hit points (or AC and HP).

In most cases, these attributes are pretty self explanatory; your strength score dictates what you can carry and how hard you can smack something with a hammer, and dexterity is tied directly to your ac, determines agility, sneakiness, and all around just makes a character more catlike. When determining if a player is strong enough or… feline enough to perform a certain action successfully, the dm probably asks what numerical value the player has in that ability, but it can be hard to remember exactly what each component means in the context of the story when they’re only referred to by and depicted as a number on a piece of paper. I find it most difficult to roleplay two of these in particular: AC and HP, because their numerical value is so important, that thinking of them in terms of the world within the game gets bumped to the back burner. I have the following suggestions on making them more than just a number on a page. Let’s start with AC.

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In my experience, it’s pretty typical to be in a combat encounter and hear something like, “Okay, roll to attack. What did you get? 15? Nope, that’s gonna be too low this time, you miss your attack.”

If a player hits with their attack, I often hear narrative on how they hit their enemy and how they deal damage, but when they miss, I feel like the details are more vague. “You swing your sword clear over the warlocks head, as he ducks just in time!” “You loose your arrow, but it whizzes past the bad guy! Because he ducked… just in time...” And basically just other variations of, “You tried, but you missed. The end.”

It’s a shame, because I feel that the reason a character misses their target is just as important as the reason they successfully hit their target, but it’s rare to hear armor class being mentioned within that narrative in greater detail. There are tons of factors to draw upon when explaining why an attack would miss. For sake of storytelling, try to explore those factors to give your narrative a more varied feel.

Let’s take a look at the very base armor class of a player character to begin with. A normal humanoid creature usually has an AC of 10 + dex. Or in other words, 10 + how agile and quickly they can react to attacks coming their way. So, that tells me that any attack roll that falls below 10 can be described as not even coming close. They wouldn’t even need to step out of the way! The target could have been a wooden dummy, and the attack would miss. If the roll were something like an 11, but the target adds enough dexterity for the attack to miss, then that can be narrated as the target actually needing to dodge the attack, like, “The throwing axe was headed right for the bad guy! Until he tilted his head.”

Then there’s armor thrown into the mix. If a roll is over 10, but still falls under the AC of the target, the description could be a combination of the target jumping out of the way and the weapon striking their armor, but without enough accuracy to deal damage. This idea works really well if the character is wearing heavy armor, since heavy armor has a fixed AC that is unaffected by dexterity modifiers. From a role playing perspective, that means it doesn’t matter how fast a character is, because heavy armor is too clunky to benefit from that kind of agility anyway.

The player or target didn’t move out of the way of an attack quickly enough, but it’s okay, because their armor did its job and protected the wearer! Add a shield to the mix, and now you can say it was deflected with a shield.

And of course there is cover to consider. If the target was standing in an open field, would that roll have hit them? Or, did that attack only miss the target because they utilized cover? Feel free to adjust your narrative to include if that attack strikes the nearby wall, or the arrow sticks firmly into that tree.

And finally, take the attributes that make up a character’s AC into consideration if that character is a class that has a special bonus to its AC.

In the barbarian’s case, their constitution modifier is added to their armor class, which means that anyone at that armor class without a con bonus would have been affected by that attack. But this player's a barbarian, so they don’t give a heckin hoot if they were cut with a dagger, because you didn’t roll higher than their con mod, dummy! A barbarian would just shrug it off and say something like, “It’s only a flesh wound!” Or you have the monk who adds their wisdom modifier to their AC, which illustrates a warrior so perceptive that they can read an opponent's moves, dodging out of the way before the attack is even executed. They’re like those characters in old-timey kung fu movies where the camera zooms in on their eyes as they watch, like, muscles flexing, and they know just where to go!

I could have sworn there was a class that added intelligence to their AC, like the war wizard or something else, but I’m either mistaken in thinking that there was a class like that, or I’m not looking hard enough, because I cannot find it anywhere. But that doesn’t mean you can’t just homebrew a class that has an intelligence bonus to AC and deflects glancing slashes and arrows with minute strands of defensive magic.

These are just a few factors that can determine why an attack would fail, but they are some of the most common reasons. Thinking of spells or environmental factors that would cause disadvantage or other negative modifiers opens up a whole new Pandora’s can of worms, but as those factors come up in your campaign, try to incorporate them into your narrative.

You don’t have to necessarily write out a breakdown of every player’s AC with thresholds and modifiers, saying ok they have a 10 + 3 to dexterity, but they’re a barbarian with a + 2 to con, and they’re wearing light armor, and they’re behind a tree and blah blah blah blah blah.

There’s not enough room behind the DM’s screen for all that nonsense. But if all those factors are available, just think of those bits of information as tools in a toolbox at your narrative disposal. No matter how low an attacker rolls, you could potentially draw on any one of those factors as a reason why an attack did not make purchase in their target.

If you want to retain at least a little bit of consistency though, you could consider making a note of what contributes the most to that character’s AC. A barbarian with low dexterity and high constitution would hardly make an effort to get out of an attack's way, knowing they can stand a few cuts or bruises with their high tolerance. A character in heavy armor and shield probably wouldn’t rely on moving either, simply keeping faith that their armor will hold. By making a note next to each player's AC of “dex”, “con”, “armor”, you can have a quick reference to guide narration with each player and take advantage of each character’s uniqueness, without expending a ton of room on the table that could be used for other notes. It helps paint a picture in your story of whether the character can simply take a hit with no effect to their stamina like they’re Tormund Giantsbane from Game of Thrones, or if they’re actively dodging attacks like they’re Aang from The Last Airbender.

The show! Not the movie…

Narrating on a gradient scale with multiple factors can do wonders for enhancing role play, instead of using just a pass/fail, hit/miss, black and white style of narrating.

So now we have a ton of ways to describe how the adventurers are inadequate, but what happens when they actually roll well?

When the party or enemy actually hits the target with their attack, how do we keep that narration interesting? A character’s hit points are the other side of that violent coin, and the idea of it may need some reimagining at your table.

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Okay, so how many times have you heard combat narrative that goes something like this?- “the goblin peeks around the corner with its bow drawn and looses an arrow! I rolled a 13 + his bonus to attack which means that’s a hit. The arrow pierces your leather armor and sticks in your shoulder! Blood squirting and gushing all over the place!! Take 5 piercing damage!” As vivid an imagery as that narrative creates, I do have a couple issues with it, and not just how close I was to the mic. The first issue I have is that imagery of an arrow sticking into a player’s shoulder and the disproportionate damage that mechanically comes with it just doesn’t seem balanced. At its very least, being hit with an arrow or crossbow bolt or stabbed or bludgeoned is enough to seriously injure anyone! But a low amount of damage like in this example doesn’t really do that narrative justice. Compare what is represented for any of the weapons to what is represented by an unarmed attack. The die rolled gets larger the more deadly a weapon becomes, but an unarmed attack does not have a dice roll. Rather, you only ever do 1 point of damage with an unarmed strike plus that character’s strength modifiers.

According to the players handbook, a “normal human average attribute” in D&D is considered to be a 10 or an 11, which means no modifier is added to the damage, so an average adult delivering a punch to my face would just be considered 1 damage! I know I’m no adventurer, but I would not want to receive a punch from any average adult person walking down the street, but the representation of taking 1 point of damage just isn’t as scary as the real world equivalent. By that logic though, you could kill a commoner with a stab of a dagger just as easily as punching them four times!

When I was little, my dad used to greet me with a playful jab to my shoulder. Could you imagine if doing that a couple times could kill people?! That’d be insane! What happens if my adventurer stubs their toe, you take 30 damage? Look, I’ve never been stabbed before, but I think I would take four punches over that any day, but, in D&D, both of those can just kill people with just as much ease.

When you consider the amount of weight that comes from just 1 point of damage, how can other amounts of damage be justified? (And before you answer, don’t worry! It was rhetorical, because I’m about to tell you!)

Because what is considered damage, those increments being chipped off your hit point total, they don’t have to necessarily translate to making contact with the opponent.

Now don’t get me wrong, describing a character as getting stabbed in the leg and shaking off the blow makes for a vibrant visual and acts as narrative that is easily digestible for your players. Rolling below a target AC means the target was not hit, and rolling at or above the target AC means the target was hit. But if you feel like your narrative has grown into something ridiculous, because by the end of a single combat encounter your players have so many arrows sticking out of their body that they look like human pin cushions, then my suggestion is to instead imagine the hit points, not as literal indicators to how many times they can be immersed in magical fire or kabobbed with a javelin, but as a representation of the character’s stamina.

This can especially be useful if you are attempting to have a more grounded campaign. As a character levels up, they gain more hit points with a bonus depending on how high their constitution modifier is, but that doesn’t mean that a veteran fighter can survive more stab wounds than a novice fighter. It just means that a veteran has built experience in circumventing the wound all together, whereas a novice is more prone to make mistakes.

The hit points represent a character’s combat prowess and know-how. It’s a character’s footwork and breathing techniques and instincts, not their skin becoming increasingly more arrow proof. Blocking a swing of a sword with a shield or having a hammer ricochet off your plated cuirass might not show any physical wear and tear to a character’s body, but it’s certainly going to take a toll on their stamina. In the Player's Handbook under the Hit Points section in chapter 9, it states “hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live and luck.” To me, reducing a character to 0 hit points doesn’t mean slashing them down to bits with a hundred cuts, but it means wearing them down and tiring them enough that the character makes a fatally wrong move. Mechanically, we see that as their final hit points. It’s a character with a hundred hit points being able to dodge fifty slashes of a dagger before being so worn out that they become sloppy, compared to a level 1 character who maybe only skilled enough to get out of the way of an attack just a couple times.

If you’ve played 4th edition, and you still have the tendency of saying a creature is “Bloodied” when they’ve hit half of their hit points, then you can use that idea to show progress in a combat encounter. A character could be narrowly escaping physical wounds by parrying and dodging blows, but receives a glancing cut at half health as an indicator that they are being worn down. This type of narration works in two ways, because not only does it create a more grounded narrative, but it also allows the times an enemy or a player are described as getting hit to become more impactful. If every single time a gladiator is hit with an attack, they are described as getting hacked away, it raises the bar for the DM when they are finally put down for good. By lowering the stakes of each attack, you ultimately deliver more impact when the blows matter.

Now, this is simply a suggestion on reimagining the narrative of the gameplay, and it doesn’t actually change any of the mechanics. If a character rolls high enough to pass an enemy’s armor class, the creature should still take damage for all intents and purposes, but try describing what happens as the enemy just nearly jumping out of the way, their chest rising and falling with heavy breaths! Test it with your players and see which they prefer. If you and your players want a more realistic setting, this style of narration may be the one for you, but if you and your players like larger-than-life descriptions, you could stick to a narration where each of those attacks that hit do make purchase. It is definitely satisfying to hear how your hero can be riddled with arrows without succumbing to those wounds, and it fits an epic-mythos type of setting, but I’ve found that surprising your players with exciting narrative becomes more difficult, when larger-than-life narrative has been established as the status quo.

Whether you wanna add gritty, realistic descriptive elements to your narrative or you wanna stick with this larger-than-life, epic-mythos, Odyssean style of narration, you can further the detail of your combat narration by knowing which modifier a player is adding to that attack. A warrior who uses their strength to dish out blows will attack in a more brutish way, while a warrior using their dexterity modifier for attacks might be more calculated and conserve their energy until a precise attack can be made. It’s the difference of slamming a hammer down on an enemy's shield and knowing the force will wear them down, even if it was blocked, versus faking out the enemy and striking at an exposed leg or arm with precision and deft speed.

It’s not something that needs to be drawn on for every single attack, but, again, it just serves as another tool in your descriptive tool belt. It can be handy to have those notes available for when a character makes a decisive blow, because that will allow you to enhance your narrative and give the table a satisfying end to that encounter.

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So we can incorporate armor class into the story’s narrative by considering each separate mechanical piece that makes up that character's AC and including any of those pieces in the descriptive portion of combat. We can also incorporate hit points into the story’s narrative by deciding if we want a more realistic approach, where successful hits wear down the opponents stamina, if we want a more fantastic approach, where opponents truly trade blow for blow or if we want an approach that’s somewhere in between.

That leaves us with the 6 core attributes; more examples of numerical values being so integral that we may often forget how the number actually applies in a narrative way.

Some of these attributes are easy to conceptualize: if an NPC is described as having shoulders so broad that they have to turn sideways to get through a door, and veins flexing in their neck when they look to their side, one can gather that their strength score is probably higher than average. If a character walks with a dancer's grace, stepping silently on floor boards that creak under anybody else, we can guess their dexterity must not be too bad either. If an NPC has a tattoo across their neck that reads “It’s Big Brain Time,” then their intelligence is definitely at least 18 or 19.

The attribute’s numerical value is important because it acts as a blueprint of how an NPC would behave, but when players react to a skill check or damage and say, “Jeez, how strong is this lady?!”, it’s easy to forget to view the number in the way it would be physically observed in your story. We might just glance down at our notes, see that they have a 20 in strength and tell the players, “Yeah, she’s really strong.” Instead, try to think of what “really strong” looks like, or what “really smart” looks like or how any of the attributes’ numerical values would be depicted and observed in the real world. It not only strengthens the narrative, but it also avoids simply giving the players the answer!

If you tell the players that an NPC’s constitution is, “like crazy high,” then the players know exactly that! But by providing what a high constitution looks like in this scenario, the players are able to draw their own conclusions. Now, this is really great for the sneaky DM, because the attributes don’t always directly equate to what players might expect them to look like. For example, a high charisma doesn’t always necessarily mean a character has to be talkative. In fact, an npc who overly blabs their mouth might actually have a lower charisma, whereas the city’s mob boss might command a strong presence, even though they rarely speak at all. If a character asks an NPC a riddle, and they’re able to solve it, that could mean they have a high intelligence. But if they can’t seem to solve it, or if they ask the player for the answer, that either indicates a low intelligence, or a highly intelligent character who is also wise enough to not reveal how acute they truly are. The only time I would ever give my players a straight answer about an attribute’s numerical value is if their character has a feat that allows them that information (like in the case of the Battle Master Fighter and the Mastermind Rogue).

If you’re not worried about being sneaky, and you have no qualms with the NPC revealing their nature, then those numbers act like a map to navigate your NPC’s persona. If you want to make an NPC particularly special, the skills list can be a great reference to help with that. Pick a skill or two that you’d like your NPC to have proficiency in! Now when you role play your above-average-intelligence NPC, you have a bit more clarity on how to exactly portray that. Are they proficient in history? Have your NPC spout off knowledge on historical events as they casually converse. Is your NPC proficient in nature? Have them scold a party member for getting too close to that sprig of toxicodendron diversilobum. “Ah! My apologies. I’ve a terrible habit of referring to flora by its proper title. You, no doubt, would likely know this simply as, poison oak”

And of course, you’re not limited to the attribute that is normally associated with each skill. If you have an intelligent character but want to highlight their proficiency in athletics, they could very well be spouting off knowledge about that subject, even though athletics is typically checked with strength. It just depends on what color you’d like to paint your character in, and how they’re being observed by the party.

Fortunately, there’s a plethora of skills to choose from to assist in role playing attributes; unfortunately, constitution is not among them. If your aim is to showcase an NPC’s constitution, that can be a little more difficult out of combat without a typical skill to associate it with. Unless they’re at a food eating contest, or standing out in the snow in common clothing or something.

But speaking of combat, that can act as a whole new area to role play attributes. As before, you’ve got the obvious attributes like strength and dexterity, which players can probably pick up on just by glancing at the armor the NPC is wearing or the weapon they’re holding. If they’re a spell caster, the players might pick up on certain attributes the NPC has points in based on how they’re casting those spells, but what I find really interesting is conveying the mental attributes for a melee character.

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Now this doesn’t apply strictly to melee characters, but I just think it’s interesting to kind of play with those mental attributes when it’s not as easy as seeing an NPC casting a spell. If they’re not using intelligence, wisdom or charisma as their spellcasting modifier, it can be difficult to pinpoint what attribute they have points in. So here are some ways to explore that.

The first of the three is intelligence! Intelligence is associated with a pretty hefty chunk of the skills list, particularly Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature and Religion. An intelligent fighter is a tactical one and would utilize their strength in these skills to help them in combat. That might look like using their knowledge of arcana to discern what spell casting level or type of spellcaster an enemy is based on the magic they use. It might look like recalling their knowledge of nature to ascertain a creature's vulnerability or resistance. They could use religion to remember that a temple to the god of fire would have a sacrificial chamber, and maybe you could trick the enemy into entering that chamber! Or they could utilize their history skill to tell the players that these ruins contain ancient Dwarven armor known to be resistant to high temperatures. This can also be portrayed without the help of the skills list by simply describing a more tactful fighter. An archer sees an enemy run behind a large boulder and doesn’t know if they’ll try to attack from the left or the right. The archer tosses a jar of alchemist fire on one side of the boulder, nocks their arrow, and watches the opposite side of the boulder, ready to shoot. An NPC who has a high intelligence thinks outside the box, or, dare I say, outside… the dice?

[laugh track where the crowd loses their mind at how funny that joke was]

And let’s move right along to wisdom! Wisdom is… interesting. It can be really difficult to discern wisdom from intelligence, especially when only conveyed through role play. Taking a look at the skills list, we find wisdom has a hefty share of its own. You’ve got Animal Handling, Insight, Medicine, Perception, and Survival. The key difference to me between intelligence and wisdom seems to be one's awareness. An intelligent character may know how to deal with an enemy when they’re standing in front of them, but they wouldn’t have any leg up on sensing the enemy’s approach. Wisdom is awareness. It’s awareness through perception, awareness through insight, awareness through intuition, gut feelings and fight or flight. With the associated skills, you could highlight a particularly wise NPC in a few ways. While a lone bandit approaches the party in an attempt to feign parley, the perceptive NPC might hear creaks in the floorboards above and know they are about to be ambushed. Animal handling could reveal that a monster that snaps at closeby party members but refuses to move forward, maybe defending a territory or might just be scared. Insight could show if an enemy intends to continue fighting or flee the battle entirely. Medicine may hint to the NPC that the thug talks big game, but the way they're clutching their ribs, there’s no way they can wield that battle axe effectively. And survival simply means they have a better understanding of their own mortality. A wise NPC in general combat would be mindful of their surroundings, not allowing themselves to get cornered by enemies or the environment and may even be able to use parts of the environment to their own advantage! Hashtag Razzmatazz..!

And lastly, charisma. Charisma will most likely be the least useful if everyone is already past the boiling point of “talking it out.” Skills associated with charisma are Deception, Intimidation, Persuasion and Performance. So talking, lying, yelling and handstands. While it may not do much good for any character already in combat, you could highlight proficiency in any of those skills for an NPC that is not directly involved in that combat. A barkeep who is particularly intimidating might tell the party and hostile patrons that if there’s so much as a scratch on his tables, nobody will be leaving the tavern with a full set of teeth. Or a helpful NPC might deceive the enemies searching for the party with an assuring, “They went that way!” Or make your unhelpful, yet persuasive, NPC become the first target of your party when they tell the baddies, “Please don’t kill me!! The adventurers you’re looking for are in the back room! I didn’t know who they were, they made me help them! Please show mercy!!” And performance? They might distract the bad guys while the party slips away? Or you could make them recite limericks when they fight Minotaurs. If you don’t want to utilize the skills list, and you just want to generally portray a charismatic NPC, have them be a leader figure. If the party needs to evacuate a town, maybe an NPC steps up as the leader and corral the rest of the town into evacuating while the players deal with the immediate threat.

Again, these are just suggestions on role playing the attributes of your NPC with particular skills guiding the focus on that attribute. If an NPC would figure out a piece of information without a check, you should consider making that same information available to a player’s character if their proficiencies and skill levels are similar. By making each and every skill a performable action you’re just going to add more worms to your already-open Pandora can of worms, so caution there too. For instance, there’s no hard rule for using a charisma skill in combat. If an NPC makes use of their intimidation skill as their action, and you rule that the enemy now has to succeed a contested roll of insight against the NPC’s intimidation check or be frightened, then prepare to have your players attempting those same skill checks in combat. In short, be mindful of what rules you create at your table, because once you’ve made a rule known at the table, I think it should be fair game for players, too and I’m sure that they’re going to expect that as well. (And mo’ rolls, mo’ problems).

I’ve recently taken a pretty deep dive into a book called, The Monsters Know What They’re Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters. It’s by Keith Ammann (I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly, but if I’m not, then I didn’t.) The cool thing about this book is that the author talks about how to role play and fight as each monster, but does so from a very non-meta way. It’s very much from the perspective of the monsters. The author has their own way of breaking down each monster's role as an ambusher, as a brute, depending on their dexterity, their strength, their constitution, their mental attributes; it’s very, very cool. One of the early examples in the book is, a lion and a tiger both hunt very differently from each other, and they learned how to hunt instinctually based on their own “attributes.” So it goes from the direction of, if these monsters did exist in the world, how would they evolve and how would they use their own understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses to effectively hunt? When the author of The Monsters Know What They’re Doing talks about Wisdom, he uses that as a guide for when the monster would flee combat- if they’re at half health, if they're severely injured beyond half health- that is what tells the monster when to get away from the situation because they will not survive. He also uses intelligence as a factor of if a creature knows to disengage or not. He kind of goes from a stance of, a creature has to be intelligent enough to know how to maneuver in a way to disengage properly from combat, which I think is kinda neat!

I bring up the book because there are no hard rules that state, “If a creature has less than X intelligence, it cannot perform the disengage action,” or, “If a creature has less than Y wisdom, it won’t flee until half health,” but it’s definitely something to think about, especially if your goal is to create a compelling and immersive world for your table. If you haven’t heard of it or you haven’t read it, you should definitely check it out! It’s a really cool read and a great source if you’re having trouble determining how to control creatures in a way they would instinctually behave.

I’ve definitely been a culprit of having goblins just charge straight into battle, but they have low strength, they have low constitution, and this book really paints a vivid picture of how they would probably really attack adventurers in the real world. It certainly goes really in depth, so it’s very useful for if you have an encounter, and you know what monsters you’re going to use, but if you have just general NPC’s, and you’re not sure how to quite roleplay them, look at their stats, and that should be a good guiding point.

Remember, explore what the AC of a character means in terms of the setting and what makes up their AC, because every single character will have a different style of combat and different reasons for why an attack might miss them. Try to use the context of the world when reimagining or creating new mechanics, and play with the context of that world depending on if you want a realistic setting or a more fantastic one. Pay attention to the numerical value of attributes, but don’t let that be the only value. Explore what those numbers mean in the context of your narrative and find ways that you can be impactful with your storytelling and the contextual reasons why things happen a certain way in your world, rather than a number on a dice telling you so. In short, never stop finding new ways to think outside the dice!

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Credits:

Written and recorded by Allen Niles

Logo design by Karolyn Moses

Intro music by Louis Rabago

Photos by Megan Abbott

Music transitions and BG found on Youtube Audio Library:

Sneaky Business by Biz Baz Studios, Tip Toes by Myuu, and Final Boss by Myuu