Talk:Asperger's Syndrome (3.5e Trait)

Ratings

Ghostwheel opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.

Getting +2 to a potentially prime stat and -2 to a dump stat is far beyond the scope of what traits do. An obviously min-max choice that doesn't fit with traits IMO as the downside doesn't really hurt whatsoever. If you want to fix it but keep them smart, given them a +2 bonus to all trained knowledge skills (or maybe 3-4 chosen at character creation?), and a -2 penalty on Bluff, Sense Motive, Intimidate, and Diplomacy. Still pretty min-max-y, but not to the point where it offends the senses.

	MisterSinister opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	What all the others have said. Also, brevity is the soul of wit.

	DanielDraco opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	So not only does it minmax the fuck out of any int-based build, but you get 3 bonus feats on top of that? Come on, dude. Also, everything that Lez said. As someone who has Asperger's and has known several others who also do, I have to especially agree that the severity is way off-kilter. At least for a typical case.

	Leziad opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	What Fox said, also flaws never grant benefits except the bonus feat. Also Asperger syndrome is not that extreme. Bonus on one of the best stat for the game in exchange for one of the wizard/erudite dumb stat.

Fluffykittens opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.

Mechanically:+3 feats and +6 int in return for bruising a bunch of dump stats. A trait masquerading as a flaw. Autistic people are not blinder, deafer, or worse at medicine than other people, nor are they unusually weak-willed or oblivious to their surroundings. Autistic people do not have unusually weak personalities. "(Both scores cannot be reduced to less than 1 by this flaw, but their modifiers can be reduced to less than -5.)" How the fuck does this work mechanically? Fluffwise: Autism does not work that way. All Autism is is a social deficiency to a varying degree- and Asperger's is a very mild form of that. A flat INT buff at the cost of 2 charisma is not very interesting or balanced. It isn't the stupidly broken monstrosity that it was before- but still, +2 to one stat at the cost of -2 from a dump stat is simply going to give a flat buff to the Wizard, Factotum, and Archivist. As a side note, traits usually don't affect your ability scores directly, because it can lead to stupid, senseless boosts to ability scores you need and penalties to ones you don't. Fluffwise, people with ASD aren't necessarily any smarter than the general population.

	Foxwarrior is neutral on this article and rated it 2 of 4.
	Well, it attacks the numbers, but only about as much as other traits do.

MinisterSinister: As far as I'm concerned, brevity is the soul of misinterpretation.

DanielDraco: I changed this considerably, but the earlier builds were meant to emphasize that Aspies really don't get social interactions. At all. As a result, they tend to be liabilities. Maybe not to the level of "I drop my trousers and wizz on the king!", but pretty darned close. I have Asperger's myself, which is why I built this in the first place. (I did base it somewhat off of myself... I shouldn't have included the Wisdom and perception nerfs, though, as that's really ADHD, not Asperger's.)

Fluffykittens: 3 feats sounds like a bit much, but the way I had this set up before, there was no way someone with this flaw could be anything but a liability in social situations. Yes, Charisma tends to be useless for anyone not built to use it, but this flaw pretty much precluded several classes. Out of the core alone, an Aspie sorcerer, paladin, cleric, or bard would be an utter joke. Heck, even a rogue, who has some uses for high Int, has much more need of a good Charisma score to actually utilize most of its skills. Also, there's no way in heck an Aspie could get away with Use Magic Device abuse. Also, an Aspie tends to quickly realize that he/she sucks balls at socializing, which drives them away from even trying to do it. That's a textbook weak personality. But the poor perception thing? Uh... actually, that would be ADHD. Why did I ever lump that into this?!? I must have been trying to amass as much suck as I could into one package. --Luigifan18 (talk) 19:08, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Do you have self esteem problems, Luigifan18? Or do you know you're a genius?

If Asperger's Syndrome made you better at being a Wizard but worse at every other class that can be invented, it would be overpowered. --Foxwarrior (talk) 19:13, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Holy moly, I didn't know we were so many here with Asperger's Syndrome. I guess that's a stereotype based on actual truth at the base, then. I do feel that the Intelligence bonus is too high: we're not THAT smarter, aren't we? I would drop it to two, as well as the Charisma (likewise, we don't have THAT weak a personality). Maybe an additional penalty to Sense Motive and Bluff, with a bonus to Knowledge and memory checks (as if they were ever used). Heck, maybe just replace all the stats with a penalty to social interactions and these bonuses, or maybe a Skill Focus...(that's actually how I intended to include it in my game)

On another note, that's one heck of an Aspie you're describing there. Isn't that rather borderline high-level autism? I'm lucky to be far from that level, not like the guy I knew who couldn't even recognize someone when they changed clothes. I still don't get who's friendzoning who, though... No enough vicious intentions, I guess. -HarrowedMind (talk) 19:46, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

The problem with modifying ability scores at all is that no ability score penalty can ever offset an ability score boost. Just find a class that uses the bonused score but not the penalized one, and suddenly your balanced tradeoff becomes a unilateral upgrade.

Fox: From my experience it seems to me that Aspies (myself included) tend to be very forthright about their condition and completely at peace with the limitations it imposes. It's probably not so mcuh a self-esteem problem as it is blunt realism.

HM: Aspies are often nerds, and vice versa. It's just a fact that there's a huge correlation there. The traits of those groups overlap quite a bit, so it makes sense. --DanielDraco (talk) 20:30, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh no, I'm surrounded!

Well, there have been several absurdly socially inept people here on this wiki over the years, and none of them have been any of you. --Foxwarrior (talk) 20:38, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

"Just find a class that uses the bonused score but not the penalized one, and suddenly your balanced tradeoff becomes a unilateral upgrade." Or just find a way to avoid making any social skills rolls- like use mind control, or planar bind a harem and then offer them up in exchange for favors. "Well, there have been several absurdly socially inept people here on this wiki over the years, and none of them have been any of you." Actual ASD disorders, including aspergers, do not mean that the person is a socially inept genius. People with aspergers tend to be socially inept, and tend to thus favor pursuits such as personal study which do not require social interaction, but these are generalities, not individual cases. Aspergers also tends to be attributed to far too many cases by therapists, IMHO.Fluffykittens (talk) 21:02, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Asperger's is strongly correlated with above-average intelligence. Aspies also tend to have an affinity for systematized and analytic thought. And they struggle with comprehension of various social concepts and cues, but are largely distinguished from other people in the spectrum by the fact that Aspies are usually very interested in learning to socialize properly — which means that, by and large, most of us do gain sufficient social skill to not particularly stand out as being among the "absurdly socially inept people". Now stop lecturing us on the diagnosis that we've been familiarizing ourselves with for years. All symptoms occur in trends -- none of them are rules. To imply that this makes them unusable in generalities is to pretty much dismiss the entire field of psychiatry. --DanielDraco (talk) 21:41, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

New idea

Instead of flat bonuses and penalties, I'll change this back to a flaw and have the effect be that you automatically fail any Charisma-based check on which you roll a natural 5, 4, 3, or 2. If you roll a natural 1, you fail really, really hard. And by that, I mean that you commit a massive faux paus. For example - calling Jesse Jackson a "filthy nigger". To his face. Or calling the Prime Minister of Israel a kike. Or... well, basically, you say something outrageously offensive and basically make everyone except for your closest friends instantly hostile towards you. (And sometimes you alienate your friends, too). What do you think? --Luigifan18 (talk) 21:12, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Do you enrage people 5% of the time when you speak?

Mechanically, it would be a somewhat amusing flaw, except that choosing not to make Charisma-based checks is too viable a strategy in this game for it to actually matter. --Foxwarrior (talk) 21:16, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Bad idea. For a Wizard, gaining for example spell focus: enchantment is much more useful than using any social skill. For the wizard, using mind control or bound creatures is a much more effective strategy than making social skills rolls yourself. Also, what Fox said.Fluffykittens (talk) 21:21, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

What if it also made enchantment spells easier to resist? (And, yes, I do tend to enrage people 5% of the time when I talk.) --Luigifan18 (talk) 21:44, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Luigifan: I find the 5% idea absurdly precise and highly questionable. - MisterSinister (talk) 23:20, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

MS: Agreed. We don't need more stupid critical failure rules. "What if it also made enchantment spells easier to resist?" You're still giving the wizard a +2 to INT at the cost of essentially nothing. I still don't see why you're using -2 CHA to to represent aspergers, since the CHA stat has to do with force of personality, not social interaction skill (although social interaction skills are influenced by force of personality).Fluffykittens (talk) 23:55, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

No, the +2 INT and -2 CHA are being taken out of this version. It's just being a liability in social situations. --Luigifan18 (talk) 02:33, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Most Psions, Psychic Warriors, Rangers, Soulknives, Wizards, won't use the social skills, as they aren't even on their class list. Then are also classes that have social skills, but don't need to use them (SOR, DRU, CLR). That's a huge number of the characters that will be simply getting a feat in exchange for being worse at something they wouldn't do anyways.Fluffykittens (talk) 04:46, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Charisma can scarcely be defined as "force of personality". Yes, I know that the SRD says it is, but it would not be the first time WotC have deluded themselves. What the hell does "force of personality" mean? Personality is a difficult enough concept to define, but now to try to develop some notion that it has a quantitative magnitude puts an extraordinary strain on its comprehensibility. It is better to look at its usage. There are two basic uses: social persuasion, and magic. Magic is all bullshit and works on the basis of arbitrary pseudo-rules, so we can ignore it as any source of consistency. So Charisma is one's ability to affect others' actions and perceptions in accordance with their own will. This requires an understanding of how other people think, and what behavior they expect — precisely what an Aspie struggles with. Now, a Cha penalty still doesn't work mechanically, but that's why it makes perfect conceptual sense, anyway.

There's no feat anymore. Check the page again, Fluffy.

If you are going to only give a non-combat downside (and a Cha penalty counts, because we need to look at the worst-case scenario where Cha is a dump stat), you need to restrict yourself to non-combat benefits. Skill bonuses would be appropriate. Knowledge is the most obvious choice. --DanielDraco (talk) 04:50, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

"There's no feat anymore. Check the page again, Fluffy." That was in response to his suggestion near the start of the section to make it a flaw once more. "Now, a Cha penalty still doesn't work mechanically, but that's why it makes perfect conceptual sense, anyway." Charisma is also used for stuff like disguise, intimidate, and perform. By the rules, a gnome bard with ranks in intimidate is scarier than an ogre barbarian with the same number of ranks.Fluffykittens (talk) 05:11, 25 November 2012 (UTC)