[RPG] minimum ability score

ability-scorespathfinder-1e

New campaign brings new characters and looking at the first sheet I see Int 7, Cha 7. Discussing this with my party members one of them said that it is even possible to drop Cha and Int to 5 choosing an orc. I do not want to discuss if this is reasonable. But I am curious if there is an offical minimum to the ability score when you create a character.

Characters are created using the 15 Point buy method.

Best Answer

The minimum score before racial modification when using Point Buy is a 7.

See this short explanation from the SRD (emphasis mine):

Purchase: Each character receives a number of points to spend on increasing his basic attributes. In this method, all attributes start at a base of 10. A character can increase an individual score by spending some of his points. Likewise, he can gain more points to spend on other scores by decreasing one or more of his ability scores. No score can be reduced below 7 or raised above 18 using this method. See Table: Ability Score Costs for the costs of each score. After all the points are spent, apply any racial modifiers the character might have.

So what your players are doing is allowed; dropping scores to a 7 gives them extra points to spend on other scores that are more important to them. And if their race gives them an additional penalty to the stat they dropped, they will indeed start with a 5 in that ability.

That said, you might want to have a talk about what it means to your players to have a 7 Int & 7 Cha. People have very different ideas about that; some claim it's just a mechanical thing and it doesn't matter, others expect such a character to be severely stunted in their ability to think and socialize. Make sure you and your players are on the same page there, or someone might end up disappointed with the game.

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