Agreed. If Lunk the boar-milker goes on a quest to find Quarl's mystical tiara of intellect and (against all odds and in spite of his natural deficiencies) manages to actually secure the item, then more power to him in his new life as Lunque, Solver of Differential Equations (or at least Lunk the Moderately Competent).Bilgewriggler wrote:I think a distinction needs to be made between bending the rules to promote character survival (which I agree conflicts with the letter and spirit of the DCC rulebook) and working with a player to create story situations that allow low-stat characters to be playable and fun. There's no reason you can't throw in story hooks that could lead to an Intelligence-increasing magic item or phenomenon, for instance, so long as you put real challenges between the PCs and the goal they're questing for, rather than making it a "gimme."
Story-based help is the kind of help I meant when I talked about helping out a sickly character who survived the funnel.
And I think Merl makes an excellent point about using a point of spellburn to cast a lost spell. All but the feeblest of characters ought to be able to keep casting for quite a while unless the dice are just against them.
Though I don't think this has anything to do with granting a "boon" because a player deliberately chose to play a dumb wizard character. If a 15-intelligence wizard made it his mission to swell his already bulging brain with magical augmentation, I would give him the same opportunity to find and don Quarl's tiara.