We recently started up a new Pathfinder game. Same group as before, but we had to stop our previous campaign because the DM's computer died. Like, totally died - hard drive unrecoverable. And this DM puts tons of time into his worlds, so imagine getting through half of Dark Souls on the hardest setting, then your system's save file gets corrupted. It was like that. Anyway, in this new game, we all roll up characters using a method called Focus and Foibles. Pathfinder has six ability scores, and with this method you get an 18 to one of them, an 8 to one of them, and the remaining four are figured by rolling 7+1d10. Anyway, one character really had a bad day with these rolls, and here's how it worked out:

MERCY KILLING

The character in question wanted to be an arcane caster, and had some very grandiose plans. He was going to be up front, kicking ass, buffing himself, and controlling the battlefield. Then he rolled his stats. Take a guess. Lower. No, even lower. His stats ended up at 8, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18. He let out a long, pained sigh after that, and went quiet for a while, pleaded with the DM to reroll (who was in a bad mood at the time and said no), and then finally said "Yeah, I got a character in mind for this."

He came back to us with an overweight, tired, aged gentleman named Jonah, an Arcanist (new class still in the testing phase). We started the campaign at level 3, so we figured that he would have at least a few useful abilities. After all, he had somehow made it to old age with only 13 HP, a base armor class of 8, and abysmal saves. We marched into our first encounter, ready to kick ass. Our fighter did surprisingly high damage with just a punching dagger; our barbarian had an absurd amount of HP, was taking hits like a champ, and was slicing down foes left and right; I was doing respectable damage with Mind Thrust (I'm a psion) and providing a decent amount of healing; the rogue did his little flanking thing; and the wizard stepped back to summon something truly awesome. After the first round, we were definitely ready to welcome some reinforcements to spread the ogres out a bit, and what does the wizard summon? A frog. Literally, a frog. Well, okay, it was a -celestial- frog, but that just meant it glowed slightly when it croaked. And croak it did, for it had only 4 HP, missed its one little bite attack, and then was turned into chunky salsa when one of our NPC allies blasted the area with a Flame Strike. The wizard wasn't really sure what to do after that. He didn't have a crossbow, sling, darts, or anything else, but he still didn't want to die, so he cast Shield (+4 to his AC for a few rounds). The rest of us made short work of the ogres, I healed us all up, then we moved up to the next fight.

This time, I don't want to use so much mana, and there's only two ogres, so I stick to my crossbow. The frontliners do their thing, I manage to pull off a really lucky crit and nearly headshot one of the ogres, and the wizard? He casts Mage Armor (+4 to AC for a few hours). And then he just stood back and twiddled his thumbs. The rogue had gone AFK by now, so he was out of the fight (more on him later though), and the fighters and me had resigned ourselves to the fact that we were the only ones doing anything worthwhile. After we drop one of the ogres, and it reaches the second turn where the wizard does nothing, the DM has pity on him and just GIVES him a wand of magic missiles so he can at least be marginally useful. The wizard takes to that like a pro and starts doing 1d4+1 damage a round....which is rather insignificant compared to our fighters doing 15-30 damage a hit (and they hit all the time) and myself doing 1d10-3d10 damage based on how powerful I want to manifest my Mind Thrust.

We go through a few more encounters, these getting more difficult for casters because the enemies all have magic resistance and high will saves. In one of them, the wizard gets hit -once- and is down to 1 HP. After that, and being relegated to Magic Missile duty for....ever, the wizard's player is feeling very down because he can't contribute to any fights. But hey, we just leveled up! Surely that'll open some new doors for him and let him do something awesome! He rolls his HP for the next level....and gets a 1. If you didn't have to earn at least ONE HP per level, his negative con modifier would have actually made him LOSE HP that level. At that point, we joke that he would commit seppuku out of shame...and he does, figuratively speaking. The DM explains that given the situation, he will allow the player to make a new character without penalty just this once, which the player happily agrees to. He rolls his new stats....and gets 8, 9, 10, 10, 11, 18. He falls silent and the group bursts into laughter, but the DM is feeling merciful. He lets the guy get a reroll, which turns up something half-decent, and then another reroll, which turns up a very impressive 8, 14, 14, 16, 16, 18. While he ponders what kind of character to make, we ponder what to do with old Jonah. We posit a few suggestions for how to kill him, but then ultimately decide that he hasn't really done anything to deserve that. He's allowed to retire in peace.

The DM is probably going to be much more lenient regarding really bad ability score rolls from now on, but hopefully the player has learned a thing or two about playing arcane casters, like always carrying a fallback weapon and keeping mage armor up constantly.