D&D 5E Making Intelligence Less of a Dump Stat

I'd like to make Intelligence less of a dump-stat in 5th Edition, and I'm stuck. I'd like to solicit some fresh ideas and feedback from you all. For whatever reason, this stat seems to get tanked 9 times out of 10 and there isn't much consequence for dropping it as far as possible. I'd like to change that with a house rule, so that tanking Intelligence is at least as unpleasant as tanking Dex or Wis. Here are the ideas I've come up with so far.

Idea 0: Don't Worry About It
Yes, I suppose "do nothing" is always a valid approach. If everyone in the party would like to tank their Intelligence in order to get an extra point in whatever, who am I to argue? As a DM, I can always get creative and inject consequences into the story--the party ends up getting cheated more often, they keep finding stuff that they can't make sense of, or NPCs take advantage of their gullibility, that sort of thing. (And I can invent new monsters and new spells and such to exploit/punish them directly for tanking Intelligence, too, but that feels like a dick move since the players aren't breaking any rules. There's nothing wrong with having a dump stat, I just wish Intelligence wasn't such a consequence-free, obvious choice.) It disadvantages low-Int characters in subtle ways that they might not even be aware of--kind of like me in real life.

Idea 1: Bonus Proficiencies
The character gains a bonus language or tool proficiency for each point of Intelligence bonus...so a character with a 15 Intelligence would get two tool proficiencies, or two languages, or one of each. The idea here is that higher intelligence makes it easier to learn languages and master different skills, very reminiscent of earlier versions of the game. I suppose I could open it up to weapon or skill proficiencies; but that seems like a fast track to cherry-picking and other exploitation...I'd rather not. This rewards characters for not tanking Intelligence rather than penalizing those who do, and it's my favorite option so far.

Idea 2: Magic Item Attunement
Intelligence determines how many magic items may be attuned to the character at one time. The number of magic items a character may have attuned might be equal to 3 + their Intelligence modifier (minimum 1). Or maybe characters with Int 13+ can attune 4 magic items, while those with Int 9 or less can only attune 2. The math will need to be polished, of course, but the idea here is that higher intelligence makes it easier to understand and manipulate arcane forces. Wizards will be able to attune to more magic items than other characters on the whole, which kinda makes sense to me. I like this idea, but tampering with magic item attunement makes my Spidey Sense tingle.

Idea 3: Intelligent Initiative
(Hat tip: [MENTION=6799009]Phineas Q. Conundrum[/MENTION], [MENTION=6868337]Spohedus[/MENTION], others)
Initiative is based on Intelligence, not Dexterity. Low-intelligence characters will be slower to "put two and two together," and are therefore slower to recognize danger, which means they have lower Initiative. A less-severe way to handle this is to have Initiative be based off of Dexterity or Intelligence, whichever is lower. This is a great idea for a number of reasons, but especially for its simplicity. Players hate going last in initiative, for some reason. Never understood that.

Idea 4: Reduced Learning Time
(Hat tip: [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], others)
Intelligence is a measure of a character's learning capacity, so it makes sense that highly-intelligent characters would learn things more quickly than others. And it would explain why it took me so long to earn my engineering degree. The amount of downtime that characters need to learn new languages or tools is dependent upon their Intelligence modifier...something like +/- 10 days per point of Intelligence modifier. (I know that there are new rules for downtime in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, but I'm hesitant to allow stuff from non-PHB sources--because as soon as I do, I open the floodgates and my players assume Xanathar's Everything is Allowed now.)

Thoughts? Criticism? Mockery?

1/10/18: Thanks for the new ideas, everyone. Keep 'em coming!

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1/16/2018: Thanks for the input everyone, here's what I ultimately went with. From my house rules:

"Intelligence determines how many magic items your character may have attuned at any one time, as described below:
-- Characters with Intelligence 9 or less may attune 2 magic items (one fewer than described in the PHB).
-- Characters with Intelligence 10-15 may attune 3 magic items (as described in the PHB).
-- Characters with Intelligence 16+ may attune 4 magic items (one more than described in the PHB)."

I put a lot of thought into it.

I went with the +1/-1 model for magic item attunement because it worked in two directions: it gave a bonus for having a high Int as well as a penalty for having a low Int. I set the requirements high enough to avoid cherry-picking, but low enough to make them attainable-yet-difficult: mid-level characters will have to struggle over whether or not to take feats, boost their primary stat, or boost their Int to gain one extra attunement. And lastly, I capped the bonus/penalty at 1 point to avoid The Wizard Problem, as well as magic item exploitation--intelligence boosting magic items aren't going to help you gain attunements.

Anyway. I'll keep you guys posted on whether or not the attunement tweaks cause problems down the road.

Don't worry about it. With a standard array, everyone has a "dump" stat of some kind. Some day, they'll run across a foe that uses a spell or ability that hits that dump stat, and it'll hurt a bit, but I wouldn't go out of my way, whether it be Charisma or the like. What I might encourage is to "play your stats." If you're opting for an Intelligence 8, you're playing a below-average intelligence where things don't come as quickly to them as others.

In the old days, extra languages were a reasonable benefit, and it opens up more role-play avenues, especially if you're in a structured campaign that doesn't incorporate the downtime to pay to learn new languages.

Definitely don't go extra attunement, that's pretty overpowered.

Also see post from earlier this year: Making Intelligence less of a dump stat

See, now, I searched for another thread along these lines and couldn't find one. Thanks for the link, I'll go check it out.

And yes, I know that everyone has a "dump" stat of some kind. My goal is to make Intelligence a little less of the obvious choice. You know, make it a little more important, make people think twice about it. Like Dex.

I find simple things like calling for more Nature Checks instead of Survival Checks, and more Investigation Checks instead of Perception Checks helped quite a bit in teaching my table to not dump Int.

I made a character with Int as a dump stat once. First monster we encountered was an intellect devourer. Then I made another character

Initiative with Intelligence modifier. Makes everything better. Also, fewer Perception when it should be Investigation. I've scared my players just enough to where its not always Int 8.

[MENTION=6802553]BookBarbarian[/MENTION] describes the gist of the solution. More Intelligence checks.

On a side note, has anyone ever felt condescended to when a DM says "Make an Intelligence check?"

We do the following things at our table to deal with this and have been pleased with the results.

- Initiative bonus is the higher of DEX or INT.
- At character creation, you get a bonus number of languages, skills, or tools equal to your INT score, BUT they must be selected from your class and background options.
- We put a bit more oomph behind knowledge skills and are quicker to grant disadvantage on rolls for characters who have no background in the subject or knowledge skill.

We do the following things at our table to deal with this and have been pleased with the results.

- Initiative bonus is the higher of DEX or INT.
- At character creation, you get a bonus number of languages, skills, or tools equal to your INT score, BUT they must be selected from your class and background options.
- We put a bit more oomph behind knowledge skills and are quicker to grant disadvantage on rolls for characters who have no background in the subject or knowledge skill.

I'll just echo that with standard array and point buy, leaving it as-is isn't a balance issue.

Yeah, I can create traps and monsters and stuff to "zing" the players for dumping Intelligence. (Or any stat, for that matter.) But that's not really what I'm going for here. I mean, there's nothing wrong with having a low stat, and it can be a lot of fun from a role-playing perspective. It's just lame when every character at the table has the same one, and for the same non-RP reason.

I wanted to explore ways to make Intelligence more important so that the players will think twice before dumping it during character creation. Because the problem I'm seeing is that they barely give it any thought at all.

I really like the suggestion of making Initiative depend on Intelligence instead of Dexterity. That is beautiful.