D&D 5E 5th Edition Intelligence

ad_hoc said:

People underestimate how smart Int 8 really is too.

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I am finding this in some ways to be the most fascinating assertion in the thread, and would love to hear more. I think the way individual players frame where a score of 8 falls on the human spectrum probably says a great deal about the assumptions they bring to the characters and the game.

I would have assumed an 8 in an attribute represents a pretty distinct "low average" - a person who is markedly behind the curve (notably undermuscled, or awkward, or unobservant, or - you get the idea). On the Fate scale, you'd mirror that with Poor, and a 10 as one tick up at Mediocre.*

But I suspect my assumption there is not universally shared, and other gamers might interpret an 8 to be much more solidly in the midrange of average - Fate's Mediocre, with a 10 as Fair instead.

I'm not sure which of these is "right" as intended by the designers, or if it matters. I imagine there's some room for individual interpretation there. And it sort of spotlights how easy it is to assume your own reading is obviously the correct one, at your peril.

(I still cock an eyebrow at the Commoner-with-10s-across-the-board representing everyone from tillers of soil to skilled artisans, though. But that's probably a bit afield for this particular discussion.)

*Ballparking, natch, with your standard disclaimer of the inadvisability of drawing direct lines between one system's math/simulation/assumptions and another's.

I put a zero behind the intelligence score and treat it as a rough IQ. 80 is functional, and able to be mainstreamed in school, but is going to be in remedial classes to graduate.

*Deleted by user*

My Paladin in the last campaign had a 9 and I played it having trouble with numbers and letters more than anything else. It was harder to read and write than it was to focus on the things he was good at so it largely fell by the wayside.

WAY up thrad someone posted that the Eldrich Knight archtype didnt need a good int, explain please, if you dont mind.

Blue said:

But then what about a witty and sociable player who builds their characters with another focus, having high other skills and/or great damage/survivability in combat. They don't have any social skills and Chr is their dump stat. But the player can talk up a storm. Should they get all of what they build their character around because of the mechanics AND all of what the other player build their character around because they are well-spoken?

You can talk a good spiel and as DM I may give Advantage or bonuses because of what you are saying, but the die rolls will determine how well it comes across to the NPCs. Anything else is unfair to the players who are building their character that route.

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I totally agree with this. An 8 Charisma character might be extremely talkative, nice and funny, but it doesn't mean the character has a forceful personality or is at all persuasive in arguments.

ProgBard said:

I am finding this in some ways to be the most fascinating assertion in the thread, and would love to hear more. I think the way individual players frame where a score of 8 falls on the human spectrum probably says a great deal about the assumptions they bring to the characters and the game.

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Personally, I see Intelligence 8 as somewhat below average. They get a -1 modifier, so they can do most of the things an Intelligence 10 can. When I play characters with 8 Intelligence, I play them as having some sort of disadvantage. They could have a lack of general knowledge (bad education), they might have trouble memorising things by rote (learning a new language), have trouble with mathematics, or just not be very good at logical deductions.

I try to treat the ability scores as being applicable only to the actual mechanics, as far as possible, and not have them affect the personality to any more extent than a player wants them to. Things such as coming up with battle plans (int), being talktative (cha) or coming with great advice (wis) feel more like background and personality traits than anything mechanical. If a player comes up with a plan, I wouldn't have them roll for it, unless the plan involves meta knowledge that the players have but the characters don't. Just like I wouldn't have a Con 8 character roll to see if they manage to ascend a stair or a Dex 8 character to roll for not cutting their fingers off while cooking.

I regard a stat of 8-13 as "ordinary". About two-thirds of the population of NPCs will fall in this range. The modifier is at most ±1, so it's not going to affect their everyday lives very much.

However, nearly all NPCs will have at least on stat that is out of the ordinary range (the chances of rolling 3d6 six times and getting 8..13 every time is only a fraction of one percent) and those abilities that stand out might will affect how they live their lives. An unusually strong peasant lad might be apprenticed to the village blacksmith, for example.

PC characters are exceptional, of course, and even if you use the array, a human PC will have three stats that are better than ordinary, not just one.

As to the equivalence of Int scores to IQ, the "times ten" rule is quick and easy but doesn't really give very good answers because the IQ scale is more compressed. A better rule-of-thumb is to take "ten times the Int modifier, plus 100" as a rough IQ score.

BoldItalic said:

However, nearly all NPCs will have at least on stat that is out of the ordinary range (the chances of rolling 3d6 six times and getting 8..13 every time is only a fraction of one percent) and those abilities that stand out might will affect how they live their lives. An unusually strong peasant lad might be apprenticed to the village blacksmith, for example.

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Do people assume that all NPCs roll 3d6 for stats?

You are going to end up with a lot of 18s and 19s in a random human village.

I would like to think that very high stats are extremely rare.

And yeah, an 8 is below average, but not extremely so. In game terms there is no difference between someone with an 8 intelligence and an education (proficiency) and a 12 intelligence.

An education should be much more important if we're trying to mirror reality.

If I were to quantify where I think an 8 intelligence is, I would say that person would not have trouble completing an undergraduate degree, though they might be likely to not have the interest as they have other talents.

ad_hoc said:

Do people assume that all NPCs roll 3d6 for stats?

You are going to end up with a lot of 18s and 19s in a random human village.

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Interesting question. I don't; I assume they use point-buy or a standard array.

<begin slightly OT diversion into NPC math>

So the standard array for heroic characters like starting PCs is a 27-point spread. For "average" commoners, it's a 12-point spread - the number of points necessary to get 10s across the board. So a middling-bell-curve standard array for commoners might be something like 12, 11, 10, 10, 9, 8.

For slightly more competent NPCs, you could use a 15-point array to represent the midrange of the kind of scores you'd get rolling 3d6, with a standard array of 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8.

Not that I do this kind of number-crunching for every NPC, but I do keep a cheat sheet of point-buy arrays handy for both sets of numbers (as well as for heroic builds) in case I think it's important to be sure an "average" NPC is statted in a believably non-exceptional way.

</diversion>

Yardiff said:

WAY up thrad someone posted that the Eldrich Knight archtype didnt need a good int, explain please, if you dont mind.

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That was me. A lot of the best spells for fighters are buffs like Shield, Absorb Elements, Blur, and Haste. These spells, and even Magic Missile, are just as effective whether your INT is 8 or 18. I'm not necessarily saying an Eldritch Knight ought to dump INT, certainly not if you want to use attack cantrips or Fireball effectively, but it's totally viable to do so. Which is a little odd, IMO.