D&D 5E Intelligence Ratings

[ezo]

Because he always intended for PCs to be a cut above the average human.

Which is why AD&D used 4d6 drop lowest as the default, not 3d6 like Basic.

 

[Blue Orange]

That is not dead which can eternal lie circumspect,
And with strange aeons even threads may resurrect.

3d6: you know, they were a lot more limited by what kinds of dice they had--'little brown book D&D' used 6-siders, and they didn't have computers to generate random variables that couldn't be made by dice. Expected value of 3d6 is 10.5, and that was close enough to 10, which is a nice round number and also evokes the average 100 IQ.

Now technically IQs are normalized to have a 100 average and 15 SD, and 3d6 has a standard deviation of 2.96, not 1.5, so the distributions aren't the same--3d6 varies too much to be IQ/10. You could go for 4d4 if you wanted an average of 10 (with a more appropriate SD of 2.24), and 5d3 is still too variable at SD 1.8 and 6d2+1 too un-variable at SD 1.2...but nobody thought that hard about it, and before computers they would have had to spend a lot of time messing around with pen and paper and/or go to the library to look up a statistics book (and who knew what the Lake Geneva public library had). The 1e DMG has a picture of a bell curve, so probably Gygax heard somewhere it was close to that, thought 'good enough for a game' and left it at that.

Dude just wanted a 'smarts' stat to go with the 'strength' stat.

 

[Gradine]

Intelligence in a game like D&D has only a tenuous relationship with IQ.

And likewise, "IQ" has only a tenuous relationship with the measurement of anything even remotely worth measuring

 

[pawsplay]

And likewise, "IQ" has only a tenuous relationship with the measurement of anything even remotely worth measuring

Well, it has its uses. But it's not as useful as a lot of people think it is. When combined with demographic information, it's fairly predictive of college success; in conjunction with other collateral information, it can give an idea of someone's vocational potential. But all of us have met and interacted with people with fairly low IQ scores with perfectly good social skills, who were good at their jobs. Maybe just the one thing, but you don't have to be particularly intelligent to do one job well, for many types of job. There are only so many ways a car can break; you can be a car mechanic with an IQ of 85 if you really, really love cars.

It's certainly true that "general intelligence" has limited applicability to life. IQ tests were originally designed to sort candidates for military or civilian job training, according to how fast they could be expected to learn new skills, and that's mostly what they are still good for. They aren't that useful for describing something essential about one specific person, except how good they are at taking IQ tests, and what kind of day they were having the day of the test.

(I am a former vocational employment specialist, and I have conducted IQ testing under clinical supervision.)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In creature statblocks I find that at least when it comes to normal animals, int 4-5 is almost completely skipped. Really stupid animals that work mostly on instinct like spiders and snakes have int 1. Smarter animals, ones you might think you could train, such as cats, dogs and horses have 2 or 3. But then animals that are thought to be really smart like dolphins and apes go directly to 6. I think 4-5 should be the place for things like elephants, corvids and monkeys, but elephants have int 3, crows 2,* and there are no monkeys. (Well there is a flying monkey, with the expected monkey int of 5, but that's not a normal animal.)

* This is definitely wrong. Crows certainly are not dumber than dogs, they're probably quite a bit smarter.

(My game has a character who can speak to animals, so I need to think about animal intelligence quite a bit.)

 

[Clint_L]

Intelligence in a game like D&D has only a tenuous relationship with IQ.

Agreed, and IQ has only a tenuous relationship with intelligence. I passionately despise the way IQ has been misused in education for generations, to the detriment of innumerable students.

 

[Echohawk]

Out of curiosity, as I expect you'd be the one whose done the research @Echohawk - do you recall any 1E/2E monster blocks specifically rating other ability scores, especially Wisdom or Charisma?

Not in stat blocks. On rare occasions, one of the other abilities (usually Strength) is mentioned is the description if it seems relevant for a particular monster.

Looking at the second edition Monstrous Manual as an example:

• The talking owl is given a Wisdom of 21.
• The aerial servant has a Strength of 23.
• Pech have 18/50 Strength.
• Jann have a Strength of at least 18.
• Most of the giants have specific Strength scores mentioned or a range of scores specified.
• Hags have a least 18/00 Strength.
• An ogre has 18/00 Strength.
• Minotaurs have a Strength of 18.

 

[I'm A Banana]

When combined with demographic information, it's fairly predictive of college success; in conjunction with other collateral information, it can give an idea of someone's vocational potential

Correlation isn't causation, of course, and it shouldn't be surprising that college success and good jobs go hand in hand with a lot of things OTHER than "intelligence."

IQ tests were originally designed to sort candidates for military or civilian job training, according to how fast they could be expected to learn new skills, and that's mostly what they are still good for.

Not exactly. They were originally designed to identify if French schoolchildren needed academic help rather than to be sent to asylums, and then quickly adopted by eugenicists. Their application in America during WWI to identify officer candidates was spearheaded by a eugenicist who believed that Northern Europeans were superior to Southern and Eastern Europeans.

They aren't that useful for describing something essential about one specific person, except how good they are at taking IQ tests, and what kind of day they were having the day of the test.

Worth repeating!

Our ability scores in D&D correspond more to genres of hero rather than to anything measurable in real people. They ignore things like the link between power and agility, how exercise and illness affect the mind, how willpower affects endurance, how "seeing something hidden" isn't really related to "getting a read on someone," what affects reaction time for your initiative roll, etc., etc. They're about as useless in describing reality as alignment is.