D&D 5E So 5 Intelligence Huh

[TheCosmicKid]

No, just Intellgence-based. I get it, and I think that's a double standard.

My point is that nobody is imposing, advocating, or tentatively suggesting any restrictions on attempting Intelligence-based tasks either. If you think anyone is, you have misinterpreted the conversation. And if you think I am wrong about this, I invite you to demonstrate it by showing me this imposition, advocacy, and/or tentative suggestion.

If knowing and acting on what the Underground is is that important to the plot then it would have served the game better for the DM to choose a piece of information about the game world that isn't known to the players at the table, and put the acquisition of that knowledge behind an Intelligence check of appropriate difficulty.

Why is this suddenly the DM's problem? A problem for which your proposed solution may require some judicious mind reading? And even granting the DM's telepathic abilities are up to the task, do you really think a player knowing a lot about London (or Waterdeep) should discourage him from running his adventures there? Isn't it easier just to take the advice that's right there in the DMG, and keep player and character knowledge distinct?

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Here's what I would suggest to Average Arthur: Try your best to figure out stuff on your own and avoid ability checks - work on improving your player skill.

A character concept the success of which is contingent on the player gaming the system to avoid the rules ramifications of his decisions at character creation? Probably a bad idea. It's unstable. I would suggest instead harmonizing character portrayal and character sheet so that the character concept can survive a collision with the actual rules of the game being played.

But also write a flaw for the character that says "I'd eat my cap before I admit I'm wrong."

You're now advising the player to alter his portrayal of the character.

Also, encourage another player to create a cleric named, I dunno, Watson whom you consult for advice before making decisions. The cleric's guidance spell will give you another 1d4 to your ability check and perhaps his advice even Helps, which grants advantage.

He doesn't want to portray Sherlock like Michael Caine did in Without a Clue -- an idiot for whom Watson actually does the heavy lifting. He wants to portray Sherlock as a straight-up genius.

 

[iserith]

A character concept the success of which is contingent on the player gaming the system to avoid the rules ramifications of his decisions at character creation? Probably a bad idea. It's unstable. I would suggest instead harmonizing character portrayal and character sheet so that the character concept can survive a collision with the actual rules of the game being played.

It's not "gaming the sytem." It's playing the game. Smartly. Even if my ability scores are in line with my concept as you might want them to be, I'm still going to strive to avoid ability checks.

You're now advising the player to alter his portrayal of the character.

Allow me to put it another way, since clearly my humor was lost on you. I would advise the player to create personality traits, ideals, bonds, or flaws that fit his or her concept and can be played to fairly easily so as to gain Inspiration to apply to Intelligence checks. Play to your concept and get resources you can apply toward shoring up your weak areas. That seems like a good incentive to drive players toward roleplay, wouldn't you say?

He doesn't want to portray Sherlock like Michael Caine did in Without a Clue -- an idiot for whom Watson actually does the heavy lifting. He wants to portray Sherlock as a straight-up genius.

Nothing about what I suggested necessitates Watson doing all the heavy lifting - that's just how you choose to perceive it. They discuss matters. Sherlock's player gets a bonus to the check. The mechanics are giving incentive to interact and develop a relationship with another character. Is that bad?

 

[Yardiff]

The rules provide the modifiers, the scores are the bounds in which the player CAN be considering character options, if they want.



A lot of games just deal in modifiers rather than ability scores that determine modifiers. I would say the reason D&D doesn't do this is simply tradition, especially since the rules are silent on how a player must roleplay a character with a particular ability score.

Why dont you go on twitter and ask a couple of the developer how they'd ropleplay peticularly low and high mental ability scores and see what they have to, might give you an indication of tradition was the only reason ability scores were kept in the game.

 

[iserith]

Why dont you go on twitter and ask a couple of the developer how they'd ropleplay peticularly low and high mental ability scores and see what they have to, might give you an indication of tradition was the only reason ability scores were kept in the game.

What difference does it make how they choose to play those scores? It makes no difference to me how you choose to play them either. You and I might play an Intelligence 5 character pretty much the same way. However, some assertions were made in this thread that the rules mandate we roleplay in particular ways based on our characters' ability scores. That Intelligence is reasoning and therefore low Intelligence is low reasoning and if you don't play with low reasoning (whatever that means) you're roleplaying wrong. I reject this. It's a statement of preference, nothing more.

 

[citystar]

The last time I played a character with 6 Intelligence the DM made a rule my character could only speak words without A, I or L in them. This simple rule gave me a huge headache whenever I needed to communicate much to the amusement of the party as I sat there working out what words I could use without 'breaking the rules' of having such a low Int score. Since then I decided to play barbarians that could actually read and write to avoid a situation like that again. That character, just for the record, was everyones favourite character including myself due to his heroic actions. Actions he just had extreme difficulty bragging about in the local tavern over a few mugs of ale...

 

[Maxperson]

How low, exactly?

Is it "I thought up a few ideas, but I'll choose the one I find more entertaining rather than the one I think is likeliest to succeed" low?
Is it "I have only ideas that seem sort of smart to me coming to mind, so I'd better not act on any of them in character" low?
Is it some other quantification of "low", rather than just "lower than a higher score would be" which is an entirely different thing?

Please quote a source found in the 5th edition rule set that indicates to you which "low" is the right one, and cannot be equally supportive to the idea that every score in the entire possible range is roughly equivalent to whatever the players' capabilities actually are (for clarity: meaning anything from 1 to 30 in my character's Intelligence score makes my character roughly as intelligent as I am).

You keep asking that question as if it means anything at all. It doesn't. For that question to have meaning, I need to be insisting that a 5 int be roleplayed identically. Until then, a low int = low reasoning ability is good enough.

 

[Maxperson]

No it isn't.

100% is.

Unintelligent people think they are smart enough to solve problems all the time.

Which is NOT anything I've ever said is a bad thing. We are not talking about the PC thinking he's helping, but doing a bad job at it. We're talking about the PC actually being really good at puzzles only because the player is good at them in defiance of a low int.

So what did you mean by roleplaying as having a higher Strength being a problem?

Just forget strength. It's a really piss poor example since it has hard numbers which force weakness. It's the mental abilities which lend themselves to the sort of roleplaying abuses being described here.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

It's not "gaming the sytem." It's playing the game. Smartly. Even if my ability scores are in line with my concept as you might want them to be, I'm still going to strive to avoid ability checks.

Sure. But you're not going to avoid all of them. (Or, if you are, then why did you spend US$50 on a D&D book when you could be freeform roleplaying with your friends for not a cent?) And when an ability check does come up, at least your high-Int character will actually be likely to succeed at the tasks that your concept says he's supposed to be good at.

I would advise the player to create personality traits, ideals, bonds, or flaws that fit his or her concept and can be played to fairly easily so as to gain Inspiration to apply to Intelligence checks.

What's wrong with advising the player to pick ability scores that fit his or her concept? The simplest and most reliable way to have a bonus on an Intelligence check is to have a high Intelligence score.

Nothing about what I suggested necessitates Watson doing all the heavy lifting - that's just how you choose to perceive it.

It's not just how I choose to perceive it. If Watson for whatever reason isn't in the room, then dumb-Sherlock is useless.

 

[Hriston]

My point is that nobody is imposing, advocating, or tentatively suggesting any restrictions on attempting Intelligence-based tasks either. If you think anyone is, you have misinterpreted the conversation. And if you think I am wrong about this, I invite you to demonstrate it by showing me this imposition, advocacy, and/or tentative suggestion.

Here's a pretty clear statement that the rules of the game limit the roleplaying choices of a player of a low-Intelligence character vis-a-vis attempting to solve riddles.

If you are also not roleplaying out what the game tells you is limited by a low int score, you are doing it wrong. Per the rule there, a PC with a 5 int has a diminished ability to reason, so he's not going to be running around solving riddles.