Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
It's established in the fiction of Sherlock Holmes as a character that he is smarter than everyone around him excepting Moriarty -- the only other person to challenge Sherlock's genius. He has a world class memory, and learns at a prodigious rate. According to any measure of intelligence, those traits clearly mark him as above average. That it can be argued that Sherlock Holmes was of at least above average intelligence is utterly baffling. Sherlock Holmes is defined as a genius.
Utterly nonsensical. Firstly, the PHB defines 10-12 as average in ability score. 5 is below average, by definition of the game. Secondly, averages don't exist in single samples, so, what? And thirdly, are you seriously making this argument because you truly believe that a 5 INT is not below average, or are you doing this to argue?
You misunderstand bias. Regardless of whether or not you think the cited facts are correct, using those premises to come to the conclusion I have is unbiased. You treat the premises as true, and you use only those to arrive at the conclusion in deductive logic. Doing so without coloring with additional personal belief is unbiased.
Now, you can question the premises, as you've done (poorly), but a conclusion logically drawn on those premises is unbiased.
Yes, that would be 'c', and representative of 'frogs can't take IQ tests' train of Iserth's thinking. It would have nothing to do with 'turn the dial to 'S'', though.
However, I question the practice of taking the player's declaration as sacrosanct is really compatible with making it meaningless in effect. Allowing the player to declare whatever they want, but unless it meets your definition of what's allowed you just describe it has happening in a meaningless way really isn't that different from just saying 'no.' In fact, I'd argue it's more damaging, because it doesn't directly deal with the mismatch of expectations, meaning rendering the actions meaningless adds to the player's sense that nothing he does matters and/or reinforces that the game you're playing is ridiculous, with arbitrary outcomes, so might as well not take it seriously and declare random things to make the DM dance. Also, it wastes the characters action whereas a 'no, you can't shoot lasers out of your eyes, declare a different action,' or a 'you can declare that, but I'll just rule it ineffective and you'll waste your action, would you like to do something else, instead' are both more direct ways to deal with the situation that doesn't punish the player.
