D&D 5E How do you regain INT after an Intellect Devourer attack?

[Saeviomagy]

I think that there are games and plot setups that can work with "surprise, you need to go on a quest to fix bob!"

I also think that making a character completely non functional (petrified, permanently paralyzed, intellect devoured etc) is not the way to do this, because it removes the player from the game - they'd typically be better off if their character had permanently died so that they could just get on with it and roll a new one.

So - remove limbs, give crippling curses, reduce stats etc etc and make those conditions hard to fix, but don't totally eliminate the player from the game for an extended period of time while not allowing him to reroll.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think that there are games and plot setups that can work with "surprise, you need to go on a quest to fix bob!"

I also think that making a character completely non functional (petrified, permanently paralyzed, intellect devoured etc) is not the way to do this, because it removes the player from the game - they'd typically be better off if their character had permanently died so that they could just get on with it and roll a new one.

What is there to stop the player from doing this anyway?

The DMG acknowledges AD&D-style character trees. This seems like a grand opportunity to use one.

 

[Saeviomagy]

What is there to stop the player from doing this anyway?

Players usually don't like it when their character's die irrecoverably as a general rule. In this case, they're also being given some sort of hope that the character will get fixed, so they won't move on to a new character so easily.

Now, you could roll up a new character just while your old one is not quite dead, but that has it's own issues: Is the player temporarily or permanently playing the new character? What will happen when the old character is fixed - will they switch back? Is all the investment in this new character lost, or is the effort to fix the old character lost?

I think it can be done, it's just a lot less straightforward than partially crippling a character, and a bit less interesting in my book. "Remember that time your character was reduced to an int of 1?" makes for a better story than "remember the time your int was reduced to 0?" "No."

The DMG acknowledges AD&D-style character trees. This seems like a grand opportunity to use one.

Sure - character trees are a great way to handle this (and also avoid the "our party doesn't have X" issue). But they're far from universal.