did you know that by stat requirements, minsc shouldn't be able to be a ranger?
D&D 5E So 5 Intelligence Huh
did you know that by stat requirements, minsc shouldn't be able to be a ranger?
haha no I did not! But yeah he never felt like a ranger either, except maybe Boo
the details: becoming a ranger requires
str: 13
dex: 13
Con: 14
Wis: 14
Minsc fills the first three, but the last one...
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ExploderWizard
Hero
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
A 5 int is more than just a -3 penalty. It also has an IQ equivalence of approximately 10xint number. So a 5 int will correspond to roughly a 50 IQ. As has been pointed out, it's barely smarter than a baboon. When dealing with someone who is barely smarter than a baboon, it will not require prolonged contact to figure it out. Also, stupid people would go adventuring. Why? Because they're too dumb to figure out that they shouldn't. Homer has adventures all the time.
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
Where is this written?
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
It was written in the first three editions in various places. Over on the D&D boards I posted multiple times where the official 3.5 Q&A said as much. It boils down to if you don't run intelligence that way, you are not playing intelligence. You are playing something else. Intelligence is not, "Something with the intelligence of a vegetable can think of everything that a 20 int person can, eventually."
Mercule
Adventurer
It's somewhere in the 1E books. I checked the 1E PHB description of Int, but didn't see it. I know it's at least semi-official from 1E, though.
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
Mercule
Adventurer
In 2E, I played a Berserker (from the Viking Handbook) with a 4 Int and 5 Wis (or vice versa). He was mentally below the Ranger's bear companion*. Otherwise, his stats were pretty exceptional. I've told the story before, but the character was created at about 2 AM on the Friday after a particularly grueling college mid-terms. A 4 Int was about the best I could muster, anyway. I genuinely forgot stuff like other players' names more than a few times during the first session playing the character.
It just worked and I was able to find a Zen groove to return to the character for quite some time. I had to be willing to ignore a certain level of self-preserving instinct. That worked largely because I was the biggest and strongest meat shield available, so the rest of the party watched out for me and just pointed me in the direction of things they wanted destroyed (really, what else do you do with a Berserker, anyway?). Because the character was being added to a higher level (7th or 8th, IIRC), we went straight to some tougher foes. Within the first couple sessions, we found a dragon -- which I immediately charged. Someone had cast fly on my character, so I continued to chase the dragon, even after it took to flight. I was horribly outmatched, but the Psion did something that caused the dragon to believe the next attack was a mortal wound and fall unconscious. Normally, that would have been a minor annoyance as he woke up after the next attack, but we were high enough for terminal velocity to be a factor, so he plummeted his death. Since he died after taking just one wound from my axe, I was clearly a natural dragon slayer.
The ensuing god complex was fodder for all sorts of great events the party had to bail me out of -- including walking through a swamp yelling "Here, dragon, dragon, dragon," to taunt an elder wyrm. The flight thing was so much fun that I claimed the dragon's corpse and traded it to an NPC wizard in exchange for getting fly cast permanently on me; I'm not sure if it was strictly legal, but the DM loved the image of a berserk, human, hovering Cuisinart enough that he allowed it.
The character was illiterate to the point of thinking reading was a form of magic. Bathing was taboo to him, which prompted the mage to frequently clean him, but only if he was distracted. Because he had to sleep outside (covered in month-old dragon blood), he ended up with a large dragon skull set up to keep the weather off him; IIRC, he even tanned the tongue for use as a bed.
* The extremely proper and reserved player of the Ranger was deeply troubled when my Berserker gained the ability to shape shift into a bear and started getting friendly with his companion. Don't judge: he never let her fraternize with her own kind and she was just smart enough that I could understand her deeper wisdom and respect it. I was the ultimate protector and worthy male who acted more like a bear than a human. Besides, he's the one who answered when I asked whether his bear was male or female. I still want to play a natural werebear who is the offspring of that union.
It just worked and I was able to find a Zen groove to return to the character for quite some time. I had to be willing to ignore a certain level of self-preserving instinct. That worked largely because I was the biggest and strongest meat shield available, so the rest of the party watched out for me and just pointed me in the direction of things they wanted destroyed (really, what else do you do with a Berserker, anyway?). Because the character was being added to a higher level (7th or 8th, IIRC), we went straight to some tougher foes. Within the first couple sessions, we found a dragon -- which I immediately charged. Someone had cast fly on my character, so I continued to chase the dragon, even after it took to flight. I was horribly outmatched, but the Psion did something that caused the dragon to believe the next attack was a mortal wound and fall unconscious. Normally, that would have been a minor annoyance as he woke up after the next attack, but we were high enough for terminal velocity to be a factor, so he plummeted his death. Since he died after taking just one wound from my axe, I was clearly a natural dragon slayer.
The ensuing god complex was fodder for all sorts of great events the party had to bail me out of -- including walking through a swamp yelling "Here, dragon, dragon, dragon," to taunt an elder wyrm. The flight thing was so much fun that I claimed the dragon's corpse and traded it to an NPC wizard in exchange for getting fly cast permanently on me; I'm not sure if it was strictly legal, but the DM loved the image of a berserk, human, hovering Cuisinart enough that he allowed it.
The character was illiterate to the point of thinking reading was a form of magic. Bathing was taboo to him, which prompted the mage to frequently clean him, but only if he was distracted. Because he had to sleep outside (covered in month-old dragon blood), he ended up with a large dragon skull set up to keep the weather off him; IIRC, he even tanned the tongue for use as a bed.
* The extremely proper and reserved player of the Ranger was deeply troubled when my Berserker gained the ability to shape shift into a bear and started getting friendly with his companion. Don't judge: he never let her fraternize with her own kind and she was just smart enough that I could understand her deeper wisdom and respect it. I was the ultimate protector and worthy male who acted more like a bear than a human. Besides, he's the one who answered when I asked whether his bear was male or female. I still want to play a natural werebear who is the offspring of that union.
