D&D 5E So 5 Intelligence Huh

[TheCosmicKid]

Back to Lefty. As initially designed, he is +1 on Investigation (logical deduction tasks) but -3 on Lore-based checks and any un-typed Int checks. I would role-play him as normally intelligent but that seems to offend some people, and I'm rather bluntly told that I'm doing it wrong. Suppose we change him to Int 12(+1) with autofail on lore-based checks, and everyone is happy with me role-playing him with normal intelligence. Now, I can't give him Investigation as a skill (let alone expertise) otherwise it comes out too high at +5. I have to find some other, possibly irrelevant skills instead. But that seems wrong for Lefty as I envisage him; Investigation (as applied to puzzling out complex locks) is one of his strengths, along with being clever with his fingers.

I'm confused as to why you object that +5 is too high a number for a task he's supposed to be good at (and which you earlier suggested he might auto-succeed at), but you seem perfectly willing to accept a -3 on a broad array of tasks you say he's not supposed to be bad at.

No, I'm going to stick to my guns and role-play according to Ability+Skills totals...

I don't think you're doing that. I think have to ignore the ability + skill total for every task except Investigation in order to play Lefty as having average intellectual ability.

 

[Yardiff]

I started a few years later, around the mid-1980s with AD&D in high school. My take-away from old-school D&D was smart & cautious play was the assumed default, i.e. if you did dumb things at critical moments your PC would die. Before making it to 2nd level.

Because before D&D is anything else, it's a game. And you're not supposed to play a PC to lose -- no matter what their stats are.

Sure, your INT 5 PC might talk like "ME AM THUD! UMM... HUZZAH!". But that didn't mean you played him stupid when it counted. You played to win, i.e get gold/XP and level up. You played smart -- to the best of your ability -- while sounding like a complete idiot.

Or at least that was the ideal. Sometimes you were bored -- or, you know, a teenager -- and smart & cautious went right out the window, regardless of how high PCs INT and WIS were. You went in fireballs-a-blazin'. Before estimating the volume of the room and/or corridor...

Actually, things haven't changed all that much for my group.

This is pretty much how I remember.

I've mentioned it before, "Critical Role" on GeekandSundry website (can also be seen on YouTube) has a player with Barbarian with a 6 int. Travis roleplays his low int character pretty well but, as you say, when it counts (combat) he still a barbarian rager.

 

[Yardiff]

Very sensible.

But, about 20 pages ago, the OP reported having rolled up an Int 5 character and invited ideas for how to play it. So Int 5 was the starting point and we fanned out from there.

Actually he asked how you'd (forum reads) would play it. I think he was more trying to get a general idea of how people roleplayed low ability scores. I could be wrong though.

 

[JonnyP71]

My own point of view when DMing a game with a character with a very low stat (which is common as my groups always roll for stats) is that I will talk to the player beforehand and agree with them how the low stat translates into a suitable deficiency, and how the player will roleplay that PC.

5 Int can mean simply low mental capacity, lack of education, forgetfulness, illiteracy, lack of numeracy, etc - and depending on the skill proficiencies chosen, I would likely ask the player to consider at least 2 (or more) of those issues and roleplay them accordingly.

My own 6 Int fighter is semi-literate, from a nomadic tribe, with no formal education. He will hold a map upside down and claim to be 'reading' it, and has given the party food poisoning after insisting he is a good cook. It's all good fun.

I also have a wizard with a strength penalty, it's only a -1, but I play him as refusing to partake in any physical activity beyond walking (or running away!) - he's level 8 and has made just one voluntary melee attack in his entire adventuring career! If a door needs forcing he won't even try. (this gets around the daft scenario that in 5E an 8 Str character can feasibly succeed on a test of strength that 20 Str character fails!)

Another aspect we consider in our group is that our DMs often state that only PCs with a suitable proficiency are able to even try certain tasks. This is situational, but most commonly applicable to Survival/Nature/History/Religion/Arcana checks.... rather than simply ramping up the difficulty of an obscure Lore check our DM might say 'only those characters with Arcana proficiency have a chance of understanding this scroll'.

Anyway, I'm rambling slightly off topic. Summary - I'd be happy to allow a 5 Int character to be ok at some Int based tasks, but the player of that PC would have to accept that I would need them to properly roleplay other suitable reasons for their Int being so low.

 

[BoldItalic]

I'm confused as to why you object that +5 is too high a number for a task he's supposed to be good at (and which you earlier suggested he might auto-succeed at), but you seem perfectly willing to accept a -3 on a broad array of tasks you say he's not supposed to be bad at.

Lefty is not particularly good at Investigation, nor is he particularly bad. He's about average and +1 is fairly average. If he had +5 on Investigation, he would be succeeding on Investigation checks significantly more often than the average character. That doesn't fit the concept.

He is -3 on lore-based checks (because he has Int 5 and no relevant skills) and that is consistent with the concept too. He is bad at knowing lore.

I don't think you're doing that. I think have to ignore the ability + skill total for every task except Investigation in order to play Lefty as having average intellectual ability.

Now it's my turn to be confused. The only Int-related skill he has is Investigation. For that, the adjustment works out to +1. For all the other Int-related ability checks (Arcana, History, Nature and Religion) he has no skill, so for those checks the adjustment is just the Int Modifier of -3. I don't understand what it is you think I am ignoring?

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Now it's my turn to be confused. The only Int-related skill he has is Investigation. For that, the adjustment works out to +1. For all the other Int-related ability checks (Arcana, History, Nature and Religion) he has no skill, so for those checks the adjustment is just the Int Modifier of -3. I don't understand what it is you think I am ignoring?

Intelligence isn't only used for those five specific skills. You're ignoring all Intelligence checks for which there is no defined skill, like the aforementioned calculation, memorization, and puzzle-solving tasks. (Not to mention any feat or class feature or item that keys off the score.)

 

[BoldItalic]

Intelligence isn't only used for those five specific skills. You're ignoring all Intelligence checks for which there is no defined skill, like the aforementioned calculation, memorization, and puzzle-solving tasks. (Not to mention any feat or class feature or item that keys off the score.)

Ah, I see, now. Thank you. I think puzzle-solving is what Investigation is about, so that's covered. But yes, the other things will be pulled down. But that's not inconsistent with the character concept. He might be slow at arithmetic but that's consistent with lack of schooling. He can't add up a column of numbers in a ledger, because he can't read them. None of this indicates poor cognitive ability in general.

Are there any feats that rely on the Int score? There's Magic Initiate, if you choose wizard, but he hasn't taken that feat. He's a Rogue, so none of his class features depend on Int unless he elects to go Arcane Trickster. Basically, he's fine unless he tries to take up wizard magic. But since he can't read spellbooks or scrolls, he's not seriously going to do that, is he?

 

[MechaPilot]

As I've said before, this is probably just me (all my exp from 1977ish, not exactly sure when I actually started)....

Coming up with creative ways to explain how your low mental ability isnt really low, is bending over backwards to not have to roleplay a low mental ability. If you don't want to play a low mental ability character don't give it a low mental ability.

I could swear that I recall reading something in the AD&D 2e PHB that talked about roleplaying ability scores and mentioned that a low INT could simply be forgetfulness, a low Con could be a lack of stamina or a persistent illness, and so on. I no longer have that book to check, and my Google-Fu has not garnered any results at this time, but I could swear I remember reading something like that.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I think puzzle-solving is what Investigation is about, so that's covered.

Really? Physical jigsaw puzzles? Investigation?

None of this indicates poor cognitive ability in general.

You're responding to my specific examples, but they're only examples. You're really missing the forest for the trees. Any task that relies on cognitive ability is going to call for an Intelligence check, and Lefty is going to be bad at it. That's what "in general" means.

Are there any feats that rely on the Int score? There's Magic Initiate, if you choose wizard, but he hasn't taken that feat. He's a Rogue, so none of his class features depend on Int unless he elects to go Arcane Trickster. Basically, he's fine unless he tries to take up wizard magic. But since he can't read spellbooks or scrolls, he's not seriously going to do that, is he?

Again, you're saying you can avoid specific problems, but they're only symptoms of the general problem. D&D is an open-ended game. You never know when you'll run into a situation where the rules assume that Intelligence corresponds to general cognitive ability, no matter how carefully you try to avoid such situations. You've assiduously picked your way around all Intelligence-based features for however many levels, then one day Lefty opens a dungeon door and in the next room there's an intellect devourer.

In short, you're bending the rules in a way the designers did not intend, and in play, the tension between what you want and what the rules say is going to show. Why jump through all these hoops? Why not just give Lefty the 12 Intelligence that is so obviously a better fit for his character?

 

[BoldItalic]

I could swear that I recall reading something in the AD&D 2e PHB that talked about roleplaying ability scores and mentioned that a low INT could simply be forgetfulness, a low Con could be a lack of stamina or a persistent illness, and so on. I no longer have that book to check, and my Google-Fu has not garnered any results at this time, but I could swear I remember reading something like that.

To be fair, the 2e PHB pretty much equates Int to IQ (I'm looking at p.15) but skills work a bit differently in 2e, there's no proficiency bonus to add or subtract so there's no scope for building a Lefty in 2e. Essentially, you just roll against your ability.

In 5e, things are different. 5e is a new game! 5e is more subtle! Skills modify abilities numerically in specific ways (that is, they are finer-grained than abilities) so they allow us to distinguish different aspects of abilities from each other. You couldn't do that in 2e.

In 2e it notes "... a character with low Intelligence (Int 5-7) could also be called dull-witted or slow. ..." whereas in the 5e PHB (p.14) we have "... a character with low Intelligence might speak simply or easily forget details." Not quite the same. Subtle change of wording because the mechanics has changed.

Perhaps the reason some people find my way of building and playing Lefty heretical, is that old habits die hard and the 2e model is still the default assumption? Where Int=IQ and there is no scope for anything else?