D&D 5E So 5 Intelligence Huh

[iserith]

The limits on Otto's intelligence, beliefs and actions where there prior to any establishment by the players and had ZERO to do with any int modifier.

Characterization that isn't established doesn't exist. The ability scores don't establish anything other than what the modifier is. There is no rule that says "If you have a low Intelligence, you must make a reasonable attempt to act this stupid." That's just your preference. I might play an Intelligence 5 character stupider than do you. Or I might not. It's my choice. The rules don't make that choice for me.

I might have an objection if a player established his or her character as being a certain way and then acted in a totally different way without some kind of reason for change. But the rules don't say how a player must roleplay. In fact, they say the player determines how the character thinks and acts.

 

[iserith]

The rules provide the modifiers, the scores are the bounds in which the player should be considering character options.

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

If not, why bother with scores that define the range of a character's ability ti interact with the world around them?

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.

 

[BoldItalic]

Maxperson's argument appears to be that the rules are ludicrous and incorrect unless they support his opinion. Also that the colloquial meaning of a term ("skills") is acceptable when used to support his argument, but not otherwise ("intelligence").

There is an argumentation tactic that, when faced with a statement that cannot be refuted but which it is inconvenient to agree with, modifies the statement into one can be denied with impunity and denies that instead, hoping that people won't notice the deception.

The paradigm is:
Challenger: "Do you accept proposition A?"
Arguer: "Proposition B is false."

Flipping between two different meanings of the same word is one way of modifying the proposition to allow this to be attempted. This has some similarity to, but is not identical to, the fallacy of equivocation because although ambiguity is exploited, in this case there is no explicit inference.

There is a technical name for this form of sophistry but it escapes me. I used to know it. Needless to say, although the intent is to deceive, it only fools some of the people some of the time.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

There is a technical name for this form of sophistry but it escapes me. I used to know it. Needless to say, although the intent is to deceive, it only fools some of the people some of the time.

Do you perchance remember the technical name for the sophistic tactic of insinuating that your opponent has inferior intelligence or dishonest motives?

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I might have an objection if a player established his or her character as being a certain way and then acted in a totally different way without some kind of reason for change. But the rules don't say how a player must roleplay. In fact, they say the player determines how the character thinks and acts.

I don't think we differ that much. Would you object to the proposition that a player writing "Int 5" on his or her character sheet constitutes "establish[ing] his or her character as being a certain way", at least in a broad sense? There may be many different ways of plausibly portraying Int 5, but can we agree that some portrayals would contradict that score?

 

[BoldItalic]

Do you perchance remember the technical name for the sophistic tactic of insinuating that your opponent has inferior intelligence or dishonest motives?

Yes.

 

[iserith]

I don't think we differ that much. Would you object to the proposition that a player writing "Int 5" on his or her character sheet constitutes "establish[ing] his or her character as being a certain way", at least in a broad sense? There may be many different ways of plausibly portraying Int 5, but can we agree that some portrayals would contradict that score?

No. An ability score does not on its own establish who the character is in my view.

Contradictions as I see them only happen when the player actually establishes his or her characterization a particular way (e.g. "My character is this kind of guy..." or demonstrates during play a particular way of thinking and acting for the character) and does something completely different without a reason for change. I'm not against change, of course, as this is at the heart of character development. But I do think players should be rewarded for playing to established characterization and we have the Inspiration mechanic for this. (It's smart play to change your personality traits, ideals, bonds, or flaws to reflect any changes your character goes through.)

 

[pemerton]

The rules for INT specify that the ability to reason is controlled by INT. A low INT = a low ability to reason. It's up to the player to roleplay that limitation.

Don't the rules handle this?

Eg upthread [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] gave the example of making a knowledge check to recall facts about the London Underground (or some other salient element of the gameworld). A PC with a low INT will suffer a penalty to that check, reflecting his/her weaker recall and reasoning abilities.

Presumably the character also suffers a penalty on attempts to decipher unfamiliar (but somewhat cognate, so in-principle decipherable) languages/dialects, and on INT-governed perception-style checks.

In other systems, I'd take such a low score as a complication that the GM could create opportunities against. In D&D, especially point buy, what's the point in the stat if their are no in game complications, where in other stats i gain benefits from higher stats like Con, Dex, Str?

The complication is that already set out by other posters: a penalty to appropriate checks.

If the game doesn't involve many such checks then of course players might trade away INT for (say) DEX. But that just strikes me as good game play: like the fact that my players, knowing I like undead and demons as antagonists, build PCs that have at least some capability against such creatures.

Conversely, if you want players not to trade away INT, isn't the answer to devise situations that will make INT matter (eg because knowledge checks will be important)?

No, but if limitations are being taken to create benefits in other stat choices, shouldn't there be in game resource management?

The rules provide the modifiers, the scores are the bounds in which the player should be considering character options. If not, why bother with scores that define the range of a character's ability ti interact with the world around them?

If you aren't going to roleplay the limits of your stats, there's no point in having numbers for them.

In 5e, isn't the score mostly just a device for allocating a bonus?

In Moldvay Basic, there was a table for INT. An INT 3 character "has trouble with speaking". A character of INT 5 or less "cannot read or write". This means that a player of a PC with INT 4 can't declare, as an action, that his/her PC reads something or writes something. And a player of a PC with INT 3 can't delcare, as an action, that she utters some complex or beautiful sentence.

But 5e doesn't have a comparable rule that I'm aware of.

The old relative scale used to be INT*10 = IQ, so yes, there is an implied implication.

Does 5e have this rule? And does it then have a rule correlating IQ to permissible action declarations?

Leaving aside doubts about the validity of IQ as a notion, I think there are bigger issues here. A MU/wizard with 5 STR is a very viable PC in a typical D&D game. S/he will suck in melee, but given that MUs tend to suck in melee anyway, that is not a great deficit. If encumbrance is used his/her max load won't be that great, but there's likely to be at least one pack-horse fighter in a typical D&D party.

In effect, the MU player is not meaningfully constrained in permissible action declarations by having a 5 STR. And while there is a range of action delcarations where the 5 STR will hurt him/her, s/he was going to be wanting to avoid those anyway because even without 5 STR s/he sucked at them.

Saying that the 5 INT fighter can't make rational action declarations, on the other hand, is coming very close to preventing the player of that character meaningfully participating in the game - except perhaps as the comic relief, or as the Hulk-like weapon who is pointed by the other PCs at the right targets when violence breaks out.

To me, that doesn't seem like a very good game rule. (Contrast, say, the Moldvay language rules, which operate in a particular domain and only affect a particular set of action declarations. INT 3 is still pretty brutal, but not as brutal as some people in this thread seem to be suggesting the much less improbable INT 5 is.)

 

[TheCosmicKid]

No. An ability score does not on its own establish who the character is in my view.

That's not what I asked. I asked whether or not some portrayals were inconsistent with some ability scores. If Arthur the player has a character named Sherlock and plays him as a brilliant detective, but on the character sheet Sherlock's Intelligence score is 5, is this an inconsistency or not?

 

[Maxperson]

Characterization that isn't established doesn't exist. The ability scores don't establish anything other than what the modifier is. There is no rule that says "If you have a low Intelligence, you must make a reasonable attempt to act this stupid." That's just your preference. I might play an Intelligence 5 character stupider than do you. Or I might not. It's my choice. The rules don't make that choice for me.

Nice Strawman. I've not said there is an "Exactly this stupid" ideation for say a 5. I said a 5 is low and it's up to the player to roleplay it as low and not high. The rules determine that it is low, so it is low and needs to be roleplayed as low.