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.

What rules-mandated limits are there on beliefs and actions due to having an Intelligence score of 5? The rules do say that roleplaying is the player determining how the character acts and thinks (Basic Rules, page 66). I can't find any rules that support your position.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Smart play on Arthur's part is to try to avoid making Intelligence checks if at all possible by attempting to take actions that are automatically successful. That's true of all characters though in my experience regardless of ability scores: Avoid making ability checks if you can.

But characters don't know whether they're making ability checks or whether they're automatically successful. And, especially in the case of Intelligence, it's very easy to avoid making an ability check through metagaming. If Arthur is himself a highly intelligent man and a practiced deductionist, he might use his own abilities to put together the clues the DM is leaving and then have Sherlock correctly accuse the bad guy without making a check, thereby maintaining the facade of Sherlock being a brilliant detective. Whereas if Arthur is of more average skills, he might roll an Intelligence or Investigation check instead, and then suddenly Sherlock sucks.

His portrayal can only be inconsistent in my view with what he has already established for the character as I explained upthread.

His portrayal says that he is one of the best detectives in the world. The math on his character sheet says that he's worse at his job than a random person pulled off the street. Somewhere, there's an inconsistency.

 

[Maxperson]

What rules-mandated limits are there on beliefs and actions due to having an Intelligence score of 5? The rules do say that roleplaying is the player determining how the character acts and thinks (Basic Rules, page 66). I can't find any rules that support your position.

Same page as the last several times. Intelligence governs the ability to reason. Therefore a low intelligence is also a low ability to reason. The player should figure out how to roleplay that low ability to reason. Sure, the player can determine how his PC thinks and acts, but if he's roleplaying a low int as other than a low int, he is doing it wrong. The ability to make that determination does not automatically make everything you determine right or good.

 

[iserith]

You keep bring up the -15% less chance then average...by the same reasoning a -25% less chance then average,e which is an int of 1, is still playable as a highly intelligent character that just has a -25% chance of doing int based skills.

See, you and others are the ones assigning some meaning to ability scores. I do not. What matters to me is what the player tells me his or her character is about. What the character's background, personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws are. An Intelligence score of 5 means nothing to me unless and until the player tells me what he or she thinks it means for his or her character. And if I'm the DM and the player plays to his or her character's personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, that player can expect to earn Inspiration.

 

[Hriston]

Nobody here is imposing, advocating, or even tentatively suggesting any restrictions on your character's ability to attempt Strength-based tasks.

No, just Intellgence-based. I get it, and I think that's a double standard.

What a character wants and tries to do is part of their motivation, not their ability scores.

On this we agree.

A low-Int character could similarly go around trying to prove his or her intelligence, like Otto from A Fish Called Wanda. But Otto is still stupid. He's acting to the best of his very limited abilities, but they're still very limited abilities. He draws stupid conclusions from what he reads. He comes up with stupid plans. He does stupid things. What we're concerned about here is players using their intelligence and knowledge to draw conclusions, make plans, and do things on their character's behalf that are completely out of character. Otto thinks the London Underground is a political movement. Kevin Kline (or scriptwriter John Cleese, if you prefer) presumably knows it's not. Which information should Otto act on?

This is not a great analogy. In an RPG, a player identifies with and advocates for his/her character at the table. This puts the player in a very different position from a screenwriter who is not only writing the character of Otto, but every other character and plot element in the story. This is much closer to what the DM does in creating an NPC to fulfill some role or other, determining what the character does and doesn't know as it relates to the plot.

But for argument's sake, let's say John Cleese is playing the Intelligence 5 PC Otto in a game of D&D, and knowledge about the true nature of the Underground becomes relevant to the plot during gameplay. Should player Cleese be expected to sublimate his own knowledge of the Underground and give Otto his erroneous idea so that some other character with higher Intelligence can be the one to reveal what everyone at the table probably already knows? If knowing and acting on what the Underground is is that important to the plot then it would have served the game better for the DM to choose a piece of information about the game world that isn't known to the players at the table, and put the acquisition of that knowledge behind an Intelligence check of appropriate difficulty.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Therefore a low intelligence is also a low ability to reason.

How low, exactly?

Is it "I thought up a few ideas, but I'll choose the one I find more entertaining rather than the one I think is likeliest to succeed" low?
Is it "I have only ideas that seem sort of smart to me coming to mind, so I'd better not act on any of them in character" low?
Is it some other quantification of "low", rather than just "lower than a higher score would be" which is an entirely different thing?

Please quote a source found in the 5th edition rule set that indicates to you which "low" is the right one, and cannot be equally supportive to the idea that every score in the entire possible range is roughly equivalent to whatever the players' capabilities actually are (for clarity: meaning anything from 1 to 30 in my character's Intelligence score makes my character roughly as intelligent as I am).

 

[Hriston]

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

There is, in the form of a penalty to Intelligence checks, saves, and spell attack rolls.

That said, I prefer it when a player sees it as an opportunity to turn those constraints into characterizations

There's nothing wrong with that, but those kinds of decisions are usually made during char-gen. What I'm hearing being advocated for on this thread, however, is for low-Intelligence characters to continually make bad in-game decisions that will be detrimental to the survival of themselves and their party. That's pretty much excluding their players from full participation in the game.

 

[iserith]

But characters don't know whether they're making ability checks or whether they're automatically successful. And, especially in the case of Intelligence, it's very easy to avoid making an ability check through metagaming. If Arthur is himself a highly intelligent man and a practiced deductionist, he might use his own abilities to put together the clues the DM is leaving and then have Sherlock correctly accuse the bad guy without making a check, thereby maintaining the facade of Sherlock being a brilliant detective. Whereas if Arthur is of more average skills, he might roll an Intelligence or Investigation check instead, and then suddenly Sherlock sucks.

His portrayal says that he is one of the best detectives in the world. The math on his character sheet says that he's worse at his job than a random person pulled off the street. Somewhere, there's an inconsistency.

I don't think of "metagaming" the same way you do. The math on his sheet says he's sometimes worse than someone of a 10 or 11 Intelligence, depending on how he approaches situations.

Here's what I would suggest to Average Arthur: Try your best to figure out stuff on your own and avoid ability checks - work on improving your player skill. But also write a flaw for the character that says "I'd eat my cap before I admit I'm wrong." If you end up having to make and blow that Intelligence check, come up with your own answer to the problem at hand and stick to your guns, even if you're wrong (to the limits of the interaction being fun for everyone and helping to create an exciting, memorable story). Ask the DM for Inspiration. Use that Inspiration on future Intelligence checks. Also, encourage another player to create a cleric named, I dunno, Watson whom you consult for advice before making decisions. The cleric's guidance spell will give you another 1d4 to your ability check and perhaps his advice even Helps, which grants advantage.

 

[iserith]

Same page as the last several times. Intelligence governs the ability to reason. Therefore a low intelligence is also a low ability to reason.

And that is reflected in the -3 modifier. The rules say nothing about how a player must roleplay that.

 

[Hriston]

Participate? Sure. Act as if he's Einstein and run around solving puzzles as if they are nothing? That's bad roleplay.

No it isn't. Unintelligent people think they are smart enough to solve problems all the time. If the puzzles encountered by the adventurers are easy enough that just anyone can solve them then that's the fault of the adventure design, and it certainly doesn't make the character an Einstein.

Nothing unless you are actually successfully lifting what a 10+ strength PC can. Strength is harder to abuse than intelligence.

So what did you mean by roleplaying as having a higher Strength being a problem?

Yes, that is where your confusion is. Metagaming is the PC using knowledge the player has, but the PC doesn't.

But that's impossible. The character doesn't have access to out-of-character knowledge. By that measure, metagaming could never happen.