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?
It seems to me that something has gone wrong in the description.
Let's try a different example to see what that is: If Robert the player has a character named Conan and plays him as a mighty-thewed physical powerhouse, but on the character sheet Conan's STR score is 5, is this an inconsistency or not?
The answer is, surely, that the example isn't possible: because when a character with a STR score of 5 is actually played within the gameworld, according to the rules of the game, that STR 5 will result in a large amount of failure at physical feats. Not a lot can be lifted; doors can't be kicked in; Conan will tend to get beaten up in barroom brawls; etc. That is to say, you
can't play a 5 STR character as a mighty-thewed physical powerhouse. You can
try to do so, but the rules will kick in and produce a different sort of fiction that confirms that the 5 STR character is, in fact, something of a weakling.
So surely the same thing should be true for Arthur's character Sherlock: the character with 5 INT will fail at the sorts of checks that a brilliant detective would want to succeed at (like spotting clues, matching fibres to clothes, recognising voice even when muffled behind scarves or helmets, etc). So Arthur can
try to play Sherlock as a brilliant detective, but the rules should kick in and reveal the truth about the 5 INT character - namely, not all that bright.
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 also read [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s slightly different take from mine: namely, that the skilled player will try and avoid having to make checks. But it seems to me that, just as in many cases the GM will deem it less than certain that 5 STR Conan can perform the feat of strength, and so will ask for a check; so the GM may in many cases deem it less than certain that 5 INT Sherlock can spot the clue or recognise the voice or whatever, and so will ask for a check.
If the GM is letting Arthur's player have all the clues for free, then that's a different matter. But if the GM is choosing not to engage the mechanics of the game (including the system for INT checks), then it seems to me that s/he can hardly complain that a purely mechanical part of the game (this character has a 5 written in his/her INT score) is having no impact.
(You might think the previous paragraph is mostly smart-arsery. It's not meant to be - and there is more on mechanics below.)
The problem is that [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] also spoke of making decisions to the best of the player's abilities as opposed to the character's abilities. If the player knows what the London Underground is, making a decision to the best of his abilities means making the decision using that knowledge.
But if the character doesn't know, then the player may choose to disregard the personal knowledge in making the decision. That depends on the player's and the table's views about this particular sort of metagaming.
If I was GMing Arthur, who wanted Sherlock to solve mysteries despite the 5 INT, then I would be framing situations that require INT checks because there is no other way for Sherlock
or Arthur to get the information. (Or, if I wanted to go a bit more GUMSHOE, I could adopt a rule along the lines that, between long rests, you can find as many clues without need for a check as you have points of INT.) And I note that Hriston agrees:
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.
In other words, if the GM sets up a situation in which a player knows the answer but is expected to pretend that s/he doesn't that's an issue of scenario and setting design - a GMing problem - not an issue of player misconduct.
Making a check to see whether his character knows something he knows would be "mak[ing] stupid decisions for your character based on the OOC knowledge that the character has an Intelligence of 5", which Hriston has taken a stand against. I don't think anyone disputes that the Intelligence modifier should be applied as the rules say it is. What's at issue is all the times when the need for a check is ambiguous.
I don't think [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] is disagreeing with the basic rule that it is the
GM who decides when a check is required.
I don't know what Hriston's view is about the player drawing upon out-of-character knowledge to inform the character's choices (ie what is classically called
metagaming). As I said already, I think that's mostly a player and table thing.
Same page as the last several times. Intelligence governs the ability to reason. Therefore a low intelligence is also a low ability to reason.
Sure, but how low? Low enough to suffer a penalty to relevant checks. That's the measure of "lowness", by the rules of the game.
The bonus alone substandard as a metric. Otto is not 15% less likely to get something right. Mongo is not 15% less likely to get something right. Both of them have what would be a very low 5-6 int and both of them are roleplayed very well, despite having a stat penalty that would indicate far less stupidity if all the mattered was the bonus.
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.
To me, these seem like complaints about the rules. The rules as they are written don't seem to support them.
The 5e Basic PDF says (pp 8, 61) that INT measures mental acuity, information recall and accuracy of recall, analytical skill and the ability to reason. Page 61 also says that "an Intelligence check comes into play when you need to draw on logic, education, memory, or deductive reasoning. The Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature, and Religion skills reflect aptitude in certain kinds of Intelligence checks." There is nothing there saying that certain action declarations are off-limits to players whose PCs have INT 5.
If anything, the rules imply the opposite: that a player is free to declare whatever actions for his/her player s/he wants to, and if the action involves logic, memory etc and the GM thinks the outcome is uncertain then a check is required, and the penalty to that check reflects the fact that the character has less-than-average reasoning or recall ability.
In this respect 5e seems fairly consistent with 1st ed AD&D, which says the following (PHB p 10, DMG p 15):
Intelligence is quite similar to what is currently known as intelligence quotient, but it also includes mnemanic ability, reasoning, and learning ability outside those measured by the written word. Intelligence dictates the number of languages in which the character is able to converse. . . .
The intelligence rating roughly corresponds to our modern "IQ" scores. However, it assumes mnemonic, reasoning, and learning ability skills in additional areas outside the written word.
In 4e the account of INT is briefer than but consistent with this: "Intelligence (INT) describes how well your character learns and reasons" (PHB p 17).
Nothing in either edition implies that certain action declarations are off-limits. (Nor is there any statement of mathematical correspondence between a particular INT score and a particular IQ.) As I noted upthread, Moldvay Basic does contain such rules, but they only pertain to reading, writing and (at INT 3) speaking.
rolling for ability scores is just rolling for flaws old school. Literally. An Intelligence of 5 is the flaw "I am unintelligent."
My point is that nobody is imposing, advocating, or tentatively suggesting any restrictions on attempting Intelligence-based tasks either.
I think a number of posters clearly
are advocating that a player whose PC has a low INT should refrain from certain action declarations (roughly, the ones that are too "clever" for a 5 INT person to come up with, or the ones that break stat-imposed "limitations"). If you're not doing that, I'm not sure what you mean by referring to a notional flaw "I am unintelligent" - how else do you expect it to come into play, but as a constraint on action declaration?
(By the way, I am not at all convinced that you are right about the "old school". Nowhere does the AD&D DMG or PHB suggest that a player of a low-INT PC is restricted in action declarations - except that a character must have a 6 or better INT if s/he is any class other than a fighter, so there is that modest constraint on PC building.)
If a table
wants to insert some such limits on action declaration for players whose PCs have low INT scores, than nothing is stopping them. You could start with Moldvay and work from there. You will hit the issue, though, that I raised upthread: namely, in a game which is basically an intellectual exercise you would run the risk of, in practical terms, forbidding some players from engaging fully in the game. (Whereas, as I also posted upthread, the player of a 5 STR wizard does not face any such prospect, and generally has all the action declarations s/he would want to make open to him/her.) Hriston makes the same point a bit later in the thread:
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.
