Wow, over 50 pages. Just read through it all, and am a bit overwhelmed. Can I get a general summary? Here are a few questions I had on people's stances:
1. How would you, personally, play a character with 5 INT? Is there more than one way to play a character with 5 INT?
Personally, I would never build a PC with 5 INT, so the question of how to play such a character has never come up for me.
I take it as obvious that there is more than one way to play such a character, though. For instance, one might be a fighter and another a thief. One might be LG and the other CE. One might enjoy the flute, the other dislike all music.
It's impossible for there to be infinite ways to play a 5 int.
There are not infinite ways to play a character with a low intelligence. It is in fact limited.
Some collection of things can be infinite in number yet limited in character. For instance, the set of all even numbers is limited - it contains only numbers divisible by 2 without remainder - yet is identical in size to the set of all natural numbers.
When it comes to playing a 5 INT PC, even if there were indefinitely many ways of playing a character
in general which were not feasible for such a PC, there might still be indefinitely many ways of playing such a character.
Even if the player decides to play the character as suffering a serious intellectual deficit, that would still permit - as far as I can see - indefinitely many ways to play the character.
Is Int treated differently than the other Mental stats?
By whom?
I think that those who are insisting that a character with 5 INT must be roleplayed as mentally incompetent are saying, in effect, that a player whose PC has 5 INT is not permitted to fully participate in the game - which is, at base, an intellectual exercise. This is not a consequence imposed on the player of a character with 5 STR, or 5 CHA.
As I see it, the effect of a low INT is a penalty to INT checks. If you're playing a MU/wizard, it also affects your casting. (In other editions of the game it can also affect linguistic ability, but that is not the case in 5e.)
What is it you are arguing specifically here?
In my view, the rules of the game (in 5e, as in earlier editions) place no hard constraint on the sorts of action declarations the player of a character with 5 INT is permitted to make. If the GM wants to build in such limitations, that is ultimately his/her prerogative, but the game rules in themselves don't particularly lend support for this, and it would be up to each table to work out the details.
As I've already said, I think the key risk here is, in effect, debarring a particular player from actually fully engaging the game.
I'm sure if you look closely at the single sentence I posted, you'll note that I never said 5e. I said D&D. 3 of the 5 editions (4 out of 6 if you count 3.5 as a new edition) have int x 10 = IQ as a thing. 31 of the 39 years if you want to go by duration of editions. That's a clear majority of D&D.
You have argued, though, that there is no rule! No rule! No rule! That supports my idea of IQ = int x 10 in 5e
Well there is no such rule as far as I'm aware. Where are you saying that rule is found? It is not found in 5e. It is not found in 4e. It is not found in Moldvay Basic. It is not found in 1st ed AD&D, where the closest thing to it is found on p 34 of the PHB:
Even the rather slow (80 I.Q.) can learn one additionol language. However, his vocabulary, usage, and ability to translate must, perforce, be limited. The very bright can learn five, six, or even seven. (For details of the number of tongues which can be learned see CHARACTER ABILITIES, Intelligence.)
The table on p 10 indicates that to learn 7 languages requires INT 18, while to be able to learn 1 additional language requires INT 8.
And even if there were such a rule, why would it be on the player to enforce it? Wouldn't it be the GM's job to prohibit certain action declarations for that PC (just as the GM won't allow the action declaration "I flap my arms and fly to the top of the mountain"). Eg if the player declares as an action the translation of a text from Dwarvish to Common, the GM might require a check (which would be appropriately penalised).
Frogs, cats, eagles, humans, etc. do not have D&D stats. Those are purely a game construct, and the subject of what we are talking about.
I don't understand. Frogs, cats, eagles and humans are not purely game constructs: they exist in the real world as well as in the fiction of the game. And the game rules give them stats (which are purely a game construct, but certainly don't exhaust the considerations relative to an understanding of fictional positioning and adjudicating the need for a check to be made).
Iserith has argued against my positions when I base them on realism in other threads. He goes on and on about how my position isn't in the rules. Taking the other side of the argument here is arguing out of both sides of his mouth. He has no rule support for his position. It's based on realism.
The rules provide no support for your position. But they do state that the GM decides when a check is called for. As I read them, they certainly don't preclude the GM prohibiting a frog from making a check for an IQ test, nor do they prohibit the GM having regard to character INT in deciding whether or not performing some particular intellectual task requires a check.
