D&D 5E So 5 Intelligence Huh

[Manbearcat]

Just a quick, amusing (to me at least) aside. The side conversation about the prospects of the world's greatest detective having a 5 Int brought a familiar ditty to my head:

Dooby dooby doo

Inspector Gadget

Dooby dooby doot doot

HOOO HOOO

 

[Guest 6801328]

Here. You should read what a Slippery Slope is so you don't misuse it again.

Condescension and pedantry aren't really going to persuade anybody of anything. I'm not accusing you of making a Slippery Slope(tm) logical error, I'm saying that your assertion puts you on a slippery slope, in the colloquial sense. So *perhaps* you want to accuse me of making a Slippery Slope(tm) logical error...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope



First off, the odds of that are only slightly greater than 0. Not worth mentioning. It get even more ludicrous when you add in 6 int, 8 int, 10 int, 12 int, 14 int, 16 int, and 18 int. All of those have to have no double proficiency people as well. Your argument is bupkis because it relies on something that is almost, but not quite statistically impossible.



And again with the nearly impossible. You'd have better luck winning the lottery 10 times in a row than for someone to roll that badly thousands and thousands of times, or well in the case of the silly argument that novel Holmes just rolled well every time for his whole life.

Do you have a reasonable argument to put forth?

This gets at the heart of the difference between the two sides in the debate. You are talking about practical impossibilities, because you are focused on what is probably the case. Which is fair. But then you're turning it into a claim that your way must be true, and the only possible answer, because it is the most likely.

We are talking philoslphy. You're talking probability.

An extremely unlikely result may be extremely unlikely, but it illustrates that your black & white assertions exist in continuous spectrum of gray.

 

[BoldItalic]

The probability of any particular person existing in real life is billlions to one against. Therefore, for all practical purposes, that person doesn't exist. This applies to everyone. Therefore no one exists.

It's just as I always suspected. You are all just figments of my imagination.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

It's just as I always suspected. You are all just figments of my imagination.

...that doesn't seem probable.

 

[Satyrn]

The probability of any particular person existing in real life is billlions to one against. Therefore, for all practical purposes, that person doesn't exist. This applies to everyone. Therefore no one exists.

It's just as I always suspected. You are all just figments of my imagination.

You should probably see a psychiatrist about that.

 

[Mallus]

Just a quick, amusing (to me at least) aside. The side conversation about the prospects of the world's greatest detective having a 5 Int brought a familiar ditty to my head:

Dooby dooby doo

Inspector Gadget

Dooby dooby doot doot

HOOO HOOO

It makes me want to revisit the Pink Panther movies, starring the most famous INT 5 detective, Inspector Jacques Clouseau.

 

[BoldItalic]

...that doesn't seem probable.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

It is impossible that I am a figment of my own imagination (c.f. Descartes), therefore it must be everyone else

You're nothing but a pack of cards!

 

[BoldItalic]

You should probably see a psychiatrist about that.

I did, but he rolled a natural '1'.

Don't worry, he's well looked after and his wife visits him every day.

 

[Maxperson]

I think a game would have to be relatively unusual for a 5 INT character to turn out to be the best in the gameworld. But it's not impossible - [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION], for instance, points to the example of the character with Expertise who rolls well.

Not impossible is an extremely bad metric to run things by. If we ran the Court system with that metric, the jails and prisons would be empty and chaos would rule because anyone with half a brain could come up with doubts that are "not impossible" for every case. That's why reasonable doubt is useful. The doubts need to be reasonable, and not absurd like "not impossible" is.

The reality is that while it's "not impossible" that you are correct, there is almost no chance that you are. It's almost guaranteed that you are incorrect and that 5 int PC is nowhere close to being the best.

Not to mention that there is the issue of how characters are framed into the fiction. Even if an NPC has better mechanical bonuses, does s/he actually solve any nefarious plots, or make any important deductions? In many D&D campaigns, the most important of these things are the province of the PCs.

And this is meaningless in the context of this discussion. Best is best. It doesn't matter if the best is doing important things. He's still better than your PC.

 

[Maxperson]

Just a quick, amusing (to me at least) aside. The side conversation about the prospects of the world's greatest detective having a 5 Int brought a familiar ditty to my head:

Dooby dooby doo

Inspector Gadget

Dooby dooby doot doot

HOOO HOOO

Which is a completely different thing. People can think you're the best and be wrong. Inspector Gadget didn't use brains and deduction. He stumbled on the solution by mistake. His int was very low and he had none of the bonuses being applied to PCs in this thread, but had some nebulous luck stat that was a 20.

Very amusing post, though.