D&D 5E 5th Edition Intelligence

[Sacrosanct]

Discussions like this remind me why I like random stat gen so much. The wide variety of PC types. Intelligent fighters? Yep. Strong wizards? Yep. It's almost like every class in array is a cookie cutter of the other.

 

[Shasarak]

Just shy of whatever I judge the threshold to be before the DM starts calling for Intelligence checks to permit my character to act or communicate as I see fit.

I just hope I gauge it right so as to minimize the "Let's see if your character is smart enough to think up that idea " rolls.

I would recommend coming up with a couple of "dumb" plans just to give the DM a false sense of security. Of course you let yourself get talked out of those plans by the other PCs.

 

[Lanliss]

...and to those who say 8 is smart enough; It is smart enough...for a minus 1 penalty. Juxtapose it with a Fighter who is so weak that he takes a minus 1 to every attack and damage roll, who can't even carry his heavy armor easily. Compare it to a Rogue, who is so clumsy that he takes a minus 1 on every DEX ability check, every lock, every sleight of hand. It isn't dumb, but it has a penalty. The game sets bounds for every other ability check we, as players, have our characters attempt. Jump a cliff, pick a lock, stab something stabable? Roll a die and apply a bonus (or penalty). INT, and CHA, are the only abilities that spend most of the game dodging the bounds of ability checks. It is up to the players to stay within the constraints that they chose.

I am pretty sure that somewhere it is said that 8 is average human intelligence, though I may be wrong. Assuming this is true the 3 minimum required for sentience is only a little bit under the average intelligence score. 6 int would be your average Morin who doesn't know how to work a television. 13-15 could be Einstein/Tesla level. 20 is a legendary intelligence, unheard of remembering capabilities. You will never lose your keys if you have 20 int, even if someone steals them. You will simply remember that they were stolen, and know where to find them. But seriously, 8 intelligence is not that bad irl. It is just bad in the game world, where you can run into villains as clever as Einstein.

On an unrelated note, to everyone here, think about the real world. Where is intelligence applied? The only things that come to mind are teaching and inventing. Of course, by RAW the players cannot invent the A-bomb, so this is where intelligence suffers as a score, I think. To make int as valuable as any other stat, you would have to allow all the uses of intelligence in the real world to occur in game. Once your wizard rouge is able to invent cloaking technology intelligence will stop looking like a bad choice.

 

[3SpdDragster]

I would recommend coming up with a couple of "dumb" plans just to give the DM a false sense of security. Of course you let yourself get talked out of those plans by the other PCs.

This is a pretty cool idea.

 

[Shendorion]

I wouldn't let the numbers get in the way of a good character concept. You can be personable and have a low CHA; there's just something about you that keeps you from influencing people. Maybe it's ugliness or a speech impediment, or maybe nobody takes you seriously because you're self-effacing and jovial, and haven't figured out how to use that to your advantage. Hitler was an expert orator but a terrible conversationalist because he could talk at people, but not to them. Sometimes a specific deficiency is more crippling in practice than a general one.

You can be smart and have a low INT; dyslexia, dysgraphia, a horrible memory or a tendency toward visual thinking paired with a vivid imagination that make your memory suspect could all stand in the way of amassing or accessing knowledge (which is the mechanical result of high INT). You might have wasted your time studying something so esoteric it's not applicable to any real aspect of your life, or you could be cunning but uneducated. You could be a genius whose brilliance is so pronounced it makes you unfit for practical pursuits, or addled by drugs or trauma. All that low number has to represent for the game to work is the absence of a vast store of useful knowledge and the means to reliably apply it.

Let the player tell you why their character performs poorly on ability checks. The low score could be the result of a pervasive, evenly distributed deficiency, or it could be a very specific and narrow stumbling block. As long as the character is compelling and the dice aren't affected, the game still runs as it should no matter how many brilliant plans the barbarian concocts. Chalk it up to the mushrooms doing the talking and game on.

 

[Sunseeker]

So do you also run the opposite way, with high-Int PCs, when the players come up with stupid ideas?

"Make a DC 12 Int Check to discover that your plan wouldn't work on an addled donkey and that the surest way to success is to place the gem in the empty sconce you saw in the hallway."

No. That seems an odd way to do things and an attempt to make my point into something it isn't. Do you make a high-strength character roll an int check to pick up a pebble? Having the skills to do more doesn't mean you're always doing the most you can do. Low scores result in low limits, low limits are reached more often and more quickly than high limits. Like having a fast computer vs a slow one.

 

[Yardiff]

My opinion, and I'm not trying to be mean, but taking an stat like Int and saying 'my characters low Int score is only because he has a poor memory and in all other ways he's average' is just finding an excuse not RP a low mental stat.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Whether to have your players ask to make rolls, or to ask them for rolls was mentioned upthread a bit.

I've found that having a DM's reference sheet with all of the players ability scores/mods and skills (as well as things like AC and save bonuses, languages and tool proficiencies) sitting right in front of me the whole time when I'm DMing allows the game to move in a much faster and more satisfying way.

I've told my players that asking to make a roll is asking to potentially fail (since I might let them do it without a roll), and they should just tell me what they want to do in non-mechanical terms. Because I have all of that information sitting right in front of me, and my players are aware of it, they are able to trust that I am always taking their skills and abilities into account when determining the sorts of things they know or automatically succeed on. And when needed, I ask them to make rolls (or roll it myself it mystery would add to the effect).

I continue to be impressed by how much difference one or two DM visual aids can make in the flow of the game.

So do you also run the opposite way, with high-Int PCs, when the players come up with stupid ideas?

"Make a DC 12 Int Check to discover that your plan wouldn't work on an addled donkey and that the surest way to success is to place the gem in the empty sconce you saw in the hallway."

If it were something that stood out, and it happened more than occasionally, I would make rolls for them behind the scenes and give them in-character hints if the rolls succeeded.

Intelligence: "You feel like you're forgetting something. Something just isn't clicking to you."
Wisdom: "You've got a bad feeling about this."

 

[Mondobone]

When? You have to be more specific. For most of D&D's lifespan, INT wasn't all that important to anyone who wasn't a Magic User outside of how you roleplay your character.

Please refrain from hyperbole. There are still saving throws and skills (and role playing). That's not "nothing".

Ah, I see now. You're thinking your personal preferences are objectively true. Common error. For one, lots of people think 3.5 is good (not me, but obviously lots do due to it's continued popularity as a preferred edition). Also, I really doubt "most people" think it's riddled with flaws. No game is flaw free, but riddled? More hyperbole.

Intelligence previously governed the number of skills you had, which was comparatively hugely important. Now a fighter has 4 skills. Same as every other class except Rogue and Bard, who have one or two extra (or a total of like 11 if you're a half elf Lore bard, but that's an outlier). That was its primary use, and it was a great use, because it really showcased the difference between high and low int without weird "Well your brilliant plan doesn't actually work." checks. A low int fighter couldn't do hardly anything but hit people, which was absolutely iconic. An average to above average fighter, though, had a nice smattering of skills that they could act with, which was also pretty telling and made for some smooth roleplaying. Now, an intelligent fighter, instead of being able to show off all the things it can do, has like...a +1 to recall random knowledge?

Now it has saves and knowledge checks (and roleplaying), which is something it had before, and something every other stat also has. You now have to cover with roleplaying something that came naturally before. Instead of one's intelligence being clear and represented by their abilities, you literally have to act like the stat is relevant to the situation. It has "nothing" relative to other stats, which actually have significant gameplay effects on top of roleplaying and saves and checks.

I realize that charisma and wisdom are in a similar place when we're talking about fighters, but those stats also apply to more classes as primaries. Wisdom is used by clerics, rangers, and druids. Charisma is used by paladins, bards, and sorcerers. Intelligence is used by wizards. That's it.

And the whole bit on 3.5 was just me saying that we don't have to keep something around because it's been here for 40 years. Hyperbole was perfectly reasonable in that case, as the conversation didn't rely on specifics.

Firstly, there are lots of reasons not to use that array, which have already been mentioned a million times. Not everyone likes playing that way, and a whole lot of people don't assign stats to maximize their PCs, but assign stats to best support the theme of character they want to play. Secondly, you're contradicting yourself here. One of the best reasons NOT to use that array is for the reason you immediately followed up with. With BA, every stat is important, so using three dump stats with penalties each hurts more than an edition where you have lots of bonuses.

I think in most cases assigning stats to maximize your PCs overlaps with supporting your character theme perfectly. The 15/8 array isn't the same as an 18/6 from 3.5. Things were flattened, on purpose, and that means that 15/8 is actually fairly average for a specialist adventurer. If we're still talking fighter, they have pretty good, though far from legendary physical stats, and average middling mental stats with no particular negatives (or if you want to consider 10 average rather than 8, only very minor penalties due to their focus). I can imagine 14/10 if you wanted to be less min/maxed, but that's obviously not actually a huge shift from 15/8 to begin with and still illustrates my point just fine.

Now, in some cases, like the fighter or wizard, your stats are actually specific enough that even if you were optimizing you'd probably have some spare points to toss at your less important stats, but if you move into any of the hybrid classes that becomes less of an option. They tried to cut down on the MADness of paladins, for example, but because they also reduced the number of attribute points you can get to begin with, even the 15/8 array might leave you feeling fatigued and drained. So even when an intelligent fighter is reasonable, trying to put points into intelligence on a paladin or ranger is going to be especially crippling to anyone who isn't a pure roleplayer (at which point you could find better games than D&D to play with).

In short, though, even cases where 15/8 isn't what you go with, you probably don't land too far from it.

As to the second point, I'm not really sure what you're talking about. Dumping your off stats in 5e doesn't hurt basically at all, ever. The difference between a fighter with 8 int and a fighter who really splurges for 14 int is a 3 point shift on a d20 for rolls that may come up rarely or not at all. Even if we factor in some life threatening saving throws, you can't do much. Bumping your int up to 14 might help on a specific saving throw, pushing you just over a threshold, but if you went that route, your wisdom and charisma saves would still be really low, and if you tried to distribute things evenly, then we're back to only being at a single point, making them still rather weak. Your primary statistics, however, are very different by comparison. Because numbers in 3.5 were so high, going from 18 strength to 16, or even 14, ultimately wasn't especially crippling. When you're level 20 and you have a to hit bonus in the range of +40 or something, the +1 or 2 from character creation just isn't very applicable. In that scenario, saying "Hey, I bump my int up to 12 or 14 because it's cheap." is very reasonable, especially since it provided more rewards back then. In 5e, on the other hand, the absolute maximum bonus to hit you can get is, I think, +14, and that's with your appropriate stat maxed out at 20, which now requires two feats, minimum. With off stats being less useful and primary stats being hard to come by, it really incentivizes min/maxing in a way that even roleplayers would be like "Yeah, my character's not all that intelligent." I'm not sure how you can take away from this that the opposite is true.

 

[Mondobone]

My opinion, and I'm not trying to be mean, but taking an stat like Int and saying 'my characters low Int score is only because he has a poor memory and in all other ways he's average' is just finding an excuse not RP a low mental stat.

I don't think you should have to roleplay your stats. I think stats should reveal themselves through gameplay mechanics such that they're very evident. There's no reason to enforce roleplaying of intelligence, wisdom, or charisma unless you can think of similar ways to enforce the physical statistics. But those are entirely done by skill checks! So I see no reason to expect anything different from the mental statistics. Would it be weird to go around acting intelligent if you aren't? Sure, but there should be skill checks to show off just how not intelligent you are, just like if an 8 strength character was acting strong, they'd just fail repeatedly.