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<blockquote data-quote="xiphumor" data-source="post: 8796124" data-attributes="member: 7033055">This isn’t actually a rule, and there’s nothing stopping anyone from doing what you described with ghosts or mindflayers, but I disagree about the rest. First, real creatures give us a benchmark for what ability scores mean. Chimps are generally estimated to have toddler-level intelligence, which puts their “IQ” so to speak at 20-25. The average adult has an IQ of 100, and one standard deviation is about 15 points. This gives a solid sliding scale for expressing character intelligence. 10 (+0) = 100, average9 (-1) = 80, slightly lower than expected8 (-1) = 60, mild mental disability7 (-) = 40, moderate mental disability6 (-2) = 20, severe mental disability, chimp/toddler-likeBumping up creatures like chimps and dolphins to 7-8 makes the gaps between scores that much higher, and doesn’t allow us to express the normal human range of intelligence very well. While I think some creatures should have different ability scores based on their real-life counterparts, I don’t think the standard should be changes this way. Likewise, I disagree with CHA granting more languages known, both because it’s less true-to-life and because INT is already the weakest ability score, and we don’t need to be taking things away from it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="xiphumor, post: 8796124, member: 7033055"] This isn’t actually a rule, and there’s nothing stopping anyone from doing what you described with ghosts or mindflayers, but I disagree about the rest. First, real creatures give us a benchmark for what ability scores mean. Chimps are generally estimated to have toddler-level intelligence, which puts their “IQ” so to speak at 20-25. The average adult has an IQ of 100, and one standard deviation is about 15 points. This gives a solid sliding scale for expressing character intelligence. 10 (+0) = 100, average 9 (-1) = 80, slightly lower than expected 8 (-1) = 60, mild mental disability 7 (-) = 40, moderate mental disability 6 (-2) = 20, severe mental disability, chimp/toddler-like Bumping up creatures like chimps and dolphins to 7-8 makes the gaps between scores that much higher, and doesn’t allow us to express the normal human range of intelligence very well. While I think some creatures should have different ability scores based on their real-life counterparts, I don’t think the standard should be changes this way. Likewise, I disagree with CHA granting more languages known, both because it’s less true-to-life and because INT is already the weakest ability score, and we don’t need to be taking things away from it. [/QUOTE]

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