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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4979176" data-attributes="member: 4937">Ok, fine:"Adults in the bottom 5% of the IQ distribution (below 75) are very difficult to train and are not competitive for any occupation on the basis of ability. Serious problems in training low-IQ military recruits during World War II led Congress to ban enlistment from the lowest 10% (below 80) of the population, and no civilian occupation in modern economies routinely recruits its workers from that below-80 range. Current military enlistment standards exclude any individual whose IQ is below about 85." - Scientific American, 1999My assertion about the intelligence of INT 5 character may be slightly off in terms of standard distribution (but not that much) from my quick estimate, but the general point about not playing someone stupid if you don't want to play someone stupid I think remains.  My strong suspicion if you think that stating 1:20 people are barely able to function is a huge bizarre exagerration is that you haven't spent alot of time outside the shelter of a gifted and talented classroom.  Go spend a few years bumming around the country picking vegetables, staying in homeless shelters, pushing brooms in warehouses, and working fastfood and then get back to the subject.  Alot of people are out there with IQ's below 75 - that is to say, not as bright as Forest Gump.  Some of them are actually interesting people, even if they literally can't add 5 and 7, cannot be taught what a screwdriver is for, or have vocabularies of under 300 words.  Some of them are even talented in specific areas.  And I'm not in fact knocking these people.  They aren't (well, no more than the rest of us) oafs with no personality.  I'm just saying that they are out there - IQ's of 75 or even 50 aren't that unheard of or rare.That's not at all what I'm saying.  I'm saying that if you are playing someone with 5 INT, your play should signal that in some way so that I don't have to look at your character sheet to know you have 5 INT.  You can be as subtle as you like and make as complex and interesting of a character as you can concieve, and in fact I greatly prefer that.  But don't spend your 140 IQ (or whatever you got) investing that character with intellectuality, reasoning ability, and cunning and expect me to be impressed with your role-play.  And in general, regardless of the INT of the character you are animating, don't invest it with knowledge and understanding it shouldn't reasonably have.</blockquote>

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