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<blockquote data-quote="abirdcall" data-source="post: 8469873" data-attributes="member: 6748898">Yeah, if the idea is to create some sort of standard of what a character's personality must be like if they have low mental stats then high mental stats should also be enforced.Will the DM step in and tell a player that no a character with Int 20 or Cha 20 would not act that way you can't do that?Part of the point of this thread is that people don't actually know what Int 8 or Int 20 or whatever means for who a character is.Instead we bring our own biases and judgments and declare that Int 8 means this and should be roleplayed this way (some even going so far to say they will punish players for not playing the way they want them to).The only sensible solution is to have the scores mean what they mean in the game. Have the scores do the game effects that they have and let those game effects influence the narrative.This very judgment of what Int 8 should be is ableist. We don't need to be talking about someone with severe cognitive impairments to be talking about ableism. It's the very idea that intelligence can be given a score and that score dictates who that person is and what they are capable of. This is why the concept we have of intelligence is flawed from the start. D&amp;D reinforces this conception of intelligence which is harmful and limiting.We likely won't be seeing intelligence renamed but we can at least think of it differently.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="abirdcall, post: 8469873, member: 6748898"] Yeah, if the idea is to create some sort of standard of what a character's personality must be like if they have low mental stats then high mental stats should also be enforced. Will the DM step in and tell a player that no a character with Int 20 or Cha 20 would not act that way you can't do that? Part of the point of this thread is that people don't actually know what Int 8 or Int 20 or whatever means for who a character is. Instead we bring our own biases and judgments and declare that Int 8 means this and should be roleplayed this way (some even going so far to say they will punish players for not playing the way they want them to). The only sensible solution is to have the scores mean what they mean in the game. Have the scores do the game effects that they have and let those game effects influence the narrative. This very judgment of what Int 8 should be is ableist. We don't need to be talking about someone with severe cognitive impairments to be talking about ableism. It's the very idea that intelligence can be given a score and that score dictates who that person is and what they are capable of. This is why the concept we have of intelligence is flawed from the start. D&D reinforces this conception of intelligence which is harmful and limiting. We likely won't be seeing intelligence renamed but we can at least think of it differently. [/QUOTE]

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