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Don't play "stupid" characters. It is ableist.
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<blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 8471180" data-attributes="member: 59082"><p>Intelligence, in the real world, has a variety of meanings, from the more specific IQ to Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences of which IQ is just a small portion (probably a combination of verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical, leaving the other nine mostly untouched).</p><p></p><p>I've also known many people who are quite intelligent in terms of the depth of their thought, but either have a difficult time translating their thinking to words/actions, or slower in their processing. And I've known people who are extremely intelligent in other forms of intelligence--say bodily-kinesthetic or spatial-visual, etc--but not as much in terms of verbal or logical. I mean, how many of us know someone (or are someone) who "sucks at math" but is highly intelligent in other ways?</p><p></p><p>But let us not forget that D&D's Ability scores are just that: <em>abilities. </em>I used to think they were wrongly named, and should be called "Attributes," but if we instead take the word literally--Abilities--then we can see them as a character's capacity to enact actions through various means or aspects of themselves.</p><p></p><p>So INT doesn't have to be the depth of a character's thinking, but their <em>ability </em>to process certain types of information, mostly related to logic and conceptual thinking. WIS, in a way, covers some of the other forms of Gardner's intelligences: existential, spatial-visual, intrapersonal, maybe naturalistic. And CHA touches about interpersonal (social-emotional) and perhaps musical intelligences, and of course DEX covers bodily-kinesthetic.</p><p></p><p>So a low INT character need not be an idiot, they're just bad at logical processing, and especially if they're higher in WIS or CHA, is "intelligent" in different ways.</p><p></p><p>EDIT: I would also add that a high INT character could be an idiot - perhaps emotionally clueless or lacking imagination or intuition. I think the mistake is in thinking of INT as all aspects of intelligence, rather than a more narrow band of rational-logical thinking and processing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mercurius, post: 8471180, member: 59082"] Intelligence, in the real world, has a variety of meanings, from the more specific IQ to Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences of which IQ is just a small portion (probably a combination of verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical, leaving the other nine mostly untouched). I've also known many people who are quite intelligent in terms of the depth of their thought, but either have a difficult time translating their thinking to words/actions, or slower in their processing. And I've known people who are extremely intelligent in other forms of intelligence--say bodily-kinesthetic or spatial-visual, etc--but not as much in terms of verbal or logical. I mean, how many of us know someone (or are someone) who "sucks at math" but is highly intelligent in other ways? But let us not forget that D&D's Ability scores are just that: [I]abilities. [/I]I used to think they were wrongly named, and should be called "Attributes," but if we instead take the word literally--Abilities--then we can see them as a character's capacity to enact actions through various means or aspects of themselves. So INT doesn't have to be the depth of a character's thinking, but their [I]ability [/I]to process certain types of information, mostly related to logic and conceptual thinking. WIS, in a way, covers some of the other forms of Gardner's intelligences: existential, spatial-visual, intrapersonal, maybe naturalistic. And CHA touches about interpersonal (social-emotional) and perhaps musical intelligences, and of course DEX covers bodily-kinesthetic. So a low INT character need not be an idiot, they're just bad at logical processing, and especially if they're higher in WIS or CHA, is "intelligent" in different ways. EDIT: I would also add that a high INT character could be an idiot - perhaps emotionally clueless or lacking imagination or intuition. I think the mistake is in thinking of INT as all aspects of intelligence, rather than a more narrow band of rational-logical thinking and processing. [/QUOTE]
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