D&D 5E Geniuses with 5 Int

[Ovinomancer]

Gen. Butcher frowned. His head wound still bothered him. He surveyed the campaign table before him and wondered what it was. He felt sure it was important but couldn't remember why. Besides, it looked wrong. The pink was too heavy. Yes, that was it. He moved some flags around. That was better.

At his side, a man coughed. The general looked round and stared at the man. He looked vaguely familiar but he couldn't remember why.

"Prenthorpe, sir," said the man helpfully, "I'm your aide-de-camp."

"Ah. Yes. Very good. Carry on."

Prenthorpe indicated the flags that his general had just moved. "You are redeploying the XIVth Heavy Cavalry into the northern forest?"

"I am?"

"Very good, sir, I'll send out the orders straight away."

Later that day, Gen. Aargh of the Brown Hordes surveyed the tattered remnants of his army as they fled the battlefield. His masterplan had crumbled before his eyes. His feint to the south had met with surprisingly little resistance, while his main force, advancing stealthily through the northern forest, had been cut to ribbons by sabre-wielding heavy horsemen hiding in the trees. It made no sense. They shouldn't have been there. No-one deploys heavy cavalry in a forest !

A circle of subordinates circled Aargh, surveying him with mixed feelings and each other with distinctly unmixed feelings. There was about to be a vacancy for general and each and every one of them wanted it.

"My comrades," began Aargh, "There is no shame in this defeat. The gods were against us. After our previous defeat at Broken Mountain, I though I had the measure of Butcher. But I was wrong. The man is a military genius. I have sent emissaries offering an honourable surrender."

The next thing he said was his last. He called out his own name as he toppled backwards. "Aargh!"

No one deploys heavy cavalry in the woods because their very vulnerable when they can't close ranks and charge. So vulnerable in that case that even skirmishes are very dangerous to them.

So Mr. General of the Losing Color didn't lose to Mr. General of the Winning Color because of tactics, but because his forces in the field were incompetent when given a fight where they have every advantage.

Sent from my desire to irritate Mustrum

 

[Guest 6801328]

I can't find anything in the books that says, explicitly, that the rules are absolute. Therefore, by Maxperson's argument, they are not.

Which leaves with the position that what is written in the books is descriptive and not prescriptive.

Which we already knew anyway.

Ooh. You must have an Int 5 because that was freakin' brilliant.

 

[Guest 6801328]

No one deploys heavy cavalry in the woods because their very vulnerable when they can't close ranks and charge. So vulnerable in that case that even skirmishes are very dangerous to them.

So Mr. General of the Losing Color didn't lose to Mr. General of the Winning Color because of tactics, but because his forces in the field were incompetent when given a fight where they have every advantage.

Sent from my desire to irritate Mustrum

If you wrote a novel and Bold wrote a novel, and each of you included your version of this scene, Bold's novel would be more fun to read.

EDIT:

The General Butcher story raises an interesting question for everyone in this thread: would you object to somebody with an 18 Int playing a "lucky idiot" and narrating all their successes as fluke, luck, etc.?

 

[BoldItalic]

No one deploys heavy cavalry in the woods because their very vulnerable when they can't close ranks and charge. So vulnerable in that case that even skirmishes are very dangerous to them.

Except if the enemy isn't expecting them to be there and has left all his polearms at home because everybody knows you don't need them in forests. The brilliance lies not in the tactics but in wrong-footing the enemy. Aargh realized this, afterwards, and that's why he acknowledged the genius of his opponent. No-one else in the history of warfare had thought of doing what Butcher did because it doesn't make sense, logically, until afterwards when you see how brilliant it was.

So Mr. General of the Losing Color didn't lose to Mr. General of the Winning Color because of tactics, but because his forces in the field were incompetent when given a fight where they have every advantage.

See above.

Sent from my desire to irritate Mustrum

Have you been taking your frog pills lately?

 

[Maxperson]

The problem with this is that no set of rules covers all the cases it has to when taken strictly literally, with no entailment or extrapolation permitted.

How is that a problem? Rulings are not a part of RAW. Ever. Not one ruling on something a rule does not cover is written in the rules, therefore it cannot by definition be RAWRITTEN.

Some of the entailments are obvious and uncontentious (eg the rules tell us that recovering 1 hp takes 1 day of rest; and so we extrapolate that if my PC is 7 hp down that wil take a week of rest to recover).

Some of the entailments are more contentious. For instance, the rules tell us that alchemist's fire, burning oil and a lighted torch all do fire damage (SRD pp 66, 68), and also tell us (under the heading "Damage Types -") that "Red dragons breathe fire, and many spells conjure flames to deal fire damage" (SRD p 97). This seems to me to support extrapolation to "fire damage is the result of being burned by flames". It is pretty uncontentious that flames can set timber structures alight. Hence, I see an extrapolation to "fire damage can set timber structures alight". The extrapolations here are weaker than strict entailment, but they're much stronger than mere conjecture, or mere permissible selection from a range of feasible alternatives.

Is that a departure from RAW, or a "ruling", in the way that the 1 week's healing to recover 7 hp is not? Again, until someone tells me what's at stake in the distinction, I'm not going to express a view.

It's very reasonable and most or all DMs I know would rule that way. It's not RAW, though. It literally can't be. RAW is what is written. Any ruling, no matter how common or reasonable that is not written, cannot be RAW. If it changes a mechanic, and they usually do, they are also a house rule. That change is good only at your table.

They're instances of the things that the stats might measure. Nothing suggests that they are exhaustive.

Other than the absolutist language you mean. There is no language present that indicates that they are only things that might be measured. What is written says that those things are it.

They're barely even canonical, given that the items on the list changes from occurrence to occurrence. Just sticking to INT, the SRD on p 76 tells us that INT "measur[es] reasoning and memory", and then on p 81 tells us that INT "measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason", and then on the same page tells us that "An Intelligence check comes into play when you need to draw on logic, education, memory, or deductive reasoning."

None of that is in conflict. Let's see... We have reasoning, ability to reason logic and deductive reasoning. All the same thing, but with different ways to say it. Then we have memory, accuracy of recall and memory. Again, all different ways of saying the exact same thing. Then we have mental acuity. The one thing that is a bit of an oddbal, but not really when you look at it, is education which is a combination of memory (remembering what you learned) and the ability to reason (put that education to use).

So no, there is no change whatsoever from occurrence to occurrence. All occurrences use the same three things from the definitive definition.

What is the relationship between mental acuity, which appears on only one of those lists, and the other components of INT?

The ability to focus and understand is more of a meta-aspect. It aids the others.

What about inductive or scientific reasoning, which isn't mentioned at all? Is that included under reasoning ability? But then why specifically call out logic and deductive reasoning?

Yes, it's under ability to reason. Why call the others out? Maybe it was context. Maybe it was simply because the other chose to for aesthetic reasons. It doesn't matter since they are all the same thing.

 

[Maxperson]

An implication of this claim is that anything...anything...that is not explicitly listed for some ability or skill cannot be used. Because if the lists aren't examples but are definitive, anything not in the lists is excluded.

I'm imagining this conversation:
"How far is it from here to the tower?"
"You don't know."
"Yeah but can I estimate?"
"Um...I don't see 'estimate distances' under Intelligence, or Wisdom, or Survival...so no, you can't."

That's the literal application of what you just claimed above.

You do realize that estimations fall under accuracy of recall (remembering what you learned about distances) and ability to reason (applying that learning).

Your example is flawed and there is no problem with a PC doing it under the definitive definition provided by the game.

 

[TwoSix]

The General Butcher story raises an interesting question for everyone in this thread: would you object to somebody with an 18 Int playing a "lucky idiot" and narrating all their successes as fluke, luck, etc.?

I haven't done the concept as luck, per se, but I've certainly had characters with high attributes that in were in opposition to their description, usually due to external forces. A 5'0" female elf warrior with 18 Str, for example, because she has a divine gift for fighting.

 

[BoldItalic]

Ooh. You must have an Int 5 because that was freakin' brilliant.

Thank you, but it was nothing

Next level up, I get an ASI and I can get to Int 6. That's 20% cleverer than 5, isn't it? Then you will all be amazed. And I'll be allowed to read successfully sometimes instead of automatic failure so I'll be able to read what people are actually posting here, instead of having to use telepathy on them and only knowing what they were thinking when they posted it.

Oops, I wasn't supposed to talk about the telepathy.

 

[pemerton]

It doesn't matter since they are all the same thing.

I'll just reply to this.

Logical ability and ability in scientific reasoning are not the same thing. Nor are other forms of reasoning. I've had the good fortune to know a number of very brilliant mathematicians. They are not all good philosophers, although one of them is not too bad at it, which I learned when I was his first year tutor. Nor are they all good physicists - the one who studied philosophy did so because he had no interest or inclination to take any natural science units as part of his degree. One of them tried to be good at literary criticism, but dropped out of that component of his studies to focus on mathematics; while another won a writing competition in his home town while still an undergraduate student.

What is the D&D stat for literary criticism? For being good at philosophy but not chemistry, or vice versa? For being good at mathematics but not the natural sciences?

In the real world, these are not all the same thing.

 

[Ovinomancer]

If you wrote a novel and Bold wrote a novel, and each of you included your version of this scene, Bold's novel would be more fun to read.

How dismissive of you. Firstly, we aren't talking of novels, but of games, and secondly, BI being wrong doesn't make his story better unless you prefer wrong.

Sent from my desire to irritate Mustrum