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<blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 6867333" data-attributes="member: 19675">Cutesy ad hominem attacks don't win fans.&nbsp; Or debates.The most charitable reading of your characters with MostlyDM's restatement &quot;they are receiving a -3 penalty to Intelligence ability checks, spell attack rolls, saving throws, and spell DCs&quot; is that Milton and Deuce might be interpretable that way.Why?&nbsp; Because by your descriptions, Elolelle and Calivan actually succeed in their rolls: Elolelle deliberately misrepresents her success; Calivan succeeds, but holds back in hopes his tiger can come to the correct conclusions.&nbsp; They are making decisions to go with less optimum results.&nbsp; They are not actually failing, they are &quot;throwing the fight.&quot;Back to Milton and Deuce, though.&nbsp; Again, the character descriptions do not fit with the mechanics.&nbsp; Milton is- as described- seemingly ONLY affected when he's dealing with matters arcane.&nbsp; Absent any more info, the would seem to be unhindered by those insecurities.Deuce's hinderance is similarly situationally limited.&nbsp; Being made idiotic by love is a great RP hook, but what if there is no &quot;love-linked&quot; distraction to be had?&nbsp; In the example given, if the library were that of someone who had no poetry in his soul, is Deuce going to get that same -3 when the raciest, most erotic text in the collection was &quot;How to Torture a Modron&quot;?As for MostlyDM's restatement itself?&nbsp; Well, the assertion that you can divorce the description of Intelligence form the math that models it is very problematic.&nbsp; Words mean things.&nbsp; Going down that path allows someone to describe the darkness of night and giving bonuses to visual perception rolls.&nbsp; Or describing something as heavy and letting characters carry more mass the weaker they get.There ARE games that do a good job of letting you model highly intellectual characters with flaws that hinder their cognitive abilities in certain situations- HERO, GURPS, etc.- but D&amp;D isn't one of them.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dannyalcatraz, post: 6867333, member: 19675"] Cutesy ad hominem attacks don't win fans. Or debates. The most charitable reading of your characters with MostlyDM's restatement "they are receiving a -3 penalty to Intelligence ability checks, spell attack rolls, saving throws, and spell DCs" is that Milton and Deuce [I]might[/I] be interpretable that way. Why? Because by your descriptions, Elolelle and Calivan actually [I]succeed in their rolls[/I]: Elolelle deliberately misrepresents her success; Calivan succeeds, but holds back in hopes his tiger can come to the correct conclusions. They are making decisions to go with less optimum results. They are not actually failing, they are "throwing the fight." Back to Milton and Deuce, though. Again, the character descriptions do not fit with the mechanics. Milton is- as described- seemingly ONLY affected when he's dealing with matters arcane. Absent any more info, the would seem to be unhindered by those insecurities. Deuce's hinderance is similarly situationally limited. Being made idiotic by love is a great RP hook, but what if there is no "love-linked" distraction to be had? In the example given, if the library were that of someone who had no poetry in his soul, is Deuce going to get that same -3 when the raciest, most erotic text in the collection was "How to Torture a Modron"? As for MostlyDM's restatement itself? Well, the assertion that you can divorce the description of Intelligence form the math that models it is very problematic. Words mean things. Going down that path allows someone to describe the darkness of night and giving bonuses to visual perception rolls. Or describing something as heavy and letting characters carry more mass the weaker they get. There ARE games that do a good job of letting you model highly intellectual characters with flaws that hinder their cognitive abilities in certain situations- HERO, GURPS, etc.- but D&D isn't one of them. [/QUOTE]

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