How smart is a 3 INT in d20?

[Epametheus]

The first thing that popped into my head was "picture what it would be like if your dog could talk. It's not actually smarter; it's just able to talk, and understand you when you talk back."

Personally, I'd be perfectly willing to give certain animals higher int scores than 2.

Mechanically, the main difference between a 2 int and a 3 int is that the 3 int can actually understand language. Might not be able to speak it back, but can still understand it (arguably, you should be able to talk to the Tarrasque if you use a Tongues spell, though it's far more likely to eat you than to respond).

Such a person simply wouldn't understand or even care about anything remotely complicated. Your dog, cat, or horse doesn't care about reading; the 3 Int guy wouldn't either.

 

[Dark Jezter]

I want to know In game how smart would a 3 int be? For a 30 iq is not playable and want some real tips not just auggh me hurt you.

Here's some example intelligence scores from the Player's Handbook:

0: Zombie, golem, ochre jelly
1: Carrion crawler, purple worm, camel
2: Tiger, hydra, dog, horse
3: Gray render, tendriculos, Harry Knowles
4-5: Otyugh, griffon, displacer beast
6-7: Troll, hell-hound, ogre, yrthak
8-9: Troglodite, centaur, gnoll
10: Human, bugbear, wight, night hag

So, a character with an intelligence score of 3 would still be able to communicate verbally (although they would likely have a very simple vocabulary), but they would have a lot trouble grasping anything that required thought, such as mathematics, logic, literacy, et cetera.

 

[Elephant]

Profound mental retardation.

I seem to remember seeing that INTx10 = IQ somewhere. It might be a bit too simplistic, but it's certainly food for thought.

 

[Kalanyr]

On a bellcurve, a 3 on 3d6 is almost 3 standard deviations below the mean. MENSA entry (top 2% of the population in intelligence) entry cutoff is 2 standard deviations above the mean, in otherwords such a character falls with in (and not towards the top of) the dumbest 2% of humans on the planet at the moment. On a standard MENSA entry IQ test its a score of about 59 (85 and below qualifies as mentally retarded).

Edit- Note: 86-114 on such a test is considered "average" whatever the heck that means.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'd still say you'd be barely functional as a person; you'd probably have to be looked after in a large city. With a '3', they're only one point above a bright animal.

This is completely incorrect on a fundamental level.

Do you think that 1 in 256 of the D&D population is that non-functional? I don't!

You are assuming that INT is a continuum from 1-18 and beyond. There is actually a fundamental disconnect between 2 and 3... 3-18 is the human range, 1-2 is the animal range and never the twain shall meet. It is an artifact of the 3d6 attribute system; the fact that "3" is 1 point higher than "2" is irrelevant because one represents animal level intelligence and the other represents the lower bounds of human intelligence.

I think that Sejs has the right of it - someone with low INT, WIS & CHA would be considered retarted and barely functional as a person (and 3 in all three attributes is sufficiently rare - 1 in 16 milliion odd - that it comes across a little more realistically to my mind).

Cheers

 

[random user]

This is completely incorrect on a fundamental level.

Do you think that 1 in 256 of the D&D population is that non-functional? I don't!

You are assuming that INT is a continuum from 1-18 and beyond. There is actually a fundamental disconnect between 2 and 3... 3-18 is the human range, 1-2 is the animal range and never the twain shall meet. It is an artifact of the 3d6 attribute system; the fact that "3" is 1 point higher than "2" is irrelevant because one represents animal level intelligence and the other represents the lower bounds of human intelligence.

I think that Sejs has the right of it - someone with low INT, WIS & CHA would be considered retarted and barely functional as a person (and 3 in all three attributes is sufficiently rare - 1 in 16 milliion odd - that it comes across a little more realistically to my mind).

Cheers

Well, there are lots of ways to look at it. One way to look at it is that 3 is 50% more than 2. That's pretty significant, though it does assume a linear progression, which I is a position I'm not advocating (I don't really care actually).

The other thing to consider though is that the curve isn't going to be representative of the population at large -- it would be representative of the population at birth. Chances are pretty good that an NPC with a 3 in any stat isn't going to make it past childhood, given the nature of life in most campaigns.

 

[Al]

A quick analysis of the normal distribution (SD=15, Mean=100) reveals that an Int 3 is roughly equal to a 60 IQ in purely intellectual terms. Whilst it's a relatively crude measure since Wis would factor into IQ, the general formula for converted IQ to mental age (in the case of retardation) is (IQ x 16/100)= 9.6. So you'd have the mental ability of a nine-year-old.

This means that Int 3 is generally more intelligent than most would assume. You have basic literacy skills, basic mathematical ability (simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), some very crude one-step logical conclusions (e.g. fire burns), perhaps learnt by rote, and basic spatial skills. Anything else is probably beyond them.

 

[Kalanyr]

random user posted:
The other thing to consider though is that the curve isn't going to be representative of the population at large -- it would be representative of the population at birth. Chances are pretty good that an NPC with a 3 in any stat isn't going to make it past childhood, given the nature of life in most campaigns.

And to think I tried to work out how to say that point about really low intelligence without offending anyone for a good 5 minutes, before deleting it from my post, and you say it so simply. I am deeply ashamed now.

 

[S'mon]

INT & IQ - these days, looking at IQ bell curves vs 3d6 and typical D&D distributions, I'd advocate something like INT 10 = IQ 100, each +/- 1 INT = +/- 5 IQ. So INT 18 would be IQ 136-140, INT 3 would be IQ 61-65. This doesn't work for INT 0-2 which are mostly used for animals and such (I seem to recall chimpanzees tested for IQ scoring 35 or so), but seems to work ok for higher INTs.

INT IQ
3 61-65
4 66-70
5 71-75
6 76-80
7 81-85
8 86-90
9 91-95
10 96-100
11 101-105
12 106-110
13 111-115
14 116-120
15 121-125
16 126-130
17 131-135
18 136-140
19 141-145

If these seem too low you could add +4 to all the scores (so INT 10 would be IQ 101-105), or take a different baseline. In 1e INT 8-10 was described as "Average", so you could make INT 9 = IQ 100 if you wanted.

The one thing I'd emphasise is that making 1 pt INT = 5 pts IQ, whatever the baseline, gives much more plausible results for (uncoached) IQ scores than making it = 10 pts. Both on a 3d6 roll and in almost every campaign world, INT 18 is vastly more common than IQ 180 is IRL - IQ 180 is vanishingly rare, far less than the 1 in 216 you get from the 3d6 roll.

 

[S'mon]

A quick analysis of the normal distribution (SD=15, Mean=100) reveals that an Int 3 is roughly equal to a 60 IQ in purely intellectual terms. Whilst it's a relatively crude measure since Wis would factor into IQ, the general formula for converted IQ to mental age (in the case of retardation) is (IQ x 16/100)= 9.6. So you'd have the mental ability of a nine-year-old.

This means that Int 3 is generally more intelligent than most would assume. You have basic literacy skills, basic mathematical ability (simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), some very crude one-step logical conclusions (e.g. fire burns), perhaps learnt by rote, and basic spatial skills. Anything else is probably beyond them.

Indeed.