Int = IQ?

WD40

First Post
A passage in my well-old 2nd ed book told me that your characters Int score x 10 = his IQ (Give or take).

On the surface, this seems to work in my eyes...

Ignoring the whole "IQ =/= Intelligence" argument, how do you prefer your high/low Int characters act?

Do you think Int x 10 = IQ formula works?
 

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WD40 said:
A passage in my well-old 2nd ed book told me that your characters Int score x 10 = his IQ (Give or take).

On the surface, this seems to work in my eyes...

Ignoring the whole "IQ =/= Intelligence" argument, how do you prefer your high/low Int characters act?

Do you think Int x 10 = IQ formula works?

Not really. I have a PC with a 30 Int... and there is no way in hell I can roleplay anything much higher than a 14 :p
 

I think it's irrelevant. IMC the intelligence stat describes learning. A higher int person can learn more (more skill points), learn faster (bonus to knowledge related skills) and can grasp and learn complicated analytic magic and combat (wizard spells and int based combat feats).

Problem solving and memory tasks? Those are down to the player, not the character.

Examples:

  • A stupid bard can still have +20 knowledge. He's just taken longer to reach that level than his more intelligent friend
  • A high Int mage might still be dumb enough to chuck a fireball at creatures in melee with the party, or use disintegrate to get past an obstacle when mage hand would've been better
 
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WD40 said:
A passage in my well-old 2nd ed book told me that your characters Int score x 10 = his IQ (Give or take).

On the surface, this seems to work in my eyes...

Ignoring the whole "IQ =/= Intelligence" argument, how do you prefer your high/low Int characters act?

Do you think Int x 10 = IQ formula works?
It's kind of a cool idea as sort of a roleplaying benchmark system, but it might break down at the extremes of the scale. An IQ of 30 is possible, but indicative of severe retardation. I mean, you're not even considered "trainable" in that range. And I think you'll find more Int scores of 18 in a given D&D campaign than you'll find IQ scores of 180 on the entire Earth. Hell, even an IQ of 140 is pretty damned rare.
 


No, because every character with 14 int or higher would be a genius. That'd be a lot of characters. I scored a 128 on the Wechsler test I took a last year. Dang, just 2 points short of Mensa status.

Now, as far as acting out characer's INT, I tend to not act it out too much since INT is more difficult to tell by personality. Wis OTOH, is quite obvious.
 
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I think iq is representative of both wisdom and intelligence. In other words both need to be high to have a good iq. thats also real life iq imho.
 

In a previous thread on this topic, someone, I can't rember who, posted this little table of their Int -> IQ conversion. I find it quite realistic.

INT IQ
03 60-65
04 65-70
05 70-75
06 75-80
07 80-85
08 85-90
09 90-95
10 95-100
11 100-105
12 105-110
13 110-115
14 115-120
15 120-125
16 125-130
17 130-135
18 135-140
 

GreatLemur said:
It's kind of a cool idea as sort of a roleplaying benchmark system, but it might break down at the extremes of the scale. An IQ of 30 is possible, but indicative of severe retardation. I mean, you're not even considered "trainable" in that range. And I think you'll find more Int scores of 18 in a given D&D campaign than you'll find IQ scores of 180 on the entire Earth. Hell, even an IQ of 140 is pretty damned rare.

Exactly...both IQ and a score of 3-18 on 3d6 follow bell curves, but the distributions are different.

An 18 Int on 3d6 (allegedly equating to a 180 IQ) would occur in roughly 0.5% of the population (odds of rolling 18 on 3d6 are 1 in 216); a 17 or better (allegedly a 170+ IQ) would occur in roughly 2% of the population (4 in 216 chance of rolling a 17+). But, a 140 IQ is already in the 99+ percentile, and only about 2% of the population has an IQ above 130.
 

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