D&D 5E (2024) Intelligence is your lie detecting stat - is it still a dump stat?

[Stalker0]

So one major (and likely controversial) change from the latest packet: Insight is no longer your primary "lie detector" type stats. Deception is now opposed by the intelligence score of the person you are trying to bluff.

This is a major flavor change, no longer is your wise cleric the one sniffing out lies, its your book nerd wizard.

Intelligence has long been thought of as a dump stat for characters not focused in it. Do you think this change will help that? Do you think this change makes sense?

 

[Charlaquin]

I don’t think it’s relevant for PCs because the influence action is explicitly only for use against DM-controlled characters.

 

[billd91]

I'm not sure it makes sense in all cases. It might make sense with respect to recent shows that have had people ferreting out lies by observing tells, something that could be Intelligence-based. But others go by intuition, which is more suggestive of Wisdom.
I do think setting the DC to be the target's Intelligence score rather than a calculation based on some base value + Int Mod is a bit odd compared to everything 3e-5e.

 

[Minigiant]

For Deception, Intelligence based DC only makes sense for long processes when the target gets to think about it. Like deceiving a noble at their throne or court would be Intelligence as they have time to think over the entire process.

But as an action it would be Wisdom unless you have a gigabrain to calculate the situation quickly.

And for Animal Handling it should be Wisdom versus Charisma.

 

[tetrasodium]

So one major (and likely controversial) change from the latest packet: Insight is no longer your primary "lie detector" type stats. Deception is now opposed by the intelligence score of the person you are trying to bluff.

This is a major flavor change, no longer is your wise cleric the one sniffing out lies, its your book nerd wizard.

Intelligence has long been thought of as a dump stat for characters not focused in it. Do you think this change will help that? Do you think this change makes sense?

It's important for monsters yes. Players can look at a gm stating "the npc makes an incredibly persuasive case & your character feels that way" even with "he made a 47 on his persuade" & just straight up nosell it even if they have a 3 intelligence.

At least currently there does not seem to be any reason fore PCs to invest in intelligence or care about a loss to intelligence. Almost all of the int linked uses can be substituted with player knowledge or every player rolling a d20 on the same check to get lucky in knowing a thing.

 

[Clint_L]

I feel like intelligence should just never be a dump stat for a sentient [the character element formerly known as race]. Like, I get that you want all six to b balanced, but it just seems weird to me that being dumb would often be advantageous.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I hate that Int and Str (in that order) became teh dump stats for 5e (like cha was in 2e) but I don't know if this will fix it.

 

[Clint_L]

Strength I totally get. I mean, in our own world strength is effectively a dump stat in tons of professions. But intelligence seems pretty essential to any skilled occupation, and even outside of that is just generally good to have.

Assuming you have equal rights I suppose...now I am remembering Daisy claiming that the best her girl could hope for was to be a "pretty little fool" so she wouldn't know how much the world sucked for women in 1920s America (The Great Gatsby).

 

[Charlaquin]

It's important for monsters yes. Players can look at a gm stating "the npc makes an incredibly persuasive case & your character feels that way" even with "he made a 47 on his persuade" & just straight up nosell it even if they have a 3 intelligence.

Moreover, Intelligence only affects the DC of Charisma checks using the Influence action, which can only be taken against NPCs. If a PC wants to determine an NPC’s state of mind, that’s a Search action according to the playtest rules glossary, which still uses Wisdom.

 

[Stalker0]

I don’t think it’s relevant for PCs because the influence action is explicitly only for use against DM-controlled characters.

If that's the case then are npcs just incapable of lieing to PCs?