D&D 4E Is Intelligence 4e's dump stat?

[Valdrax]

By now, I'm sure everyone has seen the new Rogue preview. The thing that jumped out me the most is the utter irrelevance of Intelligence to the new Rogue. The following two blocks make it clear:

Key Abilities: Dexterity, Strength, Charisma
[...]
Trained Skills: Stealth and Thievery plus four others. From the class skills list below, choose four more trained skills at 1st level.
Class Skills: Acrobatics (Dexterity), Athletics (Str), Bluff (Cha), Dungeoneering (Wis), Insight (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Perception (Wis), Stealth (Dexterity), Streetwise (Cha), Thievery (Dexterity)

Note two important things from the block above:
1. You don't gain bonus skills for a high Intelligence score.
2. Not a single skill on this list is Int-based!

In 3e, Rogues were very often high-Int characters to better maximize their skill potential. Now, they can be as dumb as a bag of hammers and still be awesome at their job. While that opens up some more freedom for less clever cutpurses, I have mixed feelings about this.

In 3e, Intelligence was useful to every class -- not as useful as Con, but something you often didn't want to put a negative score into, especially given how miserly skill points were handed out. Charisma, on the other hand, was the dump stat of all previous editions. In 3e, you only needed it if you were (a) a spontaneous caster, (b) a rare social-skill maven, (c) a Paladin, or (d) the rare Cleric who actually cared about Turn Undead. Everyone else only cared about the stat when something did ability damage to it.

In 4e, it looks like Charisma and Wisdom are ascendant, and Intelligence is on the outs. We only know of two classes that are hinted at to need Intelligence -- the Wizard and the Warlord. Fighters have been noted as not having much use for the stat. (Sorry, Roy! And no Combat Expertise, apparently, if Fighters don't have much use for Int.) Additionally, 4e is getting some sort of social combat system which will likely make Charisma even more important.

In the meantime, Cha & Wis are eating skills that formerly belonged to Int -- Knowledge(local) is folded into Streetwise, and Knowledge(Dungeoneering) is just now Dungeoneering, a Wis skill. I wouldn't be surprised if Nature and Religion are Wis-based too.

So what's really left for the Int-based character other than a handful of skills and powers for maybe two classes? Int is the new Cha in 4e. As someone who likes to play smart characters, I'm a little sad to see this. (Especially because low Int gets role-played a lot more than low Cha, in my experience. I foresee a lot of sessions of playing the straight man to a comedic bunch of monosyllabic party members... :\ )

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Is that the proof - they're really dumbing down the game?

Well, I'd say it's a little too early to tell. It is notable that Rogues previous focus has changed. That's a considerable change.
But it's only one class of 8.
From what we heard, Warlords will rely also on INT, and there can be no doubt that it's the same for Wizards...
We really need to see more skills and more classes to make a final judgment.

If they really try to focus each class on 3 stats, I think Charisma definitely takes precedence over Intelligence for a Rogue. Dex is a given, and I think Strength makes a lot of sense, too, if they are supposed to be "martial" characters, especially if focused on melee. (Or rather: A low Strength sounds unreasonable.)

 

[WyzardWhately]

Some people over in the rogue discussion thread have theorized that INT innately gives you skill picks from the entire list - and that that fact might not be in any given class's section. It may also simply be false. I personally kind of hope it's true, because I don't really like dump-stats.

 

[Peter LaCara]

I think they're trying to make is so that no stat is important to every class. We've seen that they've dramatically reduced Con's importance by divorcing it from level up HP. At the same time, though, they're designing powers for every ability score spread out through the different classes (they've mentioned some fighter powers using Int, and I'm sure several warlord powers will use it too at least, not to mention wizards). So Int will be a dump stat for rogues, but there will be plenty of other characters with a need for brains in addition to brawn.

 

[malraux]

I'd bet that Int still factors into skills somehow. Perhaps all characters can select their Int modifier in skills from the entire skill list to train in. That would show up in the character creation section, not a particular class description. Or some of the powers will be keyed to the rogue's Int score, not Cha or Dex.

That said, to deal with issues of MAD/SAD, I hope all classes really use ~3 stats heavily, rather than some needing one or two and others needing many.

 

[Valdrax]

[T]hey've mentioned some fighter powers using Int [...]

If you have more information on this, I'd love to hear it, but the last word I had heard on Fighters and Intelligence was from Rich Baker's blog:

I thought about converting Karhun to a fighter instead of a warlord. After all, warblades would be in the defender role, just like fighters are. However, my desire to keep in touch with some arcane spellcasting meant that Karhun would need to multiclass into wizard (no warmage yet either), and thus could really use a good Intelligence score. Fighters have no real use for a high Intelligence, but warlords certainly do, and warlord abilities are often reminiscent of the White Raven maneuvers from Tome of Battle—Karhun had a couple of those maneuvers in his 3e incarnation. So it wasn’t entirely crazy to change up roles, and make Karhun into a warlord.

Granted, this post is 4 months old, and things may have changed, but I haven't heard a single thing that suggests that they have.

 

[squalie]

Charisma has always been the neglected attribute. For most characters you really only have 5 stats to put points on. I think it's cool that they have tried to make every attribute important depending on your class choice.. I have DM'd for years and it seems every character my friends have made have been ugly and rude, but strong, dextrous, wise and smart

 

[Valdrax]

That said, to deal with issues of MAD/SAD, I hope all classes really use ~3 stats heavily, rather than some needing one or two and others needing many.

Some people over in the rogue discussion thread have theorized that INT innately gives you skill picks from the entire list - and that that fact might not be in any given class's section. It may also simply be false. I personally kind of hope it's true, because I don't really like dump-stats.

I doubt that Int is going to let you pick non-class skills. (I'll bet that requires a feat.) It might be interesting if it did, but that swings Int back towards being *too* useful.

But dump stats are inevitable for exactly the reason malraux mentions. I think that every class in the game is likely to make an attempt at balancing MAD out after the problems it caused in 3e. An inevitable result of that, combined with point-buy, is that every class is going to have certain dump stats, and I don't really have a problem with that.

The main issue I have is the risk that Int is going to be the favored dump stat of the majority of classes -- in effect, becoming the new Cha. We know that every character is going to have a use for Cha thanks to social combat mechanics, and Wis looks to be the preferred stat for many skills. That pretty much leaves Int as the mental dump stat -- one that's less attractive than any of the physical stats.

 

[malraux]

I doubt that Int is going to let you pick non-class skills. (I'll bet that requires a feat.) It might be interesting if it did, but that swings Int back towards being *too* useful.

I don't see that as too useful. It only gives you a +5 on the check, and opens some restrictions up. But I don't see that as an uber power.

 

[Pale Jackal]

I really hope Intelligence has some relevance to every class.

CHA being a dump stat was bad enough, multiple dump stats per class isn't something I'm looking forward to.