D&D 5E So 5 Intelligence Huh

[Hriston]

It's crystal clear that I am talking about IQ here, not math in general. Strawman alert.

So your argument is "Earth math" doesn't apply in D&D only as it relates to the concept of IQ? You've lost me here.

 

[Maxperson]

I think he was claiming that it is irrational on the player's part, not the character's, to do the thwarting action. Maybe "irrational" isn't technically correct, because you could argue that it's rational to prioritize a narrative over mechanical goals, but at least he's trying to define his terms.

That still doesn't make any sense. Assuming that you aren't playing D&D as a board game, one of your goals is to roleplay your character, including any flaws such as stupidity for low intelligence. That means that it would be irrational not to roleplay your character as stupid, as that failure would thwart your goal.

 

[Maxperson]

So your argument is "Earth math" doesn't apply in D&D only as it relates to the concept of IQ? You've lost me here.

My argument about Earth math was in the context of IQ and you know it. Other "Earth math" may or may not be applicable on a case by case basis. It depends on what D&D says. With the case of IQ, D&D says IQ = int x 10, so that's the only math D&D uses for IQ, not the Earth math you would like to use.

 

[Guest 6801328]

That still doesn't make any sense. Assuming that you aren't playing D&D as a board game, one of your goals is to roleplay your character, including any flaws such as stupidity for low intelligence. That means that it would be irrational not to roleplay your character as stupid, as that failure would thwart your goal.

Uh, yeah, you basically repeated my second of two sentences.

I'll observe that you wrote "one of your goals is" rather than "your only goal is". In other words, you might have multiple goals. If another goal is "succeed at the adventure" then you might possibly have two conflicting goals. How you prioritize them is not a right/wrong choice, it's a preference, and if adhering to a narrow definition of roleplaying that requires you to pretend to be stupid is not your top priority, then yes it may be irrational to do so in some circumstances.

I'm surprised this needs to be spelled out. Well, not really surprised. This thread long ago abandoned genuine discourse of inquiry and dissolved into stubborn intransigence and oneupmanship.

 

[Maxperson]

Uh, yeah, you basically repeated my second of two sentences.

I'll observe that you wrote "one of your goals is" rather than "your only goal is". In other words, you might have multiple goals. If another goal is "succeed at the adventure" then you might possibly have two conflicting goals. How you prioritize them is not a right/wrong choice, it's a preference, and if adhering to a narrow definition of roleplaying that requires you to pretend to be stupid is not your top priority, then yes it may be irrational to do so in some circumstances.

Yes, goals might be in competition. However, if you prioritize roleplaying as lesser and don't roleplay a stupid PC as stupid, that's still bad roleplaying. It might be okay with you and your group, but that won't turn bad roleplay into good roleplay.

 

[Hriston]

Let me try to explain this again. Person A has an IQ of 50. Person B has an IQ of 100. Person C has an IQ of 150. If these values were nominal, you could say that B was twice as smart as A, and C was three times as smart as A, but only half again as smart as B. But IQ is ordinal, which means we cannot tell how much difference there is between numbers, just that the numbers are ranked in order. So Person B is smarter than Person A, but we cannot say how much smarter. I would be very inappropriate to say twice a smart, for instance, because the only information we can glean is the B is smarter to some degree than A. C is the smartest in this little group, but we can't say how much smarter. He may be twice as smart as B but only 2 and a half times smarter than A. Or he may be barely smarter than B. We cannot tell. Because of this, even though I could do the math to average the three scores and say that the mean is 100, that's has no value because I don't know that C is the same distance from B as A is, so saying B is the average value isn't possible -- the true average value may be anywhere between A and C.

I'm beginning to think you're not reading my posts you're responding to. My argument has nothing to do with how smart a person with a particular IQ is compared to another person with some other IQ. It has nothing to do with the mean of 100 being an accurate measure of average intelligence. My argument is only about how rare a particular IQ score is. IQ tests are purposely constructed in such a way that the results will conform to the 3-sigma rule; 68% of people will have an IQ between 85 and 115, 95% of people will have an IQ between 70 and 130, and 99.7% of people will have an IQ between 55 and 145. You can see from this that IQ isn't so much a measure of how smart you are but of how rare a certain test result is. An IQ of 180 (if it was even a valid result) is exceedingly rare, much more rare than a result of 18 on a 3d6.

 

[Hriston]

My argument about Earth math was in the context of IQ and you know it. Other "Earth math" may or may not be applicable on a case by case basis. It depends on what D&D says. With the case of IQ, D&D says IQ = int x 10, so that's the only math D&D uses for IQ, not the Earth math you would like to use.

So now you're saying that D&D has a special type of IQ (let's call it D&D IQ) that is defined as Intelligence X 10 and has nothing, or very little, to do with IQ as it is used here on Earth. I'm sure some of the many rules references you've mentioned give some indication as to what D&D IQ is for. I ask you again to provide citations, since from what you've said all it seems to be is a reiteration of the character's Intelligence score.

 

[pming]

Hiya.

My 2 1/2 year old can do all of those (or, in the case of the coins, something equivalent) except the words of more then 5 letters.

Are you suggesting that a character who, according to the rules, is not only viable but is 2 entire steps smarter than a minimally viable character, is less functional than a 2 1/2 year old?

In the context of rules for a fantasy game of make-believe, yes. As I said in my post, the key is ROLE-PLAYING your character with a 5 Int. Seeing as it's pretty hard for most folk to grasp what a "5 Int" person has to deal with on a day to day basis, we, as roleplayers, need to sort of "fudge" expectations and play up the concept of 'stupid'. We have to do it when we play a character with a 16 Int, after all (well, most of us who don't have 160+ IQ's).

A character with a 5 Int can do 'smart things', as per the player playing the character. My point was that the player should role-play the stupidity, and the DM should fill in the blanks for outcome (e.g., my door opening scenario).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Guest 6801328]

Yes, goals might be in competition. However, if you prioritize roleplaying as lesser and don't roleplay a stupid PC as stupid, that's still bad roleplaying. It might be okay with you and your group, but that won't turn bad roleplay into good roleplay.

Ah, ok. Now we're getting to the argument about the One True Way to roleplay. I knew this was the same debate as using fire on trolls, in a different guise.

 

[pemerton]

In the editions where IQ = int x 10, it's not conjecture. Those editions comprise a large majority of D&D.

Can you actually state which editions you mean?

The ones for which I think there is no rule that IQ = INT*10 are OD&D, AD&D (at least 1st ed, maybe 2nd as well), 4e, 5e, and Moldvay/Marsh/Cook B/X. The remark by Brian Blume in a semi-humorous article, written at a time when the main function of Dragon was to publish house rules and advice, is not a rule for any edition of the game (though perhaps Blume handled things that way at his table).

Please re-read my multiple posts on the inappropriateness of using means, SDs, and normal distributions with ordinal data.

<snip>

It is utterly false that an ordinal set of data can posses a true mean, a true standard deviation, or be a true normal distribution.

<snip>

Person A has an IQ of 50. Person B has an IQ of 100. Person C has an IQ of 150. If these values were nominal, you could say that B was twice as smart as A, and C was three times as smart as A, but only half again as smart as B. But IQ is ordinal, which means we cannot tell how much difference there is between numbers, just that the numbers are ranked in order.

Is the above relevant to the discussion with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] about IQ?

IQ scores provide a ranking, and also indicate a likelihood - so IQ 180 means that X% of people will be at or above that IQ (for some relatively small X, many decimal places less than 1).

So does the 3d6 roll: only 1 in 216 (= (1/6)^3) people will have INT 18.

But 1 in 216 is approximately 0.5%; hence an 18 INT is far more common, in the imagined population of D&D PCs, than is 180 IQ in the real population of human beings.

As far as I can tell, nothing in the above reasoning requires treating IQ, or INT, as measuring some quantity; nor does the notion of a "normal distribution" play a role in the reasoning; nor does the reasoning require treating the mean or SD of any data set as meaningful in the way that you are objecting to.

I'm not a mathematician or statistician, but to me it seems to be a rather straightforward argument about likelihoods.

(And since writing this reply, I see that [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] has said the same thing as above in post 816.)