D&D 5E So 5 Intelligence Huh

[pemerton]

A player who role-plays to his flaw may take actions that are less than optimal for himself or the party (and possibly even be rewarded with Inspiration for doing so) but even so, the rules don't force him to do that. If he does it occasionally to make the game more entertaining for the others, then that could be classed as "good". If he does it perversely, however, if he chooses a flaw that, in effect, says "I invariably make stupid decisions", to justify in his own mind actions that make the game less entertaining for the others (the "it's what my character would do" defence) then he's just being a jerk.

I would suggest that sub-optimal play is "good" if there is some legitimate rationale behind it, and it makes the game more fun for the other players.

Whenever you roleplay your character appropriately, it adds to the game, even if it makes the goal more difficult. Good roleplay makes the game more enjoyable

On this issue my view is closer to that of BoldItalic than Maxperson.

You don't have to go all the way to CN/CE horror stories to see how "just playing my character" can reduce the fun of the table rather than make it more enjoyable, even if those at the table see the main goal of play being to establish and maintain characterisation.

I would push it one step further, though, and say that even if the player is not being a jerk, it might be a problem - at least at some tables - if s/he is not establishing goals for his/her PC and trying to move the game forward by declaring actions in pursuit of those goals. (And that doesn't mean that these games are hostile to "roleplaying". Though they may not regard characterisation as the be-all and end-all of RPing.)

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION], [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]: the likelihood of rolling less than 8 on best 3 of 4d6 is 74/1296, or nearly 6%. So in a party of 4 PCs whose stats are generated in this way, there's a good chance to see at least 1 or 2 such scores.

If the person who rolls that score is playing a wizard, by default I'd expect to see it in STR. If that person is playing a fighter or barbarian, by default I'd expect to see in in INT. (I recognise that 5e, perhaps more than any other edition of D&D, encourages departures from those defaults. But I still think they are the defaults.)

And in either case, I would expect the subsequent play of the game to reveal (via action declaration and action resolution) that one is a cerebral sort of character, and the other not.

 

[Valmarius]

Ultimately, I'd want a character I play to have stats influenced by their personality. Not a personality derived from their stats.

 

[Sadras]

Beats me, and I'm taking you at your word your calculations are correct. (I'm not a math guy.) They didn't include a rule that says to reroll if you get lower than 8 either. Why is that?

To answer your question. My personal feeling, and this may just be my inner idealist, is that those who actually roll their ability scores/hit points, will roleplay as 'expected'. The point-buy suits the non-risk takers and the min-maxers so they will at least have an 8 INT. That way both camps are satisfied

You're adding that last bit.

True I am, based on the mechanics given character creation process.

I think it's fair to ask someone to play the way you want them to and I think it's fair to expect they will do so if they agreed to it.

and

And that might be the expectation at your table.

We have 'that guy' at our table, but he is generally harmless he only echoes what everyone else might possibly be thinking but isn't willing to comment. In any event if someone was playing a 5 INT character - the rest of the players would be auditing his/her roleplaying. As DM, I wouldn't even have to get involved - and for that reason no one plays a 5 INT.
I merely wanted to highlight that the mechanical reality of a 5e character with 5 INT is a rather a rare case and that the designers, through the mechanics, were in favour of more balanced characters.

 

[dennis_johnjoe]

The rules are quite specific regarding what you can do with a physical ability score. For example, if I know your strength, I know exactly how far and high you can jump and how much you can carry. I'm interested to know what people on here think that an int 5 character can do? What are his/her limits?

To me, the problem here is that there's no uniform definition as far as I can tell. So it's down to the individual to decide. However, I suspect that people will vary a great deal in their assessment of what this int 5 character can reasonably do.

Also, this still presents the other issue that as well as static values derived from strength (eg. Jumping distance) exist alongside strength ability checks and opposed checks. In these cases, a puny individual might achieve amazing feats of strength if they're lucky enough. Is the same not true of intelligence or aren't you even allowed to try?

 

[dennis_johnjoe]

I guess the real question is this:

What can an int 6 character figure out that an int 5 character can't? And how much more does the int 7 character know? And 8.... And so on and so forth. And who steps in and says "sorry, your reasoning is beyond an intelligence 8 character, I'd expect a score of at least 11 to be thinking of that. You're role playing is not acceptable to me, I'm off."

 

[iserith]

To answer your question. My personal feeling, and this may just be my inner idealist, is that those who actually roll their ability scores/hit points, will roleplay as 'expected'. The point-buy suits the non-risk takers and the min-maxers so they will at least have an 8 INT. That way both camps are satisfied

One would think that anyone at your table would roleplay as expected regardless of what the ability score is or how it was generated.

True I am, based on the mechanics given character creation process.

I'm not sure what you mean.

We have 'that guy' at our table, but he is generally harmless he only echoes what everyone else might possibly be thinking but isn't willing to comment. In any event if someone was playing a 5 INT character - the rest of the players would be auditing his/her roleplaying. As DM, I wouldn't even have to get involved - and for that reason no one plays a 5 INT.
I merely wanted to highlight that the mechanical reality of a 5e character with 5 INT is a rather a rare case and that the designers, through the mechanics, were in favour of more balanced characters.

I wouldn't want to play at the table period, regardless of Intelligence score, if I felt like everyone was going to be "auditing my roleplaying." That sounds really bad to me. I value people minding their own business when it comes to this sort of thing.

 

[Maxperson]

It's not an Appeal to Authority fallacy if the person being appealed to actually has expertise on the topic in question.

That's false. An Appeal to Authority applies to authorities, too. It's a fallacy to say X is correct because an authority says it's correct and leave it at that. You have to also prove your argument through other means.

 

[Maxperson]

Just adding to this tangent: I believe that general relativity is (roughly) true, because I know that some extremely clever mathematical physicists (eg Einstein, Weil) have worked on it; because I have read Bertrand Russell's (simplified) presentations of it; because I heard on the radio fairly recently that gravity waves had been detected by astronomers;etc.

By [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s standards, it seems that I'm guilty of a fallacy for trusting the testimony of these various authorities and believing that general relativity is (roughly) true. I guess that Maxperson also doubts that Alice Springs exists, seeing as he doesn't believe things just because competent people tell them to him. (Maxperson, if you have been to Alice Springs than lets substitute Broken Hill, or Pyonyang, or some other place whose existence you know of only from the testimony of others.)

And this is...

An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attack on an argument made by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, rather than attacking the argument directly.

First you declare yourself an authority use that as the only proof that you are correct. Appeal to Authority, and now you attack me and not my argument. Very nice. Well, no, not really.

Fallacies might work well on some ignorant jurors, but most people here are above average in intelligence and fairly well educated. You're just going to get called out on the fallacies, which takes away from the thread, and use of the fallacies themselves harms your arguments tremendously.

 

[Sadras]

One would think that anyone at your table would roleplay as expected regardless of what the ability score is or how it was generated.

In that instance, I wasn't speaking about my table, but about players that roll for their characters.

I wouldn't want to play at the table period, regardless of Intelligence score, if I felt like everyone was going to be "auditing my roleplaying." That sounds really bad to me. I value people minding their own business when it comes to this sort of thing.

Well I was talking about an audit of INT 5 and it is more tongue in cheek type audit. Teasing/taunting goes very much hand in hand with roleplaying at our table, especially amongst a group of friends. But as you have said it might not be for everyone.