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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6845088" data-attributes="member: 42582">Why would I accept that?What's being discussed in this thread is whether the D&D game includes an expectation that players of PCs with low INT will self-police their action declarations by making sure that their PCs don't do things that are, relative to the ingame situation and the interests of those PCs, clever things.To the best of my knowledge, the only version of D&D to assert this is 2nd ed AD&D.No. I am saying that the whole game is a mental challenge. That is inherent in it being the sort of activity that it is. Playing the game means thinking about who is a friend and who an enemy; whether to move left or right in combat; how to allocate various resources (eg X/rest abilities); whether to rest or move on; etc.Participating in the game means thinking about these matters, and making sensible choices - or in a party-based game like D&D, helping the group as a whole arrive at a sensible choice. Expecting or demanding that the player of the 5 INT character to argue for irrational choices in these respects is, in my view, unreasonable. (If the player wants to play that way on his/her own motion, that's his/her prerogative.)Agreed. But I think some posters are saying that you should.This is picked up nicely in iserith's post:My response to iserith's examples are that I'm good with the STR ones, and the INT check ones. The GMing deciding that a task which is described in abstract terms as an application of the intellect is too hard for the low INT PC is fine (provided it accords with whatever the general rules are for "saying no" in the game in question). I'm not all that keen on the final one, though. When the player declares an action such as I turn the dial to S, for the GM to veto that is a rather different thing. That said, I would prefer the GM to outright veto the action declaration than to secretly thwart it in the way Ovinomancer describes.I agree. That's why, upthread, I posted that "If all fiendishly difficult puzzles are resolved by INT checks there might be other issues with the campaign, but the low INT PC will be suitably penalised, just as is the low STR PC when it comes to weightlifting competitions."So do I. I'm not sure how that's really relevant, though.</blockquote>

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