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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 6865074" data-attributes="member: 6787503">I gave this rather short shrift earlier, but I think it deserves more consideration. First of all, I think DMs were certainly intended by Gygax to use a monster's intelligence rating as a guide to its behavior, as indicated by the intelligence chart in the Monster Manual, so I suppose this could be a roleplaying suggestion for the DM with regard to NPC actions. The DM is, after all, supposed to remain impartial, and an NPC/monster's Intelligence could well be thought of as an indicator of such a character's likely course of action, similar to the mechanics dealing with morale and loyalty, considerations that were never meant to bind the action declarations of a player character. The placement of this statement, however, in the section introducing PC ability scores, seems to indicate Gygax is talking about the referee making decisions about whether certain actions would be taken by the PC. I wonder if Gygax's intent here was for the DM to decide a character just wouldn't take certain actions due to low intelligence, or that certain actions would fail once taken. The former doesn't seem to be in keeping with the general development of D&D, while the latter is certainly under the DM's purview even into the most recent edition. I think you're correct in pointing out Gygax is placing this type of regulation in the DM's corner, however, rather than putting it on the player to limit  a PC's action declarations. Also of note is Gygax's statement that, "Wisdom rating will act much as does that for intelligence." By which I take it that action declarations will be similarly limited/adjudicated (by the DM).Taking the above mentioned feebleminded character as an example, if the player of the character declares, "I cast a spell," it's unclear from the passage from Men and Magic whether the DM's response should be, "You can't attempt to do that. You're too stupid," or simply, "Your attempt is a failure." The latter is more in line with my preferences. Nowhere does Gygax indicate, however, that the player should refrain from attempting to cast spells once struck with feeblemind, because that would make a character problem ("Why don't my spells work?") into a player problem ("What do I do instead of casting a spell since the rules clearly say I can't do that?"). It's clearly part of the DM's job.</blockquote>

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