So at what intelligence am I allowed to use tactics?

[Dagger75]

I have seen a 100 times on this board, basically some DM's and Players complain that intelligent scores dictate battle tacts.

So as a DM what is the list of stuff I can do for a given Int score. What is the hard and fast number that I am allowed to move around a threatened square. How about spring attack?

 

[Jupp]

I am not really sure that tactics have something to do with a high Int score. AFAIK the average fighter does not have to be Einstein to use battle tactics in a fight. I think it is more tied to the level you have. The higher the level the more seasoned you are. So at level 1 you can have a very high Int (allthough I would use Wisdom to determine the ability to use tactics as well) but you are just a greenhorn who does not really know how to apply the different tactics in a fight at the right time. I'd say from level 3/4 on you should not be restricted by your Int/Wis when it comes to using tactic/maneuvers in a fight. Well sure, if your Int is somewhere below 5 or so then that would be another thing But even then you could use tactics, but they would be based more on instinct and the desire to survive than on cold, hard thinking.

Just my 2 cents

 

[TheEvil]

I would say what tactics you use should be a roleplaying decission, not a stat based one. You don't get to be a 1st level fighter by doing tactically stupid things. You won't necessarily do the optimum thing though...

 

[Thanee]

Int 3+ is enough to do very basic tactics, like flanking.

Int 6+ or so should allow for using one's own abilities to full extend.

Int 8+ should be enough for more complex, but not overly complicated group tactics.

Int 10+ should allow pretty much everything, but monsters would mostly go by the moment of the situation and not think ahead too much.

Int 12+ should allow thinking ahead and taking possible outcomes into account, this ability would improve even further for higher Int scores.

Something like that.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Li Shenron]

I think the problem doesn't make much sense. Just let the players play the best tactic they can.

The day a low-Int player is able to simulate a high-Int character, I may start asking high-Int players to correctly roleplay a low-Int character.

 

[fusangite]

Do you, as a player, know everything your character knows? No. Do you, as a player, know 25% of what your character knows? Probably not. There are all kinds of ways of knowing that your character has that you do not have access to. For instance, you have no practical experience with magic; you just have some spell descriptions in the PHB. Similarly, you, as a player, have no experience with battle, no intuitive sense of where to move when.

Essentially, you are always playing your character at a handicap, knowing at most 20% of what he knows (and more like 5%) so the idea that a GM would rule that you cannot even bring to bear your meagre intellectual knowledge of tactics in a combat strikes me as simply ridiculous. Your character fights as a full-time job. Do you? No.

Furthermore, your character's intelligence is divided amongst a number of attributes so, in order to argue that a character is so stupid that they can't do their full-time job better than some amateur who thinks about it once a week, this character wouldn't just need a sub-normal Int; he would need a sub-normal Cha, a sub-normal Wis and possibly a sub-normal Dex.

The fact is that the whole of a D&D character simply cannot be represented in these scores. Your character's capacity to think is largely your capacity to think-- Int is simply a representation of one's capacity to acquire new trained skills; Wis is simply a representation of one's capacity to resist mental assaults and Cha is simply a representation of one's capacity to make a forceful or favourable impression. Most of what intelligence is doesn't fall into any of these categories; originality, the most prized aspect of intelligence in our civilization isn't represented in any of these scores, for instance.

So, if my GM told me that I couldn't think sensibly because of my Int score, I'd tell him he was being ridiculous.

 

[Chroma]

I think the "tactics" that are complained about are more like when a dire weasel threads its way through a party, avoiding all threatened squares, to latch itself onto the sorcerer at the back, who hasn't even cast a spell yet, just to take her out of the fight...

Or once the party has a "line" spell, the enemies stop lining up...

 

[smetzger]

Int 3+ is enough to do very basic tactics, like flanking.

Int 6+ or so should allow for using one's own abilities to full extend.

Int 8+ should be enough for more complex, but not overly complicated group tactics.

Int 10+ should allow pretty much everything, but monsters would mostly go by the moment of the situation and not think ahead too much.

Int 12+ should allow thinking ahead and taking possible outcomes into account, this ability would improve even further for higher Int scores.

Something like that.

Yup. and for Int > 18 you can start assumming the monster knows more than the given evidence would suggest. For example, knows that the sorcerer doesn't have very many spells left, even though its the begining of combat.

 

[Trickstergod]

I think the "tactics" that are complained about are more like when a dire weasel threads its way through a party, avoiding all threatened squares, to latch itself onto the sorcerer at the back, who hasn't even cast a spell yet, just to take her out of the fight...

Or once the party has a "line" spell, the enemies stop lining up...

To a degree, that's metagaming, anyway.

In regards to the initial post:

You know, at one point a player of mine was called out on thinking up something particularly clever to the point that it just stood out as something his character's own low-to-average Intelligence wouldn't, as the players who called him out thought, cover.

At which point the clever player in question remarked on his own lack of intelligence most of the time, to which we all essentially agreed, and promptly left him alone from there on in.

And, for the most part, that's probably how it should be done. Because seriously, how many people do you know with an Intelligence above, say, 15? And if you were to say that roughly was their Intelligence, how many would you say had a Wisdom of above 15 on top of that? And Charisma? My group is, for the most part, a fairly bright bunch, but all of them lack at least one, if not all of those, ability scores at above middling levels, if I were to slap numbers on them. As such, any bits of insight they come up with for their characters are probably fairly appropriate.

Besides, how often are their tactics extending beyond small, fairly personal conflicts? Sure, if they start following in the footsteps of Hannibal or Alexander or whoever, yeah, the I might say something if they're the relatively typical low-to-average Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma fighter.

But unless the character in question is coming in at under an 8 Intelligence or Wisdom or what not, then the player probably has roughly the same mental capacity. Level, as has been mentioned, also comes into play here and, generally speaking, the more tactical tricks one can pull out, the higher level the character is, anyway.

 

[fusangite]

Int 3+ is enough to do very basic tactics, like flanking.

So animals that hunt in packs don't use flanking? All animals in D&D have Intelligence scores of 1 or 2 and yet when animals that hunt in packs assault their prey they can utilize quite sophisticated tactics.