So Int does NOT add to skills

Charwoman Gene said:
No, this is what you might call the "6.944 Steven Hawkings High School" Fallacy.

18 means you are smarter than 215/216 people. I'm that smart. Therefore I have an 18.

I had a high school graduating class of 1500. We should have 6.944 Stephen Hawkings.

17-18 is smart, like pretty much everyone of their relatives and stuff would be like whoa, you're smart. But they could have colleagues who can CRUSH them.

Even if we assume that percentage chance of rolling an 18 on 3d6 was the percentage of people that actually have an 18, you still have to consider the fact that many of the people that could theoretically have an 18 die in childbirth or some unforeseen circumstance before they were able to do much of anything.

But traditional dnd numbers for society doesn't hold that out. While PCs have a 1/216 of getting at 18, npcs are a different matter. 18 is literally one of the smartest humans who have ever lived.
 

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Stalker0 said:
True, but they always act first and can toss throwing knives like a champ:)
I suspect that for the classes that aren't explicitly based on Dex, they're not going to be habitually tossing knives anyway.
 

It's worth noting that we have still only seen a *tiny* slice of the world of 4E. We've seen predesigned characters—and while they play counter to our expectations for race/class combinations, they seem to tread the straight and narrow for class abilities, showing us all of the stuff we really expected to see.

When considering the canny fighter or rogue archetype, we really need to see more of the feats and powers available. In Bo9S, there was a large variety of "fighter" powers based on Int. I don't see why the same shouldn't be true here, and I can imagine the same being true for rogue powers.

That said, it's also possible that the "expertise"-style abilities will fall under a different stat entirely. Wisdom would be very appropriate for spotting when and how an opponent will attack and reacting quickly, for a "smart" defense. It could also be used to spot weaknesses in an enemy's defense for a "smart" offense. Likewise, Charisma is very appropriate for both creating openings and leading an opponent to attack where you are strong.

But really, the short form is: We have to wait and see. It's clear that the way powers use different abilities as the key attack ability across classes means there's tremendous potential for different ability score choices supporting different fighting/casting styles within the various core class/archetypes—but it's not yet clear whether or how this will be done.
 

Anax said:
When considering the canny fighter or rogue archetype, we really need to see more of the feats and powers available.

I agree - if you look at the 3.5 fighter, without seeing the feat list, all that's there is a less-than-awesome skill list. There's nothing there to suggest that Int has much benefit for the 3e fighter at all.

Also most high-Int 3e fighters I've seen choose to multiclass with something that has a better skill list, and we haven't seen the 4e multiclass rules either.

We really don't have enough information to start panicking yet IMO.
 

Anax said:
But really, the short form is: We have to wait and see. It's clear that the way powers use different abilities as the key attack ability across classes means there's tremendous potential for different ability score choices supporting different fighting/casting styles within the various core class/archetypes—but it's not yet clear whether or how this will be done.

Even if it's not crystal clear, we have strong hints to figure it out. Dragon's Sneak Attack Article casts a lot of light on the matter.

*Every class will have different build options (2 it seams), wich determines your overall playstyle and what ability scores will by moer important to you.
*Different powers relay on different ability scores, you can freely chose the powers that better fits your build, your tastes or whathever.
*Feats will be more openended, further adding flexibility.
*Many racial features for every race, fighter/dwarf fighter/tiefling should taste really different.

Basicly if you've played WOW you know what's gonna be about :uhoh:
 

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