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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manabarbs" data-source="post: 7063555" data-attributes="member: 6717251">3-6 is a bit below average. When you start to get into the realm of -3 or -4, you're starting to get into the range where the difference in the spread starts to be perceptible. It'd still be a pretty severe fiction disconnect to play such a character as outright unintelligent, however. Under d20 rules, a person with 5 intelligence will beat a person with 10 intelligence at an int contest about 34% of the time. The smarter character will win about 62% of the time. If you're okay with a character who has trouble with addition, reading and writing doing better than an average person at int checks about a third of the time, then it's correct to play them that way. If you think it's silly for a character who is seriously intellectually lacking to pretty regularly be the person who happens to be the smartest at something, then you shouldn't play it that way. (If int checks are never regularly rolled in your games, then it doesn't matter one way or another, because the stat isn't affecting anything in that case.)If you get a 5 and you're playing that person as seriously impaired, then you're either playing a game where Int has no mechanical effect to begin with or you don't care if there's a huge discrepancy between how you're playing a character and what actually happens in the game. Playing a character with 5 int as a seriously impaired individual who couldn't be expected to ever really contribute on that front is exactly the opposite of roleplaying what you get in a sensible manner, and is precisely as silly an incorrect as playing them as an exceptionally smart person. (If you're using a system where 5 int represents a much larger penalty than -3, of course, then that all goes out the window.)A difference of +8 is where you get to the stronger character outperforming the weaker one 80% of the time, so it's certainly correct to play a character with 20 Int as being reliably somewhat brighter than a character with 5.</blockquote>

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