SO..... It started as me making a joke character, called John Doe, human fighter, most basic person ever. I roll. Decent stats, and then a 3. With my human race, thats bumped to a 4, and I am now wondering, does anyone have any suggestions on how to play a character that is the same intelligence as a baboon?
SO..... It started as me making a joke character, called John Doe, human fighter, most basic person ever. I roll. Decent stats, and then a 3. With my human race, thats bumped to a 4, and I am now wondering, does anyone have any suggestions on how to play a character that is the same intelligence as a baboon?
It's functionally unplayable and as the GM I wouldn't allow it - as it is, friendly use of Polymorph requires severe house-ruling to make work in a functional way, since it's beyond the role-playing ability of most (including me) to roleplay the same personality with an ability to reason that low. I just require my players to use point buy, so the minimum of 8 prevents these problems.
If you want to stress test my claim, just imagine a baboon with a knife being allowed loose in a restaurant.
Not really useful, Quin. The guy's asking for tips on how to make it work, not why he shouldn't be allowed to do it. Besides. Minimum-score-is-8 is super boring.
Mael: My recommendation would be asking the DM whether it's all right for your character to've suffered head trauma in the past. He started with a more typical/playable intelligence, but took a bad wound and now has trouble focusing and remembering. The low Intelligence isn't "I am dumber than most of the things we kill", it's "I took a bad injury and now my memory is unreliable." Intelligence checks, after all, are usually used to recall knowledge or to make logical connections with information. You can play the character as generally functional (if not great, given how low that score is), but the injury has impaired his ability to recall or to piece things together. Or to resist psychic intrusion via INT saves, since his brain is literally broken.
That gets around the whole "literally too dumb to live" thing whilst still allowing for the terrible score, and would cover the inconsistency of playing someone so much less able to reason than yourself - he has good days and bad days insofar as his injury is concerned.
SO..... It started as me making a joke character, called John Doe, human fighter, most basic person ever. I roll. Decent stats, and then a 3. With my human race, thats bumped to a 4, and I am now wondering, does anyone have any suggestions on how to play a character that is the same intelligence as a baboon?
A 4 in a stat works perfectly fine. There's too much focus on:
"If my stats aren't at least this, I can't do anything. If my stats aren't above this, my character sucks."
You are creating memories. Those are based one experiences and memorable things and aren't fixed or exclusive to characters with specific numbers on their sheet. I assure you, a 4 (in any stat) character can be great fun. Here's a few bits:
Separate player from character. Don't have your character make choices based on the choices you (as a real life person) would make.
Perhaps don't make a lot of choices at all. Sit in the background. Don't be the voice of the party. Don't try and be the social guy, despite having a high Charisma, etc.
Play the game with one simple mentality. My AXE is my skill list. If you can't hulk smash, don't offer to contribute much.
Play into your other strengths (which might actually be STRENGTH). Let other PCs (and players) know - "hey, I suck at figuring things out and knowledge stuff and I have a slow mind but I'm a badass climber, acrobatic, etc." The great apes - even dogs, can differentiate good things from bad things. Friends from foes. They can show love or aggression towards others. A 4 Intelligence character can do the same. You can still be the worlds greatest Life Cleric with a 4 Intelligence. Maybe you have a 17 Wisdom. You're an amazing healer. No one will sell me on the fact that a character with 4 Intelligence can't determine who and when they should be healing. If friendly things bleed, fix them. It's not rocket science (which you absolutely need to stay away from with a 4 Int).
Point is, you can have LOADS of fun. Don't ditch it. I'll be honest, as Yurei indicated - a class with a 4 in a stat is so much more fun and interesting than a bog standard 8 as the lowest.
I like seeing the occasional 7 or 6 in a stat, but lower just feels like it's firmly in disability territory (trying not to offend anyone here). I mean, you can push the hopelessly naive, never thinks anything through, never cares to figure stuff out type all you want but at 4 Int you're arguably unable to understand moderately complex plans (the concept of planning might well be a bit nebulous to begin with), large numbers and values are difficult to understand (100 gold is a lot, 10000 gold is a lot, all the gold in the kingdom is a lot), etc. it also gets weird if you combine that low of an Int score with a decent or high Wis score: your gut can tell you whether or not to trust someone or believe them, but at the same time you may not even be able to understand the point they're trying to make
Intelligence
Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason.
Intelligence Checks
An Intelligence check comes into play when you need to draw on logic, education, memory, or deductive reasoning. The Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature, and Religion skills reflect aptitude in certain kinds of Intelligence checks.
Arcana
Your Intelligence (Arcana) check measures your ability to recall lore about spells, magic items, eldritch symbols, magical traditions, the planes of existence, and the inhabitants of those planes.
History
Your Intelligence (History) check measures your ability to recall lore about historical events, legendary people, ancient kingdoms, past disputes, recent wars, and lost civilizations.
Investigation
When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Intelligence (Investigation) check. You might deduce the location of a hidden object, discern from the appearance of a wound what kind of weapon dealt it, or determine the weakest point in a tunnel that could cause it to collapse. Poring through ancient scrolls in search of a hidden fragment of knowledge might also call for an Intelligence (Investigation) check.
Nature
Your Intelligence (Nature) check measures your ability to recall lore about terrain, plants and animals, the weather, and natural cycles.
Religion
Your Intelligence (Religion) check measures your ability to recall lore about deities, rites and prayers, religious hierarchies, holy symbols, and the practices of secret cults.
Other Intelligence Checks
The DM might call for an Intelligence check when you try to accomplish tasks like the following:
Communicate with a creature without using words
Estimate the value of a precious item
Pull together a disguise to pass as a city guard
Forge a document
Recall lore about a craft or trade
Win a game of skill
Spellcasting Ability
Wizards use Intelligence as their spellcasting ability, which helps determine the saving throw DCs of spells they cast.
A lot of Int is related to memory and bookish learning, but understanding others is Int-based too (with some Wis thrown in), as is making assessments, figuring things out and pretty much everything that's abstract - which may be something as simple as managing a budget for the next month and deciding if you can afford that shiny thing you saw in the store without going hungry for two weeks, or having an idea about what to do and being able to tell how impossible it is or what the consequences will be if it goes wrong. You could be very charismatic and really good at selling a lie, but with a 4 Int you likely don't realize what's believable and what isn't and decide that "the fairies did it" is a good lie to tell the local constables to get out of trouble.
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I'm firmly in the "wouldn't allow a 4 anywhere in my campaign" camp, but if I had to play a character with 4 INT, I'd play it like an animal companion. I would be loyal to the party and domesticated enough to only attack on command, but I couldn't really communicate or cast spells or handle money or use most magic items. Fun for a one-shot, but I think it would wear thin over a campaign.
Mostly, I'm just throwing out ideas for someone willing to roll stats and then keep what they rolled. Not everybody who rolls a 4 is willing to take it.
Yeah, 4 INT by a strict reading of RAW is subhuman levels of intelligence. That's why one might suggest injury or other hardship that reduces what might've started as an 8 down to a 4, somewhat like taking some of the nastier disadvantages in GURPS. It can be done, but yes - it generally requires a more experienced or adept player to work through the issues, and to pull off the cripplingly low number in a way that doesn't tank the campaign, or only screws the party in interesting ways rather than annoying ones.
That and the numbers don't necessarily have to be perfectly reflective of the character. A super low Intelligence score could simply reflect a "don't think, feel" personality type that is not subhuman-level stupid, but rather simply someone who doesn't bother with book learning or clever gambits. There's ways to do it, if one is stuck with/determined to do so.
As Pangurjan said, a 4 in Intelligence is in disability territory to the point that I don’t think it’s appropriate for a PC. 4 means you’re largely incapable of language and decision-making. Maybe you can follow relatively simple instructions and act reasonably well on instinct, but if you actually play your character as their Int indicates, the rest of the party are going to be making 95% of your decisions, which doesn’t seem fun to me.
There’s also the obvious threat of making a meme out of people with intellectual disabilities.
Yurei’s post has some good ideas, but they don’t really work with Int 4. Bump it up to 6 or 7 and her thoughts can be a big help. But it’s just not an accurate representation of what Intelligence 4 actually means, which seems to kind of defeat the purpose.
Not really useful, Quin. The guy's asking for tips on how to make it work, not why he shouldn't be allowed to do it. Besides. Minimum-score-is-8 is super boring.
That's fair.
Ok, here are some pointers for Int 4:
PHB: "Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason." It's also the Investigate check, as well as these:
Communicate with a creature without using words Estimate the value of a precious item Pull together a disguise to pass as a city guard (Charisma is also listed as doing this) Forge a document Win a game of skill
So, by definition, you have the mental acuity of a baboon:
You don't understand clothes, but once someone has won your trust, you are likely to let them dress you, if they insist. It may be possible to train you to don and doff armor on command.
You don't understand hygiene - you poop wherever you want, whenever you want.
You don't actually understand languages beyond the simplest of things - you can understand a pointing finger and its verbal equivalent, like the word "stay". But otherwise, you can't meaningfully communicate with anyone - you can't converse with the party or any NPCs to any meaningful degree, and you generally won't try. That said, you're still going to enjoy making noises, like a baboon does - feel free to laugh at anything funny (like someone falling down) and cry at anything sad (like you falling down), entirely independently of social context, which you have no understanding of.
You don't understand commerce - money makes no sense to you, and you have at best an incredibly limited grasp of property (e.g. you may think anything that smells like you is yours and nothing else is). Even in silence, you can't buy things in shops, and no one can buy things from you, since even if coins are in your pocket and you're trained by a party member (using Animal Handling) to hand over coins when you want something, you won't be able to associate coins with items without specific training in every item. You can't read or write, naturally.
To put this in perspective, here's roughly how smart some famous movie characters are:
Lieutenant Dan: 10
Forrest Gump: 08
Any Jurassic Park Velociraptor, and in some movies, King Kong: 06
I might be in the minority here, but I don't think you need to play the character as animal-level intelligence because that's what his score says. Having him talk like a caveman "John no like goblin. John SMASH goblin!" and be ridiculously oblivious (think Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy) would still be a fun way to play a really dumb character.
I might be in the minority here, but I don't think you need to play the character as animal-level intelligence because that's what his score says. Having him talk like a caveman "John no like goblin. John SMASH goblin!" and be ridiculously oblivious (think Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy) would still be a fun way to play a really dumb character.
Somewhere between Lenny Small in "Of Mice and Men" (though, yes, problems of ableism there) and Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World" one can recognize a way to play the character. Alien3 had 85 which you can use as a sort of level to depart downward, or you could read Flowers for Algernon as an exercise in getting to the level of below average intelligence you're wanting to get at. Yes the character will not be good at Intelligence skill checks (I'd probably allow Nature as a WIS check alternative). Sure, the character may not be "good with money", that is easily duped into bad transactions, doesn't know how to give change likely, easily financially exploited etc. If you look at the skills INT is bound to, D&D Intelligence to me clearly reflects either accomplishment or potential for _training_/education in systems used to understand and negotiate the world. So sure, architecture, writing, pattern recognition requiring abstraction, etc. are things that literally challenge a below 10 INT. Maybe the character is arrogant and just bumbles through things, or maybe they're aware of their limitations and finds the limitation perpetually frustrating. Or maybe, they've adapted to rely on other party members for their intelligence but has made themselves valuable to the team by developing high competencies in non intelligence areas. The ability stats are markers signifying mechanical parameters. How you role play those markers depends on your creative intelligence/wisdom/charisma as a player.
As a DM I'd never force a player to play the stat, since it does present the aforementioned literal skill challenge. However, if it was presented to me, I'd probably just ask "how do you want to play this?" more to get a sense that the mechanical limitation will be role played in a way that makes sense in my game and doesn't provoke any sensitivities at my table through say abusing ableism tropes for entertainment etc.
If 3s and 4s were as non functional, i.e. can't get dressed or hygienically go to the bathroom, as some on this threads claim, they probably wouldn't be possible in the game. Stats can challenge by they don't lead to total nonfuction. Of course on the hygiene front, having a character who doesn't know how to "take care of themself" on that front might be something to make use of and frankly may be more world reflective depending on the character's background. Let's remember the bodily and oral hygiene standards I'd argue most D&D players are accustomed to are not exactly a global standard, so the likelihood a game world may have funkier musks and poor teeth integrity in the general population. (Why are you constantly immersing yourself and swishing and spitting the well water? We need that to drink!).
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I might be in the minority here, but I don't think you need to play the character as animal-level intelligence because that's what his score says. Having him talk like a caveman "John no like goblin. John SMASH goblin!" and be ridiculously oblivious (think Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy) would still be a fun way to play a really dumb character.
That's around Int 7.
Based on what?
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
A regular Ape has Int 6, a Baboon Int 4, a Badger Int 2. Trying not to be crass here, but Int 4 is less than someone with Down's syndrome or your average 8-year old. If not for Wis hopefully being a lot better, that's a character you can't leave unsupervised. I always try to let people play what they want and I'm not saying it can't be done, but it feels pretty cringe-worthy if I'm being totally honest.
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Trying hard to think of story options, you could do a demon possession, in that the guys mind has been ravaged by some natural connection to the 9 Hells. When awake he constantly hallucinates, has waking nightmares and is often reduced to a gibbering wreck. He often pleads for an entity to take control so he will not see the other side. Never sure what will take control, you can roll on a table (something like: 1 no response, 2 rage demon, 3 cultured devil, 4 devil enjoying a flesh puppet ride, 5 battle master, 6 magical entity). You could run two character sheets, one fighter and one mage, never knowing when you awake which will be in control. It would take work to balance and figure out the mechanics, but could be an amusing twist.
Consider not setting your intelligence to 4 - not being able to really talk might get boring in the long run. Consider Imo setting anything but constitution or intelligence as the 4. I think those two stats at 4 might make it very hard to play the character.
Of course, perhaps being 4 intelligence could be a character with a mangled soul with fragments of memory popping out from time to time.
A regular Ape has Int 6, a Baboon Int 4, a Badger Int 2. Trying not to be crass here, but Int 4 is less than someone with Down's syndrome or your average 8-year old. If not for Wis hopefully being a lot better, that's a character you can't leave unsupervised. I always try to let people play what they want and I'm not saying it can't be done, but it feels pretty cringe-worthy if I'm being totally honest.
Probably based on it being roughly the same intellectual ability that D&D depicts trolls (a creature with 7 intelligence) as having.
A 4 intelligence would make a character dumber than the average ogre.
Yeah yeah and Ravens have an INT of 2 and Dophines an INT of 6...
Let me perform some counter intelligence, so to speak ;)
I think, again, folks are using, or rather imposing, "beast markers" assigned to MM stat blocks as direct corollaries to the personality and interiority of a PC (won't even get into the . What does INT do in game? It's leverage for some spell casting and determines the degree of ease or challenge for some DC checks. An INT of 4 imposes a -4 or -3 modifier. What are odds a character so afflicted would fail a DC 5? 10? 15? 20(where we're talking the INT equivalent of using STR to break chain bindings)? 25? Sure at the upper tier some things are impossible less you go by the common Nat 20 = success house rule. RAW:
Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason.
Intelligence Checks
An Intelligence check comes into play when you need to draw on logic, education, memory, or deductive reasoning. The Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature, and Religion skills reflect aptitude in certain kinds of Intelligence checks.
It's not insinuated even basic literacy is tied to INT. So if you have toilet paper in your game world, let's assume a 3 or 4 might have been toilet trained, I mean sled dogs use wolf stats and they got 3s and I imagine a domesticated animal wouldn't have more than 4 but the presumptive intelligence experts on this thread?
Facile stats correlations is illustrative of what RL folks with some modest facility in logic, education, memory, and deductive reasoning would call a false equivalency. I mean if you want to insist a PC must cognitively and conceptually perform in accordance with beasts with similar mechanical markers, while I think it begs the INT of the DM based on their extrapolative capacity I won't go there. Instead I'll just say I guess these primitive or feral intelligences would get the pack tactics or subterranean navigation ability or other innate cleverness you're mapping onto a "sub intelligent" PC? Extrapolative and interpretive faculties, the ability to "work creatively with what you got" is considered a high intelligence marker in a number of assessment protocols. Insisting on connections one sees written in a book despite textual support asserting your conjecture is not. But that might be going to meta, so to speak.
Sure the 3 or 4 INT PC isn't going to be the one to figure out the Dragon Vault Sudoku puzzle once the PCs demonstrate they don't have the RL INT to figure it out so resort to skill checks. But assuming the character is as feral or vegetative as being implied I think more speaks to imagination deficits than any sort of RAW assertions.
Sure the 3 or 4 INT PC isn't going to be the one to figure out the Dragon Vault Sudoku puzzle once the PCs demonstrate they don't have the RL INT to figure it out so resort to skill checks. But assuming the character is as feral or vegetative as being implied I think more speaks to imagination deficits than any sort of RAW assertions.
Does it?
"Once the PCs demonstrate they don't have the RL INT to figure it out" suggests characters should benefit from their player's real life intelligence unless there's a specific mechanic for the situation outlined in the rules. To each their own, but that wouldn't feel very much like roleplaying to me. It also begs the question of consistency: there are several mechanics based on ability scores rather than checks (carrying capacity, damage, armor class, hit points) so there are limits to how able a character is set directly by ability scores, and I doubt you're allowing players to demonstrate their own strength, dexterity or perceptiveness to sub for their character's if they feel it might be helpful.
Again, to each their own; I'm not trying to tell you how to run your game. I do think that the way others run theirs makes a perfectly valid case for determining a limit to what a character's Int score should allow in terms of in-game mental acuity, and for setting that limit pretty darn low in case of a score of 4.
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Again, Pang - the number's there. I do believe part of the thread's intent is that the player cannot change it. INT 4 is super troublesome, but so is a 4 in anything else. DMs normally love to impose 'make the best of what you've got' situations on the player. This is one of those.
Stats should be a guide, not a shackle. People who say that a player shouldn't be allowed to speak at the table, or even play at all, unless their Intelligence is 8 or higher may need to rethink their priorities. We all remember Grog Strongjaw, ne?
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SO..... It started as me making a joke character, called John Doe, human fighter, most basic person ever. I roll. Decent stats, and then a 3. With my human race, thats bumped to a 4, and I am now wondering, does anyone have any suggestions on how to play a character that is the same intelligence as a baboon?
It's functionally unplayable and as the GM I wouldn't allow it - as it is, friendly use of Polymorph requires severe house-ruling to make work in a functional way, since it's beyond the role-playing ability of most (including me) to roleplay the same personality with an ability to reason that low. I just require my players to use point buy, so the minimum of 8 prevents these problems.
If you want to stress test my claim, just imagine a baboon with a knife being allowed loose in a restaurant.
Not really useful, Quin. The guy's asking for tips on how to make it work, not why he shouldn't be allowed to do it. Besides. Minimum-score-is-8 is super boring.
Mael: My recommendation would be asking the DM whether it's all right for your character to've suffered head trauma in the past. He started with a more typical/playable intelligence, but took a bad wound and now has trouble focusing and remembering. The low Intelligence isn't "I am dumber than most of the things we kill", it's "I took a bad injury and now my memory is unreliable." Intelligence checks, after all, are usually used to recall knowledge or to make logical connections with information. You can play the character as generally functional (if not great, given how low that score is), but the injury has impaired his ability to recall or to piece things together. Or to resist psychic intrusion via INT saves, since his brain is literally broken.
That gets around the whole "literally too dumb to live" thing whilst still allowing for the terrible score, and would cover the inconsistency of playing someone so much less able to reason than yourself - he has good days and bad days insofar as his injury is concerned.
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A 4 in a stat works perfectly fine. There's too much focus on:
"If my stats aren't at least this, I can't do anything. If my stats aren't above this, my character sucks."
You are creating memories. Those are based one experiences and memorable things and aren't fixed or exclusive to characters with specific numbers on their sheet. I assure you, a 4 (in any stat) character can be great fun. Here's a few bits:
Point is, you can have LOADS of fun. Don't ditch it. I'll be honest, as Yurei indicated - a class with a 4 in a stat is so much more fun and interesting than a bog standard 8 as the lowest.
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I like seeing the occasional 7 or 6 in a stat, but lower just feels like it's firmly in disability territory (trying not to offend anyone here). I mean, you can push the hopelessly naive, never thinks anything through, never cares to figure stuff out type all you want but at 4 Int you're arguably unable to understand moderately complex plans (the concept of planning might well be a bit nebulous to begin with), large numbers and values are difficult to understand (100 gold is a lot, 10000 gold is a lot, all the gold in the kingdom is a lot), etc. it also gets weird if you combine that low of an Int score with a decent or high Wis score: your gut can tell you whether or not to trust someone or believe them, but at the same time you may not even be able to understand the point they're trying to make
Intelligence
Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason.
Intelligence Checks
An Intelligence check comes into play when you need to draw on logic, education, memory, or deductive reasoning. The Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature, and Religion skills reflect aptitude in certain kinds of Intelligence checks.
Arcana
Your Intelligence (Arcana) check measures your ability to recall lore about spells, magic items, eldritch symbols, magical traditions, the planes of existence, and the inhabitants of those planes.
History
Your Intelligence (History) check measures your ability to recall lore about historical events, legendary people, ancient kingdoms, past disputes, recent wars, and lost civilizations.
Investigation
When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Intelligence (Investigation) check. You might deduce the location of a hidden object, discern from the appearance of a wound what kind of weapon dealt it, or determine the weakest point in a tunnel that could cause it to collapse. Poring through ancient scrolls in search of a hidden fragment of knowledge might also call for an Intelligence (Investigation) check.
Nature
Your Intelligence (Nature) check measures your ability to recall lore about terrain, plants and animals, the weather, and natural cycles.
Religion
Your Intelligence (Religion) check measures your ability to recall lore about deities, rites and prayers, religious hierarchies, holy symbols, and the practices of secret cults.
Other Intelligence Checks
The DM might call for an Intelligence check when you try to accomplish tasks like the following:
Spellcasting Ability
Wizards use Intelligence as their spellcasting ability, which helps determine the saving throw DCs of spells they cast.
A lot of Int is related to memory and bookish learning, but understanding others is Int-based too (with some Wis thrown in), as is making assessments, figuring things out and pretty much everything that's abstract - which may be something as simple as managing a budget for the next month and deciding if you can afford that shiny thing you saw in the store without going hungry for two weeks, or having an idea about what to do and being able to tell how impossible it is or what the consequences will be if it goes wrong. You could be very charismatic and really good at selling a lie, but with a 4 Int you likely don't realize what's believable and what isn't and decide that "the fairies did it" is a good lie to tell the local constables to get out of trouble.
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I'm firmly in the "wouldn't allow a 4 anywhere in my campaign" camp, but if I had to play a character with 4 INT, I'd play it like an animal companion. I would be loyal to the party and domesticated enough to only attack on command, but I couldn't really communicate or cast spells or handle money or use most magic items. Fun for a one-shot, but I think it would wear thin over a campaign.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Mostly, I'm just throwing out ideas for someone willing to roll stats and then keep what they rolled. Not everybody who rolls a 4 is willing to take it.
Yeah, 4 INT by a strict reading of RAW is subhuman levels of intelligence. That's why one might suggest injury or other hardship that reduces what might've started as an 8 down to a 4, somewhat like taking some of the nastier disadvantages in GURPS. It can be done, but yes - it generally requires a more experienced or adept player to work through the issues, and to pull off the cripplingly low number in a way that doesn't tank the campaign, or only screws the party in interesting ways rather than annoying ones.
That and the numbers don't necessarily have to be perfectly reflective of the character. A super low Intelligence score could simply reflect a "don't think, feel" personality type that is not subhuman-level stupid, but rather simply someone who doesn't bother with book learning or clever gambits. There's ways to do it, if one is stuck with/determined to do so.
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As Pangurjan said, a 4 in Intelligence is in disability territory to the point that I don’t think it’s appropriate for a PC. 4 means you’re largely incapable of language and decision-making. Maybe you can follow relatively simple instructions and act reasonably well on instinct, but if you actually play your character as their Int indicates, the rest of the party are going to be making 95% of your decisions, which doesn’t seem fun to me.
There’s also the obvious threat of making a meme out of people with intellectual disabilities.
Yurei’s post has some good ideas, but they don’t really work with Int 4. Bump it up to 6 or 7 and her thoughts can be a big help. But it’s just not an accurate representation of what Intelligence 4 actually means, which seems to kind of defeat the purpose.
That's fair.
Ok, here are some pointers for Int 4:
PHB: "Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason." It's also the Investigate check, as well as these:
Communicate with a creature without using words
Estimate the value of a precious item
Pull together a disguise to pass as a city guard (Charisma is also listed as doing this)
Forge a document
Win a game of skill
So, by definition, you have the mental acuity of a baboon:
To put this in perspective, here's roughly how smart some famous movie characters are:
I might be in the minority here, but I don't think you need to play the character as animal-level intelligence because that's what his score says. Having him talk like a caveman "John no like goblin. John SMASH goblin!" and be ridiculously oblivious (think Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy) would still be a fun way to play a really dumb character.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
That's around Int 7.
What's the character's Wisdom and Charisma? ;)
Somewhere between Lenny Small in "Of Mice and Men" (though, yes, problems of ableism there) and Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World" one can recognize a way to play the character. Alien3 had 85 which you can use as a sort of level to depart downward, or you could read Flowers for Algernon as an exercise in getting to the level of below average intelligence you're wanting to get at. Yes the character will not be good at Intelligence skill checks (I'd probably allow Nature as a WIS check alternative). Sure, the character may not be "good with money", that is easily duped into bad transactions, doesn't know how to give change likely, easily financially exploited etc. If you look at the skills INT is bound to, D&D Intelligence to me clearly reflects either accomplishment or potential for _training_/education in systems used to understand and negotiate the world. So sure, architecture, writing, pattern recognition requiring abstraction, etc. are things that literally challenge a below 10 INT. Maybe the character is arrogant and just bumbles through things, or maybe they're aware of their limitations and finds the limitation perpetually frustrating. Or maybe, they've adapted to rely on other party members for their intelligence but has made themselves valuable to the team by developing high competencies in non intelligence areas. The ability stats are markers signifying mechanical parameters. How you role play those markers depends on your creative intelligence/wisdom/charisma as a player.
As a DM I'd never force a player to play the stat, since it does present the aforementioned literal skill challenge. However, if it was presented to me, I'd probably just ask "how do you want to play this?" more to get a sense that the mechanical limitation will be role played in a way that makes sense in my game and doesn't provoke any sensitivities at my table through say abusing ableism tropes for entertainment etc.
If 3s and 4s were as non functional, i.e. can't get dressed or hygienically go to the bathroom, as some on this threads claim, they probably wouldn't be possible in the game. Stats can challenge by they don't lead to total nonfuction. Of course on the hygiene front, having a character who doesn't know how to "take care of themself" on that front might be something to make use of and frankly may be more world reflective depending on the character's background. Let's remember the bodily and oral hygiene standards I'd argue most D&D players are accustomed to are not exactly a global standard, so the likelihood a game world may have funkier musks and poor teeth integrity in the general population. (Why are you constantly immersing yourself and swishing and spitting the well water? We need that to drink!).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Based on what?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
A regular Ape has Int 6, a Baboon Int 4, a Badger Int 2. Trying not to be crass here, but Int 4 is less than someone with Down's syndrome or your average 8-year old. If not for Wis hopefully being a lot better, that's a character you can't leave unsupervised. I always try to let people play what they want and I'm not saying it can't be done, but it feels pretty cringe-worthy if I'm being totally honest.
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Probably based on it being roughly the same intellectual ability that D&D depicts trolls (a creature with 7 intelligence) as having.
A 4 intelligence would make a character dumber than the average ogre.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Trying hard to think of story options, you could do a demon possession, in that the guys mind has been ravaged by some natural connection to the 9 Hells. When awake he constantly hallucinates, has waking nightmares and is often reduced to a gibbering wreck. He often pleads for an entity to take control so he will not see the other side. Never sure what will take control, you can roll on a table (something like: 1 no response, 2 rage demon, 3 cultured devil, 4 devil enjoying a flesh puppet ride, 5 battle master, 6 magical entity). You could run two character sheets, one fighter and one mage, never knowing when you awake which will be in control. It would take work to balance and figure out the mechanics, but could be an amusing twist.
Consider not setting your intelligence to 4 - not being able to really talk might get boring in the long run. Consider Imo setting anything but constitution or intelligence as the 4. I think those two stats at 4 might make it very hard to play the character.
Of course, perhaps being 4 intelligence could be a character with a mangled soul with fragments of memory popping out from time to time.
Altrazin Aghanes - Wizard/Fighter
Varpulis Windhowl - Fighter
Skolson Demjon - Cleric/Fighter
Yeah yeah and Ravens have an INT of 2 and Dophines an INT of 6...
Let me perform some counter intelligence, so to speak ;)
I think, again, folks are using, or rather imposing, "beast markers" assigned to MM stat blocks as direct corollaries to the personality and interiority of a PC (won't even get into the . What does INT do in game? It's leverage for some spell casting and determines the degree of ease or challenge for some DC checks. An INT of 4 imposes a -4 or -3 modifier. What are odds a character so afflicted would fail a DC 5? 10? 15? 20(where we're talking the INT equivalent of using STR to break chain bindings)? 25? Sure at the upper tier some things are impossible less you go by the common Nat 20 = success house rule. RAW:
It's not insinuated even basic literacy is tied to INT. So if you have toilet paper in your game world, let's assume a 3 or 4 might have been toilet trained, I mean sled dogs use wolf stats and they got 3s and I imagine a domesticated animal wouldn't have more than 4 but the presumptive intelligence experts on this thread?
Facile stats correlations is illustrative of what RL folks with some modest facility in logic, education, memory, and deductive reasoning would call a false equivalency. I mean if you want to insist a PC must cognitively and conceptually perform in accordance with beasts with similar mechanical markers, while I think it begs the INT of the DM based on their extrapolative capacity I won't go there. Instead I'll just say I guess these primitive or feral intelligences would get the pack tactics or subterranean navigation ability or other innate cleverness you're mapping onto a "sub intelligent" PC? Extrapolative and interpretive faculties, the ability to "work creatively with what you got" is considered a high intelligence marker in a number of assessment protocols. Insisting on connections one sees written in a book despite textual support asserting your conjecture is not. But that might be going to meta, so to speak.
Sure the 3 or 4 INT PC isn't going to be the one to figure out the Dragon Vault Sudoku puzzle once the PCs demonstrate they don't have the RL INT to figure it out so resort to skill checks. But assuming the character is as feral or vegetative as being implied I think more speaks to imagination deficits than any sort of RAW assertions.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Does it?
"Once the PCs demonstrate they don't have the RL INT to figure it out" suggests characters should benefit from their player's real life intelligence unless there's a specific mechanic for the situation outlined in the rules. To each their own, but that wouldn't feel very much like roleplaying to me. It also begs the question of consistency: there are several mechanics based on ability scores rather than checks (carrying capacity, damage, armor class, hit points) so there are limits to how able a character is set directly by ability scores, and I doubt you're allowing players to demonstrate their own strength, dexterity or perceptiveness to sub for their character's if they feel it might be helpful.
Again, to each their own; I'm not trying to tell you how to run your game. I do think that the way others run theirs makes a perfectly valid case for determining a limit to what a character's Int score should allow in terms of in-game mental acuity, and for setting that limit pretty darn low in case of a score of 4.
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Again, Pang - the number's there. I do believe part of the thread's intent is that the player cannot change it. INT 4 is super troublesome, but so is a 4 in anything else. DMs normally love to impose 'make the best of what you've got' situations on the player. This is one of those.
Stats should be a guide, not a shackle. People who say that a player shouldn't be allowed to speak at the table, or even play at all, unless their Intelligence is 8 or higher may need to rethink their priorities. We all remember Grog Strongjaw, ne?
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