Has anyone ever played (or played with) a Druid who was naive and oblivious and lacked common sense? Or a Warlock who was edgy, prickly, and a lone wolf? Those are pretty common character archetypes in D&D today, but they’re not necessarily reflected in that stats. The oblivious Druid still has high Wisdom. The edgy Warlock still has high Charisma. The stats don’t automatically define the character.
So if these characters are okay, why is there a problem with a 4 INT fighter being a functional, if stupid, person? The game doesn’t have to be fully simulationist unless you want it to be.
That's because wisdom does not mean worldly and charisma does not mean social. You can have a high stat and not have the character use it to its full potential. But having an extremely low intelligence and insisting that they're able to talk and perform math like a normal person is like having a character with a 4 Constitution and insisting that they do a six mile jog every morning.
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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.
To me, roleplay is about making meaningful choices. Getting into a character's head and making the choices they would make. The issue with INT 4 is that you barely have the capacity to do that. Every choice is going to be based on the same handful of basic instincts OR what the party tells you to do. There's just very little substance there to dig into over multiple sessions of play, and there's very little room for character growth.
Again, that implies animals cannot make meaningful choices. It is hard to play but not impossible.
It's a big, unproven claim that animals can make choices, let alone meaningful ones.
I'm sorry but I don't understand why you think that's a big unproven claim... Many non-human animals display intelligent behavior which indicate the ability to learn and make meaningful choices. Popular examples of non-human animals displaying some level of consciousness are other apes, dophins, elephants, pigs and corvids
There are even examples of non-human animals being able to understand simple human language, such as Alex the parrot, Koko the gorilla and Kanzi the Bonobo... really fascinating stuff.
That's not to say that anyone would want to play a character with the consciousness level of a raven of course ^^... But I don't feel like there's any good reason to dispute that non-human animals make choices on some level.
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Has anyone ever played (or played with) a Druid who was naive and oblivious and lacked common sense? Or a Warlock who was edgy, prickly, and a lone wolf? Those are pretty common character archetypes in D&D today, but they’re not necessarily reflected in that stats. The oblivious Druid still has high Wisdom. The edgy Warlock still has high Charisma. The stats don’t automatically define the character.
So if these characters are okay, why is there a problem with a 4 INT fighter being a functional, if stupid, person? The game doesn’t have to be fully simulationist unless you want it to be.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
That's because wisdom does not mean worldly and charisma does not mean social. You can have a high stat and not have the character use it to its full potential. But having an extremely low intelligence and insisting that they're able to talk and perform math like a normal person is like having a character with a 4 Constitution and insisting that they do a six mile jog every morning.
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.
I'm sorry but I don't understand why you think that's a big unproven claim... Many non-human animals display intelligent behavior which indicate the ability to learn and make meaningful choices. Popular examples of non-human animals displaying some level of consciousness are other apes, dophins, elephants, pigs and corvids
There are even examples of non-human animals being able to understand simple human language, such as Alex the parrot, Koko the gorilla and Kanzi the Bonobo... really fascinating stuff.
That's not to say that anyone would want to play a character with the consciousness level of a raven of course ^^... But I don't feel like there's any good reason to dispute that non-human animals make choices on some level.