How intelligent do you think a person with 22 int should be compared to everyone else?
I like to think that even though game mechanics dictate that player wizards should all get to 20 eventually, 20 int is actually extremely rare in the world. Like maybe a handful of people in the whole world. Because it's literally the natural maximum intelligence for a person.
The archmage monster has 20. I think most Masters and Grandmasters would be 16-18.
My wizard has 20 int, but I'm gonna read the Manual of Clear Thought soon, which will permanently increase my int to 22.
How does that compare to others in the world? I personally think that it's an unnaturally high intelligence, way beyond any normal genius. I think he was already a genius at 20. So now?
Any thoughts on how to play it?
I'm also a dm in this campaign/setting, so I have a lot of say in how the world runs. We are taking turns. I got the tome as a player obv. Didn't give it to the party myself. 😆
You don’t really have to try to match it to real world intelligence. 20 is the normal maximum for all humanoid (and almost all other) intelligences. A 22 is a +6 stat bonus so it’s 5% better than the best human intelligences. We have stats (in the DMG & MM if nowhere else) going up to 30 for mechanical use.
Intelligence is fairly nebulously defined in the real world. I wouldn't try to link a character's intelligence score in D&D to anything aside from how good they are at higher math and their word choices.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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 wasn't really looking for real-life comparison, but more about how to compare it with the rest of the fantasy population. I'm very surprised how little meaning you guys are giving it. The mechanical difference is relatively small, but going beyond natural limits for any attribute should be a really big deal for roleplaying and other non-mechanical purposes. Like this is a level of intelligence that shouldn't exist in a mortal being. The Manual of Clear Thought is to my knowledge the only official way for a mortal to achieve this, if you are already or will be naturally maxed out.
If this was ignored or downplayed, I'd be missing out on a lot of potential RP stuff.
That said, you guys are absolutely right that intelligence is difficult to define in the real world and even more so in DnD attributes. Wisdom and Intelligence overlap a lot in terms of traditional intelligence. I'm always quite liberal with this is a DM. I let my players interpret them quite freely. Like a 8 Int character could be very clever, but can't read and has very little knowledge about things.
The intelligence here stands for higher education/learning and the ability to understand complicated issues like cosmic laws of magic etc. So basically very much a Knowledge skill.
He is already a remarkable scholar at 20. He is a transmutation wizard. As a Senior Master, he is one of the best transmuters there are and an excellent alchemist - especially regarding his area of expertise. We are using a companion mod to fill up the party, and my companion is a very life-like golem, which has been his project for a long time. So he is a pretty much the best in the whole world when it comes to his own area of expertise. He doesn't know the biggest spells, but wizardrdy is more than just spellcasting.
So we've been talking about this with my fellow DMs in this campaign. The 22 will probably mean that he has the ability to learn and understand things beyond the comprehension of other mortals. And he understands what he already knows at a whole new level. He doesn't automatically learn these things. But for example with his humanoid golem, he might finally be able to crack the secrets of life itself. Because he wants to make his golem an actual living person, able to procreate and sustain itself without any magic. This has been his project for 200 years already (he is an old dwarf). He has gotten far, but there are so many mysteries left to study. His companion is already sentient and sapient in many ways, but requires magical organs etc. and cannot procreate among other issues.
There's a good line from the TV show Bones. Intelligence isn't what you choose to do; it's how well you make, execute, and adjust your plan. Motivation is still about morals, ethics, and emotional investment, and a high intelligence just means you're better able to adapt your planning to situations that arise.
I wasn't really looking for real-life comparison, but more about how to compare it with the rest of the fantasy population. I'm very surprised how little meaning you guys are giving it. The mechanical difference is relatively small, but going beyond natural limits for any attribute should be a really big deal for roleplaying and other non-mechanical purposes. Like this is a level of intelligence that shouldn't exist in a mortal being. The Manual of Clear Thought is to my knowledge the only official way for a mortal to achieve this, if you are already or will be naturally maxed out.
If this was ignored or downplayed, I'd be missing out on a lot of potential RP stuff.
Not really. It's not like there's some sort of huge jump in power from going from an INT of 20 to an INT of 21. What you're describing is more like what would be appropriate for a character who started are around 14-16 INT and jumped straight into the 20s with no stops in between.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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 think the difference between 20 and 22 is actually significantly greater than the difference between 10 and 12 for example.
When you are at the very top of a sport or a field of expertise, even relatively small differences can be dramatic.
Let's take a look at Chess for example. The differences between the top 5 players and the rest of the top 10 is pretty dramatic, not to mention the difference between the top 10 and the top 100. Even the difference between the best player and the top 3 is pretty big. These are all Grandmasters. A normal person wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the best and the 100th. But the 100th doesn't really have any chance against the best player. Even the 10th doesn't have a realistic chance of winning a tournament against the best player.
This same goes for most elite level stuff from mathematics to tennis.
And the 20 int person is already at the very top. Now imagine suddenly getting a 10% intelligence boost when you are already one of the best. This is why people use all sorts of substances at the elite level of sports whether it's intellectual or physical. Doping doesn't really mean anything when you're mediocre. But a 1% increase at the highest level may very well determine the winner. So imagine a permanent 10% increase.
And simply because there are only 20 steps to encompass the entire intellectual ability of people and animals alike, the leap between each score is pretty big. It just gets blurred when the game-mechanical leaps happen so quickly in campaigns.
In the real world that might be the case. However, this isn’t the real world and the difference in game is. Only 5% not 10%. Why? Because you don’t use the actual intelligence score for anything and do use the stat bonus and that is not non a +1 or 5%. Are they better than PC/NPC with “only a 20”? Yes, but, thanks to the game mechanics only 5% better. Still, that is enough to be significant long term. That is the same difference as between scene hits .400 vs someone who hits .381.
And the 20 int person is already at the very top. Now imagine suddenly getting a 10% intelligence boost when you are already one of the best. This is why people use all sorts of substances at the elite level of sports whether it's intellectual or physical. Doping doesn't really mean anything when you're mediocre. But a 1% increase at the highest level may very well determine the winner. So imagine a permanent 10% increase.
The problem is that you're looking at this as a 10% increase. Aside from Wi1dBi11 already pointing out that it's functionally actually a 5% increase, the question is a 5/10% increase in what? At making Arcana checks? A rogue of the same level with Expertise and a decent INT is probably better, does that mean they're smarter? At hitting with a spell attack? That's certainly a useful effect, but how does that translate into anything else? You can prepare one extra spell per day, which is nice but it doesn't let you cast any extra spells.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
We are clearly talking about two entirely different things.
You are talking about mechanical increases, which I agree are small.
You are talking about game-mechanical stuff like modifiers and Arcana Checks. I am talking about the roleplaying and the setting and bigger picture implications of having a superhuman intelligence that isn't generally achievable by mortals.
If you don't see those implications and only see the +1 modifier to intelligence checks, then we are perhaps playing a different game altogether. Like I mentioned before, we tend to make wizardry more than just what happens in-game. Life-long ambitions and projects and specialization. These things affect the game and the story, even though they don't have any actual mechanics set in place. (That's why the Score is perhaps even more important than the modifier.)
But this is about interpretation and play style. I always try to make the stats mean something, even if it is difficult in DnD.
In-game the DM could easily rule that intelligence also affects what kind of intelligence checks you are allowed to make in the first place. Specialization and intelligence could affect this. It's not really even a house rule, because with int checks, the DM already decides what information is available with a check anyways.
As a DM I would probably rule that the 22 Int person can think about stuff that are too complicated for others to even make a check about. Like some super complicated cosmic questions about invisible magical energies travelling between the realms of deities. Only the 22 is even allowed to make the check. Stuff like this to make it visible.
This is an imaginary game without any barriers except the ones we create. Surely you can let the modifier get in the way of creativity if you want to. That's a choice. I choose to have the game mechanics support and inspire the story, not to have the mechanics be the absolute value and the core of the game.
I mean, at your table you can do what you want, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to say there's a threshold at 20 INT and if you cross it you're suddenly a 12th level intellect like Brainiac or something. Really, given that it's almost exclusively going to come up only for NPC's, the mechanical implications are about all that seriously matter. NPC's know whatever the plot needs them to know, and even just within the realm of printed descriptions you get a lot of variance between INT score and how intelligent the creature is presented as. Like, an Elder Brain and a non-Gem Greatwyrm both have 21 INT, but one is- while a powerful psionic- just the core of a hive mind while the other is a draconic demigod whose creation can involve a dragon aligning itself with the echoes of itself on other planes. Beholders are written as being able to imagine any possibility but only have 17 INT. Granted, part of this is just the inevitable result of dozens of different hands working on a project across multiple years, but it underlines the point that INT is a fairly loose and abstract stat that doesn't necessarily track well to what a creature is actually capable of.
In the real world, "intelligence" is mostly a measure about how good someone is at taking standardized tests and doesn't automatically translate into capability. Steven Hawking, for example, would have rated extremely low on an IQ test since the amount of time it takes to complete the test impacts the final score on it. Saying "my intelligence has increased by 5%" is only slightly more coherent than saying "my aura is 5% more turquoise."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Roleplay - do you actually know anyone with a 200 IQ? I know I don’t. So trying to play someone even smarter is, other than via the game mechanics, essentially impossible. In everyday life hawking, newton, Einstein et Al were not severely different from anyone else. In their areas of expertise they could outthink their competitors- sometimes. The reality is it’s very difficult to roleplay someone smarter and more creative than you yourself are. Especially if you’re trying to do it outside of the game mechanics. If you’re not an “outside the box” thinker you are not going to be able to play one because you’re not going to think outside the box in game. Unlike strength and dexterity where we have all seen elites do things we can’t and then draw on that to describe the actions of a PC with supranormal strength and dexterity, I’ve never seen someone “outthink” another except in chess ( maybe) .I’ve seen folks that thought differently, that came up with different solutions to the same problems, that could “see” a photo or painting/drawing/poem/etc I couldn’t. But by the same token quite often they couldn’t see my version - different but not “better” , not “smarter”. By caster roles Einstein was a sorceror not a Wizard - he draw on his internalized understandings and simply made the magic happen. Someone like Neil’s Bohr was more the Wizard- using the existing formulas others created and then extending them in new ways, or drawing on all those creative extensions of folks like Einstein to create a new synthesis of the rules of physics/magic. Both were incredibly brilliant but very different in their thinking - which was actually “ smarter”? And then how do you roleplay that difference and level if genius.
Roleplaying someone more intelligent than yourself is not really any more difficult than playing any role that is very different from yourself. It's much more difficult in a LARP, but in these roleplaying games you can also describe things in addition to saying the actual lines. So it's actually pretty easy to roleplay a genius IMO.
Even more so if you get a bit of help from the DM.
It shouldn't be a sudden treshold. If it is, then high scores are pretty severely inflated. 20 in any stat should already feel and seem extraordinary. Even 16 should already show IMO.
In earlier editions 18 was the normal max with scores above that coming from either species bonuses or magic. At that time they actually outlined a sort of equivalence for intelligence - 10=IQ 100, 6= 60, 18=180 etc. while 5e doesn’t do this officially it’s still a decent approximation. The intelligence in game is, to a large extent memorization and working from known designs to extend them. And that fits well with the origin of intelligence tests - who would do well at the 1890’s Sorbonne coming out of the Paris school system.
I don't really care about real world equivalency or IQs or a clear definition of intelligence in DnD. I let players define/interpret their scores however they see fit, just like Alignments. The stat/skill system in DnD just isn't very good because people are much more complicated than that.
This thread was really about emphasizing the differences between the highest natural scores and the rare occasion of going beyond them within the setting and in roleplaying. But clearly I'm not getting those ideas/thoughts and our views are just way too different for this thread to bear any fruit.
I'm sorry, I'm just getting frustrated because this thread took a wrong turn immediately and I can't steer it back on track.
Could we just close this thread? 😅 It's really taking a toll on my ADHD brain. I can't just ignore the replies and it's taking quite of a bit of bandwidth to explain my reasoning to many people online. I would find it rude to just unsub from my own thread.
Thanks! I appreciate the replies, I think I just started the thread with the wrong phrasing. 🙂
Well, just as a point of constructive criticism, you were the one who opened the topic with a request for other peoples' takes on the subject. When you then just insist that your interpretation is the correct one, it can read like you were just looking for validation rather than actual discussion on the topic. Not trying to level any personal accusations, just my two cents on the trajectory of this thread.
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How intelligent do you think a person with 22 int should be compared to everyone else?
I like to think that even though game mechanics dictate that player wizards should all get to 20 eventually, 20 int is actually extremely rare in the world. Like maybe a handful of people in the whole world. Because it's literally the natural maximum intelligence for a person.
The archmage monster has 20. I think most Masters and Grandmasters would be 16-18.
My wizard has 20 int, but I'm gonna read the Manual of Clear Thought soon, which will permanently increase my int to 22.
How does that compare to others in the world? I personally think that it's an unnaturally high intelligence, way beyond any normal genius. I think he was already a genius at 20. So now?
Any thoughts on how to play it?
I'm also a dm in this campaign/setting, so I have a lot of say in how the world runs. We are taking turns. I got the tome as a player obv. Didn't give it to the party myself. 😆
Finland GMT/UTC +2
This is what ChatGPT threw back at me..
Intelligence 3-4: Severely below average intelligence (IQ < 70)
Intelligence 5-6: Below average intelligence (IQ 70-79)
Intelligence 7-8: Low average intelligence (IQ 80-89)
Intelligence 9-10: Average intelligence (IQ 90-109)
Intelligence 11-12: Above average intelligence (IQ 110-119)
Intelligence 13-14: High intelligence (IQ 120-129)
Intelligence 15-16: Very high intelligence (IQ 130-139)
Intelligence 17-18: Exceptionally high intelligence (IQ 140-149)
Intelligence 19-20: Genius level intelligence (IQ 150-159)
So I would assume a 22 is Hawking / Einstein .
You don’t really have to try to match it to real world intelligence. 20 is the normal maximum for all humanoid (and almost all other) intelligences. A 22 is a +6 stat bonus so it’s 5% better than the best human intelligences. We have stats (in the DMG & MM if nowhere else) going up to 30 for mechanical use.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Intelligence is fairly nebulously defined in the real world. I wouldn't try to link a character's intelligence score in D&D to anything aside from how good they are at higher math and their word choices.
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.
Yeah, I wouldn't make too much of it beyond being extremely good with retaining and processing information.
I wasn't really looking for real-life comparison, but more about how to compare it with the rest of the fantasy population. I'm very surprised how little meaning you guys are giving it. The mechanical difference is relatively small, but going beyond natural limits for any attribute should be a really big deal for roleplaying and other non-mechanical purposes. Like this is a level of intelligence that shouldn't exist in a mortal being. The Manual of Clear Thought is to my knowledge the only official way for a mortal to achieve this, if you are already or will be naturally maxed out.
If this was ignored or downplayed, I'd be missing out on a lot of potential RP stuff.
That said, you guys are absolutely right that intelligence is difficult to define in the real world and even more so in DnD attributes. Wisdom and Intelligence overlap a lot in terms of traditional intelligence. I'm always quite liberal with this is a DM. I let my players interpret them quite freely. Like a 8 Int character could be very clever, but can't read and has very little knowledge about things.
The intelligence here stands for higher education/learning and the ability to understand complicated issues like cosmic laws of magic etc. So basically very much a Knowledge skill.
He is already a remarkable scholar at 20. He is a transmutation wizard. As a Senior Master, he is one of the best transmuters there are and an excellent alchemist - especially regarding his area of expertise. We are using a companion mod to fill up the party, and my companion is a very life-like golem, which has been his project for a long time. So he is a pretty much the best in the whole world when it comes to his own area of expertise. He doesn't know the biggest spells, but wizardrdy is more than just spellcasting.
So we've been talking about this with my fellow DMs in this campaign. The 22 will probably mean that he has the ability to learn and understand things beyond the comprehension of other mortals. And he understands what he already knows at a whole new level. He doesn't automatically learn these things. But for example with his humanoid golem, he might finally be able to crack the secrets of life itself. Because he wants to make his golem an actual living person, able to procreate and sustain itself without any magic. This has been his project for 200 years already (he is an old dwarf). He has gotten far, but there are so many mysteries left to study. His companion is already sentient and sapient in many ways, but requires magical organs etc. and cannot procreate among other issues.
Finland GMT/UTC +2
There's a good line from the TV show Bones. Intelligence isn't what you choose to do; it's how well you make, execute, and adjust your plan. Motivation is still about morals, ethics, and emotional investment, and a high intelligence just means you're better able to adapt your planning to situations that arise.
Not really. It's not like there's some sort of huge jump in power from going from an INT of 20 to an INT of 21. What you're describing is more like what would be appropriate for a character who started are around 14-16 INT and jumped straight into the 20s with no stops in between.
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 think the difference between 20 and 22 is actually significantly greater than the difference between 10 and 12 for example.
When you are at the very top of a sport or a field of expertise, even relatively small differences can be dramatic.
Let's take a look at Chess for example. The differences between the top 5 players and the rest of the top 10 is pretty dramatic, not to mention the difference between the top 10 and the top 100. Even the difference between the best player and the top 3 is pretty big. These are all Grandmasters. A normal person wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the best and the 100th. But the 100th doesn't really have any chance against the best player. Even the 10th doesn't have a realistic chance of winning a tournament against the best player.
This same goes for most elite level stuff from mathematics to tennis.
And the 20 int person is already at the very top. Now imagine suddenly getting a 10% intelligence boost when you are already one of the best. This is why people use all sorts of substances at the elite level of sports whether it's intellectual or physical. Doping doesn't really mean anything when you're mediocre. But a 1% increase at the highest level may very well determine the winner. So imagine a permanent 10% increase.
And simply because there are only 20 steps to encompass the entire intellectual ability of people and animals alike, the leap between each score is pretty big. It just gets blurred when the game-mechanical leaps happen so quickly in campaigns.
Finland GMT/UTC +2
In the real world that might be the case. However, this isn’t the real world and the difference in game is. Only 5% not 10%. Why? Because you don’t use the actual intelligence score for anything and do use the stat bonus and that is not non a +1 or 5%. Are they better than PC/NPC with “only a 20”? Yes, but, thanks to the game mechanics only 5% better. Still, that is enough to be significant long term. That is the same difference as between scene hits .400 vs someone who hits .381.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
The problem is that you're looking at this as a 10% increase. Aside from Wi1dBi11 already pointing out that it's functionally actually a 5% increase, the question is a 5/10% increase in what? At making Arcana checks? A rogue of the same level with Expertise and a decent INT is probably better, does that mean they're smarter? At hitting with a spell attack? That's certainly a useful effect, but how does that translate into anything else? You can prepare one extra spell per day, which is nice but it doesn't let you cast any extra spells.
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.
We are clearly talking about two entirely different things.
You are talking about mechanical increases, which I agree are small.
You are talking about game-mechanical stuff like modifiers and Arcana Checks. I am talking about the roleplaying and the setting and bigger picture implications of having a superhuman intelligence that isn't generally achievable by mortals.
If you don't see those implications and only see the +1 modifier to intelligence checks, then we are perhaps playing a different game altogether. Like I mentioned before, we tend to make wizardry more than just what happens in-game. Life-long ambitions and projects and specialization. These things affect the game and the story, even though they don't have any actual mechanics set in place. (That's why the Score is perhaps even more important than the modifier.)
But this is about interpretation and play style. I always try to make the stats mean something, even if it is difficult in DnD.
In-game the DM could easily rule that intelligence also affects what kind of intelligence checks you are allowed to make in the first place. Specialization and intelligence could affect this. It's not really even a house rule, because with int checks, the DM already decides what information is available with a check anyways.
As a DM I would probably rule that the 22 Int person can think about stuff that are too complicated for others to even make a check about. Like some super complicated cosmic questions about invisible magical energies travelling between the realms of deities. Only the 22 is even allowed to make the check. Stuff like this to make it visible.
This is an imaginary game without any barriers except the ones we create. Surely you can let the modifier get in the way of creativity if you want to. That's a choice. I choose to have the game mechanics support and inspire the story, not to have the mechanics be the absolute value and the core of the game.
Finland GMT/UTC +2
I mean, at your table you can do what you want, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to say there's a threshold at 20 INT and if you cross it you're suddenly a 12th level intellect like Brainiac or something. Really, given that it's almost exclusively going to come up only for NPC's, the mechanical implications are about all that seriously matter. NPC's know whatever the plot needs them to know, and even just within the realm of printed descriptions you get a lot of variance between INT score and how intelligent the creature is presented as. Like, an Elder Brain and a non-Gem Greatwyrm both have 21 INT, but one is- while a powerful psionic- just the core of a hive mind while the other is a draconic demigod whose creation can involve a dragon aligning itself with the echoes of itself on other planes. Beholders are written as being able to imagine any possibility but only have 17 INT. Granted, part of this is just the inevitable result of dozens of different hands working on a project across multiple years, but it underlines the point that INT is a fairly loose and abstract stat that doesn't necessarily track well to what a creature is actually capable of.
In the real world, "intelligence" is mostly a measure about how good someone is at taking standardized tests and doesn't automatically translate into capability. Steven Hawking, for example, would have rated extremely low on an IQ test since the amount of time it takes to complete the test impacts the final score on it. Saying "my intelligence has increased by 5%" is only slightly more coherent than saying "my aura is 5% more turquoise."
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.
Roleplay - do you actually know anyone with a 200 IQ? I know I don’t. So trying to play someone even smarter is, other than via the game mechanics, essentially impossible. In everyday life hawking, newton, Einstein et Al were not severely different from anyone else. In their areas of expertise they could outthink their competitors- sometimes. The reality is it’s very difficult to roleplay someone smarter and more creative than you yourself are. Especially if you’re trying to do it outside of the game mechanics. If you’re not an “outside the box” thinker you are not going to be able to play one because you’re not going to think outside the box in game. Unlike strength and dexterity where we have all seen elites do things we can’t and then draw on that to describe the actions of a PC with supranormal strength and dexterity, I’ve never seen someone “outthink” another except in chess ( maybe) .I’ve seen folks that thought differently, that came up with different solutions to the same problems, that could “see” a photo or painting/drawing/poem/etc I couldn’t. But by the same token quite often they couldn’t see my version - different but not “better” , not “smarter”. By caster roles Einstein was a sorceror not a Wizard - he draw on his internalized understandings and simply made the magic happen. Someone like Neil’s Bohr was more the Wizard- using the existing formulas others created and then extending them in new ways, or drawing on all those creative extensions of folks like Einstein to create a new synthesis of the rules of physics/magic. Both were incredibly brilliant but very different in their thinking - which was actually “ smarter”? And then how do you roleplay that difference and level if genius.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Roleplaying someone more intelligent than yourself is not really any more difficult than playing any role that is very different from yourself. It's much more difficult in a LARP, but in these roleplaying games you can also describe things in addition to saying the actual lines. So it's actually pretty easy to roleplay a genius IMO.
Even more so if you get a bit of help from the DM.
Finland GMT/UTC +2
It shouldn't be a sudden treshold. If it is, then high scores are pretty severely inflated. 20 in any stat should already feel and seem extraordinary. Even 16 should already show IMO.
Finland GMT/UTC +2
In earlier editions 18 was the normal max with scores above that coming from either species bonuses or magic. At that time they actually outlined a sort of equivalence for intelligence - 10=IQ 100, 6= 60, 18=180 etc. while 5e doesn’t do this officially it’s still a decent approximation. The intelligence in game is, to a large extent memorization and working from known designs to extend them. And that fits well with the origin of intelligence tests - who would do well at the 1890’s Sorbonne coming out of the Paris school system.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
I don't really care about real world equivalency or IQs or a clear definition of intelligence in DnD. I let players define/interpret their scores however they see fit, just like Alignments. The stat/skill system in DnD just isn't very good because people are much more complicated than that.
This thread was really about emphasizing the differences between the highest natural scores and the rare occasion of going beyond them within the setting and in roleplaying. But clearly I'm not getting those ideas/thoughts and our views are just way too different for this thread to bear any fruit.
I'm sorry, I'm just getting frustrated because this thread took a wrong turn immediately and I can't steer it back on track.
Could we just close this thread? 😅 It's really taking a toll on my ADHD brain. I can't just ignore the replies and it's taking quite of a bit of bandwidth to explain my reasoning to many people online. I would find it rude to just unsub from my own thread.
Thanks! I appreciate the replies, I think I just started the thread with the wrong phrasing. 🙂
Finland GMT/UTC +2
Well, just as a point of constructive criticism, you were the one who opened the topic with a request for other peoples' takes on the subject. When you then just insist that your interpretation is the correct one, it can read like you were just looking for validation rather than actual discussion on the topic. Not trying to level any personal accusations, just my two cents on the trajectory of this thread.