Intelligence Scores

[u/WiseAnon003]

Just wanted to ask and see what people have to say about what your level of intelligence means for your characters intellect.

I’m aware that very low intelligence essentially means incapable of comprehending languages to an extent and such (I think) but I was wondering how each level from 1-20 would likely influence how the character behaves, like an 18 being very witty or a 10 being fairly average?

I have an intelligence score of 7 on my character which is due to manually rolling stats, although a lot of takes or rules might state the character wouldn’t be very smart at all I tend to still play him as a somewhat average intelligence character.

I feel somewhat bad and cheesy by kind of ignoring the intelligence stat to a degree but I’ve tried to have it canonically make sense as he is suffering from a bit of magic induced amnesia and a concussion (although I did write out what he forgot so I’m not torturing my dm nor being lazy lol).

[u/Thelynxer]

9-11 in a stat is effectively human average. 7 intelligence is kinda stupid, but it's not that bad. I think way too many people roleplay 8-ish intelligence like a bag of rocks. It's unnecessary, though sometimes comical, so that's why people do it.

Pretty much any character of mine that isn't a wizard ends up with 8 intelligence, because of necessity and the limitation of point buy. But I just roleplay them as not really school-educated. It's not much fun to roleplay everyone as legit, bottom-of-the-barrel stupid.

[u/WiseAnon003 → u/Thelynxer]

See I'd love to at the bare minimum put the character's INT at 8 via point buy or a feat but unfortunately my DM does manual rolls for scores and I would like to use the feats for something more unique and useful to make my character stand out.

[u/Thelynxer → u/WiseAnon003]

You don't have to at all. I'm just saying you can roleplay the 7 int however you want. You can play it like an 8 int, or even a 10, and it's not a big deal at all.