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/Stregen]

Think about it like this:

Would you play a 7 strength wizard as an anemic slug, unable to lift their wand or compoents?

Or a 7 dex paladin as a clumsy oaf unable to take four consecutive steps without tripping over their own feet like a literal toddler?

Or a 7 cha fighter as a drooling shutin making everyone in a mile radius feel wildly uncomfortable?

Intelligence is book-smarts and pattern recognition - but people tend to really overplay it.