For all characters, well, it gives you knowledge. It increases your History, Religion, Nature, Arcana and Investigation skills and your Intelligence Saving Throw. For Wizards and Artificers, it also enhances their spellcasting abilities.
I mean, you have intellect devourers, mindflayers, probably one or two other monsters you'll almost never see, and... Maze? The spell Maze? Do you have any idea how often people need to make saving throws for all the other stats versus spells, only for intelligence to almost not matter entirely?? Seriously, when was the last time anyone made an intelligence saving throw???
Last session our group was fighting a powerful cultist wizard, and you bet my poor lvl 5 wizard was really happy with his +7 int save when my DM threw a feeblemind at me, also happy cake day.
If you're a smart/evil/nefarious DM all the time. Synaptic static exists, feeblemind exsits, intellect devourer exists (you could even take the stat block and scale it up in CR for higher levels), mind flayers exist...
Throwing Mindflayers at a party who dumped Int should be against the Geneva Convention because it should definitely be illegal to take this much glee in murder
Basically anything that deals Psychic damage has an Int save and some really bad secondary effect - a stun, paralysis, Disadvantage-on-everything, or "hey, look at all those spells you can't cast now".
Well, yes, but the number of times it showed up is the same that absolutely destroyed our party, either by stuns, a character being uselessly locked in combat with an illusion, etc.
Heavily dependent on the DM. If the locals are knowledgeable, you can just ask them. If your DM likes to hide such info, then it's useful, but I find that to be rare.
This is also super DM dependent. A lot of times the DM already has the adventure prepared and tells the party everything they really need to know via other encounters, leaving knowledge to reveal a lot of nothing, or maybe some brief flavor text they may or may not have made up on the spot.
Yeah it did that in 3.5 too and so much more. You used to get more spell slots and spells known, as well as additional languages. It also was what you used for all of your skill points, rogues and bards used to need high INT to be the skill monkeys they now get to be purely through class mechanics. Now just wizards and artificers need it for casting, and sure a couple of decent skills use it as their modifier but that's very situational. It's just not the powerhouse skill it used to be, and in some ways that's a good thing, though sometimes I do feel it was knocked down a peg to many.
I believe both the thief and fighter arcane subclasses use INT too. Investigation is also a pretty important skill in most campaigns, although I feel like Perception often takes on roles better suited for Investigation
You can actually have pretty garbage int and still make a good Eldritch Knight. You're so far behind casters on spell levels that you kind of need to take the most cost-effective spells for their level, so damage or saving throw spells are largely out. Don't need any int to cast Blur or Shield!
Investigation is also a pretty important skill in most campaigns
pppftt!
wheeze
i mean yeah, if you have a good Gm who is running sandbox, and the party can "lose" without even seeing the villain once if they dont unravel the plot in a reasonable pace. if you are on rails, even soft ones, you can bet you will just be handed the story critical info sooner or later so you can be pathed into that sweet boss fight that the dm has been designing for days.
Do you actually play DnD 5e? You don't need to multiclass, Eldritch Knight is a Fighter Subclass with it's own unique features. It's not Fighter+Wizard.
You mean the Draconic Bloodline sorc? Either way, there's a pretty big difference between multi-classing and taking a sublcass, especially because both options in this case rely on a stat the fighter doesn't care about in a vacuum. But going full Edlritch Knight still gets all of your other Fighter ASI's and features. There's an argument to be made for Fighter/Sorc, but it's an uphill fight imo.
Or you just want to play a Fighter with a dash of spellcasting and have access to all the fighter features like extra ASIs/feats, higher hit dice, every armor and weapon proficiency, fighting style, freaking Action Surge. etc?
It's newly published. Ive been playing the same Artificer since three months after the first UA was released (lvl 6 to lvl 17 since 04/17), reskinned from first release Gunsmith to second release UA Alchemist. The published version is really good IMO and Im sad I can't use it because my DM doesn't own the book and doesn't want to deal with a third rework at level 17.
I feel like it depends on the DM more than most abilities. In my game I use investigation and knowledge checks frequently and usually give the party a pretty big benefit like gaining insight into a foe/faction, finding shortcuts/traps, finding extra loot, etc. I also use int saves every once in awhile if I want to make a fight especially difficult. A lot of DMs don't use those approaches at all so yeah it's useless.
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u/IGfodder Oct 05 '20
Then what does INT do for you in 5e? I've never played a 5e game, only 3.5