extremely low attribute question [Archive] - Wizards Community

extremely low attribute question [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
greenblood
05-30-06, 12:42 PM I once had a fellow gamer play a crippled sorcerer. The concept was that he was crippled at a young age and as a result studied very hard to become more adept as a caster. His starting Cha & Int were high, but his Str was 6, and Dex was 8. His speed was reduced to 5 or 10, and he was basically incapable of traversing any terrain without a crutch. At first, I found it odd that the DM allowed the player to drop some of his attributes below 8 in order to raise others. However, he played the character incredibly well, and it was a pleasure to have him in the group.

My player group will be starting a new game in the next week. Per the DM, we our creating our character's attributes using a standard 20 point buy system with all attributes beginning at 8. We have a PC who is fairly new to the D&D world, and is lacking in the RP department (he had great difficulty in our recently completed game). As a result, our DM has helped him create a character with what he considers low RP requirements. The character in question is a Half Orc Barbarian. The DM dropped the characters Int and Cha to 4, and raised the Str to 20 (might have been 20+).

I do not recall his other attribute scores, but they are not relative to my question. At what point is a character completely crippled by their attributes?

To me an Int of 4 would represent severe retardation. Beyond the inability to speak, a creature with an Int of 4 would likely be inept at all forms of communication, lacking the ability to follow the simplest of instruction like "Hey Cronk, go smash!"

Am I incorrect in my assumptions? At what point is an attribute too low to even consider the character playable in a campaign?

Thank you in advance.

John
LouSapphire
05-30-06, 12:54 PM As per the rules a character is unplayable if it has a base Int of less than 3. Am in work atm so can;t quote page numbers for reference but I'm sure someone can.

It's really upto the DM and player how they want to play this char, with an Int and Cha of 4 I would see it being played as a nieve puppy dog, slow and has to be led around the world, seeing everything black and white and viewing his "master" as god.

A half orc with that mentality and having it adopt a father figure in the group will either be great if it's roleplayed well or absolutly cringeworthy when not.

Personally I wouldn;t allow a player to play those stats, beyond roleplaying purposes he can be negated in combat with a simple Touch of Idiocy or any ability that hits a mental attribute.

Regarding simple instructions, remember that animals have a lower int than 3 but can be taught tricks. "Go Smash2 doesn;t seem that complex to me, and in fact with that stat array will be the only option the char has in pretty much any situation...
Juan Moore
05-30-06, 12:56 PM A creature with human-like intelligence must have an INT of 3 or greater. I'd figure it'd be something with intelligent retardation. Since Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons, I'd say they barely learn unless they get hurt doing something and they don't reason at all. Thus, highly unskilled. Oh, and they'll keep grabbing at the stick in the fire until they're really burned and something clicks, "Oh, grabbing at the stick burns me... maybe I should stop grabbing at that stick and grab at the other stick in the fire?"

I think playing a stupid character is way harder than playing a smart one. At least with the smart character, you get told what you DO know if you the player don't know something. I don't think being told that you DON'T know something is fun.

That character will die a completely painful death. Eventually.
Zherog
05-30-06, 01:23 PM :blink:

20 Point Buy is exceedingly low! In addition, standard point buy doesn't allow you to reduce a stat below 8 to get more points to spend elsewhere.

Finally, I would think a character with an Int of 4 would be really difficult to roleplay well. I think your friend is going to have more problems than your DM expects.
hmmmm
05-30-06, 01:30 PM 20 point buy is really low.
Crimson_Concerto
05-30-06, 01:49 PM Yeah, 20 pb is really low. The lowest pb in the DMG is 25 pb.
Even the elite array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) is a pb of 25, and I'm farely certain that's the array monster CRs are designed around.
BloodBought
05-30-06, 01:53 PM I actually have experience with someone playing a char very similar. My girlfriends first character she ever played in a game I ran was a female Half-Orc Barbarian with an Int of 3, a Str of 25 (with items, i was still new and didn't realize that the gauntlets of ogre power and belt of giant str didn't stack), and average stats everywhere else. I think I can offer you a few tips based on how she played this character.

1. Though the Int is low, it's not so low that the char can't at least partially communicate, it just means that the variety of the char's vocabulary is extrememly limited. One thing my girlfriend did for her char was to make a small vocabulary list for the char (not necessarily an all-inclusive vocab list, but a guide of sorts). She also deliberately avoided using any words with more than 2 syllables since we reasoned they would be too complex for the char to understand.

2. Definitely suggest that this player choose one of the other characters as sort of a parental figure to attach himself to since that helps make it easier to RP the low Intelligence when the char basically looks to the other char questioningly anytime there's something that requires thought happening.

3. Have fun with items. A character with low Int will do things with items that you might never think of. One example of this was when the party containing Baggi (my gf's char, also known as Iggab since she'd occasionally forget the way to say her own name....) met some people that were really hungry and hadn't eaten in quite some time, well Baggi made a wonderful leap of logic for her char, and pulled out her bag of tricks and produced a weasel I think it was for food. (She loved the animals she could pull out of there....)

4. Don't pass up opportunities for the char to RP learning. One of the most memorable experiences with Baggi was the time she learned to refer to the Dwarf in the party as "Car-pet-face!"

I think that covers most of the advice I can give. Overall, a low Int doesn't have to cripple you, but it does definitely leave you vulnerable to certain spells. Let me know if you have any other questions and I'll try to dig out my old notes from that game and see if I can give you any more advice based off that char.
kelvinaw273
05-30-06, 03:22 PM I would find it really hard to play a low int character, myself. Bear in mind that anything below an 8 would be considered to have 'educational special needs' in a school, and you see that an int of 4 would be really, really dumb. Communication is not the biggest problem, it's sitting around and doing nothing because your character can't think of what to do ....
KirkBb
05-30-06, 03:30 PM The rule I saw for int score ( I think it was in the FAQ) is that every point of int equals 10 points of IQ, making anybody with int 7 or lower mentally retarded, and your average wizard a genious.
Nom
05-30-06, 08:15 PM Yeah, 20 pb is really low. The lowest pb in the DMG is 25 pb.
Even the elite array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) is a pb of 25, and I'm farely certain that's the array monster CRs are designed around.Technically, the lowest PB in the DMG is 15, which is the value of the "standard array" (13,12,11,10,9,8) or its monster equivalent (11,11,11,10,10,10). However, those arrays are designed for use by "everyday creatures", not "heroes" or elite characters. To avoid potential confusion, it is worth noting that "standard point buy" is equivalent to the "elite array", not the "standard array".

Incidentally, the DMG offers PC point values ranging from 15 (low powered) through 22 (challenging), 25 (standard), 28 (tougher) to 32 (high powered).
Edymnion
05-30-06, 08:22 PM Here's some benchmarks for the character to go by:
Ability Score Modifier Example
1 -5 Completely inept/disabled
2-3 -4 Weak; infant
4-5 -3 Young Child
6-7 -2 Child, Elderly, impaired
8-9 -1 Below average; teenager
10-11 0 Average adult
Max the Immortal
05-31-06, 05:37 AM I disagree with the notion that a character with an Int score of 4 would have an "Og smash" style of vocabulary. Out of hundreds of millions of people in the English speaking world, very few, if any, people speak that way. The speech of a character with a low Int score need not be fractured. I suggest a speech pattern like that of Ricky from Trailer Park Boys; he often mixes up words with similar sounds, and he swears a LOT (because he doesn't have a very large vocabulary).

IMO, even a character with an Int score of 3 need not be played "retarded-dumb" or "caveman-dumb"; you can get away with "Joey Tribbiani-dumb".
shift244
05-31-06, 07:19 AM Haha.. yep I agree. And I really like BloodBought's post, though as said, they should be able to use moderately simple and common words and have some grammatical errors.

Hey.. how're you doin'?"
Bulletproof_Condom
05-31-06, 07:39 AM At what point is an attribute too low to even consider the character playable in a campaign?When ability damage lowers any score to 0.

Of course, that can be healed.

There are rules on PHB p. 8 for "Rerolling" if your stats are too low. Obviously, you aren't rolling for your stats, but the guidelines for when a set of scores is too low could still be useful.

An ability score can be as low as 1 after racial mods (except Int which can be as low as 3) and the character can still be playable, assuming of course that the character's other stats make up for it. Some exceedingly low scores will affect a given character type less than others. A well-built spellcaster only really needs his casting stat to be really high. He can rely on party support to keep him alive in other situations.

Think Prof. X.
X-Codes
05-31-06, 07:47 AM IMO, even a character with an Int score of 3 need not be played "retarded-dumb" or "caveman-dumb"; you can get away with "Joey Tribbiani-dumb".
Not really. An average Human has an int score of either 10 or 11. Most animals have an Int of 2. If you have an Int of 3, it means your upper brain functions are extremely limited and you are driven mostly by instinct. Having an intelligence of 4-5 means you have a hard time with complex words, 6-7 means you can communicate virtually any idea, albeit ineffectively, and characters generally need 8-9 intelligence to speak like we are now in their native tongue.

What kinda muddles me is that understanding innuendo is driven by wisdom (Sense Motive) and charisma (Bluff)... It should probably be based off the Knowledge (local) skill instead, with a simple DC (15 most likely, giving the person you are communicating with a +2 synergy bonus for having 5+ ranks) for both communicating and understanding innuendo.
ElanaYama
05-31-06, 07:48 AM I think that this score would cause "caveman" speaking since any lower than a three is incapable of speech. Now that doesn't mean alwayy "thog smash" speak but it will be that simple for words and full sentances will probaly elude him. I do think that BloodBought seems to have a good feel for the roleplaying part. Realy though i dont think that this is the best build for a begginner. If this is the players first time just make a human fighter with normal pb AKA no under 8.
greenblood
05-31-06, 11:59 AM Thank you all for your input. It has helped me gain perspective. I have a much better idea of how to interact with this character in order to help mold the player.

Cheers!

GB
Edymnion
05-31-06, 02:12 PM Not really. An average Human has an int score of either 10 or 11. Most animals have an Int of 2. If you have an Int of 3, it means your upper brain functions are extremely limited and you are driven mostly by instinct. Having an intelligence of 4-5 means you have a hard time with complex words, 6-7 means you can communicate virtually any idea, albeit ineffectively, and characters generally need 8-9 intelligence to speak like we are now in their native tongue.Yup, which is why I put up the benchmarks in my last post. A score of 3 is roughly equal to an infant. I'd put it at an older infant though, old enough to be able to point and gesture, and grunt.

4-5 is a young child, roughly equal to a 4 year old, which if you've ever been around children that age, you know they are quite capable of talking and getting their desires across. Granted, its just as likely to be "MINE!!!" as anything more complex, but they can communicate well enough.

6-7 would be more along the lines of an 8 year old.
Engilbrand
05-31-06, 03:35 PM "moderate retardation: IQ 35–40 to 50–55; children require moderate supervision and assistance; formally called "Trainable Mentally Retarded". "
from Wikipedia
So, this character is "Trainably Retarted". If the DM knew that the players has problems roleplaying, why would he do this? The only thing that comes to mind is that he doesn't care about playing your mental scores as appropriate. If that's the case, gimp the hell out of yourself and play your character normal. Or play your character right and don't let this guy talk to people or go off on his own. After all, he might easily break something.
Drachasor
05-31-06, 04:00 PM Statistically speaking, even a 3 is an IQ of 70 or so. So a low-int character is quite capable of dealing with direct cause-effect (put not chains of cause-effect behavior). It is only mild retardation (I think a young child, as someone suggested, is a pretty good benchmark).

-Drachasor
Bulletproof_Condom
06-01-06, 02:35 AM So Forrest Gump is only slightly smarter than my dog?

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
greenblood 05-30-06, 12:42 PM	I once had a fellow gamer play a crippled sorcerer. The concept was that he was crippled at a young age and as a result studied very hard to become more adept as a caster. His starting Cha & Int were high, but his Str was 6, and Dex was 8. His speed was reduced to 5 or 10, and he was basically incapable of traversing any terrain without a crutch. At first, I found it odd that the DM allowed the player to drop some of his attributes below 8 in order to raise others. However, he played the character incredibly well, and it was a pleasure to have him in the group. My player group will be starting a new game in the next week. Per the DM, we our creating our character's attributes using a standard 20 point buy system with all attributes beginning at 8. We have a PC who is fairly new to the D&D world, and is lacking in the RP department (he had great difficulty in our recently completed game). As a result, our DM has helped him create a character with what he considers low RP requirements. The character in question is a Half Orc Barbarian. The DM dropped the characters Int and Cha to 4, and raised the Str to 20 (might have been 20+). I do not recall his other attribute scores, but they are not relative to my question. At what point is a character completely crippled by their attributes? To me an Int of 4 would represent severe retardation. Beyond the inability to speak, a creature with an Int of 4 would likely be inept at all forms of communication, lacking the ability to follow the simplest of instruction like "Hey Cronk, go smash!" Am I incorrect in my assumptions? At what point is an attribute too low to even consider the character playable in a campaign? Thank you in advance. John
LouSapphire 05-30-06, 12:54 PM	As per the rules a character is unplayable if it has a base Int of less than 3. Am in work atm so can;t quote page numbers for reference but I'm sure someone can. It's really upto the DM and player how they want to play this char, with an Int and Cha of 4 I would see it being played as a nieve puppy dog, slow and has to be led around the world, seeing everything black and white and viewing his "master" as god. A half orc with that mentality and having it adopt a father figure in the group will either be great if it's roleplayed well or absolutly cringeworthy when not. Personally I wouldn;t allow a player to play those stats, beyond roleplaying purposes he can be negated in combat with a simple Touch of Idiocy or any ability that hits a mental attribute. Regarding simple instructions, remember that animals have a lower int than 3 but can be taught tricks. "Go Smash2 doesn;t seem that complex to me, and in fact with that stat array will be the only option the char has in pretty much any situation...
Juan Moore 05-30-06, 12:56 PM	A creature with human-like intelligence must have an INT of 3 or greater. I'd figure it'd be something with intelligent retardation. Since Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons, I'd say they barely learn unless they get hurt doing something and they don't reason at all. Thus, highly unskilled. Oh, and they'll keep grabbing at the stick in the fire until they're really burned and something clicks, "Oh, grabbing at the stick burns me... maybe I should stop grabbing at that stick and grab at the other stick in the fire?" I think playing a stupid character is way harder than playing a smart one. At least with the smart character, you get told what you DO know if you the player don't know something. I don't think being told that you DON'T know something is fun. That character will die a completely painful death. Eventually.
Zherog 05-30-06, 01:23 PM	:blink: 20 Point Buy is exceedingly low! In addition, standard point buy doesn't allow you to reduce a stat below 8 to get more points to spend elsewhere. Finally, I would think a character with an Int of 4 would be really difficult to roleplay well. I think your friend is going to have more problems than your DM expects.
hmmmm 05-30-06, 01:30 PM	20 point buy is really low.
Crimson_Concerto 05-30-06, 01:49 PM	Yeah, 20 pb is really low. The lowest pb in the DMG is 25 pb. Even the elite array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) is a pb of 25, and I'm farely certain that's the array monster CRs are designed around.
BloodBought 05-30-06, 01:53 PM	I actually have experience with someone playing a char very similar. My girlfriends first character she ever played in a game I ran was a female Half-Orc Barbarian with an Int of 3, a Str of 25 (with items, i was still new and didn't realize that the gauntlets of ogre power and belt of giant str didn't stack), and average stats everywhere else. I think I can offer you a few tips based on how she played this character. 1. Though the Int is low, it's not so low that the char can't at least partially communicate, it just means that the variety of the char's vocabulary is extrememly limited. One thing my girlfriend did for her char was to make a small vocabulary list for the char (not necessarily an all-inclusive vocab list, but a guide of sorts). She also deliberately avoided using any words with more than 2 syllables since we reasoned they would be too complex for the char to understand. 2. Definitely suggest that this player choose one of the other characters as sort of a parental figure to attach himself to since that helps make it easier to RP the low Intelligence when the char basically looks to the other char questioningly anytime there's something that requires thought happening. 3. Have fun with items. A character with low Int will do things with items that you might never think of. One example of this was when the party containing Baggi (my gf's char, also known as Iggab since she'd occasionally forget the way to say her own name....) met some people that were really hungry and hadn't eaten in quite some time, well Baggi made a wonderful leap of logic for her char, and pulled out her bag of tricks and produced a weasel I think it was for food. (She loved the animals she could pull out of there....) 4. Don't pass up opportunities for the char to RP learning. One of the most memorable experiences with Baggi was the time she learned to refer to the Dwarf in the party as "Car-pet-face!" I think that covers most of the advice I can give. Overall, a low Int doesn't have to cripple you, but it does definitely leave you vulnerable to certain spells. Let me know if you have any other questions and I'll try to dig out my old notes from that game and see if I can give you any more advice based off that char.
kelvinaw273 05-30-06, 03:22 PM	I would find it really hard to play a low int character, myself. Bear in mind that anything below an 8 would be considered to have 'educational special needs' in a school, and you see that an int of 4 would be really, really dumb. Communication is not the biggest problem, it's sitting around and doing nothing because your character can't think of what to do ....
KirkBb 05-30-06, 03:30 PM	The rule I saw for int score ( I think it was in the FAQ) is that every point of int equals 10 points of IQ, making anybody with int 7 or lower mentally retarded, and your average wizard a genious.
Nom 05-30-06, 08:15 PM	Yeah, 20 pb is really low. The lowest pb in the DMG is 25 pb. Even the elite array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) is a pb of 25, and I'm farely certain that's the array monster CRs are designed around.Technically, the lowest PB in the DMG is 15, which is the value of the "standard array" (13,12,11,10,9,8) or its monster equivalent (11,11,11,10,10,10). However, those arrays are designed for use by "everyday creatures", not "heroes" or elite characters. To avoid potential confusion, it is worth noting that "standard point buy" is equivalent to the "elite array", not the "standard array". Incidentally, the DMG offers PC point values ranging from 15 (low powered) through 22 (challenging), 25 (standard), 28 (tougher) to 32 (high powered).
Edymnion 05-30-06, 08:22 PM	Here's some benchmarks for the character to go by: Ability Score Modifier Example 1 -5 Completely inept/disabled 2-3 -4 Weak; infant 4-5 -3 Young Child 6-7 -2 Child, Elderly, impaired 8-9 -1 Below average; teenager 10-11 0 Average adult
Max the Immortal 05-31-06, 05:37 AM	I disagree with the notion that a character with an Int score of 4 would have an "Og smash" style of vocabulary. Out of hundreds of millions of people in the English speaking world, very few, if any, people speak that way. The speech of a character with a low Int score need not be fractured. I suggest a speech pattern like that of Ricky from Trailer Park Boys; he often mixes up words with similar sounds, and he swears a LOT (because he doesn't have a very large vocabulary). IMO, even a character with an Int score of 3 need not be played "retarded-dumb" or "caveman-dumb"; you can get away with "Joey Tribbiani-dumb".
shift244 05-31-06, 07:19 AM	Haha.. yep I agree. And I really like BloodBought's post, though as said, they should be able to use moderately simple and common words and have some grammatical errors. Hey.. how're you doin'?"
Bulletproof_Condom 05-31-06, 07:39 AM	At what point is an attribute too low to even consider the character playable in a campaign?When ability damage lowers any score to 0. Of course, that can be healed. There are rules on PHB p. 8 for "Rerolling" if your stats are too low. Obviously, you aren't rolling for your stats, but the guidelines for when a set of scores is too low could still be useful. An ability score can be as low as 1 after racial mods (except Int which can be as low as 3) and the character can still be playable, assuming of course that the character's other stats make up for it. Some exceedingly low scores will affect a given character type less than others. A well-built spellcaster only really needs his casting stat to be really high. He can rely on party support to keep him alive in other situations. Think Prof. X.
X-Codes 05-31-06, 07:47 AM	IMO, even a character with an Int score of 3 need not be played "retarded-dumb" or "caveman-dumb"; you can get away with "Joey Tribbiani-dumb". Not really. An average Human has an int score of either 10 or 11. Most animals have an Int of 2. If you have an Int of 3, it means your upper brain functions are extremely limited and you are driven mostly by instinct. Having an intelligence of 4-5 means you have a hard time with complex words, 6-7 means you can communicate virtually any idea, albeit ineffectively, and characters generally need 8-9 intelligence to speak like we are now in their native tongue. What kinda muddles me is that understanding innuendo is driven by wisdom (Sense Motive) and charisma (Bluff)... It should probably be based off the Knowledge (local) skill instead, with a simple DC (15 most likely, giving the person you are communicating with a +2 synergy bonus for having 5+ ranks) for both communicating and understanding innuendo.
ElanaYama 05-31-06, 07:48 AM	I think that this score would cause "caveman" speaking since any lower than a three is incapable of speech. Now that doesn't mean alwayy "thog smash" speak but it will be that simple for words and full sentances will probaly elude him. I do think that BloodBought seems to have a good feel for the roleplaying part. Realy though i dont think that this is the best build for a begginner. If this is the players first time just make a human fighter with normal pb AKA no under 8.
greenblood 05-31-06, 11:59 AM	Thank you all for your input. It has helped me gain perspective. I have a much better idea of how to interact with this character in order to help mold the player. Cheers! GB
Edymnion 05-31-06, 02:12 PM	Not really. An average Human has an int score of either 10 or 11. Most animals have an Int of 2. If you have an Int of 3, it means your upper brain functions are extremely limited and you are driven mostly by instinct. Having an intelligence of 4-5 means you have a hard time with complex words, 6-7 means you can communicate virtually any idea, albeit ineffectively, and characters generally need 8-9 intelligence to speak like we are now in their native tongue.Yup, which is why I put up the benchmarks in my last post. A score of 3 is roughly equal to an infant. I'd put it at an older infant though, old enough to be able to point and gesture, and grunt. 4-5 is a young child, roughly equal to a 4 year old, which if you've ever been around children that age, you know they are quite capable of talking and getting their desires across. Granted, its just as likely to be "MINE!!!" as anything more complex, but they can communicate well enough. 6-7 would be more along the lines of an 8 year old.
Engilbrand 05-31-06, 03:35 PM	"moderate retardation: IQ 35–40 to 50–55; children require moderate supervision and assistance; formally called "Trainable Mentally Retarded". " from Wikipedia So, this character is "Trainably Retarted". If the DM knew that the players has problems roleplaying, why would he do this? The only thing that comes to mind is that he doesn't care about playing your mental scores as appropriate. If that's the case, gimp the hell out of yourself and play your character normal. Or play your character right and don't let this guy talk to people or go off on his own. After all, he might easily break something.
Drachasor 05-31-06, 04:00 PM	Statistically speaking, even a 3 is an IQ of 70 or so. So a low-int character is quite capable of dealing with direct cause-effect (put not chains of cause-effect behavior). It is only mild retardation (I think a young child, as someone suggested, is a pretty good benchmark). -Drachasor
Bulletproof_Condom 06-01-06, 02:35 AM	So Forrest Gump is only slightly smarter than my dog?