Mithdraug's page

I always thought the 4d6 was mainly for PCs as they are typically better than the average population, which is why I assumed 3d6. That and the typical NPC state line of 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, and 8 is the average of(and supports using) 3d6.

It is interesting looking at the numbers though. I think too often people view it as linear, when in reality it is not. The difference between 10 and 9 is much less than 9 to 8 (and so on).

As a personal hero of mine, I would have to disagree about Homer.

"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that."

(and yes we have gone off on a tangent)

I do agree about IQ not being a definitive measure, but it serves as a basis for comparison in this "study". I mainly did this because I am going to start running Dragon's Demand on Sunday and one of the characters has an 8 Int score. The best part about this is that the player (based on my numbers above) would easily have a 16 or 17 Int score. He is the player that takes my best puzzle encounters and solves them in no time. We talked about the challenge of playing a character with a low Int score. Of course his response was relief that for once he didn't need to do the thinking.

A 7 Int does represent a rather slow person. The difference between 10 and 7 may not look big, until you break it down and look at the curve (assuming 3d6 to generate the range of values, ignoring the +2 to a stat). If you look at a population you will come up with the following percent having a specific Int score (any true mathematicians please correct any statistical errors).

Int occurrence/ Percent of Percent of people
Score 216 people population below you
3 1 0.5% 0.0%
4 3 1.4% 0.5%
5 6 2.8% 1.9%
6 10 4.6% 4.6%
7 15 6.9% 9.3%
8 21 9.7% 16.2%
9 25 11.6% 25.9%
10 27 12.5% 37.5%
11 27 12.5% 50.0%
12 25 11.6% 62.5%
13 21 9.7% 74.1%
14 15 6.9% 83.8%
15 10 4.6% 90.7%
16 6 2.8% 95.4%
17 3 1.4% 98.1%
18 1 0.5% 99.5%

So a 7 Int score puts you in the lower 16% or a mid 80s IQ. Based on the following site http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQBasics.aspx (I can make no claims to the accuracy of this site, just one I found) a 7 Int makes you a dullard.

Now that doesn't mean they can not be fun to role play. One of my favorite characters was a lawful neutral half orc fighter with a low int and chr. It was actually a lot of fun playing him as somebody that did not think for themselves, but followed orders like a good soldier. It also allowed a lot of room to grow the character via role playing.

This does not mean you act like an idiot in combat (that is instincts and training imo), but at a 7 Int you should not be doing any creative thinking in the party.

As noted above, I was not a math or stats major...so please point out any mistakes (constructively) that I may have made.

(P.S. Will try to sort out the formatting of the table.)