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Animals have an Int of 1 or 2, and anything 3 or above is considered "human-like." That has never sat well with me. I've always felt like there should be a greater range of animal intelligences, that 3 is pretty dumb for a human, and that maybe there ought to be a bit of overlap between the lowest humanoids and the smartest animals.
I'd love to see a scale something like this:
0 = no reaction to stimuli: chairs, tables, rocks
1 = no thinking, no problem solving, only reacting to stimuli, no fear of death; untrainable: oozes, jelly fish, plants, animated objects
2 = dumb animals - mostly react based in instincts, limited problem solving, dimly self aware and seek self-preservation; minimally trainable: insects, fish, birds, reptiles, hunting plants, zombies, skeletons, constructs
3 = average animals - instinctive but adaptable, simple problem solving, self aware, somewhat trainable: mammals, hunting insects/fish/birds/reptiles
4 = smart animals - well-developed problem solving skills, aware of self and somewhat aware of others, fully trainable: hunting mammals (or working mammals bred for intelligence), primates, cetaceans, humanoids of the absolute lowest intelligence
5 = exceptionally smart animals - capable of short and medium term planning, fully aware of self and others, occasional ethical leaps, highly trainable: hunting primates and cetaceans, really dumb humanoids
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6 = sentient beings capable of moral and ethical choices
So two questions:
1. Any interest/utility in fiddling with animal intelligence, as I've suggested or otherwise?
2. Is the current definition of animal intelligence so hard wired into the rules that it would be impossible to change - spells, skill point allotments, training rules via Animal Handling, familiars and animal companions, etc?
Creative Director
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While it would indeed be nice to have a wider range of scores to use for animals (the difference between a chimpanzee or a pig or an octopus and a goldfish or a turtle or a newt is pretty huge), there's not much that can be done with it as long as we keep the baseline range of 3–18 for initial "human" scores, as laid out by the 3d6 method that gives us an average score of 10.5.
While it's certainly possible to have a human dumber than a smart animal, that's not really the norm and is generally the result of brain trauma or damage or the like, and so shouldn't really factor into what is "standard" for a human.
If we wanted to extend "animal" intelligence up to 3 or 4 or 5, we'd have to adjust the human baseline, and that has VERY extensive ripple effects throughout the entire game, and would fundamentally alter one of the very core concepts of the game (that an average human's stats can be generated by 3d6).
Fortunately, the game handles animal "intelligence" in other ways. Although it's easy to think of the stat "Intelligence" as being the only thing that governs the mind, we have two other attributes to play with as well. We can model animals that are "smarter" than others with variations in Wisdom and Charisma, I think; highly social animals could have higher charisma scores, while animals with stronger instincts can have higher wisdom scores.
Smarts, in other words, is not just intelligence in the game. It's governed by all three mental stats.
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Fortunately, the game handles animal "intelligence" in other ways. Although it's easy to think of the stat "Intelligence" as being the only thing that governs the mind, we have two other attributes to play with as well. We can model animals that are "smarter" than others with variations in Wisdom and Charisma, I think; highly social animals could have higher charisma scores, while animals with stronger instincts can have higher wisdom scores.
For that reason, I wouldn't be at all surprised if many animals had a better Charisma score than currently listed. Animals intimidate and influence each others behavior all the time (and most animals prefer threat displays to risk of injury for non-life-threatening social situations).
I would still definitely argue for insects having an Int score of 1. Instead of a half dozen kludged in feats or whatever to explain Drow being able to train spiders, just give them an Int 1 and let them be trainable. (And, given how many insects scatter in the presence of the appropriate stimuli, they definitely aren't immune to fear!)
While it's certainly possible to have a human dumber than a smart animal, that's not really the norm and is generally the result of brain trauma or damage or the like, and so shouldn't really factor into what is "standard" for a human.
I don't know. Thinking of some of the "customers" that I have met working in retail . . .
... there's not much that can be done with it as long as we keep the baseline range of 3–18 for initial "human" scores, as laid out by the 3d6 method that gives us an average score of 10.5.
You mean 3 to 20, right? Or 3 to 25 with advancement? It is possible to achieve a 25 with no magical intervention in Pathfinder RPG.
I think the OP makes a good point. Mainly, it is more useful to divide the smart animals from the brainless animals than it is to keep them all lumped so closely together. When was the last time you saw a functional character with Int 4? Int 5? Int 6 is just about the lowest PC Int score I've ever seen, and would be a good "bottom end" since that's about the lowest a player is going to tolerate.
standard 3.5 rolling does subjest rerolling anything under 10. so pc with less then 10 is pretty much an option. less then 8 is just mean. I am all for what the OP says
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While it would indeed be nice to have a wider range of scores to use for animals (the difference between a chimpanzee or a pig or an octopus and a goldfish or a turtle or a newt is pretty huge), there's not much that can be done with it as long as we keep the baseline range of 3–18 for initial "human" scores, as laid out by the 3d6 method that gives us an average score of 10.5.
I remember back in the days of 1E people used to say that Int roughly corresponded to IQ. I don't remember if that was ever expressly stated or just here-say, but it was a pretty common opinion. 3d6 does generate a normal range of intelligence, and the ones way at the bottom are possible for humans; they may not be playable, but they are possible. But in real life, too, anyone way down on the curve is facing some serious obstacles. With IQs, anything under 70 is considered mildly retarded. I know some mildly retarded kids and they are challenged but totally functional. Get down to the 30s and 40s though, and things become much more difficult, folks need a lot of help. Here's a great/horrible/sad quote I ran across:
My point is, I don't think raising animal intelligence would invalidate human intelligence as obtainable via 3d6. It might emphasize that Int score of 3, 4 and 5 are REALLY low (although I think trying to match scores to any real world clinical labels like retarded would be a bad idea). If anything, it would exaggerate animal intelligence a bit by saying that some animals are a smart as humans, but I think that's okay in a fantasy game. And it would add a lot by allowing us to differentiate a bit more between dumb and smart animals.
You mean 3 to 20, right? Or 3 to 25 with advancement? It is possible to achieve a 25 with no magical intervention in Pathfinder RPG.
standard 3.5 rolling does subjest rerolling anything under 10. so pc with less then 10 is pretty much an option. less then 8 is just mean. I am all for what the OP says
It's not about what the PCs can roll. They are the heroes.. of course they get rerolls and "nothing lower than X". Point Buy doesn't even have an option to go below 7 in Pathfinder, meaning 5 is the lowest with a -2 stat penalty.
The point though, is that the "Standard" is a Human rolling 3d6 for stats. The average NPC (no rerolls, no lower limits). The game assumes there are humans out there with a 3 for an Int score.
Change this, and you change the standard the game is built upon. This might not be a bad thing necessarily, however it is still a consideration.
There's a good article on "Calibrating your Expectations". It is one of the articles that helped fuel the idea of E6.
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Now, that isn't to say that this shouldn't be considered. It'd give animal companions much more leeway in becoming useful cohorts. We should tread carefully with such changes though.
standard 3.5 rolling does subjest rerolling anything under 10. so pc with less then 10 is pretty much an option. less then 8 is just mean. I am all for what the OP says
The standard 3.5 rolling is roll 4d6 drop lowest and lets you rereoll the whole set of stats if you don't have at least one 13 (I think) and a total ability bonus of at least +1. It doesn't say anything about rerolling individual scores if they are too low.
So 6, 8, 10, 12, 12, 15 is not elegible for a reroll under the standard rules. It may be mean, but that's what you get for rolling stats: You let chance decide, and sometimes chance is against you.
Actually, If I ever used a rolling method again, there would be no rerolls at all. Take the dice, roll stats, once, and those stats are written down and used by all your characters in that campaign.
Sounds hard-ass, and it is. But if you want to roll, usually for a chance to get something like 18, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10 or anything else that is way beyond what you could get with even the best purchase option, you have to accept that with the chance for something really good comes the chance for something really bad.
Those rolling methods that have failsaves and safety nets like rerolls and treating anything below X as X and so on are a joke. Either roll the dice and accept the outcome, or stop kidding yourself and use point buy.
The dice are cast.
Talking about animal intelligence: I don't think this is important enough to change it. Not really a part of the game that needs that much attention to detail if you ask me. Not with if after you did this, a lot of other stuff suddenly makes no sense, or has to be reworked as well.
I also agree that the standard rolling doesn't have to take into account severe mental disabilities that basically make you no smarter than an animal. I'd say that those are quite rare, anyway. Many hamper you in other ways.
And even for those that do limit your intelligence I don't think the standard conditions need to be changed. You wouldn't roll whether your character has a club foot, either. That kind of character decision is something to be taken care of by some kind of Disadvantages rule, or just by roleplaying it accordingly.
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The biggest problem with low Intelligence monsters is called Ray of Stupidity, it sits in the Spell Compendium and it's a death trap for any DM that allows "take whatever you like" policy and doesn't read splatbooks.
I suggested in the Dinosaurs thread, that, just as with Ray of Enfeeblement, there should be a low cap for this spell of 1 Int.
And the same with Touch of Idiocy.This doesn't help with ability damage, though, such as from poison.
Alternatively, we should rethink what it actually means to have 0 ability scores. Zero Con would still be death, zero Str or Dex would be immobile, but instead of unconsciousness, zero mental stats would result in some form of insanity, or reverting to pure instinct, which in many cases, is what the animal already relies on.
Making it mostly pointless to use these tactics on animals, except to maybe break their training, or ability to recognise friend from foe.
There's a good article on "Calibrating your Expectations". It is one of the articles that helped fuel the idea of E6.
Good catch. The article really is quite good. Maybe a little bit off here and there (5th-level "regular" characters with an 18 in their top ability score) but overall, it does a great work of showing what the numbers mean.
Obliquely, I think it would be more "realistic" if 10 in a stat were the human mode, rather than average.
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... there's not much that can be done with it as long as we keep the baseline range of 3–18 for initial "human" scores, as laid out by the 3d6 method that gives us an average score of 10.5.
You mean 3 to 20, right? Or 3 to 25 with advancement? It is possible to achieve a 25 with no magical intervention in Pathfinder RPG.
I think the OP makes a good point. Mainly, it is more useful to divide the smart animals from the brainless animals than it is to keep them all lumped so closely together. When was the last time you saw a functional character with Int 4? Int 5? Int 6 is just about the lowest PC Int score I've ever seen, and would be a good "bottom end" since that's about the lowest a player is going to tolerate.
No, I mean 3 to 18. I'm not talking about PCs or NPCs. I'm talking about average humans.
And when was the last time you saw a character with a lower than 6 score in any stat? That's not something that's a "problem" with Intelligence only.
And in any case, the game is WAY too close to being done for us to go in and make such an enormous change to one of the foundation rules anyway, even if we wanted to.
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Creative Director
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The biggest problem with low Intelligence monsters is called Ray of Stupidity, it sits in the Spell Compendium and it's a death trap for any DM that allows "take whatever you like" policy and doesn't read splatbooks.
Technically, that's a problem with the spell and not anything else. Ray of stupidity is aptly name, is what I'm saying; a classic example of a spell designed with the idea that it's only going to be used against "normal D&D monsters," meaning monsters with intelligence.
The way to fix this problem is to fix ray of stupidity so it works like ray of enfeeblement: its effects create a penalty to intelligence that doesn't stack, not actual intelligence damage, and this penalty cannot exceed the target's Intelligence score, thereby making it unable to reduce an INT score to 0. The spell remains just as useful for blunting wizards and preventing their spellcasting, but is no longer a cheesy way to off animals.
I mean... feeblemind can't even autokill an animal by reducing its INT to 0, and that spell is MUCH higher level than ray of stupidity!
The biggest problem with low Intelligence monsters is called Ray of Stupidity, it sits in the Spell Compendium and it's a death trap for any DM that allows "take whatever you like" policy and doesn't read splatbooks.Technically, that's a problem with the spell and not anything else. Ray of stupidity is aptly name, is what I'm saying; a classic example of a spell designed with the idea that it's only going to be used against "normal D&D monsters," meaning monsters with intelligence.
The way to fix this problem is to fix ray of stupidity so it works like ray of enfeeblement: its effects create a penalty to intelligence that doesn't stack, not actual intelligence damage, and this penalty cannot exceed the target's Intelligence score, thereby making it unable to reduce an INT score to 0. The spell remains just as useful for blunting wizards and preventing their spellcasting, but is no longer a cheesy way to off animals.
I mean... feeblemind can't even autokill an animal by reducing its INT to 0, and that spell is MUCH higher level than ray of stupidity!
I agree. The problem with ray of stupidity lies not with animals' intelligence scores, but with bad design on the part of the spell's author.
Good catch. The article really is quite good. Maybe a little bit off here and there (5th-level "regular" characters with an 18 in their top ability score) but overall, it does a great work of showing what the numbers mean.
There's a good article on "Calibrating your Expectations". It is one of the articles that helped fuel the idea of E6.
I agree, that is a good article, except as KaeYoss mentioned.
The references to real world statistics are quite accurate.Thanx Kaisoku! :)
Dug up some old dusty research notes, that might help...
Binet formula (1905) IQ = (mental age / chronological age) x 100
IQ obsolete terms mental age (comparative zoology)
<20 idiot <3 (fish, amoeba)
20 imbecile 3 (cattle, shark, reptile, insect, bat)
35 simpleton, naive 5 (gorilla, canine, horse, rodent, songbird)
50 moronic, clueless 8 (elephant, feline, parrot)
75 stupid, inept 13 (chimpanzee, raven)
80 challenged 15 (dolphin, orca)
90 normal 18
110 clever, competant
130 insightful, gifted
150 brilliant, genius
IQ p20 dnd Terman/Wechsler scale |minimum for...
<20 (1%) 00 profound retardation
20 (4%) 01 severe retardation
35 (10%) 02 moderate retardation |trainable
50 (85%) 03 mild retardation |educable
<70 01 Feeble-minded/Defective
75 02 04 Borderline deficiency
80 03 05 Dullness
85 06 |Jr High School
90 06 08 Average Human (min) |Laborer
95 09 |Crafter
100 11 |Tradesman
105 13 10 Average Human (max) |Guildmeister
110 16 11 Superior/Bright Normal |Sr High School, Professional
115 18 12 Above Average |University
120 19 13 Very Superior |Mensa member, Mentor
130 20 15 Gifted |Post-graduate
140 (50%) 16 Near Genius, Highly Gifted |Intellectual, Professor, Research Scientist
150 (35%) 17 Genius
160 (10%) 18 Profound Genius |Nobel Prize level (ie Einstein)
180 (4%) 19 Extreme Genius
200 (1%) 20 Beyond Genius
200+ 21+ Immeasurable
p20 based on percentage of population, with 01 and 20 each representing 2%
p20 (#%) is the percentage of that 2% represented by 01 and 20
dnd rating based on original Gygax scale from 1st edition
While it would indeed be nice to have a wider range of scores to use for animals (the difference between a chimpanzee or a pig or an octopus and a goldfish or a turtle or a newt is pretty huge), there's not much that can be done with it as long as we keep the baseline range of 3–18 for initial "human" scores, as laid out by the 3d6 method that gives us an average score of 10.5.I remember back in the days of 1E people used to say that Int roughly corresponded to IQ.
That conversion does not correspond to population Bell curves. If we match the bell curves of 3d6 to IQ, we will get the following:
Intelligence of 10.5 = IQ of 100
Standard Deviation of IQ is 15 and standard deviation of 3d6 is about 2.958 or approximately 3. That means that a deviation of 1 point of Intelligence from the mean is the equivalent of about 5 IQ point deviations from the mean.
Consequently, here is the IQ equivalence of basic human range of intelligence in D&D and Pathfinder RPG:
Intelligence...IQ
3..............62.5
4..............67.5
5..............72.5
6..............77.5
7..............82.5
8..............87.5
9..............92.5
10.............97.5
10.5...........100
11.............102.5
12.............107.5
13.............112.5
14.............117.5
15.............122.5
16.............127.5
17.............132.5
18.............137.5
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While it would indeed be nice to have a wider range of scores to use for animals (the difference between a chimpanzee or a pig or an octopus and a goldfish or a turtle or a newt is pretty huge), there's not much that can be done with it as long as we keep the baseline range of 3–18 for initial "human" scores, as laid out by the 3d6 method that gives us an average score of 10.5.
While it's certainly possible to have a human dumber than a smart animal, that's not really the norm and is generally the result of brain trauma or damage or the like, and so shouldn't really factor into what is "standard" for a human.
If we wanted to extend "animal" intelligence up to 3 or 4 or 5, we'd have to adjust the human baseline, and that has VERY extensive ripple effects throughout the entire game, and would fundamentally alter one of the very core concepts of the game (that an average human's stats can be generated by 3d6).
Fortunately, the game handles animal "intelligence" in other ways. Although it's easy to think of the stat "Intelligence" as being the only thing that governs the mind, we have two other attributes to play with as well. We can model animals that are "smarter" than others with variations in Wisdom and Charisma, I think; highly social animals could have higher charisma scores, while animals with stronger instincts can have higher wisdom scores.
Smarts, in other words, is not just intelligence in the game. It's governed by all three mental stats.
There could be other ways to simulate things like this. For example, giving dogs the ability to learn more tricks than other animals.
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And in any case, the game is WAY too close to being done for us to go in and make such an enormous change to one of the foundation rules anyway, even if we wanted to.
So that's pretty final, and totally fair. But let's say in MY world I wanted to try this. Let's say the animals in my Golarion are a little smarter than the animals of Golarion-Prime.
Where would I need to look for compatibility issues? What else is tied to setting animal intelligence at 1 or 2 in the Pathfinder RAW?
That conversion does not correspond to population Bell curves. If we match the bell curves of 3d6 to IQ, we will get the following:
Intelligence of 10.5 = IQ of 100
Standard Deviation of IQ is 15 and standard deviation of 3d6 is about 2.958 or approximately 3. That means that a deviation of 1 point of Intelligence from the mean is the equivalent of about 5 IQ point deviations from the mean.
Meh. The nominal std dev of the Stanford-Binet type tests is 16 (they're called "16 point" tests). Mensa uses IQ 132 or "highest 2%" because 132 is the second sigma, corresponding to the upper 2.5% for normal distribution. The problem is that the tests are notoriously difficult to balance. Either they measure average intelligence well and significantly smarter people score anomalously high, or they are suitable challenging to smart people and give inconsistent results to average people.
The other problem is that people learn from taking tests, so you get kids taking online IQ tests and getting 150+ because they are conditioned. It is so bad now that Mensa doesn't take published tests as valid for entry.
Which means the old 10 IQ per Int is probably conservative, you just have to reconcile with the "new" IQ scale.
Strange, ain't it?
Where would I need to look for compatibility issues? What else is tied to setting animal intelligence at 1 or 2 in the Pathfinder RAW?
I think a lot of it is in the implications: Standard ability scores range from 3-18 (not counting racial modifiers), meaning that if you increase animal intelligence, you'll have animals that are smarter than people.
Also, there's the thing that those with "animal intelligence" are unable to make moral or ethnical decisions, so normally, they cannot have an alignment other than neutral.
And feeblemind implies that those with such a low int cannot do any spellcasting (a cleric with wis 50 and int 1 cannot cast spells!), and can probably not speak a language (though there's the raven familiar - I'm not sure normal ravens in D&D can learn a language. I think all "talking" birds can do is "parrot" sounds.)
So if you increase animal intelligence (say, to everything up to 5), does that mean that the smarter animals can have an alignment? Does it mean that those with int 4 or 5 cannot have an alignment? Can they cast spells? Or are those things now disconnected from int scores and depend wholly on type?
IQ obsolete terms mental age (comparative zoology)
<20 idiot <3 (fish, amoeba)
20 imbecile 3 (cattle, shark, reptile, insect, bat)
35 simpleton, naive 5 (gorilla, canine, horse, rodent, songbird)
50 moronic, clueless 8 (elephant, feline, parrot)
75 stupid, inept 13 (chimpanzee, raven)
80 challenged 15 (dolphin, orca)
90 normal 18
110 clever, competant
130 insightful, gifted
150 brilliant, genius
Animals go quite high up there. A guy with an IQ of 75 (stupid) would be outsmarted by a dolphin all the time! And from what I know of current ranges, 75 is only one deviation below the standard range (which goes from 85 to 115), so it's still not that uncommon.
Meh. The nominal std dev of the Stanford-Binet type tests is 16 (they're called "16 point" tests).That conversion does not correspond to population Bell curves. If we match the bell curves of 3d6 to IQ, we will get the following:
Intelligence of 10.5 = IQ of 100
Standard Deviation of IQ is 15 and standard deviation of 3d6 is about 2.958 or approximately 3. That means that a deviation of 1 point of Intelligence from the mean is the equivalent of about 5 IQ point deviations from the mean.
Yes, and Wechsler tests use standard deviation of 15. When most people think of IQ these days I would venture a guess thay are referring to a scale with a 15 point standard deviation. Even if that's not the case, however, and they use a 16 point scale, the table I posted would not change too much - there would be less than a 3 IQ point difference at the extremes of the table.
Mensa uses IQ 132 or "highest 2%" because 132 is the second sigma, corresponding to the upper 2.5% for normal distribution. The problem is that the tests are notoriously difficult to balance. Either they measure average intelligence well and significantly smarter people score anomalously high, or they are suitable challenging to smart people and give inconsistent results to average people.
The other problem is that people learn from taking tests, so you get kids taking online IQ tests and getting 150+ because they are conditioned. It is so bad now that Mensa doesn't take published tests as valid for entry.
Yeah, I don't think IQ is a particularly good measure of intelligence in the first place. But for the purposes of D&D Intelligence approximations I am not too picky and find it to be good enough as long as 3d6 and the Bell Curve of IQ are standardized to the same scale through means and standard deviations.
Animals have an Int of 1 or 2, and anything 3 or above is considered "human-like." That has never sat well with me. I've always felt like there should be a greater range of animal intelligences, that 3 is pretty dumb for a human, and that maybe there ought to be a bit of overlap between the lowest humanoids and the smartest animals.
Ironically, I'm in favour of decreasing the range of possible Intelligence scores -- specifically, getting rid of "Int --" for skeletons, constructs, oozes and vermin. I'd rather have mindlessness represented by having a Cha score of "--".
But when I posted this idea on the Alpha playtest board, the consensus was that it's too radical a change.
So wait, is the assumption that only PCs have access to the +2 Human bonus to any attribute? That contradicts conventional wisdom about how NPCs of any given race work.
I think when we discuss what is "possible" for a human (non-magically), it needs to be 3-25. A smart, 20th level commoner could have a 25 Int, even though once would imagine he would then be something other than a commoner.
3-18 as the range of human "possibility" at first level no longer applies, due to the human bonus to any ability score.
So wait, is the assumption that only PCs have access to the +2 Human bonus to any attribute? That contradicts conventional wisdom about how NPCs of any given race work. [/quote
Well, I am kind of hoping the +2 Human bonus to any attribute is eliminated and we go back to 3.5E way of doing things in this regard (though perhaps the other races could have a choice which of the two attributes they want to place their bonus into (or perhaps even how much into which attribute)).
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Creative Director
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So wait, is the assumption that only PCs have access to the +2 Human bonus to any attribute? That contradicts conventional wisdom about how NPCs of any given race work.
I think when we discuss what is "possible" for a human (non-magically), it needs to be 3-25. A smart, 20th level commoner could have a 25 Int, even though once would imagine he would then be something other than a commoner.
3-18 as the range of human "possibility" at first level no longer applies, due to the human bonus to any ability score.
All humans have the +2 bonus to an attribute. But only to ONE attribute. And since they can pick which attribute, it doesn't really matter for "human average." Instead, human average is an attribute of 10.5, with all humans being better in one way and being above average (by 2 points) in one way.
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Yeah, I don't think IQ is a particularly good measure of intelligence in the first place. But for the purposes of D&D Intelligence approximations I am not too picky and find it to be good enough as long as 3d6 and the Bell Curve of IQ are standardized to the same scale through means and standard deviations.
Would it actually be a bell-curve, though?
The 3d6 roll only shows a person's potential.
Check out any show like 'You've Been Framed', or 'America's Dumbest Criminals' to see how the ones at the bottom of the barrel will find ways to take themselves out of the gene pool.
Would it actually be a bell-curve, though?
Yes, it would. The IQ scale is designed to be a bell curve, and is renormalized periodically.
Besides, low IQs are not as lethal as one might think.
Would it actually be a bell-curve, though?Yes, it would. The IQ scale is designed to be a bell curve, and is renormalized periodically.
Besides, low IQs are not as lethal as one might think.
Indeed on both counts!
Besides, low IQs are not as lethal as one might think.
Definetly. If low IQs were lethal, we wouldn't have a problem with overpopulation or unemployment.
If someone finds a "dumb luck" switch and flips it over to "off" for just one day, the results would make Captain Trips look like a walk in the park.
I'm not sure normal ravens in D&D can learn a language. I think all "talking" birds can do is "parrot" sounds...
Animals go quite high up there. A guy with an IQ of 75 (stupid) would be outsmarted by a dolphin all the time! And from what I know of current ranges, 75 is only one deviation below the standard range (which goes from 85 to 115), so it's still not that uncommon.
research has shown that larger birds make decisions on which sounds they mimic, not randomly like small ones.
raven murders in particular have been recorded working together to cause minor car accidents on purpose to get food.that said, the animal listings were from research studies and do not represent the norm
ie elephants that paint, gorillas that use a computer to "talk",
dolphins that design thier own routines in marine parks,
orcas that disarm mines and kill unauthorized divers via knife strapped on thier back,
and so on...
they're in a vaccuum, under intensive training by scientists trying to prove something ;)
half the rating is likely the average at a sheer guess
btw - I did mention dug up from old dusty notes, meaning back from the 70's and 80's lol :D
I also guess that changing this aspect of the game is likely to open a can of worms. Either follow James´ idea and fiddle with wisdom and charisma of animals, or if you need more than that, consider having a parallel chart, with the rulebook INT being for truly sentient beings, and another 0-18 scale for animals only, with 0 being automatons, 5 insects, 10 a horse or a dog and 18 a trained dolphin or something similar. That way, you can have a broader range of animal intelligence, but still say, it is the animal intelligence chart and not comparable to sentient beings.
Stefan