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This is not exactly difficult stuff.
Unless you have a 5 INT.
:)
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Small piece of data that often get's overlooked,
An average is not a median. It's an average.
Overlooked in this case because it is totally irrelevant. Median is used as a measure of central tendancy when the distribution is skewed beyond normalcy. When it isn't skewed then median and mean are going to be the same. The distribution of 3d6 is normal, and the IQ distribution is normal by definition.
The point being, people keep imagining a bell curve when they talk about 10 being the 'average' but it doesn't have to be a symmetrical bell curve. Most of the time, it's not, especially in D&D.
If scores are generated using 3d6 then 10.5 is, in fact, the mean and median score.
Even looking at the maximum of 20 starting out (18 + 2 racial), it's not a bell curve. It's because the minimum int is not 0, but 3. That means it's already a skewed bell curve.
The +2 comes into play after the initial stat is generated, generated via 3d6 by default method. The result of 3d6 is a value between 3 and 18 and is a "normal curve" if you apply the +2 all you do is transpose the curve, you don't alter it - it is the same normal curve that now has a mean of 12.5 instead of 10.5
The absolute minimum intelligence a character can have and still be sentient is 3. That's someone who's barely sentient (animals are 2). So if we equate that to say, 20 IQ (profound mental retardation, can't care for themselves, but sentient) and 100 IQ being average, then we get the following :
Range of IQ from Minimum IQ to average : 80 pts
Range of Int from Minimum to average : 7 pts
80/7 = 11.42
Let me introduce you to the idea of Standard Deviation, which is the appropriate measure to use but nothing close to what you're calculating. The standard deviation for IQ is 15, the standard deviation for 3d6 is 2.96, which is how you translate between the two.
So an Int 7 is about 34 pts below average, or 66 IQ, yeah, Forest Gump is a good example.
The conversion, using Z-score because both are normal distributions, is 82.
The scale above the IQ zone is different for Int, the maximum is about 200IQ, so it works at 10 per point.
200 IQ equates to a 29 or 30 INT. Maximum starting IQ for a human, in D&D, would be about 150, and thus, with natural development, the maximum IQ for a D&D human (discounting other forms of stat improvement) is, in fact, 200 (30 Int) at level 20.
The issue comes from making 3 the minimum but 20 the max. We're having to map a skewed bell curve (3 to 20) against a standard bell curve (IQ is designed to be a strict symmetrical bell curve from 0 to 200 with 100 being average, and each standard deviation being 15 IQ points).
The stat you choose to give a bonus to isn't part of the distribution, it is just a choice of an early piece of natural development on the part of your character, making you above average in that stat for the race. Since humans can put their +2 in any one stat, there's no reason to include the +2 in the basic translation between the two.
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We had a halfling with a low int in our party, he was played like a mentally handicapped individual, who made a string of impulsive and silly decisions. Including stealing from an NPC who was very friendly to the party, taking the drugs he was addicted too in front of the local sheriff, and going for a swim in the sink hole beside the spooky prison. He didn't come back from the swim...
@VoodooMike
I have a mathematics degree, so you don't need to 'introduce' me to anything.
You are applying the logic incorrectly. This is not an unusual thing to do, which is why I pointed it out.
You would be correct about the +2 from racial simply moving the curve up or down the line, and making the average 12.5... if the +2 were always applied. But the +2 is not always applied. This means it is a situational adjustment, which results in the bell curve being skewed.
The minimum INT is 3 (where our theoretical sentient rolled 3 on their stat dice and then applied the +2 racial bonus to Dex let's say), while the maximum is 20 (where our theoretical sentient rolled 18 on their dice and then applied the +2 racial bonus to Int).
The racial bonus being applied after the roll has nothing to do with whether the Int curve is skewed, since we are talking about the curve of Int, not the curve of 3d6. To even talk about 3d6 invalidates the argument, since it could be point buy, 4d6-1, 4d6-1 re-roll 1's, or any of the other myriad of rolling methods, each and every one of which will have a different distribution curve, some of which are skewed as well, such as for example 4d6 drop lowest or even more so 4d6 drop lowest re-roll ones. In the latter example, the curve is heavily skewed toward the higher end of 20, for example.
So for our purposes, we have to look at just the possible ranges, not the method for determining the actual values. Which means that the possible ranges are 3 to 20, with a skewed, not symmetrical, distribution due to the situational additive.
On a side note, notice I also simplified the way I discussed the numbers, because unlike you, I assume that 99% of the people that read the forums do not have a Master's degree in mathematics, and I don't feel that talking down at them using terms they may not understand is really the way to post. First off, it alienates people. Secondly, when I begin talking out of my ***, as my grandma would have said, there's very few people who will catch when I make a mistake if I'm using statistical nomenclature.
The stat you choose to give a bonus to isn't part of the distribution, it is just a choice of an early piece of natural development on the part of your character, making you above average in that stat for the race. Since humans can put their +2 in any one stat, there's no reason to include the +2 in the basic translation between the two.
I wanted to address this separately.
This is really a bad decision mathematically. You're altering your result set to fit your own preconceived notions. This skews your statistical analysis. There's a reason why people say 'Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics'. I automatically ignore 95% of all statistics because they are made up by the marketing department. :) And any statistics posted by posters in forums are usually fabricated out of thin air.
We are discussing how IQ in the real world (as applies to humans) applies to Int (as applies to humans). So the +2 racial bonus for humans absolutely does come into play, as we need to compare apples to apples. You are wanting to compare apples to kumquats if you throw out the racial modifier. Mathematics deals with absolutes. In pathfinder, the absolute lowest Int a human can have is 3. The absolute highest (starting) Int is 20. If we go for the absolute highest Int a human can have without magic ever it's even higher. That would be 20, + 5 (5 bonuses from leveling 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 20th), + 3 for venerable age, leaves us with 28.
IQ, being defined by the curve and standard deviations, keeps average at 100. It's a made up numbering system that's defined by itself, that is, average IQ is always 100, no matter what. Everyone falls on the scale based on how many standard deviations, or fraction thereof, they are from the average.
Pathfinder has an artificially designated 'average' of 10. That means if we're mapping the two, we have to map the end points, and the average, and force everything else to fit into the curve. Unfortunately, the artificial system in PF has created a heavily skewed curve. To fit it all in correctly, we have to have a different mapping ratio below and above the average. Even if we assume standard 3d6 distribution of scores (the most bell-like distribution) prior to racial modifiers, this is only for starting scores, and then they go up from there via age if nothing else due to how the system works. Thus there's no way not to skew them higher than 'average' over time. Even a 3 int character ends up at 6 assuming they live to 90.
So the only way to map this to IQ, is to have a different mapping ratio for values above 100 IQ and those below. Below, you map 10 to 100 IQ onto 3 to 10 range of Int values. On the other side, you map 101 to 200 IQ to 11 to 28 range. Again, a skewed system where one point of int loss is a bigger drop in IQ than one gain.
On the off chance that you're just being obtuse, consider:
"Love is an intense feeling of deep affection." That's hardly precise, is it? On the basis of this definition, I can't tell you the precise meaning of the statement "A loves B." I can't tell you whether A would die for B, or whether A wants to spend the rest of his life with B, or any such thing. But I can tell you this: A has an intense feeling of deep affection for B. The definition, swiped straight from a dictionary, means what it says.
Similarly, "Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons." That's not a precise definition, but there's clearly information there. A character with low Intelligence is bad at learning and reasoning; a character with high Intelligence is good at learning and reasoning. This is not exactly difficult stuff.
When the game rules put "love" into the mechanics, let's talk about "love" OK Glen? Do you see the point? Probably not. Few others do. The point is that these numbers are supposed to MEAN SOMETHING, but they don't. Nobody agrees what they mean.
Even if you could get people to agree that a 7 int means an 83 IQ they would just then argue about what an 83 IQ means.
That's the point.
No.
I'm not sure whether this was addressed to me, because you didn't specify my post, but I think you're missing the point. No one contests that the INT stat measures reasoning ability as well as knowledge.
But "reasoning ability" as measured by IQ is about the underlying capacity for fast and accurate reasoning (and for absorption of information). That's why IQ correlates positively to scores on tests that measure lots of different kinds of intelligence. For example, a high IQ person is likely to score well on both vocabulary tests and abstract pattern recognition tests, despite the fact that those tests measure two different competencies, because there is an underlying capacity that influences (but does not determine) both.
While INT measures both knowledge and reasoning, it does not measure anything like an underlying capacity for same. It measures practical ability as expressed in practical outcomes. This is obvious by analogy to other traits: with STR, we don't care about the underlying physical factor that correlates to your ability in various unrelated physical feats, but rather about your practical ability to lift or to swing a big sword. That ability is influenced by your underlying aptitude and by the extent to which you've developed your ability, but also by temperament, habits and situational factors related to your background.
Doesn't IQ measure those latter elements, you ask? No, it tries to compensate for them. A good IQ test, for example, will not ding people too badly for magical thinking, since that's a personal and cultural thing that isn't relevant to the underlying capacity the test purports to measure. In the real world, though, pronounced magical thinking is highly relevant to a person's intellectual performance.
If it helps, consider the differences between IQ and the SA in SAT. You'd expect a positive correlation between those two numbers, but in psychometric terms, we do well to remember that intelligence is not the same thing as scholastic aptitude. You've got to keep in mind exactly what you're measuring.
(Incidentally, scholastic aptitude would probably be a better score to map onto INT, though I still think that INT is to nebulous to support a really rigorous measurement with real-world tests.)
@OwlbearRepublic
No, again. I think Int is exactly what it says it is, a measure of your ability to learn and reason. That is, it's your capability of sentient reasoning. You seem to be trying to argue that your sentience is not your ability to reason. This seems to be an argument that is advanced by those who want to dump INT but not have to deal with the idea that there 5 Int guy is not a moron. In other words, it seems like you want the 5 int guy and the 25 int guy to both have the same ability to think in day to day endeavors, but the 25 int guy has more skills, and that's it. But that's not accurate. The 25 int guy is MUCH better at thinking than the 5 int guy. The 25 int guy might watch 5 guys cutting on trees and figure out that they're building a gallows to hang the 5 int guy. The 5 int guy watches in rapt fascination with no clue what's going on, eager to see what the final result of all the hard work will be.
The 25 int guy is MUCH better at thinking than the 5 int guy. The 25 int guy might watch 5 guys cutting on trees and figure out that they're building a gallows to hang the 5 int guy. The 5 int guy watches in rapt fascination with no clue what's going on, eager to see what the final result of all the hard work will be.
Well, int 5 is -3, int 25 is 7. Is it right to say that in pathfinder the guy with int 5 should have about 25% chance to perform at least as well than the guy with int 7?
When the game rules put "love" into the mechanics, let's talk about "love" OK Glen? Do you see the point? Probably not. Few others do. The point is that these numbers are supposed to MEAN SOMETHING, but they don't. Nobody agrees what they mean.
Even if you could get people to agree that a 7 int means an 83 IQ they would just then argue about what an 83 IQ means.
That's the point.
Three things.
Food for thought: If essentially no one sees your point, perhaps there's a reason for that.
I agree entirely that the precise effects of having a low Int score aren't defined, except for the mechanical effect.
However, I have a rough understanding of the meaning of "learn," "reason," and "below average." Because I am not a total moron, I can combine my understanding of these words/phrases to get a rough understanding of what it means to be "below average at learning and reasoning" even though the game is not prescriptive about it. And because I believe that ability scores represent something instead of nothing, I apply my understanding of "below average at learning and reasoning" to my Int 7 PC. Can I tell you his precise intellectual limitations? No, of course not. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have intellectual limitations.
My emphasis. If you can't tell me what those intellectual limitations are, they aren't intellectual limitations. They are just opinion.
@OwlbearRepublic
No, again. I think Int is exactly what it says it is, a measure of your ability to learn and reason.
Are you reading my posts? Because you say "no," but then you repeat what I said.
INT is a measure of a character's reasoning ability and knowledge. The problem is, that's patently not what IQ is. IQ is a measure of an underlying trait that contributes to performance on a variety of intelligence-based tasks. IQ is an almost diagnostic measurement of a objective personal trait, while INT is a descriptive measurement meant to simulate practical outcomes.
That is, it's your capability of sentient reasoning. You seem to be trying to argue that your sentience is not your ability to reason. This seems to be an argument that is advanced by those who want to dump INT but not have to deal with the idea that there 5 Int guy is not a moron.
First of all, sentience has nothing to do with reason except as an obvious prerequisite. Non-reasoning animals are sentient.
Secondly, INT is an indicator of sentience, but it's pretty coarse-grained. An INT 20 character is not more sentient than an INT 3 one. If there's any such thing as "more sentient" (that is, more conscious and able to have subjective experience), that trait belongs as much to CHA and WIS as to INT.Your assumption about my motives is both incorrect and irrelevant.
In other words, it seems like you want the 5 int guy and the 25 int guy to both have the same ability to think in day to day endeavors, but the 25 int guy has more skills, and that's it.
That is precisely the opposite of my point. My point is that a low INT does reflect a substantially lower reasoning ability and knowledge base in "day to day endeavors" than that of a high INT character. But that is not what IQ reflects. If you:
* suspend your reasoning ability to rely on faith instead
* are too stubborn to alter your opinions, instead rationalizing what you already believe
* come from a background in which reasoning is undervalued and opportunities for learning are rare
* reason well, but have bad premises that you won't abandon
* can perform well if you concentrate, but will not or cannot do so
* strongly prefer concrete thought even where abstract thought is more appropriate
then IQ tests attempt to compensate for those weaknesses to give a stronger indication of your native capacity for learning and reason. Even though your reasoning and learning are impaired in practice, IQ attempts to discover your "real" general intelligence by looking past those impairments. That's totally valid, but it's different from measuring practical ability, which you, yourself, insist is the purpose of INT.
I'm just not sure where our disagreement is, because I don't think we actually disagree on what INT measures. Perhaps you disagree with me on what IQ measures? Or perhaps you agree on that, but disagree on the usefulness of mapping one metric to another when they represent different things?
(It's possible that we're talking past each other or that I'm just not hearing you. Sorry if my tone's a little harsh.)
The 25 int guy is MUCH better at thinking than the 5 int guy. The 25 int guy might watch 5 guys cutting on trees and figure out that they're building a gallows to hang the 5 int guy. The 5 int guy watches in rapt fascination with no clue what's going on, eager to see what the final result of all the hard work will be.Well, int 5 is -3, int 25 is 7. Is it right to say that in pathfinder the guy with int 5 should have about 25% chance to perform at least as well than the guy with int 7?
I'm not sure what you're asking exactly, since you're going from 5/25 to 5/7.
However,
Let's assume both character's put 1 rank into a knowledge skill (Both of them spent the same effort learning). Let's assume both of them have the skill as a class skill. For that one rank, the 5 INT guy has a 1 skill (1 - 3 + 3 = 1). The guy with 25 int has an 11 skill (7 + 1 + 3 = 11).
If the DC is 5, the 5 Int guy has a 80% chance of succeeding. The 25 Int guy can't fail.
If the DC is 10, the 5 int guy has a 55% chance of succeeding. The 25 Int guy can't fail.
If the DC is 15, the 5 int guy has a 35% chance of succeeding. The 25 Int guy has an 80% chance of succeeding.
If the DC is 20, the 5 int guy has a 10% chance of succeeding. The 25 Int guy has a 55% chance of succeeding.
If the DC is 25, the 5 int guy automatically fails. He simply can't succeed. The 25 Int guy has a 35% chance of succeeding.
If the DC is 30, the 5 int guy autofails, and the 25 Int guy has a 10% chance of succeeding.
I think we can say that that is a significant difference, more than 25% across the board, considering that at low DCs, the smarter guy can't fail, and at the higher end the dumb guy can't succeed.
@OwlBearRepublic
I think we're talking past each other. If I understand your last post correctly, I don't necessarily disagree with you. IQ and Int are both attempts by humans to describe the concept of how a brain works. Both contain aspects of each other, and aspects that don't really apply to the other.
I think you can map the two together, as long as you agree ahead of time that it's not perfect, and never will be, since both are imaginary constructs created by human beings to describe a nebulous concept. So.. I guess we disagree to agree? :)
In the last few months I have joined 6 pbp's and am finding the 20point buys brutal for fighters and clerics.
Oh, wow. Clerics and Fighters get along with PB 15 just fine. The problem is probably your expectations. Stop think about 14 as an "OK" stat - its a good stat. 16 is awesome. 18 is almost unheard of.
@Adamantine Dragon:
Love was used analogously earlier. Just now, beards were. I'll give you another one:
Colors. Define any color. Describe to me what a color actually looks like.
You might tell me how a color makes you (and/or most people) feel. You might go into wavelengths and photons. You could take a number of approaches, but at the end of the day, you will not have a definition of color that a person who has never seen a specific color can imagine.
Definition of concepts is not always the only answer.
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The 25 int guy might watch 5 guys cutting on trees and figure out that they're building a gallows to hang the 5 int guy. The 5 int guy watches in rapt fascination with no clue what's going on, eager to see what the final result of all the hard work will be.
That would be true if the 5 int guy also has 5 wis.
If he has 25 wis, he will be long gone by the time the 5 guys finish cutting their trees. Not because he will see the logical link between the trees and a gallows, but because he will realize that the 5 guys want him dead and that, for some reason, they have to finish cutting the trees before killing him.
Note that a 25 int but 5 wis guy will understand at once that the guys are building a gallows but will not realize that it is intended for him until they tie the knot around his throat. In fact he is likely to give them some really brilliant advice on how to build it faster and better.
I will say this one last time.
Let's say that you all achieve your noble goal here and you get everyone in the world to agree that there is an exact correlation between intelligence attributes and intelligence quotient. Let's say that agreement includes that an int of "7" exactly equals an IQ of "83".
How is that going to change in any conceivable manner, the way the game is played? Do you think that "you can't do that, you have an IQ of 83!" is going to be any more compelling to the player than "you can't do that, you have an int of 7!"?
Seriously?
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To the OP, play your character as empty-headed as you feel like but try to agree with the DM before play starts that he will allow your character to give some very brilliant idea when it helps the group make progress and all the INT 18+ characters are just stuck.
Because nothing is more frustrating than having a wonderful idea and being forced to ignore it because "You must roleplay your low INT".
To the OP, play your character as empty-headed as you feel like but try to agree with the DM before play starts that he will allow your character to give some very brilliant idea when it helps the group make progress and all the INT 18+ characters are just stuck.
Because nothing is more frustrating than having a wonderful idea and being forced to ignore it because "You must roleplay your low INT".
So... you tap the guy playing the 18 int char and say "if my char had 18 int, here's something he'd think of..."
Problem solved.
@black raven
Agreed, wisdom does come into it as well. There's very few examples you can give that don't require wisdom as well.
Which is why I really have fun with those sorcerers that dump int and wis. :) Sure, they can talk circles around people, but don't always realize that scamming the local mafia boss is a bad idea. :)
I will say this one last time.
Let's say that you all achieve your noble goal here and you get everyone in the world to agree that there is an exact correlation between intelligence attributes and intelligence quotient. Let's say that agreement includes that an int of "7" exactly equals an IQ of "83".
How is that going to change in any conceivable manner, the way the game is played? Do you think that "you can't do that, you have an IQ of 83!" is going to be any more compelling to the player than "you can't do that, you have an int of 7!"?
Seriously?
For me, the point I have mostly had to defend is IQ is perfectly tangible and relevant. As someone who's studied and agrees with psychology, it's natural that I would.
However, the actual idea of charting Int -> IQ is two things: a deterrent and a thought exercise.
Players will continue to try making a connection between Int and IQ. It's going to happen, the two are just incredibly similar and relevant. Making an accurate chart, like the link I gave in the earlier bits of the thread, is a good way of stopping misinformation like "IQ = Int x 10" from seeping out.
And as for a thought exercise, it's just something I enjoy doing. As a someone who loves RPGs and has spent a stupid number of hours studying psychology, I enjoy connecting the two. It's really no different from my current endeavor to make an Android app that generates stat blocks complete with names and feat/spell selection so GMs can click a few buttons and have a full NPC built in a couple seconds, right in the palm of their hand. It's just merging two hobbies as a superhobby.
And as for a thought exercise, it's just something I enjoy doing. As a someone who loves RPGs and has spent a stupid number of hours studying psychology, I enjoy connecting the two. It's really no different from my current endeavor to make an Android app that generates stat blocks complete with names and feat/spell selection so GMs can click a few buttons and have a full NPC built in a couple seconds, right in the palm of their hand. It's just merging two hobbies as a superhobby.
I enjoy a thought exercise too, but as this thread shows, people tend to think their interpretation of how to map int scores into IQ is the "right" one, no matter what other people think. The comparison is too complex for any of the techniques I've seen to be compelling to me. They are all too low-level approximations that don't take into account any of the synergies of intelligence attribute effects.
For example, the difference between an int of 7 and 8 is not just the difference in bonus that is applied to a skill. That difference also allows the 8 int person to choose an additional skill. So the 8 dude is not just smarter in the skills they share, he has more skills to practice. The larger the difference between the scores, the more important this difference is. So anything that treats the int score as linear is simply wrong. It's a discontinuous function. Int 9 people can't cast ANY int-based spells. int 10 people can at least cast cantrips. That's a huge difference in intellectual ability. How do you even try to map that into IQ? Int 11 people can cast first level spells. Int 19 people can cast ninth level spells. Every boost in int above 10 means the character has access to an entirely new and more powerful set of spells to cast.
It's a fun exercise, but if you truly wanted to analyze how much smarter an int 10 person was compared to an int 9 person, you have to at least factor in the fact that the int 10 person can do int-based magic.
That means, to me, that the jump between 9 and 10 isn't just larger than the jump between 8 and 9, the jump is literally incalculable. You can't put a number on it. You're not just smarter, you've crossed a threshold into an entirely new intellectual realm.
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To the OP, play your character as empty-headed as you feel like but try to agree with the DM before play starts that he will allow your character to give some very brilliant idea when it helps the group make progress and all the INT 18+ characters are just stuck.
Because nothing is more frustrating than having a wonderful idea and being forced to ignore it because "You must roleplay your low INT".
So... you tap the guy playing the 18 int char and say "if my char had 18 int, here's something he'd think of..."
Problem solved.
I see it more as a last resort thing, when all the brilliant (and average) INT characters come up with nothing and the usually dumb one has the smartest idea (should not happen that often, really).
Obviously, if the low INT character abuses this and it ruins the fun of the other players/DM, they are well within their rights to remind him of his place (golden rule and all).
To the OP, play your character as empty-headed as you feel like but try to agree with the DM before play starts that he will allow your character to give some very brilliant idea when it helps the group make progress and all the INT 18+ characters are just stuck.
Because nothing is more frustrating than having a wonderful idea and being forced to ignore it because "You must roleplay your low INT".
So... you tap the guy playing the 18 int char and say "if my char had 18 int, here's something he'd think of..."
Problem solved.
I see it more as a last resort thing, when all the brilliant (and average) INT characters come up with nothing and the usually dumb one has the smartest idea (should not happen that often, really).
Obviously, if the low INT character abuses this and it ruins the fun of the other players/DM, they are well within their rights to remind him of his place (golden rule and all).
On occasion in that or similar situations, I have had my low-int character do something that seems foolish but leads the "smart" party members to investigate the more clever approach.
But I see no problem with nudging the player next to me and saying "maybe your character would think about this...."
One more thought to add...
The difference between int in the game and IQ in real life is that int literally creates boundaries between capabilities. For the two to be comparable there would have to be something in real life that compared to the int 9 character not being able to cast int-based spells, but the int 10 character can.
For example, that would be like an IQ 80 character can do simple math, but can't learn algebra. It takes an IQ of 130 to learn calculus. In IQ of 150 is required to comprehend general relativity.
IQ doesn't work that way. But int does.
I think you can map the two together, as long as you agree ahead of time that it's not perfect, and never will be, since both are imaginary constructs created by human beings to describe a nebulous concept.
Well, I'd say "two slightly different but substantially overlapping concepts." But I like to slice my assertions deli-thin, as you've probably noticed. We pretty much agree.
so.. I guess we disagree to agree? :)
No, we call each other names and fight to the death! What, are you new to the Internet? :)
Perfectly correct!So... you tap the guy playing the 18 int char and say "if my char had 18 int, here's something he'd think of..."
Problem solved.
I don't recommend this as it tend to piss other players off. It's essentially talking down to them, or telling them how to play their characters. I find most people aren't appreciative of such things.
I don't recommend this as it tend to piss other players off. It's essentially talking down to them, or telling them how to play their characters. I find most people aren't appreciative of such things.Perfectly correct!So... you tap the guy playing the 18 int char and say "if my char had 18 int, here's something he'd think of..."
Problem solved.
LOL RD, I don't know if that's more of a reflection on your fellow players or yourself.
Personally I've never played with anyone who would ever get pissed if I said "Hey, did you think about...."
LOL RD, I don't know if that's more of a reflection on your fellow players or yourself.
Personally I've never played with anyone who would ever get pissed if I said "Hey, did you think about...."
There might be something to that. I once had a player snap at me just for talking...on my turn. Apparently he didn't like the sound of my voice.
Still don't recommend it though.
LOL RD, I don't know if that's more of a reflection on your fellow players or yourself.
Personally I've never played with anyone who would ever get pissed if I said "Hey, did you think about...."
There might be something to that. I once had a player snap at me just for talking...on my turn. Apparently he didn't like the sound of my voice.
Still don't recommend it though.
LOL. OK, to any other readers, in the unlikely event that you play with someone who is so insecure that they would be challenged and angered by the mere suggestion that they may have missed an option that might be worth pursuing, then by all means, don't yank that sore-toothed tiger's tail!
For the rest of you, please try to work together as a team. As a GM I want your best effort, meaning all of your brains at work.
I don't recommend this as it tend to piss other players off. It's essentially talking down to them, or telling them how to play their characters. I find most people aren't appreciative of such things.There is, admittedly, a certain art to giving advice without coming across as pushy, condescending, or demanding, but I don't think it's that difficult.
Not all roleplayers have a normal level of social development. Take me for example: I've had a hearing disability all my life, so as an adult, I find it difficult talking to anyone, not for lack of confidence, but because I could never hear well enough to listen to people, much less develop proper social standards. In short, though I certainly don't mean to, I probably do come off as somewhat pushy, condescending, or demanding at times.
That, or I'm surrounded by a bunch of crazy roleplayers who yell at me for talking on my turn. :P
mdt, would you be more lenient if we were considering dwarves instead of human AND considering only 3d6 as a possible generation method?
The 25 int guy is MUCH better at thinking than the 5 int guy. The 25 int guy might watch 5 guys cutting on trees and figure out that they're building a gallows to hang the 5 int guy. The 5 int guy watches in rapt fascination with no clue what's going on, eager to see what the final result of all the hard work will be.Well, int 5 is -3, int 25 is 7. Is it right to say that in pathfinder the guy with int 5 should have about 25% chance to perform at least as well than the guy with int 7?
I'm not sure what you're asking exactly, since you're going from 5/25 to 5/7.
That was a typo. I meant int 5 vs int 25 (which translates in intmod -3 vs intmod 7)
However,
Let's assume both character's put 1 rank into a knowledge skill (Both of them spent the same effort learning). Let's assume both of them have the skill as a class skill. For that one rank, the 5 INT guy has a 1 skill (1 - 3 + 3 = 1). The guy with 25 int has an 11 skill (7 + 1 + 3 = 11).If the DC is 5, the 5 Int guy has a 80% chance of succeeding. The 25 Int guy can't fail.
If the DC is 10, the 5 int guy has a 55% chance of succeeding. The 25 Int guy can't fail.
If the DC is 15, the 5 int guy has a 35% chance of succeeding. The 25 Int guy has an 80% chance of succeeding.
If the DC is 20, the 5 int guy has a 10% chance of succeeding. The 25 Int guy has a 55% chance of succeeding.
If the DC is 25, the 5 int guy automatically fails. He simply can't succeed. The 25 Int guy has a 35% chance of succeeding.
If the DC is 30, the 5 int guy autofails, and the 25 Int guy has a 10% chance of succeeding.
I think we can say that that is a significant difference, more than 25% across the board, considering that at low DCs, the smarter guy can't fail, and at the higher end the dumb guy can't succeed.
Yes, of course. My 25% estimate was for a check like the one you could ask for a challenge between two players, one without a set DC. A simple: "ok you both, roll an intelligence check and tell me who get the highest". There are 400 possible results based on both having 20 possible results: out of those, the high int guy roll higher 300 times, the low int roll higher or just as high 100 times.
When you introduce set DC you have to consider the probability, as you did, singularly for each DC: this means that some stuff the guy with low int can't do while the smart guy can.
Well,
Crysknife, if you put it in as a dwarf the numbers don't change. If it's a 5 int dwarf and a 25 int dwarf, then they still have a variance on their skills of 10 points. If both keep working just as hard (both put the same number of skill points into the skill) then Smart Dwarf will always have a +10 over Dumb Dwarf. That's not 25%, it's 50%, with each point being 5% on a d20.
The only time that dumb dwarf can beat smart dwarf is when dumb dwarf rolls really high and smart dwarf rolls really low. To be specific, there are 400 possible rolls, the minimum roll for smarty is 12, the minimum roll for dumb is 2. The maximum for smarty is 31, the maximum for dumb is 21.
Of those 200 rolls, exactly 45 are where dumb beats smarty. That percentage is 22.5%. Was that what you were referring to?
Not sure if that really proves anything though, it only applies to a competition roll, which most knowledge skills checks aren't, they're set DC checks. It also doesn't take into account that smarty is going to have significantly more skill points to spend than dumb.
If both are in a class that's 2+Int skills, then dumb has 1 per level, and smarty has 9 per level. That means dumb is only good at one skill, while smarty can max out 9 skills. If they're both say, a rogue, with 8+Int skills then Dumb can have 5 skills maxed out, while smarty can have a whopping 15 skills maxed out. So depending on class, you could say that smarty is 3 to 9 times more skillful than dumb.
EDIT : Dwarf would change the numbers from 3 to 23, instead of 5 to 25, but the difference between the two would remain the same, 10. The dumb would still have 1 skill maxed out if he's a 2+int class, and smarty would have only 8. If dumb was a rogue, he'd have 4 skills maxed out, while smarty would have 14. Still a difference of 10.
The dwarf was only for removing the complication of dealing with the possible +2 racial increase and make the INT distribution more similar to a Normal distribution. This is also the reason of the 3d6 stat generation (since the others would skew the distribution toward the right). It was not related to the challenge I was proposing.
As for the challenge, I was referring to a single skill check (better, to a simple intelligence check) and I only wanted to say that PF allows a dumb PC to get a better result (no set DC) than a smart PC.
My previous estimate was wrong (I just guessed it and it seemed right, of course it was not): I redid my calculations and if I'm not wrong again the chance for the dumb PC to have a better result than the smart PC are 11,25% (which is your figure after including the unreachable rolls of the smart PC, so I can't be wrong again) and the chance for a tie are an additional 2,5%.
I'd also leave the topic of the number of skill points aside: on a side note, however, I don't see why what represented by the game (high INT correlate with more skills) should be incompatible with what IQ would predict.
My main objective in all this is to give a guideline INT<->IQ to my fellow players in order to not hearing again that one player did something outright stupid just because his PC had int 9 (portrayed as unable to count up to 10 due to sheer stupidity) and not 18 (portrayed as super-genius level with the ability to solve intricate puzzles with a glance or memorizing an entire book reading it once)
EDIT: Just wanted to add that of course I don't think that 3d6 or the actual distribution of IQ have precisely Normal distributions, I'm simply reasoning as if the are similar enough for the purposes of this excercise
@Crysknife
If that's your aim, then I don't think the exercise is going to help. The fact the dumb dwarf can get a better roll a certain percentage of the time doesn't really help with IQ mapping. It actually argues against it.
I have 3 immediate family members who were/are mentally challenged (uncle who OD'd on angel dust, cousin who had a nervous breakdown, and brother in law who's bipolar, in order of functionality). The most extreme example though would be my uncle.
For my uncle, there was simply no day of his life after the over dose that he would ever be better than anyone at anything other than smoking and watching tv. Prior to the OD, he was an expert auto mechanic, he could tear a car down to parts and put it back together better than he found it. After, he was capable of walking, muttering 'yeah' or 'no', and that was about it. He could light his own cigarette from a gas stove if the stove was left on without hurting himself (usually) but that was about it. If I had to pick an int for him, it would be 3. He could understand language if you used very simple phrases, but that's it. So at no point could he, despite having a high skill investiture in craft (auto repair) ever best even me, and I have minimal skills in it. He's was just no longer functional at that level, despite still being human and self aware.
@Crysknife
If that's your aim, then I don't think the exercise is going to help. The fact the dumb dwarf can get a better roll a certain percentage of the time doesn't really help with IQ mapping. It actually argues against it.
I have 3 immediate family members who were/are mentally challenged (uncle who OD'd on angel dust, cousin who had a nervous breakdown, and brother in law who's bipolar, in order of functionality). The most extreme example though would be my uncle.
For my uncle, there was simply no day of his life after the over dose that he would ever be better than anyone at anything other than smoking and watching tv. Prior to the OD, he was an expert auto mechanic, he could tear a car down to parts and put it back together better than he found it. After, he was capable of walking, muttering 'yeah' or 'no', and that was about it. He could light his own cigarette from a gas stove if the stove was left on without hurting himself (usually) but that was about it. If I had to pick an int for him, it would be 3. He could understand language if you used very simple phrases, but that's it. So at no point could he, despite having a high skill investiture in craft (auto repair) ever best even me, and I have minimal skills in it. He's was just no longer functional at that level, despite still being human and self aware.
I'm sorry for your uncle.
I see your point. Can you propose another scale which could better serve my purpose? I dislike how open the definition provided by the manual is.
I removed a post and the replies to it. Play nice.
No big deal, he OD'd long before I was born (Dad told me that he wasn't doing the drugs on purpose, some guys made him drink a coke that had white powder in it, then he collapsed and ended up in the hospital, hospital diagnosed OD).
As to another scale... my best suggestion would be to just assign some examples...
Intelligence
3 : Godzilla
5 : Bizzarro
7 : Forest Gump
9 : Superman
10: Average Person
12: College Scholarship Recipient
14: Thomas Edison
16: Albert Einstein/Bruce Wayne
18: Lex Luthor
20: Brainiac