Touch of idiocy, feeblemind, and stat-boosting effects or items...

[seebs]

So, if you cast feeblemind on someone who's got an enhancement bonus to intelligence (and they fail their save), what happens?

1. Their intelligence is now 1, period.
2. Their intelligence is now 1 + the enhancement bonus.

Now consider Touch of Idiocy, which applies a penalty. It seems pretty clear that penalties and bonuses are processed at the same time. Touch of idiocy says "This penalty can't reduce any of these scores below 1."

Does that mean that the penalty cannot be large enough that it would reduce the score below 1, or does it mean that the penalty can be arbitrarily large, but the result of the computation will never be below 1 no matter what?

Also, I note that while there's a rule about bonuses from the same source not stacking in the magical rules, there's no such rule on penalties. Can you just spam touch of idiocy on someone and reduce their cognitive stats to all 1s?

[wraithstrike]

PRD wrote:

Spells that provide bonuses or penalties on attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, and other attributes usually do not stack with themselves.

PRD wrote:

Same Effect More than Once in Different Strengths: In cases when two or more identical spells are operating in the same area or on the same target, but at different strengths, only the one with the highest strength applies.

[seebs]

Ah-hah. I was looking for the "same source" text, but they spelled it out differently for penalties.

I also found a Wizards FAQ for 3.5 saying that Feeblemind just sets the stats to 1 unconditionally, bonuses being completely ignored.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

That's how it works. Doesn't matter if you have a +infinity to a statistic, it becomes 1. No questions asked.

Obviously, people might cheese this and treat those who went to 0 (or less) Intelligence to 1 and they'd still be alive, but referencing Wraithstrike's quote, as well as the factor that they'd no longer be eligible as a target for the 2 spells, means they cannot be affected by it.

A fun fact for Rules Lawyering...