Your horse will have an intelligence of at least 6. So, it starts at 6 and can be increased from there.
How smart is an intelligence of 6? "Dull-witted or slow, often misuses and mispronounces words". It doesn't speaks a language automatically (Ultimate Campaign) so you'd have to spend skill ranks on Linguistics to learn a language.
You count as a druid of the same level so yes, you get a level 5 bonded mount.
The fact that you can get 8 INT as a PC, I'd rule it that you're smart enough to function, understand complex actions and be capable of making plans.
Maybe you don't get physics, mathematics, but let's be honest, what untrained human gets them?
I guess an INT 8 character would do things, plan, but wouldn't consider ramifications in an extensive way.
Also, don't forget the Roleplay your Stats vs Roleplay your skills.
I know it's a Horse, but what if I INT 7 Human would get ranks in Profession Physics ? Well, is he stupid but knows physics really well, is he just a slow learner?
To me INT 6 means your potential is unlimited but you need +X%of time/work done to achieve the same as a 10 INT person.
A horse would basically understand every command you gave him, but couldn't function on a party if he get polymorphed, because he doesn't know our culture
Six int is not that low. 6 int gives a -2 modifier, which is within range of a normal adventurer. An orc or other int penalty race could have as low as 5 int and could be a functional PC and literate even though no core race can achieve this.
Don't expect your horse to balance its own checkbook or solve a sodoku, but it's not functionally illiterate or anything like that.
Also, try very very hard to convince your GM to allow you to ride something with more charisma. At level 11 they get the celestial template, but smiting with a negative charisma modifier will turf their accuracy. Axe-Beaks are a non-munchkin non-core animal you might get your GM to allow with the chocobo argument and have 10 charisma and are large at level 4. Ostriches have 11 charisma and are medium at level 4 if you're small. Llamas are medium with 9 charisma and it would take a pretty anal GM to not consider Llamas a reasonable mount for small characters since they're a real animal that can really be ridden. By adult humans even.
Confused about the penalty using smite... why there would be a penalty? You only apply your CHA bonus, not your penalty.
The mount could learn to speak common if it had vocal cords. Like people said it can learn to understand common. Maybe you could talk your GM into letting you spend a skill point on linguistics to learn a made up language you share with your horse (horse would also need to learn this language so 2 points from him one for common and one for "Magic Pony") so you can have a Han Solo/Chewbacca type relationship where you speak common and your mount makes animal sounds and a type of sign language (Magic Pony) that you can understand.
Perhaps other people can learn to speak this special case language and be able to talk to your horse also.
This is a really complicated question. So if we assume 10 Int is human bog standard in PF, that correlates perfectly with an IQ of 100 (your IQ is your "mental" age over your actual age times 100, so 100 is, by definition, average for a given age). We'll assume your mount is an adult. An adult human with an IQ of 60 has roughly the intellectual capacity of a 3rd grader. That's doesn't consider emotional maturity, or the developmental limitations of a 9 year old (kids younger than 12 or 13 have a REALLY hard time handling abstract concepts, because their brains are still developing. It's like infants pre-object permanence), and doesn't speak to what knowledge they have, merely the cognitive horsepower.
However, if your IQ is below 75 in the real world, you are suffering from some form of mental retardation, so we don't really know what an otherwise fully functional adult with an IQ of 60 looks or acts like, which makes an abstraction hard to do. The bell curve of humanity just doesn't dip low enough without running into all kinds of other problems. So we have to look outside the species.
While I can't find concrete numbers (and didn't honestly expect to), we can extrapolate from what horses, dogs, dolphins and octupi can already do. (and you have to decide whether or not an INT >2 automatically grants sentience, and what that means in game terms, if anything) These creature are capable of learning by observing, especially horses. Dogs can intuit what body language matches what emotion across virtually all mammals, better than humans can, and reverse engineer behavior to elict desired responses. Octupi are (terrifyingly) efficient at figuring out puzzles and re-purposing tools, and we can assume with relative safety that they all have human IQs less than 60.
All that is to say a horse with an INT of 6 or 12 or 18 is still a horse. They would still think like a horse, the first instincts would still be horsey, not humany. They would still approach problems like a herding quadruped, living in a bipedal world. I sincerely doubt they'd be picking swords up in their mouths and swinging them around. Don't just make your mount a human in horse form.
This reminds me of a story that came from the internet (probably buried somewhere way back in rec.games.frp, and it isn't my story, so I may have not remembered all details exactly right) back in the 1990s. This was of a quest played in 1st or 2nd Edition, in which a Paladin was questing for his war horse (Divine Bond only had 1 option back then) and was led to the castle of this Lawful Evil Wizard. The Wizard had also divined the Paladin's coming, and knew that he couldn't win in a straight-up fight, so he offered no resistance, but tricked the Paladin into accepting a spell as part of his test, and then said "Okay, you've gotten through the test -- here's your horse". In comes this lad, obviously a bit mentally challenged but seeming fully human, introducing himself as "Me horse!". Then the Paladin suddenly realized that he COULDN'T vocalize human language any more . . . .
How smart is your horse? Depends on whether your GM enforces the ass-backwards blog post that applies* in PFS play.
If he does, your animal basically has 2 int, but with only a -2 penalty on Int checks/skills and the ability to learn far more tricks.
If he doesn't, your horse is as smart as a Fighter, except it can't speak (but it can learn languages, and probably automatically knows one), doesn't have opposable thumbs, and doesn't have a lot of proficiencies.
(Is the paladin's mount exempt from that, though? I know that other high-int companions aren't).
In any case, a paladin mount is smart enough to find it´s food bucket and probably smart enough to know not to eat out of it´s neighbours food bucket, because that´s not what a LG mount does.
It is also likely to share it´s own food, should some other animal not have enough food, to the point where it risks being exhausted the next day.
Having a natural feel for the greater good, it would also not help the paladin in any wrong acts. Or maybe it would and fall alongside, depending on the nature of the bond between the two.
Watch the "Black Beauty" or "Lassie" shows for a better feeling^^
Been watching the Bruce Campbell show Brisco County, Jr lately. My first thought was that Comet is clearly a Divine Bond. He's a darn-good role-model for a 6-int horse*. At least in the episodes where they remember he's smart. Sometimes the writers appear to forget he's been shown to be more than a normal horse.
* and probably smarter than Brisco in most eps.
Would it be smart enough to not eat itself sick after running all day?
New paladin class feature!
Horse Vomit: at Nth level, the paladin's mount gains the ability to vomit, even if it is a horse. It is not at risk of injury or death from colic.
Actually, with the Linguistics skill it can't fully understand Common.
There's been a blog on this. It's still a horse, an animal. Only until it's been Awakened, it can fully understand and act on talking conversations.
So long as it hasn't been Awakened, you still need Handle Animal. The INT 5 or 6 just means you can compare it's intelligence to a smart monkey or dolphin - yet still an animal.
Sentient Companions: a sentient companion (a creature that can understand language and has an Intelligence score of at least 3) is considered your ally and obeys your suggestions and orders to the best of its ability. It won't necessarily blindly follow a suicidal order, but it has your interests at heart and does what it can to keep you alive. Paladin bonded mounts, familiars, and cohorts fall into this category, and are usually player-controlled companions.
Even if an animal's Intelligence increases to 3 or higher, you must still use the Handle Animal skill to direct the animal, as it is a smart animal rather than a low-intelligence person (using awaken is an exception—an awakened animal takes orders like a person). The GM should take the animal's Intelligence into account when determining its response to commands or its behavior when it doesn't have specific instructions. For example, an intelligent wolf companion can pick the weakest-looking target if directed to do so, and that same wolf trapped in a burning building might push open a door or window without being told.
Mixing SO many things in the rules, it's clearly impossible to define a point
Actually, with the Linguistics skill it can't fully understand Common.
There's been a blog on this. It's still a horse, an animal. Only until it's been Awakened, it can fully understand and act on talking conversations.
So long as it hasn't been Awakened, you still need Handle Animal. The INT 5 or 6 just means you can compare it's intelligence to a smart monkey or dolphin - yet still an animal.
Increasing an animal's Intelligence to 3 or higher means it is smart enough to understand a language. However, unless an awaken spell is used, the animal doesn't automatically and instantly learn a language, any more than a human child does. The animal must be taught a language, usually over the course of months, giving it the understanding of the meaning of words and sentences beyond its trained responses to commands like "attack" and "heel."
Blog posts aren't rules. The rules explicitly say that an animal with an intelligence over 3 or higher can be taught a language. It doesn't detail what this entails, though, but expending a skill point on Linguistics absolutely would apply.
I'm currently building a paladin character for the first time, for a homebrew game. It says that the paladin's bonded mount is "unusually intelligent" with an Intelligence of "at least 6." As I understand it, the Intelligence can increase as the mount gains levels, and gets ability score increases. But how smart is horse with an Int of 6? Can it communicate? Not in Common or similar languages (a horse's vocal cords probably couldn't figure that out, even if the horse could), but through gestures or something similar. Could it lead a paladin somewhere that it knows the paladin wants to go?
Also, since the paladin uses his paladin level as his effective druid level, does that mean a level 5 paladin has a level 5 bonded mount, and therefore starts out with an ability score increase?
Thanks in advance.
Ability score increases are based on the animal companion's Hit dice, not your effective druid level.
Int 6 means that the horse outsmarts Lassie the Wonder Dog as well as the horse that "counted" to three.
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They start out as a legitimate contender in the semi annual paladins checkers tournament and go up from there.
Int 6 maps out pretty much perfectly to mid grade Down Syndrome based on the bell curve of 3d6 mirroring real life IQ distribution. That's still pretty functional. That's can-work-a-minimum-wage-job-efficiently functional. You might have to remind your horse how to do certain tasks (especially if they're more complex) but for the most part the horse should be able to act independently once you teach it how to do things, but it's a horse so there's a lot of things that are simple to understand for humans that are awkward and abstract for a horse, meaning that you'll have to use handle animal more often than diplomacy to teach it how to do something the first time. After learning how to do something, I wouldn't bother with asking for another check to do the same task again unless in combat or some other stressful situation.
Int 6 maps out pretty much perfectly to mid grade Down Syndrome based on the bell curve of 3d6 mirroring real life IQ distribution. That's still pretty functional. That's can-work-a-minimum-wage-job-efficiently functional. You might have to remind your horse how to do certain tasks (especially if they're more complex) but for the most part the horse should be able to act independently once you teach it how to do things, but it's a horse so there's a lot of things that are simple to understand for humans that are awkward and abstract for a horse, meaning that you'll have to use handle animal more often than diplomacy to teach it how to do something the first time. After learning how to do something, I wouldn't bother with asking for another check to do the same task again unless in combat or some other stressful situation.
The "Standard" method of determining ability scores in Pathfinder is 4d6, drop the lowest. That changes things rather significantly.
Point buy changes it even further - making a 6 lower than the lowest a intellect that a human can naturally have.
Int 6 maps out pretty much perfectly to mid grade Down Syndrome based on the bell curve of 3d6 mirroring real life IQ distribution. That's still pretty functional. That's can-work-a-minimum-wage-job-efficiently functional. You might have to remind your horse how to do certain tasks (especially if they're more complex) but for the most part the horse should be able to act independently once you teach it how to do things, but it's a horse so there's a lot of things that are simple to understand for humans that are awkward and abstract for a horse, meaning that you'll have to use handle animal more often than diplomacy to teach it how to do something the first time. After learning how to do something, I wouldn't bother with asking for another check to do the same task again unless in combat or some other stressful situation.The "Standard" method of determining ability scores in Pathfinder is 4d6, drop the lowest. That changes things rather significantly.
Point buy changes it even further - making a 6 lower than the lowest a intellect that a human can naturally have.
Those methods are both for heroes, not the general population.
Those methods are both for heroes, not the general population.Int 6 maps out pretty much perfectly to mid grade Down Syndrome based on the bell curve of 3d6 mirroring real life IQ distribution. That's still pretty functional. That's can-work-a-minimum-wage-job-efficiently functional. You might have to remind your horse how to do certain tasks (especially if they're more complex) but for the most part the horse should be able to act independently once you teach it how to do things, but it's a horse so there's a lot of things that are simple to understand for humans that are awkward and abstract for a horse, meaning that you'll have to use handle animal more often than diplomacy to teach it how to do something the first time. After learning how to do something, I wouldn't bother with asking for another check to do the same task again unless in combat or some other stressful situation.The "Standard" method of determining ability scores in Pathfinder is 4d6, drop the lowest. That changes things rather significantly.
Point buy changes it even further - making a 6 lower than the lowest a intellect that a human can naturally have.
Fair enough. Let's look at the rules for the general population:
Basic NPCs: The ability scores for a basic NPC are: 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, and 8.
Also, there's the table for the "preset ability scores" which indicates that the intelligence scores for NPCs will range from 9 to 15. So, non-heroic NPCs should have an intelligence no lower than 8 or 9. It's just heroic NPCs and PCs who get to go as low as 7.
Those methods are both for heroes, not the general population.Int 6 maps out pretty much perfectly to mid grade Down Syndrome based on the bell curve of 3d6 mirroring real life IQ distribution. That's still pretty functional. That's can-work-a-minimum-wage-job-efficiently functional. You might have to remind your horse how to do certain tasks (especially if they're more complex) but for the most part the horse should be able to act independently once you teach it how to do things, but it's a horse so there's a lot of things that are simple to understand for humans that are awkward and abstract for a horse, meaning that you'll have to use handle animal more often than diplomacy to teach it how to do something the first time. After learning how to do something, I wouldn't bother with asking for another check to do the same task again unless in combat or some other stressful situation.The "Standard" method of determining ability scores in Pathfinder is 4d6, drop the lowest. That changes things rather significantly.
Point buy changes it even further - making a 6 lower than the lowest a intellect that a human can naturally have.
Fair enough. Let's look the the rules for the general population:
Basic NPCs: The ability scores for a basic NPC are: 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, and 8.Also, there's the table for the "preset ability scores" which indicates that the intelligence scores for NPCs will range from 9 to 15. So, non-heroic NPCs should have an intelligence no lower than 8 or 9. It's just heroic NPCs and PCs who get to go as low as 7.
Hmm, I thought there was a "roll 3d6 for each" method for NPCs too. I guess not. How odd. That would have made 6 Int correspond to a 77 IQ since IQ is scaled to be 100+-15 and 3d6 is 10.5+-3. That's roughly the 10th percentile so it's clearly pretty darn functional.
Anyway, if normal/healthy people only go down to 8 Int it seems plausible to me that 6 Int is no worse than moderate Down's Syndrome and as functional as johnnythexxxiv says.
Well, and then there's int penalties. For example, you could easily have an Int 6 suli or orc.
Your Int 6 horse is about as smart as the dumbest person you know.
But your Int 6 horse is smart enough that it's actually a person.
Though it still needs a rank of linguistics to understand a language. There's a cheap item in the Animal Archive that would allow it to talk once it does have a language.
Handle animal is relevant if you need to command your intelligent mount silently or if you need him or her to do something, no questions asked.
Otherwise, you actually need to convince the horse, because its a person and might not like your idea.
Nature oracles can also get Int 6 mounts. And they can get constant speak with animals with selected types of animals at all times. (Aside: nature oracle works pretty well as a base if you're making a Disney princess-ish character =P)
Nature oracles get ride as a class skill. They don't get handle animal.
(Though amusingly, lunar oracles get int 2 animal companions, and they don't get handle animal either.)
Aside: it's worth keeping in mind that the intelligent animals blogpost predates Ultimate Campaign by two years.
I figure that where Ultimate Campaign contradicts that post, Ultimate Campaign controls.
The horse doesn't need a Handle animal check, or anything like it. It's like a familiar, you don't need a check to handle your familiar.
If he has at least INT 6, I consider it human-like intelligence. Might not be as smart, but he can understand lots of things.
It's the classical Aasimov, robot gets intelligence/consciousness.
Plus that blog on Intelligent animals do not apply to Familiars, Palandin's mount, because they're another category.
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As far humanoid intelligence goes, I will point out that the Village Idiot NPC from the Gamemastery Guide comes with an intelligence score of 4.
The basic NPC stat array was never intended to be the measurement of "All people exist within this range" some people apply it as. It's just a roughly average set of numbers to cover average, unremarkable people.
I'm sure there's a Mr. Ed joke to be made here.
As far humanoid intelligence goes, I will point out that the Village Idiot NPC from the Gamemastery Guide comes with an intelligence score of 4.
The basic NPC stat array was never intended to be the measurement of "All people exist within this range" some people apply it as. It's just a roughly average set of numbers to cover average, unremarkable people.
Exactly, nothing says Humans or whatever can't exist outside that range (higher or lower), or exactly what the population curves are for these over-all, there is no real figure for what percentage of population falls within NPC stat arrays (obviously we have PC stat array humans, and Elite NPC stat array humans, and even Village Idiot stat array humans). NPC stat arrays really only are relevant to standard CR calculations, but there isn't anything that makes non-standard stat NPCs illegitimate, it's just that their CR may not be clearly proscribed... OF course, you can just go back to generic monster design rules to go by the end-value of their attack/defense stats, and if there is no combat encounter then the CR simply doesn't matter anyways (neither if you aren't following strict CR:XP correlation for advancement).
The official stance is that instead of delineating sentience at Int 3, as both the CRB and the Bestiary do explicitly and repeatedly, it's set arbitrarily. Paladin mounts with Int 6 qualify, familiars qualify, but a Nature Oracle's int 6 companion may or may not qualify; it's not explicitly named, but the list as written is a "for example" list, not a "these and these only" list.