How does Intelligence work?

[Meophist]

So, characters of any class starts with N + Intelligence modifier skills trained, where N varies depending on the class. Since it's the modifier and not bonus, this means that it's possible to start with no skills trained, correct? How does negative skills trained work?

Is this just starting skills? In other words, if the character's Intelligence increases later, do they get more skills? If it decreases later(let's say through retraining), do they lose skills?

[Lanathar]

Don’t you only get negative intelligence if you impose it on yourself?
And no one has 1 + INT skills

So unless I am misunderstanding the question this should never be an issue - even if they introduce a -2 INT ancestry

[ChibiNyan]

Is intelligence now the de-facto dump stat? It does nothing past lv1 so gonna be at the bototm of my list of scores to increase at 5. They've done a good job making CHA more desirable, but then ruined INT to fill that dump slot.

[Lanathar]

So what changes would make you want intelligence ? You are saying it has become the new dump stat but here would be an opportunity to theorise a fix for that . I am drawing blanks at this moment however

Does increasing it mean you get a whole new trained skill? As that might be more versatile than +1 will ? But I think they have claimed that the critical success/failure maths somehow makes +1s a lot more valuable (that is above my head at the moment)

[Igor Horvat]

They should return to +1 language per point of intelligence.
Even after 1st level. If you raise int at lvl 5 that can be also role played that you tried also to learn a language past few levels.

Also at start you could add one extra signature skill for your character with 14 int and 2 skills with 18 int.

Also if they rearnage racial feats, that you get lets say 3 racials at 1st level and you could get extra feat with 14 int

[Meophist]

Even if you can only get negative Intelligence modifier via choosing to do so or with rolling, the rules do support it so it should support whatever outcomes from that.