The Case Against AD&D - Ability Scores, pt. 5

Smarts

Dungeons & Dragons has a bit of a complicated history with ability scores, and they went from having barely any mechanical effect to becoming the core of each character's abilities, over and above their class or race. Obviously, I prefer them being consistent, and consistently small in their mechanical effect, since a character's class should have more of an effect on their abilities, otherwise you wind up with incompetent characters (which admittedly can be fun in the right sort of game). The issue of competency has no more stark example than does Intelligence.

Intelligence also has implications for roleplaying, since a "smart" character can generally be assumed to be clever, logical, inventive, and a plethora of other nice sounding descriptions. The truth of the matter is, however, that the "cleverness" of a given character is poorly modeled by roleplaying game mechanics, and in general, their actual cleverness will be a confluence of the player's cleverness, and the DM's permissiveness. Take for example, the quintessential notion of using Intelligence to determine whether or not a player character can solve a puzzle, remember a clue, or come up with a tactically sound plan.

Solving a puzzle through a check sort of seems reasonable on the surface, since a "smart" character will have a greater chance to succeed. In practice, it removes any real engagement with the environment, and creates the additional problem of there being a flat chance that a "smart" character will fail to solve an extremely easy or obvious puzzle thanks to the dice.

Using Intelligence as a measure of memory also seems like it would be a good fit, but I've known plenty of otherwise smart people who have terrible recall for any number of things (grocery lists, something they just read, where they put their keys, etc.). In addition, I think it's more than fair to allow players to keep notes, and to remind them of something their character should know if the situation warrants it.

Now, a tactically sound plan on the other hand is so vague that it's completely useless. I've seen it modeled in games as bonuses to attack and defense for the side whose commander made the appropriate check, but then you get weird situations where both sides have tactically sound plans, or both sides have made blunders. Worse, a side may have rolled that it made a catastrophic blunder, but then the players make tactically brilliant moves in the actual combat play, and still manage to snag a victory. You could retcon the situation to be that the plan was poor, but they managed to adapt and improvise during the battle to eke out a win, but this is for me, unsatisfying and artificial.

In the case of a stupid player rolling Intelligence in order to "do smart things" it's literally just the DM telling the stupid player what they need to do in order to win, rather like having a grandmaster sitting next to you telling you how to beat your opponent at chess (I know, the analogy is weak - chess is competitive, D&D and most other RPGs are not). At this point, you're not actually playing the game, someone else is, and you're just going through the motions. I may be a bad person for this, but I feel that stupid players should just fail over and over again if they keep acting like an idiot. That they're incapable of doing anything else is not really my fault, or my problem.

Mechanical Effects of Intelligence

So what exactly does Intelligence actually do in AD&D 2e, aside from gauge how "smart" a character is? Well, let's take a look.

The first derived ability of a character's Intelligence is the number of languages that they can know. According to the Players Handbook, this can represent either the number of languages your character can speak, or the maximum potential languages your character can know. Additionally, it's the number of bonus non-weapon proficiencies a character can have in addition to the ones granted by their class. I'm not super fond of this (or the way it scales), but for the most part, it's reasonable that there should be a way of determining if a character knows more than just their racial or cultural languages.

Next is spell level, which is the highest level spells a character with the Wizard class can cast. This is one of my biggest gripes with AD&D, since having high enough Intelligence implies that a.) anyone can become a Wizard if they just applied themselves, and b.) that any Wizard with less than 18 Intelligence is incompetent by default. Let's examine that a bit further.

According to the table, 9 Intelligence (the minimum for being a mage of any stripe) allows you to cast up to 4th level spells. This by itself, goes the logic, should be enough to encourage anyone with any sense or ambition to be a mage or Wizard, since it allows them access to reality bending powers than can make their life easier, more interesting, and they would have access to powers that allow them to become even more powerful over time. I've seen this argument in many forms over the years, generally used for 3rd edition, but the same logic applies here. AD&D 2e still has 0-level NPCs, and 3rd edition has NPC classes, but proponents of the Intelligence = Ultimate Cosmic Power/Anyone Who Didn't Choose the Wizard Class is Retarded argument seem to ignore that in early editions, anyway, PCs are exceptional (due to training, bloodline, whathaveyou) and that magic isn't necessarily open to everyone.

But I can see where the Wizard or Bust! camp gets the idea, since the rules do in fact reflect how things work in the game world (it's one of the reasons why having the rules separate from the lore is potentially disastrous). Exceptionalism in heroes is not a new idea, and previous editions of D&D have reinforced this idea with 0-level characters. 2nd edition retains this feature, though a later splatbook, Sages & Specialists exists - and I'm not jazzed about it. It was a prelude to the stupidity of NPC classes in 3rd edition. Speaking of, 3rd edition has no clear divide between heroic characters and non-heroic ones aside from the fact that PCs are always heroic, and NPC classes are generally worse than PC ones. They're built the same way as PCs, and this adds weight to the Wizard or Bust! camp's argument (at least, for that specific edition).

Whether or not this implication is true is going to be determined by what the DM prefers and has chosen for their particular campaign world. Either way though, the DM is going to have to grapple with the this, because those assumptions are implicit in the rules, and Intelligence's role in determining spellcasting proficiency is explicit. They're going to have to have either a good explanation for why the lore doesn't match up with the rules, or players who are willing to play along.

As far as being competent or incompetent is concerned, note that in order to have the potential to cast 9th level spells, a Wizard or mage needs 18 Intelligence, the highest possible natural roll. In 3rd edition, spell level was directly a factor of Intelligence, in that the highest level of spell you could cast was determined by [(Intelligence-10) greater than, or equal to (spell level)]. This is further compounded in 3rd edition because your Intelligence modifier directly determines your spell save DCs, so higher Intelligence equals spells that are harder to resist. AD&D 2e mages and Wizards do not have this, but having a low Intelligence certainly does prevent a Wizard or mage from realizing their true potential.

Contrast all of this with Basic and retroclones: Intelligence has nothing to do with spellcasting, not even as a requirement to take the class. They're completely decoupled, and as a result, there are two things we can draw from this:

1. Intelligence has nothing to do with being a Magic User. There are smart Magic Users, and dumb ones. Maybe anyone can become a Magic User with the right training, but it's equally possible that they require some kind of special bloodline, or must transcend to a more enlightened state, or truck with dark powers beyond the mortal ken. Any or all of these can be true.
2. A Magic Users's competency is a function of their experience level rather than a single ability score.

Personally, I think this is to the system's advantage, both mechanically and for roleplaying purposes because it not only allows Magic User to be competent at their role despite rolling poorly for Intelligence, but it also allows the player and the DM to have leeway to explain what powers the Magic User's spells.

Moving on, we have the Chance to Learn Spell. This is the chance a character can successfully copy a spell from a scroll, which again, means that low Intelligence Wizards and mages are falling into that incompetency accusation. In all the retroclones that I have, scribing scrolls into spellbooks only costs money and time. In the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, this still holds true. I'm not sure about Holmes Basic, Mentzer Basic, or even OD&D, but I can ask Carlos when I get the chance.

The Maximum Spells per Level section is optional, but it limits a Wizard to a certain number of spells per each level, as advertised. There's an optional spell research rule that would allow them to bypass this, but frankly, I think that it shouldn't exist and if there's a spell research rule, you may as well require them to research any spell that they don't have a scroll to copy from.

Illusion Immunity is only relevant for gray elves and other creatures that can conceivably have a 19 in Intelligence to start with. However, that immunity is just another reason to accumulate a high Intelligence score, even for non-Wizards. Like I keep harping on, this is not a good thing, and encourages a style of play where everyone seeks every opportunity to acquire more ability score points.

Final Thoughts

While Intelligence affects more than just spellcasting, spellcasting arguably dominates any conversation you could have about Intelligence. Having an ability score that so completely determines a character's capability to perform their role in the party ends up being harmful to the game. It also has implications for how the campaign world works, which may or may not appeal.

If we consider the average roll of 4d6 drop the lowest, a 16 is not terrible. It would allow up to 8th level spells, something a Wizard won't have to worry about until 18th level (hilariously, this is one of the areas in which AD&D is superior to 3e). However, they have a 70% chance to scribe scrolls into their spellbooks, and while that seems like it would be a pretty high chance, it's still a greater than a 1 in 4 chance to fail to scribe the scroll, raising questions of the Wizard's competency.

Whether it bothers you from a mechanical, lore, or roleplaying perspective, or all three, Intelligence is an ability score that comes with a whole bunch of issues. Obviously, not everyone is bothered by the assumptions implicit in the score, but for my part, I'd rather that Intelligence be a rough roleplaying guidepost, or non-existent, rather than an integral pillar of the game's mechanics given the way it is presented in AD&D and later editions.