is Rurik stupid? (talking about INT)

[Whisker89]

Forgive me for the title, just joking

I was wondering about how INT works for characters. If the average INT for a human is 13 (=2D6+6), how could Rurik be of average intelligence with his INT 10?

And how "dumb" is a character with INT 10, or 8 or even less?

[Guest Vile Traveller]

Because back in the day of the RQ2 rulebook, INT was 3D6. It was later that 2D6+6 became fashionable.

[Questbird]

The average of 3D6 is about 10 or 11. Player characters are generally assumed to be above average, so they roll 2D6+6, which changes the average a bit. So Rurik is of average intelligence for the normal population, and possibly a bit less intelligent than the 'average adventurer'.

[Whisker89]

Thanks for the answers guys This is something that had always left me puzzled, maybe because I've got a D&D background.
Nonetheless, I'm considering switching to 5D3+3 for INT and SIZ (min 8 / average 10,5 / max 18) to have a "flatter" set of characteristics.

[soltakss]

Regardless of the INT, he did ignore the trollkin and got killed - pretty stupid if you ask me.

 

 

[Whisker89]

Regardless of the INT, he did ignore the trollkin and got killed - pretty stupid if you ask me.

 

 

poor Rurik Greg Stafford himself tells he (=Steve Perrin, who was Rurik's player) was really unlucky because he got two consecutive critical hits by the infamous trollkin, both avoided by divine intervention... but the divine intervention brought Rurik's POW down to 0 so he died

[seneschal]

poor Rurik Greg Stafford himself tells he (=Steve Perrin, who was Rurik's player) was really unlucky because he got two consecutive critical hits by the infamous trollkin, both avoided by divine intervention... but the divine intervention brought Rurik's POW down to 0 so he died

Divine intervention killed him?  With friends like that ....

[Sean_RDP]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that INT 8 was bare minimum for being sentient and self aware enough to be viable. So even if 8 was the minimum, 10 or 11 would be about right for average INT. But I am old and I could be remembering it wrong.

[nDervish]

Thanks for the answers guys This is something that had always left me puzzled, maybe because I've got a D&D background.
Nonetheless, I'm considering switching to 5D3+3 for INT and SIZ (min 8 / average 10,5 / max 18) to have a "flatter" set of characteristics.

Ehm...  As you can see on anydice (http://anydice.com/program/6d9b), the average of 5d3+3 is 13, the same as 2d6+6, not 10.5.  Also, 5d3+3 is more likely to produce closer-to-average results (because you're rolling more dice), so I wouldn't really consider it "flatter".

More generally, for any symmetric distribution, the average result will be equal to the average of the minimum and maximum values.  To get a range from 8-18 with 10.5 average, you'd need to do something like roll d6s and read 1-3 as 1, 4-5 as 2, and 6 as 3 or something like that in order to make the results asymmetric.

[Whisker89]

Yes nDervish, you're totally right! I came to my sense and got to the same conclusion the last week, but I was far from a pc and then I totally forgot to post about it

[Newt]

Yes in a low Average Int sort of way

Questbird hits the nail on the head for my reasoning why Rurik is so Averagely blah in the INT department.

If you go read the character generation example in OpenQuest, of which he's the star of , he starts with 8 in INT and his player adds 2 points out of a pool of 30* at his disposal

"to make sure Rurik is average for Intelligence".

* much of which has already been spent on STR, CON, DEX and SIZ because Rurik's player wants him to be a Warrior.