From: sjdaskal@unix.amherst.edu (Steve)
Subject: Re: PC vs. Player INT
Organization: Amherst College, Amherst MA
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 05:25:30 GMT

In article <846@blue.cis.pitt.edu> seawasp@vm2.cis.pitt.edu (Sea Wasp) writes:
>In article <8045@news.duke.edu> dks@acpub.duke.edu writes:
>>cbnorman@cayley.uwaterloo.ca (Bruce Norman) writes:
>>|> 16-17-18 intelligence? We're talking the top 5% of the population here
>>|> (if we assume 3d6 for intelligence--by AD&D1's claim that int=IQ/10
>>|> we're talking the top 1% of the population).  Believe me, I know it,
>>|> most gamers do not fall in this range.  Most gamers are NORMAL PEOPLE.  
>
>	Obviously we have encountered disparate samples. I've never encountered
>a gamer -- by this I mean someone capable of playing more than hack,slay,etc. -
>whose IQ would be less than average; ergo, the vast majority of them are
>'way above average. Most gamers I've encountered have IQ's in the 130-140
>range, or else have abilities which I evaluate as equating to a higher
>intelligence (creativity is something I consider a manifestation of
>intelligence, although neither IQ nor other standardized tests like SATs
>measure it; therefore a highly creative person is above average in intellect
>from MY point of view).
>
>>	Agreed -- a few weeks (months?) ago, someone posted an idea that
>>normal folks (non-adventurers) don't usually get 3d6 for their 'stats';
>>an 18 in any ability is much rarer than ~.5% of the population. The bell
>>curve for IQ is much steeper than that for a 3d6 distribution.  An '18
>>intelligence' has not occurred more than a couple of hundred times through-
>>out history, I think.
>
>	Well, that's one way to look at it. It's not the way I look at it.
>Since (at least in the beginning) there was no difference in the methods used 
>for creating NPCs and PCs, it seemed pretty obvious that they were on
>the same scale, and thus on the same frequency chart. That's how I do it.
>Thus in my cosmos, an 18 is equivalent to 1 out of 216 people. 
>
>					Sea Wasp

Forgive me if this seems silly, but if you count 18 intelligence as one out
of every 216 people, do you have any way of describing people who are genius-
level?  For instance, Newton, Galileo, Einstein, Copernicus, etc., etc.

Now, Im not saying that these are the only people who should have 18 
intelligence.  Rather, this is a question that has always bothered me about
the 3-18 scale.  Do you simply explain this away by saying that not all 18
intelligence people ar eequaly intelligent (i.e. 18 int describes a range
of intelligence)?  I agree with this thought, but it seems that ranging 
from 1 out of 216 to this level of genius is excessively wide, dont you
think?  Would you give these people and people like them intelligences of 19? 
More than 19?

But then are you saying that it is impossible for PCs to be genius level?
This is a concept which I dont necessarily disagree with, but it seems 
somehow against the nature of the game, especially if you understand the 
PCs to be above the level of ordinary people, i.e. heroes, as you seem
to from your posts in .advocacy not long ago (i think it was you, at least).

Have you found a way to resolve this problem?  Or do ou not even think
of it as a problem?

One way, of course, would be to make 18 int far, far rarer than 1/216, as
another poster suggested (10 in history of world, I think was mentioned).
But, you apparently don't want to do that, so how do you resolve this
dilemma?

--Steve