Intelligence

Intelligence is one of the six ability scores. It is the prime requisite of mages, and as such requires a score of 15 to dual-class from mage to another class and a score of 17 to dual-class from another class to mage.
Intelligence is especially important to mages, specialist mages, wild mages, and bards. Although sorcerers are commonly grouped with other wizards, they do not gain any special benefits from INT.
Gnomes have a +1 INT bonus, allowing them to start with 19 INT; Half-Orcs have a -2 INT penalty, limiting them to 16 INT at the start of the game.
==Effects==
*Wand/Scroll Usability: All wands and scrolls require 9 INT to use, regardless of their class restrictions.
*Item Usability: Some items like the Golem Manual require an even higher Intelligence (16) to be used.
*Lore Bonus: INT adds a bonus to the character's base lore value, which wisdom also contributes to. This ranges from -20 at 6 INT and below up to +40 at 25 INT.LOREBON.2da
*Maze Duration: INT determines the amount of time that a character will be trapped by the 8th level wizard spell Maze (the higher the intelligence, the faster they solve the maze). This ranges from 20d4 rounds at 3 INT and below down to 1d4 rounds at 18 INT and above.INTMOD.2da
*Mind Flayer Resistance: Mind flayers temporarily drain 5 INT for 30 seconds on a successful hit (no save); if a character's INT is lowered to 0, they instantly die. Thus, characters with high INT are better suited to combat them.
*Dialog Checks: There are also a rare number of dialog choices that are only available when the party leader has high intelligence, but these are extremely minor and have no real effect on how quests progress.
===Mages and Bards Only===
*Maximum Spell Level: Intelligence determines the maximum level of a spell a wizard is able to learn, starting at a score of 9, needed for all spells of level 4 and below, while a score of 18 is needed to learn level 9 spells.
**Note that this only applies to scribing, not casting. A wizard may temporarily boost their INT and scribe the desired scrolls; they will be able to memorize and cast that spell even when their INT returns to normal.
**Bards can only learn up to level 6 spells, so their highest required INT for this restriction is 12.
**Temporary INT boosts can be done e.g. with a Potion of Mind Focusing or a Potion of Genius, both of which are also cumulative with themselves and with each other.
*Known Spells per Level: INT determines the number of available wizard spells that a character may memorize per level. This ranges from 6 at 9 INT up to 99 at 19 INT.
**Note that this only applies when the spell is to be scribed. A wizard may temporarily boost their INT and scribe as many scrolls as they are able to; they will still retain those in their mage book when their INT returns to normal.
*Scribe Success Rate: INT determines the success rate of scribing scrolls. This ranges from 35% at 9 INT up to 150% at 24 INT. In the original edition of Baldur's Gate I only, the maximum is 100%. 
**Note that specialist mages will modify this percentage based on the school of magic that they are attempting to scribe; either a +15% bonus for spells of their favored school or a -15% penalty for all other schools.
**Scribing will always be successful at normal game difficulty and below in Enhanced Editions. In the original edition, this threshold kicks in at the easy difficulty because EE's normal is OE's easy.
Mages and Bards (and Sorcerers) do NOT gain more spell slots from higher Intelligence. Spell slot increases only happen for Druids and Clerics with high Wisdom.
==Scores table==
Based on the 2da tables INTMOD and LOREBON.
INT 	Mages and bards only	Mages and bards only	Mages and bards only	Lore modifier
INT 	Max spell level 	Spells per level 	Scribe success rate 	Lore modifier
1 – 6	0 	0 	0% 	-20
7 	0 	0 	0% 	-10
8 	0 	0 	0% 	-10
9 	4th 	6 	35% 	-10
10 	5th 	7 	40% 	0
11 	5th 	7 	45% 	0
12 	6th 	7 	50% 	0
13 	6th 	9 	55% 	0
14 	7th 	9 	60% 	0
15 	7th 	11 	65% 	+5 +3
16 	8th 	11 	70% 	+5
17 	8th 	14 	75% 	+7
18 	9th 	18 	85% 	+10
19 	9th 	99 	95% 	+12
20 	9th 	99 	96% 	+15
21 	9th 	99 	97% 	+20
22 	9th 	99 	98% 	+25
23 	9th 	99 	99% 	+30
24 	9th 	99 	150% 100% 	+35
25 	9th 	99 	150% 100% 	+40
== Score Altering ==
=== Permanent Boosts ===
* - Tome of Clear Thought (+1)
* - Machine of Lum the Mad (+1)
* - STAR card from the Deck of Many Things (+1)
** This bonus is only obtained by sorcerers and mages (except Mage / Thief and Fighter / Mage / Thief characters, who gain DEX instead)
===Permanent penalties ===
* - Machine of Lum the Mad, entering the wrong code may result in a loss of 1 intelligence point
=== Temporary Alterations ===
==== Potions ====
* Potion of Genius (+4 for 15 turns)
* Potion of Mind Focusing (+3 for 12 hours; also increases DEX by +3)
* Red Potion (sets to 25 for 24 hours; also sets STR and WIS to 3 and grants +50% magic resistance)
==== Equipment ====
*Discipliner (sets to 3; also sets WIS to 3, inflicts Feeblemindedness, and is cursed)
* Big-Fisted Belt (sets to 6; also sets STR to 19 and is cursed)
* Gemblade (+1)
* Robe of Arcane Aptitude (+1)
* Golden Ioun Stone (+1)
==== Other ====
* Mind Flayers drain 5 INT for 30 seconds when they hit successfully (no save)
* - ERINYES card from the Deck of Many Things (+1 to all attributes lasting 24-hours)
* Feeblemindedness sets INT 3. The most common causes of this status effect are prismatic spray and feeblemind spells
==Bugs==
*The Wild Mage, Blade, Jester, Skald, and Imoen in Baldur's Gate II, and all characters that dual-classed from a kit to mage suffer an undue penalty to their chance to learn from scrolls.Condition to trigger the bug: The character able to learn from scrolls must have a kit that is neither KIT_TRUECLASS nor one of the 8 Specialist Mage's. All of their kits are erroneously treated the same as a specialist mage when it comes to scribing scrolls, so they receive a specialist's -15 learning penalty. Having no specialist school, the penalty applies to all scrolls and no scroll gets the specialist's +15 bonus with their own school. As a workaround to avoid losing scrolls to this bug, a player could temporarily downgrade game difficulty to "Normal" in Enhanced Edition or "Easy" in original edition to make scribing failure impossible. Alternatively, increasing INT to 24 with potions gives a 150% learning chance in EE and the original BG2, so failure should be impossible even with the undue penalty.
==External links==
* 
==References==
Category:Ability scores