> JulesMrshn@aol.com writes:
>
> Int and Wis don't measure how clever you are, they measure how smart and
> how wise you are, but not how clever. Cleverness is an intagable quality. It
> has nothing to do with wisdom or intelligence.

The description of the intelligence ability in the PHB mentions cleverness
specifically. Cleverness is an aspect of intelligence, just as memory and
deductive ability are, and is no more "intangible" than any other aspect of the
ability.


> JNeighb934@aol.com wrote:

> I have to disagree with you there. Cleverness definitely can be linked to
> wisdom. However, only three mental attributes (INT, WIS, & CHR) hardly
> measures the complete mental makeup of a real person. Therefore, for example
> if I have a character with low wisdom, I will pick an aspect of wisdom that
> the character is deficient in. Perhaps he is foolhardy and reckless, or not
> very intuitive, or weak-willed when it comes to vices, etc., while other
> wisdom-related aspects (like cleverness, perhaps) are more average. The same
> with a higher attribute but a strength in that attribute instead of a
> weakness. The lower or higher the score, the more faults or strengths in the
> particular attribute.

I agree with your assessment of the role-playing effects of ability scores, but I
think cleverness is actually linked to intelligence rather than wisdom. Wisdom
covers things like willpower, enlightenment, "common sense" and intuition.
Intelligence is the more intellectual aspects of the mind--memory, learning,
reasoning, creativity and cleverness.

It seems to me that, like the rest of the ability scores, intelligence is
designed to be a sort of general thing covering all intellectual capacity, just
as dexterity covers the broad physical abilities ranging from manual dexterity to
agility and from hand-eye coordination to gracefulness.

Because RW intelligence is a rather difficult thing to quantify, I suppose it is
understandable that someone might not see cleverness as being an aspect of the
ability, but it seems pretty clear to me that it is from the description in the
PHB that it is intended to be an aspect of that ability. A player playing a
character with a low intelligence score as a clever person would not be
"role-playing" very well.

I would have a problem if a player in a campaign I was DMing was playing a
half-ogre with a 7 intelligence who outsmarts the local mage's guild and makes
off with all their magic items. The player might role-play such a situation by
having his PC blunder through the adventure, outsmarting all the mages by "luck"
and accident, but I would probably start ruling against him (by requiring
intelligence checks) if he didn't make an effort to properly play his character's
intelligence.

Gary