Intertwining Wisdom and Intelligence?

[TheMiningDwarf]

In my off time from school these summer months I've taken it upon myself to learn Java and even though I've only just begun I thought a good test of my future skills would be designing a crude game so naturally my first thought was "Why not something like Dnd?" One of my first changes from the standard dnd concepts was using an IQ score with a base of 90 rather than an Intelligence score. Anyone that knows about IQ scores should know that 90 is a bit below average. My next idea is the reason for this threads existence should I intertwine Wisdom and IQ?

Any other advice you have will be appreciated as well if there's anything you always thought should be in dnd proper let me know and If I like it you might see it in the final product. So far all I have is a concept and just barely that, this will also be the first "game" I'll ever make so let's keep our expectations reasonable okay? :smallbiggrin:

[Falcon X]

I would check out how other systems do it too and see what classifications they have.
For example, Numenera only uses 3 stats: Might, Speed, and Intellect. Those three summarize everything.
Shadowrun has 8: Body, Strength, Reaction, Agility, Logic, Intuition, Charisma, and Willpower.
Make the stats that you need for your game.

That being said, a few notes on D&D stats:
- Wisdom might as well be called perception. I think it would be except that we tie it to a Cleric's power.
If I were doing what you are trying to do, I would move cleric powers to Charisma stat and Perception powers to something else (possibly combine with Dex?) Then have all thinking processes be under the IQ rating.
- Charisma stat is best understood by knowing it's greek origins. "Charisma" is the Greek word for "gift". That is why D&D uses it for all innate qualities, inner powers, and natural presence. Just food for thought...

What kind of setting and style of gameplay are you thinking?

[TheMiningDwarf]

I would love to get into more interesting gameplay style-wise but until I can really learn about graphics and what not, I'm thinking of using a text-based system with text describing what's going on and giving a list of options to choose from, not the most original idea, I know. As for setting I'm thinking of using a simple dungeon crawl as the base just to get all the mechanics worked out before I delve into the realm of storytelling and world building. I quite like the idea of things like charm person and the diplomacy, bluff and intimidate skills just for the novelty of being able to settle things non-combatively so some form of that will be making a few appearances.

[Carl]

no, no, no, no, no. How the game is going to look has no effect on how it's going to work. What are the mechanics, are you just stealing concepts from D&D, or are you going to port most of the mechanics. If your going to just grab concepts you need to know what purpose everything, including your choice of stat's, is going to do before you choose them. If your going to mostly port you have to figure out how to combine the two stats without creating a mess.

@Falcon, i'd argue that wisdom is meant to allow stats to represent the Ditzy Genius (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DitzyGenius), unfortunately as you say they didn't do a good job of separating the two conceptually. IMO just dumping one of them would be by far the best, my "fix" if i ever get round to putting it on paper dumps Int for that very reason.

[TheMiningDwarf]

Right, I was getting ahead of myself there. One I want to do is have a single stat for magical powers rather than having three separate ones for different classes, I feel like it's kind of unnecessary to use wholly different stats to use the same spells, power is power is power. Since that would free up Int, Wisdom as well as Charisma from being casting stats I can change Wisdom into Perception With all of the Spot and Search, Listen type skills being derivative of Perception. If you didn't have a high perception stat it wouldn't matter how intelligent you are since you wouldn't be able to notice what's going on around you, you wouldn't be able to use your intelligence to understand what's going on. IQ would affect how quickly you would be able to take in and process new information as you perceive it so skills like Spellcraft and the Knowledge tree would be tied to IQ. This is all just brainstorming so far I have to take a look at skills and see which ones I want to include. Still not sure what I'll change with Charisma just yet.

As always any ideas are appreciated. If you have any ideas for new skills that I could tie into IQ or perception or ways I could mangle existing skills together into one I'd love to hear it. :smallbiggrin:

[Network]

Right, I was getting ahead of myself there. One I want to do is have a single stat for magical powers rather than having three separate ones for different classes, I feel like it's kind of unnecessary to use wholly different stats to use the same spells, power is power is power. Since that would free up Int, Wisdom as well as Charisma from being casting stats I can change Wisdom into Perception With all of the Spot and Search, Listen type skills being derivative of Perception. If you didn't have a high perception stat it wouldn't matter how intelligent you are since you wouldn't be able to notice what's going on around you, you wouldn't be able to use your intelligence to understand what's going on. IQ would affect how quickly you would be able to take in and process new information as you perceive it so skills like Spellcraft and the Knowledge tree would be tied to IQ. This is all just brainstorming so far I have to take a look at skills and see which ones I want to include. Still not sure what I'll change with Charisma just yet.

As always any ideas are appreciated. If you have any ideas for new skills that I could tie into IQ or perception or ways I could mangle existing skills together into one I'd love to hear it. :smallbiggrin:
Wisdom is also a factor of willpower in D&D, and I think this may be the reason why clerics have it as their casting stat. Of course, willpower could be part of the stat for magic.

You are not too clear on the stats you'll use in your game. There could be more or less than that. Strength, Dexterity and Constitution could be simply reduced to Athletism, or you could just change their name slightly (Endurance instead of Constitution, Reflexes instead of Dexterity) to ease comprehension for those with no roleplay experience.

If you are going for IQ, then you'll likely want abilities to average at 100. Such a score would give no bonus or penalty, but higher or lower scores would.

Are you going for a simple game or a complex game? If simple, the less stats and options your character has the better. If you want something complex, then each class should have at least a couple options on how to do things starting at level 1, with more coming with levels. This will make a big difference when you'll decide how to divide skills.

[Falcon X]

If you want to minimize stats, I would boil things down to three stats. Check these ideas out:

Numenera by Monte Cook did Might, Speed, and Intelligence. That would be great for your system, as you could modify Intelligence into IQ, and perception would fall under Speed.

Another of my favorite systems is Hi/Low heroes (http://www.scribd.com/doc/15905669/Hi-Lo-Heroes), which has 3 choices that effect 6 stats:
- Build: Quick vs. Powerful
- Mentality: Logical (Mundane) vs. Intuitive (Fantastic/Magical)
- Temperament: Bold (HP) vs. Cautious (Evade)

[Dornith]

I would like you to keep in mind something my psychology teacher taught me about IQ: "You're IQ score is a measure of how well you do on an IQ test."

Intelligence is very subjective and IQ really doesn't mean anything other than how you did on that test at that time. For describing a person's mental ability in a quantifiable way (as is necessary in many scientific studies), it's sufficient; but as a realistic measure of how smart any person is, it's not the ideal. It really all comes down to how you define intelligence. (Note, that you may find many IQ tests, many of which will yield completely contradictory results.) I think that the makers of D&D were wise to separate it out into three distinct categories. Now, if you believe in the g-factor, then sure, it makes sense. But if your like me and you think that intelligence is a very diverse concept, then it's probably not a good idea to tie the multiple intelligence together.

Also, that being said, as a fellow programmer, I must warn you that the task you are taking on will not be simple. It is of course possible (I'm working on something similar myself), but I wouldn't use that as your "Introduction to Java" program. Heck, I would say wait until you feel like you've got at least the core aspects down (all the control statements, Object structure, swing GUI's, arrays/vectors/maps) before embarking on this.

Edit: Also, if you plan to use the console for text-base games, I would add getting well acquainted with those libraries. I found that most of them either behave unintuitively, or have some kind of weird bug that only shows up under specific circumstances (e.g. the Console class doesn't work in IDE simulated consoles).

[silphael]

The number and separation between part of the intellect is more fleeted based on the main tendance of your game. Basicalyy, do you plan to make something based on narration, based on simulation, or something that should feel like a game?

If narrative : it may go from simply having 2 attributes (physical and mental) to comportemental attributes (like in Esteren, all attributes have influences on diverses things, sometimes positive and sometime negative. Using few attributes makes the system light and not bothering the storytelling, which is fondamental in that case.

If simulationninst : those usually have a lot of attributes, and a high number of skills. In that case you want to have things like "scientific intuition" and "scientific method" be different things, because they are. Such a system is hard to design for starters, as it requires a very good sense of balance for everything : nothing like a Rohan's rider killed by falling off his horse when trying to ride it...

If ludist : standard D&D situation. Thing is, here you have to make everything so that each attributes can have as much love as any other, because what you wanting is that the mechanical part of each character is enough to be fun to play. Of course roleplay exist in those games, but technically they shouldn't need a lot of investment on characters, else you'll have people waiting because they couldn't pay the mechanical prize. More like basic D&D in fact, that is interactions are for the player to do.

Then you will have to ensure your randomizing (or lack of, cf Ambre) system works accordingly : you don't need an extremely precise table if you're playing in a narrativist situation, as it'll often impede the story, for exemple.

[TheMiningDwarf]

I would like you to keep in mind something my psychology teacher taught me about IQ: "You're IQ score is a measure of how well you do on an IQ test."

Intelligence is very subjective and IQ really doesn't mean anything other than how you did on that test at that time. For describing a person's mental ability in a quantifiable way (as is necessary in many scientific studies), it's sufficient; but as a realistic measure of how smart any person is, it's not the ideal. It really all comes down to how you define intelligence. (Note, that you may find many IQ tests, many of which will yield completely contradictory results.) I think that the makers of D&D were wise to separate it out into three distinct categories. Now, if you believe in the g-factor, then sure, it makes sense. But if your like me and you think that intelligence is a very diverse concept, then it's probably not a good idea to tie the multiple intelligence together.

Tbh I've never found myself putting too much importance on test grades my main (read only) reason for changing Intelligence to IQ was that IQ is already scaled for me what's average, what's high, and what's low is already been calculated out for me.



Also, that being said, as a fellow programmer, I must warn you that the task you are taking on will not be simple. It is of course possible (I'm working on something similar myself), but I wouldn't use that as your "Introduction to Java" program. Heck, I would say wait until you feel like you've got at least the core aspects down (all the control statements, Object structure, swing GUI's, arrays/vectors/maps) before embarking on this.

Edit: Also, if you plan to use the console for text-base games, I would add getting well acquainted with those libraries. I found that most of them either behave unintuitively, or have some kind of weird bug that only shows up under specific circumstances (e.g. the Console class doesn't work in IDE simulated consoles).

Trust me I never thought this would be simple or easy, it's just something I've been wanting to do for awhile now, design a game I mean. Anyway thanks for the tip about the console I'll have to remember to go through the libraries.

[jqavins]

Tbh I've never found myself putting too much importance on test grades my main (read only) reason for changing Intelligence to IQ was that IQ is already scaled for me what's average, what's high, and what's low is already been calculated out for me.
If you're borrowing/cribbing/stealing from D&D, then the average and distribution are very well defined. By definition, the general population conforms to a 3d6 curve, so 10.5 is average (10 an 11 equally "normal") 12 is the 74th percentile, etc.

On the Wisdom question, I would agree that the Wis ability in D&D 3.x is mostly perception, but also willpower. It's called Wisdom because WotC is locked in to the vocabulary of original AD&D. Back then, Wisdom was described as being about one's oneness with the cosmos, which is why it was clerics' main stat, and still is.

If I were making up a whole new system from scratch, I'd probably have only one stat for "smarts" that would include learning new things, analytic reasoning, intuition, and perception. (Or I'd go stat heavy and separate all those four, but probably nothing in between.) I do think charisma, i.e. presence or force of personality, is something else entirely. And I don't know what I'd do about willpower. On the other hand, if I were creating a system that's "D&D 3.5 except..." then the whole question of redefining ability scores would be pretty low on my exceptions list.

[Dornith]

I do think charisma, i.e. presence or force of personality, is something else entirely.

This is the way I look at Charisma:
Charisma is how well you do what comes naturally to you. It's not intelligence because you're not studying to figure things out, nor wisdom because you're not thinking it through using common sense, you just do charisma related things naturally. A person whose really good at getting people to like him/her likely isn't studying or planning what he/she says, but rather just going with the flow.
That's why natural magic relies on Charisma, as well as things that humans and humanoids would do naturally such as socializing.