Wisdom Vs. Intelligence, Does D&D Portray Them Fairly?

[PapaQuackers]

So I've been mulling this over for a while guys and I'm having just a little trouble with the skill system that has been present in pretty much every version of D&D.

The skills listed under Wisdom and the skills listed under Intelligence.

Intelligence, as we all know I'm sure, in 5th edition literally boils down to just the knowledge skills + investigation. Now I definitely appreciate that investigation is there, in place of search but I feel like the lack of other types of skills really enforces the idea that Intelligence is measured by what you have memorized. That idea that we're fed in high school that memorization = Intelligence is very vexing to me.

Wisdom on the other hand has a lot of oddities, Animal Handling definitely seems more like Charisma than Wisdom. Insight is definitely a Wisdom thing, the ability to determine who someone is really using your experiences and yatta yatta, Medicine is just plain wrong, I don't care if you're the wisest Monk in the universe, you cannot help someone without knowledge of medicine or magic, Perception is also one that I find very strange, why do I have to be wise in order to see or hear something? Survival is fine as a Wisdom skill as well though I suppose you could argue that knowledge nature would also suffice in some areas.

So what do you guys think? Do you think these stats are being represented properly by their skills or not?

[Naanomi]

The terms used to label them are idiosyncratic to be sure, but narratively I think it is a good split to put 'bookish smarts' on one pool and 'intuitive/instinctive' in another.

I agree Medicine could be an intelligence skill, I always assumed that it was a wisdom skill because medieval fantasy doctors were more 'go with their gut' trauma paramedics (where quick instinctual choices mattered) than educated surgeons. If a player asked me to use intelligence for their medicine skill I'd allow it if it fit their character concept

[lunaticfringe]

The DMs guide Basically says go with your gut in regards to skills. Wisdom & Intelligence are often Analogous in real life. Page 4 DMG:

The Rules aren't in charge, you are in charge.(the DM)

If you are a player you're probably screwed...

[PapaQuackers]

I'm just talking about in general, not that anyone's being slighted by them. It just seems to enforce strange ideas about intelligence and wisdom.

[lunaticfringe]

Because it follows the logic of the game. Using the Medicine example...

The Main/Traditional Healing classes (Cleric/Druid) prioritise Wisdom. Healing is a Role they are expected to do. What happens if they run out of Magic Spells? Even if they aren't Proficient they will still have a decent bonus to the skill check.

[beargryllz]

Medicine is INT, not WIS.

I'd probably allow my players to use either if they built their character to be good or proficient at medicine and have an untrained player use INT. I might even allow investigation checks in place of medicine to *identify* what is wrong, rather than actually *cure* the target of their "medicine" check. That's my little, private houserule patch and I'm sticking to it.

[Naanomi]

Medicine is INT, not WIS.

I'd probably allow my players to use either if they built their character to be good or proficient at medicine and have an untrained player use INT. That's my little, private houserule patch and I'm sticking to it.
I'd argue pre-industrial medicine was equal parts Int, Wis, and Charisma (being reassuring, confident, and a bit of snake-oil placebo sales). Dexterity as manual surgery might also have a place

[PapaQuackers]

Because it follows the logic of the game. Using the Medicine example...

The Main/Traditional Healing classes (Cleric/Druid) prioritise Wisdom. Healing is a Role they are expected to do. What happens if they run out of Magic Spells? Even if they aren't Proficient they will still have a decent bonus to the skill check.

Even if it makes sense mechanically it violates the spirit of logical application. Just because it's beneficial to the character from a mechanical stand point doesn't mean it's justified.

Otherwise I make an ability that allows bards to add their charisma modifier to AC, there's really no justification for that other than it would help them be more SAD.

[beargryllz]

I'd argue pre-industrial medicine was equal parts Int, Wis, and Charisma (being reassuring, confident, and a bit of snake-oil placebo sales). Dexterity as manual surgery might also have a place

That sounds more like a skill challenge from 4e. The richest merchant in Amn injured himself in a hunting accident and has an arrowhead stuck in his belly!

The rogue can hold the scalpel and retractors to dig out the arrowhead, the bard can excuse himself from the encounter, knowing now is not the time for song and dance, and instead try to sell walnut oil as a cure-all, while the wizard bores through tomes for possible ointments to stave off corruption (infection), while the paladin lays hands on the patient and offers comforting insight on mortality, death, and dying

[lunaticfringe]

My bad! No one even uses medicine in my games because expending 2 uses of a Healer's Kit is like having the Healer Feat, they cost double too. House Rules!

[beargryllz]

My bad! No one even uses medicine in my games because expending 2 uses of a Healer's Kit is like having the Healer Feat, they cost double too. House Rules!

Big assumption there.

A lot of players completely blank out on very basic items that are super-relevant in most adventures. In 8 levels, I'm still the only guy that insists on securing horses before gallivanting off into the wilderness to plunder treasure or assault our enemies... You'd think they'd realize how crucial this point is by now...

The longer you've been playing, the more you notice things like this. I'm never taking Healer feat, but I sure will use a healer's kit...

[GorogIrongut]

I find the difference between Wisdom and Intelligence to be the difference between saying someone is Smart and saying someone is Intelligent. We've all seen the professor who is incredibly intelligent in his given field, but has zero clue about anything else in the world (i.e. can't cook, manage a budget, etc.)

In that sense, if we return to medicine and healthcare, I would use Wisdom for all kinds of common sense cures to help people... but if my player was looking to pioneer a cure or identify why a common sense cure wasn't working, Intelligence would be required.

This is why Wisdom governs perception. It allows you to see the world as it is. Combine Wisdom with a little bit of intelligence and you can start putting those puzzle pieces together and go beyond rudimentary... in the moment smarts.

[lunaticfringe]

Big assumption there.

A lot of players completely blank out on very basic items that are super-relevant in most adventures. In 8 levels, I'm still the only guy that insists on securing horses before gallivanting off into the wilderness to plunder treasure or assault our enemies... You'd think they'd realize how crucial this point is by now...

The longer you've been playing, the more you notice things like this. I'm never taking Healer feat, but I sure will use a healer's kit...

It's really just about Fun & Pacing. Stopping for short rests to heal up ruins dramatic tension & Climatic moments. Yeah & No one in my groups is ever going to get the Healer Feat. It only really ever applies low tier though.

It's 10 gp for a quick heal so a group of level 2s doesn't have to stop in the middle of a cave crawling with enemies. The 1/Rest rule still applies.

[odigity]

It's really just about Fun & Pacing. Stopping for short rests to heal up ruins dramatic tension & Climatic moments.

Sure, sometimes, like when you've cleared most of a small dungeon then spend 60 minutes hanging out 20' from the big boss's door.

But sometimes I think it adds to the narrative. Having to rest emphasizes the severity of the challenges they've recently had to overcome. Heroes need to bleed sometimes if their victory is to have meaning.

Re: Int vs Wis - When my group first started playing 5e, we decided we didn't like the idea of all our martial chars being stupid just because they have Int 8, so we re-interpreted Int as something more like formal education than IQ.

Also, yes, both the choice of what to make a skill and what ability to key it off are a bit strange, and probably have always been in every edition but in different ways, since there's obviously no perfect answer. If you have a stable at-home group, change it to suit your fancy. If you play AL, then just accept it and move on.

[ad_hoc]

Medicine is the only one that sticks out to me as wrong (I'm open to the case of Charisma for Animal Handling but I'm also fine with it being Wisdom. Likely it is because of Ranger history.)

As someone who studied medicine, it is certainly an Intelligence skill. Wisdom and Charisma play a part of course, but many/all skills also have other attributes that are important. For the sake of the game you only add the bonus from one attribute when using the skill.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter though. Medicine is the Use Rope of 5e. Most of the actual medical knowledge is covered under the Nature skill.

Medicine is only good for diagnosing an illness and attempting a stabilization check without a healing kit.

[Vogonjeltz]

So I've been mulling this over for a while guys and I'm having just a little trouble with the skill system that has been present in pretty much every version of D&D.

The skills listed under Wisdom and the skills listed under Intelligence.

Intelligence, as we all know I'm sure, in 5th edition literally boils down to just the knowledge skills + investigation. Now I definitely appreciate that investigation is there, in place of search but I feel like the lack of other types of skills really enforces the idea that Intelligence is measured by what you have memorized. That idea that we're fed in high school that memorization = Intelligence is very vexing to me.

Wisdom on the other hand has a lot of oddities, Animal Handling definitely seems more like Charisma than Wisdom. Insight is definitely a Wisdom thing, the ability to determine who someone is really using your experiences and yatta yatta, Medicine is just plain wrong, I don't care if you're the wisest Monk in the universe, you cannot help someone without knowledge of medicine or magic, Perception is also one that I find very strange, why do I have to be wise in order to see or hear something? Survival is fine as a Wisdom skill as well though I suppose you could argue that knowledge nature would also suffice in some areas.

So what do you guys think? Do you think these stats are being represented properly by their skills or not?

Something to bear in mind, those are just skills, there are inumerable ability checks for which no skill applies.

Int is reason, acuity, and recall.
Wis is awareness and intuition.

And I'd strongly challenge the idea of Charisma having any role to play with Animal Handling. Charisma can be important for interactions with people, but it's downright useless with animals and leads to people who think they know dogs or whatever and then get bitten because they're incapable of reading the animals body language properly and think they can force happiness on an animal with their winning personality. It doesn't work like that, and animals simply do not respond to people whose behavior is threatening while using non-threatening words. Wisdom is key here because this is a skill about reading animals behaviors and not misinterpreting body language.

This is medieval levels of medicine, so it's more about feeling out the problem in question, and less about diagnosing purely from the literature, which would be an Intelligence (Medicine) check.

Perception is because wisdom is about being aware of your surroundings, no other ability qualifies.

And, in some of the cases of the book, Intelligence (Nature) is a substitute for Wisdom (Survival); for example, harvesting poison from a poisonous creatures corpse.

[Daishain]

Yeah, the skills system is in need of adjustment in my opinion, and the way they shorted Int is among the main concerns I have.

Its more of an overhaul than a tweak, and is noticeably more complicated than the default rules, but you might be interested in taking a look at the HB ruleset I posted in the following thread a while ago. I'm still not 100% happy with it, and I haven't had a chance to test it in play yet (current group is full of newbies, don't want to spring something like this on them.), but it attempts to rebalance several of the skills while making mastery of a particular skill more worthwhile and causing Int to be considerably less of a dump stat for everyone but wizards. It also gives each skill a secondary stat to draw on, addressing the issue where multiple such apply. (Medicine would be a function of both Wis and Int for instance)

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?489051-Skill-System-variant-making-proficiencies-matter

[Tanarii]

Intelligence, as we all know I'm sure, in 5th edition literally boils down to just the knowledge skills + investigation. Now I definitely appreciate that investigation is there, in place of search but I feel like the lack of other types of skills really enforces the idea that Intelligence is measured by what you have memorized. That idea that we're fed in high school that memorization = Intelligence is very vexing to me.I use Investigation for the majority of deductive, analytical and logical thinking. That's quite possibly extending it quite a bit beyond what written in the book. But even if you don't do that, straight Int checks should cover anything Investigation doesn't. It kinda sounds to me like you're falling (somewhat) into the trap that all checks must be skill checks / get a proficiency bonus on this one.

As far as the Wisdom skills, yeah, I think they line up pretty well.
"Wisdom reflects how attuned you are to the world around you and represents perceptiveness and intuition."

Animal Handling "calm down a domesticated animal, keep a mount from getting spooked, or intuit an animal’s intentions" --> all intuition tasks IMO

Perception "measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses" --> perception task. It's even in the definition of Wisdom, so I'm not sure how you can object to this one. However, there is some overlap with Investigation. It depends if you're paying attention to the world around you and noticing things (Perception) or thinking and trying to deduce / figure out where something is or how it works (Investigation)

Survival "follow tracks, hunt wild game, guide your group through frozen wastelands, identify signs that owlbears live nearby, predict the weather, or avoid quicksand and other natural hazards" --> attuned to the world around you tasks. Anything that is a learned aspect of dealing with the natural world is covered under Nature instead. And yeah, totally some overlap between those two, different ways to do the same thing.

Medicine could be an exception, because yes it could easily be an Intelligence skill instead. Depends on if you emphasize the "learning" aspect or the "figuring out" aspect. And for the latter, if it's done deductively or intuitively.

Edit:

Re: Int vs Wis - When my group first started playing 5e, we decided we didn't like the idea of all our martial chars being stupid just because they have Int 8, so we re-interpreted Int as something more like formal education than IQ.
I like to take Investigation with Int-dumped (Int 8) characters that lack education, but are not too shabby at figuring things out on their own. At level 1, your deductive reasoning capabilities is the equivalent of Int 12. And it goes up as you level.