Subjective Atributes

[Shazzbaa]

Like Shazzbaa, I find it fun to try and map D&D things like alignments and ability scores onto people I know. Once me and my college RP group played a self-game, where the characters were the players. So everyone had to figure out their own ability scores. You can imagine some of the results. :) It's really funny for me now, looking back on it, but it was a big drama at the time.

Eeek, you guys, too? I'd like to take this moment to advise everyone here NOT to try this at home. We did a slight variation of this in my college group, where everyone except the person himself was allowed to debate that person's scores. Mine ended up being quite a compliment, but listening to my roommate complain for days afterwards about how her Wisdom should be soooo much higher than 10....
It was a horrible mistake to attempt it, and I'm glad the game was abandoned.

I like to think of intelligence as one's ability to learn. This makes sense in D&D because more INT means you get more skills and are able to grasp the mechanics behind magic, which would require a good learner.

I agree with this definition of intelligence, which... well... makes it even more impossible to measure IRL.
In our game at home we've got a character who's very much the "stupid farmer," but his INT is higher than most of the other characters, even those far more eloquent and knowledgeable than he is. But then you have to realise... smart or not, he was raised on a farm. He can figure stuff out quickly, but he only knows what he's taught.

D&D Intelligence is very much a hidden trait in real life. Someone with high INT has high potential, but if his only class-skill is "dirt farming," then he's not going to get much of an opportunity to show off that potential, no matter how many skill points he gets.

"Intelligence lets you figure out how to do things, Wisdom lets you figure out whether you should be doing them in the first place." Another way to put it is that Intelligence is more useful for understanding things, Wisdom is more useful for understanding people.

As for Wisdom, I read this on a forum somewhere: "Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in fruit salad."

Actually, if you live in the US, a tomato is a fruit and a vegetable at the same time. Scientifically, it's a fruit; but legally, it's a vegetable (because it counts as a vegetable for some kind of import tax). [/fun trivia]

Anyway, the problem with wisdom is that these are all good descriptions of the typical, day-to-day differentiation of being wise vs. being intelligent, but they're not necessarily or completely the difference between Wis vs. Int.

What does Wisdom represent in-game? It powers your Will save, your Sense Motive skill, and your Spot and Listen skills... also Survival, Heal, and Profession. Also, stuff for Clerics and Monks. Maybe some other things I forgot.

So Wisdom, then, could relate to Willpower and mental fortitude (will save). Somewhat related to this concept, it could be a connection to the spiritual or divine (clerics). It could be intuition of a similar nature (monks). It could be basic common sense, i.e., knowing a tomato doesn't go in a fruit salad (survival, heal, and profession -- your Wis bonus is just the common sense knowledge you're born with; actual ranks would represent practice and learning). But then it could also be perception regarding others -- being able to 'read people', as it were (sense motive), or it could be simple physical perceptiveness, awareness of the world around you (spot, listen, and to some extent survival).

Wisdom is so spread out that it's hard to point at what a high Wis represents, because it could be so many people. It could just be the guy who just makes sense and knows how the world works, or it could be the person I described earlier who can read people just by watching the way they walk; it could be a tribal man who knows little of the ways of the world but is always, always aware and nothing goes by him unnoticed, or it could be the unwavering man of faith with an unfathomable strength of will and mental fortitude that will never give in.

I continue to vote for Wisdom as the most confused stat of D&D.