Int 24 (3.5)

[Adamaro]

I was looking at balors' stats the other day and this fella has int 24. IMO 10 is average intelligence, highly educated person (able to graduate on a college) may have int 14, while genius starts between 15 and 20. Einstein was maybe 22 and 24 ... well, thats IMO smart. Real smart. So I was thinking how would monsters' above average int. reflect in its approach to combat? Surely balor will not just teleport itself to an enemy and whack away ...
How do you think would such a creature make a comleptely unfair fight? Especially since it has CR 20 and usually faces high lvl characters(wizards!).

[Ponce]

With something like Int 24, it would (if it were real) perform a lot better than you would, on average. Best just to try your hardest and not dwell on the matter too much.

[Adamaro]

With something like Int 24, it would (if it were real) perform a lot better than you would, on average. Best just to try your hardest and not dwell on the matter too much.

True. Thats why I would like some "dirty trick" suggestions to reflect this int. lvl.

[Irreverent Fool]

I was looking at balors' stats the other day and this fella has int 24. IMO 10 is average intelligence, highly educated person (able to graduate on a college) may have int 14, while genius starts between 15 and 20. Einstein was maybe 22 and 24 ... well, thats IMO smart. Real smart. So I was thinking how would monsters' above average int. reflect in its approach to combat? Surely balor will not just teleport itself to an enemy and whack away ...
How do you think would such a creature make a comleptely unfair fight? Especially since it has CR 20 and usually faces high lvl characters(wizards!).

Balors would show up in pairs and take turns using blasphemy, ensuring that non-evil characters in range never get actions.

obnoxious
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[Adamaro]

Balors would show up in pairs and take turns using blasphemy, ensuring that non-evil characters in range never get actions.

obnoxious
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Wut? How? Blasphemy only dazes weakens, paralyses ...

[Ossian]

I was looking at balors' stats the other day and this fella has int 24. IMO 10 is average intelligence, highly educated person (able to graduate on a college) may have int 14, while genius starts between 15 and 20. Einstein was maybe 22 and 24 ... well, thats IMO smart. Real smart. So I was thinking how would monsters' above average int. reflect in its approach to combat? Surely balor will not just teleport itself to an enemy and whack away ...
How do you think would such a creature make a comleptely unfair fight? Especially since it has CR 20 and usually faces high lvl characters(wizards!).

It is a kind of cunning intelligence, that of the Balors. While supernatural, without "Knowledge - Mathematics" and skill focus in the same skill, a team of researchers, commitment and interest, years of research and top of the line equipment, no Balor (or Einstein himself) could come up with relativity.

Besides, the D&D INT scale kinda misrepresents our education system, or our 20th century geniuses.

A Balor is capable of taking rational decisions in a split second, to outscheme and outplan most people you would call smart and wise, and has massive lots of skill as a result of the high INT bonus.

Best thing you can do is, as a DM, to plan responses to even the most obscure and improbable scenarios, even to stuff that the Balor could not normally plan ahead or know of, to simulate the fact that he has INT 24 and centuries of slaughters on his CV and...well, you don't (I suppose ;) )

O.

[Irreverent Fool]

Wut? How? Blasphemy only dazes weakens, paralyses ...

Blasphemy dazes without a save.

Dazed

The creature is unable to act normally. A dazed creature can take no actions, but has no penalty to AC.

A dazed condition typically lasts 1 round.

obnoxious
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[Runestar]

Balors would show up in pairs and take turns using blasphemy, ensuring that non-evil characters in range never get actions.

obnoxious
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A balor can summon another balor, so you don't even need a pair to do the job.

That said, I don't think its int was a major factor, considering its sample battle sequence.

[Spiryt]

It is a kind of cunning intelligence, that of the Balors. While supernatural, without "Knowledge - Mathematics" and skill focus in the same skill, a team of researchers, commitment and interest, years of research and top of the line equipment, no Balor (or Einstein himself) could come up with relativity.

Besides, the D&D INT scale kinda misrepresents our education system, or our 20th century geniuses.

A Balor is capable of taking rational decisions in a split second, to outscheme and outplan most people you would call smart and wise, and has massive lots of skill as a result of the high INT bonus.

Best thing you can do is, as a DM, to plan responses to even the most obscure and improbable scenarios, even to stuff that the Balor could not normally plan ahead or know of, to simulate the fact that he has INT 24 and centuries of slaughters on his CV and...well, you don't (I suppose ;) )

O.

This.

Any ecounter with such creature should be planned by DM, so he can have "find" nice solution for everything.

The problem is that on such levels, it's pretty certain that Wizzzard will have some really silly Int, not "mere" 24.

[Incompleat]

I was looking at balors' stats the other day and this fella has int 24. IMO 10 is average intelligence, highly educated person (able to graduate on a college) may have int 14, while genius starts between 15 and 20. Einstein was maybe 22 and 24 ...

No, I don't think so.

10 is average intelligence, able to graduate a college = 8 or higher (perhaps 10 or higher for especially difficult subjects, or if you meant "able to graduate with top grades from a good college"), genius = 14 or higher.

Really, getting a college degree does not require much intelligence: pretty much everyone can do so with just a little bit of good, old-fashioned hard work.

Einstein probably was a 17 or 18 INT - remember, int 18 is the highest an unaugmented human could possibly have - who put a lot of skill points in knowledge(physics) and knowledge(mathematics), and more generally worked his butt off.

[Killer Angel]

Any ecounter with such creature should be planned by DM, so he can have "find" nice solution for everything.

And to roleplay his superior tactic, thanks to Int 24, You'll ask before some suggestion from the forum's optimizers... you cannot have Int 24, but you'll have at disposal a hive mind!

[Yora]

A balor can summon another balor, so you don't even need a pair to do the job.

Yes, he can. And the he has another power hungry and backstabbing CR 20 fiend with him, which now knows what kind of situation he thinks he can't handle himself. And the summoned balor surely won't be to happy to have to fight someone elses battle. Depending on the actual threat for the initial balor, it might be a better idea to go for 1d4 hezrous instead.

[Irreverent Fool]

Yes, he can. And the he has another power hungry and backstabbing CR 20 fiend with him, which now knows what kind of situation he thinks he can't handle himself. And the summoned balor surely won't be to happy to have to fight someone elses battle. Depending on the actual threat for the initial balor, it might be a better idea to go for 1d4 hezrous instead.

Very good point. Of course, he could get a simulacrum of himself which is 100% loyal and still has blasphemy at will.

obnoxious
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[Yora]

Depends on the fluff, of course. But I belive in planescape, it was explicitly stated that most outsiders just hate to having resolve to summoning because it often causes more troubles than it solves.

[Eldan]

A mundance genius theoretically could get to a 22, if he spent his level 4 bonus and got a +3 from age. Since earth humans top at around level 4-5, it could rarely happen.

[hamishspence]

"Earth humans top at 4-5" is highly debatable- not proven.

It might work for combat capability- but multiple sources (Arms & Equipment Guide, Cityscape, DMG2) suggest that skillwise, humans should reach much higher levels.

[Eldan]

It depends: a very focused human, such as an olympic athlete, or a researcher, would probably get skill focus in his skill, a full 6-8 ranks, a high attribute in that area, circumstance boni and maybe a second feat for a +2. So they can get up to more than +20 at level five. And that's without modern tools which most likely give more circumstance boni or help from apprentices and colleagues.

[hamishspence]

Possible.

DMG2 has an array of "unusual NPC abilities"- one of which is Prodigy- which is not supernatural.

This one might help to account for the more exceptional, one in a billion or so, type of person.

[Runestar]

Yes, he can. And the he has another power hungry and backstabbing CR 20 fiend with him, which now knows what kind of situation he thinks he can't handle himself. And the summoned balor surely won't be to happy to have to fight someone elses battle. Depending on the actual threat for the initial balor, it might be a better idea to go for 1d4 hezrous instead.

I find 2 balors easier to handle than another hezrou (since it shares the same stat block as the existing balor). Plus, it follows the rules for summon monster, which means the summoned balor has to follow the instructions of the 1st balor, whether it likes it or not.

Or to be an even bigger jerk, maybe give it swift concentration so it can maintain implosion as a move (or even swift) action.

[Gaiyamato]

If you look, it is suggested that ordinary humans should at most be able to pass a DC 25, maybe one person in millions and DC 30.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/usingSkills.htm

DC 30 is a Heroic feats of near super human proportions.
This means at with 1D20+skill bonus you should only just hit 30 tops assuming you are a very much above average human.
Take into account Assist other for +2 and that means that with 18 INT and INT based skill should have no more than maybe 4 ranks in it at best.

This means that all of us are actually level 1, with maybe the odd level 2 walking about, nearly all of us are Experts or Commoners (mostly Experts with modern education), perhaps the odd Aristocrat, for our first level.

So level 4-5 at best sounds more than reasonable. Extremely high in fact.

We can so powerful and get away with so much in DnD because it is a game about being super human and super powerful, full of magic and fantastical stuff far beyond our normal mundane abilties.
So in DnD the Human wizard can get huge intelligence, but he would be far beyond the ken of you or I.

I would say that even at best guess we would be lucky to have more than one or two people even approaching 14 INT on this forum and I would highly doubt anyone above that. Most people would be in the 10-12 range I would say.
So now you think of that 24 INT Balor. *shudders*

Just imagine throwing level 1 NPC Expert Class Humans with all thier stats being at best 14, most likely most of them being 10-12 range.

[The Vorpal Tribble]

From what I've heard from Wizards writers, 10 is like an iq of 100. 11 is 110, 120 is 120, etc.

In that case you're not approaching genius until around a 16-18.

[hamishspence]

If you look, it is suggested that ordinary humans should at most be able to pass a DC 25, maybe one person in millions and DC 30.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/usingSkills.htm

DC 30 is a Heroic feats of near super human proportions.
This means at with 1D20+skill bonus you should only just hit 30 tops assuming you are a very much above average human.
Take into account Assist other for +2 and that means that with 18 INT and INT based skill should have no more than maybe 4 ranks in it at best.

This means that all of us are actually level 1, with maybe the odd level 2 walking about, nearly all of us are Experts or Commoners (mostly Experts with modern education), perhaps the odd Aristocrat, for our first level.

I don't think D20 Modern took that approach.

Also- on genius- some versions of IQ testing have 140 being genius.

[Volkov]

1 int=10 iq points IMHO. 240 IQ points is at Mozart's level or so. He'd still be easily outwitted by a pit fiend.

[Gaiyamato]

Yeah DnD doesnt scale very well into IQ ranges. lol.
10-12 covers from aprox IQ 90-120 in DnD.

[hamishspence]

1 int=10 iq points IMHO.

While this was suggested in Dragon, very early on, and repeated in a 3.5 FAQ- it's also been disputed a lot.

[Irreverent Fool]

I find 2 balors easier to handle than another hezrou (since it shares the same stat block as the existing balor). Plus, it follows the rules for summon monster, which means the summoned balor has to follow the instructions of the 1st balor, whether it likes it or not.

Or to be an even bigger jerk, maybe give it swift concentration so it can maintain implosion as a move (or even swift) action.

Yes, but afterwards, the summoner is in the summoned Balor's debt, which isn't a place even a Balor wants to be.

obnoxious
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[Optimystik]

Yes, he can. And the he has another power hungry and backstabbing CR 20 fiend with him, which now knows what kind of situation he thinks he can't handle himself. And the summoned balor surely won't be to happy to have to fight someone elses battle. Depending on the actual threat for the initial balor, it might be a better idea to go for 1d4 hezrous instead.

I'd like to add a qualifier here - according to FC1, summoned Demons fight with reckless abandon, because they know that they can't actually be harmed unless they are Called. Called demons are much worse off - if they die, they can be demoted all the way down to dretch or even mane - even Balors are subject to this. But being summoned acts as protection.

"When a demon is summoned out of the Abyss magically, it simply returns unharmed when the spell ends or when it is destroyed, no matter what happens to it in the meantime. Thus, demons summoned to the material plane have little fear of death."

That says to me that if a Balor summons another Balor, the second one will feel invincible and be out solely to have a good time. Furthermore, summoned demons are happy to fight others' battles - "As long as a demon is asked to do things it wants to do anyway (such as kill, maim, destroy or corrupt), it serves."

There is, however, another reason for the Balor to go for 1d4 Hezrous over a second Balor - they are listed under the "Overlord" archetype, so they're more likely to want multiple weaker minions to boss around in combat than one strong one - but they will still summon the backup they feel fits the situation, so they'll be unlikely to ever summon 4d10 dretches for a battle where quality > quantity.

Bottom line: it's not clear-cut. One thing is certain, is that the Balor will summon something almost immediately using its default tactics. Whether that something is another Balor, a Nalfeshnee, or a pile of dretches is up to the DM to decide.

[2xMachina]

1 coupon for being summoned later.

It'll be a pretty good system.

The Buddy System! For when you're being attacked by small, good adventurers!

[Runestar]

Yes, but afterwards, the summoner is in the summoned Balor's debt, which isn't a place even a Balor wants to be.

obnoxious
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And that is a problem for the PCs because...?

[Volkov]

And that is a problem for the PCs because...?

He'll have to leave for a while, then return as a demon lord or advanced balor. Which is something no one wants.