Quote:
Originally Posted by Senturian
"Whereas IQ only does two jobs: it regulates memory capacity (the number of things you can learn), and complexity (the difficulty of the things you can learn). It's so weak heroes don't even need the stat in Melee. Even when they have it, they rarely ever need to use it in combat."
so what you're saying is that: Intelligence isn't important.
sorry, couldn't resist.
but seriously, how about those non wizard characters that rely on Int, such as thieves? I know I'd like to know what trap I set off while I take my last few breaths.
Even Conan needs to disbelieve the Illusions dragging him down in HTH.
|
You're right, I forgot to count disbelief! So original IQ served a 3rd function, and that one was equally valuable to all types of characters.
It wasn't until the introduction of talents in the first printing of ITL around 1981(?) that IQ served any
other purpose for a non-wizard. My old group had played about 40 all-day, 12 hour campaign sessions by then! That's how we ended up with more house rules than rules as written, because we were filling in the gaps as we played, and writing down how we handled things (climbing, jumping, swimming, riding, mid-air combat, potions, enchantment, language rules) so we'd always do it the same way the
next time a similar situation arose. All before there were any official rules on these subjects. This resulted in a whopping 200 pages of typed, single space house rules! Just one glance at that giant binder sent newly recruited players screaming out the door.
But we really didn't change any but one of the original Melee/Wizard rules at that early point, only added to them. We got more radical later, but at that point we weren't doing anything like using IQ to power spells, nor did we ever have any ST/Mana batteries. Our only departure from the RAW back then was one change in character creation: we made the starting human MA only 8, creating 2 more free points to go on any other attribute. That was probably more beneficial to starting wizards than other characters, but not by enough to really keep them alive.
I wouldn't use that MA house rule in a new group, nor a lot of the other house rules from my old group. Assuming I start a new group, I want the novice players to have as few exceptions from the RAW to learn and worry about. I want to rely on the official SJ rules and rule books as much as possible but I can't completely forgo what I learned about IQ, memory, and powering spells (and a few things about staves) from playing all those years ago. (We had a much cooler Staff spell too).