i guess the whole naming the stat intelligence confuses me, i generally see it reflected elsewhere as your actual intelect and ability to focus, and in this way it allows those who use magic to harness the various forces they wield. while on the other hand a warrior doesn't actually need too much intelligence

hmm cool explanation
In discworld (sorry one of my favourite books) the mages are highly intelligent and soo lazy that they use their minds to find ways around actually doing things.
While the vocab of the most intelligent of warriors stretches a little beyond that of a ten year old

wrap up: sorry about this it's just i've always been presented with intelligence as being how smart the character is. The smarter the character the stronger their power because their mental ability is the main factor in controling something that isn't truely physical. Those races who are naturally more intelligent often are focused around magic and the like.

EDIT: also no ninjaing and keep in mind that 12 - 14 is average intelligence

I've never played a warrior archtype here, but from what I understand it takes a bit of skill and strategy to be able to fight well... so possessing a bit of intelligence, while not of the kind that shows up on STAT, would probably be a common trait among warriors.

yeah but the way game stats seem to work no warrior seems to ever gain a bonus from any int

Surge gives them a huge INT-based advantage. One reason Dracnari warriors were so popular pre-race changes.

Intelligence is useful for everyone, more or less but it is. A bit like Constitution.

Not like, let's say, strength which is useless for me as a Guardian, save <0.1s longer shieldstun. And I love the fact it's a strength bonus we get in Highmagic, I really do.

Roleplaying a character with the intelligence of a three year old is extremely, extremely difficult. And now that I've got my mind so deeply involved in it, I can barely RP Erion anymore (I've logged him on a few times, and barely scraped by - it's a serious struggle for me now!). Nor can I roleplay much else that's small cute and fuzzy - they end up behaving just like Kalo, minus the third-person speech and the misanthropic fae-spirit in his head.

Hmm I've always tried to roleplay Lomdomian as a sort of low intelligence - high wisdom kind of creature. As in, he would have quite sophisticated arguments and thoughs, but a rather poor grasp on the common tongue.

That was mostly because he was quite proud of being a Tae'Dae though and thus never bothered to really learn to speak proper Common in his youth. He was always able to speak perfectly fine in Tae'Dae.

He only started speaking proper Common after he had become a Seccy in the Moondancers and took language lessons with Miss Trundle in Estelbar so he could do his job properly

Then when he got bound to the Glomdoring by Gwynevere's coven, he lapsed back to his old impaired speech for a while to portray being rather jumbled up mentally for a while. He still does it on rare occasions when the shadowy bonds are weakened for some reason.

When I was a mortal on Achaea, I once attempted to RP a dumb troll brutish warrior, complete with bad trollish grammar. The guild leaders just yelled at me and told me to talk normally, which was a disappointment. I guess they don't understand over there that being stupid can actually be RP. Needless to say, the character didn't last long, though it was amusing while it lasted. (His name was Ugluk in case anyone remembers his remembers his brief existence.) It is actually more difficult to do something like that because you have to be consistant in your stupidity (like making the same grammatical mistakes consistantly).

Another difficulty was when I OOCly was smarter than the other character I was interacting with, it was hard to not "outsmart" the other person. Like if he's preaching the doctrine of the guild, and I OOCly see inconsistancies in it, it was always tempting to point it out and act confused since a troll would not be able to resolve the conflict beyond just suffering from massive foggy-headed confusion. Players didn't like being outwitted by a stupid brute professing to be confused, so that made him even less popular.

This is tricky. Hold on let me put my thinking cap on. Alright. That was close. I saw earlier that some one mentioned how Intelligence was primarily connected with arcane comprehension rather than run-of-the-mill mundane capacity (not in so many words; sorry I'm just wordy). That is precisely how I understood this to be. After all, doesn't Intelligence effect your mana points and nothing else? Think on it. If it did effect things, such as capacity for learning, then you would notice that humans who--until Evolution at level 50--have balanced statistics across the board, yet gain experience at an astounding rate. They are mediocre in comparison to a Merian in Intelligence yet still learn faster than them. Isn't this quintessentially intelligence in the way that you mention it? Of course it is. Development of assets and functionality is intelligence, but in Lusternia it goes beyond the mundane. What you consider intelligence collectively should actually be called wisdom. Your perception of life, what is and what may become is wisdom. Deciphering the intracacies of planar layers and traversing them would fall under intelligence, but knowing the difference between a good form of attack and a bad one would be wisdom. Or prudence, I prefer prudence over saying wise. Consider this: you may not think of your character as being one type of person or another based on his race and what you have worked out for him but you also have to draw a line at some point between what you think works for your character and what works for you. Sure, an Igasho shouldn't really know that much about planar travel, but for the sake of his guild he would find it necessary to be able to travel to the different planes to defend the powers that be. In fact, in New Celest, particularly among the Paladins, it is required that you at least be able to travel to Celestia on a planar level or you will never go beyond the rank of Squire. Some times you just can't sacrifice the long-term life of your character for who/what you may think they are in the now. It just won't work out for you all the time. So just do the best you can with what you have and have a good time. If you're more intellectual than what someone might think your race should be I don't think any one is going to complain and say, "For the love of the gods, please stop being so smart and helpful." Y'know? Hope I made sense, if not it won't be a big surprise to me.

There is more to it than just a number. If you roleplay intelligence solely on the basis of a number, you are setting yourself up for failure. If every Imperial Merian went around acting like they had an 18 Int, you would have a city full of Einstein geniuses, resulting in one big nerd fest. Revenge of the nerds anyone? Magnagora sure looks like a bunch of jocks to me...

Intelligence should be based on your character's role. If you choose to make him smart, then play him smart. If you choose make him slow, make him slow. Your race should not be the sole factor in determining your character's mental capacity. And remember, there are always exceptions in every species.

I think race should play some role in it. For example, some merians will be smarter than others, as will tae'dae, but the average merian should be smarter than the average tae'dae. Thus for example if you are a smart tae'dae then you could write a history of leaving your tribe because you just could not relate to your fellow tae'dae comrades, and so you have moved to the big city where things are more intellectually stimulating. Or if you are a dumb merian then you could claim that the elitist school (as in "school of fish") you came from rejected any young that did not measure up to their intelligence standards, and so you came to Celest to make a new life for yourself in the Paladins.

Ack! That wasn't supposed to happen!

Are you implying that Celest warriors are dumb compared to other warriors?

Did I ever say you were great Roark? This is awesome!!

I play an Igasho, with a low Intelligence score, but I do not give up my common sense or even my good grammar. Instead, I play it as I'm just a little slow to pick up on some of the complex things people discuss. If anyone says that I speak well for my intelligence level, I simply say that I had excellent tutors as a child.

I can agree with Lisaera, though. Low intelligence doesn't mean you're an idiot. I might mean you have a learning disability, and so you have trouble with certain concepts. Or it might just mean you have less capacity for practicing magic, and you tend to rely on more brute strength to get the job done.