"I'm honestly a bit puzzled as to why wizards don't already know calculus and not just topology. But maybe if spell design is hard enough to require specialized ultra-expensive intelligence headbands and calculus is only useful once you get to that part... well, that's a topic for another time." Keltham is going to be so amused if the actual key to spell design is on the order of 'invert the matrix to solve for the balancing point' and they just don't know how to invert matrices, but he is mostly not expecting this to be the case, though the incredibly bad design of Chelish schools sure has bumped up its plausibility.
"Anyways, uh, now that I've said all that, and just to check, has anyone had a sudden horrible realization about how mutations for lower Intelligence would be propagating, or why only what this world calls 'average intelligence' is the way for a family to have the most grandchildren, or why the Chelish heritage-optimization program is doing something horribly wrong around there? I don't have anything specific in mind, here, I just, uh, it seems wise to check."