Clothing and meds that increase your intelligence. things like hacking computers are linked to perks. if you do not have a perk, increasing your intelligence by putting clothes on wont let you hack that computer. Charisma, agility, strength, luck, perception, endurance, I understand the benefit for those.

Why would you take chems to increase intelligence? why carry around clothing to boost intelligence? I havent finished the game yet so maybe theres a reason im just not seeing.

Intelligence governs XP gain.

Intelligence boosting gear = moar XP

Being more intelligent helps with Hacking, the higher your intelligence the less words there are to pick from in the hacking screen, also it effects the size of the words, and how many dud entry removal lines that there will be.

At 10 INT there might only be 4 or 5 possible words to pick to hack the computer.

but is it worth carrying around clothing to gain xp? is it worth risking a drug addiction just to remove a word, if that? to me it isnt, i seem to level up relatively quick. and the computers seem easier to hack than FO3/NV but maybe thats just the way i perceive it.

I guess i was looking for more dialog options or an intelligence check required for secrets or something.

maybe im just crazy. I miss things from FO3 like finding primes messages in the computer terminals in the museum that unlocks the unique assault rifle the Xuanlong assault rifle. or passing a speech check in oasis to get a unique item giving you a boost in speech. or finding a note from sunbeam's father then telling her what happend and getting a unique weapon. or rigging an election and kicking commander dave out of his own republic. random encounters and so on. I havent run across any of these types of things.

Self removed due to spoilers

Somewhat related, I also miss the skill or perk related speech checks. Such as using strength to intimidate, medicine to convince someone to do something or robotics expert to make a robot shut itself down.

they have several speech checks that are moderated by Charisma,

Because fair variety. Imagine if there were no INT related items. people would be on here going "oh em gee, where are the lab coats plox?"