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Mc. Lovin'
2007-01-05, 05:14 PM
I was wandering what the best way of roleplaying a charachter with an itn score of 3 would be, i really have no idea. I have made an orc Barbarian with (as i said) int 3 and (as i said) i need help knowing what to do with it, thanks

Mick_the_Rogue
2007-01-05, 05:20 PM
Think Thog, very child like, with temper trantrums that translate into fits of rage. I personally never liked the idea of having very stupid characters, both mechanically and flavor wise

I mean it's kind of hard to do anyhow, without being funny, and in my experiance barbarians should not be funny, they should be scary....

Matthew
2007-01-05, 05:30 PM
A Player Character with an Intelligence of 3 is potentially a Character with significant mental acuity problems. He is only slightly more intelligent than a Dog or Cat and a potentially very difficult roleplaying challenge.

[Edit]Britan?

Pegasos989
2007-01-05, 05:31 PM
I also play nothing with mental scores under 6. I think that thog would be INT 5: even for a half-orc, far below average.

So think a lot more stupid than Thog. Int 3 is just barely over the line of being able to speak... It could be played kind of a feral beast who gets primal rage when angered but to be any kind of believable as such, you would need charisma over 10...

Chunklets
2007-01-05, 05:32 PM
You could play him as being extremely sensitive about his intelligence, and liable to engage in acts of extraordinary violence whenever anyone makes a crack about it. That could help solve the problem of him being merely comic relief, and give him a bit of the scariness that Mick alluded to.

Skyserpent
2007-01-05, 05:35 PM
We had a Barbarian with 5 Intelligence... the player decided that his character could only know single syllable words.

It was HILARIOUS.

Dark
2007-01-05, 05:36 PM
Thog is highly suggestible. You could go the opposite way: have a dumb character who leaps to the first conclusion that appears in his dim brain, and then stubbornly sticks to it come hell or high water. Even if he's temporarily convinced otherwise, it'll only take him ten minutes to forget those arguments and then bring his original notion up again.

Much scarier, especially when there's a lot of strength behind that stupidity. But potentially very frustrating for the other players. I predict a short life expectancy for this character :)

Pegasos989
2007-01-05, 05:37 PM
You could play him as being extremely sensitive about his intelligence, and liable to engage in acts of extraordinary violence whenever anyone makes a crack about it. That could help solve the problem of him being merely comic relief, and give him a bit of the scariness that Mick alluded to.


Int 3 would be barely able to understand words. Him understanding that he is mocked is very unlikely.

amanodel
2007-01-05, 05:46 PM
In one of the games here we were to roll stats. Invisicastle went hard on me and got a natural 5. I took it to int and went half-orc. It is hilarious to play him. Lowest int score possible.

Misunderstanding the simpliest words is fun. My half-orc currently thinks they are to kill the sherif, which he thinks is a beast.

It started not so long ago, here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28758) you can find it. I think I'm playing him smarter than he actually should be, tough.

The Black Prince
2007-01-05, 05:51 PM
Int 3 would be barely able to understand words. Him understanding that he is mocked is very unlikely.

Just because he has Int 3 doesn't mean that he can barely understand words. You see, animals don't understand us not because they have 2 Int, but because they don't speak ours or any language. They are capable of making primative sounds like barks, woofs, and meows. I think you should play him as a step abpve this. Able to speak, but with primative 1-3 syllable words.

Hey! You could play him as barely being able to speak, but with an okay Int. Or play him stupid, but with a good grasp of things.

:thog: thog smash!

Pegasos989
2007-01-05, 06:06 PM
Just because he has Int 3 doesn't mean that he can barely understand words. You see, animals don't understand us not because they have 2 Int, but because they don't speak ours or any language. They are capable of making primative sounds like barks, woofs, and meows. I think you should play him as a step abpve this. Able to speak, but with primative 1-3 syllable words.

Hey! You could play him as barely being able to speak, but with an okay Int. Or play him stupid, but with a good grasp of things.

:thog: thog smash!

As a owner of parrot which is capable of very humanlike sounds but not forming a single sentence, I would really say that the reason why animals couldn't speak is the intelligence 1-2 (Fiada has spent all her life among humans and been talked with for hours, every single day. She can imitate the words very closely but only can assossiate a few words, like "come" and a calling whistle. A human would learn language from such, I think.).

Int 3 is just extremely stupid.

Think of an average ogre. It has intelligence 6-7. Assuming normal array, elite array or pointbuy, ogres have intelligence of 4 minium. Intelligence 4 is so stupid that ogres see him as the "special" kid.

Now, a notch below it is intelligence 3.

Bryn
2007-01-05, 06:12 PM
You know, I'm the one who will have to DM for this character... :smalleek:

Another possibility: He might latch on to another character, probably a high-int one, and follow him around, doing whatever he says. A blind trust, so to speak. He could be fiercely loyal to said character, going into a rage if ever someone says something against them.

Chunklets
2007-01-05, 06:14 PM
Int 3 would be barely able to understand words. Him understanding that he is mocked is very unlikely.

Possibly, but that might, in fact, make him even scarier. Even if his vocabulary was small, he'd be able to pick up tone of voice and body language, and that could cause him to think he was being mocked when he actually wasn't, lending an element of unpredictability to his violent outbursts. I am reminded here of the running gag in the old Groo the Wanderer comics, where the title character flew off the handle every time someone called him a "mendicant", even though he didn't know what the word meant. Obviously, there it was being played for comedic effect, but you wouldn't necessarily have to do it that way.

Premier
2007-01-05, 06:22 PM
Possibly, but that might, in fact, make him even scarier. Even if his vocabulary was small, he'd be able to pick up tone of voice and body language

Or not. There are many kinds of mental handicaps were people are incapable of interpreting such non-verbal information. And INT 3 is certainly in the land of serious mental handicap.

TheOOB
2007-01-05, 08:02 PM
A character with an INT 3 is barely sapient, barely more intellegant then a dog would be. Their vocabulary probally only consistants of 100 or so simple words, they have only the most redumentry understanding of right or wrong, and it is near impossible for them to understand anything beyond simple survival instincts.

Thog probally has an Int around 6-7, he's extreamly simple and doesn't understand advanced or complex comcepts, but he is still more or less functional. A character with 4-5 int would be unable to function really at all in society, and a character with a 3 int would be barely more intellgant then a common animal.

Callos_DeTerran
2007-01-05, 08:07 PM
I was wandering what the best way of roleplaying a charachter with an itn score of 3 would be, i really have no idea. I have made an orc Barbarian with (as i said) int 3 and (as i said) i need help knowing what to do with it, thanks


Eat everything around him and destroy what can't be eaten. Sleep for years at a time for brief periods of destruction. Maybe drool alot and crap on peoples lawns.

How did the barbarian get an Int of 3? How is that even allowable? Your barbarian isn't even capable of speech! He's just as smart as the tarrasque without the advantages of being big and really hard to kill!

He doesn't even have human intelligence. Just human like. A clever animal at best.

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-01-05, 08:16 PM
"Forget" to listen to what the DM says. Just say you're doing things every now and then purely on whim with no care for any consequences. Feel free to shout "INSTINCT!" every time.

Toliudar
2007-01-05, 08:47 PM
I played a barbarian with an int of 4 and a charisma of 6 (rolled). I pegged him as having a fantasy disorder akin to a severe Down's Syndrome. As was suggested above, he was very closely bonded with a maternal character in the game, but cautious and suspicious around the other PC's. He was also stubborn as hell. Not particularly violent, under normal circumstances...until one of the other PC's thought it would be funny to give the barbarian his first taste of alcohol...

The very slow can create a kind of moral centre to the group - with a black and white sense of what should be - and are also, of course, great comic relief from time to time. My barbarian was a favourite character in the group, and others tended to work hard to shield him from the more complex realities of situations.

Shazzbaa
2007-01-05, 09:04 PM
Yeah, really base things off of animal instinct. Someone explaining to you why your animal instinct is not the best idea in this scenario is not going to make a lot of sense to you, and unless you've got another character who can tell you "just trust me," I doubt anyone would be able to convince you otherwise.

MrNexx
2007-01-05, 09:11 PM
Just out of curiousity, what are his Wisdom and Charisma? That's going to play a major role in his roleplaying, in addition to his Intelligence.

Tor the Fallen
2007-01-05, 09:33 PM
3 Intelligence is a lot. A single point of intelligence divides man from beasts. Even the goofiest of retards is miles ahead the most clever ape when it comes to language, communication and problem solving.

And animals aren't that dumb. They're exeedingly well adapted for their environment, and for mammalian megafauna, this means they use a large brain to adapt to environmental changes. Wild canines are not at all dumb, compared to their prey. Nor are ravens. Wolves are ruthless, efficient pack hunters, with social skills about on par with that of people. When it comes to society, dogs and humans are virtually identical. In fact, anthropologists speculate that 30,000 years ago, dogs helped people become more socialized as they learned how to hunt together.

Ravens are also socially organized, use tools, and adult birds engage in play. They have a keen memory. They watch other birds for environmental cues. They communicate with each other. Scientists that capture and study ravens must wear disguises, including mustaches, hats, and different types of clothes to fool ravens into letting them close enough. Fool them once....

I would play your barbarian (depending on charisma and wisdom) as an intelligent wolf. One that could talk, form rudimentary battle tactics (flanking, surprise, etc), count, use tools and lie. He would eat raw meat, avoid large crowds, dislike bright light, and places without cover. He would dislike clothes, cities and treeless areas. I would decide his verbosity on his charisma score. 10 or higher and he uses words, albeit simple. 10 or lower, he grunts, yells, or uses force. Or maybe just wouldn't talk.

iceman
2007-01-05, 09:59 PM
I have had some experience with playing dumb barbarians and even some not so stupid barbarians who merely acted dumb( its funny i always seem to fall into this roll because no one ever wants to be a front line tanker). any way an int score of 3 is pretty severe. The best thing to do is to do a combination of what has been said here. He would probably act like a four or five year old child and not know the difference between what is right and what is wrong. Also having him latch onto another character, probably a charismatic one and follow him or her around like a puppy.

Note: the most fun i ever had while playing a dumb barbarian was when my char was so stupid he had no concept of currency and therefore handed it over to the party rogue for "safe keeping" it was a regular occurance that my share of the treasure ended up benefiting someone else. That is until one day i was with the party buying supplies when I saw something i wanted and would have been able to afford if not for the thieving. Anyway to make an already long story shorter that particular shop got busted up a little bit along with a few of the city guards and the odd samaritan that was poking his nose where it didn't belong. The entire party was arrested and stripped of their possessions in order to pay for damages and we were then pressganged into the service of the city's officials. My share of the gold never came up short again.

krossbow
2007-01-05, 10:05 PM
I had a half-orc named "Lothar, the mentally challenged barbarian" in a campaing with a 4.


Speak in third person, have a vocabulary of about 100, so you repeat the same words alot, and horribly misinterpret what everyone else says.

Nothing pisses the clerics of grumphs off more than when they say "We want his land!" and you fill a few bags of holding up with dirt and deposit them on their shrine.

Heh, good old lothar.

ClericofPhwarrr
2007-01-05, 10:09 PM
Do remember that Int is not Wis. From the PH: "Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons." "Wisdom describes a character's willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition. While Intelligence represents one's ability to analyze information, Wisdom represents being in tune with and aware of one's surroundings. ... A simpleton (low Intelligence) might still have great insight (high Wisdom)."

If you've ever read Animal Farm, the character Boxer (the horse), could be a good inspiration. Immensely strong, he is convinced that any problem that his community befalls can be solved by increased effort on his part. He has become convinced of the community leader (Napoleon)'s infallability. This gives the basis for his two main sayings: "I will work harder, comrades!" and "Comrade Napoleon is always right." Initially, all the characters are trying to learn how to read. Boxer learns the letters A, B, C, and D. By the time he has learned E, F, G, and H, he has forgotten A-D. He relearns them, but cannot remember E-H. Despite being stupid, he is looked up to by almost everyone for his strength, willpower, and work ethic.

...yeah. I like Orwell's works.

krossbow
2007-01-05, 10:14 PM
Do remember that Int is not Wis. From the PH: "Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons." "Wisdom describes a character's willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition. While Intelligence represents one's ability to analyze information, Wisdom represents being in tune with and aware of one's surroundings. ... A simpleton (low Intelligence) might still have great insight (high Wisdom)."

If you've ever read Animal Farm, the character Boxer (the horse), could be a good inspiration. Immensely strong, he is convinced that any problem that his community befalls can be solved by increased effort on his part. He has become convinced of the community leader (Napoleon)'s infallability. This gives the basis for his two main sayings: "I will work harder, comrades!" and "Comrade Napoleon is always right." Initially, all the characters are trying to learn how to read. Boxer learns the letters A, B, C, and D. By the time he has learned E, F, G, and H, he has forgotten A-D. He relearns them, but cannot remember E-H. Despite being stupid, he is looked up to by almost everyone for his strength, willpower, and work ethic.

...yeah. I like Orwell's works.




Boxer had HORRIBLE perception though; he got sold off to a glue factory!

The person with wisdom was the goat, not boxer. If boxer was wise, he would of realized that "I will work harder!" was just the pigs way of using him (horrible sense motive, a wisdom skill).

ClericofPhwarrr
2007-01-05, 10:37 PM
Boxer had HORRIBLE perception though; he got sold off to a glue factory!

The person with wisdom was the goat donkey, not boxer. If boxer was wise, he would of realized that "I will work harder!" was just the pigs way of using him (horrible sense motive, a wisdom skill).

Yeah, he did. Though, technically, I never said that Boxer had a decent wisdom score... :smallbiggrin: Hence the two seperate paragraphs.

And really, most of the main characters other than Benjamin (said donkey) and the pigs have terrible wisdom (and intelligence).

Bouldering Jove
2007-01-05, 11:00 PM
Wisdom and Charisma are definitely the things to go by here. Even if he's dumb as a post, that's his ability to reason cognitively - with a high wisdom score, you might not to be able to explain a complicated plan to him, but he'd be cannily able to tell when someone was talking down to him or hiding something. Or to put it another way, he'd have a very good sense of the moment, and a very poor sense of consequences and how things play out over time (he always knows what's going on with A, but the path to B is a bit misty and C never enters his mind). With low charisma, he could be very indrawn and frustrating to talk to, and with high, he'd be so gregarious and likable that people are willing to be patient and explain things clearly to him.

themightybiggun
2007-01-06, 12:49 AM
If he's got a high wisdom, then you could get away with a primal cunning, like almost a predatory intelligence.

Low wisdom+low int= the incredible hulk, only capable of processing immediate threats and who is not "hurting hulk" and responding in turn.

Pllleeeease say he's got a decent wisdom! Please!!!

Oh, and his charisma will represent how well he can express himself too. An abysmal score there will truly make him the Hulk, unable to express himself in any other way than with his fists (or Greataxe)

krossbow
2007-01-06, 01:05 AM
Think of it this way: Thog has crap wisdom and intelligence but (I assume) great charisma.


Personally, I like to have my barbarians wear a top hat and monacle around because they're convinced it makes them "look fancy".

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-01-06, 01:10 AM
A friend of mine told me about a great barbarian in a campaign he played. He had two sacks. One was filled with meat. The other was filled with money to buy meat. His entire reason for adventuring was to get more money to buy more meat, as it was his only true love in life. Good deeds didn't make any sense to him if it didn't somehow involve promises to obtain either meat or money to buy said meat. It also never occured to him that he could steal the meat.

Basically, he was too stupid to be good or evil.

Mc. Lovin'
2007-01-06, 06:53 AM
Just out of curiousity, what are his Wisdom and Charisma? That's going to play a major role in his roleplaying, in addition to his Intelligence.

His ability scores wold be...

Str 22
Dex 15
Con 17
Int 3
Wis 6
Cha 13


If you've ever read Animal Farm, the character Boxer (the horse), could be a good inspiration. Immensely strong, he is convinced that any problem that his community befalls can be solved by increased effort on his part. He has become convinced of the community leader (Napoleon)'s infallability. This gives the basis for his two main sayings: "I will work harder, comrades!" and "Comrade Napoleon is always right." Initially, all the characters are trying to learn how to read. Boxer learns the letters A, B, C, and D. By the time he has learned E, F, G, and H, he has forgotten A-D. He relearns them, but cannot remember E-H. Despite being stupid, he is looked up to by almost everyone for his strength, willpower, and work ethic.

I like this idea, it would give the party a raison to keep him around, because he is good, not always shouting and hurting. Meybe writing down his 'vast' vocabulary would help me roleplay him a bit more

amanodel
2007-01-06, 08:09 AM
High charisma for the win! As charisma leads by a lot, he could be an egomaniac, and think he's much better than anyone else (thanks to low int and wis).

Vocabulary can increase, no matter if he understands the world.

:thog: thog has no ris-pon-se-bee-lee-tee.

Quincunx
2007-01-06, 10:55 AM
A friend of mine told me about a great barbarian in a campaign he played. He had two sacks. One was filled with meat. The other was filled with money to buy meat. His entire reason for adventuring was to get more money to buy more meat, as it was his only true love in life. Good deeds didn't make any sense to him if it didn't somehow involve promises to obtain either meat or money to buy said meat. It also never occured to him that he could steal the meat.

Basically, he was too stupid to be good or evil.

This is inspirational. Tor's idea of an animalistic human is easier to roleplay, and probably closer to what a 3 could achieve (I'm not sure a 3 would understand money--money is a kind of language)--but this is the type of character whose reputation spreads, and you have enough charisma to have a reputation. Take a little from column A, a little from column B. . .if you can understand metaphors, which you couldn't. . .or maps, plans, disguises, or other abstract ideas. . .How much of a memory would you have with int 3? What could you learn?

In 3d6 down-the-line, my character had a pair of 5s (con + int) in an otherwise respectable array; I chose for her background a disease that would have dragged down those two scores. If you want to explain the low stats as something that wasn't there from birth, you'd need some psychological disorder or the aftereffects of a prolonged fever, lowering wis + int without touching the physical stats. Caring for a childlike character of toddler age gets very wearisome for the guardian PC(s), and I don't think int 3 can be played much above age 3.

themightybiggun
2007-01-06, 03:07 PM
Okay, so even an uneducated cunning is out of the question with only a 6 in wisdom. But with higher Cha he would probably have a completely inflated view of himself and his abilities and would constantly be trying to impress the other pcs with his fancy skills...

MrNexx
2007-01-06, 03:55 PM
His ability scores wold be...

Str 22
Dex 15
Con 17
Int 3
Wis 6
Cha 13


Hmmm... I'm reminded of the 2nd edition PH, which actually gave you a stat array, and several different ways of interpreting it. In this case, I would say that he's severely retarded and autistic (not really aware of his surroundings and takes in new information painfully slowly; low wisdom, super-low intelligence), but can be easily swayed by those he trusts (low wisdom). However, the Charisma means one of two things... he's a scary madre-wombater, or he's simply the friendliest individual you've ever met, especially to people his friends tell him he should trust... and his friends are somewhat situational, depending on the charisma of those he encounters.

Did you ever see Goonies? Do you remember Sloth? Immensely strong, tough, and severely mentally retarded and deformed? Who spent every day in front of the television, and communicated largely in terms of things that he would've seen and heard repeated time after time ("Hey you guys!" was a cry from a children's show; Baby Ruth candy bars; ripping his shirt open to reveal a Superman logo). That should be your role-playing model. Your job in the party is to find your Chunk... the person who tells you what to do and takes care of you... and do what they say. If they tell you to hit that person, you hit that person. If they tell you not to, you don't, even if you're not sure why.

Spacefrog
2007-01-06, 06:16 PM
I think there's actually a question about playing a character with Int 3 in the D&D FAQ on the Wizards of the Coast official site.

Low Int, low Wis, and decent Cha sounds to me like he's a loveable buffoon. I wouldn't say he's an egomaniac, at least not in any way that makes him unpleasant to be around -- that sounds more like someone who has low Cha but thinks he has high Cha!

As for money, I would think an Int 3 character could understand the concept of money but maybe have difficulty counting it or comparing different amounts, especially large ones. You might have to keep explaining to him the difference between a hundred and a thousand, because they're both too big for him to visualize.

Karsh
2007-01-06, 06:51 PM
With the coins thing, if you go with that, make him choose larger quantities of less valuable coins whenever possible. Someone that dumb isn't going to understand the concept of a smaller number of gold coins being worth vastly more than a large number of bronze ones.

This screws your WBL, but your character shouldn't be making intelligent decisions when it comes to magic items anyways.

Athenodorus
2007-01-06, 07:20 PM
This is making me hungry to RP a low-int, high-wis monk or priest. It would probably make me cry through, I am such a sucker for sad stuff.
*casts Cure Moderate Damage To Masculinity*

Tor the Fallen
2007-01-06, 11:53 PM
I would switch charisma with wisdom, if it's still possible, and play it as a feral child, all grown up. That high will save will be nice, too.

MrNexx's suggestion to play him like Sloth is excellent. He's either going to be a loveable buffoon, or an intimidating monster.

krossbow
2007-01-07, 12:09 AM
Hey, use high charisma IMO, not wisdom: Barbarians are great for intimidation, especially with intimidating rage.

Plus, with strength of personality, you can sub charisma for wisdom against mental domination or effects, and BAM! Zap brannigan!
________
VAPORIZER REVIEW (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmixODIvAtM)

MrNexx
2007-01-07, 12:24 AM
MrNexx's suggestion to play him like Sloth is excellent. He's either going to be a loveable buffoon, or an intimidating monster.

Or both, depending on the situation.

"We're in deep drek now, Frances."