How Do You Make Your Intelligent or Specialized Characters Sound Smart?

[Melville's Book]

Title pretty much says it all. If you want to roleplay about the fact that your character is really intelligent or at least very well-versed in a given something that you yourself aren't really well-versed in, how do you go about it?

Now, of course, before people start throwing food at me and booing, roleplaying out these traits is not somehow a requirement of good gaming. I'm just asking how you would go about it if you were wanting to do so.

You probably all know the situation. Your blacksmith character with insane smithing skills starts casually talking about the intricacies of his life's art, which he ought to know like the back of his hand, or you want your wizard to go through that common scene where he starts explaining something complex like teleportation and someone needs to tell him to "put it in layman's terms." Problem is, you don't know the first thing about how smiths actually do their thing or how spacial physics work for something like teleporting, and you don't just want to narrate that "he starts talking gibberish about how teleportation magic works."

So what do you do in those situations? I personally just throw together some fancy words I heard from a TV show or something, but I'd like to get some other ideas to twirl around in my head. What are your thoughts/experiences?

[Alex12]

I pretty much lift my magi-babble from Discworld whenever possible. Protip: when using magi-babble, the phrase "thaumic resonance" is never out of place.

Also, if you've got a more scholarly character, referencing made-up papers and ideas like "Tenser's Third Theorem of Transmutation"

[Tengu_temp]

Look up factoids on the internet in preparation. And other than that? Make **** up. The chances are, nobody at the table is better informed about this stuff than you anyway, especially if it's some fantasy topic with no relation to reality.

[Zale]

I usually try to do at least mild research about anything that my characters should know about.

I mean, you needn't know the dynamics of third-century blacksmithing to know how it goes vaguely. Just skimming the wikipedia article and familiarizing yourself with the terminology is a good step.

For magical things, I find the idea of the laws of physics existing in their proper form in any game with heavy magic to be really hilarious. I'd personally just brush up on my knowledge of occult lore, folklore and general historical magic use.

For teleportation magic, something like..

By manipulating the law of sympathy, which states like attracts to like, a willful mind can cause two disparate locations to temporarily overlap by tapping occult forces and carefully aligning one's mind to the platonic identity of both places. This causes the magister to, for the briefest of moments, exist in both locations at once (A phenomenon known as Bilocation, which is well known among certain outsiders). At that point they may shift their physical form ever so slightly so that it aligns with the desired location rather than with the current location, thus appearing to 'Instantly' transport the caster. This is, of course, only the simplest possible explanation of the effect itself- actual understanding would require the comprehension of several other magical principles and, this being the magic of wizardry, would enable one to actually use the spell- After all, knowledge is power. Quite literally in this case. If you have a few spare months, I can facilitate understanding in some of the more simple aspects of magic, so that you may learn the basics in order to pursue higher and more complex ideas.

..would work.

Or, form a Sorcerer-

I want to be somewhere, and boom, there I am. I don't look gift horse in the mouth.

[NichG]

Research really is key if you want it to sound realistic and not just made-up or fake. Picking something you know about makes it a lot easier, but it can also be a good opportunity to learn a lot about some particular thing.

When it comes to things that have no actual real-world equivalent (like explaining teleportation), then it can help if you work out some sort of underlying factoids with the DM in private, so you can say during game 'Ah, yes, teleportation uses the astral so of course in the elemental planes its restricted...' and things like that, because you and the DM have previously agreed that it will be true even if the other players don't know it.

[Lord Raziere]

yeah, sorcerer's have it easy:

Look man I just flip people off and fireballs fly out of them to make my wishes come true, y'know what I'm saying?

How do I fly? I curse at gravity and it flees in fear, the coward.

Look, I didn't know I made them explosive runes, I just was just like "screw this quill junk, I'm writing this with magic" and used my finger to trace them onto the page, there they were....

[Aedilred]

I guess there's a difference between portraying intelligence, and portraying knowledge. Portraying knowledge is rather easier, you just have to know stuff (or make it look like you do, for the sake of the RP). Wikipedia would be a good place to start if you want information on something real-world, like blacksmithing. For in-world details, consulting the GM in advance is also a good idea. You don't need to know great detail, since that would bore everyone to death, of course, just the basics.

Intelligence itself, though, is pretty intangible. A common way of doing it is to use lots of long, fancy, over-elaborate words (see Kin in the Goblins comic) but I rarely think that comes across well; it just makes you sound like an swotty schoolboy who's swallowed a dictionary. Many intelligent characters will speak only rarely, and in short phrases, but with great insight. One of the great things about The Wire was its ability to portray intelligent characters without losing their distinctive (and almost always working-class) voices. Some characters will just be able to see things and make connections that others miss. Unfortunately, it's quite hard to do that unless you're already very intelligent yourself.

A way to simulate it might be - although this could get quite irritating after a while, so use with discretion - during the planning phases, take a back seat (OOC) and focus on analysing other ideas that are put forward rather than presenting your own. Then pick holes in them, explain all the flaws, what contingencies would need to be put in place, etc. Of course, eventually they'll turn to you and ask you what you think - if you don't have a better idea yourself, just go with the plan you've heard so far that you think is best or most practical. Of course there are different types of intelligent character and some will be very forthright, some will be arrogant and not listen to others in the first place, and so on.

You can also do it through "metagaming" (sort of) to an extent. By thinking about strategies in combat, the RP situations and so on OOC between games you can contribute more usefully to tactical discussion, making the links between elements of the plot or characters that other people might have missed, and the like. And if you discuss it with the GM they might be prepared to work with you to make your intelligent character... appear more intelligent, if it's for the sake of good roleplaying.

[Slipperychicken]

You could try droning on about it until someone stops you. Or excitedly burst into an explanation, only to stop when people start giving you looks.

You can also simplify it.

"Well, you need to boot up the TRM before you can start cas -oh! that stands for Thaumaturgic Resonance Matrix -Wait, you don't know what any of that means, do you? Well, I basically need to spend some time meditating to figure out where all the magic goes, like putting books on a shelf, so they can fly off the 'shelf' later, flow into my hands where I shape it into something usable, and come out as spells"

[Jay R]

In general, it is better to not try to "look" smart, because really intelligent people don't do so. The intelligent person isn't the one who looks smart; she's the one whose ideas work.

But if you must, the best way to do it is to not give an explanation. If somebody asks you wizard how teleportation works, you should look at a candle, light it with a cantrip, and say, "Did you understand that? When you do, I can begin to teach you the principles that will, a few years later, lead to teleportation."

Or, to a fighter, "Can you explain a battle plan to somebody who doesn't know what swords and spears are?"

[Segev]

This thread has already discussed several different archetypes of "the smart character." The one the OP seems to be aiming at is the scholar who is really in to his subject matter and will wax loquacious about it if it comes up. (How tangential the subject is to his area of specialty will vary and will often be in direct proportion to how much of a space cadet the guy is about day-to-day matters.)

The others are the "smart doer" who doesn't say much but just lays out a clear plan and executes it, and the "mysterious know-it-all" (also known as "The Doctor") who will not explain things because they're too complex and seems a bit idiosyncratic at the best of times...but is usually right somehow.

Personally, I have found the easiest way to make a character "sound intelligent" is to be focused just a little too much on precision and detail. Admittedly, I am calling myself "smart-sounding," here, as one of my own failings in communication is that I tend to strive to be overly precise. This leads to sesquipedalian loquaciousness (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SesquipedalianLoquaciousness) on my part at times.

I therefore find this trait easy to RP; I don't know how easy it is for others who are more pithy in their communication. (I have a DEVIL of a time playing the mystery man, because they say so little...and that translates to so little getting across at the gaming table.)

But the easiest way to "sound smart," I think, is just to try very hard to have the character use exactly the right word for the specific meaning and circumstance, and to be as precise and detailed as possible...even if it means an extra sentence of dozen of explanation. If you don't know the precisely right word, just substitute more explanation. Not totally redundant repetition, but calling out specific exceptions or precisely defining what it is you mean by a given choice of word. (If you ever are pithy, make sure it's with EXACTLY the right word for what you mean.)

[Jay R]

Personally, I have found the easiest way to make a character "sound intelligent" is to be focused just a little too much on precision and detail.

That's how to make the character sound like Sheldon or Amy, but not like Leonard, Raj, Howard or Bernadette, all of whom are quite intelligent.

[Red Fel]

Going with what others have said, trying to make them sound smart (e.g. magibabble) works if you're doing a high-Int character who's socially awkward. A smart or skilled character who's just a normal Joe probably won't go on at length about how he does things; he just does them. And if asked, he can give a brief answer, like "Six years of sniper training," "Fight in seven wars and see how well you learn it," "I have three different doctorates, people," or "It's magic."

But another option? Fanboy-out.

Your character is good at magic, or swordplay, or archery or machinery or whatever. Fine. You have ways of showing your skill or intellect. Super. You don't need to "sound smart."

And then you see it. Maybe it's a scholar who revolutionized the art of conjuration. Maybe it's the original text that formed the basis for a form of critical tactical analysis. Maybe it's the sword of the first of a dynasty of kings, the very blade he wielded as he unified the tribes into a single glorious empire. Maybe it's a perfectly efficient perpetual motion engine utilizing a hydroelectric input.

That's where you can show your intellect and skills. Not by talking smart, certainly not all the time. By getting excited over something nobody else in the party understands. You don't even need the techbabble.

"Holy crap, is that a perpetual motion device? I thought those were imaginary!"

"My various gods, check out the balance on this sword. It feels so light!"

"I've never seen a first edition! Holy crap, you guys, he autographed it!"

You don't need to sound like Dr. Sheldon Cooper to come across as smart, or possessed of unique knowledge or skills. You simply have to have them and use them, and occasionally get excited about stuff that nobody else gets.

[Raphite1]

When you can't RP it yourself, that's when you roll the dice to see how your character did.

[OverdrivePrime]

I tend to do a lot of research to familiarize myself with the character's interests. I'll look up scholarly journals, specialized forums, read blogs and such so that I either know the lingo and topics of the area of expertise, or know where I can look them up at a moment's notice. I try to find a few bad jokes that only people in that specialized area would appreciate, because a unifying theme of my characters is that they all enjoy puns.

The only area where I'm not so good at this is music. I love to play bards, and my bards tend to know different forms of storytelling and ways to arrange verse, but I personally have something of a block when it comes to music. It all tends to jumble together for me, and it doesn't help that I game with a few actually talented musicians who get paid good money for their vocals and/or strumming.
Oddly, none of them ever play bards. :smallconfused:

For magicians, I've spent a fair amount of time looking up the writing of various kooky people that treat magic as a real science, and I'll throw dashes of that lexicon in with liberal amounts of BS. :)

[TeChameleon]

*shrug*

Honestly, there are as many ways to 'sound smart' as there are intelligent people/intelligent characters. In my own case, I tend to play high-int or specialized characters who approach things from a slightly cockeyed angle- as one of the members of my gaming group commented 'his ideas are weird, but they usually work'. It probably helps that I simply don't see things the way most people do in real life as well :smallredface:

In short, find your niche and what the rest of the group/DM is comfortable with you doing, and the rest should flow fairly naturally.

... although in a pinch, fragments of Greek or Latin ('scientific' terms) go a long way :smalltongue:

[Slipperychicken]

The only area where I'm not so good at this is music. I love to play bards, and my bards tend to know different forms of storytelling and ways to arrange verse, but I personally have something of a block when it comes to music. It all tends to jumble together for me, and it doesn't help that I game with a few actually talented musicians who get paid good money for their vocals and/or strumming.
Oddly, none of them ever play bards. :smallconfused:


I play music as a hobby, and I tell you that I would never bring a stringed instrument anywhere near a dungeon, much less to a fight. That just breaks immersion for me :smalltongue:

Besides, I can't even find listed costs for basic music stuff like rosin and bows. Or metronomes. Or even instrument-cases for that matter. And even if you fall over while playing (as a result of being stabbed), you'll dutifully keep playing uninterrupted, and your instrument wont even risk being scratched.

[Qwertystop]

Going with what others have said, trying to make them sound smart (e.g. magibabble) works if you're doing a high-Int character who's socially awkward. A smart or skilled character who's just a normal Joe probably won't go on at length about how he does things; he just does them. And if asked, he can give a brief answer, like "Six years of sniper training," "Fight in seven wars and see how well you learn it," "I have three different doctorates, people," or "It's magic."

But another option? Fanboy-out.

Your character is good at magic, or swordplay, or archery or machinery or whatever. Fine. You have ways of showing your skill or intellect. Super. You don't need to "sound smart."

And then you see it. Maybe it's a scholar who revolutionized the art of conjuration. Maybe it's the original text that formed the basis for a form of critical tactical analysis. Maybe it's the sword of the first of a dynasty of kings, the very blade he wielded as he unified the tribes into a single glorious empire. Maybe it's a perfectly efficient perpetual motion engine utilizing a hydroelectric input.

That's where you can show your intellect and skills. Not by talking smart, certainly not all the time. By getting excited over something nobody else in the party understands. You don't even need the techbabble.

"Holy crap, is that a perpetual motion device? I thought those were imaginary!"

"My various gods, check out the balance on this sword. It feels so light!"

"I've never seen a first edition! Holy crap, you guys, he autographed it!"

You don't need to sound like Dr. Sheldon Cooper to come across as smart, or possessed of unique knowledge or skills. You simply have to have them and use them, and occasionally get excited about stuff that nobody else gets.

I like this one, yeah.

[~xFellWardenx~]

I play music as a hobby, and I tell you that I would never bring a stringed instrument anywhere near a dungeon, much less to a fight. That just breaks immersion for me :smalltongue:

Besides, I can't even find listed costs for basic music stuff like rosin and bows. Or metronomes. Or even instrument-cases for that matter. And even if you fall over while playing (as a result of being stabbed), you'll dutifully keep playing uninterrupted, and your instrument wont even risk being scratched.

Okay, now, I'd be the kind of DM to ask for a Concentration roll there, but maybe that's just me.

No point giving the Bard disadvantages by applying too much realism. The enemy wants his instrument gone, they can sunder it like anything else.

Unless you have one of those jerk singer Bards. But hey, vocal cords... Or I guess in this case, chords... Can be cut too.

I second snippets of Greek and Latin.

[The Oni]

Curiously enough, the smartest character I have actually tends to come across as a bit dim (At Wis and Cha 7, I play him somewhere between "delusional superhero" and "mildly autistic"). Part of this is that he's sort of obsessed with chivalric ideals, so he's known to do things that he knows are a bad idea in the name of outdated heroism. A genre-savvy Don Quixote, if you will.

If you're going for the mad-scientist angle, technobabble is fine (and in fact quite enjoyable). Especially when they start spouting it wildly in the middle of actually working on something, sticking the parts together faster than they can explain it.

But assuming the character you're playing is intelligent and *not* socially deficient or unhinged, then yes. Have the characters get excited over things that don't make sense to other players. For added lulz, have them genuinely be confused when the 11 Int Barbarian is *not* chomping at the bit to get ahold of the only printed copy of Albert Fizzwig's Completed Treatises on Hyperkinetic Dimensional Transharmonics.

The head GM at the shop where I play PFS had a wizard who didn't believe in magic. He figures that casters are really just manipulating mundane principles at high speed with complex mental procedures, experiments, etc. using hidden properties of spell components as chemical catalysts (and I think he was adventuring specifically for the purpose of finding some way to prove his theory).

[GuesssWho]

I'm pretty smart myself, but I have no clue how a character would sound smart. Probably because 'smart' stuff sounds normal to me?

I suppose you could have the character come out with random facts, but you might wind up sounding live a 6-year-old with their first science book . . .

[QuidEst]

Analogies are great. They're a quick way to put something in layman's terms, and the limits of the analogy can cut off anywhere you need them to. It's not a bad way to show a bit of your character, too. Do they explain something using a waterfall or lemmings going off a cliff?

For something that exists in real life, like blacksmithing, it's harder. You can look it up, but a lot of the modern terminology is going to be useless. I'd probably try to talk a little more about his feelings with it, and keep it to broader statements. "If you cool it too soon, you'll ruin the whole thing and have to start over," for instance. Probably true, specific enough to sound knowledgeable, while remaining vague enough that if somebody does know about the entire process, you can let their knowledge fill it in.

[nedz]

In general, it is better to not try to "look" smart, because really intelligent people don't do so. The intelligent person isn't the one who looks smart; she's the one whose ideas work.

But if you must, the best way to do it is to not give an explanation. If somebody asks you wizard how teleportation works, you should look at a candle, light it with a cantrip, and say, "Did you understand that? When you do, I can begin to teach you the principles that will, a few years later, lead to teleportation."

This reminds me of the Quote "The height of cleverness is the art of concealing it" — though I forget who first said this.

[Jay R]

This reminds me of the Quote "The height of cleverness is the art of concealing it" — though I forget who first said this.

Not quite the same, but Piet Hein wrote:

You'll probably find
that it suits your book
to be a bit cleverer
than you look.
Observe that the easiest
method by far
is to look a bit stupider
than you are.

[2E Phoinex]

Probably an obvious answer would be to steal from books. A lot of fantasy novels (other genres too actually) expertly depict the little day to day experiences of characters. When I try to portray a black smith I think of Perrin from The Wheel of Time and how when he went to a new forge for the first time he would dip his finger into the water barrels, then lick them in order to find out which one contained salt water, which was used for a different type of quenching. Little mannerisms like that are gems for the role player. From that paragraph I learned that black smiths often had a water barrel, a salt water barrel, and even an olive oil barrel for varying degrees of softness.

You don't need him to tell his buddies exactly how he crafted the item, he can just reflect with glee how the metal screamed when he plunged it into the barrel and other mundane but interesting things like that.

The shallow understanding that I get of a lot of different things from good books are a constant source of inspiration when I role play in DnD.
Keep in mind that not all smart people feel obligated to geek out about their particular craft constantly. If they have a decent Charisma score they may even want to avoid this so as not to make their less specialized friends feel stupid.

Spouting out truly intelligent observations and facts in a particular field on the other hand can be a bit more ambitious. My answer is again to turn to books. OR delve into the rules that the game has over whatever it is your character is good at. A smart wizard will observe that "The nature of the magic missile spell is that it will never miss, but cannot be targeted to a specific body part or inanimate object; Therefore, Mr. Barbarian I cannot 'do that thing with the wand and break his scepter' because that is not how the spell functions. However, I may be able to distract him from using it while you shoot the scepter with your bow. " There is no reason why our arguments over the rules need to always be out of character hahaha