Playing Villains With Higher Than Human Intelligence

[walfulninja]

How do you properly roleplay a monster that has intelligence beyond what humans can reach? I'm talking dragons, mindflayers, beholders etc.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Easiest way I know of is to simply have their strategy countered ahead of time. Spy network + incredible int means they know of counters to your plan before you have your plan fully fleshed out.
Another way is to make a binder of possible plans your PCs can take and have something to help counter each of these. If your PCs come up with an exceptionally novel way to outwit the opponent then let them have their reward. Otherwise let 'er rip!

[Rhyltran]

How do you properly roleplay a monster that has intelligence beyond what humans can reach? I'm talking dragons, mindflayers, beholders etc.

As the other poster stated you can give them a massive spy network. Usually dragons can appear to be humanoids. This is why I avoid the lair bit. Their lairs are usually for treasure which is hidden but the dragon itself is usually right under everyone else's nose. Might even be the king of a major city or an influential mayor. Trying to attack him directly or even accuse him of being a dragon could have him charge you with treason but it doesn't mean it has to be hopeless for pc's. A mind flayer may have some mind controlled slaves, traps, and have a perfectly defensive position that can prevent normal adventurers from ever standing a chance. They made their connections ahead of time, covered their bases, and planned ahead for any eventuality but sometimes no matter how well the plan is it doesn't matter when "superman" can move faster than the speed of light and smash through adamantine walls if you catch my drift. ;)

[jiriku]

Socially, play the high-Int NPC as enigmatic. Imply that you know more than you let on, and occasionally react to chance phrases as though they revealed something about the speaker that no one else observed. When speaking, visibly pause before speaking, so that it's clear you are *thinking* about your response. Use big words, and long phrases with dependent clauses. Qualify your statements. Display polite disdain towards characters of average Intelligence, and show surprise when they come up with ideas that are unusually clever.

Tactically, this can be really hard to do. One thing I try to do with intelligent characters is rely on combos of powers, and complicated multi-part tactics, rather than simple tactics that are strong by themselves. For example, archery combined with protection from arrows, a mind fog trap accompanied by spells that target Will saves. Anything that's just a level more sophisticated than the tactics that your monsters normally use, so that your players will notice the difference. Intelligent foes are more likely to use complex tactics because they can more easily consider multiple mutually dependent variables at once.

[OldTrees1]

1) More intelligence = think faster. But my brain can't go faster than itself so I "cheat" by letting the character use out of game time to think.

2) More intelligence = more creative. But I can't be more creative than myself. However my future self can be more creative than my past self. So I "cheat" by adjusting the unseen universe to retroactively have the character have thought of/expected something in the past.

If all else fails, watch some Xanatos(Gargoyles tv show)

[KillianHawkeye]

1) More intelligence = think faster. But my brain can't go faster than itself so I "cheat" by letting the character use out of game time to think.

2) More intelligence = more creative. But I can't be more creative than myself. However my future self can be more creative than my past self. So I "cheat" by adjusting the unseen universe to retroactively have the character have thought of/expected something in the past.

If all else fails, watch some Xanatos(Gargoyles tv show)

I agree with these points.

Whenever I am playing a high-Int character, whether that is an NPC (villainous or otherwise) or my 26 Intelligence (with items) Wizard PC, I spend a lot of time thinking about various plans, strategies, reactions, and ideas.

I consider myself, amongst normal humans, to have above average intelligence. I wouldn't necessarily equate myself to an 18 Int, but at a guess I'd give myself a 14 at the lowest. I've been playing D&D more than 15 years now, and it took me a long time to become a good roleplayer, and even longer to figure out how to play a character that is smarter or more socially apt than myself. And while the social issue can be solved by trust and alcohol, the intelligence issue requires a lot of honest thinking. See, I know for a fact that an illithid or a centuries-old dragon or even my super genius Wizard character can think of more complicated plans and come to more profound understandings in mere moments than I would be capable of in long hours of pondering. That's how much smarter they are than I am.

So my strategy for evening those odds is to use the one resource I do have, time between play sessions, to think about the kinds of things my characters or NPCs would be able to solve on short notice. This is something that I've found useful for any character, not just those that are super smart, because I don't actually live in a magical fantasy world and so there are a lot of things that would be obvious to anyone that I would need to figure out on my own. It just becomes a lot more broad and far-reaching when you do it for those super smart characters than it is for your typical forest-dwelling elf or cave-dwelling dwarf. In one case, you're trying to come up with plans and counter-plans and contingencies and counter-contingencies, and in the other you're just trying to adapt to and understand a fictional foreign culture.

The other thing is that I'm less unwilling to metagame when playing a hyper-intelligent character. Normally, I try to avoid that sort of thing, but I will use any OOC knowledge that the character could possibly know about (like guessing what kind of monster we're facing and using my own knowledge of its strengths and weaknesses, but not using my OOC knowledge of a private conversation between people that the character did not witness and could not or was not informed about). To supplement/justify my ability to do this, I usually spread a few skill points throughout all of the various Knowledge skills that I don't need to focus on and let my high Int bonus do the rest.

[I3igAl]

So I "cheat" by adjusting the unseen universe to retroactively have the character have thought of/expected something in the past.


I tend to do this too sometimes.

With other creatures one can also depict them as Alien, so the players won't know their motivations.

[noob]

Super intelligent villains will try to not look intelligent and will have a way to seem related to nothing who is happening and will not have an important position officially and will manage to send messages to their servitors by a mean the most untraceable possible trying to even not be known by gods.
Also he will have servitors who are simultaneously able of great initiative and loyal to him while not even knowing him or his name(if you are smart enough I believe you can find that kind of stuff and avoid being seen by gods even if one way to do so is not evident).
All his servitors will ignore all his other servitors and make their own defenses for themselves and their own armies and try to look like megalomaniac people without leader wanting to rule everything for making people not think about the fact they might be working for someone else and they use memory editing memory for making themselves forget everything about their ruler and have them in a mental condition so that once the super villain communicate to him he obeys even if he does not remember.
In fact an enough intelligent villain might be never ever be found and defeated.

[Blackhawk748]

1) More intelligence = think faster. But my brain can't go faster than itself so I "cheat" by letting the character use out of game time to think.

2) More intelligence = more creative. But I can't be more creative than myself. However my future self can be more creative than my past self. So I "cheat" by adjusting the unseen universe to retroactively have the character have thought of/expected something in the past.

If all else fails, watch some Xanatos(Gargoyles tv show)

This. If a super intelligent villain knows of the PCs the vast majority of their strategies will be countered, usually because the plans arent as unorthodox as the PCs think.

[Amon Winterfall]

How do you properly roleplay a monster that has intelligence beyond what humans can reach? I'm talking dragons, mindflayers, beholders etc.

One fun archetype is that they have a very high INT but a lowish WIS, at which point they are often "Super Blunder" types that, while really scary in their field, tend to get it wrong as only geniuses can. Having had an INT 20 villain that was barely able to understand how to interact with others is really not an "outplay" sort of scenario. I think the comic answer of "Still doesn't know how to play poker" can apply even to supergeniuses.

If a character has sky high INT but Average WIS, this doesn't mean that they're going to be able to figure out whether the party will zig or zag; it means that they're going to be trying to oppose the PCs in an arena that plays to their strengths, like a legal confrontation or a far-flung journey to different planes. The PCs are in a major disadvantage against a guy who is stacking knowledge against them, but without equal WIS they should be outplayed.

I think it's really the combination of High INT and High WIS that's particularly difficult to deal with--that describes a character that should be on to the PCs and be nearly impossible to outmatch. The Cartoonish Villain character has vast resources, perhaps a very high INT but a low WIS. High INT and High WIS is something like Professor Moriarty--and may well serve the same role as Moriarty, being the guy who kills (?) Sherlock Holmes.

This is not the sort of person the PCs can afford to remain on poor terms with. If they want to kill the PCs, they're going to be very likely to succeed:

This is exactly the sort of enemy who deduces how to coup de grace the whole party in their sleep and get away with it, or otherwise do something like Scry and Fry the party. What they'd actually do if they were willing to see it done is very unlikely to be fun for the game. Outmatching the PCs both in smarts and in tactics is going to lead to large advantages against them.

My personal hunch is that this is best done if the foe in particular is an UNDERMATCH for the PCs, something like two levels lower than they are and nowhere near equipped enough to equal them in a fair fight; this is a good way to help them how to play better while keeping the challenge appropriate.

As for a Villain with more tactics, resources and abilities--have them look at something besides the PCs or else he'll crush them.

[Red Fel]

I'm going to second using Xanatos as a resource, and I'm going to take it all in a slightly different direction. Instead of talking about the mechanical ability score Intelligence, I'm going to talk about the personality traits, intellect and cunning. And here's the thing you have to understand about a villain with both in abundance:

He will not confront the PCs, or anyone else, unless his victory is guaranteed.

The smart, canny villain is a pragmatist. He doesn't take needless risks. He doesn't let his emotions cloud his judgment. (Although note that dragons may let their passions drive them, mindflayers may allow their hunger to override their reason, and beholders are ugly racial supremacists.) As such, he doesn't play the revenge game. He plans in the long term.

Coming back to Xanatos for a moment. There is a trope named after him, called the Xanatos Gambit. (No, I won't link it, because TV Tropes can be dangerously addictive.) The premise is simple. For every encounter the villain orchestrates, there are two possible outcomes: (1) I win, or (2) you lose. There may be many outcomes, but they all boil down to this. When the villain schemes, when he uses pawns, even when he employs the PCs themselves, he does so knowing that the only way for his enemies to have a chance of stopping him is if they ruin themselves in the process.

And this is the heart of the villain's cunning. It means not only knowing what you want and how to get it, but knowing what other people want, and using it to influence their actions. The PCs are after a sacred artifact? It happens to be guarded by a holy spirit, one of the only beings that knows your weakness. Give the PCs the tools to slay the spirit, and that secret dies with it. The PCs want to stop you? Well, they certainly could, but there's a calamity coming (which you helped to orchestrate), and if you go down, they won't know how to stop it. It's all a game, all plans-within-plans.

Now, the great cunning villain is exceedingly hard to play as a PC, because you need to be able to influence and control NPCs, and the DM might chafe at that. But as an NPC, he's easy and fun, because the DM controls all NPCs. It's effortless to explain that he managed to get out of jail on good behavior after a breakout (which he orchestrated) occurred, and he declined to leave with the escapees. It's fine to say that he bankrolled the current ruler, and therefore has a direct line to the throne plus diplomatic immunity. And it's a lark to have him show up any time you please, as if he always knew the PCs would be there at that time.

The real challenge, and the rewarding part, is to make him a character your PCs love to hate. It's easy to make him into a Mary-Sue that does whatever you want whenever you want and is arrayed in full plate Plot Armor; it's also frustrating and unsatisfying. But creating a character who arranges situations so that whenever he appears, it's under circumstances that prevent the PCs from attacking without causing trouble for themselves; a character who is both snarky and touchingly human at times; a character whose motivations are known only to himself but may as easily ally himself with the PCs as oppose them if it suits him; doing this is what makes the players both happy and angry to see him again.

These are the elements of a cunning villain. He plans, he manipulates, and he never gives anyone the opportunity to stop him unless it benefits him to do so. Do it right, and your players will love you for it.

[OldTrees1]

Coming back to Xanatos for a moment. There is a trope named after him, called the Xanatos Gambit. (No, I won't link it, because TV Tropes can be dangerously addictive.) The premise is simple. For every encounter the villain orchestrates, there are two possible outcomes: (1) I win, or (2) you lose. There may be many outcomes, but they all boil down to this. When the villain schemes, when he uses pawns, even when he employs the PCs themselves, he does so knowing that the only way for his enemies to have a chance of stopping him is if they ruin themselves in the process.

I think it is better tor describe the Xanatos gambit as:
(1) I win, or (2) I win, or (3) I win, ... since it is defined as "A Xanatos Gambit is a plan whose multiple foreseen outcomes all benefit its creator."
You were describing "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose" instead (which is another, albeit weaker, tactic).

[Red Fel]

I think it is better tor describe the Xanatos gambit as:
(1) I win, or (2) I win, or (3) I win, ... since it is defined as "A Xanatos Gambit is a plan whose multiple foreseen outcomes all benefit its creator."
You were describing "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose" instead.

Well, when facing an opponent who can't afford to lose, "you lose" is the equivalent of "I win," seeing as they'll never choose that option. But yeah, "I win" is the ideal outcome in all scenarios. Here's a diagram, again not linking the article itself, that's used to illustrate the point nicely.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/XanatosGambitDiagram_7509.jpg

Notice how, yes, some of these outcomes result in the loss of the villain. However, even when the villain loses, his objectives are achieved ("I win") while the hero's are ultimately thwarted ("You lose").

But yes, typically, all Xanatos outcomes come back to "I win." It's just much easier to pull that off in a narrative than in an interactive work, which can leave the players feeling railroaded and frustrated.

[noob]

And those metamagic spells for not destroying the mac guffin when killing xanatos?(I know one metamagic who make your spells unable to damage items and does not increase the level of the spell)
Also making of the heroes villains is not defeating them they might even end up killing the dragon just after it killed the army then they see people hate them and the players thinks "yep now I have a justification for becoming evil and casting domination on everyone and enslaving everyone"
(I really had that kind of players once)

[OldTrees1]

Well, when facing an opponent who can't afford to lose, "you lose" is the equivalent of "I win," seeing as they'll never choose that option.

Humans invented spite. Eventually you would find someone willing to lose if it also makes you not win.

Also that graph shows only "I win"s.
1) I defeat you allowing me to continue my plan.
2) I escape to continue my plan.
3) The dragon defeats you allowing me to continue my plan.
4) I become the martyr of the piece (weak win) allowing my army to continue my plan?
5) My army defeats you allowing my son to continue my plan.

But both the "I always win" and the "Either I win or you lose" plans works well for superintellgences.

[Ettina]

D&D Int isn't exactly what we colloquially think of as Intelligence. It doesn't necessarily lead to good strategic thinking or clever planning - I'd attribute those more to Wisdom. Int instead reflects how easily you memorize and recall information. So I'd play superhuman Int by taking copious notes OOC while IC the character is just remembering that stuff without much effort.

Superhuman Wisdom, on the other hand, would involve much less restriction on meta-gaming, and taking extra time OOC to think up the perfect plan rather than just doing the first thing that comes to mind (even though IC they may be doing the first thing that comes to mind).

[OldTrees1]

D&D Int isn't exactly what we colloquially think of as Intelligence. It doesn't necessarily lead to good strategic thinking or clever planning - I'd attribute those more to Wisdom. Int instead reflects how easily you memorize and recall information. So I'd play superhuman Int by taking copious notes OOC while IC the character is just remembering that stuff without much effort.

Superhuman Wisdom, on the other hand, would involve much less restriction on meta-gaming, and taking extra time OOC to think up the perfect plan rather than just doing the first thing that comes to mind (even though IC they may be doing the first thing that comes to mind).

Memory is wisdom (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/skills/autohypnosis.htm)
Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/theBasics.htm#intelligenceInt)

[NichG]

One thing you can do is to recognize that as a DM, there are things you are constantly consciously and subconsciously doing in order to help the PCs.

For example, you might describe a villain in a way that suggests whether they're a caster or melee, how to evaluate their threat level compared to other targets, etc. That villain could wear a cloak or shroud over their holy-symbol-bedecked armor, but you let it go for the sake of ambiance and for giving the PCs the information they need in order to solve the encounter. Similarly, villains will often do really dump things in order to establish themselves as 'villian-ey': giving monologues, coming out to greet the PCs rather than springing a surprise attack or just collapsing a building on them, arbitrarily punishing their subordinates so that loyalty suffers, applying the Sorting Algorithm of Evil and sending challenges at the PCs at just the right rate to get them to grow stronger but not so much that it kills them, etc.

IME, when you compare how monsters under a DM fight and how PCs fight each-other its very different, because the players aren't holding themselves back in the same way. Player-versus-player tends to be very cutthroat - if a player can pull off something which lets them win and completely denies their enemy any ability to counter it, they will do so, whereas most DMs will flinch back from that and ask 'is this really fair to the players?'.

So one big thing you can do to make a villain appear to be much smarter than what the players normally expect is that whenever you are about to have him act, just take a second to think about that other mindset. Ask yourself 'wait, why is he doing it this way?' or 'wait, why wouldn't he just use X?'. You don't have to actually change course after thinking that, but being aware that the villain should realize that doing this is normally stupid will help you think of contingencies and things like that. Even deeper, it may suggest different motivations for the character than you initially imagined, giving the character more depth.

For example, you can know that the Sorting Algorithm of Evil is a really bad idea in D&D-land where your enemies level up on your fallen soldiers. So if the villain actually does go ahead and help the PCs power up by sending perfectly calibrated challenges their way, maybe what that means is that actually his goal is to make the PCs powerful rather than to kill them. But if he's smart, he has to know that this will lead to them eventually outpacing him and being really wanting to kill him after 18 levels of torture. So he should already know how he is going to exit stage left just before it gets to that point, dumping all that power and aggression on his true target. Maybe his plans even involve him dying or appearing to die at the PCs' hands.

And of course, you can also just be more ruthless. If he doesn't need to show his face, he doesn't. If he can send completely overpowering forces to smash the PCs from the get-go, he does so without any compunctions. He's genre-savvy, knows who his enemies really are and what their real defeat conditions are (so he uses things that prevent resurrection, destroy gear, etc), etc. But of course this is dangerous because it can be very draining and demoralizing for the players to go up against an enemy like that. If you do that, it might be best to have him not actually be in direct opposition to the PCs, but rather have him be fighting some other villain and have the PCs be sort of in the mix somewhere (so they can see his ruthlessness play out and understand what kind of stuff is going to come down on them if they draw too much of his attention, rather than just being placed on the anvil from the get-go).

The other thing however is for the villain to not pre-emptively cut off opportunities. He'll be able to recognize power and potential when he sees it, and so if the PCs aren't actually his enemies, he will go out of his way to make sure they stay neutral. No posturing of giving off 'I'm a villain!' vibes or openly torturing townspeople. But when its necessary to go hostile, he'll do so without restraint or hesitation, because he's planned out that moment in advance - nothing tentative, just a complete and sudden change from 'I'm your best friend' to 'I am having you all over-killed using every dirty trick in the book'.

[DMVerdandi]

Personally, I think such a creature should have high mental stats across the board.
INT,WIS, and CHA should be through the roof for such a character. As far as the Ability scores go, the mental stats are all a sort of intelligence.

INT is about cognition, memory and problem solving. It is about memorizing data and events, and using them to solve problems.

WIS is the intelligence of insight. It is the ability to know what to do with one's INT score, and how to use one's knowledge in a fashion that is "natural". Simply put, WIS is INT interacting with someone's senses.

CHA is the intelligence of relating to others and one's self. It is something like WIS and INT applied not to objects, but subjects. When it comes to influence, one has an intelligence of how to create the best results within an interaction with another being. One still needs intelligence and wisdom to get to this result as they need the ability to both intellect and sense before they gain any sort of well directed force of personality.


So, someone with a higher mental faculty than others does not simply have a higher INT score.
In as sensitive a way possible, when people think of Idiot Savants, yes they seem to have a higher ability to memorize things, but they woefully lack the ability to apply knowledge for understanding social graces and behavior, and practical problem solving. This is an increase in ability towards one specific type of intelligence, and a deficiency in the others to the point of handicapping.


So, a TRUE savant, would be one with extreme capability in all types of intelligence, and that person/being/thing, is extremely dangerous. Not only because they are well learned, and easily taught, but because they also are brilliant in applying that knowledge to achieve their goals, and in making others less willing to see them achieving their goals as a threat, if they even are aware of their goals at all.


This in action is in a positive light is a sage, and in a negative light, a mastermind.
There is no need for research, they already did that years ago. May have spent a year locked up in a hole and has perfect recall of everything. Furthermore, even with the most obscure knowledge, they can find a use for it. When interacting with others, they know how to make them feel at ease, terrify them, or influence any of their sentiments.Finally they are highly in tune with themselves, and have a natural ease of knowing what to do. There is never a second lost. They are fully present and in the moment at all times.




Side note:
All of these things are best expressed by having ALL THE SKILLS. Skills, outside of spells, and even moreso psionic powers are the best way to mechanically show that one is smarter than the average bear. Skills like Sense motive, Knowledge,Craft,Profession,Diplomacy/intimidate, etc. are all great ways to show that.

Classes like factotum,wizard,erudite,artificer are all great (even though this is probably going to be a monster so...) But generally, yes, simply having high proficiency in skills, as well as some sort of class ability that is contingent on the mental scores is more than enough to mechanically give precedent to one being hypercogitive.

Also, anyone realize how little intelligence was put into actually assigning some of the skills to ability scores?
Heal is WIS? wtf. Should be INT.
Concentration is CON, rather than INT or WIS or CHA?

Even calling Wisdom wisdom is silly in my opinion. It should have been called Sense.
Also having willpower be a quality of wisdom rather than charisma seems backwards as well.
ANYWHO... hope my rambling helps.

[noob]

Intelligence and Wisdom are swappable when you want in dnd because they are supposed to be vague terms who include more rather than less.
Intelligence include the ability to learn but they never says it contains other things look to the skills: knowledge(learning based and when you learn more of course it give a bonus to all knowledge even if you do not actively train those) craft(Learning more allows you to have better methods and to know the proper ways and so intelligence give a bonus to it because you learn more)
magic(knowing better the arcane and plenty of things about magic make you able to better cast spells also higher intelligence allows you to remember more spells for the day)
skills(having more intelligence make you able to train more skills because you learn better)
decipher script(knowing and learning the encrypting algorithms.)
open lock(I have seen people in real life learning it and it is essentially knowing the list of the locking systems and of the tools for bypassing them or opening them so it is essentially leaning so the reason it is dex based make me curious)
Disable device(I do not know it is way too much broad)
Search(looking at everything and knowing a checklist of everything you must research and not researching always the three same things seems clearly based on memory and learning)
Spellcraft(knowing the spells and how to recognize them)

So intelligence clearly include the learning aspect and I did not have seen any skill with intelligence including the thinking speed nor skill including the ability to do complex things apart from disable device.
Intelligence checks for enigma totally does make sense if you have a great culture you will probably recognize it is a variant of one other enigma and intelligence for getting out of a maze corresponds to the ability to know where you did go and to do fast optimized branch search easier because you have an easy time remembering and other things of this kind.
with intelligence being the ability to learn and remember dnd would be coherent.
Wisdom is a lot more fuzzy having more wisdom allows you to do better a profession but it also increase your will meaning that somehow having more will means that you are more convinced that what you do it what you should do.
Wisdom also make you better at healing and it looks weird since healing is essentially knowing the diseases and the wounds and how to heal them and so is more learning than other things.
Gods reward more people with wisdom.(I do not know the reason)
wisdom can include the ability to learn(auto-hypnosis and such kind of stuff)
The reason charisma does not give a bonus to will saves is that else people with strong will are going to speak well and I do not want people to have everything with one stat and also I think that being beautiful and knowing the good arguments does not make you believe in them.

[Ettina]

Memory is wisdom (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/skills/autohypnosis.htm)

Autohypnosis isn't memory, it's a skill that can boost memory.

A person who knows their own mental functions well can figure out how to make it easier to remember something by using mnemonic strategies that work, as well as by focusing their attention.

In child development, children show a huge boost in memory performance once they realize that they can help themselves remember by repeating information over and over. It doesn't mean their base capacity to remember things has actually improved.

You can use skills born out of focus and self-knowledge (both parts of Wisdom) in order to boost your own memory, but it takes conscious effort. If you just naturally have a good memory, you'll remember things without trying.

[Ettina]

Also, anyone realize how little intelligence was put into actually assigning some of the skills to ability scores?
Heal is WIS? wtf. Should be INT.
Concentration is CON, rather than INT or WIS or CHA?


Concentration being Con makes sense, since you're usually expected to make concentration checks in physically painful or strenuous circumstances, such as when you get injured while casting.

As for Heal being Wisdom, book learning helps in knowing what conditions exist and how to treat them, but accurate diagnosis is a lot harder to directly teach and often relies on intuition. And an inaccurate diagnosis will result in improper treatment.