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Scalenex
2020-05-17, 08:06 AM
I've heard a lot of discussion talk about high charisma characters and roleplaying.

I have seen a lot of RPG discussion threads on shy players playing high charisma characters but I haven't seen much on players playing high intelligence characters.

Without getting into specifics, I've seen a lot of TV shows and movies nose dive when average intelligence writers try to write dialogue and action for high intelligence characters.

I consider myself fairly intelligent but I'm not a genius.

I can imagine what it's like to be ridiculously strong. I can sort of visualize what a hyper-charismatic person would be like. I can sort of imagine what a hyper aware person would be like.

I might be able to extrapolate what it's like for someone like Albert Einstein, but what would a person with intelligence beyond humanity's look like?

I notice D&D and fantasy in general usually has hyper intelligent villains and strong heroes. What would a hyper intelligent villain want? What would a hyper intelligent hero want?

My thought, maybe I'm wrong, is that most hyper intelligent beings would gravitate away from Good and Evil and towards Neutrality. They just want to be left alone with their thoughts. In the real world, there are certainly lots of historical examples of very intelligent people being recluses. But recluses rarely make interesting stories for RPGs or fantasy novels.

I'm homebrewing a world right now and I have created a lot of races that are somewhat mentally imparied compared to humans but I haven't come up with anything superior to humans. Maybe dragons, I'm still trying to figure out how powerful to make dragons.

I'm populating my undersea fantasy right now and I'm using real world animals as a baseline. Crab People, Shark People, Mer people. Squids and octopi in real life are practically wizards. They have freakish camouflage abilities, ink blasts, and their intelligence is second to only humans. I cannot picture cephlapod people not being super smart, but if they are super smart, why aren't they running everything? Also, maybe it's Lovecraftian influence but I think squid people would lean towards Evil, or maybe I'm biased from Western folklore where hyper intelligent people lean towards evil.

Vahnavoi
2020-05-17, 09:15 AM
For the most part, you don't, because you can't. Pretty much all people, when trying to play smarter than they really are, are at the mercy of the game mechanics giving you extra information and extra time to make decisions. Time is most important: the longer you have to make a decision or crack a problem, the more elaborate your reasoning and problem solving can get.

However, even more importantly, intelligence is orthogonal to values. (https://youtu.be/hEUO6pjwFOo) In D&D's terms, a character's alignment, wisdom, personality etc. are all independent of intelligence.

So, check if you're implicitly asking two different questions at once: roleplaying superhuman and roleplaying inhuman intelligences are two different things. Even someone of superior intelligence would act like a normal person provided they have terminal goals similar to less intelligent people. On the other hand, a person with abnormal terminal goals would behave incomprehensibly whether they're highly intelligent or not.

prabe
2020-05-17, 11:37 AM
It's easier to do, the smarter you are--not only can you adjust and adapt more quickly, but you are closer to seeing the world the same way your super-intelligent character does (at least on that axis). That said:

As a player, you use mechanics for knowledge, take notes, read every piece of written lore the GM gives you, and take time out-of-session to consider plans and alternatives based on what you think you see coming (or just in general). I find that staying engaged helps me to simulate higher intelligence, but "stay engaged" is such good general advice I'm reluctant to give it.

As a GM, you take the time out-of-session, and you cheat--especially if the PCs do something that seems obvious in retrospect--in the sense of allowing your super-intelligent villain to have prepared for things.

And yes, in both cases, consider both the goals and other aspects of the personality.

Segev
2020-05-17, 11:44 AM
High intelligence enables you to solve problems faster. To hold more concepts in your head at the same time, and thus do more problem solving without aids like notes and calculators. It often, but not always, gives a better memory, but does almost always mean that, even if photographic memory is lacking, integration of ideas and concepts to the point that they can be reexplained even without recalling where he heard them is doable.

Some super geniuses will recall line and verse of every reference they’ve seen others will struggle with that, but still understand the topic very well. (This is a good way to write a genius who can be out-argued by somebody of average or lesser intellect. “What’s your source for that? My source that I can name says differently, and even though nobody listening knows why they should or should not trust my source, the fact that it sounds authoritative while you sound like you’re just saying to trust your word means I sound smarter and less biased.”)

Smart people make good intuitive leaps, because they pieced the details together sometimes faster than their conscious mind followed (but they usually can go back and explain each step if they must). This isn’t the same as wisdom’s intuition; it’s rooted in logic chains and reason, not perception and discernment of specifics to the situation.

To portray them, it’s mostly about having them come to correct conclusions on sparser evidence. But be sure they also have good reason for not entertaining alternate hypotheses that fit the same evidence. Or have them speak of all the possibilities, and narrow them down incisively as more evidence arises.

Nifft
2020-05-17, 11:48 AM
I might be able to extrapolate what it's like for someone like Albert Einstein, but what would a person with intelligence beyond humanity's look like?

I notice D&D and fantasy in general usually has hyper intelligent villains and strong heroes. What would a hyper intelligent villain want? What would a hyper intelligent hero want?

My thought, maybe I'm wrong, is that most hyper intelligent beings would gravitate away from Good and Evil and towards Neutrality. They just want to be left alone with their thoughts. In the real world, there are certainly lots of historical examples of very intelligent people being recluses. But recluses rarely make interesting stories for RPGs or fantasy novels.

Super-intelligent people have the same basic human needs as you: community, companionship, communication.

IRL you see a lot of super-smart recluses because they can't get those things from nearby people, because the nearby people are outside the super-smart person's communication range (which seems to be roughly ±30 IQ).

So in a fantasy world with more than just humans, the brainy loners might tend to find companionship with non-humans.

This association with non-humans might tend to impose non-human outlooks, and that's something you can leverage as a DM.

If you have personality traits which you use for NPCs that are non-human / super-human in some way, you could pretty easily have a super-smart human NPC adopt some of those personality traits. That might be sufficient to show that the NPC Wizard finds himself swayed by the emotional connection to his intellectual peers.

Zarrgon
2020-05-17, 01:16 PM
You can't, it's simply impossible.

You can have the DM tell your character everything and then you can act like your character figured it all out....but that is not role playing high intelligence.

The thing is "intelligence" covers a lot of mental abilities. And intelligence is just a part of a persons mind.

So really, you just need to "make it up".


And TV shows....are the worst. It's bad enough with all the ''cop" shows with super intelligent people...that act like idiots as they are written by someone with maybe average intelligence. The worst of the worst might be Sherlock. Most writers have no clue how to write the character....and it shows in every episode.

Mr.Sandman
2020-05-17, 10:24 PM
The Octopi aren't running things for the same reason they aren't in our world. Male octopi die shortly after breeding, and females work themselves to death caring for the extremely fragile eggs, and even if you take the eggs away a hormone in their brain switches on putting them into a slow death by ennui. Octopi are naturally incredibly intelligent and fast learners, but they have noone to teach them and only one life time to learn things in. In fact I have often expressed the opinion that, were it not for these detriments, earth would have a second sentient species within 2 generations.

NichG
2020-05-18, 12:09 AM
There's lots of facets to intelligence as has been pointed out. For short conversations at least (e.g. deities speaking with PCs and the like) I tend to depict characters with superhuman intelligence as being somewhat 'unaffected', or affected in sometimes the opposite ways as one would expect. So if something is said that they didn't expect or didn't know, rather than communicating and displaying their shock, or spending a bit visibly questioning the veracity of the information, I skip those steps and immediately have them ask the followup question. If at the end they decide not to believe the thing, they can appear to switch from 100% buying into the premise to 100% denying the premise without a word said wrong by the other side.

That doesn't mean they accept whatever they're told at face value, it's more to indicate that they can simultaneously hold a conversation 'as if it were true' since that is the context of the person in front of them, without actually having to believe 'that it is true'. So I'm trying to highlight an ability to hold multiple conflicting beliefs or hypotheses in their head at once.

Similarly, I tend to have superhumanly intelligent characters change their direction quickly and decisively a few steps before when other characters would. So if they're in a fight and they're losing but still have 90% of their hitpoints and most of their resources, they will flee or change tactics immediately, not wait until they're down to 20%. They will also tend to more heavily use the side-effects of things that they can produce rather than the direct effects, or try to accomplish multiple things at once with a single move whenever I can spot those opportunities. For example, if they're running away via Planeshift they might not just Planeshift to somewhere else random, but rather Planeshift to a place where the environmental hazards are more dangerous to their pursuers than themselves.

Finally, this is much easier to do as the GM, because whenever the character is trying to anticipate the behavior of other NPCs, make plans about how environmental factors work, etc, they can be right as often as you let them since the same brain is being used to come up with the plan and to evaluate its consequences (e.g. yours). You can't do this when their plans involve the PCs of course or when their plans involve things with very concrete existing mechanics for them. But something like 'if I scatter some coins as I run past, the crowd is going to rush after them and block pursuit' or 'if I push this barrel, it's going to get in the way of that cart that is moving in from a side-street and create a jam' or the like can work to display a level of creative thinking.

Anyhow:

- Hold multiple beliefs or ideas simultaneously and switch between them freely as the situation demands, without excessive attachment or inertia to one or the other.
- Don't continue in futile courses of action once the writing is on the wall. Be able to completely abandon a plan in an instant and change direction as the situation evolves. Commit decisively when changing.
- Take actions that have multiple simultaneous purposes whenever possible. Think in terms of the obvious response to your next action and try to set things up so that the character's opposition has to do two actions for each one of yours, in order to stay on top of things.
- If you're GMing, take advantage of the fact that you're running the game and so have access to a 'perfect' simulator of what would happen, at least for plans that don't have to be played out mechanically. Give the NPC access to a variable level of this ground truth based on their intelligence.

Mastikator
2020-05-18, 01:56 AM
Closest approximation I can think of is meta-gaming: a player with encyclopedic knowledge of the game, and a DM that humors him will produce the outcome of being superhuman intelligent. Since the player is allowed to deliberate over issues while the game is paused, and has full knowledge of all possible objects in the game they will be able to deduce things at a superhuman rate.

What do they want?
You should also consider that *terminal goals are not related to intelligence, goals and intelligence is orthogonal, the function of intelligence is not to create goals but to figure out how to achieve them. Highly intelligent people are better at coming up with intermediate goals, goals that are a means to an end, the terminal goals. The terminal goals are still the same: food, shelter, family, community, esteem, self actualization, etc.

*terminal goals are goals that you just have

How do they act?
Based on real world geniuses I think it's fair to say they would talk and act mostly the same way everyone else does, it would be impossible to tell if someone is super intelligent just by looking at them. I used to think I was smart because people often told me how impressed they were with my intelligence, truth is that was the halo effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect) talking, I'm not smart, I'm just kinda good looking, tall and I dress well.

The good news is you can act and look anyway you like.

Why don't superintelligent cepholopods run everything?
What terminal goal would that solve? What is the ultimate point of running everything? They might have some ideological or religious reason to want that. Maybe some of them are narcissists who want to be worshiped by the "lesser species"? That would be a thing a villain could do. World domination because vanity.

Altair_the_Vexed
2020-05-18, 03:41 AM
I'm surprised no-one else has posted this yet. (http://qwantz.com/index.php?comic=493)

Regarding playing superintelligent NPCs, the trick I tend to use as a GM is to cheat a little.
I assign them a small set of empty slots for special abilities (spells, gadgets ,whatever is right for the game and setting). These empty slots are used to let them have exactly the right thing prepared, because they planned for exactly this situation to happen. As in "Lucky I had my Bat-Shark-Repellent!"
Now, I only give them a small number of empty slots, because otherwise it would get silly. Generally it would be one or two. And it's still then limited by my ability to come up with a fix on the fly.

As far as their plans and schemes go, I assume that the players plans are part of the the NPC's plans, because the superintelligent NPC has thought of those contingencies. I limit this to the sort of thing that the players do that is relatively routine - if the players come up with an idea that is pleasingly smart and clever, then I don't pretend I already thought of it. They've got to have a break and reward now and then!

Scalenex
2020-05-18, 06:23 AM
I think the best suggestion on this thread is that hyper intelligent creatures would be hyper prepared.

At least half of the comments touch on this somehow. I especially like the idea of blank slots to let the GM come up with things on the fly that the character planned "well in advanced."

One of my friends was talking about a lousy rendition of Sherlock Holmes because the writers were average people. "Smart people prepare for contingencies so to average people they look like wizards." Note that friend is a paranoid well prepared individual who is handling the current quarantine like a boss.

Taln
2020-05-18, 09:52 AM
The Otherworldly Incantations blog has a very helpful series called Roleplaying Intelligent Creatures in D&D 5e. The P2: Hyper-Intelligence page is especially relevant. (Sorry I can't post links yet.)

MoiMagnus
2020-05-18, 10:37 AM
I think the best suggestion on this thread is that hyper intelligent creatures would be hyper prepared.

I'd say that representing hyper intelligence through hyper preparation is a good advice, it would be wrong to consider that hyper intelligent beings would always be prepared. There is a lot of personality involved in whether or not the character actually like to prepare.

Something to not forget is that hyper intelligence doesn't protect you from being a human being.
Plenty of very intelligent peoples are in depression, fully aware of their depression and the irrationality of some of their though, but still unable to break out of the cycle. [For example, a character with hype-intelligence might be able to analyse it's own behaviour far too efficiently, and conclude he has no free will, which is devastating from a mental stability point of view].
Plenty of others suffer from laziness and procrastination. Their judgement might be clouded, and they might also have focus issues preventing them to perceive quickly what's happening around them.
They can also have a lot of difficulties to understand other's feelings and ways of thinking, but I feel like that quirk is kind of overdone in fiction in general.

Just because they have the capabilities of being super-efficient and super-prepared because of their high "D&D Intelligence" doesn't mean they have the "D&D Wisdom" required to make a full use of their capabilities.

As for additional advices for hyper-intelligence, more on the technical side:

1) Cooperation with the DM for rule exceptions. If you have DM approval, it is much easier to come up with "out-of-the-box" solutions. Things like "cancelling a this specific spell mid-casting and continuing like this other spell in order to do X" can really show the "very good at finding hacky solutions" character. But don't forget to find a reason on why this solution is not an always-possible-solution-that-anyone-can-use, because your can easily destroy the coherence of a universe by adding new utilisations of a spell.

2) Thinking faster than acting. If you're combat turns last 10min or more in real life, congratulation, you are RPing super-intelligent beings that are able to coordinate themselves with each others and deeply think about their next move for very complex actions that last for around 6s in universe.

3) Abstract effects. That one is more a DM-advice. If you have a genius tactician against the PC, it might be difficult to actually give a genius tactic to your monsters. What is easier to do is to give them raw +2 bonuses to attack rolls and some other things, and describing the enemies as significantly more efficient than usual.

4) Skill checks. That one is a little sad, but sometimes you don't have better. Similarly to using a charisma-based check to try to convince someone, you can use an intelligence-based check to try to outsmart him.

Keltest
2020-05-18, 10:47 AM
Regarding playing superintelligent NPCs, the trick I tend to use as a GM is to cheat a little.

For practical purposes, I think this is probably the solution. As a DM or player, you have to metagame a bit. Maybe the DM lets you have restricted access to the notes to represent your better memory. Maybe a successful roll to know something yields more data. Maybe youre allowed a little bit of retroactive preparedness.

KineticDiplomat
2020-05-18, 11:07 PM
Well super smart people are by definition neurologically atypical.

Which means they are generally going to be different. That doesn’t mean crazy, but it does mean they are going to think and act differently than your normal person. From an RP perspective, this might take the form of behavioral or linguistic tics. Perhaps they have a tendency to leave sentences dangling, or don’t feel the need to clarify pronouns as often, or reference parts of the conversation long past because they just naturally assume everyone else has been holding it all in their heads and doesn’t need further explanation.

Perhaps they are very rigid in their thinking - they’ve spent most of their life knowing that they are usually right, even when many people tell them they are wrong, and have a certain amount of stubbornness as a result.

Maybe they are so far above others that they tend to lowest common denominator people when speaking to them, because they’ve long ago learned no one seems to keep up with how they speak naturally and they developed a way to speak to others - which means they might actually appear dumber than they are at first glance.

russianwizard
2020-05-19, 06:31 AM
I can't really offer much that hasn't been offered already in terms of theory, but I have a good amount of experience in this—one of my recent characters was an Artificer/Wizard in a Spelljammer campaign who ended her journey at a comfortable INT 30.

The first thing that came to mind when describing her, that I haven't seen mentioned here at all, is "lonely." She had almost no way of relating to the rest of the party since she was so far above them in terms of raw mental capacity. Her closest friend was another wizard, with an Int of 24, and they still had trouble relating. She had been giving flying lessons to the crew, but had to stop because she simply couldn't teach them to do the multivariable calculus that she was using to fly perfectly.
Another issue she had was obsession with preparation. She planned for everything, but worried constantly that something would catch her off guard.
Eventually, she died was erased from time because she messed up a wish, which was a completely fitting end for her considering her 8 Wisdom.


Which means they are generally going to be different. That doesn’t mean crazy, but it does mean they are going to think and act differently than your normal person. From an RP perspective, this might take the form of behavioral or linguistic tics. Perhaps they have a tendency to leave sentences dangling, or don’t feel the need to clarify pronouns as often, or reference parts of the conversation long past because they just naturally assume everyone else has been holding it all in their heads and doesn’t need further explanation.

This is completely accurate. Perhaps, carrying it farther, it's common to pick up conversations from multiple days ago and carry on as though there was never an interruption?
I also like the earlier suggestions of slight metagaming in order to increase the appearance of intelligence.

Instant decisions are also a good way of showing intelligence: to the average person they look hasty, but they simply considered all the options and selected the most logical one with extreme speed and accuracy.


Anyhow:

- Hold multiple beliefs or ideas simultaneously and switch between them freely as the situation demands, without excessive attachment or inertia to one or the other.
- Don't continue in futile courses of action once the writing is on the wall. Be able to completely abandon a plan in an instant and change direction as the situation evolves. Commit decisively when changing.
- Take actions that have multiple simultaneous purposes whenever possible. Think in terms of the obvious response to your next action and try to set things up so that the character's opposition has to do two actions for each one of yours, in order to stay on top of things.

This is all great advice. It's quite hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who's smarter than you, but the dilation of time especially in combat is quite helpful for maintaining the appearance.

I hope whatever insights I have were helpful. If you want more insight into the bad decisions that evenespecially intelligent characters make, check out our campaign journal for a nicely compacted list of all the stupid things we've ever done: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?597128-Jenna-s-List

Segev
2020-05-19, 10:35 AM
Intelligence that outstrips wisdom will tend to lead to overly trusting the models they have in their heads and being surprised by reality having unforeseen complications. Very intelligent people will have better models, so this gets obscured a bit, but when they come up with grand schemes, it will show.

Psyren
2020-05-19, 11:46 AM
You can have the DM tell your character everything and then you can act like your character figured it all out....but that is not role playing high intelligence.

Why not? This works fine in my opinion; I've played many high-Int characters that do exactly this.

(Not "everything" though, just more than the lower-Int characters get.)

prabe
2020-05-19, 11:51 AM
Why not? This works fine in my opinion; I've played many high-Int characters that do exactly this.

(Not "everything" though, just more than the lower-Int characters get.)

It certainly works as part of the metagame approach.

Something I don't think I've seen yet is this: Don't try to "talk smart." Don't try to overinflate your vocabulary or overcomplicate your sentence structure--it'll just sound stupid. Nothing jumps out more than someone trying to talk (or write, in printed fiction) someone smarter than they are. Don't worry about big words--not all smart folks use big words all the time; not all of them even bother with good grammar.

Zarrgon
2020-05-19, 02:39 PM
Why not? This works fine in my opinion; I've played many high-Int characters that do exactly this.

It "works" only superficially and the player is not in any way playing or role playing a intelligent character.

A lot of gamers want to play/role play a smart character. After all intelligence is amazing and a person playing a RPG or doing many things in life can dazzle anyone of even slightly less then themselves. A lot of people struggle with a lot of things and are amazed when someone else just effortlessly does it.

They watch the intelligent gamer have their character take some actions, have a plan or three, avoid a trap or obstcale or three, get the treasure and do the adventure goal: all in a fairly easy smooth manner.

And the player really wants to do that. They want that feeling: that the world is easy and with just a little effort they can get what they want, and maybe even be an all star hero.

So what they settle for is: the DM tells them some stuff about the game play. But it does not do all that much. Even telling a player X does not help them much as that is just stand alone information. So they still must use their own mind to understand, processes and use it. Unless the DM also gives them context and all other relevant related information and then tells the player what to do.

In short, the player is NOT in any way playing an intelligent character: at best they are playing a character with inside information.

Nifft
2020-05-19, 02:44 PM
It certainly works as part of the metagame approach.

Something I don't think I've seen yet is this: Don't try to "talk smart." Don't try to overinflate your vocabulary or overcomplicate your sentence structure--it'll just sound stupid. Nothing jumps out more than someone trying to talk (or write, in printed fiction) someone smarter than they are. Don't worry about big words--not all smart folks use big words all the time; not all of them even bother with good grammar.

A thing which some smart people do do is talk accurate.

Don't mush words when dealing with important topics (to your character). Think about specific words, which may be large or small, but which exactly describe the important thing.

When it comes to that topic, be sure you exactly include what matters, and exclude what doesn't, with your language.

Be concise and precise.


If you make it look natural and quick, you'll look smart as a player, which is a bonus -- but you don't need to actually do it quick. Take your time outside the session.

prabe
2020-05-19, 02:45 PM
A thing which some smart people do do is talk accurate.

Don't mush words when dealing with important topics (to your character). Think about specific words, which may be large or small, but which exactly describe the important thing.

When it comes to that topic, be sure you exactly include what matters, and exclude what doesn't, with your language.

Be concise and precise.


If you make it look natural and quick, you'll look smart as a player, which is a bonus -- but you don't need to actually do it quick. Take your time outside the session.

Or, if your brain works this way, coin new words. Apt neologisms might work to establish at least a certain kind of intelligence.

Nifft
2020-05-19, 08:31 PM
Or, if your brain works this way, coin new words. Apt neologisms might work to establish at least a certain kind of intelligence.

That's risky. You might dorfldorp.


In contrast, if you look up better, more specific words between sessions, you may actually learn more words -- which will help you to legitimately be more Intelligent, since D&D Intelligence is about book-learning and Knowledge checks, probably even more than it is about IQ and such.

prabe
2020-05-19, 09:44 PM
That's risky. You might dorfldorp.


In contrast, if you look up better, more specific words between sessions, you may actually learn more words -- which will help you to legitimately be more Intelligent, since D&D Intelligence is about book-learning and Knowledge checks, probably even more than it is about IQ and such.

Yeah, you might tongue-tie yourself, if your brain doesn't work this way, but someone asking how to play characters more intelligent than themselves might have enough self-knowledge to know their strengths and weaknesses.

NichG
2020-05-19, 10:24 PM
If you specifically want to sound like a theoretical scientist or mathematician, you can coin new words but this should be done as a mechanism of discussion rather than just randomly saying something and assuming people around you know what you think it means. You can use constructions like 'Lets consider things of this type, I'll call them X'. It sounds more like a particular dialect of academic than necessarily indicating intelligence to me though.

Segev
2020-05-20, 10:36 AM
It "works" only superficially and the player is not in any way playing or role playing a intelligent character.

A lot of gamers want to play/role play a smart character. After all intelligence is amazing and a person playing a RPG or doing many things in life can dazzle anyone of even slightly less then themselves. A lot of people struggle with a lot of things and are amazed when someone else just effortlessly does it.

They watch the intelligent gamer have their character take some actions, have a plan or three, avoid a trap or obstcale or three, get the treasure and do the adventure goal: all in a fairly easy smooth manner.

And the player really wants to do that. They want that feeling: that the world is easy and with just a little effort they can get what they want, and maybe even be an all star hero.

So what they settle for is: the DM tells them some stuff about the game play. But it does not do all that much. Even telling a player X does not help them much as that is just stand alone information. So they still must use their own mind to understand, processes and use it. Unless the DM also gives them context and all other relevant related information and then tells the player what to do.

In short, the player is NOT in any way playing an intelligent character: at best they are playing a character with inside information.

The key is that sometimes the DM does just give them the implication.

"Okay, you've got 5 clues. Roll Intelligence, Investigation proficiency counts" (for a 5e example). If they roll over the DC - which can be 20 to 25 and still doable if they're really smart - give them the full implication of the clues.

It's no different than telling the player of the high-Athletics character, "Your roll means you can leap the chasm by swinging from the dangling vines like Tarzan." He doesn't have to demonstrate the skill to RP somebody who has it.

Zarrgon
2020-05-20, 11:44 AM
The key is that sometimes the DM does just give them the implication.

"Okay, you've got 5 clues. Roll Intelligence, Investigation proficiency counts" (for a 5e example). If they roll over the DC - which can be 20 to 25 and still doable if they're really smart - give them the full implication of the clues.

It's no different than telling the player of the high-Athletics character, "Your roll means you can leap the chasm by swinging from the dangling vines like Tarzan." He doesn't have to demonstrate the skill to RP somebody who has it.

You can't compare physical game actions, even more so very simple and direct actions. Can an athletic character leap or climb or jump over something? Sure that is easy and simple and straightforward. The character does X. And if your character does athletic things, you can happily say your playing an athletic character. When it comes to mental actions like intelligence things are very different and not so simple and direct. Intelligence covers a vast umbrella of many things. The typical to "role play a smart character" is only to just tell the player things they don't know or figure out things for the player that they can't figure out.

For some players that is enough: the athletic character player made a roll and did a thing; the smart character player made a roll and did a thing.

But the two are far from equal. The physical action mostly just moves the character, but has little direct effect on the game. While the mental actions have huge effects. Giving the not so bright player information or letting the character do a mental action, does not effect the player. They are still who they are: you could give them a ton of information, even all the game secrets, and they would still be their normal not so bright self. Intelligence is also using gained information, and the player can't do that...unless the DM helps some more. Though, if you get to the point where just about every minute the DM is "helping the player to play a smart character", then you just cross the over the line of the DM is playing the character.

And on top of this, the not so bright player won't even feel that they are playing a smart character. After all they are just doing what the DM tells them to do. In effect, they are role playing a character that is following orders. And to make it worse, the player is only limited to the intelligence of the DM too. If the DM thought about it, they can tell the player....but only if the DM thought it first.

The worst is when a player with real intelligence plays, and they effortlessly do all sorts of smart things. The not so bright player does not feel so great when they just rolled past something that the intelligent player figured out for Real. The intelligent player makes all sorts of smart decisions and does smart actions, while the not so bright character just sits back and waits for a chance to roll to see if there character can do such an action. And on top of all that is the DM limit. The DM can only tell the not so bright player what they know and have figured out. A smart, clever player will very often think up a twist or surprise that the DM never thought of at all. But the player that is being told ''what their character knows and has figured out" will never be able to do that, as the DM can't tell the player something they never thought of first.


It is rare that a player finds playing a smart character by using the method of the DM tells them things and figures out things for the character has a fun and satisfying time playing the smart character. It might be a bit fun in the short term for the character to know things and figure out things while the player just tags along and takes credit, but it is rare it works out for long.

Psyren
2020-05-20, 12:59 PM
It "works" only superficially and the player is not in any way playing or role playing a intelligent character.

You're just restating your assertion and I still disagree. Let's unpack this a bit - how do you define "a smart character?"

For me, a "smart character" is one who has information that those around him don't, especially on a variety of subjects, and especially if those subjects have practical application to the goals of his group. The GM passing notes to the player of the smart PC is therefore the most straightforward way of accomplishing that. And as for roleplaying - notes carry an additional advantage in that it is entirely up to the player whether and how to reveal that information to the rest of the group. He might be arrogant, berating those around him for being too simple to possess insight/knowledge that he portrays as being elementary, like Raistlin. He might eagerly share his knowledge with the group even unprompted, like Hermione. He might be taciturn, speaking only when necessary or when specifically asked, like Batman. There's a lot of ways to roleplay the information once they have it.

And as stated, a GM's note can contain any amount of context or clues necessary to portray different degrees of "smart."


So what they settle for is: the DM tells them some stuff about the game play. But it does not do all that much. Even telling a player X does not help them much as that is just stand alone information. So they still must use their own mind to understand, processes and use it. Unless the DM also gives them context and all other relevant related information and then tells the player what to do.

In short, the player is NOT in any way playing an intelligent character: at best they are playing a character with inside information.

As mentioned above, information is only a piece of the puzzle - the player still controls if they share it, how much of it, when, their attitude, and the delivery method. The source of that information is also mutable - the DM's note can represent a flash of insight, a photographic memory, laborious taking and cross-referencing of documentation, or even be the result of magical or technological aid, like divinations or computations. Any or all of these can be the purview of a smart character.

Segev
2020-05-20, 02:11 PM
The worst is when a player with real intelligence plays, and they effortlessly do all sorts of smart things.

The best solution to this kind of thing, I've found, is to work it out at the table that, if your PC wouldn't think of such things, you feed your OOC insights to the player(s) of those who would.

Smarty McSmartypants may be playing Clerical Averagebrain (the Wise), and Norm Alsmarts might be playing Genius O'Wizardly, and Smarty might figure out things effortlessly OOC...but he tells Norm what he's figured out, and lets Norm have Genius O'Wizardly be the PC that put it together, and decides what to share about it, and how to present the information.

prabe
2020-05-20, 02:14 PM
The best solution to this kind of thing, I've found, is to work it out at the table that, if your PC wouldn't think of such things, you feed your OOC insights to the player(s) of those who would.

Smarty McSmartypants may be playing Clerical Averagebrain (the Wise), and Norm Alsmarts might be playing Genius O'Wizardly, and Smarty might figure out things effortlessly OOC...but he tells Norm what he's figured out, and lets Norm have Genius O'Wizardly be the PC that put it together, and decides what to share about it, and how to present the information.

A somewhat different approach at least one player at a table I GM uses is not to dump his INT. It saves him the cognitive load of figuring out how much smarter he is than his character. It's kinda my own preference, as well, as a player.

Segev
2020-05-20, 02:29 PM
A somewhat different approach at least one player at a table I GM uses is not to dump his INT. It saves him the cognitive load of figuring out how much smarter he is than his character. It's kinda my own preference, as well, as a player.

Most groups I've gamed with (this doesn't work well in living campaigns where you rotate different tables and parties) have a semi-collaborative approach to RP. There's a certain amount of OOC discussion as well as IC discussion, as we try to solve problems and then decide which PC(s) actually come up with, propose, or implement solutions. This also enables even systems lacking in social mechanics to have a cooperative group of players let the guy who can't meet a new person without both feet somehow winding up in his mouth still play a suave and debonaire PC because the more socially-ept players will help him come up with his RP approach.

I still prefer actual mechanics to matter, but it's a good stop-gap.

prabe
2020-05-20, 02:34 PM
Most groups I've gamed with (this doesn't work well in living campaigns where you rotate different tables and parties) have a semi-collaborative approach to RP. There's a certain amount of OOC discussion as well as IC discussion, as we try to solve problems and then decide which PC(s) actually come up with, propose, or implement solutions. This also enables even systems lacking in social mechanics to have a cooperative group of players let the guy who can't meet a new person without both feet somehow winding up in his mouth still play a suave and debonaire PC because the more socially-ept players will help him come up with his RP approach.

I still prefer actual mechanics to matter, but it's a good stop-gap.

I know of a campaign--which might be dead--where, because everyone was supposed to be quasi-genetically-engineered to be smarter, collaborative thinking was explicitly encouraged. I think it's a little bit better than a "stop-gap" if handled well.

Zarrgon
2020-05-20, 03:43 PM
For me, a "smart character" is one who has information that those around him don't, especially on a variety of subjects, and especially if those subjects have practical application to the goals of his group. The GM passing notes to the player of the smart PC is therefore the most straightforward way of accomplishing that.

Well, to break this down a bit more: you are not describing a smart character here: this is just a more observant character. Or even just a character with information. Neither really even comes close to "smart".



And as for roleplaying - notes carry an additional advantage in that it is entirely up to the player whether and how to reveal that information to the rest of the group. He might be arrogant, berating those around him for being too simple to possess insight/knowledge that he portrays as being elementary, like Raistlin. He might eagerly share his knowledge with the group even unprompted, like Hermione. He might be taciturn, speaking only when necessary or when specifically asked, like Batman. There's a lot of ways to roleplay the information once they have it.

Role playing after the DM gives you information really has nothing to do with role playing a smart character. When the player is not quite up to figuring out the information by themselves, they are also not going to be able to use the information in any intelligent way. Even if the player is given some great secret that they can use for great effect......the player is still, mostly likely, to just blunder ahead and do something not so smart.



As mentioned above, information is only a piece of the puzzle - the player still controls if they share it, how much of it, when, their attitude, and the delivery method. The source of that information is also mutable - the DM's note can represent a flash of insight, a photographic memory, laborious taking and cross-referencing of documentation, or even be the result of magical or technological aid, like divinations or computations. Any or all of these can be the purview of a smart character.

This is my point: in no way is this playing a "smart character", this is simply "a character that knows something". If the goal of the player playing a "smart character" only to have their character know things the DM tells them and then role play knowing that information.....then they are good. Though like I say, it's a far, far, far cry from playing a smart character.


The best solution to this kind of thing, I've found, is to work it out at the table that, if your PC wouldn't think of such things, you feed your OOC insights to the player(s) of those who would.


It's true you can ask the smarter player(s) to ''play dumb" in order to prop up the player(s) that are not as smart as them. And while some smart players might have fun ''playing dumb" for a short time, it's not a long term solution. And it can be hard for even an ''average" player to play "too dumb", even more so when the player that is "role playing a smart character that the DM tells stuff" is leading the whole group right into the most obvious trap in history as they happily say "nope nothing is wrong, lets go".

Democratus
2020-05-20, 03:57 PM
Seems like we're talking about two different things here.

Superhuman intelligence: More intelligent than a human can possibly be. Therefore, no longer human.

Super-intelligent human: Extremely intelligent, but still bounded by humanity.

Depending on which of these you are portraying, the methods might be different.

Psyren
2020-05-20, 04:00 PM
Well, to break this down a bit more: you are not describing a smart character here: this is just a more observant character. Or even just a character with information. Neither really even comes close to "smart".

No, it's only "observation" if the information is gleaned primarily from their surroundings/immediate vicinity. Not if they are drawing on deductive reasoning or education/training to form accurate conclusions - that's intelligence.


This is my point: in no way is this playing a "smart character", this is simply "a character that knows something". If the goal of the player playing a "smart character" only to have their character know things the DM tells them and then role play knowing that information.....then they are good. Though like I say, it's a far, far, far cry from playing a smart character.

What if they know "many things" as opposed to "something?" What is your threshold for "smart?"

Democratus
2020-05-20, 04:13 PM
What if they know "many things" as opposed to "something?" What is your threshold for "smart?"

A person can know a great many things and not be smart. Retention of information is not the same as the ability to reason.

prabe
2020-05-20, 04:24 PM
Seems like we're talking about two different things here.

Superhuman intelligence: More intelligent than a human can possibly be. Therefore, no longer human.

Super-intelligent human: Extremely intelligent, but still bounded by humanity.

Depending on which of these you are portraying, the methods might be different.

Indeed true. In the former, the extent of the inhumanity might not (or it might) correlate to how much smarter than human the being is. Seems more in the province of the GM than a player, which might make it easier. You might have to do a lot more prep, here, because you might want some of the responses to be automatic, and unpredictable from the players' POV. Keeping the motivations in mind seems helpful as well, though that's kinda the case for any NPC (or it should be).

In the former, you might be able to pull ideas from other writers, or from actors, or whatever. Here, the character should be almost-understandable, just ... smarter. More knowledgeable is one axis, but thinking more clearly (at least in some directions) and deciding more quickly are two others--and there are almost certainly more.

I don't think any of the suggestions in this thread are exclusively bad; I think someone looking at doing this as either or player or a GM is going to need to prepare more than normal, if the supergenius is going to come off as anything like believable.

Psyren
2020-05-20, 04:26 PM
A person can know a great many things and not be smart. Retention of information is not the same as the ability to reason.

I would argue that "knowing" is different from "retaining information." Especially in D&D terms, where knowledge is used to "answer questions from your field of study." Mere rote regurgitation can answer some questions, but knowledge includes knowing when and how to apply the information too, rather than merely storing it.

Democratus
2020-05-20, 04:30 PM
I would argue that "knowing" is different from "retaining information." Especially in D&D terms, where knowledge is used to "answer questions from your field of study." Mere rote regurgitation can answer some questions, but knowledge includes knowing when and how to apply the information too, rather than merely storing it.

What you defined there is reasoning, applying knowledge to a situation. :smallcool:

Segev
2020-05-20, 04:52 PM
It's true you can ask the smarter player(s) to ''play dumb" in order to prop up the player(s) that are not as smart as them. And while some smart players might have fun ''playing dumb" for a short time, it's not a long term solution. And it can be hard for even an ''average" player to play "too dumb", even more so when the player that is "role playing a smart character that the DM tells stuff" is leading the whole group right into the most obvious trap in history as they happily say "nope nothing is wrong, lets go".

Not exactly. You're missing half of what I said: yes, the smarter player doesn't have his PC spout out the observations and insights the player has had, and in that sense, he's "playing dumb." After all, he opted for the role and is probably glad to be doing it. The other half, however, is that the player still gets to share his insights, just OOC. And the player(s) of smarter characters can decide - with discussion or on their own, however the table works it out - to have their smarter characters be the source of this synthesized information.

So the party isn't stumbling into stupid traps. Unless the player of the smart character chooses to ignore or hide the insights from the party.

Psyren
2020-05-20, 06:22 PM
What you defined there is reasoning, applying knowledge to a situation. :smallcool:

Okay... and? Is reasoning not a function of intelligence? Can a GM not facilitate that by providing a player with clues/likely outcomes?

NichG
2020-05-20, 07:15 PM
I want to push back on the idea that to play a smart character you have to be concerned with not having others at the table do smart things. That loses the point of portraying sonething - exploring the different and distinct aspects of it and getting hints as to what its really like, or generating insights about the premise.

If your character feels bad whenever anyone around them does something smart, then I think that's a portrayal of insecurity, not intelligence.

I'd have a superintelligent character think, instead: "Finally! Someone other than me is contributing too, I might be able to actually work with them rather than just telling them what to do!"

Basically, lean into, recognize, and embrace the intelligence of others with joy. Overwhelm them and maybe disturb them a bit with how it concentrates your interest or flips a switch in how you interact with them.

And as a player I'd say putting yourself in a mindset of not being insecure about your character is generally a good policy all around. The more you care about what others depict over your own depictions, the less control you leave yourself over your own ability to have fun.

Zarrgon
2020-05-20, 09:35 PM
So the party isn't stumbling into stupid traps. Unless the player of the smart character chooses to ignore or hide the insights from the party.

Though this brings us right back to the other problem I mentioned: you have the 'smarter' player is just playing the ''less smarter" players character for them. And in most cases that is not fun for either player.

The player that wanted to play a smart character does not like to be told every couple of minutes what there smart character would do by another player, even if it is in the nicest way. Even when said in a nice way, being told that "oh, hey your character is too smart to do the thing you just said; your character would do this instead" will wear thin.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-05-20, 10:20 PM
I've heard a lot of discussion talk about high charisma characters and roleplaying.

I have seen a lot of RPG discussion threads on shy players playing high charisma characters but I haven't seen much on players playing high intelligence characters.

Without getting into specifics, I've seen a lot of TV shows and movies nose dive when average intelligence writers try to write dialogue and action for high intelligence characters.

I consider myself fairly intelligent but I'm not a genius.

I can imagine what it's like to be ridiculously strong. I can sort of visualize what a hyper-charismatic person would be like. I can sort of imagine what a hyper aware person would be like.

I might be able to extrapolate what it's like for someone like Albert Einstein, but what would a person with intelligence beyond humanity's look like?

I notice D&D and fantasy in general usually has hyper intelligent villains and strong heroes. What would a hyper intelligent villain want? What would a hyper intelligent hero want?

My thought, maybe I'm wrong, is that most hyper intelligent beings would gravitate away from Good and Evil and towards Neutrality. They just want to be left alone with their thoughts. In the real world, there are certainly lots of historical examples of very intelligent people being recluses. But recluses rarely make interesting stories for RPGs or fantasy novels.

I'm homebrewing a world right now and I have created a lot of races that are somewhat mentally imparied compared to humans but I haven't come up with anything superior to humans. Maybe dragons, I'm still trying to figure out how powerful to make dragons.

I'm populating my undersea fantasy right now and I'm using real world animals as a baseline. Crab People, Shark People, Mer people. Squids and octopi in real life are practically wizards. They have freakish camouflage abilities, ink blasts, and their intelligence is second to only humans. I cannot picture cephlapod people not being super smart, but if they are super smart, why aren't they running everything? Also, maybe it's Lovecraftian influence but I think squid people would lean towards Evil, or maybe I'm biased from Western folklore where hyper intelligent people lean towards evil.

Intelligence and introversion are not hand-in-hand. Intellectual recluse is an option, but a great many very intelligent people were/are are also entirely capable of being very sociable. In fact, I think it's probably easier to portray a character as super-smart if you also play them as super-sociable, because it gives you lots of opportunities to show off how smart they are. [By the same token, intelligent people can be good or evil just as they can be neutral]



As for playing a "very intelligent character", you should determine what type of very intelligent person they are:

If they're a scientist/engineer, consider incorporating innumerable polysyllabic words into your lexicon, or outright going as far as technobabble by creating your own smart-sounding words. Sometimes, you don't need to actually be smart or right, just sound smart. "Don't touch that! It's arcane matrix is meta-unstable, and could result in an unmediated arcanic deflagration cascade!"

If they're a sort of brilliant tactician or planner sort of character, my first advice is to take extensive notes. This substitutes for "memory recall" and allows you to have much more information to actually make brilliant plans. The second piece of advice is to have "retroactively foreseen and planned for this". There's a feat for this in pathfinder [called "brilliant planner" that lets you stash away up to 50xlevel of undefined stuff which you can declare what it is when you need it], but you can also spend fate/wrath/similar meta resource points for narrative declarations or just negotiate with the GM to say "I was ready for that, here's my 25 chainmail bags that I packed ahead of time in case it could escape from burlap."

Psyren
2020-05-21, 12:35 AM
Though this brings us right back to the other problem I mentioned: you have the 'smarter' player is just playing the ''less smarter" players character for them. And in most cases that is not fun for either player.

The player that wanted to play a smart character does not like to be told every couple of minutes what there smart character would do by another player, even if it is in the nicest way. Even when said in a nice way, being told that "oh, hey your character is too smart to do the thing you just said; your character would do this instead" will wear thin.

And routinely having no answer or the wrong answer because the player isn't as smart as their character would be more fun in your view?

LordCdrMilitant
2020-05-21, 12:44 AM
And routinely having no answer or the wrong answer because the player isn't as smart as their character would be more fun in your view?

Yes. Nobody else gets to play my character. If necessary, I can make a knowledge check to know if what I'm about to say is right.

Psyren
2020-05-21, 02:12 AM
If necessary, I can make a knowledge check to know if what I'm about to say is right.

This is literally what I'm advocating for though?

Onos
2020-05-21, 03:27 AM
Effective metagaming.

To elaborate, I don't mean the crap kind where you know the Monster Manual inside out, but more like drip-feeding your character information as though they figured it out. Determining the AC of something with natural armour because you "analysed the ratio of scale size between its throat and shoulder" or a spellcasting DC because "his bookshelf was filled with tomes by Otiluke, and I didn't see a single volume of Marathra!"

Play a high-AC, high-perception character. Any time an attack misses it's due to you having perfectly calculated the arc of the swing, and throw in a reference to Sherlock whenever you do well on perception (bonus points if the GM let's you use Int instead of Wis). Focus on lore skills and play it like you're figuring things out instead of remembering them. Take the "Lucky" feat and ask your GM to rename it "Brainy" or ask for a custom background feature which grants you a bonus to something which helps in exchange for a small penalty to something thematic (riff on the typical social awkwardness and take disadvantage on every social roll for allowing you to use Int instead of Dex for AC).

Pick a field of knowledge, and anytime you speak about/in that field just staple a bunch of random buzzwords together which mean nothing, then elaborate when you get blank looks (illusion wizard: clearly the virtual photons have been repolarised to produce a semi-inverted quantum phase transition. Translation: that's an illusory wall.) Pick one or two things which people interact "normally" with and be extremely detached. Have literally no care what you're eating so long as it's not poisonous (it's just fuel for the mortal shell), or never bother with a cloak because you're always too deep in thought to notice the weather.

Democratus
2020-05-21, 09:24 AM
Okay... and? Is reasoning not a function of intelligence? Can a GM not facilitate that by providing a player with clues/likely outcomes?

Which is exactly the point I was making. Reasoning is intelligence. Retention of information is memory, not intelligence. They are two different things.

You can be very intelligent (high reasoning ability) and have low retention. And you can have eidetic memory and not be smart at all.

Dimers
2020-05-21, 10:32 AM
The trait I most associate with intelligence in people around me is optimization/efficiency. Consistently making the least movement for the greatest effect is what convinces me someone is intelligent.

One way that often happens is hyper-preparation, especially of the "Xanatos speed chess" variety: no matter what happens, it was already part of the plan to make things naturally and nigh-effortlessly move toward the planner's goals.

Max_Killjoy
2020-05-21, 11:22 AM
Hyper-prep can easily come across as cheesy and contrived when it's done with retcons, etc.

Zarrgon
2020-05-21, 12:15 PM
And routinely having no answer or the wrong answer because the player isn't as smart as their character would be more fun in your view?

It's not fun, no. But just having the DM tell you things, and even going to the extent of playing your smart character for you, is also not fun.

If getting information passed to you by the DM and the DM occasionally taking control of your character to act smart, is enough for you to feel like you are in some way "playing a smart character", then by all means do so.

I'm just saying that I have rarely seen it work long term. And many players don't have fun being told what their character knows and what their character does.

Nifft
2020-05-21, 12:31 PM
Which is exactly the point I was making. Reasoning is intelligence. Retention of information is memory, not intelligence. They are two different things.

You can be very intelligent (high reasoning ability) and have low retention. And you can have eidetic memory and not be smart at all.

It should be noted that D&D conflates these meanings.

Furthermore, mechanical limitations allows a high Intelligence score to model retention, but doesn't help much with reasoning -- so it could be argued that D&D Intelligence is mostly about a few types of mostly-academic memory.

Democratus
2020-05-21, 12:44 PM
It should be noted that D&D conflates these meanings.

Furthermore, mechanical limitations allows a high Intelligence score to model retention, but doesn't help much with reasoning -- so it could be argued that D&D Intelligence is mostly about a few types of mostly-academic memory.

They do seem to bunch it all in together: :smallamused:

"Intelligence is quite similar to what is currently known as intelligence quotient, but it also includes mnemonic ability, reasoning, and learning ability outside those measured by the written word." (AD&D PH p.10)

Psyren
2020-05-21, 02:20 PM
Which is exactly the point I was making. Reasoning is intelligence. Retention of information is memory, not intelligence. They are two different things.

You can be very intelligent (high reasoning ability) and have low retention. And you can have eidetic memory and not be smart at all.

Again, and? The GM handing notes to the intelligent character's player can cover both scenarios. I'm really unclear of the point you're making and its relevance to either what I said or this topic as a whole, it just comes across as being pedantic for the sake of being pedantic.


It's not fun, no. But just having the DM tell you things, and even going to the extent of playing your smart character for you, is also not fun.

That is a strawman, nowhere did I say "the GM should play your character for you." A note is a note, i.e. information. What your character does with that information is up to you.

Max_Killjoy
2020-05-21, 02:28 PM
That is a strawman, nowhere did I say "the GM should play your character for you." A note is a note, i.e. information. What your character does with that information is up to you.


Yeah, I'd say there's a huge difference between a note that says "this is what your character perceives/understands/knows here because of their high intelligence", and a note that says "this is what your character DOES because of etc..."

Nifft
2020-05-21, 02:29 PM
They do seem to bunch it all in together: :smallamused:

"Intelligence is quite similar to what is currently known as intelligence quotient, but it also includes mnemonic ability, reasoning, and learning ability outside those measured by the written word." (AD&D PH p.10)

Yeah, but in addition you can roll to recall a fact or subject. IQ is not well modeled by dice mechanics.

When polygons hit the table in anger, what Intelligence buys you is most often memory.


Therefore, by expanding your real-life vocabulary, you can genuinely and without deception portray a higher Intelligence score.

False God
2020-05-21, 02:37 PM
I tend to take a page from other media, Lex Luthor is a good example, obviously the people who write him aren't super-humanly intelligent, but he's certainly regarded as a good standard for what a super-intelligent human might act like, so ya know, role-play like that.

Zarrgon
2020-05-21, 04:30 PM
That is a strawman, nowhere did I say "the GM should play your character for you." A note is a note, i.e. information. What your character does with that information is up to you.

I did.

You stated that the DM can tell the player that wants to play a smart character things the player would never know, figure out or be able to see, but that the character would be able to do.

You also stated that the player could then role play knowing whatever the DM told them their character knows.

This is the part where I pointed out that doing it this way only lets the player role play they know something, and it's not even close to role playing a smart character. Plus the player can only ''be themselves" with whatever there mental abilities are for real. In short, just giving a person some information does not let them role play smart.

So then a further pointed out the the DM would have to provide context, additional information.........and maybe most of all: Advise.

And THAT is where you head along down the road of the DM playing the players smart character. When every couple minutes the DM is telling the player "your character is smart enough to do or not do that", the player is no longer playing the character, as they are just doing what the DM tells them to do with their character.

Psyren
2020-05-21, 05:29 PM
When every couple minutes the DM is telling the player "your character is smart enough to do or not do that", the player is no longer playing the character, as they are just doing what the DM tells them to do with their character.

Which is why I never said the DM should do that either :smallconfused:

What the DM should say is something like "you know that X is the likely result if you do Y" or "you can safely rule out X as a possible outcome if you do Y" or "here are factors your less smart teammates aren't considering, that you happen to know because you are educated in X." The player is still the one who can choose to do Y or not do Y (or alternatively, to advise his team to do Y or not do Y) - but whether they do so or not, it's their choice. More importantly, it's an informed choice. Does that help?

Jay R
2020-05-21, 07:06 PM
The word “intelligence” is used to include a great many things, not all of which are connected. If we stop trying to make it include things it can’t include in the game, things make more sense.

Playing a character is simply making a long series of decisions. From choosing a class and building a character, to choosing the right spells or equipment, to studying the rules to understand the effects of one’s choices, to deciding which weapon or spell to use, and where to aim it, the play of the game is decision-making.

And a 30 on your character’s INT score will not help you make better decisions.

But why should it? There are highly intelligent people who are nonetheless very impractical (Sheldon Cooper, the classic absent-minded professor), and there are highly intelligent people who are also very practical (Batman, Sherlock Holmes).

The INT score determines how intelligent your character is, but your long sequence of decisions will determine how practical or clever she is in using that intelligence.

Consider two players. Pat is running a high-INT wizard. Sandy is running an average INT sorcerer. The party explores an area and sees a bunch of tracks and many scorched trees. Pat asks to roll a knowledge(arcana) check, succeeds, and learns that there is a specific fire-based creature. The DM explains all the details about the creature. Pat’s wizard attacks with a fireball.

Meanwhile, Sandy says, “There are a lot of scorched trees here. Let’s try a cold spell.” The cold spell does double damage.

Pat’s wizard is absolutely higher intelligence, and has higher level spells available, and made the knowledge (arcana) roll. Sandy’s sorcerer showed more cleverness.

You play a high-intelligence character by having more spell points, making better INT-based skill checks, having access to higher-level spells, etc.

But you play a cleverer, more practical character by learning to make better decisions.

Max_Killjoy
2020-05-21, 07:23 PM
The word “intelligence” is used to include a great many things, not all of which are connected. If we stop trying to make it include things it can’t include in the game, things make more sense.

Playing a character is simply making a long series of decisions. From choosing a class and building a character, to choosing the right spells or equipment, to studying the rules to understand the effects of one’s choices, to deciding which weapon or spell to use, and where to aim it, the play of the game is decision-making.

And a 30 on your character’s INT score will not help you make better decisions.

But why should it? There are highly intelligent people who are nonetheless very impractical (Sheldon Cooper, the classic absent-minded professor), and there are highly intelligent people who are also very practical (Batman, Sherlock Holmes).

The INT score determines how intelligent your character is, but your long sequence of decisions will determine how practical or clever she is in using that intelligence.

Consider two players. Pat is running a high-INT wizard. Sandy is running an average INT sorcerer. The party explores an area and sees a bunch of tracks and many scorched trees. Pat asks to roll a knowledge(arcana) check, succeeds, and learns that there is a specific fire-based creature. The DM explains all the details about the creature. Pat’s wizard attacks with a fireball.

Meanwhile, Sandy says, “There are a lot of scorched trees here. Let’s try a cold spell.” The cold spell does double damage.

Pat’s wizard is absolutely higher intelligence, and has higher level spells available, and made the knowledge (arcana) roll. Sandy’s sorcerer showed more cleverness.

You play a high-intelligence character by having more spell points, making better INT-based skill checks, having access to higher-level spells, etc.

But you play a cleverer, more practical character by learning to make better decisions.

First, that assumes a lot about which system we're looking at.

Second, even some inside-D&D text describes intelligence in broader terms than you do here.

D&D_Fan
2020-05-21, 07:28 PM
By intelligence, do you mean Knowledge, or total Mental capability.

If you mean knowledge, then just have a bunch of references to made up literature, book, and even some minor meta thoughts.

I've read that Intelligence of 15 in D&D is peak human capability. By 20 or so, just do random things that are incomprehensible and have them always be right. You can't do it yourself, since it is superhuman. Just make it up. If you are unhumanly smart, then not even the player should be able to understand the interactions of their character.

Zarrgon
2020-05-21, 08:51 PM
Which is why I never said the DM should do that either :smallconfused:

What the DM should say is something like "you know that X is the likely result if you do Y" or "you can safely rule out X as a possible outcome if you do Y" or "here are factors your less smart teammates aren't considering, that you happen to know because you are educated in X." The player is still the one who can choose to do Y or not do Y (or alternatively, to advise his team to do Y or not do Y) - but whether they do so or not, it's their choice. More importantly, it's an informed choice. Does that help?

I think you are still missing my point.

If a player is not so bright, no amount of things a DM tells the player will change that. The player still needs to be the one that uses the information, and they don't have the skill and mental abilities to do so.

You can say the player is still in control of the character, sure: but if the player is just going to have the character do whatever the DM says...then is not the DM in control of the character?

DM: in the middle of the room you see a treasure chest
Player: Oh, my character can't wait to run over and takes all the loot!
DM: no, no, wait. Your super intelligent character is too smart to fall for this as it's a obvious trap.
Player:Oh, um, thanks DM. I won't have my character do that.

And if the player does choose to ignore the DM, and their smart character, then they are not playing a smart character after all.

AntiAuthority
2020-05-21, 08:55 PM
I didn't particularly read the other posts, so my apologies if this is parroting information already stated. This also might be a little cynical as I seem to naturally gravitate towards darker characters.

Well, this is all purely theoretical, and this is a fairly common problem among writers... And this is just my interpretation of such a character/characters.

I'd say such a character would probably feel frustrated if they're the smartest person in the room, akin to being an adult talking to toddlers if the other people are of average or above average intelligence (this is avoidable if placed around beings of similar intelligence). There's also some studies to suggest higher intelligence leads to mental illnesses like depression and anxiety disorders, so they might not be the cheeriest person.

Probably able to memorize most things they see and hear, along with incredible problem solving abilities that border on being able to predict possible outcomes like Sherlock Holmes to the point where they're basically omniscient/able to see the future (unless this is broken up into Wisdom, but this is the general forums section, so I'll include it).

Then there's the Dunning-Kruger Effect means that, depending on their Charisma, they might have an even harder time communicating their ideas to those with lower intelligence due to lack of confidence... Though this is more dependent on their supplemental mental scores.

So these characters might appear coldly logical on the outside, but that's because of apathy brought on by depression/anxiety, boredom with most things as most things can be predicted to them along with tests of intelligence coming so easily they rarely have to give most things their all so don't see much point in going all out with how easily things come to them, possibly confused on why other people of realistic levels of intelligence struggle with the simplest of concepts, the ability to memorize most things and create/improve upon already existing things means they'd probably have a grim satisfaction with their intelligence, and possibly be intellectually isolated if placed around people of average or even realistically genius levels of intelligence as it might as well be like them trying to communicate with ants or toddlers in the bodies of adults... This isn't even going into how much they might be frustrated communicating simple (to them) ideas to average/realistically intelligent people (imagine trying to teach a kindergartner the details of theoretical physics... Simple to you, but not them), though this really depends on their Charisma score (or equivalent of Charisma) and possibly could result in talking down to average intelligence/highly intelligent people (by our standards) like one would a child. Possibly nihilistic depending on how they interpret the world around them.

Psyren
2020-05-21, 09:17 PM
DM: no, no, wait. Your super intelligent character is too smart to fall for this as it's a obvious trap.


Zarrgon. Your examples are the problem. Because you keep writing this DM as though they are grabbing the steering wheel when you can simply not do that.

Instead of a note that says "your intelligent character is too smart to fall for this" - try instead "your knowledge of Drow suggests that they would never leave a real treasure unguarded in the center of an empty room. This appears to be a trap." Then the player makes the choice of what to do with that information. Why is this such a difficult concept?

A good character might warn his companions, or if doing so might result in more danger, trigger it themselves.
An evil character might say "That lid looks heavy. We should let our strong and gallant Paladin, who I've never gotten along with, open the chest first." Followed by a knowing smirk. See? Choice.

Zarrgon
2020-05-21, 10:08 PM
Zarrgon. Your examples are the problem. Because you keep writing this DM as though they are grabbing the steering wheel when you can simply not do that.


Your making way too much of a leap.

You have the not so bright player with a smart character and the DM tells the player some information the smart character would know.

Now your making the leap that the dim player will, somehow, become smart and act and even role play in an intelligent way, just as they were told some information.

The DM passes the the note that says "your knowledge of Drow suggests that they would never leave a real treasure unguarded in the center of an empty room. This appears to be a trap."

The player looks at the note and just says "my character goes over and ties to open the chest".

See the intelligence of the player is totally unaffected by the note: they are the same person they have always been.

Sure the not so bright player can make a choice, but that has no effect on role playing a smart character: The players choices will always be not so bright because that is all the player can think of. It's the classic: you can lead a horse to water, but you can not make them drink it.

Psyren
2020-05-21, 11:27 PM
The player looks at the note and just says "my character goes over and ties to open the chest".

See the intelligence of the player is totally unaffected by the note: they are the same person they have always been.

1) Weren't you just saying the DM is controlling the character's actions instead of the player? So which is it?
2) "I want to roleplay a superintelligent character" and "I want to trigger a trap for no reason after finding out it's a trap" isn't a system problem, it's just a troll at your table.

Jay R
2020-05-21, 11:28 PM
First, that assumes a lot about which system we're looking at.

Yes, my specific examples were specific. That’s the essence of an example. And yes, they were deliberately chosen to be a system the largest number of readers could recognize.

Nonetheless, the basic point applies equally well to Intelligence as used in all versions of D&D, Chivalry & Sorcery, Hero Systems, Traveller, Flashing Blades, GURPS, Pendragon, and in fact every game I’ve ever played with Intelligence as a stat.


Second, even some inside-D&D text describes intelligence in broader terms than you do here.

Agreed. Therefore I wrote, “If we stop trying to make it include things we can’t include in the game, it all makes more sense.”

My primary point is that playing a game is a series of decisions. As long as the definition of Intelligence as a stat includes decision making, the game stat cannot represent that, without taking the decisions away from the player.

As soon as we stop thinking that the stat represents the part of the character that is what we play, then there is no problem.

If I play a World War II game, even if I am playing Patton’s troops, I don’t have Patton’s decisions. The write-up can give me his knowledge of the tanks’ abilities, and a description of the terrain effects, but I am making the decisions, not Patton.

As soon as we stop expecting the rules to give me Patton’s decision-making skills, it all makes sense.

Vahnavoi
2020-05-22, 04:59 AM
Gotta agree with Jay R here. Intelligence-as-decision-making is notoriously hard to model, intelligence-as-memory is trivial: a player can write notes, record audio, use a calculator, look up things on Google etc. to both retain and access more information than they could on their own.

Zarrgon is right that IQ 100 decision made on N+1 units of information is still as much an IQ 100 decision as one made with N units of information, but for purposes of a game, it's enough.

Zarrgon
2020-05-22, 12:26 PM
1) Weren't you just saying the DM is controlling the character's actions instead of the player? So which is it?

It's my main point: the not so bright player does not like being told by the DM what to do under the guise of the DM telling the player what their smart character would do.



2) "I want to roleplay a superintelligent character" and "I want to trigger a trap for no reason after finding out it's a trap" isn't a system problem, it's just a troll at your table.

Note it is also a typical action of a not so bright person.

When you just look at people in general, look how many people make poor, bad or stupid decisions or actions. Right now, somewhere someone, is sending their bank information online as they are so happy they won the Whatever Lotto. Right now, somewhere someone, is signing up for a car warranty over the phone. Right now someone is getting the call that their social security number has been canceled and to get it back they must go to Dollar General and get a $500 visa gift card and send it to the caller on the phone.

You can spend hours...days even..watching You Tube videos full of such things. The guys ladder can't reach the top of his house, so no problem he gets the ping pong table out of the shed, puts the latter on top of that and climbs up, what could possibly go wrong, right?

And in most such cases, even if someone was there to tell them not to do it....they mostly likely still would.

You can give a player all the information in the game world, but that will never make the player smarter or more intelligent.

Segev
2020-05-22, 02:48 PM
Though this brings us right back to the other problem I mentioned: you have the 'smarter' player is just playing the ''less smarter" players character for them. And in most cases that is not fun for either player.

The player that wanted to play a smart character does not like to be told every couple of minutes what there smart character would do by another player, even if it is in the nicest way. Even when said in a nice way, being told that "oh, hey your character is too smart to do the thing you just said; your character would do this instead" will wear thin.

Nowhere did I say anything even remotely like, "The other player takes control of the smart PC from the less-smart player and tells him what his character does."

What I said was, "The other players, who do figure out something that the player of the smart PC has missed, point out what they have figured out."

Those other players aren't having their characters speak, IC. They're telling the player of the smart PC what they've figured out, and if the player of the smart PC wishes, he can have his character be the one to figure it out. And then act on whatever it is that's been figured out.

I am unsure why you think this is any more taking over the PC by telling his player "what a smart character would do" than having the player roll a Knowledge or Intelligence check to see if he knows or figures something out.

It's sharing information and letting the player who controls the PC who should, IC, be the one figuring stuff out be the one who gets to have and therefore act on the information.

prabe
2020-05-22, 02:59 PM
Nowhere did I say anything even remotely like, "The other player takes control of the smart PC from the less-smart player and tells him what his character does."

What I said was, "The other players, who do figure out something that the player of the smart PC has missed, point out what they have figured out."

Those other players aren't having their characters speak, IC. They're telling the player of the smart PC what they've figured out, and if the player of the smart PC wishes, he can have his character be the one to figure it out. And then act on whatever it is that's been figured out.

I am unsure why you think this is any more taking over the PC by telling his player "what a smart character would do" than having the player roll a Knowledge or Intelligence check to see if he knows or figures something out.

It's sharing information and letting the player who controls the PC who should, IC, be the one figuring stuff out be the one who gets to have and therefore act on the information.

While I agree this isn't the problem Zarrgon thinks it is, I think it's better as a way for an intelligent player to emulate a super-intelligent character than it is as a way for a player with more like average intelligence to emulate a human-scale genius.

Zarrgon
2020-05-22, 04:28 PM
I am unsure why you think this is any more taking over the PC by telling his player "what a smart character would do" than having the player roll a Knowledge or Intelligence check to see if he knows or figures something out.


When you give the player information the player has to use their own mind and skills and mental ability to understand, comprehend, assimilate and use that information. If the player does not understand, the DM or other players have to further explain things and help the poor player understand and this leads down the road of others taking contol of the character.

When I say ''takes control of the character" I'm not talking about grabbing the character sheet and throwing the player out of the game. I'm talking about more the follower effect where the player willing gives up control of their character. In this case: because they want their character to act smart.

The DM tells the player information their smart character knows.
The player does not understand and asks for help.
The DM or other players tell the player what their smart character should do.
The player wanting to play a smart character has their character do whatever they said to do.

And my whole point is that it does not work. The player will get tired quickly of always following the advise of "what their smart character would do".

prabe
2020-05-22, 04:37 PM
There is a difference between "playing a character smarter than you" and "playing a character smarter than you can imagine." Obviously in either case it's easier the more intelligent you are. Zarrgon is focusing more on the latter case, whereas I understood the main point of the OP to be the former, and Zarrgon seems also to be focusing on the difficulties--more prevalent when playing a being more intelligent than you can imagine--more than on offering advice. Most of how it's going to work--if it's going to work--is likely to involve some amount of metagame thinking, some amount of prep, and some amount of help from the GM and the other players.

Psyren
2020-05-22, 05:02 PM
It's my main point: the not so bright player does not like being told by the DM what to do under the guise of the DM telling the player what their smart character would do.


Giving someone information that their smart character would know is not "telling the player what their smart character would do." If you still don't see that, there's no point in this discussion continuing.

Zarrgon
2020-05-22, 08:13 PM
Giving someone information that their smart character would know is not "telling the player what their smart character would do." If you still don't see that, there's no point in this discussion continuing.

Ok, Ive said it a couple times but I'll say it again: I agree with that. Ok, done, final, over. You never need bring it up again.

Ok....now, I'm talking about the next step after that.

The not so bright player gets all the information from the DM, but they do not understand it or know what to do with it. So they have to ask what it means, and then head down the road of asking for advise. And this is where the player will freely choose to give up control of their character to have their character do whatever the player was advised to do.

Is that more clear?

Max_Killjoy
2020-05-22, 08:20 PM
That's not unique to hyperintelligent characters.

I've seen almost every type of character played by someone who constantly asks what they should do.

Psyren
2020-05-22, 08:26 PM
Ok, Ive said it a couple times but I'll say it again: I agree with that. Ok, done, final, over. You never need bring it up again.

Ok....now, I'm talking about the next step after that.

The not so bright player gets all the information from the DM, but they do not understand it or know what to do with it. So they have to ask what it means, and then head down the road of asking for advise. And this is where the player will freely choose to give up control of their character to have their character do whatever the player was advised to do.

Is that more clear?

How the heck would a reasonable person not know what to do with information like "this is an obvious trap?" There's a certain level of player knowledge you're expected to have to be able to play the game at all. Would you also have to explain to them that fire is hot and spikes are pointy? The word "trap" generally carries negative connotations.

And the player usually doesn't have to do anything except announce what his knowledge roll has told him. He rolls high, the GM hands him a note, the other players look at him. In-character, he says "that has a high likelihood of being a trap." The choice is still his, as well as the party's what to do next.

Jay R
2020-05-22, 09:34 PM
You're spending a lot of time saying that the system or the DM can supply knowledge and memory, but it can't supply decisiond without taking the decision-making away from the player.

I don't even think you would even disagree about any specific situation; you're just talking about different situations.

I suspect that one of you is talking about DM info that leaves only one good option, while the other is talking about DM info that takes away the one bad option.

Zarrgon
2020-05-22, 09:55 PM
How the heck would a reasonable person not know what to do with information like "this is an obvious trap?" There's a certain level of player knowledge you're expected to have to be able to play the game at all. Would you also have to explain to them that fire is hot and spikes are pointy? The word "trap" generally carries negative connotations.

Well, keep in mind the reasonable average intelligence person would not need or want the DM to pass them information as they can figure out things for themselves and role play a smart character by themselves.

It's the unreasonable below average intelligence person that wants the help from the DM so they can role play their character as a smart character that is the focus here.




And the player usually doesn't have to do anything except announce what his knowledge roll has told him. He rolls high, the GM hands him a note, the other players look at him. In-character, he says "that has a high likelihood of being a trap." The choice is still his, as well as the party's what to do next.

This is my point though.

-The not so bright player wants to play a super smart character.
-So the DM does the bit where they pass smart notes to the player. And later the DM passes the note about the trap.
-Then the player has their character say the information as the player reads the note to everyone. This is where the player might feel like they are role playing a smart character for a couple seconds.
-The other players discuss the information, while the not so bright player just sits back as he normally does. He does not have anything else to add or say.
-Eventually the players of average intelligence or more will decide on a course of action using the DM note information.
-Then the group will ''strongly suggest" to the not so bright player what their smart character "should do".
-The not so bright player, having no idea what to do and wanting to play a smart character, just has their character do whatever the other player(s) told him to have his character do. The not so bright character chooses to be told what to do.


So there are my two points:

*Just getting notes of information from the DM does very little or nothing to make a player think or feel like they are playing a smart character.

*The DM information almost leads leads to others telling and suggesting to the player of "what their smart character would or should do", and that while the player might agree to follow and do as they are told at the start, it will wear thin quickly and the player won't like always being ''told by even the nicest suggestion" what to do with their character all the time.

NigelWalmsley
2020-05-22, 10:03 PM
You're spending a lot of time saying that the system or the DM can supply knowledge and memory, but it can't supply decisiond without taking the decision-making away from the player.

No, but you could have it change the value or effectiveness of the decision. You could imagine an approach more similar to metagame currency used in ruleslight games where you could use your character's intelligence to make plans work. Obviously that's not a perfect solution, as it is unsatisfying to the people who want to rely on their own cleverness, but there's no particular reason you couldn't allow people to take the action "come up with a clever plan to sneak into the fortress".

Vahnavoi
2020-05-22, 10:10 PM
That's not unique to hyperintelligent characters.

I've seen almost every type of character played by someone who constantly asks what they should do.

That's because it's obviously a player trait, independent of character. A player who is unsure or insecure of how to play their character is prone to constantly seeking affirmation. It's undesireable only insofar the point is to get the player(s) to make decisions out of their own initiative and volition.


You're spending a lot of time saying that the system or the DM can supply knowledge and memory, but it can't supply decisiond without taking the decision-making away from the player.

I don't even think you would even disagree about any specific situation; you're just talking about different situations.

I suspect that one of you is talking about DM info that leaves only one good option, while the other is talking about DM info that takes away the one bad option.

Psyren and Zarrgon, listen to Jay R. He has the gist of it.

The best compromise between merely supplying information and supplying decisions, is to offer multiple decisions of equal play strength. That's limited by the GM's intelligence rather than the player's, so it's not necessarily enough to produce smarter decisions than the player on their own, but it's something.

Psyren
2020-05-22, 11:54 PM
You're spending a lot of time saying that the system or the DM can supply knowledge and memory, but it can't supply decisiond without taking the decision-making away from the player.

I've never once advocated "supplying decisions." Please show me where I did, and I'll happily edit the post for clarity.



-The other players discuss the information, while the not so bright player just sits back as he normally does. He does not have anything else to add or say.

This is not the only possible scenario.



-Then the group will ''strongly suggest" to the not so bright player what their smart character "should do".

So what? Players suggest what they think other players should do all the time. What a character does is still up to their player.



So there are my two points:

*Just getting notes of information from the DM does very little or nothing to make a player think or feel like they are playing a smart character.

*The DM information almost leads leads to others telling and suggesting to the player of "what their smart character would or should do", and that while the player might agree to follow and do as they are told at the start, it will wear thin quickly and the player won't like always being ''told by even the nicest suggestion" what to do with their character all the time.

Your points rely on a doormat player being browbeaten by either their group or their DM, neither of which I'm advocating. I'm not saying that can't happen, but no in-game solution can solve what is clearly an out-of-game problem. If people are mandating what your character does or should do, you're in a toxic group, and that is off-topic for this thread.



Psyren and Zarrgon, listen to Jay R. He has the gist of it.

Not from where I'm sitting.

Onos
2020-05-23, 06:01 AM
Wow, much less friendly thread than I'd expected it to be! This is... an absurdly pointless argument. There's plenty of ways to tie mechanical impact to whatever kind of flavour you want, and plenty of ways to add flavour with zero game impact. And if you're expecting your table's fictional Wizard to actually Sherlock the Big Bad's plot (which, spoiler alert, if you're at a table with people they're probably of comparable intelligence) thanks to the player's mental translation of a (necessarily) incomplete description of events in a world with quite substantial differences from our own, then I have bad news.

It's widely accepted that Ability Scores in D&D don't translate particularly brilliantly to real-world terms, regardless of what is said in the books. Nor do AC, Damage, or a whole bunch of other stuff. "Intelligence" as a concept is so ludicrously broad even in real-life that trying to nail down a single set of behaviours is silly - especially when you're getting to superhuman levels. Dogs can't outthink us, even if they're 'playing at being human.' The very concept of 'spacetime' - something which dogs likely can't grasp - forms the basis of everything from basic measurement to GPS. None of us are superhuman, so none of us know what the "next basic concepts" are if you follow - we literally cannot imagine how someone with 350 IQ thinks.

Given that there is no bar, no standard, it baffles me that there's such a level of argument over this. You are welcome to portray superintelligence however you please and no-one can say it's wrong. Those of you saying 'oh, but a really smart person wouldn't do X' - are honestly probably the least suited to weigh in. Smart people have emotions, neuroses, addictions and traumas just like everyone else. Not to mention they can be flat out wrong.

As far as agency goes, I'm sure we've all had (or heard of) players who need every thought reaffirmed and players who go out their way to spite anything resembling a suggestion. So any of the 'this is what your character knows/thinks' stuff is going to be decided on a table-by-table, person-by-person basis anyway. Because that's sort of the point of a tabletop game with a GM role, to make decisions based on what's actually happening.

So, to those of you who say it can't be done: please let the rest of us play our games about imaginary goblins whatever wrong way we want.

Max_Killjoy
2020-05-23, 09:42 AM
There's a roleplaying aspect to this... I've found that many players don't like being limited by their character's abilities, only empowered by them. They'll take a dump stat because they don't care about the mechanical effect, but heaven forbid they actually abide by or portray the character's lack of foresight, or wits, or intellect, or charm, or whatever.

And then there's another question, of how often does a game present a challenge that's directed at the character's intelligence. For example, I've seen arguments over whether a puzzle is in the game to challenge the character, or challenge the player -- sure the character with the 20 out of 20 INT and the "Puzzlemaster Feat" could solve it moments, but what does that matter when the GM and/or the player insists that the players need to solve the puzzle, not "the dice"?

prabe
2020-05-23, 09:59 AM
There's a roleplaying aspect to this... I've found that many players don't like being limited by their character's abilities, only empowered by them. They'll take a dump stat because they don't care about the mechanical effect, but heaven forbid they actually abide buy or portray the character's lack of foresight, or wits, or intellect, or charm, or whatever.

And watch the wrath of the heavens descend on a GM who establishes situations where the dump stat matters, and enforces them. But yes, people don't (typically) dump INT because they want to play a moron, or CHA because they want to play a boor.


And then there's another question, of how often does a game present a challenge that's directed at the character's intelligence. For example, I've seen arguments over whether a puzzle is in the game to challenge the character, or challenge the player -- sure the character with the 20 out of 20 INT and the "Puzzlemaster Feat" could solve it moments, but what does that matter when the GM and/or the player insists that the players need to solve the puzzle, not "the dice"?

This is similar to social skills, where someone kinda introverted decides to play a face and has a hard roleplaying it and counts on the mechanics. In both cases it kinda puts at least some extra work on the GM. I think puzzles are probably the case where it's hardest to go to mechanical (dice-rolling) solutions, because usually the point is, as I understand it, to challenge the player not the character, especially when there's no game-mechanics resolution given. If you give intelligent players a Gordian Knot, don't be surprised if they go with an Alexandrian solution.

Alcore
2020-05-23, 10:08 AM
It's less about what they look like or how intelligent. More about the filter they see the world through.


Thanos is intelligent. He is strong and tough. His race has a longevity most would envy. His solutions to things generally apply power to the problem, it isn't always the easiest and he has a long view on things. He has an ideology to work towards and he does so.

Cavemen are hyper intelligent in comparison to the creatures of their world. What do they have? Two arms, two legs, a brain. This is where human greed started, it is our nature (though i feel we take it farther than they did). They were envious of mammoths and their pelts, of the sabertooth cats and their sharp fangs, and even the sun and it's warmth. They made blankets, coats, spears and fire. If we were not challenged by the environment we might not have those things or discover them much later.



I notice D&D and fantasy in general usually has hyper intelligent villains and strong heroes. What would a hyper intelligent villain want? What would a hyper intelligent hero want?intelligence alone (literally) usually doesn't want anything. Read more books? Solve mathematical problems? What does the hero want? What does the villain want? The intelligence will expand on those answers. Perhaps even note a problem present in the plan.


Caveman is sitting in cave. Stomach growls. He wants food. He remembers a suitable source nearby. Intelligence then pipes up "your kin needs food too. Bring [x] too to carry some of the food back. Remember that spear!"

Cluedrew
2020-05-23, 10:41 AM
It is sort of implicate in the number of varied answers but there is some initial steps I would like to highlight:

Make a Character: I hope this is obvious but "superhuman intelligence" is not a character, it is a trait. They will have many other traits as the character fills out. Some will relate to their intelligence (but are hardly fixed: to the enjoy explaining things to people who don't get it or does that drive them crazy) and others will not (is a highly intelligent person more or less likely to enjoy baking). This is just something I feel should be dropped into every thread about creating a type of character just as a reminder.

Choose a Type of Intelligence: I don't know any role-playing systems that have stats for every type of intelligence I have seen in the world. Even ignoring things like mussel-memory and coordination that are probably biologically mental but are better represented as a physical aspect for game play there are a lot. Being good at reading people is different than big picture thinking or predicting what will happen next and... let me put it this way: who did exactly as well in English (or whatever they call literature studies where you live) as they did in Mathematics? I certainly didn't.

Now neither of those things may not be immediately useful skills in most role-playing games, but intelligence is not one or three scaling values. So for any given character pick the representation of intelligence that suits them the best.

Dimers
2020-05-23, 12:11 PM
I'm sure we've all had (or heard of) players who need every thought reaffirmed and players who go out their way to spite anything resembling a suggestion.

Heh. I know one guy who does both. He has a hard time making decisions without other players/GM chiming in, but then 90% of the time he goes against the advice given. :smallamused:

Nifft
2020-05-23, 12:17 PM
Heh. I know one guy who does both. He has a hard time making decisions without other players/GM chiming in, but then 90% of the time he goes against the advice given. :smallamused:

Is that how to roleplay a subhuman intelligence?

Dimers
2020-05-24, 02:00 AM
Is that how to roleplay a subhuman intelligence?

Nah, just Chaotic Stupid with a low Wisdom.

Onos
2020-05-24, 05:34 AM
Make a Character: I hope this is obvious but "superhuman intelligence" is not a character, it is a trait. They will have many other traits as the character fills out. Some will relate to their intelligence (but are hardly fixed: to the enjoy explaining things to people who don't get it or does that drive them crazy) and others will not (is a highly intelligent person more or less likely to enjoy baking). This is just something I feel should be dropped into every thread about creating a type of character just as a reminder.


Very well put. "Intelligence" has no more of an impact on personality than any of the other ability scores - sure, someone very strong probably enjoys working out to some extent, and someone very smart probably enjoys learning but beyond basic things like that (which can certainly still have exceptions) your stats shouldn't really guide your personality. Even skill proficiencies are a better measure of personality as they're supposed to be an area of interest to your character.

@Dimers: That's... tragically hilarious. I have great sympathy for your GM haha.

Something tangentially related which occurred to me, wondering if it's a common thought: the "ideal, bond and flaw" on the character sheet are pretty terrible IMO. Bond is too situational (i.e. there's too many murderhobos) to be of much use.

Ideal and Flaw could potentially be worthwhile if taken down to one of each, though I do think some small mechanical impact could be given (to encourage the metagaming instincts and allow role to more actively contribute to roll) and be fleshed out with a bunch more traits like a Fear, Secret, Goal, Resentment or what have you. This could be steered towards "intelligence" as much as any other traits, and something I experiment with in home games. Anyone have any similar thoughts which can help character portrayal?

jayem
2020-05-24, 05:04 PM
Oh I reckon I manage to dumb things down enough. [Now that's out the way]


I think you are still missing my point.

If a player is not so bright, no amount of things a DM tells the player will change that. The player still needs to be the one that uses the information, and they don't have the skill and mental abilities to do so.

You can say the player is still in control of the character, sure: but if the player is just going to have the character do whatever the DM says...then is not the DM in control of the character?

DM: in the middle of the room you see a treasure chest
Player: Oh, my character can't wait to run over and takes all the loot!
DM: no, no, wait. Your super intelligent character is too smart to fall for this as it's a obvious trap.
Player:Oh, um, thanks DM. I won't have my character do that.

And if the player does choose to ignore the DM, and their smart character, then they are not playing a smart character after all.

It's got to be a case where every bit of leverage comes together. By the first line the DM should be applying the players experience
DM: in the middle of the room you see a suspiciously positioned treasure chest

The player should try to instruct forms of behaviour associated with intelligent behaviour "I think about the object"
The team can supply 'inner monologues', even if it's a group decision it's still "his" character. "If the stables on fire, you'll need more than a bucket of water"
The DM can help again "you start to walk towards what looks like an obvious trap..."
The player can bring what intelligence they have (if this is high then they can carry more of the weight by themselves. If lower they can have more help)

Lorsa
2020-05-26, 02:58 AM
I think the best suggestion on this thread is that hyper intelligent creatures would be hyper prepared.

Ehm, why? If you can outwit anyone in the moment, why prepare? Wouldn't that just make things boring?

Actually, come to think of it, hyper intelligent individuals are most likely hyper bored. It depends, of course, how lonely they are, but at least of humans, it's sort of a universal that high intelligence need stimuli - which can be difficult to get if noone is around to give you a challenge. So you might end up purposefully making it more difficult for yourself.

I guess my real point is that high intelligence isn't the only predictor of how people act. In fact, it may be a poor one.

Democratus
2020-05-26, 08:24 AM
For NPCs run by the GM, I think hyper-prepared is a good way to go because it is a great story trope. Serving the story of the game seems a reasonable standard for which to strive.

I have seen a few fun systems for handling super-intelligent NPCs during combat that usually involve predictive advantage to the NPC.

PCs, in general, should not have superhuman (super-elf, super-dwarf, etc.) intelligence. They are portraying people and that means that nothing about their mind is beyond what people can have.

Stories about super-human intelligence are usually about runaway AI, since any intellect a human can have is - by definition - not superhuman.

prabe
2020-05-26, 08:55 AM
As one of the people who mentioned preparedness as a way to emulate hyper-intelligence, I was specifically thinking of player-side preparation as a way to emulate superfast decision-making. You work out a number of responses to approximate situations, before they happen. As with any of the mental stats (in roughly any game that has mental stats), it's easier to roleplay the better you are at it IRL: It's easier for high-social people to play high-social characters; it's easier for smart people to play smart characters; it's easier for intuitive people to play intuitive characters. I think there are things a player (with a little help from the GM) can do to make their character a little smarter, but it's obviously going to be limited by player capability.

Segev
2020-05-29, 11:04 AM
And watch the wrath of the heavens descend on a GM who establishes situations where the dump stat matters, and enforces them. But yes, people don't (typically) dump INT because they want to play a moron, or CHA because they want to play a boor.


They don't? In my experience, that's EXACTLY why those stats get dumped. And people dump Wisdom when they want to play an impulsive so-and-so.

prabe
2020-05-29, 11:24 AM
They don't? In my experience, that's EXACTLY why those stats get dumped. And people dump Wisdom when they want to play an impulsive so-and-so.

In my experience, people dump stats in scores that don't matter for the concept they're intending to play. What you're talking about sounds like what some guys I play with call/ed "free points" in a point-buy system: when the system gives you build points for playing a character you think will be fun (especially if the GM doesn't put the characters into situations where the disadvantage comes up). There's a difference between "I want to play a foolish character" and "In order to maximize something else I need to put a low score somewhere ... Wisdom will do."

Segev
2020-05-29, 11:56 AM
In my experience, people dump stats in scores that don't matter for the concept they're intending to play. What you're talking about sounds like what some guys I play with call/ed "free points" in a point-buy system: when the system gives you build points for playing a character you think will be fun (especially if the GM doesn't put the characters into situations where the disadvantage comes up). There's a difference between "I want to play a foolish character" and "In order to maximize something else I need to put a low score somewhere ... Wisdom will do."

Sure, but I still haven't seen people - with the exception of some who take explicit advantage of a system claiming to value an aspect of play and then failing to have a subsystem in favor of "roleplay it" - who typically dump something and then ignore the defect.

Even people who take, say, a dump stat of Strength because they're playing a flipping wizard and need every ounce of Int they can get don't whine and moan that the DM is being unfair if Strength comes up as being important. They knew what they were doing when they dumped it, and most of them even laugh along with everyone else at how feeble their character is and at coming up with work-arounds to solve the problem.

The guy playing the low-Wisdom BDF isn't whining that the DM used mind-control on his character. He's rolling his eyes, sure, and maybe complaining that things are going poorly, but who doesn't?

I generally only see people really start doing the "but you're picking on me!" complaining when they've built a weakness into their character that does take some enemy intelligence or bad luck to exploit. "My super-fragile long-range sniping super-stealther is being targeted by long-range AoEs in his general vicinity? Why are they targeting ME when they can't even tell I'm there!?" is more common than, "You have the hypno-master snake-people using suggestion on my low-Wisdom fighter!? Why are you picking on me like that!?"

prabe
2020-05-29, 12:06 PM
Sure, but I still haven't seen people - with the exception of some who take explicit advantage of a system claiming to value an aspect of play and then failing to have a subsystem in favor of "roleplay it" - who typically dump something and then ignore the defect.

That's the whole "murderhobo" trope/cliche, innit? I don't need to interact politely with people if I'm just going to kill everyone. I think the distinction between "the game as played ignores the defect" and "the player ignores the defect" is one without much difference in practice.


I generally only see people really start doing the "but you're picking on me!" complaining when they've built a weakness into their character that does take some enemy intelligence or bad luck to exploit. "My super-fragile long-range sniping super-stealther is being targeted by long-range AoEs in his general vicinity? Why are they targeting ME when they can't even tell I'm there!?" is more common than, "You have the hypno-master snake-people using suggestion on my low-Wisdom fighter!? Why are you picking on me like that!?"

Whether players complain when this happens comes to expectations of play, I think, and if the GM says "go ahead and play Murda McHobo" then he's kinda setting up an expectation that the character will be viable; if he then targets the tanked CHA, repeatedly, the player might get kinda cheezed. I don't have much patience for that kind of player, generally, but in that case I could see his point.

Segev
2020-05-29, 12:28 PM
That's the whole "murderhobo" trope/cliche, innit? I don't need to interact politely with people if I'm just going to kill everyone. I think the distinction between "the game as played ignores the defect" and "the player ignores the defect" is one without much difference in practice.I was actually referring to a problem I saw in L5R, which DOES have a heavy emphasis on the social/political side of the game in terms of how the game expects to be played, but which has limited to no real mechanics with any teeth for affecting player behavior or enabling players to interact with the NPCs. So you'd see players who recognized this and did all the OOC research to be able to present exquisite gifts, thoughtful behaviors, and otherwise basically have their on-paper crude and crass Hobo Korosu be this silver-tongued, super-polite, favor-trading genius while also having every ounce of mechanical oomph invested in combat, so they were keeping up with or outdoing people who invested heavily in the social aspect of a build because they tricked the DM into letting them bypass any need to roll anything at all. Meanwhile, those who invested in the social side couldn't just describe how awesome their characters were in combat; the dice rolls still mattered.

But that's a flaw in a game which allows investment in something it deems important, but then lacks subsystem support to actually make those mechanics useful and says to "roleplay it." I like roleplay; don't get me wrong. But I also like mechanics to DO something.


Whether players complain when this happens comes to expectations of play, I think, and if the GM says "go ahead and play Murda McHobo" then he's kinda setting up an expectation that the character will be viable; if he then targets the tanked CHA, repeatedly, the player might get kinda cheezed. I don't have much patience for that kind of player, generally, but in that case I could see his point.
The issue really only arises when the expectation of how often something will come up is different. And whether they're getting targeted more than other players' weaknesses are.

I actually have more noticed the problem when a player has designed something that is untouchable without exploiting its weaknesses, who then whines that the weaknesses are exploited. This is a problem on both sides of the GM screen, mind; balancing how often they bring a threat to bear against the character with how big a threat it is.

The example I'm thinking of involved a glass cannon who relied on stealth and distance but couldn't take even one hit. If they were under fire, one hit might well be all it took to take them out, and the GM was bad at using "threat of discovery" as the threat metric to pressure the PC, rather than just having "discovery" be a thing that he made happen and then used AoE to try to apply pressure.

It can be very tricky to train a GM to recognize things other than "am I doing hp damage?" as a metric for how much pressure and stress a PC and his player feels.

prabe
2020-05-29, 12:42 PM
I was actually referring to a problem I saw in L5R, which DOES have a heavy emphasis on the social/political side of the game in terms of how the game expects to be played, but which has limited to no real mechanics with any teeth for affecting player behavior or enabling players to interact with the NPCs. So you'd see players who recognized this and did all the OOC research to be able to present exquisite gifts, thoughtful behaviors, and otherwise basically have their on-paper crude and crass Hobo Korosu be this silver-tongued, super-polite, favor-trading genius while also having every ounce of mechanical oomph invested in combat, so they were keeping up with or outdoing people who invested heavily in the social aspect of a build because they tricked the DM into letting them bypass any need to roll anything at all. Meanwhile, those who invested in the social side couldn't just describe how awesome their characters were in combat; the dice rolls still mattered.

But that's a flaw in a game which allows investment in something it deems important, but then lacks subsystem support to actually make those mechanics useful and says to "roleplay it." I like roleplay; don't get me wrong. But I also like mechanics to DO something.

That's fair. Sorry if my jumping to the wrong conclusion bothered you. I've not played L5R, mainly because the purported emphasis on matters of court ... doesn't appeal to me.



The issue really only arises when the expectation of how often something will come up is different. And whether they're getting targeted more than other players' weaknesses are.

The example I'm thinking of involved a glass cannon who relied on stealth and distance but couldn't take even one hit. If they were under fire, one hit might well be all it took to take them out, and the GM was bad at using "threat of discovery" as the threat metric to pressure the PC, rather than just having "discovery" be a thing that he made happen and then used AoE to try to apply pressure.

It can be very tricky to train a GM to recognize things other than "am I doing hp damage?" as a metric for how much pressure and stress a PC and his player feels.

Yeah. There are ways to threaten a character without hurting them, but finding them isn't always easy. OTOH, depending on how cannonlike the class cannon was, it might make sense for the opposition to target that character (or try to).

Max_Killjoy
2020-05-29, 04:08 PM
I was actually referring to a problem I saw in L5R, which DOES have a heavy emphasis on the social/political side of the game in terms of how the game expects to be played, but which has limited to no real mechanics with any teeth for affecting player behavior or enabling players to interact with the NPCs. So you'd see players who recognized this and did all the OOC research to be able to present exquisite gifts, thoughtful behaviors, and otherwise basically have their on-paper crude and crass Hobo Korosu be this silver-tongued, super-polite, favor-trading genius while also having every ounce of mechanical oomph invested in combat, so they were keeping up with or outdoing people who invested heavily in the social aspect of a build because they tricked the DM into letting them bypass any need to roll anything at all. Meanwhile, those who invested in the social side couldn't just describe how awesome their characters were in combat; the dice rolls still mattered.

But that's a flaw in a game which allows investment in something it deems important, but then lacks subsystem support to actually make those mechanics useful and says to "roleplay it." I like roleplay; don't get me wrong. But I also like mechanics to DO something.


L5R, at least 4th Edition, also had that problem with things like crafting... it then added crafting-focused schools later, but there was no system upon which to build the abilities, so it was a bunch of disconnected stuff attached to no underlying base.

Segev
2020-05-29, 06:43 PM
That's fair. Sorry if my jumping to the wrong conclusion bothered you. I've not played L5R, mainly because the purported emphasis on matters of court ... doesn't appeal to me.Didn't offend/bother me, just made me realize I'd given the wrong impression, so provoked me to clarify. I really hate being unclear. :smallredface:


Yeah. There are ways to threaten a character without hurting them, but finding them isn't always easy. OTOH, depending on how cannonlike the class cannon was, it might make sense for the opposition to target that character (or try to).It can be challenging, yeah. And despite the stealthy sniper's complaints about being "singled out," the GM was actually not aiming at that PC particularly often considering that the PC was a high-stealth long-range sniper who...didn't always move too terribly far between shots.


L5R, at least 4th Edition, also had that problem with things like crafting... it then added crafting-focused schools later, but there was no system upon which to build the abilities, so it was a bunch of disconnected stuff attached to no underlying base.Crafting, huh? Definitely not something I saw much of in 3e and 2e (2e was nightmarishly unkind to PCs in terms of difficulties for even stuff that was supported).

But yes, that sounds like exactly the problem: the social rules amounted to "make some rolls and...uh... they might ... convince people. Who don't ahve any rules about how they react to them, judge your persuasiveness, etc."

Morty
2020-06-04, 04:14 PM
Something to keep in mind is that there's no such thing as an intelligence score in real life. An intelligence attribute in any RPG that uses it is going to be a mechanical abstraction that covers some particular kinds of intelligence.

So instead of trying to play some hyper-rational organic computer that always makes right choices, consider why you've made an intelligent character. You took a high Intelligence score for a reason. Are they a scholar? Scientist? Engineer? Wizard? Tactical mastermind? Then play your character accordingly.