How to play high wisdom

[Skrum]

I'm a 5e player, but this would pertain to any system with a wisdom/wisdom-like stat.

How do y'all play a high wisdom character? Intelligence, obvious, you're smart; Charisma, you're good at talking (and probably used to getting your way), but wisdom.... What the heck is this stat. Besides some connection to resisting mental magic.

[NichG]

Be genre savvy, mind-read the GM.

[Jay R]

Make good decisions.

Not tactically effective decisions; that's intelligence.

Incisive decisions that demonstrate insight into all the personalities involved, that include consideration of possible unintended consequences, that consider long-term effects as well as short term ones, and that fit within your moral code.

Unfortunately, it is just as difficult for an unwise player to play a wise PC as it is for an unintelligent player to play an intelligent PC.

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When I started playing original D&D, we realized the difficulty of playing characters wiser and/or more intelligent than the player. Since we are making the PC's decisions, if we make unintelligent or unwise decisions, then the PC behaves unintelligently or unwisely. I eventually decided that "INT" meant magical ability and the ability to remember facts about the world, and "WIS" meant clerical ability. [Those were the only actual effects of the abilities in that game.]

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In an early article in either The Dragon or its predecessor The Strategic Review, there was an article on how to generate your own stats. The method for determining your own wisdom was 20 minus the number of hours per week you spend on D&D. [At the time, that gave me a WIS score of about -10. I couldn't argue.]

[MoiMagnus]

I'm a 5e player, but this would pertain to any system with a wisdom/wisdom-like stat.

How do y'all play a high wisdom character? Intelligence, obvious, you're smart; Charisma, you're good at talking (and probably used to getting your way), but wisdom.... What the heck is this stat. Besides some connection to resisting mental magic.

As said by others, like all mental ability scores, it's difficult to play a character significantly better than you. If the character is only slightly better than you, you can compensate by taking more time to plan their actions, rather than reacting immediately.

Wisdom is usually the capacity to evaluate the situation. It's the capacity to evaluate your own decisions and see the blind spots (so no rash decision-making). It's the capacity to not miss any detail in your surrounding (so perception). It's the capacity to correctly understand what the NPCs want and care about (so insight, and to a certain degree animal handling). It's about being aware of the consequences of your actions: a low-wisdom chaotic evil is more "evil because LOL", (which includes the high-intelligence "mad scientist"), a high-wisdom chaotic evil is more a high-functioning psychopath.

And in fictive universes, it can also include being genre savy as you have a deep intuition of "how the world works".

The easiest way to RP a high wisdom character is to "shut up" until you know that what you're about to say is relevant, and try to focus on blind spots that the team might have. Typically, be aware of any hint of traps/traitor when the team is trusting a NPC, and look at the use of the NPC as a potential ally when the team is seeing them only as enemies. That does not mean "always be a contrarian", high wisdom is about knowing when being a contrarian is relevant and when it is a counterproductive/annoying, and for that you need to "always consider being a contrarian".

[Slipjig]

I would disagree slightly: a high Wisdom doesn't necessarily mean a character will make "good decisions", it means that the character can correctly anticipate the consequences of their actions. Not in the "if I add exactly 328 gallons of water to this system..." way (that's Intelligence), but more along the lines of, "this person I just caught stealing is popular with the public, if I kill him it could cause civil unrest."

That doesn't mean the character doesn't kill the thief, it just means that he understands what he's doing. I think it's appropriate for the DM to ask, "Are you SURE?" a lot more with high-WIS characters.

[SpyOne]

I'm not sure if younger generations have much chance of getting this, but my brother/DM explained it thus:
"Richard Nixon was intelligent, Edith Bunker was wise."

[KorvinStarmast]

The easiest way to RP a high wisdom character is to "shut up" until you know that what you're about to say is relevant, and try to focus on blind spots that the team might have. That's good advice.


Typically, be aware of any hint of traps/traitor when the team is trusting a NPC, and look at the use of the NPC as a potential ally when the team is seeing them only as enemies. This also.

But you do need to read the DM a bit in any case.

[Anonymouswizard]

Intelligence, obvious, you're smart;

What does that mean? Educated? Good at processing information (but in that case why isn't Perception an INT skill)? Quick thinking? Pompous? Speaks in a Received Pronunciation accent? Sharp dresser?

The D&D mental stats aren't clearly delineated, but generally I'd assume a high INT character seems knowledgeable, a high WIS character seems composed, and a high CHA character seems personable

[Lord Torath]

I'm not sure if younger generations have much chance of getting this, but my brother/DM explained it thus:
"Richard Nixon was intelligent, Edith Bunker was wise.""Edith Bunker" from "The Archie Bunker Show"? I could get behind that.

[KorvinStarmast]

"Edith Bunker" from "The Archie Bunker Show"? I could get behind that.
The show was called "All In The Family" ... FWIW. It was a huge hit at the time. (70's)

[False God]

IMO, wisdom is contextual with the other skills. When asked to roleplay it, I think it's important to take your other mental skills into consideration.

In a general sense, I treat "Int" as "study and book smarts", which I think is reflected in most skill associations, and "Wis" as "experience and street smarts", which again I think is reflected in most of its skill associations, and "Cha" as "interpersonal smarts". So a high Wis character has probably been a lot of places and seen a lot of things and knows the world from that perspective, but doesn't know the underlying science to things, and while they are likely understanding of others, they don't necessarily understand others.

There's a lot of ways people can come around to being "smart", but they're often smart within the context of their relative scores. A Rancher(Wis), a Chemist(Int), and a Politician(Cha) are all "smart" in their areas of expertise (ranching/chemical engineering/food-politics) and they may overlap in certain areas (crop rotation/soil fertilization/disputes between crop-growers). And I think how you end up playing your character can be very contextual relative to your class abilities and skill selection. IE: A high-wis cleric and a high-wis monk would probably not be roleplayed the same way.

[gbaji]

Another way to look at these stats is to imagine you are considering some course of action.

The high Int character will understand how to do the action. (mechanics of the action)
The high Wis chrarcter will understand why to do the action. (pros/cons of the action)
The high Cha character will understand who to do the action. (talked into it, inspired to do it, affected by it, etc)

[Easy e]

Wisdom is basically Emotional Intelligence. Read up on that and you probably have a good idea of what Wisdom is.


As for how to play it. I think the GM really needs to help you out with it IF you do not all ready have it as a person. Like any stat you don't really have, the GM needs to give you the information you need and the chance to adjust your actions when they go against your character's actual abilities in an area.

As a player, keep in mind that your GM does not know your character's stats as well as you so you may need to prod them with a question like, "I have a Wisdom of 17, does that help me understand what this person is trying to do here?"

[King of Nowhere]

I think it's wrong to try and play "high wisdom" or "high intelligence".
the thing is, while d&d and similar systems are limited to 3 stats, there are dozens of different ways of being smart. the three stats cannot possibly encompass them all.

I prefer to decide what the character is good at, and what are his blind spots, and then justify those traits with his mental stats somehow. I generally end up playing them as less smart than they are supposed to be, and I justify it as "high wisdom represent that my monk is good at his class abilities; however, he trained so hard in that, it left him as somewhat of an idiot savant; he is very perceptive about the environment, but not about social situations. Also, while he realizes the risks thanks to high wisdom, as an adrenaline junkie he still jumps headfirst into danger". not every trait must be represented perfectly by a number on the character sheet.

[Kish]

Intelligence is knowing that Frankenstein isn't the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster.

Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that you shouldn't put one in a fruit salad.

[Scarlet Knight]

I think it's wrong to try and play "high wisdom" or "high intelligence".... Also, while he realizes the risks thanks to high wisdom, as an adrenaline junkie he still jumps headfirst into danger".

That is the definition of low wisdom. Why bother pretending he has high wisdom then go through all the mental gymnastics to act unwise. Make it your dump stat and be done.

I think playing the traits of "wisdom" or "intelligence" are the stats that create fun role-playing. They are the personalities that stand out if played alone.

Example:
Sheldon Cooper has high INT but low WIS.
Jed Clampett has low INT but high WIS.

[MoiMagnus]

That is the definition of low wisdom. Why bother pretending he has high wisdom then go through all the mental gymnastics to act unwise. Make it your dump stat and be done.

I think playing the traits of "wisdom" or "intelligence" are the stats that create fun role-playing. They are the personalities that stand out if played alone.

Example:
Sheldon Cooper has high INT but low WIS.
Jed Clampett has low INT but high WIS.

D&D-like games often struggle with your mindset because your ability scores are tied to mechanical effects, and in particular tied to classes.

Sure, you can play a low Wisdom cleric or a low Intelligence wizard, but it significantly undermine your choices of spells and the mathematical efficiency of your character.

(Though homebrew is always a solution)

[Anonymouswizard]

This is why Tunnels & Trolls replaced Wisdom with Luck.

[Vahnavoi]

When I started playing original D&D, we realized the difficulty of playing characters wiser and/or more intelligent than the player. Since we are making the PC's decisions, if we make unintelligent or unwise decisions, then the PC behaves unintelligently or unwisely. I eventually decided that "INT" meant magical ability and the ability to remember facts about the world, and "WIS" meant clerical ability. [Those were the only actual effects of the abilities in that game.]


For a similar reason, Lamentations of the Flame Princess and some other retroclones explicitly state that beyond listed game mechanical effects, it's up to the players' own ability to depict their character as intelligent or wise. Nicely prevents any dim "but that's not what my super-intelligent character would do" type of arguments, when no real person has any insight to what a super-intelligent character would do.

Likewise, when I do freeform roleplaying, I frequently advice people to not describe how "smart" their characters are; just play the character as what makes sense to you and let other people worry about how smart they seem. Few things are worse than a player hanging themselves on their own inability to live up to the idea they had in their head.

Anyways, back to thread topic, "wisdom" is not easily distinquished from intelligence. For contrast, D&D intelligence can correspond to (and in earlier editions, explicitly corresponds to) general intelligence, making Intelligence ability score analogous measure to Intelligence Quotient of the real world. No comparable metric exist for real-life wisdom, the closest you get are some sub-divisions of IQ, notably fluid versus crystallized intelligence. Charisma is at an equally bad place, being based on outdated ideas of personality and attraction.

So, the best you can do is pick people who you think are wise or charismatic, or widely believed to be so, and then try to emulate them.

[Easy e]

Answer all questions with a question, and then cite Zen Koans as much as you can.

You are now playing a wise character.

[Kish]

I once knew a character who answered every question with a question. An elf tried for an hour to get a straight answer out of him and finally walked away, concluding, "He must be so wise."
Then a dwarf came along. She tried for three hours to get a straight answer out of him and finally walked away, concluding, "He must be so wise."
Then a human came along. He tried for twelve hours to get a straight answer out of him and finally walked away, concluding, "He must be so wise."
Then an orc came along. She tried for ten seconds to get a straight answer out of him. Then she chopped him in half with her axe.

The orc, of course, had the highest Wisdom score.

[Doug Lampert]

Intelligence is knowing that Frankenstein isn't the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster.

I love that one.


I once knew a character who answered every question with a question. An elf tried for an hour to get a straight answer out of him and finally walked away, concluding, "He must be so wise."
Then a dwarf came along. She tried for three hours to get a straight answer out of him and finally walked away, concluding, "He must be so wise."
Then a human came along. He tried for twelve hours to get a straight answer out of him and finally walked away, concluding, "He must be so wise."
Then an orc came along. She tried for ten seconds to get a straight answer out of him. Then she chopped him in half with her axe.

The orc, of course, had the highest Wisdom score.

And the guy who tried to BS an orc with an axe really wasn't so wise, because he should have seen that one coming a mile away.

[Slipjig]

Intelligence is knowing that Frankenstein isn't the Monster. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster.

Tangential a bit, but I never thought the idea the Doctor is the REAL monster could survive contact with the actual text. Sure, he engages in an ill-advised act that arguably crosses the line into hubris. But the Monster murders a small child for laughing at him, deliberately frames an innocent young woman for the murder, and then takes great delight in her eventually being hanged for it.

I don't want to drink a beer with the good Doctor, but nothing he did was even CLOSE to what the Monster did on the Good<-->Evil axis. The Monster's, "I should have been your Adam" is just straight up gaslighting.

[Anonymouswizard]

Tangential a bit, but I never thought the idea the Doctor is the REAL monster could survive contact with the actual text. Sure, he engages in an ill-advised act that arguably crosses the line into hubris. But the Monster murders a small child for laughing at him, deliberately frames an innocent young woman for the murder, and then takes great delight in her eventually being hanged for it.

I don't want to drink a beer with the good Doctor, but nothing he did was even CLOSE to what the Monster did on the Good<-->Evil axis. The Monster's, "I should have been your Adam" is just straight up gaslighting.

Adam's worst acts are IIRC making Victor lonely and miserable after Victor denies him a last chance at companionship. Acts he fully warms Victor he will commit and that Victor could have stopped. From the moment he decided to abandon his newborn child Victor bares at least some responsibility for the consequences.

And this is from Victor's point of view, after long enough that his memories are likely no longer entirely accurate. Most likely they're both about as bad as each other, but we don't get to see Adam's point of view (who is, we must remember, mostly unsocialised despite his intelligence and knowledge).

[Kish]

I mean, the monster murders people. I think he's plenty morally monstrous, just in a way that exactly reflects Victor: both of them ultimately see all the people in Victor's life as significant only for what their presence or absence means to Victor. Victor makes no effort to prevent Judith's execution; he just feels really sorry for himself about it. "I will be with you on your wedding night"--I don't need to think about protecting my bride, I need to think about protecting myself!

[King of Nowhere]

That is the definition of low wisdom. Why bother pretending he has high wisdom then go through all the mental gymnastics to act unwise. Make it your dump stat and be done.

I think playing the traits of "wisdom" or "intelligence" are the stats that create fun role-playing. They are the personalities that stand out if played alone.

because that character is a monk, and therefore needs high wisdom to do monk stuff. He is a danger seeking adrenaline junkie because he's fun to play.

see, if you constrain yourself by stuff like "this character has high wisdom, therefore she would never do X" you are severely constraining your role-playing - in that you would never play a monk or cleric with a foolish streak, or a bard that is great at playing an instrument but bad at talking to people, or a wizard that understands the intricacies of magic but can't handle paperwork.
It's also supported by real life evidence; look at your friends, you will find several that fits into the "high int" or "high wis" or "high cha" archetypes, but I bet you each one of them is pretty bad at some activities commonly associated with such stats. because the brain is a lot more complicated than 3 stats.

think on the opposite approach: you have a nice idea about a monk that took the mantra "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" a bit too literally, and is always trying to put himself in harm's way thinking it will make him stronger. Also, he was emotionally scarred as a child, and surviving danger makes him feel better in a "that time i was a helpless victim, but now I'm helpless no more" way, sort of like a victim of robbery may feel better by carrying a gun. And the more you think of this character concept, the more you like it.
What would you do? would you say "impossible, a monk has high wisdom and therefore would never make a fool of himself" and ditch the concept entirely?

By the way, that monk was built exactly to jump into danger; he was extremely hard to hurt with weapons or magic, he had a plethora of options to mess you up if you tried to hit him, and other options to mess you up if you tried to ignore him. And plenty of options to flee if overwhelmed. Jumping straight in the middle of the enemies, draw their attention, and call for the wizard to fireball on him (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0215.html) is a perfectly sensible tactic for that character. So is running through a trapped hallway to find the traps. So is acquiring a taste for poison and trying to get stabbed with poisoned stuff, once he got poison immunity.
So, I'd say he still was rather wise after all.

[VladSlavhinsky]

Usually the problem with this statistic arises from its influence on perception. I intend to play a thief Tabaxi in the next campaign, raised as a house cat together with other real cats, with a high perception, which made me raise a lot of wisdom. Very wild and absolutely not inclined to civilization, it's not easy to play a wise figure, which is why I decided to play a feline-type wisdom. He doesn't waste time with philosophical questions, because he believes that the answer is in what one feels, not in what one can express in words.
Who's to say why a cat does what he does? And the cat, is he perhaps wondering about the same motivations as him?
Each character can be wise in his own way, while remaining a naive in many areas of life.

[MonochromeTiger]

The issue with trying to answer this question is honestly about the same issue with answering a question about playing a specific alignment. No one agrees 100% on how definitive the way it's described in the game is to what the stat or label really means, no one agrees 100% that a particular portrayal of that stat lines up with the spirit of it, and everyone's got their own idea of a definite "wrong" way to play it.

Sure we have general ideas, like high Int means you're supposed to be smart. But how do you even determine what is and isn't smart when you can ask two people and get three different answers, each with their own little self contradictory flaws? You can try to roleplay it but then you've got a disconnect in perceptions for what the stat means to each person at the table. You can just let the dice handle it and hand wave what actually happened but then you've got an even bigger disconnect between player and character and you're leaving it up to everyone at the table to determine what "I got a 30 so I passed" actually means in the story.

Personally the answer is similar to the answer of alignment, at the end of the day the only interpretation that truly matters is whatever the player and DM/GM agree on. If they decide high Wisdom is being really good at trivia topics then just getting the occasional bit of info handed to you out of game because you're just that knowledgeable in game should be fine. Just reach an agreement with your DM on what you feel fits your character and to heck with the narrow definitions of others, it's much easier and allows you to play a wider range of options than caving in to the cries of "no it works this way" from people on the internet you likely aren't even playing with.

If somebody else at your table disagrees? Congratulations to them, they're allowed their own opinion, but you've got your version and you're playing it.

[animorte]

Another way to look at these stats is to imagine you are considering some course of action.

The high Int character will understand how to do the action. (mechanics of the action)
The high Wis chrarcter will understand why to do the action. (pros/cons of the action)
The high Cha character will understand who to do the action. (talked into it, inspired to do it, affected by it, etc)
Nicely put. I expressed something very similar to this when concerning the exploration pillar (in its entirety) of the game.

[SimonMoon6]

Wisdom is my least favorite ability score in D&D. You may notice that most other RPGs (that aren't copies of D&D) don't have a Wisdom score.

The Wisdom (with a capital "w") ability score doesn't show any game mechanics related to real-world wisdom. Having a high wisdom never causes the DM to say, "Hey, make a wisdom check, DC 25. If you succeed, your character realizes that the correct thing to do in this situation is ________". (To be fair, intelligence doesn't work this way either and a character with high INT can do stupid things, but at least INT works as "book learning".)

The Wisdom ability score provides only the following three benefits in 3.0, 3.5, and P1e:
(1) A bonus to perception. While perception and "perceptiveness" have similar etymological roots and sound like they are similar concepts, they are very different things. Being able to spot things has no connection to being wise.
(2) A bonus to WILL saves because you're just so stubborn and/or determined. Stubbornness also has no real connection to true wisdom.
(3) The ability to force deities to give you more spells (if you're a cleric). That to me sounds more like something that should be in the realm of charisma. I see no connection to true wisdom.

So, to role-play a person with a high Wisdom score, one must merely portray someone who (a) spots things really well, (b) is really stubborn, and (c) makes the very gods on high do his bidding. You don't have to play someone with any great philosophical understanding of the world.

I mean, there are a lot of really evil monsters who have a high Wisdom score. But being evil is a *bad* choice in a D&D world since everyone knows that the afterlife is REAL and evil people will be punished for all eternity. So, someone with true wisdom would work towards avoiding that fate. But that's not how people with a high Wisdom score are required to act.

[MoiMagnus]

Having a high wisdom never causes the DM to say, "Hey, make a wisdom check, DC 25. If you succeed, your character realizes that the correct thing to do in this situation is ________".

I'm pretty sure I've seen passive Insight (so a Wisdom-based skill) be used by my GM to communicate things that would be visible through body languages of the NPCs. We also use it for communications with entities/peoples you don't share a language with, so a little like using "animal handling" but with non-animals.

And I'm pretty sure I've played in a few homebrew games where a Wisdom-like ability score was given some precognition (so feeling an ambush before it happens, and more generally reading the GM's mind).

Lastly, our campaigns often tend to degenerate into "ruling the country" kind of campaign, where we make skill checks that correspond to a day or even a week of giving orders to various NPCs. In which case, yes, a high wisdom character can make a check to "realise what is the correct thing to do", and let the GM handle whatever happen behind the scene.

I'm not saying that Wisdom is the best ability score, but it has more "ability check" use than Constitution, which is just your HP disguised as an ability score.
(And I'm not sure how I rate it compared to Intelligence, since it's unclear which of the two would absorb the other if I were to reduce to only 4 ability scores)

[gbaji]

Wisdom is my least favorite ability score in D&D. You may notice that most other RPGs (that aren't copies of D&D) don't have a Wisdom score.

Yup. In RuneQuest, they just use Intelligence and Power stats. Intelligence is how "smart" you are, but basically just affects how easily you learn new things, and how many spells you can memorize. Power is about how strong your spirt is, and affects things like how well you can affect others or resist others when spells are involved, how well you can resist/affect spirits, and can also be abstracted as "luck" (more like how aware you are). Also has some effect on how aware others are of you.

But the game is primarily skill based, and the stats you have provide some bonus to various categories of skills. And somewhat small ones at that. There's nothing preventing someone with a poor Int stat from having really high knowledge skills (lores, languages, etc). It's just slightly easier/faster for someone with a high Int stat is all.

Honestly, the "wisdom" concept is just left as a RP thing. You're free to decide whether your character is brash or cautious, or whatever. And I suppose it's one of the reasons why when I do play a more D&D clone type game with Wisdom, I don't allow it to determine how I play the character. It's just a stat. It has various in-game effects and may fulfill some class requirements. I maybe might look at the starting stats and come up with a personality that "fits". Or maybe I wont. Or at least, it's not going to be the sole determinant.

Trying to fit everything you RP about a character into their stats (mostly looking at int, wis, and cha here) is going to be problematic most of the time. And way too restrictive (as with the "aggressive monk" example mentioned earlier).

[Anonymouswizard]

Honestly if I was writing 5.5/6e I'd change the mental stats to Learning, Senses, and Presence. At this point the only real vestige of Intelligence being about mental processing ability is the Investigation skill, all the rest has gone to Wisdom. Which itself is a confusing mixture of perception and willpower, except in some circumstances Charisma actually governs willpower. Going instead for defining your ability to know, your ability to perceive, and your ability to enforce your will makes the three clearer, even if it would probably require some skill and save shuffling.

As a plus side suddenly your stats say nothing about how your characters think. Meaning I don't have to worry about 18 INT Artificers with my impulse control.