Characters are smarter than players

[Donox]

Characters are smarter than the people who play them (or at least for int focused character) The normal intellect of a human is 10 or 11, while the intelligence of a human wizard is normally around 18+. So my question is, should players be compensated for their less than supernatural intelligence? or should intelligence be solely mechanical in nature?

Donox

[Bearpunch]

How would a player be compensated for a stat in a game?

The purpose of stats (other than class benefits) is to roleplay with them.

[Greyfeld]

Intelligence usually dictates how much a person knows, and their capacity to learn. Intelligence in-game is easily represented by knowledge rolls, intelligence checks, languages known, and any other number of skills related to the stat. This isn't something that a player can be screwed out of due to his own personal intelligence, unless the DM blatantly screws his character out of information his character should know.

Wisdom, on the other hand, is a bit more tricky, and tends to lean more toward the "common sense" factor that some people seem to lack.

[navar100]

That is the purpose of Skills. Using skills not only allows players to know in character what they know out of character but also to know out of character what their characters should know in character.

A particular player may never have gone to medical school, but his character with 10 ranks in Healing certainly does know how to treat various diseases and poisons and should not be denied the ability just because the player can't literally tell the DM what various medicines and methods to use.

[Donox]

Valid points, my thoughts were about a players capacity to make plans/make deduction about the situation, but I guess that would fall into Wisdom as much as intelligence.

So, how do you compensate for a players lack of wisdom compared to their characters? Or is no such compensation needed?

Donox

[Conners]

Give them tips, I'd guess. This is also handy for play-by-post games, where you can't describe all the details.

[Greyfeld]

While trying to maintain character roles, it becomes the responsibility of all players (and the DM) to share ideas out-of-character for the sake of in-character gameplay. Just because the character that's playing the 18-wisdom druid can't think of how to piece together all the information into a coherent plan doesn't mean that all the players can't spitball together, then funnel the "plan" through the character with the highest wisdom modifier.

In addition, I've had plenty of times where a DM has stepped in when we're stuck and told one of the players, "Considering the present information, your character comes to the conclusion that he has options X, Y and Z to carry out his mission."

Roleplaying is about collective storytelling, with emphasis on the "collective" part.

[yilduz]

Back when I played table top, one of the guys in our group was a complete dummy. He just simply wasn't allowed to play characters with a high intelligence score. It was a lot of fun playing with him, though.

[Zerter]

Intelligence is purely mechanical in nature. You can roleplay a character smart and you can roleplay a character stupid. Ultimately they both require strong and intelligent roleplaying. Good examples of this can be found in the Order of the Stick where Elan is the best roleplayed character and Vaarsuvius might be an intelligent character but is still limited by the player (even though he or she is obviously growing over the course of the campaign).

You should not give someone free conclusions just because his character is smart, for starters what are you gonna do with intelligences above 30 if you're rewarding someone big time for 18, and secondly he gets enough advantages from high intelligence as it is represented in various in-game rewards.

Also, most D&D players don't have intelligence 10/11 unless you have very different experiences than I do. Pretty much all of them are smart and a lot of them are really smart. Pretty much all of them are experts as well and given the amount of skills they have at least with some levels (meaning they can put a stat point in intelligence and max knowledge (D&D)). Also D&D players are getting older on average, a good deal of them are probably middle age (making them more handsome, better able to see things and even smarter). So most parties should include some intelligence 16/17 players and possibly even higher (20+). For some reason they all seem to use wisdom as a dump stat however.

[GoblinArchmage]

Intelligence is purely mechanical in nature. You can roleplay a character smart and you can roleplay a character stupid. Ultimately they both require strong and intelligent roleplaying. Good examples of this can be found in the Order of the Stick where Elan is the best roleplayed character and Vaarsuvius might be an intelligent character but is still limited by the player (even though he or she is obviously growing over the course of the campaign).

You should not give someone free conclusions just because his character is smart, for starters what are you gonna do with intelligences above 30 if you're rewarding someone big time for 18, and secondly he gets enough advantages from high intelligence as it is represented in various in-game rewards.

Also, most D&D players don't have intelligence 10/11 unless you have very different experiences than I do. Pretty much all of them are smart and a lot of them are really smart. Pretty much all of them are experts as well and given the amount of skills they have at least with some levels (meaning they can put a stat point in intelligence and max knowledge (D&D)). Also D&D players are getting older on average, a good deal of them are probably middle age (making them more handsome, better able to see things and even smarter). So most parties should include some intelligence 16/17 players and possibly even higher (20+). For some reason they all seem to use wisdom as a dump stat however.

I agree with this. Saying that most real people have mechanical Intelligence scores of 10 or 11 is terribly oversimplifying the concept of actual intelligence. The numbers in a D&D game don't work when one tries to apply them to the real world, because that's not how things really work.

[Totally Guy]

Also, most D&D players don't have intelligence 10/11 unless you have very different experiences than I do. Pretty much all of them are smart and a lot of them are really smart. Pretty much all of them are experts as well and given the amount of skills they have at least with some levels (meaning they can put a stat point in intelligence and max knowledge (D&D)). Also D&D players are getting older on average, a good deal of them are probably middle age (making them more handsome, better able to see things and even smarter). So most parties should include some intelligence 16/17 players and possibly even higher (20+). For some reason they all seem to use wisdom as a dump stat however.

I can't tell if this is cringeworthy or intentional use of irony.

[mint]

I read about someone who let a high INT PC retcon their preparedness for x number of unexpected situations. So he could go "just as planned!" and solve the problem.
I think that sounds like a lot of fun but like some of the guys said in this thread: INT is already modelled in the game, mainly by skill points, language and magic.
Comparing rl intelligence to the D&D stat becomes sort of silly. The mental stats really aren't meant to be, nor are they, complex enough to model a person faithfully in high resolution.

[Zejety]

Also, remember that 10-11 is merely the average in a medieval fantasy setting.

[ken-do-nim]

Also, remember that 10-11 is merely the average in a medieval fantasy setting.

It's hard to discuss what stat scores in 3E+ represent, because they aren't tied to real-world analogues like they used to be. In TSR D&D, multiply intelligence by 10 and it is the character's IQ score. Viewed that way, 10-11 is still the average, but the average person is of course more educated. I guess people are getting more skill points for the same intelligence score nowadays.

[deuxhero]

they aren't tied to real-world analogues like they used to be.

Well, Strength at least given a basis to judge for the "real world"