Good examples of low-Wis characters in fiction

[Super Evil User]

Edward Elric is a good example of a high-Int, low-Wis character: he has a strong but easily manipulated moral center and can be fooled really easily into thinking he's doing the right thing. The entire FMA series is about him increasing his Wis score.

Darth Vader has Wis as his dump stat. He has high everything else, but his judgement is poor and the high-Int high-Wis high-Cha Palpatine can play him with no effort at all.

[Honest Tiefling]

Ahem.

"Joxer the Mighty
roams through the countryside,
he never needs a place to hide.
With Gabby as his sidekick,
fighting with her little stick.
Righting wrongs and singing songs.
Being mighty all day long.
He's Joxer! He's Joxer the Mighty!"

He might have had a bad intelligence score as well.

[Beta Centauri]

That depends entirely how one believes ability scores control personality and dictate ability. As long as the mechanical results of the character's dice rolls can be explained with a reasonable degree of consistency, I don't personally care how someone roleplays a particular ability score. To my knowledge, there's no rule that covers every eventuality of how good someone's judgment is, so even a high-Wisdom character could exhibit bad judgment. But if there are rolls involved, then there should be an explanation of why a character played as very wise has a little trouble passing Wisdom-based checks. But coming up with such an explanation really isn't that hard. In Vader's case, his need for control makes it easy to turn him into the puppet of a tyrant, but that doesn't mean he's not otherwise just as savvy as everyone else.

[goto124]

?

High Int Low Wis probably.

[jedipotter]

The Doctor is maybe the best example. Sure his Intelligence is 100, but he sure does not use it.

Doc Brown from Back the the Future.

Thor is often written this way, as is the Hulk, but not all the time.

[Pex]

The cast of the Walking Dead except for Carol, Daryl, and Michonne.

Horror movie teenagers

The alleged "comic relief" sidekick of the Action Movie Hero

Dudley Do-Right, Bullwinkle

[Rakoa]

Marv of Sin City would probably be a good fit.

[Jay R]

That depends on what aspect of Wisdom you're talking about. Remember that it's the basis for all perception rolls.

Lois Lane has the worst Spot check in the world. ("They're just glasses. Behind them, it's Superman, the man you love, working next to you every day.")

[roko10]

Lois Lane has the worst Spot check in the world. ("They're just glasses. Behind them, it's Superman, the man you love, working next to you every day.")

To be fair, Lois does have an halfway decent Spot check, it's just that Superman cranked up his Bluff and Disguise skills to the max.

[jaydubs]

-Syndrome from the Incredibles
-The Brain, from Pinky & the Brain
-Wile E. Coyote, Elmer Fudd
-Eric Cartman
-Romeo and Juliet - the titular characters, and much of the cast besides. Actually, many Shakespeare characters are unwise, since he wrote quite a few tragedies.

[Amaril]

Boromir, of The Lord of the Rings. He's told by some of the most knowledgeable people in the world, people who have personal experience dealing with the Ring and the corruption of the Shadow, that its power cannot be used without turning the bearer to evil, yet still decides that it's something he should attempt, with disastrous results. Even if you blame his mistakes on external magical influence from the Ring itself, he was still the only one of the fellowship who was manipulated that way, indicating he probably doesn't have the best Will save bonus (which is, of course, based on Wisdom).

[Inevitability]

Elan. It is directly stated in the comic that he doesn't even have 'a smidgen' of wisdom. I think that counts as 'below average'.

[veti]

Consider Saruman. He knows Gandalf will never side with him, and Gandalf himself reinforces that message quite emphatically, but he still insists on imprisoning him in the open air, atop an eminently-escapable tower.

Fenthick in Neverwinter Nights. Despite being a distinguished cleric, he's completely oblivious to what literally everyone else, including the rookie adventurer who's only met him a handful of times, can see, viz that Desther is an evil git. (I hate it when characters who are supposed to be extraordinarily wise are the last ones to see the huge honking menace right under their nose. The same goes for Yoda, who has no idea Palpatine is a bad guy until it's too late despite numerous honking great clues, and Durkon in OOTS, who critically fails his Sense Motive on Malack.)

A more difficult question would be "are there any literary villains who don't have WIS as a dump stat? Seeing how the plot invariably requires them to overlook, often to the point of wilful blindness, something absolutely central to their plans..."

[Amaril]

Oh, another one--Kamina, from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. I'm pretty sure a lot of people would give him low Intelligence, but I don't really think that's fair; he's shown to be a competent strategist, and does come up with a lot of creative ideas. He just has no sense of self-preservation or the limits of his own abilities.

[Kitten Champion]

Well, there's Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment which is perhaps the best example I could give.

For a fantasy example, there's Harry Dresden, who rarely sees the forest through the trees.

[Kid Jake]

Daffy Duck: In most of his incarnations he's pretty much oblivious to anything that doesn't immediately advance his goals. He's slick and manipulative, but easily duped.

Frasier Crane: He's obviously intelligent and well spoken, but never learns from his mistakes and is way too engrossed in himself to pick up on even the most obvious signals from the people around him. His brother might even be a better example.

The Tick: Just...everything he does. Only made worse by his low intelligence.

Pretty Much Everyone Ever Played By Don Adams: They'd pretty much all try to dig a waffle out of the toaster with a fork if nobody stopped them.

To be fair, Lois does have an halfway decent Spot check, it's just that Superman cranked up his Bluff and Disguise skills to the max.

Yes, he's the Lord Bearington of DC comics

[Amaril]

For a fantasy example, there's Harry Dresden, who rarely sees the forest through the trees.

I think Harry actually has fairly good Wisdom, as evidenced by having enough self-awareness and willpower to have resisted corruption by dark magical influences many times. Plus, he's normally pretty good at reading people and judging character. Not that I think he has an 18 or anything, but I'd put him solidly in the 12-13 range.

[kyoryu]

Almost any scientist portrayed in fiction.

Exception: Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park

[veti]

Frasier Crane: He's obviously intelligent and well spoken, but never learns from his mistakes and is way too engrossed in himself to pick up on even the most obvious signals from the people around him. His brother might even be a better example.

Good one. But Niles, at least, does learn from his mistakes, to the point where he ends up winning the girl. (Which for me is where the series jumped the shark anyway... the tension between Niles and Daphne, and of course Maris, was the number one source of funny, and once that got resolved it became distinctly meh.)

[Honest Tiefling]

Fenthick in Neverwinter Nights. Despite being a distinguished cleric, he's completely oblivious to what literally everyone else, including the rookie adventurer who's only met him a handful of times, can see, viz that Desther is an evil git.

He even has an evil character portrait! And bad things happen to you when you ask for Helm's Blessing. I also want to nominate his girlfriend, the only paladin in existence who thinks that finger-waving and telling people they are naughty will somehow stop them from murdering an entire city after they've already stabbed a few people. Maybe you should stop...Healing them?

[Lord Raziere]

any shonen protagonist. any counterexamples are exceptions that prove the rule.

[IZ42]

Keen Intellect(INT to will) and Force of Personality(CHA to will) could be used to bump up will saves while having a low WIS, so Harry Dresden could be low wis.



Ummmmm... Pagan Min from Far Cry 4 has pretty poor judgment if you think about it. Many of the main characters in the Redwall Series could have pretty low WIS. That's all I can think of right now.

[Jay R]

Sheldon Cooper.

Are we done yet?

[NNescio]

Every single villain who decides to gloat instead of just shooting/stabbing the hero they captured.

Jokes aside, the 'megalomania' personality is pretty much indicative of low Wis (and often comes with high Int and sometimes Cha). This is pretty much the key defining trait of a Mad Scientist.

(So yeah, nearly all the characters in Girl Genius. Minions included since you have to have low Wis to work with them as well).

Other archetypes with low Wis include the oblivious-to-love rom-com protagonist who might as well be denser than neutronium and the by-the-book-bookish know-it-all with zero street smarts

As for Vader, well, one might make the argument that he's not necessarily low Wis in the original trilogy, but Anakin is pretty much a textbook example of low Wis in the prequel trilogy from the Clones onwards.

[Amaril]

Keen Intellect(INT to will) and Force of Personality(CHA to will) could be used to bump up will saves while having a low WIS, so Harry Dresden could be low wis.

It's possible, but I don't think all the resisting he does is through Will saves alone. Some of it, like

Spoiler

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reforming the fragment of Lasciel,

he manages because he has the good judgment to realize it's a possibility and attempt it when most people would give up even trying. And in many more cases, he's able to resist corruption by carefully sorting out his own emotions and reactions from those of external influences and focusing on ignoring the latter group (though I guess that could be Will saves, and is actually the best argument for Will saves being based on Wisdom that I can remember hearing). Plus, he's very self-aware about his own fallibility and never assumes he can avoid being turned or making bad decisions.

Anyway, this is going a little off-track, so I'll shut up about it after this

[Yora]

Low intelligence is not being able to figure something out.
Low wisdom is making very bad judgements.

[razorback]

Matrim "Mat" Cauthon from the Wheel of Time.
Intelligent, incredibly lucky and extremely poor decision making.

[Cazero]

Cugel the "clever". The guy can't cross a village without coming up with an elaborate scam to profit from it, and most of the times it fails because people are not all blind/deaf/stupid.

[illyahr]

...he's able to resist corruption by carefully sorting out his own emotions and reactions from those of external influences and focusing on ignoring the latter group (though I guess that could be Will saves, and is actually the best argument for Will saves being based on Wisdom that I can remember hearing). Plus, he's very self-aware about his own fallibility and never assumes he can avoid being turned or making bad decisions.

Charisma is basically defined as your sense of self and how strongly it interacts with your surroundings. This is actually a good argument that he has the Force of Personality feat (use CHA modifier in place of WIS modifier on Will saves).

[Wardog]

Oh, another one--Kamina, from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. I'm pretty sure a lot of people would give him low Intelligence, but I don't really think that's fair; he's shown to be a competent strategist, and does come up with a lot of creative ideas. He just has no sense of self-preservation or the limits of his own abilities.

He doesn't need high Wis. He has a special prestige class that lets him add his Cha to everything