Beyond my Intellect

[Last_resort_33]

I have been pondering this for a while...

If you have a character with a strength of 22 then you tell you character to do big meaty lifting things, you don't have to do them yourself
Simailarly with high dexterity.
Same with con.
Charisma things are all based on rolls.
Wisdom seems to be more perception in D&D and therefore is determined by the DM

But how, as either a player or a DM, do you roleplay a character with 20+ int.

all players make silly mistakes, they don't think things through properly. a REALLY intelligent guy wouldn't make these mistakes.

A really intelligent guy would be able to come up with better spell combos, better tactics and better plans than I ever could.

So if I'm sitting at the games table with my lowly 16 int (do I think too highly of myself?) How do I roleplay a wizard and tactician of 22 int? Add fox's cunning onto that and I really wouldn't even know where to begin...

So what should I do, all you guys out there with 30 int?

[Dhavaer]

I have this problem myself, a character with 36 Int. The only thing I can think of is to think about something for hours and hours and then have that be a few moments thought. But realistically that's just not going to be enough.

[Takamari]

Ah ha! I have this one, lol. See, I would like to think of myself as a smart person. Most of the people who play D&D are smart people, I know we can debate that in some cases...lol. Anyway, my trick is to say, "Mr. DM, my character has an intillegence of 30 and that is way smarter than me. Can I roll an intillegence check to try to figure this out?" It usually works if I'm totally baffled. Or my DM says, "your character is smart enough to know this"

[Dhavaer]

So what do you do if you are the DM?

[Takamari]

And a PC has the high int? In that case I throw them a bone. You just know this. If I'm trying to rp the high int wizard or other character, lots of metagame knowlege, lol. Well, not really. In that case, I let the players think it out with my NPC giving hints. If they ask why he didnt help, he says he wanted to test them...or something else like that. I try to avoid having an NPC cleric/rogue/wizard if possible.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Mycroft Holmes? Archchancellor Ridcully? How to intelligent people in fiction act? Do they neccesarally think about everything before they do it? Think about certain things and remember that your ability scores to not immediately dictate your personality.

When do they use their intelligence?

• Do they plan their day when they get up in the morning?
• Do they only use their intelligence once presented with a problem.
• Are they contantly thinking about stuff, not quite realising where they actually are?

What's their Wisdom score?

• Are they the absent minded professor type? Does their intelligence have trouble being interested in the things at hand.
• Do they notice everything around them and try to understand it?
• Do they evaluate every action to try and see what could be done better?

Is your character self-centered

• Does he get angry easily at his mental inferiors?
• Does he build up mental profiles of his companions that he can use to make objective dessissions?
• Does he have trouble remembering that not everyone is as smart as him?
• Does he appreciate that others have strengths he lacks?

That's just some ideas you might find useful. If I had time I'd write more.

[Dhavaer]

What I was thinking of doing was, should the PC ever have to converse with this character, making a new thread in which I'd play out a few minutes of the conversation, and then make a real post. Then do another few minutes of conversation. If Int was the only high stat I wouldn't bother with it, but she also has a high Wis and very high ranks in Sense Motive and Knowledge (behavioural sciences). 'Very high' meaning 'essentially telepathic'.

[Takamari]

It makes things go more smoothly. It also removes the doubt if the DM just tells the character what they know. When my wizard had a +17 to his knowledge arcana and history my DM usually didn't make me roll when it came to any of those subjects.

[Ulzgoroth]

Superhuman wisdom is manageable, since it mostly amounts to knowing way more than you normally would (and maybe being hyper-attentive, so think hard before acting), but superhuman int is a hard problem, logically. By definition, none of us have 20 Int, but a mid-level wizard has more than that as a rule and thus thinks on a level no one at the table can match. I think all there is to do with that is 'take 20' any time you're RPing an int-related action...

What a superhuman charisma score would mean I can't fathom.

[Dhavaer]

What a superhuman charisma score would mean I can't fathom.

I think most mooks would just fall over in worship if you get it high enough. I generally describe a character with 25-ish Charisma as having emotions that affect the people around them. Example:

Spoiler

Show

Lady Saint-Clair is a tall, attractive woman with dark brown hair and deep green eyes. Despite a reputation as an astonishing beauty, she appears to lack the graceful elegance of Jonquil, Jennifer's exotic beauty and Roberta's rakish good looks; she simply has no flaws. As a photo she would be simply described as pretty, but like the Queen, her personality is an almost tangible thing.
Unlike Markova, whose aura is one of cool pride and regal majesty, Victoria radiates a primal whirlwind of passionate emotion. Marcus can almost feel her emotions as his own; pleasant recognition and friendship to Ethan and Jonquil, a powerful surge of lust with Natasha and an awakening sense of the same directed at himself.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I think most mooks would just fall over in worship if you get it high enough. I generally describe a character with 25-ish Charisma as having emotions that affect the people around them. Example:

Spoiler

Show

Lady Saint-Clair is a tall, attractive woman with dark brown hair and deep green eyes. Despite a reputation as an astonishing beauty, she appears to lack the graceful elegance of Jonquil, Jennifer's exotic beauty and Roberta's rakish good looks; she simply has no flaws. As a photo she would be simply described as pretty, but like the Queen, her personality is an almost tangible thing.
Unlike Markova, whose aura is one of cool pride and regal majesty, Victoria radiates a primal whirlwind of passionate emotion. Marcus can almost feel her emotions as his own; pleasant recognition and friendship to Ethan and Jonquil, a powerful surge of lust with Natasha and an awakening sense of the same directed at himself.

Cha 25 makes you a Mary Sue? Great... just what the party needs...

[Dhavaer]

Cha 25 makes you a Mary Sue? Great... just what the party needs...

I don't think Mary-Sues can co-exist, so no.

[Ikkitosen]

As a DM I might houserule that players can confer freely when deciding a high-int character's actions even when their PCs canot talk/are not in the same place, whereas I might force a low-int character's player to make their own choices, stupid mistakes and all. 's worth a try...

[Ranis]

One of my PCs demonstrates the use of high intelligence rather well. He is a rogue with an INT of 20, and aside from playing skillmonkey, he is deceptively intelligent. He has talked circles around and outsmarted several of my NPCs, one of which was a Wizard 10 levels higher. He uses extremely complicated verbatism and intonations with his wording to really shine.

The problem is, he has a WIS of 10, so sometimes he does a lot of things that get the party in situations that they have difficulty getting themselves out of.

[Dausuul]

I generally consider the Intelligence score to represent the character's memory and skill at abstract reasoning. So a high-Int character has excellent memory (as indicated by the Knowledge skills) and is very good at complex mathematics and metaphysics (ability to cast high-level spells, Appraise skill, et cetera).

This does not necessarily translate into being smart in a practical, hands-on sense. That's why it's up to the player to actually come up with intelligent solutions to problems.

With rare exceptions, I do not let people roll their Intelligence to figure stuff out. I mean, hell, at that point why even bother playing? Just make a list of all the problems and puzzles the characters will face, and make Intelligence checks to see if they can figure out a way past them. The exceptions are cases of metagame knowledge, and cases where the player makes a reasonable argument that the character would have remembered to do something which the player forgot.

[Indon]

Well, we have one advantage our characters don't; we don't need to think in their time. If your superhuman character is faced with an exceptionally difficult problem, okay, take time to think about it before even a second of game time has passed.

Heck, players often do that _without_ their characters having superhuman int scores.

[Tellah]

I've been considering using a series of minute hourglasses (minuteglasses?) to better facilitate mental challenges in-game. For most puzzles, everyone gets to speak and work through the problem in one minute. 14+ INT gets you a second hourglass, while everyone else at the tale hushes up, please. 18+ gets you a third, and so forth in that fashion. I think that's a good mechanical way to deal specifically with high INT and trapped puzzles (a common enough occurance in my games), but it doesn't deal with the core problem of roleplaying their unknowable intentions.

It works well for Diplomacy checks, too. Since the skill requires a full minute to use, I have the player making the check, and all players seeking to Aid Another, roleplay the conversation for a full minute while the glass ticks down. At the end of the minute, a assign a circumstance bonus based on how well they did.

[Telonius]

Mental stats are a perennial difficulty. Here's how I envision it:

Super-high Intelligence: Knows and remembers just about any fact that they've ever encountered. Is excellent at answering straightforward questions. Can complete crossword puzzles within minutes, solves mathematical problems in seconds, and has beaten Rubik's Cube without peeling off the stickers. Probably has photographic memory. Knows the odds of being dealt that particular poker hand. Data from Star Trek.

Super-high Charisma: Wins friends and influences people. Wins every debate they've ever entered. Could look like a troll with a bad hair day, and people would still be fawning over them. Completely controls others' perceptions of them. Is able to bluff the others at the table into believing they have a better (or worse) poker hand than they actually have. Emperor Palpatine.

Super-high Wisdom: Able to anticipate what others are about to do, or what others are likely thinking. Super-sensitive BS detector. Is very good at answering riddles, trick questions, and anything that requires something other than a straightforward, factual answer. Is good at figuring out what other people's poker hands actually are by noticing the minute reactions on their faces. Obi-Wan Kenobi.

So, if we're talking about a riddle, I'd actually rely on a Wisdom check, if I'm relying on a check at all. If we're talking about a number puzzle, Intelligence would be the roll. In that sense, a high-INT character is a little easier to play than a high-WIS character. All a high-INT character has to do is remember stuff.

[Diggorian]

I read Intelligence as memory and reasoning mostly too. I've always handled it like any other high ability, with a check. The higher the result the more obscure the fact recalled or the more wild a conclusion reached.

A wizard is critted with an arrow and teleports away with Contigency. Where'd he go?

Mr. Monster Int makes an ability check, hits DC 25, that's "Formidible" by the DC Table. As DM I know the wizard is in the port city of Gradsul, so I let the PC recall hint pointing there.

"When the mage first appear he threatened, 'Time to sink of swim, so-called heroes!'. That is phrase used by Crimson Blades pirates who often attack trade along the Azure coast. When the arrow hit his chest he released a phlegmy rasp cough, symptomatic of Bunk-warmer's Blight: a breathing affection common to over-exposed dock wenches."

PC: "Where's the nearest coastal city?"

"You think it could be ... Gradsul maybe."

You could make it a complex check too, to glean each piece of the puzzle.

[Roderick_BR]

So what do you do if you are the DM?

A trick I read on a magazine once, is to emulate an high intelligence by use of metagame information. Like, you know the results of many puzzles, where everyone in the game are, etc. You could use some of that info to the NPC.
It helps a bit.

[factotum]

I think roleplaying a high Wisdom is actually harder than a high Int, partly because it's very difficult to define what Wisdom actually is...

[Logos7]

And that Intellegence already has severely tangible ingame benefits, Lots to do with the knowledge skills, and unaided knowledge checks, search checks and all that, just remember because lots of people are that smart doesn;t mean that they act it all the time, Remember the pic of Einstein sticking his tongue out, is that how a 30 int person acts? What about Hawking doing a cameo on start trek tng? Just becasue youu have an exceedingly high int ( Those two might be the only two, baring a few mental case ( Eidionic memory or whatever its called, certain forms of autism, etc) that broke the 30 barrier, and your use of Spells more than reflects their own competence in their own fields.

Personally I might have a page with 20 different 5-6 syllable words and maybe an obscure magic theory name gen wrote down to use for fun when feeling not particularlly in character but that's not limited to high int by any means. My Mean and Nasty sorcerer has a swear word tables (It's highly amusing when the DM looks all concerned at you cause your rolling dice and then he realizes its only for swear words)

Logo

[Da Beast]

I've ran into this problem before playing a gestalt swashbuckler//bard/dread pirate with 22 intelligence. I'd ask the DM if I could make an intelligence check for additional hints but he always refused

[Reinboom]

I believe intelligence is being applied to broadly here. A person being intelligent does not mean they are intelligent with everything. Given, their intellectual understanding of basic ideas or logical machinations should come easier to them it does not necessarily mean the character absolutely understands what is at hand. An example would be a diplomatic specialist who excels with a broad range of languages and understanding of behavioral sciences of a multitude of cultures. I would consider this person to be rather intelligent, yet, at the same time this person could only just understand basic concepts of algebra and was always below average at working with math in general.
With that said, I would recommend to try to role play from the start of the journey with what the character's intelligence was and only have the character learn from there. These intelligence checks are already given to you of how they would improve from here, for example, if you are a wizard you most definately will be intellectually inclined towards magic, the art, concept, and theories thereof. You could be a mastermind at quickly determining which spells are in production as they are being formed (spellcraft), designing spells (spellcraft), or even understanding basic principles behind the arcane arts (knowledge(arcane)). With these concentrated works in knowledge and understanding, and due to your high intelligence capacity, you may begin piecing together other bits of books or encyclopedias you have casually read and further grasp their meanings (other knowledge checks), however, you may have not necessarily emphasized upon this teachings due to not letting such unimportant matters hinder your magical focus.

[Theodoxus]

Per SRD - Intelligence is the ability to analyze information. The higher your intelligence, the faster you can analyze more information. Seems pretty straight forward to me. To 'roleplay' it in a gaming sense, the GM should provide additional clues to the high int player; almost like Sherlock Holmes. However, unless the character has a high wisdom to go with it - the clues shouldn't be perception based.

[kamikasei]

And that Intellegence already has severely tangible ingame benefits, Lots to do with the knowledge skills, and unaided knowledge checks, search checks and all that, just remember because lots of people are that smart doesn;t mean that they act it all the time, Remember the pic of Einstein sticking his tongue out, is that how a 30 int person acts? What about Hawking doing a cameo on start trek tng? Just becasue youu have an exceedingly high int ( Those two might be the only two, baring a few mental case ( Eidionic memory or whatever its called, certain forms of autism, etc) that broke the 30 barrier, and your use of Spells more than reflects their own competence in their own fields.

It looks like your last sentence there got mangled, so perhaps you were in the middle of saying something else, but:
- I seriously doubt either Einstein or Hawking come anywhere close to 30 int. A 30-int Einstein wouldn't have said "genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration", he'd have said something incomprehensible, grinned mysteriously and disappeared in a psionic teleport.
- I know of nothing in the rules or fluff about intelligence that requires a high-int character to be dour, or humourless, or necessarily dignified. A 30-int person wouldn't do stupid things (generally), but that has no bearing on whether he's concerned with looking silly to others. Indeed, the smarter a person is, often, the less concerned he is with appearances.

The real difficulty is how to represent a character so inhumanly intelligent that their mistakes are nearly impossible to comprehend. At the higher levels of intelligence, you've stopped looking at a smart guy and are now facing Muad'Dib, or Leto.

[CharPixie]

Take notes. If you have extensive notes, your character will remember small details and make links that would have been hard for you to make if you didn't have them. Most games I've run, it's the notebook wielding femme who sounds brilliant in character.

[Theodoxus]

Most often highly intelligent people are portrayed (in video media) as being aloof or even alien in their thinking.

Real life highly intelligent people tend to be difficult to pigeon hole. Intelligence (able to comprehend difficult subjects, speed of thought, etc) Wisdom (common sense and perception and generally a higher regard for those around them) and Charisma (the ability to emote with those around them) go hand in hand to some degree. Certainly there are people who have little or no natural charisma but are brilliant theoreticians. There are those who can comprehend the entirety of quantum physics yet won't understand the ramifications of their research until someone has taken their fusion powerplant and turned it into an uber bomb. But generally, highly intelligent people can bluff their way through situations requiring wisdom or charisma because they can see the different lines of reasoning and pick which will bring about the desired result - or at least would given the information the person has.

Another view point would be to look at it differently. Take Strength for instance. Sure, you could visualize what it would be like to be able to lift 500 pounds and huck it 20 feet. But conceptualize what it would feel like. Your muscles bulging, tendons straining - nearly to the point of bursting - that's really painful. The boulder in question resisting your attempt to move it, and finally releasing with a quick upward movement, nearly toppling you over. And even that is a mental exorcise. Unless you've been in a Worlds Strongest Man competition, you can't really know what it's like to be that strong. The same is true with every attribute.

In my mind, there isn't much difference between being able to roleplay boundless strength, graceful dexterity or mighty intelligence. Apparently, people are more accepting of using simple numerical representation of the physical stats and less so of the mental stats - perhaps the question should really start there.

"Why is roleplaying a really strong character easier to do than a really smart one?" and as a corollary, "Do people play really strong characters well when all they do is play to the numbers, and nothing more?"

It might be boring, but if you only play to the numbers (extra spells, skill points, languages, etc) for a high intelligence, what harm is there? Skills presumably take care of most 'in game' knowledge. Everything else is metagame anyway - there really isn't a good way to 'in game' overcome puzzles - except by dice rolling.

Number puzzles, logic puzzles, heck even crosswords can stump people. I subscribe to an email list that sends out puzzles daily. Sometimes I can do them, sometimes I can't. A lot of them require either a very specific way of thinking "what number should finish this sequence? 23, 14, 19, 6, 20 .?."
or require specific knowledge: "What is the next in this pattern: 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 89, 47, 13, 18, 33, 85, 79, 4, 5, ? "

or are simple logic problems: "You are an expert on paranormal activity and have been hired to locate a spirit haunting an old resort hotel. Strong signs indicate that the spirit lies behind one of four doors. The inscriptions on each door read as follows:

Door A: It's behind B or C
Door B: It's behind A or D
Door C: It's in here
Door D: It's not in here

Your psychic powers have told you three of the inscriptions are false, and one is true. Behind which door will you find the spirit? "

As a DM, if I had decent players who were playing really smart characters, I'd either give hints (the first one, the numbers represent letters of the alphabet) or outright let them roll. "You try to figure out the logic problem, roll a DC 20 Int check... 23? great, you open door 'D', and find the spirit."

I definitely think, regardless of the characters intelligence (unless they have suboptimal) players should be given a chance to arrive at the answer before their character steps in and saves the day.

Theo

[Kyace]

I was bored and between classes so I figured I'd "run the numbers". Assuming that the normal D&D population gets their stat rolls by 3d6 (Only the heros roll 4 and drop the lowest), then this results in a nice bell curve, just like IQs and most every other normally distributed data set. So, out of the 216 possible rolls, the lowest starting roll is a 3, which happens .45% of the time up to 10 and 11, the most common rolls that happen 12.5% each up to the max roll of 18, which also happens .45% of the time.

The standard deviation is almost 3 (2.96) so if we take the average roll to be 10.5, then one std up would be 13.5 and one std down would be 7.5. Now, on an IQ test, the average is 100 and one STD is 15 points, so a roll of 14 or higher would likely be smarter (or as rare) as having an IQ of 115 or higher, either way, you are smarter than 84% of the normal D&D population. If you want to go higher, then a starting roll of 17 or higher would be as rare and likely as smart as having an IQ of 130 or higher. Your wizard with 17 int could join Mensa, because an int of 17 would rank higher than 98% of the population.

Basically, once you get over 17 int, there are so few people that high to even compare. An 18 int would be smarter than 99.5% of the population. Now, the starting values can't go up higher, but lets assume Int stats follow a normal distribution up higher. If that is the case, then having an int score three STDs above the average, 10.5 + ~3*3 = 19.5, or more would put you in the top .13%. Having an int above 22.5 would put you in the top .0032%. IE, if you have 31,575 people in an kingdom, you might expect only one to have an int stat higher than 22.5. In real life, thats about the rarity of IQs higher than 160.
Int scores higher than 25.5 would only show up in .00003% of the population. About as likely as an IQ of 175 or higher. So only about 1 in 3 million would have Int scores higher than 25.5.

While the IQs generally work for Ints scores, the percents and odds work for other scores. Your bard with 26 cha, by wearing his cloak and boasting it every 4 levels, ought to be 1 in 3 million. You He-man fighter with 23 str is 1 in 30,000. Your elf rogue with 20 dex would likely have faster reflexes than 999 humans out of 1000. Heros are generally the top of the top.

[Indon]

I must say, that's a more statistically robust equivalency for int scores than AD&D's "Intx10" rule.