How do you roleplay characters with superhuman intelligence?

[Segev]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Segev]

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]

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

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

[NichG]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Hyper-prep can easily come across as cheesy and contrived when it's done with retcons, etc.

[Zarrgon]

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]

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]

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:

"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]

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]

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]

They do seem to bunch it all in together:

"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]

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]

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]

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

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?