Intelligence is not a superpower

[Beleriphon]

Absolutely. High intelligence is just the excuse, and not any better of one than anything else. I mean, how often do Lex Luthor, Dr. Sivana, or the Ultra-Humanite ultimately win?

For Luthor define win.

On the other side, Mr Fantastic is super intelligent, and its basically a superpower. Being stretch is a weird quirk he has, but being super intelligent is his thing.

[Mechalich]

This pretty much summarizes how I feel about this. If having a physical ability score of 40 gives you super powers, then a mental ability score of 40 should probably also give you super powers. If the person with a physical ability score of 40 is just the guy at the gym, then the person with 40 intelligence is just the guy who knows a lot of pi.

This hits on a question of thresholds, specifically how is 'super' defined.

D&D ability scores scale linearly, but DCs are static. It is reasonable to talk of 'super-powers' as the ability to automatically succeed at any challenge possible on any roll.

This is how the Diplomancer build works - a simple DC 50 check changes someone from hostile to helpful. Any character with a Charisma of 110 - and thus a +50 to the check, absolutely has a superpower, they have the ability to literally talk anyone into being their friend. That's an extreme example, I hope no one has a 110 Cha, but getting a character who has a +50 to Diplomacy and a trick to ignore rolled 1s is quite doable.

For intelligence a character with a high enough Int and the correct skill investments could essentially make any knowledge check and any spellcraft check automatically. Plausibly such a character effectively plays with the Monster Manual open. In the context of D&D, that's a super-power, it's not all encompassing, but it's definitely a special ability.

[NichG]

This hits on a question of thresholds, specifically how is 'super' defined.

D&D ability scores scale linearly, but DCs are static. It is reasonable to talk of 'super-powers' as the ability to automatically succeed at any challenge possible on any roll.

This is how the Diplomancer build works - a simple DC 50 check changes someone from hostile to helpful. Any character with a Charisma of 110 - and thus a +50 to the check, absolutely has a superpower, they have the ability to literally talk anyone into being their friend. That's an extreme example, I hope no one has a 110 Cha, but getting a character who has a +50 to Diplomacy and a trick to ignore rolled 1s is quite doable.

For intelligence a character with a high enough Int and the correct skill investments could essentially make any knowledge check and any spellcraft check automatically. Plausibly such a character effectively plays with the Monster Manual open. In the context of D&D, that's a super-power, it's not all encompassing, but it's definitely a special ability.

The problem usually comes from an argument along the lines of 'if it's a thing that could be known, there should be some Knowledge skill and check DC to know it'. Which for the record I think does not follow, but I can empathize with being tired of having to argue against that over and over.

[Quertus]

getting a character who has a +50 to Diplomacy and a trick to ignore rolled 1s is quite doable.

You only need a +49, and 1s aren't auto-failures on skill checks.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This hits on a question of thresholds, specifically how is 'super' defined.

D&D ability scores scale linearly, but DCs are static. It is reasonable to talk of 'super-powers' as the ability to automatically succeed at any challenge possible on any roll.

This is how the Diplomancer build works - a simple DC 50 check changes someone from hostile to helpful. Any character with a Charisma of 110 - and thus a +50 to the check, absolutely has a superpower, they have the ability to literally talk anyone into being their friend. That's an extreme example, I hope no one has a 110 Cha, but getting a character who has a +50 to Diplomacy and a trick to ignore rolled 1s is quite doable.

For intelligence a character with a high enough Int and the correct skill investments could essentially make any knowledge check and any spellcraft check automatically. Plausibly such a character effectively plays with the Monster Manual open. In the context of D&D, that's a super-power, it's not all encompassing, but it's definitely a special ability.

The problem usually comes from an argument along the lines of 'if it's a thing that could be known, there should be some Knowledge skill and check DC to know it'. Which for the record I think does not follow, but I can empathize with being tired of having to argue against that over and over.

I agree with NichG. There is no guarantee (especially out of the rather...specific...circumstances of 3e played forum-style) that all things that are known to anyone are knowable.

I've got lots of things in my setting that no one knows. Certainly not any mortal. Period. You can have INT 30 and expertise in all the right skills (using 5e)...and not even be able to roll for those things. And when you have one-off monsters or creatures, or things that are newly made--you don't know those things. DC NOPE. You might be able to figure things out relatively fast, given information, but you need that experience. On your first shot, you know nothing about them. Because no one does.

Being super smart doesn't give you access to information you don't have. It lets you reason from facts you do have, but you're just as vulnerable to mistaken facts, deception, or anything else as anyone else. If you have the wrong facts, being super smart just lets you make bigger mistakes by extrapolating from lesser information.

On the other hand, someone who grew up around the bog-sneeches (a rare species found only in one little valley in nowhere-land that aren't written about anywhere) will know lots about them even if they have INT 8 and no INT-based skills. Because of their everyday experience. Whereas someone from outside that valley will no nothing about the bog-sneeches, no matter how smart and learned they are.

It's why I'm firmly opposed to fixed DCs for anything knowledge related. Because the circumstantial factors take it from DC 0 to DC NOPE.

[Mechalich]

I agree with NichG. There is no guarantee (especially out of the rather...specific...circumstances of 3e played forum-style) that all things that are known to anyone are knowable.

I've got lots of things in my setting that no one knows. Certainly not any mortal. Period. You can have INT 30 and expertise in all the right skills (using 5e)...and not even be able to roll for those things. And when you have one-off monsters or creatures, or things that are newly made--you don't know those things. DC NOPE. You might be able to figure things out relatively fast, given information, but you need that experience. On your first shot, you know nothing about them. Because no one does.

Being super smart doesn't give you access to information you don't have. It lets you reason from facts you do have, but you're just as vulnerable to mistaken facts, deception, or anything else as anyone else. If you have the wrong facts, being super smart just lets you make bigger mistakes by extrapolating from lesser information.

On the other hand, someone who grew up around the bog-sneeches (a rare species found only in one little valley in nowhere-land that aren't written about anywhere) will know lots about them even if they have INT 8 and no INT-based skills. Because of their everyday experience. Whereas someone from outside that valley will no nothing about the bog-sneeches, no matter how smart and learned they are.

It's why I'm firmly opposed to fixed DCs for anything knowledge related. Because the circumstantial factors take it from DC 0 to DC NOPE.

Okay, but that's a specific set of house rules that you have made for your setting. You're making a choice to reduce the value of in-character knowledge and the utility of powers like divination (whose entire purpose is to all characters to learn the unknown). Your initial post complains about people making assumptions about the utility of intelligence that are not based on your specific house rules.

I'm not saying you're wrong to reduce the value of raw knowledge in your setting - in 3e especially there's plenty of evidence that even moderately optimized characters regularly exceed expected skill values by huge margins - but there's a difference between 'intelligence is not a superpower' and 'I have made intelligence not a superpower anymore.'

[PhoenixPhyre]

Okay, but that's a specific set of house rules that you have made for your setting. You're making a choice to reduce the value of in-character knowledge and the utility of powers like divination (whose entire purpose is to all characters to learn the unknown). Your initial post complains about people making assumptions about the utility of intelligence that are not based on your specific house rules.

I'm not saying you're wrong to reduce the value of raw knowledge in your setting - in 3e especially there's plenty of evidence that even moderately optimized characters regularly exceed expected skill values by huge margins - but there's a difference between 'intelligence is not a superpower' and 'I have made intelligence not a superpower anymore.'

Playgrounder's error[1] in play here. Exacerbated by the fact that common forum understanding of RAW isn't really the rules at all.

Those aren't house rules, at least in 5e. 5e explicitly says that the DM decides the difficulty of a check[2]. And they aren't in 3e either--at least in the stuff I've read, there's no "know everything is a DC X check that you can always roll" rule. "I can remember things I've never learned" isn't anywhere in those rules. They all presume that the threshold question has been met. Beyond that, the guidelines are explicitly only that, guidelines. And you're encouraged to make them setting specific.

[1] I hate using the term fallacy. You're assuming 3e, and particularly one cramped, non-textual reading of those rules, the one that the forums call "RAW", the one that minimizes the role of the DM and assumes that all optimization and cheese is in play and anyone saying otherwise is houseruling. When in fact it's the other way around--you're presuming certain things about DMs and settings by making those assumptions in the first place.

[2] specifically, the 5e DMG says for all checks:

When deciding whether to use a roll, ask yourself two questions:

* Is a task so easy and so free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure?
* Is a task so inappropriate or impossible--such as hitting the moon with an arrow--that it can't work?

If the answer to both these questions is no, some kind of roll is appropriate.

Saying "no, no matter your STR score you can't hit the moon with an arrow" or "no, no matter your INT score you can't know this" isn't a house rule at all. It's hard, cold, solid RAW.

And here's the 3.5e PHB on the matter:

The DM decides what is actually impossible and what is merely practically impossible. Characters with very high skill modifiers are capable of accomplishing incredible, almost unbelievable tasks, just as characters with very high combat bonuses are.

This is after stating that a task considered practically impossible has a DC of 40, 60, or even higher (or it carries a modifier of +20 or more to the DC). So practically impossible things have an unbounded DC. Really impossible things (as decided entirely and exclusively by the DM) don't have a DC at all. You just fail.

And here's the section about Knowledge checks:

Check: Answering a question within your field of study has a DC of 10 (for really easy questions), 15 (for basic questions), or 20
to 30 (for really tough questions)[3]. In many cases[4], you can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, the DM can give another piece of useful information.
...
Try Again: No. The check represents what you know, and thinking about a topic a second time doesn’t let you know something that you never learned in the first place

There is clearly no "I have a +50, so I know everything. It's all mights and can and in many cases.

[3] But remember that the DM can (and is instructed to) add circumstance modifiers of any value they happen to choose to represent the real difficulty.
[4] in many cases directly means that it doesn't apply to all cases. Otherwise they'd not have said that statement.

[NichG]

Okay, but that's a specific set of house rules that you have made for your setting. You're making a choice to reduce the value of in-character knowledge and the utility of powers like divination (whose entire purpose is to all characters to learn the unknown). Your initial post complains about people making assumptions about the utility of intelligence that are not based on your specific house rules.

I'm not saying you're wrong to reduce the value of raw knowledge in your setting - in 3e especially there's plenty of evidence that even moderately optimized characters regularly exceed expected skill values by huge margins - but there's a difference between 'intelligence is not a superpower' and 'I have made intelligence not a superpower anymore.'

There's a non-house-rules way of arguing it. If you want to live by RAW, you die by RAW - only those things explicitly printed as having a Knowledge check DC are able to be known by Knowledge, and no DC is given for things harder than 'really tough questions in a given field' - therefore, anything harder than a 'really tough question' is outside of the scope of Knowledge. Anything which would belong to a field for which there isn't an explicitly printed Knowledge skill is outside of the scope of Knowledge, and there's no reason under RAW that an argument to allow a particular thing to fall under the umbrella of X because 'it's the closest' must be followed. If Knowledge(Religion) did not exist, that doesn't mean that knowing about Undead is now a Knowledge(Planes) check because that's the closest thing - it means that there is no skill check to know about Undead.

There is no Knowledge skill for 'what the BBEG's plans are'. There is no Knowledge skill for 'what tactic could I execute that would guarantee me victory in this encounter?'. Knowing a secret that would let you blackmail the Duke need not be so easy as 'a really tough question in the field of Nobility and Royalty', and therefore it need not be assumed by RAW that there is a corresponding DC.

If we want to talk RAI, that's fine, but under RAI we enter into the discussion that Knowledge skills represent information gleaned from study, which means that an interpretation such as 'anything you get out of a Knowledge skill is something that the character had to have read or been told at some point in time' can establish pretty severe limits as well.

[King of Nowhere]

This pretty much summarizes how I feel about this. If having a physical ability score of 40 gives you super powers, then a mental ability score of 40 should probably also give you super powers. If the person with a physical ability score of 40 is just the guy at the gym, then the person with 40 intelligence is just the guy who knows a lot of pi.

Then again, there are different levels of superhuman.
The guy with str 40 could pick up a car, possibly a van, but he definitely could not pick up an aircraft carrier.
The guy with con 40 could shrug off a shotgun to the face, he may survive being hit by a cannon, but he certainly won't survive a close nuclear explosion.
The guy with int 40 can be an expert at more fields than any person can, he can know more stuff without having to look it up, he can mentally solve complex equations faster than you can type them on the calculator... but he's still got limits.

Even superhuman characters - especially superhuman characters - have limits. In a narrative, it is more important to establish those limits than to establish the full extent of their power

[icefractal]

Those aren't house rules, at least in 5e. 5e explicitly says that the DM decides the difficulty of a check[2].

Ok, but this whole discussion makes little sense in 5E. In that edition, neither your Int or your skill bonuses are going that far outside the normal human range, so "what abilities does being a hyper-genius who could answer the most difficult of normal questions while drunk and asleep give you?" isn't even a question, because you can't play one of those.

As far as the more general point of what Knowledge checks do or don't cover, I'm of two minds.

On the one hand, no, I don't think you should be able to roll "Knowledge (the BBEG's plans)" or "Knowledge (what's inside this sealed vault that nobody has ever opened and the builder disappeared without telling anyone)". And hitting a DC 35 isn't so hard that it should reasonably give you every secret of the universe.

On the other hand, Knowledge rolls are already somewhat niche. And if you make anything actually important be "special and unknowable", they become a pointless trap for people to waste skill points on. Especially if you have "sage" NPCs who do know the relevant info when sought out. That's a double whammy of suck - not only are those skills you took worthless, but you'll never be as cool as the NPCs are.


Oh, and on the third hand - a lot of the time I see hyper-intelligence at its most superpower-like on this forum, it's as part of a thought experiment. In those cases, there is no GM, and no established facts about the setting or the character's history in that setting. So in that case, what would you use besides the character's stats/skills?

[NichG]

Ok, but this whole discussion makes little sense in 5E. In that edition, neither your Int or your skill bonuses are going that far outside the normal human range, so "what abilities does being a hyper-genius who could answer the most difficult of normal questions while drunk and asleep give you?" isn't even a question, because you can't play one of those.

As far as the more general point of what Knowledge checks do or don't cover, I'm of two minds.

On the one hand, no, I don't think you should be able to roll "Knowledge (the BBEG's plans)" or "Knowledge (what's inside this sealed vault that nobody has ever opened and the builder disappeared without telling anyone)". And hitting a DC 35 isn't so hard that it should reasonably give you every secret of the universe.

On the other hand, Knowledge rolls are already somewhat niche. And if you make anything actually important be "special and unknowable", they become a pointless trap for people to waste skill points on. Especially if you have "sage" NPCs who do know the relevant info when sought out. That's a double whammy of suck - not only are those skills you took worthless, but you'll never be as cool as the NPCs are.

There's sort of a ratchet thing here, though - this idea that all skills should be interpreted as being as powerful as the most powerful skill you can come up with means you get a sort of mental power creep about what a skill check should accomplish. If Knowledge skills only let you know things that, say, exist in a library somewhere in the setting, would you rather have Knowledge or Jump? Knowledge or Decipher Script? Knowledge or Survival? Knowledge or Use Rope? Knowledge or Climb? Even something like Knowledge and >5 Tumble? Knowledge and Heal?

It only makes Knowledge seem weak compared to things like Diplomacy (which can be a build-defining skill), Hide/Move Silently (also build-defining), Spot/Listen (okay everyone should have this), Autohypnosis (this just has random good stuff), and potentially UMD.

Depending which skills you look at, you could draw the conclusion that individual skills in general aren't really supposed to be character-defining investments, but are really supposed to be secondary augments to a game centered more on class abilities and feats. One might say 'what about Rogues or other skill-monkey characters?', but note that rather than having a higher skill cap than others, they just get to be broader.

So anyhow, I'm not saying this has to be one way or another, but rather that there's an entire design space here and I'd place this as a 'table preference' kind of thing. Not allowing Knowledge to be a particular kind of super-power doesn't automatically make it a trap - there's a very wide middle ground there that still constitutes a viable game system, and where things land will be a combination of campaign specificity and taste.

Oh, and on the third hand - a lot of the time I see hyper-intelligence at its most superpower-like on this forum, it's as part of a thought experiment. In those cases, there is no GM, and no established facts about the setting or the character's history in that setting. So in that case, what would you use besides Intelligence / Knowledge skills?

In other theory-craft discussions, there's a standard that things which depend on GM adjudication are off the table, rather than assuming a very permissive GM. For example, spell invention is possible but explicitly requires adjudication, so people usually don't invoke it in theoretical optimization discussions. So the answer here could be 'since it requires a permissive GM to go beyond DCs that are explicitly in the books, we can't assume access to it in TO and must find another way'.

[King of Nowhere]

In other theory-craft discussions, there's a standard that things which depend on GM adjudication are off the table, rather than assuming a very permissive GM. For example, spell invention is possible but explicitly requires adjudication, so people usually don't invoke it in theoretical optimization discussions. So the answer here could be 'since it requires a permissive GM to go beyond DCs that are explicitly in the books, we can't assume access to it in TO and must find another way'.

disagreement here - a lot of the things total optimization does are stuff that not even a very permissive dm would allow.
i'd rather say that TO is based on the idea that the rules be taken literally instead of interpreted

[NichG]

disagreement here - a lot of the things total optimization does are stuff that not even a very permissive dm would allow.
i'd rather say that TO is based on the idea that the rules be taken literally instead of interpreted

Agree that TO is based on the idea that the rules be taken literally, but there are places in the rules that outright call for adjudication. For example, the rules say that the DC of a Knowledge check for a 'really tough question' is 20-30, but outside of specific published DCs the GM is specifically asked to determine how hard a given question is and what field of study if any it belongs to.

So in that case, you could do 'TO under the assumption that the GM rules in favor of the player when a ruling is demanded' or 'TO under the assumption that the GM rules against the player when a ruling is demanded'. Anything else besides those two extremes basically will reduce to ambiguity. However, if you do the former, then something like 'the first thing I do is invent a Cantrip with no XP cost that permanently grants a Salient Divine Ability of my choice to the spell's target' is valid, and there's basically no discussion to be had - it's like the version of Pun Pun where the Sarrukh ability is taken to allow the player to author arbitrary rules text. The more restrictive version of TO is to say, okay, you can only use things where (outside of rule zero) a GM would have no choice under RAW but to allow it. That gets you the version of Pun Pun where he can't write rules text but can grab any written ability that exists in the rules.

Edit: And for what its worth, and to not miss the point of this thread... It would be completely reasonable for someone to post a thread saying e.g. 'hey, stop trying to bring TO stuff to my table, it isn't going to work and its dumb'. Which is sort of a super-set of what I feel this thread is about, e.g. bringing these sorts of arguing-the-GM-into-submission types of viewpoints to an actual table and expecting them to be honored.

[Quertus]

@PhoenixPhyre - you come off very… one-sided in your descriptions. Which makes me curious whether it's an actuate depiction of your stance or not.

So, suppose that… Draconians or Warforged never existed in D&D. And you make them in your world, as a *new*, never before seen creature.

PC is looking at +50 or higher bonus to knowledge checks.

Player asks for a knowledge check, you say "DC nope!"?

You describe the monster, player mages educated guesses based on those descriptions (dragon, wings, flying, "elemental" magical abilities, spell resistance // Construct, living, sentient, crit immunities).

Do you really run a world where the players are more knowledgeable than their characters? Do you just not give the players the information that they would need to think about things? Or do you not "DC nope!" as hard as you make it sound? (Or, I suppose, do you have players who lack the ability to make educated guesses… or some other option i haven't considered?)

I ask because I *also* do "DC nope!", but allow perceivable information to be summized.

On the other hand, Knowledge rolls are already somewhat niche. And if you make anything actually important be "special and unknowable", they become a pointless trap for people to waste skill points on. Especially if you have "sage" NPCs who do know the relevant info when sought out. That's a double whammy of suck - not only are those skills you took worthless, but you'll never be as cool as the NPCs are.

Strongly agree. If some NPC "sage" (Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, often laments just how clueless and ignorant one can be, and still claim the title of "sage") can know a thing, PCs who have invested in the appropriate Knowledge should, as well. (To my players who may question my adherence to this: the sage who made the "DC nope" roll *was lying*.)

[NichG]

I'll just raise here that you're making an assumption that the way this hypothetical sage has information is through Knowledge.

But you wouldn't (hopefully) use a character's Knowledge to determine how much they remember about an adventure they had or a conversation they had.

Why is it unreasonable that an NPC who, say, found Acererak's true tomb, ventured in just enough to go Nope!, and retired somewhere safe might know the location, if Knowledge could not?

[Morty]

If a player character is trying to use a high knowledge check to find out something they couldn't have plausibly learned, the right answer is usually to make it clear there's nothing about it in their sources of knowledge. This can be useful information in its own right, as it lets the player know that they've run into something obscure and undocumented and informs their expectations. "Whatever it is, there's nothing about it in the Imperial Academy of Goodebarrylok" is a pretty definitive statement. You can also give them information about related subjects that might be useful.

Really though, this just demonstrates that attributes aren't created equal and intelligence is a considerably more abstract concept than strength. "Intelligence" isn't a superpower. Tactical acuity might be, or a wealth of obscure knowledge. Or, as it usually happens, arcane magic that requires intelligence to study and practice. At least it's better than wisdom.

[King of Nowhere]

Strongly agree. If some NPC "sage" can know a thing, PCs who have invested in the appropriate Knowledge should, as well. (To my players who may question my adherence to this: the sage who made the "DC nope" roll *was lying*.)

objection: if some npc knows who is the killer on account of having witnessed it, your pc cannot know it just by rolling knowledge.
knowledge means having access to the corpus of what is knows around. some things are not known by anyone except those few who witnessed it exactly. if it's not written in any book - but there is a lone survivor who saw it - then knowledge won't tell you what it is. and it won't help some random npc "sage" either.

objection 2: your wizard is geared towards casting spells; he has a whole build dedicated to spellcasting. and he just happens to have maximized his ranks in knowledge, something with very little cost for his build. somebody who invested his whole build into knowing stuff should be more knowledgeable, under the general principle that a generalist should not be able to beat a specialist in the specialist's own field.
since the rules are not particularly functional and some builds have broken power levels, i made the specialized expert class - linked in my signature - specifically to try to model the npc "sage" who has no spells, no combat training, no class abilities to speak of, but who *will* roll higher than you in his specific field of expertise

of course, each instance has to be judged specifically. but it makes no sense - and would be both immersion breaking, and liable to create a boring invincible hero^TM to me - that just because someone has one more level to get one extra rank in skill checks, then he gets to be the foremost world expert of... EVERYTHING

EDIT: I prefer to fluff knowledge by field of expertise. "so your wizard has summoned a lot of demons and he has done many mission involving demons and he has studied demons a lot, so he's officially a demon expert, you get to know the really obscure stuff there, even npc that are higher level than you and should have a higher modifier than you still come and ask your counsel when it comes to demons."
"on the other hand, you never interacted with dragons and never had much interest in them. so, while your high knowledge check means you still know a lot of stuff about dragons, for the really deep knowledge a specific expert of dragons will be needed. to your character, dragons are like that topic you studied during your second year of university and never looked back again afterwards".
it's like, there is a sort of similarity in the search and disarm traps, in that everyone can make the check, but only a rogue can beat traps above a certain DC. Well, i don't want to put down specific numbers, but during the campaign everyone is getting a few "expert of X" badges depending on what their characters actually do, and being an expert on X means you can know better.

Ultimately, though, I treat "not being an expert at X" as just another plot obstacle, and thus liable to be overcome in many ways. If you are looking for very specific stuff on dragons, the easier way is to look for a specific expert - and if you have a decent network of contacts and influences, it shouldn't even require any roll - but if you decide that your character is going to hole up in a library and spend a few weeks researching dragons, i am definitely willing to let you find the answers yourself.

[Tanarii]

I ask because I *also* do "DC nope!", but allow perceivable information to be summized.

Perceivable information is perceivable. It's DC Automatic.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Perceivable information is perceivable. It's DC Automatic.

Or at most depends on a Wisdom (Perception) check.

A few responses (without quotes):

@"No point in doing this in 5e because you can't get that far off"--this entire thread was sparked by a conversation in the 5e forums about letting villains with INT > 20 "read the DM's mind" and gain access to the players' plans (that they couldn't be explained to have done without that) to show that they're super-smart and thus know everything about everyone. So yeah.

@Quertus: I'm relatively free with things you can perceive. And you can figure out a lot that way. But you can't know it in advance, just by thinking hard. And honestly, I'm not so concerned about monster metagaming, because it backfires a lot. I may at most say "how does your character know that?" I'm much more concerned with people (including especially DMs) using high INT as an excuse why they're immune to mistakes. And pushing back against the "if the villain or chess-master character has flaws, it's because he was handed the idiot ball" mentality very common on these forums. The idea that high INT can replace all the other statistics and is basically a guaranteed win. Basically, the whole "I'm a wizard, so I'm super smart, so I've prepared for everything" schrodinger's wizard concept that gets thrown around is entirely outside the game. "super smart" == "paranoid and batman" has no rules support whatsoever. And it's lazy and bad worldbuilding, fit only for the worse kinds of comics.

[kyoryu]

@PhoenixPhyre - you come off very… one-sided in your descriptions. Which makes me curious whether it's an actuate depiction of your stance or not.

So, suppose that… Draconians or Warforged never existed in D&D. And you make them in your world, as a *new*, never before seen creature.

PC is looking at +50 or higher bonus to knowledge checks.

Player asks for a knowledge check, you say "DC nope!"?

You describe the monster, player mages educated guesses based on those descriptions (dragon, wings, flying, "elemental" magical abilities, spell resistance // Construct, living, sentient, crit immunities).

Do you really run a world where the players are more knowledgeable than their characters? Do you just not give the players the information that they would need to think about things? Or do you not "DC nope!" as hard as you make it sound? (Or, I suppose, do you have players who lack the ability to make educated guesses… or some other option i haven't considered?)

I ask because I *also* do "DC nope!", but allow perceivable information to be summized.

DC Nope! for the win. (Also, DC yep!).

In Fate, this tends to get rolled up in the big ball we call "fictional positioning" - the idea that actions have to be plausible to even warrant a roll. Start by saying what it is you're trying to do, and if the answer is "that doesn't make sense", then you don't get to roll.

In your case, with a previously unknown creature? The character won't know anything. You can give them information that they might be able to extrapolate based on observable criteria (and I do believe in being generous with that), but I'd also make it clear that said information is a guess and an extrapolation.

"Yeah, the creature looks kind of like something that's half-man, half human. Its skin is oily and black, kind of like a black dragon's. You're really not sure, but you do recall that a black dragon is resistant to acid, so this thing might be too."

(realistically this'd probably be a few back and forths. Volunteering non-factual information is basically leading the characters on)

And agreed with others that perceivable info is just perceived, and the GM should be excessively free with that. The character is there and actually seeing it, the player has to play twenty questions", which is no fun. Also, "roll to not be stupid" isn't particularly fun gameplay most of the time - "here's the info, what are you going to do about it" is. In some cases, a perception/wisdom/whatever check to put some non-obvious pieces together might be called for.

[Lord Raziere]

@Quertus: I'm relatively free with things you can perceive. And you can figure out a lot that way. But you can't know it in advance, just by thinking hard. And honestly, I'm not so concerned about monster metagaming, because it backfires a lot. I may at most say "how does your character know that?" I'm much more concerned with people (including especially DMs) using high INT as an excuse why they're immune to mistakes. And pushing back against the "if the villain or chess-master character has flaws, it's because he was handed the idiot ball" mentality very common on these forums. The idea that high INT can replace all the other statistics and is basically a guaranteed win. Basically, the whole "I'm a wizard, so I'm super smart, so I've prepared for everything" schrodinger's wizard concept that gets thrown around is entirely outside the game. "super smart" == "paranoid and batman" has no rules support whatsoever. And it's lazy and bad worldbuilding, fit only for the worse kinds of comics.

Yeah, and even real Batman and Lex Luthor have limitations to their preparedness in that their ability to do so is tied to societal benefits of money, technology, the companies they run and thus the public face they present, with Batman having a further limitation in that most of the stuff he has could pass for stylized spy gadgets or cutting edge modern stuff.

like crazy prepared type of guys are better the more down to earth you can make them, because if the all powerful wizard is prepared thats not real impressive, magic can do anything so you can come up with reasoning for them to have any spell. its playing the preparedness game on easy mode.

a rogue that sets up traps, uses alchemy and has to physically scout out their foe on the other hand? that someone I'd rather do the preparation playstyle with, because your more likely to find a paranoid mindset among spies and scoundrels, but not have any of the overpowered magic to make that suspicious paranoid nature invincible, and you need to be creative and work within the limits you have. I'd rather wizards just be researchers who are focused on their area of study and all the quirks that come with it.

though the wizard university trope has become a little too common, the teacher/apprentice set up should come back, make that knowledge a bit more individually taught and less standardized and centralized.

[King of Nowhere]

this entire thread was sparked by a conversation in the 5e forums about letting villains with INT > 20 "read the DM's mind" and gain access to the players' plans (that they couldn't be explained to have done without that) to show that they're super-smart and thus know everything about everyone.

awww, that's lazy/bad dming. when i throw around those kind of mastermind villains, i use on them the same principle i use on the players, "is there a reasonable way they could have found out about this?"
and the answer is most likely yes! because I've been good at placing those villains in unsuspecting places. Heck, one of them actually managed to place one of his henchmen as a party cohort. That revelation was among my finest dming moments.
Or there was the part where the players directly asked the villain for informations, because they thought the villain was their ally. The villain gave them the requested information on the location of plot items and quest locations, all very helpful; then he went to the party's enemies and told them "the heroes are going to be in this place in the near future, set up an ambush". And since the villain did not take any direct or apparent part in it, but it was a third party who was resposible for the ambushes, the players never suspected the villain - and went to him again to ask for more "directions".

it's always a good time when i can reveal my mastermind villain's unsuspectable sources of information

[Max_Killjoy]

Intelligence is not clairvoyance or telepathy, that's for damn sure.

Charisma is not mind control.

[Tanarii]

Or at most depends on a Wisdom (Perception) check.

OTOH, deducible information from what's been perceived may be (in 5e) an Intelligence (Investigation) check. That's where we start getting into "how much can a demi-god level Intelligence (Int 20) person figure out on the fly and in short time from immediately perceivable information at hand".

Keeping in mind that Int 18-19 is already top 2% of the population. (IQ 130+ if we go by old-school IQ systems, which is pretty questionable, but still).

[kyoryu]

Tabletop gamers over-value intelligence and under-value wisdom.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Tabletop gamers over-value intelligence and under-value wisdom.

This is the one-sentence summary of my point. It may be because TT gaming is (traditionally) a nerd hobby, and nerds are Team Intellect (again traditionally), so it's sort of revenge/payback for being mocked. See? I'm smart so I'm god (in this game world)! Also a plausible explanation for the commonality of Guy at the Gym issues.

[NichG]

Would you really be fine with the initial scenario of a DM saying a BBEG anticipated the party's plans in every contingency if the only thing the DM did differently was move the 20 from Int to Wis on the villain's character sheet? I feel like the semantic thing is a bit of a distraction from the substantive problem...

[Xervous]

Tabletop gamers over-value intelligence and under-value wisdom.

Now why am I thinking of INT as the memory, WIS as the circuitry, and CHA as the webpage’s UI?

Tortured analogies and lost sleep probably.

[Morty]

In all fairness, properly valuing wisdom is difficult because it's an undefined mess of an attribute that doesn't actually have much to do with actual wisdom of any kind.

[Quertus]

I'll just raise here that you're making an assumption that the way this hypothetical sage has information is through Knowledge.

But you wouldn't (hopefully) use a character's Knowledge to determine how much they remember about an adventure they had or a conversation they had.

Why is it unreasonable that an NPC who, say, found Acererak's true tomb, ventured in just enough to go Nope!, and retired somewhere safe might know the location, if Knowledge could not?

If the books you're reading weren't written by the future people and brought back via Teleport Through Time, or by people asking questions about the future through Divinations, your world is suboptimal.

Color blue to taste.

(I'm not a fan of Knowledge skills. No, I've never made a character whose backstory was that they were reading their own (temporally-displaced) journals as the excuse for their knowledge skills, why do you ask?)

(Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, isn't reading books - he's writing them. Much more fun than making knowledge checks, IMO)

@Quertus: I'm relatively free with things you can perceive. And you can figure out a lot that way. But you can't know it in advance, just by thinking hard. And honestly, I'm not so concerned about monster metagaming, because it backfires a lot. I may at most say "how does your character know that?" I'm much more concerned with people (including especially DMs) using high INT as an excuse why they're immune to mistakes. And pushing back against the "if the villain or chess-master character has flaws, it's because he was handed the idiot ball" mentality very common on these forums.

Well, we're definitely on the same side on "int <> immune to mistakes" (and on including especially DMs).

But I though it might be very appropriate for this thread if, you know, figuring things out based on observations was somehow Int-based…

In your case, with a previously unknown creature? The character won't know anything. You can give them information that they might be able to extrapolate based on observable criteria (and I do believe in being generous with that), but I'd also make it clear that said information is a guess and an extrapolation.

"Yeah, the creature looks kind of like something that's half-man, half human. Its skin is oily and black, kind of like a black dragon's. You're really not sure, but you do recall that a black dragon is resistant to acid, so this thing might be too."

(realistically this'd probably be a few back and forths. Volunteering non-factual information is basically leading the characters on).

"half-man, half human"?

Suppose you've got the corpse of one of these creatures to study. You've never seen one alive. But you can evaluate its skin, organs, bones, fluids, circulatory and nervous system. You can compare the set of its eyes, the shape of its scales, every feature to known creatures.

What you can learn is based on…

Player skill? Knowledge (Int) check?

Tabletop gamers over-value intelligence and under-value wisdom.

Strongly agree!

For the example by @kyoryu, I would hope that Wisdom would strongly help in recognizing assumptions (and contradictions to those assumptions).