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Thread: How to play high wisdom
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2023-06-05, 05:49 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2018
Re: How to play high wisdom
I'm pretty sure I've seen passive Insight (so a Wisdom-based skill) be used by my GM to communicate things that would be visible through body languages of the NPCs. We also use it for communications with entities/peoples you don't share a language with, so a little like using "animal handling" but with non-animals.
And I'm pretty sure I've played in a few homebrew games where a Wisdom-like ability score was given some precognition (so feeling an ambush before it happens, and more generally reading the GM's mind).
Lastly, our campaigns often tend to degenerate into "ruling the country" kind of campaign, where we make skill checks that correspond to a day or even a week of giving orders to various NPCs. In which case, yes, a high wisdom character can make a check to "realise what is the correct thing to do", and let the GM handle whatever happen behind the scene.
I'm not saying that Wisdom is the best ability score, but it has more "ability check" use than Constitution, which is just your HP disguised as an ability score.
(And I'm not sure how I rate it compared to Intelligence, since it's unclear which of the two would absorb the other if I were to reduce to only 4 ability scores)Last edited by MoiMagnus; 2023-06-05 at 05:49 PM.
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2023-06-05, 06:25 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2022
Re: How to play high wisdom
Yup. In RuneQuest, they just use Intelligence and Power stats. Intelligence is how "smart" you are, but basically just affects how easily you learn new things, and how many spells you can memorize. Power is about how strong your spirt is, and affects things like how well you can affect others or resist others when spells are involved, how well you can resist/affect spirits, and can also be abstracted as "luck" (more like how aware you are). Also has some effect on how aware others are of you.
But the game is primarily skill based, and the stats you have provide some bonus to various categories of skills. And somewhat small ones at that. There's nothing preventing someone with a poor Int stat from having really high knowledge skills (lores, languages, etc). It's just slightly easier/faster for someone with a high Int stat is all.
Honestly, the "wisdom" concept is just left as a RP thing. You're free to decide whether your character is brash or cautious, or whatever. And I suppose it's one of the reasons why when I do play a more D&D clone type game with Wisdom, I don't allow it to determine how I play the character. It's just a stat. It has various in-game effects and may fulfill some class requirements. I maybe might look at the starting stats and come up with a personality that "fits". Or maybe I wont. Or at least, it's not going to be the sole determinant.
Trying to fit everything you RP about a character into their stats (mostly looking at int, wis, and cha here) is going to be problematic most of the time. And way too restrictive (as with the "aggressive monk" example mentioned earlier).
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2023-06-05, 07:28 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Location
- In my library
Re: How to play high wisdom
Honestly if I was writing 5.5/6e I'd change the mental stats to Learning, Senses, and Presence. At this point the only real vestige of Intelligence being about mental processing ability is the Investigation skill, all the rest has gone to Wisdom. Which itself is a confusing mixture of perception and willpower, except in some circumstances Charisma actually governs willpower. Going instead for defining your ability to know, your ability to perceive, and your ability to enforce your will makes the three clearer, even if it would probably require some skill and save shuffling.
As a plus side suddenly your stats say nothing about how your characters think. Meaning I don't have to worry about 18 INT Artificers with my impulse control.