Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Quenditar 01-20-05, 09:22 PM	I have a wizard who currently has Intelligence 21 and Wisdom 10, and I don't know how to roleplay the difference between the two scores. Right now I play her more or less as myself; she comes up with most of the party's plans and other ideas (e.g. "let's not attack the hermit in the mountains - if he's survived here alone, there's a reason"), although she tends to overcaution and occasional really stupid comments. If I were a D&D character, I think I would have about Intelligence 16 and Wisdom 9, so hopefully I'm not too far off - but I could use advice.
DBoot 01-20-05, 09:46 PM	Intelligence is to me more of a measure of raw mental prowess. The higher it is, the greater your capacity for knowledge, problem solving, abstractions, and so forth. Wisdom is more of a matter of common sense, perception. Intelligence is more logic, Wisdom is more intuition. For Contrast High Int, Low Wis: I'll turn him into a little tiny bug. Then I'll put him in a box. Then I'll put that box in another box. Then I'll send that box to myself. Then I'll SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER! High Wis, Low Int: Or, since I don't have time, I'll just poision him with this! (Except, this person actually checks to make sure that skull isn't just a llama in disguise) Basically, someone with high int will be able to devise a complex and relatively fool proof solution to a problem. Someone with high wis is likely to see the button that says 'solves problem' on it. I'd imagine a 21 int and 10 wis means your character is very smart, but isn't exceptionally cunning. You get the job done, but occasionally someone will point out an easier solution. The Hermit example? I think that's more of a high wis thing. A High Int character would spend time thinking 'Why/How has the hermit survived here alone?' Not 'The hermit has survived here alone. Better not mess with him.'
Quenditar 01-21-05, 12:36 AM	I'd imagine a 21 int and 10 wis means your character is very smart, but isn't exceptionally cunning. You get the job done, but occasionally someone will point out an easier solution. The Hermit example? I think that's more of a high wis thing. A High Int character would spend time thinking 'Why/How has the hermit survived here alone?' Not 'The hermit has survived here alone. Better not mess with him.' Hmm, I should keep an eye on that then. My train of thought was "this hermit is living, all by his lonesome, in an area full of slave raiders. He hasn't been enslaved yet. We are not a terribly powerful bunch. [We were, and are, a band of seven 4th-level characters, a wyrmling, a jinxkin, and a grig.] Surely others have tried to enslave him before and failed; if they couldn't, we shouldn't try." (The fighter did attack and we all ended up blown off the cliff.) When a sandstorm approached, my character came up with the idea of having the wyrmling burrow into the sand far enough to provide a shelter for us - Int or Wis? My impression (based on personal experience) is that high Int or high Wis can often compensate for a low score in the other (well, that, or my own 'Wisdom' is well above average for observing detail and well below average for social interaction).
ehrin 01-22-05, 11:55 AM	IMO, intelligence is book smarts, wisdom is street smarts... Your character, if played by me, would be able to devise plans involving machinery, complicated devices, could design a swinging rope bridge, or map a dungeon out of a wooden stick and a mouse.... He would lack, however, huge intuitive leaps of reasoning, might miss some subtle clues, or ignore things that are not of interest to him. If they were pointed out, sure, they would make sense, but your character is a typical brilliant professor, but a bit absent minded at times... walks into trouble while discussing his theories. Your wisdom is still pretty high, so the character is not brain dead to the world, but rather, a bit absent minded, probably not aware of the world around him as much as others might be, etc... he would stop in traffic to observe something interesting, and not realize the problems he is causing around him.
zioth 01-23-05, 06:05 PM	10 is only half a point below average. Most of the high-intelligence advice in this thread is useful, but I think some of the low-wisdom advice is a little extreme. Your character doesn't have to be absent-minded, since the average person isn't absent-minded (otherwise, there wouldn't be such a term, since it would be normal). Your character isn't going to make any great leaps of insight, but he can compensate, albeit more slowly, by considering all possibilities and deciding on the most effective course of action. On the other hand, he's not a fool. He won't wander off a cliff thinking he can fly or anything. That would be a wisdom closer to 1 or 2. 21 intelligence is the hard one to play. In the real world, you'd be the smartest person in the world, or at least one of the top two or three.
Tzu-Theory 01-26-05, 01:40 AM	I would roleplay being mysteriously intelligent but rather unaware of my surroundings and quite aloof.
Cardinal Teplin 01-26-05, 01:04 PM	Try going for very very complicated plans that might, technically speaking, work, but are utterly impractical. For example, train the hamster to run on the treadmill to turn the wheel to spin the jessy that winds the string that rachets onto the spindel that has a notch in it, causing the bottle of glow worms to be shaken, creating light. As a bonus it demonstrates grunweedle's treatise on transferred motion, while simulataneously showcasing the properties of luminensce tranferred from a organic to mechanical and back again! If someone suggests you could just light a candle, try and give the impression that they've missed the point entirely. Better yet, try and give the impression that you hadn't thought of that, but would have got around to it given time. Or... Watch the party cleric go through his prayers every night. Memorise the prayer, spend a lot of time working out what it would sound like if it were greatly speeded up, and then reproduce that burst of sound using the ghost sound spell. Huge amounts of time saved! Argue with the cleric when he complains that it's not actually the same thing. You might also want to employ the 'Star trek' system. Collar your Gm, warn him that you're intending to make up eminent scholars and theories on the spot, and ask him to back you up. Then you can wibble on about Grunwheedle's theorum of applied motion, or Declorix's proof that an arrow will never stop moving when fired, it just keeps on getting slower until you can't tell it's moving any more, safe in the knowledge that if you ever meet a scholar in the game, they'll be happy to go on about Grunwheedle too. That way you don't actually have to make sense, and heaven forfend that it be *useful*, just be consistent, and it should sound find. If you're playing a mage of some kind, this works even better. Just ask the GM whether you can recognise the magical structures of the enchantment before you, and exploit their inherent counterharmony to cause them to collapse. Then write him a note saying you're casting dispel magic. Roll a few dice, roleplay your investigation, and maybe mess around with a small tuning fork, and the rest of the party should be suitably impressed with your ability if the enchantment is dispelled. If you're a mage, you can also specilaise in useful, but horribly dangerous magical experiments. Like the skeleton-powered chariot, Glyphs of warding or symbols on the soles of your feet so you can kick people with surprising effect (or incinerate your own party if you happen to fall over...), pretty any form of demonology, and so on. Eg. The levitate powered alarm clock. Get a big log, levitate up as far as you can. Go to sleep. Time things so that the spell will wear off in precisely 8 hours. The log comes crashing down from the sky, creating a huge noise, and probably smashing the log to smitherines. While the rest of the party leap into action, ready for an impending attack, you can calmly get up and start looking into breakfast. It takes a high intellect to do the necessary calculations. It takes a low wisdom not to tell people that you are doing it, and to use them in that way. Playing high int low wis characters can be great fun. Sell down your wisdom if you can. Playing an average wisdom is very hard to, and it will make the contrast with your intelligence all the stronger.
Quenditar 01-31-05, 04:47 AM	I just wanted to comment that after a day of chatting with a very creative friend, my character has a shiny new background as a theoretical astrophysicist who discovered the hard way that her theories on faster-than-light travel weren't quite accurate. She doesn't know what went wrong; she only knows that she's been stuck on this backward planet for 12 years now and wants to go home. She considers arcane magic an integral part of the natural laws of this world (having more than ample proof that it works) and goes about researching magic like she used to research particles.
Mirikon 02-02-05, 12:04 AM	Int 21 Wis 10 would mean you plan out incredibly drawn out and complicated strategies, but there are perhaps simpler ways of doing them, or there are easy ways to break them, or they just don't make sense in reality. A couple examples. Developing a machine that, when the clock gets to 8AM, releases the rope which drops the pail which hits the lever which knocks the Bowling ball, which rolls down the ramp, which the birdcage, which causes the bird to squawk, thus waking you up. Watch Star Trek III, especially the part at the beginning where Scotty removes a couple chips from the Excelsior warp drive so they can't follow the Enterprise. "The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." (The int 21, wis 10 would be on the Excelsior designers, btw.) Anything by Red Mage, on 8Bit Theater. On the other hand, Int 10, Wis 21 would be the opposite. Think the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Arc. Really simple traps there, but ruthlessly efficient. Also think someone like MacGuyver. "Don't tell me you can make a bomb out of a piece of chewing gum!" "Why, you got some?"