D&D 5E Geniuses with 5 Int

[Satyrn]

Yea, I agree with that. It's an easy thing for the DM to include.

I wonder what other kind of narrations cause this kind of dissonance? Beautiful woman with 5 Cha? Marathon runner with 5 Con?

I've known women who could fit that first description.

As for the marathon runner, that'll play out quite straightforward with whatever Constitution checks or Fortitude saves the DM feels is appropriate for the task. It should cause no one dissonance if the character succeeds on these rolls.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It seems to me that's what Dannyalcatraz is afraid of: "Why WOULDN'T he keep casting if has that whole deck of cards?" He didn't because he's using the RP to express the mechanics, not to circumvent them.

There is no fear here.

A Gambit style sorcerer is small potatoes. That's akin to an old 3.5Ed Feat.

Changing the definition of intelligence, of what it actually means to know an answer, etc? I have a problem with that.

 

[TwoSix]

Working with the stated initial premise that genius Eloelle knows the answers but lies about them, situation 3 raises an insoluble conflict between mechanics and the desired RP result. She can't both know the answer and not know it.

Not necessarily. Zone of Truth allows the speaker to be willfully evasive on a failed save. Eloelle just has to start giving faerie-style answers to the questions. (I mean, she IS a genius.) Alternatively, Eloelle's patron clouds her mind, to ensure that this arcane truth does not fall into the hands of this sorcerer. The patron has plans for this information, of which Eloelle is just starting to become aware...

 

[Guest 6801328]

First, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't ZoT a Cha based save? If so, she might not make that save "because I'm a genius"...

Oh, is it? Then she has a good chance of passing 'cause she's a Warlock

At any rate, the narration isn't a panacea to the situation you're creating with your redefinition of Int.

Correction: non-canonical interpretation of Int. See Post #25.

In the ZoT, there are 4 basic outcomes to the caster's queries, 2 for each version of Eloelle.

1) If Eloelle is an idiot and fails her save, she answers truthfully "I don't know." The caster knows this answer is truthful.

2) If Eloelle is an idiot and makes her save, she can answer truthfully "I don't know." or she can lie. But the caster will know she made her save and won't necessarily accept the given answer as truth.

3) If Eloelle is a genius and fails her save, she cannot answer "I don't know." She HAS to give the correct answer if she knows it regardless of the Patron's menacing whispers; the ZoT's caster knows this answer is truthful.

4) If Eloelle is an genius and makes her save, she can answer with a lie "I don't know." or she can tell the truth (though she might not, I'd her patron forbids it). But the caster will know she made her save and won't necessarily accept the given answer as truth.

Working with the stated initial premise that genius Eloelle knows the answers but lies about them, situation 3 raises an insoluble conflict between mechanics and the desired RP result. She can't both know the answer and not know it.

J.F.C., Danny, I can't believe you aren't getting this. Eloelle failed her Int check so mechanically she does not know the answer. Everything else...the part about her knowing it but keeping it secret because of her Patron...is storytelling. If she passes the ZoT saving throw she does whatever she wants. If she fails she fails so she has to tell the truth, but she narrates it as succeeding and hiding the truth.

As the DM you could enjoy this storytelling and play along with the pretense, or you could set up situations to try to force the player to admit that her character doesn't know the answer, that Int means what you say it is, leading to an arms race of increasingly contrived scenarios and responses.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Two weeks ago I was in an Adventurer's League game with a sorcerer who had a deck of cards. To cast his spells he would pull cards from his deck and throw them. Each one was described, e.g. "I pull out a 3 of Diamonds, and fling it at the Ghoul. It turns into three glowing darts that strike the Ghoul in the chest....doing...dang, a total of 6 damage." And OF COURSE he didn't change any of the mechanics of how a Sorcerer works, nor did he ever say, "Ha! Even though a normal Sorcerer would be out of spell slots, I still have this whole deck of cards so I get to keep casting!" It seems to me that's what Dannyalcatraz is afraid of: "Why WOULDN'T he keep casting if has that whole deck of cards?" He didn't because he's using the RP to express the mechanics, not to circumvent them.

My bard does much the same thing with a deck of tarot cards. I'm hardly a stranger to player-initiated reskinning. The difference between reskinning spells as card magic and reskinning low Intelligence as high intelligence is that the card interpretation of the spell doesn't directly and immediately contradict the standard interpretation. A deck of cards can function just like a wand: it's a small physical object, its weight is negligible, you can hold and manipulate it in one hand, and so on. The substitution is natural and intuitive. You don't have to constantly grasp for reasons why you're not benefiting from having a deck instead of a wand, because there are genuinely very reasons why you would be. But when the rules say, "You don't know this fact" and the player says, "Actually I do know this fact", that's a contradiction. And there are lots of reasons why knowing something is more beneficial than not knowing something, so you've constantly got to be patching your own narrative as the contradiction strains at verisimilitude.

 

[Guest 6801328]

My bard does much the same thing with a deck of tarot cards. I'm hardly a stranger to player-initiated reskinning. The difference between reskinning spells as card magic and reskinning low Intelligence as high intelligence is that the card interpretation of the spell doesn't directly and immediately contradict the standard interpretation. A deck of cards can function just like a wand: it's a small physical object, its weight is negligible, you can hold and manipulate it in one hand, and so on. The substitution is natural and intuitive. You don't have to constantly grasp for reasons why you're not benefiting from having a deck instead of a wand, because there are genuinely very reasons why you would be. But when the rules say, "You don't know this fact" and the player says, "Actually I do know this fact", that's a contradiction. And there are lots of reasons why knowing something is more beneficial than not knowing something, so you've constantly got to be patching your own narrative as the contradiction strains at verisimilitude.

Having a deck of cards with more cards in it than allowable spell slots is also a contradiction of the rules, and to maintain the illusion one has to come up with contrived reasons for not using more cards. So it's really no different, especially if the players and DM aren't actively trying to undermine the narrative.

Sure, you might have to patch your narrative to handle edge cases. That's fun and, as pointed out above, leads to unexpected new opportunities.

I feel like Danny's response to this would be, "Ok, so what if he gets charmed by a Vampire, and the Vampire compels him to use all the rest of the cards?" Which completely, utterly misses the point.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Quite simply, I don't play with people who think like that. If I do, I don't use these kind of concepts.

So you acknowledge that this concept can't survive an audience that thinks through the consequences?

What does that tell you?

 

[Guest 6801328]

So you acknowledge that this concept can't survive an audience that thinks through the consequences?

I call foul. That's a dishonest (and frankly just lame) rhetorical technique. He did NOT "acknowledge that this concept can't survive an audience that thinks through the consequences". He acknowledged that it goes awry with somebody who tries to abuse it to the detriment of the group rather than use it to contribute to the fun.

I don't play RPGs with people who try to PvP against unwilling participants. Does that mean I'm acknowledging this this concept (that is, roleplaying games) can't survive an audience that thinks through the consequences?

I don't play RPGs with people who flip over tables in anger...well, you can probably see where I'm going with this.

Retract your spurious claim, please.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Having a deck of cards with more cards in it than allowable spell slots is also a contradiction of the rules, and to maintain the illusion one has to come up with contrived reasons for not using more cards.

No more contrived than the reason why a regular sorcerer can't carry around a big basket of bat guano to cast fireball a zillion times. Spell slots have always come from the caster, not the components. Changing them to a deck of cards changes nothing about that.

 

[Guest 6801328]

No more contrived than the reason why a regular sorcerer can't carry around a big basket of bat guano to cast fireball a zillion times. Spell slots have always come from the caster, not the components. Changing them to a deck of cards changes nothing about that.

Whoah. That totally misses the point.

The sorcerer isn't using the cards as material components to the spells. He is refluffing spell casting to be the flinging of cards. Taken literally it raises all kinds of paradoxes, each of which must be explained away in order to sustain the illusion. We do so because we like the imagery (maybe) and out of courtesy to the player.