But my character is smarter than I am!

[magnas_veritas]

As the DM for my group, I'm sensitive to those sorts of concerns. I find the easiest way, although probably not the most accurate, is to let the players chat amongst themselves when the brainiac character is thinking. The player gets more insight than he would have on his own that way.

Granted, I have to shut everybody up when the dumb characters are alone and trying to sort stuff out. No help then.

Oooo...that's not bad.

It does get a bit hard when, as in our group, you have people with superhuman mental/social stats. The B&E rogue has a natural Int of 22 with a Headband of Intellect +6, while one of the two mages has a higher natural Int and is fond of triple-empowered extended Fox's Cunnings. The paladin/priest has a Cha of 30+. At that point, you just kind of let it go and just remember that the character is amazingly smart/perceptive/cool.

As the rogue's player, I notice that the DM gives me slightly better suggestions than he does most other players. Then again, he often gives just plain bad ones, because those are fun.

Brad

 

[Olive]

But would you agree Olive that the character by word and deed shoud make an effort to be convincing - and that the more compelling there strategy, and the favourability of their audience to hearing it - should be modifiers on your die roll?

sure, to a degree. I mean if the player is all 'i tell them that they should help us and stuff', and rolls a 20, he's really only rolled a 5. but as long as he makes a reasonable effort, and he puts forward a real good arguement, then the roll stays (good or bad!). If he makes a REALLY good arguement, then he'll probably not need to role.

But the dice plays a part, otherwise the player would be feeling wierd about spending skill points in diplomacy or bluff.

 

[DanMcS]

It's actually not too hard to play a guy who's way smart. Playing an average or dumb guy is actually harder, probably, because I've been playing RPGs and watching action movies for years, and I know my DM, so I know how things tend to work, and I know good strategies and tactics and monster stats and such.

What you do when playing a really smart guy is use player knowledge a bit. Your average guy might not come up with a killer tactic like buff-scry-teleport (or whatever) without some inspiration, but your 19-int wizard migh. Or 'he' might think up some of those 100 uses for a Quaal's Feather Token- tree that I've seen floating around. You also can occasionally ask the DM for a pause to look up info you're pretty sure your character would know.

As an example, in our Mutants and Masterminds game, my character is killer smart. 20 int base, a rank of super-int, lots of skill points in sciences and knowledges.

Last game, we found an empty chest, a circular ceramic disk, and a book. Both the book and the chest could be locked and unlocked with the disk. We hadn't a clue what they were, really, except they reminded us of the book in the Mummy.

Lo and behold, we met a genie. Terrible scary, no way we could take him. He runs up to my character, and says "Give me the Seal of Solomon." Thinking this could be bad, I say, "No, get in the chest!", and cower, expecting him to beat on me. Only he doesn't, and my friends attack him for a while, bruising him, but not knocking him out. Then I run away, and all of a sudden we can't hit him. He chases me, we can hit him, I run away, we can't. And our DM keeps changing cards behind his screen.

So I realize the DM is changing stats based on movement or something, and that the genie wants the Seal, and I figure out it's his weakness, that if it's close to him, he can be hurt. What my character, being super-smart, realized is that the Seal apparently was weakening the genie. So I used some player knowledge to help my super-smart character figure out what was going on. Mark said he was about to have us start rolling int-checks to figure it out if I hadn't come up with that.

 

[megamania]

As the DM for my group, I'm sensitive to those sorts of concerns. I find the easiest way, although probably not the most accurate, is to let the players chat amongst themselves when the brainiac character is thinking. The player gets more insight than he would have on his own that way.

Granted, I have to shut everybody up when the dumb characters are alone and trying to sort stuff out. No help then.

Same thing for large skills that the player dosen't have. Input from the peanut gallery usually gets them by.

about what I do. Also allow a roll and keep in mind everything going on. If player is purposely being dumb even with a 22 INt the heck with him- auto fail.

 

[Andion Isurand]

Sometimes, I get in the habit of narrating what my character does and says from a 3rd person perspective.

Like, I'm telling his part of the story.

That way I can summarize events that would otherwise be harder to portray.

 

[Alchemist]

about what I do. Also allow a roll and keep in mind everything going on. If player is purposely being dumb even with a 22 INt the heck with him- auto fail.

Ditto there too. If the player has his character act like a stupid ass, he pays the natural consequences of his foolishness. Ya gets what ya deserves.