DM intervention

[Luvin Lt. Fingers]

How do some of you handle PC's with super high intellingence? We are in the Ret. to the Temple of Evil adventure. One of the PC's is Thoraval, a sun elf wizard with a 19 int. During a battle with D'gran, the group was nearly surrounded with darkness spells. The player suddenly had Thoraval run off and down another corridoor to abush the enemy from behind with a fireball. I had D'gran (18 int) sneak through the darkness while also invisible and melee with Thoraval (he was easily slain in the 1st round). Afterward, the player and I had a long discussion. I thought the descriptions I gave of this section of the dungeon were very clear, but he states that he couldn't tell what was going on (with the darkness spells, and D'gran was invisible and doing cantrips). He says his elf would've known that these were darkness spells and if he had a clearer understanding, wouldn't have let Thoraval leave the party. This discussion continued for many days. I decided that maybe the player was getting nervous and made a foolish decision that the PC wouldn't have made, so I let him have a free Raise Dead spell w/out the negative level. How do you DM's handle players with super genius minds? Do you let them receive extra information, or sometimes give them obvious hints?

 

[billd91]

I suppose it depends. Being extremely intelligent doesn't mean that the character always knows what's going on or does the right thing. Intelligence is also no clear indicator of success once combat starts and the fur starts flying.
I don't think I'd necessarily believe a player who thinks his highly intelligent character would know or understand more of what was going on than the player. If you are so inclined, you could have had the 19-int character make a spellcraft roll to tell if the darkness was a spell or not. Usually, I expect the players to ask for those rolls, otherwise I assume their characters don't really care enough to take the effort. In your case, with a highly intelligent character, you could assume he's always going to give it a try and you could make that roll for him behind the DM screen. Then you don't have to worry about a player's lower intelligence preventing his PC from understanding the situation.
As far as his argument about being an elf and knowing what darkness is: that's exactly what spellcraft is for. No spellcraft? Then no idea what that darkness is unless the player can figure it out. That's how I play it.

 

[LostSoul]

Well, you can have a high Int and a low Wis and do something foolish. And D'Gran is one mean SOB anyway.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

If a math problem comes up in game, or the PC comes across a Rubic's Cube, I'll allow an intelligence roll to determine if the PC can solve the problem, regardless of the intelligence of the player. That's about as far as I'll take it. A high int does not insulate a PC from a player's bad choices, any more than a low int prevents a PC from benefitting from a player's good ones.

 

[S'mon]

Int 19 isn't "super-genius" in 3e anyway... nor does super-high-Int (say 25+) make you a tactical combat genius. I would snort derisively at any player who dared suggest that their PC would never make mistakes due to high INT - I have high INT IRL & I screw up all the time, plenty of people who are smarter than me have no common sense at all!

 

[reanjr]

Int 19 isn't "super-genius" in 3e anyway... nor does super-high-Int (say 25+) make you a tactical combat genius. I would snort derisively at any player who dared suggest that their PC would never make mistakes due to high INT - I have high INT IRL & I screw up all the time, plenty of people who are smarter than me have no common sense at all!

If the standard character rolling method is 4d6 drop lowest, then an 18 represents 99.5th percentile, which is pretty damned smart. A 19 is even more. Almost by definition, a 19 is just about outside of the reach of common human intellect. If you study the demographics of the game in the DMG, you will find that there are very few (statistically negligible in fact) characters who reach 4th level and who could use the ability score bonus to add to Intelligence (which not all would do anyway; if you are already the smartest person in the county, maybe you wanna spend some of that on Charisma or something else more useful to your peasent life).

I'd say a 19 Int character is intelligent in the extreme. Skip or Monte said that a 5 point increase is supposed to indicate a doubling of the aptitude in an ability score. So a 19 would be twice as smart as a 14, etc. Imagine the capabilities of a 24 Int Dragon (or anything else). A 29 Int? Pretty much beyond human reckoning. That intelligence would verge on premonition and foresight to the point that it would seem they were diviners.

 

[Creamsteak]

If the standard character rolling method is 4d6 drop lowest, then an 18 represents 99.5th percentile.

No it doesn't. D&D is an abstract game of bonuses and points. It can mean the character is in the 99.5th percentile, but it could also mean just about anything else. It might mean something completely different for a wizard than it would for an arristocrat, for instance.

 

[S'mon]

If the standard character rolling method is 4d6 drop lowest, then an 18 represents 99.5th percentile, which is pretty damned smart.

I8 is 99.5th on straight 3d6 actually (1 in 216 chance), before level bonuses & magical augmentation of course; which makes an 18 about IQ 150 if you wish to make a straight equation and are assuming that N/PC Int distribution follows a 3d6 bell curve, which made sense in 1e but maybe less so in 3e with its stat increases by level, Point Buy et al. Int increases by _Age_ BTW, unlike IQ, so most Venerable wizards will have very high INT, certainly over 18. For all these reasons INT scores in the low 20s will not be uncommon among humans (esp high level & elderly Wizards) in most D&D 3e settings.

 

[Bauglir]

When considering this situation with regard to a PC with a high int, you should take into account how you would treat a high int NPC under similar circumstances (I'm thinking of dragons in particular here) and try to be consistent between the two IMO.

 

[reanjr]

I8 is 99.5th on straight 3d6 actually (1 in 216 chance), before level bonuses & magical augmentation of course; which makes an 18 about IQ 150 if you wish to make a straight equation and are assuming that N/PC Int distribution follows a 3d6 bell curve, which made sense in 1e but maybe less so in 3e with its stat increases by level, Point Buy et al. Int increases by _Age_ BTW, unlike IQ, so most Venerable wizards will have very high INT, certainly over 18. For all these reasons INT scores in the low 20s will not be uncommon among humans (esp high level & elderly Wizards) in most D&D 3e settings.

Oh, sorry, I forgot to add in the floating die in the probability. It's 98.4th percentile. Still really good

About the older characters/wizards: Wizards are a very slight portion of the demographic (if I had the DMG, I'd figure out an approximate, but I don't). Ones that have gotten to those levels and started out with a high intelligence even rarer. I'd say the average NPC (starting) wizard wouldn't have an Int above 16, many falling below that.

19 would still be well out of range for the common man. 1st-level 18 is 98.4th, which is IQ 118. As going from 18 to 19 is beyond statistics (based on age of death, level, class, and personal preference) we can only estimate IQ beyond that.

1 in 100, I think would be a fair off-the-cuff estimate, which would raise the IQ to 154. Certainly genius level. Getting to 20, again would be VERY rare, possibly raising the IQ to a 180 or so. 200 is around the top measurable IQ. If there were fifteen times the people on this planet than there are, we could expect 1 person of that Intelligence.