How does one roleplay a 49 Intelligence? Plus! Mega Super *BONUS* Questions!

[Quickleaf]

skills and 49 int (continued)

* You always appraise an object successfully, and with most items your price accuracy is 100% (unless it has insanely high DC)
*You always succeed on craft checks, which seems kind of strange... (I never did like the idea of Craft being an INT modified skill)
* You always interpret even the most ancient and esoteric writing. Once per day you can decipher a written spell without read magic (DC 50 +5/spell leve)
* Again, for some *strange* reason, you always identify a fake document and can always make a convincing fake, even if it contradicts previous orders (unless the person reading it is very, very high-level too)
* You always answer really tough question in all trained knowledge skills, and have a high chance of success even in untrained knowledge skills.

THAT said...Intelligence measures how completely and quickly your PC learns (and reasons). It is often said the best way to know you've learned something is to be able to reach it to a kid. I would think your PC is a prodigious teacher, able to dissect even the most abstract theories and, parsing the relevant information, present them in layman's terms. Perhaps the PC should get special abilities for teaching others, and even the ability to once/day imbue another with increased intelligence (by taking a corresponding penalty).
Also, I think it would be reasonable for your DM to allow you to make up one or two special skill synergies just for your character, representing completeness of learning.
Your PC should be able to keep a number of feats/skill open (as someone already suggested); thus when the need arises to repair tangled rigging on a boat, you can conveniently select ranks in Use Rope or Profesion (Sailor). This represents prior learning for lots of skill ranks, or even a sudden realization (for fewer ranks). Of course, ALL skills should be class skills for such a character, but who knows, maybe not?

If you're trying to play a character with ANY semblance of humanity, I would suggest taking a serious flaw for your character, perhaps something or someone that he/she constantly overlooks or underestimates. Sort of a blind spot in his/her supra-godly intelligence. Cheers!

 

[Particle_Man]

1) You can metagame like an S.O.B., because the character really WOULD know what works best for what situation, AND be likely to predict what situations are most likely to come up.

2) Such a character might even realize that it is only a character in a roleplaying game, and thus might take life a lot less seriously.

 

[Crimsonite]

We already spoke about this, so I will mention the best bits:

Take one point in disarm trap. Really, add that to your natural search ability and you can clear every room of traps by glancing at it.
To justify it roleplaying wise take a trip to Mechanus or read trap-making and disabling manuals by venerable rogues.

Actually stop 'reading' all together and create a spell of the divination school that allows you to 'download' the contents of a book, scroll, tome, etc into your mind as long as you speak the language. Your massive brain shouldn't have a problem comprehending a whole book at once.

Once you take craft skills build things along the way. Like .. pick up a stick, a stone and invent an improvised perpetual motion device. Okay, not that elaborate. But use your magic and mind to create the ultimate key for example. Based on statistical math and your extensive knowledge of key-and-lock-making throughout the ages you should be able to smith the most average key that has the chance of unlocking most locks with a few half-ways skilled tries. Use bone as source material. It's a pun, you see.

You may want to carry a big, fat book of knowledge around with you in real life so you can access a vast field of exactly that. Knowledge.

Have sourcebooks on your world or knowledge from the DM handy. Whenever a place is mentioned and someone only looks at you, you could mention the last few major battles fought there, local wildlife, what you can most likely expect there and territorial claims associated with it.

What you'll need is a few good books with a well-organized index. When you go shopping, look at each item and evaluate it based on .. this sentence is getting tired .. your extensive knowledge.

For the nezumi .. why don't you find a suitable body and channel that souls power into it, making a most awesome familiar? Damnit, make a golem familiar if you somehow can. Those 26 levels of Nezumi will surely empower it in some way.

Or use the Nezumi soul as source for your wish spells. Simply watch its power (read: exp) deplete as you cast wish after powerful wish.


And finally the spells: I already explained hte rubix spell.
I'll explain it for the benefit of everyone present here, too, though.

Imagine a rubix cube. Okay, that wasn't hard. Now imagine it being a lot more detailed. Like instead of being 3³ it's suddenly 21³ or larger. Make each side a detailed net, too small for the smallest swarm animal to fly through.
That's a lot of cubes right there.
The size of the cube itself is variable within limits, the larger you make it the larger the holes in the net.
Let's make the standard size a cubic meter, so that if it were expanded to two cubic meters, every second swarm animal would get through.

Here comes the mental leap: There is no rubix cube, it's only a force field that rips space apart and re-arranges it as the creator sees fit to re-arrange the squares. (In the standard rubix cube way, of course.)

The use of that isn't completely obvious yet. So let's notionally swat the cube. Anything that went through the cube comes out on various ends of it, if at all and .. well .. your hand's ruined, dude. It's turned into a myriad of small gates that teleport whatever matter enters into another designated square as exit gate.

That sounds pretty cool, you can slice and dice anything by casting the spell on it. But there's even more uses: barricade areas, destroy artifacts or (and this is where the spell gets highly complex AND hard to keep up without 49 God damned INT) preserve them within the cube.
As in: you arrange the cube so that all the portals point to a hollow on the inside (and so that you can place the item/person/kitty in there without them dying badly) then you re-arrange the surface of the cube so that all portals point to random points to the outside and the center has no 'in-portals' at all.

Taking this one step further you could encease yourself in a cube shaped armor that only lets vapour and extremely lucky critical arrows (due to this massive AC) pass.


The madness of this spell is that you'd need a super-computer to calculate the results of re-arranging the squares. But 49 INT go a long way into making these calculations on the fly.
So basically you'd have to tell your DM "I'm the smartest being that ever lived, most Gods are out-witted by my massive intellect and I say that this magical rubix cube was arranged in such a fashion that the following things will happen if it's influenced in way etc etc blah blah." They'll simply have to aggree. Or scrap the spell.



You may also want to consider having an aura of verbal awe around you. As in: Whenever you open your mouth to say something intelligent all beings that can hear and comprehend the language you speak will be stunned and recognize your incredible wits. This can be used for persuasion, intimidation and getting your way with the hot Elfen princess.

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Holy mother of all things explosive: I just had an idea.
Try to use your characters incredible knowledge to recruit a being that could act as a familiar that works like the rubix cube spell with some penalties. Such as a permanent size and not being able to create more than one. If you have to, use the Nezumis soul to empower that .. cube-thing.
You could hide in a familiar of total anihilation. The only thing that would really threaten you is amorphus fogs and blobs who can live with being cut into many bits.

 

[Craer]

Your post made me giggle like a schoolgirl.

 

[LostSoul]

Well, you could play your character as though he had been paralyzed for years. All this great knowledge - it let him see the future, more or less, in a God-Emperor of Dune kind of way. He would see entire civilizations wink out of existence caused by his breathing.

So he turns it off most of the time. He lets that great intellect sit on the passenger side of the car while he gets on with living something that resembles a life. He can call upon his intellect (ie. make skill checks), but most of the time he acts like a guy with a mediocre 200 IQ.

You could have him "freak out", have panic attacks, stop motionless and almost lifeless, whenever he is forced to use the full powers of his mind.

 

[drnuncheon]

DM: Weeeeell, today the bad guys' long-term goal would've come to frutition, but since you could work out every nefarious scheme they've come up with from hearing a single sentence uttered by a distant relative of the girlfriend of one of the low level grunts in their organisation, and unfailingly predict the exact way in which the whole scheme would operate from the very first day, and have put in place your own operations to stymie and stifle every possible permutation of the nefarious schemes well in advance of those schemes even being considered by the bad guys, it doesn't. You're bored. You spend a few minutes reconcilingteleportation magic and the Grand Unifying Theory of physics. Then you're bored again...

...until you find out that all of your extrapolations are wrong because the bad guy has an Int of 51 and deliberately planted that single sentence for you to hear, knowing how you would react.

And now you've got to save the world. (Again.)

J

 

[Thalia]

It might be interesting to play a personality something akin to Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen comic. Very difficult to describe, but anyone who has read the comic will know what I mean. Totally beyond human. Post-human.

 

[Zappo]

DM: Weeeeell, today the bad guys' long-term goal would've come to frutition, but since you could work out every nefarious scheme they've come up with from hearing a single sentence uttered by a distant relative of the girlfriend of one of the low level grunts in their organisation, and unfailingly predict the exact way in which the whole scheme would operate from the very first day, and have put in place your own operations to stymie and stifle every possible permutation of the nefarious schemes well in advance of those schemes even being considered by the bad guys, it doesn't. You're bored. You spend a few minutes reconcilingteleportation magic and the Grand Unifying Theory of physics. Then you're bored again...

Huh, by the same reasoning, a game involving a 17th level fighter should be boring because he can easily defeat any human opponent. Problem is, that ain't true and even if it were, there are lots of superhuman things.

Apart from that, the simulation of high intelligence by metagaming irks me deeply, maybe because it is usually used against players by DM (though I never do so). It is true that I cannot understand a 49 INT, but I do know that there is a hard limit on what you can infer from a small amount of information. It doesn't matter how smart you are; the further you take a deduction, the wider the range of probabilities. You can think of anything we could think and more - but you still can't know which of all those things we will actually do.

I hate it when the ancient lich we're going to face turns out to have prepared exactly the counters to the tactic we discussed the day before in a scry-protected bunker, just because he's so smart.

 

[Buzzardo]

Roleplaying a 49 intelligence.... easy.

Talk only about 20% as much you listen. When you do talk, always ask open ended questions. Answer questions with questions.


Makes you seem intelligent on a whole other level.

 

[Zog]

Watch firefly, Pay attention to river. The character of river is a super intelligent girl, she learns everything very easily, but cannot relate or communicate well with other characters because she thinks so differently (and is so messed up, but that's another story).

Also read The Man of His Word by Dave Duncan - 2 word geniuses. Able to learn anything with ease, dance, sewing, fencing, anything. Just that good.

And Watch Pinky and the Brain. Pay attention to Pinky. After all, one of them is a genius and the other is insane, and we know brain is insane, sooooo.....

Try things like: When someone is suggesting a plan, nod, say 'Its a decent plan, but we lack the (random nonsequitor) to make it work, lets try xyz.'
Or it will fail because of (even more random semi-nonsense).

Reference history (talk to the gm, get approval to create ancient historical figures) - yes, we can set an ambush like General Dumar, only improve on it by combuining it with the principles of Bonnetti. Yesssss, this will work.