I recently had an issue where one of my players had a dominated creature. My player gave him commands, and playing the dominated creature as best I can came up with ways to subvert his orders.
So when my player said don't kill any people, this creature started killing animals. When I told my player he had never said animals, he retorted, "Well I didn't think of it, but I don't have a 24 int. My character does though, he would have thought of it." He was exactly right, so I've tried to model intellingence a little more mechanically for these kinds of situations:
I'm assuming all my players have a 10 int...that's probably low but its a good starting assumption. Whenever my player makes a series of commands to a dominated creature...he gets as many free pases as his int modifier.
So if my player is playing a wizard with 24 int, he has a +7. As the dm if I come up with a valid idea for the monster that my player didn't mention...I mark that off as a freebie (the character thought of that contingency, just the player didn't).
So in the example I had a problem with...the magister says don't kill any people to his creature. The creature tries to kill animals, as the wizard just said people. The wizard says he would have said no to that, so I mark it off as a freebie. The creature thinks his master said not to kill, he didn't say anything about maiming. The wizard tells the DM that he also thought of that one, so again I mark it off as a freebie and so forth until he runs out of freebies...then anything else I come up with is fair game.
Now for characters with negative stats...they give me a series of commands. For every stat mod in the negative, one of their commands has a 25% chance to not have been said.
So let's say the wizard tells the creature to obey all orders given by the fighter. The fighter tells the creature, don't move, don't cast any spells, and don't talk.
The fighter has a -2 int, so the dm decides there's a 25% chance the warmain did not say, "cast any spells" and a 25% chance he didn't say "don't talk". The 25% hits on the cast any spells, but fails on the don't talk. So the creature knows that he can't talk (and probably not use any somatic components) but he could use a spell-like ability freely.
So when my player said don't kill any people, this creature started killing animals. When I told my player he had never said animals, he retorted, "Well I didn't think of it, but I don't have a 24 int. My character does though, he would have thought of it." He was exactly right, so I've tried to model intellingence a little more mechanically for these kinds of situations:
I'm assuming all my players have a 10 int...that's probably low but its a good starting assumption. Whenever my player makes a series of commands to a dominated creature...he gets as many free pases as his int modifier.
So if my player is playing a wizard with 24 int, he has a +7. As the dm if I come up with a valid idea for the monster that my player didn't mention...I mark that off as a freebie (the character thought of that contingency, just the player didn't).
So in the example I had a problem with...the magister says don't kill any people to his creature. The creature tries to kill animals, as the wizard just said people. The wizard says he would have said no to that, so I mark it off as a freebie. The creature thinks his master said not to kill, he didn't say anything about maiming. The wizard tells the DM that he also thought of that one, so again I mark it off as a freebie and so forth until he runs out of freebies...then anything else I come up with is fair game.
Now for characters with negative stats...they give me a series of commands. For every stat mod in the negative, one of their commands has a 25% chance to not have been said.
So let's say the wizard tells the creature to obey all orders given by the fighter. The fighter tells the creature, don't move, don't cast any spells, and don't talk.
The fighter has a -2 int, so the dm decides there's a 25% chance the warmain did not say, "cast any spells" and a 25% chance he didn't say "don't talk". The 25% hits on the cast any spells, but fails on the don't talk. So the creature knows that he can't talk (and probably not use any somatic components) but he could use a spell-like ability freely.
