Smart vs. Intelligence and Combatless Roleplaying Sessions

[SweeneyTodd]

The best advice I can give about any of this is to keep what you're doing: Listening to the players. They gave feedback, and that's great.

It sounds like your players enjoy different things, and that the ones who were most engrossed with the dungeon crawl were less "into" the town interactions. Well, that's the best you can do with a group with differing tastes, so that's a good thing.

 

[Tarangil]

I don't think I've ever had a player that would rather solve a riddle/puzzle by a dice rolls alone. Those that had troubleshooting skills such as Knowledge(puzzles) would and could roll, but that wouldn't solve the puzzle for them. What I would do depending on how high the roll was, was to give that player better hints that may help.

 

[fusangite]

I think it is up to each GM to decide how far an intelligence roll can go. No GM will advise their players on the most efficient position for flanking during combat or the most effective spell to cast against a monster based on an Intelligence check. In every game, there will be some categories of tasks that player rather than their characters are expected to figure out. Each game, in my experience, draws the line in a different place.

My games have very complex plots than can be solved on either a mundane or a symbollic level; figuring out the plot of the game is not something I will let people substitute skill checks for; and I suspect I'm with the majority of GMs on this one. However, I'm not a fan, as a player or a GM, of word puzzles, pattern matching or sequencing exercises. But that's my taste; I think it's really a matter of individual campaign and GM tastes. There's a big grey area here and I don't see any universal gaming principles beyond individual GM style to determine how it's handled.

 

[swrushing]

Problem is, that you use your own personal smarts of d and d to know which tactics to best use vs which monster.

actually, i frequently use my character's knowledge and preferences over my own objective analysis and have the character chose things that I wouldn't, even in combat, because "its what he would do."

i have done so many times and seen my players do so.

thats the roleplaying part.

then again, i have also solved a puzzle on sight and then shut up and said nothing for a freakin' hour while the rest of my gang fiddled around without a clue, because my character did not know it. "good roleplaying"? probably, but not a lot of fun.

again, puzzles at a minimum and make sure they are IN CHARACTER solvable.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I want to reiterate a point that I don't think I made clearly in my previous post: Your approach to in-game puzzles should depend on what's fun for your players. Several posters have stated that rolls should be used because your character is smarter than you. Others have stated that the best gameplay comes when players solve the puzzles. I say that if your players like to solve puzzles, then let the players solve the puzzles. If they don't and you still want puzzles, have the characters do it. Neither approach is inherently objectively better.

Personally, I like solving puzzles myself as long as they make sense and are something I can reasonably solve as a player. YMWV.

 

[Crothian]

Puzzles are great, but they do depend on the Players and lets face it some players just don't want to think during a game. Which is fine the DM needs to know what the players he has likes and don't like. And even if you use puzzles don't make the solving of the puzzle pivital to the game. There is nothing worse then a logjam at a puzzle. Sometimes the group just can't come up with the answer and a good DM needs to be preapred for that.

 

[CCamfield]

So the player picks the right armor, figures out the right spells and selects when to bullrush, but we "pretend" its the character despite the fact that no roll nor skill attribute to these tactics. However, whenever someone mentions some type of puzzle people scream its the players doing it. Despite the fact that the puzzle is a legit puzzle conserning the dungeon. Despite the fact that the characters receive clues on the puzzles previously. Despite the fact that the characters are in the room with the puzzle, riddle or clue and theres no realistic stat to equivilate a character realy solving the puzzle. Again, tis the same of settling killing a monster to one roll.

Well, I read on rpg.net in a discussion of non-combat-oriented games, like, a hypothetical Agatha Christie like murder mystery, that combat could in fact be resolved by a single roll.

Which is to say that games do (and should) have more detailed resolution for the things that they are focussing on, and less for what doesn't matter so much to that game.


Anyhow, regarding your arguments above, I would say that you seem to be missing something, and it is this:

When a player decides what tavern their character is going to visit in town, what spell to memorize, or when to bull rush, or what else to do in combat, they are making decisions for their character. The results of these actions is determined by rolling dice and adding the appropriate bonuses and penalties based on the character's abilities and the situation.

When you confront the characters with a puzzle that the players have to solve, the result of the puzzle-solving by the characters is going to be based on the players' abilities. That is different from combat.


It seems to me, both in the fact that some people are for puzzles and some against it, that this is a play style issue not unlike roleplaying social situations. Some GMs want their players to roleplay out, I don't know, questioning an informant. Others are happy if the players just roll.

RANT: Oh, and on the issue of attributes, I note that in the PHB, it says (in the definition of Wisdom) "While Intelligence represents one's ability to analyze information, Wisdom represents being in tune with and aware of one's surroundings." I'm not sure how puzzle solving is anything BUT analyzing information, and quite honestly, being pedantic about the definition of the Intelligence attribute based on the very brief entries in the PHB is just ridiculous. It is quite obviously the most appropriate attribute to use if the character got to make a puzzle-solving roll.


There are ways you could resolve a complex puzzle in between having the players figure it out entirely, and resolving it with a single roll. For instance, if you are giving them clues, then you could allow that successful Intelligence checks will give the players some hints about how to connect those clues together - hints which follow from the information they have collected.

One of the frustrating things about puzzles, like mystery adventures, is that sometimes the solution seems reasonably easy to the GM, but the players miss a clue or they miss the significance of a clue, and the GM hasn't provided an excess of clues which is needed to be able to solve the mystery when you DON'T know the solution.


At the end of the day, though, what's most important is what is fun for your players.

 

[jmucchiello]

Your statement is kind of silly. I presented a fact from a non-fictinonal reference material used to determine the meaning of words and you equivilated it to an assumption based on a series of fictional horror movies.

If we were debating the nature of Intelligence this would be a useful starting point, but we are playing a game and in that game Intelligence has a specific definition that overrides the dictionary definition. Specifically:

Intelligence determines how well your character learns and reasons.

Notice that is says nothing about speed of reasoning, only how WELL. A high int character can logically deduce (i.e. reason) better than a low int character. An Int 18 Wizard may be book-smarter than the rest of the party, he may not be. But when solving a logic puzzle, there are puzzles the Int 6 fighter will NEVER solve, that the Int 18 wizard will solve with a little effort. Logic puzzles that are not at some level based on Int checks defy the "rules" of the game. I'm not saying you just say "You enter a room give me an Int check. Okay, Bill got a 25 so you defeat the puzzle." But the players of high Int characters should be given hints or skill checks that will help them play their role correctly.

Personally, I find this debate interesting when cross-compared to the "help in combat" debate: do you allow other players to give advice the currently active player in combat? If mister knowledge (warfare) is making a blunder of Napoleanic proportion, do you let the character playing the wizard point out his error and allow the fighter to change his course of action? If you don't think player Intelligence should influence in game actions then the wizard's player becomes a line of reasoning in the fighter's head that comes to him at the last second before he commits a tactical blunder.

On the third hand, both of these concepts play upon the meta-concept of the social contract that brings the players and DM to the table. And no one answer will satisfy all.

 

[Hjorimir]

Far be it from me to tell others how to play their game (do what you and yours enjoy most). That being said, I like riddles/mysteries that the players have to solve. It promotes involvement in a campaign while discouraging what I'd call lazy role-playing.

 

[Voadam]

I expect riddle demons to present actual riddles that I, roleplaying my character, try to figure out. If I don't figure it out I expect to run my character through a combat.

Rolling to have the character figure out the riddle (an int check or whatever) would be boring and feel like cheating, making the situation much less fun to play through for me.

On the other hand a purely riddle filled city where the game was nothing but riddles with no other interactions or fun stuff would quickly become annoying.