Smart vs. Intelligence and Combatless Roleplaying Sessions

[DonTadow]

Well, you're obviously doing what's right for your group as a whole. So don't let us abstractionists stop ya.

But:



What, exactly, are you defining roleplaying as? Because I'm defining it as acting out a fictional character. You know, playing a role. In that case, combat enables them to play a role, to be a character who beats up bad guys and saves the day and makes evil cower, to be a star in their own way. Whether it's by blasting fireballs or by single duelist combat, it enables the playing of a role.

Puzzles don't. Not when they're not testing the *role's* knowledge, but the player's. What the player knows about the situation doesn't matter. The player isn't in a fantasy world. The player can't fight orcs in real life. The player doesn't have to save princesses from dragons -- he has to act out a role that would. The player's ability to solve puzzles doesn't matter any more than the player's ability to run a race, bench press 150, or fight your dog. His character should still be able to run fast, be strong, beat up wolves, and solve puzzles.

If you make the player figure out a puzzle, he's not playing a role anymore. He's not playing a role-playing game, just a mindgame, just a trick. Just like if you make a player run a race to win initiative, he's no longer playing a role, he's running a race. Those can be fun in their own way, but they have nothing to do with being a sword-swinging dragon slayer in a fantasy world. They remove the level of abstraction -- suddenly, your character's genius in puzzles and mindgames is dependant on your own. And it never should be, in my view. I mean, it's obviously working for you, so good, but the opposite opinion shouldn't shock you. People don't want their role's abilities to depend on their own. Just because *I* can't fly doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to play a flying monkey.

Rolls, advice, in-character analysis....these things keep the barrier between character and player, and so don't wind up making the bard actually sing a song to help his party.Because it doesn't matter how well Ed sings, and it doesn't matter what kind of smarts Julie has. It matters how well Ed's half-elf bard sings, and it matters what kind of smarts Julie's puzzle-loving halfling has. And that demands abstraction -- challenging the characters (and through the characters, the players who make choices for them), not just challenging the players while ignoring the characters.

Making them solve a puzzle is like making them run a race -- it challenges the players, but it means they're no longer playing a role. Thus, it hurts role playing.

As previously stated, what you have listed is mechanics set aside to aleviate character /world interaction that no other logical method can aleviate. For instance, you can not kill a orc and whereas initiative is not whom is fasted (its whose instinct is quicker) running a race would be too distractive in most campaigns. However, having a character solve an in game puzzle is very much easily done as previously stated by myself and others. It also takes up far less time than combat. From the first adventures in the late 70s there have always been dungeon rooms trapped and locked by different means. My statement is that they are just as much apart of the game as combat. What it seems like you're saying is that it is illogical for puzzles to be in the game.

From your example, it sounds like dungeons and dragons is a combat oriented game based solely on the mechanics. You even go as far as to equate role playing to roll playing.

Say Ugh goes into a room in the room Ugh sees three symbols , which is elven for the letters "r", "b" and "g". Ugh walks into the next room and after searching the room finds three orbs a red one a blue one and a green one. Are you saying that the player of ugh should roll a d20 to figure it out because it is too much of a stretch for the player as ugh could never come up with hte solution. Even if Ugh is an intelligence of 6 it is very likely that he could figure this out.

Or, say the party comes upon a murder, are you saying that it is ok to roll a int check to pull a sherlock holmes and automatically deduce from all the evidence the killer.

Puzzles, mysteries and riddles allow the character to take on roles just as much as a heavy fighter does. I can use from my example, that I loved Indiana Jones growing up. I've created several type characters and solving a well placed clue provided puzzle is just as fulfilling as killing the vampire. Of course this is a preference. But globally, pertaining to this thread, there was nothing preventing my Indiana Jones type character from breaking roleplaying when he encounters a typical dungeon puzzle. Perhaps this is revelevant to an earlier response that stated that you have to be an experienced dm to come up with good dungeon oriented puzzles.

Now, I will agree that putting a trig problem in the middle of a series of caveryns is silly, but the orb example i gave is very much likely and similar puzzles , riddles and dungeon rooms can be found in any fantasy novel, movie, or television show.

What it sounds like , is you'd rather skip the puzzle solving part of the game to move on to combat. That's fine. But that is not a reason as to why puzzles deviate from role playing.

 

[ThirdWizard]

While rolling initiative and attacks and saves, it is more like a war game where your army is one person. When you shout out exclamations or make sample gestures in the combat, perosnally acting out the role, you are roleplaying during the combat.

Sure you can roleplay in combat. Just do more than "I move three squares with my Move and Attack with my Standard while Power Attacking for 4. *rolls* If a 23 hits, I deal 17 damage."

You know, "Ug roars his battle cry of 'Blood! Guts! Glory!' and charges toward the orcs, flailing his scythe wildly as he runs forward. He aims for the vitals of the first orc he sees in the line ignoring the others in an attempt to drop him. *rolls* If a 23 hits, I deal 17 damage, and Ug stares down the other orcs, daring them to challenge him!"

Which would be completely different for a number of other characters.

Compare it to, "Roland smiles and waves for his comrades to follow after him with a wink, attempting to move in the shadows past the two guards. If I get past them, I'm going to go ahead and jump in the hole, ignoring the uncertainty of what lies beyond. *rolls* 18 Hide and... 10 Move Silently."

Or "I walk up to the bandit king, interrupting his monologue about how he'll kill us and say out loud for all to hear, 'Fools, I give you this one last chance to run and hide in your little forest. A troop of the King's finest are behind us, and you might kill us all, but we will last until they arrive, and none of you will be left standing after they are through with you.' *rolls* 16 Intimidate."

The roleplaying doesn't stop just because there are dice involved.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

It just comes down to the question if you as a player want any challange in playing your character. When we play, we are playing for a challange to be handled via the character. So there is stuff that is there to challange the player. Sure Int checks and stuff can lead to hints, but there are some things that are going to be there just for the players to figure out.

 

[Voadam]

Sure you can roleplay in combat. Just do more than "I move three squares with my Move and Attack with my Standard while Power Attacking for 4. *rolls* If a 23 hits, I deal 17 damage."

You know, "Ug roars his battle cry of 'Blood! Guts! Glory!' and charges toward the orcs, flailing his scythe wildly as he runs forward. He aims for the vitals of the first orc he sees in the line ignoring the others in an attempt to drop him. *rolls* If a 23 hits, I deal 17 damage, and Ug stares down the other orcs, daring them to challenge him!"

Which would be completely different for a number of other characters.

Compare it to, "Roland smiles and waves for his comrades to follow after him with a wink, attempting to move in the shadows past the two guards. If I get past them, I'm going to go ahead and jump in the hole, ignoring the uncertainty of what lies beyond. *rolls* 18 Hide and... 10 Move Silently."

Or "I walk up to the bandit king, interrupting his monologue about how he'll kill us and say out loud for all to hear, 'Fools, I give you this one last chance to run and hide in your little forest. A troop of the King's finest are behind us, and you might kill us all, but we will last until they arrive, and none of you will be left standing after they are through with you.' *rolls* 16 Intimidate."

The roleplaying doesn't stop just because there are dice involved.

Right, the mechanics themselves are not the roleplaying.

Taking your third example giving the speech is roleplaying the character, rolling the dice is an optional task resolution mechanic. How the bandits react can be determined by mechanical skills and dice rolls or by DM judgment.

Saying "My character is good at intimidation, I'm not. I use intimidate to get them to surrender . . . 16" is simple character task resolution without roleplaying.

Dice don't preclude roleplaying at the same time as game mechanical task resolution. They are just different actions.

 

[DamionW]

With Dex and Wisdom, they have created associated skills to further define what you listed. By definition Constitution means pain threshold, endurance and resistance. There is , however, no, solve puzzle skill nor tactical skill check associated with intelligence, thus my original question still stands, if the creators wanted puzzles to be solved with intelligence checks why not make a separate skill for it.

First off DonTadow, I want to say i personally don't see anything wrong with well made DM puzzles like the orb example. That's just me, but I do understand Kamikaze's point, as I'll get into. Second, if you want to talk about stats with several meanings, look at CHA. The PHB describes CHA as:

Charisma measures a character's force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. This ability represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting.

(Emphasis mine.)

To me, this laundry list of traits rolled under one stat seems unwieldly. It precludes an effective, yet obnoxious and ugly sorcerer, or a born half-orc leader. If you look at any race with a CHA penalty, all of the reasons that they give for the penalty have to do with how they're perceived by others in a social setting. Take dwarves. They're justification for having a CHA penalty is that they're "gruff and reserved." What does that have to do with not having a forceful personality? So, most of the examples people give on here about other stats encompass multiple facets of a character are not far fetched. Even CHA has both Bluff, a skill describing how their perceived in a social situation, and Use Magic Device, a skill describing how effectively you can force your will upon an item.

So, while I say that I personally like puzzles, I agree with Kamikaze in that just because I as a player may not have a solution, that should not preclude my character from knowing how to go forward, even if I don't have ranks in Knowledge (puzzles). This line of thinking results in limiting a player's ability to develop their characters in my opinion.

So, if I create a concept for a Gnomish tinkerer, with a high Int and Wis scores because he likes puzzling around with machines and puzzles and things, why should myself, the player not recognizing the significance of your clues impact him? To say you're not going to give him a boost to solving a puzzle because you want me to come up with the solution in front of you is limiting me from exploring the tinkerer character's potential as an esoteric, non-combat oriented genius.

That's just the way I see it. As I talked with you in the roll-first/describe-first thread, a player should give you enough descriptions to develop a resolution mechanism, as Voadam puts it. Beyond that, you need to give the player enough credit for his character design to let mechanics take it the rest of the way. Saying, "I make an intelligence check to solve the puzzle," IS as bad as saying "I roll a STR check to kill the orc." It doesn't define the resolution mechanism in sufficient detail for you to adjudicate the result as DM. However, saying "I make an intelligence check to determine if the colors red blue and green have anything to do with the symbols I saw in the other room," is a sufficiently defined mechanic resolution to prompt an actual response from you. You saying, "No, Jim, I want you to figure that out for yourself," is just prompting him to not put points into Intelligence. Instead, at least give him the idea that "You're pretty sure you've seen those symbols describing different elven colors," as an example of a successful Int check spurs them on.

This is long-winded, I know, but I feel it's important to encourage DMs to appreciate players who choose to design characters with powerful mental stats equally to those who design characters with high physical stats by letting them succeed in combat.

 

[DamionW]

Taking your third example giving the speech is roleplaying the character, rolling the dice is an optional task resolution mechanic. How the bandits react can be determined by mechanical skills and dice rolls or by DM judgment.

(Edited for proper quoting)
This, Voadam, is where I will always disagree with you. Kamikaze ThirdWizard gave you a perfectly concise, valid description of his intimidation attempt. To hand-waive that a 16 is not successful only encourages your players to do one thing: Never spend ranks in Intimidate. Put them in tumble, or jump, or climb, something useful in combat, because those are the only places mechanics have fidelity in the game universe. If I play in your games and you have the right to arbitrarily decide whether my character is intimidating or persuasive, or knowledgable, or any has other non-combat mechanic working for him, how can I ever make a character that is STRONGER in those qualities than myself? Maybe I happen to be a bad liar. You let someone who is a bad martial artist explore the option of slaying orcs to have fun, and you do that without question for the simple reason that the actions can't be done at the table. Why are you eliminating the possiblity of me playing a lying piece of crap just because I can't do it to meet your satisfaction at the table? There are only so many pieces of character capital a player has at their disposal: ability rolls or point buys, one to two feats at first level, 1 to 48 skill points at first level, etc. If intimidate can be resolved without using mechanics by DM fiat, why would I ever invest in the feat persuasive, for example? There's no return on that investment compared to Power Attack, so all that encourages is one-dimensional combat-designed characters.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Right, the mechanics themselves are not the roleplaying.

Taking your third example giving the speech is roleplaying the character, rolling the dice is an optional task resolution mechanic. How the bandits react can be determined by mechanical skills and dice rolls or by DM judgment.

Saying "My character is good at intimidation, I'm not. I use intimidate to get them to surrender . . . 16" is simple character task resolution without roleplaying.

Dice don't preclude roleplaying at the same time as game mechanical task resolution. They are just different actions.

HA! I never made it to my main point, which was that puzzles don't touch on roleplaying. I know I had a great segue in there somewhere, but by now I've forgotten it. Ah well.

Or, finding a solution doesn't do this. If you're playing the Int 7 Ugh and are met with a puzzle, then a roleplayer specifically won't try and solve the problem, he will think what Ugh would do, and react accordingly. This is why I say puzzles are anti-thetical to roleplaying, the resolution can't be roleplayed.

Some might say that just because a character isn't good at something doesn't preclude roleplaying. I might as well be complaining about a low Charisma character dealing with NPCs, right? But, there is a difference. Failing to influence an NPC still gets you somewhere. The NPC has a reaction to you, and things develop. They might go well or they might go badly, but something will happen. Ugh might try to bribe a guard, and whether his Diplomacy check (or whatever) is successful or not, something will result from it.

A puzzle, on the other hand, has no roleplaying value. If you roleplay it out, most likely nothing will happen. You'll just be back to where you started. The orbs that go into the slots marked by elven letters (barbarians are illiterate by the way, so Ugh can't do anything). If you don't put the orbs into the slots, you stay there until you do. You can't roleplay out your character, because the game will sit if you do. Ugh will do nothing for eternity unless the Player decides he's had enough and uses his own ability to solve the puzzle or leaves. Personally, I would leave the dungeon before meta-gaming my character.

This is one of my main problems with puzzles.


>_>
[size=-1]Psssst, DamionW. That was me, not KM, though he was the one who made the analogies.[/size]
<_<

You bring up an interesting point, though. What if a Player wants to have a puzzle solving PC as his idea. The PC is a riddler and logical thinking who can easily solve and create puzzles. Maybe he's a detective along the lines of Holmes, and he wants to play a brilliant guy like this. Should a person be disallowed playing such a character just because they arn't, themselves, a genius?

 

[DamionW]

>_>
[size=-1]Psssst, DamionW. That was me, not KM, though he was the one who made the analogies.[/size]
<_<

Oops! Sorry. Too many different posters. I failed my Spot check.

 

[DonTadow]

First off DonTadow, I want to say i personally don't see anything wrong with well made DM puzzles like the orb example. That's just me, but I do understand Kamikaze's point, as I'll get into. Second, if you want to talk about stats with several meanings, look at CHA. The PHB describes CHA as:

(Emphasis mine.)

To me, this laundry list of traits rolled under one stat seems unwieldly. It precludes an effective, yet obnoxious and ugly sorcerer, or a born half-orc leader. If you look at any race with a CHA penalty, all of the reasons that they give for the penalty have to do with how they're perceived by others in a social setting. Take dwarves. They're justification for having a CHA penalty is that they're "gruff and reserved." What does that have to do with not having a forceful personality? So, most of the examples people give on here about other stats encompass multiple facets of a character are not far fetched. Even CHA has both Bluff, a skill describing how their perceived in a social situation, and Use Magic Device, a skill describing how effectively you can force your will upon an item.

So, while I say that I personally like puzzles, I agree with Kamikaze in that just because I as a player may not have a solution, that should not preclude my character from knowing how to go forward, even if I don't have ranks in Knowledge (puzzles). This line of thinking results in limiting a player's ability to develop their characters in my opinion.

So, if I create a concept for a Gnomish tinkerer, with a high Int and Wis scores because he likes puzzling around with machines and puzzles and things, why should myself, the player not recognizing the significance of your clues impact him? To say you're not going to give him a boost to solving a puzzle because you want me to come up with the solution in front of you is limiting me from exploring the tinkerer character's potential as an esoteric, non-combat oriented genius.

That's just the way I see it. As I talked with you in the roll-first/describe-first thread, a player should give you enough descriptions to develop a resolution mechanism, as Voadam puts it. Beyond that, you need to give the player enough credit for his character design to let mechanics take it the rest of the way. Saying, "I make an intelligence check to solve the puzzle," IS as bad as saying "I roll a STR check to kill the orc." It doesn't define the resolution mechanism in sufficient detail for you to adjudicate the result as DM. However, saying "I make an intelligence check to determine if the colors red blue and green have anything to do with the symbols I saw in the other room," is a sufficiently defined mechanic resolution to prompt an actual response from you. You saying, "No, Jim, I want you to figure that out for yourself," is just prompting him to not put points into Intelligence. Instead, at least give him the idea that "You're pretty sure you've seen those symbols describing different elven colors," as an example of a successful Int check spurs them on.

This is long-winded, I know, but I feel it's important to encourage DMs to appreciate players who choose to design characters with powerful mental stats equally to those who design characters with high physical stats by letting them succeed in combat.

I completely agree with you. First yes I hate the way they have charisma and I hate it more how intimidate is a cha based skill instead of strength. Any suggestions on how to fix Charisma??? For that matter diplomacy is just as much wisdom as it is intelligence. However, outside of having a "good looks skill" charisma is properly broken down into various skills to reflect its original definition. Again there is no "puzzle skill" for intelligence, which leads me to believe it was not designers (none of the editions) intentions to wave away the puzzle aspects of dungeons with a dice roll.

I have never said that intelligence should not be factored into obtaining clues for puzzles, my gripe would be hand waving away the puzzle with a single roll. I usually have 3 to 5 set clues that various rolls will get the pcs for puzzles and riddles. The Cloud Kingdom books (PLUG) come equipped with suggested clue rolls that get easier as the time goes on. My players use your example all the time, especially with harder puzzles. The rolls I require are usually more than a simple intelligence check however. They either concern knowledge rolls in the field of the particular puzzle or the riddle or other skills that may concern it. For instance, I make use a knowledge dungeoneering check in order for the pc highly confirm that theres a connection between the two rooms. Knowledge arcana or history may do it as well.

I have (had he died two sessions ago) a character in my campaign whom ws a gnomish inventor and was very good at puzzles, but the player hated doing the puzzles. So he'd always ask questions like you suggested and I gave him clues that did not compromise the puzzle, but helped put things into better perspectives. It wouldn't be fair to the players whom like solving the puzzle if i let him handwave it away because he wrote it into his background and dumped points into intelligence. But if I see he put knowledge skills in appropriate skills, I would be more likely to provide clues for the rolls.

 

[DamionW]

Fair enough, DonTadow, I just think it always comes back to understanding personal preferences and compromising. If the one Tinkerer player just dislikes puzzles and all the other players want to take a swing at it themselves, that's his problem. The bottom line is fun. Just keep an eye out for you being the only player that wants the characters to overcome a puzzle to continue the plot, as ThirdWizard describes.