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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6871045" data-attributes="member: 42582">Just to be clear: are you saying that a 20 INT character can know that William the Conqueror's reign in England began in 1066; or can know that the Nile is the longest river in the world; even if s/he has never encountered those facts before?That seems odd to me (and in discussing the first "knowledge check" mechanic in the game, thieves' Read Languages ability, Gygax said (DMG p 20) that "This ability assumes that the language is, in fact, one which the thief has encountered sometime in the past. Ancient and strange languages (those you, as DM, have previously designated as such) are always totally unreadable").There are at least two things going on here that I find puzzling.One: what does it mean to "play a character as a a genius with unparalleled levels of intelligence" if you have only a 50/50 chance of success on medium difficulty INT-based tasks? You are not the only poster to have introduced this notion of playing a character as a genius in some fashion that is divorced from succeeding at INT checks, but I still don't understand the notion. Can you give an example of what this might actually look like in play?I think the reason for my puzzlement is, broadly, this: I've known some fairly clever people over the years, and the way their cleverness manifested was in the ability to succeed very reliably at the intellectual endeavours they set for themselves. So in the context of the game, I don't know what it would mean to be very clever yet not be very reliable at intellectual tasks.Two: the example of "Holmes with 5 INT" is not about statting up a character from fiction. It's about statting up a character, playing that character, and then having it emerge in play that the character in question is very clever. There's been a long discussion upthread of how that might happen even if the PCs' INT is not terribly high (eg lucky rolls; good skill bonuses; avoiding the need to roll at all via skilled play; etc).</blockquote>

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