When your dnd character is intelligent... but you're not
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 5 апр 2023
- #dnd #ttrpg #puzzle
Music: [Fantasy Motion] by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License 
Развлечения
This is a much bigger problem for DMs. The Lich may be a hyper-intelligent thousand year old master planner with an endless bag of tricks, but I'm just some chump trying to fake it behind the screen.
I actually have a problem with this. I am not very smart you see, but one of the villains I made is supposed to be.
It's an insanely difficult task to balance out how smart a villain is with a mix of logic and maybe a bit of metagaming.
I was so afraid I'd make a villain unreachable, I let her be fooled twice, and realised how retarded the situation really was.
On the bright side, it achieved what I wanted to do, that is to save the idiot player's character who thought it was a bright idea to try and capture the villain by himself.
I will try to make my villains a little smarter, giving myself 10 seconds to assess the situation and come up with the best possible outcome. Maybe them being unreachable is a good thing. ... For a while, then there will be a time when the players make their position vulnerable or they just say they'd rather deal with the problem themselves.
I ran it similar to Corypheus in Dragon Age Inquisition. Multiple sub plots that destabilised several kingdoms, ruined or ensnared heroes and there were too many conspiracies for the team to complete and they weren't aware of them all. The only mistake I made was custom selecting the spells, which led to it being a wee bit stronger than it should've been with a hidden phylactery in a demiplane. And many, many magical traps, I realised you could use a demiplane with a glyph of warding for a large quantity of stored spells, so he had multiple planes connected to glyph of wardings... Campaign ended before they could actually complete the campaign. They had managed to kill the lich before in an assassination but couldn't find the phylactery and it was leading to a multinational war effort verse the lich.
This isn't a problem at my table because I'm an evil and conniving bastard
When the players outsmart you, just make them fail anyway and say "the Lich saw that coming and totally planned for it beforehand."
You can metagame while playing as a lich. Liches are powerful mages. They can scry, use spies, create tons of magical traps and just have a countermeasures for everything you players discussed in front of you.
Same goes with beholders
I like that he was consistently bad at math, even getting the intelligence roll wrong by one
At first I thought it was a mistake, but the payoff was 👌
My brain refuses to question 17 + 5 = 23. Seems legit to me.
@@AnaseSkyrider17 + 3 is 20. Now we have 2 left from the 5. 20 + 2 equals?
@@SimF1e 23.
@@finna2160 20 plus two. Not 20 plus three, 20 plus two.
I have several times told the DM, "Give me a sec, player too dumb for character too smart." No reason to let real time get in the way of my character having a quick wit
It's even worse when it's the other way around. I have a friend who is incredibly intelligent and decided to play the dumb brute. Then just got stressed because their character was too dumb to come up with any intelligent plans or strategy when they have so many ideas they could write a book on it.
That's exactly why I never play a dumb character if I'm not sure I can rely on the other players to be smart
I think that limitating yourself to acting dumb just because your status of inteligence is low kinda sucks, and you don't need to do it. I think that inteligence would be more drawn to the character's knowledge and hability with ciences and etc, as there are characters in series, like Goku, that are very dumb, but has some kind of intuitive thinking when it comes up to battles. And besides, independent of status, you shouldn't hold back, as DnD is a game to have fun, and if something is just ruining the fun instead of making it better, that's not right.
If it is a problem to naturally smart players outshining characters focused on inteligence but with "not so smart" players, just give them tips with notes so they can look smarter. And if the players aren't satisfied this way, it means he has a problem about feeling bad for thinking he's dumber than others, and he should deal with it with therapy, because I doubt that this is only bothering him inside of DnD
@@wagos21 what he said, most intelligent checks are used to recall knowledge anyway not to come up with plans. If you want to play a dumb character, play a dumb character, don't do it just because your INT is low. Or come up with plans and lie under the guise of your character saying you thought something else would happen (but in reality you knew what you were doing the whole time). That said usually only the best roleplayers can play dumb characters because it takes a lot of work to play an idiot
thats what playing my first character was like with only score above a 10 being a 13 which i put in strength XD
Hmmm, I feel I disagree myself from personal experience of being in campaigns.
An intelligent person who plays a dumb brute is able to adjust their intelligence and playstyle freely.
However, a non-intelligent person who plays a very intelligent character will struggle so much more to make up for that difference without either hiding it through crypticness or wit, or receiving external support
At the least, I've seen players get stressed out enough by the latter enough times to know how crushing that sort of thing can be
"I should be a detective, I am playing a detective, so why can't I reduce this mystery"
He rolled a 17 +5 for a 22 on his first roll, to which he adds wrong for 23 and then he flubs the math at the end xD perfectly done
Proficience?
It is called foreshadowing ... ;D
@@magoshyyem7436 proficiency at the very least is +2, and that would require them dungeon crawling some 1000 year old crypt... before lvl 5.
the math question he got wrong was also 19-7 which adds to 12 but said 13 so he added 1 to both
@@IndependentObserver *proficiency is at least +1, with a bard's jack of all trades; since this is an intelligence ability check that +1 would apply. also who doesn't explore thousand year old crypts before level 5
Since 10 is the average score for a normal human npc, I'd say most people are dumber than their characters.
x'cept most players dump intelligence on most classes
@@jakob3044 It's a vanity stat!
@@IndigoIndustrial we have homebrew ruling at our table that you get extra (or lose) skill proficiencies according to your intelligence agility score. The warlock I'm playing right now is running Cha: 19, Int: 19
@@jakob3044 why would you have two stats so high but uneven??
@@DerXavia Because we started our campaign at lvl 10, rolled for stats and got a free feat at lvl 1. In roleplay, all of our characters are created by and sent out by a God on a mission, so we all carry stupidly powerful artifacts. It's more or less a power-fantasy; we were provably comparable in strength individually to lvl 12 rather than 10.
Unneven because I plan to get both to 20 at ASI, and I have three half feats. Plus some homebrew that allows me to use intelligence for a special help action in combat, but mostly because my character was supposed to be rediculously smart.
Dump stat is Dex because I am a tiefling with hooves
Every time he does math he gets one more than the result he should
In a current campaign, we're all bards, and like fools we made Int the dump stat. This has both bitten us badly and made for some of the best funny moments in this campaign.
Seems like a realistic scenario. Most irl bards are idiots.
So... do you all just take turns trying to seduce the boss, or do you all just seduce each other all game?
That's the thing even in this situation I think you could do something funny with it and not just block off the players. Think the futurama scene where the devil is like "yes the number I was thinking of was the letter M". understand it'd be hard for a DM to come up with something funny on the fly though.
The mental stats are always harder to roleplay than the physical stats, if you yourself lack them.
Take it from someone who's dump stat is Wisdom and likes playing Clerics.
Yeah you can't be more charismatic or intelligent than you are
@@realdragon fake it till you make it :D
Oh, really? Then how about you RP jumping out of a window of a 2-story building for your nimble rogue or lifting a 400 pound stone as a Barbarian?
@@TheSeth256 I don't know if that is a joke but you don't have to actually perform all of this. It is acceptable if you only show some movements and follow them with some phrases("I'm not afraid of falling, I have had much more painful experience than this", "Oh, this one is really heavy"), helping other players to imagine how it would happen in real life. I believe everybody knows how strength or physical tension looks like and each person is able to imitate these characteristics, but it is pretty hard to play a character with high charisma if you are shy and lack crucial leadership skills or to play a character with high level of religion knowledge if you aren't interested in theology at all.
@@AffixedEvil that's what I was trying to convey: why are players expected to enact dialogue of characters with legendary charisma if for physical attributes all that's really expected is a description of the action? The video was hyperbolic, but still went this weird route.
It’s very frustrating the other way around too.
Out of character, I know the answer, but in character I have no clue so I have to purposely dance around the answer
I think it's a bit easier to find a dumb reason for an intelligent answer
GROG BONKED HIS HEAD ON ROCK.🤕 ROCK TOLD HIM SECRETS! 🤯
Grog loves rock! 🥰
That bit I don't find difficult. Just do something dumb that results in the right solution 'by chance', as lorenzo pointed out. It is more... what do you do in conversations, discussions and such? How are you... at least funny, if you're not useful?
A lot of times I will be like, Human Me does not know the answer but Character Me would! (Or vice versa).
With Charisma I might say "Character uses his knowledge of nobility to flatter the local lord". I mean *I* don't know they proper way to schmooze but my character would!
This exactly: Charisma is the worst real-life ability to lack at a 5e table, because you don't need to be strong or healthy or even especially smart or wise, to be allowed to play D&D 5e, but you end up with no one to play with if you piss everyone off.
>_>
Yeah, I don’t think I like how the GM did it. He should have given him the answer, not just a hint. An intelligence roll means it’s the character’s thoughts, why would the character think in riddles himself?
@@mujiescomedy279 Overall I agree with you but to suggest an answer for your question, an intelligent character could possibly overthink the riddle.
@@devinm.6149that's shitty
Don't punish you players for being good at there things
The fact that he rolled a 23 is an absolutely fantastic joke that I don't know if it was intentional or not.
He rolls a 17
With a +5 intelligence comes to 22
Now he could have an item or something that adds +1 to intelligence checks, but my headcanon is that he just can't do basic arithmetic which is great😂
At the end he does the same thing, so it is safe to say he can't do basic arithmetic
I guess you can say he threw in the towel on that first one...
The riddle one reminds me of my players. I love puzzles and such, and every campaign I've run has an arc inside my living puzzle dungeon. I just have all the players work on puzzles together in the background and let the appropriate character shout out the answer so that one person isn't forced to work on his/her own.
To anyone wondering what the answer to the riddle is, its Fumed Silica powder, which can coat water into little bubbles that, in turn, repel water.
It dries as it gets wet.
isnt it just a towel?
@williamabde2488 obviously. But fumed silica would also work, and given that it satisfies the riddle but wasnt what was expected, I found that funny.
@@clairespivak2953 I got that you were making a joke. :) And it's a clever answer. If I were the DM, I'd totally accept it.
Wouldn't a shammy also be accurate? IIRC they are hyper absorbent, but only once they're wet. In other words at 0% wet they hate water, but if you can force them to get 5% wet the fibres open up and they take in way more water. They can never completely dry something, but they *_can_* dry it.
How many wrong ways can we answer this riddle correctly?
@@felixjohnson3874 To be fair, you can't expect any character in dnd to know what a shammy is
This happened to me once, we were playing a campaign and I was the wizard known for being the wise and smart granddad of the group... Had to do a riddle, everyone else got it, except me. I understand what the DM wanted to increase immersion with a riddle, but I sadly just felt stupid afterwards, which broke my immersion of playing this wise wizard. I say let the int checks be int checks and leave riddles for groups to solve, Collaborating to solve a riddle/puzzle is more fun than having one dude feel like an idiot. But maybe I am to blame, I also got 13... Thank actually smart people for calculators
Your getting a bit old grand dad. It's okay that you couldn't figure it out
I agree with you, puzzle are a challenge to the players, not the PCs. And even smart people can slip sometimes.
but sometimes the smartest person gets something wrong and the less intelligent gets things right.
To be fair riddles are more of a wisdom check, as you try to guess wtf riddler was smoking
The artificer in our party constantly has this problem. He's a great guy, he just struggles a bit with puzzles and stuff, despite being the highest int character. Sometimes we have the party barbarian "stumble" into the right answer to help the artificer out.
But yeah, normally I do just give hints for high int rolls, and most of the time that's sufficient
This is me, but with my high-charisma, silver-tongued swashbuckler. It's even more painful because the "charismatic" part, the actual words she was meant to be saying, were a fundamental part of the roleplay, but I do not share her way with words 😅
There's a reason my next character was very much a herbo barbarian who likes to keep things simple and will just smash anything that tries to hurt her friends (even if she's only known these friends for 10 mins at this point of the one-shot 😂)
Herbo... Derived from himbo... Itself derived from bimbo. Just say she's a bimbo lmao
It is why guys like herbo's
props to the dm for delivering a good hint on that first int check though
The same problem arises with charisma
that's why i always make cha my dump stat
I mean the fact the GM gave a hint and an alternate riddle because the *character* was intelligent is a good way to do it, my players always had the opposite problem, they'd make tons of assumptions and never stop and think "hey, maybe we should roll empathy/investigate here" in a sense dragging their characters down to their level.
It’s the same for charismatic face characters being played by quiet, shy introverts. There’s a lot of filling in the gaps required for that
Pass a strenght test : roll some die.
Pass a intelligence test : COMPLETE THIS UNSOLVABLE MATH PROBLEM IN REAL LIFE.
When It comes to riddles/puzzles I give my group 2 options to solve the problem. The party can talk it over but the chosen player has to tell me the answer, or the party needs to make a collective roll to see if they beat my challenge number. This way they get a chance to at least try in the event no one can give me an answer.
That dm is so good to his players
what a good delivery.
The fact that “what gets wetter the more it dries?” was an entry in a book of riddles for children I owned as a youngster makes this even funnier for me.
It is a good riddle, actually. I didn't have a clue yet until he gave that hint.
@@Fh8919 It is clever wordplay, as drying is here not a status change but an active action. And the wet state affects something different, not the object itself.
Crowd source ideas.
I play genius characters. I ask for help from the other players.
I was wondering about that 17+5=23
Just like the 19 - 7 = 13, he is awful at math.
The black screen and music at the end had to make it feel like a game over screen lol
Excellent. And a good job by the DM
To be fair, everything dries as it gets wet as long as its not fully submerged lol as soon as the liquid begins to leave the wet surface, the process of drying has begun. 😊 This riddle I've always heard as what gets wetter as it dries, which makes a lot more sense lol
I love this. Relatable honestly.
I especially like the part when he rolls a 17 and his intelligence modifier is a +5 so naturally it would be a 22 but he says he got a 23 because he's STUPID. It's a nice detail that I missed the first time watching.
There's also the opposite case. In Brazil, we have a podcast called Nerdast. They have an awesome DnD campaign in podcast format (they speak in Portuguese, of course). Anyway, one of the players was a Barbarian, but the player was a pretty smart guy. So, every riddle that the party encountered was always answered by him, the Barbarian. So, it became a Joke, the High IQ Barbarian of low intelligence level.
I love finding channels with great content, but few subs! Someday, when you have 20,000 followers, I’ll be proud to be #129 🙂 keep up the great work! Can’t wait to see more!
#229!!! :D
#303!! wow, this channel has way to little subs for it's content.
#425 let's get this man to 500
When the maths got brought up it hit home. I got mathlexia or something because I'm absolutly horrible at math and need to use the calculator on my phone at sessions so I don't hold the gameplay up. It's kinda embarrassing.
It's called dyscalclia. I have it and I DM because of fabulous imagination and word smith skills. Two of my players are insta correct math heads. I refer on the spot in game calculations to them 😊
It works well
Same. I can come up with ridiculously intricate plans to shove two orcs off a cliff, but every time i roll anything it takes a bit
As a math guy, if you have discalculia, my heart goes out to you.
I do however know many, many people who are bad at math, especially quick math in their head, because they've never practiced it. It's a skill that needs to be worked on, and improved.
Maybe try 5 minutes a day, just doing some simple math! Addition and subtraction in the DnD number range. Only need multiplication and division by 2, if I remember correctly.
Riddle: Towel
With 27 INT (and yes, my alchemist had that fair and square), it's not fair to expect me to know as much about science and potion making as she does (I am good at brain-teasers, though). Frankly, I'm an imbecile compared to her. But that's for stuff that the character actually specializes in. There are occasionally times when the DM asks how I'd accomplish something, I can't really visualize the scenario he's describing that I'm trying to solve, and on those occasions, I'd ask if my character would know better than I would. That said, riddles are a classic standby for TTRPG puzzles, but when I'm the DM, I'd never put the onus on a single player to answer them. That's something I'd present to all of the players as equals. (Granted, I wasn't expecting to have a player to be able to rapid fire answer every riddle I threw at her.)
i legit could not get the riddle until the hint lol
I heard "what drives as it gets wet", and I was like a boat?
Its the vulfpeck T-shirt for me
Me and my character, but I’m too dumb to know how dumb my character should act
My biggest problem is, im a long term planner and thinker so i make elaborate plans over hours rather than a fast plan over minutes😊
Honestly, this is the DMs fault here, a character who have high intelligence who also rolls above 15 on the dice should know the awnser after just (up to a minute) some thinking.
The same way a 20 str barbarien player are not expected to compete with olympic champion athlets
even worse when your character has high charisma but your not very talkative
Ugh yes! Playing a flirtatious bard as an introvert is very hard 😣
I currently don't play Dungeons & Dragons but I can imagine that this is very accurate. 😁
"What Is.. 19 - 7?"
and everyone looking at him like "You have been playing with mathrocks for four months Alex, you know the answer."
I play a charachter that knows a lot of biology and medicine. Too bad I'm a programmer.
A good first video! Keep it up! ❤😊
Okay, I finally knew the answer 2 weeks ago. I had no idea. I do think I could also roll wisdom for this one.
This is me in Baldur's Gate 3 tbh... Astarion successfully rolled and detected something and I was totally oblivious to it 😅
That was great!
I blame the other players for failing this intelligence check.
They saw him do the same bad math on all of his rolls.
I had a young player who was a wizard and struggled heavily so he would roll "are you sure about that" checks before making a bad desicion
I made a lawyer character and I got through 2 cases before I got to one that I was too stupid to solve
Thats why the dm should let them roll for that or even more, just autosucceed since what is being tested there is the CHARACTER'S intelligence, not the player's intelligence. Same for charisma, the usual "i wat to convince the npc to let us pass" followed by the dm saying: "convince me and inlet you roll"... i mean, sometimes, most of the times, the player have way lower stats than the character, i can be a shy non charismatic player and still be allowed to play a bard with expertise on persasion amd deceptoon, but then again, mayority of dms just devide that is the players's charisma what is being tested by the npcs instead on the character's charisma, which nullifies the option of just asking for an idea of just saying as a dm: ok, what type or argument/lie you wanna use?" And then the player just need to give the basic idea, like saying "oh, i want to tolf the guard that theres a fusturbance in the plaza, the other guards needed help" and thats it, not need for 1st prrson if you dont want, or do if you want, but that basic idea is equal to "i wanna knock down a door using this portable ram" or "i wanna ude my rope to descend on stealth from the ceiling". Then you roll dice for the ability check nd the rest is cooperative narrated according with the checks total, is not the same getting a nat1-3 than getting that nat20 on the expertised bard with +15
There's a certain understandable tradeoff to this. The player asked to roll. The DM let him. The player rolled high. Now the DM has to decide how to respond. They could give the answer. This leads to a neutral progression. They DM could also do what he did here and give a hint. In this case, the roll was high so the DM gave a very, very large hint that he expected the player to get. The player asked for persuasion and gave a reasonable argument. I imagine this to be a low dc persuasion check like DC5. The DM can't just backpedal at this point and give the answer. And so he gave what should have been an easy question though if he knew the player better, he'd have known this isn't such a great idea.
A lot of this comes down to knowing your players and how both of you want to handle such situations. I don't think what the DM did was weird in a vacuum.
Now as for the bit about player charisma and ideas, that's trickier and something that needs to be worked out on a table by table, player by player basis. When the DM asks the player to do something in character, it isn't generally with the intention of judging them on it but to help them immerse themselves in the game, an overall good thing. However, it isn't for everyone and not everyone wants to. So it has to be worked out case by case. In some cases, the DM does allow the player to just come up with the basic idea but the player has trouble thinking of one. I've run into this case a few times and what results is a balancing act. If the campaign is one with low degree of consequences, the DM can just feed them an answer. However, if it is one where player choice matters more, this is where things get tricky. Now anything the DM suggests comes with an expectation because it came from the DM. It may not be expected that the barbarian go lift some weights for his skill check but depending on the level of sandbox to railroad in your game, you players may be expected to make decisions which of course requires a degree of player intelligence whether we like it or not. I let me players entertain ideas and do let them know when they've overlooked something they should know about. Still, this can reach an issue sometimes depending on the player.
All in all, the matter for me now comes to case by case basis. I tell the players who want more decision making assistance that they can ask help from the other players or myself. I just caution them that if they ask me for suggestions, I'll provide multiple ideas based upon which they know and some pros and cons after which they can pick. When you're playing a political intrigue game, I can make decision making easier or harder for various players but I can't promise them that they will never have to make a decision in a complicated situation and have no intention of giving a player benefits of meta knowledge for not thinking it out or of things they don't know. That's why if they want options, I narrow it down to 3ish options with pros and cons. I can make the decision making easier but I can't just decide for them without leaving myself open to issues later.
Yeah, I know. I demand a lot. I just thought my small spiel would help give some further insight into the disposition towards intelligence and especially decision making being something that DMs want to get their players to participate in as opposed to only throwing a dice for. There are people who take it too far but in a vacuum of not knowing the players, the way it was handled in video was pretty reasonable imo. NORMALLY you'd expect drying yourself off with something to be a sufficient hint. NORMALLY you'd expect people to do basic subtraction. Of course, the DM should have also known given that the player has already shown a trend of not being able to do basic math. While played for laughs, inability to do basic math would make playing DND pretty hard.
Same thing happened once at my table. Enchanter stood on a bridge challenging us to answer math problems. Wizard (with a 19 Intelligence) was asked what 9+10 is, player was dumber than a bag of hay, he says 21. Worst session ever.
As a guy playing mostly wizards, I feel called out, lol.
That's why I am afraid to put any points in intelligence and charisma and put all in strength, toughness, and agility.
I feel called out xD
1:10 a towel?
I feel this so hard, but especially for charisma! my character will have a +4 charisma and I’ll have no idea how to inspire people w/ a rousing speech
You can actually turn this into a running joke by leaning into how bad your character sounds, but SOMEHOW it works because of their charisma.
I had a max charisma character that I went out of my way to be as awkward and rude as possible, but still rolled a huge persuasion check so it worked. In shops if I wanted to try and get a discount on a war hammer, I’d pick it up and call it “this is terrible SWORD, it’s not even sharp, it shouldn’t cost this much”. Since my character was max charisma, this nonsense argument ‘worked’ and we got the discount. Same goes for the rousing speech to inspire people. “Hey everyone, don’t die, it will make me look bad if you do”. [Party is inspired and gets bonus stats]
Talk about the after game or break time snack or meal. Food is a great way to motivate.
As a DM, for an intelligent character, I just let the party do something and then rearrange encounters so it seems like the character had anticipated that. Worked pretty well, but I hold it for very specific moments, cause when they think they’re being read like a book they get MAD! And spend like 2 hours devising the perfect, unforseeable plan. If their arguments make sense, I give it to them. If there is at least one bit of logic reasoning that would give it away, they get read
I’ll be honest I have zero idea what the first one is only thing I got is a towel, but that would be too obvious.
This is something I struggle with, when making a character who has personality traits I lack. E.g.: I currently have a very Charismatic character. She's meant to be able to weave a conversation around whatever topics, and keep the focus on whomever she's talking to, and extract information within this conversation almost subtly... but I suck at thinking on my feet and actually doing this...
Glad the DM just has rolls occur and basically says this works, and so, yay! Success!
However, mid-game, when my character is meant to be pushed out front to do the talking when there's a sudden encounter, I suck at coming up with what to say. XD
One question still remains: What does dry as it gets wet?
Towels...
Or a sponge
A mouth eating a lemon.
I was thinking salt or maybe a frosted man.
Skin?
Thats why you have rolls for 🤣
yeah I got a dumb character now so I just use dumb plans that somehow work like convincing a goblin I need help carrying things because my friends don't have hands (they have hands). Or using clearly dead bodies as fake sleeping guards.
title should have said 'but your not' to drive the joke home lol
Why was my first thought a rain cloud-
A towel
This is why I always bring a calculator to D&D.
You can allow other players to help you determain what your character says. The players as a whole should be smarter than just one... usually.
Yep. There have been a couple instances in our game where we gave ideas out-of-character to the player playing the Artificer, and the DM allowed it because the presumption was that the Artificer would likely come up with those things herself.
I'm not sure, my players had limited time to cast a wish and individually they had better ideas than the compromise they used as a party.
Ok. Have them roll for it. Works for either dumb or smart characters, when the player is struggling. Dumb character can roll, and on a medium difficulty, they can have a stroke of genius. Smart character can roll, and on a medium difficulty, the GM shoots that player a hint. And if they still can't get it. Just give it to them. Especially if it's plot necessary.
One thing that happens to me is trying to make knowledgeable character, like an erudite or a researcher, not really knowing much of the world they live in. Like, I feel I can't rol him propertly unless it's like my 10th campaign in that setting, which is sad, cause it's one of my favourite character archetypes to play haha
Just subbed
This is me but for Charisma
Tbh I'd probably be a little annoyed if DM made me the player figure out the riddle. Especially if I rolled 17+5. I don't know the answer but the dice says my character does
#229!!! :DD very excited to tell people i was one of your first 300 subscribers😎!!!!
I enjoy playing a character who is less intelligent and charismatic than I am so I can laugh at "my" own stupidity.
Similar thing for when your dnd character is charismatic but you're not.
Similar to when your character is charismatic but you are very introverted...
big mood
They rolled a 22, I think it’s fair that they just get the answer but also I’m not in this fictional table so. 😭
I have simmiliar problem with my charisma
In theory you could say "I roll an intelligence check and if I pass it I will design a plan to get out of this situation", "I roll a charisma check and if I pass it I will find the best way to approach this person". If I play someone with superhuman strength I can throw boulders, but I play a genius I cannot solve a riddle that normal humans can solve?
This why most of the dms I play with don’t run stuff like puzzles. You could be able to figure it out as the player but you’re playing a negative intelligence character who can only talk by some divine miracle or you could be playing a high intelligence character hut you as the player are awful at puzzles even though you character should be amazing at them. First option risks meta gaming and the other risks a bit of a toxic play style, not helping the party when you’re the only one who’s solved the puzzle because of the dreaded “It’s what my character would do.”
Being the nicest person in the friend group and choosing the play the asshole of the DnD party gives me life.
I intentionally played an unintelligent character & the other players didn't believe me.
They kept asking me for ideas & to lead the party instead of thinking for themselves.
It was a total party kill...
I did something like that after my high INT, moderately high WIS character was stumped on a couple of puzzles and riddles and the rest of the group kept giving me a hard time about it but said their characters were too dumb to contribute the answer. So the next time we rolled up new characters, I rolled up a dumb fighter/thief, and then I kept seeing solutions to various puzzles or conundrums but my character was too dumb to speak up and the rest of the party was stumped even though somebody else had a mage with a high INT and a cleric with high wis.
Afterwards we compromised and said that players with characters that had low mental stats could contribute hints and suggestions to players with characters with high mental stats with the clock stopped.
The important note here, for any DMs in the comments, is that Out of Game Riddles are often the easiest way to kill the engagement in a session and make Int Characters feel stupid and undervalued. It’s a classic mistake that rookie DMs make in their games, not understanding that riddles challenge the PLAYER, not the character, and thus often have absolutely no place in D&D. If you put a Riddle that MUST be solved on a magical door, and you don’t allow a player to meet a certain DC check for their character to solve it (their character thinks up the answer without the player themself knowing it), I immediately consider you to be an amateur DM. Not necessarily a BAD DM, but amateur: the riddle adds nothing to the role playing aspect of the game, and unless you allow a roll to complete it, it cannot be interacted with by the Dice Rolling system, the half of the system that exists to cover whatever roleplay cannot. Since neither roleplay NOR rolls can effectively engage with Riddles, do not use them.
Most riddles are tacky, anyway.
i almost exclusively play dumb characters because it’s all i know how to do 😂
I have a solution, but it does require the cooperation of the player.
If a character is super intelligent (let's say 15+) let the referee hand the player information that he ought to know. Now let the player role-play how and why that information is known,
The referee hands the smart player a message: The Orc bandits took the left passage.
The "Smart Player": As we can see by the scuff marks an Orc party clearly passed this way. I deduce that there were seven of them carrying a heavy load."
If the player is an idiot. "Uh guys...they went that uh way." then that player would get fewer clues.
Tbf, riddles are a test of wisdom (keen of mind), so him struggling with it could be accurate to the character who may possess great knowledge, but not understand the nuances of how it relates...
Still, he was quick of mind at the end, even if he should've thrown in the towel. 😅
Just throwing this out there, I’m pretty sure the answer to the riddle is magma or lava. It starts in a liquid form and as it gets colder or wet it eventually solidifies.
It's towel
@@palpatine6197 oh, that makes a lot more sense.
@@nokh3382 lol, yeah it's a popular riddle
I think this is more a problem for the DM. If the character is intelligent, and you let them roll an intelligence check, if it’s high enough just tell them the answer. The whole point of game mechanic stuff like rolling for intelligence is that the players aren’t their characters. Let the dice do their thing.
I'm avoiding Int stats for this very reason. Like, i don't even know which number is good or bad for rolls, i ain't gonna pass as some genius that knows the law of universe. 😂
towel and 12 btw
Oof yes. I’m autistic and I played a charisma-based rogue once. He was supposed to be a smooth talker, but ended up sounding super creepy by accident.
lets be honest, if our in character stats had anything to do with our IRL stats wed all be screwed!
If you have to go off your own knowledge for things for a high int character instead of theirs, then it should be the same for low int characters.