Roleplaying a Character Better Than You

How are you supposed to know what to do when your character is smarter than you IRL, or wiser, or more charismatic? You can't even BS wisdom, and the closest thing you can do while pretending to be a supergenius is bring along a dictionary. Advice?

Depends on the game and the GM, but asking "What does my character know about X?" can work for a character who is more intelligent (or at least more knowledgable in a given area) than the player.

I really just think that a DM ought to be more than lenient in this, because generally all characters are going to be better than their players in some capacity, and are going to know more about the world around them; the DM should help out with these things at any time it is appropriate.

^I completely agree, but I was making an allowance for the fact that some DMs are dicks. Although I suppose the proper response is to just not play with those people.

edited 20th Jul '10 5:49:13 PM by Chaostryke

I know one time our GM had two the two smartest people work on a puzzle due to that one character doing it having a very high int score.

As a player I've been known, when I'd like to give another player some advice but couldn't do it in-character, to ask the player to make an int roll and ask if that's enough to think of what I've thought of. If it is I tell them.

I usually do this. On the other hand, I have many characters worse than myself.

You can fake it with preparation. Read scientific journals, ancient wisdom, beautiful poetry and great speeches, and steal steal steal.

Then you just come off as a character who's an Insufferable Genius and always fails when they're asked to actually do something smart.

Try discussing solutions with your group, then credit the result to the smartest character.

Ironically, I have this problem in that I'm G Ming and my players...aren't very good.

The characters really ought to know better, but the players repeatedly find ways to get themselves owned, or make incredibly suboptimal decisions, even with prompting. I'm at my wit's end.

Some of it is my bad; if I give them basically a blank check to go equipment shopping with, I really shouldn't be surprised if they respond by buying guns, guns, more guns, etc. Yet given that what they want to do is steal information from a casino, not level the place, and have no escape plan to deal with the inevitable police response...

My solution thus far has been to try and teach players to think better. Be more creative. You can fake charisma via acting. You can fake wisdom by thinking practically. You can fake intelligence by just getting good at thinking, and being systematic in your thought processes.

So to play a better character, get good at doing what that character does. If I want to win at something, I show up at each session with a list of questions and a partial information web that I can fill in for brain storming. Remember, you only have to outsmart the GM; if you can outsmart the GM, you can be a super-genius in character regardless of how intelligent you or your character is. Metagaming also helps, although G Ms can and will call you on it if you don't let them know.

I usually play wizards and psions, so I've got a lot of experience running high Int characters. Over the years I've picked up a few tricks for role playing geniuses.

On of my tricks is a long standing agreement with my GM that I'm allowed to make up crap about the campaign world, and it will be absorbed into the canon. The catch is I'm not allowed to do this for personal gain; I can't announce that the magic shop is giving away +5 weapons for free and expect him to roll with it. But if my character mentions that, say, the drow elves designate CR 15 and higher demons as the "Vasa Inquitatis" ("vessels of anger"), then that's added in; henceforth it becomes a fact that Drow demonlogists will lump mariliths, deathdrinkers, and balors as the Vasa Inquitatis, the Vessels of Anger and Inventors of Wicked Arts. Thus, my 24 Int wizard seems knowledgable, and the GM gets to use the cool fluff I think of for him (or steal from comic books, as the case may be). Everybody wins.

Just one of my tactics. More to come.

edited 14th Oct '10 10:41:04 PM by disturbly

@Disturbly: That's very, very cool.

Clever idea. Faking domain knowledge is in some ways an even harder problem than faking intelligence.

One idea I've heard of for master-planner type geniuses is that they get a INT roll worth of "Master Plan Points" that they can spend during each mission to retroactively have planned ahead for some complication. Perfect for the Crazy-Prepared types.

I recall a feat for players that's similar to that.

The flavor of the feat is that your character is Crazy-Prepared for anything.
The mechanics of it is that once per session/scene you can retroactively buy any mundane item(s) from the Player's Handbook up to a certain threshold(I think it was either 100 or 500 gold).

In practice:
Party comes across a pit too large to jump. Nobody remembered to replace the rope that got cut in the last campaign. Player X says "I have Crazy-Prepared Feat. I'm buying 100 ft of rope, 3 grappling hooks, and a couple extra torches". Character X say "It's ok, guys. I expected this." and then pulls the items out of his backpack. Campaign continues.

Another use is emergency potions of healing or cure poison. Low-level scrolls are useful, too. Extra lockpicks when the rogue breaks/drops her last set.

A lot of it depends on DM discretion, of course, but it's pretty balanced because you can only use it once per session. It mostly a convienience feat to speed storytelling without unneccesary trips back to town.

Was just thinking about this topic.

My usual deal with the players is that they can ask more questions before requiring a roll, or they get better descriptions then everyone else (But that's usually reserved for if the party is struggling.)

The add-stuff-to-cannon is awesome, and I've tried to run/play in a game like that. The big concern is people's ego getting in the way, and wanting to keep their idea "Pure".

I do like that Crazy prepared thing. I think I'll add that as an option in my next game.