How do you play a smart character in D&D when you have an real-life intelligence stat of 8?

[@darcraven01]

your best friend as a player is the phrase "would my character know..."

[@ShadowBaneLeader]

"I've got two braincells and a dream." ~ the irl Barbarian trying to play an Artificer

[@Benjamin1986980]

You could make him as a nutty professor. Brilliant in his field, but unable to consistently tie his shoes. Overthink so much that he constantly undermines simple plans.

[@IHaveWaffles]

"I'm not that kind of smart, I just am able to memorize a bunch of spells, their components, incantations and such.

[@Xecryo]

Best advice I can give is ask the DM if your character would know. Worst case scenario he says "No this is something few if any people have seen" Second best scenario the DM gives you a skill check and oh would you look at that all your int skills are boosted and/or you have proficiencies. Best case scenario your DM gets to do a mini lore dump and you can go to the other players "Hey it's a...that thing the DM just said."

[@arancourt5623]

Could do a Sherlock Holmes-Esque character relying on wildly bizarre and unrelated concepts/ideas to zaney effect. Dead husband found murdered, everyone thinks the wife did it because of infidelity, but the only love he had for anything else was the ale two towns over and the barkeep did it out of jealousy or some such. Hide the intelligence in insanity and wackiness.

[@Living_with_Narcissists]

Since the trick for smart people role-playing dumb ones is to not pay attention. I would just recommend taking notes.

[@MemoristCed]

I mean, most people have a WIS of 6 but that doesn't stop them playing wise characters...

[@Perdition25]

As a wizard right now I do my best to play the part by spending a lot of time in between sessions thinking heavily about what the party can do to produce the best results with the information I have. So by the time the next session comes up most of the scenerios that come up I have a solution for. So in game it seems like I come up with the most intelligent answer on the fly when in real life I have thought about all of it during the week or more.

[@41217beingbored]

The quick and easy answer is to not worry about it. This stuff boils down to mechanics and a dice roll so unless your backstory involves specifically being smarter than most or being in an intellectual field, no one should worry that you don't fully act out your character's intelligence. Alternatively, my own trick to playing a class's major stat without having it irl is to emphasize (even overemphasize) another mental stat that's lower along with it. There's plenty of intelligent people that try at a situation because they rather do it themselves than converse or even ask for help. That's a charisma issue. And there's plenty of smart people that walk into a bad situation because they overthought it or underestimated it and didn't check the obvious. That doesn't have to be a lack of intelligence, that could just be a lack of wisdom. You don't have to be in the forefront for making moves because of intelligence but if you feel you must, maybe play up other stats to offset bad rolls or stupid moments.

[@themetalone7739]

Interesting question... Work with the DM, is the best answer. I've DMed campaigns in which I've proactively provided certain players with certain information, because I know their character has a particularly high interest/expertise in a stat like that. Like, someone in a group might be playing a "nerd" character that knows a lot about history, and so I would automatically go into a brief history of a new location they're going to, starting off by explaining which character knows the info and why. It's, ideally, one of the 10,000 things the DM should keep track of mentally. As someone else suggested, you can also prod the DM a bit by asking questions about what your character would know about, or whether your character is smart enough to solve a certain problem.

[@Forever-GM-Dusty]

Idea rolls and being cautious. Ask for retcons if you do or say something that's really dumb, and ask the dm to assume you're completing your task in a competent manner. Also, take notes and use them

[@CurrentlyDuck1]

I don't know the first thing about DnD, I'm just happy to be here

[@postapocalypticnewsradio]

PANR has tuned in.

[@winnerwannabe9868]

Wis matches better with logic and int is more memory. Just take a lot of notes. Also, intelligence and wisdom are usually both subjective and dependent on the situation. A math genius might struggle with physics even though they bot heavily deal with numbers.

[@jakejake3040]

Smart is relative. To me I'm a regular Albert Epstein

[@boreddeffy]

Lmao Albert Epstein??

[@lillithplays6514]

I'm this but with Charisma

[@carolinelabbott2451]

Same here. I love Bards but I am inept at coming up with cutting words or charming words to say. So I stopped playing them for the longest time after one very socially embarrassing irl session. Now I just look up other folks suggestions and type/print out a list of things I can say for a high charisma character. Less stressful for me, and more comfortable for everyone else at the table. 😊 I'm thinking of doing the same sort of lists for high intelligence and high wisdom, just incase my social anxiety kicks in bad again.

[@pulsefel9210]

Intelligence is book knowledge, wisdom is application of your knowledge.

[@Forever-GM-Dusty]

Good advice to make int be a dump stat. Why can't a wizard be good at applying his knowledge in practical and creative ways without taking a high wisdom? Wisdom will have its place, I promise. It can be good for a representation of common sense, willpower, and powers of perception

[@MemoristCed]

Hard to apply what you don't have, though.

[@johngeralt]

in DnD Wisdom is more about emotional intelligence and like instinct and gut feeling. That is why skills like Insight and Perception are tied to it. Not to mention most Beast have average wisdom and bottom of the barrel intelligence.

[@friendlyheretic9103]

​@@MemoristCedYou can do it like a writer of a medical or law drama: Ask a few questions, take some notes, and apply a lot of confidence

[@dragoknight589]

Not in D&D. Wisdom in D&D is senses and stuff. Intelligence in D&D also includes deductive reasoning.

[@BHJ-YM]

I'm naturally pretty dumb so I tend to avoid playing traditionaly smart characters. That said, I found a work around by basically playing Old Man McGucket from gravity falls. 18 int artificer with 3 wisdom. I can say the dumbest shit when I'm RPing and it doesn't matter because the only person who needs to understand him is...well...him.

[@arcticwolf2742]

I use a variety of different strategies when playing intelligent characters. I try to teach in moments when I do well on any sort of Knowledge based skill check that I happen to actually know about IRL. I also listen to what my DM says before retranslating it through my character's perceptions whether I know much on a given subject or not. When I fail, I might say I've heard about the subject bug can't recall the exact specific thing we need. I also am not afraid to let the other players at the table and the DM tell me things if they know more on any topic- for instance, in one of my last games, a message was delivered to the party in Morse code, and one of my fellow players, who was playing our resident dumb barbarian, knew how to translate. So instead of being stubborn and trying to figure it out myself because "I'm supposed to be the super smart Sherlock Holmes style character and I rolled High!" I sat back and let him translate. Then I took the words and extrapolated on their meaning by using context clues gathered through the session. He figured out what it said, but I was the one who figured out what it actually MEANT. "The Faces are Wrong." Meant nothing on it's own, but given I know the man I'm receiving it from is a rich noble dressed in rags and under a compulsion spell, along with over a dozen of his colleagues...well, I realized pretty quick that the Nobles of the court had been replaced. There's all manner of strategies, if you know how to use them. And perhaps the greatest of all....actually learning about stuff, and knowing how to relay thag information to others in interesting and useful ways.

[@CATusthetidsresenar]

I played a artificer once what was very intelligent. Was able make him act intelligent by macgyvering my way out of situations and my playing of the crazy acts as insanity. That character got increasingly more insane and mental that when the dm made all the players temporary insanity (by giving them all temporary insanity effects), the dm let me keep my insanity effect permanently. Moral: when in doubt go with insanity (very good for explaining very strange and wacky plans)

[@RotBrainOP]

From what I've heard my friends say "intelligence is book smarts while wisdom is street smarts" so if I were to have a smart character step into a trap I could play into the fact that the guy doesn't even go outside that often and that in a way all that studying on magic hurt him more than helped him xD

[@solowingkiba7800]

One way is to use a quirk the character has. On the opposite side of playing smart, I had a really dumb character thanks to terrible roles in a Dungeon Crawl Classics one shot. Your characters start at Lvl 0. I rolled my dumb character's profession and got Chicken farmer, as such he carried a hen with him everywhere. I had this character converse exclusively with the hen, CluckCluck talking to her when responding to other PCs. If I rolled high on intelligence or wisdom when trying to figure things out, my character would act as if he had gotten the answer from CluckCluck. The party half assumed my actual PC was the chicken and the farmer was the NPC

[@synashilp]

Oddly enough, you do what smart people do: research the topics in which your character should have knowledge. You can use Google and Google Scholar. If your character's subjects are more about the setting, talk with your Game Master about them. Some examples of this are the history of the world, the nobility that inhabit the nations, and how magic works. If you have a real life intelligence stat of 8, that's perfectly fine; take notes and utilize them to help you remember key points of your research. Just remember not to metagame.

[@kazekamiha]

You can play Int in two ways; being able to memorize facts and details or being able to work problems.

[@MagicalMaster]

The trick to being smart, both in game and real life. Is being very curious. Ask as many questions as you can think about, then keep asking even about petty and small things. The more questions you ask the more answers you find, even if they're petty or useless answers. Questions Questions Questions to get Data Data Data, you cannot make bricks without clay!

[@StormAsher104]

Intelligence isn’t just one kind of being smart, you can be intelligent in nature things, or history things, but maybe not intelligent in planning ahead or being socially intelligent, heck that’s how it is for a lot of people in real life, if they’re intelligent that doesn’t mean they’re smart in every single thing, just in some things, and are probably really dumb in other things, so just make your character smart in what you’re smart, and dumb in what you’re dumb. Edit: I literally did this for my first character, I’m kinda socially dumb irl so I just made my character very socially dumb.

[@Nerdipaints]

This is me alot. My official nickname is Dipshit. My one party member/cousin is trying to figure out how i graduated kindergarten. I have learning disabilities. He is not wrong except i barely qualified for kindergarten. After thinking a bit. I might be bullied. Alot

[@jatsantsa]

Well now you have to do your homework and study lore, game spells and everything relevant. Do not forget to take notes. If your int is really 8 irl well good luck to keep track on everything. However it is much easier to just find DM with low int stat so he dors not notice.

[@JRandomJacket]

I always think of the intelligence score as a measure of knowledge rather than reasoning ability. A cleric from a small village with a 6 intelligence score isn't necessarily "stupid", he is just ignorant of the wider world outside his village. His focus has been on understanding religion beliefs and dogma, not art, history, and science.

[@trueblade39]

Common sense is something that isn't indicative of intelligence. So someone who spent a life as a farmer might have practical knowledge and down to earth common sense that some ivory tower book learning wizard with no practical world exposure wouldn't have. I usually look at Forrest Gump if I want to play someone who doesn't have intellgence, because he simply does what he knows is right because of his traditional upbringing, and because what we usually consider morally correct coincides with good judgment, it works out

[@QuixoteBadger]

Your friend rolled int 3? That is the same as a dog.. Your friend's character is as smart as a labrador.

[@joelrobinson5457]

Improv. Looooots of improv!

[@dragonriderabens9761]

I need help with the inverse of this how do I play a himbo when my IRL int stat is at least a 16?

[@redman7775]

For each encounter, think of the absolute dumbest way to do something, then do something ever so slightly smarter

[@melaniehammers7757]

Pretend to be Kronk

[@MemoristCed]

Think of that guy whose work you constantly have to redo, at school or at work, and ask yourself what he would do in this situation.

[@whitefox3189]

Your PC has ADHD. Thats the simplest solution.

[@Darkwintre]

Low Wisdom you might be smart, but actually have no common sense.

[@lobstermann]

nice

[@sleepinggiant4062]

You can't roleplay it well. You can talk with an air of haughtiness. At our table it's usually a British accent. But you can rollplay it. Work with the DM and use your Int skills. I prefer that my players not ask me if they can roll a specific check, but you can ask if you know. You can easily act dumber than you are. I dislike it when DMs test player skill and not the character's skill.

[@zerrrp]

use complicated words on stupid phrases