Behaving Intelligently
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Magus isn’t the sharpest knife in the crayon box. I love her to death, but she probably didn’t earn that lab coat. More likely there’s a semi-naked arcane lab-tech tied up in the backroom somewhere, bereft of glasses and standard-issue chalk. But you know what? Magus is pretty convincing all the same. Wizard certainly seems taken in by her confidence and her fancy hair bun. She may not be all that smart, but she can exude intelligence with the best of them.
One common complaint I hear from the would-be-wizards of the world is that it’s difficult–bordering on impossible–to play a character who is more intelligent than you. How can you possibly hope to live up to a dude who’s got a higher IQ than Einstein? I mean, just look at that Int score! What normal gamer could possibly portray a 23?
As Magus so ably shows however, I don’t think that you actually have to be intelligent to act intelligent. Just check out this guy for your role model. Brainy Smurf is a smug know-it-all. He is a pedantic bore who carries a big book, uses big words, and can fit more “um actuallies” into a conversation than a team of trained neckbeards. Crucially, he is not always the guy with the good idea and the brilliant plans. His arrogance gets him into trouble, and spur-of-the-moment decisions are not his strong suit. My point is that a high Intelligence score doesn’t mean that you’ve always got a Xanatos Gambit in your back pocket. Even rocket scientists can get lost in airports. And let’s not forget that it was Frodo rather than Gandalf who figured out the riddle at the Doors of Durin.
So if you want to be true to your super-smart character, I say to worry less about being smart. Simply put on the lab coat, drop a few vague platitudes, and call mysteries “curious” or “very interesting” when you’re stumped. It doesn’t take a genius to play one.
So help me out here. What are some strategies for seeming smarter than you really are? How can you play a proper mad scientist or learned archmage at the table? Let’s hear it in the comments!
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
If you want to do the whole “I’ve studied for years at the most prestigious academy in the world” shtick, a good dose of arrogance might be enough to seem above the others, along with everything but the most stressing cognitive tasks being boring and tedious.
However, it gets a lot more difficult if you want to play a smart character that is not arrogant. In that case, it might be best to take on problems from different angles while thinking out loud, so that everyone can hear that you’re truly capable of analyzing a situation. It might also help to have some actual experience evaluating probabilities of success and failure.
Apart from that, however, if your character is really supposed to not just act, but actually be significantly smarter than you, your DM should give you the occasional chance to figure out some additional stuff with a die roll. Or, if there’s a smart player playing a stupid character and they realize something that their character wouldn’t, your character could instead (which, I would reason, is usually not metagaming).
I’ve always liked the idea of crowdsourcing intelligence. If you’re gaming with a “three dummies and a wizard” type party, it can be a solid way to allow folks to play intelligently, funneling the group’s collective good ideas through the wizard and thereby preserving verisimilitude.
In a similar vein, there are some old comic standbys that work just as well.
“Erm… Why we not tunnel under big wall?”
“Grumph you idiot! That will never work. Wait a minute, I think I’ve got something. What if, instead of going over the wall, we go under it?”
“Grumph wish he smart like you.”
You can be an impractical academic without being arrogant. Just use variations on “that’s interesting, I wonder how it works” as a default reaction, even when the “it” in question is trying to kill you.
“Wait, how do dragons create their breath weapons? I wonder if it could be … ummm … no, that won’t work, but maybe … nah, that violates the conservation of reality … though actually … wait no, that still doesn’t work … wait a sec, how about … yeah, that seems actually plausible. [fails dex save] Oh, shit, I guess dodging that breath attack would have been helpful.”
Just hope your party doesn’t ask what any of those ideas actually were.
No worries about making up ideas. You just keep making ’em up! To misappropriate an idiom: “It’s bullshit all the way down.” 😉
There’s also the other approach – smart characters don’t always “sound smart”. They certainly don’t need to be academically gifted or even educated at all. I’ve played two barbarians with Intelligence 14 or 15, and a Shadowrun motorcycle ganger with Logic 4 who was illiterate and had never seen the inside of a school. But they all had sharp, flexible minds, able to evaluate situations and concoct cunning plans, and the things they do know (tribal history, plant identification and motorcycle maintenance respectively), they know inside out.
You don’t have to play your high Intelligence character like Gandalf or Einstein. You can play them like Conan the Barbarian or Ragnar Loðbrok (as portrayed in Vikings): sizing up every situation and looking for advantage, and coming up with the most creative and effective way to solve whatever today’s problem is.
Very true. However, I think you’re describing the challenge rather than the solution. Coming up with a brilliant plan is the ideal way to demonstrate your intelligence in-game. It’s the “being smart rather than looking smart” that we all strive for. The bugger is that it demands you actually have a brilliant plan.
That said, a GM can certainly help with this playstyle, treating the statistically smart guy’s plan more charitably than the dumb guy’s. Some game rules help as well. Case in point:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/brilliant-planner/
I have two approaches.
The first is coming up with plans during breaks during or between sessions. As such, having a long time of planning is roughly equivalent to intelligence 20 having a minute of planning. I’ve come up with some pretty complex plots in between sessions.
The second is to seperate intelligence into it’s various aspect, and to play one or two of them. For instance, I’m currently playing a bad spells wizard. He’s intelligent in that he’s good at improvising and creative use of spells, but he left school aged six in humans years, and as such he is barely literate and can’t numbers. I find it quite funny the way that he’s creating and hiding under a Tenser’s floating ghost table one moment and then he’s think that 200 divided by eight is 40 the next.
I love your “aspects of intelligence” solution. There are many kinds of smart. You don’t have to portray them all at once!
Ah, nothing like the feeling of noticing a wizardly art upgrade.
Laurel has been power leveling. She distributed her points appropriately.
Wait, I though she was a Pathfinder magus?
Because those are intelligence-based. I thought she just had abysmal wisdom.
I think your Magus build makes sense. However, we’ve joked a couple of times down in the comments that she took an archetype:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/magus/archetypes/paizo-magus-archetypes/eldritch-scion/
It was an amusing moment when we realized our lovable dummy character was supposedly Int-based. We had to scramble for explanations.
Of course, we don’t plan to ever build out our Heroes and say, “This is the stat block!” That just closes off too many possibilities in terms of gags. “What a minute… I looked at the stats, and she doesn’t have that ability!” Blech.
I might do a “build your favorite character” contest one of these days though. Give away some merch and such…
You could always explain her ditzy nature with a low Wisdom score.
Also: why do you keep calling Fighter: Eldritch Knight “Magus”?
I am frustrated with 5e’s approach to classes. I made it a rule early on that there is exactly one of each class in Handbook World. It seems to be WotC’s plan is to release archetypes rather than classes. I am consequently in something of a pickle. We can’t have Fighter dueling Magus for horning in on his territory. The poor human mook would get destroyed, and then we’d be out of That Guy gags.
I’m pretty sure Fighter: Battelmaster could crush Fighter: Eldritch Knight in a direct fight. It’s notoriously the most powerful Fighter subclass.
I know this is straight up crazy talk but…. you could choose to change that rule. They do what they want with their properly, you can do what you like with yours.
Heck, changing how the rules work after a while is perfectly fitting for a comic that isn’t about any particular system. =)
Or you could go for some gags and go the other direction and start looking at homebrew classes. =P
(Side note: I’m almost done with my full set of homebrew Final Fantasy themed classes and archetypes. Not that I’m suggestion you use most of those as we could get into weird comic cross-over territory there. Haha.)
I guess I’ll see what the dudes think about it on Patreon. I think we’re due for another new character class this month.
Despite being a proud 5e purist, I haven’t really had an issue with the class blend. There are some things that transcend editions, namely the other people at the table, and that seems to be a lot more important to this comic than anything mechanical. For pete’s sake we had a shadowrun class a comic or two ago and shadowrun doesn’t even have classes anymore! So basically, don’t sweat it.
AetherSquid gets me. Cheers, mate!
I love this contest idea.
My question is….. is there a prize for making incredibly wrong builds? =P
I’m thinking two prizes: “Funniest” and “Most Appropriate.” I’m betting that “incredibly wrong build” would have a strong shot at the former.
Dang Wizard looks fly in those glasses, speaking of hyper-intelligent characters I ran into a similar problem with a chronically insane but still brilliant wizard named Calemondorion, It was incredibly difficult to try to be both intelligent and crazy without being intrusive onto the gameplay.
Any examples of when you pulled it off well? I’d be curious to hear how you went about playing such a character.
Magus’s picture on the left reminds me of a certain Snuggles from a Giant in the Playgrounds thread. I don’t know how to link in this site, so I’ll just leave a site description to type into google, but I’d appreciate it if someone with more google-fu can create the link.
Site: first time DMing and already killed a character giant in the playground.
Damn Snuggles. Damn. O_O
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?93068-First-time-DMing-and-already-killed-a-character
How would one get to 23 Intelligence? The natural limit is 20, and a Headband of Intellect sets it to 19.
You fill in the blanks with intelligence rolls. “Can I roll Intelligence: History to know aboot this?”
Int rolls can work well. They do come with a challenge though. The issue is that intelligence-as-Int-roll stems from an external source: the GM rather than the player. It’s hard to feel clever when the thing that’s actually happening at the table is listening to the GM and then saying “ditto.”
Intelligence isn’t necessarily cunning. You just need to know everything the GM knows. Wisdom can just as easily represent cunning.
I think giving the characters with a higher int score more information to work with is a viable solution. You aren’t straight up handing them the answer, but by giving the player more tools to work with, theyre better able to use their own real intelligence even if its not that impressive, whereas if Grod the Barbarian has an int of 6, it doesn’t matter how smart his player is, because all he’s going to get to know is the tree is on fire and its very comfortably warm.
Maybe combine this with the crowdsourcing intelligence mentioned elsewhere.
Stat caps are a 5th edition thing, rather than Pathfinder. Wizard’s intelligence is unbounded.
I think there was also a similar thing in 2e, or at least the headband worked the same way in 2e.
Still definitely not a thing in 3e, 3.5, or Pathfinder though
I got two solutions for portrayal of intelligent characters in a game like DnD: Specilization and Cunning.
Specilization means that all your intelligence, expertise, and knowledge is generally focused into a single area. For example wizards who studied magical theories instead of say, local legislatures or puzzle solving. This is how you got wizards who want to pursue the ultimate spell combination or know the ins and out of the magic and abilities in the world I.e. legal metagaming.
Cunning is a more difficult but at the same time less stat based form of intelligence. This is the type of intelligence that works with tactical minded fighters, street smart rogues, or barbarians well versed in their local monster stories. It can range from anything small such as “trolls are weak to fire” to “here’s how we’re going to slay Chutulu”. This is arguably one of the more common sorta of metacomplaints I hear going both ways; players who complain how their super smart characters can’t think up of these plans due to the player’s lack of int, or players complaining how low int characters/creatures are acting much more cunning and tactical than their low int suggest they “should” act.
This is exactly the issue I’m trying to get at in the comic. The easy solution is to reconceptualize the way you think about intelligence (as in your first example). I’m hoping that this thread will kick up a good list of solutions for the latter problem. Any thoughts on the matter yourself?
Regarding the “low int characters/creatures using tactics”, animals can use basic tactics (ambushing, flanking, swarming) despite usually being 1 or 2 INT. Bait and basic traps (like concealed pits) are also animal-usable tricks. And D&D has a fair number of predators that are specifically evolved/modified to target humanoids, unlike real-life animals. While they might not instantly recognize the difference between a Fighter and a Wizard, it’s not unreasonable to think that they might consider the guy who just shot fire out of his hands to be a large threat. If they have spell-like or spell-like-like abilities, it is reasonable to think that they know how to use them effectively (for example, aiming their AoE at a large group).
In summary, if all of that can be done by creatures incapable of speech, it’s no surprise that dumb humanoids could do that. Especially if they’ve had time for trial-and-error. (I am reminded of a specific trap from Rise of the Runelords Book 1, where a rope bridge is cut so that everyone falls off of it, but the main rope remains in place so that the bridge can be easily repaired. I believe the book specifically notes that it took the goblins several bridges to realize that they could do that.)
Goblins excel at iterative design processes. It’s a racial trait.
aka “Dammit, these little buggers breed fast!”
lol
Not exactly what you were talking about, but I think this is a risk that “clever” GMs run when they add IRL puzzles to their campaign. You may think people solving your cipher is going to be exciting, but most of the time it doesn’t engage everyone at the table, and these things usually take a good deal of time to figure out. In addition, what happens when the naturally intelligent players are playing non-intelligent characters? Why is the barbarian going at the puzzle while the wizard is picking his nose in boredom?
What’s worse is when the solution escapes the party and now you’ve hit a really bad roadblock. Eventually the party wizard says, in frustration, “my character’s really intelligent, can I just roll to see if he can figure out the puzzle?”
I love real puzzles. But they are really hard to pull off in-game.
We talked about this one over here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/riddle-me-not
It’s no accident that Magus stars in that one too.
I think a key point is to make riddles optional. No sense grinding the game to a halt when the group is stumped.
Looking at that old comic made me realize that Magus’s feet are unbelievably tiny. I mean look at it – her foot is shorter than her hand, her ear, her breast, her EYE and is about the size of her mouth.
…Now that I look at it, I’m starting to have a guess as to why most characters in this comic are shown from the waist up. Oh well, the art can only improve in so many areas at a time. (That last sentence is still meant as a compliment for Laurel.)
Now that you’ve notice it, you can’t unsee it in other comics:
https://www.pipelinecomics.com/rob-liefeld-doesnt-draw-feet/
My solution to ‘being the shmott-guy’ is to be the ‘knows everything guy’. In most fantasy games I’ve played to know a monster’s weaknesses, you’ve got to have the skills… so I make sure my smart-guy/gal has the skills and then I just keep very good notes.
Laurel likes to tell the story of her old pal Long Cat. It was an Exalted 2e game, and Long Cat was a big dumb lunar exalt who grew up in a library. Low Intelligence, stratospheric Lore.
“How could you possibly know that, Long Cat?”
“Mah learnins!”
“So help me out here. What are some strategies for seeming smarter than you really are?” It would be really difficult for me, i em alrreadi schmark gauy. In fact i play characters that are not necessary stupid but that hide their intelligence behind either obfuscating madness or stupidity. Many people here has a very good point with the whole “different kinds of intelligence” thing. looking smart is not different from looking complete loony, you just need that the other people believe it. Smart people makes mistakes too, that really help. Tony Stark kinda is a smart guy, he made a suit of armor and also blowup his secret identity in five minutes. In the Pink Panther, the inspector Clouseau it is not the smarter guy, still he resolves the crime, the same Columbo. 18 INT can be academic intellect, street cleverness, powerful deduction or just good planing from different perspectives, or even neither of these.
Good call on Tony Stark. Oftentimes it’s Cap rather than Iron Man coming up with the clever tactics. Tony’s intelligence manifests in his engineering genius and ready wit. Lots of different ways to play it!
Well one is an inventor, playboy, philanthropist, exCEO, and armored hero, the other one is a WWII veteran with military training biologically enhanced capabilities and human Popsicle. Tony Stark can be more intelligent but Octogenarian Captain can apply his own intelligence in another ways. In D&D the INT stat can be more thing that just smartness, can be wits and cleverness, and yes some of this things can be part of the WIS stat. Um, INT vs WIS, better don’t start with that.
Well then. There’s a comic idea that I need to write. :3
Yeah, flame wars for everybody 🙂
I spent like three weeks researching chemistry and old methods of creating chemicals for my alchemist.
Sure, it was a lot of work, but when I can just pull out a vial of virtually anything that will melt and/or explode whatever is in the way, it is nice. Making water explode is fun.
In most cases though, I think the best way is understanding the focus of their intelligence (A genius chess player is not a genius artist, even though both are highly intelligent in their own rights), and at the minimum, understanding the basics. Remember, we have d20’s to roll for those things we can’t describe.
Caesium in water? Nice.
I like your research idea. Putting in a bit of time away from the table to look up discipline-specific stuff is a solid way to simulate esoteric knowledge.
When I was younger I thought on this question for a little bit on occasion.
As I grew older I realized that even the smartest people act incredibly stupid or just average about as much as everyone else does. So roleplaying a smart character is really just having them be really good at whatever their specialty is. Which is probably what you’re going to do for any character anyway, so it’s not really an issue worth fussing over.
Weirdly, I think people get intimidated by the idea of intelligence as this colossal thing that they’ve got to live up to. “I’m a genius! I must be a genius all the time!” Naw man. Just be good at your thing. That’s how your genius manifests.
The problem with intelligent characters isn’t necessarily plans, it’s facts. Particularly the ones that are actually things in the real world, like math stuff or the anatomy and biology of wolves, bears, snakes, and other animals commonly encountered by adventurers. And also stuff that isn’t real but falls under the purview of the DM or the setting or the module so they can’t just make it up (monsters, history of this particular evil temple, that sort of thing).
Plus, while it’s definitely reasonable for a person with just one high mental stat to not be good at solving riddles or coming up with a plan it becomes more of an issue if you have high values in multiple mental stats (specifically both Int and Wis for plans, and any two for riddles). And someone with good values for all the mental stats ought to be able to solve riddles all day.
One useful tactic I’ve seen for the “isn’t real but falls under the purview of the DM or the setting or the module” problem is to actually allow the player to make stuff up. You rolled 40 on that check to identify the T-Rex? Alright. Tell me that its vision is based on movement. Or that it can’t stand the taste of licorice. Or that it’s spooked easily by loud noises.
It won’t work if you’re trying to take a hard line on simulation, but the “make up the lore as you go” solution can work a treat in less serious games.
I think the “vague platitudes” thing would work better for wisdom than intelligence. You could bring a bag of fortune cookies and open one whenever your character needs to give a bit of wise advice.
I’m not going to lie. I love the shit out of that fortune cookie idea.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/bard/bardic-masterpieces/masterpieces/pageant-of-the-peacock/
^This. A million times this. Who cares if you know what you’re actually talking about as long as they think you do!
I believe the peacock is the spirit animal of this comic.
There’s also a Vigilante social talent regarding this, “Well-Known Expert.”
“The vigilante’s social identity is known as an expert in numerous fields, including areas and topics the vigilante hasn’t actually taken the time to study. As a result the vigilante is skilled at encouraging others to discover solutions to difficult problems themselves by asking probing questions, while appearing to give the information himself.
In his social identity, the vigilante can take 10 when attempting to aid another on Appraise, Craft, and Knowledge checks. He also gains a bonus equal to half his class level (minimum +1) on Bluff checks to appear knowledgeable in Appraise, Craft (all), and Knowledge (all). If he has the Renown social talent, he grants a +3 bonus when he successfully aids another on these skill checks, rather than +2.
In his area of renown, the vigilante’s social identity is so trusted as an expert that scholars are inspired to make amazing deductions and intuitive leaps in discussions with him. A creature that has already failed a Knowledge check on a specific subject can attempt one additional check to gain information on the same topic if it receives an aid another bonus from the vigilante when doing so.”
Maybe Magus has taken a level of Vigilante and gotten that talent. The Magus we regularly see is the Vigilante Identity, and her secret Social Identity is shown here, demiplanologist Dr. Maggy S. Purrson.
…I am way too proud of that name.
I love everything about this comment. Especially Maggy S. Purrson.
Once again, I’m reminded of my desire to play an “everyone has vigilante levels” gestalt game.
As intelligent characters go, I feel that sometimes the stat solves itself. Specifically, Knowledge checks.
Intelligence is the sheer value of accumulated information. It doesn’t cover practical or pragmatic application of said accumulation (that’s more Wisdom related), but at very least, it’s available to be acted on. Int also gives you skill points. If you’re a Wizard, once you’ve filled up your Spellcraft and such, all those Int-based skill points are headed straight to your Knowledges.
Whenever you encounter something you are unfamiliar with, a successful Knowledge check will allow the DM to share some or all of the mystery with your character. Various classes have their fortes, Rogues with K Local, Rangers and Druids with K Nature, etc, but that much only makes them savvy in their area of expertise. Being able to pull down that veil consistently in all areas will, by itself, promote your character’s identity as a distinctly learned man/woman/plant creature.
As a side note, casters in general are the relatively high skill cap classes. If you’re used to them, you’re probably already system savvy. If you’re not, the Bumbling Wizard narrative archetype can be a great source of levity to your crew. Everyone’s a winner!
Knowledge skills are a good mechancial tool. To quote myself from another comment though:
I find that big Knowledge rolls are a useful way to reinforce the idea of intelligence. If you’re trying to convey intelligence through your character though, I think it’s the RP side of things that causes the most trouble. In that sense, I think that the archetype of the “bumbling wizard” is an clever choice for a newcomer, as it more closely mirrors system mastery. Like I always say, I love nothing better than watching mechanics reinforce RP and vice versa!
I take note of particularly high scores, physical or mental, in my notes during Session Zero. Then, if I come across something that seems important but obtuse and I’m not sure the players will get it, I toss it as a freeby to my high Intelligence player and let him be smart.
Occasionally I’ll look at my Wits 5 Wod Player and go “Your high wits allows you to figure out X” when he seems to be floundering with a particular mystery if I feel it’s reasonable. Obviously some things aren’t about how witty or smart you are and what information you have, and so that requires rolls or investigation, but I use high Intelligence or Wits as a “hey, go this way” kind of thing. It’s like the Common Sense Merit, but instead of getting to ask your GM questions, your GM occasionally gives you a nod in the right direction.
And Pathfinder Magus only gets up to sixth level spells anyway, so she only needs to start with a Intelligence of 12 to max her potential. ^.^
I like this technique. So often we come to bottlenecks where the PCs need information to advance. Rather than using my old standby (whoever rolls highest is the one to notice) it’s nice to use the opportunity to reinforce character concepts. Good show!
Playing up the, “not all intelligence is practical/applicable” aspect is my favorite go-to.
I’ve had characters whose hobbies revolved around building Rube Goldberg machines, and some where I just bone up on really obscure facts between games so my character can do the ‘absent-minded professor’ routine and randomly spout them off.
Or go the speculative route, where you don’t actually need any answers at all if your questions sound smart enough:
pause in the middle of a fight and deliver a lecture on metal fatigue (making up stats for how “mending” interacts with it) and speculating about experiment designs to test the interaction of planes-hopping and metal fatigue, or what-have-you.
That kind of thing.
Also, on the riddles thing.
If you give riddles at the END of a session, the players who want to puzzle it out have a lot of between-session time to try that, and impatient ones can google the answer.
Just make sure that at the start of the next session, you have everyone write down their answer for you and give them an in-game reward (extra xp or a bonus to an appropriate next roll or whatever) for doing “homework”.
I like to give more generous/creative bonuses to people who spent time puzzling it out and more rote rewards for people who looked it up.
I can usually tell who did which, but if you can’t figure it out you can find out by disguising the question: “I want to calibrate my riddles better, so can I get feedback from you all? How much time did you spend on this before you Googled the answer? Did any of you already know this one?”
And of course if it turns out all of them don’t even try, you know this is not the crowd for riddles and can move on to other things.
Coming up with intelligent characters is easy, having super high wisdom is really hard for me. I cant help as a player wnating to do stupid stuff. Intelligent people act stupid, wisdom is more about not acting stupid
I’ve had this problem with “boring hero” type characters. I thought it might be fun for a change to roll up a generic hero. I missed my sarcastic quipping too much, and had no choice but to retire the dude. I’ve since stopped trying to make characters that work against my playstyle. Of course, for me that has more to do with personality than ability scores. I tend to play my dudes how I like rather than worry too much about “what Charisma means to me” this time around.
In my high Essence (6-7) Exalted game I have a Lunar with 10 Int (I bumped up her stats because she is in a group with four Infernals).
So, I stole a thing from the tv-show Leverage (which also exists in some RPG but I can’t remember which) – flashback scenes to stuff the Lunar prepared in advance because she is just that smart. I do let the other players use this too, but it’s more pronounced for the higher intelligent character.
If my PCs are going to do something stupid, as they are wont to do, I could let her roll something appropriate which could award her 1-3 flashback scenes that she can use at anytime during that particular “mission” to show us that she might have convinced a cook to pour poison in the punch that will make people sick and give the group a distraction or that she hid a smoke bomb behind the geranium for when they get caught or whatnot.
This also helps cut down on general planning time. I’ve spent too much time watching sessions (as a player and ST) disappear into making convoluted plans that probably won’t survive enemy contact anyway.
Are you thinking of Blades in the Dark? Check out the “Flashbacks” section over here:
https://bladesinthedark.com/planning-engagement
It’s on my mind since I’m starting my first campaign this coming Thursday. 🙂
Looks about right. 🙂
On the topic of population sizes:
Be me.
Look up planar metropolis stats.
Planar metropolis: 100,000+ people.
“Across the planes of existence, there are places where untold masses live, converging in groups so large as to boggle the imagination.”
Realize that medieval Paris has 250000-300000 people.
Realize medieval Beijing had 600000+ people
Realize Rome had 1000000+ people.
Reakize that Sigil, a place with portals to every place on the material plane, the NEXUS of PLANES has, on a good day, 250000 people.
Weep in frustration at WoTC’s lack of demographics knowledge.
To rephrase the commentary on this comic: Intelligence is bullshit! There is no single factor governing everything we group under “intelligence”. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.
Now, to be fair, all attributes are bullshit. Archers have strong arms and (relatively) weak legs, dexterity and agility are different things, and a talented musician might not be able to lie their way out of a paper bag. But then again, nobody’s ever tried to quantify people’s “Charisma Quotients” and then say high-CQ individuals/demographics are superior.
From the way they have performed so far, one can get the impression that they will make their way through the entire plot.
Sick burn or clever compliment? YOU BE THE JUDGE!
Both!