Dragons have intelligence scores in the 40s

His disadvantage is that he's a fucking capitalist

That too, but that might not be relevant to OP.

>Lex Fucking Luther
>He has a disadvantage.
>He is insane.

More like he's so petty and mean that he had to run as an independant candidate.

Intelligent isn't the same as prescient or clairvoyant.
There are lots of things - in fact, most of the genuinely useful things - about the PCs plans that it would be impossible for the dragon to know or figure out.
Arbitrary specifics like where, when, and exactly how something should be done, for example.

>I have an IQ of 400

Ha, no, that's your IQ you're thinking of there, user. Your IQ is approaching 40.

Ryuutama

>good dragon rules

Shadowrun.

Yeah, in hexdecimal.

... wait, shit.

They have high intelligence, and lots of power. However, they're also greedy and lazy. They're also kept in check by other dragons.

They're like the nerd who spends all day in his cave. Super smart, but they don't necessarily do anything with those smarts.

...I wonder if dragons just secretly have a mental internet connection this whole time? It would explain a lot.

Fairly obvious, really. Dragons loke to sleep on their hoards for long periods of time. Dragons will often have minions. While the dragon may make the most brilliant plan ever conceived, the minions are probably too dumb to execute the plan.

>...I wonder if dragons just secretly have a mental internet connection this whole time? It would explain a lot.

They do if they are secretly dragon androids.

>low_quality_bait.jpg

I don't like dragons that are both stronger and smarter than humans. I prefer western dragons that have animal levels of intelligence. That's something Dragon Age got right, the dragons there were about as smart as dolphins.

That kinda falls apart when you realize Karl Marx hated Russians, Lenin came to distrust/dislike Stalin near the end of his life, and Maoist China had such poor relations with the USSR that they became buddies with the USA.

Literally who

I don't think you understand that meme yet, come back when you've lurked a bit more and try again.

>What edition of D&D even gives dragons an INT approaching 40?
Not 5e, that's for sure. Even Ancients range from 10 to 20.

>Posts complaint about dnd rules
>The issue has already been fixed by the edition update a year ago
Do we need to take out the Slowpoke images?

I always liked that about dragon age, too.

Dragons capping out at 20 INT is a little odd, considering D&Ds traditions. Personally, i sorta like it though.

It's particularly odd when things like Balors have like, i think it's 21 or 22.

The ability score limit of 20 is definitely a soft limit rather than a hard one.

>The ability score limit of 20 is definitely a soft limit rather than a hard one.
It's specifically a soft limit, you need epic levels of gear, magic, or being to break it.

Make extremely convoluted plans involving a dragon worshipping cult or shapeshifting/human controlling magic.

Socialism/Communism just doesn't work. Marx never worked a day in his life, all he did was party and live off loans and inheritances. Of course he would write a philosophy book about leeching off the work of others but the moment his retardation became mainstream he didn't think it was cool any more.

>marx is the only person who has ever advocated for socialism/communism and the sole person whose ideology inspired it

I'm sure you don't benefit from the roads being built with your parents taxes, you little shit.
I'm sure you fucking don't.

Not him, but to be fair those crazy 1830s Utopian Socialists weren't any good either. Napoleon III (ironically enough) may have been the only self-proclaimed socialist who didn't horribly fuck everything up and actually improved the lot of the masses.

Infrastructure is a colabrative project to help all of socity

Redistribution of wealth and infrastructure are not comparable you fucking mong

If you put someone in the bottom of society and don't give them the opportunity to rise up and become productive, they're going to become criminals.
Even if it's not about starvation, but just basic fundamentals of life like television or internet - if there aren't any jobs that pay well enough, if there isn't any meaningful way of getting it, they're going to take it, out of desperation.

What happens then, if you make sure that those people have access to jobs, and the health care they need to keep those jobs. When you let them work as an engine of the economy, to improve your GDP by stimulating consumption, moving money and creating value, resulting in growth and prosperity, instead of just bottom-feeding like you'd have otherwise condemned them to?

Some degree of wealth redistribution isn't selfless at all.
It's an investment in a better and more robust economy - even if you take all care and consideration for your fellow human beings out of the equation.

But you can't do it by simply giving croney capitalist deals to businesses, like they have in the united states. Of course a welfare state is going to be inefficient if you tell businesses they can just set the prices however they want, you're going to buy X number of millions of units regardless.

Intelligence ability scores vary between editions, sometimes by a lot. It's only 3.PF that has such high scores.

In 2e, the maximum ability score was 25.

In Basic, the maximum was 18.

Honestly, you should play them as a paranoid hoarder that knows magic and is strong enough and smart enough to make massive earthworks; or, alternatively, is powerful enough to kidnap engineers and architects, force them to design their defenses, and is equally powerful enough to press giants into service in order to actually build said defenses.

Obviously the engineer or architect must be kept as a prisoner, or simply eaten.

Dragons also desire to completely dominate their territory, so you can almost guarantee that most monsters within its domain are its slaves, vassals, or other level of subject. Anything else is a rival that must be killed or driven out, or is so pitiful the dragon can gain no use from it.

It doesn't work because people won't be satisfied with what they have when people of other countries and their own leaders have more then they do yet the state ideology preaches everyone having a fair stake.

Objectivsim/Libertarianism also doesn't work because if you build a society on pure personal merit and dismantle the welfare state and its benefits eventually the have-nots will outnumber the haves and be mad enough to do something about it. Then you can either turn into a police state to suppress the rabble, betraying the fundamental mandate of individual freedom from state control libertarianism/objectivism is built around, or you can allow yourself to be lined up and shot by the rebelling proletariat.

Both extremes are retarded in their own way, Viva la regulated free market capitalism with a robust social safety net. That way the forward thing and ambitious can still make a lot of money even if its not as MUCH as they could make in an unregulated environment, but in return the poors are kept sated on entitlements and don't burn the whole system down

Intelligence does affect how perceptive you are, a dragon would anticipate what youre doing while youre doing it because youre a retard compared to him who is also slow as fuck and weak.

>replying to lazy bait
When you give them replies, it just encourages them.

Fewer replies today means less bait tomorrow.

Your idea is bad, and you know it, pal.

Speaking of Ancalagon, Several of my players have expressed an interest in a campaign taking place in Beleriand around the time of the War of Wrath.
Any idea what material I should look into except the Silmarillon?

I don't think we can consider this chart accurate, considering how vague and almost apocryphal Tolkien's descriptions of the dragons is the silmarillion were.

>pic related

Ik I just pulled a commie pic from something
>tfw communism still rustles jimmies

This is what happens when you tie mental resistance to how smart something is.

Well, when you do that and can't accept the idea of monsters being weak to anything. Because heaven forbid a strong enemy has any weaknesses to speak of.

Read the Children of Hurin.
It has some pretty neat stuff about glauring (iirc) in it.

Yes, this album right here for INSPIRATION. Just remember that no matter how badass the players are, Fingolfin will always be more badass, by an infinite margin.

youtube.com/watch?v=kZ1bbXUEweQ

Because of their exceptionally long lives and experience, a GM should roleplay a dragon(or any other high mental stat character) as any other broad minded character with any or all of the following "feats/traits".

>1. Complete? knowledge of the character's personality and fears.
Either they inferred it because the characters are not so special snowflakes when viewed from a 1000 year lens, or their tells are visible to a Sherlock Holmes level intellect and the rest is arithmetic (as a child is to an adult). As a practical matter, the GM should know this of the characters by the time of a confrontation anyway and the players should respond in character to any pressure. Resisting a character weakness trap would require a roleplay reason for the character development (at least a stat roll to act out of character) which is a plus not a minus.

>2. Complete? knowledge of the main plot and all the dramatis personae.
The players should be slightly in the dark about the plot. The Dragon should at least have in active memory the state of plot as of the present time as the GM would. The GM dropping hints from the Dragon to this effect, perhaps even false hints depending on the mood and group is advisable to represent this. Any petty objective the dragon might have can be used as a cover for the exchange. Do quest for dragon, get nugget of information about the plot otherwise lost to the player's IRL intellect.

>3. The "bag of fuck you player".
If a GM/Dragon is in fact tricked/out-smarted, and the GM is competent enough without aggravating the players, the dragon should be able to manage 'Mage: the Ascension' levels of pulling a rabbit out of their hat to thwart the trick (backup monster allies, magic items out of my back pocket, new plot information that contradicts former info, etc). Just follow the rules against Vulgar magic in that system and you should be fine. By no means punish players for good thinking and roleplay, even the most genius can be tricked by the most gormless novice, but the Rule of Cool should allow for a bit of 'in progress campaign editing' if the situation and players enjoyment will allow for it to simulate godlike intelligence.

>4. The "slow play"
The dragon has gotten used to 'thinking down to the player's level' to intentionally lull them in to a false sense of superiority. It pretends to be younger than it really is, or the black sheep of dragons, etc. Any lack of intelligence during interaction is later made up for by after game reflection by the GM for off-screen lulz that might have been the dragon fucking with the players or not. Never cripple the players, just demonstrate a greater command of the world by the dragon than they possess off-screen.

>5. The "beneath my notice false positive"
Everything that points to the dragon in the plot as a relevant actor is in fact garbage information. The dragon has no stake or role to play in the story and is simply a red herring. Conversations with the dragon play it as arrogant but ignorant of the situation to no useful effect on the story. Literally the anti-Checkov's Gun. When/if the players return to the dragon's lair it is long gone as is all treasure. If you can con a player into actively wondering if the Dragon is really behind this when you know the dragon is long gone, congratulations, you've succeeded.

Makes more sense for mental resistance to be high they dumber you are anyway

Just do not tell them anything and do small inconsistent actions. Let their paranoia run wild. Also consider the personality of your dragon, where they aged, what their purpose is. Define a personality and run with what you would do if you where in their shoes. Half of the fun of playing op characters is not telling your players how op you are and just letting them find out the hard way.

>regulated free market

Rolled 19 (1d20)

Behind the scenes, dragons shitpost at each other on DragonChan daily about their least favorite game, Hoards and Humans.

>about as smart as dolphins
>dolphins are likely about as intelligent as humans
>they're just physically incapable of speaking human language
>we're physically incapable of speaking dolphin language

I was made to take an official IQ test when I was a child. I know what my parents said my score was, but I am almost certain it was far lower than that.

And yet they don't create governments or taxes. Dolphins are smarter than statists.

There is a spell for that in one of the 40k RPGs.

>Intelligent isn't the same as prescient or clairvoyant.
It is when you're a wizard

They don't have hands or tentacles, so obviously they can't trade (thereby eliminating currency and taxes) and dolphins are only ever temporarily in pods, so even a tribe-like government isn't all that likely.

In general I think you're only made to take IQ tests if they suspect you're fairly above or below, so by now I'm sure you have a pretty good idea which it is

I struggled a lot with vector calculus and linear algebra, and it took me months of studying to understand quaternions for an opengl course I took in college, so I am pretty sure it is on the lower end.

I generally try to roleplay characters of average or slightly below average intelligence. I'm not even really sure how I would portray a character with 16/17 intelligence, let alone anything with superhuman levels of intelligence.

I know it's not the topic, but where does it says that luthor is smarter than Brainiac?

I read Atlas Shrugged! I'm a big boy now! Pay attention to my political opinions!

You would only have to worry about that with the most ancient of dragons, and by then I figure a lot of their intelligence would be 'taken up' by simply remembering all the things that everyone else has forgotten.

Young dragons might only be a bit smarter than a human, or if you're an unfortunate white dragon, even at your most ancient you're only at relatively genius human levels. So you roleplay them like you would any other character.

You can't have a truly free market because market leaders will always use underhanded tactics to push their competitors out business and create monopolies, which then regulate the market.

It's the same way you can't have a truly communist society because there's always going to be a Hitler or Stalin to seize control in the absence of a single leader.

Intelligence is not the same as knowledge, and it's not directly proportional to age. In fact, your knowledge peaks in your early teens. A juvenile dragon may be significantly more intelligence than an ancient one, and while the ancient dragon will have unimaginably more experience and knowledge than the juvenile, even the juvenile will have more than you.

That's not how the monster manual puts it - at least for 3.5e. Not sure about other editions.

I find it very kekworthy that, when she was old and decrepit, Ayn Rand ended up collecting Social Security checks. Says a lot about objectivism if you ask me.

3.5

Thanks, will read/listen.

>something having a benefit means that that something is good
nice meme

What you're ignoring is the inefficiency inherent in an administration large enough to manage a complex industrial economy actually makes that administration unable to manage said economy.

>If you put someone in the bottom of society
No one "put" them there, they're just there.

>don't give them the opportunity to rise up
people are capable of creating opportunities, they don't need to be handed out. I'm aware sometimes they're simply aren't enough jobs to go around, and that the working poor is not a myth, but you act like someone has to intentionally create opportunity for someone else to better their life.

>they're going to become criminals
they're adults and can make their own decisions, no one forces them to commit crime. stop removing their agency and responsibility.

>if you make sure that those people have access to jobs
the keynesian "dig a ditch then fill it in" method isn't a way to create sustainable job growth, and that's what most government jobs programs amount to. Plus, the government can't afford to finance this shit, we're running a massive deficit as is.

>and the health care they need to keep those jobs
there are reasons healthcare is so expensive now, and putting a bandaid on one symptom does literally nothing to solve those problems, it just hemorrhages more money.

>When you let them work as an engine of the economy, to improve your GDP by stimulating consumption, moving money and creating value, resulting in growth and prosperity
hahahahaha, this is what you actually believe. use money we don't have, to pay people to do jobs that don't exist, so they can buy products no one is producing with real money, so that businesses grow on a flimsy scaffolding, so that we can gain more wealth that doesn't really exist. fucking brilliant.

just stop now dude, you're memeing out of control.

If you're truly intelligent you take other's incompetence into account

Or you can use your superior knowledge (as a DM) of the game world against them.
A dragon might not be able foresee what a party would do, but he knows enough about the world and is smart enough to eliminate or change every other variable to his favor.

I think there should be a difference between the two; in that near-animalistic dragons are relatively common, but an actual intelligent dragon is fleetingly rare and something terrifying to behold when you figure out they aren't a dumb animal like their kin.

>How do you even roleplay a dragon if you're a DM?

They have some completely different thing going on that the players aren't involved in. It mostly stalemates and/or gets stuck because while the dragon involved is a 50 ton MENSA member, the adversary is a 45 ton 999 member.

It's xanathos gambits all the way down.

>eventually the have-nots will outnumber the haves and be mad enough to do something about it
marxist determinism
Can't we have a culture that looks up to the haves? Is that impossible?
Maybe if we get rid of inheritance.

Never underestimate the depths of stupidity.

One of the things that I liked about Kingdoms of Amalur was that it had only one dragon but it was a big one.

>dolphins are smart

This is a meme, and it needs to die. Horses are smarter than dolphins.

It's a joke, pinko

You sure? Even the oldest gold dragon in 3.5 only has an Int of 32.

Maybe you should open up a history book and look at something called "The Gilded Age". It was a period in America's history where there was no minimum wage, effectively no economic regulation aside from controls on counterfeiting, no social safety net, and the only choice a person had for a better life was to work harder and hope it paid off (despite the fact that many many jobs were being lost to much cheaper and more reliable machines).

Hint: It fucking sucked for everyone but the richest few. There's a reason that the most economically prosperous societies (Switzerland, Scandinavian and Nordic Countries, etc) don't look like that.

Hard to look up to the haves when they're stuffing their faces with champaign and caviar in their huge mansions while you're barely scraping by with beans and bread in a cramped, ramshackle apartment.

If the gap wasn't so wide as to make being a "have" unattainable, as it is in America, there would be a much healthier culture to money and wealth in my opinion.

>implying I don't know history
Maybe you should pick up a book, you'd know that the primary reason for Scandinavian prosperity is them staying out of both world wars and having an extremely laissez faire economy for much of the last century. The myth of scandinavian socialism is exactly that because it only works due to the wealth Sweden was able to build up with a non-socialist economy while the rest of Europe was being ripped apart in two of the bloodiest most destructive wars in history.

>where there was no minimum wage
you mean like in Finland right now?

>effectively no economic regulation aside from controls on counterfeiting
surely you mean "industrial regulation", still not true but the government had a finger on many industries at the time.

>no social safety net
for many there still isn't, and yet things are better now anyway.

>It fucking sucked for everyone but the richest few
You do realize there were people in America besides poor factory workers living in the East and the Robber Barons, yeah?

Plus, many if these problems were solved when the government stopped repressing worker organizings. Unions != the redistribution of wealth, and I personally would argue that the rights of workers to freely associate and choose to collectively bargain with their employer ought be fully allowed and encouraged under an ideal laissez faire capitalist system.

I'm honestly a little insulted that you tried to lecture me on common knowledge, and you didn't even bother to get it right.

>Scandinavia stayed out of both world wars

Guys, I found the problem. His history book only goes up to 1920.

Sweden, denmark, and norway, have been in many wars against each other, and they were affected by the world wars, and did take part in them. They also warred against each other in the pre-christian era. The "primary reason" for scandinavian property is not "staying out of war", but a combination of resources, population, society, and laws. You may single out one thing in most of them, like Norway being dirt poor shit-tier country if it weren't for fossil fuel, fish and potato, but none of these are war.