User stop solving all my riddles, your character only has 6 INT!

Riddles often rely on lateral or unconventional thinking.

Soneone who exclusively operates on lateral thinking would be both very good at riddles and very, very bad at everyday life.

Therefore, someone with low INT can be good at riddles, as long as you define whether their INT score is based on idiocy or retardation.

>"user stop kicking in steel enforced doors, your character only has 6 STR!"
>This is acceptable

>"user stop solving all my riddles, your character only has 6 INT!"
>This is not

This is the same attitude that leads to martials being constrained to the laws of realism/plausibility while casters are not.

It's more that the player is solving riddles himself and not playing his character.

Okay here's an easy fucking solution:

Have the dumb character's player talk to the smart character's player OOC, so that way she smart character can actually say the answer to the riddle.

>but he's supposed to figure it out

This is an easy solution to the age-old problem of the charismatic character not having a charismatic player, or the smart player having a dumb character. Why shouldn't you have your party members work together OOC to solve a social situation or a mind game as much as they work OOC to properly arrange themselves in combat?

How about you don't use any goddamn "riddles" and write a real plot.

mental and social basic stats are bad

Attributes work well thematically or mechanically, but not both.
Compare 1e with 3.5, etc.

You need below average INT to think teeth are horses.

Here is a suggestion.

Stop being a fuck boi and doc his xp.

if a riddle has an int requirement, it should be a roll, not a riddle

A riddle isn't necessarily an INT thing. It's probably more a WIS thing really if your riddle has nothing to do with logic.
Like the man who managed to survive in the desert with nothing but a calender, there's nothing logical about eating the "sundays" at all

>Well if someone with 6 int can solve your riddles, you might want to work on some better ones.
the problem is OOC

This.
Reward good roleplaying, punish bad roleplaying.

The 4 int barbarian solving Parthalaxes' Labyrinth of Maddening Riddles is acceptable, but ONLY if his PC goes through extremely stupid reasoning to get the answer.

>"What walks on four legs in morning, two legs in afternoon, and three legs at night?"
>Well... in the morning, I tend to walk on fours, to honour my ancestors, the wolves. During the afternoon I walk with my axe in hand... and at night, I do my one handed push-ups, and sometimes I move while I do those, so that means walking right? I'm the answer! I'm a man!

Fuck you Caesar.

My character managed to solve a riddle because he was drunk and I roleplayed him that way. We found a hidden passage with some gibberish on it, so he just knocked on the stone that hid the passage and it opened.

The GM told us that he used the same thing for another group and it took them a long time to solve the riddle. Sometimes you need a drunk monk to get shit done.

Because reeeeeeee metagaming or some shit like that. I dunno man, people are weird.

Generally I imagine Int score to be a reflection of their level of education, rather than just straight up IQ. A 6 int character isn't a complete braindead retard, they just can't read good.

Oh good, so you're saying my character that has high mental stats should be able to solve these riddles? Very well, I'll use my superior deductive abilities and give the NPC the correct answer, whatever that might be.

Riddle diddle, puzzle schmuzzle. Ain't got time for playing with levers and pulleys, we got heroics to do, besides the sarcophagus opened when I just gently knocked on it.

INT seems (as best I can tell) to refer to how easily the character acquires and integrates new information, not to the broad concept of "being smart" as we understand it in everyday conversation.

I'm open to any examples of mechanics in any edition of D&D which indicate otherwise, but if this is the case, then it affects one aspect of riddle-solving, but not all aspects.

Jesus Christ that's frightening

>user stop surviving, you only have 2 hp

Isn't that WIS?

I'm fine with DMs enforcing this, as long as the character with high INT can just roll to solve the riddle without thinking about it OOC. If they can't but you still try to enforce this you're being inconsistent.

just because you solved it doesnt mean you are smart, just elaborate a ridiculous nonsensical train of thought that happens to lead to the same conclusion

But he has 14 Wisdom!

I guess one way to barricade dumbass characters from figuring the riddle is to abstract the victory.

They roll to see if they can articulate the idea properly or act on it.

I'm having a hard time seeing this come to life in an actual scenario but it's a consideration. Since intellect and choice cannot be parted from the player as easily as so many other skills...

Honestly, the DM shouldn't have to enforce it, if you're playing a low-intelligence character, it's up to you, as a player, to roleplay a character lacking in book smarts

yah, that's fair. Like logic rolls in Dark Heresy.

>no, you're not allowed to roll intelligence to solve my riddles, you need to solve them yourself
>you can't solve the riddle, your character only has 6 int

OP gave a hypothetical where the DM did enforce it after a player felt it was fine to answer the riddle with the low INT character. The player felt it was fine, and the DM stepped in and said "no, your character isn't able to do this, solving riddles requires a certain INT score to be able to do."

And if the DM does that, I'm fine with it, as long as the player who's bad at riddles but has an 18 INT character is able to just roll to solve it even if the player doesn't know the answer.

This user gets it.

Being smart and stupid are irrelevant when solving riddles.
>What has roots as nobody sees,
>Is taller than trees Up, up, up it goes,
>And yet never grows?

>have 6 lNT
>can solve riddles OOC
>have 6 STR
>can't crush the BBEG mini

BULLSHlT
U
L
L
S
H
l
T

But Thog heard answer at poetry reading girlfriend drag him to last week! Eric use same riddle to try to get in Betsy's pants! Betsy not care. She likes Ted.

Uh. Skyscraper? No those grow taller.!Castle? Those also grow. Mountain? Maybe.

See, if I'm not allowed to tell the high-int/wis character the answer because they're more likely to know it, then I'll either come up with a chain of non sequiturs that would represent my character's "logic", or have them luck out on the answer, a la "what do the rich need and if you eat it you die/I got nothing"

>character has 20 int
>secretly read the pre-made campaign so he always knows what to do

>Play a dumb-as-shit barbarian
>Try to solve a problem that requires intelligence and thought
>End up using a line of thought straight out of XRA

"If the people are affected by a computer virus, then the best way to cure them is with a human virus."

youtube.com/watch?v=E70q9ojUauM

this basically

reminds me of doing everything with 20 INT char would do with 2 INT char in fallout

would actually consider doing this as faggy as this sounds

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT

I would so love to play a character like Xavier in a campaign, but I feel like the other players would get pissed off really quickly.

>I no longer fear your PAINfries -OOHBOY- for in PAIN, I found the truth. And even though PAIN hurts, you need to confront PAIN if you want to transcend the crushing PAIN of your inner PAIN.

As Goblin Punch says, it probably takes a table of average players to simulate 18 INT anyway.

Or this! Hell, make the riddle answer something obvious, like a fact straight from the monster manual. Then, have the players frantically write backstory elements to justify them knowing the answer.

It's stupid though. There are no downsides - even the guy who stutters and can't ever think of what to say can be a face if someone helps him with what to say, and it'll help him grow confidence in doing it on his own. If a guy isn't as intelligent as his character, helping him with the answer to a riddle is helping him act in-character for his character.

A 6 int adventurer, taking intelligence as it is taken in real life, wouldn't even be able to function as an adult, much less an adventurer.

family trees?

>implying most murderhobos are functional

new fetish.

Uh... my dick?

Isn't intelligence in d&d strictly tied to a character's capacity for knowledge while wisdom governs everything else? A low int char should be able to function in society as long as they have a moderate wisdom.

> riddles are for players, not characters. If you want PCs to make an INT roll to succeed or fail, don't bother writing a puzzle.
> If you want to do puzzles AND have INT help PCs, the way to do it is to award hints to high-INT PCs. This is especially useful when a low-intelligence player has a high-INT character.
> WIS represents natural observation and practical experience. That's why Clerics and Monks run on WIS. INT is natural cleverness and education, which is why Wizards run on INT. WIS makes sense if you're trying to make sense of the human condition or gradually improve at some profession. If you're trying to solve a seemingly paradoxical word puzzle that hinges on many ambiguous meanings of the very "to have", then INT is probably correct. Pattern recognition is squarely in INT's court.

Yet you don't help me when my char has 26 int

Int is book smarts, Wis is street smarts.

Obligatory "Have you tried not playing D&D?"

>Fine, I'll solve your retarded riddle myself instead of rolling if you insist
>But instead of making my next attack roll I'll punch you in your fucking face, it'll only be fair, deal?

Played one session with this DM who admitted to penalizing rolls related to all my plans because I had 8 INT, never mind that they were all plans related to mercenary work, his job.
Never again.

I think this is less about D&D and more about situations where meta-gaming cannot be separated comfortably from skill checks.
I think that if you tried to give the players a puzzle in any system where all of the pertinent information is on the table and rolling can "help" instead of dictate success, the same problem would likely surface.

It seems that riddles need to be incredibly obscure (to thus necessitate a roll for aid/success) or simply not be used at all, if we truly care about divorcing metagaming from roleplay.

here's the thing: modern DMs are way too ready to call something metagaming. Mearles once bitched about a player revealing how many hp he had.

When the knowledge that you're playing a game factors into you in-game decisions (the troll won't kill us, that would be anticlimactic), you're metagaming. When you just run with what the game gives you - a puzzle which inherently has a solution, or the number of hp that represents how healthy you feel - that can never be metagaming. That's just gaming. That's what you're here to do.

Interesting point. I mean, the intersection of motive between the player and character is high. It makes sense to evoke any advantage to survive.
In the case of a riddle in particular, it would be beautiful if I assume all my players went the route of roleplay and held their breaths when they figured out something their character didn't.
It's still a problem, this mismatch of mental ability, because some have gravitated more INT/WIS-powered characters to avoid disparity and better match their real intellects.

I do exactly that. I'm awful at judging whether my character is smart enough to work something out when I as a player have, and I'd feel shitty if choosing to keep an idea to myself because of that ruins shit for the party. So, I play high INT/WIS characters

>hoy, I 'member this one! my ma used ta tell it ta me in da mornings to get mah brain ready for hay-shovelin'.
>sometimes I have to think on it a while, tho

>Using riddles

He's right you know. If you actually were roleplaying the responsible thing would be to not answer the riddle or to roll to see if you should answer it or to nudge someone with a higher int and either give them a hint or the answer. Should the DM have a character with a charisma of 6 pass charisma checks because an eloquent person is playing them and always gives great speeches and makes great debate points despite their character's low charisma?

At least you can still have the player of the low charisma character make a roll and rationalize the failure with something along the lines of "despite the excellent point you make, your character is so uncharismatic that nobody pays attention to him." The problem with riddles is that they really aren't something you want people rolling for. If your riddle or puzzle is just going to be a "roll this high to proceed" gate anyway, you might as well have had a door that required a lockpick check to open or a boulder that required a strength check to move. The only difference is that this time the intelligence character gets to make the roll. Like a previous user said: puzzles are for players, not for characters. They're supposed to be a change of pace from just rolling to solve everything and a chance for the players to feel smart once they solve it.

If you're going to include puzzles or riddles in your game at all, I would recommend letting players handle them OOC so that the smart character can solve it IC, or at the very least allow the stupid character to solve it by accident or something.

I'm quite scared

Yeah guys.

Those wizards are so overpowered

Because they solve

riddles

wihtout even hvaing

18.00

strength

You can fuck right off with those riddles faggot.

Wisdom is a shit stat.

Mental stats are shit stats

Well, if he can roll up 6 or less on 3d6, he earned it. I mean, even complete retards have some lucky ideas once in a while.

May as well just say "the character asks you a riddle, roll int for the answer" then. Why bother asking actual riddles?

for the roleplay potential

If you intended the riddle to be a test of Int score, why didn't you just say "There's a riddle, give me skill rolls." instead of presenting a riddle?
Generally you'd give players direct copies of puzzles or riddles because they'd have fun solving them, because solving riddles is fun and can easily be done at the table. Just like why you'd roleplay out encounters instead of just having someone roll a charisma check and making up whatever words were exchanged: It's more fun.

Intelligence is OK.

You can do both, you know. I usually require skill check, and then players roleplay out it's results.

>they'd have fun solving them, because solving riddles is fun
Imagine if you were going to see a movie, were looking forward to seeing a movie, but in the cinema there was no movie and instead there were tables for a table tennis because table tennis is fun.

That's a pretty shit analogy, user.

Not really, because of the problem of separating player skill and character intelligence.

It's a perfectly legitimate analogy for a pretty shit idea.

Give players a tough riddle

Int checks will give them clues to figure it out

if the dumb character guesses it, chalk it up to dumb luck

sage and hide threads like this, there's been two already today.

Do you play tabletop games explicitly because you get off to the act of rolling dice?
"You encounter a wall. Roll to bust it down."
>13+6
>("Oooh, yeah...that's a good one...")
>"What was that, user?
>"Uh, nothing, just glad because I didn't prepare Knock."

>"You encounter a locked door with a plaque that reads, 'I walk on four le-"
>"Can I just roll to solve the riddle?"
>"Why?"
>"My wizard's got +3 Int and I suck at riddles, I just wanna bypass it."
>"...roll, maybe I'll give you a hint."
>20+3
>user's eye twitches
>"...well, okay then. Your wizard has heard this riddle before, and quickly quips- user are you oka-?"
>user jizzes all over the table, still reeling from that well timed nat 20

I've never heard of anyone considering low INT to be the kind of absent-minded professor spaznik you're describing.

If it is a narrative heavy story? sure. But in an OSR-like game, this is par for course and is accepted.

I'm certainly not playing them to be sorting through something copied from Riddles & Crosswords magazine. If I wanted to do that, I would have bought that magazine.

>it's hard or even impossible to roleplay as a character that's smarter than the person playing them

Wow, why hasn't anyone noticed this issue before?

>Why can't I solve this riddle, my character has 20 INT

This is why my system doesn't have int as a stat, but uses willpower for casting magic.

Character skill checks are based on their education/life experience/work experience rolls.

>If I wanted a story, I'd bought a book
>If I wanted to do mock combat, I'd play a videogame
>If I wanted to RP, I'd have joined an improv group

Come on user, riddles are pretty intrinsically a part of classic fantasy RPGs

Being a minmaxing faggot should, in fact, come with consequences. There should, of course, be some leeway, but if you dump charisma, your convincing arguments will matter a lot less, and if you dump intelligence, your character can't solve riddles and won't know that trolls are weak to fire. Don't like, accept that you may have to settle for having an 18 in your best stat after racials.

I have always seen it as a relationship between "knowledge and logic" and "empathy and intuition."

Wizards, INT based casters, acquire their abilities through meticulous study and poring over ancient tomes etc.

Clerics, Druids, Sorcerors (WIS based casters) have their abilities because of an intuitive connection with some other power (God, nature, nasty blood) though it could be argued Clerics obessively study religious rites.

If the answer to a riddle "makes sense," INT should be a factor in solving it. If it requires some ridiculous tangential logic, WIS is more appropriate. For example:

>A man is in a dark room with only one match, and must choose between a ::Lantern::, a ::Fireplace::, and a ::Candle::. What does he light first? (INT based riddle)
Solution: This is a full sentence to not make the answer a gimme without hovering over it, but the answer is the match.

>A man is in a room with no windows or doors, and only a mirror and a table. How does he escape? (WIS based riddle)
Solution: He looks in the mirror and sees his reflection, he takes what he ::saw:: and saws the table in half. He pushes the two halves together against the wall to make a ::(w)hole::, and exits through the hole.

Should have taken ranks in Profession (Mercenary)