How to roleplay this? (Int 20, wis 10, cha 5)


Advice


Greetings to all, I'm making tiefling wizard (got inspired by the looks of one certain tieling in Skull & Shackles AP5) but I'm having some problems in how to roleplay him. The problem arises from his ability scores: Intelligence 20 (I tend to know pretty well battlefield tactics, and remember some monster stats), wisdom 10 and charisma...5... He is pretty scary looking, dark blue transparent skin, long tail which whips around all the time and strange eyes (haven't thought about them yet). I don't want him to be just simply irritating, so I need clues how to make him somehow socially inadept? Only thing I've thought is that he is very very arrogant about his own intelligence, he thinks he is only one who should think how to approach situations, his opinion is always the right one and so on... I'm not really sure about should I pick lawful good or neutral good aligment, being honorful is the thing which disturbs me in LG.

And his buddy is half-orc barbarian... and he wants to establish magic shop with all kind of shunned people :)

Thanks for the help!

Liberty's Edge

Possibilities:

Arrogance is good, if you want to go that route. So is using extremely technical vocabulary that most people won't get.

Complete tone-deafness to people's emotional states is solid as well, as is shyness in social situations. Being less-than-attractive helps here, too, but isn't enough explanation on its own.

Not being very assertive makes sense and goes with the shyness quite well, though it goes less well with the arrogance. Mixing the two is possible, though, with him being awkward, shy and diffident until something he sees as his area of specialty comes up, when he suddenly becomes very assured and arrogant.

Those are the basic routes that seem reasonable to me.

Grand Lodge

Have you considered the Clever Wordplay trait?

It would allow you to choose, say, Diplomacy, and use your intelligence, instead of your charisma, for checks.


HOLY MOLY! How I've missed that trait O_O that is simply amazing. I've gotta discuss this with my group, because one of us (we're only three players + GM) was going to make oracle solely for the charisma so that we have ''party face''. We're specifically going to play wrath of the righteousness and our gm said there will be some heroic armyleading so one high cha character seemed like a must.

Liberty's Edge

Clever Wordplay is really cool...but it will not help lead armies. That's explicitly Charisma based, not anything to do with Bluff or Diplomacy directly.

Just for the record.

It's still totally worth taking if you want to participate in social stuff, but an actual high-Charisma character is still a pretty good call.

Lantern Lodge

5 Cha?

Looks "scary looking, dark blue transparent skin, long tail which whips around all the time and strange eyes", but wears bright psychedelic colors! Add that color scheme to everything he wears! Like a EVERYTHING.
If he has a shirt in shocking lime green, then his buttons got to a flaming orange... etc
He should have like brightly colored ribbons every where on him while wearing spiked shoulder pats.

Plus have him wear 10 inch stilettos high heels! Nothing screams arrogant and "listen to me" then stomping the ground on 10 inch stilettos heels.

If anyone looks at your character, make sure their eyes bleed...


I would roleplay it as a guy who thinks a lot about things and he worked things out very carefully, but he just doesn't get it why things doesn't always go his way. Like "I have calculate all the possibility of such event, yet, the outcome was unexpected." Everytime he failed something, I image he would say that. He would be a calm collective man, but get frustrated whenever things goes wrong, which happens often because of his look and his luck. He can calculate how to score a woman in the tavern by using statistic, but never works because of bad luck.

Liberty's Edge

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Sheldon from Big Bang Theory!

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32

You could play him as somebody who can understand books and lore perfectly well, but who sees human nature as too unpredictable to really comprehend. You know logically what people should be thinking/feeling in a given situation and are consistently surprised when they behave counter to good logic.

The type of guy who sees a girl he likes, and rather than trusting himself to court her naturally, reads a bunch of love sonnets and quotes them precisely, not realizing that there's a certain je ne said quoi behind it all that he's not getting.


Charisma is described as:

PRD wrote:
Charisma measures a character's personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance.

A 5 score should mean your character is bad or deficient at these. So a character with no personality works, talks in monotone, doesn't understand/laugh at jokes, etc.

Personal magnetism is mostly out of your hands as a player (that will be up to the GM,) but you could add to your backstory that you had zero friends, and no one liked you.

Ability to lead is similar to personal magnetism. You can assist with this by not having followers, no cohorts, don't found any wizard schools, don't take on apprentices, etc. Or RP any attempts to do such as total failures.

Finally, appearance. As a tiefling, you could make your character have mottled skin (think like a mutant in Futurama,) one eye socket hangs lower than the other, etc. You could also add a terrible body odor, nasty food remnants constantly clinging to your black and yellow teeth, etc.

With all of that in place, your character is incredibly smart and knows a lot about a lot of things. If another character asks your character a question, you could describe the rancid smell coming off your breath as you go into a long and detailed explanation.

Best of luck.

Grand Lodge

5 charisma could be played as the stoic, emotionless fellow.


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Whatever you choose, be annoying to npcs, not to players.


Similar to what other people have said you can play him as
-a smartass who doesnt give a damn about other "stupid" people - and lets them know he doesnt care/ knows much more/ tells his opinions all the time without being asked etc. ("Sheldon")
-ugly and irritating as a person (i.e. selfish, talks to himself all the time, doesnt pay attention to other peoples needs/ opinions, smells funny etc.) ("Ferengi" from Star Trek come to mind)
-smart but shy and socially awkward (just look around your avarage gaming group :D )


Marc Radle wrote:
Sheldon from Big Bang Theory!

This is exactly how I'd see such a PC. He could even HAVE clever wordplay because sometimes, if he takes the time to think before talking he can be a nice guy. But most of the time he just doesn't care enough.


Marc Radle wrote:
Sheldon from Big Bang Theory!

Pretty much this.

This screams 20 Intelligence, 10 Wisdom, and 5 Charisma.


MrRed wrote:

Similar to what other people have said you can play him as

-ugly and irritating as a person (i.e. selfish, talks to himself all the time, doesnt pay attention to other peoples needs/ opinions, smells funny etc.) ("Ferengi" from Star Trek come to mind)

Selfishness is more to do with alignment, not noticing what's going on with other people is more to do with Perceptiveness (i.e. Wisdom) - which is average for him.

However, if he does notice what's going on with other people, he'll probably manage to upset them when he tries to help (low Char = poor social skills). He may or may not notice he's upset them (average Wis), but if he does notice, he'll probably work out why (high Int) ... which may make it frustrating that he can't do anything about it.


Nekrah wrote:

Greetings to all, I'm making tiefling wizard (got inspired by the looks of one certain tieling in Skull & Shackles AP5) but I'm having some problems in how to roleplay him. The problem arises from his ability scores: Intelligence 20 (I tend to know pretty well battlefield tactics, and remember some monster stats), wisdom 10 and charisma...5... He is pretty scary looking, dark blue transparent skin, long tail which whips around all the time and strange eyes (haven't thought about them yet). I don't want him to be just simply irritating, so I need clues how to make him somehow socially inadept? Only thing I've thought is that he is very very arrogant about his own intelligence, he thinks he is only one who should think how to approach situations, his opinion is always the right one and so on... I'm not really sure about should I pick lawful good or neutral good aligment, being honorful is the thing which disturbs me in LG.

And his buddy is half-orc barbarian... and he wants to establish magic shop with all kind of shunned people :)

Thanks for the help!

So the question is "How do I roleplay those stats", eh? Sounds like you rolled up Sheldon from "Big Bang Theory"

Ridiculously intelligent? Check
Poor impulse control (always talking out)? Check
Socially inept? Check!

Bingo! You are Sheldon the Tiefling Mage.

And Mark beat me to it.

DANG!


Saw those stats and immediately thought of Kent from the movie Real Genius.


If you get the cooperation of the GM you can play him just like any other high intelligence character, and then just have NPCs react badly. Basically if you have him act like a non-threatening, unarmed, non-magical human, he should do enough things which creep out NPCs without bothering the PCs or players.


I was thinking Severus Snape (as played by Alan Rickman). Clearly brilliant. Clearly a jerk. And about as perceptive as the next guy.

Shadow Lodge

Full disclosure - my son is high-functioning autistic.

That said, this route was the first thing I thought of with these stats. It's sort of a more extreme take on Sheldon. He'd be just plain different, like born on a different planet with different customs and different 'normal'. He doesn't influence people well because he fundamentally does not 'get' human interaction on a very basic level. Maybe he had to be taught what an angry face looks like, for example. But his CHA is higher than that because he has learned to 'fake it' with his powerful intellect.

Definitely run it by the GM and group if you're considering it, but it might make for a very unique character concept.


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Bill Dunn wrote:
I was thinking Severus Snape (as played by Alan Rickman). Clearly brilliant. Clearly a jerk. And about as perceptive as the next guy.

Agreed -- Severaus is definitely a better example than Sheldon.

For Sheldon I would actually reverse the wisdom and charisma, since he does many foolish things (low wisdom) but can actually get people to give him rides in their cars (average charisma).


Another vote for Sheldon. That was my first thought when I read the OP

Grand Lodge

Cold, emotionless, and calculating, is good approach.

It's easy, and fitting.

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