All Sense & No Brains
And now we're faced with one of the commonest questions about clerics and druids: How do you role-play a character who has a high Wisdom score and a low Intelligence score? How do you play all sense and no brains within an AD&D® game campaign?
Intelligence deals more with reasoning power, calculating ability, and memory retention. Wisdom deals with common sense, understanding of human nature, and judgement.
So when you're role-playing a character with a low Intelligence and a high Wisdom, try to break down the situations they face into the elements which the character's Intelligence and Wisdom would analyze.
Example: The characters have come to a rickety bridge which spans a gorge. They need to cross the gorge, but the bridge looks dangerous. Should they cross?
The character's Intelligence will evaluate the bridge's chances of holding up while they cross over. The character will look at the state of the wood, ropes, nails, how much and where it sags, where it's rotted through, and so on, and then will try to calculate the answer to this question: Will the bridge hold up if the characters cross over? If the character thinks it will, then his reply, regardless of the group's current situation and time available, is Yes: They should cross. If the character thinks it won't, then his reply will be No: They shouldn't.
The character's Wisdom will compare the risk to their need and situation. The risk is that the bridge will collapse and kill someone, perhaps a party member dear to everyone. What is their current situation? If the party has little time and is being pursued by a superior enemy force, then the risk is necessary, more or less regardless of what the Intelligence thinks of the bridge's chances; the character will say Yes, they must try to cross now. If the party has a good deal of time, then the risk is not necessary; regardless of how safe the Intelligence thinks the bridge is, Wisdom says not to risk it. A life is not worth it.
This is the kind of decision-making process the character can undertake if he wishes to role-play a high-Wisdom, low-Intelligence character in a campaign . . . and obviously it can lead to great arguments between them and their high-Intelligence, low-Wisdom counterparts.
Comments