I know this is a joke, but if you really want to improve your character play, I highly suggest taking a full week, spending 20 -30 mins a day roleplaying to imagined scenarios, replying to them out loud.
As most actors can tell you, if you want to nail down a character all you need is practice, once you gain that confidence you’ll be the most interesting character at the table
I always encourage my players to paraphrase if they’re trying to be more than they are in real life. It’s totally fine to be like “I tell him with a lot of big words that he’s a doodyhead”
Pretty accurate for high INT esp with low charisma and/or wisdom.
Sputtering angry nerd is super valid.
I say “fuck you, you big asshole” in smartese. Or is it smartlish. My character would know. 😞
My most controversial/unpopular D&D opinion is that high CHA characters should only be played by high CHA people.
What if an awkward person wants to have a power fantasy about being a smooth talker? What if they want to play a warlock or bard?
I had a 3 CHA character and I struggled to actually be that low of a charisma irl because I kept talking normally, so I had to fake stutters and be extremely creepy to make up for it. Oh and I was schizophrenic. Didn’t plan for it. GM made me do it.
Counter-hot-take: Rip the charisma stat and its skills out of the game. It’s half-baked as it is. The cha classes can be moved to int or wis.
The secret to writing (or playing) characters that are smarter than you are is that you can take your time coming up with what they do. Maybe in-game your character has a razor wit and would have a snappy comeback for any situation. Out of game you’ve got a list of pre-prepared retorts you can bust out as needed.
1st off, intelligent =/= eloquent.
That said, no one can play a character smarter than the real life DM. If you are dumb and the DM is smart, he can tell you what your character would do with more intelligence. If you are smart you can think of it yourself. However, if the DM is dumb, it won’t matter how smart you or your character is, because the universe your character inhabits is made of stupid.
Ever since I switched from text to voice I feel like my characters lost some of their… Verbosity.
But last night I bon-mot-ed a minotaur (as my ascended animal swash-bard unicorn) by saying “Oooh, a fellow hooved creature! … Sorry about your appearance, fella.”
And rolled a crit.
And it felt awesome. Playing Swashbard is awesome.
