Does anyone else dislike the way hardly anyone roleplays their Int? Brilliant deduction, language, and reasoning from a Fire Giant is terrible roleplaying to me. I really hate it when people play Fire Giants as a "human in a giant suit". I can understand the inherent challenge in roleplaying a race more intelligent than humans (in that it is impossible to accurately understand what someone more intelligent than yourself would say or do on a regular basis), but roleplaying less intelligent races isn't like that.

Like the helpfile for Fire Giants says:
"Embracing brute strength rather than intelligence, these
giants make excellent warriors, preferring all forms of warfare over
the subtle hand of diplomacy and trade. Showing true loyalty only
to direct blood relations, their temper often leads them to hasty
action, guided more by emotion than logic. "

And for Orcs says:
"Orcs are cunning but woefully stupid, strong but cowardly, and use pure brute strength in plowing through their opponents. Greed, fear, and rage drive the writhing brain of the Orc."

These seem to be describing physical and personality attributes in an effort to help you understand how to play them. For someone to roleplay an Orc as stupid seems very fitting and seems like perfectly appropriate roleplaying. Is that not the case?

I can understand we come from a variety of fantasy backgrounds where Giants and Orcs are portrayed very differently, but it seems like we all know what stupid is, and, as Forrest Gump said, "Stupid is as stupid does." If your character isn't doing stupid things, are they really stupid?

Some people in Entropy were referred to as "chaotic stupid" and I can see where that might not be exactly what the cabal was about, but a race like Orc? Dysfunctional, repulsive, and chaotically uncivilized? Seems like good roleplaying to me.

It could be pointed out that 14-16 Intelligence is called "Average", but you can't roll a Human with less than 17 Intelligence. Aside from extremely special cases (or with specific armor), no PC Human is going to have less than 17 Intelligence. As a reference, the range for Humans in CF is 17-23.

And speaking of stat modifying armor or maledictions, why do so few roleplay maledictions except as it directly affects your ability to fight? Wearing -5 Int worth of gear so you're running around with 12 Int? Shouldn't you be roleplaying a borderline idiot? Strength reduced from fighting something nasty? That would probably impact your character quite a bit aside from, "Oh, try to give me that item in 3 hours, then I'll be ok."

Maybe during my break from CF my rose-tinted glasses got really thick, but the game seems really power-gamey these days.

Hutto, the Sleepy Nitpicker

There's dumb, and then there's dumb. That is to say there are different contexts in which intelligence plays out. Generally speaking, Carrion Fields intelligence seems to refer to complex logic and stuff. Not, for instance, planning a military campaign. A fire giant may an extremely cunning warlord, direct his troops with precision and guile, but he's not going to quote Shakespeare to you.

Also, as you point out, fire giant intelligence is "average", while the range for humans is 17-23. You have to remember we're talking about adventurers here. Heroes of the land, etc. Most PCs we encounter are supposed to be "exceptional" in some regard.

Still, I'm not going to disagree with your main point, which is that people often don't RP intelligence. I'm guilty of this as well.

He was dumb.

If someone who was not a mage told him something, he generally believed it, even if I clearly knew it was ####.

I remember ranking in Arial City with a couple of non-cloud non-arials. They told me that they knew of a friendly druid who would bless them with flight. I would go wait on the rim of the canyon while they quaffed their potions.

Likewise if I received a tell from someone saying that a certain mage was somewhere, even though I clearly knew it was a trap I'd be running merrily off to wherever to get summon ganked into a locked room.

What this got me was in my death thread:
Thror: I liked this Battlerager. You roleplayed the 'dumb' giant rather well.

and Con-dying pretty quickly.

So, it does happen, but the rewards are, well, knowingly marching to your death, but feeling like it's RP appropriate.

Just for the record, what do you think of Knacnar? He's a fire giant who's answer for every problem is "BURN!" and though he's cunning he tends to face every battle pretty head on. I'd say he's doing an awesome job of playing a Fire-Gianty Fire Giant.

Do you agree?

To any great degree, so why bother?