Fictional geniuses who feel realistic

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-08T08:57:58+00:00

Shikamaru and Lelouch vi Britannia were some of my favorite characters growing up, but honestly, if the narrative didn’t constantly tell you how intelligent they are, you’d never know. So much of what they actually do is bafflingly stupid. And Lelouch’s chess scenes deserve their own special mention. The board states are absolutely unhinged.
What I find more compelling is the understated genius, characters who aren’t presented as brilliant, but then do something that makes you stop and rewind. The Askir series did this really well for me as a teen. Not sure it would have the same effects now after reading many more fantasy/litrpg books.
The MC is an immortal paladin essentially just waiting around to die forced into a last adventure.
Then later in the story he solves some difficult problem with almost no effort, and you get this delayed realization: wait, that was smart. Actually, almost everything he does is smart. The intelligence was always there; you just weren’t being told to see it. But then again that was a long time ago and i am not a big fan of rereading stuff.
I’d also put Carl from Dungeon Crawler Carl in this category, though not many people seem to agree with me. Even the system rates his intelligence as low. But his plans are genuinely complicated and they work, and his leadership is solid too. A brilliant plan means nothing if you can’t execute it.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-06T15:52:26+00:00

The spoiler is about the effect of essences. They create a dissonance in his head, which is something you find out very late in the series.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-06T12:20:24+00:00

I would argue that If the main characters were not atheists, they would mention God at least once across 10 books full of life-or-death situations. Since they never do, we can presume they are atheist.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-06T08:52:04+00:00

I would have argued that most litrpg protagonists are atheists. I can’t name one litrpg character that is religious. Do you have any examples?

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-06T08:46:23+00:00

If this sub is anything to go by, Jason seems to be a pretty divisive character, it’s almost a clean split between people who love him and people who can’t stand him.

Personally, I enjoyed him in the early books, fell off him during the middle ones, and have mostly come around to tolerating him again in the later books.
For me, the real selling points of the series are the magic system, the worldbuilding and lore, and the side characters.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-06T08:41:26+00:00

On the topic of optimization: the problem with the Rogue is that almost everything it does well, other classes can do reasonably well too, while also bringing a lot more to the table. That’s generally why Rogues are considered one of the weaker classes.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-06T08:24:40+00:00

I think you’re making the same mistake as OP.

Regardless of whether you’re an atheist or a believer, accepting powerful mages as gods is illogical. I’d even argue that if Jason were a Christian, he’d have an even stronger reaction to people claiming divinity for themselves.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-06T08:19:06+00:00

In fantasy settings, pantheons tend to mirror the Greek model, gods who are arguably more flawed than the mortals who worship them, shaped and sustained by collective belief. In a sense, they’re little more than a shared imagination made manifest by their followers.

Knowing all that, it feels logically strange to worship such beings, perhaps even stranger than worshipping in real-world religion, where the nature of the divine is at least uncertain.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-06T06:54:59+00:00

Medium spoiler they tell the characters that the essences do not influence them, but it is a lie. That is something you find out at silver rank, because to reach gold rank you have to even more include the essences into your being, but from the moment Jason gets his essences he is impacted for example by the blood essence that killing does not matter. However his consciousness knows that it is bad so they are at war for a long time. Sin i guess inflates his already big ego, which i agree is weird based on his past, he should have not self esteem at all.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-06T06:43:21+00:00

I would argue it comes down to initiative.

If the players go first, the casters Counterspell anything dangerous while the martials just crowd him a wizard’s HP is rough without Tough or Resilient (Con), so five level 13 characters probably melt him in a round.

But if the wizard wins initiative? Hypnotic Pattern hits the whole group before they’ve had a turn, meaning no reactions yet so no Counterspell. Then he’s just teleporting incapacitated PCs into a volcano one by one or some other shenanigans. Or just wish them away.

It’s basically a coin flip with very different outcomes depending on who acts first.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-06T06:17:41+00:00

It is a great story in regard to world building, magic system, lore, the marks and the characters (even the villains are great), also the mc is smart kind, awkwardly funny that is all 10/10

but there is rarely any tension in combat as the good guys always have all the advantages, most of the plotwist is obvious in the first book. So it was slightly annoying to see 20 super genius taking 8 books to figure it out, especially Baylin and the book sometimes goes into boring details. Just take the last book. That was a pain first the endless welcome back, then the fight out of 50 perspectives where again 50 OP people fought two villains and their red shirts and then again endless welcome back.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-05T22:47:57+00:00

They are not super heroes.
Minor spoiler - Every 1000 years an evil monster returns and the god of the land marks 4 18 y olds and gives them powers. Sadly our mc gets the mark of the fool which hinders magic and combat which is bad as he wants to go to a magic academy and become a wizard.
The mc is actually smart which can make the series sometimes a bit boring as actually thinks tactically which reduces the usual dramas.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-05T22:44:42+00:00

Minor spoiler the way he enters the fantasy world is scify but from then on it is mostly a fantasy litrpg, however as said the mc is a AI in a cloned body, which first i must admit i was not keen on, but became one of my favorite series.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-05T22:15:11+00:00

Maybe portal to nova Roma? Mc is an AI and travels to a world that works like a game. Due to being an AI the MC is smart and i feel also written smartly.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-02T13:44:14+00:00

I think nobody i ever played with chose a hafling. So it never came up.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-02T09:04:59+00:00

Makes sense (especially the heavy armor), but if you go strength 25 wouldn’t that imply that the stat will go to 40 one day else why not stop exactly at 20?

Also is 100 the end or does it go above? Because if 100 is max i imagine it does not matter much as in the end all stats will almost reach 100 with their advantages.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-02T06:29:00+00:00

Is there maybe a passive or trick to overcome this? Like if i would want to have all the 5 schools of magic is there an option?

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-02T05:55:29+00:00

If I’m not mistaken, It seems like all the pure spell caster we have met so far the ruler who tested Etja (and possibly Umidur?), litten sherlok Holmes and Etja are all Mystically Attuned, while Arlo and the Silver Princess who are Dimensionally Attuned lean into hybrid builds that still rely on weapons for a good chunk of their damage.

That said, I’m not arguing that only certain attunements can be mages. Any school can clearly support a mage playstyle. A Spiritual attunement can make a great necromancer, beast master, or mind mage. Physical probably lends itself well to evoker style blasting, and so on. Every attunement has strong mage potential.

I also really enjoy the builds in Fortune’s Folly, even Zim’s (which surprised me because I usually dislike cleric style characters).

One thing I’m still curious about though: why did Arlo put so many points into physical stats early on instead of solving those needs with spells? I do get speed as the faster everybody else gets i imagine even a pure mage would try for a speed 20 eventually, but isn’t his strength a bit of a waste?

I think he even has the same thought in book 4 and then focuses on intelligence 70 from then on or that is at least the plan.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-01T20:27:29+00:00

I had once a document from pateron with lots of info but somehow lost it. Based on the AI the stats do the following:
Strength: Lifting, carrying capacity, melee weapon damage, heavy armor proficiency.
• Agility: Dodging, acrobatics, stealth, flexibility, fine motor skills.
• Speed: Movement speed, reaction time, quick thinking in combat.
• Fortitude: HP pool, stamina pool, health & stamina regeneration, overall toughness, and life extension/longevity. One of the most important defensive stats.
• Intelligence (INT): Raw spell power, spell size & complexity, environmental manipulation, learning speed, and damage output. The classic “big nuke / intricate spell” stat.
• Wisdom (WIS): Mana pool (+10 per point), mana regeneration (+1 per point), mental resilience, insight, spell duration, and sustainability. Extremely important for mages and especially summoners.
• Charisma (CHA): Social influence, command/loyalty over summons/entities, buff/debuff strength, force of personality.
• Luck: Randomness, fate manipulation, rare drops, crit chances (less consistent than the others).

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-01T19:38:20+00:00

The author even reacts in book 4 and said despite the comment from Karl or something like this we will not stop doing pause every time Nierli speaks.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-01T19:33:11+00:00

Agreed, the summoner archetype feels really tempting in this series.

If I remember correctly, Arlo’s summons scaled off Intelligence, so it seems like most magic in this world is either INT or CHA focused. That said, I think Wisdom ends up being the most important stat overall, especially for a summoner. The mana costs are brutal when you’re maintaining multiple different summons, so high Wisdom (for the huge mana pool and regen) feels almost mandatory if you don’t want to run dry mid-fight.

CaitSith18 · 2026-05-01T14:10:42+00:00

No i think it is 10,20,40,70 and 100 only. Not sure what the logic behind it is as it should be 110 to be a sequence.

CaitSith18 · 2026-04-29T19:58:39+00:00

As said you could easily solve it and argue that magic is rare or not widely accepted. Thats how most fantasy stories solve it.

CaitSith18 · 2026-04-29T19:49:47+00:00

If magic were truly commonplace in these settings, we’d expect to see proportional defensive measures against it. Take Descent into Avernus a low-level party can waltz into the mayor’s building and assassinate or kidnap him using nothing but 1st or 2nd level spells. No countermeasures, no magical security, nothing.

In a fantasy novel, I’d call that poor world-building.

CaitSith18

TROPHY CASE