Gunslinger being countered by the GM


Advice

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Sovereign Court

Silbeg wrote:


Just a couple of quick points. You are forgetting Deadly Aim.

So, for a -4 AB, he gets 5(DEX) + 4(deadly aim) + 1(point blank) + 1(enhance) for +11, assuming a much more easily achieved 18 DEX. At a 27.1% chance of a misfire. So even without the bard, he can do it averaging 9 on the dice, which is high, but less implausible.

Ti've been playing a gunslinger all summer in PFS, and the misfire chance is a real issue.

Also, as a GM you need to enforce cover rules (soft cover of your friends is still cover), and firing into melee penalty if the slinger does not have precise shot. Taking an effective -8 to -12 will mark even touch AC hard to hit.

As for the pistoleros they are never far from melee range... And usually a 5' step away from a large creature's reach attack! That is a real vulnerability, if you choose to exploit it.

All true. And sure, it could have been just a lucky round. But from what the OP says, the character is consistently frustrating the GM by ending encounters in this way. And yes, it could be the class design more than the specific character build that's frustrating the GM. And it's also true that I don't know either of these people. But what I suspect is going on is that they are having a hard time communicating because of a fundamental difference in perspective. I think it is very likely that the GM has been remiss in sufficiently communicating his problems with the character to the OP. But I also think it is extremely likely that his reticence is caused in no small part because he perceives that the OP, even if he agrees to change his character, will merely be condescending to do so. It is that attitude of superiority/infallibility, perhaps even more than the optimization itself, that makes optimizers so difficult and frustrating to deal with. And it is for that reason exactly that I felt notabot's comments about the GM in question, which basically instructed the OP explicitly to condescend to engage diplomatically with him, were so corrosive.

I am not saying that optimizers do not have a point. They do. But it is not the only point. They assume that the rest of us have not considered or cannot understand their argument. Well, we have considered it. We do understand it. We still disagree. So approach your negotiations over such matters with a sense of genuine equality and compromise, rather than elitism and condescension. If both sides do this, then situations like the OP's can be circumvented.

Silver Crusade

Erick Wilson wrote:
As far as optimization goes, that you keep calling the GM's reaction immature does not make it so. I can easily turn that around and call the optimizer immature for making his character powerful well beyond the point that is necessary to defeat the encounters.

Targeting a player and focusing on killing that character, or otherwise destroying the play experience of someone at your table (your friend, in many cases) is not mature. This should need to be explained further.

Optimizing a character "well beyond the point that is necessary" is not a static benchmark. Encounters are designed very differently. What happens when your friends drop from bad a bad die roll? Is it reasonable to build a character that can keep going when it's Party -1? Party -2? At which point does it become well beyond reasonable? If my party were designed for out of combat performance, I would feel pressured to compensate so we didn't have a full party wipe. You cannot accuse the optimizer of being immature because s/he optimized. If they specifically designed the character to piss off the GM, that would be immature.

Erick Wilson wrote:
Naturally it would be great for every GM to know every possible permutation of every build in every class. But that just is not going to happen, and it's completely unreasonable to not only hope for but actually expect/demand it to the point that you scorn someone who does not live up to it.

I do not think that's the message, though it may have felt that way. A GM should know what characters are sitting down at the ongoing table. If there is a dialogue between the players and the story teller then the GM will rarely get blindsided. Even if you just have a copy of the PC's character sheet to look over and understand what makes that character work. It is very reasonable to expect this in an ongoing game where I play the same character session after session. I assume the GM would take an interest in my character, after all the GM assumes I want to take an interest in the campaign. After all, we're here to play together, right?

Erick Wilson wrote:
Especially since a GM can, as I've been trying to say, be seen as reasonably within his rights to simply not spend his time considering what, honestly, really are abuses of the system.

Incorrect! As the GM, you are the arbiter for all rules disputes and interpretations. It is actually your job to consider what are abuses of the system and how you want to handle it. You don't have to think of them all ahead of time, but you definitely should address them when you feel they are coming up.

Erick Wilson wrote:
If a given GM is making the choice to leave such considerations aside and focus on other aspects of the game while trusting in his players' reasonableness and restraint to avoid such problems, I cannot blame him at all.

A GM can trust in his players to the exact extent he has invested in communicating clearly with them what is and is not okay. In this situation the GM told the OP that Gunslingers are acceptable. The GM did this without knowing a thing about Gunslingers. It turned out, he actually felt differently about the class than he thought.

If you are responsible for running the game and you answer yes to questions without knowing what that really means...then the unintended consequences are on your shoulders. When you signed up to be the GM you said "Yes, I want to be responsible." Your players count on you to set boundaries, determine fairness, and stand by your decisions. You don't get to be in charge if you cannot say "No." Further, if it is your game, why wouldn't you look up the classes that your players are going to play? If for no other reason, surely just to be familiar with the mechanics you'll have to interact with at every session. It is as much a part of game prep as putting together stat blocks for NPC's or spell lists or determining the next story arc.

I agree, you cannot blame the GM for getting frustrated. Everyone gets frustrated for different reasons, some of them more petty than others. How the frustration was handled is not okay. No matter how you want to point a finger and say "But that player was asking for it! He built a powerful character!" it does not justify targeting that player and ruining his enjoyment of the game deliberately and with malice. There are ways to handle these situations without that kind of adversarial chest thumping. Using, you know, words is a great start.

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