I'm torn between "play what you like" advice and "play with the group" advice. I really don't see anything wrong with what you're doing.
If the DM has it out for you guys, then theres really nothing you can make character wise that will make a difference.
In your OP, "I also have a tendency to stay in the back row and lay down battlefield control, mind-affecting effects, and illusions to great effect. Occasionally, I even blast something."
What is the difference between battlefield control and crowd control?
to me crowd control means "territorial damage/effects"
to me battlefield control sound like "tactician/commander/help out the weak spot"
I honestly don't know who to feel the more sympathy for, RD for playing with such a group of grunting, belching, knuckle-dragging...or RD's group for having to play with such a brilliant, superior, experienced and sensitive gamer.Except for essentially calling them stupid (they're not, some even come close to my level of brilliance/experience), that seems like a fair description of everyone involved to me.
RD, LOL again... you don't seem to understand. From where I am sitting I'm not the one calling your game partners "stupid." You deny it and insist that you think your game group are bright, intelligent with an almost human-like capacity for reason, but your actual commentary on your games does not say the same thing. In fact 90% of your requests for "advice" on these boards could probably be replaced with "why are my game partners and GM so dumb? Why don't they recognize my brilliance?"
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When I asked for advice, I was hoping for some magic words or something that would get them off my back should they decide to continue harping me about it.
This is the problem with this thread.
When I asked for advice, I was hoping for some magic words or something that would get them off my back should they decide to continue harping me about it.This is the problem with this thread.
This reminds me of my kids. "Dad, what should I do about..."
"What!? I don't want to do THAT! Geez! I wasn't looking for advice, just affirmation!"
When I asked for advice, I was hoping for some magic words or something that would get them off my back should they decide to continue harping me about it.This is the problem with this thread.
Indeed.
Honestly, RD, there is no magic solution. You have to do one of three things:
1) Convince the killer DMs to stop being killer DMs. Only way I can figure that is to let them TPK the party a few times, you included. It'll suck for a while until they all realise TPKs aren't fun.
2) Convince the other players to play your way and not their way. That's unlikely to happen as you have probably already tried.
3) You change your style to match the rest of your group more closely.
There's a thin line between cowardice and intelligence--as thin as the one between bravery and stupidity.
I'm with RD on this one. The problem is clearly his killer GM who fudges roles against him, and players who can't see the value of spells that aren't magic missile and generally seem to want to gang up on him.
Dead characters contribute nothing. If the average encounter is 4+ APL, then RD is doing the obvious correct thing in optimizing for survival. His fellow players are doing the wrong thing by not following suit.
Also, I don't know about anyone else, but if my fellow players couldn't be relied upon not to dispel their own buffs from me, I'd take it upon myself to be as self-sufficient as possible too, or find a different group. I don't know how close you are to these people RD, but I've dropped out of gaming groups for less than what happened to Hama.
Guess I'll make a fighter and see what happens.
EDIT: All done. What do you think of Gudruun, Master of Chains? No real back story yet, but he's meant to be a versatile bag of tricks with a loathing for goblinoids and a love of flail weapons.
Guess I'll make a fighter and see what happens.
EDIT: All done. What do you think of Gudruun, Master of Chains? No real back story yet, but he's meant to be a versatile bag of tricks with a loathing for goblinoids and a love of flail weapons.
Good idea. Yes, if you are going to play with these guys, you must adapt- at least a little.
Trippers get old very quickly. Jest sayin.
Guess I'll make a fighter and see what happens.
EDIT: All done. What do you think of Gudruun, Master of Chains? No real back story yet, but he's meant to be a versatile bag of tricks with a loathing for goblinoids and a love of flail weapons.
Good idea. It's an interesting build, but remember that at higher levels maneuvers can be tough to pull off. Don't be afraid to just hit things.
Since they accused you of being a coward, I'd screw with them and make your fighting the most defensive ball of armor and shields possible.
Since they accused you of being a coward, I'd screw with them and make your fighting the most defensive ball of armor and shields possible.
You know, I often have to discipline my children by telling them that somebody else's bad behaviour does not excuse them from likewise behaving badly.
Browsing your original character I guess DrDeth is wrong, if you don't get tired playing a one dimensional SOS monkey whose backstory feels like a weak justification for hideous min maxing you won't certainly be tired to play a one dimensional trip monkey either!
To be fair, a very defensively built fighter is still very useful to a party.
Especially if he grabs the feats that allow him to defend his allies and control the battlefield.
It would just be funny.
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...feels like a weak justification for hideous min maxing...
What's wrong with a little hideous min maxing?
To be fair, a very defensively built fighter is still very useful to a party.
Especially if he grabs the feats that allow him to defend his allies and control the battlefield.
It would just be funny.
I've never seen the "humor" in "screwing with people." But that's just because I don't like getting "screwed with" myself.
I certainly hope RD doesn't take this approach....
Guess I'll make a fighter and see what happens.
EDIT: All done. What do you think of Gudruun, Master of Chains? No real back story yet, but he's meant to be a versatile bag of tricks with a loathing for goblinoids and a love of flail weapons.
I can't view the build from work, but from other comments it sounds as if you might be attempting to build a tripper.
To me that is skating perilously close to a character who will continue to annoy your play partners. Both because tripping is easy for the GM to avoid (and based on your comments, your GM seems the type to do so) and because even with standard encounters as you level up CMB builds tend to become less effective.
My suggestion is to go with a standard walk up and smash the enemy in the face build, but with just enough attention given to AC and defense to keep him alive.
To be fair, a very defensively built fighter is still very useful to a party.
Especially if he grabs the feats that allow him to defend his allies and control the battlefield.
It would just be funny.
I've never seen the "humor" in "screwing with people." But that's just because I don't like getting "screwed with" myself.
I certainly hope RD doesn't take this approach....
It's called feeding your inner troll.
There's something inherently enjoyable about people getting upset about 1st world problems.
Real suffering sucks, and one should do as much as possible to help it.
But people who get upset about the tiny minutia of life are just fun to mess with.
They're like the 16 year old daughter who freaks out because her parents bought her a BMW instead of a Lexus. That's tears everyone can enjoy.
It's called feeding your inner troll.
There's something inherently enjoyable about people getting upset about 1st world problems.
Real suffering sucks, and one should do as much as possible to help it.
But people who get upset about the tiny minutia of life are just fun to mess with.
They're like the 16 year old daughter who freaks out because her parents bought her a BMW instead of a Lexus. That's tears everyone can enjoy.
Well, we'll just have to disagree Fleshgrinder. Even when I feel a need to challenge someone on a subject, I never get any pleasure from causing them to get upset. I don't even understand that concept. Getting people upset is, unfortunately, sometimes unavoidable in order to achieve a more important goal, but there's something bothersome to me about ever having a goal of intentionally upsetting anyone.
Life is just too short, even for those you may feel deserve to be reminded of their "first world problems."
It's called feeding your inner troll.
There's something inherently enjoyable about people getting upset about 1st world problems.
Real suffering sucks, and one should do as much as possible to help it.
But people who get upset about the tiny minutia of life are just fun to mess with.
They're like the 16 year old daughter who freaks out because her parents bought her a BMW instead of a Lexus. That's tears everyone can enjoy.
Being an ass to your friends isn't on the level of starving in the third world, but it's still b++$#&$$.
As a male, isn't half the interaction you have with your friends messing with each other?
It's kind of the foundation of the male friendship.
I've been hanging out with the same guys wince we were 12 (we're now 30) and giving each other a hard time is the cornerstone of our friendship.
For example, I am mildly arachnophobic... this means my friends will go out of their way to throw spiders at me when they find one. My buddy has a small vocabulary due to being a non-native English speaker, so we screw with him by having entire conversations about him using the most complex words we can think of.
Of course, maybe we're abnormal, I don't know many people my age still hanging out with their friends from 6th grade.
It's called feeding your inner troll.
There's something inherently enjoyable about people getting upset about 1st world problems.
Real suffering sucks, and one should do as much as possible to help it.
But people who get upset about the tiny minutia of life are just fun to mess with.
They're like the 16 year old daughter who freaks out because her parents bought her a BMW instead of a Lexus. That's tears everyone can enjoy.
Being an ass to your friends isn't on the level of starving in the third world, but it's still b++$#&$$.
As a male, isn't half the interaction you have with your friends messing with each other?
It's kind of the foundation of the male friendship.
Growing up I never experienced it, but two of my female best friends (one of which is now my sister-in-law, and the other probably about the closest friendship one can have short of romantic involvement) have in the years since introduced me to and swayed me over to the mindset of "If I like you as a friend I'll pick on you and bother you, if I don't like you I won't".
Of course, maybe we're abnormal, I don't know many people my age still hanging out with their friends from 6th grade.
If you are abnormal, hanging out with friends from the 6th grade isn't the abnormality.
I do know a lot of people who think the way you do about how it's "male bonding" to be an ass with your friends.
I did stop hanging around with that sort of person in about the sixth grade, but I think that's probably a coincidence.
Yeah, one of them (the guy with the small vocabulary) is my best friend. We've been hanging out multiple times a week for 18+ years. I've seen the guy go from no interest in women to being a father of two.
We TORMENT each other. We went to Jamaica for a week together and we were quite close to killing each other after a week of sleeping in the same room (a week of rum drinking might have been involved) but it's that brotherly type of love.
It's where you love a person and hate them at the same time. The trick is that the love is enough to cancel out all the annoying things they do.
We actually don't make new friends easily because people get scared off by our antagonistic attitude.
Since I also happen to game with people I've known for a decade+, I guess my game table is just a lot different than most as some people seem to actually play with strangers.
As a male, isn't half the interaction you have with your friends messing with each other?
There's messing, and there's being a douche. There is a dividing line, and I think that given RD's description of his friends' approach to gaming, this may cross it.
It's kind of the foundation of the male friendship.
Nope, sorry, mine is chilling with them, sharing talk, having a joke and being around when they need me. Being a douche to them doesn't come into it. Besides, we don't know if all his gaming buddies are male. There are female gamers out there.
I've been hanging out with the same guys wince we were 12 (we're now 30) and giving each other a hard time is the cornerstone of our friendship.
That's fine for you, I merely point out that it doesn't work for everyone.
Of course, maybe we're abnormal, I don't know many people my age still hanging out with their friends from 6th grade.
No offence, but it sounds like you are still acting like you are in 6th grade now and then, chucking spiders at each other and winding up the non-English speaker. That's OK, if that's what you and your friends do, but not everyone does that.
As a male, isn't half the interaction you have with your friends messing with each other?There's messing, and there's being a douche. There is a dividing line, and I think that given RD's description of his friends' approach to gaming, this may cross it.
It's kind of the foundation of the male friendship.Nope, sorry, mine is chilling with them, sharing talk, having a joke and being around when they need me. Being a douche to them doesn't come into it. Besides, we don't know if all his gaming buddies are male. There are female gamers out there.
I've been hanging out with the same guys wince we were 12 (we're now 30) and giving each other a hard time is the cornerstone of our friendship.That's fine for you, I merely point out that it doesn't work for everyone.
Of course, maybe we're abnormal, I don't know many people my age still hanging out with their friends from 6th grade.No offence, but it sounds like you are still acting like you are in 6th grade now and then, chucking spiders at each other and winding up the non-English speaker. That's OK, if that's what you and your friends do, but not everyone does that.
I wish I could still act like I'm in the 6th grade.
I've been trying to dodge responsibility since the day I slopped out of my mother but no matter how hard I try I end up with crap like rent and food needing to be paid.
I've personally always seen maturity as giving up on the dream.
Life is a joke, and the point is figuring out how to laugh at it.
Let's be honest, we're all people between 20 and 50 playing a complicated boardgame, we've all bucked maturity at least slightly.
I just bucked harder.
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RD, LOL again... you don't seem to understand. From where I am sitting I'm not the one calling your game partners "stupid." You deny it and insist that you think your game group are bright, intelligent with an almost human-like capacity for reason, but your actual commentary on your games does not say the same thing. In fact 90% of your requests for "advice" on these boards could probably be replaced with "why are my game partners and GM so dumb? Why don't they recognize my brilliance?"I honestly don't know who to feel the more sympathy for, RD for playing with such a group of grunting, belching, knuckle-dragging...or RD's group for having to play with such a brilliant, superior, experienced and sensitive gamer.Except for essentially calling them stupid (they're not, some even come close to my level of brilliance/experience), that seems like a fair description of everyone involved to me.
I've always assumed RD's posts to be extremely well contrived situations to provoke discussion, with some of them being wholly manufactured and others being mere elaborations on reality.
I don't mean this in a derogatory "liar liar pants on fire way," I just find it difficult to imagine that one person could be a) involved in that much gaming b) a the centre of so many outlandish scenarios and still talking to said people.
So I've always use the working assumption that RD is telling us apocryphal tales and then the discussion that ensues is almost always entertaining if not illuminating.
I wish I could still act like I'm in the 6th grade.I've been trying to dodge responsibility since the day I slopped out of my mother but no matter how hard I try I end up with crap like rent and food needing to be paid.
I've personally always seen maturity as giving up on the dream.
Life is a joke, and the point is figuring out how to laugh at it.
Let's be honest, we're all people between 20 and 50 playing a complicated boardgame, we've all bucked maturity at least slightly.
I just bucked harder.
A few comments...
Playing games is not "bucking maturity". Playing games is what intelligent beings do, by nature. Maturity is more or less exhibited not by playing games but by how you play them.
Heh, I also wish I fit the "between 20 and 50" age range still....
My guess is that insofar as life may be a "joke" I don't think the punchline is based on causing other people to suffer, even slightly. There's plenty of suffering in the world without deliberately adding to it.
Up to the point where it actually starts to bother them, sure.
For example, if you were seriously arachnophobic, to the point of panic attacks, would they still throw spiders at you? Would you still hang out with them?It seems to me that RDs problem here is already screwing up the game. Pushing it just to screw with the other players is not helpful.
I guess I'm just telling RD to do what I'd do. Difference is that I'd leave the gaming group he's in if subjected to what he's been subjected to, so my messing with them would just be the coup de grace before I removed myself from the group.
RD, LOL again... you don't seem to understand. From where I am sitting I'm not the one calling your game partners "stupid." You deny it and insist that you think your game group are bright, intelligent with an almost human-like capacity for reason, but your actual commentary on your games does not say the same thing. In fact 90% of your requests for "advice" on these boards could probably be replaced with "why are my game partners and GM so dumb? Why don't they recognize my brilliance?"I honestly don't know who to feel the more sympathy for, RD for playing with such a group of grunting, belching, knuckle-dragging...or RD's group for having to play with such a brilliant, superior, experienced and sensitive gamer.Except for essentially calling them stupid (they're not, some even come close to my level of brilliance/experience), that seems like a fair description of everyone involved to me.I've always assumed RD's posts to be extremely well contrived situations to provoke discussion, with some of them being wholly manufactured and others being mere elaborations on reality.
I don't mean this in a derogatory "liar liar pants on fire way," I just find it difficult to imagine that one person could be a) involved in that much gaming b) a the centre of so many outlandish scenarios and still talking to said people.
So I've always use the working assumption that RD is telling us apocryphal tales and then the discussion that ensues is almost always entertaining if not illuminating.
Galnorog, so do I, in fact I posted something remarkably similar to your comment here pages ago. I once said that I envision RD in a darkened room, his face lit from below by the creepy light from his computer monitor, an evil grin sliding across his lips as he extends one claw-like talon forward to click his mouse on the "186 replies" link to his latest offering, drooling slightly in anticipation of the mayhem his latest scenario has spawned.
I actually enjoy the discussion and have repeatedly told RD that. But I do take him at his word and react to the situations as he states them purely as an intellectual exercise, just in case some lurker is really dealing with something similar to RD's potentially manufactured scenarios.
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RD, your build looks fine. You may start having problems doing Combat Maneuvers once the monsters you fight start flying, stop using weapons, being larger than large, having more than two feet, or any combination of the previous, and I think APL+4 encounters will screw you over on the CMD vs CMD rolls, so you may end up just swinging your chains for damage regardless. It looks like you've spent feats for this outcome, so I think you'll do well until your party bites off more than it can chew.
I'm playing in one 3.0 game currently where I have a transmutation specialist with evocation as an opposition school. The rest of the players were initially upset by the lack of magic missile and fireball. When I use my transmutation and conjuration spells to buff the party, weaken the enemy, or cut off battlefield movement to shift the odds the complaints tend to vanish. On the other hand, you could always try something a player in one game I was in did. He was a wizard with no offensive magic whatsoever. The only thing useful he ever did in battle was to cast haste on my fighter, and he only did that once. His default statement when asked by the GM what he was doing was to say "I cry." That game was a bit strange anyway. When the rest of the party hides behind the halfling fighter at the beginning of combat, you know you're in for a surreal game.
I'm playing in one 3.0 game currently where I have a transmutation specialist with evocation as an opposition school. The rest of the players were initially upset by the lack of magic missile and fireball. When I use my transmutation and conjuration spells to buff the party, weaken the enemy, or cut off battlefield movement to shift the odds the complaints tend to vanish. On the other hand, you could always try something a player in one game I was in did. He was a wizard with no offensive magic whatsoever. The only thing useful he ever did in battle was to cast haste on my fighter, and he only did that once. His default statement when asked by the GM what he was doing was to say "I cry." That game was a bit strange anyway. When the rest of the party hides behind the halfling fighter at the beginning of combat, you know you're in for a surreal game.
I had a similar issue with a Conjuration specialist I had made. The players freaked out that I didn't have Magic Missile... until I busted out an Improved Summoning Celestial badger who was raging.
My badgers out damaged every other member of the party quite often.
"I can't open this door"
"I summon a badger"
"If I can't open it, how can a badger?"
"My badger has 4 higher strength than you do"
The barbarian asked to reroll as a badger.
"I can't open this door"
"I summon a badger"
"If I can't open it, how can a badger?"
"My badger has 4 higher strength than you do"The barbarian asked to reroll as a badger.
It's reincarnate time!
Dump both con and dex. Show absolutely no self preservation. If he lives through a single session you have failed.
Heh. How about designing a Leadership Cohort character you care about, and expendable "main" PCs who seldom last two game sessions? "Well, so much for Sir Saps-A-Lot. Time to roll up a new PC to watch over the Destined Princess as she searches for her long-lost evil stepmother."
It sounds to me like you are prioritizing contributing the most to the group's success. Why?
The group is asking you to prioritize reckless bravado. That sounds like a fun invitation.
Whether or not the entire group survives is a burden for the GM's shoulders, not yours as a player.
Ravingdork, is there a way that you can email me your character sheets for these two characters? For some reason my home computer will not let me open the links you posted.
Ravingdork, is there a way that you can email me your character sheets for these two characters? For some reason my home computer will not let me open the links you posted.
Send me you E-mail via private message, and I will send them along.
...feels like a weak justification for hideous min maxing...What's wrong with a little hideous min maxing?
There is not "little hideous min maxing".
Hideous min maxing is breaking the game for your fellow players who do not want to indulge in it.
Hey, wait, that might explain many of your posts...
I think it was more like a tongue-in-cheek post. A joke....feels like a weak justification for hideous min maxing...What's wrong with a little hideous min maxing?There is not "little hideous min maxing".
Hideous min maxing is breaking the game for your fellow players who do not want to indulge in it.
Hey, wait, that might explain many of your posts...
Many a true word can be said in jest ;)
Dump both con and dex. Show absolutely no self preservation. If he lives through a single session you have failed.Heh. How about designing a Leadership Cohort character you care about, and expendable "main" PCs who seldom last two game sessions? "Well, so much for Sir Saps-A-Lot. Time to roll up a new PC to watch over the Destined Princess as she searches for her long-lost evil stepmother."
I'll be honest, I think this could have the potential to be interesting.
Ravingdork, is there a way that you can email me your character sheets for these two characters? For some reason my home computer will not let me open the links you posted.Send me you E-mail via private message, and I will send them along.
Thanks! How do I do that?