First time GM having trouble with a problem player. Please help!

[Kaiden Renfield]

Hello everyone I've been role playing for up to 10 years now and my friends wanted me to run a Pathfinder game for them. While most of them are enjoying my campaign but one player is finding issue with it.

I'll try to put this in context as best I can. The first session our level 1 heroes were in a swamp fighting off an attack of boggards scaled down to CR 1. While the village guards dealt with the main threat some slipped through leaving our heroes as the last line of defense. Now I only have 2 players, a tanky Ranger, and a skill focused Druid.

The druid took a direct hit from a boggard doing half his HP in damage. The druid still fought on and the boggard didn't land a another hit during the encounter. I was going to go easy on him for the first session however the dice rolls were bad and it legitimately missed before rolling a natural 1. At that point the boggard got his tongue stuck to another boggard and the druid chopped it off slaying the monster.

The rest of the game session went off with out a hitch with a chase scene but no further combat scenes.

Both players loved it and begged me to make it more then a 1 shot.

Session two: Our heroes are now level 2. An explosion up the mountain caused a landslide destroying their town. After collecting them selves and making sure the villagers were ok they climbed the mountain to investigate the explosion. It is there that they meet the villains of the campaign. A dragon disciple, two elves, and a half orc barbarian.

Talking turns to combat and the Orc is sent in to soften up the heroes. She is level 6 so she takes a good beating from both level 2 PCs and the level 2 fighter NPC but in the end she proves too much for them and knocks their NPC companion unconscious. During the fight the druid fires a flame sphere at the two elves and the dragon disciple who are performing a ritual in the background. One of the elves is standing watch and counters the flame sphere negating it's effects. This was never meant to be a fight that the PCs can win it was simply a scene to demonstrate the power of the villains, give the PCs a taste of what they're up against and show that not every encounter is going to be scaled to their level.

In the end our Heroes revive their companion and the villains leave after completing their ritual. The heroes then discover clues about the villains origins and set off to Korvosa in order to find them.

Session three: Our heroes are now level 3. They set sail to Korvosa. Upon arriving they find it difficult to enter due to city riots but after a little bribery are escorted to the castle. There they report their town destroyed by the culprits and all the clues they could find of their origin and identity. Korvosan government brushes them aside with a "We'll take care of it" approach.

This was meant to encourage the party to seek out these villains on their own rather then rely on the government to do the adventure for them. Once gathering a few clues they are approached by a man who offers to help them if they will help him acquire something stolen from him. He is shifting and gives little clues about what was stolen or how to get it back but our heroes follow him anyway. He leads them into the Grey graveyard district and down into a stairwell that leads to the Vault.

Once underground they encounter a group of vampires. Their guide proceeds to barter with these vampires offering the heroes as payment for the release of his mother. The vampires accept and move to take the heroes prisoner. The heroes do not resist. (This is where the trouble started...)

It's at this point that the Druid starts to complain about putting his level 3 up against a CR 7 creature. He has the bestiary out and is memorizing every little rule about vampires he can, trying to figure something out about how to defeat them. I try to defuse the situation but he launches into even more complaints about how it's impossible to fight vampires at their level. (Now I designed this encounter to add a sense of dread and mystery to the campaign. Little do the players know the guide is actually a Dhamire and his father is the lead villain of the campaign. His mother is a vampire who fled Korvosa when he was born to protect him from his father's mad scheme of becoming a god. He came to Korvosa to kill his father but the vampires, bitter about his mother's disappearance from the clan, captured his mother out of spite. He has no intention of leaving the heroes in the underground jail cell and unknown to our heroes at the time slips them a key to escape. His goal: use the heroes as a distraction, get the underground prince alone, defeat him and free his mother. Secondly our druid took profession "Cooking" and his belt is full of herbs and spices. No sense letting all that GARLIC go to waist is there? )

Shew... Ok lets take a breather.. Did you get all that? Good..

Season 4: (The s&@~ hits the fan!) Our heroes are now level 4! Mr. Druid is in a better mood this time and is ready to face what might lie ahead. The session runs pretty smoothly until I tell him to roll intelligence to remember he had herbs in his belt. He starts to argue with me that he doesn't even know what herbs he has and that if he had garlic he might of sold it.. As the DM I say if you don't know what you have then lets say you have it.. After all I am the DM.. Druid continues to argue the fact but finally relents and has one garlic. He passes the 5 cloves to an old man, a child, the Ranger, their NPC companion, and one for himself. Druid also discovers a key (remember the Dhampires plan???) and the Ranger takes it to unlock the cell door. The slaves escape. A (CR 4 vampire SPAWN) attacks the heroes. They beat on it for a few turns and Druid makes a flaming sword, attacks said spawn and proclaims he bypasses it's damage reduction because one of a vampires weaknesses is magic. I tell him that would have worked if I were using those rules. (This is not a vampire it is a vampire SPAWN) but of course I don't let him know that.

Druid is attacked and takes 1 negative level. Druid starts to lose his s#&+ saying if he gets hit with energy drain three more times he'll die and there's no point. Ranger steps up his game and punches the spawn with a nat 20. Ranger previously rubbed him self down in garlic oil neck, arms, and fits. Since critting 1d3 against a DR 5/silver would do very little I say he got some of the garlic oil in the vampires mouth. This chokes the vampire leaving it prone. Druid Coupe De Grace's and WINS the encounter! They then discover another group of "vampires" and ward them off with the garlic. Their will saves being +5 and the DC to overcome the garlic being a 25 I rule it's not even worth rolling and you ward them off. They get all the slaves to the door but don't have the key. They must go back to find the key and it's then that they encounter their guide the Dhampire, crucified. The Prince gives them a choice. They can save the Dhampire and face his wrath or they can take a key and leave. Well they opt to leave and I don't blame them. The Dhampire was kind of a dick and they had no reason to save him. On the other hand if they did save him they would have been clued in to his relationship with the dragon disciple and what the villains plans are.

Once out Mr. Druid launches into another bout of complains OOC and IC about impossible odds, even though AGAIN he managed to kill no less then 8 vampires in the session, ineffective government, referring to the Korvosan government brushing off his report which was meant to inspire him to deal with the investigation himself rather then rely on NPCs to do the work for him. And creature rules not being used properly. ie. he thought he was dealing with a vampire not a vampire spawn.

The rest of the session breezes by with their investigation leading them to the mage college and the interrogation of a Tiefling wizard who works for the dragon disciple. That night a Drow sneaks into their room and gives them both a magic item for water breathing. Both of them had dreams of going under water to find a bright light. (prophecy, foreshadowing)

So now once the session is over Mr. Druid launches a complaint campaign about designing challenges they can actually compete in. Mind you Mr. Ranger loved the session and had zero complaints. Rather then focus on the progression of the plot, the ingenuity of the Ranger to KO vampires with garlic oil, the magic loot and rewards they discovered after a difficult session. Rather focus on all the postivies Mr. Druid focuses on. Challenge Rating. He says they have had 3 combat scenes so far that they couldn't win.

1. the vampire scene which they actually utilized the garlic oil trick and took out several spawn and one full fledged vampire..

2. The Orc where they got the smack down. Yes I admit that was just a scene to show how powerful the villains were.

3. the Boggards attack where in Mr. Druid's own words; "One took half my health in one hit and then the rest of the encounter I didn't get hit ONCE!" I'm still confused about this complaint because if they had hit him again it would of taken maybe a couple more to KO him. Plus I didn't hold back in the encounter they just had really bad rolls.. If he had been KOed would his complaint be "I got taken out in the first four rounds and didn't get to do anything!" When he clearly killed a Boggard of his own luck and skill in that first session.

So to recap I have a player who wants an easier challenge, doesn't want to lose, thinks he's lost even when he wins because he had to use tactics instead of dice rolls, uses metagame knowledge to psych him self out IRL about an encounter. Gets upset when his metagame knowledge turns out to be wrong. Get's upset when the NPCs don't play the campaign for him. Gets upset when an encounter actually scaled to him only hits him ONCE and I can only assume because he thinks I was fudging the dice, which in that case is upset that I gave him a victory.

Did I miss anything or am I completely misrepresenting him? Which could very well be the case. At this point I'm angry with him, frustrated, angry with my self that maybe I didn't make a good enough campaign..

In the end I don't know what to do about this situation.. I plan for the underwater scene to have plenty of CR 1/3 - CR 2 so Mr. Druid can just slay away and be happy.. There will be a CR 12 sea serpent guarding the relic they seek but it will be asleep.. Will Mr. Druid consider that giving him a victory like he considered the boggard encounter or the garlic use a given victory?

Or am I showing my first time DM colors and just being completely bad at running a campaign? Again the Ranger seems to like it..

I could really use any **constructive criticism** you guys have to offer.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I apologize for it being so long. :)

[Ascalaphus]

Hey, first off, the story sounds fun enough, but you might want to work on the mechanics "under the hood" a bit.

You are using quite a few combats that you yourself describe as being "you'd better run/this is just to show off how nasty your enemies are/you're not supposed to beat these people RIGHT NOW". It's okay to do that every once in a while, but I think you're doing it a bit too often.

Reading the Bestiary entries for monsters you're currently facing as a PC is certainly not fair behavior. However, I understand the druid's frustration.

Part of it is expectations; when you play PF, you expect to be a badass hero, kicking the monsters' butts. If the GM then keeps coming with monsters that you can't handle, that doesn't really work out. If you went to see Diehard #33 and all the nameless goons are actually good with guns, and Bruce Willis gets shot in the head every scene and is basically dead by scene 2, then you're probably disappointed.

It's okay for the bad guys to be too powerful now and then, but it needs to be rare enough to be special, while you also need enough fights where the PCs are just being the toughest kid on the block.

About the boggards: I think that's a bit whiny of the druid player; getting knocked out occasionally in combat at level 1 is fairly normal (if scary/annoying); that's just part of the game. The sea serpent on the other hand: that's not really a monster you fight, it's like a force of nature. The focus should probably be on not waking it up while trying to quietly fight much weaker monsters that you bump into.
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I think with the garlic, it might have felt to the player like YOU had a way planned to do the encounter, so that as long as they stayed on your rails, they'd be fine. But that doesn't leave them a lot of room to figure out their own tactics; they're basically doing what you told them to do.

It sounds like you enjoy the idea of the PCs being underdogs, managing to deal with big bad monsters by being clever and fast, using the monsters' vulnerabilities. That's good; it can be a lot of fun. But I think your execution doesn't quite work. Too much, YOU are the one coming up with the clever tactics.

Suppose that they got some advance warning instead; when they meet the guide you make them roll Sense Motive, and they realize he's up to something. Now they know they need him for his information, but he's also going to betray them at some point. Oh, and he does look rather pale and creepy. Now the players could ask around, and hear rumors from townsfolk that he's a vampire (dhampir, but what do commoners know the difference), and that vampires are supposed to hate garlic. Maybe now the players decide to bring along garlic, or stakes, or holy symbols.

It's more or less the same story as you described, but in this version the players had much more hand in coming up with their underdog tactics.

[Kaiden Renfield]

Thank you Ascalaphus, I see your point and I intend on the next session to give them better odds. The Sea Serpent is not intended to wake up unless something horrible happens like an underwater explosion or one of the PCs stabs it in the eye.

On the vampires I should have prepared the PCs more before throwing them into the situation. I can see my tactics were an expectation of the players and that's unfair. I acted too hastily connecting the Druid's love of cooking and spices to a vampires weakness.

At the start of this campaign I told the players it would be very role play heavy and less combat focus. They seemed to love the idea and that's the initial reason I threw harder monsters in the mix. I expected them to role play their way out of it, not freak out about it.

Either case thank you for the advice and I'll work to scale down.

[KotC ChaiGuy]

Concerning damage reduction, from page 561-562 of the Core Rulebook: ... spells, spell like abilities, and energy attacks (even nonmagical fire) ignore damage reduction. ...

In the fight with the vampire spawn the druid's flaming sword (I guess they cast the spell Flame Blade) bypasses the vampire spawn's DR because the attack deals fire damage.

consider the damage reduction for vampires and vampire spawn:

Vampire: DR 10/magic and silver. To overcome the DR of a vampire the weapon used against it must have at least a +1 magical enchantment (the magic part of the DR) and be made from silver.

Vampire spawn: DR 5/silver. The weapon must be made of silver to overcome the DR, note the spawn's DR is easier to overcome since only one condition needs to be met.

I don't think this is a huge deal, I just thought I'd mention it.

[Kryptik]

Coming from a fellow GM (and player, when I get the chance), there is little as disheartening and frustrating than to throw the PCs against opponents they have little chance to beat, and then have the GM "graciously" fiat them out of it or pull a deus ex machina. Every once in a while it's ok, but this seems too frequent.

There are only two of them, after all. If you want to push their limits, give them a larger number of minions and add to flavor.

As a GM who learned the hard way, the whole "be intimidated by my edgy and dangerous gameworld" schtick gets old quickly. And if you have to use fiat to save them, they will (rightly) learn that it doesn't matter how hard they try, daddy GM is going to save them no matter what.

[The Epic Dungeon Master]

One very important thing to keep in mind is that there are only 2 PC's. So while a level 7 vs 4 level 4's might not be so intimidating, when there's only 2 you're going to be hurting. If the players act on tactics and ingenuity, this might not be such a problem. Afterall, it seems like they already did. However, it seems they only did so from your prompts planted suggestions.

Using powerful, challenging encounters to make the PC's feel heroic once defeated isn't a bad tactic. It just needs to be used sparingly. It seems like you only really do one very challenging encounter. Perhaps try to split it up. One easy, average and hard. Giving the PC's an easy challenge helps to reaffirm that they are, in fact, heroes and powerful. An average encounter will show that there are worthy adversaries in the world. And a hard encounter might display the power of the antagonist or more powerful forces in the world.

Do not ever plan for specific actions to be taken. If you plant a perfect device to 'x', the players may never think to use it and, generally (or at least with your druid player), they're not going to want to be told what to do or how to do it, even a friendly suggestion. Then, if end up not reminding them of their perfect tool, they'll never use it and possibly get overwhelmed.

Being a GM is about compromising between your ideas and your players' expectations. Clearly the ranger is fine with what you've provided, and I expect he'd be fine with a little easier challenges. But the druid is not. So ask yourself, what is it you want from your games? Generally, I think it's shared amongst most GM's that they just want everyone to have fun and to come away with an epic story. Something you guys will bring every time you see each other. For that, you don't need incredibly hard challenges that will be satisfying IF they defeat it. You just need a good story that meets everyone's expectations. You know what the druid wants - easier encounters. So plan for that. There's nothing wrong with easy encounters. You can still make them epic through circumstance, environment and context.

Here is an article from the great DM, Chris Perkins, about how he used goblins against level 22 PC's to epic proportions. LINK

Your combats should be more than just a series of mundane attacks, you should have various levels of activity going on (not saying you didn't do this, as I don't have a play by play, but just a suggestion). Add environmental problems for the players to deal with - traps, hazard or conditions. This will effectively increase the challenge of the encounter and druid might never realize your CR 2 encounter was actually CR 5 with the environment. A trap that shoots octopus ink into the waters as a smoke screen, assassin kelp (assassin vine reflavored, read this on another forum), add an illusory room with an image of the relic they are looking for, but really it's something worse, a whirlpool that pulls creatures towards it which becomes hard to resist if they don't have swim speed, a coral wall separating PC's from their destination - enemies can attack through it with cover and the PC's will have to break it, a room of passive jellyfish they have to be careful to avoid while dealing with enemies.

Lastly, I would encourage or ask the druid to keep the bestiary out of the game while you play, it'll break the immersion and turn the game into a numbers game. Rather than focus on what his DR and AC is, he should be focusing on what's available that he could use to his advantage. If he wants to know those things, make him roll knowledge checks for it. Hope this helps!

[DrDeth]

Kaiden Renfield wrote:

Little do the players know the guide is actually a Dhamire and his father is the lead villain of the campaign. His mother is a vampire who fled Korvosa when he was born to protect him from his father's mad scheme of becoming a god. He came to Korvosa to kill his father but the vampires, bitter about his mother's disappearance from the clan, captured his mother out of spite. He has no intention of leaving the heroes in the underground jail cell and unknown to our heroes at the time slips them a key to escape. His goal: use the heroes as a distraction, get the underground prince alone, defeat him and free his mother.

This scares me a lot, sounds like a DMPC? or at least a NPC where you have a story all written out, which seems more important than the PC's story and the NPC seems pretty powerful.

Yes, the Spawn should have wiped the floor with them, and "garlic oil" is a little odd, like "there's only one way to beat this encounter so..."

I am also leery of the "Once underground they encounter a group of vampires. Their guide proceeds to barter with these vampires offering the heroes as payment for the release of his mother. The vampires accept and move to take the heroes prisoner. The heroes do not resist."

Also this "I admit that was just a scene to show how powerful the villains were.

Players don't like being captured, and this seems very rail-road to me.

[Thomas Long 175]

I'm just gonna say, pathfinder generally doesn't make the best horror game. Its a fantasy genre. Too many times, trying to save the players from certain death with luck and such comes off as heavy handed GM Fiat.

It gets old very quickly because:
1. Your players are going to feel like there's no use to them showing up or being there. If its all going to work out no matter what you do then whats the use of you doing anything?

2. Flip side. The danger is so great that basically nothing you're going to do is going to be of any use. You're never going to succeed of your own accord so any victory, any chance for your character to feel worthwhile and useful is negated by the fact you feel it was handed to you.

3. The game becomes less PC-centric. To some this isn't a problem, but many people don't show up for 6 hours of "how awesome my npc's and world are." They show up to feel heroic.

[plaidwandering]

It may help to think of running a campaign like a typical action/adventure TV show.

The players are the stars of the show. They are the central characters there in every episode. They are the ones that mow through hordes of expendable minions. They should shine and be the most important parts of the story...other characters come and go, even if they reoccur.

That doesn't mean no setbacks, no failures, no defeats...just that's the lesser percentage.

Give them moments to shine, so when they get their teeth kicked in it doesn't feel like it's all the time. (now granted at lvl one it's REALLY easy for any character to get half or more HP taken off in one hit...that's just the game)

It seems like doing the one epic fight a level may be what is leading to some of these bad feelings. More routine challenges intermixed in with your heftier but not crazy higher CR fight mixed in should help.

The other thing, I'd flat tell the player that reading the bestiary during play will be utterly useless to him. He has no business doing that, it is very much not character knowledge.

[KenderKin]

Solid story-wise. I think game mechanic wise you should probably stay in the lower CR area for awhile. Let the heroes at least feel heroic on occassion (if they are always feeling terrible dread) they are not having fun.

Instead of proving how powerful the BBEG is directly now, let them battle a CR appropriate foe who gives them a tough time and then foreshadows the impending doom! "Just wait till your father gets home!" Evil laughter..