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So, then what is the solution if one player's build is hurting the other plers' fun? There are people out there who would happily build characters designed to break the game. Am I in the wrong for wanting a challenge? Am I in the wrong for wanting to significantly contribute?...That isn't what he was saying, at all.
He's saying that he's made a relatively reasonable character that is functional, well-rounded, and competent, but he's sitting at a table with a group of seriously OP characters that completely make his character irrelevant.
I do not think this is what Nohwear was saying.
And I do not see how the stance of one player's fun being more important than the rest of the players and GM's fun should be okay as long as the lone character is not "OP", and completely verboten when the lone character is "OP"
I feel that we are getting back to the roleplay vs rollplay conflict and Stormwind Fallacy not far behind :-(
Incorrect, I did not respond because I had spelled out what I meant in an earlier post.
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ok, just some random thoughts as I read thru this thread today.
1) ** spoiler omitted **...
Number three assumes that you have a choice. For many people the option is to play with that person or go home. If the person can not be dealt with, then the lodge, or at least that location, may die. Of course, the this must be balanced against an overly authoritative GM.
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Player 1: level 1
Player 2: level 2
Player 3: level 2
Player 4: level 4 aasimar druid/monk/barbarian.
GM: if you've got a lower level character that would fit better.
Player 4: nope. This scenario says it's got content for my level 4's faction so I wanna play my level 4.
GM: *eyeballs Player 4's character sheet* - you've got a buffed AC of 30 and you do 3d6+10 damage on a hit. You could solo this scenario and that wouldn't be fun for the rest of the table. Please use a different PC with a more appropriate power level, or a pregen, otherwise my responsibility to provide a fun experience for everyone means I can't let you use that character.
Players 1, 2, and 3: we prefer you play a different PC please.
This whole hypothetical made me cringe. I truly hope this never happens at any table.
I've encountered GMs who didn't want a higher or lower level PC to join their game, and that's atrocious enough, but to have the other players say the same thing? I would simply quit going to PFS at that point.
One bad apple I can handle, but not an entire Lodge of them.
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One bad apple I can handle, but not an entire Lodge of them.
The one bad apple spoiled the bunch for me.
Edit: Added source link.
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If this were my introduction to organized play, I wouldn't have touched it with a 25-foot pole.Hence part of the reason it took me 4 years to get into PFS after my first table.
I should have specified that I meant the grousing against leaderships, thinly veiled accusations of all-but-cheating and "badwrongfun" against straw-man players, and the desire of forum keyboard-warriors to police the playing habits of the community at large but possessing zero authority whatsoever. From playing and running games both locally and at some of the biggest cons in the hobby, I have never once witnessed the dysfunction described here; I've seen friction at the table but it was quickly and easily resolved and not even close to the level of disaster you would think was common-place based on what has been discussed so far.
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One bad apple I can handle, but not an entire Lodge of them.The one bad apple spoiled the bunch for me.
One bad apple spoiled one of our previous Lodges, too.
Luckily we had/have others to choose from.
I have never once witnessed the dysfunction described here
It exists. Case in point:
My aforementioned "bad apple" typically GMed at the newer Lodge in our region, and as a result most of his players were newer and lower level (except for his).
When he played, he would be higher level (and more experienced) than any other character/player at the table. Intricate builds and all.
But if someone from a neighboring Lodge, with a similarly built character showed up, they'd be asked to play a Pregen instead.
When our VC and VL jointly approached him about it, he simply quit. That Lodge no longer exists now, because the player base wasn't experienced enough to recover.
So things like this do happen. Sounds like you're lucky in your region.
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Incorrect, I did not respond because I had spelled out what I meant in an earlier post.So, then what is the solution if one player's build is hurting the other plers' fun? There are people out there who would happily build characters designed to break the game. Am I in the wrong for wanting a challenge? Am I in the wrong for wanting to significantly contribute?...That isn't what he was saying, at all.
He's saying that he's made a relatively reasonable character that is functional, well-rounded, and competent, but he's sitting at a table with a group of seriously OP characters that completely make his character irrelevant.
I do not think this is what Nohwear was saying.
And I do not see how the stance of one player's fun being more important than the rest of the players and GM's fun should be okay as long as the lone character is not "OP", and completely verboten when the lone character is "OP"
I feel that we are getting back to the roleplay vs rollplay conflict and Stormwind Fallacy not far behind :-(
I will need to do some thread searching then :-)
BTW, for any wondering, I heavily edited my original post quoted here because I felt it read far too antagonistic. Sorry about the mess :-(
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Player 1: level 1
Player 2: level 2
Player 3: level 2
Player 4: level 4 aasimar druid/monk/barbarian.
GM: if you've got a lower level character that would fit better.
Player 4: nope. This scenario says it's got content for my level 4's faction so I wanna play my level 4.
GM: *eyeballs Player 4's character sheet* - you've got a buffed AC of 30 and you do 3d6+10 damage on a hit. You could solo this scenario and that wouldn't be fun for the rest of the table. Please use a different PC with a more appropriate power level, or a pregen, otherwise my responsibility to provide a fun experience for everyone means I can't let you use that character.
Players 1, 2, and 3: we prefer you play a different PC please.This whole hypothetical made me cringe. I truly hope this never happens at any table.
I've encountered GMs who didn't want a higher or lower level PC to join their game, and that's atrocious enough, but to have the other players say the same thing? I would simply quit going to PFS at that point.
One bad apple I can handle, but not an entire Lodge of them.
Would people really seriously be this rude to someone? That's crazy.
This is someone with a legal in tier character who wants to play a mission for his faction.
I'm sure there is various sources of dice damage but 10 static damage is like.. 2-handed power attacking with 16 strength..
These hypothetical people need to chill.
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These hypotheticals often leave out the potential for a reasonable player response.
When my 40+ AC Armor Master sat down to a low tier table, I'd have him remove his Tower Shield and do things like provoking AoOs to get into a Flank so other attackers could shine.
When my 300+ DPR Musket Master was amongst a group of other Damage Dealers, I'd have her move and single shot instead of unloading everything she had.
When the options are only presented as "GM says no" and "Player says yes", the possibility for compromise goes out the window.
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When my 40+ AC Armor Master sat down to a low tier table, I'd have him remove his Tower Shield and do things like provoking AoOs to get into a Flank so other attackers could shine.
When my 300+ DPR Musket Master was amongst a group of other Damage Dealers, I'd have her move and single shot instead of unloading everything she had.
I did much the same with my cavalier this past weekend. I charged the enemy and struck with his adamantine nodachi. When one of the other players looked askance and inquired why I didn't use the lance, I told him that I didn't need to. The party wasn't in danger yet.
Now, when the dragon showed up in the next slot, my pirate captain did NOT hold back with her pistol, because her allies were in danger of dying. But before that, I actually considered not using Deadly Aim. I even took only one shot a round a few times rather than giving the full barrage.
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Number three assumes that you have a choice. For many people the option is to play with that person or go home. If the person can not be dealt with, then the lodge, or at least that location, may die. Of course, the this must be balanced against an overly authoritative GM.ok, just some random thoughts as I read thru this thread today.
1) ** spoiler omitted **...
I disagree.
Having a jerk in the lodge will kill the lodge. I have seen this repeatedly over the years.
Plus - heck, the Jerk may be ME... if my play style doesn't fit the rest of the table (including the judge) then I am spoiling the fun of other people at the table and I need to be excluded from that table. If it's the only table around... maybe I should go play 5E? The players have the actual authority and ability to do this, and we/they do this all the time. There are people who will not play at a table with me (at least I think so), and I KNOW there are people I will not even sit in the same room with (only a couple). I don't need/want TPTB to enact rules to the effect that force someone to change so that they can sit at a game table with me. Life is to short for that sort of thing.
If there are only 2 other players I can play with? Time to go recruiting (this is something I love to do - I introduce a lot of people to this game of ours - newbies are fun to play with).
I do not understand how we are disagreeing. Perhaps I was not clear enough?
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Would people really seriously be this rude to someone? That's crazy.
This is someone with a legal in tier character who wants to play a mission for his faction.
I'm sure there is various sources of dice damage but 10 static damage is like.. 2-handed power attacking with 16 strength..
These hypothetical people need to chill.
It was just a hypothetical illustration, and I could have chosen bigger numbers instead but didn't want to get into hyperbole.
I hope nothing I've been advocating here has been viewed as somehow dictatorial, or wanting to constrain anyone's fun, or prioritising one person's fun over that of others.
I want to stress: I am advocating consensus building.
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Yeah - "Playground Rules". The Group makes and enforces Custom, and Custom is stronger than Law. "Play nice, or we wont play with you again".Would people really seriously be this rude to someone? That's crazy.
This is someone with a legal in tier character who wants to play a mission for his faction.
I'm sure there is various sources of dice damage but 10 static damage is like.. 2-handed power attacking with 16 strength..
These hypothetical people need to chill.
It was just a hypothetical illustration, and I could have chosen bigger numbers instead but didn't want to get into hyperbole.
I hope nothing I've been advocating here has been viewed as somehow dictatorial, or wanting to constrain anyone's fun, or prioritising one person's fun over that of others.
I want to stress: I am advocating consensus building.
Precisely. This is in keeping with the Community Standards.
It seems like the root problem is that widely differing PC power levels can have a negative impact on the quality of the Group experience at the table (it's not a given that they will, but they can). Rather than a top down approach to the problem, namely nerfing character options that are viewed as too potent, I would prefer that we use the Playground Rules to curtail the problem behaviours.
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I think that the reason some people wince against this is because we are a group primarily made of outsiders. Thus we have experienced unfair snubbings for being different.
A fair point. Mob rule can co-exist alongside democratic consensus. What's the best way to avoid unfair exclusion? We have a VO structure we can appeal to, but ideally we don't want to be in the position that we need to appeal.
Our Community Standards are reasonably clear:
It is our intention that everybody participating in Pathfinder Society organized play enjoys gaming in a safe and fun environment. While conflict between characters may arise, at no time should a player feel excluded or threatened at the table.
We don't want to exclude a player just for wanting to play a higher level character than the rest of the group. But, on the other hand, if some players at the table are preventing other players from having an enjoyable experience because of the PCs' power differential (or more accurately, the way that some players leverage that power differential), that is also exclusion.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Online—PbP
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I think that the reason some people wince against this is because we are a group primarily made of outsiders. Thus we have experienced unfair snubbings for being different.IMHO - Pain teaches us. It allows growth. Sometimes, we even learn to control "the Jerk" inside us. (And we all have a little Jerk in there trying to get out. We've all been in that "Playground" where "the rules" are enforced... some of us just need a reminder every now and again.)
I think you're missing the point here. In my experience, playground rules usually aren't used to enforce good behavior, they're used to force bad behavior. Don't wear nail polish in fourth grade like the leader does? You're out until you do what the group thinks you should. Don't watch the same TV shows? Go away. Don't tell the leader often enough that she's right about everything? Go play by yourself. Talk to the current victim of bullying? You're not welcome.
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Number three assumes that you have a choice. For many people the option is to play with that person or go home. If the person can not be dealt with, then the lodge, or at least that location, may die. Of course, the this must be balanced against an overly authoritative GM.ok, just some random thoughts as I read thru this thread today.
1) ** spoiler omitted **...
In the most egregious of cases, where a player is causing entire tables of players and GMs to not have fun, it becomes a player issue, not a character issue. You can deal with it as such. Legal or not, if a player consistently disrupts play and fun to a point where nobody wants to play with or GM for them, then the discussion becomes whether they should remain part of the community.
But I am not advocating any sort of codified set up where certain types of characters would trigger such a discussion. It has to be taken on a situation by situation basis and treated with a high level of objectivity.
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Number three assumes that you have a choice. For many people the option is to play with that person or go home. If the person can not be dealt with, then the lodge, or at least that location, may die. Of course, the this must be balanced against an overly authoritative GM.ok, just some random thoughts as I read thru this thread today.
1) ** spoiler omitted **...
In the most egregious of cases, where a player is causing entire tables of players and GMs to not have fun, it becomes a player issue, not a character issue. You can deal with it as such. Legal or not, if a player consistently disrupts play and fun to a point where nobody wants to play with or GM for them, then the discussion becomes whether they should remain part of the community.
But I am not advocating any sort of codified set up where certain types of characters would trigger such a discussion. It has to be taken on a situation by situation basis and treated with a high level of objectivity.
I agree with this.
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The side-commentary here has been about someone who has a character that could 'over-contribute' to a given table.
The door swings both ways, though.
At GenCon, we had an insistent player that desperately wanted to play their wizard at 'high tier', to the point that they drove away two people that the musterer was trying to seat because 'they had a real ticket and they wanted to play their character up'.
I didn't say anything, because it'd taken us twenty minutes to get enough people together to sit down and our GM was doing level-best to try and get us moving.
I *should* have said something, and then pulled out my lower-tier character. There was only one player that was *insistent* on playing 'up'.
That particular player then became a complete a** the entire scenario, and contributed next to nothing to the table. Refused to accept a loan of other party member equipment to make them more effective. Refused to do anything other than 'take up a space on the turn order', and then grumble when their spell didn't go off because the target made a save.
In addition, they kept trying to endanger the party by doing things that no sane or intelligent Pathfinder would do.
The power and level is secondary to the character of the player sitting at the table. Not the PC, but the actual internal/external workings of one's fellow player. As someone stated up-thread, no gaming is better than bad gaming, and every time I forget that, it kicks me in the chest.
To bring it back to the 'why has it been getting harsher?' 'Edge lords' and 'Edge ladies' have been pushing that. Leadership gives us a centimetre, they take a metre. Leadership gives us something nice? They do speed runs despite being asked not to politely by leadership. Because to some, the *Community* is far less important than *their own agenda*.
One can feel empowered playing a character that's perfectly in-line with the power level of a given tier of a given scenario. That's the important distinction. Far too many individuals have gone this route (and I've been sorely guilty of it myself in the past) of 'Well, if we can't cover EVERY contingency, then we're boned'.
Rather than, y'know, learning from the things that weren't covered organically in play, and having a fun experience from discovering something new.
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I should have specified that I meant the grousing against leaderships, thinly veiled accusations of all-but-cheating and "badwrongfun" against straw-man players, and the desire of forum keyboard-warriors to police the playing habits of the community at large but possessing zero authority whatsoever. From playing and running games both locally and at some of the biggest cons in the hobby, I have never once witnessed the dysfunction described here; I've seen friction at the table but it was quickly and easily resolved and not even close to the level of disaster you would think was common-place based on what has been discussed so far.If this were my introduction to organized play, I wouldn't have touched it with a 25-foot pole.Hence part of the reason it took me 4 years to get into PFS after my first table.
Just because you have not seen it, does not mean that type of dysfunction does not exist. Largely, the region I'm from is pretty good. But we've had a couple bad apples where entire tables would Un-RSVP if they were at the table. When I ran a game day, I would have 3 or 4 players email me specifically saying, "I want to play X as long as I'm not at their table."
And this particular player would consistently play out of sub-tier, playing down, and then proceed to dominate the table. One time he agreed to play in sub-tier and last second said, "Nope, I'm switching." So the rest of the table did as well. And he proceeded to leave mad because he wasn't the only star at the table.
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One bad apple I can handle, but not an entire Lodge of them.The one bad apple spoiled the bunch for me.One bad apple spoiled one of our previous Lodges, too.
Luckily we had/have others to choose from.
I have never once witnessed the dysfunction described hereIt exists. Case in point:
My aforementioned "bad apple" typically GMed at the newer Lodge in our region, and as a result most of his players were newer and lower level (except for his).
When he played, he would be higher level (and more experienced) than any other character/player at the table. Intricate builds and all.
But if someone from a neighboring Lodge, with a similarly built character showed up, they'd be asked to play a Pregen instead.
When our VC and VL jointly approached him about it, he simply quit. That Lodge no longer exists now, because the player base wasn't experienced enough to recover.
So things like this do happen. Sounds like you're lucky in your region.
This is kinda a catch 22 situation though. If your level 4 player is willing to hold back and let the other players each have their moment instead of dominating the entire session, then sure, its fine. And I certainly don't want to ban level 4's from a sub-tier 1-2. But I will and have had a conversation with a player letting them know the gravity of their choice and asking if they are willing to hold back some so others can shine too. Most often, they are ok with this or they switch to a lower level character with no rancor. Once its calmly explained to them.
But then there are those who do so purposefully so they can dominate the table with no challenge from anyone else. Now this is a player problem and should be dealt with as such. But I certainly can see if a GM or region has experienced this many times, why they might be gun-shy and just flat out deny level 4 or 5 in a sub-tier 1-2. Even though that is certainly not ideal.
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These hypotheticals often leave out the potential for a reasonable player response.
When my 40+ AC Armor Master sat down to a low tier table, I'd have him remove his Tower Shield and do things like provoking AoOs to get into a Flank so other attackers could shine.
When my 300+ DPR Musket Master was amongst a group of other Damage Dealers, I'd have her move and single shot instead of unloading everything she had.
When the options are only presented as "GM says no" and "Player says yes", the possibility for compromise goes out the window.
absolutely. If you foresee it being a problem, the best thing to do is to explain to the player why you think it might be an issue, and ask them to hold back a little. I've usually had good experiences having just this type of conversation.
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Other people care.
Especially when it is as obnoxious as it was.
If you weren't there, you probably shouldn't judge.
I was there. I saw no problem at all with people grandfathering Assimars and Tieflings (very few of them have actually come out to play, at least locally or in the on-line areas I frequent).
And I saw no problem with the Speedruns. Who cares if people want to start at level 2 and not level 1? Doesn't bother me in the least.
People seem to have decided that Speedruns are EEEEEVVVVVVVIIIILLLLL. And I have no idea why
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Other people care.
Especially when it is as obnoxious as it was.
If you weren't there, you probably shouldn't judge.
I was there. I saw no problem at all with people grandfathering Assimars and Tieflings (very few of them have actually come out to play, at least locally or in the on-line areas I frequent).
And I saw no problem with the Speedruns. Who cares if people want to start at level 2 and not level 1? Doesn't bother me in the least.
People seem to have decided that Speedruns are EEEEEVVVVVVVIIIILLLLL. And I have no idea why
This is kinda disingenuous to say, considering nobody discussed speedruns at all until they were used to quickly create a pile of aasimars and tieflings. Plus, it is generally assumed that people are actually playing scenarios and not just plowing through them as quickly as they can just to get the XP.
But lets look at the situation more objectively.
We have a 3XP Evergreen module that runs short when played fully and can run really short on a replay when you know exactly where to go and what to do. Typically, scenarios, take 4 to 5 hours to play. Even the quick ones, or ones that end quickly usually take 2 or 3 hours to play, and you get 1 XP. You'd need to play 3 of these to get 2nd level. And then you'd need to find 3 different ones to do the same. At the time, only Confirmation was a thing for evergreen scenarios. Add to this that typically a 3XP module takes 5 to 8 hours to play. You have campaign leadership giving folks a Month to get their aasimars and tieflings into the game, with the request that they be reasonable about it. So even if you play 7 days a week for 28 straight days, assuming you have a day job, you would only get 28 XP, divided by 3, is 7 level 2 aasimars or tieflings. The speedruns had folks do 10 runs in 8 hours on a single day for 10 aasimars and tieflings. Regardless where you think the line is for good, bad, wrong, fun, whatever... that is a pretty blatant exploit of a request for reasonability. Because I don't think anyone can justify saying that running a 3XP module in 20 minutes, 10 times in a row, is reasonable.
If you want to slam through Masters of the Fallen Fortress in 20 minutes before you start Dragon's Demand Part 1, then that doesn't bother me really.
The line is when leadership ambiguously asks you to be reasonable, and your response is to declare reasonable the maximum number you can possibly do in a single day flouting the typical and usual time constraints one would be under.
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I was talking about Playgrounds, not High School. Pre-school... maybe kindergarten or 1st grade. but whatever... Playground rules are the ones that exist now and are self-enforcing by the players. Not pretty, not nice, but they are what they are. People play with who they want to... Making rules on who someone else can play with ... is going to work about as well as when your mom told you you had to play with your cousin - the creepy kid who... did creepy things.
I think you're missing the point here. In my experience, playground rules usually aren't used to enforce good behavior, they're used to force bad behavior. Don't wear nail polish in fourth grade like the leader does? You're out until you do what the group thinks you should. Don't watch the same TV shows? Go away. Don't tell the leader often enough that she's right about everything? Go play by yourself. Talk to the current victim of bullying? You're not welcome.
I was talking about playgrounds, too. Especially about third grade. Equal in brutality about the exclusion to anything seen in high school. At least by high school the misfits started to find each other.
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I was talking about Playgrounds, not High School. Pre-school... maybe kindergarten or 1st grade. but whatever... Playground rules are the ones that exist now and are self-enforcing by the players. Not pretty, not nice, but they are what they are. People play with who they want to... Making rules on who someone else can play with ... is going to work about as well as when your mom told you you had to play with your cousin - the creepy kid who... did creepy things.
Lets not use playground rules. I'm getting too old to suplex people.
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Lets not use playground rules. I'm getting too old to suplex people.
I was talking about Playgrounds, not High School. Pre-school... maybe kindergarten or 1st grade. but whatever... Playground rules are the ones that exist now and are self-enforcing by the players. Not pretty, not nice, but they are what they are. People play with who they want to... Making rules on who someone else can play with ... is going to work about as well as when your mom told you you had to play with your cousin - the creepy kid who... did creepy things.
It's not the best phrase is it? Negative connotations for a lot of people.
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And I saw no problem with the Speedruns. Who cares if people want to start at level 2 and not level 1? Doesn't bother me in the least.Would it bother you if people just filled out the chronicles for the characters then, rather than spend time running the module?When someone shows up at a table with me - I really don't check to see if her CRs are filled out. I don't quiz her on how she played her last few games, or anything like that. What's she bringing to the table to play with me? What's she going to play like? Is she there to have fun? How is she going to fit in... not did she "play right" in her former games.
If - during the game with me - something is really "off" with the way she's playing? or something's weird with her PC? I might ask something then... but mostly to see if she's messed something up (made a mistake) or if she knows something I might learn (some "cute gimmick"), I tend to assume she's honest and fun to have at the table - at least until proven otherwise.
Let's look at it this way. What if a bunch of people from different lodges not only skipped straight to the sheets, but started to brag about it. Would it be their fault or the leadership's if there was a new layer of paper work and scrutiny added?