Needing some assistance. As the thread says, I am a first time GM who is doing a home brew campaign with experienced players and am needing advice on a few things. Below I have listed the main problems I am having and I was hoping that there might be people out there who can give me advice on how to handle them. For context the party is currently at level 8:
1. One of my players is a ratfolk investigator with a feat that allows him to add inspiration to perception checks without expending an inspiration point. He also has a plus 20 to perception which means he can consistently roll in the 30's, meaning I can never surprise them.
2. I made the mistake of allowing one of the group to play a gun slinger, on the emerging category (the campaign is set at an equivalent of time period of assassin's creed 2, so very early technology and not common items.) so he is shooting against touch AC and doing a large amount of damage, which makes building a challenging encounter difficult.
3. My players seem to be very stuck in habits that don't let them vary styles when roleplaying social encounters. I get that these are their characters, they know them best, but one or two things have me pulling up: The first incident was I had them searching a silver mine for a cursed item. It meant they had to pass through a military road block, put in place by direct Baronial order and when they came out they were confronted by a group if paladins (two of whom were of the same church and higher level than the one in the party) and a 11th level inquisitor of Abadar informing them that they were under arrest for trespassing and violation of a Baronial order. The gunslinger, who is a lawful neutral follower of Abadar, refuses to co-opperate and just about pulls his weapons. The second happened when the Paladin was questioning a thug who had attacked one of the party members, which was later discovered to be a diversion so another party member could be kidnapped. For this campaign I have an NPC party member travelling with them to drive the story, a Sanctified Rogue. During the attack she was one of the party members to intervene and nearly broke the guy’s arm, so he is freak out by her and she is clearly not opposed to trying again. The paladin is aware of this and when the suspect refuses to co-operate, the paladin decides to leave him with the ninja, knowing full well what lengths she could go to if she has too. The problem is I feel like calling them out on these things is going to cause arguments in the group.
There are other problems I have but I don’t want to overload the message board at this time. No doubt these have come from a few rookie mistakes on my part, my question is how to deal with them without becoming a tyrant.
1) Generally speaking, unless you have an encounter planned out with invisibility and an entire group of stealthy types you'll never manage to 'surprise' the party anyways. Someone will always roll high enough to make a perception check.
If you do feel the need to surprise them (and I seriously question that need) then use invisibility (+40 if they don't move, +20 if they do!). Or have the enemy disguise themselves and mix in with non-hostiles so it isn't perception but sense motive vs bluff to tell who is an enemy or who isn't. Have half of the bad guys delay attacking for a round to further confuse the party. And of course the ever popular 'attack the party when they are sleeping' the investigator has to sleep sometimes.
Oh, and your investigator worked hard to set his character up to have a ridiculous perception, so you should reward him for it. Let him know of a typical bandit ambush while they are in sight of it, but before the talking starts. Or people watching from an ally way (could be kids, could be admirers, could be the Barron's men watching murderhoboes to make sure nobody gets killed in town. Have the Barron's men refer to them as murderhoboes to their faces).
2) Gunslingers hit well, but damage? They generally can't add much damage to a shot? If it really annoys you throw some regular zombied monsters (like Ogres) at the party. The 5 DR should make him cry.
All in all, I don't think a vanilla gunslinger should be a problem? Especially since early guns only hit touch to the first range increment? Make sure he's doing his reloading properly. If he is duel wielding pistols he can't reload because he needs a free hand. Rifles reload slower, so he should only be able to load a barrel as a move action even if he does have feats and alchemical cartridges. Also his misfires should be as frequent as his crits? A misfire takes him out of combat for a little while unless he spends a grit point and has the grit talent to clear the jam.
3) So yeah, it doesn't sound like your players want a RP challenge. They want to wander around and beat things up, maybe with a side of light RP.
Is that fine? Talk to them out of game and see if they are up to the game you want to run. It might be better to give them what they want since forcing them into what you want is sort of against what good GMing is (in my opinion). This is suppose to be a night of entertainment and story telling, not a night of arguments and plotting against your friends.
Give them incorporeal undead, things that can turn invisible, flying critters, etc. Plus, pretty much all undead have Dr, so that gun slinger is going to cry.
As to Touch AC, dragons. Sure, he can hit all he wants. Sure, they don't have any DR, for the most part. But, and here's the key, if you're not using Modern firearms (if guns are emerging tech, they certainly should NOT be using Modern firearms), he has to be within the first range category to fire against Touch AC. Breath weapons, spells, reach... Shall I continue?
I'd put out an arrest warrant for the party. Have the offending gunslinger called out as a heretic to the church, the all characters seen in his company (party members) wanted for questioning, ect. You don't mess with Paladins. Especially not ones explicitly acting with the direct orders of the guy in charge of the area. :P But, then, I'm a terrible person, and this is likely to end in a party wipe (eventually).
1) Invisibility was already mentioned but if you feel like he needs to be punished for being so perceptive then start using creatures with Gaze attacks... he would be the first one to lock eyes most likely. If he is the only one in the group to pass the Perception check it would scare the party pretty good if the Ratfolk suddenly turned to stone lol
2) The other guys covered that. Reloading early firearms is a chore... and not possible if your hands are full and they only target touch AC within the first range increment.
3) I've dealt with this situation before myself. If you want your world to have an established authority then they need to be strong enough to put the PC's in check if they get out of line. I've had players literally laugh in the town guards faces when they were threatened with being arrested. I also had a Wizard who thought he could get away with anything he wanted to using Invisibility and Fly... some high level archers took him out before he knew he was being hunted.
You might not need to kill your players but whooping their ass and having them wake up in jail will send a clear message. Another tactic I use as a teaching tool is presenting a character that they can make either an enemy or ally out of... meanwhile, your main encounter to come is especially challenging (APL+3). If they are combative to this "spare" character (usually they are) then they would face the challenge alone... and possibly die. If they win, it will most likely be considered "barely" and possibly at a heavy cost. That's when you get to say "That one guy was a potential ally for this encounter but you guys decided to kill him for no discernible reason."
At the end of the day, you must be conscious of what is fun for the players. You might have worked hard on a story that you want to unfold but if they are not interested then just go with the flow and adjust your story so it's tailored to their play style.
In my games, I use the following interpretations to manage ambushes.
The party is always assumed to be taking 10 in a hostile setting, this means that I always know what the DC needed in stealth to beat is.
Then you have to remember that a lot of monsters are ambush monsters. They'll stay in place and let the PC come to them. That means they take 20 on their stealth checks. That will often be enough to beat the perception of the party, or at least make them start closer (don't forget to account for that -1 to perception for each 10 ft of distance)
Also let's talk about that distance modifier. Suppose your party isn't being very stealthy. The DC to see them is 0. So in essence, if your monster (let's say a black dragon) is hidden somewhere 300 feet away, he definitely sees them, but they definitely don't see him (-30 to perception from distance)
That black dragon then also has enough fly speed to close the distance as his surprise round, or cast a spell, or breath his acid.
So I would say, think about how perception works, and you'll find plenty opportunities to surprise your pcs
One guy has Perception in the sky? Great - reward him for it, but remember that encounters in situations that are favourable to the party are considered to be of a lower CR.
OR
Don't bother. If he's invested heavily in Perception, so what. If no-one's trying to hide, that's not much use.
PS: Yeah, I saw that feat too, and thought it broken as [insert 4-letter word of own choosing].
In the game I’m running right now, the party has a summoner whose eidolon was built for stealth and perception; there’s nothing it can’t find.
And that’s fine with me. The party will never be surprised by anything, so I plan encounters with that in mind. I just put them against more and tougher enemies, because I know the party can handle it. They never get ambushed, but I make up for that by putting them up against stronger enemies who don’t need a surprise round to put up a fight.
As for the gunslinger, I’d challenge the player by including more enemies, who attack in groups. That’s pretty good advice for challenging any glass cannon character, I think. Don’t give them just one enemy to full-round.
I wish you the best!
For general purpose GMing advice that I point all new GMs I find or make towards, this years old Reddit post is fairly on-point and better written than my doggerel.
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