silver_diamond's page

Sorry to be back here griping so soon after my last query, but I think this issue might be relevant to more people than just me so maybe it can help other GMs with similar issues. I'm going to run down what I think my players are doing wrong and give some examples of how I've tried to help. Then you guys can tell me where I went right, where I went wrong, and what has worked for y'all in the past.

I'm running a kingdom building and exploration campaign in a homebrew world with a party of five. They recently hit level ten (they started at fifth) and it's been a rough ride. Party composition has changed around some since one player changed his character, one player left, and another player is joining next session, but it looks roughly like this: wizard, ranged martial, occultist/fighter multiclass, disciple of the pike cavalier, melee martial. Ranged martial was a thrower, now a gunslinger. Melee martial was a brawler, he left and the player joining is a melee focused warpriest.

I am really loathe to say someone is playing wrong or GMing wrong because we all have our styles and wants but I think I can safely say their playing wrong. Every player has nearly died many times, everyone has died at least once, and a few players have died more than once. There has been one TPK and one effective TPK though technically a few were still alive; they were just permanently out of commission. During the two TPK events, the party had, coincidentally, met with a powerful entity. The first was a patron demigod and the second was a fae lord. In both cases, they were able to bargain for their resurrection/healing for some price. In the other deaths they bought scrolls or paid for casting of spells. I've also been generous on a couple occasions behind the screen and fudged some otherwise lethal rolls against party members. Perhaps that was too generous of me, IDK.

With all this death and danger, I'd thought they might realize that they aren't diversifying their options. They spend all the money they get on four things: better weapons, better armor, scrolls (for the wizard to copy and that's it), and crafting (wizard crafts wondrous items and armor and weapons, occultist crafts healing potions). They aren't interested in anything that isn't those four things.

For example, they were fighting oni last time, and I knew no one had fire or acid attacks (occultist doesn't have evocation and wizard is from the metal school) so I stuck in a wand of acid arrow with 14 charges halfway through the adventure so they could finish off the rest without using their torches (which I had to remind them they had since no one could think of how to deal fire damage). Another example comes from fighting a magma dragon. In the hoard they found, among other things a wand of restoration and a strand of prayer beads (greater version, and they know what it does). They decided no one needed the prayer beads and since no one in the party had the spell on their list, they decided to toss out the wand. One of the players mentioned that the warpriest joining next week could use it. The wizard mentioned that the party didn't know she was joining so it didn't matter. I mentioned that they have two allied NPCs who can use the wand and would be more than happy to use it on them when they are at home base so they don't have to keep paying for that spell. They decided to sell the wand anyway. They wound up being unable to sell the beads because the town doesn't have the money to buy that, but they still view it as "useless to us."

So my problem is that they want to go out and adventure and come back and craft up new items for themselves, but no one is using the stuff they get that's useful and no one is actually crafting useful items anyway. They all hoard money until they have enough to buy the next +1 enhancement for their gear or they HAVE to pay for healing or spellcasting. How do I show them that they need to have a diverse set of gear? One of my favorite features of Pathfinder is that even the most inflexible build can become somewhat adaptable with some magic gear. Oils of alignment, potions of invisibility, wands with useful spells, rings with niche but super beneficial powers, these things give the party the power to face anything because someone always has something useful on hand. I can't figure out how to get the party to understand that the reason their coming closer to dying more and more is because they haven't diversified their gear since they started the campaign.

Or maybe this is all in my head. The encounters look fairly balanced on paper from what I can tell. No one has complained that fights are unbalanced. Suggestions anyone?

So I am doing some homebrew writing in a land with a lot of weird stuff, right? I come across an absolute gem of a weird video and decided I'd make a monster out of it.

Here's the goal:
-CR 9
-aberration/fey/magical beast (not sure which yet)
-In some way resembles the absolute madness embodied in the video above.

So my wonderful brainstormers, anyone want to help with ideas for abilities/type/spells/feats?

I'm not sure how much info anyone will want so I'll give a bit of a preamble in case it helps any. Bear with me, I swear there's an actual problem I could use advice on.

So I'm running in a homebrew world (if that helps anyone find answers to my issue) but it's nothing drastically different from the main setting. I've run a few campaigns in it and I'm about to start up a new one with a party of three, possibly four if we find another player. This campaign is going to be mythic, and I'm looking forward to playing around with the wild adventures such power allows in a campaign.

The first player (I'll call him the warrior) has a very standard view of what a party needs and, as a result, tends to build tanks because none of my other players build characters with an AC higher than, say 25 at a high level. Personally, I don't like it when my players decide to ditch an interesting character idea to just fill in a check box, but I understand that that's my preference; I'm not upset by it. In addition to building tanks, he has a tendency to only play fighters or cavaliers and build characters putting out as much damage as possible (Power Attack, only 2h weapons, the standard stuff). As a result, he can, and often does, just wade right on up to big bad enemies and wail on them until they die. Not a problem really, I just need to provide encounters that offer some challenge or require creative approaches. Except....

The other two players in this campaign don't build powerful characters. They're not building weaklings by any stretch, they're just not nearly on the statistical level that the warrior is on. Let's call these other two the story players. The story players build characters with backstory and concept at the forefront. This typically results in characters that are decent at what they do, and won't set any records but won't be left behind. Except by the warrior when it comes to AC and sheer damage output. This playstyle is also fine, and I am not complaining about them either.

The issue is that the warrior has a tendency to remark (not infrequently) on how he has to carry the party a lot. He very seriously believes this and I can see why. He has a very dominant personality and tend to have the party deal with problems in a way that plays to his own strengths, even if the rest of the party wants to try another route (shooting a bandit captain in the head because he felt the story players weren't making any headway in their diplomacy). Not that he doesn't do social stuff, but if he is lacking a skill that he needs in a social situation, he'll just go with what he's good at and, to quote him "make things go my way." The end result is that when the party looks back on what they've done in the past session, it really does look like he carried the party, and he remarks about how he was right about what to do, though this is frequently because his intuitions are self-fulfilling prophecies.

This hasn't become a problem for the other players yet (so far as I know). No one has complained and there has been no conflict. He is fairly good about staying in character though sometimes it's hard to tell what is in character and what is him personally. However, it's beginning to wear on me a bit and I'm worried that his actions might make the other players feel bad about their playstyle (one player in particular has been playing for a little bit now but is still shy about asking for help). I'd like to give the story players the ability to go down a path without the warrior deciding that they have to do it in a way that he personally excels at. Maybe this is all in my head but I've been GMing for 8 or 9 years now with a few different groups and I don't think I'm imagining the issues this could cause down the line.

Does anyone have advice on how I can:
1) Help show the warrior that, no, he is not carrying the party and that characters don't have to be amazing in combat to be considered good;
2) Help ensure that the other characters have moments to shine?

Thanks for your help guys!