a word about that, have a friend that has lymphoma now, he went through chemo did everyting the doctor told him to do, and had an "I beat cancer party" then it came back, the doc told him because he didnt elect to have a bone marro transplant, they could not do it now that he has had the chemo.
he started studying everyting, read litterally like 100 books, one thing he found is there are tests to see if your cancer will respond to one chemo treatment over another. no doctor here ever told him about them... why? because they are only available in europe. they work, and they are accurate, but for whatever reason they dont do them here. there is also a doctor in canada that had something like 4000 cases of lymphoma cured with diet,exercise, a few holistic practices and a totally illegal drug (marijuana) my buddy followed that and guess what, the lymphnodes shrank, the doctor now says he is in complete remission, and he could not be happyer.
now thats just one person maybe shouldent be applied to the whole of cancer science, but with medicine theres only so much they will tell you and the advice is not always the best. sometimes you just gotta jump in and give it a shot when you got nothing to loose.
The point of anecdotal accounts like this is that the people who try the alternative medicines and die dont write books about it.
What matters is not whether some guy cured himself with positive attitude/marijuana/crystals. What matters is what proportion of patients doing that survive compare to what proportion survive who undergo evidence-based treatments.
Doctors like curing their patients. They're not going to hide something that works. They just recognise that a treatment which works once out of the twenty people who try it is worse than one which works a hundred times out of a thousand trials - despite the fact that the second treatment has nine hundred people who will report they have had no success.
The great tragedy with alternative medicine is that people do have something to lose, whether they realise it or not. It's nearly always better to begin treatment early - if you waste six months on meditative practises/crystal therapies/homeopathy or anything else and then go to the mainstream therapies as a last resort the damage has already been done. Purveyors of these treatments-without-evidence are doing harm, pure and simple.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
oh btw. we had another session last night, DM spent 40 min trying to figure out if DR got applied before or after the save split the damage... sure it was common sense to us that it would be applied after but he wanted to read it and couldnent find it... hes a very exacting guy and has a lotta trouble with the books. One big issue is the descriptions in the beasteary, the monster entry will say type"construct" then he has to try and find where that is located at to see if it is immune to some form of damage, then he has to go to three other areas to find where DR is covered... ugg... took forever... and eventually we just begged him to make a decision rather than keep trying to find it...
3 points:
1) If the rule is something not specific to the monster, then everyone should look for the rule, not just the DM. It will save time if you find it and say, "Hey, I think what you are looking for is on page 230 of the Advanced Players Guide." Obviously, this does not apply if it requires you to pull out the Bestiary and look up the monster, because then you might get some metagame info.
2) Encourage your DM to try www.d20pfsrd.com. It has almost all the info of the books and it has hyperlinks and a great google-powered search. So if you see "Constuct," you should be able to click on the link and read the construct rules, or google search. And the www.d20pfsrd.com works great on an iPad if your DM has one.
3) Remind the DM of "Rule 0": When in doubt, he has the final say. He sets the rules and he can, as you said, make a decision rather than stop the game. Even if he later finds out his rule was not RAW, he can keep his old rule as a house rule or state that he made a minor mistake, and from now on, he will be using the RAW.
a word about that, have a friend that has lymphoma now, he went through chemo did everyting the doctor told him to do, and had an "I beat cancer party" then it came back, the doc told him because he didnt elect to have a bone marro transplant, they could not do it now that he has had the chemo.
he started studying everyting, read litterally like 100 books, one thing he found is there are tests to see if your cancer will respond to one chemo treatment over another. no doctor here ever told him about them... why? because they are only available in europe. they work, and they are accurate, but for whatever reason they dont do them here. there is also a doctor in canada that had something like 4000 cases of lymphoma cured with diet,exercise, a few holistic practices and a totally illegal drug (marijuana) my buddy followed that and guess what, the lymphnodes shrank, the doctor now says he is in complete remission, and he could not be happyer.
now thats just one person maybe shouldent be applied to the whole of cancer science, but with medicine theres only so much they will tell you and the advice is not always the best. sometimes you just gotta jump in and give it a shot when you got nothing to loose.
maybe thats the same with gaming, everybody can tell you "dont do xyz" but maybe thats exactly what you should do...
When I was in the military I figured out a mechanical/electronics issue that in a within 10 minutes that stumped a guy with master's degree for 6 hours. Are you suggesting that my word should be taken over his?
It is no secret that there are techniques in other countries that are not supported in the U.S., with regard to medicine. That does not make them not viable. In short saying the U.S. approved method is not actually a valid argument.PS:Diet and exercise take care of a lot of things, and so does marijuana. I am not in any way advocating illegal use of it though. It is used as medicinal drug here(U.S.). That is not really a secret so I would not say marijuana is holistic at all.
oh btw. we had another session last night, DM spent 40 min trying to figure out if DR got applied before or after the save split the damage... sure it was common sense to us that it would be applied after but he wanted to read it and couldnent find it... hes a very exacting guy and has a lotta trouble with the books. One big issue is the descriptions in the beasteary, the monster entry will say type"construct" then he has to try and find where that is located at to see if it is immune to some form of damage, then he has to go to three other areas to find where DR is covered... ugg... took forever... and eventually we just begged him to make a decision rather than keep trying to find it...
It seems your GM is the type that has trouble remembering rules if he has been GM'ing for 4 years and did not know that. I have a player who I keep having to remind about certain rules, had never GM'd, and even he knows the things your GM does not know. In an earlier post I said that you GM should at least know where to look to find the answer. The bestiary has a list of monster subtypes, and general abilities of each type, and subtype. You might need to GM.
RE: medicine and homeopathy... they are not without evidence, some have a hell of a lot of evidence, but yeah generally I agree with you go with the treatment that has the highest chance of working, THEN if that does not work go for the amazonian bark cures.
but aside from that, I think the topic is finally winding down... anyone else got anything to add about controling powergamers?
1.Define an acceptable power level for your group.
2.Don't add in any house rules that give extra stuff such as lizard men.
3.Use 15 or 20 point buy.
4.Make sure everyone knows how the character works.
5.A GM should not allow something unless he understands it.
6.If something appears to be broken look at all possibilities. It might be a misread rule. The player may have gone beyond the group's acceptable power level. The other players might just be underpowered. The GM might not have figured out the correct tactics to deal with the issue. Etc.........
7. Don't be afraid to go online and ask others how they dealt with similar issues.
RE: medicine and homeopathy... they are not without evidence, some have a hell of a lot of evidence, but yeah generally I agree with you go with the treatment that has the highest chance of working, THEN if that does not work go for the amazonian bark cures.
but aside from that, I think the topic is finally winding down... anyone else got anything to add about controling powergamers?
I think you're missing my point.
Homeopathic medicine is not 'medicine'. It is a dilution agent, with none of the medicine present.
If Amazonian bark was shown to have beneficial effects, I'm all for actually using it. The homeopathic version though, would not actually contain any amazonian bark. It would be named amazonian bark. Amazonian bark would have been used in the process of making the medicine, but the final product will contain zero molecules of amazonian bark, or anything that was in the bark or anything even related to the bark.
Its the equivalent of putting a bottle of sugar pills in a room, then putting a bottle of amazonian bark in the room, never letting the two interact. Then, you take the sugar pills out of the room and put a label of "amazonian bark" on it.
Homeopathy claims that water has a "memory". If you introduce an agent, shake it up violently with water, the water will take on properties of that agent, even if the agent is removed.
There is no scientific basis for this to happen. It also contradicts the fundamental laws of chemistry and physics as we understand them today. For it to work, everything in every chemistry book ever written HAS TO BE WRONG. It would change the nature of everything we know about physics. Every scientific advance to date, would have to be attributed to pure luck, because the laws of physics as we understand them and have used to make scientific advances would be wrong.
Water does have a memory... but it disappears in fifty millionths of a nanosecond. That's 0.0000000000000001 seconds, otherwise known as a femtosecond.
For comparison, a femtosecond is to a second, as a second is to 31.7 million years.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Power-gamers come with...
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/power-creep
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
ok sidney, I've gotten a lot of advice like that but lets get specific... how exactly do you have them tone down the character. Is lowering it 1 ac enough? 3? where do you draw the line? and if its a character that has a combination of synergizing abilities, and a little cut wont make much difference, do you push harder?
It's purely a case-by-case basis ; and again, you don't simply say to a player he has to lower his character's AC. You don't simply control powergamers ; especially if you have yourself trouble defining the concept or seeing it executed (and not as in "my character is optimized and really efficient" as you may believe from a lack of rules-fu). The only broken builds are easy to find online, and it is even easier to check if they are legal just by posting said build on the messageboards.
With a disruptive player, you talk with him about how his character is overshining everyone (if this is actually the case), and ask him to tone it down for everyone's fun, or better, to help his fellow players making their own concept more efficient so he isn't overshining people anymore.
Wraith, not sure what your going with on the military example, but if your asking if I trust the word of people who work in the field vs people who theorize about the field and have a lot of education... I'd take the 60yr old mechanic's word about how to fix a car before taking the word of a advanced robotics engineer from harvard, if you catch my drift.
Iron are you aware that the placebo effect is actually very effective for some disorders/diseases? and that the people who respond best to them are doctors and people who have a faith or belif in science? now if your talking about "stratified water" or whatever thats called, no there are a lot of snake oil salesmen out there... I dont disagree with you on that.
ok sidney, I've gotten a lot of advice like that but lets get specific... how exactly do you have them tone down the character. Is lowering it 1 ac enough? 3? where do you draw the line? and if its a character that has a combination of synergizing abilities, and a little cut wont make much difference, do you push harder?
My point was that the guy with the degree was supposed to be the expert. He actually helped design the equipment in question. Yet, for all of his knowledge and training he got trumped by someone with a high school degree, and a some on the job training.
Now knowing that he helped designed the equipment who do you bet your money on, most of the time? <--Rhetorical question.
PS:He actually went out and did field work. He was not just someone who talked about things, but never put it in practice.
ok sidney, I've gotten a lot of advice like that but lets get specific... how exactly do you have them tone down the character. Is lowering it 1 ac enough? 3? where do you draw the line? and if its a character that has a combination of synergizing abilities, and a little cut wont make much difference, do you push harder?
It depends on the specific situation, and where the other characters stand. Is he slightly outside the group's comfort zone, or is he able to constantly solo encounters?
Is the GM able to handle such builds? Does he have the time to adjust to such builds....etc?
There is no magic solution. The game is really complicated. Sometimes what seems like the problem, won't even be the problem. As an example I had a player complaining about a character. The character was not weak though. The problem was that he(the player) refused to use tactics. He just charged into combat every time, got himself surrounded, and got taken down.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is just a matter of stepping out of the spotlight on purpose. Just because you can do ________ that does not mean you have to do it. Allowing someone else the opportunity to do things is a good way to keep everyone happy if other players value being in the spotlight.
PS:Allowing them to do _____ just because you know they will fail is not cool though.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Summoners are much worse against DR.
A fighter does more damage per hit than a summoner, but a summoner gets a lot more attacks which is why it has more total damage so if the baddie has no DR then the summoner has a very good chance of doing more damage, but you also have to take size into consideration. Large and Huge eidolons are often not always feasible in actual gameplay. I know this because I played a druid with a large animal companion, and when I was fighting inside the tiger was not in a position to be as effective as it could be otherwise. If that tiger had been huge he would have had to stay outside. Yeah the eidolon can be reduced in size, but it also drops his damage.
Going back to the fighter and eidolon, as more baddies get DR at higher levels the summoner's advantage is not so big. A haste spell which does occur many actual games, but is not often included in theorycrafting does more for a fighter's DPR than it does for a summoner.
The summoner also has to worry about the caster(actual summoner, not eidolon) being targeted as a way to get rid of the eidolon. I have had one at the table. Yeah the numbers look scary, but in actual gameplay they are less impressive.
As for the barbarian, it does more damage when raging, just like the ranger and paladin do more damage when their special abilities are on. The fighter just brings the pain all day long though. No evil enemies, no problem. No favoured enemy, who cares. Not angry, it does not even matter.
Back to the summoner and his buddy-->The eidolon can not be dispelled if the summoner brings it in the normal way. You can knock the summoner unconscious to get rid of the eidolon though. Getting them to be far enough apart also automatically reduces the eidolon's hit points.
Having seen a summoner in play, I was glad to find out they were not as scary as advertised. At the same time I would not suggest them for a player or GM that is not up on the rules. They have so many special rules that it is easy to build on correctly, and have it do a lot more than it is supposed to. Almost every "problem summoner" posted has rules being misapplied. Once that is corrected the poster is normally a lot happier.
edit:Just do you know I have played or GM'd every class at least once, except for the cavalier.
so yeah... I pretty much go with the job experience over the scholar any day...
In case you missed it the guy with the degree had experience. He was just wrong that particular time. My point was that you should go with experience, even if the person with experience is wrong once or twice. He is more likely to be right than the other person.
edit:Me being right instead of him on that occasion does not make me the best choice for the piece of equipment.
PS:I am the experienced guy*. I am not just repeating things I have heard somewhere. Some of these other posts you kept bringing up were just done on paper. :)
*I have seen these things at the table.
|
oh btw. we had another session last night, DM spent 40 min trying to figure out if DR got applied before or after the save split the damage... sure it was common sense to us that it would be applied after but he wanted to read it and couldnent find it... hes a very exacting guy and has a lotta trouble with the books. One big issue is the descriptions in the beasteary, the monster entry will say type"construct" then he has to try and find where that is located at to see if it is immune to some form of damage, then he has to go to three other areas to find where DR is covered... ugg... took forever... and eventually we just begged him to make a decision rather than keep trying to find it...3 points:
1) If the rule is something not specific to the monster, then everyone should look for the rule, not just the DM. It will save time if you find it and say, "Hey, I think what you are looking for is on page 230 of the Advanced Players Guide." Obviously, this does not apply if it requires you to pull out the Bestiary and look up the monster, because then you might get some metagame info.
2) Encourage your DM to try www.d20pfsrd.com. It has almost all the info of the books and it has hyperlinks and a great google-powered search. So if you see "Constuct," you should be able to click on the link and read the construct rules, or google search. And the www.d20pfsrd.com works great on an iPad if your DM has one.
3) Remind the DM of "Rule 0": When in doubt, he has the final say. He sets the rules and he can, as you said, make a decision rather than stop the game. Even if he later finds out his rule was not RAW, he can keep his old rule as a house rule or state that he made a minor mistake, and from now on, he will be using the RAW.
Just wondering did you mean like Elemental Resist? Because there aren't any saves for melee/ranged attacks so DR shouldn't have anything to do with saves. I think you meant Elemenal Resist but just making sure your GM isn't confused.
And the answer most certainly is after the save.
I am running the Jade Regent Adventure Path.
We had a player show up with an AC which could only be hit if the lead bad guy rolled a natural 20.
I told him his character was overpower for the game.
I gave him three choices:
1) Tone down the character,
2) Play a different character and keep the campaign's power level in mind when he made the new character, or
3) Don't play.
If I was running my own campaign, I could deal with this by choosing monsters with high touch attacks, area attacks w/o reflex save, villians who were cheesed out.
I don't want to do this with a published campaign.
Remember that the reason we play is to have fun and I find this kind of cheese ruins my fun and other players' fun.
Talk to your PC first, but if not try this...
I gotta ask how the PC got this way? Did he spend every copper he had on AC? If so let him be. Take one good swing at him with the bad guy and then move on to another player. This game has no "threat" or anything so any guy with a decent Int is going to go after the guy doing a lot more damage or the guy wearing no armor. Not to mention there will come a time when the guy with the high AC will need to make a save or something and just fail miserably.
Like we told Baal and other people in this thread. APs are a nice story guide but some work by the GM is required to alter or adjust to match the desired difficulty for the party. If you have trouble hitting the guy toss in a few spell casters, use flanking, use nets, or heck like I said above just run around him and attack other people. Now if he has more than the average WBL then you may get into issues where his damage doesn't sufficiently suck enough for having that high AC.
MR is not the correct term. He might have meant spell resistance, which determines if a save even has to be made, but it does not determine if extra fire damage is added or not.
Certain creatures are weak against certain elements and take 1.5 times the normal amount of damage. It should be taken into account after the save since it increases actual damage taken, and you won't know how much damage is taken until after the save.
I would have to see the build in question in order to point out any weaknesses. It is highly possible to have more than one way to try to achieve the same results.
I think what people should really do is TALK to your players BEFORE you run anything for them. Find out what they want and how they will play and plan ahead! If they are powergamers then powergame your game. If they are RPers then try and make good RP encounters. If they are a mix you may have to mix and match things.
Also if the players you have are power gamers and you don't want to run for powergamers then maybe you will have to make a hard choice and say "NO". If they are truly your friends they would understand that your friendship is more important than a game. If they are just strangers then its not so hard to say "sorry I'm not that kind of DM."
|
|
I think what people should really do is TALK to your players BEFORE you run anything for them. Find out what they want and how they will play and plan ahead! If they are powergamers then powergame your game. If they are RPers then try and make good RP encounters. If they are a mix you may have to mix and match things.
Also if the players you have are power gamers and you don't want to run for powergamers then maybe you will have to make a hard choice and say "NO". If they are truly your friends they would understand that your friendship is more important than a game. If they are just strangers then its not so hard to say "sorry I'm not that kind of DM."
Pretty much what I do up front. I don't deal with power gamers. I make this as clear up front as possible. They are welcome to play, but I don't cater to it so it won't be at my game. Then with new gamers, I make sure to groom them away from such play styles.
Some power gamers are excellent roleplayers, so they are more than welcome to bring that part of their play style to my game. I think acting like its an either/or proposition is in error. But that doesn't give them carte blanche to screw up the rest of our experience at our table.
Different tables have different standards of play. Just as some groups do not like roleplay, or hate dungeon crawls, or only do hack'n'slash, there are those that abhor power gaming.
All of that said, I think that a full group of power gamers works wonderfully together, and a GM knowing up front that this is the case and agreeing to that play style, has a full toolbox to work with it. Power gaming is not in and of itself a negative, but it can be a negative for some tables.
Wraith, ok, but I think that was part of the problem old white dragon had spell resist and took damage from fire, where the save came in and where the damage was reduced was his problem. either way because "dragon" was the monster type and it was not in the area the stats were in, and because the rules for spell resist (or whatever it was) were not listed near stats, he had to look everything up and it took way way too long... I think I want to make sme new DM screens based on this for him or something...
One thing that I do as a GM as part of my game preparation is to make a text document for the creatures that the party will face. I copy and paste all of the relevant abilities (from the beastiary entry, from the tables at the back of the beastiary, from the core, etc...). This entry also has any modifications that I have done to the creature (changed feats, HD upgrades, spells already cast, etc..).
When I first started doing that, it increased my prep time a fair bit, but it did three things for me.
1) It made sure that I knew what each creature could do as well as put all of the relevant facts in one place
2) It increased my knowledge of the rules and made sure that I knew where to find them for when I need to verify them.
3) It provided me with a database that allows me to quickly grab what I need or make changes on the fly as to what the PCs are facing (cause you know that the detailed planning that you did for a location will be the location that the PCs miss or decide to do last - or head directly for the one place that you didn't prep).
IF the GM can't or won't do this, you may want to prepare some cheat sheets that have the relevant text and which page of which book to find them.
ex: Spell Resistance does .... p217-218 Core or p304 Beastiary
Caster Level Check (d20 + caster level) p217 Core
Saving Throws p216-217 Core
Vulnerability does.... p305 Beastiary
PS: as long as some of you are passing toward or through Wisconsin feel free to hope over the lake to Michigan and buy some of our amazing Mackinaw Island Fudge.Can I get some of this in Superior WI? My wife and I are heading to Duluth, MN later this week to visit her sister-in-law.
-- david
Papa.DRB
Sorry if this is late. It is only sold in Mackinaw City and on Mackinaw Island, since it is made in smaller batches by Ma and Pa style businesses.
I am not saying I know anything about homeopathic medicine... But it did provide me with relief from a condition that had real doctors stumped for years, in my case anyway.
In my case my mom just happened to buy a book on alternative remedies. I looked up my condition and it listed a number of remedies from diverse sources such as Chinese Herbalism, Homeopathy, and even folk remedies. The real doctors were useless so I tried the alternatives. Homeopathy listed some pill... I looked up the pill and it was sodium chloride... yes table salt. Not wanting to buy expensive homeopathy pills I just grabbed the salt shaker off the table and used as directed. It cleared it up and the condition didn't return for two days. So far, the Folk remedies and Chinese herbalism have proved marvelously effective as well. They aren't cures but they work to relieve symptoms that so called real medicine CAN'T relieve.
I think if real doctors would grow up and start taking older remedies seriously then we would have MUCH better medical care.
Er... no I simply looked up the active ingredient in the homeopathic pill and used the active ingredient directly.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Have you guys thought about just maybe taking this completely off-topic homeopathic discussion to another thread...preferably one in the Off-Topic board? It may have once had some vague bearing on controlling powergamers, but it has long since finished any relevance to the title topic.
Wraith, ok, but I think that was part of the problem old white dragon had spell resist and took damage from fire, where the save came in and where the damage was reduced was his problem. either way because "dragon" was the monster type and it was not in the area the stats were in, and because the rules for spell resist (or whatever it was) were not listed near stats, he had to look everything up and it took way way too long... I think I want to make sme new DM screens based on this for him or something...
Scott- humm... lets say your a powergamer, does that mean you wont enjoy a well run game by a great DM if he does more RP? If there are a bunch of inexpirenced gamers who have only ever played with a DM who's done nothing but powergamer games, does that mean you should never offer them an alternative? I agree its good to talk with the gamers, but I dont think I agree that you should give the players everything they want... (little kids like candy, so is that all a mom should ever feed them?)
Pathfinder has GM screens. The more you tell me about this GM, the more I think you should GM. It might help him learn the rules, and then you can give him the GM chair back, assuming he is willing to allow you to GM.
Doing more RP does not mean you can't powergame also. You can even powergame RP. <--Assumes you meant "combat" when you said powergame, since it seems like that was what Scott was saying.
Scott's wording seems to try to separate the two, which is not the really possible since they are not polar opposities.
If you have players that powergame you should find out why. If the last GM was really brutal with his encounters then you might have to convince them that you are not so deadly with encounters.
If they just do it for fun, then you might have to try to reach a middle ground, so they still feel powerful, but you as the GM are not overwhelmed by what they bring to the table.
|
I think Bart said it the best...for every min/maxed character there is a min as well as a max. Most power gamers (well the ones that I know) tend to focus characters very narrowly..they do one thing extremely well...most times it is combat related but there is also a min side of the coin.
Broaden your game to include both the maxed and the min....they will either be content with being useless in the min encounter or they will start remake your characters.
Remember it is about fun....the player spent a lot of time min/maxing his character so let them shine also....
I find if you balance the game then you balance the party naturally!
|
1. Stop inviting powergamers, min-maxers, and munchkins to your game
2. Take ownership in the situation - the GM owns half of every table issue. Figure out if you need to set clearer expectations about the type of game you plan to run, etc.
These issues are social issues/problems, not game mechanic issues. New GMs should take caution to avoid social hype around these issues; instead, steep yourself in learning how to be a great GM i.e. read the Gamemastery Guide as well as the 1e AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (1979). Most of what is essential to really "get" can be found in either book, sometimes the composite of both will help illuminate your awareness and facilitate better game and table control of issues.
The bottom line is... you cannot change people. Speaking from years of experience now, it's best to be clear about your expectations in advance, and be clear that players who prefer a different style of game need not continue with the group. You do not need to judge people for their preferences; everyone is entitled to have fun as they prefer--however, the onus is upon the GM to make these types of decisions and express his intentions to the group. Playership is at-will, and this includes the GM.
If powergamers ruin your game, your fun, etc., you must take your own enjoyment seriously, and reform the group with clearer expectation.
Good luck.
Pax
|
|
With scores like those I'm surprised any adventuring company would hire you tbh.Well duh, have you seen my ability scores?Face it, you are amazingly sub-optimal. :POss- The most Out of Character thing a soldier could do is waste precious training time on something that will not help him survive.As a soldier, I find this statement preposterous.
They want me to be a trapfinder so I can roll a real character.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Again...not powergaming.
Granted it is an interesting concept and the character will be pretty MAD, but the game is about everyone having fun. Its really not YOUR job to tell someone they are having fun wrong.
He will have to write himself a very good back story, and there will be A LOT of roleplaying for this character. Personally fitting in and gliding through the story sounds incredibly boring to me...I'd be more upset with the GM making you change your character concept.
I can't believe I am saying this again, BUT APs are a GUIDELINE...GUIDELINE...GUIDELINE! Just because the players want to go a different route or whatever doesn't mean you punish them. YOUR GM NEEDS TO LEARN TO ADAPT! I am running Council of Thieves and the very first chapter there is a warning that says "if the PCs decide NOT to follow Janiven you will have to make changes" and then it gives some suggestions. If my players decided to go a different route at one of the dozens of crosroads in the books then I'd be in unwritten territory and have to adapt and evolve the story myself. Your GM needs to stop being lazy and start learning to adapt. If he has enough time to scheme and think of creative ways to kill players and make players turn on each other then he has enough time to figure out creative solutions.
Off the top of my head I can think of 2 creative solutions to this problem:
1. Make this guy your character's body guard.
2. Make this guy in debt to your character for saving his life and make the character take the alternate racial trait Chain Fighter.
See how much better life is when you aren't trying to be a huge d-bag to the players in your group?
|
|
now another player created a half damphere half ork, hungry ghost monk, summoner with sanguine bloodline, so he can bite people and drain hp cause stat damage etc.
Lolwut
My first impression was "this guy is gonna suck". But reading it again, and wondering if he rolled his stats and how he distributed them (let me guess, 7/7/7/14/20/20 synthesist ?) I'm pretty sure this character will not even be legal, and in top of this, benefit from too much leniency from the DM. Please post his build ASAP on this thread, asking your DM first since he has every right to know what the characters look like.
The player seems totally opposed to running anything but this character, so now what does the DM do? does he kill the PC, make all of us avoid the PC (which in character is exactly what most of the PCs should and would do)does he create a magic background where the first level character was some how savior of the city and everybody knows and likes the happy key lime colored throat ripper.
A DM has to adapt the game to the characters ; the players have to adapt their roleplay to the universe as to not be disruptive. First thing of all : no DM will ever tell me what I shall play.
I can deal with setting restrictions or suggestions for a character to better fit in the story, but being imposed a character ? This isn't roleplaying. It's assuming the shape of a character from the DM's seemingly-awesome novel.Maybe the half-orc will find it's way through a strange underground community of bored nobles looking for freaks of nature, staging blood fights and taking him for some kind of amazing, gold coated champion.
You don't have to punish the player for his choice, but telling him again to make the character more able to play in a social setting or ready himself to deal with these situations will help (maybe he's a "bodyguard found in distant lands" ?). If he doesn't listen and if you roleplay your own character well, your group will have no reason to get along with the half-orc, and he will naturally be excluded from the fun. Who in his right mind would want people to know the crazy psychopath is someone you adventure with ?
|
|
@baalbamoth - in the long run, the gaming group you describe, and especially the GM, will be better off without that player. It's clear he doesn't "get it", and perhaps after a few years of experience he might mature enough to listen to the GM and be more considerate of the group playstyle.
For many reasons it's good to have these discussions up front to see if there are any "red flags" that pop up when getting to know players. This isn't about judging anyone--it's about getting the right players at the table for the type of game the GM wishes to run. Players who have enough self-awareness to know they're a powergamer and have those preferences could be self-regulating and find another group to play in where they will be happier.
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
@baalbamoth - in the long run, the gaming group you describe, and especially the GM, will be better off without that player. It's clear he doesn't "get it", and perhaps after a few years of experience he might mature enough to listen to the GM and be more considerate of the group playstyle.
For many reasons it's good to have these discussions up front to see if there are any "red flags" that pop up when getting to know players. This isn't about judging anyone--it's about getting the right players at the table for the type of game the GM wishes to run. Players who have enough self-awareness to know they're a powergamer and have those preferences could be self-regulating and find another group to play in where they will be happier.
Wait wait...you are calling this guy a powergamer? HOW? Did you read his character concept? A Hungry Ghost Monk with a multiclass into a Sanguin Bloodline Sorcerer! That is the opposite of powergaming...as a matter of fact his character design sounds more like power roleplaying than powergaming.
At this point its not even about being a more powerful character its just the GM being a terrible GM. He may as well come out and say, "Here is the story I want to read you guys so I need you to make these characters to play."
|
|
@baalbamoth - in the long run, the gaming group you describe, and especially the GM, will be better off without that player. It's clear he doesn't "get it", and perhaps after a few years of experience he might mature enough to listen to the GM and be more considerate of the group playstyle.
This I disagree with. We don't know enough about said player to assume he's disruptive ; and there are lots of imaginative ways his character concept could be included in a social oriented campaign.
I'm already more wary about his potential powergaming tendencies ; and again, I'd like to take a look at his build.
Wait wait...you are calling this guy a powergamer? HOW? Did you read his character concept? A Hungry Ghost Monk with a multiclass into a Sanguin Bloodline Sorcerer! That is the opposite of powergaming...as a matter of fact his character design sounds more like power roleplaying than powergaming.
At this point its not even about being a more powerful character its just the GM being a terrible GM. He may as well come out and say, "Here is the story I want to read you guys so I need you to make these characters to play."
now another player created a half damphere half ork, hungry ghost monk, summoner with sanguine bloodline, so he can bite people and drain hp cause stat damage etc.
I read that as a monk/summoner gestalt (or maybe synthesist summoner with a monk dip for Dragon Style) with a custom built race from the ARG that maybe took the Eldrich Heritage feat.
I'm not seeing how the Sanguine Bloodline allows him to drain hp or cause stat damage, since the Sanguine Bloodline only allows you to drink from corpses to regain HP.
The character in question sounds dubiously rules-legal.
|
|
Even if thats the case its not like its anything special...short of combining the Half Dhampir with Half Orc its just a multiclassed hodge-podge of meh. Just because he wants to make a Dhampir Half Orc doesn't mean he gets any half orc racial traits. He is treated as being a Dhampir...thats it. And personally Dhampirs are a poor party choice because they get light sensitivity AND they are harmed by positive energy so you have to work as a partnership with someone that can cast harm spells to heal you.
Even if thats the case its not like its anything special...short of combining the Half Dhampir with Half Orc its just a multiclassed hodge-podge of meh. Just because he wants to make a Dhampir Half Orc doesn't mean he gets any half orc racial traits. He is treated as being a Dhampir...thats it. And personally Dhampirs are a poor party choice because they get light sensitivity AND they are harmed by positive energy so you have to work as a partnership with someone that can cast harm spells to heal you.
I think part of the problem is that baalbamoth might be inaccurately discribing the capabilities of this person's build. I agree that a rules-legal summoner/monk multiclass isn't a overpowered combination. But some of what baalbamoth is discribing in terms of combat capabilities that are not in line with a strict interpretation of the rules.
Maybe baalbamoth is over-estimating his party-members strength, or maybe the DM is allowing some questionable rules interpretations.
But I agree with you, this is not a "powergamer" issue. This is a DM issue. The DM doesn't know how to deal with complex rule situations or non-Core material, but allows it in his game anyway.
|
|
I dont know if I'll see the build but I'll ask (generally the DM likes to role play people getting to know eachother and not knowing every posession the other character is carrying etc.)
Maxx- thats the thing, the player isnt really disruptive but he can be a bit oh, I dont know how to say this nice... slow. he can make some big mistakes and not realize he's done it or what hes about to do when every other player in the group and his character would likely think "this is a really bad idea" so he's not intentionally disruptive and it can sometimes be pretty funny.Ossian- "to me this seems exactly the kind of situation where one player is dead set on powergaming (twisting the rules till they squeal so he can achieve optimization of a single ability)"
He is twisting the rules as much as they can possibly be twisted so he can optimize a single ability. he is "going for power" I stated earlyer that I didnt know if this would be an "over powered" build or not, but that it will definately make this character extremely strange, hard if not impossible to RP in the setting were in, and require an extremely farfetched backstory to explain.
Also, going by what the DM is telling me about the noble houses, politics, and importance of popularity in Korsovo,etc. no noble would be caught anywere near a biting blood drooling vampork, bodyguard or not. Even being associated with Varisians or other humans of non-chillaxian heritage is considered somewhat beneath them.
It would be totally out of character for my character and the others (a dueling master who trains young nobles, a cleric of pharasma who would look down on negitive energy draining and blood drinking etc, a Chillaxian academy mage wishing to impress his masters etc.) to be around this guy. It just does not fit the party at all.
so, because this player wants to play a bizzare race/class combo that will have severe roleplayign hinderences, I and the rest of the players must act out of character and out of concept to allow this player the ability to...
Based on what you put here I don't think you understand large chunks of this game...
Pharasma would have no problem with the character design EXCEPT the fact that he is partially undead. Pharasma is the "gate keeper" to the afterlife planes and doesn't approve of undead.
I don't see where he is twisting the rules. Can you give me an example? So far it seems completely rules legal...albeit completely a waste of pencil and paper IMO.
Did you guys download the FREE Player's Guide and read it like you should have? Its full of valuable info.