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My 2 copper.
I will always have a problem with a GM, let alone a VO, who uses the phrase "Not at my table." Especially when referring to a Legal option. Mostly because the statement is hostile and adversarial. It is petty tyranny based an an assumption of authority. Being a VO mean you have more responsibility, not more authority. There are far more respectful and mature ways to deal with a situation than boastful ultimatums.
The opinions expressed in this thread on how to keep a table fun for all have much merit. But if VO's would like to see something banned for any reason, they have a direct resource. Make your case to your fellow VO's and to Mike Brock and see what can be done. Until then if you have a player who is zapping fun from a table, pull them aside and have a polite and respectful talk with them.
Or in other words, how about we all try to act like adults and treat each other with respect. This is a complicated game we play with astounding number of varying personalities. Try and enjoy it.
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Just because a character can solo a scenario, doesn't mean that the other characters don't get play, or that they won't have highly effective actions.
I learned this well when I was happily going along destroying every monster in sight with my ranger's bow (not really even needing to send in my animal companion). Then one of the other players said to me, "you know, I should just teleport the other characters out, I think you able to finish up by yourself" (paraphrasing there).
At first, it kind of pissed me off. But then I saw the error of my ways. I was playing a ranger. Many apologies.
I have since resolved to build my characters with as much power potential as I can but to not really break out the big guns until its needed. I think I do a reasonable job with it now.
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For the record, if *MY* BBEG(irl) died in one hit at my table, I'd punch that player in their face, light their character sheet on fire and report them as dead (both the character to Paizo and the player to the Police). /s
I seriously hope you are joking. Nothing that you have said is even remotely within the spirit of the "dont be a jerk" rule.
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That is always the key. I would much rather have the ability to fill a power void if needed then find myself in the position of needing more power but not having it. The key is, as you said, knowing when to hold back and when to go nuclear.
I think casters are much easier to play in this style because you can always fall back on the excuse of spell conservation after nudging the battle towards a win.
Venture-Lieutenant, West Virginia—Charleston
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Personally, I think that the appropriate way to handle a game-breaking, unfun situation is to try to stop it in-game.
Let's use the example of the battle bison. It won't fit through doors. You might have trouble leading it around. It poops. It eats. It won't be allowed in high-class establishments. People will look at you funny if you're leading one around. Solutions like that make it seem less like GM fiat and more realistic.
However, we also need to realize that combat is only one part of this game. Those who have read my posts on here know my love of roleplay. A solid roleplaying session can make an easy combat scenario very memorable. Murder on the Throaty Mermaid is a classic, well-loved scenario that pretty much everybody in my region has played, many 2 or 3 times. Why? Because it's awesome. It's flavorful and memorable. It's also pathetically easy. Does the ease of beating it make the session any less good? Of course not.
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For the record, if *MY* BBEG(irl) died in one hit at my table, I'd punch that player in their face, light their character sheet on fire and report them as dead (both the character to Paizo and the player to the Police). /sI seriously hope you are joking. Nothing that you have said is even remotely within the spirit of the "dont be a jerk" rule.
The '/s' at the end stands for sarcasm.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Interestingly, I don't think I've ever read a post from a GM saying "Man, if someone uses this build/tactic at MY table, I'm totally gonna give him a chance to use it responsibly and then if he doesn't I'll pull him aside for a respectful chat about his behavior, and then if he doesn't shape up I'll boot him from the table; just like I would with any other disruptive player."
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Maybe it's just the current atmosphere of the PFS board but I see very few people writing about stories and cooperation and a lot of people writing about how to 'game' the system. And I'm sick of it.Pretty sure this is just confirmation bias. Bad experiences stick out more than good experiences, so people are more likely to remember them and talk about them than the times they worked together as a team to do awesome stuff. Don't know why, but that topic of conversation just comes up more. I'm sure if you asked, plenty of people would have experiences of pulling off cool stuff as a team or using ingenuity to make an encounter more fun.
It's also "complaint bias". If people are really happy or really angry, they will probably say something. They're more likely to go on at great length with the latter, however, which already adds bias. Where it really comes in, though, is that if people are satisfied or sort of happy, they be happy and go on with their lives. If they're disgruntled or normally unhappy, they're more likely to complain. As such, you hear complaints out of proportion to how much they're there.
I've played in a bunch of PFS games by now, and GMed a few. (One more for my first star!) Most of the ones I've GMed have been with groups from my University, and most of the players don't know Pathfinder all that well, so they aren't the ones who will make "broken" builds. However, I have played with others, and I played several tables at PaizoCon. I have yet to see an extremely annoying game-breaking player. Indeed, I wouldn't even call most of the players I've seen "optimizers"; their characters were effective, but they weren't "too" effective, nor were they horribly minmaxed. Pretty much everybody I've played with has been fun to play with and has played good characters. (The exception I can think of involved too much alcohol and inappropriate OOC comments, not inappropriate in-game behavior. Even that exception didn't break the game; there were enough other people at the table willing to call him on his inappropriate comments that he didn't get away with it.)
[LabRat=wrote/QUOTE]
If a GM can't run with all legal options on the table they should not GM public games.
Considering Mike Brock's opinion on this topic, if this happened to me I would be reporting said GM to my VC.
I fully agree with Lab Rat here. If a GM feels the need to take it upon themselves to impose there own limits they may be better served in running a home or PbP game where they can spell out what they are looking for.
Concerning the reporting of GM's i will say that this could also work against the player's and the Battle Bisons of Ultimate Annihilation. If enough threads such as this or complaints about such crazy builds crop up then i would think that Paizo will find a way to RAW deal with it.
I would also like to point out that as a player and not a GM if said build was disrupting my enjoyment at the table, especially on multiple occasions, i would need to take it upon myself to let the player know about it. "Hey dude, congrats on the super beast but how about you remember the rest of us. We're all trying to get through this together so tone it down or we'll need to report you." As some one who also coordinates PFS games at his store, if this were to happen on multiple occasions and players/GMs were annoyed at the continued actions i may need to ask them to tone it down or don't come to play at my store any longer. The greater good and all.
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Interestingly, I don't think I've ever read a post from a GM saying "Man, if someone uses this build/tactic at MY table, I'm totally gonna give him a chance to use it responsibly and then if he doesn't I'll pull him aside for a respectful chat about his behavior, and then if he doesn't shape up I'll boot him from the table; just like I would with any other disruptive player."
No...there have been a few of us who said this.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Interestingly, I don't think I've ever read a post from a GM saying "Man, if someone uses this build/tactic at MY table, I'm totally gonna give him a chance to use it responsibly and then if he doesn't I'll pull him aside for a respectful chat about his behavior, and then if he doesn't shape up I'll boot him from the table; just like I would with any other disruptive player."No...there have been a few of us who said this.
I was going for a particular joke angle that I don't think worked. :(
The idea was a differentiation between when some GMs first read about a build/tactic (garnering a "Bring it to my table and I'll walk" type of comment) versus when other GMs then reply to the first GM (not to the build/tactic) by pointing out that intervention should be based on disruptive behavior instead of the build itself.
But I guess that didn't get across. Oh well. :/
Yo OP, you can't tell us this happened then not give us the skinny. What caused you to make this post?
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Interestingly, I don't think I've ever read a post from a GM saying "Man, if someone uses this build/tactic at MY table, I'm totally gonna give him a chance to use it responsibly and then if he doesn't I'll pull him aside for a respectful chat about his behavior, and then if he doesn't shape up I'll boot him from the table; just like I would with any other disruptive player."
To me this is so obvious of an answer that it does not need to be said.
Thats like me saying. "Hey when I DM a game I review and refresh my knowledge on tactics of things used in a scenario before I run it."
Ofcourse you do those things.
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I have a much bigger problem having to argue with GMs over rules that are quite explicit or have been clearly FAQed. Rarely have tables with rules disputes overlapped with OP characters in my experience. GMs seem perfectly willing to roll over and let some PC throwing out huge numbers go unchallenged, but some poor person wants to figure out how to counter act deeper darkness, and the GM gets to basically make up whatever they want.
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I have a much bigger problem having to argue with GMs over rules that are quite explicit or have been clearly FAQed. Rarely have tables with rules disputes overlapped with OP characters in my experience. GMs seem perfectly willing to roll over and let some PC throwing out huge numbers go unchallenged, but some poor person wants to figure out how to counter act deeper darkness, and the GM gets to basically make up whatever they want.
I roll over all the time...
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The '/s' at the end stands for sarcasm.For the record, if *MY* BBEG(irl) died in one hit at my table, I'd punch that player in their face, light their character sheet on fire and report them as dead (both the character to Paizo and the player to the Police). /sI seriously hope you are joking. Nothing that you have said is even remotely within the spirit of the "dont be a jerk" rule.
Oh, oops. Apologies and all that then. :)
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I believe that key to making a fun game is in controlling the players. You have to know the limits of everything that someone can do. The more you know the rules, the better. In fact, you can always provide equal amount of fun for everyone especially when players try something you aren't usually familiar with.
I am rules junky. Some people hate it, some got used to it. I don't bother people, especially GM's much with it, but when I see that something stinks, it stinks. As a rule of thumb, if something is that good, it is usually too good to be true and I have found out that players make mistakes all the time even after they told me that they double-checked it.
At my table, players used to learn about Cover for the first time. They looked at me in surprise and ranged characters were shocked after I told them they have -4 or even -8 penalty to hit since they have zero ranged feats.
This is why at my table I try to play by the book. I want people to learn something along and have fun.
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Thumbs up to Malag. One of the worst games I've ever played was a game in which a GM wasn't using cover and the fighter archer went more nuts than he should have been able to.
I'm talking about basic stuff here. Cover. Lighting. Taking 10. When someone can stealth. Grappling. I've seen it all botched, often to the detriment of the PC group. The GM is already getting guaranteed rewards from the scenario. There is no need to play shell games with rules.
When players are crushing a scenario, I literally don't care. I run the NPCs to the best of my ability, but at the end of the day, I didn't write the scenario. You can be assured that if I had written them, no one would be crushing through them trivially. Granted, season 4 is much better.
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I believe that key to making a fun game is in controlling the players. You have to know the limits of everything that someone can do. The more you know the rules, the better. In fact, you can always provide equal amount of fun for everyone especially when players try something you aren't usually familiar with.
I am rules junky. Some people hate it, some got used to it. I don't bother people, especially GM's much with it, but when I see that something stinks, it stinks. As a rule of thumb, if something is that good, it is usually too good to be true and I have found out that players make mistakes all the time even after they told me that they double-checked it.
At my table, players used to learn about Cover for the first time. They looked at me in surprise and ranged characters were shocked after I told them they have -4 or even -8 penalty to hit since they have zero ranged feats.
This is why at my table I try to play by the book. I want people to learn something along and have fun.
not to be snarky, but they would have a -4 for shooting into a melee. The target gets a +4 to AC for cover. So, it's not really a -8... Just figured I should help, one rules lawyer to another.
;)
What do you call a bus full of rules lawyers at the bottom of the ocean and nobody has a wand of air bubble? A good start... :)
I remember this exact thing happening to a gunslinger in a game I played once. I think he was even outside his first range increment, adding insult to injury. I actually thought it was funny. I think he claimed he might was well not even play that character anymore with rules like that!
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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I'll be the first to admit that if a player is doing something I am unfamiliar with, I'll be asking questions. If their explanation doesn't jive with how I understand rules X, Y, and Z, I'll likely ask for some detailed documentation. If they're unable to provide that, I'll then ask them to hold off on using that tactic/ability until I can verify that it works as they're intending it to.
The last handful of times I've done this, no one has had a problem with it.
Also, the last few times it's happened -- I've been incorrect, and the player has provided me evidence to both explain their point and educate me as GM.
This is how I think most situations with questionable character builds or actions should go, although I know that it's not always the case.
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I'll be the first to admit that if a player is doing something I am unfamiliar with, I'll be asking questions. If their explanation doesn't jive with how I understand rules X, Y, and Z, I'll likely ask for some detailed documentation. If they're unable to provide that, I'll then ask them to hold off on using that tactic/ability until I can verify that it works as they're intending it to.
The last handful of times I've done this, no one has had a problem with it.
Also, the last few times it's happened -- I've been incorrect, and the player has provided me evidence to both explain their point and educate me as GM.This is how I think most situations with questionable character builds or actions should go, although I know that it's not always the case.
I think this is largely how its always gone when something questionable comes up.
I've never had to ask a player to leave, or even think of threatening to leave myself as a GM.
I've never had to ban a player from the game days I coordinate.
But those are the last resort, nuclear options that sometimes one might have to resort to, if the player in question gives them no other option.
I would only ever consider using the nuclear option, if the health of the PFS community in my area were severely undermined or the retention of players was being threatened because of one individual.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
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Rules lawyers are great if kept in check.
My rules lawyering etiquette explain your rule once so the DM understand your point. Then let the GM make the ruling. Lastly shut up the law has been laid.
That's the part I have a problem with. The law being laid down incorrectly. And just sitting there taking it. Not fun. Sorry.
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Your right it can not be fun. But how fun is it to argue and fight with the DM.
If you can show them they are wrong, and they still rule against you what would fighting them do?
If they rule incorrectly and it wrecks your fun talk to their VO.
I recently played in a game where the DM ignored me for about an hour. I pulled out a book and turned my back to him to prove how much I was ignored. After I said my character waited by the fountain, him and the the player that got all of his attention at one point were deciding if my character was in the room to be hit by the trap. Thats when I decided I need to leave the table. After I spent 3 minutes packing up my books I stood up and the DM then asked me what I would like to do. This was at a con where I apid money to play. You do not pay for a game like that.
Every player has the right to leave the table. That is the biggest insult you can give to a DM is that their game is so garbage you can not sit there with them. If I were a DM and a player did this to me, I would be horribly ashamed of myself.
Fighting about a ruling reaches a point where you become the jerk too. Even if you are right. Because other people want to play the game too.
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Your right it can not be fun. But how fun is it to argue and fight with the DM.
If you can show them they are wrong, and they still rule against you what would fighting them do?
If they rule incorrectly and it wrecks your fun talk to their VO.
I recently played in a game where the DM ignored me for about an hour. I pulled out a book and turned my back to him to prove how much I was ignored. After I said my character waited by the fountain, him and the the player that got all of his attention at one point were deciding if my character was in the room to be hit by the trap. Thats when I decided I need to leave the table. After I spent 3 minutes packing up my books I stood up and the DM then asked me what I would like to do. This was at a con where I apid money to play. You do not pay for a game like that.
Every player has the right to leave the table. That is the biggest insult you can give to a DM is that their game is so garbage you can not sit there with them. If I were a DM and a player did this to me, I would be horribly ashamed of myself.
Fighting about a ruling reaches a point where you become the jerk too. Even if you are right. Because other people want to play the game too.
Yeah, that pretty much sucks. I'll bring up mistakes a couple times, and if they are non-trivial, and they keep it up, I'll just leave rather than fighting.
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I go home feeling down when someone at.the table had a character death. I really do not care if you think my Eidolon does too much damage. I want everyone to survive the encounter.
If I was asked to tone it down and I felt we suffered a PC death because of it, I would blame your complaing for it. Same goes for the necessity of expending too many resources like consumables or worse yet, spell slots needed for the end boss, which when empty in the next fight leads to a death.
Is it not hypocritical to say you are ruining everyone else's fun? It sounds to me like saying, stop being effective, ruin your own fun so I can have mine.
Maybe we can talk about how fragile my legal Summoner & Eidolon really is. It is better than sitting there with a pouting mouth, remaining ignorant about the subject. Maybe when I explain my legal build, you will learn how to catch the cheaters that are the real.cause of the frustration.
The GM who walks away from a table because of a legal build owes an apology to the 4 or more players who wasted their time and money to show for the game. That GM should never have agreed to judge in the first place.
Maybe the player who feels.machannically worthless should enjoy the character acting & ROLE playing chance for the character they felt would be cool. Or maybe they should stop pretending to be a strictly ROLE player and admit they do have some ROLL playing requirements of their own. Maybe they can try to play their class to.the best of their( class/player) ability. Consider it a challenge to see how far they can go. Nothing prevents them from makeing their next PC more machannically oriented. Maybe they should learn and accept the fact that Paizo does not pretend that every class is 100% balanced against every other class. Maybe these players should accept that another player doing a lot more homework on their PC is likely to be more effective than the PC they built in 20 minutes.
Who is any individsual GM to declare what is fun or unfun for everyone? I disapprove of debuff spells but I have no right to ban them as unfun. No more than someone else banning pits/grappling/eidolons, ect. I acknowledge campaign management's authorsy to do so, banning items, archetypes, ect, not some individsual GM, not even.a venture officer level GM.
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Venture-Agent, Colorado—Colorado Springs
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That's the part I have a problem with. The law being laid down incorrectly. And just sitting there taking it. Not fun. Sorry.Rules lawyers are great if kept in check.
My rules lawyering etiquette explain your rule once so the DM understand your point. Then let the GM make the ruling. Lastly shut up the law has been laid.
I have a problem with it as well, but I try very hard to act exactly as David suggests. Order of operations goes something like this: GM rules in a way I believe is incorrect, I correct GM, GM say he's right, I say OK and hope I have time after the game to speak with him about it.
It only becomes not fun when this happens over and over again, especially with the same rule (not necessarily with the same GM). I have walked away from a table where I didn't agree with the GM's rulings, though mainly to keep the game going smoothly even if I had to not be there for that to happen.
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Thirdly, just because the player may feel like they're being overshadowed or ignored doesn't mean that they're mechanically incompetent. In fact, they could be decently optimized and have put just as much thought and planning into their character as you have yours. Isn't it rather arrogant to assume everyone who feels like they might as well not shown up had no interest in building their character competently?
This. I am perfectly capable of building mechanically dominant PCs. However, I choose not to to avoid just this kind of issue. I'm not sure what people think they are proving by breaking PFS scenarios with those builds that are capable, but I personally am not impressed at all.
As a GM, I pretty much have no choice but to let such mechanically superior players break the scenario. The authors do not put in fail safes for broken characters or pet overload. As a GM, I am not responsible for the authors' failure to take these builds into account in any way.
However, as a player, I will frequently just go do something else. This has caused a couple of tables to not run; once at a paid event. I do feel bad for the other players, but I'm not going to subject myself to that for 5 hours. There's no point for me.
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So far, this has only really happened to me once (more along the original question than one-shoting BBEGs). I was the player who (sort of) got told not at my table. The DM was not a jerk about it at all, but it does allow me to see this from different sides, and that also includes the perspectives of the other players who all had their own say and opinions on it. Because it was a PbP, it also did not stop the game at all.
Their reaction was that it was incredibly overpowered, and while legal, was probably just wrong. They didn't accuse me of anything, and on the side we had a small dialogue about it, in which I tried to explain my point of view, including comparisons to other similar spells, and stating that the only thing I felt was in need of errata was the spell's Range, (but that had not been a factor in the game anyway as I used it close). We disagreed philosophically, and on friendly and respectful terms, as I offered to change out the spell, (they said no, that fine), and then I offered to remove my other casting of it for something else, (in which they thanked me).
After that we opened up the floor to the other players, who's opinions ranged from "it looks perfectly fine to me, it's no Sleep or Color Spray" to "it's strong for it's level, but not brokenly strong", to "even if it only really affects Evil, that's not that much of a limitation and it probably needs to be banned", to my personal favorite (as I heavily agree with the last part) "wow, I am really loving the flavor of that spell for my Celestial Sorcerer. It's perfect and I want more like that. What took them so long???".
From my perspective, it was something that I had been waiting on for a long, long time, and it just fit s perfectly for a divine warrior calling down the literal wrath of heaven sort of Cleric. It's what Channel Energy SHOULD have been. It's what divine magic SHOULD have always done from the start. It wasn't that it was powerful, (and I still do not think it is that powerful in all honesty), it was all about the excitement of finally getting the perfect new toy.
From the DM's PoV, it looked like a spell that seemed to do comparable damage to a Wizard's blasty-blasty, AND ALSO had another effect. The save was not negates, which they felt was a huge red flag, (even though I showed other examples of similar things, that was their opinion, which is fine), and because (I did not realize this at the time) the encounter I used it was intended to be a group of mounted archers picking us off from a distance, they felt that the spell and my action underminded the significance of the fight.
I think the importance of this was manifold. A.) all sides of the issue acted like mature adults, but stating their sides and displayed both the willingness and the effort to find an acceptable middle ground, and did so within maybe the span of 3 minutes. B.) The DM DID their job as a PFS DM and accepted the fact that it was not their call to make, regardless of how they felt, while I (and I don't mean this to brag or toot my own horn) did my job as a player and stated my case, using both other in game resources, my opinion, and the rules, and pretty much left it at that, but did not stop the game or break the mood to do so. C.) All the other players did likewise, and finally D.) all worked together to make sure that any of the issues or perceived issues did not ruin the game.
It could have gone very poorly if any one of those had not been true. In my personal opinion, as a DM and a player, B.) is the most important if, IF everyone is acting like an adult and not being a jerk. DM's, (and this goes equally for VL's, VC's, etc. . .) are given the power by the players, and that power only lasts as long as the players continue to invest them with it. That is to say only as long as they do with it what they where given it to do. To act as a leader, not a dictator. To be fair and impartial, not to play by their house rules. It's not DM vs Player(s).
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I don't think GMs are *trying* to be jerks. I think that most of the cases where there has been a problem, they were just trying to keep the game moving. However, I consider that a slippery slope. What all are we willing to hand waive to "keep the game moving"? Unfortunately, there are some wonky mechanics in Pathfinder (grapple, lighting) that have very non-trivial effects for the PCs.
To tie this in to another thread, I know that a few people have told me the reason they play scenario-breaking PCs is a hedge against table randomness. If their PC is untouchable, or just does unmanageable amounts of damage, GM rulings on things like grapple just don't matter anymore. Although lighting still does I'd argue.
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The only thing that bothers me about "powerful builds" are when they ruin the fun of the other players at the table. I really don't care if you're capable of downing the very BBEG I designed in one hit. Congrats. But did you and the rest of the table have fun doing it? If not, then I have a problem with it (more the player than the character).
Big thumbs up.
I've watched the power builds go from mildly annoying as a player to outright obnoxious.
When one player can nuke an entire encounter while performing every other task needed to participate in the game, basically preventing anybody else from actually doing anything, we have a problem. I don't show up to game days to watch you play your character.
It's really becoming a problem when one goes from feeling disappointed and upset when a fellow player's character dies (where you then spend your own gold to help raise them), to happy to watch them get comeuppance. Come to think of it. In the first three years of PFS play I never felt that way, now I've felt it on more than one occasion.
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For the record, if *MY* BBEG(irl) died in one hit at my table, I'd punch that player in their face, light their character sheet on fire and report them as dead (both the character to Paizo and the player to the Police). /s
*Your* BBEG didn't die in one hit at my table, it took two. I made sure to knock out his teeth for you while yelling, "That's for Kyle Baird!"
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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We've drifted a little bit afield -- what a surprise.
Drifting back for a moment, I remember a situation almost two years ago. At that time, you could get PFS credit for playing modules at any level, and your PFS character was never in any actual risk.
Painlord said that he'd run modules, but that he required players to actually cross off consumables that they spent, and voluntarily retire characters if the modules listed them as "killed". If you refused to do so, he wouldn't let you at the table. If everybody refused to play by those rules, I suppose that he'd refuse to run the game.
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I think the pregen thing is a bit lame in terms of risk factor to the player. But I'm not sure I'd go to the extremes that Painlord seems to have.
I just really hate the attitude listed in the title of the thread. It's not the GM's home game. GM's should strive for uniformity of experience, not be policing stuff they don't like. There's been several things that I see and don't like, but I'm bound by RAW to play it straight. It's not my fault; its the devs and authors letting things fall through the cracks.