I think I would have laughed at the suggestion that classes have limited, fixed roles in Pathfinder. Then, when I discovered he/she was actually serious we would have proceeded to argue until someone blew a gasket.
Play how you like, not how you are dictated to play, and take up the reins at the first opportunity and run your own game. Invite this person to join you.
Some classes do tend to have more fixed and limited roles. Like the Fighter, Monk and Rogue. They're usually considered underpowered.
The amusing thing in this thread for me is how different it is from my personal experience. In our Rise of the Runelords campaign, the DM actually helped our cleric player build a very tough 'battle cleric'. But I'm sure if the player had wanted a buffing/healing cleric, he would've helped with that, too.
I find it works best if the GM has the most system mastery in the group. Or maybe at least better than the group average, if the guys who's best isn't good at the story immersion/adaptation aspects of GMing.
I had a GM who would pull this sort of stuff once. Our solution was to start a new game with another GM and slowly play his game less and less.
Also, as sort of an aside- I noticed some people disparaging the idea of 'using a build'. ALL characters use a build, that's just how this game works. It might be a haphazard, terrible build, but there's still a build. I find that building towards a specific goal makes better characters both mechanically and RP-wise.
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Your PC is a Cleric, and a person, full of hopes, dreams, aspirations, personality, and free will. He fights, loves, and acts as he pleases.
Not a Pawn in a chess game, and not a Rock'em Sock'em robot.
Your PC can choose, to fight as he pleases.
So, if your DM keeps deciding to inflict his forced playstyle upon your PC, then play it up.
Every time the DM forces an action, have your PC react, as if forced to do something, without choice.
"Huh? I was going to thrust my blade into that goblin, but suddenly, a strange force made me cast a spell upon friend here. It was as if, some great god was bending me to it's will, and I lost all control."
You could even have your PC be more paranoid, if it happens more often.
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A lot of this comes down to a class/player filling the role they sign up for. If no one wants to play the healer, then the group will have to figure out what they're going to do when someone gets hurt/poisoned/diseased/etc. There are options - from the GM tweaking rules to make healing easier, to throwing in an NPC that heals, to showering the group with healing items, and others.
The problem comes in when someone agrees to play the healer, but then spends a lot of their character resources on optimizing other parts of their character instead of healing.
I agree with this, with one caveat: you have to ask the players what role they are signing up for. "I want to play a cleric" is not the same as "I want to play the healer", just as "I want to play a fighter" does not equal "I want to wear plate mail, swing a Great Sword, and be rock-headed and anti-social."
Also, there's nothing that says each player can fufill one and only one role. In PFS, we get assigned to tables on the fly, so we all have to adjust how we play our characters to make sure all the roles get filled. Most players plan a primary role and a backup role for their characters. At game time, we poll the table to see who has any social skills or if anybody can use a wand of cure light, then negotiate who would be best in any given role. Usually, we end up with roles shared between characters, and sometimes, we end up with no roles covered at all.
Another issue with the "if you sign up to play the healer, you'd better not do anything else" mentality is that many groups and GMs treat their healers like crap. The healer becomes the dump role: nobody wants to get stuck in that role, and I've seen a lot of instances of players getting bullied into being the healer--and then taking abuse from the other players on top of it. If you pigeon hole roles too much, you get this kind of BS.
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Suspect the caster in your party is controlling you to do their bidding with this idea, and as you grow more paranoid you conspire to murder then and all their evil accomplices. When they sleep you cut their throats and laugh like a madman.
"FREEDOM" as you cry tears of joy thinking you fixed the problem
Did you miss the part where the OP says the GM openly admitted he was only being attacked for not playing his cleric to the GM's specifications?
If he were to 'up his tank game' the GM would create yet another homebrew monster expressly to beat him down and show him 'clerics can't tank'.
This is ALL on the GM being a walking pile of bull defecation.
Now the guy comes in to defend the gm and attack the poster. Who cares? He wants advice, so give it. If the person is flat out lying how would you know? You going to get the pathfinder police to do a thorough investigation and find justice for the innocent gm?
Based off the information given people are reacting. If the op is dishonest or biased, then their advice they seek might suffer from it. Discuss things in the thread, and give advice as requested.
Don't just knee jerk leave a game. I have had problem people and some are being help, but most are reasonable. You have a brain, so take whatever you find if value I'm this thread and use it constructively. Salvage your existing game if possible or bail out to save yourself the suffering.
You are really, really not reading this thread, tkul.
The GM said, outright, in plain English, 'I am attacking you because I think you're playing your cleric wrong'.
PERIOD, FULL STOP, ALL WE NEED TO KNOW.
Direct quote, original post:
" he conceded to targeting people who he thought weren't playing their characters the way he thought they should be played"
You trolling?
Why are you being derogatory calling people power gamers? He is playing a character in a rpg... OP states the gm metagamed stuff to put others in a stupid position.
Bbeg, "ah, a power gamer! Time to disregard my normal behavior with this situation and just kill this one guy because of the fact he is a power gamer! What's a power gamer? Whatever, I'm crazy!"
If that's how you play, then you're "that guy".
Because you're a certain class template for your character doesn't define and restrict you to a stereotype vanilla thing. Don't be closed minded and use your imagination.
Wow, sounds like a jerkass GM. The beauty of the d20 system is that despite the classes being made with roles in mind, you can really tweak them in your build to be anything your heart desires.
If your GM is singling you out for playing a class the way you want to, they have failed as GM. In one of the worst possible ways. Giving advice to a player on what you could take to make your character realise its potential while staying within your concept is cool, and good GMing, flat out telling someone how to play their class is just so wrong. I can't think of a thing that would piss me off more as a player than if my GM did that.
It is your character to make into what you will, no one but you should dictate your own PC's actions and you should never be punished for playing your build how you want to.
Time to break out the melee sorcerer! :)
I don't think it a goofy change at all. Honestly I think they should have been limited to light armor and have spell chance failure just like bard in anything heavier. You have heard of Clericzilla in 3.5. Cleric are the most powerful class in the game. Still are despite the few changes that were made to them to weakening them. now they have channel based healing in addition to the spells they had before.Clerics get heavy armor in 3.5 and not in pf. It's horrible.well that is a goofy change. I wonder why they took that away in PF? Clerics needed some love, and they got it, but what's the harm in letting them use heavy armor? In my old-school mind that is one of the defining features of the cleric class.
In my current campaign my buddy is playing a cleric in plate armor. We both played 3.0/3.5 heavily before PF, so I guess that's one change neither of us noticed! *hand wave*
I thought it was the CoDzilla (Cleric or Druid) and that the Druid edged them out. Cleric was the best buffing class and, thanks to several buffs that have been nerfed in Pathfinder, better than any martial class at fighting.
Druid, I think and I could definitely be wrong, was slightly better because they could power build their stats more. Thanks to wildshape, they could focus on their mental stats and leave their physical stats to their shifted form. With Natural Spell (which has been kept in Pathfinder,) they have all their spellcasting in their much beefier forms.
Thanks to the aforementioned self-buffs, the cleric was probably the best tank in the game actually. In Pathfinder, they're beaten by armor master fighters probably. Not that it matters because, in either game, tanking blows. AC only goes so high and doesn't scale well against monsters.
Your cleric can definitely still do damage on the frontline and keep up with the fighter while be still being versatile. With spontaneous healing spells, you're down to heal as necessary without even having to build that way. I have no idea what the GM was on about really.
P.S. Clerics not getting heavy armor is not the end of the world. Clerics needed a nerf and this was not the biggest they did.
If a GM insists of this kind of behavior, at some point I'd just sit back and stop playing, then ask him what's the point of me being there, since he's the one making the decisions for my character. It's not like rolling dice is such an immensurable effort that he needs my help to do it.
Vew few things a GM can do that annoy me more than taking control of my character or trying to force their view of my character's personality/class on me.
Does the GM think every Cleric should be a healer? Well, I don't f@@@ing care! It's my character. If I want to try and make him a tank, that's what I'll do. I might change my gameplay style if it's disruptive for some reason, but I'll certainly not do it because it doesn't conform to the GM's idea of how my class is supposed to be played.
Every class can be a tank. I think your GM will realize this if he saw my wizard tank.
I assure you that the GM would flip out if he saw MY design for a wizard tank :)
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Isn't it generally agreed that healing cannot keep up with damage dealt per round (barring the heal spell of course) and as a result you're generally better off using balls-out offence to pummel the enemy into submission as quickly and efficiently as possible so they can't deal as much damage to your team in the first place, then heal up after the bodies start to cool?
In other words, isn't the role the GM is trying to force on the OP not only a narrow interpenetration of the Cleric's abilities, but a suboptimal and unfun one as well?
Also, IIRC the OP's party already has a cohort heal-b%%@~ who the OP would probably end up second-stringing to as he hasn't optimized for healing? IE the PC would be relegated to supporting the flipping cohort?!?
Could be wrong. Please correct me if so.
Isn't it generally agreed that healing cannot keep up with damage dealt per round (barring the heal spell of course) and as a result you're generally better off using balls-out offence to pummel the enemy into submission as quickly and efficiently as possible so they can't deal as much damage to your team in the first place, then heal up after the bodies start to cool?
In other words, isn't the role the GM is trying to force on the OP not only a narrow interpenetration of the Cleric's abilities, but a suboptimal and unfun one as well?
Also, IIRC the OP's party already has a cohort heal-b+~!+ who the OP would probably end up second-stringing to as he hasn't optimized for healing? IE the PC would be relegated to supporting the flipping cohort?!?
Could be wrong. Please correct me if so.
No, you've just about got it.
No, you've just about got it.Isn't it generally agreed that healing cannot keep up with damage dealt per round (barring the heal spell of course) and as a result you're generally better off using balls-out offence to pummel the enemy into submission as quickly and efficiently as possible so they can't deal as much damage to your team in the first place, then heal up after the bodies start to cool?
In other words, isn't the role the GM is trying to force on the OP not only a narrow interpenetration of the Cleric's abilities, but a suboptimal and unfun one as well?
Also, IIRC the OP's party already has a cohort heal-b+~!+ who the OP would probably end up second-stringing to as he hasn't optimized for healing? IE the PC would be relegated to supporting the flipping cohort?!?
Could be wrong. Please correct me if so.
Oh well in that case the OP should just suck it up! After all, being the lesser of the party's two healbots should be more than enough for him and any attempt to move beyond this role should see him pummeled into the ground with so much prejudice that his character can only use stone-age tools from now on! This GM is a big bleeding-heart softie for allowing things to go as far as they have and should compensate appropriately! No more mundane items for you! You get clubs and rocks, and you'd better be happy with them or else! [/sarcasm]
I must be missing some part of this situation.
If you are the one being attacked, then you are tanking, and you win the argument.
If you are surviving the attacks from standard creatures, then you win the argument.
If he is beefing his monsters up beyond reason in an effort to kill you, then you win the argument.
Just tell him, "I agree. Clerics make lousy tanks." Then keep doing what you want.
Aight, here's the situation. Same DM as my previous AC advice question, but this time I'm having a bit more a person to person issue; namely, the DM is under the belief that Clerics can't be tanks, and that only Fighters/Barbarians/what-have-you have a place in the front lines.
He went so far as to say that the point of Clerics are to buff and be healers. He did eventually concede that Clerics can, after all that nonsense, assist in close-combat, but basically the general thrust of his argument was that Clerics are purely support and can't really tank or fight.
Where it actually became a bit of an issue with me, however (besides the rather obvious 'Heal-gimp' scenario), was when he conceded to targeting people who he thought weren't playing their characters the way he thought they should be played; IE, he targeted my guy with this homebrewed monster that could hit like a mack-truck and do so many times a turn, because he figured I was buffing myself too much and not everyone else.
Now, I get partially where he's coming from; I should spread the magical-love a bit, yes. However, where I have a great issue is the idea that classes are built for one thing, and that if it's not according to what the DM thinks, he's just going to lay down the hand of god and start being a wanker about the entire thing.
I can concede certain points, don't misunderstand me, but the idea that there's only one primary role for a cleric, and that any deviation from that role should be punished, irks me. He said it was because he was targeting 'powergamers,' but this doesn't exactly strike me as being entirely honest. . .
This is still the game where the monsters all have unbeatable saves so SoS/SoD is useless, correct?
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I must be missing some part of this situation.
If you are the one being attacked, then you are tanking, and you win the argument.
If you are surviving the attacks from standard creatures, then you win the argument.
If he is beefing his monsters up beyond reason in an effort to kill you, then you win the argument.
Just tell him, "I agree. Clerics make lousy tanks." Then keep doing what you want.
Not the point. The point is, the GM is intentionally singling him out because the OP isn't playing his character like the GM wants. This is BS.
The main point is the DM is not remaing impartial toward the players he may not like how someone is playing there characters .
But that should not effect how he runs the games he's not there to force the player to play as he wants he's just there to run a game if he don't like the way they play then step down and allow someone else to run
I figure it isn't the case, and people are just exaggerating things and getting real mad. Dude said he thinks op is taking advantage of the have and being a power gamer, so he feels justified to act immature to "teach a lesson" through in game punishment.
When someone says something along the lines they can't imagine something with my character I point out we're in a fantasy game, and/or, "today's the day you do, because this is the dude who does it"
I'd like to think there's another option besides leaving the group. I feel that creates bad blood, and a level of tension.
Here's my 2cp:
1) Reasonably explain to him that what he's doing (targeting you because he thinks you're powergaming) is wrong. No GM should ever do that. I could understand him having stuff attack you if you charged up there. However, like you said, he explicitly told you he was targeting powergamers, this is where he is in the wrong.
2) Explain to him that if he's targeting you because he doesn't like the character, that you'll make another one that can fit your concept. If you're wanting to play the "tank" depending on your version of "tank," the Cavalier archetype Honor Guard, and the Order of the Shield make incredibly effective "tanks."
3) Direct him to this thread. Once he sees that everyone here is in agreement (for the most part) with you, he will hopefully come to the realization that he might be doing something wrong.
4) Warn him before directing him to this thread that some of the posters were a little abrasive about it, and he may read something that he doesn't like. (Honestly, I was a little more than shocked by some of the comments on this thread.)
5) If he refuses to admit what he did was wrong, and refuses to allow you to change over to something else, then do what everyone else said. Don't play with this guy, because if he's still being an asshat after the previous points, he's not going to get better. If you think you're frustrated now, just wait, it could end in a fist fight, with table flipping and broken miniatures.
I had a DM like that once (though it wasn't on DnD, that kind of game wasn't mature enough for 16 years olds in his opinion) and my advice is to RUN LIKE THE WIND.
Now if your DM isn't a complete a#&!##& in general (as mine was) then you can always try having someone else from the group DM instead of him.
Now, there is a certain area where this type of thing is acceptable. If the GM is running homebrew content in which the cleric is not a martial class that wears medium armor, has shields and is functionally martially trained, then his stance is more appropriate. However, if this is his stance he should have stated that the default cleric used the cloistered cleric, evangelist, or a custom archtype. Ultimately, the GM does create the world and sometimes that comes with tweaking classes a bit. Now, if he did not specify this, and instead left the standard cleric kit which includes medium armor, shields, the same BAB progression as a rogue, etc? Then he needs to accept that the cleric is not the class he thought of it as and adjust as appropriate.
I don't get the feeling this is the case however. I get the feeling he sees the cleric as the classic priest role which is purely supportive with no right to steal the limelight, could be wrong.
The second point is that if he feels you are powergaming, he needs to pull you aside and talk with you. The simple fact is that while what he calls powergaming may just be simple optimization, if the rest of the party doesn't optimize at all, it can make balancing encounters a complete pain. It results in one player being the hero time and time again while everybody gets to be the supporting cast. "Hooray, the fighter and the other guys!" which is great if you are the fighter, but horrible if you are anybody else. In this case, as a GM it's not a bad idea to sit down and talk with the player and find some way to tune down their character in a reasonable way so that other people can shine a bit too, but this should be a join measure. I know that I have booted a power gamer from my group on two occasions because they could not resist the urge to hyper-optimize their characters to the point where the other 5 players just weren't having fun. They wanted to play sort of zany builds that weren't quite optimal, but good enough to meet the challenge, but the powergamer just stole the show. Obviously booting them took place after multiple situations where I sat them down and talked with them and tried to compromise, explaining the issue as a GM.
Of course, giving the "DPS" player the ability to do damage to his homebrew creations and telling everybody else to support the DPS in the same way as a WoW raid seems to give me the feeling that his problem is more that people are shaking up his notion of how a party should run.
Looking at what you've said so far, I honestly think you have a GM who needs to grow a bit as a GM. Some GMs just need time, to run a few games that fall flat on their face. Others need to watch somebody do it right. And some never learn. It may be best to let him improve on his own and split directions.
This can't be said any better. It's exactly right.Not the point. The point is, the GM is intentionally singling him out because the OP isn't playing his character like the GM wants. This is BS.I must be missing some part of this situation.
If you are the one being attacked, then you are tanking, and you win the argument.
If you are surviving the attacks from standard creatures, then you win the argument.
If he is beefing his monsters up beyond reason in an effort to kill you, then you win the argument.
Just tell him, "I agree. Clerics make lousy tanks." Then keep doing what you want.
I feel I could say it better, but it would require a level of vulgarity not permitted on this boards.
Now, there is a certain area where this type of thing is acceptable. If the GM is running homebrew content in which the cleric is not a martial class that wears medium armor, has shields and is functionally martially trained, then his stance is more appropriate. However, if this is his stance he should have stated that the default cleric used the cloistered cleric, evangelist, or a custom archtype. Ultimately, the GM does create the world and sometimes that comes with tweaking classes a bit. Now, if he did not specify this, and instead left the standard cleric kit which includes medium armor, shields, the same BAB progression as a rogue, etc? Then he needs to accept that the cleric is not the class he thought of it as and adjust as appropriate.
I don't get the feeling this is the case however. I get the feeling he sees the cleric as the classic priest role which is purely supportive with no right to steal the limelight, could be wrong.
The second point is that if he feels you are powergaming, he needs to pull you aside and talk with you. The simple fact is that while what he calls powergaming may just be simple optimization, if the rest of the party doesn't optimize at all, it can make balancing encounters a complete pain. It results in one player being the hero time and time again while everybody gets to be the supporting cast. "Hooray, the fighter and the other guys!" which is great if you are the fighter, but horrible if you are anybody else. In this case, as a GM it's not a bad idea to sit down and talk with the player and find some way to tune down their character in a reasonable way so that other people can shine a bit too, but this should be a join measure. I know that I have booted a power gamer from my group on two occasions because they could not resist the urge to hyper-optimize their characters to the point where the other 5 players just weren't having fun. They wanted to play sort of zany builds that weren't quite optimal, but good enough to meet the challenge, but the powergamer just...
Couldn't agree more. There are so many variables here that it's hard to determine who is truly right. Ultimately, it comes down to fun; if you aren't having any fun but the other players are, try to find something you can play that you know you would have fun with and the GM would find acceptable. It could be that you are playing a reasonably optimised build while the other players are playing sub-optimals, so you are sticking out like a sore thumb. Either move to a sub-optimal and have fun with the rest of them, or help them to optimise their builds (bit late at level 13).It could be that the GM has certain expectations of party roles and you are steppng outside of that; try to find a role that you would enjoy and the GM approves of; speak to your GM. tell him you want to play something acceptable to him that you would find fun. If he still insists on you playing a healbot (because he percieves it as a necessary role that needs to be filled and you're the only one that can fill it), it's very poor GMing. You then have to decide if you want to be stuck in a boring role or if you want to move on.
If the other players are not having fun either, speak to them. Maybe they aren't happy that their fighters are reduced to holding off his homebrew monsters while his pet pc kills them with his specially procured arrows; if this is the case, perhaps it's time to meet on an alternative day for a new campaign with a new GM. When people stop turning up to his games, maybe he'll get the message (maybe not though).
