Do you ever play a character that either his personality or role or whatever is not something you like, but you keep playing it anyway?
Lately I've seen a few of:
No, I don't put any ranks in knowledge or social skills for this guy. I built him to be a big dumb brute with a stick. But man is it boring to play like this.
This is my heal-bot PC. So he just holds his actions until someone is hurt or needs a condition removed. When I'm with a good group like this almost no one gets hurt to need healing. It's very irritating. But he's almost a pacifist and only wants to help people by healing them.
My wizardess only preps SoD spells. If they make their save it's like she did nothing and that's really aggravating. But if they fail the save, the fight is over so fast it's almost boring.
All three of these people felt like they to keep playing their PC's in a manner that they didn't enjoy. Seemed weird to me.
In my RotRL group, we had a player who also had built the 'Heal-bot' PC the OP mentioned above.
Our group rarely took damage and fights ended quickly, so he often felt useless and left out. He didn't like the build and wished he could change it. He was a fairly new player at the time and felt trapped in his initial decisions, especially since we were playing an AP that was shaping up to be a lonnnnnng adventure.
So...our GM let him rebuild his character once he clearly expressed his displeasure, with some advice and feedback from both himself and from us in the group. Same personality, same class, different mechanics...problem solved ever since.
I have only met one GM that would not let you change a character that you don't like.
I have a standing policy of 1 free complete rebuild for each player.
Now I will admit, I don't like a player to change their character every other session. I find that annoying to deal with both as a player and as a GM.
I was very fond of the retraining/rebuilding rules presented in 3.5's PHB2, so if I had a player who was dissatisfied with his character in this manner I usually made an effort to work something out with them to justify their changes.
These days I'm more lenient, but I also have a larger number of new players in my current group. When they become more experienced, I'll probably be a little more restrictive, but retraining in downtime or going on rebuilding quests will still be options on the table.
Same here, Kydeem de' Morcaine.
I offered my Skull & Shackles players the opportunity to switch out their characters or rebuild a current character's mechanics at the end of the Ch. 1, with their new build/character coming into play very early on in Ch. 2. This was also with the understanding that after that, I will mostly likely not allow any further character changes whatsoever.
One player made a very slight change to their Ranger build. Another introduced a completely new character, as she had very much grew to dislike some of her initial decisions regarding her first character. The other four players stayed put, happy with their characters.
Now, circumstances do come up from time to time where a "no, no more rebuilds/changes at all" turns into "okay, but just this time and just because this is really weird/unique situation", but for the most part I agree, as a GM I am very much against rapid/frequent character rebuilds/changes.
I as well tend to do an "Oh S&&#" after a scenario and let people do a rebuild.
Over all, I tend to be pretty flexible about rebuilding, especially if I don't get the sense of someone gaming the system.
I flat-out tell my players that they can rebuild their character once or twice if they feel they made a mistake somewhere along the line-- or if new options become available that are appropriate. My only rule is that they don't change the primary flavor of the character.
I also let players retire a character and replace with a new one. The caveat there is that we figure out a way in-game for the PC to leave, and that PC takes all of his stuff with him.
Playing a PC in the way the OP described sound very strange-- and not particularly fun for the player.
None of those 3 were the GM telling the player he couldn't change. Those were the players deciding they had to stick with how they had originally designed the PC.
Heck, one of them is a PFS character. The player already has 4+ PC's in PFS that I know of. Why keep playing one he doesn't like?
I ditched a witch I had taken from 1st to 10th in SerSku as it just became so much hard work to play......
When GMing I always let people change.....it is the players game really
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Hmm.
I will play a character based on a concept, but the character's initial concept of themselves changes over time and adventure. Perhaps Brutey the Bruiser decides he wants to study a bit more to impress that hawt NPC he's lusting after, since the NPC likes the party wizard. Maybe they feel so ineffectual they change classes completely.
If you play a person who grows out of a concept, it's hard to get bored with the character.
Most of the folks I play with or know tend to switch out characters when they're bored with the mechanics of the class or class combination they chose. It seems I like to play people, and they like to play numbers. Just a difference in style.
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I've had a few characters that didn't turn out the way I planned (including a healbot cleric like the one Lamontius described above); an urban druid focused on tanking/spellcasting (I can't build very well for high AC it turns out).
It's PFS, so for a very long time I had no choice but to abandon a lot of scenarios played, or keep playing the character hoping it would get better somehow.
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I ditched a witch I had taken from 1st to 10th in SerSku as it just became so much hard work to play......
When GMing I always let people change.....it is the players game really
What's hard to play about a witch?
Get within 30ft, slumber. Got accursed hex? Slumber again. Immune to mind affecting? Misfortune. Fly a lot.
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I ditched a witch I had taken from 1st to 10th in SerSku as it just became so much hard work to play......
When GMing I always let people change.....it is the players game really
What's hard to play about a witch?
Get within 30ft, slumber. Got accursed hex? Slumber again. Immune to mind affecting? Misfortune. Fly a lot.
That's it? Remind me to never play a witch.
That's it? Remind me to never play a witch.I ditched a witch I had taken from 1st to 10th in SerSku as it just became so much hard work to play......
When GMing I always let people change.....it is the players game really
What's hard to play about a witch?
Get within 30ft, slumber. Got accursed hex? Slumber again. Immune to mind affecting? Misfortune. Fly a lot.
I have heard of many people (but only saw one) that play witches like that. I certainly won't.
I kinda look at witch as a somewhere between a sorc and a wizard. I can prepare spells for specific situations, I have spamable actions for when the prepared spells are not ideal (or being saved), and I got a familiar. It's got it all babe.
{The spell list isn't as great though.}
This thread reminded me of this for some reason.
