So I am a relatively new GM, and last night I started a game for a bunch of my friends. They created characters using 4d6, drop the lowest and after a few hours, we came away with a four man party of a Half-Orc Paladin, a Half-Elf Ranger, an Aasimar Ninja and an Elven Witch.
My main concern, after a night of goblin-slaying, is about the overall strength of the party. Everyone made their characters a little sub-optimally, especially the Paladin player. He did not roll particularly well (everything between 10 and 14), and he doesn't have any score above a 15. He's using a battleaxe and shield. The rest of the party is pretty well built, although the Ninja player needs to learn about the importance of Disable Device.
They fared pretty well considering, but I'm a little worried about their future prospects. I may be overreacting, but they're all relatively new players and I don't know if they have the skills (haha) to work with slightly suboptimal characters.
I don't want to come across to them as forceful, but I want to help them succeed despite any problems from character creation. Do people have any suggestions for dealing with a party that seems sub-optimal and players that may not realize it? Should I increase treasure? Lower CRs? Any advice would be appreciated.
BTW, it's a homebrew campaign in a Spelljammer-like setting. The PCs got kidnapped from their home world by intergalactic slavers. I'm trying to go for a Star Wars meets Mass Effect flavor.
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Well, if the whole party is at the same level of optimization...yeah, lowering CR a bit seems reasonable.
If the problem is mainly with one player's rolls...maybe let him re-roll. I'd certainly do so for any character who didn't get a single 16. Of course, I hate rolling for stats in the first place...
Let them stand on their own feet otherwise any challenge will be pointless and there will be no tension or drama. Without the players making real choices that could end up with the death of their characters then any victory will be hollow and the players will soon realize that any actions they take will be without consequence. Stop worrying about stats or how the players choose to build their characters and concentrate on building a fun and fair game for your friends. Have fun.
Woo Flaxman wrote: Let them stand on their own feet otherwise any challenge will be pointless and there will be no tension or drama. Without the players making real choices that could end up with the death of their characters then any victory will be hollow and the players will soon realize that any actions they take will be without consequence. Stop worrying about stats or how the players choose to build their characters and concentrate on building a fun and fair game for your friends. Have fun. Thanks for the advice. Sometimes it can be easy to forget that the game is about having fun and not crunching numbers (an aspect that I love more than most of my friends).
Rolling for stats gives you situations like this, dems da breaks. Two paths to walk here. The first path is to just softball it to them. Dont pump up encounters and tailor tough ones to avoid TPKs. Path two is murder those sub-optimals and have the party replace them with better builds.
It is a quasi-fix for the Paladin, but maybe the first bit of magical treasure they find are some gauntlets of Ogre Strength? (or something similar. Something that will appeal to the Paladin more than any other party member).
I feel I should say that it isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world to have "sub-optimal" character stats. I mean, what does that really mean? Optimal to me equals 18+. Optimal is a strong word.
"Sub-par" maybe?
Even a sub-par character can be capable and be a lot of fun to play. Do high stats help in combat? For sure!
Do high stats help out of combat? Yes!
Are they required to have fun? to succeed? to role-play? No.
In fact I've had more than one character that had middle of the road and even poor stats that provided great opportunities for RP flavor that wouldn't have been there otherwise.
Use your instincts and feel them out. Start off slow and build up your encounter strength as time goes on. They are new after all right? :)
Stats despite being helpful and required for some feats, is probably the thing that matters least in the game as it relates to getting a job done. Even a character with attributes in the 30s barely scales with built in saves, BAB, etc etc. and class features can trump all those depending on 100 variables. As long as they can meet the prerequisites for the fundamental feats/features they need I would let it be until you have more reason to question it.
As an aside, for future games if you want to roll stats for the thrill of it, have everyone get together to do it at once.
Let everyone roll a statline, then let all the players pick any of the statlines rolled by anyone at the table. That way, SAD classes could get that one 18 they wanted but be in the 10-14 range on the others, and mad classes could have several 14s but 15 highest to be more well rounded.
Everyone had the same choices, everyone starts on the same field.
We have used this for years, and it is a blast.
Keep your party at APL = CR with some APL +1 or +2 encounters. Some of my fondest memories come from my early days of killing characters. As a new player without any rules knowledge, I died several times learning monster strengths and weaknesses. I have played decades since then, but that initial thrill of learning a monster's weakness and defeating it has never been surpassed.
So, let them fail occasionally, and they will probably thank you for it later.
If a TPK happens but they did not actually die but are all dieing on the ground you can instead capture them.
Offer surrender and reasonable terms.
Instead of killing you can maim them in interesting ways.
Let creative ideas have chance to work. I go with the player needing a 6 on something they are great at, 11 for average to good, and 16 for things they are bad at. Do not announce the DC just look at the dice roll. Reduce the number arbitrarily based on help from others and spells.
Let them fail with style.
Do not focus on combat all the time.
If you're doing random starting rolls then take whoever rolled the highest add his numbers and have everyone make a character off that. Attributes are important and everyone should have an even start. Failing that, you give everyone the same starting points to stat their character up with.
The other thing is, always err on the low side for CRs, if something looks challenging to you then for Pete's sake, lower it or give the players something (a one-shot device) that evens it up. When you make mistakes (and you will just a fact of life) it's always best to err on the side of anti-climax rather than killing everyone.
I GMed a session where the characters were 3rd level and I set up an encounter with 9 Bugbears, a shaman and a sub-chief - and I saw I had made a mistake and they were going to lose big-time, so I had a Roc come by, grab 4 Bugbears in either talon(one was the shaman) and just fly away. You can do variations of this with floors falling away, cavern cave-ins, and if you have a cleric who worships a luck God it's even better when you do this kind of thing - it looks like you had actually planned it!
It's a bit cheesy, but if you ever happen to create a magical pool or something that has random effects based on a percentile, you can always have the character roll percentiles, then roll a d6, then ask what his Fort save is, then roll in secret, and say, "Oh. Wow. Well, your [most problematical stat] just got a permanent inherent +1 bonus."
Of course, if one of the other players happens to roll the same percentile and d6 results, you're going to have to think fast. Explain it was influenced by their astrological sign! (And hope those two PCs don't happen to be twins or something.)
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