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I don't get that. I provide players with pre-calculated bonuses for stuff. Because I get to keep their sheets.
There is a nice number. You just roll a d20 and add that number in that specific situation. I even label them.
And yet, there will ALWAYS be that one guy who will still try to add those numbers up.
And don't even get me started on people who can't tell between dice after freaking YEARS of gaming.
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I don't get that. I provide players with pre-calculated bonuses for stuff. Because I get to keep their sheets.
There is a nice number. You just roll a d20 and add that number in that specific situation. I even label them.
And yet, there will ALWAYS be that one guy who will still try to add those numbers up.
And don't even get me started on people who can't tell between dice after freaking YEARS of gaming.
Ugh. The worst thing are the experienced players that don't know what they're doing. I've been playing for what, three years with barely any 3.5 experience. Guy I was GMing has been playing for years longer and has books as old as AD&D around. I remember I quit the Hero System campaign he was in because Hero System is complicated as hell. That guy was running around with a ranger with 14 Charisma and 8 Wisdom. I caught it when he seemed basically useless in the game so I asked to see his character sheet.
I just want one game. ONE game where my players can fill out a character sheet without supervision. I'm still upset because EVERY GM wants to see my character sheet when I make a summoner despite it always being correct. Its fracking arithmetic and I'm not going to play a class if I cant comprehend it.
Wow. I just... Wow.. I have to say that I have never run into these experienced players that don't know what they hell they are doing. I'm less experienced than most of my friends and more than some of them. Everyone knows I can't add, but, since I admit that freely, it's not a problem. I just usually ask the person next to me to check my numbers. I know what to add and when to add it, but I have problems mathing (sorry, inside jargon heehee).
Wow. I just... Wow.. I have to say that I have never run into these experienced players that don't know what they hell they are doing. I'm less experienced than most of my friends and more than some of them. Everyone knows I can't add, but, since I admit that freely, it's not a problem. I just usually ask the person next to me to check my numbers. I know what to add and when to add it, but I have problems mathing (sorry, inside jargon heehee).
Making a character and asking to check your math is drastically different from forgetting to give your ranger enough Wisdom to cast spells after years of playing.
I have this problem as a player as well. Now I'm not looking for optimized team mates. I generally make characters based on a dumb gimmick that I'll optimize to the point of not dying and taking everyone else with me. My characters as a whole are suboptimal. However I've quit games where I just felt like I was just making the curve too high for team mates. The GM wanted to challenge us by putting lvl 10 fighters against our lvl 5 party. I pulled out all the stops and summoned a two creatures and that dancing weapon spell and tried to chip away with a reach weapon. Meanwhile the rest of my party is dying quick. We eventually won (I with almost max hp) but then I remembered that I GMed my team mates and there had to use cr5 encounters with cr2-3 creatures because anything more and they'd die quickly. So after a while I realized that my presence was making the danger curve go too high just by knowing more about the game (my character was actually pretty weak) so I quit.
There must be something in the water in your town to have so many problems with other gamers. That, or you need to expand your pool of friends/co-workers/where ever you're meeting these people. We all have experienced the occasionally 'slow' player, and being predominately introverted geeks, we all have various social issues to work around, but your experience is really throwing off the bell curve here.
You seem impressed with PFS, so why don't you GM there? I have found that PFS players are more focused, more knowledgeable about the game, and make the time to arrive on game night. But then again, that's kind of the point of an Organized Game, eh? I mean, if you go to the bowling ally for Midnight Bowl verses League Night, where are you going to find the better bowlers?
Okay, enough bashing from me. One suggestion I have that might help you, is to let them GM a game. Nothing will make them learn the rules better and faster than having to run the whole thing. If they refuse, or do just as poorly in that role, that might help you choose a direction to take your game in.
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I have run into players like all of you are describing; and in all honesty they just don't care to learn the rules. They can manage to have fun without doing so and therefore have no actual incentive to do so; but they fail to realize that they are walking all over other people's fun. Sometimes you can't even explain that to them. I have yet to find a solution.
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Now I'm not talking about players that are too new to fully understand the game. I'm not talking about players that don't take the plot seriously and do random dumb things. I'm not talking about players that just make bad decisions. I'm not talking about players that underoptimize because of cool flavor.
I'm talking about people who play for four years and still have no idea to to calculate their melee damage, give their wizard 14 INT or still haven't comprehended how many of what actions they can perform in a turn. Sometimes its a lack of willingness to read the actual rules but sometimes I have parties full of people who are... off is some way that I cannot determine where I'm forced to build characters for them, avoid plots more complicated than "Bad guy over there!", and have to recalculate anything their character does. This causes DM burnout really really fast and it seems like half my parties are like this.
What do you do? What should I do? Fixing the problem should be simple right? Not really...
I tried explaining building a character and the basic combat chapter rules. The results are either people see this as a lecture and only absorb bits of it. I understand this. I didn't 'get' pathfinder until I read the core rulebook, so that's understandable. so...
I tried directing to online guides and srd. This never goes well. Whenever I give out or direct to any resource that involves the internet I will guarantee that at least 3/4s of the entire party will never see it. I might as well have sent emails to mars.
I feel like the only thing I haven't tried was making my own guide to pathfinder in general, but I'm terrified that the amount of work it would take to draw the graphics, write it out and compose it in pdf form would not be worth it because nobody, and I mean nobody, reads any of my handouts and I don't expect this to change.
Its like if you already know what you're doing things will go okay, but if you don't know what you're doing by now this will not change even years from...
It sounds to me like you have lazy players, not dumb ones. Not much to be done for people who don't want to learn, so I can't help if that's the case.
I have a dumb player in my group. He flat out admits this himself. Did terrible in school, can't even do basic addition and subtraction without either a calculator or counting on his fingers. He has troubles grasping the finer points of the system, and the only role-playing he does with his characters is "drunk" or "angry". He has been playing with my group for 7 years, and has finally gotten to where he can make his own characters. It takes him some time to add things up, but he has a good time and we generally enjoy his company at the table.My point is, dumb players can be helped with time and patience. Lazy ones, probably not.
I do DM pts. But I want to do APs and homebrew and pfs people are already in games/groups or play pfs because they have no other stable free time.
I don't get that. I provide players with pre-calculated bonuses for stuff. Because I get to keep their sheets.
There is a nice number. You just roll a d20 and add that number in that specific situation. I even label them.
And yet, there will ALWAYS be that one guy who will still try to add those numbers up.
I'm not even sure how that works...
My Paladin has a different Attack # or damage to add to that D20 if he's power Attacking, If he's smiting, if he's power attacking AND smiting... if he's One handing or two handing... Then sometimes there's Haste going, or Prayer, or Bless... or All three... Or if he's using divine bond on his sword THAT can have some different bonuses... Don't forget bull's strength and or Eagles Splender.... All with different durations of course..
Pathfinder is a lot more complicated then just 'here's your number, add D20'... Our games have a lot of math flying around the table and people adjusting their numbers.
Same with AC... Was I in my armor? did I have the shield out? Who's watch was it? Where did these bonuses come from? Ioun stones? boots, haste... ummm... Yeah, I THINK that attack hits this time. Wait... I was smiting him! Nope! It's a miss!
And don't even get me started on people who can't tell between dice after freaking YEARS of gaming.
Yeah, Got nuthin' for this one... O.o
That's just BAD!!!!
having to explain how to add up attack bonuses to someone who I know has played at least five campaigns before.
I'm also very surprised how drastically DIFFERENT Each class feels for me. I've played a Rogue, A sorcerer and a Paladin so far... Yeah, EVERYTHING changes when you switch classes. There are always some overlap of course... but 5 campaigns don't mean much if you now have a completely different rule set to learn.
I think one to keep in mind for DM's... is you're playing ALL the classes, and ALL the monsters... In that last campaign you spent a lot of time learning how that Sorcerer worked and his ranger henchmen, and the elementals powers... and of course the idea of 'natural and secondary attacks...' And you've used that same bestiary for years now....
Me... that whole campaign, I mastered the 'rogue' rules... What does my new Druid get when he turns into a fire elemental?? ummmm... better double check that, I've only used water and Earth so far... Ohhh I can summon... a LOT of different things... Yeah... ummm.. ok...
It's the downside to such a rule heavy game. 2E we never saw this kind of fumbling.Pathfinder? There's a definite learning curve.
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My Paladin has a different Attack # or damage to add to that D20 if he's power Attacking, If he's smiting, if he's power attacking AND smiting... if he's One handing or two handing... Then sometimes there's Haste going, or Prayer, or Bless... or All three... Or if he's using divine bond on his sword THAT can have some different bonuses... Don't forget bull's strength and or Eagles Splender.... All with different durations of course..
Pathfinder is a lot more complicated then just 'here's your number, add D20'... Our games have a lot of math flying around the table and people adjusting their numbers.
Same with AC... Was I in my armor? did I have the shield out? Who's watch was it? Where did these bonuses come from? Ioun stones? boots, haste... ummm... Yeah, I THINK that attack hits this time. Wait... I was smiting him! Nope! It's a miss!
And I pre-calculate every single one of those attacks or variances. Plus if you need a full minute to add 4 to you AC, I've got news for you...
If you feel your players are dumb or stupid, you should not be a GM. You clearly don't respect them and they don't respect you, hence the mass exodus from your game. You seem to enjoy PFS play, so that's where you should thrive. I have gamed with people that don't have the same grasp on the rules as I do, and they are not stupid or dumb, they just see things differently and don't involve themselves in the game to the same degree. Granted I would much rather play with these friends that a bunch of numbers freeks that never make a mistake. I do get annoyed when others don't seem to have a grasp of the game in the same way, but they I can't do things like they do in their fields of interest.
Not knowing the rules is a drastically different story. My first group were new and didn't grasp the rules quickly but were functional enough to make a character with instructions. I have been in games where the players are terminally inept and quit GMing on those grounds as well as the opposite extreme. I'm not talking about players who are loose with the rules or don't fully grasp them, otherwise I'd rip out the beginner box again. Some of the 'smart' players I mentioned above started with me on the beginner box and didn't move much past core. They didn't fully grasp the rules as opposed to being incompetent. Actually two of my favorite players didn't fully grasp the rules but made up for it with fun and roleplaying. One of my least favorite players was a rules lawyer.
As to the conversation of how complicated Pathfinder actually is, I can run The Dragon's Demand with the beginner box so it doesn't have to be complicated if you don't want it to be and still have some stuff to work with. If your players are more into story than rules or powers then its a good way to go. Alternatively Descent: Journey into Darkness exists if your players want barely a story and all fighting. I found Pathfinder to not be that complicated if I keep a piece of paper with my usual modified numbers. If I have a class that buffs other people I use props to remind people of added numbers. Nobody remembers what's not on their own sheet so I feel like it's my responsibility to make sure my powers are going through so there's an unwritten agreement that everyone does what they do and I'll tell them to add to it after they roll if I'm the source of the bonus. For things like rage and power attack I made it a habit to write my attack number separately and label them 'raging attack' and 'raging power attack.' More writing but I don't forget them. When I made a sythesist summoner I went as far as cutting a character sheet in half and putting my synthesized stats over my normal ones when I was in eidolon mode. For the most part number confusion for me comes when my character sheet can't hold what I want written down. Spells particularly are my bane and I would not do it without my tablet to keep track of my spells.
...Now I'm not talking about players that are too new to fully understand the game. I'm not talking about players that don't take the plot seriously and do random dumb things. I'm not talking about players that just make bad decisions. I'm not talking about players that underoptimize because of cool flavor.
I'm talking about people who play for four years and still have no idea to to calculate their melee damage, give their wizard 14 INT or still haven't comprehended how many of what actions they can perform in a turn. Sometimes its a lack of willingness to read the actual rules but sometimes I have parties full of people who are... off is some way that I cannot determine where I'm forced to build characters for them, avoid plots more complicated than "Bad guy over there!", and have to recalculate anything their character does. This causes DM burnout really really fast and it seems like half my parties are like this.
What do you do? What should I do? Fixing the problem should be simple right? Not really...
I tried explaining building a character and the basic combat chapter rules. The results are either people see this as a lecture and only absorb bits of it. I understand this. I didn't 'get' pathfinder until I read the core rulebook, so that's understandable. so...
I tried directing to online guides and srd. This never goes well. Whenever I give out or direct to any resource that involves the internet I will guarantee that at least 3/4s of the entire party will never see it. I might as well have sent emails to mars.
I feel like the only thing I haven't tried was making my own guide to pathfinder in general, but I'm terrified that the amount of work it would take to draw the graphics, write it out and compose it in pdf form would not be worth it because nobody, and I mean nobody, reads any of my handouts and I don't expect this to change.
Its like if you already know what you're doing things will go okay, but if you don't know what you're doing by now this will not
This is probably it. I mean I've had new players that progress or are clever outside the rules. In some ways I get it. When I tried to introduce the beginner box to my little sister (21 years old) she took one look at the character sheet and and listened to one sentence and said "This looks like homework.". Learning a game can feel like work, however whats up with people that have been playing the game since 3.5?
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This is probably it. I mean I've had new players that progress or are clever outside the rules. In some ways I get it. When I tried to introduce the beginner box to my little sister (21 years old) she took one look at the character sheet and and listened to one sentence and said "This looks like homework.". Learning a game can feel like work, however whats up with people that have been playing the game since 3.5?
Different people have different levels of enjoyment and are willing to endure different levels of immersion in the game system. If a player isn't willing to at least learn the rules for their own character class there's not much you can do for them. If they aren't even willing to at least sit down with you and learn their specific character, dump 'em.