How to Handle A Min-Maxer


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Ryan Freire wrote:

Actually sociologically agency is pretty specifically about the ability to make choices, how effective those choices are doesn't really come into it.

You're confusing Structure for Agency. Structure (the gm) is that which seems to influence or limit those choices.

It's agency in that you expect your choices to matter and that picking them does something. the Gm is taking that away be taking away your choices and replacing them with his own set by nerfing the number on the back end. It's even worse that the player doesn't KNOW his choices aren't being used as you're lying to him.

Basically it's not a real choice if the GM ignores it or changes it without letting you know.

Ryan Freire wrote:
Omission isn't the same as lying, and frankly this isn't even lying, its a gm actively managing the story.

But the omission here is that you're lying so does it matter if the omission itself isn't lying?


Firewarrior44 wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Ryan Freire wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:

To me it's not really about the player agency thing.

It's the lying thing.

I simply don't like liars. I don't associate with them if at all possible. I don't see anything good coming from lying to your friends.

Thats your hangup. The reality is its a COMMON gm tool and your choice to associate that tool with the stark phrase "lying to your friends" is a poor rhetorical attempt to erase both context and scale.

It's one thing if you're upfront and tell them that you may fudge occasionally. Then it's not lying.

If you told this player that you were nerfing all of his actions behind the screen, that wouldn't be lying either, but I'm rather dubious that he'd be okay with it.

If you feel the need to lie in order to take an action because you .don't want to deal with the repercussions of being upfront about it Then it's probably not an action that you should be taking.

Omission isn't the same as lying, and frankly this isn't even lying, its a gm actively managing the story.


Don't invite that player to this campaign, not because he's a min-maxer, but because he likes combat and you want to run a horror campaign.

I'd suggest going to the Extra Credits Youtube channel and searching their archives for stuff about horror games. Pretty much everything will transfer to tabletop because horror is about atmosphere. The most relevant advice is that a good horror game doesn't let the player fight. A fight will either be lost, knocking the player out of the game; or won, undercutting the feeling of dread horror strives to create and maintain.

If your other players also like combat you should probably just forget about doing horror.

And if you do go through with your horror campaign save everybody a world of pointless paperwork and use a rules light system, possibly one with some sort of sanity track. As much as Paizo keeps repeatedly trying, Pathfinder is one of the worst game systems on the market for horror.


Ryan Freire wrote:
Firewarrior44 wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Ryan Freire wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:

To me it's not really about the player agency thing.

It's the lying thing.

I simply don't like liars. I don't associate with them if at all possible. I don't see anything good coming from lying to your friends.

Thats your hangup. The reality is its a COMMON gm tool and your choice to associate that tool with the stark phrase "lying to your friends" is a poor rhetorical attempt to erase both context and scale.

It's one thing if you're upfront and tell them that you may fudge occasionally. Then it's not lying.

If you told this player that you were nerfing all of his actions behind the screen, that wouldn't be lying either, but I'm rather dubious that he'd be okay with it.

If you feel the need to lie in order to take an action because you .don't want to deal with the repercussions of being upfront about it Then it's probably not an action that you should be taking.
Omission isn't the same as lying, and frankly this isn't even lying, its a gm actively managing the story.

Lying isn't inherently bad, but it's entirely situational on how you do it. You should never be lying to your players to create a detrimental effect. They shouldn't be missing when they should be hitting, they shouldn't be getting hit when the monster should be missing, the monsters shouldn't be making every single spell save, etc. You should only be lying when it creates a beneficial effect to your group: The monster's critical hit becoming a regular hit, or the player's 20 damage suddenly killing the monster with 24 hit points, because you know that if that player goes down it's likely going to lead to a full party wipe.

Alternatively, you may have also discovered that your BBEG that you designed to be a fun and challenging encounter is extremely underpowered and you may find that you need to fudge dice rules: add hit points, increase AC, or other things just to simply pad him out and make him more formidable than you originally had planned. If nothing else, you might just need to keep the encounter running for that extra 30 minutes because in the end you know full well they're going to beat him one way or the other so you might as well make it entertaining. Those are the kind of lies that should be happening, if any need to be made at all.


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Ryan Freire wrote:
and frankly this isn't even lying, its a gm actively managing the story.

Do you tell your players upfront that stats and rolls don't really matter, it's all about the story? That they are playing magical tea time? That this is a railroaded campaign but you get to pretend you're choosing what you're doing?

Like if the story has some BBEG that supposed to be the final boss of an arch, but the paladin "stuipidly" charges in on the guy as he is monologing and gets a crit with a x4 weapon does the BBEG still have HP and runs away or is this story arc dramatically altered and/or prematurely ended because of the player's decision and luck?

option 1 is magical storytime. Nothing you do matters if it would effect the story.
Option 2 is collaborative storytelling. The players actions directly impact the story and can cause unforeseen consequences to the story the GM had in mind.


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It's both a game and simulation. People have a right to enjoy the game part of the experience. Unpredictability because you are willing to lie about dice to nerf a character makes it "playtime with a GM who thinks his story is more important than a game."

A GM can do both. I am all for creating unique templates and special powers and giving favorable terrain and good action economy. But I am not going to lie about what the dice say. In fact, I roll out in the open when it comes to combat. People deserve to see their fate.

(I do hidden rolls for more appropriate situations, such as bluff, stealth, etc.)


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Honesty about situations and mistakes will get you miles further with your players than lying ever will. We have a recap before every session and if I made mistakes I'm straight up front about it. I like to let them know what I did wrong so that they don't repeat it in the future, or they can catch me if I accidentally start doing it again. Sometimes I even refund some resources, like if I calculated a hit bonus wrong and I know a player took a couple hard hits that should have missed; I may be inclined to give a potion back, or add a couple Cure spells back to the Cleric. Players don't expect you to be a rules dictionary, they just expect you to provide an entertaining game. It's not You vs. Them, and lying to them and being underhanded makes it that way.


Endoralis wrote:
The Sword wrote:

One simple piece of advice is to take down the key stats of each player when they level up and make it clear no character can have 5 higher in AC, to hit, max save, Spell DC etc than the next best player. That prevents combats that unfairly challenge everyone else but one character is able to cakewalk.

Set this expectation out right from the start, so that he can focus on optimising choices rather than sheer power. You may need to tinker with this if he is playing a fighter in a party of sorcerers or if he has several abilities that allow him to boost these core stats (arcane accuracy for instance).

It's a simple solution that doesn't penalise him retrospectively.

I have to point this out. If you take any advice DO NOT take this one. It is one of the worse things you can do as it basically sets the limit at the worse possible player and makes them have control over others while penalizing anyone who uses a modicrum of intelligence differently. A Fighter should not be within bounds of a Magus nor should a Monk to say a Evocation focused wizard.

A Paladin Will have outstandingly better saves than a Rogue, the examples go on. DONT DO THIS.

That isn't a fair representation of what I'm saying Endoralis.

im not saying the min-maker should aim to be within 5 points of the least powerful character, I'm saying he needs to be within 5 of the next best character. There is a massive difference.

You can easily have a 1st level barbarian with AC 15 a fighter with AC 20 and Paladin with AC 25 fine by me. However if that Paladin has AC 30 then you have a fundamental problem with the game. The worst player is irrelevant to this house rule. If you also read my post I make it clear if you are comparing different classes you need to be more flexible.

I would agree with you if what you were criticising had anything to do with what I suggested.

For the record I'm not a fan of making dice rolls up, however I am a big fan of adding monsters and templates on the fly.


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The Sword wrote:

That isn't a fair representation of what I'm saying Endoralis.

im not saying the min-maker should aim to be within 5 points of the least powerful character, I'm saying he needs to be within 5 of the next best character. There is a massive difference.

You can easily have a 1st level barbarian with AC 15 a fighter with AC 20 and Paladin with AC 25 fine by me. However if that Paladin has AC 30 then you have a fundamental problem with the game. The worst player is irrelevant to this house rule. If you also read my post I make it clear if you are comparing different classes you need to be more flexible.

I would agree with you if what you were criticising had anything to do with what I suggested.

For the record I'm not a fan of making dice rolls up, however I am a big fan of adding monsters and templates on the fly.

So I'm not sure if they made a mistake or just didn't explain it well enough, but I entirely agree with them that it's a terrible idea. You keep giving nicely mixed examples and ignoring the real problem ones. Just to make it real clear, consider the party of one fighter and 3 wizards. Is the fighter not allowed to get plate mail because the wizards are ignoring their AC? Does the fighter have to tank Str to get their to-hit numbers closer to the wizard's? They can't control their BAB. Similarly, what about a caster in a party of martials and one of the martials dips a caster. Does the pure caster now have to find a way to take stat drain to bring them down to the level of the one level dip?

Then there's the exactly as intended ones that are still problems. Let's use your example, only now the paladin has 30, the fighter has 28, and everyone else has 15. Anything that can hit the top 2 basically auto-hits the rest. Anything that struggles to hit the rest can't touch the top 2. How does making sure only two players stand out instead of one fix anything?

Additionally, since this is the kind of thing that would have to be done openly, with everyone involved, you'd be creating player friction if they're prevented from doing stuff because other players. Especially if it's things like picking feats or buying new magic items. "No Alice, you can't buy that new Str belt because Bob's to-hit is too low".

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

Alia Blackburn wrote:
He values the rulebook ABOVE the what the DM says and tries to FIGHT the DM on the rules

Your best recourse is to shut that down. Use Rule 0 if required.

MiniMax: "The rules say I get +1000 enhancement bonus to speed"

You: "I don't read it that way, I see it as only +10 because reasons".

MiniMax: "But that's not what this rule says - see here"

You: "Ok, fine. I'm rule zero-ing it to be +10 speed. Can we continue now?"

This will either align the min-maxer to proper behavior or it will encourage him to find a new group.


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I feel compelled to join the chorus of voices advising you AGAINST deception as solution. It won't work to solve ANY issues with the players. It should be obvious why but I will explain anyway.

The deception approach falsely reduces the damage being done by the power gamer in order to equalize the fight... and it WILL equalize the fight. BUT it won't solve the issue. The players STILL SEE him doing much more damage than they do. They still think this is an honest fight. To them it looks like you boosted up all the monsters HP scores(and selectively you did just that). They will feel like they are contributing LESS to the fight than before.

It has only two outcomes: Either the role play guys still feel unimportant in the fight OR the numbers guy figures out your cheating and you lose the trust of your players and they start calling you the Railroad conductor. And don't think he can't. I could and I am not even much of a numbers girl. How? Monsters of a similar type and role should have nearly the same HP. But a monster engaged by three of the role play guys goes down after taking X damage, while the monster your numbers guy fought took 3X damage before dropping. At first it may seem like a one off and that your numbers guy just happened to attack the tough one... But after this continues it will become obvious what you are doing.


James Risner wrote:
Use Rule 0 if required.

If James and I are thinking the same thing, Rule 0 would be "The Dungeon Master is always right."

But if you are not the kind of GM would would not roll behind the Screen to fudge the die roll to make sure your PC didn't die if you didn't want him to, then you also shouldn't be the kind of GM who should squelch minmaxing builds. If you believe that a Player Character is just a game piece subject to the rules, then it's only fair that you, GM, are only a referee implementing the rules, and let your players minmax all they want because technically that's what the rules say, and in return, you will let the chips fall where they may.

Heroic Fantasy characters are often people who are touched by Fate who make things just work out for them. The literal hand of the GM turning the dice to represent the figurative hand of Fate is not necessarily a bad thing.

But of course, it is important to bear in mind that the OP is not talking about running a Heroic Fantasy game, but rather a horror campaign. The Hand of Horrible Fate may turn the dice, too, just the other way, or if in the same way, just to make them suffer longer. It is important that that players understand this from the getgo.

Your minmaxers don't necessarily have 0 place in a horror campaign, either. They are the ones who say, "I'm the one you are going to follow if you are getting out of here alive!" who then gets his head bitten off 5 minutes later. Or he's the one who survives by betraying everyone else, or maybe he's the REAL monster.

Albert Einstein wrote:
The Dungeon Master does not play dice with the Universe!


James Risner wrote:
Alia Blackburn wrote:
He values the rulebook ABOVE the what the DM says and tries to FIGHT the DM on the rules

Your best recourse is to shut that down. Use Rule 0 if required.

MiniMax: "The rules say I get +1000 enhancement bonus to speed"

You: "I don't read it that way, I see it as only +10 because reasons".

MiniMax: "But that's not what this rule says - see here"

You: "Ok, fine. I'm rule zero-ing it to be +10 speed. Can we continue now?"

This will either align the min-maxer to proper behavior or it will encourage him to find a new group.

Which is what I suggested. So yes I support this.


Bob Bob Bob wrote:

So I'm not sure if they made a mistake or just didn't explain it well enough, but I entirely agree with them that it's a terrible idea. You keep giving nicely mixed examples and ignoring the real problem ones. Just to make it real clear, consider the party of one fighter and 3 wizards. Is the fighter not allowed to get plate mail because the wizards are ignoring their AC? Does the fighter have to tank Str to get their to-hit numbers closer to the wizard's? They can't control their BAB. Similarly, what about a caster in a party of martials and one of the martials dips a caster. Does the pure caster now have to find a way to take stat drain to bring them down to the level of the one level dip?

Then there's the exactly as intended ones that are still problems. Let's use your example, only now the paladin has 30, the fighter has 28, and everyone else has 15. Anything that can hit the top 2 basically auto-hits the rest. Anything that struggles to hit the rest can't touch the top 2. How does making sure only two players stand out instead of one fix anything?

Additionally, since this is the kind of thing that would have to be done openly, with everyone...

Bob, I address this point and made it quite clear that you can't simply use this method to compare apples with oranges

TheSword wrote:
You may need to tinker with this if he is playing a fighter in a party of sorcerers.

This is a specific solution to a specific problem of one character optimised for combat that is completely out of line with the rest of the party. Unless there is more information let's assume this is across a fair range of classes and not all sorcerers. I'm not saying use it in every game. However it is a simple alternative to the nuclear option of kicking the player who may be one of their friends.

Either convince everyone else to spec up, find another group or moderate your behaviour. Self restraint is a virtue. Consideration of others is also virtuous.


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I have a ilck with rule zero and i find it more fustrating than it should, might be because a DM or two i have been with have a tendency to "zero-out" entire class abilities just because they want their narrative to be "perfect"

This is why i prefer the rules are being clear, and the problem with a lot of the rules is that they are too unclear to even be played without a player-to-DM session zero about it.

Still on the terms of the min-maxer in a horror campagin, you might have to figure out a way that make him feel weak. Since its horror its in the theme itself that the enviroment and the ambience take advantage of the weaknesses of the character to make them second guess their actions. ( Note: there is a large difference between exploiting a weakness and shutting down a character )


Dracokinight, the reason Rule 0 exists is to shut down endless rule debates and keep the game moving. Can it be used unfairly? Of course it can, but if a GM is being unfair then that isn't a rule 0 issue it is an issue with group dynamics. Rule 0 is working correctly as written and as intended.


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Aranna wrote:

Dracokinight, the reason Rule 0 exists is to shut down endless rule debates and keep the game moving. Can it be used unfairly? Of course it can, but if a GM is being unfair then that isn't a rule 0 issue it is an issue with group dynamics. Rule 0 is working correctly as written and as intended.

Which is a fair point which i am not arguing, its just that i personally find it as a "cop-out" to write proper explained rules by just say "let the GM decide"

But in the end, its technically up to the entire group to work with eachother to find to which extent this work for them.
So to not hi-jack the thread, and you still want to discuss this point we could do it over PMs.

On-Topic: Use attribute damage, works wonders.


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Aranna wrote:
Dracokinight, the reason Rule 0 exists is to shut down endless rule debates and keep the game moving. Can it be used unfairly? Of course it can, but if a GM is being unfair then that isn't a rule 0 issue it is an issue with group dynamics. Rule 0 is working correctly as written and as intended.

GMs potentially misusing Rule Zero is worth keeping in mind whenever discussing group dynamics, though. I think a lot of the issue comes from how broad the rule is. There's a huge difference between a GM using Rule Zero to solve an ambiguous rule so the game can move versus the GM using Rule Zero to spring surprise house rules on the players.

It's also worth remembering that when it comes to rules-lawyering versus Rule Zero, different folks have different perspectives on where to draw the lines. The GM's "reasonable Rule Zero call" can be the player's "Dude, you just completely broke my character."

I know I was extremely annoyed when I rolled up a bard for a 3.5 campaign, and halfway through the first session the DM told me that he'd houseruled that bards still got arcane spell failure in light armor. If not for the fact that I was gaming with friends I probably would've quite right away (as it was the campaign only lasted three sessions anyway).


Chengar, no body is advising him to abuse Rule 0. This is exactly one on those times that Rule 0 was intended for.


Charon's Little Helper wrote:

To me it's not really about the player agency thing.

It's the lying thing.

I simply don't like liars. I don't associate with them if at all possible. I don't see anything good coming from lying to your friends.

You dont lie? You might be the only person who does not lol


CWheezy wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:

To me it's not really about the player agency thing.

It's the lying thing.

I simply don't like liars. I don't associate with them if at all possible. I don't see anything good coming from lying to your friends.

You dont lie? You might be the only person who does not lol

It's not necessarily lying. It's fantasy.

Do you really think that L. Frank Baum didn't fudge the d20 roll when he was rolling to see whether the house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East?

Do you really think that Lucy had an equal chance for the Wandering Monster roll to come up Mr. Tumnus, Fenris, or White Witch?

ChessPwn wrote:
That they are playing magical tea time?

Magical tea time can be lovely. So can cleverly moving your game pieces around the Chess board. Pathfinder is a game with rules that the GM is refereeing. It's a fantasy story that the GM is collaborating with the players to create. It's roleplaying, where you pretend to be a character in a made up world. That's why it's called a fantasy role playing game.

There's lots of ways to do it so that everybody has fun. And there are lots of ways for players and GMs to ruin it for everybody else.


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Scott Wilhelm wrote:
CWheezy wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:

To me it's not really about the player agency thing.

It's the lying thing.

I simply don't like liars. I don't associate with them if at all possible. I don't see anything good coming from lying to your friends.

You dont lie? You might be the only person who does not lol

It's not necessarily lying. It's fantasy.

Do you really think that L. Frank Baum didn't fudge the d20 roll when he was rolling to see whether the house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East?

Do you really think that Lucy had an equal chance for the Wandering Monster roll to come up Mr. Tumnus, Fenris, or White Witch?

They didn't roll dice. If your story is more important than the game you, too, should be writing a novel not GMing a game.


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Scott Wilhelm wrote:
CWheezy wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:

To me it's not really about the player agency thing.

It's the lying thing.

I simply don't like liars. I don't associate with them if at all possible. I don't see anything good coming from lying to your friends.

You dont lie? You might be the only person who does not lol

It's not necessarily lying. It's fantasy.

Do you really think that L. Frank Baum didn't fudge the d20 roll when he was rolling to see whether the house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East?

Do you really think that Lucy had an equal chance for the Wandering Monster roll to come up Mr. Tumnus, Fenris, or White Witch?

ChessPwn wrote:
That they are playing magical tea time?

Magical tea time can be lovely. So can cleverly moving your game pieces around the Chess board. Pathfinder is a game with rules that the GM is refereeing. It's a fantasy story that the GM is collaborating with the players to create. It's roleplaying, where you pretend to be a character in a made up world. That's why it's called a fantasy role playing game.

There's lots of ways to do it so that everybody has fun. And there are lots of ways for players and GMs to ruin it for everybody else.

Literature is a poor comparison. The author has complete control over his characters and what they do and do not do, he dictates the action and the outcome. He has no rules or mechanics that he has to abide by besides those he fabricates himself.

In the case of a ttrpg it's the player who dictates the choice and the games mechanics that determine the outcome. Those choices are informed by the assumption that the world and action will behave a certain way (mechanics/rules). When you break and bend the mechanics without informing the player then their choice has been rendered effectively meaningless as it is no longer an informed decision.


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Ryan Freire wrote:
Or, again, you can manage it entirely behind the screen without telling anyone and if you do it at all with subtlety everyone gets to play what they want without feeling constrained by the gm.

This is entirely the worst advice you can give someone, the gm I had that pulled that crap I refuse to play with anymore because I can't trust him and it was easy to tell what he was doing.

If you want things to go how you want arbitrarily write a book.


Firewarrior44 wrote:

Literature is a poor comparison. The author has complete control over his characters and what they do and do not do, he dictates the action and the outcome. He has no rules or mechanics that he has to abide by besides those he fabricates himself.

In the case of a ttrpg it's the player who dictates the choice and the games mechanics that determine the outcome. Those choices are informed by the assumption that the world and action will behave a certain way (mechanics/rules). When you break and bend the mechanics without informing the player then their choice has been rendered effectively meaningless as it is no longer an informed decision.

ttrpg isn't writing a book, but it's not playing Risk, either. There are rules that are supposed to govern outcomes coherently, but, usually, a GM is more than a mere referee. A GM is supposed to be able to exercise control over some outcomes as part of the course of play, the goal of which usually is to collaborate with the players to craft a story.

I'm not saying a GM can't ruin a game by surprising the players by bending and breaking mechanics. It's happened to me.

But I am saying that good GMing can have a little of that.


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Scott Wilhelm wrote:

I'm not saying a GM can't ruin a game by surprising the players by bending and breaking mechanics. It's happened to me.

But I am saying that good GMing can have a little of that.

Yes a good and skilled gm it takes a very careful hand to do something like that.

Stuff like arbitrarily deciding player X does too much damage so I am going to do more damage to them and make them do less damage, meanwhile I will make player Y who does less damage do increased damage because I want it to be fair.
I had a dm do that to me, I was playing a character built around doing a lot of damage, and I would always get critted, meanwhile the person playing the bard using crappy weapons, and not using his class features to buff himself would get all the kills rarely get hit in combat, and in general out preformed me, even going all in which meant I was expending resources. All of the dms rolling was done behind the screen mind you, I was also the only d10 hd class and had the highest con, ac, and had some defense abilities, and I was still knocked out in almost every other combat.
Doing stuff like that just makes your players not see the point in playing because you have already decided what will happen.
And that is why the advice to do so was bad was because it was stuff like that.


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Rule 0 is not an excuse to avoid legitimate rules discussions with players. I don't want protracted discussions during the game, but after the game the dialogue isn't: 1) Player has interpretation X; 2) GM has interpretation Y; 3) GM is right. I listen to and consider the interpretations and decide if they fit within the world.

A lot of people are way way too authoritarian as GMs for my taste. The game is so much better when everything is about dialogue and agreement with players and gms and the players and other players and everyone is accommodated. Rule 0 should be used sparingly to limit players, and more frequently to enable cool and creative ideas.


The Yellow King wrote:
Scott Wilhelm wrote:

I'm not saying a GM can't ruin a game by surprising the players by bending and breaking mechanics. It's happened to me.

But I am saying that good GMing can have a little of that.

Yes a good and skilled gm it takes a very careful hand to do something like that.

Stuff like arbitrarily deciding player X does too much damage so I am going to do more damage to them and make them do less damage, meanwhile I will make player Y who does less damage do increased damage because I want it to be fair.
I had a dm do that to me, I was playing a character built around doing a lot of damage, and I would always get critted, meanwhile the person playing the bard using crappy weapons, and not using his class features to buff himself would get all the kills rarely get hit in combat, and in general out preformed me, even going all in which meant I was expending resources. All of the dms rolling was done behind the screen mind you, I was also the only d10 hd class and had the highest con, ac, and had some defense abilities, and I was still knocked out in almost every other combat.
Doing stuff like that just makes your players not see the point in playing because you have already decided what will happen.
And that is why the advice to do so was bad was because it was stuff like that.

I've had some very frustrating experiences with capricious GMs, myself. I can very relate and sympathize.


Looking through here, this is what advice I can provide;

If it is a horror campaign, you can maybe provide some extra incentive to roleplay and act fearful;

Rob heavily from fate and 3.5; Take the action point system from 3.5, and grant them two action points.

Have them write Aspects for their character, like with Fate. First the High Concept, The Trouble, then the Phase Trio when everyone is there.

Include the mechanic known as Compels; When one of their aspects might make any given interaction more interesting, or when you wish to invoke that feeling of something otherworldly calling. If they do as you ask, they gain a fate point. If they don't, they lose a fate point. This will encourage their character to do interesting stuff, while also rewarding those characters who roleplay.

This does something incredibly valuable to horror campaigns, in that it removes agency in a limited sense; Grants them weakness that you can enforce.

Also, make your combats intresting; Use difficult terrain, alternate goals, and other things.


I have a different take here, and I think it needs be said. I'm new to posting, but I've lurked around Paizo boards for years, and I see the same thing a great deal:
"Just don't have him play" or "Don't invite that player".

Okay. Most of the time, we don't only game tabletop with our friends. There are a lot of complications to telling your wife's best friend Laura that she can't play in your new campaign, but her husband Tom is totally welcome. Just lost two players there.

And if you live in an area with a limited number of gamers, losing two of them isn't conducive to actually having game sessions.

Even, "Convince him it isn't his cup of tea since it is a horror game," will probably fail in an area that doesn't have two gaming stores with games posted all over. If the power gamer knows it is his only option, he's still going to play in the horror game. And so advice of, 'just don't let him play' isn't advice, it is non-advice.

Pathfinder is social. Social activities require other people. Those people don't always agree.

Here's my advice: Spotlight.
-Set your iPhone for 25 minutes on a timer that makes a fantasy like sound (a snippet from a fantasy game MMO would work nicely)
-Take it as a general queue to move from RP of one topic with one player character as a 'star' to move to the next (when there is a break in the action of the story to allow for it)
-If your power stats master (I'm one of those by the way) blows through a combat tripping this and AOO that -- fine. Make post combat interesting! The chest is locked. There is a scrap of poetry that is the spoken password to a glyph later. The majority of the treasure is a Japanese themed water clock, with the simple puzzle, "How the F do we get that out of here?"
-That restarts RP
-Reset your phone timer
-Focus on each player equally

And don't stop inviting friends you've had for a decade. There's no amount of horror that's worth losing a whiskey drinkin' buddy. Ever.


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OldHairyDM wrote:
And don't stop inviting friends you've had for a decade. There's no amount of horror that's worth losing a whiskey drinkin' buddy. Ever.

No gaming is better than bad gaming and if you do horror right someone who's there for the combat will be bored to tears.

You don't invite all your friends to everything you invite anyone to unless all your friends are alike. It's the back stabbing advice everyone else is giving to "manage" him that would lose the OP his buddy, not having one game he doesn't play in.


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I hate to deflate poor Ryan any more... But... Players can often be very happy even under poor GMing practices. When faced with even worse GMs or no game at all they can be grateful for the effort even if they hate one or two things the GM does. Heck I enjoyed playing at Sexist GMs table despite everything misogynistic. Why? Because we are complex people and he was an amazingly creative guy and a successful freelance game developer. That didn't excuse his bad behavior, but we had fun at his table anyway.

So no just because your players are happy doesn't mean this will work. It just means your players like something about you or your game. It could literally be anything it's silly to assume they love you for cheating.


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Aranna wrote:
Chengar, no body is advising him to abuse Rule 0. This is exactly one on those times that Rule 0 was intended for.

Leaving aside that plenty of people in the thread actually are, one of the points I raised was that the GM and player might have different ideas of what constitutes abuse.


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Hey, Alia.

I'm sorry you have a player who feels he has to corner/challenge the GM. That's no fun. Even less fun is play being bogged down by rules arguments when you'd like to focus on the game. Even less fun is when those rules arguments are slowing down play for four other players, and yourself. It boils down to: Him vs Him, Him, Her, Her, and Him.

I'd suggest taking this to the rpg.net forums or a different site. I love Paizo to pieces. Their forums tend to be crunchier than most, though. This has its strengths. If you're looking for more management advice, it can be found here, but will often get bogged down with the classic minmaxers aren't bad! versus yes they are! versus Let's qualify that. That's what is happening above, and "let's qualify what minmaxing is" is really tangential to your question.

So I'd head there, or perhaps a different forum and frame your question as a social and group issue at the table. There's no need to even bring up the system really, as this sounds firmly like a player issue.

GMs have been handling issues like these since time immortal. It's group management.


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That is &$$&$%^$!!! It's one thing if a GM for the story fudge die rolls. I have as have other GMs I play with. It's on thing to bend the rules so a villain you want to build up escapes again and again. Mot of the group I play with uses every resource to keep any enemy they fight escape.
But that is cheating and no one I know tolerates that well. We have had issues of that insisting everyone rolls dice in front of everyone including the GM. I do having a set of dice I use just for bad guys. I roll secretly on some things but overall they see the rolls of the bad guys.
The other issue I'm seeing is favoritism. It happens a lot in some cases it becomes a major problem. We had a GM who hated me for whatever reason but loved his buddy. He often did two things which pissed me and the other players off to no end. The first was when he ran a campaign he wouldn't tell us anything about the campaign except his buddy. The second was his buddy often a level or even two in one case higher then the rest of the PCs. I don't mind a GM keeping his campaign a secret except I'd like to know enough to not play a character who will end up being useless and hated. Example a Dessert warrior running around in the frozen north.
Now to the main issue of MinMaxing our group has a tendency to do it. Not always but in general yes. Half our group also played first ed D&D and you needed to MinMax just to stay alive. Now in some cases our characters are more powerful then others but we have all played together for years so we compliment each other well. We have discovered while our characters are MinMaxed that doesn't make them boring at all. Had an evil fighter in our group once he was very memorable more for what he did outside of combat then the damage he did in combat. Some players would rather Role Play then focus on combat we as a group have no issue with this. Our issue is some players focus so much on the RP aspect that they tend to make useless characters. I'm not talking about a Faceman with a exceedingly high Chr and Diplomacy skill. Most times we have needed such a character. We don't complain knowing his lack of combat skills are offset by his other abilities. I'm talking about someone who eagerly does everything to make himself worthless for the sake of RP.


Atarlost wrote:
OldHairyDM wrote:
And don't stop inviting friends you've had for a decade. There's no amount of horror that's worth losing a whiskey drinkin' buddy. Ever.

No gaming is better than bad gaming and if you do horror right someone who's there for the combat will be bored to tears.

You don't invite all your friends to everything you invite anyone to unless all your friends are alike. It's the back stabbing advice everyone else is giving to "manage" him that would lose the OP his buddy, not having one game he doesn't play in.

Yes but you should explain the type of game to your buddy let them know that there will not be a lot of combat focus and you won't be able to fight most encounters and instead need to run away, list changes x y and z that you are making, and then tell him he is invited but if it isnt the kind of game for him its okay. If he is your friend you talk to him you don't just not invite him.

The general rule of thumb is if he is part of your gaming group you invite him, otherwise if he finds out you are running a game with the old group sans him it will look like you just don't want to play with him if he was not told anything about it.


Derek Dalton wrote:

That is &$$&$%^$!!! It's one thing if a GM for the story fudge die rolls. I have as have other GMs I play with. It's on thing to bend the rules so a villain you want to build up escapes again and again. Mot of the group I play with uses every resource to keep any enemy they fight escape.

But that is cheating and no one I know tolerates that well. We have had issues of that insisting everyone rolls dice in front of everyone including the GM. I do having a set of dice I use just for bad guys. I roll secretly on some things but overall they see the rolls of the bad guys.
The other issue I'm seeing is favoritism. It happens a lot in some cases it becomes a major problem. We had a GM who hated me for whatever reason but loved his buddy. He often did two things which pissed me and the other players off to no end. The first was when he ran a campaign he wouldn't tell us anything about the campaign except his buddy. The second was his buddy often a level or even two in one case higher then the rest of the PCs. I don't mind a GM keeping his campaign a secret except I'd like to know enough to not play a character who will end up being useless and hated. Example a Dessert warrior running around in the frozen north.
Now to the main issue of MinMaxing our group has a tendency to do it. Not always but in general yes. Half our group also played first ed D&D and you needed to MinMax just to stay alive. Now in some cases our characters are more powerful then others but we have all played together for years so we compliment each other well. We have discovered while our characters are MinMaxed that doesn't make them boring at all. Had an evil fighter in our group once he was very memorable more for what he did outside of combat then the damage he did in combat. Some players would rather Role Play then focus on combat we as a group have no issue with this. Our issue is some players focus so much on the RP aspect that they tend to make useless characters. I'm not talking about a Faceman with a exceedingly high Chr and...

Hey, there. Are you sure you are not reading your own experiences into the OP's question? Or that you are not answering a "to Minmax or not Minmax" argument instead of providing help?

At the moment, I am reading that things are coming down to: Him vs Him, Him, Her, Her, and Him, with the one person causing disruption at the table and arguing with the DM--even breaking the game to do so.


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I did answer although admittedly it is convoluted. Our group MinMaxes. We have done so for years and probably will continue to do so. But we have allowed it and even encouraged it. I as a GM have in the past asked players not to do so and they have. It's about respect for everyone. My asking players not to MinMax and for them not to do so. If you can't have that then you should talk about it first. If it continues to be an issue maybe you should seek out other players.

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