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This title is bait. I'm not exactly looking for incentives to have players roll actually mediocre characters, but I'm looking for 'home game' or 'PFS play in Campaign Mode' character creation rules that actually encourage players to adopt a theme for their characters and 'stick to it' (i.e. not just dump one rank in Craft and then forget about the whole thing).
Do any of you have suggestions for such incentives to build with the rule of cool and strongly encourage players not to create min/maxed murderhobos made up from a patchwork of rules taken from 65 different books?
(i.e. for example, if a campaign is about urban investigations, to create a toon that makes sense in an urban setting and didn't spend his entire childhood in a box learning to hold his breath or resisting bullies in alleys 24/7... in essence, making the character viable with a bunch of non-optimized for combat options which may include things like Skill Focus, Deceitful, Expert Salvager, Hide Worker, etc.)
Tell the table that you are not allowing stats below a 10, after racial modifiers are applied.
In a point buy system, this will raise the floor, but also lower the ceiling.
Use Hero Points to reward good roleplaying outside of combat.
Provide an environment that offers a lot of RP potential outside of combat.
Limit the amount of materials/books that they have access to for feats and classes and equipment.
But probably, most of all, talk to the table about your intentions and expectations... and listen to theirs.
I think have a decent point buy (20 rather than 15) so that character concepts are easier to make without min-maxing. Put restrictions on minimum and maximum scores, I usually say nothing higher than 18 AFTER racial modifiers are applied, eg. an Elf can get 16 INT +2 racial = 8, but they can't start with 18 INT +2 racial = 20. For minimum just don't gove them anything for negative stats, eg. 12 STR costs 2 points, 10 STR costs 0 points, 8 STR costs 0 points (no -2 cost points for dumping).
For more on skill points you could use background skill ranks, where players get more skill points per level but must put them in certain skills.
OPTIONAL RULES FOR BACKGROUND SKILLS
This means you're not taking something away from the players, you're giving them something. But it puts the focus on non-combat abilities and frees up some resources for them so that they can develop character without costing them anything.
You could also use Background traits, but tell them they pick one (bulllied etc) but you choose the other. So after they submit a backstory of some kind you get to say "ok you were a baker so you get this trait that helps with profession baker".
I have experience with this working
You could also use Background traits, but tell them they pick one (bulllied etc) but you choose the other. So after they submit a backstory of some kind you get to say "ok you were a baker so you get this trait that helps with profession baker".
I would say though that because players do like to optimise their character I would suggest allowing drawbacks so they can get that 3rd trait (Their 2nd selection)
Elephant in the Room Feat Tax rules - If players have less need for chain feats they have more space in their selection, and therefore a chance at least to select a RP feat instead
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I don't have players trying to build those crazy characters too often. Here's my general approach:
1. Limit the material available for character creation.
2. Build encounters that test the PC's from every angle and reward different approaches. That bloodrager/oracle/gunslinger monstrosity might crank out damage like no other, but how do they handle ability damage, restrictive terrain and powerful foes that want more from the PC's than to kill them all?
3. Be active in character creation. "Oh, so you began life as a fighter. Were you a soldier? And then it looks like you took a few levels in swashbuckler. What happened there? What about the Snake Style feat, where did you pick that up?"
--most of my players have learned that a cohesive, sensible character has a depth of tone that a hodgepodge of ability grabs and saving throw boosts does not. And the more integrated their character is to my setting, the more satisfying they'll usually find gameplay.
That goes both ways, though. If a player really feels like some sub-optimal choices will fit their character, I'm always willing to give them a boost. I dont want my players sacrificing character depth for mechanical advantage, but I don't want them to feel like they can only have it one way, either.
I am way more willing to throw a dog a bone if the player has made a wonderfully immersive character that is completely suboptimal.
I love an in-depth, flavorful character... and respect those choices far more than the most optimized murderhobo in existence.
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I think the biggest thing is to make sure the players don't feel like they NEED to be super-optimised.
If you ask them for a DC:20 Fort save vs Ability Drain at level 1 then the players are going to react accordingly. You have to find a balance where the players are enjoying themselves but don't feel underpowered. The best way to do this is probably to start them on easy mode and slowly ramp up the difficulty. The tricky part is working out how slowly (or how quickly) to change the difficulty - if you go too fast they'll feel underpowered and optimise more, and if you go too slowly you risk people getting bored.
The other side of this is that you also have to reward players for interesting non-power choices. If that person is a baker with ranks in Profession:Baker or Craft:Bread you have to find a way for that to be important to the game somehow. If I've taken skill Focus and invested 17 levels of skill ranks into a skill for my 10 INT fighter I'm going to be pretty peeved if that skill never comes in handy. I can role-play a baker perfectly adequatly with one rank thank you very much (or no ranks).
So the main things are:
- Don't punish your players for making interesting choices.
- Reward your players for making interesting choices.
Though there are many ways to do this, remember that it all boils down to the character having a meaningful effect on the story. If you want them to make interesting choices then those choices have to affect their world.
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Have a target
If a fighter needs to survive past level 15, he needs to plan his feats a lot more carefully than he does if the campaign only goes to 8. Let your players know how far they need to go. If the fighter or rogue doesn't have to be competitive with high-level summons, they might not feel like they have to go full-tilt from the beginning to keep up with the curve.
Have a goal
Feats, skills, traits, and class features are all limited resources. If your players know which direction they need to focus, they will be able to move away from the "safe" choice of being better in combat.
Be skeptical
Some builds have an embarrassment of options. The Human wizard loves the finer things in life and keeps his Craft(Jewelry) and Appraise maxed out with a supporting trait, feat, and backstory? He can afford to do that much more than the Elven Archer can and may leverage those investments into breaking the game later on.
Be realistic
Not all classes are made equal. Some classes trivialize an encounter if they have the right spell prepared. Some classes are damn near useless in most situations until level 5. Wanting the Paladin to spend this level's skill point on Profession(Haberdasher) is a lot to ask for. Wanting your demihumans to buy their 8s into 10s will get you a lot of humans. Weak point buy creates more pets and fewer Magi or Monks. Etc.
* * *
In short, consider doing something to help the feat-hungry, skill-starved classes who inherently have fewer options. Maybe something like the Background Skills option from the Unchained book.
I used the Background Skills option in most of my games. Up to now I've run Pathfinder with PCs that are fairly optimized, and in some case they did so with my help. However after a few recent APs the players have trudged through like a cakewalk, I'm reconsidering this approach. What the Background Skills was meant for has in many instance just become a tool for optimization to some players, let's face it. I think that system needs heavy GM veto at this point: i.e. skill pts. must be used on something absolutely not combat/delve oriented (for instance: must be used for cook or baker or something actually useful for say, us all in real life! lol)
I don't want to cripple the party to a point where they look like chumps and are unable to tackle heavier threats, and I do want to keep playing APs, but yes, I do want to reduce the likelihood of that one PC soloing most encounters due to an absolutely unpredictable occultist combo I had no idea was possible. Said unpredictable ubermensch ends up completely screwed during games where social skills are say, required, and yawns/zones out/plays with his phone. Sometimes they put up a good face and try, but you can tell they're just itching to throw those dice and finish that next encounter by round 2.
I've found that these games are no fun for anyone, including the cakewalkers, in the end...
I'm really wondering if such non-combat options can be made into an actual, party-wide appealing incentives by means other than GM narrative and GM constant care taking of the external/environmental campaign elements offered as feedback to the players?
I've tried something completely different in a recent game I ran (Strange Aeons) for a local group: as some of you know, the game begins with all the PCs suffering from amnesia... so I went all in with that, akin to the way described in The Chronicles of Amber and had all characters wake up with absolutely no memories. No name, no class, no skills, no feats, nothing. The only thing available to them as they wake up was based on observation: they could tell they were thin, strong, short or tall, etc., as well as race, gender, but that was it. I obviously approached the players first before doing this, and told them they had 'nothing to do or prepare' before the first game. I prepared a pool of about 15 characters and literally assigned each player a character at random. The sheet was blank other than race, gender, height, weight and general personality. The experiment could have been a fail, but the players have had so much fun with this, and slowly getting their memory back, that I'm willing to try other similar things if you all have some ideas... even the most 'play barbarian all the time' players are currently having a blast playing the meek tiny halfling bard learning who he was before or the athletic swashbuckling half-elf with a fondness for certain jokes... so much so that I don't think I want to throw back character creation to the players ever again, at least not completely. I'm getting the feeling that character creation sets the tone to a campaign perhaps way more than I ever admitted it before... if you flub that, you might actually do long-term harm to a campaign.
There's things like businesses in Ultimate Campaign that I could have fun with going forward, for instance, but I know that APs are long and have a way to dominate the story, with little time for PC downtime. But I think that going forward, certain story elements could be stretched out over years instead of months, especially for APs that really *don't* feel connected from one book to another.
Sorry for the wall of text! I welcome all your inputs! those above have been great so far! My next AP goal, in a few months and when the craziness is over, may be to start Ruins of Azlant... I feel (but correct me if I'm wrong) that this one in particular could allow for experimentation throughout, due to that frontier / colony angle.
I prepared a pool of about 15 characters and literally assigned each player a character at random.
Actually this can ve a great tool as well. I wouldn't necessarily do this at the start of a campaign (although kudos if it works for you), but handing a random character to a player for a one-shot or shorter module (or campaign even apparently) does two things:
1. It introduces the player to a class/race/style/etc that they may never have tried otherwise. You don't really know what your favourite class is until you've tried them all, and even then there may he creative ways to use a class that you hadn't thought of. This moght help players branch out from their usual playstyle.
2. It gives them a character that they're not invested in mechanically. This means that the only way to emotionally invest in the character is to do so with roleplay. If they keep that character going forward then they'll likely be making more optimal choices, but since their original emotional investment was likely one born of the less mechanical aspects of the game they're more likely to choose options that suit the character rather than the build.
I'm actually a big fan of the iconic characters for these reasons. All the ones I've played are quite mechanically strong in their own way, but they all have weaknesses that inform character and game-play, and they often show off aspects of the class that tend to be ignored. As someone who tends to min-max more than I probably need to this can really help me get into character and accept - or even embrace - the weaknesses.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
If this is a homebrew campaign, consider capping the characters at a certain level using something like P8 rules. That is: once they hit a certain level, they stop gaining levels and instead gain feats (which potentially can be spent to get class abilities that would be available at, say, 3 levels higher than their class). The reason I suggest this is the game only really gets broken at the higher levels where the gap between casters and martials takes place.
For example, a level 8 character at most has access to 4th level spells and feats that require BAB 8+. This is a LOT easier to plan for than, say, parties with casters that goes up to spells of 7th level or higher. Plus, with only 8 character levels, any feats gained *after* level 8 won't feel like they need to be spent on combat stuff. People will feel more free to purchase fluffier feats, I think, once they've hit their "cap," even if they continue to gain XP and feats after hitting max level.
I have a small gaming group and we play Gestalt most of the time and that is usually correct. With the expectation that you will get more feats you feel free to use some for noncombat stuff.
This title is bait. I'm not exactly looking for incentives to have players roll actually mediocre characters, but I'm looking for 'home game' or 'PFS play in Campaign Mode' character creation rules that actually encourage players to adopt a theme for their characters and 'stick to it' (i.e. not just dump one rank in Craft and then forget about the whole thing).
Do any of you have suggestions for such incentives to build with the rule of cool and strongly encourage players not to create min/maxed murderhobos made up from a patchwork of rules taken from 65 different books?
(i.e. for example, if a campaign is about urban investigations, to create a toon that makes sense in an urban setting and didn't spend his entire childhood in a box learning to hold his breath or resisting bullies in alleys 24/7... in essence, making the character viable with a bunch of non-optimized for combat options which may include things like Skill Focus, Deceitful, Expert Salvager, Hide Worker, etc.)
Honestly, the best thing to do in my opinion is to tell the players you're not going to run a combat focused campaign but rather an intrigue based campaign.
Make combats easy. Like super easy. So easy than un-optimized characters using only the core rule book would find it easy. This means they don't benefit from increasing their numbers much, because they're we're already going to succeed. Eventually they might catch on that "Man, combat is easy, but we keep failing all these investigations and diplomatic events!"
Oh yeah, and make sure you don't let one character carry RP events. Force everyone to be involved, and that individual failures can cause the group to fail. There are rules sets that exist for this, and the Pathfinder Social Combat deck rules are a good base. With a little tweaking, at least for my group.
Another thing I did was to rip the Backgrounds from 5E but only use the special bonus. Sailors get free passage on boats for example. I dropped all benefits to skills (That's what traits are for). What I found was my players naturally selected one trait to aid that special bonus (Profession: Sailor in this particular case
I usually start the campaign by saying "Guys, Pathfinder isn't that hard, you don't need to make a PC who can solo the game."
If the Players optimize themselves out of fun at that point, its on them.
What do you mean when you say “optimize themselves out of fun”?
I think the biggest thing is to make sure the players don't feel like they NEED to be super-optimised.
If you ask them for a DC:20 Fort save vs Ability Drain at level 1 then the players are going to react accordingly. You have to find a balance where the players are enjoying themselves but don't feel underpowered. The best way to do this is probably to start them on easy mode and slowly ramp up the difficulty. The tricky part is working out how slowly (or how quickly) to change the difficulty - if you go too fast they'll feel underpowered and optimise more, and if you go too slowly you risk people getting bored.
The other side of this is that you also have to reward players for interesting non-power choices. If that person is a baker with ranks in Profession:Baker or Craft:Bread you have to find a way for that to be important to the game somehow. If I've taken skill Focus and invested 17 levels of skill ranks into a skill for my 10 INT fighter I'm going to be pretty peeved if that skill never comes in handy. I can role-play a baker perfectly adequatly with one rank thank you very much (or no ranks).
So the main things are:
- Don't punish your players for making interesting choices.
- Reward your players for making interesting choices.
Though there are many ways to do this, remember that it all boils down to the character having a meaningful effect on the story. If you want them to make interesting choices then those choices have to affect their world.
This is incredibly important
I made the mistake of running midnight mirror just before starting an AP. That was littered with save or suck (loads of paralysis)
So when it got to AP characters people are pumping AC and saves to the excisions of almost everything else. Including eschewing flavourful familiar options directly tied to the background in favour of the one that gets you the saving throw boost required
What do you mean when you say “optimize themselves out of fun”?I usually start the campaign by saying "Guys, Pathfinder isn't that hard, you don't need to make a PC who can solo the game."
If the Players optimize themselves out of fun at that point, its on them.
If combat is over in the first round because the PCs are too optimized for combat, combat become really boring to the people that enjoy the combat encounters in the game.
So they've made it so that they're not having fun because their characters are too good at it.
The biggest reason most players make combat focused characters is that is what 90% of the game usually ends up being. If you want your players to build something besides combat focused characters put out more challenges that cannot be solved by combat. Most people don’t like paying for things they don’t use so if you are not requiring skills to be used they are not going to invest in them.
Part of the problem is the whole role playing vs roll playing argument. Most people who say they want role playing actually don’t role play that well. How many times have you seen a person try to social skills they have that their character does not possess and play it off as role playing. If they really were role playing they would roll the skill and then play of off that, instead of trying to get the circumstance they desire. The best example I have seen on this was when a player with a low CHA score attempted to use diplomacy to get some information. The player rolled crap and instead of trying to salvage the situation starting insulting everyone in the bar. The player had better skills than that, but they still went with it because that was his concept.
First thing to do is to start calling for more skill rolls. Once your players realize that they will be an important part of the game they will start investing in them. You don’t need to call for a roll for everything, but you need to make it so the players have a reason to invest in skills. Another way to reward players for investing in skills is to give them some extra rewards. Look over your characters sheets and if the character has a high bonus in a relevant skill give them a clue or minor benefit without having to roll. For example if a character has a high bonus in a knowledge skill give them some information related to that knowledge that helps the current situation without requiring a roll.
Using the background skill option is a good idea which is why I do it in my campaigns. But you have to actually use those skills. Professional skills are often overlooked but can be useful. If you players are trying to research something in a library professional skill librarian should cut the time to find the information significantly and gain more information than the players would otherwise get. Professional skill soldier would allow the player to choose better defensive site for resting. Professional skill architect could help figure out where a secret door is, maybe give a +2 circumstance bonus to perception.
Dumping stats is a kind of tricky. Physical stats are not a problem and you should not restrict dumping those. The wizard with the low STR is a pretty classic concept and does not usually cause a lot of problems. Dumping mental stats is usually where the problem lies. Other than the role play vs roll play that I already covered, the other problem is when a player with a high mental stat has a hard time down playing his own stat. I for one have a hard time playing characters with low INT. Some players are able to do this quite well, but other do not. Let your players know if they are going to dump a mental stat you expect them to role play to their characters stat, not their own.
The most important thing is to talk to your players before the game starts and let them know what type of game you are going to be running. Tell them that skills will be a big part of the game and ignoring them will make things more difficult for them. After you have told them this follow up and don’t cut them any slack if they ignore your advice. The only exception I would make on this is if they want to rework their character after the campaign starts.
In the last game I ran, the PC's needed to convince The Queen of the Fae to close the doorways between her world and the mortal, while her crooked advisor tried to convince her of the opposite.
So there were opportunities for plenty of social rolls; those were the engine of the encounter, how progress was made.
Then there was Knowledge and stuff like that, to help the PC's understand what sorts of conversational tactics would be most effective (appealing to the Fae-Queen's sense of compassion would be a lot harder than good ol' fashioned flattery, for example).
That was the road the encounter was on. It dictated how quickly and easily progress could be made.
And then there was a bit o' combat and mortal danger. The Queen's garden was full of blood-hungry flowers, curse-slinging trow and fierce sprites riding giant wasps and tiny owls. Making a case before the Queen was a standard action, so the party had to take shifts beating off the numerous monsters to buy the others time, depending on who's skills were needed most at the moment.
And then there was the reality-warping aura of the Queen that eroded the party's sense of self and sanity.
That was...I guess the potholes in the road, and the seatbelts and the gas tank? The metaphor starts to fall apart there, but the physical threats served as obstacles to their main goal and as a time limit for their goal to be met.
At any rate, no one "dominated" the encounter or solved it with a spell or anything of that sort. In addition, it was incredibly tense, frightening and memorable. No one performed the same action more than twice in a row, they were one step away from defeat and one of the players was one round away from Cha0.
I think the Angry GM's articles on encounter building are absolutely priceless, if you can get beyond his arrogance and faux-hostility.
Unless they are the type of player who enjoy this. I know a couple.]If combat is over in the first round because the PCs are too optimized for combat, combat become really boring to the people that enjoy the combat encounters in the game.
So they've made it so that they're not having fun because their characters are too good at it.
Same here. I found a way around it last night:
--> The PCs' reputation of being ruthless killers has been spreading fast for three games in a row now.
--> When they get somewhere and interact with NPCs, those have their guards up against the PCs already, and have invested in early warning systems (paid lookouts disguised in the crowd). Message is a beautiful 0-level spell.
--> When the (overly good at combat) PCs initiate combat, NPCs and monsters (lo and behold!) FLEE immediately, drink potions of invisibility, activate newly purchased scrolls of dimension door.
--> THIS, frustrates some uber PCs immensely. Immensely.
--> MY PREDICTION: those uber slayers will now start adopting a lower profile, refrain from always striking first despite their +18 initiative, and invest in a sap or merciful weapon, or at least begin to take the -4 to strike as nonlethal.
Now, to find a way to influence players to take non-optimized options in the long run and not only as a response to GM interventions... :P
In the game I'm currently running, I give everyone a free max ranked skill based on charisma called "background". You roll it whenever your non-combat back story, goals, and forgotten information need to be applied. Originally it was to make sure players didn't feel the need to define their skill set within the rules framework, but I use it for other purposes too.
Unfortunately, I also included a universal amnesiac period in the plot and hooked what the players wanted to roll for to what their life was like during that period, so I don't have a clean idea of how well this works. But it seems to work out alright.
I also give feats to people who have selected non-optimal feats for flavor. Either a thematically appropriate combat related feat for a non-combat related one, or an additional combat feat when they select one that sucks. And I allow occasional rebuilds and such if requested.
All of that is balanced against a hyper optimized version of their characters that I've built and maintained, so that I know about where they could be if they were going crazy with the rules.
I haven't played a lot of my characters but I have made a bunch. I always try to optimize enough so they won't die when I do get to play them. But I've also planned feats and classes for flavor as well.
As others have said, you can't throw something that could easily kill them with one bad roll and then not expect them to make it so that won't happen later in the game. The Elephant in the Room feat taxes would be a great help in that regard. I have a few characters where playing with those rules would open up at least 3 feats.
It's good to encourage role-playing by rewarding an interesting choice, but don't punish uninteresting choices either. My first character died early on (granted it was mostly because I was too inexperienced and made a stupid decision), but I came to like the idea I had come up for her so I rebuilt her and gave her a starting level of Inspired Blade Swashbuckler. This was a choice made for a mechanical benefit as I wanted her to survive the next time I got to play her. But I can easily make it into an interesting aspect of her backstory.