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Have you ever seen a player give up and disengage? I've seen it happen in my own games when incorporeal foes resist weapon damage, golems prove immune to magic, or alchemists straight up run out of bombs.
The response I'm trying to avoid is, "I guess I can't do anything. I delay." At that point, the discouraged player checks out of the adventure.
As a GM, how do you help such players understand that there are other way to contribute? I mean, even if it’s a less-effective-than-usual option like setting up a flank, using aid another, or attempting an RP gambit like taunting the enemy, it's got to be more effecting than twiddling your thumbs and glowering at your mini!
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My way of dealing with similar issues really depend on the level of game expertise the player have.
One of my expert players gets whiny whenever ennemies exploit ''unfun'' mechanics such as poisons, stealth or whatever he feels is ''unfun''. As he's a good friend of mine, i kindly remind him to stop whining and to deal with it.
Two of my other players are rather new to pathfinder. Not new to roleplaying in general, so i remind them of options that's available to them, within the system.If they ask if they can do something a bit more original, i'll find the closest possible action within the system and might tweek it a bit if necessary.
If characters have any knowledge skills i'll also allow for them to roll to find unconventinal weaknesses and such.
Although, it very, very rarely happens that players feels useless at my table. I supervise character creation and level up so they don't end up with abyssmal combat abilities. In addition i'm not in the habit of designing encounters in which characters will end up 100% useless.
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I encourage the players at my table to not build BS one-trick characters... so at any given time, everyone usually has SOMETHING they can do.
I also started the campaign with a GMPC focused on Aid Another... which reminded everyone of the usefulness of said Aid Another action... even when my GMPC was no longer part of the adventuring group, they still remembered that Aid Another is an option when all else fails.
On top of that, I have been blessed with awesome people at my tables, and they invest in roleplaying their characters through thick and thin... if they don't know what to do, or have nothing to do, it usually ends up with some sort of hilarious roleplay scenario that is well worth whatever distraction from whatever the encounter may be...
If the Alchemist feels as though they cannot contribute without Bombs, then that player needs to shown a few things about the class so they understand that an Alchemist in not just the sum of their Bombs. They either don't know how to use the class correctly, or built a terrible Alchemist... either way, the GM needs to assist the player in sucking less. An Alchemist should pretty much always be able to contribute SOMETHING, be it Knowledge or Aid or buffs... screw the Bombs... Bombs are only damage, and there is SO MUCH MORE to the game than just reducing hit points.
If your players are checking out because of incorporeal enemies or constructs... Bye, Felicia! I don't have time for petty whiney BS. If you failed to take my advice on character creation and allowed nothing to deal with these sorts of things, then I really don't feel sorry for you. Incorporeal enemies exist, and will be used. Everyone knows about the weapon damage thing... yet you did nothing, NOTHING, to prepare yourself... sorry, but not sorry.
Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get the F over it.
Mebbe addin' in some free 3pp player options [probably cooperatively determined by players/GM] for the players to use or porting some kinda "stunts"/"criticals" system [something like what Dragon Age/Fantasy Age has]?
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I’ve been playing an illusion/enchantment focused wizard in a campaign lately and well… for the last 15 or so encounters we have been dealing with either mindless creatures or entities with fairly high SR relative to our level… so for quite a few combats now my spells have been utterly ineffective against our enemies and after I have cast my paltry few spells I can on allies I do often find myself with extremely limited options. As a player who loves the RP and the game, I don’t want to be in a situation where I basically just check out and give up on my actions for the rest of the encounter, but sometimes it does feel like that is the only option… for the character in question, her fall back as of late has been to throw caution to the wind and run in with a dagger and stab something, a tactic that has bee surprisingly effective… far more so than literally any of her spell casts have been this entire campaign…and that is with a strength score of 8… she is the weakest member of the party physically and yet when her spells fail she stabs things. She has actually managed to take out quite a few enemies with her dagger even. (Funny enough I kept forgetting to prepaid mage armor for the majority of the campaign so far so she was running around with a measly 12AC… and I have yet to roll above a 2 for her HP… somehow she is still alive)
My point though… sure their might always be “something you can do”… weather or not you should do it or if it will even be effective might be another story…
in the same campaign my character has a twin sister who is a shadowcaster wizard… so as you can probably imagine she too has been finding her spells to be largely useless as of late, unlike her sister however her backup has been to use a crossbow… and it has been an exercise in futility… the poor girl can’t even hit the broad side of a barn if it were 10 feet in front of her… intimidation has been a no go as the few times it has been tried has been constantly met with failure despite having fairly high rolls… flanking is a bad idea for a wizard unless you happen to have a sizable AC and good rolls on HP… aid another is only good if you can reliably hit that DC 10, which while sure it’s a base 50% chance, can be surprisingly challenging for some characters… (to put it into perspective, last session she had 1 attack roll above 10 over the course of 4 encounters)… and even when you can reliably hit that seemingly simply DC 10 reliably, putting yourself into a position where you can aid another is generally no safer than flanking.
While conventional wisdom says that every character should have atleast 3 or 4 different things that they can not only do, but do well, in any given situation… the fact of the matter is that limitations of the system and sometimes even story can often make that impossible. If you don’t have enough skill points to distribute into the skills that you need for your build progression, are vital for your character structure, and offer you alternative actions for an encounter type; then something has to be sacrificed… for a min-maxer the obvious choice is to give up the skills that are more structural for RP development, while an RPer will usually sacrifice the skills that give them more choices unless they can work out a way to take the skills they need for feats or prestige classes at later levels without hurting their progression or concept. You might also simply be incapable of performing certain actions due to lacking the tools to do so. I know a few individuals who when making a primary Spellcaster will opt not to take a weapon since they feel if they have to use a weapon then they aren’t playing their character properly… and when they are faced with the situation of their spells just simply don’t work, it can be rather challenging to find anything that they can do. It also happens all too often that groups that play with the same individuals a lot tend towards having groups where each player has a task that only they can perform (or atleast perform well) and when the party encounters something that none of them had built for in a campaign they fruitlessly try dozens of options only to inevitably give up and abandon that task (assuming that abandoning the task is even an option)… I know in one campaign our GM literally had to give us a McGuffin to complete a certain task because it was 100% impossible to actually complete that task with the tools and skills available throughout our party, and the story couldn’t proceed otherwise.
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It depends why they are checking out. Some people by disengage over being overwhelmed in the moment, example they tried all their tricks, used all special abilities so not that they can’t do anything they don’t know what they can do in the heat of the moment. If they survived there is character growth opportunity to role play maybe even give the doubt drawback.
Now if they withdraw because they want to play murder hobo dungeon crawls only where they steam roll over everything Id tell them; this isn’t the style game I run. That mindset will get you killed in my games as I run deadly games. If you don’t social well to prepare you can die just as easy from trash as the mini boss.
I had a group of 7 players 3 years ago. They were level 3 and faced 3 were boars bandits (Challenging encounter but not impossible) well they didn’t social at all just headed blindly in woods and stumbled upon their camp. They were hitting we’ll only they couldn’t overcome the DR (no silver weapons) and I saw 3 players were getting mad as their attacks did zero damage. The psychic of the party got clever and used a cantrip to launch silver coins to damage them. The cleric of the party did something don’t remember but I decided to throw a small bone. A light shown in the camp of a dead hunter. He has some silver weapons and they finally killed the boars with one infected party member. After the encounter I warned them out of character (some new players) that never run in blind.
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What I try to do is remind my players that you don't need guaranteed success in order to contribute to a scene.
I may be pouncing a little too hard on a specific word, but the usage of "scene" here makes me wonder if there's a style difference at play. When players are "useless and get discouraged," is it maybe because they feel like they can't be the one to solve the problem? In other words, we GMs want them to contribute dramatically, but they want to contribute mechanically.
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Where I get frustrated though, as a GM, is that because of these silos the players put their characters in what ends up happening is on extended skill uses, like in social situations or on complex puzzles or whatever, three of my players just sit around playing on their phones or laptops while the fourth one shines.
Unfortunately Pathfinder 1e is very much a specialist based game. To make everyone more rounded up there has to be some agreement that this is the intented goal of the game. In my current E6 campaign, i made it very clear to the players during session 0 that i would use social conflict and verbal duel.
Another solution might be to restrict class selection to 3/4 BBa and 3/4 caster class. Those class are generally the more polyvalent and the most balanced one.
Moreover, after a session like that wraps inevitably one of my players comes back and says "can we have less social encounters" or "can we handwave traps" because they were bored while the other player did their thing.
Yikes that's rough. I'm sure you're an excellent GM from what i've been reading, but does that player stay out of social encounters because they lack the skills to do so or because they lack interest?
Can we start another thread entitled "how to intervene when the GM gives up" b/c these kinds of situations are really getting me down.
I feel ya, GM burnout is a real thing. What i advise is to talk to you player and see how they feel. I've stopped some campaign in the past when i realised i wasn't having fun anymore and my players were also getting a bit down. Sometimes taking a small break or starting something new helps. Good with luck with that!
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Hmm, one of my players has been a bit disengaged after being unable to use their stealth.
This is the reason I try to discourage inexperienced (or mechanically unversed) players from playing Rogue - the entire class is basically a huge pile of false advertising. You want a class that's good at sneaking? Rogue is not the class for that! You want a class that strikes from the shadows? Rogue is not the class for that! You want a class that is good at 'backstabbing'? Rogue is not a class for that! You want a class that can make swift kills? Rogue is not the class for that!
The root of the player's problem is not something you did, but rather that he wants a playstyle that his class simply does not properly support.
Unfortunately Pathfinder 1e is very much a specialist based game.
- This is actually a misconception. One should not pursue unrelated/non-synergetic combat styles, but Pathfinder highly rewards building hybrid-ish or flexible characters.
This is yet another thing where the stupid "distinct/traditional party roles" crap that mentally calcified old players still propagate hurts the game.
Of course, in this paticular instance, the main issue is the GM and/or the writer - pure skill check 'challenges' are terrible design, especially when they take up a lot of playtime. If the GM makes it so that in social situations only players with high social skills can succeed, or puts horribly designed traps in the dungeon that just check the Disable Device skill, of course the other players will get bored.
'Social encounters' rarely have just binary outcomes, so it's fairly easy to build them so that 'unskilled' PCs can have some success, without invalidating then choices of those who did invest in social skills. And as for traps, I recommend this article.
Oh, and pro tip: If you want to get more players to invest in social skills, make them influence quest rewards. Make quests give a higher reward if they quest give gets convinced (diplomacy) or tricked (bluff) that there were additional hardships, or if they're intimidated; if you make the quest giver sort of "single out" a PC (e.g. with a "you look trustworthy"), or give certain PCs bonuses on the check depending on the quest giver's personality (the small guy might react better to an intimidate comign form the half-orc than from the gnome Sorcerer), you can prevent having the same PC do it for the group every time. It shouldn't be overdone, but presenting a direct way to get tangible reqards from having social skills is the most effective way of making players invest in them.
Also, giving PCs more skill ranks can help. Paizo removed the terrible overpricing of cross-class-skills, but sadly didn't fix that many classes have objectively too few skill ranks per level (and for many classes they're indeed objectively too few, as I analyzed [url=https://paizo.com/threads/rzs432o8&page=6?Are-There-Any-Classes-or-Class-Abilities-That#263]here[/url).
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This is actually a misconception. One should not pursue unrelated/non-synergetic combat styles, but Pathfinder highly rewards building hybrid-ish or flexible characters.
This is yet another thing where the stupid "distinct/traditional party roles" crap that mentally calcified old players still propagate hurts the game.
Fair point. Hybrid class are actually pretty good and i like them a lot. However, there's still an amount of specialisation that character must commit and character tend to maximize combat abilities as it's also what the game is the most equipped to deal with. The other pillars, lets say social and exploration, are anemic compared to the amount of combat rules.
I really try my best in my homebrew campaign, i use social conflict rules, i try to involve player into their skill check roll, but still combat takes at least 40% of the campaign space. Granted i might just be a combat focused GM.
Also, giving PCs more skill ranks can help. Paizo removed the terrible overpricing of cross-class-skills, but sadly didn't fix that many classes have objectively too few skill ranks per level
Hard agree. This is why i play with the Background Skill rule, it really helps fleshing out characters.
Edit: About skill, i also raised each class outside of int-based casters, paladin and cleric to at least 4+int. No more 2+int on fighter and sorcerer that's just bad. It plays a bit on the Rogue ''role'', but i couldn't care less as i encourage everyone to stay away from the class and pick slayer instead.
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On that note, @AlgarikPeople say that most of the rules are related to combat. But if you actually look at all the rules, alt rules, and bonus rules you would notice that most of it has to do with handling a variety of encounters everything from terrain, to social, to just "how do I drive a cart", to creating a variety of things (to help or torment players).
Its really incredible how many alt rules are there mostly ignored because "this game is about combat".
I'm not saying that there is no rule to deal with something else than combat. However i'll have to disagree. There's some guidline on how to run social encounters in ultimate intrigue, it's still pretty anemic compared to the amount of content dedicated to combat.
The game is combat simulator with extra side rule.
It's impossible to progress in pathfinder without gaining combat capabilities. Even NPC classes can't avoid gaining hit dices and base attack bonus as they level.
Combat is this huge thing with a huge library of 6 bestiaries to fight, with epic battle. It's also pretty cohesive and work on the same framework.
Skills are all one or two roll to solve problems.
Side rules sometimes work, sometimes are janky and some of them doesn't even mesh well with the base game.
Lets take the verbal duel from Ultimate intrigue. It's fun i really like it. It's also it's own mini-game that interact sideway with the system. It doesn't even use the traditional skill bonus.
Spells without combat applixability are also fairly limited.
In conclusion, while i don't think pathfinder is exclusively a combat game, i still think it's mainly built as a combat game with side dishes of exploration and social rules.
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Oh yeah I won't deny that there being more feat/class/spell content related to combat. I was referring to the "combat" rules themselves being relatively few.
Which is kind of weird when you think about it, but not surprising to be honest.
Ther are far more combat rules and the combat rules are far more comprehensive than any rules set for any other type of encounter… if you group up all rules by encounter type, you’d find that social encounters have very few rules to work with, and most of the optional and alternative rules sets for social encounters are rather complex and hard to follow and ultimately create more questions and problems than they solve… investigative encounters have some of the simplest rules ever and really don’t leave much to work with… chase encounters have one solitary rule set and it’s very limited in functionality… Escape/Infiltration encounters revolve almost entirely around stealth, trap, lockpicking, and hidden door rules… you can fit the entirety of the rules for all non-combat encounters on a fraction of the pages it takes to fit all of the combat encounter rules. You only think combat rules are few because we are all so accustomed to them that we can easily sum them all up mentally into a very small rule set.
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When do I check out: Maze
I absolutely hate that spell