I'm playing a rogue in a party with another rogue.
They seem to be new. In one of our first encounters, they didn't move into flanking with me until the third round, instead opting to Bon Mot and Demoralize at range even though no one in the party appeared to be using any Will Save based effects. In the meantime, I got pretty torn up, and likely would have died had the GM not had the NPC spread out their attacks and take a few buff/debuff actions.
When the other rogue finally moved into flanking, they started their turn by feinting. When we told him it wasn't necessary, since the act of flanking already made the target off-guard, he responded with something to the effect of "our characters don't possess any knowledge of the game's mechanics; of every +1 that they can get. I'm not going to metagame."
I told him that "even dogs and other animals know about flanking; your character most certainly does as well. Sure they don't know about the mechanics, but they do understand survival instincts and basic combat strategy. It's common knowledge."
"I'm going to feint anyways. It's what my character would do."
Like, what do you even say to that? I'm not one to tell others how to play their characters, but he clearly doesn't understand the rules of the game, and appears to be willing to roleplay his character to the detriment of the party--which, for me, is the most concerning part of all this.
Does anyone here have any suggestions on handling the situation tactfully, with the aim of getting us all back into the fun and not making a bigger issue of it? I want to direct him to a better path, but don't want to diminish his enjoyment of the game or risk running off a new prospective player.
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That's gotta be frustrating. Using basic tactics is not metagaming lmao. It's part of the unfortunately common and incorrect assumption that roleplay and mechanics are somehow at odds with each other.
I'd just try to emphasize that this is a cooperative game and purposefully playing poorly is detrimental to the efforts and fun of his teammates.
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Another thing to try (it probably needs GM help to really work) is to use in world descriptions of what you're doing.
So, instead of "I move to flank" you say something like "I come up behind the person and, while his attention is completely elsewhere, I stab him in the kidneys".
Followed by the GM saying something like
"He whirls to face YourCharacter, leaving his back totally exposed to HisCharacter"
and if he STILL tries to feint, have the GM say something like
"The opponent was paying absolutely no attention to you so he didn't even notice your feint. Fortunately, his back is still to you so you can aim for the kidneys if you want"
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Flanking is one of the most basic tactics in combat, understood even by social insects and fish. A rogue is intended to be incredibly good at this specific tactic.
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"our characters don't possess any knowledge of the game's mechanics; of every +1 that they can get. I'm not going to metagame."
Nice. Toxic metagaming in the opposite direction.
Yes, a certain level of metagaming is necessary for the players to be able to tell a shared story.
There is also a certain amount of 'railroading' that is necessary too.
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That's a difficult situation indeed.
Often times, some players have this tendency of thinking that good roleplay means that they need to ignore everything about the RPG aspect and think like a movie character, often times thinking that their characters are more incompetent than they should be based on what they think is common knowledge and what information is available.
To me, what the Rogue did in this situation was trying to feint someone with their back turned to them, which is roughly what Off-guard is meant to represent. Even in game, that would be silly, besides being a tactical mistake.
Personally, I think that depending on the character I'm playing, and if they're not meant be more instinctual and savage like Barbarians), it's a valid assumption that my superior vision of the battlefield and the ability to coldly calculate my movements is a rough translation of my Character's combat expertise.
There are sometimes that Roleplay should take precedence over, specially with Reactions, but other things are harder to justify not doing.
I think its been said already.
If you have your opponent flanked then both mechanically and narritively you already have an opening.
How low is the PC's intelligence? maybe it is what their character would do?
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This is usually indicative of a new player trying to play the concept and not the game. Hopefully they grow out of it as they learn what works versus what they're seeing in their head.
They can imagine they're feinting while flanking.
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This has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I don’t know how much live stream stuff has influenced it more, but players assuming that everything has to be narratively described in detail, in game, to exist or be actionable is exhausting. Characters have lived full rich lives doing the things that turn them into characters that can tell if a target is vulnerable to their signature abilities. Neither the GM nor the player should assume ignorance on a character that has managed to survive in a high magical world to gain a character class. We are not playing commoner NPCs.
In other words, a character may not think in game terms, but game terms exist to help players communicate effectively about things in the game world that characters inherently understand.
They just seem very confused about the social contract at a typical PF2E table. They're playing like it's a rules-light narrative game instead of a wargame.
Usually, I feel like this is something the GM would handle; they'd probably try to take the player aside and explain the general expectations for the table and the table etiquette for the group. Tell them, "In combat, this is a tactical game that requires teamwork," explain the aspects of the game that make it that way, and so on. My vote would just be to privately nudge the GM to do something about it.
This reminds me of some of the things discussed in the monk grapple topic, but from a different direction. A lot of what I said in the second half of this post is exactly the sort of thing I'd probably be saying to this player as their GM. In particular, I'd want to emphasize
...they should accept that PF2E plays closer to a game like ICON (which explicitly divorces combat mechanics and narrative mechanics, uses different systems for each, and swaps to entirely different gameplay mechanics when you enter combat) in practice...
...the game just isn't balanced with playing or building for flavor over mechanics. The expected performance floor is often too high for that, and the mechanics are made less to form a diegetic narrative and more to create a certain playflow the designers felt was enjoyable, so there's not much point in it anyways...
...There is an expected amount of dissonance between how your character plays combat in PF2E and how you roleplay the character outside of it, and the solution is just... you [mostly] don't roleplay your character [through their actions] in combat. You treat it like a separate game...
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I think a conversation can be had regarding divorcing flavor descriptions and mechanical actions.
Yes, it is in flavor to come in from behind, fake an attack high and go low to score a blow in a weak spot.
Doesn't mean you have to perform the Feint action. There's still the tactical combat part of the game to play.
Perhaps a conversation along those lines could help.
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I mean I play my characters like I believe they would act in-combat too; there was one time I apologized ahead of time to my party since an in-character personal grudge was going to make my player laser-focused on a specific enemy even when I knew OOC it wasn't going to be the most tactically sound thing to do.
Even in that instance, my character knew about flanking, raising her shield, tripping. Etc. If this person is so desperate for an in-character justification on why their character "knows game mechanics," you can cite the fact that our PCs are either trained or experienced enough in fights, more so than the average level -1 commoner, to know this stuff!
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"If it is genuinely what your character would do, and it's still disruptive or not beneficial to you... create a better character."
No matter what it is that a character would do, the character is still entirely up to the player to devise, so there isn't actually any "it's not within my control" element like the claim is implying to be the case.
It is circular reasoning of this being what you have chosen because it is what you have chosen being presented as if it were some kind of point of integrity.
Yeah, this doesn't even feel like a character choice that a player makes because it would make sense for their character. It's just mistaking good roleplay with being bad at the game.
Making a choice that will harm your character but that is more in line with something they would do is different than just doing random stuff mid combat out of misguided sense that you're not being a good roleplayer because you're not defaulting to inhabit 100% of your character like an actor.
Online tables are very performative, specially the most famous ones like Critical Role, but even them don't do this kind of stuff. They're mechanically bad players (amazing roleplayers), but they still play to win and use the tools at their disposal to the best of their ability.
Another example is with the crew from Dimension20. They're amazing roleplayers and rule of cool dominate a lot of their character choices, but the show to anyone how busted, complicated and convoluted DnD5e really is, despite the fans trying to pretend that it is "rules-light". They don't mess around in combat either, even though their characters also inform their choices.
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This is one of the things which I think shows how what the hobby treats as the traditional view on what meta-gaming is and what should be done about it are rooted in inherently GM-versus-players mentality.
To be honest, calling "metagaming" is usually a way to try to bludgeon disruptive players back into line. I don't think there's a consensus view on what is and isn't metagaming—and there definitely won't be one for a game designed to be a tactical game like PF2E.
Heck, "metagaming" is viewed very unusually in most online 2E discussion spaces. For example, when was the last time you heard anyone say, "But your magus has no reason to suddenly gain psychic powers—that's metagaming!" Yet that is precisely one way (and a very common way) to bludgeon people with the metagaming hammer in other games. "Why are you doing this optimized build that makes no sense for you in-character? That's metagaming!"
I also think there's never been a clear line across the hobby on what metagaming even is. A lot of puzzle-filled dungeon crawls are fairly metagamey, and are designed as challenges to the player rather than a challenge to the player's character. Is it metagaming to use OSR tactics in these situations, like the 10ft pole or using water to check for traps? Does it depend on if your character would think of it themselves? Different tables tend to fall in different places on this issue.
Besides, even if the person described in the original post is clearly being a bit silly, I think there's reasonable arguments not far from where they are. Things that are good play (like using Bon Mot before Synesthesia) can indeed begin to feel a bit metagamey to some sensibilities. I can reasonably see someone asking, "Why do you always insult them before you cast spells at them? That's oddly calculated and repetitive. Would your character really do that? Isn't it pretty mean? You're so nice out of combat." Likewise, it'd be fair to ask, "Why are you casting Fear all the time? Do you enjoy people being scared of you or something?" I don't think this is an invalid concern, per se. But I don't think it's a concern appropriate for PF2E—the devs clearly didn't care much about it, and it'd be counterproductive for you to care about it when you're playing their game.
In general, I think "metagaming" is a slippery concept, and trying to convince someone that flanking isn't metagaming is a fool's errand. There are all kinds of counters in that land that you can't easily deal with in pleasant ways. What do you say if they reply, "But my character isn't all that experienced! Would they really flank yet?" Are you just doomed to say, "Sorry, this system doesn't really allow you to play inexperienced combatants. Fix your concept"? To me, it seems better to ask them to move their values to align with the system when playing the system—or at least to suspend those values during tactical combat. Right now, you're basically arguing with them about what their values mean and saying you know what they mean better than they do, and that your suggestions better align with their values than their own... which is not a great thing to try to do, especially when their values seem a bit odd and you're not likely to gain much purchase. I'd rather acknowledge their values, explain that PF2E doesn't align with their values in combat, and just ask if they can suspend those values for the sake of the table and their own enjoyment.
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I like to think that characters that are new to each other, such as at the start of a campaign, aren't a well-oiled machine yet, and play suboptimally for two reasons:
- To show off their characters. They do a thing two or three times to show their standard modus operandi, then slowly phase it out as other players get the vibe.
- They don't know how the others work. Yeah, someone might keep out of the frontlines because they're relatively squishy, they could also just be playing a sensible character. Besides, so many classes aren't made for the frontline, so it's not weird to stay on the edges of a fight. Once a character knows "hey, this person's much more effective when they're flanking, maybe I should set up a flank for them," they might start discussing tactics or opening moves.
I get what the player is doing with feinting: they're showing off what they can do. But on the other hand, as others have also said, it's not metagaming to know there's only one penalty for being distracted. Maybe in a more rules-light game you could make the two effects stack, but not in PF2e. Yes, you don't have to squeeze out every +1 you can get or be as efficient with your actions as possible, but that shouldn't get in the way of basic combat.
I have two stories I'd like to share, both from PFS:
- Back in PF1, two people rocked up. A Bard (I think) and her bodyguard (Barbarian). All the bodyguard did was stand in front of the Bard and, well, bodyguard. No rage, no attacks, just full defense every single round. She was just a bag of HP. She would only rage and attack once the Bard got hurt. Which, considering it was a backline Bard, rarely happened. I get that it's in theme for you, but you're actively not contributing to the fight, and it was frustrating to me, because she did add to the challenge. But it made sense for her character, so it also felt wrong to speak to her about it.
- A guy popped up with a knife-throwing Rogue. Literally all he did in combat was throw daggers from 30 foot distance, as he didn't want to be in danger. +4 DEX, +0 STR, so he did 4 damage a round, max, unless he won initiative and got a one-time 1d6 sneak attack. If he hit at all, that is, since daggers have a 10 foot range and he was taking -2s left and right for no reason whatsoever. Turns out in his friend group they all play very rules-light and low power, it's more about the story than the combat. All completely fine, but he just didn't adapt to the PFS mentality where it's a group effort and things are a bit more hardcore than he's used to. Ine one fight, of our party of four, two people were knocked out, only he and the other Rogue were still standing. He hasn't flanked all scenario. Boss is breathing down the other Rogue's neck, who is standing at a handful of hit points. Other Rogue couldn't flank, and he's doing 2 damage a round. Guy says, "I throw a dagger and run away." (he's at full HP, by the way) We literally had to stop the scenario and say that if he didn't get his ass into melee, we'd all die. "Yeah, but this is what I would do." Eventually we managed to persuade him and he grumbled about being told what to do, but we barely won.
That guy is still playing that awful character. He's level 4 now, doing 2d4 a round with his Striking daggers, against enemies with 30+ HP. We all dread playing with him, but he doesn't seem to understand why.
Bottom line of these two stories: "It's what my character would do" is fun at the start and in low-stakes situations but players (and characters) should adapt to the group. It's a team game, and you cannot do your own thing if it is actually in the way of the group dynamic.
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Another view on what might be the case:
What the guy literally said doesn't have to be what is actually the case. We sometimes get into the weeds here because we take things at face value too much. (What, us nerds, taking what people too literally? No...)
Imagine that you're new to this game and you don't really know that much which abilities really really matter. You've looked a bit here and there and you see that Bon Mot and Demoralize can help weaken enemies. Great! You've found a cool way that your character can contribute! There's even synergy - Bon Mot makes Demoralize easier.
And then you're getting into a fight and doing your stuff to contribute, and other people keep yelling at you that you need to do something different. Well, you read about Feint as a thing rogues do to get their mojo going. You do that and people yell at you again. At this point you're telling them to back off.
It's very possible that "it's what my character would do" actually means "stop telling me what to do".
Even when other people really are more experienced than you, it's not fun to be constantly told what to do. Just because technically they might be correct doesn't mean it feels good. "Metagaming" can also mean being too busy with the mechanics of the game - even when correct - for someone's feelings.
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I think Quentin has a point - this is a game where all characters have to pull their weight to match against the difficulty of the adventure. Otherwise people are going to have a bad time. You (Ravingdork) are in a worse position because you're bearing the brunt of the encounter difficulty because someone else isn't living up to the level the GM is expecting.
But maybe the GM should also tone down the difficulty of the adventure to the level of the players (not just the level of the characters)?
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Aside from the GM maybe having to dial encounter difficulty down to "remedial" for a while, what about actually really leaning into "okay, so what would your character do?" part?
Instead of arguing out of character about it, you could also talk it out in character.
What just happened? You (the character) were in a fight and you were counting on your buddy to help out. But he hung out in the back and didn't do anything useful. Why? Is he a coward? Is he green and doesn't know what to do?
What are you gonna do next time? Ask him what he thinks you should do next time, if he doesn't come and help you. Should you also stay in the back? Run away?
Maybe what you need is a mock fight, to figure out your teamwork? Look at Bob the fighter, sitting there, eating his lunch, looking a little wary now that we're talking about him. You and the new guy are gonna fight him together, just fists, trying to work together to see how it goes. There's no monsters really trying to kill you, although Bob might give you a black eye.
My issue is that "our characters don't possess any knowledge of the game's mechanics; of every +1 that they can get. I'm not going to metagame." Is flatly an incorrect statement about RPGs generally and PF2 specifically. Especially for PCs. It is also a table hostile attitude to bring without talking about playing that way in session 0.
Yeah, Ascalaphus and Unicore bring up a good point. Sounds like it's a bit of inexperience combined with poor expectation management. Players don't like being told what to do, combined with not knowing how the other players want from you.
This doesn't have to be a thing, but a "hey, I'm used to a different style of game, let's see if there's a middle ground" conversation might be a good idea. That also prevents fingers from being pointed at each other and saying badwrongno. Though I also really like the idea of an in-character training session.
It is certainly possible they're just trying to say "don't tell me how to play my character," though it can come off really poorly if you assume that and try to act accordingly and you're wrong. You end up indirectly accusing them of being a bit duplicitous, which isn't great.
Maybe it's just the people I play with—can't generalize things like this but so much—but it's usually better to take what people say at face value.
I take it as written that caster know that irritated and afraid enemies are more susceptible to mental magic and ruthlessly exploit any advantage they can get. Because exploiting all advantages is the only way to become and old or experienced adventurer.
I would argue that maintaining such hard links between mechanics and diegetics in a game not designed for it will constrain characterization. What you said already imparts a lot of characterization that I wouldn't necessarily want to be bound by, myself, if I were just trying to play a bard well for the sake of my table.
(In case someone infers from context that I'm indirectly supporting or defending 1E on this count—I'm not. Optimized PF1E is exceedingly bad about this too, particularly when it comes to funny dips into paladin, leaving gunslinger after 5 levels, and the like. The only difference, in my experience, is that the table etiquette around optimization is far more variable for 1E than 2E, and 1E handles being optimized disproportionately badly. So you're more likely to have avoid optimizing on purpose in 1E. And one way to avoid optimizing is to simply pick for diegetics. Since 2E tolerates optimization better, it just runs into this issue more.)
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Not everyone is playing the same game, even if they're playing PF2E. The social contract and a lot of implicit rules drastically change between tables. There is no consistency simply because there are different people with different sensibilities arbitrating the games, and different groups with different sensibilities playing them. This is just how a tabletop game is.
I could be misreading this, but it sounds to me you're approaching most tables like you're expecting a purer wargame, and that's just not how a lot of TTRPG tables play.
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I would also say that someone's inability to give a good, clear definition of metagaming for their table doesn't mean there is no such thing as "metagaming." A normal person isn't going to be able to write an A+ philosophical essay on metagaming, or give necessary and sufficient conditions for metagaming. They might not even have an idea of what kinds of things metagaming behaviors have in common, so they couldn't even gesture at a more "family resemblance" styled concept of metagaming. That doesn't mean that metagaming is a construct designed to keep poor powergamers in line and do nothing else.
Personally, I think "no metagaming" edicts amount to a request that players prioritize a game's narrative cohesion over mechanically optimized play when the two conflict. However, people have different thresholds for what they consider a "conflict" between the two, and so you end up with a wide spectrum of beliefs about what behaviors are and aren't metagaming. This isn't weird! In fact, it's about as weird as how wide swaths of people think they should be polite, yet there is simultaneously wide variance in what people believe polite behavior is. That discrepancy doesn't prevent there from being such a thing as "politeness," though. And the discrepancy in what different tables consider "metagaming" likewise doesn't entail "metagaming" doesn't exist or is a fruitless concept.
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Just as an aside... for reference, about the only things I'd really consider "metagaming" in PF2E at my table are
1) looking up things that shouldn't be player knowledge (monster statblocks) or
2) taking advantage of knowledge the player has that the character extremely clearly does not have (such as exploiting some monster's unique weakness without using RK—and I don't mean "the thing made of wood has weakness fire 5," I mean "this thing is afraid of butterflies and runs off crying if it sees them")
And I make (2) less of an issue by running a fairly different version of RK where RK is a free action, players typically get more information at once, and players choose what kinds of information they glean themselves. I'm only really going to get annoyed by (2) if the player is striding in against the THORDANE (secretly very afraid of silkworms) and they immediately produce a silkworm from their pocket out of nowhere.
To me, PF2E is mostly a tactics game; it's how the game was made and it's what it's good at. It's kind of silly to be picky about playing a tactics game well. But I know other people who do not run or play it that way, and that's their prerogative.
I play and run other games differently, though. PF1E depends on the table. Tenra Bansho Zero is a game where I frown on making mechanics-first choices; you had better roleplay every shift in your fates, at the least. Technoir is a narrative game and I'll be annoyed if you start trying to play to "win" the storytelling game and start using Hack on every problem and ultimately try to outshine the other players. (Hack doesn't /have/ to work on everything, but you end up having a hard time figuring out why hack wouldn't work on a lot of problems you'd encounter in a cyberpunk setting in a rules-light game, so...) I'd be rather angry if someone accused me of metagaming in Gloomhaven for obvious reasons (which is not a TTRPG, but is very much a tactical RPG). And so on. Generally, I try to align myself with what seems appropriate for the experience the system wants to give, with an eye to how well or poorly the game functions if one attempts to optimize it.
And I mean, seriously. "You're so nice out of combat."? That's a joke, right?
You can look at it from the building/characterization direction instead, if it helps: "I want to make a character who's polite, even to their enemies. But I don't feel like optimizing with Intimidate lets me do that."
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When the other rogue finally moved into flanking, they started their turn by feinting. When we told him it wasn't necessary, since the act of flanking already made the target off-guard, he responded with something to the effect of "our characters don't possess any knowledge of the game's mechanics; of every +1 that they can get. I'm not going to metagame."I told him that "even dogs and other animals know about flanking; your character most certainly does as well. Sure they don't know about the mechanics, but they do understand survival instincts and basic combat strategy. It's common knowledge."
"I'm going to feint anyways. It's what my character would do."
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That player is completely in the right.
That's why no matter how many times the GM tells me that my opponent is dead or that the other players beg me to move on, my characters will never stop attacking their first opponent in every adventure.
How is my character supposed to know what the dying 4 condition means?
None of that metagaming nonsense for me.
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I mean, Gisher exaggerated, but he makes a good point. Our characters might be aware of things our players aren't and vice versa. Overlaying game rules onto a fictional world requires some suspension of disbelief, and I think experienced players are just more familiar with the constraints and "invisible walls" than new players. I don't mean to say new players are bad at it, they just aren't (completely) aware of the social contract. It might feel natural from a game perspective to not squeeze every bonus out of a situation, but in the fiction, in a life-or-death situation, you'll grab every bonus you can get. And it's up to the players, not the characters, to adjudicate how far you wanna go.