Hey. This is my first post here. I’m wondering what other people’s experience has been playing with friends who aren’t “good at D&D.”
This is my situation. A few months ago I started playing D&D after a 15-year hiatus (I’m 29) with A., who had never played before but was very enthusiastic about it, and the DM, who is a much more seasoned player than I am but was also returning to the game after a fairly long break.
Since it’s a small group, the DM plays a PC, a halfling rogue who helps out in combat but, obviously, doesn’t participate in strategic discussions and decision-making. My character is a half-elf paladin who, at level 8, is quite well-built (STR 18, CHA 17, CON 18… INT 5. We used the roll-4d6-drop-one method rather than standard arrays). A. plays a human cleric with a high score of STR 16. If she had read the Player’s Handbook and taken its advice, she would have built a Battle Cleric and chosen melee attacks. But instead she picks mostly WIS-based ranged attacks, and since her score is 13 (it had been 12, but when we reached level 8 she raised it at my insistence) they’re not always effective. Her second-highest score is INT 14, and she’s chosen training in Arcana, and her ability to cast rituals and identify magic items partially compensates for the lack of a wizard in the party, but isn’t much help in combat.
Now, despite how I might come off in the last paragraph, I’m not just a number cruncher. I appreciate the narrative and role-playing possibilities of an intellectually curious, somewhat scatter-brained cleric who, despite her considerable experience, has yet to select an area of focus, unlike her half-brother, a very charismatic but semi-retarded paladin who has devoted himself to smiting the foes of their god, in part because he’s too dumb to serve in any other way. But it can be frustrating for me when I get flanked by enemies and I have to spend a long time hacking at them because A. doesn’t land many attacks. (Of course, it’s frustrating for A., too, because she’d like to make a big contribution in an area besides healing, which she thinks of as a wussy skill, and she’s expressed jealousy that on a hit I do a minimum of 9 point of damage, while that’s about her maximum with an at-will. Oddly, she doesn’t seem to understand that attacks are directly related to ability scores and modifiers.) If our party were bigger, this probably wouldn’t be a problem, but with 2.5 PCs it’s tough, and I’m sure it will only get worse when we reach paragon tier, because the rules that assign monsters by level assume that PCs’ primary ability scores will be in the high teens by then.
So, getting back to the point, I’d like to know how you’ve played with allies who don’t quite grasp the basic mechanics of the game, or who made unfortunate character-building choices early on that affected development later. Did you take the didactic route, and if so, were there any explanations that worked particularly well? Did the DM dish out magic items to pad attack and damage bonuses?
Thanks for the tips
This is my situation. A few months ago I started playing D&D after a 15-year hiatus (I’m 29) with A., who had never played before but was very enthusiastic about it, and the DM, who is a much more seasoned player than I am but was also returning to the game after a fairly long break.
Since it’s a small group, the DM plays a PC, a halfling rogue who helps out in combat but, obviously, doesn’t participate in strategic discussions and decision-making. My character is a half-elf paladin who, at level 8, is quite well-built (STR 18, CHA 17, CON 18… INT 5. We used the roll-4d6-drop-one method rather than standard arrays). A. plays a human cleric with a high score of STR 16. If she had read the Player’s Handbook and taken its advice, she would have built a Battle Cleric and chosen melee attacks. But instead she picks mostly WIS-based ranged attacks, and since her score is 13 (it had been 12, but when we reached level 8 she raised it at my insistence) they’re not always effective. Her second-highest score is INT 14, and she’s chosen training in Arcana, and her ability to cast rituals and identify magic items partially compensates for the lack of a wizard in the party, but isn’t much help in combat.
Now, despite how I might come off in the last paragraph, I’m not just a number cruncher. I appreciate the narrative and role-playing possibilities of an intellectually curious, somewhat scatter-brained cleric who, despite her considerable experience, has yet to select an area of focus, unlike her half-brother, a very charismatic but semi-retarded paladin who has devoted himself to smiting the foes of their god, in part because he’s too dumb to serve in any other way. But it can be frustrating for me when I get flanked by enemies and I have to spend a long time hacking at them because A. doesn’t land many attacks. (Of course, it’s frustrating for A., too, because she’d like to make a big contribution in an area besides healing, which she thinks of as a wussy skill, and she’s expressed jealousy that on a hit I do a minimum of 9 point of damage, while that’s about her maximum with an at-will. Oddly, she doesn’t seem to understand that attacks are directly related to ability scores and modifiers.) If our party were bigger, this probably wouldn’t be a problem, but with 2.5 PCs it’s tough, and I’m sure it will only get worse when we reach paragon tier, because the rules that assign monsters by level assume that PCs’ primary ability scores will be in the high teens by then.
So, getting back to the point, I’d like to know how you’ve played with allies who don’t quite grasp the basic mechanics of the game, or who made unfortunate character-building choices early on that affected development later. Did you take the didactic route, and if so, were there any explanations that worked particularly well? Did the DM dish out magic items to pad attack and damage bonuses?
Thanks for the tips
