players making useless characthers

troy31 said:

A paladin he made had such a low charisma, he had a negative mod to his class abilities.

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IMO, you just have to help him a bit when he creates PCs and warn him about strange choices.

If he stills plays complete weirdos and you can't rationalize some useful abilites
for his character concept, try to find something his PC can do better than the other PCs and make sure his PC will shine at least at some point of the adventure.


Chacal

Well, I myself usually play characters that arent godlike.

Its fun to play characters that have a solid concept and that is what should come first. A paladin with low charisma can be alot of fun to play and a great deal of fun for the whole group.

Still if the player complains about that he sucks (when the fighting starts) he should invest his skills/feats on things that are better and if he doesnt understand the rules that well the DM should help him. Perhaps the problem is that the other guys in the group are powergamers and he is not?

Just my two cents....

I would tend to go with the view that the DM may be slightly to blame here, because it isn't difficult to make a character that looks weak compared to other characters, if all the other characters are powergamed and min/maxed, and challenges are thus scaled. A problem I faced in a group I gamed with last year.

Personally I think its a conflict of gaming styles.

Uh... Played with a guy in a fantasy game with a skill-based system (similar to GURPS in terms of character creation) who was a really nice guy, and usually a good player, but somehow managed to create the most horribly irritating character I have ever seen.

The character used no magic, was rather weak and fought with a shortsword (so he was hard-pressed to hurt anyone in armor) but he had practically EVERY damn mental skill known to man at level higher than everyone else in the party. He'd be completely useless in a combat situation, and out of combat he'd make any skills anyone else had redundant, because he was better at wilderness lore and tracking than my hunter PC and knew more about religion than the priest, more about magic theory than most mages, and so on... As much a fault of the system as the player, but God, how I hated that PC

I suggest two possible solutions to your problem(s). Both are very similar.

A) Take his present character, and suggest possible corrections that would make it a more viable contribution to the party. The only problem with this is, unless the rest of the players understand why you are doing this, they may expect similar liberties with their characters "But John got to change his feats around, can't I do that also?"

B) Convince him to create yet another character and look it over when he is done. Then make suggestions that would make the character a little more helpful. One problem with this solution is he might not want to make another character. Or he might not like the suggestions. If he doesn't like the suggestions, then I'd say you have nothing more to worry about, because he had the option, via your suggestions, to create a better character, but chose to go with his mediocre creation.

In any event, your situation, as you can see from so many replies, is not uncommon. Lets be realistic, some people are ment to be Scientists and Engineers, some are ment to be janitors. Doesn't mean the janitors are losers or anything, it's just what they are ment for. Apparently this guy, in D&D terms, is probably more suited as a peasent

Maybe you should have him roleplay one of the peasent NPC classes next time hehehe

K Koie

*from the lurking shadows points out paladins only add positive charisma modifier*

"A paladin applies her Charisma modifier (if positive) as a bonus to all saving throws."

some clarifications

I know it sounds like the DM is mean to the guy or that the other players are just powergaming or whatever... Trust me here, that's not the case. It really -- well, let me just address the questions.

The paladin with an 8 CHA - That wasn't a case of a neat backstory. He wanted a high STR and CON, so he put his stats there and put his lowest in CHA. We pointed out how dumb that was but he wasn't willing to sacrifice the fighting benefits of strength or the hp bonuses of con.

The nuke wizard - It's not like the DM did that on purpose really. He even asked the player to mix up his spell selection so he could do more beforehand, but the player wouldn't budge. So, fighting indoors he was useless and outdoors he was more a threat to the party with his area of effect spells.

The fighter/rogue - He blew his points on hide, climb, and move silently. Yet, he never uses those. He mostly tries to use info gathering, bluff, and search. So, with no surprise, he fails. Every time.

The undead hunter - The DM laid out the setting beforehand. Some funky world where humans were rare and the spirits of the dead go back to their home world. Anyway, the point was there was no undead. The necromancer mostly was toying around with neato death spells in addition to his standard spell set. And this is for you 8-bit Theatre fans:

DM: There's no undead.
PC: I'm an Undead Slayer.
DM: Dude, there's no undead. Pick something else.
PC: I'm an Undead Slayer.
DM: Why do you do this to me?
PC: I'm an Undead Slayer.
DM: Why don't you pick from the other 200 choices?
PC: I'm an Undead Slayer.

Other stuff:

This player has been playing for many years. Many systems, many games. He knows the rules. This isn't just one GM he has trouble with. He just gets his mind locked in on some characther template that isn't flexable and won't bend regardless of what happens with the group.

He reads some class and gets this image in his head that is unbreakable at that point. And this is before talking to the DM about the game at hand. The DM describes the world, gives an idea of what's going on, and asks us to make characthers. Without fail, he'll make one that either goes against the world, the group, or just ends up not using his abilities. It's like gaming with George Kostanza. Lots of great ideas, but for some reason, his plan always backfires.

Re: wish it was that easy

troy31 said:

...he tends to get upset when his character can't contribute in the same way as the rest of us who know how to make productive members of a fake society.

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this is a great line.

I had this happen in my last campaign.

It sucks.

Everyone else is annoyed because one player cannot hold his own weight.

In fact, it was worse than that. I had an NPC Druid to help with healing duties in the group and also as an NPC for the players to run, especially if they were unconscious or split up or whatever.

This guy ran her a few times and almost got her and the party killed.

*shakes head*

LOL

Quite entertaining and as usual you have a very scewed view of the facts and realty of things (Troy).

Lets go over your 2 posts and present some actual, more realistic information.

"He's got one bounty-hunter type fighter/rogue"

- True... it's his latest character in a game that probably has gone defunct.

"Well, due to his distribution of skills and feats, he can't fight and he can't do any roguish sneaky sneaky."

- Not true. He can fight and usually very well. Last game was a curse for him though.. I dont' think he rolled more than 3 times above 10 on the Die. Things like that happen but I didn't see him get pissed. Unlike yourself, who in the first session of the game as a pure fighter couldn't hit due to unlucky rolls, got extremily pissed off and depressed. By the end of the session you were in a state of "wtf should I bother, i could care less about this game" mood and tried to disrupt the session w/ OOC antics. GM finally killed your character and you had to make a new one, all because you couldn't let go and laugh at the idea of gettin a bad luck streak on rolls. I never have seen the other player get a character killed because he was being an ass or disrupting a game session. He has characters die mainly to the fact that he can't roll w/ a .

"provides misinformation due to no skill ability." Ever heard of rolling a 1? see above for more info on how the number on the die can affect outcomes. Btw, 1 lvl rogue and 1 lvl fighter... how many skill points to fighters get? He got 3 w/ the +1 int. oooo, a whole lot there buddy.

"He blew his points on hide, climb, and move silently. Yet, he never uses those"

- Not quite true. He did put a good amount of points into hide, move silently and a couple others and he did use them. But since that info wouldn't fit into your want of flaming, you didn't include that info here.

"He mostly tries to use info gathering, bluff, and search. So, with no surprise, he fails. Every time."

- he never used bluff man. Yes, he did use gather info and search. Info is low in rank while search was fairly high (at lvl 2) but again, when you roll below 10 almsot every roll it won't help. Alas your memory apparently doesn't go past a week ago, otherwise you'd have remembered him making his skill checks in the other sessions.

- Also, the game was meant to have stayed on a low-tech, almsot backwaters world for a long while before going into space. His concept revolved around that... but at the 2nd second session it suddenly got pulled into a space game. I understand it was because you were complaining that you didn't like the idea of being a low-tech game and the GM got tired of listening to ya.


"In a party with a necromancer, he made an undead slayer.... And this was on a world with no undead" --- "The DM laid out the setting beforehand"

- The player was not informed of that info before he had already made the character. So he shows up and is told that he couldnt play an undead slayer cause there is no undead but there is a necro in the party... huh? I will admit that it did take the guy a bit to understand the concept of the non-undead undead but it was a really weird concept.

"A paladin he made had such a low charisma, he had a negative mod to his class abilities." --- "We pointed out how dumb that was but he wasn't willing to sacrifice the fighting benefits of strength or the hp bonuses of con"

- He did it for a RP aspect but it seems you're stuck on the Numbers side of things. I can't remember what the prestige class he was going into but it he wanted to come from a paladiin background going into it for the history, not the abilities.

"Had one wizard so obsessed with destruction that he only memorized area of effect damage spells. And the game ended up beging fought mostly indoors..."

- Uhm, perhaps you can describe the story for me? I dont' remember him having a wizard like this ever. He had a wizard that did have a variety of spells, no AE dmg ones and was highly restricted on availiable new spells. He had a Shugenja that he tried to focus on having Dmg spells, i think only 2 spells were multi-hit spells and the game was played outside till the end. At that point the end battle was in a cramped hallway (for the most part) and the Bad guy let loose chain lighting almost killing all the PC's in the hallway. The shugenja and another player stayed back out of there to guard someone. So again, what wizard would this have been?

"Passed on using a vorpal magic sword with one warrior because he thought his plain old wood chopping axe looked cooler"

- LOL, if this is the game i think it is then you weren't even there.. in fact you weren't gaming w/ us at this time. You heard about this story completly 2nd and 3rd hand a few years after the fact. There were also a ton of things that went wrong w/ that game which was mostly due to GM not informing the PC's of how his world works.

"Made a super-strong guy in a superhero game with no real fighting ability or way to absorb damage."

- Is this the same game that you made a character that's sole purpose was to try and get yourself a ton of renown and then quit/destroy the PC group?

Well, now that you've made yourself to sound like you can do no wrong and this guy does nothing but interrupt the session and make the other players' lives hell, lets get some insight on a few of your characters (Troy).

You used a nice setup to discuss something, so i'll just borrow that so it won't confuse you to much.

Troy has a character (fighter i think) and GM is asking him a standard question.

GM: Troy, what is your characters alignment?
Troy: uhh, uhhh... Chaotic Evil
GM: I stated earlier that no Evil alignments were allowed, so what is your alignment?
Troy: It doesnt matter, alignments are pointless and they dont' matter to the game.
GM: Actually alignment matters a lot to the game, it affects spells and determines how you character is supposed to act.
Troy: A player will act the way he wants to act, alignments do not matter
GM: Then you don't know how to RP... what is your alignment?
Troy: Fine, my character is CE
GM: I just said he couldn't be that.
Troy: Well he say's he's LG... he's CE, he can do that.
GM: Fine, your alignment is now NG.


Troy had made a paladin for a different game and GM
GM: Who does your paladin worship troy?
Troy: Jeff, god of biscuits.
GM: There is no Jeff, god of biscuits... I told you where you can choose a god from, so pick a real one.
Troy: It doesn't matter, my guy is a paladin not a cleric
GM: Paladins are supposed to follow a god like a cleric, it's where they get their powers from... so who is your God?
Troy: Told ya, Jeff god of bisquits.


And other antics like those. Sorry but these kind of things dissrupt sessions and other players *far* more than someone who gets unlucky w/ characters.

Btw, if this stuff bothered you *so* much then why haven't you talked to him about it yet or at least before you came and here and tried to act righteous. *waves* see ya around McLure.