Holmes in my D&D: dealing with Perception+Insight optimization?

[AbdulAlhazred]

An approach that's been said before (but I'll add my 2cp) is to "shift" the focus from "finding stuff out" to a more "what should we do with all this info"?

Since in Zeitgeist, the nature of who the "real" good guys are is a very up-in-the-air question, you can use throw all the available information you can think of at the players and still have meaningful discourse going on. The game can also promote some very involved role-play as the players have access to a lot of in-game information on which they can rely. If they are "note-takers" this can lead to incredible sessions of roleplay and "strategising".

2nd option:
Don't do this often (very, very rarely in fact) but you can also set up "wrong info" situations where the information they get leads them to make a very bad decision (and they will follow this correct information with great certainty, since they "know" they can't fail) - this can be very good for the game, but the timing and the frequency must be very precise.

But, and I can't stress this enough - don't do this often!

Right, one of the best ways is to face off the PCs against an evil mastermind, Moriarty to your Holmes. At first the players will not realized the existence of Moriarty and be easily mislead, but soon clues will begin to accumulate. Of course its a bit hard to do this with a pre-existing set adventure path, but there's always tweaking things a bit...

Actually this all sounds like a pretty fun kind of situation to have. breaks the mold of the usual dungeon crawling loot-mongers a bit.

 

[Umbran]

Right, one of the best ways is to face off the PCs against an evil mastermind, Moriarty to your Holmes.

The problem with that is that the GM then has to be a mastermind.

Writing a convincing mystery is difficult enough. Now, take that, and have your mastermind engineering misleading results along the way - for each mystery, you are actually writing *two* mysteries that are both consistent with the available information, until the PCs find the crucial bits that turn one into the other. Do this repeatedly (as mastermind villains are typically repeating antagonists) and stuff gets hairy quickly.

 

[Manbearcat]

Couple thoughts on this. The first is about philosophy, table agenda, and transparency in communication. The second is technique/system-related in how to handle this stuff and keep it fun.

1) The player is flagging (a) what they want to be up for grabs with respect to conflict the unfolding story and (b) where they want "director-like" capacity as a PC. This is good. There isn't going to be a lot of challenge when it comes to investigatory (the central trope here) conflicts. The player will be in a stout position to dictate outcomes. They'll look like Sherlock Holmes. Good deal. However, they are also signalling that they're ok with conflict and unsuspecting dramatic outcomes in other areas; eg the physical noncombat challenges such as the inevitable chases that come out of such genre play. So, they always figure out who killed the butler (Professor Plumb), where it occurred (in the library), and how (with the candlestick). But the following action scene (eg - the chase) is laden with drama, up for grabs, and everyone gets to play to find out what happens!

2) How can you make investigatory challenges engaging from a player perspective? Let us say the Skill Challenge is uncovering who killed the butler. Each success would be a clue as to the killer's methodology, motive, and identity. Something extremely easy to do in order to get what you want (throw some odds of failure into the mix and engage the player, not just the PC, from a challenge perspective) is to address the reward cycle. Wheel of Fortune. Allow them to take a risk to "solve the puzzle" before the final success cements the reveal. Perhaps each success less the total required to succeed in the Skill Challenge gives them another "of-level Standard" worth of xp (eg 500 xp for a 10th level character). However, failure means they fail the Skill Challenge and something major serves to complicate the life of your Sherlock PC (eg, the body, a witness, or some other important bit of evidence comes up missing...or the scene burned to the ground...or third party thugs hired through several proxies show up to send Sherlock down for the dirtnap!).

 

[Herobizkit]

The problem with that is that the GM then has to be a mastermind.

I would use this as an excuse to make a genre-savvy opponent where I could and would use meta-game knowledge against the PCs.

In true Sherlock/Moriarty form, I would "Make an opponent that can defeat Data". (Star Trek:TNG S02E03, _Elementary, My Dear Data_)

 

[MwaO]

Generally, when a player optimizes to the point of being detrimental to some part of the game, the first thing that needs to be done is to ask the player what their goals are. Do they want to be challenged? Do they want to auto-succeed at a subset of tasks in the game? Do they want to hog the spotlight whenever X comes up?

Also, a few things based on the level 10 build:
His numbers are off. He's replacing his Perception/Insight scores with Arcana. He doesn't then get to add bonuses to Perception or Insight to the final Arcana result. I'd also question where he's getting +10 to Arcana from - +2 from Eladrin, +3 from feat, +1 Disciple of Lore, +2 item bonus from boon, and that seems to be it. Binding Mastery doesn't add to either of those, only to very specific checks. So that'll drop his passive perception/insight to 34. Which is still is exceptionally high, but...

He has three boons by 10th level? Those are DM permission only and I'm not sure why you would give those out.

Where are the feats that allow him to do this on his sheet? Sorcerous Vision in particular is a Paragon-only feat, so he can't have it at 10th level.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The problem with that is that the GM then has to be a mastermind.

Writing a convincing mystery is difficult enough. Now, take that, and have your mastermind engineering misleading results along the way - for each mystery, you are actually writing *two* mysteries that are both consistent with the available information, until the PCs find the crucial bits that turn one into the other. Do this repeatedly (as mastermind villains are typically repeating antagonists) and stuff gets hairy quickly.

Yes and no. The DM is after all 'god' of his world, and has total omniscience and omnipotence. He should be able to act as a 'mastermind' of some sort. Admittedly you will find that you have your supergenius badguy do X and then later some player will say "that was stupid, why didn't he do Y!" and you facepalm, but so it goes. So, yeah, not the easiest kind of DMing, OTOH maybe not really harder than making a credible mystery? I'm not sure.

 

[Umbran]

I would use this as an excuse to make a genre-savvy opponent where I could and would use meta-game knowledge against the PCs.

In true Sherlock/Moriarty form, I would "Make an opponent that can defeat Data". (Star Trek:TNG S02E03, _Elementary, My Dear Data_)

Yeah, and that's a solution that would work well for many groups. Some might think of that as "cheating" on the GM's part, though, so we have to use that path judiciously.

Generally, when a player optimizes to the point of being detrimental to some part of the game, the first thing that needs to be done is to ask the player what their goals are. Do they want to be challenged? Do they want to auto-succeed at a subset of tasks in the game? Do they want to hog the spotlight whenever X comes up?

When a player optimizes to such a point, we should also ask that part of the game is detrimental, or at least not as valuable as we thought.

GUMSHOE, for example, does this for *everyone*. If you have a skill, and are in the right place to use it, you get the clue. Period. No die roll necessary. You may spend some resource points to get even more clues, but that's a matter of choice, not chance.

There are two basic ways to construct a mystery. One is to make the clues incredibly difficult to get, but have them easy to interpret (like, if you don't think to mention that your character is searching the legs of chairs in the room, you will not find the hidden compartment that hides the scroll detailing the Evil Duke's plan to an underling). This will tend to stall if the clue isn't found, though. The other is to make the clues fairly easy to get, but no one clue is definitive, and the players must assemble the clues like puzzle pieces.

The player may be effectively saying that the task of searching for clues is not interesting to them. If the folks at the table don't *like* that style of mystery, optimizing to get past it quickly is not detrimental to the game.

 

[hirou]

Sorry, didn't have time to reply to all the posts, we're having a bit of a break in our play either way. Some technical replies:

His numbers are off. He's replacing his Perception/Insight scores with Arcana. He doesn't then get to add bonuses to Perception or Insight to the final Arcana result.

Never said he would.

I'd also question where he's getting +10 to Arcana from - +2 from Eladrin, +3 from feat, +1 Disciple of Lore, +2 item bonus from boon, and that seems to be it. Binding Mastery doesn't add to either of those, only to very specific checks. So that'll drop his passive perception/insight to 34. Which is still is exceptionally high, but...

You're forgetting +2 from familiar (actually, not a Coure Attendant yet, but another one with Arcana bonus)

He has three boons by 10th level? Those are DM permission only and I'm not sure why you would give those out.

A bit of leeway on my side, I agree. They're reskinned as physical items, filling waist, hands and head slot (he has another head item in store). I understand that slot-less rewards are unfairly powerful, but he had to work to get these, and none of them are really game-breaking. I straight up banned Elven chainmail and Dice of Auspicious Fortune though...

Where are the feats that allow him to do this on his sheet? Sorcerous Vision in particular is a Paragon-only feat, so he can't have it at 10th level.

As I said, we're talking about his development on 11th level. He's retraining Weapon Focus for multiclass and then gaining Sorcerous Vision.

 

[MwaO]

Never said he would.

You said he had a 40 passive perception - that's only possible with a 26 Arcana if he then adds +4 from somewhere else. Which would appear to be the +3 to Perception + the +1 to all trained skills. Unless he's getting +4 from his paragon path.

In any case, as noted, I'd figure out why he's so concerned about defeating any skill problems that might arise and what the table wants out of the game.

Finally, the Corellon boon can be extremely powerful. I'd keep a careful eye out on that one...

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Orc barbarians with greataxes might be a nice field leveler ...