When you want to strangle a player

[Lord Zardoz]

The rules are a tool to help resolve game issues and shouldn't always be set in stone just because the stats & die rolls say otherwise. It's issues like this that cause me to dislike roleplaying skill checks.

I don't care what the rules say and what a die result shows....if Joe American; the friendliest smooth-talking social worker from New York City tries to stop Osama bin Laden from running his sword through George Bush's chest....I don't care what Joe says & how well he says it...Osama is going to run that sword through Bush's chest unless Muhammad himself stops him.

Some situations just can't be avoided simply because you *think* you're the most charismatic person alive. I have no problem with a DM throwing social skill die rolls out the window if needed. I think the Bard was lucky to even resolve the conflict the way he did.

I happen to like the idea of Diplomacy type skills, though my reasoning is different. The simple fact that they exist tends to cause both players and DM's to consider using that sort of approach rather than ignore / autofail it. But I will concede that there are situations in which the skill will not really apply.

Since I generally Dm, my approach is as follows. First I will decide if the roll is going to have any effect at all. If it can not, then I would tell the player that long before it came time to throwing the dice.

But if the roll can, I do not think I would punish a player for being the wrong race or class except in extraordinary circumstances. And by extraordinary, I mean on the order of a Half Demon or Blackguard type trying to use diplomacy on a lawful good cleric.

The modifiers themselves aren't so unreasonable (Unless I misread the relevant post, they ended up being not more than a 4 point penalty with respect to the Cuthbert Cleric). But I can see how a player who created a character built to be an optimal face type would be pissed off if a different character not built to that purpose was consistently more effective at that role simply due to situational modifiers that would nearly always be in play at key times.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Herobizkit]

One earlier poster said it best, and I shall paraphrase thusly: "If you don't max out your skills, don't bother taking them at all". I would add that a player should max out all of his most frequenty used skills, but should also feel free to take some "knack" abilities to flesh out what the character knows.

In your player's case, it seems to me that he wants to be a skill monkey. Bards do have a lot of skill points, but still fewer points than the Rogue. If your player wanted to be skill-man AND a Bard, he (hopefully) made a Human and pumped his Int. Removing the restriction on cross-class skills is a GREAT idea; it saves your player from blowing a feat that does the same thing. Bards are feat-starved (being Masters of None), but if his Bard wants to fight in melee, he also should have pumped his Dex and taken the Weapon Finesse feat. With a Con of 8, he's not going to have much staying power, but hey, sometimes it's fun to tempt fate; Toughness may be an option for him.

As for multi-classing, I can understand why he'd feel like he was short-changing his character. Shadowrun characters who can "do it all" (Decking, Magery, Combat, and Social Skills) CAN do it all with a reasonable amount of success; the Bard, not so much. The Bard seems to be more of a support character than a Leading Man, but really, it's all about attitude. IMCs, I almost always play a light-armored type with d6 or d8 HD, and I'm in melee just as often or even more often than I'm hanging back. That said, I have a couple of options for you. If you have access to Complete Arcane, there's a feat in there that lets you maintain up to 4 levels of your caster level if you multi-class... IDTBIFOM but if your player is worried about losing out on spell progression, it's a good fix. Lastly, multi-classing into Warlock is teh awesome for Bards; overlapping skills, free blasting power, all-day spell effects, no arcane failure in light armor and making UMD your ultimate friend is pure genius (IMO).

Regardless of everything, if your player insists on making sub-optimal choices, at least consider his intent before you jump all over his design. Try not to penalize him, but at the same time, make it just as hard on him as everyone else.

 

[Slife]

The rules are a tool to help resolve game issues and shouldn't always be set in stone just because the stats & die rolls say otherwise. It's issues like this that cause me to dislike roleplaying skill checks.

I don't care what the rules say and what a die result shows....if Joe American; the friendliest smooth-talking social worker from New York City tries to stop Osama bin Laden from running his sword through George Bush's chest....I don't care what Joe says & how well he says it...Osama is going to run that sword through Bush's chest unless Muhammad himself stops him.

Some situations just can't be avoided simply because you *think* you're the most charismatic person alive. I have no problem with a DM throwing social skill die rolls out the window if needed. I think the Bard was lucky to even resolve the conflict the way he did.

Have you read "Going Postal" or "Making Money"?

Moist Von Lipwig could totally do that.

 

[haakon1]

I don't care what the rules say and what a die result shows....if Joe American; the friendliest smooth-talking social worker from New York City tries to stop Osama bin Laden from running his sword through George Bush's chest....I don't care what Joe says & how well he says it...Osama is going to run that sword through Bush's chest unless Muhammad himself stops him.

I bet there are some NYC women who could talk him out of it . . . possibly some of the best male lawyers and salesfolk too, who do tend to reach epic levels in NYC more than elsewhere.

 

[jeffh]

Okay, while this player's difficult life situation does excuse his other frustrating behaviour, at least up to a point, let me join the chorus of people saying they don't understand the self-sabotage. If you want to play a master diplomat, the first thing you should do toward that end is max out your Diplomacy! If he hasn't done that, then that's a very strong signal that being a master diplomat is not, however often and loudly the player claims otherwise, actually central to his character concept, and he shouldn't complain when the occasional Diplomacy check doesn't go his way. (Never mind that this one was actually, under the circumstances, a resounding success!)

I'm also going to take the opposite line from some posters here and say I think you went very easy on him with the modifiers. Only -2 for being of a race the Cuthbert cleric was seriously bigoted against?!? That's pretty generous if you ask me.

 

[Oryan77]

I bet there are some NYC women who could talk him out of it . . . possibly some of the best male lawyers and salesfolk too, who do tend to reach epic levels in NYC more than elsewhere.

You think a woman will talk Osama out of killing Bush? An American woman of all things? An American non-Muslim woman? An American non-Muslim woman that doesn't wear a hijab everyday of her life? You don't have much experience being around middle eastern Muslim men do you?

A religious fanatical Muslim man like Osama would never even listen to what a real Muslim woman says much less an American non-Muslim woman who show's her hair in her normal day life. I don't even believe he'd listen to an American male lawyer or whoever. That's why so many optimistic reporters and aid workers keep getting captured and beheaded...they think to highly of themselves and don't understand the level of evilness they are dealing with.

*Disclaimer* BTW, I'm not trying to turn it into a religious discussion. I'm Muslim myself (converted and married to an Afghan woman) and I'm referring to a religious fanatic in an attempt to compare that mindset to the OPs racist religious NPC...that's all

 

[TarionzCousin]

First, Elf Witch, I agree with the majority of the posters that it seems like you are doing a great job.

Second, I think that a significant part of the problem is the player's decision to play a bard. Bards really only shine in one area of 3.5: face-time. If they aren't the best diplomat, they are at most second-best in another area.

IMO, your decision to offer the player the chance to re-tool his character completely is a wise one. Please let us know how things work out.

 

[Elf Witch]

Elf Witch, you aren't wrong in this situation. But I do think you are having some clashes with current playstyles. Yes, the group as a whole may have agreed that they want to play in a heavy story/heavy roleplaying game. But that is a group consensus and might not genuinely reflect individual playstyles.

As well, playstyles will adjust based on changes in individual lives.

So what do you do about that? Well, it depends. Are you interested enough in individual players to analyze playstyles and start trying to accommodate what each player finds interesting? If not, you are likely to lose the player, at least for a time.

If you are willing to do that work, dig out the DMG II and read up on individual playstyles. Elicit some more feedback from all the players and see if you can tag out individual playstyles. Please note, it is rare that any one player only fits one particular playstyle.

As an example, I have a strong emphasis in 4 playstyles. So long as I get some feedback in one or two areas on a fairly consistent basis, I am happy. But when I have no feedback in all four areas for a prolonged period of time, I start to lose my enthusiasm in the game.

Don't pigeonhole the players too tightly. You will miss some opportunities if you do.

Now, back to your specific examples, I would hazard a guess that the player enjoys storytelling as well as having moments where he likes to be cool and shine. It is possible that even though he did a lot of information gathering and was the reason the party learned information, he missed how that was actually relevant to the story. So now he is feeling like he isn't contributing to the story at all, and is certainly not impacting it, because the story is all about the cleric - in his mind. So when a situation erupts between two clerics, where he might be able to do the cool character thing and talk them both down, he is less successful than he hoped. Along comes the cleric and is able to achieve the results the bard player was hoping for.

It doesn't make you wrong. But it might mean that you are not identifying what fun factor/stress relief the player is playing the game to find. This might be complicated by the fact that the player is having so much RL stress that the reasons he wants to game have changed since the beginning of the game.

Analyzing playstyles and then trying to accommodate them is a lot of work. It might be something that takes too much energy away from other game prep. Some people would even argue that doing this work is just pandering to a needy player.

I'm not going to pass a value judgement on that.

But if you are looking for a way to make this situation better, addressing the problem from the perspective of misidentified/unidentified playstyles is one possible route.

I have spent some time this week reading the DMG, DMG 2 and DMing for Dummies.

Looking at the DMG 2 my problem player is a mainly into psychodrama , character and story.

I give him plenty of RP opportunities to deal with the psychodrama. His character is dealing with family issues and I amke sure to add them to the game. I also try very hard to work into the plot character stuff that he has mentioned.

I sent him an email asking him what he would like to see his character accomplish in the next few sessions and I asked him to tell me what he wants his character to be able to do in combat and out of combat. I am hoping we an get on the same page as what he wants out of the game and what he sees his playstyle as.

I had a long lunch with his wife yesterday and we talked over some things. He told her he is dropping the ultimatum over the drive issue for now. She suggested to just ignore it to let him save face so for now I am going to pretend he never said anything.

One thing she told me that kind of has me worried is that he is writing a story about his character. He likes to write fiction. Now while I wouldn't mind stories based on what has already happened in game he is writing his own story based on the character and how he sees the world.

Since he gets so into his character I think he forgets that firat and foremost this is a game not a novel and second he only has control over his character not the others. I think he may be coming to th table with a script already written in his head about how the other characters are going to respond to him. For example his wife told me one of his character's goals is to get the cleric/paladin to lighten up and develop a sense of humor. Now that is fine he can role play this out with the other player but he can't control the outcome and I think he has a disconnect with that. In his story he is has written that he is successful in this.

The guy is very creative and he does a lot of research on things that interest him which can really at times add to the game. But sometimes he gets so into his research and he forgets that the game designers and the DM may not be on the same page. There was an issue in our Shadowrun game over this.

He researched a lot about Shaminism and tried to add his research to his character the only problem was that the only thing the GM knew about the subject was how it is handled in the game. This caused a lot of misunderstanding between them until they finally hammered it out.

Talking about his playstyle I think one big thing is he likes to use the game as a way to jump start is creativity.

 

[Elf Witch]

Regardless of everything, if your player insists on making sub-optimal choices, at least consider his intent before you jump all over his design. Try not to penalize him, but at the same time, make it just as hard on him as everyone else.

My advice to him about his character design was not meant to be jumping all over him.

I may be a new DM but I am not a newbie to the game and have played and made many a 3.0/3.5 character far more than he has. I was trying to help him make the character do what he wants it do using the rules.

He said he wanted to be good at melee and the party face, I suggested he make his con a 10 so at least he was not taking any minuses in it and I also suggested that if he wanted to be a party face to max out diplomacy.

I have tried not to penalize him because of his build. The modifiers I used for him in the encounter I thought were not impossible to overcome. Maybe they were it added a +4 to his target numbers. I have been really second guessing myself on this.

One of the things I am thinking of doing is making certain skill rolls for the players and telling them the outcome. It is suggested in the players handbook that the DM make the roll for disguise checks. I was thhinking about this and I thought that is not a bad idea for some of the other social skills.

Take sense motive if the player suspects an NPC is being dishonest and they roll badly and I say no you don't sense that the NPC is being dishonest. I am sure that a little metagaming is going to creep in. The thought well I rolled badly so he may be lying.

 

[billd91]

One thing she told me that kind of has me worried is that he is writing a story about his character. He likes to write fiction. Now while I wouldn't mind stories based on what has already happened in game he is writing his own story based on the character and how he sees the world.

Since he gets so into his character I think he forgets that firat and foremost this is a game not a novel and second he only has control over his character not the others. I think he may be coming to th table with a script already written in his head about how the other characters are going to respond to him. For example his wife told me one of his character's goals is to get the cleric/paladin to lighten up and develop a sense of humor. Now that is fine he can role play this out with the other player but he can't control the outcome and I think he has a disconnect with that. In his story he is has written that he is successful in this.

I think this could turn out to be really good... or really bad. It might be the kind of outlet he needs to control the action and environment around his character so that he can let go in the game and stop getting into such a snit about it.

Or it will magnify his problems because he'll think that the control he exerts in the story should translate to the game table as well.

Either way, I'd sit back and see how it develops before bringing up the story and how it will likely affect the game. This could be a very personal way for him to work through his issues with the game and control of life around him and should not be intruded upon without good cause.