Player just doing the same thing problem- please help.

[Mad Hamish]

Barring a strange build an Archer Ranger build is far more effective with the bow than in Melee.
If a bow archer in melee is better than the cleric then I'd say that the cleric build needs looking at.

Really you have a Paladin as a tank, a cleric and rogue as melee combatants and a Wizard and Ranger as ranged attackers which looks pretty reasonable.

I'd recommend that when the rogue sees something while scouting he goes back to the party so that they are informed of what's going on and keep him from being swamped.
The idea of a scout is to find where trouble will be and then report it. Not to go in himself and get kicked.

I suspect that the Rogue is moving too far ahead of the group while scouting making it tough for people to help him when he's getting in trouble and the Ranger probably is best equipped to trail him and provide covering fire while they retreat back to the core of the party who are moving up.

You might also want to look at how the monsters are playing.
If the Ranger is consistantly staying back and doing a lot of damage suddenly he becomes a big target and they'll want to get to him.

If they go after him and he goes into evading them he's tying up opposition just as much as if he's in hand to hand with them.

You might also want to look at the Rogue build, I haven't seen one in play but it sounds like it could be improved somewhat.

 

[Kzach]

Two things.

1) Mix it up more. If the ranger can be 10 squares away all the time, then the enemies have enough room to run around tanks and hit the artillery. After all, the ranger is their biggest threat, getting rid of him first is a very sound tactic on the part of the enemies. Play the enemies smarter, put more and different types of monsters in with ranged attacks or the ability to get around defenders.

2) Guy sounds like a douche. Drop him.

 

[On Puget Sound]

There's always the time-honored tradition of occasionally having a bit of unguarded treasure (perhaps trapped) that the rogue, if left far ahead of the party, can discreetly pocket. A few of those will encourage the rest of the group to stay in close-support range if only to keep an eye on the rogue's fingers.

I agree with most posting here that the ranger is playing properly by staying back and shooting for the most part. It sounds like there are other issues with this player and/or character, though, revolving around alignment or roleplaying and team cohesiveness. I suspect the problem lies there rather than in tactics.

 

[ObsidianCrane]

Indeed the "mix up the encounters" advice is very sound.

Similar problems emerge with all ranged attack characters if they are not harrased. A good encounter model I used recently was a Goblin Hexer with 2 Guard Drakes, throw in Goblin Cutters and more Drakes to pad it out according to party size/level. The Drakes and the Hexer stick together, giving the Drakes better damage and the Hexer somewhere to redirect those Ranged attacks to.

The Ranger will hate not being able to hit the key target, and the Hexer can shut him down effectively with both the Blinding Hex and the Vexing Cloud.

You could easily remodel the Hexer as a Kobold and match it up with Dragonshields as well as Guard Drakes, replacing Incite Bravery with the Wyrmpriest's temp hit point buff, and Goblin Tactics with Shifty.

Not every encounter needs to be like that mind you, but if the party (or a PC) is overly depending on 1 strategy make sure you vary the monster strategies and tactics enough that you are providing a challenge for all PCs/Players.

The "take him aside and explain the problem and his choices" advice is sound as well, but I'm not the best one to give that advice as I'm bad at doing that as well.

 

[Saeviomagy]

How are your players holding up such a solid defensive line? More importantly why are they holding up such a solid defensive line?

Ideally the defenders should be allowing one or two foes through the line, specifically to spread damage around and to allow the rogue to get flanks without exposing himself to the entire enemy lineup.

 

[Mad Hamish]

It also doesn't help that as the last fight kicked off, probably their hardest encounter to date, then the Ranger was being guarded by the Paladin as he had just killed a Kobold kid- for no good reason, and much to the annoyance of the Cleric, and said Paladin, even the Rogue leapt in to bar the way- stop him offing anymore of them.

If there's a 10gp/head reward for Kobolds then killing Kobolds is not 'for no good reason'.
Depending upon the campaign it might well be considered perfectly appropriate behaviour even for a good character.
If you (and the rest of the group from the sounds of it) don't want him to play that way then I'd recommend having a chat with him away from the rest of the group saying that you're aiming the campaign to be a bit more high fantasy and you'd like him to avoid that sort of behaviour because it doesn't fit the campaign all that well (don't say it's wrong or bad roleplaying or anything).

From there the Rogue headed forward with Cleric and Wizard- the Paladin having a "whispered" but amusing conversation via MapTools with the Ranger, as to why the Ranger should desist from killing more Kobolds- there's a 10gp reward for Kobold head- the Ranger finds a chamber of kids and mums- result he's rich, the Paladin explaining that she's not taking Kobold kids heads back and trying to claim a reward for them). Anyway the Rogue goes scouting and gets into a fight, he's on his own and the otherside of a sprung pit.

In all honesty here the problem appears to be less with the ranger and more with either the Paladin for hanging back or the rogue wandering away from the party before other people are ready for it.

Result Rogue in the thick of it, but holding his own. Cleric doing his best to get round difficult terrain to provide support, Wizard a-ok bringing the fire, and the Paladin having to dash back to the front- the Ranger sidles up, remains secure behind the pit trap for a while, then heads into the chamber ahead to hide along the back wall in the fungi, while the Paladin, Cleric and Thief go toe to toe. Then a Deathjump spider drops off the ceiling and the Kobold Chieftain makes his appearance- having circled around the group via an unexplored passageway.

If the Ranger is attacking then he is doing his job. If he's wandering off and not attacking then he isn't. From what you've written I can't be sure what is actually happening there.

<from another post of yours>

This week a Kobold Chieftain snuck up on him (designed like a Slyblade except with nasty hand crossbow damage), sent him to a handful of HP in one round (they're only 2nd level characters) and he blamed the Rogue for starting the fight, not playing tactically- I think that was an over-reaction to the fact it's genuinely the first time he's taken any real damage. But the fact remains the group, I feel, is on the road to implosion, and the Ranger can't see why.

Without having been there it's tough to be sure what's going on.
From what you say at various places in the thread it does sound like the Rogue is starting most of the fights and drawing most of the heat which does suggest that they're doing too much.
The idea of scouting is to find out what's ahead, not to go ahead and try and solo it.
However the ranger seems like he's staying a long way away from the rest of the group and that does leave you very open to being isolated and cut to pieces.
It sounds to me like the Rogue player is a bit gung-ho but the fight had progressed enough that the Ranger had chosen what he was doing and had time to adjust so I'd say that the Ranger whining there was unjustified but he might be getting a bit frustrated with other people's expectations.

The other players (Paladin & Cleric) have said that they have had to act out of character to stop the fight from breaking out with the Ranger. The Ranger thinks I ahve a problem with this as I was a little peeved that he's started killing kids, his last character a Paladin was fond of slaying sleeping Orcs. It gets me how he can't see that the other two players in the party are getting annoyed by this.

In all honesty I can't see a problem with killing sleeping enemy warriors in damned near any campaign.
If it's civilians then it gets less understandable.
Hopefully the talk above should straighten things out.

 

[Mad Hamish]

Noted, will do, although my problem (and others) is with the Ranger, he's not willing to get dirty even when others are rushing around trying to save each other he's ten paces back doing the same thing most rounds, at least 90% of the time anyway-

Do you complain about the Wizard hanging back?
Because they're both ranged attackers who are better off staying out of melee.

and then bitching that the group shouldn't be in this mess in the first place, the other players are getting irked that he's complaining about their lack of tactics and yet he's not suggesting any alternives and resolutely remains at the back, we play on MapTools, he's usually on the bottom square of the screen while the others are some ten or so squares away.

How about you get one of the other players to ask him what tactics he thinks people should be using?
He might have a case.

 

[DracoSuave]

Actually, suggest to the rogue that he look, gather the intel, and get back to the party asap. Don't have him wander too close to the groups and blow his stealth. Spot the enemy, run back, report. That's what a scout's supposed to do, and he won't be trapped in melee so much if he lets the other party members know what the problem is.

Why is his AC the second worst? Rogues should have a really decent AC, on par with Bow Rangers, at worst 1 off.

 

[Family]

2) Guy sounds like a douche. Drop him.

What's this laying on the ground over here? *cough* http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?p=56222#56222 *cough*

I got nothing; I'll leave.

 

[DracoSuave]

What's this laying on the ground over here? *cough* http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?p=56222#56222 *cough*

I got nothing; I'll leave.

Pfft. We -alllll- know what people from BC are like. Damn hippies.

*hides his vancouver street address*