Help me convince my players that the Cleric is cool

[Lord Pendragon]

Maybe - and that's perfectly fine if he informed them about what the campaign/game world is like beforehand.

No, it's not. Because deciding on the type of campaign to play in is not only the DM's choice. It's the entire gaming group's choice. And if everyone but the DM wants to play in a campaign that does not require a cleric to survive, then the DM going forward with exactly the opposite is not fine.

I, personally, would never do that. Of course, my players would never have their PCs going anywhere near undead or areas known to have undead if they created a party without a cleric. So, no worries on my part.

You seem to be the kind of DM who would allow the PCs to "choose their own BBEG" as it were. So yeah, if the players have the option of avoiding the undead, then choosing to pit themselves against undead without a cleric is a make-your-bed-now-lie-in-it kind of scenario. Great.

But if undead is the only choice, and the players aren't allowed to look elsewhere for adventure (which seems to be the case with the original poster), then the situation is not the same. The players aren't being allowed to seek foes who are better suited to their cleric-less state. They're being given only one choice: undead. And if they don't want to go along with that, screw 'em.

Also, to clarify because I'm not sure it's obvious, I certainly think that a DM should be allowed to DM a game he enjoys DMing. The DM certainly has a right to have fun as well as the players. He's not the players' slave or employee, to always suppress his own desires in favor of theirs.

However, that said, there are situations where the majority rules. And IMO this is one of those cases. If all of the players agree that they'd like to play in a game where a cleric isn't needed, then the DM should go along with that.

 

[Trainz]

Lord Pendragon:

You seem to be assuming that I'm out to screw my players. You might not have read the whole thread (I wouldn't either at 9+ pages), but do not jump the gun and make generalisations. The Thayan Menace did, I cleared things up, and he understood. A very constructive and quite interesting conversation ensued, and very fun I might add. I don't want to start the argument all over again. It's in the previous pages.

I have a campaign concept that I have worked on ALL SUMMER ON (links to maps in the previous pages). A Cleric is central to the story. How long have the PLAYERS worked on that setting ? Nothing. What am I asking ? That one of them plays a certain class (that almost every group includes anyways). I AM ready to spend dozens of hours on a campaign, but it is NOT the DM's duty to be the player's slave.

I'm here to have fun too, you know. Until the players pay me by the hour to DM their games, it will be a COLLABORATIVE effort to do the games i.e. I create the whole thing and make sure there's room for everyone to shine in those games, and they accept some requests as to their characters.

Now, if they DO NOT play a cleric, I WON'T screw them over. Yes, I will provide a means to give them healing.

If you really want to be having this discussion, you really should get more intimate with what has been said, so that we don't go over the same things over and over and over and over again.

With all that said, welcome to the discussion, and thanks for your interest in the thread !

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Trainz, I have followed this thread from the beginning. I don't mean to attack you personally, but you have in this thread given an example of a certain style that I disagree with.

Note that in the thread right before yours, I noted that I agree that the DM is not the players' slave.

However, you seem to not be hearing your own words. You write that the game is a collaborative effort, and yet your players were allowed to give no collaboration whatsoever while you were working up your campaign concept ALL SUMMER LONG. If they had, then you would have probably wound up with a concept that didn't depend on a class none of them want to play.

As it stands, you've made a huge investment in time and effort creating a concept without input from your players, and now that you've discovered the concept clashes with what they would prefer, you've decided to go ahead anyway, rather than adapt your concept to the characters they'd like to play.

As DMs, we come up with concepts all the time. Things that we could do with a monk PC, or a sorcerer PC, or, yes, a cleric PC. Then if it turns out that that idea is no longer applicable to the PCs or the situation, you shelve that idea for some other time when it does work, or perhaps you modify it to work in a different way, but you don't shoehorn your PCs into it, come hell or high water.

 

[Umbra]

Perhaps you can suggest to the players that they multiclass while providing additional healing resources so that a) they aren't stuck healing and b) they can still play that barbarian if they want to.

You could also suggest some PrC's that may tempt the players which require a cleric base.

As I'm not very knowledgable about PrC's, can others suggest some possibilities.

 

[Halivar]

Well, if you're a chaotic-evil DM, it's simple enough. TPK, all the way. They'll suddenly realize that if they'd had a cleric in the back healing them they'd still be alive. Reroll characters, and you'll have your cleric.

If they're smart, that is. I mean, really smart players don't go anywhere without at least a druid or a bard.

 

[DarkMaster]

Same as Halivar. I prepare my adventure with reasonable challenge and if they are dumb (or smart ) enough to be all playing wizards, I let them go soon some will die and natural selection will make sure to balance the party.
We got attacked by this group of gobelin three of us died, because nobody stopped the gobelin and nobody was there to heal the dying. So lets have a fighter and a cleric and another MU. Next thing you know they fall in a trap two of them die, Ok let's have a rogue and another MU.

Oops from 4 wizards you now have a balanced party. Obviously this example is very extreme but we all get the idea.

You do it once or twice and you usually never have to worry about it with your group of player, they will find a way to create a group that can deal with skill exhaustive encounter, injury and combat on their own.

 

[DarkMaster]

Lord Pendragon I usually agree with most of your post but not here. Yes you can adapt your campaign to fit your player but that is baby sitting them. For sure I can prevent my 2 year old son from touching the oven but eventually he will have to learn by himself that oven can be dangerous, I cannot remove all the oven in the world, or always be on his side so that he never touch them.

Same with the PC most fantasy worlds (at least my homebrew) have traps, encounters that requires high social skills, dungeon that will contain a lot of monster and allow limited amount of rest, forcing the players to rely on healing magic, Monster that will bring low level PC under 0 hp,Necromancers controlling tons of undead and so on. I cannot remove all these challenges from my world because the party doesn't have a Divine caster, skill monkey or Combat tank. I will not replace the necromancer minion by gobelins because the ranger has choosen them as is favored enemy. My world is build and the PC have to interact in it, like I have to interact with the world around me. Because I studied in computer eng life will not bring me only computer challenge.

The PC will have to deal with the fact that in the Necromancer towers there are a lot of undead. Does that mean they need to have a cleric, no. But they will have to find an alternate way to deal with them.(have a cleric henchemen or buy scroll to target undead, ect).

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Darkmaster, I'm not saying that you should compensate for every weakness the party has. At the same time, I think it's bad DMing to run a campaign that targets or highlights that weakness.

Say nobody amongst a group of players wants to play a rogue. Turning around and running a campaign titled "City of a Million Traps" is not good DMing.

Say everyone in the party wants to play a fighter. Deciding to run "City of a Million Spellcasters" is, again, not good DMing.

Perhaps it is my own ingrained idea that a player should be able to play any sort of character he likes, rather than fulfill the requirements of a checklist (Fighter? Check. Wizard? Check. Rogue? Check. etc.) that leads me to this very strong belief. Because if you do either of the above, you are forcing your players to play something they don't want to play, or face a campaign that is far more difficult than standard.

On that note, it occurs to me that I wouldn't mind either scenario, so long as the DM adjusted all the CRs way up, to take into account the fact that, for a specific party, the encounters are much more difficult than for the archtypical one.

 

[Halivar]

I don't like the idea of DM's intentionally stacking the deck against the party by playing to their weaknesses. However, I heartily approve of a DM setting an encounter that an iconic party (fighter, thief, wizard, and priest) can reasonably handle, and turning it loose on a party of the same level that is ill-equipped to handle it. Some of the funnest moments are the ones where a player goes, "Crap! And I just sold one of those, too," or "You know, if we had a friend with class X this wouldn't be killing us right now" (of course, "class X" is never a bard).

Besides, TPK's are fun. Well, for me, at least. I think I got adult ADHD and I don't like to play the same character for more than five minutes, so take my advice as you will...

EDIT: Lord Pendragon, I agree with your last statement heartily. When a spell-depleted wizard picks up a sword (been there) and manages to kill a fighter of the same level (done that), he deserves mucho experience-o, as you would say in Spanish (if you did not speak Spanish).

 

[Trainz]

First, I want to thank you for your tone. I appreciate the effort you're making.

However, you seem to not be hearing your own words. You write that the game is a collaborative effort, and yet your players were allowed to give no collaboration whatsoever while you were working up your campaign concept ALL SUMMER LONG. If they had, then you would have probably wound up with a concept that didn't depend on a class none of them want to play.

This one is easy to answer: my players do not want to invest such time in creating the campaign world with me. They are more than content to let me do everything and then show up for game sessions.

You do have a valid point though. It is more rewarding for everyone to create the campaign together. I'd like it if one of my players sat down and said "Here, let me help you out with this". They just don't.

Hell, if one of my player said "Look, I created a prestige class for a character concept of mine and here's the background of the organisation that uses such characters", I would integrate it on the spot in my campaign. It's not their thang. That's all.