How do you 'nudge' your players away from tank mentality? (and high magic games)

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

How do you 'nudge' your players away from tanks? It seems that every group I've ever run thinks they need a lug, tank character. As soon as they get one, they STOP thinking and having interesting combat actions and move back to "D&D mini's mentality."

Our campaign group has the situation now and of course the Bbn outshines the other PC's 10:1 on damage and to-hit and the other players just sit there and send him into combats..or feign interest while he's blasting away. THis is an extension to the "are barbarians overpowered" thread from earlier.

The Lower-Magic Campaign characters are:
Thuh' Barbarian
Swashbuckler-rogue
Swashbuckler-rogue
Ninja-Spellthief
Rogue-Warlock
Rogue

Solutions? THoughts?

jh

First things first, you're running into an obvious balance problem. The low magic is probably making that worse. Low magic means low AC (high hit point advantage) and low damage. It's hard enough for swashbucklers to do decent damage with magic items. Using low magic makes it worse.

My solution is to introduce house rules to either power up the characters (to make up for the lower magic) or use something other than DnD. DnD, the way it's designed, simply screws light non-tank fighter types. I don't believe I've seen WotC ever do a well-designed DnD light fighter class, taking into account the monk, both swashbucklers and the swordsage.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

I definately wouldn't punish the tank player. If a player wants to play a tank, they should be able to play a tank. And the problem doesn't lie with the tank. The problem lies with everyone else.

As was suggested before, spells like Hold ____, Sleep-type spells, etc. are excellent ways of making the party think because the tank isn't there any more. This doesn't punish the barbarian - especially if the enemy is a bit intelligent and ignores the tank for a bit to drive the others off.

Other spells like dimension door help bring the combat to them without having to go through the tank. Ranged attacks w/cover or attackers that can outrun the tank also work well.

Personally, though, I think the best suggestion up there is the one I immediately thought of. Why have combat so frequently? Sure, the tank needs some time to shine. But the rest of the group is clearly (I think, although this isn't a completely foregone conclusion) sending a message to the DM that they don't want to be combat focused. They want to be skill focused. So give them interaction, not combat. Less people die that way - player characters last a bit longer. Good things.

 

[ZSutherland]

If you have a copy of Arcana Evolved, you might add combat rites per day to the swashbucklers, but not to the barbarian. That might help beef them up some, and it's a more stylized form of combat.

 

[Emirikol]

So give them interaction, not combat.

..but I'm running Age of Worms...it seems like one big dungeon crawl. ANyone here effectively added 'interaction' to this scenario? Any tips if you haven't?

jh

 

[BlueBlackRed]

Well, don't completely force your way over theres. Some people resent that.

No, of course not every single time.
Go with about once per four sessions, then less often once they've adapted. Then just often enough so they don't forget with a fake will save added to mess with their heads.

 

[drothgery]

Basically, you introduced house rules that nerfed most of your players' characters far more than they nerfed the barbarian (fighters -- especially light fighters -- and rogues are extremely dependent on magic equipment; casters at 1/2 level can easily slide into irrelevance). And barbarians were already the best PHB class for dealing melee damage. Maybe a fighter/cleric multiclass could keep up in that scenario, but that's about it.

 

[ValhallaGH]

How do you 'nudge' your players away from tanks? It seems that every group I've ever run thinks they need a lug, tank character. As soon as they get one, they STOP thinking and having interesting combat actions and move back to "D&D mini's mentality."

Our campaign group has the situation now and of course the Bbn outshines the other PC's 10:1 on damage and to-hit and the other players just sit there and send him into combats..or feign interest while he's blasting away. THis is an extension to the "are barbarians overpowered" thread from earlier.

The Lower-Magic Campaign characters are:
Thuh' Barbarian
Swashbuckler-rogue
Swashbuckler-rogue
Ninja-Spellthief
Rogue-Warlock
Rogue

Solutions? THoughts?

Steal many of the combat options from Iron Heroes and then use them liberally with the bad guys until the party learns that they can move, trip, bullrush, disarm, knock down a tree and use it to crush a swarm, set the tree on fire and swing it at the hellwasp swarm until it disperses, leap off the cliff and kill the flying foe and then grab the cliffside before they hit the ground, and jump on the Wyvern's back and wrestle it into the ground before decapitating it with their greataxe.

Make your environments more interactive. Allow fistfuls of mud to be flung into faces and eyes, let them scoop up hot coals and thow them on the caster's robes setting the poor mage on fire, have lots of big stone pillars that can be shoved over with a strength check to crush/pin/delay the enemy and allow your players to do crazy things that you totally didn't plan for in the middle of a combat.

Tanking has it's place, and it is an important place, but to keep them from relying upon it you need to give them other options that are at least as good.

Good Luck.

Edit:

But I'm running Age of Worms

Think up ways for them to bypass/defeat encounters by using skill rather than bloody force. It takes a bit of effort on your part and creativity on theirs but that's what you're trying to get anyway.

 

[Hypersmurf]

The game I'm running at the moment, I pregenned all the PCs - four 7th level gestalt rogues.

A beguiler, a favoured soul, a monk, and a fighter/ranger. The average AC is around 15, I think, and the hit points average around 39 or 40. They're not tanks.

On the other hand, all four of them have +4d6 sneak attack.

They try to avoid combat, or to have minions to do the fighting... but when combat occurs, there's lots of tumble-to-flanking, battlefield control, visibility control, and the like going on.

The favoured soul's player usually sticks to martial clerics or greatsword-wielding rangers. The first time he got to hit someone in combat, he looked at the stats for his quickrazor, and for a moment, I thought he was going to cry. "One d four? I miss my greatsword..."

We pointed out that the opponent was flat-footed, and he got to add 4d6 to that. He perked up a bit at that point

-Hyp.

 

[Remathilis]

Want the heavy handed answer?

1.) Enforce the social-barbarian context; no one will talk with the outsider. Impose a -2 to -6 cha penalty when talking with the common folk and/or nobles.

2.) Ban heavy armor.

3.) Switch to Defense Bonus. (UA).

4.) Restrict the carrying of heavy weapons (greatswords) in cities. No one in the city of Thurndan can carry a blade longer than 8" (dagger). Punishment included confication, fines, or worse. (Tie this into the anti-outsider case if you want to harass only him).

5.) Include a weapon that grants bonuses to non-tankish things (+1 sword, +3 when using fient)

6.) Enforce cha-skills for social interaction. Or, look like you do. Make them roll, then role-play the discussion. Then, ignore the actual die result and role-play solely on the discussion. However, make it SEEM like the Dice was important; so that PCs will put something into social skills.

 

[icedrake]

I don't mean to sound snarky, but how in the world can you run Age of Worms as a low magic adventure without a lot of work retailering the adventure?

Personally, I think the problem might be that you placed the highly magically dependent adventure path into a low magic setting. The play testers did not mean for it to be used in such a manor. I don't know much about AoW, but I'ved heard a lot about Shackled City and am playing in Savage Tide and both of those are meat grinders for characters. People die all the time or have TPKs frequently in those adventures normally, with magic weapons/armor and full spellcasters. I just don't see how the characters survive to level up in a low magic version of the game, mosnters + cr + elc assume the players have access to resources that yours just don't have, such as wands, potions and wonderous items.

If you would like to play a non-dnd based system, I suggest blue rose or true 20. I've heard good things about those and they seem like good systems. I've recently started playing Warhammer Fantasy Role-play and that has an awesome awesome system involving percentages; only only roll d100s or 10s and have to meet or roll below your skill, which is a %. If you would like a solid no-magic or low magic game, try it. You'd have to work on mosters, but the system is very portable and ready to go out of the box.

Edit:
My other suggestion would be to try Iron Heroes or some other system that's not dnd, but a d20 system, designed around the idea of low or no magic. The d20/ogl forum has a lot of suggetions and threads on this subject, as does rpg.net.