How do you tell a fellow player he can't pick a particular feat for his PC?

[pawsplay]

I can think of reasons why someone would pick Animal Affinity and Acrobatic. One good reason would be if you want minor abilities in those areas, but they aren't class skills. Has he maxed out his mage skills like a good little Napalm Merlin? If so, I think he gets a pass.

Now, another possibility is that he has no idea who his character is. You're thinking "suboptimal," but maybe the problem is that his character concept is too difuse. He just pictured his guy doing a back flip on a pony and went with it. I've seen this most in newer players, but I've also known a few old hands who just take pleasure in doing very strange things. Like the halfling cleric with Improved Unarmed Strike and profession (bartender), a superhero who gained his powers in a "freak textile accident," or a human barbarian purposefully knocked off of Shee-Ra. Or that guy on wizards.com who wanted help on optimizing a "dwarf wizard bard oh and I heard Tumble was good. I'd like to be good at fireballs and melee."

It's also a possibility the player would like to play a trick rider, and got drafted, guilt-tripped, or distracted by shiny books into playing a spellcaster.

 

[Dross]

Have you asked him why?

This is my thought.

Many PrCs have seemingly strange prereqs. The player may simply be looking to take one that the OP is not familiar with.

A "Are you sure? What are you trying to do? Then maybe this feat would help" should be the most forceful way of telling someone not to take a feet.

Or maybe it is a difference in playing styles (without reference to anyone in particular): Munchkin v Role-player does not a good group make without lots of effort.

 

[DerHauptman]

When this lackluster wizard can't hold up his share of the responsibility in the Field / Dungeon, the whole party suffers. Do you expect foes to get weaker when PCs make poor build choices? A player should not feel pressure to min-max /optimize, but basically throwing away feats is tantamount to trying to trying to kill your own party. It would be like a firefighter activly trying, so to speak, to gain 80 pounds of fat.

OUT OF CHARACTER...

Who decides what makes a feat wasted - you Frank...?

Who made you the authority? There are no right or wrong choices and player character feats, are not party assets.

I could give a %$#@ if you, Driddle or anyone else at the table liked my feat choices.

It's no one else's business.


IN CHARACTER...

Feat what? There are no feats only things a guy is good at. There is a good IC reason that can be made for almost any feat choice - optimal, sub-optimal, average, made-up, RAW, core, broken or unbroken etc.

 

[haakon1]

You don't.

You can certainly tell him you think it's a bad idea, and suggest he do otherwise. But the only person at the table with the right to disallow options is the DM, and even that right is subject to the Player's Veto (i.e. the right to walk away from the table).

Agreed. Even as a DM, that's the approach I'd take (advice, not orders) unless it was something I had banned for all characters.

People play the game for fun. If it's fun for the player to have a "not optimized" character, that's fine.

 

[TheEvil]

try to tell that to all the people who get their undies all in a bunch because "class X" is overpowered and ruining their game. <rolleyes>

To be honest, I suspect their real problem is a player hogging the spotlight and they are taking it out on the poor class.
I further suspect most people will agree that a player hogging the spotlight is irritating pretty much however they do it, be it min-maxing or simply monopolizing the GM with minor RP.

 

[billd91]

Yes, it's what you do with the feat that matters. But there is no way that, overall, in anything coming close to being close to possibly being a typical campaign, SF (Craft(basketweaving)) will come into play in any way to make you "do something with it" that matters. Heck, even in your example,.. They had a contract to deliver the baskets, not -make- them. And if they have holes, a cleric who can cast Mending is better off. And even if it -does- work out that way, well ok, that was for that one delivery.

In a fairly typical OA campaign I was running, one PC invested a LOT of effort into his cooking skills. And I do mean a lot of effort. He was using his cooking skills as his cover for the more nefarious things he was doing and eventually got close enough to assassinate the retired emperor.
Skill focus in the craft skill may not be that useful adventuring, but it gives the character something to do in his down-time and not suck at it. Including integrating himself into a particular town or castle setting so he and his friends can have a stable base of operations, a patron who will look out for him, etc.
So what if adventures aren't based around it. You can base the events going on outside of dungeon-crawling around it.

 

[wayne62682]

One additional point: If this character is weaker than the rest of the party.. should a good DM not take that into consideration when designing his adventures? Not everyone likes to min/max, some people enjoy the "flavor" of picking what we consider useless feats because it fits their character.. the DM should consider the entire party when he writes up an encounter so the rest of the party doesn't suffer that much.

 

[Engilbrand]

I would like to point out, again, that the character in question is NOT USING HIS FEAT! At some point, the discussion became something else entirely. The character hasn't done anything with it and hasn't put any other ranks in it. He just took a feat and let it atrophy. Now he's planning to take another one that he won't use. Can SF Basketweaving or Cooking be good? Ummmm.... sure. Some people have talked about the great ways that these crappy feats have helped. I say crappy because they are about 99.99% of the time. But some people can use them. They do something extra nifty for flavor AND keep right with it. The player in question is not. Much like the person who asked about a fighter taking Quicken Spell, and player is wasting a precious feat on something worthless TO THE CHARACTER! Whether or not Driddle did or didn't say something else in another place doesn't matter. If the barbarian in my group said, "Hey, I can't wait to hit level 3. I'm going to take Silent Spell! Duh...... Ooga!" I would tell him to stop being an idiot. It's a complete waste. "But if it's fun for the player...." Ok. Fine. Then it's fun for me to kill other players while they're asleep. "Tee hee hee! Wow, guys! I'm really enjoying this game. Isn't that great!?"



NO!

 

[Barak]

In a fairly typical OA campaign I was running, one PC invested a LOT of effort into his cooking skills. And I do mean a lot of effort. He was using his cooking skills as his cover for the more nefarious things he was doing and eventually got close enough to assassinate the retired emperor.
Skill focus in the craft skill may not be that useful adventuring, but it gives the character something to do in his down-time and not suck at it. Including integrating himself into a particular town or castle setting so he and his friends can have a stable base of operations, a patron who will look out for him, etc.
So what if adventures aren't based around it. You can base the events going on outside of dungeon-crawling around it.

You're missing the point. The thing isn't that SF (Craft(basketweaving)) isn't useful at all. That wasn't the question, or the point to be made. What was said was that all feats are equal or something to that effect, which is just flat-wrong in context. The point I was making is that not all feats are as useful to everybody all the time, no matter how they use them. Take my 12th level fighter who takes Quicken Spell in a campaign that won't go epic, if you really like the feat SF (Craft(basketweaving)).

And on that, I'm done talking about that subject. And thanks, In Vino Veritas, for ending the madness!

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

One additional point: If this character is weaker than the rest of the party.. should a good DM not take that into consideration when designing his adventures? Not everyone likes to min/max, some people enjoy the "flavor" of picking what we consider useless feats because it fits their character.. the DM should consider the entire party when he writes up an encounter so the rest of the party doesn't suffer that much.

I kind of depends. If I have a party with 4 well honed killing machines and one guy with "flavor" who is a liability in combat, I'm gong to design for the bulk of the part to challange them. IF they are all, or the majority at least, less than optimal then of course I'll take that into consideration. But if I'm running a combat heavy game and they all decide to play master rumormongers or basketweavers they they are most likely going to be part of a TPK.

Of course people who want to play a rumormonger probably shouldn't play in games I run to begin with, not my style of game you see.