My Brawler Fighter and how fellow players complain

[Dannyalcatraz]

The Fighter certainly wouldn't have "Huh, I wonder how my picking up this rock and throwing it at the skeleton would change the mood of this adventure," on his mind in the middle of a fight.

Oh, I don't know- sounds like RP of an introspective, aesthetically minded warrior...a "Death Artist," perhaps.

"I killed your father with my axe, I killed your brother with a stone. Thanatiope, the Muse of Death, has inspired me to complete your family's triptych of woe by slaying you with...a SHRUBBERY!"

 

[Colmarr]

Reading between the lines here, I see three possibilities:

1. the DM really is the sort of 'wilting flower' that everyone is criticising him for being; or
2. the OP is being bombastic and difficult about being denied 2-4 points worth of hit points damage, and rather than resolve the issue like an adult by allowing the DM to make the call at the table and then discuss it privately afterwards, he chose to disrupt the game by arguing the point at the table and then continue to argument publically afterward.
3. somewhere in between.

If I were the DM, and a player acted in accordance with #2 - even if my ruling was wrong - I don't think I'd react very kindly to it either.

As others have suggested, I think there's more context to this story. A comment like "Adam-ing" certainly suggests to me an ongoing issue with rules lawyering.

 

[Mummolus]

Reading between the lines here, I see three possibilities:

1. the DM really is the sort of 'wilting flower' that everyone is criticising him for being; or
2. the OP is being bombastic and difficult about being denied 2-4 points worth of hit points damage, and rather than resolve the issue like an adult by allowing the DM to make the call at the table and then discuss it privately afterwards, he chose to disrupt the game by arguing the point at the table and then continue to argument publically afterward.
3. somewhere in between.

If I were the DM, and a player acted in accordance with #2 - even if my ruling was wrong - I don't think I'd react very kindly to it either.

As others have suggested, I think there's more context to this story. A comment like "Adam-ing" certainly suggests to me an ongoing issue with rules lawyering.

It doesn't seem to have been the actual DM who complained, though, but one of the other players.

To the OP:
I'm curious as to whether your fighter consistently outperforms the other characters on the board, specifically that of the person who complained? We had an issue like this once, where someone was upset because they felt like they were under-performing compared to the rest of the group and kept lashing out in strange ways. It took a while to figure out what was going on and some gentle nudging, but once it was resolved things ran smoothly.

 

[fba827]

i have not read all of this thread, so i apologize if i'm bringing up something that's already been said.

but with reference to doing as much damage with a rock as a dagger, well the key difference between the two is not so much the damage but the the weapon proficiency bonus... as in, improvised weapons have none and therefore there is a greater chance of actually doing 0 damage with the rock than there is with the dagger. It only happened that given your PC's attributes, he happened to be able to hit and therefore probably chucked the fist-sized rock at the target's head/crotch/spine/anywhere

and thrown rocks hurt. a lot.

try it as an experiment with two tomatoes - cut one with a knife and the other smash with a rock... assuming you didn't find some pebble size rock and instead used something fist sized, chances are you'll end up with the same amount of tomato guts spread across your kitchen counter.... the difference? the rock has to hit more central to actually do more damage while the knife can cut most anywhere -- sure, it's not a perfect experiment, but it's kind of sort of close...


so the complainer may be focusing on the amount of damage that the dice said you did. But looking at actual probabilities, he would see that the chance of you doing any damage at all is lower, thus (in some ways) accounting for the rock not being as effective as a weapon.

all that being said, make sure you are pursuing this with your group for the right reason... pick your fights and all that.
are you pursuing this with them because the freedom to do stuff by the rules vs. dm adjudication is important to your enjoyment of the game?
or are you pursuing this for the sake of showing the group that you are right?

if it's the later, well, you may be picking this fight for the wrong reason and it will only serve to make people unhappy to game with you.
conversely, if you're having this discussion with them for the sake of the former reason, well, know that at some point you'll have to accept the ruling and either move on or leave the group (if you keep pushing it beyond a tolerable amount then you'll turn in to "that guy" that the group talks about years from now that bothered them and wouldn't let the topic go)

 

[Lo-Kag]

WOW

I really wasn't expecting this thread to go so far!
My fellow players and I talked and, to put simply, this has gone too far. We talked and worked out our differences in opinions and moved on.

In alot of ways I've really gone too far in posting personal emails and names on the internet and for that, I feel really bad.

Thanks to everyone for posting your opinions and such.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Great, now you've got me waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Dear Posters:

You have been warned time and time again: you are not to agree with each other, no matter how tempting it may be to do so when you are all making sense. ENWorld will have no chance of surviving in this rough and tumble age of Lady Gaga and Michele Bachmann if we allow our non-stop, over-the-top, hop-on-pop bickering to be interrupted.

So knock it off. We have enough banhammers for all of you -- and trust me, the banhammer ain't no improvised weapon!

Sincerely,

The Modulators

 

[DracoSuave]

So knock it off. We have enough banhammers for all of you -- and trust me, the banhammer ain't no improvised weapon!

I concur. This is a reasonable position.

 

[Herschel]

I concur. This is a reasonable position.

Reasonable posts about reasonable ideas shall not be tolerated. You, sir, shall not receive your Edition War Commemorative Tote bag.

 

[DracoSuave]

Reasonable posts about reasonable ideas shall not be tolerated. You, sir, shall not receive your Edition War Commemorative Tote bag.

This is a fair way to address the issue.

 

[Bagpuss]

You said "To Mark someone you have to at least appear as a threat in my opinion." Even if the Fighter is temporarily unable to reach his opponent, that doesn't make him not-a-threat, suddenly. He is still threatening, in the sense that in about six seconds he will be bearing down on you with an axe.

If that is the case I might allow it. But to routinely carry around a bunch of pebbles, rather than say several daggers, just to get a Mark at range seems a little daft. Further more I know it would in time annoy the hell out of most the players at my table. First because it would be a stupidly sub-optimal action and thus could lead to the party getting killed, and second, because really in a fight are you going to be more bothered by a pebble thrown by some fool across the battlefield or the rogue trying to stick a knife in your ribs from right in front of you.

I might allow pebble chucking as a daily or even and encounter at a push (IE: The conditions were just right for something as benign as a tap from a pebble to distract an enemy in mortal danger). But more frequently than that it would suspend my disbelief and spoil the game.

There are a number of attacks in D&D which don't involve dealing damage. Those can still mark. Because marking a target isn't a function of dealing damage to that target. If that were the case, the Fighter's mark ability would read something like, "You apply your mark whenever you deal damage with an attack to an enemy."

Fine if you use your pebble for one of those attacks, because they normally describe in what why you are marking without dealing damage, and normally they are encounters or daily powers.

Again, making it more difficult for your enemy to hit anyone but you can be accomplished in any number of ways. Injuring your enemy is only one of them, and it's narrow-minded to use that sort of justification for preventing a player from doing something that is both plausible and well within the rules.

Right but I think most people have a limit to what they will accept, for example it might seem a great idea for you to play a character that is a court jester that only ever wacks people with a pig's bladder on a stick, doing no damage but claiming to do the fighter's mark because the rules allow him.

But I think the rest of the players would pretty quickly get annoyed with this character, and as a DM I wouldn't allow it for that reason, even if it was within the rules.

Just to be clear the odd pebble being chucked, to get a mark I don't have a problem with, carrying round bags of pebbles I would. For lots of reasons even if it is technically possible in the rules.