Player Complaints About Pre-Gens

[cincinnati reds]

Sure a heck beats watching a baseball game in the same time frame.

Waitasec....

 

[Cam Banks]

I created the stats for Raistlin in the various Sovereign Press Dragonlance products in which he appears, including the recently released Dragons of Autumn (where he's one of the pregens). Nothing says fan love like being told that "your Raistlin build is totally sub-par, did you not check out the Optimization Boards before you wrote him up?"

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Psion]

I created the stats for Raistlin in the various Sovereign Press Dragonlance products in which he appears, including the recently released Dragons of Autumn (where he's one of the pregens). Nothing says fan love like being told that "your Raistlin build is totally sub-par, did you not check out the Optimization Boards before you wrote him up?"

The "optimization boards", home of pun pun and hulking hurler builds, are not a good measure of "par".

 

[Nadaka]

from what I have heard here and on the WotC message boards, 3/4 or more of the games ended in TPK's. While there were a few mechanical errors (like a fighter with a 2 handed axe and a shield), and some extremely poor design decisions (a paladin with a charisma of 10), and some decidedly bad selections (everyone has dodge, spell choice for memorization), the biggest problem seems to be that the adventure itself was not engineered to account for the characters abilities (and inabilities).

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Sadly, the reality is that many people don't realise that "no, you can't" doesn't always reduce fun, and "yes, you can" doesn't always increase it. So, very often, they find themselves working against their own fun.

Someone should sig the hell out of this one.

It's pretty much how I feel about alot of gamers in general and one of the main thing that has really started to turn me off to the gaming community at large.

 

[Mark CMG]

I think letting the players enjoy themselves is the primary goal of the game

I've found that once the game is in progress, everyone at the table can begin to enjoy themself. That said, we made adjustments to the pregens for the Worldwide D&D Game Day prior to the day, to correct the obvious mistakes, although even we missed one or two given the time to prepare was short. However, when it comes down to a choice of whether to jump right in so everyone is playing, or delay the game so that a couple of people can adjust their characters further, I've found the former to be the better way to go. It's easy enough to make a couple of concessions along the way to offset what someone might perceive as a pregen deficiency or two.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I've been lucky. I've only ever been in one bad gameday-type game, and that was an 'official' one at GenCon. For the most part, the people I've played with and DM'd for have understood the cardinal rule of gamedays -- go with the flow.

Nothing screws things up worse than having somebody think that it all has to be about them, whether its drama queens that hog the spotlight, rules-lawyers that feel the need to demonstrate their mastery, or munchkins out to 'win'.

That said, a paladin with a 10 CHA is either really dumb or a major oversight. I hope it was the latter.

 

[Shade]

I guess I'm a spoiled brat too, then, because I would have wanted to change the characters too.

On the DM side of the screen, I would have let them. I think letting the players enjoy themselves is the primary goal of the game, not DM ego gratification.

What he said.

 

[IceFractal]

There's a difference between "super optimized" and "fully functional" characters - these didn't even sound like the latter. I mean, come on, a Paladin who can't even use most of the Paladin abilities? Why not just have a LG Fighter then? I can think of several reasons to use characters like these, but none apply:

1) Background Roleplaying - but the characters had no background and the module was pretty much just combat and the like.
2) Challenge - while trying to survive a dungeon with commoners can be a fun challenge for experienced players, I don't think it's a good way to introduce new people to D&D.
3) Tailored to the Adventure - But they weren't, as the Rogue can attest.

So frankly, it seems like these characters were just not well designed. And while redoing them could take time from the adventure, just doing some minor changes like feat or spell swaps would only take a couple minutes.

 

[Wik]

Wasn't it a ravenloft theme? I think playing butt-useless characters is sort of a staple of the horror genre...