Player Complaints About Pre-Gens

[Shazman]

So not only are the characters nearly useless they are in Ravenloft? I wasn't able to play on game day, because my FLGS didn't start theirs until 4, and that interfered with my regular bi-monthly Red Hand of Doom camapaign I'm playing in. Now I see that I didn't miss much. I think I could have had a blast with 20th level Dungeon Delve characters, but not these sorry pregens. I mean in Ravenloft of all places you will want a paladin with a high charisma! Sending beginning players into an almost certain TPK will not give begining players a positive gaming experience. It may even turn some off of D&D. "Hey want to have fun killing monsters and saving the day? Don't try D&D then, cause it's just about getting killed repeatedly." These pitiful characters are almost like negative PR for the game.

 

[SiderisAnon]

The wizard player was distraught that his character's only offensive spell was magic missile.

I think your wizard player has the same problem that a number of players I've dealt with lately have -- they get totally focused on certain spells and never work with anything outside of that "optimized" toolset.

Typically Prepared Spells: 0--acid splash, detect magic, prestidigitation,
read magic; 1st--color spray, magic missile, protection from evil, ray of enfeeblement; 2nd--false life, glitterdust, scourching ray.

I count acid splash, color spray, magic missle, ray of enfeeblement, and scourching ray all as offensive spells. The glitterdust spell proved critical in both of the rounds of the pregen module that I ran.

However, I will admit that giving the paladin such an average Charisma and so removing some of his special abilities really did lower the cool factor of the character. Since the whole point was to wow people into playing more (and therefore buying more books), I think WoTC dropped the ball on that one.



At my local gaming shop, we ran the module three times. I rant it twice, another DM once. There were a couple of characters dropped, but no total party kills. In fact, the first time I ran it, the party took the hellcat faster than they had any other encounter, dead by round two, because of a combination of tactics and good rolls. The second time I ran it, the party took out the wizard and his magma hurler with very little damage, thanks mostly to both NPCs blowing every saving throw, and then went on to take out the hellcat without bothering to collect the scrolls the module provided. (We were low on time, and they decided to skip the whole tomb encounter.)

Yes, there was a lot of PC blood on the floor, and without magic there would have been permanent deaths, but I do not think that the module was too tough or the characters not optimized enough. I believe that the players didn't look at their options.

Unfortunately, I have to agree that this is becoming the state of the players. They come into D&D and they want uber-items, walkthroughs, and cheat codes, just like they get in their video games. Even some of the gamers I know who have been at it for 20 years are starting to think this way, because of all of the video games they play.

I knew they days of my remaining a DM were limited when my players demanded to be able to hit the space button in the middle of a fight to pause the game so they could think. Seriously. At the table, live playing, six people. Five out of six absolutely demanded it. (Though, come to think of it, only one of those five is still in my group, so maybe there's still hope...)

 

[Mycanid]

I'm also an aberration, which I realize -- I'm the guy who'll take a character into the Tomb of Horrors for the fun of it, or who doesn't balk at starting naked with a chopped-off hand and a club and a loincloth in the bottom of a dungeon, because it sounds fun. Sure a heck beats watching a baseball game in the same time frame.

'Fraid you're not a LONE aberration Henry. I'm the same sort of player. Ahhh ... the days of the the one handed loincloth wearing club wielding pc's waking up in the dark ... I love em then and love em now!

 

[Brimshack]

I've never expected an optimized character, but I do like to have at least one viable tactic in each character's bag of tricks, something that will actually make them useful in most cases. If I can't conceive of my character as contributing anythign useful to a game I am going to get real tired of it real fast.

 

[Mycanid]

Well said all round, Psion. Gamers have it far too easy now. In my day..........

I don't agree that this came from OD&D though; I started gaming in 1977, and I'm pretty sure the munchkins invaded with AD&D. That's one of the reasons I stuck with the One True Red Book (at least, until I got the Rules Cyclopedia. That ruled our D&D gaming until Third Edition, but that's another story). In OD&D, I reckon powergamers played Elves, or not at all.

I put the latest batch of Munchkinitis down to computer gamers being introduced to the hobby, and WoTC pandering to their big, 3D-rendered explosive minds. Choice is good, but thinking that all choices are automatically available is bad. So is thinking that the only way to "win" is to have a stupidly powerful character. Computer games mentality, again.

Hmm ... well maybe you can say comp games can help contribute or catalyze such an approach, but there were plenty of the "monty hall" sort in the late 70's and early 80's too, when there just weren't a whole lotta those things around.

But then again, some people like to play in this way. They see challenges in optimized vs. optimized and the like. Others, perhaps, like the ... err ... "minimilist" methods of being challenged I guess? That is - the loinclothed club wielder image Henry articulated.

 

[Brimshack]

'Fraid you're not a LONE aberration Henry. I'm the same sort of player. Ahhh ... the days of the the one handed loincloth wearing club wielding pc's waking up in the dark ... I love em then and love em now!

Heh, I once started a campaign of mercenary assassins by dropping them all naked on an island. They were told that not only did they have to survive on their own, but they had 1 month to slaughter the local elf village or their boss would deem them inadequate and kill them and the elves together. (Okay, this was a campaign for the kindness challenged.) Anyway, I did enjoy seeing the strategies players had to come up with to handle the circumstances, and I liked seeing the shift in power as characters gained equiptment. Some characters who don't need much were critical for the first game or 2 (a little monster and a monk come to mind), but when we finally got our hands on a greatsword and some spell components, the power shifted to other characters.

 

[BryonD]

I'll join the Psion is right bandwagon for this thread.

D&D doesn't need to be about optimized characters. But those specific characters were an issue in their own right.

 

[Mark CMG]

D&D doesn't need to be about optimized characters. But those specific characters were an issue in their own right.

I think I might be missing the point, here (though it wouldn't be the first time). Some seem to be making a couple of points that are not necessarily linked; one being that making sure all of the players have fun is of ultimate importance and one that these particular pregens were not well made.

As to the fun goal, I don't think anyone disagrees, though some might differ on how best to achieve it.

I also don't think anyone would claim the PCs were well-made but there's more involved here, isn't there?

In regard to the fashioning of the PCs, no offense but this was being discussed weeks before the game day (almost two months ago). I think the best approach was to make some revisions before the actual day of the game and then make allowances for players who wished to make personal changes, but not to delay the game, overly, to achieve that end.

With the pregens available so far ahead of time online, and the adventure and pregens included with the kits available ahead of time from the stores, I guess I am just surprized to be reading complaints as if they were unexpected. I can understand it from some DMs who weren't allowed access to anything in advance (if your location was keeping things secret, for instance). Most of the complaints I am reading seem to come from people who were completely blindsided by the materials.

So, is this the case? Didn't DMs have advance warning when they looked over the material and what they might have tried to do to avoid the problems? Or did DMs just not get the materials in advance, at all, as far as those posting are concerned?

 

[BryonD]

I think I might be missing the point, here (though it wouldn't be the first time). Some seem to be making a couple of points that are not necessarily linked; one being that making sure all of the players have fun is of ultimate importance and one that these particular pregens were not well made.

I don't think I was disputing the second point so much as taken it for granted.

I agree that the two points do not need to be linked. But by my personal reading of the OP, they are in this specific case. People complaining about these PC was put up as the alternative to the desired goal of a group just having fun. IMO, these characters were sufficiently anti-optimized that it became a distraction.

As an aside, I think this is really a lot worse if you are talking about trying to get new players in the game. Which doesn't seem to be the case in the OP. But to give a new player a character that fails to showcase the game seems a bad idea. (For example the 10 CHR paladin who losses out on special abilities)

 

[Mark CMG]

I see what you mean and I don't disagree with anything you have said but . . .

But to give a new player a character that fails to showcase the game seems a bad idea.

. . . there was a whole lot of time between when the PCs were available and when the DMs put them into the hands of the players. WotC has to take responsibility for what they designed and handed the DMs, but I am reading complaints here and there from DMs, not just players, that seem to be putting all of this back on WotC and I cannot agree with that stance.