Player Problem, need advice

[robberbaron]

Try relying less on combat. Create a story involving subterfuge, diplomacy, etc.

Failing that, start a second game suited to MinMaxed combat wombats.
Or get him to run HIS style of game.

 

[DragonLancer]

Also, if you like a low-powered game, it's probably less hassle to choose a different set of rules. One of the most basic tasks any GM has upon deciding to run a campaign is choosing the rules that best fit his gaming style. It doesn't sound like D&D does the trick.

But we like D&D. Its been our favourite game since we first started roleplaying. Why change that?

A player can only ruin and disrupt your game if you allow him to. It seems to me that if you were handling things correctly, he'd either settle down and enjoy himself with the rest of the players, or get frustrated at the low power level and wander off to play somewhere else. Under no circumstances, unless you've made some big mistakes, should he be breaking your encounters or hurting your game.

Ok, then given what you know of the situation, how should I handle it? After all this time, Likuidice knows how we play, and should have settled down. I don’t see what else I can do really, which maintains the type of game we enjoy.

See - this really makes you sound like someone who just can't drop it. I've heard you say that he's willingly given over a character who was just too good, that his previous character died (which doesn't sound like the sort of thing that happens to a munchkin powergamer character in a normal level of game without some serious DM cheating) and that his current character is "not too bad".

The sorcerer character that I mentioned before was us testing out the new spells and third party rules, so it wasn’t what I would call a proper character and I can’t keep saying that “I don’t like the character please retire it.” That would be rather unfair.
In the current campaign everyone is 8th level, and he is playing a Minotaur Fighter/Psion/DragonSlayer. His deceased character was an elven ranger/rogue/fighter/duelist and he died when the party attempted to ambush a band of Githyanki Knights.

Currently, neither character is too bad. By that I mean they have not reached a point where there’s powers and feats cross that threshold. Give it a couple more levels and I fully expect him to start jumping ahead. Hopefully I will be proved wrong.

But you still expect that at any moment he's going to blow all the other characters away, and because of that, he's a munchkin powergamer and you hate his play style.

Ok, once more… I do not hate his play style. It just does not fit how the rest of the group plays.

So far I've heard a total of ONE incident where the player has argued against you, and the only reason that happened is because you made the mistake of gloating. And don't tell me you didn't - why else would you say "you know - you missed that spot check by 1 point! Because I added a situational modifier!"

Maybe not in so many words, but it certainly sounds like that's the information you gave him. There was simply no reason to tell him why he failed his check, or how much he failed it by unless you were trying to provoke some form of response. Did it make you feel good to annoy him?

I don’t have all day to type through all the rules/calling’s that he has argued with. Most of them are when I have made a judgement call based on in game situations, and I get hassle from him over it.

And I didn’t gloat. You really have a bad impression of me for some reason. As a group, we are open enough to discuss such things following a gaming session. I didn’t through that particular incident in his face, and I resent that implication quite frankly.

Further - if you're discussing the mechanics, then why shouldn't he? You already held up the game to gloat - why shouldn't he be allowed to complain about your methods?

If he wants to, please let him. So far he has never complained about my methods – at least not to my knowledge. If he has a complaint (if any of my players have a complaint) then he should bring it to me. But even during the various discussions we have had over this, he has never raised any complaint about how we play the game or anything I have done.

Sorry DragonLancer, but if you genuinely are innocent of the above charges, then you're doing a really bad job of presenting yourself.

I’ve never been good at explaining things over messageboards, but I’m sure that you can understand what I’m trying to say.

I can almost guarantee that DragonLancer won't be able to drop the issue.

What? Because I’m interested in what people have to say, and because everyone’s posts are helpful and insightful. I think your’re being a little harsh.

 

[Tessarael]

[..] your characters often get very powerful, your cleric [..], who was regularly pulling off over 100 points of damage with each hit, for example.

The reason your current character is behind on damage dealing is because you have taken 3 classes and a PrC, but that doesn’t stop you pulling off some nice damage. Both K’aros (Minotaur Fighter/Barbarian) and Servos (Gnome Barbarian/Rogue) are only dual class.

Unfortunately, Clerics and Wizards can sometimes be better combat tanks that the characters (e.g. Fighters) built for that purpose. This is a problem with the 3E and 3.5E rules as written. My suggestion is to allow/use the buff spells on the party tanks, rather than just personally.

In our campaign we have an Eldritch Knight who buffs himself mostly. The result was that another Fighter-type character died. This is where both characters should have been buffed, and it was a mistake by the Eldritch Knight to not help buff fellow party members. In that sense, it is important to be a team player and help everyone, rather than outshining.

So sounds like the Cleric doing 100 damage/attack was a problem. Two fixes: (a) allow these buffs to apply to the party tanks so they can shine too (b) fix the rule mechanics that allow too much damage.

Ok, getting back to the case in hand ... sounds like the current character isn't overly powerful. So maybe you're prejudging unfairly. The Minotaur Fighter/Barbarian and the Dragon Slayer will probably be the tanks of the party. The Gnomish Barbarian/Rogue will be useful when flanking, but not as good. This should be fine.

Frankly, if a party tank was doing say on the order of 200 damage/round at around 12th-15th level it would be high, but not unplayable. Keep in mind that they're not usually taking down more than one or two opponents per round, and that the party's spellcasters are just as effective (e.g. Hold Person takes out one opponent, Dominate is even better).

Other stuff ... tweaking an encounter is entirely reasonable. He has no right to complain that the Draconians were hard to spot. If this happened all the time, or his character never got the chance to shine, then he would have a right to complain.

I guess many players don't come from a background where they are playing a home brew system or game where the DM makes lots of decisions on the fly. I do come from that background: as a DM I'll make the rules fit where they should and I'll substantially tweak encounters (Draconians mahahaha - you really think they'll be the standard Monster Manual entry that you use metagame knowledge for???). I don't want to railroad PCs or make rules which muck up their characters, but by the same token I don't want the same tweaked combination to work in every encounter. If that happens, change the encounters or fix the rules that allow the tweaking (e.g. disallow the Improved Trip feat - not that I have needed to do this). By the same token, if the PCs have the appropriate skills/abilities, they should be able to shine (e.g. If he makes his Knowledge roll for info on the Draconians I would give him some info on the non-standard version).

To give a brief example along these lines when I was DM recently ... the players encountered an enemy spellcaster who cast a spell they could not recognize with a high Spellcraft roll. I did tell them that it was most probably a unique spell, and allowed them to figure out some info about it. (It was indeed an entirely unique spell to that spellcaster that they could not possibly have seen before - using the Unique Spell feat in Arcana Unearthed.) I think one of the players was trying to go exactly by the rules and wasn't used to my DM style, or things that might be outside the rules he was expecting in a metagame sense.

The most important thing is to have fun ... sit down, sort it out so everyone has their share of the spotlight and are happy.

 

[Tessarael]

Re: Rules calls

Players should not be arguing about rules calls in session. At most it should be a one sentence question, the DM rules, then get on with it. You should welcome him to discuss them with you out of the game sessions. Also, you may find it helpful to put down a list of house rules (e.g. on a web page), for both you and your players to keep track of them - this has helped a lot in our campaign.

I do regularly discuss the rules and so forth with my DM and others. Sometimes, no doubt, it wearies them - but we have a separate mailing list for it, and they can ignore it when they don't want to hear my latest pondering on the rules. Other times they happily agree with a suggestion, or the DM implements a rule change or whatever ... sometimes I'm right, and sometimes I'm wrong, but it's important not to hold up the game sessions with a rules argument.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Smell the Coffee!

After my comment:

Likudice isn't out to wreck your campaign. Remember, you let him design a combat monster for your campaign. If he has to keep it muzzled because every encounter is solved by diplomacy, its like he wasted his time designing that PC.

Dragonlancer wrote (over several posts):

He’s only using feats from the 3.5 PHB and one or two from the XPH. In that instance I’m not going to stop him using feats that I have said are fine, and isn’t the problem. He can play a combat character but don’t go ridiculous with it. As it is, he may as well be playing his own game.

We're not jealous of it, and I honestly don't know where you have got that idea from.

As I keep saying, playing characters that can pull that off isn't what we want to play, and we don't want to play scenarios based around playing like that. Simple enough as I can see.

Emphasis Mine

You're the DM. The buck stops at your desk. YOU let him design a combat intensive PC in a role-play heavy campaign. Either you apparently weren't ready for the consequences-the friction that could and did cause, or you didn't warn him about the predominant play style of the campaign.

Either way, its a serious error on your part. You cannot expect him to play his PC less than optimally just because the other PCs aren't as good in combat as he is. That's nonsense.

I understand you two are freinds, and that may have caused you to gloss over the possibility of conflict here, but now you're fully aware of it. Everything you've posted here indicates to me that you don't like his PC and what it does in your campaign. Despite your protestation, those quotes abvove tell me the PC and the campaign are currently ill-suited to each other. You either need to feed the combat monster a little more or let Likudice design a new PC that is more campaign appropriate.

Likudice, on the other hand, shouldn't question stuff in game unless its a genuine point of controversy. Your word should be final.

He also shouldn't take it personally if there isn't a combat cookie tossed in his direction EVERY session. D&D isn't all about combat. If that's what he wants, he should play Chainmail, Confrontation, or some such.

 

[Saeviomagy]

What? Because I’m interested in what people have to say, and because everyone’s posts are helpful and insightful. I think your’re being a little harsh.

Nope - because your previous posts are all "3 characters ago, the player created a character that was too powerful, so he's obviously got a playstyle which doesn't match ours". You're making it a focus of your arguement. Whenever you bring it up I hear "I'm someone who won't forgive or forget".

And since we've heard the badly-supported "character too good" arguement a few times, and only one instance - the latest instance - of him argueing with a ruling, and that in a way that was either
a) immediately after the combat, in the middle of a session - IOW, you were breaking the session to tell them how he failed to make a roll, not him.

b) out of the game anyway, and therefore not deleterious to the game.

I'm putting together a picture of someone who's out looking for justification. I'm sitting here and I'm seeing a case that's so badly put together that it has to be concealing something. In other words, because of your lack of supporting evidence, your concentration on events which support your case, but appear to me to be less than relevant and your quite fuzzy point, I'm seeing heavy bias. Unsurprisingly, I therefore believe you to be an evasive and deceitful character and someone I cannot agree with.

If you want me to agree with you, make a convincing case.

 

[The Gnomish Tinkerer]

Hi all,

I am one of the players who is involved in the current campaign that DragonLancer is running. The complaints that I and the other players have with regards to Likeudice are simple....

1 - Every character is the same. Same old high powered hack and slash....we have been playing for a few years and it get's tireing.

2 - Everything is black and white. There are no possibles with him......he will argue the ruling to he is blue in the face.

3 - No concept of the word roleplaying.

This is not the first DM/GM the player concerned has pee'd off and my guess is it won't be the last.

At the end of the day DragonLancer was asking for advice on a problematic player.....which in my view has nowbegun spiraling out of control from the replys. There are references to showing evidence etc and some cutting remarks. This is a messageboard and not the The Spanish Inquisition.

 

[tonym]

...At the end of the day DragonLancer was asking for advice on a problematic player.....which in my view has nowbegun spiraling out of control from the replys. There are references to showing evidence etc and some cutting remarks. This is a messageboard and not the The Spanish Inquisition.

Thanks for posting, Gnomish Tinkerer.

Your DM, DragonLancer, has certainly been a shining example of diplomacy and courtesy in the face of the many well-meaning, passionate posts defending the underdog-Player. He must be a great DM to keep his cool like that.

Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, assuming anybody is right or wrong (which nobody may be)....if I was the Player, I would probably quit before I was voted out.

Tony

 

[DragonLancer]

Your DM, DragonLancer, has certainly been a shining example of diplomacy and courtesy in the face of the many well-meaning, passionate posts defending the underdog-Player. He must be a great DM to keep his cool like that.

Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, assuming anybody is right or wrong (which nobody may be)....if I was the Player, I would probably quit before I was voted out.

Tony

I don't think there is a right or wrong here. How Likuidice plays is great for some groups, just not ours, and I'm sure my DMing style would not suit many of the posters of these boards.

I originally posted on here just to get some third person views on the situation that we have, and they have been good and bad, insightful and certainly food for thought.

I don't want this to go on and on, so I shall take what everyone has posted and see if we finally sort something out between the group and likuidice. Thankyou all for what you have had to say.

This is a messageboard and not the The Spanish Inquisition.

No one suspects the Spanish Inquisition...

 

[res]

Hi all,

I am one of the players who is involved in the current campaign that DragonLancer is running. The complaints that I and the other players have with regards to Likeudice are simple....

1 - Every character is the same. Same old high powered hack and slash....we have been playing for a few years and it get's tireing.

2 - Everything is black and white. There are no possibles with him......he will argue the ruling to he is blue in the face.

3 - No concept of the word roleplaying.

This is not the first DM/GM the player concerned has pee'd off and my guess is it won't be the last.

At the end of the day DragonLancer was asking for advice on a problematic player.....which in my view has nowbegun spiraling out of control from the replys. There are references to showing evidence etc and some cutting remarks. This is a messageboard and not the The Spanish Inquisition.

I was hopeing to hear from someone else in this group, right now there are two points of view and some more are a help to clear things up.

I've known many people who fall under the 3 complaints you have, each seperatly though. I can usually live with these people, but someone with all 3 of these traits would make me want to rip my hair out.

It looks like Likeudice's days with the group are numbered. If the rest of the group feels the same way that you do about him then I can't really see any way that he can stay in the game.