Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
A SSotM appears to be perfectly legal on a staff (or any other weapliment).
Compendium said:
Powerplayers
- Thread starter Reffy
- Start date
Having a character with overwhelming OCD might be fun too.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Sounds to me like A is an instigator, B is maybe a thinker, and C is something of a power gamer. Not that those designations often fit exactly, but they have different agendas. C wants to play charopped hard mode higher level play, B probably doesn't care one way or the other, and A likes to mess around (and again probably doesn't care and may well just like to fiddle with making oddball characters, not super effective ones).
You'll have to give it some thought as far as making sure there are elements in there for each of them to latch onto. At least C seems to also have a penchant for world detail, so maybe you can engage that aspect of play with him more and he'll spend less time worrying about how combat optimized people are.
You'll have to give it some thought as far as making sure there are elements in there for each of them to latch onto. At least C seems to also have a penchant for world detail, so maybe you can engage that aspect of play with him more and he'll spend less time worrying about how combat optimized people are.
Raistlin: He's asking for realism, only when it affects him. If it didn't affect his character, he wouldn't bother with it.
You wouldn't bother with it if I said to you, that you can't use that shard or a shard. Because you realize that you can still have fun without that shard, it's not a big deal, correct?
It's exhausting for me, in my current condition, to have this discussions.
In short, I have breathing problems, waiting for surgery. It's not a big thing, but I'm constantly tired > which leads to headaches > overreacting > calling him a scrubb.
I'm not happy with my behavior but I'm trying to do the best I can.
We all agreed on starting a new lv1 campaign, player C likes the idea a bit less, but he just wants to play. He asked if he could start with a lv5 magic item, which isn't helping my headache get away.
Anyway, I've learned a lot from you all, much obliged. How do I give xp to everyone that has commented in this topic?
You wouldn't bother with it if I said to you, that you can't use that shard or a shard. Because you realize that you can still have fun without that shard, it's not a big deal, correct?
It's exhausting for me, in my current condition, to have this discussions.
In short, I have breathing problems, waiting for surgery. It's not a big thing, but I'm constantly tired > which leads to headaches > overreacting > calling him a scrubb.
I'm not happy with my behavior but I'm trying to do the best I can.
We all agreed on starting a new lv1 campaign, player C likes the idea a bit less, but he just wants to play. He asked if he could start with a lv5 magic item, which isn't helping my headache get away.
Anyway, I've learned a lot from you all, much obliged. How do I give xp to everyone that has commented in this topic?
Mapache
Explorer
Character C as posted really seems to be about where characters are intended to be, mechanically-speaking. Of all the names to use to refer to him, "Scrubb" seems the most erroneous. In gaming terms, a scrub is a player who is not good at a game and who chooses not to get better while complaining about the game. While bad players may not know about or may not be able to execute good tactics, scrubs are aware of these tactics but dislike them for other reasons and will deride them as "cheap", complain that they're ruining the game, and lobby to ban them. That is, a scrub is a player who is held back by a mental set of house rules and who gets mad when other players do not subscribe to this set of house rules but rather the rules of the game as written. In particular, scrubs seem to dislike second-level tactics that are specifically there to counter basic moves, such as counterspells in Magic: the Gathering or throws in fighting games. The scrub has a pre-set gameplan in mind that they feel should win, and gets mad when the opponent disrupts that gameplan, as opposed to learning how to counter or avoid that disruption.
Also, Wardens are so overpowered that they're almost as good as Fighters.
Also, Wardens are so overpowered that they're almost as good as Fighters.
If I were you Mr OP, I would:
1. Start a new campaign at 1st level. Up to ca 3rd level is ok for more experienced DMs, and might be ok for you, but for a new DM I think it's best to begin at the beginning.
2. Limit player character sources to books you own and are comfortable with. Currently that means the PHB. I recommend using the PHB errata document, which is downloadable from wizards.com.
3. Optionally you may wish to purchase, read, & subsequently allow some additional player sourcebooks. Good choices include the Player's Handbook 2 and the two Essentials 'Heroes of' books. However the more you allow the more you will need to read & understand, so I think you may be best off starting with PHB only and gradually incorporating more books as the game progresses.
4. Optionally, get yourself a monster source other than Adventure Tools. I recommend the Monster Vault, which comes with lots of nice counters, and includes pretty well all the real classic monsters. Be aware that MV monsters tend to be a lot nastier than those in the original 4e Monster Manual.
5. Remember you're in charge, not player C.
1. Start a new campaign at 1st level. Up to ca 3rd level is ok for more experienced DMs, and might be ok for you, but for a new DM I think it's best to begin at the beginning.
2. Limit player character sources to books you own and are comfortable with. Currently that means the PHB. I recommend using the PHB errata document, which is downloadable from wizards.com.
3. Optionally you may wish to purchase, read, & subsequently allow some additional player sourcebooks. Good choices include the Player's Handbook 2 and the two Essentials 'Heroes of' books. However the more you allow the more you will need to read & understand, so I think you may be best off starting with PHB only and gradually incorporating more books as the game progresses.
4. Optionally, get yourself a monster source other than Adventure Tools. I recommend the Monster Vault, which comes with lots of nice counters, and includes pretty well all the real classic monsters. Be aware that MV monsters tend to be a lot nastier than those in the original 4e Monster Manual.
5. Remember you're in charge, not player C.
First, I'm sorry to hear about your difficulties. I hope everything turns out ok.
As for the realism, it isn't really about what I would or wouldn't care about because I am not the player in question. The point here is that there is a category of player that wants to make things as realistic as possible. These players will naturally gravitate toward those issues that affect them as they are the ones that they are thinking about. As a player, I'm rarely going to be thinking about how a DM should rule on a hypothetical situation concerning another player or class. I don't even know if that particular action is being contemplated. More to the point, it does appear from the text quoted a few posts ago that the shard does in fact work with the staff.
As for the level 5 magic item, I do agree that this is a bit much to ask for at gen. I certainly would never expect it. I might; however, ask the DM if he likes the idea of player wish lists. Some DMs love them, others hate them.
As for XP, click on the "thumb's up" symbol on a post that you want to give XP to. Its in the lower left under the poster's name.
RLBURNSIDE
First Post
wow
Bob, I thought you were my old friend from high school until I read the last line there. We started 4e when it came out as well for two years, through heroic tier (it took forever, it seemed. and we played every week), and now I play Pathfinder after our campaign sort of dissolved in a huff. So I can tell you from the other side of that equation. If the other players are bad at math or abstract reasoning or even missing basic understanding of elementary statistics, that is TOO BAD for them. This is 4e, that's the way it works. Don't like it? Play a different system. Make the encounters scaled tougher so the laggards will have to re-invest. Play some NPCs of the same classes as the players who can teach them how to use their powers. There are creative/in game ways to teach people how to do their classes' job, and why this weapon and that feat are better/worse choices for their concept. Being weak is a good story arc : to end up in the morgue. The graveyards are FILLED with the corpses of middling swordsmen.
First off, I invited a few players from this site to join our group so that we would have 6 players rain or shine, and not be beholden to the whims of one or two guys routinely not being able to show up at the last minute and forcing us all to cancel. One of those players currently still plays with them, and yeah I'm a little bitter about that, but anyway...point is, I am a bit of an optimizer but I also played DM and am a (somewhat) mature adult, so I can agreed with the DM when he says so and so is OP and tone it down...
HOWEVER, that does not mean you should throw people out of your game. It will have concequences that you should be willing / ready to deal with. Giving brand new players / random people a bigger role or vote than your friend of 20 years WILL have negative consequences to your friendship. When things end badly, for whatever reason, you can pass a few years, if ever, to get over it and even want to hang out with those people, let alone play D&D with them.
I'd also beware DMs asking for advice on this forum and then ignoring it in full view of their players reading the same forum.
My DM asked y'all on this very forum what to do, since I was playing a str-paladin and was VERY bored with it, by 5th level. I wanted to switch up the character to a ranger which was my right, but for continuity's sake, he wanted to know what was a good way to boost it up a notch. This was before DP (hehe) I believe. Know what this forum suggested?
Which he showed me: Play a hybrid paladin/ranger.
I said, great! But had to wait until 6th level for it to work and finally, after much annoying finagling and idiotic insults from around the table about "power-gamer", I was allowed to play this woefully unoptimal hybrid. This is when the hybrid paladin mark was an immediate reaction, gimping several of the ranger powers I had selected (even dailies). Then, after another year of trying it out, I just thought, this is so annoying, I never use my paladin powers anyway, I'm stuck in Scale anyway, might as well play a straight up ranger.
So after an unrelated break in game play, I re-subbed to DP Insider to make a legal straight up ranger with standard point buy, with nothing special in terms of items (I don't even like frost cheese or such stuff). I sent him the character sheet a week before playing to look it over, and three of our friends also did, and they all agreed it was fine, then the DAY of the game, 5 minutes before I was about to walk over to his place, he calls me and tells me I need to tone down my PHB 1 ranger because I put an 18 in str. I was like, no, this is ridiculous. I painstakingly spent hours and hours and he does this to me again. Making your players feel like
for knowing how to build a proper striker is...well, annoying.
I sat by when the wizard and the rogue had better AC than me, and my marks were ridiculous, and there are no iron armbands and the loot is badly distributed, but I cannot and will not abide by DMs who do not obey the rules as they are stated on page 1 of PHB 1. If the players have to deal with getting hit by the errata pignata, DMs need to accept that rangers are the toughest, baddest single class to play, and come within one point of AC usually to a defender, yet do so much more damage it's not even funny. That's 4e. Don't like rangers? Fine, I'll play in a game with a DM who likes them. But at that point why even play 4e, and don't invite an old friend back into your game, knowing what class he'll play, and at the 11th hour say no.
When players feel abuse or repeated frustration, they can find other groups and other systems to play. When they start feeling abused or treated unfairly, particularly versus other gamers who are new friends and won't be there for your wedding or funerals and gone through countless life events together, well yeah, being excluded from D&D is potentially a deal-breaker, on a permanent basis. We talk, but I'm not inclined to hang out with him and especially not with the others, who I used to cook for and throw the most lavish parties like the bon-vivant that I am. The thanks I get is reading their statuses on facebook saying how much fun they are having. Well, you know what? Good bye then.
Lesseon learned : don't exclude your friends if you want to maintain your friends. D&D players you meet are a dime a dozen, there are fresh batches being made all the time. How many of them will you have at your wedding, or at your funeral? Most will come and go, and you need to valorize your long-term friends or you will risk losing them.
ps, Yes, start at level 1 campaign. No offense, but you are a n00b DM and this forum is giving you good advice. When you go up through the levels you can decide what items the players find / can buy, and don't have to deal with such idiotic things. Hey, this is not a videogame! If you want one, play Wow. Get rid of those shards and eberron feats and ooodles of magic items. Even if they start at Paragon I'd give them one or two items they want, and the rest I'd roll for them or give them generic +3s.
You are the DM, first lesson is start acting like one. A FAIR one, but a DM nonetheless. The idea of players insisting on having a particular set of the best magic items is against the spirit of the game. But characters selecting Staff Expertise are not abusing anything, sure it's a very powerful feat that might get nerfed, but you can kill the wizard if he gets up in the enemies face too much. First rule of DMing, a wizard in melee?
Ooooh, kill him. Hard. 1st lesson on the 1st day at Monster Academy.
Bob, I thought you were my old friend from high school until I read the last line there. We started 4e when it came out as well for two years, through heroic tier (it took forever, it seemed. and we played every week), and now I play Pathfinder after our campaign sort of dissolved in a huff. So I can tell you from the other side of that equation. If the other players are bad at math or abstract reasoning or even missing basic understanding of elementary statistics, that is TOO BAD for them. This is 4e, that's the way it works. Don't like it? Play a different system. Make the encounters scaled tougher so the laggards will have to re-invest. Play some NPCs of the same classes as the players who can teach them how to use their powers. There are creative/in game ways to teach people how to do their classes' job, and why this weapon and that feat are better/worse choices for their concept. Being weak is a good story arc : to end up in the morgue. The graveyards are FILLED with the corpses of middling swordsmen.
First off, I invited a few players from this site to join our group so that we would have 6 players rain or shine, and not be beholden to the whims of one or two guys routinely not being able to show up at the last minute and forcing us all to cancel. One of those players currently still plays with them, and yeah I'm a little bitter about that, but anyway...point is, I am a bit of an optimizer but I also played DM and am a (somewhat) mature adult, so I can agreed with the DM when he says so and so is OP and tone it down...
HOWEVER, that does not mean you should throw people out of your game. It will have concequences that you should be willing / ready to deal with. Giving brand new players / random people a bigger role or vote than your friend of 20 years WILL have negative consequences to your friendship. When things end badly, for whatever reason, you can pass a few years, if ever, to get over it and even want to hang out with those people, let alone play D&D with them.
I'd also beware DMs asking for advice on this forum and then ignoring it in full view of their players reading the same forum.
My DM asked y'all on this very forum what to do, since I was playing a str-paladin and was VERY bored with it, by 5th level. I wanted to switch up the character to a ranger which was my right, but for continuity's sake, he wanted to know what was a good way to boost it up a notch. This was before DP (hehe) I believe. Know what this forum suggested?
Which he showed me: Play a hybrid paladin/ranger.
I said, great! But had to wait until 6th level for it to work and finally, after much annoying finagling and idiotic insults from around the table about "power-gamer", I was allowed to play this woefully unoptimal hybrid. This is when the hybrid paladin mark was an immediate reaction, gimping several of the ranger powers I had selected (even dailies). Then, after another year of trying it out, I just thought, this is so annoying, I never use my paladin powers anyway, I'm stuck in Scale anyway, might as well play a straight up ranger.
So after an unrelated break in game play, I re-subbed to DP Insider to make a legal straight up ranger with standard point buy, with nothing special in terms of items (I don't even like frost cheese or such stuff). I sent him the character sheet a week before playing to look it over, and three of our friends also did, and they all agreed it was fine, then the DAY of the game, 5 minutes before I was about to walk over to his place, he calls me and tells me I need to tone down my PHB 1 ranger because I put an 18 in str. I was like, no, this is ridiculous. I painstakingly spent hours and hours and he does this to me again. Making your players feel like
for knowing how to build a proper striker is...well, annoying.I sat by when the wizard and the rogue had better AC than me, and my marks were ridiculous, and there are no iron armbands and the loot is badly distributed, but I cannot and will not abide by DMs who do not obey the rules as they are stated on page 1 of PHB 1. If the players have to deal with getting hit by the errata pignata, DMs need to accept that rangers are the toughest, baddest single class to play, and come within one point of AC usually to a defender, yet do so much more damage it's not even funny. That's 4e. Don't like rangers? Fine, I'll play in a game with a DM who likes them. But at that point why even play 4e, and don't invite an old friend back into your game, knowing what class he'll play, and at the 11th hour say no.
When players feel abuse or repeated frustration, they can find other groups and other systems to play. When they start feeling abused or treated unfairly, particularly versus other gamers who are new friends and won't be there for your wedding or funerals and gone through countless life events together, well yeah, being excluded from D&D is potentially a deal-breaker, on a permanent basis. We talk, but I'm not inclined to hang out with him and especially not with the others, who I used to cook for and throw the most lavish parties like the bon-vivant that I am. The thanks I get is reading their statuses on facebook saying how much fun they are having. Well, you know what? Good bye then.
Lesseon learned : don't exclude your friends if you want to maintain your friends. D&D players you meet are a dime a dozen, there are fresh batches being made all the time. How many of them will you have at your wedding, or at your funeral? Most will come and go, and you need to valorize your long-term friends or you will risk losing them.
ps, Yes, start at level 1 campaign. No offense, but you are a n00b DM and this forum is giving you good advice. When you go up through the levels you can decide what items the players find / can buy, and don't have to deal with such idiotic things. Hey, this is not a videogame! If you want one, play Wow. Get rid of those shards and eberron feats and ooodles of magic items. Even if they start at Paragon I'd give them one or two items they want, and the rest I'd roll for them or give them generic +3s.
You are the DM, first lesson is start acting like one. A FAIR one, but a DM nonetheless. The idea of players insisting on having a particular set of the best magic items is against the spirit of the game. But characters selecting Staff Expertise are not abusing anything, sure it's a very powerful feat that might get nerfed, but you can kill the wizard if he gets up in the enemies face too much. First rule of DMing, a wizard in melee?
Ooooh, kill him. Hard. 1st lesson on the 1st day at Monster Academy.
Last edited:
TheUltramark
First Post
well, here I go putting on the chum suit and diving in the ocean again, none of you will like this answer i suspect
player C would get the crap kicked out of him - it's the old spider-man philosophy, "with great power, comes the lion's share of the attacks"
I have been the offending player getting my rear end handed to me, I have been "player A or B" watching on with a certain sense of satisfaction as player C gets 4 out of the 6 monsters attacking him, and I have been the dm handing out street justice where it needs be. Sometimes people just need a dose of the act-right.
player C would get the crap kicked out of him - it's the old spider-man philosophy, "with great power, comes the lion's share of the attacks"
I have been the offending player getting my rear end handed to me, I have been "player A or B" watching on with a certain sense of satisfaction as player C gets 4 out of the 6 monsters attacking him, and I have been the dm handing out street justice where it needs be. Sometimes people just need a dose of the act-right.
Just say no. New 1st level PC starts with 100gp, no 5th level items. If he wants it so bad he can quest for it in-game. Maybe he can eventually get together the cash to get a friendly wizard to make one for him.
If I were being *really* kind as DM I might allow a backstory where the PC *had* the item, but it was stolen or broken, making a straightforward quest to recover or repair it, rather than a general speculative item-hunt.
Edit: I guess this is my "No, but" philosophy - "No, you can't start with that item, BUT..."
