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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 6976067" data-attributes="member: 29398">A big distinction needs to be made here: I'm not talking about slacker PLAYERS.  I'm talking about slacker CHARACTERS in the party who are sometimes run by very engaged players who take a long-term approach to "winning".  The sequence usually goes, over a series of adventures, something like this: - hang back, stay safe, get involved in risky business only when it's essential (but be fully involved in all other aspects e.g. planning) right from the start - where serious risks have to be taken (a reasonably frequent occurrence in adventuring) get others to take them - each adventure one or two characters will probably die...but not yours, and you'll get to share in looting them along with sharing whatever conventional treasure the party accrues - replacements for those characters often come in at lower level and invariably come in with lower wealth, making them a bit more vulnerable, so... - lather rinse repeat until... - after 6 or 8 adventures (or by the time the party has relatively easy access to revival-from-death effects) you're "ahead" of the party - in wealth and sometimes in level - enough that the DM can't seriously threaten you without probably slaughtering the rest of the party.  Further, as you're now the big fish in the pond the party is probably built around you to some extent...maybe you're even its perceived leader...and now you're set.  As a player, your main challenge now is to resist any calls for you to retire or otherwise weaken your character.Needless to say, a party entirely made up of such "passenger" characters doesn't tend to get much done; be it by analysis paralysis, indecision, or simply getting stuck in a position where everyone is waiting for someone else to make the first (risky) move.  I've seen this once or twice; eventually someone (as either player or character) gets bored and dives in and gets on with it, thus dooming him-herself as even if the current risk doesn't prove deadly he-she has now put him-herself in the position of risk-taker and will be looked upon to do it every time, inevitably leading to the character's death.The only ways* a DM can mitigate this if she sees it happening are to either specifically (and, too often, unrealistically) target only that character; or to make sure the risk-takers somehow get individually rewarded for what they do - and this is where individual xp can come in very handy, though from experience I can say it's not a complete fix.* - well, another (awful) way is to make all the characters death-immune; but that way lies gonzo madness and-or complete loss of realism.Lan-"if EnWorld ever does another battle-of-the-bards we have a song for it about this issue"-efan</blockquote>

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