Seeking advice (mini rant?)

[Garnett]

Okay here is my situation and I will try to keep this brief. I have played D&D for over twenty years and with my current core group for over ten years. A little over a year ago we added some new players to the core group. They are a good mix and it was fun yet frustrating at times teaching them the 4e system.


So we have been gaming together for over a year and a couple of these new players still do not have a grasp of the rules. From simple things such as not reading their powers closely to major things like making things up that just do not exist. The DM is fairly indifferent and says it is not his job to make sure their characters are “legal” and believe me they are far from it. This is not as huge a concern to me as is the player’s unwillingness to learn or even listen when one tries to “help” them.


I put help in quotations because if you offer these players your insight as to what their powers should be doing opposed to how they think they should work they get pretty defensive and think you are trying to “nerf” their character. In general they know about the move/minor/standard and immediate/opportunity actions but have a hard time following them…especially when reacting to everything with a sudden solution which resulted from a mid-level retooling of their character to prevent situation X which happened to them in last week’s game! For example if in one game a PC was stunned a lot or slowed a lot you can be sure the next time he shows up he will have a way out of it via an item or feat, legit or not.


As mentioned above the DM knows about the situation yet refuses to get into it as he feels it is not his job. There are many sources and our DM just has the core books. If a player comes to the table with a made up feat or item he has no reference to know if it is real or not. Well I do…in the form of the Insider compendium. I know that many things these players do are not legit yet quit calling them on it based off the negative reactions I got from them. As a DM I think it would be odd to see a player have a way out of absolutely everything that happens to the PC and add like (seriously) five or six modifiers onto their damage roll after normal damage was initially tallied. A lot of times he doesn’t even count their actions, he just rolls with it.


Now I also DM quite a bit….. but not for these players. I fear my more “by the book” approach would not be up their alley. This situation has lingered and been largely ignored by me, the group and the DM for about the last six months. Recently our PC’s in this campaign have hit about level 16 and their misuse of the rules is really starting to show more and more as powers and items (some legit and some not) pile up on them. I am considering not playing in the group as I do not really have fun at all but I don’t want to mess with the campaign and be “that guy.” I need some advice from anyone who has been in a similar situation.

 

[Kinneus]

Players seem happy, with their crazy made-up powers and mid-level feat swaps. The DM doesn't care. The only person who seems to have a problem with it is you. Since you're not the DM, just a player burdened with rules knowledge, you've only got two options open to you.

1. Cope with it as best you can.
2. Leave.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just saying that there's not a lot you can do. You can't "save" somebody from playing a game wrong, and I frankly don't know why you'd want to try.

Not trying to be harsh, I understand that it's a crappy situation and I'd probably be just as annoyed as you are if it were me. I'm just saying you got to pick your battles. Leave them to their badwrongfun and find a game you enjoy playing in.

 

[huank]

Remember the most important thing in D&D (we read a lot of this in all the books) and any other game is to have fun, so, if everyone is having fun even if the rules are not followed by the book, then it's O.K. If you're the only one that's not enjoying the game, then maybe you should make your own gaming group with a more rule focused style, maybe you will feel much better.

 

[TornadoCreator]

OK, I've been in games like this and I've via house rules in my early days caused games like this. I created a few magic items and allowed some 3rd party feats/spells in my 3.5 campaign a few years back because they fit the theme and storyline but they unbalanced the game terribly. I've also played in a WoD game where the players didn't know the rules and often rolled 2-3 extra dice in their dice-pool and the GM neither cared nor bothered to explain the rules. I left the WoD (world of darkness) game because it was getting silly, we may as well have been Gods because we could just effectively make up our stats. In my D&D game my players did a something you may consider.... an ultimatum

Two of the players, the two familiar with the game took me to one side and said "Rebalance the game and keep to the rules within reason or we will leave, if we don't see a change within the next two weeks we're leaving the game."
It may seem antagonistic but it worked. I rebalanced the game, and it worked really well in the end.

Your only other options really are; 1. Put up with it, 2. Leave

 

[S'mon]

It's really the GM's responsibility, and if he doesn't care that they're deliberately just making stuff up there is not much you can do. Personally I would talk to the GM, say I'm not happy, and if he still says "not my responsibility" then I would quit.

 

[P1NBACK]

Start your own game.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Make up your own rules and have your fun. And just wait how you now can trivialize their characters.

Just do crazy things. And then remind the DM to check it. I know this method is not very kind, but sometimes people need reminders of why rules exist.

I once had a group who all believed: every fighter needs a level of barbarian. OK. All trolls had one too. Silliness just stopped right after that fight and all people began thinking about why their characters can have a level of barbarian or if it is inappropriate.

 

[Ahwe Yahzhe]

Make up your own rules and have your fun. And just wait how you now can trivialize their characters.

Just do crazy things. And then remind the DM to check it. I know this method is not very kind, but sometimes people need reminders of why rules exist.

I once had a group who all believed: every fighter needs a level of barbarian. OK. All trolls had one too. Silliness just stopped right after that fight and all people began thinking about why their characters can have a level of barbarian or if it is inappropriate.

THAT is awesome. It reminds me of 4th-grade, when all the kids pretended to play D&D and loved to brag about their 100th-level characters with 25 Strength (or all six stats), each of whom had Stormbringer and Mjolnir (from the 1st print Deities & Demigods book) from defeating Elric and Thor is single-handed combat. This was long ago, the first and last time D&D was 'cool' to the average kid.

I love the idea of you running a little experiment on your game group similar to what was mentioned above. It really sounds like this table doesn't care or want a resident rules lawyer (personally, I prefer a whole table of them to keep me straight.) Accept that this is your ridiculous gaming group, take every mechanic that these players break or ignore and run with it. Tell your DM you've made some minor tweaks to your character to match the house rules. Then you can challenge the DM to actually cite the rules by doing crazy broken stuff, and screw with the cheating players using your crazy broken character in an arms-race of ridiculosity. Barring that, the previous posters had it right: embrace the stupidity or quit this group (because it sounds like you have others.)

 

[jbear]

Tricky situation from your position.

As a DM that likes to know the rules and then bend them to my own taste (but always doing so transparantly with player consensus and consistency) that has begun to play as well with other players totally unfamiliar with 4e system, I am never sure how much to say or correct when I see blatant errors (i.e rolling saving throws and adding dex bonus to see if enemy is pushed off bridge or new wizard, level 2, taking an epic feat that allows the recharge of a daily power etc etc).

I know its not my place. But I do want play to be fair for everyone including myself.

I have usually done this after a game session via email (we play online) and left the decision in the DMs hands. Thankfully my DM is totally cool with that and takes measures to gently correct those errors.

The problem you have is that the DM has told you he doesn't think that is his role. Which means there is noone to take the responsibility to gently resolve the issue out or in game (because this IS the DMs role whether he likes it or not).

I'm REALLY surprised that a DM you've been playing with together as a group for 10 years (that's a really long time!) wouldn't want to help resolve an issue one of those players has even if that means 'confronting' another player. Obviously 'confrontation' is the problem, not something he personally wants to have to deal with.

I'd also be REALLY surprised that he'd not care if you left over this issue. Maybe you should ask him if he cares or not?

Or you could take a few levels of Barbarian and see what the other players think, or a level of troll ? ... it may start a snow ball that disentegrates the group though. But I'm sure you'd get your point across. 'I was at the market and found an endless supply of regenerative Troll Salve hidden beneath a loose stone. Now I have a continuous Regerration 10 and gain access to Barbarians Daily Rages!'

I had an issue with another player in my group. His character absolutely hated mine. Everytime my character opened his mouth his character began groaning, rollinging eyes, pffting etc. My character has CHA 8, so I play him as a bit of big mouth that more often than not gets himself into hot water needlessly. So I was okay with this dislike as it made sense. But it reached a stage when the reaction spilled into the 'out-of-character' realm, and I felt that who he didn't like was me. SO I sent him a mail asking him if this was the case, saying that I hope it wasn't and explaining a bit why I played my character that way etc etc and adding that it was fine for me that his character disliked mine, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't personal. 2 weeks later he left the group claiming time was an issue. May have been true, I'll never know. But boy, that was a weight off my shoulders!

If your DM says its not his problem ... well, for you it's a problem ... which makes it your problem alone. That's a green light for 'You have my blessing to resolve this problem' if you think about it in a round a bout way. So why not talk to this guy and let him know how his 'making up that his character can do' is affecting your enjoyment.

 

[P1NBACK]

Make up your own rules and have your fun. And just wait how you now can trivialize their characters.

Here's a feat you can use:

This Game Is Stupid
When you attack something, you and everything else in the universe just vanish. I mean it. Gone.

Then, start up a new game. With, you know, some sort of guideline of what's appropriate custom material and what's not.