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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Corsair" data-source="post: 2137438" data-attributes="member: 23477">What do you do when you have someone in your party who is completely devoid of tactical acumen, and they nearly singlehandedly ruin every attempt at strategy you try to use?Last night, our party was playing through the 2nd module in the Coin of Power path for Kalamar.  The party:Human Druid 4 (me) with wolf companionHalfling Rogue 4 (NPC)Half-Orc Barbarian2/Cleric2Human Ranger2/Fighter2 Over the course of the session, we got into 3 combats.  In the first two, the human fighter was relatively useless.  He spent most of the time attempting to fast dismount his camel and falling on his face in the sand, or spending entire rounds unstrapping his shield from the pack animals while the barbarian, wolf, and all the summoned critters I could find were getting bitten by ant-lions or con-drained by evil plants.  My Augumented Hippogriffs carried the day for the most part in those fights, so it wasn't TOO big of a deal.In the third combat though, we are massively out numbered by gnolls, and I'm low on spells since I spent a bunch of level 2 slots healing con damage from the plant fight.  We're doing ok for a while, with the barbarian and wolf dropping gnolls, and we're holding a decent defensive line...  Then the human fighter (who by the way has the best AC in the group even without his armor on, with the gnolls needing 19s to hit him thanks to dex, magic shield, expertise, dodge-type feat, and some shield bonus feat) starts breaking ranks, letting the gnolls swarm in around our side and surround the rest of us.Now he has a chance to redeem himself.  He moves around the back of the group, and he can step up and flank the gnoll who is attacking the rear (where my poor unarmored druid is)...  but instead of taking his last square of movement forward, he takes it BACKWARDS, farther away from us.  This allows the gols to not only surround us, but also surround him.  By the next round, the barbarian is on the ground in a crumpled heap.  One round later, the human in question is out for the count.  The druid manages to stick around another round thanks to a wand of CLW and help from his wolf, but they can't last againt the 12 or so gnolls surrounding them.-------------------Now this was a difficult encounter, and I don't completely blame one player since we probably would've gotten our butts kicked regardless, but when added to his oh-so-usefulness previously in the night, it bothered me.  Combine this with the fact that he's often easily distracted from whatever our goals are at the time by anything that even gives a hint of possible profit, and it makes for an annoying time.  NEarly every time we try to accomplish something, we have to worry about him making some poor choice which either gets us killed, or makes life more difficult for the rest of us.As another example, after the TPK, he is playing Bloodbowl with the DM.  He manages to get a pass to a player beyond the DMs back row, and it is physically impossible for the DM's team to catch him as he runs to the end zone.  Yet for some reason, rather than just ending his turn and scoring on his first action of his next turn, he spends nearly 5 minutes hemming and hawing over how to best injure as many of the other team as possible.--------------------Thanks for letting me rant. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Now for the audience participation part:How do you deal with a player who has no idea of tactics?  This guy will honestly listen to a plan, nod, and then completely ignore it.  The worst part is that he actually weighs the options, and does something different.  If you ask him afterwards why he did it, he just says "Well I dunno." and/or gets defensive.  Having any sort of complex plan is doomed to failure if it requires him to do something other than "Find nearest enemy, kill nearest enemy".Talking to him is difficult at best because he simply gets defensive, or even more annoying, passive/aggressive towards you in game.</blockquote>

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