How do you deal with other players making characters with shitty, useless builds that become an active detriment to success at the table?
>>97516943I've yet to see a player character so poorly-made that they drag down the rest of the group. However, I have seen player characters so poorly-played that they drag down the rest of the group.
>>97516970>However, I have seen player characters so poorly-played that they drag down the rest of the group.Go on...
>>97516943
>>97516943As a DM, I funnel all the gold and magic items to them, for balance.But for real, they're welcome at my table so long as their motivations are logical and consistent. Maybe I do hurl some items their way for the fucking giggles.
>>97516943The GM just pitches encounters a little lighter and the game goes on. The only important thing to remember is not to overextend to save a character from death. Whether underbuilt or unlucky, you should never let a casualty create more casualties.
>>97516973There was one guy I played with in a previous group who could not for the life of him remember anything that his characters could do. The only feature he ever managed to remember from session to session was Sneak Attack, and he could not have told you the conditions that proc it. He was in the habit of begging DMs for stupidly-overpowered special abilities or magic items, which he would use exactly once and then completely forget for the rest of the campaign - before we got very far into any given game, his character would effectively be a demigod loaded with major artefacts, and yet would still spend the majority of most fights bleeding out on the floor due to constantly charging directly into large groups of enemies to try and stab them to death one at a time with a dagger. In terms of roleplay, he was about as tone-deaf as it is possible for a human being to be - you could not have any sort of conversation with him present without him jumping in with some "witty" comment that would cause trouble for the rest of us. Overall, the only time his characters stopped being a burden was when they were dead, which was thankfully often - while we usually managed to keep his dudes alive (albeit unconscious) through combat, there was no saving them in the face of obvious lethal hazards. If there was a chalice on a pedestal surrounded by corpses, or a river of disembodied souls, or a magic circle drawn for the purpose of offering a living sacrifice to some demon, he would be on that shit in a heartbeat, and I'd breathe a sigh wondering what asinine hoops we'd have to jump through to bring his dumb ass back this time.
>>97517113Sounds like he was trying to play MemeDnD in a table of more serious players.Maybe he should have played a Barbarian or Fighter. Something built around charging enemies.
I talk to them? Isn't it an option? Also, that's in part up to encounter difficulty and design.
>>97516943I agree with >>97516970If someone's character is so incompetent that they are basically useless, just scale down the difficulty in response. If the character is detrimental to the party, that is a player issue, not a character issue. The player needs to learn how to work as a team.
I either kill them or basically peer pressure them into changing character. It very rarely does happen though as most of my fellow players can actually build well and I almost exclusively make beat sticks first and personality later
>>97516943Let the character die. As shrimple as that.
>>97516943By not playing DND, first and foremost.
>>97520314I see you've never played 3.5. The gulf between characters can be so big that someone might as well not exist. Lowering the difficulty just makes it easier on the stronger characters, not easier for the useless retard.
>>97521368But anon, who would actually even want to play a Samurai?
>>97516943You tell them to knock it off.
>>97516943I ask people for their builds & plans before the game starts. Ideally, the players make their characters in a room together so they can figure out why these fuckers are adventuring together in the first place.
>>97516943Talk about power level, the vibe of the campaign, and frequency of combat in Session Zero. If you're trying to min-max at a table that's going for a grounded or comedic feel, you're the problem. If it's meant to be epic and challenging you're the problem if you're making some joke character.
>>97521368Ah yes, the edition where the writers famously admitted to putting "gotcha" choices into the game that looked and sounded cool but where awful in comparison to other options.
>>97516943A lot of players do this because they're shopping for fluff they want. I always just explain to them, look, build for mechanics, I can be flexible enough to give you the fluff you want regardless.They expect the GM is going to stop them from being religious unless they're a Cleric, or their fighter is going to be retarded unless they pump INT for no reason, or similar stuff.It's a habit from an older, different type of roleplaying.
>>97521695I think 3.5 is what started me on the path of optimizing bad choices until they are comparable with normal ones.I get nothing from optimizing until I walk all over a game. I get a lot from optimizing so hard I am equal with everyone else's unoptimized asses.
>>97523107There is an art to it. I do that too, usually with some concept build in mind. Just optimizing for numbers is boring and already solved.Now turning a combination of classes that no one wants to put together? Now we're treading new ground.
>>97516943>muh optimal buildBy not playing 3.x and its derivatives
>>97516943Simply tell the player they are retarded and either make a real character or fuck off. If their feeling are hurt they can bitch about it on bluesky.
>>97516943>How do you deal with other playersI don't. That's GM's job.
>>97516943Sounds like a GM problem. You obviously greenlit a character that is good at non-combat activities and then failed to provide meaningful interactions.A player not spending points on combat abilities is obviously investing points into different skills, most RPGs force you to invest all points at character creation. This means he either picked all the crafting stuff, all the utility stuff, all the social stuff or spread his points out across multiple of them making him a valuable jack of all trades. If your game makes him useless despite buying a shit ton of combat abilities your game is shitty, unbalanced and quite honestly should land in a trash can.
>buildsHave you tried not playing DnD?
>>97516970>However, I have seen player characters so poorly-played that they drag down the rest of the group.This. We have a player whose character is supposed to be a comic relief and so bad at directions that every time we go to a new room, or move on in general, the player rolls a 1d4 to determine which direction their character will go. What the fuck is the point of doing this if there's only a 25% chance you'll actually be participating? The DM's not gonna make up a whole side adventure for you to do while you're gone. You'll just be doing nothing while we're in battle for a few turns until your character shows up.
>>97516943No such thing in my system.
>>97517113guarantee he was the only fun guy at the table surrounded by a bunch of dipshits that are up their own asses
>>97516943By taking the dildo out of your ass.
>>97521368Yeah, of course I haven't. Why would I want to play a dumpster fire?
>>97521756Why would you use a system that requires you to choose between being effective and making the character you want to play?
>>97542228Some systems are about being a game first and a simulation second, so you need to take the mechanics seriously or else you're being some obstinate, theater kid dipshit. There are systems that do what you want, but when you entitled retards insist that every system needs to entertain all your wisdomless whims, you fuck it up.
>>97542228>>97542251Working on my own system, literally had someone say that there were trap options because>putting less points in a thing makes you not as good at that thing
>>97542211>you should remember what your character does>stop being up your own assI dont see the connection
>>97542314Min-maxing is how all these games work. Yeah, when you put in non-optimal choices, it's a noob trap.For example, if you're playing a Fighter in D&D, you need either STR or DEX at at least 16. It's an intractable obligation of the class. Entering a game with a 15 is inherently a fucking mistake.And if that's the case, it begs the question: Why even make the player set it correctly themselves if it's not a noob trap? The only merit actually is just to punish people for not comprehending the game they're playing.If there's no theoretical merit to a decision, then you shouldn't have a decision at all. You should engineer a reason people should select an option or that option shouldn't exist.Your game sucks ass and you're stupid.
>>97516943I quite enjoy it. It leads to actual storytelling and roleplaying, and that's refreshing.
>>97542400>The only merit actually is just to punish people for not comprehending the game they're playing.Which is how games should work.
>>97542400If you dont take ranged combat and struggle at ranged combat, that's not a trap
>>97542581If you take range combat and the game punishes you because you didn't know you were also supposed to pick the glipglorp trait and exactly 18 dex to not be complete shit at range combat the game is fundamentally designed wrong.>>97521756Players want their fluff to be represented in mechanics too and good ttrpgs allow for that without any issue. Roleplay is just as important as rollplay and vice versa. And if I want my fighter to be noble with an education you can be damn sure I pump int to get results in knowledge checks.
>>97542977>And if I want my fighter to be noble with an education you can be damn sure I pump int to get results in knowledge checks.Frankly, that's an OSRS mentality. I'm not saying it's invalid, what I'm suggesting is that every system has its strengths, and you should conform to the concepts you're supposed to in order to capitalize on those strengths. If I'm playing Monopoly, I play Monopoly. I don't complain that it's not Chess.You have a little wiggle room to flavor and customize yourself without fucking up your optimization, but if you're playing a game with very little wiggle room, you just have very little wiggle room. Successfully making a coherently optimized character is part of a lot of games.
>>97516943I let them respec, possibly keeping the flavour of the trap option.That should solve any issues unless the problem is what >>97516970 said.
>>97542251No, you're just an idiot, sorry. In good games, you can take the mechanics seriously without compromising on concept. And they're not any more or less games.
>>97542493What's preventing you from roleplaying with competent characters?
>>97543477Part of bad games, certainly.
>>97542318No surprise that you don't see a connection between things that I never said were connected.
>>97543941Ah, so then you weren’t actually contributing to the conversation and just needed an excuse to voice a non sequitur opinion to get the attention you desperately crave between daddy’s belt love. Duly noted. You may run along, now.
>>97544316No, I contributed and you didn't, you just didn't understand my post. Read it again.
>>97516943I give them a problem they can solve.
>>97542204/thread.
Straighten em out and teach em what a good build is
Nah.
>>97521368This isn't true at all, in a game played in earnest. It's just white-room theorycrafting with magic marts. There are some outliers like Truenamer and some poorly thought-out stuff for sure, but you have to engineer your own pain.
>>97521695This never happened, and you need to stop reading the ramblings of actual schizophrenics online. Everything was meant to be useful, but they did not outline in what way for everything, and wanted to reward people that understood the system and knew when to do or take what. Cook is a faggot retard, but there was nothing wrong with that particular idea, and what you describe never actually happened.
>>97556585It did actually happen, it’s obvious to everyone that it did, and you need to stop defending your gay crush Monte Cook. He’s not going to love you back because you lied online. Cut it out!
>>97556572Please educate yourself. https://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=50454
>>97516970First post has it short and sweet.I have had worse times with players who have a character that can do stuff bitching that they can't do stuff, because the character or system doesn't gel with themlike, I've had it in fucking HEROQUEST man.I played heroquest with my GF and two other mates, and the guy playing our wizard was always going>Wah my spells are uselessbut when we told him to use spells it was>I don't wanna waste a spell on [thing] that's my only copy of fireball this map and we might get a worse encounter laterthe fundamental problem was he's a resource hoarder who hates using up anything that doesn't come back, playing a character whose shtick is worse base combat ability in return for all the utility powers.
>>97516943Oh no, my player isn't making a character sheet that's obsessively optimized around 3-5 stat abilities while dumping the rest.He might play his character getting involved in everything, and not just the small handful of capacities he's unreasonably capable at, while not even bothering with anything and everything else.I might have to design my game and setting around a group of characters with reasonable balance that the rules allow for, and not an assortment of individuals with different savant-grade abilities, where everyone else is a helpless babe in the subject.Whatever will I dooooooooooooooooo?
>>97516943by fixing your autism and stop being a fucking tryhard, its for fun
>>97517113>>97517265Sounds like he's one of those edgelords who plays D&D like a single player Diablo game.
>>97559253Have fun roleplaying a corpse.
>>97516943How bout you stop reading garbage and inflicting it on us, isekai trog
>>97516943Talk to them, ask them to do a bit of research in build and see what works.Tell them the system, campaign or party require more optimization on their part or you may have to ask them to leave the group as there is a mismatch from what they want, and the rest of the group.
>>97516943I stop playing poorly designed games.
