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View Full Version : DM Help Pacifist Character; Maintaining Momentum.



Brahamut
2014-04-15, 09:56 AM
I'd like some advice on dealing with a couple of issues as a DM. I've been running a 4e campaign for a little over a year. I have six players, one with previous DnD experience (my wife). When I suggested DnD to these friends, I explained it thus: Imagine if LoTR were a group of people sitting around a table. Tolkien has descriptions of the world and controls Gandalf plus everyone who's not a member of the fellowship. The other people at the table each have one member of the fellowship. LoTR is a record of the adventure they had. I'd be Tolkien - I have a setting, some bad guys, some friends for you, and background characters. You guys would each make a character more like the hobbits: they have a background, but their adventuring experience is limited to things like stealing carrots from the neighbors farm, or traveling a few days with a caravan. I let them sit on it for a few days and come back with character concepts.

One of my players came back and said "can I play Tom Bombadil?" ... No. He's like the most powerful character in Middle-earth. You can use him as a basis for a goal, but you can't start like that. "What if he's limited his power so he can adventure with mortals for a time, or what if he's lived a simple life for so long that he's forgotten who he is?" We can go with that - he's realized that he's forgotten who he is, so Goldberry has encouraged him to go out and rediscover himself. "Ok, cool. I'll make him a bard. And he's a pacifist, so I'd like to change all of his abilities so that they do no damage, just status stuff like sleep and fear or whatever." So we ended up creating a character for him that's a pacifist, with a focus on diplomacy and knowledge skills. The rest of the characters are more traditional.

Because of his focus on diplomacy, that's his solution to basically every problem. We get in an encounter, he'll spend a round or two doing buffs and debuffs until he can identify a "leader." He then always tries to negotiate. I try to strike a balance between "you've just killed half their forces, they're willing to stop fighting in hopes of surviving" and "fanatical/enraged fight to the death." But when he starts talking, the game basically stops for everyone else. I've talked with him about this, and he says that he's ok if diplomacy rarely works, or if the rest of the party says "forget talking, let's finish them off," but we all have a difficult time internalizing this and no one wants to stop him from being effective. So the general question here is "How do you balance wildly different play styles?"

The other issue is generally maintaining momentum. We play once a week, generally for five to six hours. We're mostly college students and we meet on campus. We've missed a few weeks this semester due to snow days and exam/project crunch. We had a stretch where we missed every other week. Because of missed days, bad die rolls, and bad strategy, we spent 7 weeks (four sessions) in a single combat encounter. The session we finished, I lowered the monsters defenses and HP just so we could get it over with. The first session was exciting - they felt time pressure from an encounter they'd bypassed and the monsters fighting them had some challenging tricks, but the other three we just slogs with long strings of misses or very low damage rolls. The 3rd session, only two attack rolls hit, and one of those was the rogue with CA who rolled all 1s for damage. After spending half the semester like this, no ones excited to play. One of my players approached me yesterday and said that he's planning on stepping out two sessions from now (which is the last week of the semester). I'd like to be able to change his mind, but I think he's pretty set. If he leaves, his GF will most likely go with him. That'll put us down a paladin and a druid, leaving us with a rogue, ranger, wizard, and pacifist bard. I don't know that I can salvage this campaign with the loss of two players, especially considering that the one who's planning to leave is the most invested player. So after a rather grueling semester, what can I do to reinvigorate my game?

Airk
2014-04-15, 10:33 AM
Start a new one. Maybe in a system that is less likely to have combat encounters that take four sessions.

If you're into the whole "Lord of the Rings" thing, there are several RPGs that do it pretty well. I'm running a game in The One Ring RPG right now, and it's working pretty well, and combat never even consumes an entire session.

Brahamut
2014-04-15, 09:56 PM
It's not a LoTR based campaign, I'm using bits that I like from the WotC adventure arc. I used the Kobold manor from the DMG (where the bard befriended the dragon [that I made purple in stead of white]). I ran Keep on the Shadowfell but filled it with Drow and made Kalarelle a priestess of Lolth. (The bard convinced the priestess and sorceress in one encounter that they were there to help with the ritual. The party was escorted by several members of that encounter to the final room, where a real boss fight happened.) We're currently in the Horned Hold from Thunderspire mountain. The four session encounter was the one in the southern fortress with the miniboss (Rundarr). As I said before, the encounter took four session because of a convergence of unfortunate factors. We've had similarly sized encounters that took less than 30 minutes, it's a matter of people rolling above 10 on a d20.

After that encounter, the bard used animal messenger to make a diplomacy check with the leader of the place to say "my companions have wiped out half of your forces. There's no need for this violence to continue. If you come alone to the southern fortress, we'll be happy to negotiate a truce." We start tomorrow with the boss standing across the bridge asking for their terms while he sends part of his forces to flank.

If it comes to it, I can sort of end the story here - they defeat the boss and secure a place for their dragon ally to hide and build up strength. What I'd really like is a way to make the negotiations fun for everyone (how do you run a decent skill challenge?) or to make combat more fun for the pacifist.

NichG
2014-04-15, 10:11 PM
Make a mix of encounters with sentient opponents which you expect to end up being solved diplomatically after a show of force, like what has been happening so far, and effectively non-sentient opponents such as undead, constructs, dungeon-dwelling monsters, etc - that's when the pacifist's status condition stuff will come into play and still be significant.

The difference between this and just having a mix of 'fight to the death fanatical people' is that its an obvious cue to the player of the pacifist that 'this encounter will not be resolved via diplomacy' so he won't feel compelled to try just to maintain his character's theme. I'd say maybe have one out of every three-four encounters be with a non-sentient foe, since some fighting is still going on in the encounters with sentient foes.

If you and the players feel comfortable trying it, I'd also start to have sentient foes that test the boundaries of the pacifist's resolve. For example, will the pacifist still negotiate with an ancient hag living near a village who kidnaps newborns for human sacrifice once every ten years or so? How about someone using indirect and mostly non-violent means to manipulate and take control of kingdoms - marrying a son or daughter into their royal family, then annexing them when the current ruler becomes infirm and using their kids as puppet-rulers.

Another interesting one to try is have a rival team going after the same MacGuffin/artifact of power as the PCs and have reasonable (as in, not evil) reasons to want it but have them be tricksy and a bit mercenary - that way the pacifist can try to keep them from interfering and backstabbing the group while everyone else fights the actual dangers.

Delwugor
2014-04-16, 04:53 PM
Introduce him to George. Who is George, you ask?
George is the unsung non-combatant that any combat team wants to have.

George is the one who closes the gate so more orcs don't get through.
George is the one who covers the rear so the party doesn't get surprised.
George is the one who risks himself to cover the retreat of injured party members.
George is the one who finds the secret door, lever, switch, trap while everyone else is busy fighting.
George is the one who throws caltrops, marbles, broken furniture at charging bad guys to slow them down.
George is the one distracting the two ogre henchmen so the party can concentrate on the BBEG.
(Conversely) George is the one distracting the BBEG so the party can concentrate on the minions (and 2 ogre henchmen) , before the BBEG.
George is the one that brings the ceiling down on the bad guys.
George is the one who runs around and distracts bad guys engaged against party members (hence giving flanking bonuses).
George is the one with the potion of clw, tanglefoot bag, alchemist's fire, holy water, smoke bomb ready to use.
George is the one who is ready to throw a rock at a spell-caster before the spell goes off.
George is the one who is bate for an ambush the party has set up. "Oh yooohooo, ugly bad guys, here I am"
George is the one who disrupts positioning, movement and tactics of the bad guys.

George doesn't fight, but every smart successful party wants him, because of the big difference he makes

erikun
2014-04-18, 04:03 PM
Well, first, I think that diplomancy (and related skills) can work in a typical combat. The trick is to think ahead and figure out how it would work. D&D is pretty bad at this, never having really tried, so you'll probably need to work it out yourself. Basically, what kinds of situations and modifiers would be appropriate? What bonus would diplomancy have after wiping out half the opponent's units? What if the PCs are visibly hurt? Does the pacifist bard need to get close to the leader to make diplomancy effective? What kinds of characters would be fine with a truce, and which are more likely to call for blood (and with Intimidate being more effective)?

It's probably a good idea to make a list or chart of the modifiers, and share them with the player. It's a good baseline to know what they can and can't do, and what can be done easily - even when they aren't concerned with the exact numbers.

Some versions of D&D also have morale rules, meaning the point where NPCs will give up or run away. These would be useful for more tacticfully minded players, possibly including your pacifist bard, as it means they could focus fire or set up ambushes for better chances of making NPCs flee battle.


As for lengthy combat, the biggest problems I've found are too-high AC and damage reduction. The former means it takes forever to hit anything (and most turns, players end up doing "nothing") while the latter can invalidate entire parties if they can't get past them. I'd recommend scaling down the former and avoid the latter, if at all possible. This is especially true if you don't have a blaster-spellcaster in the party, who could otherwise drop a few fireballs onto a group to wipe out hundreds of HP at a time.

Rhynn
2014-04-18, 04:25 PM
Because of missed days, bad die rolls, and bad strategy, we spent 7 weeks (four sessions) in a single combat encounter. The session we finished, I lowered the monsters defenses and HP just so we could get it over with.

This is a known 4E issue, and you have to basically heavily modify the game to make combat go faster (increase monster damage and reduce monster HP, in short). The later monster books did that, IIRC.

Try a different game. Check out my signature for a ton of free D&D retroclones (although ACKS, my favorite, isn't free). There's loads of other great RPGs, too, many of which balance non-combat and combat activities better.