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PrGo
2008-12-10, 11:58 AM
My buddies and I just started a new, low magic campaign with gestalt classes to compensate for no casting specialized classes and we all love it except for this one player.
The campaign before was a ordinary-ish evil campaign where that guy played a Sorcerer/Disciple of the Sevenfold veil/3-4 levels in a Dragonheart mage and he got used to killing everything and wasting all the DM's effort on villains with a nice placed Baleful Polymorph or a Finger of Death, not to mention his maximized Disintegrate.
On the other hand he had like 50 AC from all the buffs and Combat Expertise plus the veils that he could cast as an Immediate action as soon as someone decided to attack him.

Now we all found some roles for our chars except for him so during sessions he's all lifeless and bored, asking us to return to the characters before although the rest of us wants to play this campaign.

So I'm posting here to ask you for some advice on what to do. Some suggestions on what to do for his char (he's a Fighter/Rogue) to make him like it more.

Thanks in advance :smallbiggrin:

Mushroom Ninja
2008-12-10, 12:04 PM
ahh, wizard withdrawal... Sucks doesn't it?

Mabey you could ween him off of it with a gish?

valadil
2008-12-10, 12:26 PM
There's no reason why he can't switch to a more interesting character within this campaign. I'd get bored of a rogue/fighter too.

Actually I get bored of anything that doesn't have lots of combat options. The only fighter that kept me entertained was a spiked chain wielding gish. That character had plenty of stuff to do.

Another_Poet
2008-12-10, 12:36 PM
I've been in this position, as the bored player.

When I had to give up my gestalt ilithid/druid because we stopped our White Plume campaign haflway through, I ended up rolling a very bland character: basically a monk, except using some splatbook class that gave you a dance-based, freedom-fighting martial art style like capoeira. Sounds cool, but when you're basically the Bard of Monks (minus magical powers) it gets old fast.

I dragged my feet in the campaign and didn't even realise I was ruining the campaign for others until my character's refusal to consort with liches landed me sitting outside a cave while they went on a dungeon crawl. (To be fair, I had expected they'd just walk into the cave, drop off the item for the lich in the first room, and walk back out - I would've gone if I knew it was an actual dungeon and not just a small plot point).

Solution? Well, in my case the character got killed and I realised how happy I was to be rid of him. We never did go back to the White Plume campaign, but when I rolled another new character - a hobgoblin paladin - I found something interesting that I could get into again.

The group should talk with the bored player. Tell him:

a) You can tell he's not having a good time and it's bringing down the whole group, and
b) No one else wants to quit the campaign, but he can retire his character and build something he might like more instead.

ap

The Mormegil
2008-12-10, 12:42 PM
Make him build another character. That could be enough... except if he's a munchkin that only wants to play characters that are too strong and that he can use to kill the whole party... wait... I may be confusing him with somebody else...

Vortling
2008-12-10, 12:54 PM
Definitely try to have him rebuild his character. He sounds like the type who wants an interesting character to play. I don't know what you've got available for books but if you give us a list and what everyone else is playing we can certainly give you ideas.

Lord Tataraus
2008-12-10, 01:00 PM
Simply have him make a new character and introduce it somehow. The only exception to this is if he is a munchkin/powergamer and that's all he wants to play. If that is so, you'll have to ween him off, throw him out, or suffer with him. Player troubles are very hard to deal with and its best to take them in stride.

PrGo
2008-12-10, 01:08 PM
Make him build another character. That could be enough... except if he's a munchkin that only wants to play characters that are too strong and that he can use to kill the whole party... wait... I may be confusing him with somebody else...

Nope, that's exactly him. He always has something up his sleeve that makes the other players not want to argue with him too much cuz he'll either Hold Person/Coup de Grace you or kill you in your sleep (especially with this char, since he's planning on going to assassin while the rest of us is Good).

And we can't throw him out because we're only 4 (him, his bro, my bro and I) and his bro and I switch DMing from adventure to adventure since we don't have someone who's willing to constantly be a DM.

...and we're playing in his house :smalltongue:

But we'll talk with him and try to find him a suitable class and race that he'll like (maybe even allowing Air Humans since he wants to be one just for how they look :smallconfused:)

Roderick_BR
2008-12-10, 01:45 PM
Just tell him that in this campaign you are all playing lower level characters, and that overpowered "I kill you all" characters are off limits.
If not, he can go play videogames, and you guys go find someone better to play with.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-10, 02:49 PM
Nope, that's exactly him. He always has something up his sleeve that makes the other players not want to argue with him too much cuz he'll either Hold Person/Coup de Grace you or kill you in your sleep (especially with this char, since he's planning on going to assassin while the rest of us is Good).

And we can't throw him out because we're only 4 (him, his bro, my bro and I) and his bro and I switch DMing from adventure to adventure since we don't have someone who's willing to constantly be a DM.

...and we're playing in his house :smalltongue:

But we'll talk with him and try to find him a suitable class and race that he'll like (maybe even allowing Air Humans since he wants to be one just for how they look :smallconfused:)

Well... there isn't much you can do about munchkins getting bored with a game. Particularly a munchkin who bullies other players with in-game ridiculousness.

If you must keep playing with him, you're best chance of making him happy (if this gambit doesn't work) is to find him a non-magic munchkin build. He'll probably be just as happy with an Ubercharger as with his wizard.

MustacheFart
2008-12-10, 02:53 PM
Nope, that's exactly him. He always has something up his sleeve that makes the other players not want to argue with him too much cuz he'll either Hold Person/Coup de Grace you or kill you in your sleep (especially with this char, since he's planning on going to assassin while the rest of us is Good).

And we can't throw him out because we're only 4 (him, his bro, my bro and I) and his bro and I switch DMing from adventure to adventure since we don't have someone who's willing to constantly be a DM.

...and we're playing in his house :smalltongue:

But we'll talk with him and try to find him a suitable class and race that he'll like (maybe even allowing Air Humans since he wants to be one just for how they look :smallconfused:)


Honestly, from what you've said it sounds like he suffers from "my **** don't stink"-itis. Going off what you said, I really can't see talking to him working. It sounds like he wants to do, what he wants to do, when he wants to do it.

It sounds like he gets off on having power/control over the rest of the party. Don't get me wrong I enjoy that myself sometimes but that depends on who I am playing with (certain friends handle inner-party character conflict/drama well; some do not) and what type of campaign it is (ex. political intrigue). Your friend however sounds like he wants to be TOP dog all the time.

The only thing I can really see possibly working is to actually appease this "need for power" in game. Get his character deeper involved in the plot and give him more power...not actual character power (aka PrCs, races, templates, etc) mind you but roleplaying power.

For example, he wants to go assassin? Fine, drop the stipulation that you need to be evil, have him contacted secretly by someone in an assassin's guild. Then have him learn that the guild is more of a Robin Hood type gang just to a bigger extent. Show him that if he joins and does well it will be very fruitful (greater authority, lewts, possible cohorts/followers...basically npcs to order around, etc). However, also explain that should he choose to join he must follow their code religiously or he will be cast out and receive a burn notice.

I myself like assassins as well but I'm one of those people who think the evil stipulation is stupid and limits applicability of the class.

Anyway, either get him involved deeper in the story or find a new game. Changing characters can help but it sounds like you are going for a more story-driven campaign instead of just a munchkin campaign. If that's the case, you have to get him interested in the story or it won't matter much as to what character he plays.

Ceaon
2008-12-10, 02:59 PM
The only thing I can really see possibly working is to actually appease this "need for power" in game. Get his character deeper involved in the plot and give him more power...not actual character power (aka PrCs, races, templates, etc) mind you but roleplaying power.

For example, he wants to go assassin? Fine, drop the stipulation that you need to be evil, have him contacted secretly by someone in an assassin's guild. Then have him learn that the guild is more of a Robin Hood type gang just to a bigger extent. Show him that if he joins and does well it will be very fruitful (greater authority, lewts, possible cohorts/followers...basically npcs to order around, etc). However, also explain that should he choose to join he must follow their code religiously or he will be cast out and receive a burn notice.

This is some really good advice. I second this.

Tacoma
2008-12-10, 04:09 PM
It happens that 3E is more balanced than 2E.

Well, if you play 2E like we do, with all the brown and blue handbooks for races and classes.

We had this one guy who played with us for a LONG time, he was awesome, but I'd have to describe him as a powergamer. We actually had a term for being a powergamer in our own group: the "Mikey character".


(His name was Michael but we had two Dans, and one preferred Danny, so the obvious result of having two Mikes was a Mikey. He didn't mind. Our group actually tended to have multiples of the same name quite often.)


Unfortunately, after playing a 1E/2E hybrid long enough you start to see where some powerful characters emerge. We stopped using the Oriental Adventures altogether. And the Ninja Handbook martial arts was just for Ninja. But you can't just start outlawing all the ideas one player comes up with as he uses them (in the "no more X characters in the future" method).

His standard character caused a whole lot of damage. Might not be too defensive or durable, but caused so much damage. It kind of unbalanced fights because the standard challenges for our level were blown away by the Mikey characters. And if the DM had us come up against a tougher challenge, nobody else could do anything.

His first 3E character was a barbarian/frenzied berzerker/some kind of shapeshifter by about level 10 or so I think. He would shapeshift into a giant bear thing and go completely crazy. The rest of the party would actually leave the battleground, closing and locking doors behind them, piling up furniture, when he raged. And one time he actually chased one party member through various doors as they were closed shut, bashing them down. It was only his door-bashing instead of door-opening that slowed him down enough to calm before he killed everyone. Pretty hilarious, but pretty scary too!

Anyway, we realized that it wasn't a big deal. You like playing with these people, they're your friends, and a little powergaming is acceptable. We outlawed the most egregious character builds, and the DM got creative with battle circumstances so that the (usually melee, with a certain weapon) Mikey character wasn't all-powerful in every case. More roleplaying, more use of creativity on the players' part rather than always making it a straight-up fight. And it worked out pretty well.

Some people, too, just enjoy playing certain characters. I know I don't tend to like playing hack and slash specialists - I'd rather have more interesting options available to me. I've started to get into spellcasters, Wizards especially, mainly because I can invent my own spells if I cough up the cash. If you handed me a 15th level Fighter I'd be pretty bored and I'd probably make up for it by roleplaying outrageously ;)

Then again, if your assessment is that the Dude just wants to be really powerful, it's a different kettle of fish. Keep in mind that most people who seem to crave something in D&D often lack that thing in their daily lives. Not always, of course. But if he just wants to be cooler than everyone else and chose Wizards to achieve that, and he really just wants to go back to a game where he dominates, explain that this campaign isn't the regular thing and you'll be back to something different which he'll probably like more in a little while.

Another option might be having the two DMs each run their own campaign. You switch off each session and every player has two characters while each DM has one. This helps alleviate DM burnout as well. One campaign can be low-magic, the other can be all-Wizards or something. I'm sure Dude will be just as upset that his character isn't dominating in a group of powerful Wizard characters, but then at least his maxims are out in the open.