cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11298431
I’ve been a DM for about 3 years, and have predominantly run one-shots and short campaigns in DnD5e and PF2e. I have a player who persistently builds primary caster based characters, but then won’t do anything in combat but “I stab it with my dagger.” They rarely use cantrips, and basically won’t cast a leveled spell unless I suggest it immediately before their turn. They seem to enjoy playing despite the fact that they’re far too squishy to be a front-line melee character and don’t utilize most of their class features. I’ve talked with them explicitly about how their play style seems to be discordant with the kind of play they want to do, and that maybe next time they should try a paladin/champion or a fighter/rougue subclass with some minor casting. They agreed at the time that sounded like a good idea, but low and behold showed up to the next one-shot with a primary caster, and over 3 hours of play and 3 combats never cast a single spell, including a cantrip.
I enjoy playing with this persons as a whole. They are engaged in the fiction, and are particularly engaged during exploration activities. They tell me they also find combat quite fun, and they are requesting I run a mega dungeon in the near future.
As a general rule, I like to let people play how they have the most fun, but issues have arisen with this play style. Namely, all of my TPKs have been associated with this player charging a squishy character directly up to a significantly stronger villain and continuing to stab it with a dagger until they went down, significantly hindering the party in the action economy and resulting in a TPK. I feel I have to intentionally weaken all of my encounters to keep the party feasible in the face of such mechanically poor combat choices.
What else can I do to help drive this individual towards melee builds, and/or help encourage them to change their play style to better suite the caster classes they choose?
I wouldn’t necessarily say this is a bad thing… if you have to balance all the encounters as if you had 3 players instead of 4 because one of your PCs is functionally useless in combat, and if this player is okay with their character dying from bad choices once in a while, what’s the harm?
It kind of sounds like they just enjoy the role playing aspects and aren’t into the mechanics of the game. Which, if that’s affecting everyone else’s enjoyment in a way you can’t fix, then the only real solution is to remove them from the group (or at least indicate to them privately that you might need to if they don’t modify what they’re doing). But, if it seems like everyone’s having fun, I wouldn’t necessarily try to force them to care about aspects of the game that they clearly don’t care about.
I mean it makes the game less fun for me. I enjoy running monsters and tactical combat. I like using cool and powerful monsters (as appropriate for party level). I like using some semblance of strategy and making my monsters behave in a way that is realistic for their stat block. It makes running the game less enjoyable to be faced with the choice of 1. nerf the monsters significantly to remove all real danger to the party and be easily defeated 2. choose suboptimal behaviors to minimize damage to PCs or 3. Risk a TPK on an encounter that shouldn’t normally produce a TPK
Hmm… honestly, if it impacts your fun in running the game, then that’s different, yeah. You’re a player too. It’s supposed to be a fun activity and rewarding for everyone. It’s definitely possible that the better answer is for them to find a game that’s a better fit.
They may simply not realize that what they’re doing is impacting other people’s enjoyment of the game. I would talk to them directly in private about it in those terms. If it feels like that’s the issue you’re discussing, it may be more productive than if the conversation is “we don’t like you doing what you enjoy, please play the way we want you to instead” or else “we don’t like you please leave.”
DM Lair has a good video about the issue. Again, I’m not saying that kicking them out is definitely the answer, just offering some feedback based on limited information, for you to be able to make whatever decision you decide.
If everyone else is playing their characters mechanically well, why not just try to balance encounters so that only the stab-wizard dies? If they see that the low HP of casters isn’t really compatible with close melee combat, they may start either using their ranged abilities or building martial characters. One PC dying doesn’t have to mean TPK.
I’ve tried, I don’t attack downed players. The general flow is
Unfortunately, none of the players are really well versed in the system (and don’t really want to learn beyond in-game learning), so even though they’ll put two characters right next to the boss, they’ll never flank etc unless I explicitly remind them at that time.
I appreciate that the other players feel a sense of camaraderie and won’t abandon the other player, but I’m not going to have a dragon just suddenly decide their going to do ranged attacks when there’s someone standing directly in front of them that is actively distracted doing something else.
I’ve tried the typical advice of minions with a lower level boss, and while the individual monsters are weaker, when the stab-wizard goes down the party gets fucked by the action economy.
Sometimes I’ll do what I did last time, which is just debuff the boss monster to a significantly lower level (moderate encounter level) but then (as happened last time) you get one lucky roll and it’s dead at the start of combat and you’re like “fuck that’s not scary or fun”
Maybe you should attack downed players, that’s what a monster would do. It’s perfectly reasonable for a monster to smash the guy that was just stabbing them a second ago. Or do AOE attacks that target everyone including the downed player.
Or, like others suggested, just make them use pre generated templates. Ask each one what kind of character they want to play, and make PCs to match. Especially if, like you said, they don’t know the system very well, they shouldn’t really be opposed to that. Make a rogue for the stab-wizard so they can experience being good at stabbing.
If the stab wizard isn’t a threat, why not just have such monsters ignore him? I know that if I had 200 HP I would be least concerned about the commoner with the dagger attacking me for 3-6 damage a round.
Alternatively, give your monsters some CC and use that on him. If it’s a spell that would even be an opportunity for him to Counterspell it, which he would probably miss - unless he got frustrated by not having a turn and was motivated to try to stop that in the future. You could even prompt his casting it in this instance, e.g., by saying “The creature begins casting a spell - you can tell it’s intended to paralyze you. Since it’s a spell, if you have Counterspell prepared, you could cast it.”
Also, why are your players standing right next to the boss rather than casting Healing Word from a distance?
“It makes the game less fun” for you? Everyone else seems fine, but your lessened enjoyment is projected onto a player and you’re asking this community to help find fault in their contribution, rather than recognize that the problem is your own? Furthermore, this false “choice” you described isn’t helping anyone, as none of those are as inevitable as you allude.
Real talk: own your shit; don’t point the finger at your players unless you prefer playing all by yourself. As the DM/GM, you have a responsibility to the table, and (on a much smaller scale), they to you — though the latter is more simple etiquette than anything.
At the end of the day, the choice is yours: are you able to DM without being an adversarial dick? Or, do you need to do the others a favor and play by yourself so they can enjoy the game in their perfectly reasonable ways?
I never once asked the community to help me find fault in their behavior. It is a devastatingly poor mechanical choice to play a full caster with no armor and completely avoid using any leveled spells while rushing into melee. It makes it exceptionally hard to balance the game at a level which is challenging to the players but without threat of TPK. I am allowed to be frustrated that the “safe” encounters I feel I have to build to avoid TPK result in me basically never landing a single hit on the players. I have tried addressing this multiple times in a polite and genuine manner. I’ve tried suggesting we play a different, more narrative driven game like PBtA systems, which all of my players shot down, especially this player in particular, because they “like the crunch” of the systems we’ve been playing. I don’t like that you’re calling me an adversarial dick because I am expressing a frustration with a player even though I have done nothing adversarial.