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?
Run your next one-shot with strictly enforced character restrictions and/or pre-made characters for the players to pick from.
One of my fav campaigns from ages ago had everyone as a barbarian, and we were in the Conan world. Super fun.
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.
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
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
- Seemingly well-balanced encounter (although higher in difficulty than others because boss monster)
- Stab-wizard (not always a wizard) goes down first, boss shifts focus to other players.
- Other players panic as the death saves rise, and will stand right next to the boss monster trying to heal the stab wizard, taking huge damage and dealing none
- Next player goes down, snowball, TPK
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?
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.
“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.
You may not be aware of this, but there is a power word spell that would be perfect for this.
NO!
Works very well.
They show up with a character that makes the rest of the table not have as much fun, you cast power word refusal.
If need be, exercise DM fiat and hand them a character sheet with everything except the fluff already filled in.
Maybe sit down and guide them through rolling up an appropriate class.
There’s really no other long term solution. Short term, you can just let them die a lot, and hope they figure it out. But that fucks the rest of the table. You just gotta teach them how to make the kind of character they actually play.
If you want to bend backward to accommodate this player, you can. Give them a reason to behave that way. Make the other PCs know and understand. For example, in Dark Sun, magic saps the natural world of life and cruel, terrible things happen when magic is cast. Maybe the knife-wizard knows this. Let the spells be dangerous to other people and the environment, but not the party. Have the others in character ask/beg the caster to use a spell, especially if this matters. You can help balance encounters around whether or not they will need to dip into this costly magic.
I’ve dealt with a crossbow wizard before and, tbh, it is easier to have them just face the repercussions of their choices. Granted, that was a one-shot with close friends, but you do what you think is best.
Quick Edit: it might be worth talking about how ttrpgs are a collaborative game and that players should be working together to their goals, while they seem to be dedicated to playing not only suboptimally (which imo isn’t a problem) but they are playing in a way that is actively disruptive. Perhaps not as bad as actively attacking teammates or the like, but this would ruin my fun. I don’t want to play games with people like that.
Do they cast spells out of combat? My favourite characters of all time are basically low resource management casters who then have a couple of spell slots for our of combat utility such as a warlock. If they do, then just increase the number of out of combat obstacles as that’s probably what they’re saving their spells for.
The other thing is that if they reliably always do this in combat, just decrease how much they influence encounter balance. If you use an encounter balancing tool, just put that PC through at a lower level. If they don’t do it reliably, just make your encounters have a scalable element such as a boss who can power up or a creature who joins the fray after a round or two if they actually do use spells.
Some full casters also make good frontliners, although I’m sure you’re already accounting for that. If this character doesn’t, consider ways to offer them powerful melee options. It doesn’t need to rival a paladin or even any melee character but enough to keep them enjoying the same pkaystyle they always fall into. A sentient sword that verbally demands you cast spells because they empower it for melee attacks would be an option, it would encourage them to cast spells to enjoy being in the frontline more, and you can encourage them to cast spells in character. (That idea is actually neat please steal it).
Overall I’d say that if they’re having fun, don’t worry too much about it, I’m terrible for accidentally spoiling the fun of my players by trying to show them the right way to play. If they’re causing TPKs then something needs to be addressed, but if everyone is having fun despite the playstyle, consider how to introduce mechanics, tools and narrative options to forgive and support that pkaystyle.
Not really, they predominantly pick combat-focused spells but then don’t use them in combat. When they do have utility cantrips, despite scenarios to use them, they rarely cast them.
I feel like there’s probably something else going on here that you’d need to get to the root of before you can solve the issue. I think we’d need to know the why of them never using a spell as a primary caster. Have you had a discussion with them about why they do it this way? Do they just dislike vancian casting? Are they trying to conserve spells? Something else?
I’ve had the discussion with them twice. For leveled spells they’re trying to conserve, but to a ridiculous extent. Like fully rested before a known dragon encounter that is also an explicitly stated last encounter of the dungeon and reminded to use spells immediately prior to the encounter and never used a leveled spell. But they never give an explanation for not using cantrips beyond “I just forget”. This is when we have the discussion about “well it seems like the mechanics of this class are really at-odds with the way you like to play, maybe next time you should try a Paladin?” Which seems to go over well, until the next character sheet shows up in my inbox.
Honestly at this point I would just tell them “you aren’t allowed to play a full caster again until you’ve played a more martial class. Your playstyle with full casters has consistently led to TPKs and other players having to carry your weight.”
