Post/Author/DateTime	Post
TrueMallowman 09-24-06, 11:27 AM	My players wanted an evil campaign. I gave it to them. It went well at first; they robbed banks and fought off some good NPCs. Then we got to the second bank and all hell broke loose. A PC (a Chaotic Neutral PC at that) rolls a natural 20 on his Diplomacy check against an NPC duskblade, and somehow interprets this as him deciding to join her party. So he attacks the rest of the party, stopping when they kill the NPC and switching his alignment to CE afterward at my "suggestion" so that this doesn't happen again. This is one of about three times that any of these players have listened to me. One of the PCs, an uber-roleplayer, is a shadowcaster who starts quoting nihilistic and existentialist stuff from the books we've been reading in English. I have him cut his wrists with the shadows until he stops, which works for all of three minutes at a time. Next session, they kidnap a prince and extort money from his parents. First week, they make money. Next week, they make a lot of money. Third week... They roll nat 20 on Bluff and own the country. This is okay, I can handle this. No. The "diplomat" has his artificer cohort armed with a thought bottle build a giant robot and conquer another country. They have obscene amounts of money and an artificer to make stuff for them at half price, and have done in a single session what I thought would take months. The CR system is out of whack, in part because that same "diplomat" is an obscenely strong shifter swordsage build who rolled scores that are ridiculous (two 18s and two 17s). Somehow he rolls scores this high every single time, and because he's my brother he listens to me even less than the others. This isn't just a one-time event, though; they do this sort of thing in every game I DM. How do I solve these problems? To recap: Two players are Chaotic Neutral and take this as license to do whatever they want. One player is an uber-roleplayer at the expense of everything else, to the point where his characters are mechanically ineffective and annoying personality-wise to the entire group both in and out of character. One player somehow magically rolls obscene stats every single time and outclasses everyone else in everything. One player is very quiet but otherwise is excellent, I have no real problem with him. Regardless of whether or not I try to avoid it, they find ways to annihilate the treasure curve and destroy any attempts of mine to create some sort of challenge they can't brute-force their way out of. How do I solve these problems? They have no problem, but it frustrates me because I can't challenge them with anything and hope to succeed.
Ace the Dead 09-24-06, 12:01 PM	There are several solutions to the dice problem. I have played with people who the DM did not allow to roll their own stats because they cheated (knew a way to throw dice such that they almost always landed showing sixes). As far as keeping dice fair within the party, either use point buy (which I like) or roll/define a single attribute array and allow PCs to arrange as desired (which has also worked well for me before). You control the world the PCs live in, including where wealth is and how easy it is to extract it. You are doing something wrong if they break wealth by level (don't take it too hard, I've yet to see a DM who could actually keep PCs on wealth by level). One of the things that seems like it's going poorly is that you actually seem to use the Diplomacy rules in the PHB. Any PC who tries using these rules can easily come to rule the world. Rich Burlew (author of the Order of the Stick webcomic) has an alternative that's far less forgiving to PCs that I would recomend only if they abuse the diplomacy rules. Next up, a King should have at his fingertips several rather powerful NPCs, many of which should love the prince enough to make a damn fine show of taking him back. If you're running a high powered campaign (and you seem to be), almost any 9th level wizard and cleric pair should be able to divine the location of the prince, Dim door in, grab him and dim door out without too much trouble, since he is a willing particpant. The short of it is you need to be proactive about wealth. Before allowing things like artificer cohorts, or getting an entire kingdom as ransom for a prince, think where it ends up, and try and think of a way for that not to work. If you're PCs are as evil as they seem to be, they should be beset not only by the "Charge in Blindly" sort of paladines, but also assassins (and I don't mean the PrC here) who like the way the world used to work, know their way about the castle, and can happily, silently slip a blade inbetween the ribs of a sleeping Tyrant. Role playing and powerful builds are not mutually exclusive. Every PC I build always carries his weight, and always has personality (so much so, that we still talk about the zany anticts of Ace the Dead years after we walked out of the campaign that he was in). The problem is you can no more force a player to build a powerful character than you can force someone to roleplay. The things you can do (building their character for them, forcing them to take the powerful feats/spells/what-have-you) do not result in powerful PCs if the player doesn't play them right. And since they didn't build the PC they wanted to play, they won't play them very well at all. A powerful build is rewarded by being effective, so the best way to encourage good role-playing is to come up with rewards for good role-playing, the quintessential one being XP. You could also do things like saying anyone who RPs poorly, or in a fashion contrary to the enjoyment of the group only gets 80% xp. Other Role-playing rewards include NPC contacts, noble friends/finacal backers, a home or other base of operations, cooler looking gear (a standard stell band Ring of Protection, vs. a golden shield with wings spreading around to form a ring that does the same thing) are all other options. The problem with any of these solutions is they almost always create some sort of disparity amongst the party as certain players like their rewards more than others, and resentment and ill will starts to float around (and you get things like "That's unfair, how come Tom gets a better ___ than me?"). But there is only so much you can do. Good luck, Ace the Dead
grelna 09-24-06, 12:28 PM	First, point buy is your friend in character creation. When you have players rolling dice for their stats, one of them will almost always get scores far better than everyone else. The whole attracton of dice-rolling is that every player hopes that he or she will be able to get scores far higher than through the boring point buy way. With point buy, you can set the power level. 28 points not high enough? Make it 32, or whatever you want. At least that way you won't have individual players forever outshining the rest of the party because they got lucky for five minutes on character creation night. Second, why are the forces of law and goodness so weak in your campaign? Granted, it's an evil-oriented campaign, but it sounds pretty over the top. Your party has their army of Decepticons. Fine. Where are the Transformers for them to fight? Oh, and Smite Evil is also your friend. Third, aren't the other forces of evil bound to sit up and take notice at what your party is doing? "You, you, ...you amateurs! You've ruined everything! My carefully crafted master plan for world conquest was scheduled to kick off next week. Then you came along and shuffled the variables. You realize, of course, that this means war!" Let them face off against the might of Marvin the Martian's transplanar counterpart. Or you could just be boring and make a cabal of liches who had secretly run the show from behind the scenes before the party killed off their puppets. Whatever. For future reference, princes, even sole heirs, are ultimately expendable. Pay a ransom to get one back, yes. Hand over the kingdom, not a prayer. But now the party has had a country handed to them. Tie them up with administrative details. I don't mean forcing them to roleplay all the paperwork out, but the fact is that running a country takes a lot of work. Not to mention that if they've tapped the treasury for their own purposes, then they have substantially weakened their new power base. "Majesties, the drought in the central provinces continues unabated, locusts are eating up what crops are being grown, and the people face famine, Further, our neighbors to the north, south, and east are marching toward our borders. The last message we received was, "We won't be next." What are your instructions? Shall I buy grain or munitions or both?" Heck, if they allowed the former royals to live, maybe the royals were just looking for an excuse to dodge their responsibilities even before the party came along. Without seeing your campaign in action or knowing your party's power level, I don't really know what can be done to help you. What exactly are you hoping to accomplish with it?
kelvinaw273 09-24-06, 12:49 PM	Two players are Chaotic Neutral and take this as license to do whatever they want. We call this alignment "Chaotic Evil". Change it for them. Don't ask them, don't take BS about the rule book - YOU ARE THE DM! One player is an uber-roleplayer at the expense of everything else, to the point where his characters are mechanically ineffective and annoying personality-wise to the entire group both in and out of character. Tell him if he can't survive that isn't your problem. One player somehow magically rolls obscene stats every single time and outclasses everyone else in everything. We call that "cheating" - insist on point buy to build characters, all dice rolls to be with a group set of dice (yours) from a dice-cup. Attempts to use other dice or complaints that this is somehow 'not fair' result in the roll being an automatic '1' on each dice. One player is very quiet but otherwise is excellent, I have no real problem with him. Then put stuff his character's way - plot hooks, dying relatives with huge estates, that sort of thing. Regardless of whether or not I try to avoid it, they find ways to annihilate the treasure curve and destroy any attempts of mine to create some sort of challenge they can't brute-force their way out of. How can they do that when you control how much treasure they get? They kidnap the prince - is it cheaper for the king to hire an NPC party to get him back or pay the PCs? Is there another prince (after all, he may not be the king's favourite)? Just how much has the kingdom got? Will it survive if they steal it all? Sure they got control of the country - now they have a large bill to pay all those civil servents and soldiers, and suddenly that treasury is not looking so big! Kingdoms are expensive to run! How do I solve these problems? They have no problem, but it frustrates me because I can't challenge them with anything and hope to succeed. Learn to think their way, and hit them where it hurts. Have rogues steal their treasure, have fiends kidnap their friends! So the party is too tough? Have an assassin go after their artificer to weaken them! So they built a giant robot? the enemy army lure it into a swamp it gets bogged down in, then hit it with MDj to wreck it. Often when players come up with these plans they have lots of clever arguments for why things can't go wrong. Often these are based on assumptions that are a little fast and loose. Often they are based on bending the rules with a rule-lawyer character pushing the limit. Take no BS. Smile, nod politely. Then when they have paid off the thieve's guild to not steal their valuable mega-bot componants, have an out-of-towner do it anyway, with a backhander to the local guild for the tip-off. When they tell you the local wizards wouldn't dare offend them, have the local wizards hatch a plan that takes them down a peg or two - with no proof it was them. They are being nasty, play them at their own game!
trapspringer 09-24-06, 07:22 PM	Man up. All of these problems are a direct result of your actions. You said, "ok, sure the king will give you obscene amounts of money." And do you seriously mean you force a character to attempt suiced for role playing? Get it together. You can't control a player's actions, so stop trying. You can enforce the consequences of those actions. Start thinking those through.
Lord_Varos 09-24-06, 09:41 PM	First of all, and no one seems to understand this, A natural 20 on a skill check is not an automatic nor a critical success. A natural 20 on a skills check is just a number to which you add your modifier. Only on attacks and saves does a 1 or 20 mean anything special. Next, a single skill check or even a series of ten skills checks should never allow the PCs to own a country. Also, an Artificer that is no 30th level could not possibly build a robot to destroy an entire country. And, if it could, the player is cheating and you have to nerf that kind of cheese right now. Period. If the machine is actually that powerful, rule that it breaks down from the sheer pressure of having that much energy in one artificial being. So what if such beings already exist in your campaign? It doesn't matter! Internal consistency? Who gives a damn!? Have rogues steal their treasure, have fiends kidnap their friends! Words to live by. Even if they are super-politically-powerful, if they aren't *extremely* personally powerful, they will be slaughtered to no end by any NPC group with more class levels than they have. All this said, remember that the point of the game is for the players and DM to have fun. If this is already happening, why change anything? Fixing something that isn't broken can only make it worse. Well, you could improve it, I guess. Okay, bad imagery, but you get the idea.
KnaveofClubs 09-24-06, 11:43 PM	My solution if they break limit rules obscenely, the world around them reacts in the same manner. If they aquire a treasure way beyond their level, thieves from way beyond their level go to take it. If they perform evil deeds of enourmous renown, they have bounty hunters, mercenaries, and assassins respond accordingly. An evil party might catch they eye of a do-goody party and have some competition on their hands. Always remember how the world reacts to the players. As for your players- Mr. Roleplay is annoying so ask him to tone it down a bit or limit him to how long he can take away from the game before everyone else takes their actions, in fact you could just skip his turn at times. Mr. Rolls-to-high-to-seem-legit, there is always someone like this in every group, double check him first to see if he is cheating (even switch out his dice) but otherwise hes just lucky. Seems like you have ran into the problems every group I've seen has had.
SpellSticher 09-25-06, 03:24 AM	And if nothing of the above will do:Send a diety of the balance to smite them. That`s if the situation gets dire, though.
TrueMallowman 09-25-06, 07:58 AM	Yeah, I see. Thanks, all. I'll keep all this in mind next session. A good deal of the problem's been with me and my utter lack of an ability to say no in order to keep things balanced. This primarily comes from wanting to keep my players happy and not wanting to restrict their options. It's obviously not working if I made a topic here, though. Time to hit the undo key and clean up my mess. Again, thanks a lot.