...he takes uses a single-target at will, saying he doesn't want to use his encounters until the enemy attacking him is dealt with.
Next turn, the enemy shifts (provoking an attack from me) and makes an ineffective attack at the invoker. I re-mark the guard, the Rogue gets beaten down to 7 hit-points (turning on the Invoker powers that have riders when a bloodied ally is in the burst). The Invoker shifts backwards, now with an even BETTER target for his bursts...
...and takes a Total Defense action.
This is a PBP game, and the DM has already taken him (and at least one other player) to task for not using Encounter powers when they are appropriate. Any thoughts for how to slap some sense into this guy?
Next time, leave him to fight his own guy. Go help the rogue.
When he ask/complains about it. Just simple say that the rogue needs help or he going down. So he can either help the rogue or you will. If he helps the rogue by using his encounter powers great. Tell him if the at-will is not enough help so your still going to have to leave him and go help the rogue.
Placement and movement are a wonderful thing. We used to have a wizard who did not like casting his spells and was always saving them and hiding in the back. (3.5E) We let him. After a few encounters were nobody stayed back to protect him he learned he need to come forward with the group and cast his spells. If he the player only cares about saving his power and himself then you don't need to worry about him. He will take care of his own guy.
Talking never works with some of players. You have to show them there is value in being part of the group. You show them that I'm going to spend my resources to save you then you better do the same. If I come to your aid then I expect you to do what ever it takes to save me and the rest of the group. Or your on your own.
So since he did not want to spend his power to help the group the group does not need to spend its powers on him.
So is the invoker really worth helping? Or is the rogue? Maybe the invoker is a friend of the fighter, but is he that good a friend? Faced with the invoker's behavior, what would your Fighter do?
;)
It is perfectly okay for a player to make a character like this invoker who is selfish/cowardly/solo-focused. It is also perfectly okay for that character's fellows to treat him like you would treat a selfish and cowardly companion.
Yeah, this is one of those times when an in-character solution is completely appropriate. At some point out of combat the invoker needs to be taken aside, preferably by the fighter who was defending him, and told that everyone needs to be able to depend on him (the invoker) to protect them. The fighter had his back, so when the invoker stopped doing his own job to do the fighter's job it showed faithlessness in his friend's ability to keep him alive, and created a need for the fighter to do the invoker's job, which he doesn't have the power to do.
Warn him that the next time he neglects his own duties and defends himself at all costs, the defenders are going to read that as a greenlight to go defend other combatants, and then be as good as your words. Whether he gets the hint and starts doing controller work or the bad guys chase him around, he's keeping some kind of heat off the party, and if he's determined to waste his abilities keeping only himself alive, the rest of the group needs to let him manage that on his own.
If one member of the herd is off to the side, exposed and isolated, the pack descends upon it. That sort of predatory behavior is instinctive for a reason - it's good strategy. It sounds like you can count on the DM to respond to the invoker focusing on his own immediate survival by focusing on the invoker, and that's also appropriate.
He can complain all he wants that the DM is picking on his character, but the DM is totally justified in doing so, because the invoker gave the villains an opportunity and clear incentive to pick on him. When you get right down to it, it's the invoker's responsibility to keep the villains from being able to focus fire in the first place. That's what a controller does, so if the controller isn't doing it, the DM is sort of obliged to exploit that opening.
Three guards are wailing on our Rogue, and one is bludgeoning our Invoker. The Paladin and the Cleric go to bail the rogue out while I, the Fighter, mark the one on the controller. The Invoker shifts back, away from the marked guard, and with a clear line of sight to launch a party-friendly burst on the three soldiers flanking the rogue...
...he takes uses a single-target at will, saying he doesn't want to use his encounters until the enemy attacking him is dealt with.
Next turn, the enemy shifts (provoking an attack from me) and makes an ineffective attack at the invoker. I re-mark the guard, the Rogue gets beaten down to 7 hit-points (turning on the Invoker powers that have riders when a bloodied ally is in the burst). The Invoker shifts backwards, now with an even BETTER target for his bursts...
...and takes a Total Defense action.
This is a PBP game, and the DM has already taken him (and at least one other player) to task for not using Encounter powers when they are appropriate. Any thoughts for how to slap some sense into this guy?
Oh, so this is a game not worth playing in in the 1st place.
IE; where YOU aren't allowed to control your own character.
Hopefully the player in question realizes that he's better off not playing with you.....
There's a fine line between playing your character on your own terms and hijacking gameplay. This doesn't read all that differently to me than the player who rolled up a cleric making the other players beg him for healing spells or their characters convert to his god, or the rogue picking his teammates' pockets and telling them they have to put up with it because he's roleplaying a kleptomaniac. There's a metagame reason these people are expected not to abandon this person's character, so he's got a metagame responsibility to meet some sort of performance threshhold, to earn his keep, so to speak. If he wants to play a cowardly character, there are character builds that will let him do that narratively while meeting the performance expectations of the group mechanically.
A controller's area of expertise, an invoker's reason for existing is to interfere with the villains' mobility, accuracy and target availability. If he's not doing that, why should anyone be expected to fight alongside him? Yes, it's his prerogative to use his standard actions to bonk people with his staff if he so chooses; it's also his burden to deal with everyone responding to that with frustration and disappointment because it's the least helpful thing he could do in a (make believe) life-or-death situation. The other characters in this story are laying their lives on the line to defend him, and he's refusing to stick his neck out for them at all. It's narratively appropriate for them to abandon him, or at least to be really angry about it.
Yes, the DM has the right to expect him to break out his encounter powers too. Building and running good, challenging encounters becomes a lot harder when there's a character in the equation whose level of performance can't be predicted. Again, there's a balance between letting players do whatever they want with no limits and letting them do whatever they want with no repercussions. We don't have the whole story, so of course the DM could've been out of line in the way he addressed the problem, but it is a problem that he should be able to talk about with his players.
There's a fine line between playing your character on your own terms and hijacking gameplay. This doesn't read all that differently to me than the player who rolled up a cleric making the other players beg him for healing spells or their characters convert to his god, or the rogue picking his teammates' pockets and telling them they have to put up with it because he's roleplaying a kleptomaniac. There's a metagame reason these people are expected not to abandon this person's character, so he's got a metagame responsibility to meet some sort of performance threshhold, to earn his keep, so to speak. If he wants to play a cowardly character, there are character builds that will let him do that narratively while meeting the performance expectations of the group mechanically.
A controller's area of expertise, an invoker's reason for existing is to interfere with the villains' mobility, accuracy and target availability. If he's not doing that, why should anyone be expected to fight alongside him? Yes, it's his prerogative to use his standard actions to bonk people with his staff if he so chooses; it's also his burden to deal with everyone responding to that with frustration and disappointment because it's the least helpful thing he could do in a (make believe) life-or-death situation. The other characters in this story are laying their lives on the line to defend him, and he's refusing to stick his neck out for them at all. It's narratively appropriate for them to abandon him, or at least to be really angry about it.
Yes, the DM has the right to expect him to break out his encounter powers too. Building and running good, challenging encounters becomes a lot harder when there's a character in the equation whose level of performance can't be predicted. Again, there's a balance between letting players do whatever they want with no limits and letting them do whatever they want with no repercussions. We don't have the whole story, so of course the DM could've been out of line in the way he addressed the problem, but it is a problem that he should be able to talk about with his players.
I support this statement, and there are fish skittering in my basement.
The DM can take some other steps, though. If the monsters have a goal other than killing the characters, or if the players have a goal other than killing the monsters - in short, if failure in the encounter means something other than death - then a character's combat effectiveness might not be as important. In this case, if the DM wanted, he could try to arrange for in-combat skill challenges or traps ideal for the invoker. The skill challenges could lead directly to better effectiveness for the party in that encounter, or be part of a larger quest, or whatever.
Re: solution: I left him alone after the total defense action to bail out the rogue. He politely sent me a private mesasge asking why I left him along with two enemies. I explained that there was ONE enemy that threatened him (the warlock had immobilized the other), and that because he could use Armor of Wrath to avoid being pinned down by that enemy, defending him was low priority--especially because he was defending himself at the cost of opportunities to wreck the enemy. We'll see if he gets the message.
Sounds like you handled this pretty well, especially since Invokers are pretty capable of defending themselves anyway.
The third encounter...oh wait, they didn't make it. They didn't finish the second encounter because we ran out of time. The whole party was bloodied, out of heals, and everybody had been dropped at least once, while less than half of Team Monster was bloodied or worse (with only one mob dead). I ruled they fled back to town.
After the game when the Brawler's player confessed that he hadn't used a single encounter power, and dropped all his dailies in the first one, my basic response was, "Look I don't like to tell people how to play their character, but if you didn't use a single encounter power...at best you need to retrain because they clearly aren't useful to you, and at worst you're Doing It Wrong™."
...and takes a Total Defense action.
I have played a lot of 4E, averaging about once a week since it first came out, and I am pretty sure I have never taken a total defense action. I can only remember second winding once as a standard action and my PC was bloodied and flanked with a bunch of conditions on him in a party with no leader.
The invoker, in particular, not only had an encounter left but hadn't uses either of his daily powers five encounters into the day.
It seems like offense is not this guys strong point. He might be better off playing a 2nd defender warden who focuses on second winding, but even then you have to be willing to get hit sometimes. Or else maybe a sneaky mobile sniper build or something. A close blast controller may not be right for him. 4E may not even be the right game for him.
...and takes a Total Defense action.
I have played a lot of 4E, averaging about once a week since it first came out, and I am pretty sure I have never taken a total defense action. I can only remember second winding once as a standard action and my PC was bloodied and flanked with a bunch of conditions on him in a party with no leader.The invoker, in particular, not only had an encounter left but hadn't uses either of his daily powers five encounters into the day.
It seems like offense is not this guys strong point. He might be better off playing a 2nd defender warden who focuses on second winding, but even then you have to be willing to get hit sometimes. Or else maybe a sneaky mobile sniper build or something. A close blast controller may not be right for him. 4E may not even be the right game for him.
I've never seen anyone in my party take total defense either, and I agree, should be a defender.
It could be worse though. He could be your leader, and he could be hiding in a corner while you're fighting and dropping all of his heals on himself whenever he gets scratched and not being at all productive.
That would annoy me. If the entire party isn't doing their part the encounter becomes that much harder; Especially if your DM is building encounters to challenge optimized characters and your party is, well, definitely not. I mean, parties need to be a cohesive unit; I can see why this wouldn't be the case during the first few levels (exceptions notwithstanding) but later on it would become an issue.
It could be worse though. He could be your leader, and he could be hiding in a corner while you're fighting and dropping all of his heals on himself whenever he gets scratched and not being at all productive.
On the other hand, a Lazy Warlord might be right up this guy's alley. He never has to do anything himself, just tells other people. "Oh god it touched me! KILL IT KILL IT SOMEBODY KILL IT!"
I've never seen anyone in my party take total defense either, and I agree, should be a defender.
I disagree. Defender is the most selfless class in my experience. If he can't even be bothered to optimize his murder-tactics because there's a mean ole nasty guard BEING MARKED BY A [Debutantes avert your eyes]ING FIGHTER threatening him, I can hardly see him being any good at a class that's best played by voluntarily inserting yourself into the rogue's position (Hell I once used Persisitent Harrier to teleport into flanking, mostly for the lulz, but I think it actually ended up being tactically viable for some reason).