Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 PrimeSonic Oct 28, 2013 8:32:45	This isn't so much me asking for advice, as it's all done and over with, but rather just a cautionary tale for those who have yet to encounter the situation and just might sometime in the future.   -The situation that lead to wanting to reroll a new character-   I started at level 2 with a Fire Elementalist Sorcerer. We got to level 14. At first it was sorta fun to be playing with one of the highest damage outputs I'd ever seen. I stacked damage from every source I could, I dual-wielded Daggers of Speed and would do 3-5 attacks per turn. At least 2 attacks most of the time. And it was cool for a while. I was the main Striker and brought damage wherever it was needed.   Unfortunately, you can only keep spamming the same basic attack over and over again for so long before you get bored of it. It really wast just that, the same pure-damage attack over and over again, no matter how many times I might be able to spam it. It got boring for me after so long.   Sadly, as much as I loved the character and the directions I could take him, there just wasn't enough non-combat happening to really revel in the social dynamics, and most of the game time would be spent in combat.   I finally reached my limit and asked the DM that I wanted to reroll because I was tired of playing the same class for so long (and this was to be our longest campaign yet)   I rerolled into a Polearm Momentum build using a hybrid Avenger|Druid (if you must know)   -Every mistake we made before the session of switching-   It was the first time we, as a playgroup, were to do something like this. Our adventures were usually ended or cut short before anyone really got bored of playing the same class for too long.   The first mistake was that the DM insisted I keep this information from the other players, wanting to "surprise" them. When really we all later agreed that we should have talked it all together to make it work out as a group. In context, the DM and myself had been having our disagreements over DMing style and I figured I'd trust him on this in good faith, assuming that he was going to really handle this one in detail. So, with that, I didn't protest to it even though it went against every roleplayer's instinct I have.   The second grand problem came from a lack of communication with the DM. It was to be a new character and while I had sent him as much backstory as I could, he was to give me the summary of what my new character was up to prior of meeting the rest of the PCs. Well, that information never came to me. I didn't protest, again, assuming that he had this all figured out. And while he did, he forgot to inform me of any of it before game day.   Another problem was how we wanted to get rid of the old character, which later sparked a heated argument. I wanted to have my old character have some disappearance via the heroic sacrifice trope. He wanted to just kill him off. I should have stood my ground but, again because of wanting to show some good faith in the DM, I didn't. He later told me that if I had protested, we could have done it differently. How was I to know that?   -Everything that went wrong on the day of switching-   So game day arrives and I'm waiting for all the important events to happen. Sure enough, he has my character killed out-of-combat.   I waited at least an hour or more until the new character was brought in with a group of NPCs (another adventuring party. I was supposed to know them, but the DM forgot to tell me everything beforehand. Yeah, so I waited while dead for a while.   With the NPCs introduced, I was waiting for a clear signal to take over my new character. No such signal came as he played my new character like another NPC in the group. This bugged me just a bit.   And guess what, being Paragon Tier, the rest of the playgroup actually managed to resurrect my old character!! With no knowledge of the switch of characters, they did exactly what anyone would expect them to do. And no amount of coaxing from an NPC about "death being natural" was going to stop them.   So here I was, back with my old character and wondering when my new charcter was going to be clearly handed to me.   The issue that sparked the heated argument that took up about a third of our play session was when the DM split up the NPCs among the two adventuring parties to go over different paths. Oviously all the PCs were placed together with a few NPCs there too. The problem: my new character was sent with the other group! At this point, I exploded, the game came crashing to a halt, and the issue was explained to everyone and talked about as I felt betrayed by all the trust I placed on the DM to handle this effectively.   -What happened after-   We did a rollback and just sent my new character with the PCs while my old one went with the NPCs. And we moved on. I simply began playing the new character and we left the old one as an NPC. It was an exit to the character that none one wanted but was the only thing we could do at that point. Given that the group isn't particularly well held together as there's enough conflicts between the motivations of characters to warrent that they not be loyal to each other, we let it slide.   We all agreed that the tipping point was when my new character was thoughtlessly thrown into another band, as if to say "no, you won't be playing this character after all" even though it was just carelessness and not mal-intent.   -The reasons the DM game for his decisions-   "I don't want to do a deus ex machina" Apparently, to him, the idea of setting up a scenario (with full player buy-in) where a PC does some heroic sacrifice is doing a "deus ex machina". My counter to that was "even if it is, so what?" and he was adamant about not wanting to do a "deus ex machina" whatever it is that he believes it to be.   "I don't want the players doing meta-gaming" He didn't want the other players knowing of a new character so their character would act as they normally would. I countered that the players would meta-game either way as now they had one of their players basically not-able-to-play because his character is dead and they would push their characters all the more to quickly get him resurrected so I could return to the gaming table with something to do.   "You didn't do anything with your new character when he showed up" I countered that he was being played as an NPC and I was given no clear hook to actually do something. Heck, the DM even hand-waved dialog for that new character, further adding to the other players the idea that it was just another NPC. At this point, he should have been very explicit that it was my new character and I was to be playing him right away.   It's been a few weeks so I don't remember the rest. But in the end, we learned what not to do by getting it all wrong the first time.   -Moral of the story-   If a player in your game is going to reroll a new character and you want to bow out the old one gracefully, it has to be a collaborative effort involving not just the DM and the player in question but also everyone else at the table.   Good luck and happy gaming.
#2 iserith Oct 28, 2013 11:25:50	Good post. You've clearly identified the problems and the solutions! (The metagaming bit really irks me in particular.)
#3 Centauri Oct 28, 2013 12:14:46	Yes, thanks for giving us your experience. I've been in situations like that myself. Never again.
#4 Chainsawhand Oct 31, 2013 5:00:13	It doesn't seem like something that should be complicated at all. Seeing how some DMs handle these things is always confusing to me and demonstrates just how differently people play the same game.   Then again, I am generally an alternate DM and my game is based around flexibility since I DM when we are missing people and can't play the main game, so getting hung up on character swapping seems strange to me.
#5 PrimeSonic Oct 31, 2013 7:46:42	Chainsawhand wrote:
#6 svendj Oct 31, 2013 8:16:39	This is one of the countless examples I've seen over the years of why D&D is such a difficult game. Social interactions are a crucial part of the game, but the game's Manuals, Handbooks and Guides hardly, if ever, explain them to you. And when they do, there's a real chance of the writers getting it wrong.    Sure, it's easier to focus on statblocks and game elements. But when you make a social game that's aimed at people who generally are a bit socially inept, it might be a smart idea to focus on that aspect first.
#7 iserith Oct 31, 2013 9:58:49	svendj wrote:
#8 svendj Oct 31, 2013 11:47:37	Gotta say, I learned how to DM better from you guys than from any DM I've ever played with IRL. And by doing it, of course. Only one way you're going to get to Carnegie Hall...
#9 PrimeSonic Oct 31, 2013 12:18:01	svendj wrote:
#10 iserith Oct 31, 2013 12:26:25	Thanks for the kind words. I learn a lot from you guys too (even from my "foes") even if I don't say it very often. There's never an end to learning how to do things in this hobby. I've recently felt I hit a renaissance in learning by jumping into or observing a lot of games on Roll20. Mostly it's learning what not to do (ha!) but what is especially interesting to me is learning why people put up with stuff I wouldn't or where people are finding their fun in games that I would have quit before the end of the first session. Some of it is still a mystery to me and each new game brings further clarity.