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View Full Version : How do you deal with less than smart players in your group?



vageta31
2011-03-06, 02:16 AM
So my new group had our 2nd pnp session last night and I ran into an issue with a member of the group that had me frustrated. I know it's early on in the campaign and people will learn, but I have a feeling it won't be the last.

Basically this guy is a half-orc fighter and his RL buddy is a gnome wizard. They wrote their backstory together and so are already "friends" in game, while the other 3 of us haven't had any significant time to bond and throw our lives on the line for one another.

So situation is we're in a room inside a cave. There is an orc that was sleeping, but has had command cast on him and can't stand up(cleric wanted to question him) and also an orc that just burst through the doorway about 15ft away. The gnome wizard which only has 2 hps decides to try and colorspray the orc and stun it, and fails. Now the wizard is 10ft from the orc, the closest one to him, and it's only me and the half-orcs turn before the orcs chance to attack. Both of us are standing next to the commanded orc who is helpless as we had just killed a hyena that was near him.

Half-orc decides to attack the sleeping orc, even though I'm trying to hint at him that his buddy is in trouble. He brushes it off and laughs as he demolishes this orc... I'm already down on hit points, but I know that the only way to save the Wizard who has a whopping 2 hps is to step in front. I rush over and do 5 points of damage, then orc attacks and knocks me unconcious. Orc dies in next round but cleric has to blow a heal to stabilize me.

So I'm not happy, but not because I'm hurt. Because I know that whether by RP or tactical sense, the orc was an idiot. Being chaotic neutral and not having any allegience to the guy I shouldn't have even done what I did knowing I was low on hps and had no possible way of killing the orc in one attack. (I'm a rogue with a shortsword with no weapon finesse yet..).

1. He should have attempted to save his buddy as he was the most vested in his safety.
2. He wasn't hurt and could have easily survived the attack, and maybe even killed him in one hit with his +4 str bonus and 1d10 weapon. He almost always hits with his rolls, while me with low str always whiffs.
3. We're not very far into the dungeon, cleric only has 2 heals left and so he had to burn another one just to keep me from dying. Now we have 1 heal left and barely got anywhere in this place.

I probably should have scolded him in game with my guy, saying something about what a ****ty friend he was but I didn't really think about it till later. What irritates me most is since we are all kind of new the DM is allowing us to help one another OOC with tactics and such, and I'm trying my hardest to explain to him the situation and he is hell bent on killing this helpless orc. I'm dual wielding, in range and the orc has no dex bonus. I could have murdered him in a heartbeat on the next roll...

Anyways it wasn't a big deal, but even the wizard kind of knew it was a bad call seeing as the orc is always "trying to roleplay his character". Had I actually died I probably would have been pissed but would have been a learning experience. I half contemplated not saving the wizard...but it'd have ended the dungeon experience very early and I really was enjoying myself.

Is this just something I hope he gets better at? In the future I'm thinking maybe he needs to be reminded or taught a lesson. Had the wizard died he really would have felt like an idiot... but it wasn't worth the risk in my eyes. Our party is very light on offense, and if he is our main fighter I fear for our survival in times ahead. I'm a total tactician but I can't tell him what to do, I just hope he figures out that he should be setting up flanks for me, taking some hits when we're all unharmed to help spread the damage across the party instead of 2 nearly dead guys that will now be worthless in battle, etc..

I almost want my guy to die so I can roll up more of a front liner to bear the burden of helping the party survive more. As a rogue I really can't do much once the battle begins other than try to kill a dangerous creature asap without getting myself killed.

FYI we have a Rogue(me), Ranger who is range focused, wizard with no evocation as he took some sort of variant for transmutation, a lawful idiot cleric and the orc. I'm seriously considering playing stupid and dying and rolling up a fighter/cleric or something to help out our lack of healing ability and be more of the main tank to help control the flow of battle. I really want to be a chain wielding battle cleric who stays in front of the weaker guys, while the orc rages ahead and does his own thing. I mean I think it's going to be part of the RP where we can't count on him and must assume he isn't going to act like a dumb orc hehe.

Darth Crater
2011-03-06, 03:03 AM
Command shouldn't have kept that other orc down for long, as it has a duration of only 1 round. Still, ignoring the largest (and apparently only) threat in a battle doesn't sound "in character" for a raging half-orc type. As always, the best way to settle this is outside of the game - perhaps asking the wizard to approach him, if they're friends?

vageta31
2011-03-06, 03:41 AM
True about command, but with the 2 strikers of the party both next to him with full attack capability he would have had to have been extremely lucky to survive the round. And then I'd assume since he was laying prone he'd have taken an AoO to stand up and attack. Lawful idiot cleric is already being a problem. He's insisting on questioning this orc and we're arguing about wanting to kill it when the other guy bursts through the door. My group is taking so long arguing about what to do in each situation we've lost every single surprise opportunity thus far. DM eventually just says "so and so slowly looks backwards and notices you...". From this point on I'm RP my chaotic alignment and taking advantage of any situation while the cleric can argue with the others.

I just want the orc guy to realize whether for RP reason to save his buddy, or tactical reasons for the party it was a bad move. He could have most likely hit and killed that orc in one round if he had charged(+7 to hit with str/bab/charge). Thus saving an extra heal spell for down the road, saving his buddy, and being in the best position should something else came out of that door. Now I'm at half hps, Wizard is at 2, ranger is hurt and cleric only has one heal left. No healing kits as we're all broke at level 1 and a mile from town. If we go any deeper next session one of us will likely die.

But I think it may be a good learning lesson for all of us(I've already learned taking too much time to plan an attack when you catch 2 enemies off guard and losing a surprise round is stupid. We could have killed the hyena and orc before they even had a chance to react and no one would have been hurt and we'd all have been ready when the orc burst through the door). You have to think efficiently at this level if you only have one healer with limited spells. Orc has 12 hps, if we go any deeper I hope he realizes we're going to sit back and watch while he fights everything hehe. With 5 hps I can't even risk a tumble for flanking bonus... Well unless I want to commit "unintentional" suicide by tumbling into a group of orcs while insulting their mothers. I'm seriously contemplating being the one to sacrifice if need be as I think my rogue will be useless if my orc pal isn't tactical minded enough to work with my characters strengths.

The White Knight
2011-03-06, 08:03 AM
Now make that guy your DM, and you have my group.

Comet
2011-03-06, 08:14 AM
Some people just aren't the sort to carefully ponder their tactics and decisions in a game.

Either hope he learns to play the way you play, deal with his different play style or kick him out for being an idiot and playing the game wrong.

:smalltongue: Sorry for being unhelpful, but I'm not really seeing a huge problem here that we can help with. Talk to the player(s), explain the situation and hope for the best.

mcv
2011-03-06, 08:22 AM
If the half-orc likes to roleplay his character's stupidity and he likes to kill orcs in their sleep, then let him. But if you can't take a hit, your rogue probably shouldn't be jumping in front of big orcs. And neither should the wizard with 2 HP.

Adjust your tactics to your lack of dependable front-line fighters, and roleplay the group trying to convince the half-orc to take that job.

Roleplaying a dysfunctional group can be fun too. Of course your group might not accomplish as much, but if that's the choice your players make, then there's nothing wrong with that.

Tyndmyr
2011-03-06, 08:30 AM
How do I deal with dumb players as a dm? Well, they die. A lot.

I'm. Currently playing a game with a stupid player. He started as party leader for rp reasons but that didn't last. The party doesn't let him make decisions. Him talking ic usually results in us cutting him off and telling him to shut up. This is necessary. Otherwise, he'll interrupt delicate negotiations to speculate on the size of various bodily organs of random people.

gbprime
2011-03-06, 08:50 AM
WEll let's look at it another way. Trained melee combatant sees his badly wounded non-combatant friend rush an orc, wiggle his fingers, and fail to do anything. If said friend survives the whomping he's about to receive, he'll learn an important lesson.

Besides, the cleric can save him down to neg 9, right? For low level arcanists, that's important. :smallamused:

LordBlades
2011-03-06, 09:31 AM
FYI we have a Rogue(me), Ranger who is range focused, wizard with no evocation as he took some sort of variant for transmutation, a lawful idiot cleric and the orc. .

You make it sound like banning evocation it's a bad thing. It's the exact opposite(one of the best optimization decisions you can make as a wizard).

On the stupid player issue, I think it's best resolved out of game. Have a chat with him, and explain that D&D is a team game, and if he's not a team player, then he might suffer when he needs your help.

Nopraptor
2011-03-06, 09:55 AM
I can relate, in my last group it was me as DM, a friend of mine,his brother and his brother's friend, now each of them had two charecters to control (for combat reasons), so the brother is a complete moron and says his charecters (although from to seperate races,countries and edges of the earth) have been traveling together since forever (already creating conflicts and problems within the party).

he used to involve out of game fights with his brother in the game and one time it actually escalated enough for them to draw swords on one another and the parties goliath barbarian having to knock them both unconcious so they won't each other (the brother's friend did this, nice guy)

anyway, because of this prat we had to break up the group and I haven't played since (must kill :smallfurious:) I hope it doesn't come to that with your group, try talking to him and hope that helps

nedz
2011-03-06, 10:00 AM
Maybe the're playing low int characters ?:smallbiggrin:

I'd just laugh and post the funny stories here.:smallsmile:

They will probably learn and impove over time.

NekoJoker
2011-03-06, 10:38 AM
Best possible solution -as stated on the previous posts- is to talk to both, the gnome wizard and the half-orc into being more caring, if you guys are going to be raiding tombs and sacking temples you better start working as a team. They should not take offense if you tell them to watch each other's back a bit more.

And in return you will watch theirs, it's all give and take.

If that does not work... work with the other members of the group; If the barb does not want to play team, then you must enforce the idea on the others, it's in their best interest after al... nobody wants to die.

From the looks of it this was probably one of your first fights as a group, so it is common that everyone will do the less-than-optimal decision, tactics and strategy will come along as you play and discover each other's strenghts and weaknesses.

Don't try killing yourself to become a sort of martyr... that seldom works with this kind of player attitude, most of the time they just rationalize you made a bad decision and move on.

Now... if none of this works, just let the guy charge into battle while you stay on the sidelines, provide support, but never get close, get yourself a ranged weapon and team up with the ranger to drop an arrow on every living creature you encounter.

Firechanter
2011-03-06, 11:04 AM
First off, if you feel that you should rather play a tanky character, why wait until your rogue dies? Just talk to the DM that you feel the party needs a better tank and swap out your character at the next opportunity.

Now to the main question: in my last D&D round, we had two dumb players.

The first played a Ranger, a Drizzt-clone to boot except he wasn't Drow but Cali****e (lol at word filter... you know, person from Calimshan), but dual scimitars and all. He wasn't overly effective in combat, but anyway. The real issues with this player were that:
1. he was a coward. Any time the DM described something that filled the basic definitions of tension and adventure, he'd say "Oh that's dangerous". Effectively he got me to play my Cleric much more brash than I originally planned, just to show him how to get things done.
2. he kept meddling with other characters' niches, especially the rogue's. When the Rogue player said she wanted to stealthily scout ahead, which she was very good at due to being a halfling with maxed skills, he'd say "I'm coming along", usually blowing his half-baked stealth checks.

Also, despite being a coward in general terms, he was stupidly reckless in details. Such as opening a door before the rogue could check it for traps.
At first the rogue player got majorly pissed for his interfering with her niche, but then she decided to take it easy and watch the show. When he didn't let her do her thing, she just let him go ahead and kept a safe distance, letting him set off every trap in the respective corridor. I as cleric began to refuse healing him of wounds contracted by these stupidities.

So, all that was just one of two stupid players... so maybe you can feel my pain already. The other was a woman who started out with a Fighter. Then she saw what cool stuff the casters could pull off, so she spontaneously multiclassed into Wizard. Of course since her build was not made for that, she now sucked at both melee and magic. Eventually we made her a new character, a druid. She was happy with that, although the only spell she seemed to use was Faerie Fire whether something needed highlighting or not.
Apart from that, she'd just Wildshape, and we deployed her like a bazooka: point in general direction of the enemy and let loose.

In the long run, the group didn't survive. We got fed up with the Ranger player's shenanigans and wanted to throw him out of the group, but he was special buddy of the DM and he refused to remove him, so eventually they both left and the group broke up.

vageta31
2011-03-06, 01:21 PM
Thanks for all the replies guys, I guess having sub-optimal tactical players is rather common. The guy is definitely not an idiot, he's an engineer at my work, I just think he doesn't understand the rules of the game yet and realize just how important some decisions can be. To be honest this is my first time playing as well, but I'm sort of OCD about these sorts of things and have been doing a ton of reading, playing Temple of Elemental Evil PC game which is about as close to tactical pnp combat as you'll likely find, etc... DM is allowing us to help eachother OOC for now until everyone gets the rules...

To defend the wizard he was already close to the door when it opened, I think he was hoping to stun the guy to help us and no doubt assumed his buddy would shield him... bad assumption :)

However I think it might be fun to make a log of this group, it's quite entertaining. The orc who doesn't understand how the game works yet, is always wanting to run around and make "checks" and "roll dice" for anything and everything, not to mention he thinks he's rich and always wants to bribe everyone. He spent half the first night offering the cleric to heal him to full hps, not seeming to realize that it's not the gold but the waste of the spell that the cleric is refusing for. We found 2 dead clerics in an old mill that were being eaten by hyenas, and his response was that he wanted to eat the bodies, to which I recommended eating the dead hyena we just slaughtered.

I think you're right, instead of be frustrated at his lack of tactics we will just work with him. My rogue has high INT so maybe in game I can mess with him and get him to do stupid things to suit my guy. I wasn't intending to be a martyr, for OOC reasons I didn't want the wizard to die and spoil the night. I knew I'd have a better chance of surviving the encounter.

I guess it could be worse.. the guy playing the orc could have been the cleric and man that would have been disastrous! :)

Scarlet-Devil
2011-03-06, 01:36 PM
Hah, I've got plenty of those stories, most from the same campaign. For example, I once climbed up the wall of an inn to a second story room where I knew a vampire was staying, in the middle of the night, without telling my party. Once I reached the window I remembered: "oh yeah, windows are usually locked, from the inside", so I knocked on the window, hoping he would let me in to interrogate him...

Dalek-K
2011-03-06, 07:53 PM
In college I was a dorm mate of some great guys... I was an engineering major and they were art majors... The type of art majors that reinforces the stereotype of art majors. They were great guys but 2 of them weren't the brightest bulbs in the socket...

But I found that the best way to deal with them was to make them laugh... Or to be lenient on certain aspects of the game. One ended up being to lazy to even play D&D but the other became a really good tactical player (surprised the hell out of the rest of us).

randomhero00
2011-03-06, 07:58 PM
Don't hold back. Just keep killing the dumb players (while giving them tips after game) until they learn. That's basically how I learned. Actually learned worse than that, my first DM (who was very experienced) kept killing me until I learned without any advice. I've had 3 DMs so far, and I'd place him at 2nd best. So, personally, at least I took no offense at it. I just realized it was part of the game. Plus it kind of made it more exciting since there was a chance I'd die that session. Now that I'm an old player I feel like I'll probably never die except once in a blue moon.

edit: which has made it more boring and less fun. But I don't think a more challenging game would be in order. Unless it was a very good DM that could play epic.

vageta31
2011-03-06, 09:57 PM
I absolutely love the idea that I could die at any moment. I want to know that taking a risk could lead to death, but could also make you the hero. Since I'm itchy to reroll and play a different guy I'm contemplating doing something "stupid" soon to die gloriously :P However if I get higher level and really fall into character with a guy I like playing, I'd definitely play more wearily.

As I said, the guy is intelligent, he just likes to smash things and do damage and it overshadowed his logic at the moment. However I expect him to continue doing it so I'll learn to work around it, and if given the opportunity I'll ensure that the group and I don't cover for him one time to teach him a lesson.

I'll give him credit though, the guy hits just about everything he swings at. His die op up over 15 regularly while I struggle to hit anything. I swear I rolled more 1's 2s and 3s the last night than everyone else combined.

ryu
2011-03-06, 10:34 PM
My simple reply for dealing with annoying characters is pretty much in the sig. I'd have to come up with new ones to deal with other situations though.

vageta31
2011-03-06, 10:45 PM
True, even after only playing limited time together we're all jokingly repeating "send in the orc" during any potentially dangerous situation. I was deftly trying to disarm a magical trapped door and the orc kept wanting to crash down the door with his axe. My character has high INT so it's within RP that I continually try to coax him into doing things "I know" are stupid, but will save me from making a save if I fail :) Why risk the fragile rogue when you can send in a half-witted orc to absorb any damage that may ensue.


My simple reply for dealing with annoying characters is pretty much in the sig. I'd have to come up with new ones to deal with other situations though.

Firechanter
2011-03-07, 04:32 AM
Heh. In the aforementioned game, my cleric had found one of those summon-lion statues (the type that usually comes in pairs, but the DM screwed me over once more with that drop). One fellow player kept calling the lion "Disarm Traps", but I wouldn't have any of it. Why sacrifice the poor kitty, if you could send the ranger instead?