Teaching Lessons [3.5 pr any]

[Beelzebub1111]

My major melee tank (warforged with combat brute going for juggernaut) player is complaining that the archery ranger is out-damaging him. Said ranger spends all his gold and all his ability points and feats to improve upon his ability to shoot with a bow. The Melee fighter put his ability point in charisma so he wouldn't have a -1...

The party psychic warrior goes nova on every encounter...

The other fighter always ups their AC as far as they can using combat expertise...but she didn't take any of the associated feats like improved trip, preferring to use a rapier with a high dexterity.

The party rogue fights with two weapons (not bad for a rogue) but divided her skill points up so far that at fifth level she only has a search and disable device of +6, and NONE in use magical device despite putting her second best stat to charisma.

The third fighter, the Druid, and the Ranger aren't so bad. Even if the fighter and ranger are kind of specialized (grappling going for raging mauler, Archery going for Order of the Bow Initiate), and the Druid is kind of generic (Hey, it's a Druid)

I'm building a dungeon to teach them how to play their classes and how they built them properly. Any ideas?

Otherwise, any similar experiences with players who just don't know how to play the character they built?

[Codenpeg]

Get him off of fighters. See if he'd like to try something out of the tomb of battle. Your basic melee fighters will always have trouble, with Tomb of Battle classes, his damage will go up and his abilities will be pretty awesome.

I'm not sure if those classes will work with Juggernaut, you should GM it into working for him.

[Z3ro]

It seems to me there might be one of two problems here:

1) The players don't know how to make good charecters. This is easily fixed by you showing them what works and what doesn't, including suggesting parts of their build they could modify or plan for going forward. Letting them retrain or rebuild is usually a good option is this is the case.

2) The players have the charecters they want/don't care about things like being good in combat. Given what you said about the warforged player, this doesn't seem to be the case, but if it is you can either tailor encounters to the party (headache for you) or see if they want to play a game less combat focused, either D&D or another system.

[Beelzebub1111]

It seems to me there might be one of two problems here:

1) The players don't know how to make good charecters. This is easily fixed by you showing them what works and what doesn't, including suggesting parts of their build they could modify or plan for going forward. Letting them retrain or rebuild is usually a good option is this is the case.

That's what I'm thinking, but they didn't listen to me during creation...or at any other time. I think that they're under the impression that I'm trying to gimp them or something.



2) The players have the charecters they want/don't care about things like being good in combat. Given what you said about the warforged player, this doesn't seem to be the case, but if it is you can either tailor encounters to the party (headache for you) or see if they want to play a game less combat focused, either D&D or another system.
That's what I thought when the warforged player until he took me aside and complained to me personally about how the ranger is doing "Too Well". Which makes me think that he thought that he was going to be the most powerful character. (as another note he put his 17 in dex when he took adamantine body..)

[Beelzebub1111]

Whelp, I've built a three floor dungeon (conservation of resources for psi war) with a few traps, magical and otherwise (rogue skills), some medium sized and smaller enemies (make warforged feel good about himself and use combat techniques that he built his character around).

I'm going to talk to the warforged player before the game about how his conflict between design and desire for power is driving me nuts.

[Bagelz]

How about your players enter in the annual knight's games

some wizards duals (allow the druid to enter) some monetary prizes for hand to hand combat, a joust. Archery competion

Build a few well optimized fighters (a chain tripper, a power charger, ect) a level or two below that of the party. And one or two built similarly to your players, so they can realize how much less of a threat that is.
This gives your party the odds by die roll, but shows them a good example of what they could do.

[BenInHB]

Is your Warforged using the Dungeon Crasher variant?? If not that will up his damage a lot.

Also see if he is interested in redoing his stats. Dex shouldn't be higher than 12 if he is taking Adamantine Body.

[Z3ro]

Whelp, I've built a three floor dungeon (conservation of resources for psi war) with a few traps, magical and otherwise (rogue skills), some medium sized and smaller enemies (make warforged feel good about himself and use combat techniques that he built his character around).

I'm going to talk to the warforged player before the game about how his conflict between design and desire for power is driving me nuts.

If the warforged player with adamantine body put a 17 into dex, I don't think a training dungeon is the solution to your problems. I would offer to let the player unhappy with his charecter redesign, anything from swapping status to a total rebuild, depending on how you feel about it. Since he came to you out of game, he should be open to it. Hopefully, once he sees how much better he starts performing with a better design, he'll get the message. If not, there's not much you can do.

[Hawkfrost000]

My major melee tank (warforged with combat brute going for juggernaut) player is complaining that the archery ranger is out-damaging him. Said ranger spends all his gold and all his ability points and feats to improve upon his ability to shoot with a bow. The Melee fighter put his ability point in charisma so he wouldn't have a -1...


i may be wrong here but this is my understanding of how this works

tanks dont DEAL damage they TAKE it

they protect the party by being unkillable not by being a combat beast, leave that to the ranger

your guy is playing a fighter wrong

DM