[PF] need help with difficalt player

[arixe]

So I have been running my first pathfinder campaign for about 4 sessions and need some advice.
I have a very difficult player. He thinks I favor the rogue and the other skilled players because they amass gold much faster than him but I don’t want to penalize them for good role playing.

[Bhaakon]

I don't think there are outsider levels in pathfinder.


The easiest way to allow that kind of thing is the eldritch heritage line of feats, which will grant her bloodline powers from the sorcerer bloodline of her choice (infernal, I'm assuming).

[Larpus]

More information about the difficult player is needed.

What is his class and build?

Why does he feel that way?

What are the others doing that he is not, exactly?

As for the infernal thing, other than the mentioned heritage feats, don't think there's any way in the books, but you can always be creative.

[arixe]

He is a class jumper; he hasn’t been the same thing consistently for a while.
Right now he’s a trickery witch.
Earlier one of his characters died, one didn’t fit in the party being the only evil character, one he abandoned, and his first one was basically a glorified NPC. (At first, he said that is all he wanted to be)

What my other party members do is they find ways to make money, like the rogue in the party robs and the bard performs for money. Every chance they gets they up the price on the loot and talk their price down. He does neither and rather than stretching his gold, he pays the standard price. The rogue also involves her self in everything so she’s constantly being rewarded where he is not. He is not trying to put in any effort. Thinks I should just force-feed him the plot. But I am trying to make things as free flowing as possible. I even included a bulletin board in the current town so I could force feed him the plot but his character refused to take any of the missions.

Example being a town back the rouge… lets call her E, joined a small town rebellion and the thieves’ guild. What happened was the town’s mayor was hiking up the taxes, squeezing every drop of gold he could get from its inhabitants. What the rouge did is she immediately found a dumb figurehead, his name is T, to be the rebellions leader but she was the brains behind it. So, the rebellion is made up of all the towns people who are the good guys. The mayor and his thugs are the bad guys.
Ok so after she did that there was an attempt on the rebellion leader’s life made by an assassin. E followed the assassin, found the thieves guild, and was put in charge of killing T. so she was a double agent for the rebellion, and part of the thieves’ guild. She used her disguise skill to make an innocent guard look like T and the E proceeded to execute the fake T. Therefore, she got gold from T for saving his life, and gold from the guild master for taking down the rebellion leader. The rebellion finally attacks the mayor and another PC engages a war with the guards. So there is no one to intercept her in the mayor’s mansion while she is stealing everything he owns. So she gets gold from that too.

All of these things seem legitimate right? But the class jumper thinks it is unfair while all the other PCs are fine with it.


Also, where can I find the heritage feat?

[Aioran]

Ultimate magic, page 149. Improved and Greater Eldritch Heritage are on page 152.

[nedz]

Class Jumping, as you call it, is usually called Dipping; and there is nothing wrong with this.:smallsigh:

I could be wrong, but it sounds like you might have a personality clash - they happen - and there is probably nothing you can do to solve it.:smallsigh:

It seems likely that this player isn't interested in making money for the sake of it, perhaps because they find it boring. If this is the case then they should become more involved if you change the nature of the game in some way. How much time you you spend in town shopping and the like; and how much actually doing heroic stuff ?

[Golden Ladybug]

Class Jumping, as you call it, is usually called Dipping; and there is nothing wrong with this.:smallsigh:

From what he said above, I think he means that the problem player has been switching characters a lot, but I can't be sure :smallconfused:

Anyway, the problem you have here isn't one that can really be solved easily. This player is getting angry about not having as much Gold/Stuff/Rewards as the other players, but is doing nothing to fix that.

The Rogue is finding side quests to do, and she should be rewarded for them, and the problem player shouldn't get rewards for that side quest if he didn't do anything. He shouldn't get money because the Bard is performing, unless he goes out and performs too.

It seems that this player doesn't want to be playing the same game as the others. Talk to him outside of game, explain this to him, and ask what he wants to do to make the game more enjoyable.

[Alienist]

I don't know what a trickery witch is, I assume some kind of arcane caster thingy.

See: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/equipment.html#spellcasting-and-services

Spellcasting Caster level × spell level × 10 gp (#3)

#3 See spell description for additional costs. If the additional costs put the spell's total cost above 3,000 gp, that spell is not generally available. Use a spell level of 1/2 for 0-level spells to calculate the cost.

Unless you're showering the Rogue and Bard with enormously much more gold than you should be (seriously!) the spell caster will soon outstrip the Rogue and the Bard in their 'day jobs', and they should eventually realise this and 'pull their heads out of their asses' and get on with the job of adventuring for fun and profit, and not the humdrum boring activity of having a mundane day-job.

Just as an example, a fifth level wizard should be able to offload 4 1st, 3 2nd and 2 3rd level spells, for a total of:

5 x (4 + 6 + 6) x 10 = 800gp per day.

If a fifth level Rogue is making over 100gp per day stealing then you are grossly favouring the Rogue (even 100gp per day is way too high). Likewise with the Bard he shouldn't be making anywhere near that much (though the Bard can also sell some spells...)

Have a look at the amounts that highly skilled craftsmen can earn. Now consider that thieves and musicians typically earn much less than highly trained professionals (and have higher occupational hazards to boot).


I put it to you: that you've got it exactly the wrong way around; your 'problem' player wants to get on with the 'hero-ing' side of the role-playing, and the amount of time the other two players are sucking from the campaign with their 'day jobs' is detracting from the overall heroic nature of the campaign.

There are two reasons why splitting a party is regarded as a notoriously bad thing:
(1) higher incidence of PC death and
(2) other players get nothing to do except twiddle their thumbs while the solo-players hog the limelight.

That said, with respect to #2 I myself was considering running a campaign where it was totally optional whether the party would work together or separately. The way I was planning on handling it was to just have massive amounts of random/small/trivial encounters, and go round the table one at a time first to describe their little mini-scenario, then going straight on to the next player (to give the players time to think about what they were going to do) then coming back around a second time to role-play out the response.

If I had a little script for a 'cut scene' I might get the uninvolved players to role-play the various NPCs involved in it (and give bonus xp at the end of the session for doing a good job of it). Any fights they got into wouldn't be scaled on player #s either, they would be pre-determined, and if some solo player bites off more than he or she can chew (and realises it, some players are kind of dense that way), then they have the option of trying to figure out how to retreat and/or end the combat.

I'd need to drive the tempo relentlessly, so as to avoid the "it's Jim's turn, lets all go out for pizza" problem.

And I'm not sure if it could last for more than two or three sessions. Running separate quests for everyone is hard. Surely you are finding that with your Rogue player? Isn't the task of coming up with new burglaries for them to do just overwhelmingly tedious, or have you streamlined the process?

Sometimes it's good to go a bit deep into the minutiae of the PCs lives, where they live, who their contacts are, whether they have alternative safe-houses or bolt-holes etc. I know that when Babylon 5 was still new and shiny, people waxed lyrical about how much more awesome it was than Star Trek because you never saw people on Star Trek eating or going to the loo (the going to the loo might be a 'valid complaint', but the eating certainly wasn't, even in the original series they had episodes where they showed them chowing down on brightly coloured geometric shapes (with magnetic utensils if I remember correctly) - and in TNG they spent an inordinate amount of time in 10-forward). Here's the thing though. Even in Babylon 5 they didn't show them using the heads every episode, because minutiae are BORING. Would you watch an episode of TNG in which you just 'sat with' Geordie through a perfectly normal engineering watch, where absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened? They had 'staff meetings' in TNG, would you watch an episode that was nothing but meetings? How boring would that be?

IF you want to penalise your 'problem player' for not 'roleplaying' the boring details of selling his spells, just say "you sell your spells for X" (where X is half the market rate) and then move on.

If he gets too far in front, only let him sell his full spell complement in cities, or perhaps put a limit on it, or maybe send around some 'enforcers' from the nearest magicians guild to 'encourage' him to join (and they get a cut of the action of course, and if he stops doing it for some reason, they will simply suspect he's lying to them, and try to take the percentage that they are 'owed' anyway).

Also, for stolen goods, I hope you're not letting the thief flog them off at full price (or even half price). He should have to find a fence, and he should only get a small fraction of the 'retail' sale value. And if he's gone on a massive crime spree (which it sounds like he probably has) then one of the early things that you should do (if you want to try to sneak in some roleplaying of day jobs into your 'overly heroic' player) is to say that the local constabulary come to him, and want certain specific spells cast which will lead them to the thief. The thief, of course, will get a rude OOC shock when this happens, which will be funny in and of itself, but it will help get them back on track for actually, you know, going adventuring and stuff like that.

[Alienist]

It seems that this player doesn't want to be playing the same game as the others. Talk to him outside of game, explain this to him, and ask what he wants to do to make the game more enjoyable.

Indeed. The other players want to play Actuaries and Accountants, and the problem player wants to play Tunnels and Trolls.

(Yes, I'm stealing a joke from (I think) a cartoon in the first edition DMG, credit where it is due and all that)

Why on earth is it up to the player to make having a day job more enjoyable?

There's a reason these are FANTASY(1) games. Perhaps the original poster should switch to a 25 point GURPS campaign, that might do a more realistic job of simulating a non-heroic roleplaying system?

(1) or perhaps I should say 'escapist'?

[Golden Ladybug]

Indeed. The other players want to play Actuaries and Accountants, and the problem player wants to play Tunnels and Trolls.

Oh, I guess that all but one of the players having fun means they're doing it wrong :smalltongue:

Reading over what the OP has posted, it seems that they're not just sitting down rolling Perform or Sleight of Hand, they're making their endeavours to earn a little extra cash into side quests. Even if they're not playing a Sandbox, there is nothing wrong with that.

When the majority of players at the table are really enjoying this, and one person refusing to participate because he doesn't want to play that way, then yes, you talk to that one player and figure out what to do about it!

If he wants to play in a dungeon-crawl when everyone else wants to play political intrigue, then he's in the wrong game. He either figures out a way to enjoy himself, or he'll begin ruining it for everyone.

[Alienist]

If he wants to play in a dungeon-crawl when everyone else wants to play political intrigue, then he's in the wrong game. He either figures out a way to enjoy himself, or he'll begin ruining it for everyone.

Well, that is certainly a point of view, one that isn't actually backed up by anything the OP said. But hey, for all I know they could be in a political intrigue game instead of a heroic fantasy game.

But I think you're missing half the picture. Please find me the section of the DMG where it says that it is good and proper for players to have unequal distributions of treasure.

It's alright, I'll wait.

...

In fact, I think you will find the exact opposite. The DMG goes out of its way to point out that players getting unequal shares of treasure is a common form of strife in parties.

In fact, I would go so far as to call it a kind of griefing. There was a recent, quite heated, debate about how much to charge fellow party members for making magic items for them, which stems from this problem. If one person gets too far ahead, then everyone else will get upset, and if one person gets too far behind then they will also get upset.

But, for realistic amounts of gold that could be earned performing or stealing I don't see it as a problem really. The few tens of gold that would be earned that way aren't that big a deal. Surely the OP must be handing out thousands of gold for these exploits, otherwise there wouldn't be a big problem, and not only is that amount of money for those sorts of activities absurdly unrealistic, it is guaranteed to cause strife.

A better way of handling it, more consistent with the tropes of the genre would be to index these kinds of roleplaying exploits (assuming you wish to encourage them) to a kind of Shadowrun-style 'lifestyle'.

So you have a big performance in front of a wealthy patron, you live lavishly for a month.
So you have a big score from a burglary, again you live lavishly for a month, but then you've fritted it away on wine, women, songs and gambling, and need to make another big score to keep the lifestyle going. (That'd fit my recollections of 'heroes' such as Fafrhd (sp?) and the Grey Mouser, amongst others).

That allows the DM to reward good roleplaying with a reward that is most appropriate - an in game non-monetary reward, literally a roleplaying payoff. Those who care about that side of things will get their warm fuzzes, and those that don't won't be upset because the DM is showering everyone else with gold.

As an aside, your argument essentially boils down to: "people with a different play style should be punished and/or booted out". I recommend reading the bits in the DMG where it talks about identifying the different play styles, and providing the players with rewards and challenges they will enjoy.

Perhaps you are in a region where everyone in all your roleplaying groups have had exactly the same play style. Lucky you. The rest of us have to learn how to play nice with others.

[Callista]

So I have been running my first pathfinder campaign for about 4 sessions and need some advice.
First, I have a very difficult player. He thinks I favor the rogue and the other skilled players because they amass gold much faster than him but I don’t want to penalize them for good role playing.I've seen this problem before--a rogue focused on acquiring gold, gets a higher wealth than the rest of the party, and others are jealous... but it's all legitimately acquired wealth. Do the players with the higher wealth level mind if you try to even things out a bit by allowing them opportunities to spend their money in ways that don't affect the power level of the characters? Starting a guild, buying a keep, or buying magical items for the whole party are all useful.

[nedz]

I've seen this problem before--a rogue focused on acquiring gold, gets a higher wealth than the rest of the party, and others are jealous... but it's all legitimately acquired wealth. Do the players with the higher wealth level mind if you try to even things out a bit by allowing them opportunities to spend their money in ways that don't affect the power level of the characters? Starting a guild, buying a keep, or buying magical items for the whole party are all useful.

Have you seen this one ?
A spellcaster focussed on acquiring spells, and gets a higher tier than the rest of the party, and others are jealous... but it's all legitimately acquired power.

Wealth can be useful, but its definately not such a big deal.

[arixe]

Let me touch on a few things I may have missed.


1.What he is doing can’t really be called dipping when he has had a maximum of 3 completely new characters in one session.

2.Our difficult player is the only one not enjoying himself. I have gone through my DMG and read up on the people play styles. Basically the rouge and bard are trying to be power players, that is what all their gold is going toward, better items. The other two players like the kick in the door, dungeon crawl, type setting. But they enjoy being caught up in the rouge’s and bard’s mischief as long as they get to be involved and it is interesting to them. The problem player is playing lazily, he isn’t creative at all, his characters have no motive for their actions, no back story, and very little personality. His character never interacts with the other PCs. The bard and rouge even try very hard to involve him but he brushes their advances aside. They spend days planning and running their plot ideas past me. He sits their like a lump waiting for me to tell him what to do. I think that terrible because then it robs the other characters of their creativity when he complains.

3.Now on to the over all running of my campaign. I like running a fast-paced loot filled game. I have been a player for 6+ years and I hate when the DM doesn’t reward his players for their hard work. I am still new at this and I will obviously tone the treasure down a bit, but we’ve already figured out a way to even out the gold progression.


Golden laydybug has got the gist of what is going on. But alienist’s hilariously snide comments are quite entertaining. It helps me understand what our problem player is thinking. Anyway, I didn’t mean to start an argument I just want advice on how to deal with the difficult one. Not a debate on who is actually being hard to deal with.

[arixe]

Just as an example, a fifth level wizard should be able to offload 4 1st, 3 2nd and 2 3rd level spells, for a total of:
5 x (4 + 6 + 6) x 10 = 800gp per day.
........
or maybe send around some 'enforcers' from the nearest magicians guild to 'encourage' him to join (and they get a cut of the action of course, and if he stops doing it for some reason, they will simply suspect he's lying to them, and try to take the percentage that they are 'owed' anyway).
...........
And if he's gone on a massive crime spree (which it sounds like he probably has) then one of the early things that you should do (if you want to try to sneak in some roleplaying of day jobs into your 'overly heroic' player) is to say that the local constabulary come to him, and want certain specific spells cast which will lead them to the thief. The thief, of course, will get a rude OOC shock when this happens, which will be funny in and of itself, but it will help get them back on track for actually, you know, going adventuring and stuff like that.

Our witch hadn't even thought of selling his spells for some reason. This will probably help our problem some more. As for the other two ideas I quoted you above saying, They are a great way to get him into the plot. Thanks.


I've seen this problem before--a rogue focused on acquiring gold, gets a higher wealth than the rest of the party, and others are jealous... but it's all legitimately acquired wealth. Do the players with the higher wealth level mind if you try to even things out a bit by allowing them opportunities to spend their money in ways that don't affect the power level of the characters? Starting a guild, buying a keep, or buying magical items for the whole party are all useful.

Thank you, the guild one is a very good idea. The rouge has never even considered this before (mostly cause this is her first time playing) and it will help with the gold issue even more. But our dynamic is still off. Anyone have a resolution to that?

[arixe]

Reading over what the OP has posted, it seems that they're not just sitting down rolling Perform or Sleight of Hand, they're making their endeavours to earn a little extra cash into side quests. Even if they're not playing a Sandbox, there is nothing wrong with that.
.......
If he wants to play in a dungeon-crawl when everyone else wants to play political intrigue, then he's in the wrong game. He either figures out a way to enjoy himself, or he'll begin ruining it for everyone.

That is what they are doing. Making their gold earning into mini quests. Our campaign is suppossed to be laid back, yes a little sadbox-y. Whereas if a player comes to me and says 'hey I want to do this and that' I will allow it as long as it makes sense. If they come to me with an idea for an entire town of quest they would like to play. I will usually do it. BUT the overall goal remains the same. the way they get there is just a bit different.
As for the political intruige, that isn't entierly what is going on thoug some politics are involved.


Wealth can be useful, but its definately not such a big deal.

That is EXACTLY what I think. The gold is not as much of an issue here as the PC interactions. Which, by the way, I need to fix. how else can I involve the witch?

[Knight13]

You could always duct tape his mouth shut. From the sound of it, his whining is the only thing separating him from an NPC anyway. :smalltongue:

[nedz]

Our campaign is suppossed to be laid back, yes a little sadbox-y.
Sadboxy ? I'm going to assume thats a varient of Sandbox:smallwink:
I think I'm getting the picture here.

Whereas if a player comes to me and says 'hey I want to do this and that' I will allow it as long as it makes sense.
I'm guessing that your unhappy player doesn't do this.

That is EXACTLY what I think. The gold is not as much of an issue here as the PC interactions. Which, by the way, I need to fix. how else can I involve the witch?

OK - my guess is that he is bored.

Sandbox games are excellent IMHO, but they can be hard for some players to get to grips with.

What you need is for this player to buy into a plot which means you might have to be a little *ahem* pro-active. Ideally he should be pro-active, but thats clearly not the case. Pro-active players get the most out of a sandbox games. Passive ones can be fine, so long as you have some pro-active players. Is sounds like you have two pro-active players, 2 passive ones, and the fifth guy.

You need to work out what would interest him. This could be quite hard. Has he ever shown an interest in any part of the game, or previous ones.

There is a risk that his naturally preferred play-style is incompatible with yours. If this is the case then you are unlikely to succeed.

If you can get him to buy into a plot then that should mean that he buys into a character. This will make him stop changing characters and enjoy the game.

This might not be easy however, and you may be better working with the other 4 players ?

[DarkHarlequinn7]

Greetings, I am afforementioned "Problem Player". Do not worry i am not here to rag on OP because even I will admit to being either A) a bit difficult or B) not very clear on what I was trying to get across. The ironic thing is that not long after the post of this forum I seem to have unwittingly solved the issue on my own.

The biggest issue I was having was that the rogue at I believe 4th level was able to aquire the gear of a character that a typical level 12 character had, and it only got much worse from there. However we have worked out a method of gaining power without the help of gold (similar to the Vow of Poverty in v3.5) and I have equipped the character with a personality that won't be against the rogue's behaviour at large.

I came here to sort of dispel any debate as (for the moment at least) the issue has been resolved.

And I fully admit to being guilty of dipping/hopping or whatever you want to call it. I have been playing D&D/Pathfinder for about 6 years and for most of it I was a DM, I have had very few opportunities to play a character so now that I have the opportunity I'm going nuts and don't know what the hell I want to play. Thanks for taking the time to post here because even I have found any criticism quite helpful.

P.S. The Witch is one of the Pathfinder classes in the Advanced Player's Guide.

[Golden Ladybug]

Well, that is certainly a point of view, one that isn't actually backed up by anything the OP said. But hey, for all I know they could be in a political intrigue game instead of a heroic fantasy game.

But I think you're missing half the picture. Please find me the section of the DMG where it says that it is good and proper for players to have unequal distributions of treasure.

It's alright, I'll wait.

...

In fact, I think you will find the exact opposite. The DMG goes out of its way to point out that players getting unequal shares of treasure is a common form of strife in parties.

I completely agree; one character being a billionaire and the other having little more than pocket change is going to cause problems. However, arixe's player isn't being cheated out of wealth, he's just doing nothing to acquire it. He's sitting around being a misery guts who doesn't want to play the game everyone else is playing.

If you were DMing, and a Player didn't show up to the game for three weeks, and during that time, everyone gets cool quest rewards and loot for what they did over the course of those three weeks. This player comes back, sees that he doesn't have the same amount of wealth, cool weapons and quirky magic items, and starts complaining about it.

Do you just give him an equal amount of stuff? Does he deserve it? He certainly didn't earn it (unlike the others who put in all the effort to get those rewards), he hasn't been there for three weeks! That's what's happening with this player; he's ignoring any opportunity to go on the side quests with the other players and earn the money they are earning. He is not participating in the game, or involving himself in the game world. For all the contribution he seems to be putting in, he might as well not be there.

I do not think rewarding this behaviour is a good idea.


In fact, I would go so far as to call it a kind of griefing. There was a recent, quite heated, debate about how much to charge fellow party members for making magic items for them, which stems from this problem. If one person gets too far ahead, then everyone else will get upset, and if one person gets too far behind then they will also get upset.

You should charge whatever it costs you to craft it for them, with perhaps a small amount of profit on the side. Its still cheaper than buying it at market price, the Crafter is not disadvantaged by paying for the other player's items out of their own pocket. Everyone's happy :smallwink:


As an aside, your argument essentially boils down to: "people with a different play style should be punished and/or booted out". I recommend reading the bits in the DMG where it talks about identifying the different play styles, and providing the players with rewards and challenges they will enjoy.

Perhaps you are in a region where everyone in all your roleplaying groups have had exactly the same play style. Lucky you. The rest of us have to learn how to play nice with others.

Nope, that's not what I'm suggesting at all. People enjoy different facets of Tabletop RPGs, and not all games will cater to everyone's taste.

But, by that same token, if you wanted to make everyone perfectly happy with the game, they'll probably all hate it. Compromise is just a way of making everyone equally unhappy.

Arixe's problem player doesn't enjoy the Sandbox style of gaming, while the others do. Changing the game to accommodate one player at the expense of the other four is not going to end well, because you'll end up with four unhappy players instead of one. Ideally, the game should be fun for everyone, but if someone is making the game less fun by refusing to play along, you need to deal with that. You talk to them, make it clear that the game isn't going to be changing any time soon, so they either need to figure out a way of grinning and bearing it, finding a way to get involved and have fun or maybe taking a break for this campaign.

Anyway, I think you've got the right idea Arixe; from what I've read, it seems like you're doing a really good job of running the game, but this problem player just doesn't want to buy in. This isn't a problem you can resolve in game, and I think the only real way to fix this is to talk to him about it.

EDIT: I see I've been ninja'd. I'm glad you were able to find a way to resolve your issues with the campaign. I completely understand wanting to try out a bunch of new characters after a stint of DMing, I know the feeling quite well. That's why I tend to play a fair bit of PbP games as well DMing for my real life group, so I can do something with all the cool ideas I think of.

Happy Gaming :smallsmile: