[Solved] Was I wrong? - Indeed, I was wrong.

[Yael]

I am DM'ing a group of 7 people, the party consists on the following:
Human Beguiler.
Human Gunslinger (translated to 3.5 from PF)
Human Monk
Human Paladin of Tyrany
Jungle Troll (from Warcraft's d20) Barbarian
Silverbrow Human Dragonfire Adept
Warforged Scout (fix) Artificer

They are all level 4th, and they are going through an exploration campaign.
They started well, sailing their respecive ship as I tried to guide them to the very same boat, but they separated because of their own interacions between themselves (this ended up they killing the DFA's previous character, a changeling factotum.) Anyway, they set sail and after a couple of weeks, they got stuck in a large-as-hell coral reef. When they got down, they spotted another ship that set sail the same day they did, it was stuck as well in the coral reef (made from a homebrew material, that has almost the same hardness that Adamantine has, and it is just coral), so they went out to investigate, they all left the ship, without taking up their stuff, and boarded the second ship, as the coral reef was underwater, but the platform was high enough so the PCs could walk on it (1.5 ft of water.) I asked them if they would leave their stuff there, they agreed "what could happen to the gear? the sailors wouldn't steal it, we are stuck." they said, so I agreed and we continued, they boarded the second ship and when they did, a gang of sahuagins boarded hard, 3 mutant sahuagins and 6 normal sahuagins with tridents. They all fought them, and beat them, and I told them that the other boat was being attacked as well, because they could hear the screams at a distance. Only one player went back to the ship to discover that the crew was killed and their stuff, and supplies (as food) were stolen by the aquatic beings. They raged and tried to break the coral, they just cracked it with heavy explosions, and they agreed to continue on exploring the place, like if they had another thing to do, right? Well, the artificer just stood in the second ship, trying to repair it, as the crew was killed by sahuagins, and if they could get a better ship to sail to the unknown, they wouldn't unuse it. Long story short, this artificer stayed for the entire game "repairing" the ship, as he was infusing repair and when he ran out of repairs, he just "crafted" to repair. Anyway, the rest of the party managed to convince the Darfellan, the Merfolk and the Kuo-toa that live on the same reef to wipe out the Sahuagin, by hard means, they had to go underwater even when NO ONE can breathe underwater (except for the DFA, he took the invocation to adapt in water.) They built an stategy that I wasn't expecting and they charged towards the Sahuagin city (that I drew just in case they would explore it) and when they arrived, the artificer stayed in the boat, claiming that he "hates fighting underwater in every game" and I was: Okay, your choice. The gunslinger couldn't help too, because the troll, the paladin, and the DFA entered underwater, and underwater the gunpowder-based-guns don't work, so they stayed in the galleon (at this point, the beguiler and the monk players weren't at the place yet). So, the three I mentioned entered and held their breath up to their constitution modifier, and then rolled constitution checks to do not fall unconcious, and they succeed, but the paladin was struggling, and the DFA tried to breathweapon a sahuagin in melee range, so he got wrecked by it, and with the low HP he had, he tried to "help" his teammate that was starting to drown, by taking him depper into the sahuagin city, so he was dying; then:
A wild Tako appeared!
Wild Tako used grapple on both of them!
It's super effective!
Wild Tako deals 2d6+5 constrict damage!
It's super effective!
Wild Tako pins and hammers the DFA into the coral's bottom!
Dragonfire Adept is unconcious!
Paladin is drowning!
Wild Tako proceeded to kill some Darfellan in the area!

Anyway, that was the fight up there, then another Darfellan saw them and brought them to the surface.
While the troll was killing babies or something at the breeding room.
Anyway (again), when they got the information about the werebouts of the tribe leader of the Sahuagin, only the Troll and the Paladin went back underwater, and I asked the artificer if he wasn't going down? Or what would he do? "I mean, they are fighting underwater even if they can't, and you have support to bring, healing, damage, anything, but you can do it indefinitely underwater!" I told him, but his argument of fighting underwater was strong. By the way, the DFA was in coma at the point, kind of almost died, and the beguiler arrived at the time, heal-checked him and he didn't died.

When the battle finished, only the barbarian and the paladin fought against:
2 Sahuagin rangers
2 Sahuagin clerics
2 Tako
1 Sahuagin Mutant Barbarian 4
and I was expecting to also bring another two sahuagin mutants, two rangers, two clerics, and another tako, but I didn't because they were too few. Anyway, I tried to push them outside, and let them to wait while the battle struggled the invaders out of the city, but they didn't hear or waited for results, they killed and one of them was at -8, but they passed the challenge, a challenge made for a 7-man party, fighting UNDERWATER without any kind of freedom of movement or water breathing (actually they filled leather waterskins with air, so they could get a breath, which was pretty cool.)
Now, the gunslinger accepts that he couldn't get battle awards, the monk arrived after this, and the beguiler helped trying to divinate enemies with magical properties. But the artificer did NONE. Now he is mad at me because I just gave him 50 experience points while the barbarian and the paladin got 7000+, (and also the DFA got 1000+ because he got lost at some point and fought 3 sahuagins by himself), because they fought the whole challenge by themselves! What could I do? I asked them to read underwater combat like 5 days prior to the session, and everyone read that post and commented. Did I did wrong? I tried my best to drag them out of the cave they were in, but they wouldn't go back (being an evil party, greedyness is also part of the show), getting the loot for themselves and, most importantly, the exp.

Please, playground, tell me, was I wrong?

Oh, also I killed his homunculous because he left it flying and exploring when I warned the whole party about some medium-sized birds...

[Sir Garanok]

You were not wrong and this is a classic example of a player who wants things his way.

But one of the main DM's goals is to make players enjoy the game.

So perhaps you could have poped up a small encounter on the land for the artificer and gunslinger,while the other s where underwater or something.

There would still be a huge xp difference between the party members but the drama might have been avoided.

[Ettina]

Only criticism I have is that it's pretty harsh to send a bunch of characters on an underwater campaign without some way of breathing underwater. I'd probably have tossed out some 'rings of waterbreathing' or something at some point, just to make things easier.

[Harlot]

Personally I do not approve of your practise with giving odd XP, that is not giving the same XP to every single player.
Precisely to avoid discussions such as this one. They are a team, they work together (more or less) and thus should share XP for battles won. Otherwise a rogue or diplomancer would often get less XP than the tanks or casters because they make less kills.
I generally feel that your XP system favors individual deeds and impedes cooperation and team-spirit.

I don't think it is clear from your story whether you actually warned him directly during the game, that his behavior and lack of involvement would result in him getting substantially less XP than the rest. Or if everybody knows that that is how you always do it as a DM.
If he wasn't warned directly, how would he know to change his behavior. He isn't a mindreader and may not have known how much his lack of initiative annoyed you.
Also he did do something, repairing the ship, preparing their journey onwards. As pointed out above, both he and the gunslinger should not be punished for you making an encounter they were not built to face. Their possibilities were somewhat limited by your choice.

A disparity of almost 7000 XP is utterly unfair, regardles of his behavior. If you wanted to make a point, make it so, maybe by giving him 80% of what the others got. But giving him 50, while other got 7000 ... that is utterly unfair and also punishes him when they move on, as he will level up slower than the rest of them.
I too would be enraged. Specially if I felt I had not been properly warned or didn't know beforehand that XP wasn't evenly distributed.

That said, if he is generally a freerider as player, not in just this encounter, then ofcourse his behavior is an issue that must be adressed.
OoC that is.
Preferably you should talk to him alone, but let the other players know you'll adress this issue, and see what they have to say first.

Good luck.

[Fax Celestis]

Keeping player balance is hard enough without people winding up with different XP totals. Give everyone the same XP for everything.

And he may not have participated in the combat, but this isn't Final Fantasy: you don't only get XP for killing things. The boat needs to get fixed so they can leave eventually, and he's probably the best person out of the entire crew to do it. The sooner he starts, the sooner he'll be done, and the sooner the party can get off doing whatever they're actually supposed to be doing.

[Phelix-Mu]

I don't really agree with giving the artificer lots of xp for doing something that wasn't helping the immediate goals. Yes, the ship does need repaired, and that is important. But the artificer avoided the threat of death, played it safe, and just like the commoners that stay at home, being safe doesn't give experience (or gives much less).

Furthermore, from a metagame perspective, the artificer basically did something in-character that, while useful, was directly endangering the survival of the group. If the artificer could have been helpful, but chose to be less so, then giving equal experience for staying back and crafting will only encourage the same behavior later, which doesn't make much sense as the artificer's player doesn't seem to have enjoyed hanging back, either.

That said, the OP gave way too big a difference in experience.

Here's what I would give to the artificer, based on our extremely non-specific info of what went down:

500xp - Basic, minimum reward
500xp - In-character behavior (assuming self-interest was part of the justification for staying behind and character was evil/self-centered)
500xp - Fixing boat, which essentially will contribute to future goals, but wasn't any help with the immediate mission

So a total of 1500xp, which is a good amount for sitting around while your comrades are risking their lives. I try to incentivize good role play with experience awards, and while there are merits to doing the practical thing, its not a game about just being practical. The nature of adventuring is one of risk-taking, and failing to take risks will result in less rewards.

Also, I probably would have, behind the scenes, docked everyone in the party a bit, since the challenges were very hard, but largely due to some really boneheaded choices that they made (like going into strange territory without their gear...).

Finally, I usually fudge things with movement speeds or imply heavily that splitting up before major combat is stupid. These characters got really lucky, even if you put them up against stiff odds, they went about it the most difficult way. Reward their audacity, but try to give the impression that their deaths were way, way too close for comfort. Most of which probably could have been ameliorated with some creativity or teamwork (although if it's an evil party, that might not be the easiest thing to achieve).

[bjoern]

Just because someone isn't risking death doesn't mean they aren't contributing. How else are they going to get out of there? Saying that you are only worth something if you go out on the hunt is like saying that stay at home mothers don't deserve respect because they don't have "real jobs" who else is going to cook, clean, take care of the kids, keep up the house, etc.

Award xp for fixing the boat, award xp for killing the baddies, award xp for whatever else is relevant. Add it all up into a sum and divide that by the number of players and hand it out evenly. Some characters contribute in intangible ways that don't direclty appear as a paycheck or a protector.

[Vhaidara]

My groups have basically done away with XP, but it really matters with a crafter.

I second the issue of an aquatic campaign without water breathing. Especially with a Gunslinger, who is mechanically useless in that situation without specific preparation (dry load ammo works underwater).

All in all, you're both right. He did nothing deserving of XP (not really), but he also seems to have had no real way of helping. I would say I feel worse for the Gunslinger, since he was mechanically blocked from contributing.

[atemu1234]

My only recommendation is to, in future, use the same system as me. Have all players get the same amount of XP, and count it up at the end of each mission (that's one of the weirder houserules I have- but none of my players have complained so far). This will prevent hurt feelings in general. You also really haven't done anything wrong per se, but you may want to apologize to the player. This is more or less to mend fences instead of it actually being your fault, but it's what I would do. Also, let them know you're using a new system for counting XP (if you decide to use mine) before you implement it.

[Bronk]

Man, I don't know about this. I mean, the entire reason they were fighting underwater in the first place was because they had left their gear behind. Who does that? Having your gear stolen is every adventurer's fear (right up there with being knocked unconscious), but to voluntarily leave it lying around is just asking for trouble.

As for repairing the ships... was that even necessary? The description of the adventure didn't actually say if either of the two ships were broken. If not, did the Artificer know that?

As for the fight, how exactly would the Artificer have helped in a fight? He's not a front line fighter and he used up all his infusions. Could the character even swim? Aside from not needing to breathe (because he's warforged), how would he have helped?

It sounds like the main problem here is that you're running an evil campaign and you don't have a cohesive group. From your perspective, you had your adventure and the artificer wasn't playing along. From the Artificer's point of view, he was out Artificing it up, roleplaying perhaps, and was shafted with XP (and had his pet killed). From the other player's point of view, stuff was going on, and no one asked the Artificer to fix anything in the first place.

If the Artificer was tapped, he was right to stay in the boat, along with the nerfed Gunslinger. They could have helped later by fishing drowning teammates out of the water by having the Gunslinger dangle the warforged by a rope and hauling them back. I'm surprised the gunslinger wasn't equally miffed. The DFA too... he contributed directly and he wasn't dead, just unconscious. Also... wouldn't the boat have drifted away if no one was in it? Where would the party be then?

If they were acting as a team, they should all get the same XP. Role playing shouldn't be penalized, unless it was bad or unnecessary.

If they're trying to act alone because of the paranoia of being in an evil campaign, they shouldn't be penalized for it that much... they should all be able to do their own thing and end up pretty close in the end.

If you don't want to go back on your ruling completely, give the other characters a story award to even things out, then I suggest giving your players some more incentive to act as a team.

By the way... did they ever get their gear back?

[ComaVision]

When I'm DMing, everyone at the table gets the same experience at the end of the session.

I realise this is a PBP game you're talking about but having a large variation in player levels is going to make things harder for you in addition to (clearly) annoying your players.

[Phelix-Mu]

Am I wrong in thinking that the DMG says that only characters that take part in encounters get experience? That's the way that I've always played, since way before 3e, so I might have erroneously grandfathered something in. Perhaps this is just another popular houserule.

I just dislike treating all actions as equally "good" in terms of experience. Ad hoc awards are covered, and I add story-based stuff (like bonus xp for completing a mission, bonus xp for inspired solutions to problems, bonus xp for good use of class features).

It seems to me the problem in this instance is exacerbated by the fact that those characters that were involved in the very dangerous encounters earned way more than they should have per encounter, and the artificer earned less.

I would probably err on the side of knocking down the 7k xp a bit. I'm not looking at the table atm, but that seems like a huge chunk.

EDIT: Oh, here's a good solution (though one unlikely to get purchase in an evil campaign...). Suggest to the characters that got a lot of xp that they commission items from the artificer, and provide the xp for the crafting from their (generous) awards from the mission. Then give the artificer a bit of bonus xp for crafting stuff. This makes the artificer feel useful, gets rid of some of the disparity, and creates good feeling around the artificer using his support abilities on behalf of the group.

Would be really cool in a teamwork-oriented group, but not sure if this one counts as such.

And a final note: Seven is a huge group. Huge groups often run into problems with one or more people feeling left out, marginalized, or the like.

[ComaVision]

@Phelix: By RAW, you're doing things correctly. It is a popular house-rule to equalize experience. I'm not at all opposed to giving bonus experience for exceptional achievement in a session but I wouldn't penalize other players.

[Fax Celestis]

The point of a game is to have fun. If you're lagging behind the rest of your party because you're doing things that still need to get done but aren't earning experience for them, that's not fun. Being outclassed by your party members is not fun.

[KillianHawkeye]

I'm going to agree with the OP on this one.

It sounds like the Artificer had ample opportunities to participate in the actual game, but decided not to. You don't get XP for sitting on the beach and working on your tan. You certainly shouldn't get experience for stuff your party members did without you if you didn't at least help them in some way and you weren't even there. Personally, I'd be outraged if half the party was nearly killed fighting off a superior force and then the guy who sat back doing nothing got just as much of the reward for it. :smallannoyed:

[Stormageddon]

I think you were right. I wouldn't give EXP to a player that just sat a fight out because of personal preference. I would give EXP if he was some how barred form the fight because of being knocked out, or simply unable to contribute.

I would think that in real life if a person sat around while some life or death event was going on because well "I don't want to." And started to do a project that could have waited. And then wanted a equal reward as the people who did help out because well we're friends. I think people would have some bad words for that person.

Also friend don't let friends leech EXP.

[dascarletm]

I'm going to agree with the OP on this one.

It sounds like the Artificer had ample opportunities to participate in the actual game, but decided not to. You don't get XP for sitting on the beach and working on your tan. You certainly shouldn't get experience for stuff your party members did without you if you didn't at least help them in some way and you weren't even there. Personally, I'd be outraged if half the party was nearly killed fighting off a superior force and then the guy who sat back doing nothing got just as much of the reward for it. :smallannoyed:

Then the artificer sails away on the fixed ship by himself leaving behind the party members that were too busy getting themselves killed to help fix their best way out of the situation.

[Averis Vol]

Naw, you did things right. Now, the artificer basically bitched out of the encounter for no legitimate reason. I kinda feel for the gunslinger, but if he was told there was underwater combat, he should have known to buy the gunpowder bag that lets you fire underwater (If memory serves, it's super cheap.)

Now, let's dissect how long he was actually pounding away on the ship for. It appears to have been less than a day, so even with your leniency of letting him use repair on the boat, there's seriously not a lot that a low level artificer could have done to "Fix" a ship, especially a galleon, seeing as they have hundreds of HP (I ran a sea faring game, ship to ship combat sucks). So, if he actually manages to get the ship up and running, give him a boat (hehehe) load of XP for the job, but him pounding away on the deck, most likely without the proper tools, would have done absolutely nothing to aid the group at large, when he could have instead been a team player and used his infusions and whatever scrolls he had had to assist his team.


Then the artificer sails away on the fixed ship by himself leaving behind the party members that were too busy getting themselves killed to help fix their best way out of the situation.

While cute, there is absolutely no way he would have fixed it. he was being a poor sport and sitting out of the game session.

[bjoern]

Naw, you did things right. Now, the artificer basically bitched out of the encounter for no legitimate reason. I kinda feel for the gunslinger, but if he was told there was underwater combat, he should have known to buy the gunpowder bag that lets you fire underwater (If memory serves, it's super cheap.)

Now, let's dissect how long he was actually pounding away on the ship for. It appears to have been less than a day, so even with your leniency of letting him use repair on the boat, there's seriously not a lot that a low level artificer could have done to "Fix" a ship, especially a galleon, seeing as they have hundreds of HP (I ran a sea faring game, ship to ship combat sucks). So, if he actually manages to get the ship up and running, give him a boat (hehehe) load of XP for the job, but him pounding away on the deck, most likely without the proper tools, would have done absolutely nothing to aid the group at large, when he could have instead been a team player and used his infusions and whatever scrolls he had had to assist his team.



While cute, there is absolutely no way he would have fixed it. he was being a poor sport and sitting out of the game session.

Yeah, I'll second that. Three whole sessions of skill checks to handle the ship and not much else. After that ships were just to get from A to B with no mechanics in between.

[Yael]

Only criticism I have is that it's pretty harsh to send a bunch of characters on an underwater campaign without some way of breathing underwater. I'd probably have tossed out some 'rings of waterbreathing' or something at some point, just to make things easier.

Thing is, I didn't forced them to go underwater, but I had to prevent them if in any case a wild Tako would swallow them underwater. They had no gear and they weren't worrying about it.


Keeping player balance is hard enough without people winding up with different XP totals. Give everyone the same XP for everything.

And he may not have participated in the combat, but this isn't Final Fantasy: you don't only get XP for killing things. The boat needs to get fixed so they can leave eventually, and he's probably the best person out of the entire crew to do it. The sooner he starts, the sooner he'll be done, and the sooner the party can get off doing whatever they're actually supposed to be doing.

I know that experience isn't about killing things, but he was metagaming the whole game, about his specific gear, about his homunculous, and about his disliking of water levels.


Just because someone isn't risking death doesn't mean they aren't contributing. How else are they going to get out of there? Saying that you are only worth something if you go out on the hunt is like saying that stay at home mothers don't deserve respect because they don't have "real jobs" who else is going to cook, clean, take care of the kids, keep up the house, etc.

Award xp for fixing the boat, award xp for killing the baddies, award xp for whatever else is relevant. Add it all up into a sum and divide that by the number of players and hand it out evenly. Some characters contribute in intangible ways that don't direclty appear as a paycheck or a protector.

Thing is... I gave him experience for roleplaying, I did for everyone, he would've have gotten around 500 experience, but he was playing at "his mood", metagaming about roleplaying stuff that his character didn't know about, mysteriously teleporting into-action his homounculus... Experience penalties were hard with him.


Man, I don't know about this. I mean, the entire reason they were fighting underwater in the first place was because they had left their gear behind. Who does that? Having your gear stolen is every adventurer's fear (right up there with being knocked unconscious), but to voluntarily leave it lying around is just asking for trouble.

As for repairing the ships... was that even necessary? The description of the adventure didn't actually say if either of the two ships were broken. If not, did the Artificer know that?

As for the fight, how exactly would the Artificer have helped in a fight? He's not a front line fighter and he used up all his infusions. Could the character even swim? Aside from not needing to breathe (because he's warforged), how would he have helped?

It sounds like the main problem here is that you're running an evil campaign and you don't have a cohesive group. From your perspective, you had your adventure and the artificer wasn't playing along. From the Artificer's point of view, he was out Artificing it up, roleplaying perhaps, and was shafted with XP (and had his pet killed). From the other player's point of view, stuff was going on, and no one asked the Artificer to fix anything in the first place.

If the Artificer was tapped, he was right to stay in the boat, along with the nerfed Gunslinger. They could have helped later by fishing drowning teammates out of the water by having the Gunslinger dangle the warforged by a rope and hauling them back. I'm surprised the gunslinger wasn't equally miffed. The DFA too... he contributed directly and he wasn't dead, just unconscious. Also... wouldn't the boat have drifted away if no one was in it? Where would the party be then?

If they were acting as a team, they should all get the same XP. Role playing shouldn't be penalized, unless it was bad or unnecessary.

If they're trying to act alone because of the paranoia of being in an evil campaign, they shouldn't be penalized for it that much... they should all be able to do their own thing and end up pretty close in the end.

If you don't want to go back on your ruling completely, give the other characters a story award to even things out, then I suggest giving your players some more incentive to act as a team.

By the way... did they ever get their gear back?

Yes, they blew up the old ship with explosives, trying to open up the coral, and they didn't declared that they had retired their gear... So byebye gear anyway... The gunslinger was not particularly disagreeing, he was comfortable helping, and he got a lot of exp just by roleplaying (around 300). They wanted to reparir the ship because they were unsure of what could happen if they didn't. And the artificer started repairing because he didn't wanted to explore. He had its pet killed because of his uncautiousness, he sent it to the unknown by its own means, relying at its telepathic link, but it got killed by dire animals when he had it exploring.


When I'm DMing, everyone at the table gets the same experience at the end of the session.

I realise this is a PBP game you're talking about but having a large variation in player levels is going to make things harder for you in addition to (clearly) annoying your players.

By PBP you mean PlayByPost? No, it is an irl game.


The point of a game is to have fun. If you're lagging behind the rest of your party because you're doing things that still need to get done but aren't earning experience for them, that's not fun. Being outclassed by your party members is not fun.

They were having fun, also they know that when they do things right, they get rewarded, when they play their alignment, they get rewarded, when they do not metagame hard, they sometimes get rewarded. But they are going because they are having fun.


Then the artificer sails away on the fixed ship by himself leaving behind the party members that were too busy getting themselves killed to help fix their best way out of the situation.

The arificer was fixing the ship while the rest of the party was getting along with the locals to get helping hands, to take out of the reef the ship they wanted. But such thing by the artificer wasn't that good, because he didin't needed rolls, nor anything special, just saying: I'm repairing, yes. I am not resting, just repairing.

[Fax Celestis]

I know that experience isn't about killing things, but he was metagaming the whole game, about his specific gear, about his homunculous, and about his disliking of water levels.So you punish him for metagaming?

That's childish. You should talk to him, directly. "Hey, bro, you're metagaming this one. Come on. Your character doesn't think of this as a "water level", he thinks of this as "they stole my stuff.""


They were having fun, also they know that when they do things right, they get rewarded, when they play their alignment, they get rewarded, when they do not metagame hard, they sometimes get rewarded. But they are going because they are having fun.

"Do things right" according to who? That is a worrying turn of phase.

[dascarletm]

While cute, there is absolutely no way he would have fixed it. he was being a poor sport and sitting out of the game session.

Ah well, I wasn't there and wasn't privy to such knowledge. But like the character, I've not been told how hopeless repairing the ship was.

If my ship was constantly crashing against an adamantine hard coral reef, I'd try to get it out of there ASAP. Unless I had given up on it. If I was an artificer I'd probably see repairing something like that as a challenge worthy of my particular suit of abilities. It's not my fault the DM doesn't want me to fix the ship.

You were there and witnessed the event so perhaps it wasn't like that, and was as you said.

[Yael]

So you punish him for metagaming?

That's childish. You should talk to him, directly. "Hey, bro, you're metagaming this one. Come on. Your character doesn't think of this as a "water level", he thinks of this as "they stole my stuff.""

Thing is, he metagamed hard, almost cried in front of us, claiming that his character didn't left its stuff behind, two backpacks and an alchemist lab was at the ship's lookout, and he was working up there, when the ship crashed, he was asked to go down the ship to investigate. He did (tied on a rope, obviously..) and he didn't claimed that he took his stuff. When they saw that the other ship was stuck as well, he went there, no gear claimed. When they knew the other ship was under attack as well, and the barbarian went back, no artificer thingies. The paladin also went there, and took out HIS stuff, not others, so, when the ship exploded due to the high number of gunpowder barreels at one side of the ship, he shouted that he had recovered his stuff, and he always carries his two backpacks (a haversack and a backpack) together, everytime, and his alchemyst lab was inside the haversack, and he wasn't going to lose his gear. When I (and the rest of the party) told him that if they lost their gear, either by the sahuagin stealing crates and the boat explosion, that could've been overcomed, but not by crying. At the end, I had to give him his gear back (just by saying: yes yes, you had it all the time) after half an hour of hard crying stuff... So, at the end, no stuff stolen for his character, just the need to fear the water levels.


"Do things right" according to who? That is a worrying turn of phase.

When I say: "Do things right", I am not meaning to make them to do what I want them to do, but to roleplay their character, and he was just upset because the nature of the current phase of the campaign. I told them after the game, just to clarify, and I even showed them my notebook; I had prepared every situation that I thought woult happen during the course of the week, from them going into the Sahuagin city, to them going into the Darfellan's, or Kuo-toa's, or even finding the Merfolk around, from they trying to swim by themselves, forgetting about the ship, to having them just stay and wait for help. They decided to do X thing, so I threw X prepared thing at them. Also I showed them what the encounter at the surface would be like, if they hadn't just kick-ed the door deep underwater, and it was created to have everyone participating, I also placed inscriptions inside the coral reef, so he could get aquatic-themed infusions, I dunno, to aid its party. But no care was shown, even when I asked him loads of times if what he was doing was right, he was certainly not moving from there, claiming that he had the "most important" job at the time. He hasn't had it, he was just being selfish and not trying to help the party at all, because he wasn't even rolling at the time, and he knew perfectly that his character could've helped down there, even just to take the battle out there.

[Yael]

If my ship was constantly crashing against an adamantine hard coral reef, I'd try to get it out of there ASAP. Unless I had given up on it. If I was an artificer I'd probably see repairing something like that as a challenge worthy of my particular suit of abilities. It's not my fault the DM doesn't want me to fix the ship.

As I mentioned earlier, he got experience from crafting the ship, but he lost experience from putting ranks on a skill at the very moment just to fix the ship, having his own personality against the character's personality (that he described), and being just a childish player that wanted things his way, when, at the very start of the game setting I told them: There will be difficult terrain, underwater fights, dessert hazzards, stormy seas, dungeoncrawling, puzzlesolving, battles and else. Be prepared, read the rules, and expect the worse.

[ThisIsZen]

My issue with giving uneven XP rewards doesn't have too terrible much to do with fairness to the players - that's certainly part of it, yes, but I feel like giving uneven XP is one of the more boring ways to incentivize active play and actually makes it harder for a player to take an active role later. (The rest of the party is level 6 and now the spoilsport is level 4. How can they even mend their ways if the encounters the rest of the party faces are hugely threatening for them?)

But to flip the above around, you now have a party where two or three of the players have a 7000 XP lead on some of the others, which could potentially balloon out into an even bigger disparity depending. I don't like uneven XP because it makes the DM's job harder. Designing encounters around a party of varied class capabilities and op levels is hard enough as it stands - designing encounters around all of that but also taking into account 2-3 level disparities just makes your job needlessly more complicated.

However, I wouldn't say that in spirit you were wrong if you prefer to give uneven XP. I would argue that perhaps a smaller gulf between the highest rewards and lowest would be in order - even if I was being a poor sport in a session, if at the end of the session I got a measly 50 XP and others got 7000, I'd feel a little put out about it.

[dascarletm]

he was just being selfish and not trying to help the party at all, because he wasn't even rolling at the time, and he knew perfectly that his character could've helped down there, even just to take the battle out there.

This seems to be more of a need to vent frustration than to ask if you were wrong.

That being said, I find differing XP rewards in the party, rewards the players to fight as much as possible all the time, lest they miss out on some of that sweet XP.

Of course the opposite could be said for going the other way around...


All in all it is your game, run it how you want.

[Fax Celestis]

Hold up, crying over his character losing some equipment?

If this is a thing that is happening, your player is not emotionally mature enough to sit at your game table. Full stop.

Seriously, "crying to get what she wants" is what my three-year-old does. Is your player three? I would wager not. It's inappropriate and unacceptable. It's disrupting the game for your other players, and having that kind of emotional investment in a character is emotionally damaging and potentially dangerous. I can understand being invested in your character, to an extent, but in the end its still a game, so while I might be sad that my character got the sharp end of a long stick through the temple and I have to reroll, it's still just a game. I'm not losing a family member here.

[Phelix-Mu]

However, I wouldn't say that in spirit you were wrong if you prefer to give uneven XP. I would argue that perhaps a smaller gulf between the highest rewards and lowest would be in order - even if I was being a poor sport in a session, if at the end of the session I got a measly 50 XP and others got 7000, I'd feel a little put out about it.

I was going to mention this last bit. The problem isn't so much that some people got more, some people got less. The problem is the degree; a 150:1 ratio is rather more than incentive. In the future, I'd avoid giving anyone much less than 1/3 the baseline amount (though others may get special awards above it). So between 1500 and 2500 would have been a good ballpark. This would allow the artificer to make up the difference in one or two sessions.

Also, I'd avoid "experience penalities." If you need to dock someone something (arguably not even necessary ever), do it behind the scenes, and make it bonus for others instead of taking away from the person being penalized. There is a very, very fine line between giving the impression that there are more shinies over yonder for the taking and giving the impression of wrong bad fun. Positive reinforcement is a decent tool, in my mind, while negative reinforcement can quickly add sour grapes to spilled milk, and may be counterproductive to the goal of fun.

Like I said before, a good way to fix the disparity might be to have a side-quest thingy where the artificer gets to shine, others can donate xp to him to do crafting, and everyone can get some cool (but not overpowered) custom gear. A small, out-of-character chat about making things easier going forward can probably get some of the players to pony up a bit more than the game strictly requires, since, again, out-of-character goal is fun, even in an evil campaign.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Phelix-Mu
…the artificer avoided the threat of death, played it safe, and just like the commoners that stay at home, being safe doesn't give experience (or gives much less).

Absolutely this. Full XP is for those who fully commit themselves.


Originally Posted by Phelix-Mu
That said, the OP gave way too big a difference in experience.

And I can see this side as well. To a degree, I can understand why the artificer's player would be irritated that he only received a tiny sliver of the XP that some of his teammates did.

That said, he sat out the fight. He consciously chose to avoid the underwater engagement, even when you strongly hinted his help would be valuable. There was plenty of time to work on the ship after the fight, so I really don't buy the argument that he was contributing in some roundabout, non-teammate-supporting fashion. He didn't. The artificer chose not to step up.

There is absolutely no reason for you to apologize to this player. You certainly might consider giving him another few hundred XP as a minimum, as Phelix suggests--but given that his character made a conscious decision not to help his teammates, even after your strong suggestion that he should, I don't think he deserves much more. He certainly doesn't deserve anything remotely near what the barbarian and paladin received--because, from what you say, they earned it. The artificer didn't.


Originally Posted by Fax Celestis
The boat needs to get fixed so they can leave eventually, and he's probably the best person out of the entire crew to do it.

Casting a few spells while you're shin-deep in warm water, breathing easily beneath the tropical sun, is something entirely different from fighting deep underwater in an enemy's stronghold with improvised breathing gear. The others risked everything; the artificer risked nothing.

And again, "eventually" is a key word here. The ship was stable on the coral reef and not going anywhere: it can wait. Teammates nearly dying in the waters below? Time-sensitive.


Originally Posted by Fax Celestis
Being outclassed by your party members is not fun.

Except he made a deliberate choice to stay behind. That's not the DM's fault. At some point players need to accept the basic truth that their behavior may have consequences they don't like.

I can see how this was an awkward situation for the OP, but I'm not sensing a lot of maturity from this particular player.

[dascarletm]

And again, "eventually" is a key word here. The ship was stable on the coral reef and not going anywhere: it can wait. Teammates nearly dying in the waters below? Time-sensitive.
.

Minor nitpick:

If there is any sort of current or tides then the ship would just be getting worse and worse as it's hull constantly batters against the supernaturally hard coral reef.

I'd argue it can't wait.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by dascarletm
If there is any sort of current or tides then the ship would just be getting worse and worse as it's hull constantly batters against the supernaturally hard coral reef.

True indeed, although any battering would really depend on the strength of the wave action and the ship's position on the reef. If they were following a channel and misjudged their depth, they might be far enough into the reef's shallows to be protected from the waves. If they hit the reef right where it faces the open ocean, the wave action would certainly be stronger.

Tides would be the real double-edged sword, because a rising tide would help lift the ship off the reef--assuming it wasn't wedged too firmly on--especially if you throw off water and stores. But a lowering tide would likely twist the members out of alignment as the ship suffers under more of its own weight. This would depend on the amplitude of the tides, among other things.

(And not that the OP sounds especially cruel, but right when your ship is lodged on a reef is the perfect time for a cyclone to come through.)

So yes, the longer the ship stays on the reef, in general the worse things are. But I'd say this is a longer-term situation compared to the immediate crisis of a combat below.

[StoneCipher]

I think you were wrong to give him only 50. He was contributing in a manner, and 50 xp is just a slap in the face. I would have given all of the underwater adventurers full XP and him half of that. It's better to keep the party within a couple levels of each other.

Aside from that, if his OOG behavior shouldn't reflect what happens in game. You shouldn't really punish someone for being salty about in game actions with more in game actions. He just needs to be sorted out of game or not come back.

[atemu1234]

I think you were wrong to give him only 50. He was contributing in a manner, and 50 xp is just a slap in the face. I would have given all of the underwater adventurers full XP and him half of that. It's better to keep the party within a couple levels of each other.

Aside from that, if his OOG behavior shouldn't reflect what happens in game. You shouldn't really punish someone for being salty about in game actions with more in game actions. He just needs to be sorted out of game or not come back.

Seconded. Minimum give him half what you give the others.

Also, remember that even the DMG says not to give exp penalties for behavior, and that's basically what this is. Tell him to participate next time, but don't penalize him for doing something that made a vague amount of roleplaying sense. Also, I don't like metagaming any more than the next player, but he really ought to not be in trouble just for that. If he's not metagaming externally, odds are he'd be doing it internally, as does everyone, pretty much. No one's a perfect roleplayer.

[Troacctid]

It's possible he would have acted differently had he been aware of the consequences. Did you warn him that he would be losing out on xp for not participating?

[icefractal]

One thing here is bugging me. The mention that their gear was blown up when they tried to destroy the reef because "they didn't declare they were moving it off the ship".

Now maybe there's some reason that makes sense that wasn't mentioned, like they did the exploding in a hurry right in the midst of battle, in which case fine. But if it's a case of "You didn't say you did this obvious thing that there's no reason not to, so you didn't do it." then no. That **** isn't 'difficulty', it's being a bad interface to the world. Unless you're playing "Three Stooges, the RPG", then characters should be assumed to have a working brain, even if the player was distracted by a confusing description or someone next to him eating chips loudly.

Leaving the gear unattended in the first place and having sahaguin steal it is fine though. You asked them about it, they specifically said they didn't think it would be a problem, they turned out to be wrong. But if the second one was a "simon says" type of thing, I could see why the player would get upset about it.


Re: Not going underwater.

I don't think we have enough details for a judgement yet. Did the artificer spend all his infusions before finding out there was a need for him underwater? If so, he's not being a jerk, he just can't accomplish much down there. Was the player aware that repairing the boat was not an immediate priority?

I feel like the gunslinger is the one who got screwed the most here. He's prevented from doing anything underwater, and then he gets set back hugely by it. I mean sure, "that's the world", but in the case, the gunslinger deciding that ocean-going is for suckers, getting to land ASAP, and refusing nautical adventures in future would be a reasonable response. Are you cool with that, as a GM? If so, fine. If not, then you probably shouldn't be encouraging it by your XP distribution.

[Kesnit]

Thing is, I didn't forced them to go underwater,

No, you just had all their gear stolen and taken underwater. I'm sure if they had gone to shore, full replacements were available.


They had no gear and they weren't worrying about it.

Or maybe they had no gear, and thought the only way to get it back was to go underwater...


I know that experience isn't about killing things, but he was metagaming the whole game, about his specific gear, about his homunculous, and about his disliking of water levels.

The Artificer's player specifically told you - before everything went on - that he dislikes "going underwater in every game." So what did you do? Force the party underwater without any way to prepare. (You yourself said only the DFA had a way to breathe underwater. The rest of the party was lucky they didn't drown.)


So byebye gear anyway...

You said the gear was taken by the sea creatures.


The gunslinger was not particularly disagreeing, he was comfortable helping, and he got a lot of exp just by roleplaying (around 300).

So you allowed one player to do nothing and get 300 XP, but another player who was trying to help got 50.

And yes, the Artificer was trying to help. The party was stranded on an island. The only way off was a ship that was badly damaged. Which sounds like a better option - drowning, or getting off the island?


They wanted to reparir the ship because they were unsure of what could happen if they didn't. And the artificer started repairing because he didn't wanted to explore. He had its pet killed because of his uncautiousness, he sent it to the unknown by its own means, relying at its telepathic link, but it got killed by dire animals when he had it exploring.

So the Artificer WAS actually doing something, other than trying to fix the ship.

BTW, you do realize that an Artificer takes damage (2d10) when their pet dies, right? That not only did you cause the Artificer to lose the gold and XP he put into his pet, you got him hurt for no reward.


The arificer was fixing the ship while the rest of the party was getting along with the locals to get helping hands, to take out of the reef the ship they wanted.

Which needed to float once it was off the reef.

A few other things... By not giving the Artificer XP, you are hurting the party. The Crafting Pool given by the class does not come close to covering the XP costs of item creation. Now, the Artificer has to hold onto all of his XP if he wants to ever catch up to the players who got 6950 more XP than he did. That means that (1) you are severely weakening him again because you are taking away the primary focus of his class, and (2) you are weakening the party, both by weakening one member, and by removing their easy access to magical stuff.

As for the Artificer going underwater to use infusions, most take over a minute to cast. I'm not sure the party would want to spend 10 rounds underwater, waiting for the infusion to take effect. (If they really wanted the buff, they could come up and wait above water.) And from reading the OP, the Artificer had already spent some of his infusions trying to fix the ship.

As for using magical items, you never said what items the Artificer had. Also, how much good would the Artificer do with whatever items he had? Let's do some math...

Assume 18 CHA, so +4 to UMD. Max ranks at LVL 4 is 7, so the Artificer's UMD is +11 (+13 with scrolls). Using a 1st level scroll takes UMD of 21, so he has to roll a 8 - a 60% chance. A second level scroll requires a roll of 23, or a 50% chance. And if he fails, the scroll is gone. But wait, that requires speaking, which requires air. Using a wand is a UMD of 20, so he has to roll a 9 (55%). And that also requires speaking...


If it isn't clear by now, yes, I think you messed up. You put your player in a position where there probably wasn't a lot he could do to contribute, bashed his PC when he did try to contribute (by destroying his pet), bashed him again when he thought about the long-term and started repairing the ship, and punished him for not doing what you wanted him to do (whatever that was...) by refusing to give him XP for what he could actually contribute.

[oxybe]

Even casting infusions requires speech, to my knowledge, which is rather hard to do underwater what with how speech generally requires air to be expelled from the lungs. Now, warforged don't need to breath to survive, but this is still required for speech and spellcasting, barring silent spell metamagic or spells with no verbal components.

As such all he could have done is maybe hit things with his weapon, noting that as a caster his attack bonus is probably less then stellar (3/4 if i remember correctly) and his combat related stats, str & dex, probably average at best in the former and decent in the latter.

Note that the penalties for underwater combat are pretty severe (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#aquaticTerrain): Thrown weapons are useless, most attacks are at a -2 penalty and deal half damage and your movement is quartered or halved. Note that taking any action other then movement also causes your "air remaining" counter to drop by one (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/swim.htm), as per the swim rules.

Now, you said you asked them to read up on underwater combat. Let's setup a scenario:

Joe is playing Steve, a character with a 14 con. This means he can have 28 rounds of holding his breath, or just shy of three minutes. However, every strenuous action, like swinging a sword or attempting to break a grapple, takes off an extra 6 seconds (IE: one round of holding his breath) in addition to the normal amount you take off for simply taking your turn. so our 14 con character, with say, 6 rounds of combat has just over 2 minutes of air before he starts making constitution checks before drowning, starting at DC 10 (with a +2 con mod, he needs an 8+ for a 65% success rate), so maybe three rounds before he starts drowning proper and another 3 rounds before he's dead.

So three minutes of light combat is about the most one can go underwater with a 14 con unaided by supernatural means before drowning. This means your artificier lost about 7k exp for less then three minutes of action; 6 minutes, maybe 9, if you allow for a full waterskin to give one or two new breaths of fresh air.

And that's just combat... from what I understand they had to travel to an underwater city beforehand and after.

So, to be frank, jumping in the water to fight freaky fish people is downright stupid, in or out of character. You never bring a fight to an enemy when you're that much out of your element unless you're stupid, insane or in such a dire situation that risking drowning is better then taking the battle on land.

You're forcing the artificer to either go in the water and be rather ineffective and stupidly throw himself into mortal danger for full XP or keep doing something that would probably help the party out more in the long run, like keeping the ship from capsizing as it keeps hitting against the nigh-indestructible reef, but get little to no XP for doing so.

Talk about a catch-22. There was no "right" answer for this guy.

[Bronk]

After hearing some more details, I think that the whole situation could have been handled more diplomatically, and I think both that artificer PC and the gunslinger should have more of a reward. I can see that the player of the artificer could have handled things better too, especially if he was actually whining and crying, which must have been a sight to see. Still, I can see where that player is coming from, if he really doesn't like 'underwater levels'. Maybe he played TMNT on the Nintendo too much?

**********

So, this is how I think the game might have seemed to the artificer.

The guy begrudgingly agrees to play in the game despite knowing there might be water involved, immediately gets forced onto a ship, which then gets stuck on a reef. From the description, the reef is submerged, but they see another ship in the distance and go to investigate, leaving their gear behind for some reason. I don't know what the setup was for that, since normally people take all their gear with them, but you did warn them, so it was fair game have it get stolen almost immediately.

Now, when both ships get attacked, he was the only one to go back to the original ship, and he tried to keep fixing the ship while all the other sailors aboard that ship were getting killed by the invading sahuagins. At this point, he was probably miffed that no-one came to help, and he was probably repairing the ship because he thought they would need it to get out of the middle of the ocean. Either he started repairing the ship out of the blue, or there was some flavor text of the ship getting destroyed during the fight.

Now, it sounds like he wanted to keep repairing the ship... so far that would make sense if there were no sign of dry land, and the other ship had also been described as being destroyed. If he used up his infusions to make those repairs, that would only have taken a few rounds, which is why he switched to crafting. At this point there is no reason to believe there are three other underwater civilizations right on top of each other. Sahuagin, Merfolk, Kua-toa, and Darfellan, all within wading distance? Did they just show up, or did they find them by dunking their heads underwater? All I'm saying here is that it would have been out of the blue. So this guy gets abandoned on a sinking or at least partially destroyed ship, and he's the only one left to fix it. I've been in situations before where I wanted to do something, it was important, was told it would take a while, but the other players couldn't be bothered to wait five minutes while a day passed in the campaign world. If the other guys ran off on him, that would be on them.

While that was going on, he sent his flying minion out to also explore, and it got killed. Ouch! Were the birds attacking the other characters? They were on the surface too!

So, at this point they must have tried to get one ship out with the explosives, failed, then got the other ship out. The fact that they had two working ships is due to the artificer, so the next part wouldn't have happened at all without his input. This was also the point where you blew up the rest of his equipment, then backtracked. I'm with him... especially after the first round of lost equipment. It is normal to keep all of your things on you at all times in a game, as listed on your character sheet. It sounded like you were trying to trick him away from his artificing equipment, where he was probably trying to reequip.

Now with a working boat, they sail above the sahuagin city. They are all together here, but he's not a fighter. Clearly he was the only one in the group that didn't need to hold his breath, but what was he going to do once he was down there? As others have mentioned, fighting underwater is annoying. As it is, it seems like the effectiveness of the others was fudged quite a bit, especially with the skins filled with air, which would have been one or two breaths, max, if they weren't buoying them to the surface. With no magic and no fighting ability, I still think the best he could have done was as a living grappling hook to retrieve drowning characters.

Finally, the session ends and he gets 50XP, the Gunslinger who was tagging along uselessly gets 300XP, and the other guys get enough to jump a full level, probably two, all at once, because of what must have seemed like random encounters at the time. If I were him, I'd feel very left out.

***********

Here's what I would do to smooth this over... give the guy more XP. Call him up and tell him that you reconsidered the ruling and give him a bunch more. The DMG says that you wouldn't get XP for encounters you weren't involved with, but he was there, right above the whole thing, and they only got there because of him. It sounds like the only one who truly didn't help at all was the gunslinger. Someone mentioned that he could have gotten underwater guns somehow, but since those are from Pathfinder (or Spelljammer), and this was a 3.5 game, the player might not have known about them and/or not been able to get them. Maybe shore up his XP too, as well as the DFA... they were all in it together, and they were all in danger there. There's no way the sahuagin city was that far under the water, after all, if a couple of regular dudes could swim down to it holding filled air skins.

Next time, consider this. If you take their things, try to give them a way to get them back. Surely one of those other civilizations had casters with magic or magic items that could have given them all the ability to breathe air, or turned them into a manta ray, or polymorphed them into a fish, or whatever so that they could function better. The Gunslinger could have found a harpoon gun or something, someone could have told them that they just had to back the ship up somehow to get it off the reef, and so on. Then, if some people end up in the action more than others, let them find some loot, and let them find it first, and get the glory.

If the person playing the artificer isn't catching your hints, just take him aside and say, "Hey, the adventure is over there. I tell you this because I don't want you to get bored."

Finally, I've often found, from both sides of the DM screen, that it really helps when the DM really hams it up when he/she says "Are you Suuuuuuuuuure you want to do that?"

Good luck with your next game, and I hope you guys have fun, and that the Artificer doesn't lose the love of the game!

[Yael]

After hearing some more details, I think that the whole situation could have been handled more diplomatically, and I think both that artificer PC and the gunslinger should have more of a reward. I can see that the player of the artificer could have handled things better too, especially if he was actually whining and crying, which must have been a sight to see. Still, I can see where that player is coming from, if he really doesn't like 'underwater levels'. Maybe he played TMNT on the Nintendo too much?

**********

So, this is how I think the game might have seemed to the artificer.

The guy begrudgingly agrees to play in the game despite knowing there might be water involved, immediately gets forced onto a ship, which then gets stuck on a reef. From the description, the reef is submerged, but they see another ship in the distance and go to investigate, leaving their gear behind for some reason. I don't know what the setup was for that, since normally people take all their gear with them, but you did warn them, so it was fair game have it get stolen almost immediately.

Yes, all good.


Now, when both ships get attacked, he was the only one to go back to the original ship, and he tried to keep fixing the ship while all the other sailors aboard that ship were getting killed by the invading sahuagins. At this point, he was probably miffed that no-one came to help, and he was probably repairing the ship because he thought they would need it to get out of the middle of the ocean. Either he started repairing the ship out of the blue, or there was some flavor text of the ship getting destroyed during the fight.

He started repairing the second ship (the one they found) because it was considerably larger (a galleon, from a caravel). Yes, he did started to repair. The caravel that was their primary transport blew up by their own actions.


Now, it sounds like he wanted to keep repairing the ship... so far that would make sense if there were no sign of dry land, and the other ship had also been described as being destroyed. If he used up his infusions to make those repairs, that would only have taken a few rounds, which is why he switched to crafting. At this point there is no reason to believe there are three other underwater civilizations right on top of each other. Sahuagin, Merfolk, Kua-toa, and Darfellan, all within wading distance? Did they just show up, or did they find them by dunking their heads underwater? All I'm saying here is that it would have been out of the blue. So this guy gets abandoned on a sinking or at least partially destroyed ship, and he's the only one left to fix it. I've been in situations before where I wanted to do something, it was important, was told it would take a while, but the other players couldn't be bothered to wait five minutes while a day passed in the campaign world. If the other guys ran off on him, that would be on them.

That was their call, I asked several times what was their plan. They said that the artificer would stay behind, fixing the ship or something. Also, they found the Darfellan city by exploring the underwater caves, also they met the merfolk that way. All the cities were appart, the reef was huge as hell.


While that was going on, he sent his flying minion out to also explore, and it got killed. Ouch! Were the birds attacking the other characters? They were on the surface too!

The birds? Yes. The very same birds attacked the DFA while he was wandering lost on the surface of the reef. He managed to get away and some Darfellan locals helped him to survive there.


So, at this point they must have tried to get one ship out with the explosives, failed, then got the other ship out. The fact that they had two working ships is due to the artificer, so the next part wouldn't have happened at all without his input. This was also the point where you blew up the rest of his equipment, then backtracked. I'm with him... especially after the first round of lost equipment. It is normal to keep all of your things on you at all times in a game, as listed on your character sheet. It sounded like you were trying to trick him away from his artificing equipment, where he was probably trying to reequip.

Again, blowing the ship wasn't part of my idea, I liked more the caravel because it was smaller and easier to use, but well, their call. And no, I wasn't trying to trick anyone away from their equipment, I ruled out that Tier 1 and 2 classes weren't available from the start, except for artificer, which they would need to get items on the wild; however I was being equal with everyone, and everyone who did not take out their equipment, they lost it if the Paladin didn't took it out before the explosion. Also, the main equipment wasn't lost, the gear they had was there, the Sahuagin only took the crates with some weapons that the kingdom gave them, and the food (yes, that was par of it, but their gear WAS there.)


Now with a working boat, they sail above the sahuagin city. They are all together here, but he's not a fighter. Clearly he was the only one in the group that didn't need to hold his breath, but what was he going to do once he was down there? As others have mentioned, fighting underwater is annoying. As it is, it seems like the effectiveness of the others was fudged quite a bit, especially with the skins filled with air, which would have been one or two breaths, max, if they weren't buoying them to the surface. With no magic and no fighting ability, I still think the best he could have done was as a living grappling hook to retrieve drowning characters.

The sahuagin city was underwater, inside the reef. They mined in and established their own city there, so the entrance to the city was around 50 feet of cave-moving underwater and they would reach it, sadly, a d% ruled that they were just above it.
Even that way that would've been useful, helping others just by using its equipment (crossbows work underwater at their inc. with those penalties though...)


Finally, the session ends and he gets 50XP, the Gunslinger who was tagging along uselessly gets 300XP, and the other guys get enough to jump a full level, probably two, all at once, because of what must have seemed like random encounters at the time. If I were him, I'd feel very left out.

He was, and even if it is that way, the gunslinger roleplayed the whole "we found him" scene, because he was on another ship that they just found (he joined the game that day). So he turned out to be a sailor and gave instructions of the men that were still alive to help out at the galleon repairs (weird when they all are evil and the gunslinger is good...) So he had roleplay. The artificer wasn't roleplaying, acually, he was going all against his character, as he described it to me as an: "Adventure lover, and a being that loves help the others when in danger." So his fear of underwater levels rapidly changed its behavior...

I rule experience the following way:
I divide the days and give out experience basing me on what they did each day (to keep a record) and what they got. So the base experience is 50, the maximum would be 300 each day, but this only applies if they did something, like roleplaying or being a PC, anyway, after the roleplaying experience, I go to the battle awards, and because only two of them went down there and kicked the 6HD sahuagin with his 4hd followers, they got the chunk load of experience. Also the DFA got experience because his solo combat and roleplay in general. That being said, only those three got 1000+ experience, and the other players didn't even bothered to ask why they got that little, all that was combat experience after all, and they know that if they weren't useful here, they will be useful later, I am not aiming for the highest powerhouses to pick their challenges, but for an average and I will incapacite the strongest (if I can lol) so the lowest can shine, they know. After those two experience-giving, I apply a penalty of experience against roleplaying and alignment. They know, and they agreed, I asked if they were sure, and especially the artificer was positive on this, laughing anytime I lowered experience from others.
So, at his very calculations, he got 150 from three days of exploring, 150 from the ship-fix and -250 from metagaming and player's childish attitudes towards the use of its character. They agreed, I am not doing nothing special for no one, I even lessened the experience of the barbarian and the paladin because of metagame, and I know the difference is big, but they agreed that if they weren't involved in a fight in some way, they wouldn't get exp, we all agreed at this.



Here's what I would do to smooth this over... give the guy more XP. Call him up and tell him that you reconsidered the ruling and give him a bunch more. The DMG says that you wouldn't get XP for encounters you weren't involved with, but he was there, right above the whole thing, and they only got there because of him. It sounds like the only one who truly didn't help at all was the gunslinger. Someone mentioned that he could have gotten underwater guns somehow, but since those are from Pathfinder (or Spelljammer), and this was a 3.5 game, the player might not have known about them and/or not been able to get them. Maybe shore up his XP too, as well as the DFA... they were all in it together, and they were all in danger there. There's no way the sahuagin city was that far under the water, after all, if a couple of regular dudes could swim down to it holding filled air skins.

The gunslinger was informed of using other kind of ranged weapons like a harpoon, or a net. So he told us that he would prepare better for the next fight, he didn't cried because his use at the fight.


Next time, consider this. If you take their things, try to give them a way to get them back. Surely one of those other civilizations had casters with magic or magic items that could have given them all the ability to breathe air, or turned them into a manta ray, or polymorphed them into a fish, or whatever so that they could function better. The Gunslinger could have found a harpoon gun or something, someone could have told them that they just had to back the ship up somehow to get it off the reef, and so on. Then, if some people end up in the action more than others, let them find some loot, and let them find it first, and get the glory.

They had the chance, but only the artificer had the knowledge of which items are magical and which are not, and because the items were crafted by the coral material, you would've needed to have that guy down there, also they didn't brought nothing at the surface except for the boss's equipment.


If the person playing the artificer isn't catching your hints, just take him aside and say, "Hey, the adventure is over there. I tell you this because I don't want you to get bored."

I do, and he responds: I'm fixing the ship, continue with your game.


Finally, I've often found, from both sides of the DM screen, that it really helps when the DM really hams it up when he/she says "Are you Suuuuuuuuuure you want to do that?"

I do, and I am very proud of my questioning voice :D


Good luck with your next game, and I hope you guys have fun, and that the Artificer doesn't lose the love of the game!

I will try, my solution (after hearing all this) will be to solo-roleplay him what he did while all the others were looking for civilization. Maybe helping him, also the gunslinger, the monk and the beguiler, maybe this week.

[Kesnit]

He started repairing the second ship (the one they found) because it was considerably larger (a galleon, from a caravel). Yes, he did started to repair. The caravel that was their primary transport blew up by their own actions.

Given that they were trying to get off the reef, I'm not sure you should be blaming them for that.


That was their call,

After you had their stuff stolen.


The birds? Yes. The very same birds attacked the DFA while he was wandering lost on the surface of the reef. He managed to get away and some Darfellan locals helped him to survive there.

But you couldn't throw the Artificer a bone and save his pet..? Especially since the Artificer was actually trying to help by sending out his pet. (You seem to keep missing this point...)


Again, blowing the ship wasn't part of my idea, I liked more the caravel because it was smaller and easier to use, but well, their call.

Given that you've said both ships were stuck on the reef, does it really matter which they blew up? They'd have to try to blow the reef either way.


Even that way that would've been useful, helping others just by using its equipment (crossbows work underwater at their inc. with those penalties though...)

The city was 50 feet down. Ranged weapons take a -2 for every 5 feet of water they pass through, in addition to normal range penalties. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#aquaticTerrain) So he was at a -10 to use a crossbow. What did you expect him to hit?


So he turned out to be a sailor and gave instructions of the men that were still alive to help out at the galleon repairs

So the Gunslinger got 300 XP for repairing the boat, and the Artificer got 50?


So he had roleplay.

"Here, let me use up my class features and use my skills" isn't RP? Because that is what the Artificer did. He spent his daily infusions, sent out his pet to scout, and probably used some Craft skill checks.


The artificer wasn't roleplaying, acually, he was going all against his character, as he described it to me as an: "Adventure lover, and a being that loves help the others when in danger." So his fear of underwater levels rapidly changed its behavior...

So a character having fear isn't RP? Besides, he told you from the start that he hates underwater games. Obviously, though, you were dead-set on it (since you set the scenario that forced the party underwater), and chose to punish him for your plans.


all that was combat experience after all,

And the Artificer is dependent on XP more than any other class, because crafting takes XP.


and they know that if they weren't useful here, they will be useful later,

Not if you force them to be a level or 2 behind the rest of the party.


I am not aiming for the highest powerhouses to pick their challenges, but for an average and I will incapacite the strongest (if I can lol) so the lowest can shine,

So are you going to neutralize the Paladin and the Barbarian(?) until everyone else is caught up to them XP-wise?


player's childish attitudes

He spent 1625 gold and 126 XP on his pet. (3625 if he gave it 2 HD.) WBL for a level 4 character is 5400. Even if he spent the minimum, he put 30% of his WBL into his pet, which you just took away. He also actually lost 76 XP, between the cost of the pet and the XP you gave him The only way to get his pet back is to spend that gold and XP again. Of course, he can't afford to spend that XP since he is 6000 XP behind, and needs to hold onto every point he gets if he ever intends to catch up. Which makes his class rather pointless, since being an Artificer is all about crafting, which he can no longer do.

I'm not the least bit surprised he was upset. You completely destroyed his entire PC.


The gunslinger was informed of using other kind of ranged weapons like a harpoon, or a net. So he told us that he would prepare better for the next fight, he didn't cried because his use at the fight.

You also didn't completely negate his character, almost kill him, and then punish him for it.


but only the artificer had the knowledge of which items are magical and which are not, and because the items were crafted by the coral material, you would've needed to have that guy down there,

Why? If the items could not be brought up, it doesn't matter if they are magical or not since the party would not be able to take them. If the items could be brought up, all the PCs had to do was bring them to the surface for the Artificer to look at. There was no need for the Artificer to go down there.


I do, and he responds: I'm fixing the ship, continue with your game.

Just so everyone is on the same page, what did you expect the Artificer to do?

As has already been discussed, spells would be a problem because of the need to speak. Even if he doesn't need to breathe, he needs air to speak, plus there is the difficulty of speaking underwater. Infusions run into the same problem of needing to speak, and he had already used some (if not all) of his daily allowance (which is 5 - 3 first level and 2 second level) on the boat.

Melee would be suicidal. Assuming a 10 STR and 12 CON, he has an AB of +3 (all from his BAB) and 18 total HP (assuming average rolls). You've already killed his pet, forcing him to take 2d10 damage (average 11, a high roll could actually kill the PC). That means he has 7 HP. That's down in the area of first-level characters, where 1 attack can take out a PC.

I discussed ranged combat above.


I will try, my solution (after hearing all this) will be to solo-roleplay him what he did while all the others were looking for civilization. Maybe helping him, also the gunslinger, the monk and the beguiler, maybe this week.

Sounds like a plan. But if you do, let the Artificer play his character and don't punish him for it. Also, give him a chance to get his pet back for free. He's already been punished enough.

[Yael]

Given that they were trying to get off the reef, I'm not sure you should be blaming them for that.

I am not blaming them for that, they were trying to survive at a exploring & survival game.


After you had their stuff stolen.

I had their "stuff" that is actually only the food that they hadn't in their backpacks stolen, but not their gear, everything that didn't blew up later was still with them. What actually exploded was a mule that they didn't bothered to take out and a backpack with adventuring stuff, the DFA and the GS weren't in that boat in the first place, the Beguiler only carried a haversack with her, and the monk wasn't carrying anything besides its sweaters that he crafted at his freetime with tailoring, so only the barbarian and paladin thingies were up there, which they removed. The old PC that almost died and the player decided to change because he didn't like it (a factotum) had its stuff still in, but the paladin didn't bothered to take those out, so they blew up. They recovered (by dice %) 25% of the stolen crates (because the Kuo-toa "allies" took them away), later.


But you couldn't throw the Artificer a bone and save his pet..? Especially since the Artificer was actually trying to help by sending out his pet. (You seem to keep missing this point...)

I had him warned that his pet was in strange waters, and that it could die if he left him unnatended, he friggin' accepted, and I had him roll the d% to determine wether there was an attack or not, he agreed, he rolled, he had a 97% chance of an encounter, he actually had the encounter, his bird didn't notice them, the bird was anhiquilated by dire eagles, he knew the risks and had it flying around 1 mile at the reef by aproximately 9 hours. Over advice there's no trickery (something like that was it? "Sobre aviso no hay engaño" I meant.)


Given that you've said both ships were stuck on the reef, does it really matter which they blew up? They'd have to try to blow the reef either way.

They blew up that ship because I don't know why. They weren't trying to break the reef, they were trying to attract the sahuagin attention upwards, they succeeded, but the sahuagin stayed underwater, doing dirty signs as the barbarian did the same.


The city was 50 feet down. Ranged weapons take a -2 for every 5 feet of water they pass through, in addition to normal range penalties. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#aquaticTerrain) So he was at a -10 to use a crossbow. What did you expect him to hit?

Again, I warned them, all of them that I would apply every type of difficult terrain, even underwater, and they all agreed to play the game. They knew everything and I had them read the rules that might be needed for each session. He has a +1 crossbow, he could've helped at something in the fight, also, when they were approaching the boss fight, they returned to the surface and warned everyone that they were going in, which they had a crafting artificer that had its infusions just prepared, and they went down again.


So the Gunslinger got 300 XP for repairing the boat, and the Artificer got 50?

Again, and again, experience penalties. I already explained, they all agreed, they all were aware of the consecuences of playing that way, they knew and the other players were telling him that he was doing wrong, I spoke almost none about the topic unless I was asked, and I wasn't trying to be at anyone's side, except for asking: Are you sure you doing that? Sure? Surely do? Ok.


"Here, let me use up my class features and use my skills" isn't RP? Because that is what the Artificer did. He spent his daily infusions, sent out his pet to scout, and probably used some Craft skill checks.

He has +24 to every craft skill, he needed no rolls. He helped on the ship, YES he did! He repaired it and I already told you why he got 50 exp.



So a character having fear isn't RP? Besides, he told you from the start that he hates underwater games. Obviously, though, you were dead-set on it (since you set the scenario that forced the party underwater), and chose to punish him for your plans.

But his character wasn't having fear, he was being childish. His character had no fear for going underwater, nor fighting there, I asked silly questions at the start of the game, he answered with a giggle: Of course not. So he had no motive for being afraid.


And the Artificer is dependent on XP more than any other class, because crafting takes XP.

I know, and he had most of his items created by free, because of a variant rule we are using.


Not if you force them to be a level or 2 behind the rest of the party.

Again, separate challenges and solo-roleplaying will do.


So are you going to neutralize the Paladin and the Barbarian(?) until everyone else is caught up to them XP-wise?

Neutralize is kinda hard to say, but keep them doing other things while the others earn the same quantity of experience.


He spent 1625 gold and 126 XP on his pet. (3625 if he gave it 2 HD.) WBL for a level 4 character is 5400. Even if he spent the minimum, he put 30% of his WBL into his pet, which you just took away. He also actually lost 76 XP, between the cost of the pet and the XP you gave him The only way to get his pet back is to spend that gold and XP again. Of course, he can't afford to spend that XP since he is 6000 XP behind, and needs to hold onto every point he gets if he ever intends to catch up. Which makes his class rather pointless, since being an Artificer is all about crafting, which he can no longer do.

He spent nothing, I let him had its homunculous base price for free once, and he had added no hit dices.


I'm not the least bit surprised he was upset. You completely destroyed his entire PC.
You also didn't completely negate his character, almost kill him, and then punish him for it.


Not even close, it's an artificer, he will overcome it. Also, if he keeps playing that way he won't be running in any trouble. For real though, he is of a childish player (more than me lol) and he know what he is doing (he's actually older than me), so I will punish him for his mistakes as I am punishing every other PC for their mistakes, I ought to note that everyone had done bad their stuff and applied metagame in, so there comes the punish (no bonus exp or penalties WHICH THEY ALL AGREED, I should add, I think I've not said it before.)





Why? If the items could not be brought up, it doesn't matter if they are magical or not since the party would not be able to take them. If the items could be brought up, all the PCs had to do was bring them to the surface for the Artificer to look at. There was no need for the Artificer to go down there.

Because they were coral-looking stones with a magical aura, that's why. There's no way of differencying them from mundane rocks, unless you have a detect magic or something similar (which he had at will).



Just so everyone is on the same page, what did you expect the Artificer to do?

As has already been discussed, spells would be a problem because of the need to speak. Even if he doesn't need to breathe, he needs air to speak, plus there is the difficulty of speaking underwater. Infusions run into the same problem of needing to speak, and he had already used some (if not all) of his daily allowance (which is 5 - 3 first level and 2 second level) on the boat.

Melee would be suicidal. Assuming a 10 STR and 12 CON, he has an AB of +3 (all from his BAB) and 18 total HP (assuming average rolls). You've already killed his pet, forcing him to take 2d10 damage (average 11, a high roll could actually kill the PC). That means he has 7 HP. That's down in the area of first-level characters, where 1 attack can take out a PC.

Fighting? Helping down there? Scouting? Doing something for his teammates do not die. He was not playing his character's basic behavior, and when he asked that if he could use spells underwater I clearly told him:

Yes, you will be able to do so but you will need a Concentration check to cast any wand, scroll or anything because of the substitution of the normal components.

Don't minunderstand me, he helped, he repaired the ship which they used to get to a new island. I know that he was of importance to the game, but he was not playing how he described his character would play like, because of his "hate" towards water levels, everyone else agreed on sending the Pal and the Barbarian down there, and they did. The DFA also went down there, but different stuff, and he practically died... But when they asked him to come down, he answered the unanswereable: I hate water levels. AS HIS CHARACTER. So, strong metagaming even when his character obviously didn't say that, but they all decided to ignore him, which reminds me, everyone else in the party want to kill him... I won't let them do PvP stuff, but there's a disturbance in the force....


Sounds like a plan. But if you do, let the Artificer play his character and don't punish him for it. Also, give him a chance to get his pet back for free. He's already been punished enough.

He didn't pay for his pet, he will get what he earns during his solo play, we'll see what turns out to be. I doubt that he will earn the same exp that the challenge for the entire party was designed as, but I'll do my best to give him (and everyone else) something to do.

Thanks, playground, I was actually wrong, and I will try to fix it for whether this game and future ones!

:smallwink:

[Yahzi]

This is the beauty of my "XP = Gold" system.

(In my world XP is tangible. 1 XP = 5 gp, you can carry it around and trade it, or you can eat it to gain levels or make magic items. When you die people get to take some of your XP. Peasants are the primary source of XP.)

In my world, the party would have reaped a certain amount of XP from defeating the Saughin and boiling their heads. Then they - the players - would be responsible for distributing the XP. If they want to give it all to one guy so he can get another level of spell casting that they want, then fine. If they want to sell it for gold and hire mercenaries or buy a new ship (or give it to their mercenaries so they level up!), then fine. If they want to divide it equally, then fine.

If the party thought what the Artificer was doing was important enough to share their XP with him, then the should be allowed to. If they didn't, then they shouldn't have to. That's really up to the party. If they can't figure out how to share their treasure in a way that makes them all happy and effective, they don't deserve to be a party. If they can't figure out how to work as a team... then they deserve to die, and plenty of my NPCs will be happy to kill them and boil their heads.

[Bronk]

It does sound like, in general, you're running a really fun and well put together game! I hope you and the Artificer's player can work something out so that you don't have this problem in the future!

[atemu1234]

You seem to think giving him 50 XP is a generous reward. For accomplishing something he really should have gotten better rewards than that, and next to what the other players got it's peanuts.

[Phelix-Mu]

Several posters have posited stuff along the lines of "you need air in order to be able to cast spell [with verbal components]." I am wondering if we can get rules text on this, because I think it's not exactly correct. If that's true, how do normal underwater races cast spells while underwater? I don't seem to recall anything in aquatic elf fluff about magic being way less popular cause no one can use it without Silent Spell, but maybe I just wasn't reading in the right book.

More generally, you can speak while underwater; verbal communication hinges on sound waves, and there is nothing preventing one from making sound waves in the water. Humans would choke because the airway is...well, made for air...but I see no reason a being that doesn't even breathe couldn't speak underwater.

[oxybe]

It's less "because the rules say so" and more "it's how the larynx works".

The larynx tightens and then air passes through it from the lungs, creating sound vibrations and ultimately speech. Aquatic creatures still require air to survive, they just filter the air through their specialized organs out from the water, like gills and whatnot, rather then lungs like us. Again, it's not that aquatic critters don't require air, it's that they get it in a way different then we do.

This is the reason why fish and critters that require water suffocate on land: their breathing organs aren't made to simply intake raw oxygen like ours.

In short: living things require oxygen. I would imagine the warforged, while not requiring air to survive, still was build to mimic humanoids they live with in how they work. I always imagined they would have artificial air bladders and vocal chords so that they can blow air and mimic the basic vocal patterns of humanoids.

While a warforged wouldn't really be in any danager underwater, trying to talk complex sentences in under 6 seconds without drawing breath is hard, not to mention you're also fighting against the water trying to come into your mouth while you're doing so.

[StoneCipher]

I would imagine you would need to speak aquan for your spells to work proper or take a %chance to fizzle since your movement and voice would be hindered a bit. I'd give a 20% chance to fail given the circumstances, but by RAW, it's left up to the DM to decide what penalties - if any - come with casting underwater.

I would imagine it would be difficult to properly utter spells while also juggling not inhaling water. I could imagine at least one spell out of all of them out there having you inhale during the incantation, due to verbal duration. Each round is 6 seconds so imagine yourself trying to constantly speak for 6 full seconds or even 3 without inhaling once. Not difficult, but then try that while you're holding your breath under the crushing depths of the ocean.

But then again, a wizard did it.

[Fax Celestis]

I would imagine you would need to speak aquan for your spells to work proper or take a %chance to fizzle since your movement and voice would be hindered a bit. I'd give a 20% chance to fail given the circumstances, but by RAW, it's left up to the DM to decide what penalties - if any - come with casting underwater.

I would imagine it would be difficult to properly utter spells while also juggling not inhaling water. I could imagine at least one spell out of all of them out there having you inhale during the incantation, due to verbal duration. Each round is 6 seconds so imagine yourself trying to constantly speak for 6 full seconds or even 3 without inhaling once. Not difficult, but then try that while you're holding your breath under the crushing depths of the ocean.

But then again, a wizard did it.

I think 20% is fair considering this:


Verbal (V)
A verbal component is a spoken incantation. To provide a verbal component, you must be able to speak in a strong voice. A silence spell or a gag spoils the incantation (and thus the spell). A spellcaster who has been deafened has a 20% chance to spoil any spell with a verbal component that he or she tries to cast.

[Bronk]

Several posters have posited stuff along the lines of "you need air in order to be able to cast spell [with verbal components]." I am wondering if we can get rules text on this, because I think it's not exactly correct. If that's true, how do normal underwater races cast spells while underwater? I don't seem to recall anything in aquatic elf fluff about magic being way less popular cause no one can use it without Silent Spell, but maybe I just wasn't reading in the right book.

More generally, you can speak while underwater; verbal communication hinges on sound waves, and there is nothing preventing one from making sound waves in the water. Humans would choke because the airway is...well, made for air...but I see no reason a being that doesn't even breathe couldn't speak underwater.

I think it's more of a aquatic subtype ability. From what I can see, the fluff for that and for spells that allow you to breathe underwater is that you breathe water as if it were air, regardless to if you have gills or not, and that lets you speak and cast spells normally (even if the spells themselves act differently underwater).

I'm not sure there's a consensus on if warforged need air to speak though. Their entry just says that the don't need to breathe, but doesn't say if that relates to the ability to talk. I guess it's up to the DM to decide if their vocal ability is similar to humans, more like a speaker, or pure magic.

[Invader]

My question is how do you figure the gained 7000xp from that fight, that's enough to take them from 4th to 6th level assuming you could get two at a time, that seems really high for what they fought.