Problems with Min Maxers

[RingofThorns]

Allright just to start this off, I have no trouble with people who Min Max or Optimize a build as a whole I am only speaking of my experience with the people I have ran games with.

Now with that said I find the practice of min maxing or optimizing a character is fine in certain circumstance, namely ones like I mentioned in another thread where its player versus player in a hunger games last man standing kind of thing. Though if that is the point of the campaign, just making characters that are always as powerful as possible but dont really have any other skills in that setting once again min maxing a character is fine.

However the real issue comes into when I have played and DM'ed some games where most of the people made actual characters with flaws and particular skills and so on. Where as a few pretty much just made superly over powered and that winds up biting them in the no no places because they dont really fit in the world. Perfect example one guy was a wizard or spell caster of some sort but I think wizard is right. Any way he optimized to pretty much throw the biggest meanest fireballs ever seen short of the plane of fire, well he got made when the group encountered a band of local thugs. The bard in the party went up and started trying to just smooth things out and get everyone out without having to fight, when suddenly the wizard more or less just goes "I throw a fireball in the middle of them!" well he killed most of the thugs, almost killed the bard and just for the sake of us being in a narrow alley, I rolled so see if anyone else was around. The wizard also roasted two kids, two homeless guys and a member of the local thieves guild.

I told the wizard about all of this to which he shrugged and just said "not my problem I just throw fireballs anything after that is some one elses problem." when the party got mad because he almost wasted the bard again just another shrug "well he shouldnt have been talking to them." Well as DM I was annoyed but I didnt want to just pull something spiteful out of my bag of tricks so I made some rolls, the city guards were alerted to the fact some one had pretty much ashed about six or seven people, they did an investigation and found it was the wizard that did it. Now this investigation and everything took two to three days all the while the wizard wouldnt listen to anyone about maybe needing to leave town. Instead he acted like it was no big deal. Well the guards came and after an ordeal arrested him, and threw him in the dungeon with manacles to supress his magic. Well while their the thieves guild pretty much snuck in and put out one of his eyes in pay back for roasting one of theirs.

The wizard player at this point got pissed saying I was being unfair and that he shouldnt suffer because he was defending the party, and refused to hear the reason behind why this had all come about.

[eggynack]

Doesn't really sound like a min maxing problem, to be honest. Fireballs aren't all that great, and even if his particular fireballs were optimized for ultimate flamery, the story would have gone the same way had the player just tossed normal fireballs. In fact, the problem here seems to be that the player in question isn't particularly skilled, given that they exploded the party bard with their spell and didn't pay attention to other collateral damage or have a plan to bypass the guard. A more skilled optimizer would have probably been able to shut down the opponents without injuring the bard or nearby folks, and then almost certainly would have had the raw mechanical edge to beat/escape the guards.

[icefractal]

That sounds more like a "psycho character" problem, with a side order of obliviousness, than a min/max problem. While a player can fall into both categories, they're not particularly related.

[Eldan]

That's not a min-max problem, that's a player being a ****. He'd be a **** even if he played a monk.

[Harrow]

This is a common misconception. Some people have trouble roleplaying, so when they play a game like D&D optimization is all that they have left. So these people then optimize their character over the top and never roleplay and people assume that the former is causing the latter, when it's really the latter causing the former.

To be extra clear, the problem here is that this player isn't roleplaying a character that fits into the group. The optimization is a side effect, not a cause. The cause would probably be something more innate to this person. This person was probably expecting a game where he kills things, then takes loot form the dead things to kill more things. I would just sit down with him and talk with him about how the theme of your campaign involves a lot more talking with people and a lot less killing them before they know you're attacking them. He honestly was probably completely blindsided by there being any negative consequences for killing the bad guys. You guys are PCs, anything you do in inherently justified by you guys being heroes. Consequences are the things you do to other people for money.

[RingofThorns]

Everything that has been said so far is all very good points, but try and answer the ones I can best recall is that their are about three min maxers in my regular gaming group. They are normally the same three guys, and they are very smart and have often been the DM of their own games so I know they have ability to atleast basic roleplay. However when it comes to being the players they seem to forget the RP of RPG. Like I said dont get me wrong I Know there are times when min maxing and the like has its uses but normally in a game where everyone else makes a character and then the min maxers make whatever uber powerful murder hobo/blank slate it always winds up being kind of unfun for somebody. Either its the characters not having fun in combat because basically they cant do anything because I had to start up enemies that can even scratch the min maxed or when i leave the enemies at a basic point for the characters the min max just steam roll through it.

I suppose my basic point or atleast what I am trying to find is if there is a way for people that min max and people that like to make actual characters can play at the table and everyone still be happy at the end of the night.

[Necroticplague]

I suppose my basic point or atleast what I am trying to find is if there is a way for people that min max and people that like to make actual characters can play at the table and everyone still be happy at the end of the night.

False dichotomy. Min-maaxing and making a character that can actually play at a table are not different things even remotely. If the problem is that they don't put the RP in RPG, then that is a problem in and of itself, and has nothing to do with their character power.

[atemu1234]

Wow, I'm going to need to break down this one.

Allright just to start this off, I have no trouble with people who Min Max or Optimize a build as a whole I am only speaking of my experience with the people I have ran games with

This is a good position to be in, I suppose.


Now with that said I find the practice of min maxing or optimizing a character is fine in certain circumstance, namely ones like I mentioned in another thread where its player versus player in a hunger games last man standing kind of thing. Though if that is the point of the campaign, just making characters that are always as powerful as possible but dont really have any other skills in that setting once again min maxing a character is fine.

Well, I disagree here. You can optimize and not overshadow the party, it's like I say to my players, "If you're so insecure about your sword not being able to keep up with the powers of an arcane being able to alter reality with its thoughts, then you should've played one of those instead of swinging a sword."

It's not that I dislike melee, or want casters to be OP, but it's well known to my players that even an unoptimized wizard can still **** fireballs while they swing around a pointy metal stick. Don't be insecure in it, accept it, and roleplay.


However the real issue comes into when I have played and DM'ed some games where most of the people made actual characters with flaws and particular skills and so on. Where as a few pretty much just made superly over powered and that winds up biting them in the no no places because they dont really fit in the world. Perfect example one guy was a wizard or spell caster of some sort but I think wizard is right. Any way he optimized to pretty much throw the biggest meanest fireballs ever seen short of the plane of fire, well he got made when the group encountered a band of local thugs. The bard in the party went up and started trying to just smooth things out and get everyone out without having to fight, when suddenly the wizard more or less just goes "I throw a fireball in the middle of them!" well he killed most of the thugs, almost killed the bard and just for the sake of us being in a narrow alley, I rolled so see if anyone else was around. The wizard also roasted two kids, two homeless guys and a member of the local thieves guild.

This isn't optimization. This is just doing something random for no reason other than being random appeals to you. This is what we call "bad playing".

He isn't being an optimized wizard, he's just being a jerk, to reference an earlier post by someone else.


I told the wizard about all of this to which he shrugged and just said "not my problem I just throw fireballs anything after that is some one elses problem." when the party got mad because he almost wasted the bard again just another shrug "well he shouldnt have been talking to them." Well as DM I was annoyed but I didnt want to just pull something spiteful out of my bag of tricks so I made some rolls, the city guards were alerted to the fact some one had pretty much ashed about six or seven people, they did an investigation and found it was the wizard that did it. Now this investigation and everything took two to three days all the while the wizard wouldnt listen to anyone about maybe needing to leave town. Instead he acted like it was no big deal. Well the guards came and after an ordeal arrested him, and threw him in the dungeon with manacles to supress his magic. Well while their the thieves guild pretty much snuck in and put out one of his eyes in pay back for roasting one of theirs.

Back to him just being a jerk. So he's convinced that being a fireball-slinging murderhobo is his niche, and yet doesn't care about the bard playing to its niche?


The wizard player at this point got pissed saying I was being unfair and that he shouldnt suffer because he was defending the party, and refused to hear the reason behind why this had all come about.

Yes, he was defending the party from all those villainous prepubescents and homeless people. He truly stopped an invasion.

Tell him he's being a jerk. Tell him to get over himself, and that if he doesn't like his character suffering comeuppance for killing people during diplomatic relations, he shouldn't kill during diplomatic relations.

[Sewercop]

What about your own role in the mix?

You rolled to see if there was any other people there. As a player I would be furious if you suddenly said there was 5 more people in that narrow radius.
In a narrow alley there was 5 people extra you didnt tell me about? what the....

Reprecussions I see, but city guards apprehending a 7th + wizard and using anti magic manacles.. I would ask if you shouldnt have allowed me a knowledge roll or two on the city in itself. Not to mention the bards knowledge.

Then the thieves sneak into an area where they hold a mage, put out his eye and leave. Are you telling me you didnt think the player would get upset?
Given the fact they have guards capable of taking down spellcasters I am perplexed they confine him somewhere thieves can get in and injure him.

Unfair? probably not, but pulling stuff out of your bag of gm fiat... very much so.. I understand why he is pissed.


Minmax and the ability to roleplay .. stormwind fallacy i reckon is a good read.
But a fireball? nah... you just have a murderhobo amidst your crew. You responded bad too

[Trasilor]

Changing the scene just to 'punish' the problem player is not a proper solution.

Yes, players need to have repercussions for their actions. And yes, those repercussions should be appropriate.

In your example, the consequences of the player's actions were pretty tame. At that level, it should be fairly easy to obtain the necessary healing magic to a) heal the wizard, b) raise the children who died. In fact, it could be fine levied against the wizard - which could lead to a quest...you get the idea. :smallamused:

However, adding all these details after the fact is not proper response. I could see the homeless person being hard to spot as they might be under trash or other debris (ironically, if this is the case, they would have total cover and thus not be hit by the fireball). But two innocent kids playing in the alley? :smallconfused:

As other posters have stated, this is an attitude problem not a optimization (or min/maxing) problem. I suggest you and your group try the the Same Page Tool (https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/). As the name implies, it just helps people "get on the same page" with the game.

Regardless you need to talk to the problem player. If their level of optimization is too high, tell them that - be honest and let them know that their level of optimization is high for this group and they need to tone it down. Remind them, that as the DM, everything they do, you can do too and then some.

[Tohsaka Rin]

As usual, the solution to dealing with a problem player, is to sit down, one-on-one, with this problem player, and discuss the problem.

You need to point out that team-killing isn't cool.

You need to point out that no, he wasn't saving the party, as the bard was in the middle of attempting to handle it. If he was REALLY saving the party, he would have BEATEN the bard to the punch. If he was doing 'caster beats knife' properly, he would've used ANYTHING but a straight-up burst attack. I'm amazed he didn't catch the entire party in the burst, honestly.

This isn't starting up debate, and you need to make that clear. He KNEW the bard would be toasted when he did this, which makes his 'saving the party' point VERY MOOT.

Most average characters would have probably slipped a blade into the caster's ribs, at seeing them toast the party face. Why? This was not even combat, what's the caster going to resort to, if a hostile gets into the mix with the party meat-shield that's protecting said caster?

You need to point out that adventuring parties work together either by trust, or common goals. If he fits under 'team-killing moron' they have ZERO reason to keep the pyromaniac around, and many, many reasons to either turn him in for a bounty, or just snuff him and loot the corpse.

However you put the discussion to him, you need to be more diplomatic than I'm laying this out. Presumably he's at least an acquaintance of yours, if not a friend. If he wants to get all blast-happy, he needs to make sure what he's doing won't affect the party.

You don't frag your own guys, trying to 'protect' them. You make sure they're immune to whatever hurt you're laying out.

Or you use your BRAIN, and make sure what you're throwing WON'T hit them in the first place.

[RingofThorns]

What about your own role in the mix?

You rolled to see if there was any other people there. As a player I would be furious if you suddenly said there was 5 more people in that narrow radius.
In a narrow alley there was 5 people extra you didnt tell me about? what the....

Reprecussions I see, but city guards apprehending a 7th + wizard and using anti magic manacles.. I would ask if you shouldnt have allowed me a knowledge roll or two on the city in itself. Not to mention the bards knowledge.

Then the thieves sneak into an area where they hold a mage, put out his eye and leave. Are you telling me you didnt think the player would get upset?
Given the fact they have guards capable of taking down spellcasters I am perplexed they confine him somewhere thieves can get in and injure him.

Unfair? probably not, but pulling stuff out of your bag of gm fiat... very much so.. I understand why he is pissed.


Minmax and the ability to roleplay .. stormwind fallacy i reckon is a good read.
But a fireball? nah... you just have a murderhobo amidst your crew. You responded bad too

He knew there were offshoots and the like not to mention the aoe of the fireball was massive, if I was being really unfair about it that thing should have burned down buildings, let alone hit other people. The rest of the party knew knowledge about the town because the roleplayed and figured things out, he and the other min maxers never did so they didnt know anything about the town other then it was a large town. Now these people have played games with me before and they know that generally I dont allow city gaurds to just be rolled over, basic rank and file guys sure but this was a town that had a magics college and had dealt with rogue spell casters before. As for the thieves guild getting into a jail or prison, that is well known in the lore of DnD not to mention forgotten realms and other fantasy settings often used as inspiration for DnD campaigns. Once more this brings up my point, these three guys only ever make pretty much death on a stick type characters and then get mad because of stuff like this, all players know or atleast should know that there are repercussions to actions. He got ticked off over me not just letting him basically mini nuke in the middle of a town.

[Tohsaka Rin]

Fireball doesn't work like flames in real life, just and FYI.

It winks out at the edge of its effect. If whatever's blocking the AoE doesn't take enough damage to be destroyed, it doesn't channel the flames along its length.

Casting fireball in an alley means that the blast is shaped like a line, and winks out at the end of the burst radius. So unless he'd massively pumped up the area of this fireball, it wouldn't (in this circumstance) have much of a greater area of effect on the town at large.

[Sliver]

So he knows that this isn't the style of the game that you are running, doesn't care and whines when his expectations aren't met? Why is he playing with you? Someone here expects the other to change, and neither is going to happen.

Instead of attributing the behavior to him/them being min-maxer(s), attribute the behavior to him being in a game that he has no interest in playing the way you meant it to be played.

Also - Yeah. Fireballs can't burn stuff, and the damage they do to objects is halved before hardness even applies. Casualties? Sure. Structural damage? Unlikely.

[RingofThorns]

As usual, the solution to dealing with a problem player, is to sit down, one-on-one, with this problem player, and discuss the problem.

You need to point out that team-killing isn't cool.

You need to point out that no, he wasn't saving the party, as the bard was in the middle of attempting to handle it. If he was REALLY saving the party, he would have BEATEN the bard to the punch. If he was doing 'caster beats knife' properly, he would've used ANYTHING but a straight-up burst attack. I'm amazed he didn't catch the entire party in the burst, honestly.

This isn't starting up debate, and you need to make that clear. He KNEW the bard would be toasted when he did this, which makes his 'saving the party' point VERY MOOT.

Most average characters would have probably slipped a blade into the caster's ribs, at seeing them toast the party face. Why? This was not even combat, what's the caster going to resort to, if a hostile gets into the mix with the party meat-shield that's protecting said caster?

You need to point out that adventuring parties work together either by trust, or common goals. If he fits under 'team-killing moron' they have ZERO reason to keep the pyromaniac around, and many, many reasons to either turn him in for a bounty, or just snuff him and loot the corpse.

However you put the discussion to him, you need to be more diplomatic than I'm laying this out. Presumably he's at least an acquaintance of yours, if not a friend. If he wants to get all blast-happy, he needs to make sure what he's doing won't affect the party.

You don't frag your own guys, trying to 'protect' them. You make sure they're immune to whatever hurt you're laying out.

Or you use your BRAIN, and make sure what you're throwing WON'T hit them in the first place.


This is all very well said, and as I have said there are three of these min max or whatever you want to call them in my gaming group. Now I live in a pretty rural part of Texas so not alot of people around that play DnD. Any way yes everyone is atleast friends if not best friends, the three min max guys are normally the other people to DM so that might be something or could be nothing. All the players know their actions will result in gaining reputation and infamy depending on what they do. As far as 'punishing' this guy I wouldnt call it that, to punish him I would have had to go out of my way to do that at a personal level, I only had the world, in this case the town react to what he had done. He had been warned that with all of his feats and magic items and all the blast could easily catch additional people in it he was warned and did it anyway. After rolling on tables I have made up just for working out pretty much what people are on the streets of the town just in case that ever becomes an issue, is how I found out who and how many were hit.

From there though who is going to pay for the kids to be brought back? The wizard player has already specifically stated he didnt care about the rp portion of the game so even if they told him he had to pay the reply would be to the tune of "FIREBALL!"

[RingofThorns]

So he knows that this isn't the style of the game that you are running, doesn't care and whines when his expectations aren't met? Why is he playing with you? Someone here expects the other to change, and neither is going to happen.

Instead of attributing the behavior to him/them being min-maxer(s), attribute the behavior to him being in a game that he has no interest in playing the way you meant it to be played.

Also - Yeah. Fireballs can't burn stuff, and the damage they do to objects is halved before hardness even applies. Casualties? Sure. Structural damage? Unlikely.

My group has always played with it working like Fire, if you throw a fire in a wooden building or it hits things that are made out of wood there is a good chance it will catch fire. The guy doing this should have known this well since he is the one that has played the longest, I even got the whole fire acting like fire thing from him. As well as how to treat blast aoe effects in confined space, unless it has no where to go then the aoe is unchanged but if you use it in say a hallway then the aoe becomes longer because the blast cant push out at the side. Is that the exact rules? to be honest not sure that was how I was taught to deal with them when I started and its how I have ever since.

The wizard being called a min maxer is in fact because he min maxed the wizard to throw fireballs, he even has some feat that lets them hurt things normally unaffected by fire, though I cant recall the feats name off the top of my head. The best responce I have seen so far is to more or less tell the three of them that they are over optimized for the game, dont get me wrong I dont mind a character becoming powerful but for me their has to be some fluff reason behind the why of it.

A character that is made and has a backstory and goals and all the fluff getting more powerful and doing some of this stuff is one thing, however some one just making a walking tank that hucks spells or some behemoth with a hammer the size of a small hill crushing everything in one swing for no other reason then, hey I could make a character that can do that. That to me is the differance between a min max and a character.

[Sorry if that came out as a rant wasnt intended.]

[Tohsaka Rin]

The solution then, is...

To ban the player from running casters.

I really doubt you want to kick him out of the group, and he's (apparently) shown time and time again that his behavior is certainly lacking the maturity to handle such things.

If he throws a fit, well, that's too bad. He's just proving your point.

I have (had) a player in my group like that. Hissy-fits, refusal to RP, would storm off if someone disagreed with him. We stopped inviting him to DnD. Oh sure, we still hung out, and played games and such, but he wasn't welcome again at the DnD table for some time.

Because if you cater to one player's whims, and let him screw the party over... Are you forgetting about the other people at the table?

Adults learn to compromise a little, to allow everyone (themselves included) to have a good time. If your problem player can't be bothered to work with the rest of you to find a solution to the problem that everyone can agree with, don't invite him to play for a while.

Why punish the rest of the table?

EDIT - I suggest reading your player's handbook, there are sections that explain quite clearly how AoEs work, even with pictures.

[RingofThorns]

The solution then, is...

To ban the player from running casters.

I really doubt you want to kick him out of the group, and he's (apparently) shown time and time again that his behavior is certainly lacking the maturity to handle such things.

If he throws a fit, well, that's too bad. He's just proving your point.

I have (had) a player in my group like that. Hissy-fits, refusal to RP, would storm off if someone disagreed with him. We stopped inviting him to DnD. Oh sure, we still hung out, and played games and such, but he wasn't welcome again at the DnD table for some time.

Because if you cater to one player's whims, and let him screw the party over... Are you forgetting about the other people at the table?

Adults learn to compromise a little, to allow everyone (themselves included) to have a good time. If your problem player can't be bothered to work with the rest of you to find a solution to the problem that everyone can agree with, don't invite him to play for a while.

Why punish the rest of the table?

EDIT - I suggest reading your player's handbook, there are sections that explain quite clearly how AoEs work, even with pictures.

That is a fair enough point, and I know I could easily have done it at any point to read the players hand book about the AoE, I have even seen that section. The thing is though we were normally perfectly happy about the semi realistic version of it. Every game we play is rife with those kind of semi real home brew rules. Punching daggers is another example in the game from a pure mechanics stand point just gets x3 crit, however we have always played that it can ignore armor bonus if the target is wearing light to medium armor [cloth to ring mail] any heavier then that and the dagger cant just punch through it.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I think what we're seeing here is the difference between a full-fledged optimizer and someone who looked up a build on the internet.

You see, an optimized wizard player doesn't flash his best trick all the time. He doesn't even flash his best trick any time it's appropriate to do so. He tries to control the situation with minimum effort lest he become too predictable. Then the big moment comes, and he brings a world of hurt onto the unexpectedly tough customer.

So maybe I have a trick that does over 9000 damage on a fireball. I'm still not going to do it on some random group of peasants, especially not when the Bard is handling it. If the Bard can handle it, I'd have to be a scrub to start revealing my best tricks. That or I'm a bored jerk who doesn't care. Probably that, actually.

[Callin]

This isnt Optimizer vs non Optimizer or Min Max vs a Character. Its Roleplay vs Rollplay. There are many people here on the boards who could make you the biggest baddest T0 and give you a wonderful backstory on how they gained power and could RP him in a game. Basically this guy is Rollplaying. He is thinking like a hammer and every problem is a nail.

[Segev]

To the DM's choice to roll for random victims after the fact: The better way to handle that would have been to tell the wizard, "There are likely other people than the bandits and the bard in your AoE. And you WILL hit the bard. Are you sure you want to do this?"

In fact, use the rule-of-three. If he says yes, tell him, "Okay, then I'll roll for who else gets caught in your AoE. Bard, do you think you have a chance of surviving this? Wizard, are you sure?"

If he says yes again, roll for the other victims. "Please roll a spot check. ...you happen to notice a couple urchins playing at the end of the alleyway. They'll be in your AoE. If you're sure, go ahead and roll damage while I make some saving throws..."



To the rest of it...yeah, the player is being a jerk, either obliviously or deliberately. Maybe he expected a different kind of game, in which case a conversation about what kind of game it is should be had. If he doesn't want to play that kind of game, he should be invited to leave. If he is okay with it, he should be invited to either play his PC differently (rebuilding it a bit to fit, if necessary), or to make a new PC who fits better.

[Squark]

Yeah, this guy wasn't much of an optimizer. For a comparison, here's how the most poweful character I've ever played (A wizard around the same level)

1) Bard is negotiating with the thugs- I mostly let the bard handle this, but I might pipe in in places if I felt I was helping the situation- I am playing a kindly old professor, after all.
2) Bard rolls a 1 on his Diplomacy check, and needed an 8. Negotiations break down.
3) My wizard goes before most of the thugs because his innitiative is sky high. I drop a web spell (Or if they're lined up right, a Wall of Smoke) on the thugs, rendering helpless.
4) Either the muscle goes to work and handles the situation, or we resume negotiation from our now demonstratedly stronger position. The Kids in the alley are spooked by the display of magic, but after things are smoothed over with the thugs my character gives them a few pieces of candy as an apology. (Last part optional for optimized wizard, but very in character for Edderick)

My character resolved the situation, didn't get anybody killed (Well, maybe the thugs), didn't anger the city guard, was reasonably well roleplayed, and didn't have to bust out the big guns, having only used a first or second level spell.

[Trasilor]

Ok, so wooden things catch fire - fair enough. It's your world and it's consistent.

I think I get what you are saying. The min/maxer cast a fireball in an area without bother to notice if casualties would be present. Because he didn't bother to check, you randomly determined several innocent bystanders were nearby - down an offshoot of the alley perhaps. Once again, fair enough, if players don't bother to check, it's their fault.

Regardless, innocent people were killed due to his carelessness, and his response is 'meh'. This character is a psychopath (incapable of feeling empathy towards others).

Is the problem he cast a fireball without caring about repercussions? Or that he cast the most powerful fireball ever? These are two distinct problems.

The first, the guy is just playing a CE or NE character (I do what I want without caring about my actions affect others). You can actually have fun with this. Since his moral compass is fairly askew,BBEG could exploit this weakness; provide riches and power to turn on his friends. Now that he knows repercussions are real and will happen, hopefully he will use it as a learning experience.

If it the latter, acquiring the most powerful Fireball can be a motivation all to its own. Why? There are lots of reasons - teased as a child, living up to a legacy, inspired by a teach, pyro (they really love fire), religious (fire purifies the wicked). If he had one of these motivators would it make a difference? He would still choose exactly the same feats because the result is the same - most powerful fireball, EVAH! The best way to mitigate this is to talk to the min/maxers about toning it down. Otherwise you will end up breaking out the DM Fiat and Ban Hammer.

Regarding how to make a Wizard pay for the resurrections:
1) He is wearing anti-magical cuffs - to get them removed = 10,000 gp.
2) Law enforcement sells his gear - depending on his level he may have enough.
3) Very high level wizard magically curses him. The mark clearly identifies him as one who must help without seeking compensation. Any attempt to circumvent the curse results in an intelligence penalty equal to his current INT-10 (effectively making his INT a 10). The result would be he can cast only cantrips. The curse remains in affect until he pays the fine of 10,000 gp. Any attempts to remove the curse or death results in the body being immediately transported back to the city where they sell the gear to pay off his debt and disintegrate his remains.
4) He rots in jail until he or this party can pay the fines - roll up a new character.

[unbutu]

So I've read the OP, then a bunch of posts saying it's not a min-maxer problem.

I'm gonna take the other side of the thing, and say how I see a relation: This player made a character around throwing nothing but fireballs, and his goal in the game was to just throw fireballs. While it's a very poor attitude as a player, it's also related to the strong point of his character being that, and his character having no other skills to resolve issues. (IE: Player getting bored because his character can't do anything when he can't throw fireballs)

Except, that's not true. This sorcerer is still a sentient being. He's there for a reason. He has motivations. Character traits. Ect. Pretty sure it was the player that was being dumb more than the sorcerer being careless.

You came here for advice, I'm gonna give you one: In character creation, don't trade power for weaknesses trade them for hooks (Motivations, obligations)

If you open all books, of course some characters are gonna be all optimised, and bad players will be too focused on the 1 thing their character can do.

Instead, I find that making characters as simple as possible, but opening anything at the following cost makes more interesting games:

-Some uber feats he needs for his build can likely be tied to an obligation. Did he learn it from a mentor, a guild. Why did they teach him ? Does he have to keep a certain reputation to stay in this circle to keep learning, ect.

-What are the character's motivations. Someone is unlikely to spend hours and hours everyday crafting stuff just because YOLO. People could work 16 hours a day and they don't because they are real people, with motivations and lack of motivations. And those that do have a purpose doing it. When some character does something very exagerated, try to work out how it makes sense for his character with him.

If it does not make sense, then fine, just throw him in the asylum/ jail like you did.

TLDR: Try to keep every character's motivations in check as the game progress. A roleplaying game does not make sense otherwise. When the character lacks purpose, often the player will become disinterested as well, and begin to see the game like a bunch of senseless, lifeless numbers.

[Sewercop]

That is a fair enough point, and I know I could easily have done it at any point to read the players hand book about the AoE, I have even seen that section. The thing is though we were normally perfectly happy about the semi realistic version of it. Every game we play is rife with those kind of semi real home brew rules. Punching daggers is another example in the game from a pure mechanics stand point just gets x3 crit, however we have always played that it can ignore armor bonus if the target is wearing light to medium armor [cloth to ring mail] any heavier then that and the dagger cant just punch through it.

Yes you should have read the rule book.
Do you think you have no blame in this at all as the gamemaster?

If a player asked you if his lance could ignore armor as well, would you? it obviously has more punching power then the punching dagger.


Can you explain more about the alley and how big the fireball was? Perhaps invite your player to this thread so he can say his side of the story?
Perhaps he can shed some light on this.. right now im thinking vindictive gm with no grasp of the rules.

After all... You are the one that made the encounter with thugs happen right? Would it be ok if he blasted just them? What if the bard had attacked without talking? Would the entire group face the same retribution as you put on your fireball wizard?

You are seeking confimation that you did the right thing to show him he was wrong. But in the end, you set up the encounter as the gm?
Where is your faul?

{scrubbed}

[Ssalarn]

Doesn't really sound like a min maxing problem, to be honest. Fireballs aren't all that great, and even if his particular fireballs were optimized for ultimate flamery, the story would have gone the same way had the player just tossed normal fireballs. In fact, the problem here seems to be that the player in question isn't particularly skilled, given that they exploded the party bard with their spell and didn't pay attention to other collateral damage or have a plan to bypass the guard. A more skilled optimizer would have probably been able to shut down the opponents without injuring the bard or nearby folks, and then almost certainly would have had the raw mechanical edge to beat/escape the guards.

This was almost exactly what I thought after reading the OP. You've got a careless one-trick pony who blew up his friend. That to me sounds like you've got an unskilled player who figured out one trick and doesn't know what else to do when that trick can't be applied. Punishing that player is not going to be the solution to this problem, though it may contribute towards this player never getting any better since he'll feel like he's being singled out for punishment.

[eggynack]

Yes you should have read the rule book.
Do you think you have no blame in this at all as the gamemaster?

I don't think he particularly does, no, at least not as applies to this particular situation. As long as there's a collective understanding of how the game works, it doesn't actually matter much what the rules actually are. If the player had objected to the idea that his fireball can go beyond the normal area in tight spaces, and asked for either an action retcon or a change to the actual rules, then there some such thing should have been granted, because there was not such a collective understanding. However, my understanding is that such a request never happened, and that the player thought the same thing would happen with the fireball as the DM did. Thus, there is no particular need for blame on the DM end.

[Oddman80]

Allright just to start this off.....and refused to hear the reason behind why this had all come about.

Just look at him and say "Fantasy world or not - you just committed what people in this town would think of as a Terrorist Attack. You are the villain. You are the murderous psychopath that just immorally slaughtered a handful of this town's citizens. You are not a hero. You are a menace to society. The family of the children slain as well as the entire thieves' guild will put pressure on the law enforcement of the city to stop at nothing until you are brought in and made to pay for your horrific actions. Just because you are Chaotic Evil does not mean the world you live in shares your morals. Prepare to be hunted by the town guard, vigilantes, as well as Thieves' Guild members looking for payback."

This is how life works. It isn't unfair - it is the logical flow of events.
He will never get a character to a very high level if he keeps acting this way. Enforce the "Roll new character at party level -1" each time he is put down, or otherwise imprisoned for life. Dangerous mages have their tongues cut out and their hands chopped off. Eventually he will grow bored of the inevitable, or start playing his Psycho-Evil Casters at least more intelligently... leaving the city after doing something like that - investing in disguise methods, and other tactics to throw pursuers off his trail. he can still be a total psycho, but learn to do it better, and actually have a plot hook that is sustainable over time, rather than resolving itself consistently with him mute and handless in a prison cell every 4th day.

[Sewercop]

I don't think he particularly does, no, at least not as applies to this particular situation. As long as there's a collective understanding of how the game works, it doesn't actually matter much what the rules actually are. If the player had objected to the idea that his fireball can go beyond the normal area in tight spaces, and asked for either an action retcon or a change to the actual rules, then there some such thing should have been granted, because there was not such a collective understanding. However, my understanding is that such a request never happened, and that the player thought the same thing would happen with the fireball as the DM did. Thus, there is no particular need for blame on the DM end.


That is one side of the story. The gm asked if was unfair. I say yes and vindictive on top of that.
It`s a reason why we never(almost never) see both sides in debates like this. Because either side only seek justification for their actions and submit only
their version of events.

-5 extra people in a narrow alley, who he rolled for after the event had happend. Retconning in stuff to punish the player.
-Extending the Fireball so much it kills people outside the alley, Why did it not hit the rest of the party the opposite way if he used physics?
-He sat up the encounter knowing the players, no retribution for the rest of the group. Even thou they were a part of it. Thugs dont matter i suppose
-He overpowers him with antimagic manacles from city guards. They got a arcane guild, is normal. pfft
-He stabs out his eye. Hey, it is how it is in books right? Normal for thieves to get into wizard confining jails. Good roleplay

Other players get information based on roleplay, his character dont even get to roll a knowledge or int roll, wis or anything.
Complains about minmaxing, when there is a fireball that doesnt seem bad
Seeks justification online for messing up towards a player that feels treated unfair.


I ask you this:
Would you enjoy 5 extra people in a narrow alley appearing after your fireball is thrown? Being punished for something you did not know was there ?
Is it not the gms job to tell this to his players? To let their skills be used? Do you need skills when you can roleplay?

Unfair, vindictive, and it would be amusing to hear the other side of the story. Cause you bet there is more

[eggynack]

That is one side of the story. The gm asked if was unfair. I say yes and vindictive on top of that.
It`s a reason why we never(almost never) see both sides in debates like this. Because either side only seek justification for their actions and submit only
their version of events.
If the player didn't know the rule, then sure, it's a problematic thing. If he did though, then it's not. Pretty simple, I think.


-5 extra people in a narrow alley, who he rolled for after the event had happend. Retconning in stuff to punish the player.
I don't think it's so much retconning as it just being a crowded area where the crowd was undetermined. My understanding is that the player had no way to be aware of the other folk.


-Extending the Fireball so much it kills people outside the alley, Why did it not hit the rest of the party the opposite way if he used physics?
Who's to say it didn't, assuming the fireball would hit the party given physics?


I ask you this:
Would you enjoy 5 extra people in a narrow alley appearing after your fireball is thrown? Being punished for something you did not know was there ?
It's not necessarily a thing to enjoy or not enjoy. Sometimes things you do have collateral damage. Moving beyond the fireball specifically, if you throw a grenade at enemies when you're in a crowded urban center, you shouldn't necessarily be all that surprised to find you killed some folk.


Is it not the gms job to tell this to his players? To let their skills be used? Do you need skills when you can roleplay?
I've gotta assume he didn't have any particular way to identify the fact that folks were there.

In any case, the real point, I think, is that the player didn't seem to care all that much that he killed a bunch of folk. There wasn't some big rules fight, or sought after skill use, or even really unfairness, because the player was fine with these people dying. His only issue appears to be with the consequences for that murder afterwards.

[RingofThorns]

Yes you should have read the rule book.
Do you think you have no blame in this at all as the gamemaster?

If a player asked you if his lance could ignore armor as well, would you? it obviously has more punching power then the punching dagger.


Can you explain more about the alley and how big the fireball was? Perhaps invite your player to this thread so he can say his side of the story?
Perhaps he can shed some light on this.. right now im thinking vindictive gm with no grasp of the rules.

After all... You are the one that made the encounter with thugs happen right? Would it be ok if he blasted just them? What if the bard had attacked without talking? Would the entire group face the same retribution as you put on your fireball wizard?

You are seeking confimation that you did the right thing to show him he was wrong. But in the end, you set up the encounter as the gm?
Where is your faul?

{scrubbed}

Ok spiteful yes I set up the encounter and to answer in order,

If the guy with the lance was proficient with its use, and was at a full gallop and scored a hit against some one yeah it might, I have tables I rolled out just for that kind of stuff. Why? because I want weapons to feel like weapons not different sets of dice. I want players to think about how they use a weapon and why that weapon in that situation.

I cant recall much more beyond it was about six to eight feet wide, buildings on both sides with a couple of small joining alley ways.{scrubbed}.As far as rules go I have every book of 3.5 on my computer,plus the third party books, and I have been playing for a few years now. I was not completely ignorant of the rule its just never how any of us play that rule since a fireball is in and of itself an explosion.

Just I rolled a random encounter with some back alley thugs as they were walking down a back alley oh my however could I be so spiteful as to roll that on a random roll? Yes if he had just blasted them then yeah the guard and thieves guild more then likely wouldnt have had a reason to be after him would they? The bard would have attacked with a rapier so wide spread death and destruction isnt likely. Finally and no the entire group would not be held to blame for that as the fireball was the act of one person, the wizard.

Yes I will admit I rolled the encounter, see above. Yes I am looking for weather or not I could have handled that better, and at no point did I ever say I was not at fault. Had I have known I that the wizard was likely to just lob a fireball in the middle of everything I may have tried to handle that another way. I am not looking for conformation about anything I am looking for advice hopefully from people that have played and DMed far longer then me and might be able to give advice.

{scrubbed}

[TheIronGolem]

Allright just to start this off, I have no trouble with people who Min Max or Optimize a build as a whole I am only speaking of my experience with the people I have ran games with.

Now with that said I find the practice of min maxing or optimizing a character is fine in certain circumstance, namely ones like I mentioned in another thread where its player versus player in a hunger games last man standing kind of thing. Though if that is the point of the campaign, just making characters that are always as powerful as possible but dont really have any other skills in that setting once again min maxing a character is fine.

However the real issue comes into when I have played and DM'ed some games where most of the people made actual characters with flaws and particular skills and so on. Where as a few pretty much just made superly over powered and that winds up biting them in the no no places because they dont really fit in the world. Perfect example one guy was a wizard or spell caster of some sort but I think wizard is right. Any way he optimized to pretty much throw the biggest meanest fireballs ever seen short of the plane of fire, well he got made when the group encountered a band of local thugs. The bard in the party went up and started trying to just smooth things out and get everyone out without having to fight, when suddenly the wizard more or less just goes "I throw a fireball in the middle of them!" well he killed most of the thugs, almost killed the bard and just for the sake of us being in a narrow alley, I rolled so see if anyone else was around. The wizard also roasted two kids, two homeless guys and a member of the local thieves guild.

I told the wizard about all of this to which he shrugged and just said "not my problem I just throw fireballs anything after that is some one elses problem." when the party got mad because he almost wasted the bard again just another shrug "well he shouldnt have been talking to them." Well as DM I was annoyed but I didnt want to just pull something spiteful out of my bag of tricks so I made some rolls, the city guards were alerted to the fact some one had pretty much ashed about six or seven people, they did an investigation and found it was the wizard that did it. Now this investigation and everything took two to three days all the while the wizard wouldnt listen to anyone about maybe needing to leave town. Instead he acted like it was no big deal. Well the guards came and after an ordeal arrested him, and threw him in the dungeon with manacles to supress his magic. Well while their the thieves guild pretty much snuck in and put out one of his eyes in pay back for roasting one of theirs.

The wizard player at this point got pissed saying I was being unfair and that he shouldnt suffer because he was defending the party, and refused to hear the reason behind why this had all come about.

You don't have problems with min-maxers, you have problems with a stubborn and inconsiderate player who thinks he's entitled to murderhobo his way through your world free of consequence. Tell him to shape up, and boot him if he won't. Either way, don't make the mistake of thinking that the problem has anything to do with how much damage his Fireballs can do, because that will lead you to superficial "solutions" that are doomed to fail because they don't address the real issue.

[Sewercop]

{scrubbed}

[Sliver]

Considering that after the folks were killed, the player didn't care and said it wasn't his problem, he wouldn't have cared even if he were told before throwing that fireball. That player didn't care that he could have killed a party member, either.

The fact that this player maxed out a single trick isn't the issue I'm reading here, OP. Sure, it may or may not be a trait of his and the other problematic players at your table, but the fact that they are optimizing isn't the issue you are presenting. The issue you are presenting is of players that aren't willing to play the game that you are trying to run, instead acting as they wish and expecting you to adjust so that they can continue to play as they wish while ignoring your own desires and expectations of the game.

Now, maybe you should be running your game differently if that's what your players want from you. But, it seems obvious that your players are aware of how you are running the game. Trying to force you to run the game differently after such things have already been established isn't what people who respect you do.

If you are friends, then talk about your expectations. If they continue to 'nope' on you and demand that their actions have no repercussions, then you either comply with their wishes or ask them to leave the game, as you are obviously not the right DM for them.

For a game to work when there are two clashing styles, you'll have to talk about it like mature adults and compromise. One side or both, doesn't matter.

Again, has nothing to do with being a Min-Maxer or not. People can have more than a single trait. Perhaps besides being a Min-Maxer, the problem player is also a ninja? If I can rename this thread "Problems with Ninjas" and every instance of "Min Maxer" is changed to "Ninja" and the rant still makes sense, the problem isn't that your player is a ninja. Maybe he's just a jerk?

[Vhaidara]

I would normally agree that it is unfair to add civilians in and not let him change his actions. Except that this happened


I told the wizard about all of this to which he shrugged and just said "not my problem I just throw fireballs anything after that is some one elses problem." when the party got mad because he almost wasted the bard again just another shrug "well he shouldnt have been talking to them."

This means that the player clearly didn't care that there were civilians. If they had been mentioned, nothing would have changed. He tried to kill a party member who was engaged in diplomacy FOR NO REASON. That, in most groups I've seen, would be ground for the character being expelled from the party.

[RingofThorns]

A crowded narrow alley filled with two homeless, two childs playing, a local member of the thief guild, a gang of thugs, a gang of adventures and when all this happens the children are invisible? the homeless are under used scrolls? the thief is hiding in plain sight obviously :) the thugs are parlaying over a cup of coffee with the bard. The gang are hanging in the background like a entourage of murder hobos. All joy and happiness as it should be in a NARROW alley.

Of course this town is magical :) After all it has a wizards guild where stuff happens all the time. So often in fact it is very normal for city guards to be elite mage captivators with anti magical shackles that with a little ruckus and investigation find the wizard and puts him in jail. A wizard so powerful according to the games master he seeks advice online. The man is thrown in jail, because its jail time. The thieves enter, like out of a book, cause that is what happens in a book. His eye is plucked like odin, except for knowledge it is for reasons that are out of the books. Is normal he spoke, that happens in stories.

I need no rules, I need just follow fluff of books. My magical tea party is my game.
Of course he could not know, he did not roleplay. Stats and rules do not matter... The city with the legendary guards and invisble children, not only murder hobos but actual hobos hiding in alleys where fights go down in the narrow big not so long, but long enough alleys.

Seems fair he was unable to see them all, he was blind and eager to show his blast. Probably to fast. The bard got sad, the wizard shackled, the rest we do not know. The thiefs are happy in the city, they thugs are gone and done, but who cares they were just an encounter blasted over the counter. To bad it drove the gm mad.

Yes I use fluff and lore from fantasy things to help explain how things happen in a fantasy game, which in its own rules says that a DM can freely draw from other points of inspiration to help expand a world.

None of the people were invisible, I said narrow yes normally I would say that makes it about six to maybe eight feet from one side to the other, with other smaller or bigger alleys or streets connecting to it. If you would like I could try and explain how the blast of the massive dragon ball Z style fireball traveled but its obvious you dont want to hear it. You only want to get snarky over the fact that I care about the fluff.

Yes if the players dont know the city they are walking into, and they dont tell me that they some how want to find out about it then I am not going to hand them every little detail about the place. The wizard had that chance and chose not to, while the rest of the party got to make rolls and get some knowledge. I wrote down what they knew and gave it to them, In the alley the wizard could have made a spot,search,listen, heck any type of roll that would have let him know that people were there but he chose not to, so yeah I wasnt going to tell him that other people might be about. Even if I said when they took the alley 'you can easily see that some homeless live in this alley, some may even still be there in there thrown together tents, or sleeping in piles of garbage and debris." Did he care no?

Yes the thieves reached him in his cell, want to know how? They acted like a Thieves guild, the bribed and coerced their way inside. Yes that happens in books movies, and yeah sometimes even real life so good job on pointing out my oh so flawed logic there skippy. Where else were they going to keep him? the magics college in anything I have ever read, be it descriptions from DnD books to other fantasy novels heck even video games dont normally have cells in them. Yes the guards had anti magic stuff, why? They live in a city with lots of magic users that might from time to time cause troubles. Should they have called in other spell users to fight him? That would have worked then big AoE spells and others would have been getting tossed back and forth destroying more stuff and endangering more lives, yes my guards arent idiots and yes they have some good since to use tactics.

The only reason I stated it was a problem with Min Max players is that it only ever seems to be the min max players giving me these issues. I dont mind that they are normally one trick ponies that only do massive insane anime style fireballs, or are a walking tank with a anvil at the end of a stick for a hammer. My problems arise when the players use that min max for nothing but basically being problematic, need to question a guy? they normally kill him as soon as anyone asks a question, then say it was an accident. The guys doing this have been playing for a long time and yes they even DM one of them is a guy that helped me learn alot about DnD when I was first getting started, so its not like they are new to this.

[oxybe]

There are 2 ways to interact in a tabletop game. With the roleplay or the game mechanics. Ok, three ways if we include socializing with the players.

The player you have issue with doesn't really care about the roleplay part as he doesn't interact with the setting or take actions that would make sense, with regard to how the setting and it's people work and react. So either he's here for the mechanics or the other players. I would like to safely assume he doesn't really care about the other players since he's freely throwing fireballs while they're trying to accomplish stuff, disrupting their actions and fun.

This means the player is coming to your game solely for the mechanical aspect of the game. I see no small logical leap that a player that plays a game entirely for the ruleset to also be proficient at making that ruleset do things.

So yes, you're technically having these problems with min-maxers, but that's because people who disregard the social and roleplay elements tend to be good at optimizing, because characters that are mechanically bad tend to die pretty easily.

Really it's like going "I hate cars that go fast because they cause accidents" disregarding that the issue isn't necessarily that the car can go fast, but rather the person behind the wheel ignoring the laws and has no empathy for the other drivers on the road. In the hands of a responsible driver, the fast car would likely not be causing accidents.

[Harrow]

FOR NO REASON.

Ok, this is really starting to bother me. How can you people not see his reasoning?

The party bard was, at best, delaying the inevitable and, at worst, actually denying the party of precious money and xp. If the bard got hit, it was his own fault for being in the way and not at the back of the party, where the support players belong. If a few faceless NPCs got torched, so what? If they aren't important to the story, why does it matter if they got killed? Everyone knows that faceless NPCs rank below the mule the rogue bought to carry more loot. Now, he's done his job as a hero by defeating the random encounter, even if that stupid bard tried to stop him. Seriously, who talks to NPCs? What as he even trying to accomplish? Trick them so you guys could ambush them or something? That's completely unnecessary, he could just take them out with one spell, as he demonstrated before any more time was wasted on this nonsense.

Oh, so now he's being arrested? Whatever, they're NPC guards. They're worth even less than normal faceless NPCs. Wait, they just happen to have anti magic cuffs? Whatever, his party needs him, surely they, as shining bastions of good and justice, will bust him out, because he's a hero. Oh, but first, you (the gm) are just going to maim him? For WHAT? Defeating a random encounter? That's what you're supposed to do!


It just sounds to me like this guy, despite what you seem to think, genuinely doesn't understand the type of game you're trying to play. You may have explained it to him, he may have been playing in these types of games for years, but that doesn't mean he understands it. In fact, from how you describe how he's been playing for years, it makes more sense to me that he's NEVER understood how the rest of the group plays. He just plays all RPGs the same, be they Elder Scrolls, WoW, or D&D. His style of play is disruptive in this group and needs to stop, but he's not playing the game wrong and he's not a bad person.


The only reason I stated it was a problem with Min Max players is that it only ever seems to be the min max players giving me these issues.

As I said before, this is likely because players that find roleplay heavy games unintuitive have nothing to do other than optimize. This doesn't make optimization a bad thing, in this case it's just a symptom of deeper problems.

Also, you should probably know that many players on this particular forum have strong tendencies toward character optimization and are often accused of "rollplaying" even when we have a firm concept of our character, have backstory justifications for every feat and skillpoint, and stay in character even if it's to the detriment of the party. It can be a sore spot for some of us, and you aren't likely to make many friends throwing terms like Min Maxer around.

[Barstro]

Ok, this is really starting to bother me. How can you people not see his reasoning?

The party bard was, at best, delaying the inevitable and, at worst, actually denying the party of precious money and xp. ETC. ETC.

As I said before, this is likely because players that find roleplay heavy games unintuitive have nothing to do other than optimize. This doesn't make optimization a bad thing, in this case it's just a symptom of deeper problems.

As was mentioned by others, this is not really a min/max thing. This is a "I roleplay like this" thing and is (apparently) only now having actual consequences.

My two cents on this topic;
One can min/max and be a fine player. That can be either due to a setting where min/max works, the player being able to tone it down to keep in line with the rest of the party, or the DM taking advantage of the PC's weaknesses. Min/max is really only bad when players want to be Superman but refuse to allow kryptonite in the game.

To my mind, the key to all of this is roleplaying and adequate response. OP's version of events strike me as a good, in-character, way to deal with the situation. If it were my game, the next session would be the party hosting tryouts for a new member and the affected player can introduce the five ideas he came up with since the last time. Maybe one of them will actually fit with the play style of this particular group.

[Ssalarn]

***So yes, you're technically having these problems with min-maxers, but that's because people who disregard the social and roleplay elements tend to be good at optimizing, because characters that are mechanically bad tend to die pretty easily.

Really it's like going "I hate cars that go fast because they cause accidents" disregarding that the issue isn't necessarily that the car can go fast, but rather the person behind the wheel ignoring the laws and has no empathy for the other drivers on the road. In the hands of a responsible driver, the fast car would likely not be causing accidents.

That's so on-the-money I'm considering adding it to my signature line. Mechanically solid characters aren't the problem; people with no consideration for the world they're playing in or the people at the table with them are the problem. As others have pointed out, it really doesn't matter how good the wizard's fireballs are, this situation would have occurred regardless.

One thing I want to call out - some of the back and forth in this thread is getting a little heated, and everyone should take a deep breath and dial it back a notch. I, personally, get where the OP is coming from, and I have a strong suspicion I get where some of his player's animosity might be coming from. The DM punished his player in conditions where the player had no control or influence over what was happening; that's something liable to get any player riled up. The DM also uses houserules to enforce his personal perception of realism that might be hard to keep track of. I personally think randomly adding half a dozen victims that weren't accounted for prior to the blast was a very poor decision on the DM's part. That being said, the player's character was also behaving like a psycho and/or sociopath and that behavior majorly contributed to this result. I think that the DM and player probably need to take a few minutes to make sure that they both want to play the same game and are in agreement on what that game is. If that agreement can't be reached, it's probably best to inform the player that they may want to find a different group whose playstyle matches their own a little more closely. The situation as it stands really reads as being a confrontational issue between the player and DM, not just the character and the environment.

The fact that this thread started with the DM (perhaps unintentionally) belittling and dehumanizing the player by calling him a min/maxing power-gamer when that had absolutely nothing to do with the issue makes it clear that hurt feelings and/or real frustration are involved, and that's not good.

[Squark]

My take on the situation. The player definately crossed a few boundaries with friendly fire and being dismissive of the rest of the party's concerns, and he seems to be on the murderhobo side where the rest of the party leans in the opposite direction. However, as the DM, you probably should have told him about the presence of civilians beforehand (No, that wouldn't have changed things. That does not make it any less a faux pas), and maiming a character is generally a jerk move unless everyone's on board with playing that sort of game (Which you really need to get consent beforehand for). You did, however, give him warning that there would be consequences if he didn't skip town, and I don't think it's that surprising a large city's watch could requisition some anti-mage equipment (Provided they could get him pinned, a gag and a regular pair of manacles would work for a wizard) to go after a trigger happy fireball-lobbing pyro-wizard.

[Raimun]

Yeah, doesn't sound like a bad case of min maxing but instead a bad case of someone playing a Stupid Evil or Chaotic Stupid character. I guess someone who plays like that would do something similar, no matter the level of power.

Even if you play a super powerful character, your Alignment doesn't have to be SE or CS.

Also, I should point out that over specialization isn't very optimized. Remember that the basis for the tier system isn't power or DPS but instead versatility.

[Ssalarn]

Yeah, doesn't sound like a bad case of min maxing but instead a bad case of someone playing a Stupid Evil or Chaotic Stupid character. I guess someone who plays like that would do something similar, no matter the level of power.

Even if you play a super powerful character, your Alignment doesn't have to be SE or CS.

Also, I should point out that over specialization isn't very optimized. Remember that the basis for the tier system isn't power or DPS but instead versatility.

Right? Real power gamers make well-balanced, versatile characters with an answer to every situation, not glass-cannon, one trick murder-hobos :smallbiggrin:

[Raimun]

Right? Real power gamers make well-balanced, versatile characters with an answer to every situation, not glass-cannon, one trick murder-hobos :smallbiggrin:

Indeed.

Versatile characters are not only more powerful but also more fun to play.

[oxybe]

Yeah.

Any optimizer recognizes the power of a bucket of dice, but they also recognize the weakness of only relying on that bucket of dice.

It's nice to have a big damage option on hand, because sometimes the best or most efficient solution is to punch people, other times you realize that a more subtle approach or different way of thinking would be the best solution.

Like Fiendish Rocs. Summoned one last week. Belly-to-back suplexed a dying wyvern it had grappled like a boss. Called it Hawlucha. One person got the reference. It was a good session.

[Karl Aegis]

This is the first time I've heard of someone optimizing to the point that their optimization implodes in on itself and they end up with a one-trick pony with a trick that isn't all that relevant and isn't very good. For those of you familiar with JaronK's Tier List, this is a tier 5 character, on par with a core fighter. Tier 5 characters need encounters specifically tailored for them so they can contribute to the group. The GM didn't tailor the encounter for the character, but the player thought they could use their one trick to be relevant to the party. It backfired.

My question is: Why are level 5 or higher characters fighting the equivalent of juvenile delinquents when the city guard is perfectly capable of handling it themselves? Even a kind old lady seems like a better person to send on this mission than people who can wrestle ogres.

[oxybe]

Hey man, we're living in hard times.

Goblin population is down and winter makes for harsh warring. People just want to stay indoors so an adventurer has got to find someway to put mead on the table.

[RingofThorns]

My take on the situation. The player definately crossed a few boundaries with friendly fire and being dismissive of the rest of the party's concerns, and he seems to be on the murderhobo side where the rest of the party leans in the opposite direction. However, as the DM, you probably should have told him about the presence of civilians beforehand (No, that wouldn't have changed things. That does not make it any less a faux pas), and maiming a character is generally a jerk move unless everyone's on board with playing that sort of game (Which you really need to get consent beforehand for). You did, however, give him warning that there would be consequences if he didn't skip town, and I don't think it's that surprising a large city's watch could requisition some anti-mage equipment (Provided they could get him pinned, a gag and a regular pair of manacles would work for a wizard) to go after a trigger happy fireball-lobbing pyro-wizard.


Thats the thing at no point during all of this did I ever just hand it down like "ok this just happened to you." When the gaurds came for him they snuck up on him wearing cloaks and all since they thought he might be very violent. I told him to roll sense motive and spot and listen as well as search just to see if anything would tip him off. However he never made any of them, and before anyone says it yes all the DC were doable he just failed the rolls. Then when he was in the cell I told him to make rolls, to try and explain what had happened to try and atleast defend himself some how, heck he could have tried a bull rush I told the player that the thieves guild guy was there to hurt him. I dont try and rail road he could of made any of those rolls could have taken some kind of action but he either failed the roll or just didnt do anything.

[DEMON]

Seems like everything has already been said, but I feel like adding my 2 gp as well.

First of all, just a couple of side notes that bother me about this topic:

1. Calling a Wizard a one trick pony is kinda silly. Even if he spent all his feats and dipped here and there to optimize his fireball, he must have other spells that allow him to compliment his party in various ways. And even if he doesn't it's not much of a problem for him to acquire a couple scrolls and learn new spells (especially considering the setting).
2. The OP from all of his posts makes me feel he has a very strange idea of what a min/maxer, or min/maxing is. Also, blaming all min/maxer for not roleplaying is like blaming all car accidents on people that play video games, because someone that played Resident Evil 1 in his childhood caused a traffic jam. You can both min/max and roleplay and even have a reasonable and believable backstory and you can also have the most unoptimized, rolepay-oriented character that annoys the hell out of everyone at the table.
3. I can't help the feeling that the DM is so roleplay, and setting and "realism" focused, that players that play against his idea of the perfect setting simply don't sit well with him at all. So everything that deviates from the norm is labeled a min/maxer, which is clearly a word used as a pejorative term.

Now to the actual topic at hand:

Judging by your description of the events, the player is being a jerk. Either he is rolepaying one, or he is one in the real life and that transcends to his play style, or both. And it has nothing to do with his level of optimization.

Showing him that there are consequences for his actions if probably a good thing, but actually having a discussion with him and POINTING OUT TO HIM what the issues is, is probably more important and can lead to him either changing his attitude or leaving the gaming group (and maybe finding another one that suits his play style more). And it should also help clear the air in this group, one way or another.

Furthermore, it seems the player is not mature enough (age-wise or otherwise), to properly evaluate the situation and realize the consequences of his actions. Or he roleplayes a character that fits that bill. If he is told that is a problem, he might try to work on it.

[RingofThorns]

This is the first time I've heard of someone optimizing to the point that their optimization implodes in on itself and they end up with a one-trick pony with a trick that isn't all that relevant and isn't very good. For those of you familiar with JaronK's Tier List, this is a tier 5 character, on par with a core fighter. Tier 5 characters need encounters specifically tailored for them so they can contribute to the group. The GM didn't tailor the encounter for the character, but the player thought they could use their one trick to be relevant to the party. It backfired.

My question is: Why are level 5 or higher characters fighting the equivalent of juvenile delinquents when the city guard is perfectly capable of handling it themselves? Even a kind old lady seems like a better person to send on this mission than people who can wrestle ogres.


The whole encounter wasnt some big planned thing, I rolled out a random encounter and it was basically local thugs/gangs. So I told them what happened. The bard knew his job and tried talking out of it since he didnt want all those more or less unneeded casualties but then well the wizard happened. This was never supposed to be a big deal, I figured even if a normal fight broke out then it would just be kind of brushed under the rug as some one killed the gang in defence, not nuke the alley. To answer this by the by yes the rest of the party was in the blast they all took some damage but the Bard took the worst out the party since the fireball blew up right in front of him and he had no time to react.

[Sewercop]

The whole encounter wasnt some big planned thing, I rolled out a random encounter and it was basically local thugs/gangs. So I told them what happened. The bard knew his job and tried talking out of it since he didnt want all those more or less unneeded casualties but then well the wizard happened. This was never supposed to be a big deal, I figured even if a normal fight broke out then it would just be kind of brushed under the rug as some one killed the gang in defence, not nuke the alley. To answer this by the by yes the rest of the party was in the blast they all took some damage but the Bard took the worst out the party since the fireball blew up right in front of him and he had no time to react.

So if they killed just some thugs it would be ok?
How on earth are there thugs in a city with guards that have the resources you have explained earlier in this thread?

So something that happens in an instant affects the closest hardest? gotcha
He did kill them in defense, it was a violent gang with tendencies to fight. You even say so yourself.

How can you brush thugs under the rug..? probably with houses and friends
But hobos, dear god they are important .

Do you even consider the ramifications of a city guard that ignore thugs and gangs, allows thief guilds when they have resources to kidnap and restrain wizards? Not to mention said thieves got acsess to a prisoner....

You are describing a corrupt city, an evil empire on the rise.

{scrubbed}

EVIL city

[Ssalarn]

The whole encounter wasnt some big planned thing, I rolled out a random encounter and it was basically local thugs/gangs. So I told them what happened. The bard knew his job and tried talking out of it since he didnt want all those more or less unneeded casualties but then well the wizard happened. This was never supposed to be a big deal, I figured even if a normal fight broke out then it would just be kind of brushed under the rug as some one killed the gang in defence, not nuke the alley. To answer this by the by yes the rest of the party was in the blast they all took some damage but the Bard took the worst out the party since the fireball blew up right in front of him and he had no time to react.

The bard didn't get a reflex save? He took more damage for being closer to the center of an instaneous magical effect that deals a set damage amount?

More and more it sounds like part of the problem is that you've created so many houserules that you're now playing a d20 based system that's sort of like D&D 3.5 but isn't. If you advertised your homebrew system as D&D when gathering players, your player could be very confused about the fact that he was sold a salmon, which he had some idea how to cook and prepare, and then got home and unwrapped it to discover that he had swai filets, which he didn't know how to cook and wasn't entirely sure what to do with. With the stable framework of the rules system basically absent, he may be disengaging and acting out because he doesn't feel like he's got a play environment that he knows what to do with.

In a given night, how many encounters are solved by the bard's diplomancy? How is it that he was even able to use diplomacy against these apparently hostile threats? You said the bard "knew his job", the obvious inference being that the wizard doesn't. Maybe the player was just tired of the bard getting the spotlight all the time and wanted to do something to participate; it's pretty obvious that you reward your version of roleplaying over the kind of gaming the wizard's player favors.

I think you may have a fundamental mismatch between yourself (the DM) and your player. Maybe he just wants some hack 'n blast dungeon crawls and finds all this other stuff boring and tedious, maybe he's just disconnected because he can't keep track of all your houserules, or maybe he's a little resentful because he feels like your houserules are specifically slanted against him and/or the type of game he wants to play. Either one (preferably both) of you needs to bend a bit to create a game everyone wants to play, or you need to stop allowing the tension and distrust to broil and let this player know that this probably isn't the right game for him (or at least not the right game for this character).

[Harrow]

The whole encounter wasnt some big planned thing, I rolled out a random encounter and it was basically local thugs/gangs.

That's entirely the point that as being made. When you have a Wizard in your group that only memorizes Fireball every morning, then any encounter that you don't hand craft for him to use fireball on is either going to force him to not contribute, which isn't fun, or try to use fireball when it isn't appropriate, which is what happened here. Your player is playing a Wizard at T5, and this is the reason most groups aim for T3/T4.

As for having thieves guild members take out an eye while a T5 fireball wizard has his hands bound in anti-magic cuffs as punishment for DARING to win a random encounter... just feels a little 'Orcus' to me

[Raimun]

Seems like everything has already been said, but I feel like adding my 2 gp as well.

First of all, just a couple of side notes that bother me about this topic:

1. Calling a Wizard a one trick pony is kinda silly. Even if he spent all his feats and dipped here and there to optimize his fireball, he must have other spells that allow him to compliment his party in various ways. And even if he doesn't it's not much of a problem for him to acquire a couple scrolls and learn new spells (especially considering the setting).


In theory, yes. In practice? Not necessarily. Just because someone made a character, doesn't mean its potential is used well during the game.

In fact "fireball only"-Wizard is certainly not an unheard type of Wizard in the history of D&D. I've seen plenty of those. It just doesn't occur to some people that wizards can do so much more than fireball enemies. Heck, I can personally vouch that there has been a Barbarian to whom it didn't occur that there was this ability called Rage.

To be fair, even I have fallen victim to something like that. You know, playing a class you've never played before with a ton of class of abilities and sometimes it seems you can't remember even half of them when they would helpful. :smallbiggrin:

[Vhaidara]

That's entirely the point that as being made. When you have a Wizard in your group that only memorizes Fireball every morning, then any encounter that you don't hand craft for him to use fireball on is either going to force him to not contribute, which isn't fun, or try to use fireball when it isn't appropriate, which is what happened here. Your player is playing a Wizard at T5, and this is the reason most groups aim for T3/T4.

As for having thieves guild members take out an eye while a T5 fireball wizard has his hands bound in anti-magic cuffs as punishment for DARING to win a random encounter... just feels a little 'Orcus' to me

That's just unfair. If all the wizard prepares is fireball, then he has to accept that there will be situations where he will be useless. Like when the bard decides to do his thing. Would it have been acceptable if the party had gone to the king's ball and the wizard, because all he ever prepares is fireball, dropped one right one the king's head and expected no repercussions?? No, it wouldn't.

[Segev]

Guys, let's stop jumping down the OP's throat, shall we?

The only thing I think he did that was possible to construe as "wrong" here was not giving a "are you sure? There are civilians adn the party bard in your blast radius," type warning to the pyrophile before he let loose. It's one of those things he should have at least been warned about, even if he'd have gone on and done it anyway.

Other than that, it's mostly the player not...getting it. Which apparently hasn't been helped by OOC discussion. I don't have happy advice to give, if OOC discussion doesn't work to rectify the problem. The next step generally involves deciding whether you want to put up with him or kick him out of the game.

[RingofThorns]

So if they killed just some thugs it would be ok?
How on earth are there thugs in a city with guards that have the resources you have explained earlier in this thread?

So something that happens in an instant affects the closest hardest? gotcha
He did kill them in defense, it was a violent gang with tendencies to fight. You even say so yourself.

How can you brush thugs under the rug..? probably with houses and friends
But hobos, dear god they are important .

Do you even consider the ramifications of a city guard that ignore thugs and gangs, allows thief guilds when they have resources to kidnap and restrain wizards? Not to mention said thieves got acsess to a prisoner....

You are describing a corrupt city, an evil empire on the rise.

{scrubbed}

EVIL city

Yes if the thugs had attacked them first, I am not enough of an ass to have the whole party rounded up over that, however when its just two groups talking and one guy tosses massive fireball into the mix that is something else.

The city guard never ignored them but let me ask you something in the same vain. USA is supposed to have one of the biggest and most efficient law enforcement,intelligence,and legal systems when compared with many portions of the world and yet street gangs of serious power and influence are still a very real and present threat, why? surely if the entire law of one town ignored everything else and went after only them then surely there shouldnt be anymore right?

SO yes a small encounter with random hostiles can pretty easily get ignored by the guard as 'well they did attack you first' kind of way but they hadnt attacked yet. I think your just a miserable little troll trying to pick fights and start arguments.

Ask me anything you want about rules for the game, yes we used one homebrew house rule about hose blast type AoE is effected by a space smaller then the blast. Wow such a stretch there, I cant believe my entire game hasnt collapsed in on itself due to my so obvious incompetence to run anything more then fetch quest riddled wow rip off.

The guard also didnt kidnap anyone, the wizard was sitting at the bar in the tavern, the guy wore bright red robes that looked like fire, not really the hardest guy to find, so yeah the guards were atleast semi smart in how they took him down, again sorry I dont roll my guards as the normal neck beard useless cannon fodder found in most campaigns.

[Tvtyrant]

The city should be more willing to deploy its best against the wizard than some thugs. Your talking about an individual with tremendous power who just performed the equivalent of a mass shooting, and we don't even know what the thugs do. If their thing is selling moonshine or taxing local buisnesses, which one do you think is the bigger deal? Heck, even if they were muggers they still aren't going to draw the attention a bomb going off in a city block is going to.

And any city that exists clearly has some mid to high level defences, otherwise a couple Manticores or a Wraith would kill everyone. Just because your squad of level 6-10 retired adventurers who guard the city from major threats doesn't ignore due process and slaughter everyone walking down an alley at night doesn't mean they don't exist.

Also, the walls of a wooden building are like 10-20 HP. The Fireball would have blown through those into the inhabitants, and likely collapsed the buildings. Alleyways just mean the collateral damage goes up, exactly like a big bomb going off.

[Barstro]

That's entirely the point that as being made. When you have a Wizard in your group that only memorizes Fireball every morning, then any encounter that you don't hand craft for him to use fireball on is either going to force him to not contribute, which isn't fun, or try to use fireball when it isn't appropriate, which is what happened here. Your player is playing a Wizard at T5, and this is the reason most groups aim for T3/T4.

As for having thieves guild members take out an eye while a T5 fireball wizard has his hands bound in anti-magic cuffs as punishment for DARING to win a random encounter... just feels a little 'Orcus' to me

Opposing view:
This is a random encounter. The DM shouldn't cater it to how the PCs are. To the left, he should cater any fight that the BBEG planned for the PCs (and specifically target those weaknesses).
Despite having a spellbook, the wizard chose to only prepare a spell that is the wrong choice for many situations.
The wizard chose to "contribute" forced his contribution on the rest of the party despite another PC trying to participate in finding another solution.
While I find the wizard's actions somewhat understandable, they were ill conceived and totally his decision. Choices have consequences. Only a sociopath blames the world for not catering itself to him.

As for this scenario coming up (petty thugs in a town where the guard is somehow able to take out a L5 wizard), either more work should have been done with the logic of the situation or else the rest of the party needs to figure out that the guards are obviously being paid by the Thug Guild to allow this sort of street crime.

[RingofThorns]

The bard didn't get a reflex save? He took more damage for being closer to the center of an instaneous magical effect that deals a set damage amount?

More and more it sounds like part of the problem is that you've created so many houserules that you're now playing a d20 based system that's sort of like D&D 3.5 but isn't. If you advertised your homebrew system as D&D when gathering players, your player could be very confused about the fact that he was sold a salmon, which he had some idea how to cook and prepare, and then got home and unwrapped it to discover that he had swai filets, which he didn't know how to cook and wasn't entirely sure what to do with. With the stable framework of the rules system basically absent, he may be disengaging and acting out because he doesn't feel like he's got a play environment that he knows what to do with.

In a given night, how many encounters are solved by the bard's diplomancy? How is it that he was even able to use diplomacy against these apparently hostile threats? You said the bard "knew his job", the obvious inference being that the wizard doesn't. Maybe the player was just tired of the bard getting the spotlight all the time and wanted to do something to participate; it's pretty obvious that you reward your version of roleplaying over the kind of gaming the wizard's player favors.

I think you may have a fundamental mismatch between yourself (the DM) and your player. Maybe he just wants some hack 'n blast dungeon crawls and finds all this other stuff boring and tedious, maybe he's just disconnected because he can't keep track of all your houserules, or maybe he's a little resentful because he feels like your houserules are specifically slanted against him and/or the type of game he wants to play. Either one (preferably both) of you needs to bend a bit to create a game everyone wants to play, or you need to stop allowing the tension and distrust to broil and let this player know that this probably isn't the right game for him (or at least not the right game for this character).


IT WAS ONE FREAKING RULE, seriously One house rule was used that entire game. Want to know which one? the one that dictated the shape of the blast! Ok yeah I dont normally mess with big wizard type characters never played one. I normally play melee types as far into caster as I normally ever go is a druid with mostly utility spells as opposed to outright combat ones. I will grant yeah maybe the bard should have had a reflex save I didnt know, I asked the table got told it was up to me, so I thought about it he was completely flat footed he had no idea this was about to happen, to him everything was just talking and then he would hear 'fireball!' some heat over his shoulder and then it blew up like a foot in front of him, the blast moving out from there. The rest of the party though saw this thing fly by so they had enough time to reflex save or pull up a shield if one was handy or some other action etc. The bard player was annoyed but he was one of the people saying it was really up to me. Now that might have been played wrong I will grant you that but seriously people One house rule was used that was it I dont where and the hell people are getting this big freaking idea that I have no idea what the actual rules behind DnD are.

[Vhaidara]

IT WAS ONE FREAKING RULE, seriously One house rule was used that entire game. Want to know which one? the one that dictated the shape of the blast! Ok yeah I dont normally mess with big wizard type characters never played one. I normally play melee types as far into caster as I normally ever go is a druid with mostly utility spells as opposed to outright combat ones. I will grant yeah maybe the bard should have had a reflex save I didnt know, I asked the table got told it was up to me, so I thought about it he was completely flat footed he had no idea this was about to happen, to him everything was just talking and then he would hear 'fireball!' some heat over his shoulder and then it blew up like a foot in front of him, the blast moving out from there. The rest of the party though saw this thing fly by so they had enough time to reflex save or pull up a shield if one was handy or some other action etc. The bard player was annoyed but he was one of the people saying it was really up to me. Now that might have been played wrong I will grant you that but seriously people One house rule was used that was it I dont where and the hell people are getting this big freaking idea that I have no idea what the actual rules behind DnD are.

Calm down please. The reason people are reacting badly is because, as far as we knew, this was a houserule that you sprung on them. We have had bad experiences with a certain individual who takes great pleasure in ****ing with his players like that.

On a related note: That houserule makes me even less sympathetic towards the wizard. I repeat: ATTEMPTED MURDER OF A PARTY MEMBER FOR NO REASON SHOULD RESULT IN THE CHARACTER BEING KICKED FROM THE PARTY.

[Oddman80]

In theory, yes. In practice? Not necessarily. Just because someone made a character, doesn't mean its potential is used well during the game.

In fact "fireball only"-Wizard is certainly not an unheard type of Wizard in the history of D&D. I've seen plenty of those. It just doesn't occur to some people that wizards can do so much more than fireball enemies. Heck, I can personally vouch that there has been a Barbarian to whom it didn't occur that there was this ability called Rage.

To be fair, even I have fallen victim to something like that. You know, playing a class you've never played before with a ton of class of abilities and sometimes it seems you can't remember even half of them when they would helpful. :smallbiggrin:

Ummm.... Fireball is a level 3 spell. While it is possible he filled every level 3 or higher spell slot with fire ball, he still has all his level 2, 1, and 0 spells. He probably has a blunt object, even if it's a staff. Saying that THIS GUYs only option is fireball is like a construction worker holding a sledge hammer saying he HAD to use it on the Foreman's Face when the guy started giving him ****... "I mean, what else was I supposed to do?"

Wizards are intelligent. They are probably the smartest members of the party, but your player was either playing him with the intelligence of a toad, or with the empathy of a demon.

Agreed it should be addressed OOC.

Agreed with OP that if a group of thugs is standing in front of you in a narrow alley, you probably can't see kids behind the thugs let alone in the branching alleyways.

As far as not calling for rolls - a lot of DM use passive perception of the characters to see what they notice when not actively looking (night watch, slowly progressing through a dungeon, etc). If he has been consistent with this there is definitely nothing to jump on him for.

As to the custom fire ball - asked and answered - wizard knew full well how it would act, he helped design it himself, and it's how they played the whole game.

The distinction between min maxing and being an ******* has been firmly established.

Sewercop, you need to stop making personal attacks against forum users. It isn't helping the discussion, and you are coming off not too different from the over-reacting Wizard in the OP.

[OldTrees1]

Calm down please. The reason people are reacting badly is because, as far as we knew, this was a houserule that you sprung on them. We have had bad experiences with a certain individual who takes great pleasure in ****ing with his players like that.

Honestly I don't think we should excuse this forum's behavior so lightly. The OP is responding rather reasonably for the mountain of prejudice being thrown his way.

[RingofThorns]

That is all well and good to tell me to calm down but I have said this in multiple posts.

This wasnt a rule I made up, The guy thats playing the wizard..he made the rule about effecting blast size and the entire group has been playing with that rules for longer then three years. The only thing i have honestly added as far as house rules go is the punching dagger thing I previously mentioned. So again That is not my house rule, just a standard house rule everyone in the group knows, and uses in their games.

{scrubbed} I dont tailor fights to make things work because some character has one thing he relies on, Perfect example in another game I ran a very long standing friend of mine was using the punching dagger and wrecking all the underlings the BBG was throwing at them, so what started happening when he wanted that rogue dead? either other rogues with massive Dex and Dodge bonus to AC or guys wearing heavy armor so he couldnt just punch through it.
So if the wizard only wants to throw fireballs that is his choice, but he has to know doing that crap with no thought can come back to bite him in the no no place.

Now loosing his eye yes its harsh they could have just killed him, I mean everyone is calling me out about this whole thieves guild thing. Seriously have none of you complaining about that read any DnD book like actual game book involving them? its not common place for the thieves guild to have some sort of access to jails,prisons and more through bribes,threats and so on. Its even well established that if a city is large enough it can have multiple guilds in it competing for territory and profit so yeah, a guild with some money or enough blades in the right place can make sure the guards dont often care what happens in back alleys. Even then how are they supposed to know when and where its happening? Yeah they can be the best in the world but they cant do anything if they cant find them.

[Segev]

Frankly, unless there were political or other pressures preventing it, from an IC perspective they SHOULD have just killed him. You do NOT leave wizards known to have the power and will to fireball to ash large areas alive when you have exacted some sort of retribution against them. Not if you can help it. You don't want them pissed off and deciding you would look lovely as an ash-white statue.

[ComaVision]

Wow.

This powerful and influential thieve's guild just happened to have a guy chilling in a crowded alley (the wizard, of course, couldn't see any of the people in the alley because he didn't ask for a spot or listen check) and he's weak enough to be outright killed by a fireball (did he not get a reflex save either?),

When the guard's sneak up to the wizard, you have him roll sense motive, search, listen and spot. Did you actually roll move silently and hide rolls for all the guards, or did you just fabricate DCs?

{scrubbed}

[RingofThorns]

Frankly, unless there were political or other pressures preventing it, from an IC perspective they SHOULD have just killed him. You do NOT leave wizards known to have the power and will to fireball to ash large areas alive when you have exacted some sort of retribution against them. Not if you can help it. You don't want them pissed off and deciding you would look lovely as an ash-white statue.

That was my thinking, I even told the guy 'you might want to try and explain you didnt want to incenerate a member of his guild." The wizard though chose to stand tall and talk crap literally goading the Thieves guild Rep and I quote 'I dare you to lay a hand on me, I will burn down your whole guild." I asked if he was sure he meant to say that, and yup he did. Yeah the loss of an eye is a pain, but seriously there are spells like regeneration and other that are well known for allowing some one to regrow a lost limb, heck if he wanted he could get some big crazy magic eye thing put there.

I wouldnt even be so annoyed about him hucking massive fireballs all the time if it wasnt for the fact there is literally no reason behind it other then thats how the character was made. He literally has no back story at all, he didnt even have an actual name for the first session the other players gave him one in game. The guy playing the wizard could literally give me even a half hearted attempt at a backstory as to why he is a wizard with nothing but fire spells and the desire to only get more fire spells and make all the ones he already had more powerful.

{scrubbed}

[Ssalarn]

IT WAS ONE FREAKING RULE, seriously One house rule was used that entire game. Want to know which one? the one that dictated the shape of the blast! Ok yeah I dont normally mess with big wizard type characters never played one. I normally play melee types as far into caster as I normally ever go is a druid with mostly utility spells as opposed to outright combat ones. I will grant yeah maybe the bard should have had a reflex save I didnt know, I asked the table got told it was up to me, so I thought about it he was completely flat footed he had no idea this was about to happen, to him everything was just talking and then he would hear 'fireball!' some heat over his shoulder and then it blew up like a foot in front of him, the blast moving out from there. The rest of the party though saw this thing fly by so they had enough time to reflex save or pull up a shield if one was handy or some other action etc. The bard player was annoyed but he was one of the people saying it was really up to me. Now that might have been played wrong I will grant you that but seriously people One house rule was used that was it I dont where and the hell people are getting this big freaking idea that I have no idea what the actual rules behind DnD are.

Whoa, take a deep breath there! I've been following this thread since your first post and there's been mention of all kinds of houserules and/or misunderstandings of how the rules work: magically materializing hobos, punching daggers that target touch AC, bards who don't get reflex saves, fireballs that split off into hobo-seeking death snakes. There's also logical fallacies, like these guards who are dedicated enough to track down and imprison a wizard who incinerated some street thugs and some (maybe connected, maybe not?) alley-dwellers, but who let criminals come into their incredibly secure holding areas and maim their prisoners.

I'm not pointing fingers here, I'm just saying there's obviously two sides and two interpretations of what's happening and I can kind of see where both sides might be coming from.

So I'll repeat what I've been saying all along : TALK TO YOUR PLAYER. Don't come to a bunch of strangers on the internet with a provocative and inaccurate thread title and seek justification for decisions you already made; instead find out why this is happening. Is he happy with this game? Are you happy with him as a player? If the answer to either question is no, then why? Is it somethign that you can work through, or is it a fundamental mismatch between his expectations and your DMing style?

[RingofThorns]

Wow.

This powerful and influential thieve's guild just happened to have a guy chilling in a crowded alley (the wizard, of course, couldn't see any of the people in the alley because he didn't ask for a spot or listen check) and he's weak enough to be outright killed by a fireball (did he not get a reflex save either?),

It was randomly decided that the guy was within the area of the blast I didnt do it to be a jerk, maybe read all the posts before getting uppity. Though yes a low ranking guy out breaking into houses isnt unheard of, I mean do you think everyone part of the guild is going to be some legendary rogue? No they are going to have lower level guys doing the grunt work. However letting some random wizard get away with it yeah not going to fly because that makes them look weak.

When the guard's sneak up to the wizard, you have him roll sense motive, search, listen and spot. Did you actually roll move silently and hide rolls for all the guards, or did you just fabricate DCs?

Yes I had him literally role everything I could think of because he kept failing them, he rolled two ones and then just failed the rest.
The guard werent hiding or moving silently, they didnt sneak up on him they came in without armor or insignia in a group of four looking like people walking in from traveling. Two got on either side and more or less on the signal of 'get him!' tackled him and slapped on the anti magic cuffs. The wizard had plenty of chances to atleast not be an utter fool and run but he didnt he paid no heed at all to the dozens of very obvious signs that some thing was going on.

{scrubbed}

I give descriptions of things going on, what the city looks like if their are people on the streets and so on, this happened at noon in a large town...yeah when the blast rode out big enough to reach pretty far away that seemed like the best call. I wasnt expecting it so it caught me off gaurd, yeah I rolled to see if anyone was in the area bad luck for him people were. I mean I gave them about as much detail as any sane rational person is going to need about a freaking back alley as they could use, heck I even had a rough drawn map of it since I copied the lay out from a city map I found in another DnD book, and actual wizards of the coast rule book. Yeah he used the punching dagger rule and was smart so what? the whole reason it was there was to help a pretty much looked over weapon, I was happy he was smart in how he used it he only went after the guys in weak armor. I have had players use the blast rule to good effect as well when fighting through an evil layer, this only happened because he had no cares about tossing it in a town.

[OldTrees1]

Wow.

This powerful and influential thieve's guild just happened to have a guy chilling in a crowded alley (the wizard, of course, couldn't see any of the people in the alley because he didn't ask for a spot or listen check) and he's weak enough to be outright killed by a fireball (did he not get a reflex save either?),

When the guard's sneak up to the wizard, you have him roll sense motive, search, listen and spot. Did you actually roll move silently and hide rolls for all the guards, or did you just fabricate DCs?

It seems pretty clear to me you have a poor understanding of the rules, and if players don't get any description of things unless they ask to do a spot check every time it sounds pretty bland. I would have extreme difficulty playing in a game of yours, even without the ridiculous house rules. I like that someone has already abused your silly punching dagger rule.

Wow.

As detailed in the opening post:
1) This was a narrow alley with side alleys all withing the range of a fireball. Normally one does not ask players to make spot checks for things out of sight (anyone in the side alleys would be out of line of sight).
2) The member of the guild was placed there by RNG not be a vindictive impulse.
3a) Why would you presume the guild member did not get a reflex save? Why are you intent on assuming the absolute worst unless proven otherwise?
3b) The Rulings on reflex saves for the fireball were decided by the group not just the DM (this information was in a later post that you read).

4) Yes he did have the player roll various perception checks as the guards snuck up (this information was in a later post that you read).

[Karl Aegis]

Most of the problems you're getting are because you included details not relevant to what you were trying to communicate and used them with negative connotations attached to them. Calling someone a "Min Maxer" (an archaic term in today's D&D world) and describing them negatively leads some forum-goers that identify themselves as an optimizer (the more modern term with more positive connotations) to believe that you are trying to attack them personally. You should try to use less trigger words to get less of a rise out of people. {scrubbed}

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Thread locked.