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View Full Version : Punching below your RPG weight



Herobizkit
2017-03-12, 05:10 AM
So, as a kid in the late 80's, I dragged some friends into D&D and we played 1e and 2e together. We got older, we went our different directions, we had lives.

For a time in the 2k's, I lived with one of those friends and we explored 3e together as solo players, alternating campaigns as Player and DM. After a time, we parted ways, went to live our lives.

I moved to a new city where I once again wrangled some fresh blood into a 4e campaign. I was ten years older than the DM, and the DM was 6 or 7 years older than the other two players. We wrapped up a three-year campaign, we moved apart, and now play 5e via Skype and roll20 when we can.

Suffice it to say, I'm celebrating my 30th year of playing D&D this year.

Now, my original gaming crew from my childhood has discovered Fantasy Grounds and one of them (the guy I lived with) is now running a 5e game. The other players haven't touched a D&D tabletop game since the 90's.

Two things I immediately noticed when we started playing together:
1) the DM appears to be running the game with a lot of 3e mentality. He appears to understand the rules but I don't believe he 'gets' the 5e design. He runs the show as "Combat as War" and lets the dice fall where they may. He's also a very tactically-minded person (and in the military besides). He also introduced some rules (flanking, disadvantage when firing into melee, advantage when firing from higher ground) which greatly favor the enemies in said combats.
2) The players are all old, like me, and they just want a fun, beer n' pretzels game where they just roll dice and have fun smashing and taking their lumps. They don't want or need a deep, RP story.

For me, I like making characters that support the team (by using character mechanics in conjunction with other players) and I'm super into RP. In short, the exact opposite of what is being offered at the table. I made the "mistake" of rolling a Dex-based Bard in a team of muscle-head warriors (and one Warlock) and I can't say that I contributed much to the success of the team.

So, I stopped playing with them, and I feel crappy about it. In order for me to enjoy myself, I had to avoid doing what I enjoy and "dumb down" my contribution to "hit enemy until dead". It isn't enough to hang with the guys and throw dice when I see the rules not being used to their full potential and every solution to a problem is "hammer".

Has this ever happened to any of you? How did you handle it?

Yora
2017-03-12, 05:15 AM
I think the best solution for such situation is to switch to a character that matches the party and campaign. A lot of campaigns that aren't my prefered style of playing can still be lots of fun if you take them for what they are and run with it.

Frozen_Feet
2017-03-12, 09:03 AM
My normal "weight class" is being a convention GM or playing multiple characters in prose-heavy freeforms. I'd say any act of playing just a single character as a player is punching below that; generally I enjoy it.

Airk
2017-03-13, 01:54 PM
I think the best solution for such situation is to switch to a character that matches the party and campaign. A lot of campaigns that aren't my prefered style of playing can still be lots of fun if you take them for what they are and run with it.

I dunno. That sounds a lot like trading one type of unhappiness ("My character isn't useful") for another type of unhappiness ("I don't really want to be in this kind of game.").

I think bowing out and finding a new group is the best solution here.

Arcane_Snowman
2017-03-13, 03:27 PM
I dunno. That sounds a lot like trading one type of unhappiness ("My character isn't useful") for another type of unhappiness ("I don't really want to be in this kind of game.").

I think bowing out and finding a new group is the best solution here. Well, there's also the matter of socializing to consider: I have a number of friends that I don't see outside of RP sessions because everyone is busy, and even though we're currently playing D&D which I'm not a big fan of, I still attend.

I just go elsewhere to get my "actual" RPing itch scratched.

That being said OP did say that just hanging out with them isn't enough. If you're not enjoying the game, and you're not sufficiently motivated by the prospect of socializing with the participants to show up, then I don't see much reason to attend.

Tanarii
2017-03-13, 04:21 PM
Two things I immediately noticed when we started playing together:
1) the DM appears to be running the game with a lot of 3e mentality. He appears to understand the rules but I don't believe he 'gets' the 5e design. He runs the show as "Combat as War" and lets the dice fall where they may. He's also a very tactically-minded person (and in the military besides). He also introduced some rules (flanking, disadvantage when firing into melee, advantage when firing from higher ground) which greatly favor the enemies in said combats.
5e is uniquely suited for Combat-as-War. Unlike 3.P, which was the beginning of Combat-as-Sport. And even more unlike 4e, which was designed from the ground up in a way that suits Combat-as-Sport. However, 5e was designed so it's far stronger for Theatre of the Mind, not battle-mat play. And if he's using flanking he absolutely doesn't get how much it breaks 5e. It should never have been included as an optional rule in the DMG.

Mostly though it sounds like he's still in pre-3e mentality. Not post-3e. 5e was designed to allow pre-3e people to get back in the game, so it's very adaptable to a combat-as-war dungeon-crawling & wilderness adventures, logistics-tracking & strict time-keeping, sandbox game. I should know, I designed my campaign using the 5e non-optional rules (no feats, no multiclassing) to be exactly that. But there are definitely some features that are very different, given that the hobby has moved into a small squad combat-as-sport orientation as a whole.

Psikerlord
2017-03-13, 04:58 PM
So, as a kid in the late 80's, I dragged some friends into D&D and we played 1e and 2e together. We got older, we went our different directions, we had lives.

For a time in the 2k's, I lived with one of those friends and we explored 3e together as solo players, alternating campaigns as Player and DM. After a time, we parted ways, went to live our lives.

I moved to a new city where I once again wrangled some fresh blood into a 4e campaign. I was ten years older than the DM, and the DM was 6 or 7 years older than the other two players. We wrapped up a three-year campaign, we moved apart, and now play 5e via Skype and roll20 when we can.

Suffice it to say, I'm celebrating my 30th year of playing D&D this year.

Now, my original gaming crew from my childhood has discovered Fantasy Grounds and one of them (the guy I lived with) is now running a 5e game. The other players haven't touched a D&D tabletop game since the 90's.

Two things I immediately noticed when we started playing together:
1) the DM appears to be running the game with a lot of 3e mentality. He appears to understand the rules but I don't believe he 'gets' the 5e design. He runs the show as "Combat as War" and lets the dice fall where they may. He's also a very tactically-minded person (and in the military besides). He also introduced some rules (flanking, disadvantage when firing into melee, advantage when firing from higher ground) which greatly favor the enemies in said combats.
2) The players are all old, like me, and they just want a fun, beer n' pretzels game where they just roll dice and have fun smashing and taking their lumps. They don't want or need a deep, RP story.

For me, I like making characters that support the team (by using character mechanics in conjunction with other players) and I'm super into RP. In short, the exact opposite of what is being offered at the table. I made the "mistake" of rolling a Dex-based Bard in a team of muscle-head warriors (and one Warlock) and I can't say that I contributed much to the success of the team.

So, I stopped playing with them, and I feel crappy about it. In order for me to enjoy myself, I had to avoid doing what I enjoy and "dumb down" my contribution to "hit enemy until dead". It isn't enough to hang with the guys and throw dice when I see the rules not being used to their full potential and every solution to a problem is "hammer".

Has this ever happened to any of you? How did you handle it?
Perhaps offer to run the next game as GM yourself, show another side to the game?

The_Jette
2017-03-14, 08:39 AM
So, as a kid in the late 80's, I dragged some friends into D&D and we played 1e and 2e together. We got older, we went our different directions, we had lives.

For a time in the 2k's, I lived with one of those friends and we explored 3e together as solo players, alternating campaigns as Player and DM. After a time, we parted ways, went to live our lives.

I moved to a new city where I once again wrangled some fresh blood into a 4e campaign. I was ten years older than the DM, and the DM was 6 or 7 years older than the other two players. We wrapped up a three-year campaign, we moved apart, and now play 5e via Skype and roll20 when we can.

Suffice it to say, I'm celebrating my 30th year of playing D&D this year.

Now, my original gaming crew from my childhood has discovered Fantasy Grounds and one of them (the guy I lived with) is now running a 5e game. The other players haven't touched a D&D tabletop game since the 90's.

Two things I immediately noticed when we started playing together:
1) the DM appears to be running the game with a lot of 3e mentality. He appears to understand the rules but I don't believe he 'gets' the 5e design. He runs the show as "Combat as War" and lets the dice fall where they may. He's also a very tactically-minded person (and in the military besides). He also introduced some rules (flanking, disadvantage when firing into melee, advantage when firing from higher ground) which greatly favor the enemies in said combats.
2) The players are all old, like me, and they just want a fun, beer n' pretzels game where they just roll dice and have fun smashing and taking their lumps. They don't want or need a deep, RP story.

For me, I like making characters that support the team (by using character mechanics in conjunction with other players) and I'm super into RP. In short, the exact opposite of what is being offered at the table. I made the "mistake" of rolling a Dex-based Bard in a team of muscle-head warriors (and one Warlock) and I can't say that I contributed much to the success of the team.

So, I stopped playing with them, and I feel crappy about it. In order for me to enjoy myself, I had to avoid doing what I enjoy and "dumb down" my contribution to "hit enemy until dead". It isn't enough to hang with the guys and throw dice when I see the rules not being used to their full potential and every solution to a problem is "hammer".

Has this ever happened to any of you? How did you handle it?

I'm curious how you're playing your bard that you feel you don't contribute. Bard is a support class. So, in a team full of muscle headed maul machines, you would be the buffer that makes them all the more awesome. You offer a plethora of buffs, including to hit, damage, skills, and healing. As a skill monkey to boot, you get to do literally everything that isn't straight combat. The group finds itself in a room that is slowly crushing everyone to death? You get to shine by disarming the trap. A traveling merchant has been saved from being accosted by orcs? You get to convince him that his life really was worth that shiny bauble as a reward. A steel reinforced door stands in your way and you need to get through it without waking up the dragon inside so that you can ambush it in its sleep? That's you, buddy. And, to top it off, you make sure that your party is putting out that damage at top rate.
So, is it just that you aren't doing the same amount of damage? And, if so, is that something that you see as a problem, or that your party sees as a problem?

CharonsHelper
2017-03-14, 09:26 AM
I'm curious how you're playing your bard that you feel you don't contribute. Bard is a support class. So, in a team full of muscle headed maul machines, you would be the buffer that makes them all the more awesome.

+1

When you have a group of muscle-bound teammates - a bard is pretty much the best fit for shoring up the team's weaknesses and making all of the brutes that much more effective. Especially if you want to flex your gaming muscles without overshadowing them.

Why do you feel that you don't fit? Did you want to play the bard as a non-combat dilettante? Because I don't think that ANY version of D&D really works for non-combat characters. There are RPG systems which that works for - but D&D has never been amongst them.

Herobizkit
2017-03-14, 04:13 PM
... you get to do literally everything that isn't straight combat.And everything the party does leads to or is straight combat. Negotiate with the enemy? Nope, murder them to the last. Explore ruins? Nope, go where the soldiers are and kill them. Go to town? Nope, stay in the woods and hunt orcs. GO TO TOWN? Yes - spend money on women and booze then go back out to kill more things.

It's what they want to do. The DM allows them free rein to explore and go wherever, and it seems like every party choice is "go where the most enemies are and kill them".

I'd prefer to play a Mastermind Rogue with the Healer feat - at least then I'd be able to do something more. Bards are long-rest powered and the majority of the team relies on short rests to muscle through.

But #realtalk, my work shifts have changed and I can't play with them anymore anyhow... or if I did, it would only be for 2 hours before I'd have to run to work. Not fun.