PDA

View Full Version : gm advice for dealing with toxic player



lord4571
2017-07-04, 03:57 AM
mutants and masterminds 3ed

so im doing a champagin in hub city with 5 players. all but 1 i have not had to say no to and even this 1 i havent fully said no to a concept but just some of the powers trying to have his concept not only make sense but not be above a certain op-ness that some powers can get. im going to tell my story please tell me if this is toxic and what to do.

with all the concepts below all stats (def and ability stats and skills) are at 0 unless otherwise said

first he was trying to be a ghost and untouchable but i didnt like it but i was ok with it. issuse is when he wanted the only way he could be put to rest is when he completes his goal and no sooner. he was trying to be unkillable. when i said no to that immuntiy and said there was going to be 1 or 2 ways other than his goal that he could be put to rest. he got pissy and changed his concept

2nd was trying to be like garra, he spent 102pp in his powers and the rest in skills and will (and the skills where only for combat) ((pl 8 game)). he was going a deadpool backstory like and wanted not only sand control but also suffcation immunity, regen. then with his sand attacks he had incurable on one of his dmg attacks. oh and regen was persistant. all powers where innate. i told him no to all the things listed. kicker of it was he also totaled the cost wrong because he was misunderstood heroic alteranate form. which yeah he said he had a heroic alteranate form but based on his concept that didnt make sense. with miscal of powers on his part and problems with his powers in general he said that i was basicly attacking him just cuz i didnt like his concepts and that i was a ****. (showed this sheet to another player and he agreed with me that alot didnt make sesne

now we are on the 3rd attempt. he can shapeshift into and talk to objects. thats ok i have no problem with that. its his skills. he is a teenager and he has these skills
deception 16
fist 4
expertise noose tying 16
expertise self loathing 16

im trying not to kick him becuase this is a good group most of the time but he is being toxic and idk what to do. would u accept the third concept as viable?

[7/3/2017 10:27:47 PM] me: whats with the self loathing technique
[7/3/2017 10:28:52 PM] him: He is very good at self loathing! He has been training it his whole life since he has constantly been bullied

Frozen_Feet
2017-07-04, 04:15 AM
It's a black comedy character from the looks of it. And your game doesn't sound like a black comedy game.

So say "Ha ha, funny. Now, seriously, what kind of character you want to play?"

BTW, none of this is an example of a toxic player. A toxic player is someone who bullies or belittles other players (etc.) This is just an ordinary case of a player sucking at character creation. If they don't come up with a fourth concept, offer them a pregenerated one and see if that sticks.

Mastikator
2017-07-04, 07:34 AM
A game master is fully entitled- responsible even, to restrict the kind of characters players may play. You may need to tell him that he should stop trying to game the system, that there are other players and he needs to be considerate to them. If he takes offense to any of that then you may very well have a toxic player on your hands. In which case get rid of him, you don't owe him a spot, playing is a privilege not a right.

AMFV
2017-07-04, 09:18 AM
mutants and masterminds 3ed

I think you may not be as familiar with how this particular game is supposed to work tonally.




with all the concepts below all stats (def and ability stats and skills) are at 0 unless otherwise said

first he was trying to be a ghost and untouchable but i didnt like it but i was ok with it. issuse is when he wanted the only way he could be put to rest is when he completes his goal and no sooner. he was trying to be unkillable. when i said no to that immuntiy and said there was going to be 1 or 2 ways other than his goal that he could be put to rest. he got pissy and changed his concept

You realize that LITERALLY BEING UNKILLABLE, is like a 2 pt power. Like coming back to life when you're killed is a 2 pt power, there's no reason why "Immortality" wouldn't have fit that character concept perfect. He can't be permanently killed but he can be slowed down until he has time to manifest there's even plenty of Supers with that exact effect who are Ghosts, check out Deadman for example.



2nd was trying to be like garra, he spent 102pp in his powers and the rest in skills and will (and the skills where only for combat) ((pl 8 game)). he was going a deadpool backstory like and wanted not only sand control but also suffcation immunity, regen. then with his sand attacks he had incurable on one of his dmg attacks. oh and regen was persistant. all powers where innate. i told him no to all the things listed. kicker of it was he also totaled the cost wrong because he was misunderstood heroic alteranate form. which yeah he said he had a heroic alteranate form but based on his concept that didnt make sense. with miscal of powers on his part and problems with his powers in general he said that i was basicly attacking him just cuz i didnt like his concepts and that i was a ****. (showed this sheet to another player and he agreed with me that alot didnt make sesne

Well you should maybe try and figure out some way to make the concept work, this is a supers game, ridiculous concepts are a part of supers games. And not all powers make sense, Superman has ice breath, in what world does that make sense, but he has it.

Did he pay for innate on all of his powers? I mean a damage effect, regen, and suffocation immunity, aren't all that powerful in terms of what they can do. In M&M 3rd Ed, it is really cheap to be unkillable, and defensive powers are not always expensive as compared to manipulative powers, that's because defense doesn't really accomplish goals.

Did you ask him why he had "Incurable" on his attack, also not that really drastically increases the point cost of that particular attack. Not only that but the "Sand" descriptor is pretty easy to counter, wind and water should both shut that down if you need to make him less killy at any point.

Also it completely makes sense for a Sand based character to have "Immunity: Suffocation" like that's entirely reasonable, and not all that expensive either.

I'm going to be honest, I kind of agree with your player here, it seems like you're shooting down reasonable ideas for a supers game, particularly when they're ideas that superheroes have used in the past. I would maybe try to stretch to be a little more accommodating. I mean frankly if he's paying for "innate" and "incurable" his effect ranks are going to be all that great because he's spending 2-3 times the cost of other similar effects.



now we are on the 3rd attempt. he can shapeshift into and talk to objects. thats ok i have no problem with that. its his skills. he is a teenager and he has these skills
deception 16
fist 4
expertise noose tying 16
expertise self loathing 16

im trying not to kick him becuase this is a good group most of the time but he is being toxic and idk what to do. would u accept the third concept as viable?

[7/3/2017 10:27:47 PM] me: whats with the self loathing technique
[7/3/2017 10:28:52 PM] him: He is very good at self loathing! He has been training it his whole life since he has constantly been bullied

That sounds like he's just responding to the earlier shutting down of concepts. Like you shut down two very viable, fairly standard Superhero concepts and now he's decided that he doesn't know what kind of game it is and is just muddling around trying to figure out what kind of character would even work.

lord4571
2017-07-06, 12:18 AM
so ive posted in other forums for help as well. get the most opinons i could one brought up a good point and i think it has somethings people has brought up whats my issue with certain things so im going copy and paste what i sent to the other forum here.

Malfane said:

Everyone else has pretty much said the standard stuff like "level with him", "have a candid conversation" and "kick his sorry ass, life's too short to put up with asshats" etc etc... and that's all great advice.

However if you intend to try and salvage the situation allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment...

It can be VERY frustrating as a player to come up with a character concept that you're excited about and then have it shot down without understanding why... especially if it happens multiple times.

I imagine whatever misunderstanding caused him to propose a concept that was unsuitable has ceased being the problem at this point, now the problem is frustration and disappointment, very likely on both sides of this argument.

I don't know how you handled it when you rejected his original idea(s)... maybe you were accusatory, dismissive of what he genuinely thought was a great idea or maybe you were perfectly reasonable and instead of dismissing it out of hand explained the problem asked for his opinion and tried to find an alternative or compromise that preserved what he liked about it while getting rid of the problematic stuff.

I wasn't there so I don't know "who is at fault" nor can I tell you how to fix it in any specific way. Plenty of good generic advice on that here already... but I did want to bring up something very rarely brought up in these circumstances because it's rarely well received and even more rarely reflected on. Maybe you're the one who caused the problem and the best way forward is to recognize it and apologize for it.

Maybe you did a poor job explaining the kind of game you wanted to run... maybe you were not very cooperative when you dismissed his ideas and came across as expecting obedience and absolute deference cuz you're the GM and have a god complex... I dunno, but what I do know is that sometimes, the GM is at fault in these situations and It'd be healthy to spend some time reflecting on our own behavior as well. Yet when GM's ask for advice they rarely include their own mistakes and missteps...

Almost always it's a very one-sided story of "my player did this, then he did that... and then he said these mean things... what do?" and I'm always left wondering what did or didn't YOU say and do that might have provoked it?

"This man broke into my house, smashed my furniture and threatened to kill me with a knife" that dude sounds like a criminal... but if you add "well earlier that night I killed his wife and sent him her head in the mail" he comes across as saintly for NOT killing you.

me replying to Malfane on that other forum
your probably right that i havent shared what i did or maybe not well enough so i will expand on how i tried to handle things as they went along.

so first off how i started this game was setting the power level and explain the city. its basicly the worst city you could ever find and times it by 10. its a very much if gotham got any worse this is it.

there were 3 people who gave me concepts early. 1 nephilium 2. an half demon and angel caused by a ritual going wrong and 3. the ghost idea
i apporved the other 2. but i did say to the ghost ehhh idk how i feel about it because idk how im suppose to make you feel the pressure im trying to get.

"like I said I have to see if its viable in the game. if the falcons where your enemys and that's really the only type
no one would be able to hurt you
which means no danger"

"I'm just saying for champagin health this might not work fully and I might need you to be a bit more touchable.
but we will see"

is how i explained it when he showed me his concept. i didnt say yes or no i said maybe because i didnt know what i was going to bring to the table to be able to put pressure on a ghost at that point. so i wanted to think it over.
my next step was to actual look up a ghost and compare it to what he had made. the two were similar but different. the offical ghost form pre made was better then what he had but made more sense. i still said i was unsure if id allow it. was still looking at things but showing him if yes this is close to what it be.

before contiuning on the sheet wise of things i asked him for backstory. he gave me one a good hearted kid goes to afirca to help out. a war broke out and a bomb was dropped. he died and became a ghost but his friends who were the same way didnt.

i tried asking him what made him so special or different to become a ghost with others have the same circumstance. and also that night i found stats that would be a ghost at his level and sent that to him.

he went to saying that not knowing why he became a ghost was more interesting, putting on me why he became a ghost. i told him he can have some unknown but i still need more then what he provide as i wasnt going to fully come up with tthe reason for him. he gave me examples. i told him what i thought of said examples basicly 1 was a no i dont think thats enough but the other one should work, but because they were examples, i told him he needs to say thats what he wanted which didnt happen becuase there were other issues happening.

everntly we worked out why he was a ghost and the concept was again viable. i asked for why is he a ghost and gave me a goal of something he didnt feel he finshed yet. so i said perfect so we now have the reason ur a ghost u need to complete something to be put to rest.

now because we have a nephilium who thinks they are a valkiarye. him and the ghost talked about knowing each other and the nephilium was saying that he may try putting the ghost to rest. i at that time was looking how ghost get put to rest. and there was more then one way. i told the ghost this (not the how) and then he immeditliy said im changing concept basicly

was it unreasonable for me to say. ghost has other ways of being put to rest? i wasnt going to make it unfair, everyone has complcations these would just be his?

next was his sand concept. he gave me a background concept that i approved. then i started going though his character after he made it. the issue was that he did things that the system doesnt allow with out gms permission and i said no. i tried explaining why and looked up forums agreeing with me that the system says no. he understood this and i was tryng to help find ways around it. there werent any i knew of. so he asked me this basicly after him trying to find other ways and showing me forums saying "it should be allowed" on the same forum i found "the book doesnt allow it"
(also the source he used i found saying the exact oppsite on another forum so :/).
after the forum battle heres what was said...

player: Plus again GM can change things as the please. The rules are just suggested guidelines
player: Still don't have anything against the other person
player: Plus I was trying to avoid becoming insubstantial so you wouldn't bitch but it looks like its unavoidable
me: rank 2 insubstantial is ok
me: also player u didn't read the deflect things I showed u or that forum. if you did u would have saw that they suggest other was to do what u wanted
player: I saw
me: you get upset with me cuz I say no or when I tell u ur not going to be immortal but u dont hear me out or think of other ways getting around ur major issue. if the book, forums, and hero lab all point to no I go with no
player: You are the one that's so worried about making sense and the others don't make any
me: how so?
player: Immunities instead of blocking
player: Trying to avoid that so you had a chance
player: Because they would have a chance to hit me
player: Plus that is more physical toughness than active
me: player anything I dont want I can say no to as per u saying I can say yes to anything not in the book. im going by the book for what ill allow. so far everyone has not asked for or even tried to do things Ive had to look up find the answer and the answer came up no, nor as anyone asked me to bend the rules for them yet. im more likely to limit things then to allow anything only because if I dont limit things then ill have to hit the party with harder things to get everyone to feel the puressure. I thank you for trying to make sure u can be hit but the issue of it is im going by the book for what it says no to. so if you find another way that is book friendly and not what ill limit go right ahead but if I find it to be to op (which we have had that happen many times in this system because people just said yes to everything) people will complain or it will become an issue. im sorry you cant take deflect as a reaction, but that's how it is.


after all that i totaled his powers how he had them in hero lab with someone helping me just to make sure i wasnt messing up. he was 30pp over the power level i showed him and told him we would need to change some things. and here is how that went

(i sent him a pdf of his character made through hero lab)
me: that is ur character without innate with everything that was by the book possible on ur sheet
me: not only do I have issues setting wise but you are also over the pp amount u should currently have
me: if you are willing to work with and around what the book and my current limitations are then I'm ok with that
me: ive said no to what u have because it wasn't making sense. so far I have others who are making sense right now and just needs maybe tweeks. you currently are the only one that has the issue with the limitations of the game. I am only trying to keep things fair between everyone. if someone came to me with the stuff u are trying to do they would be under the same microscope u are
player: I calculated everything and it was fine
me: and hero lab with everything that u put on it exactly how its written on ur sheet says u did it wrong
me: reason why we use hero lab (we all do cuz doing the cal in our heads me mess up we have learned this)
me: it helps witht he calculations
player: No you must have done a ton of **** wrong because I know all my stuff is right
player: You just use hero lab to **** things up and say, "oh yeah you messed it up. Now I can change things to how I want them."
player: I'll fix things
me: ok fine then guess what I can go through it with u in hero lab
me: but if that's whats going to happen
me: I have to be there when u make ur character
me: to stop that issue

then noose tying and selfloathing knowledge skill character was made. we all know the issues there

Jay R
2017-07-06, 12:10 PM
Character design without GM input is a chancy proposition. He's designing characters that don't fit your game, but that's partially because he doesn't know what would.

I usually provide a 3-5 page document explaining the campaign and character requirements.

One paragraph from a game a few years ago:

These are early Silver Age characters, which means that they have difficulties and weaknesses. Don’t try to make a character who can survive anything. The team books of the time leaned on the weaknesses of each character, allowing other heroes to rescue the one in trouble. (Kryptonite was extremely common in Justice League stories, for instance.) You may assume that I will arrange to take each of you out of the action occasionally, for story purposes. Don’t make me have to drop a mountain on you to do it.

Because they'd seen this, nobody tried to create a character with no weaknesses.

TeChameleon
2017-07-07, 02:05 AM
I hope I don't come across as condescending or mean here, or anything like that, but it really sounds to me like some of the problem is lack of GM creativity; I took one look at the 'ghost that can't be killed' thing, and then noticed that the other characters were sorta-kinda mystical in origin as well... and my first thought was 'well, does he have any kind of protection against being bound, or suctioned into a mystic soul gem and then left to gather dust on some granny-witch type's knicknack shelf?' Doesn't matter how hard someone is to kill if you can stuff them into a situation that they can't get out of, since 'trapped forever' is, for all intents and purposes, especially in a game situation, exactly the same as being dead.

Even non-mystical characters could mess with him pretty badly- imagine a telepath managing to latch onto his mind (at a respectable penalty, of course- ghost-brains aren't things most psychics want to mess with in other fiction) and flick the switch in his mind that says 'the floor is solid and I should be above it'- cue ghost-boy dropping straight through the floor and plummeting towards the Earth's core, at least until he can shake off the mind-messing-about-with.

Other weaknesses- you could steal a bit from Shadowrun, for example, and have astral barriers that stop a ghost like a brick wall while not even being perceptible to non-astral types, while the ghost could just casually stroll straight through a regular wall. Or take some of the old folk-tale ways of dealing with haunts- can't enter holy ground, a line of salt would act like an impenetrable barrier, silver would puncture him quite painfully (even if it couldn't kill him), maybe even have him re-form (X) hours after hitting zero health- he's not laid to rest, but he's sure out of the action for a while, and if he goes down in combat, wellp, too bad, he doesn't get to run around ghosting at people until enough ingame time has passed.

The 'Gaara, but even more murder-y than the original was during his first appearance' bit is a trifle odd- I'd honestly have questioned him about the whole 'combat monster' thing before fussing too much about the point allocation problem; if you're not planning on running a 24/7 murderhobo sim, maybe it would've helped to explain to him that if he built that way, he'd have loooooong boring stretches with basically nothing to do, since nobody was fighting anybody else and attempting random murder while trying to investigate a crime would be a bit counterproductive.

The whole 'suicidal mopey teenager' thing was just kind of poor taste, though >.>

But yeh... if I were in your shoes, I'd be taking a second look at the ghost, and seeing if he was still interested in playing that... with the understanding that being a ghost comes with some built-in weaknesses that have nothing to do with being laid to rest (and if you do go that route, have at least one fight pass through a grocery store and a baddie knock over the condiment shelves. Cue ghostie being beaned by the mystic equivalent of a brick avalanche as a big pile of boxes of salt cascade over him :smalltongue:)

Grod_The_Giant
2017-07-07, 07:30 AM
Yeah, I, uh... have to agree that this is kind of on you, sorry to say. I've played a lot of M&M, both supers and fantasy, and I don't see a problem with either concept.

I can see Insubstantial 4 being irritating to work with, but there are plenty of ways around it. Just make sure the "reasonably common effect" that still works is properly common-- salt, cold iron, something like that makes things easy enough. Not to mention enemies who specifically prep anti-ghost magic, and random super-mooks who rely on... pretty much anything other than straight physical/energy assaults. Telepaths, illusionists, light/sound manipulators, possibly... get creative. But I can also see why you'd not be happy about it. Immortality, though? It's ultimately a pretty pointless power. M&M guys are pretty tough to start with, and if they do go down... well, unless you paid through the nose, you'll still be out of the fight for a good long time. And if you did, it only works if you die-- if you just incap them, or declare them "down and dying," they're pretty much stuck. "Not dying" doesn't really help you accomplish anything.

And I don't see the problem with the sand guy at all. Sand control, immunity to suffocation, regeneration, whatever. Having everything be innate is admittedly probably not right, but persistent regeneration and incurable damage are both generally wastes of points. Mechanical errors are possible, but easily fixed. You should have worked with him to polish the mechanics, not rejected it out-of-hand. What exactly was he trying to do that you found so RAW objectionable?

CharonsHelper
2017-07-07, 07:46 AM
It's pretty much been said - but I'll +1 that the first two characters seem fine, especially the 2nd one.

Also - grammar and punctuation are your friend!

Anonymouswizard
2017-07-07, 08:29 AM
Yeah, it's all been said, the first character even sounds awesome. Was in a campaign with a fellow player who took insub4, wasn't overpowered compared to my host of immunities and immortality (and bucketload of sense powers, had to occasionally remind the GM of them).

(What, insubstantial 4 for 16 points, Immortality 10 for 'even if sufficiently harmed reforms an hour later' for 20 points? Sounds reasonable, and no 'when my business is finished' does not give you a discount.)

Honestly, just make sure that something like salt or copper can stop him, throw in a few villains with 'affects insubstantial' effects, and it's good to go. Although to me M&M should be a high powered, heroes rarely die (unless they bought immortality) game.

Heck, I have a character I plan to play who's physical defences are around 2-3 each, but resurrects at least twice a round. Can't be killed by anything, but when he's not taken out can dish out healing or debuffs.

Honestly, although the second I'd be a bit suspicious at ('let's just make the sand powers noninnate'), in his situation I'd probably also make a joke character for my third attempt. Probably might actually have tried to get 'Jeff the Insurance Salesman' past my GM (max Deception, paralysing building area affliction to represent offering them a good deal on their insurance, lots of toughness, regeneration, and immortality to stop him from being killed).

Quertus
2017-07-07, 03:03 PM
The player opened with good concepts, the GM kept shooting him down until he stopped bringing good concepts. It's clearly, by definition, a case of a toxic GM. I would love to spend pages ranting about how I feel about this, but that would be counterproductive.

The question is, how can this be fixed?

Well, my first answer is communication. See, here's the thing - posts like these, we can't really know exactly what happened and why, so our advice will be hit or miss. But what we can get is a feel for communication style, and, OP, I fear that, like me, communication isn't your strong suit. Why do I suspect this? Well, because your first post makes you sound completely to blame, and your subsequent posts to explain your position haven't really provided evidence to change my opinion as much as you seem to feel that they should.

So, since I'm bad at communicating, if I were in this position, I'd overcompensate, and over communicate. I'd spell out exactly what I wanted out of the game, and detail out exactly how the characters that the player built didn't match my expectations. I'd make sure the player understood my meaning, then I'd ask them how they would like to continue. I'd lay out the following options: work together to fix one of these characters, work on building a new character, work on discussing changes to my plans to allow the player to build a character he'll enjoy, allow the player to play as the villains I've built until he comes up with a character concept he wants to try, or some alternative the player comes up with that I hadn't thought of.

Now, OP, if you haven't shut down yet, and are still reading this, good for you! I've got a few pieces of that hit or miss advice for you.

First off, if a character being immune to dying is a problem for you, you need to go home and rethink your life. If your encounter design necessitates characters dying, you need to rethink your encounters.

If the only way you can imagine threatening a character is with their own death, then I have serious doubts as to your capability to run a worthwhile game. Off the top of my head, there's damage, pain, maiming, and unconsciousness, just in the damage department, that doesn't involve death. Then there's theft, abduction/imprisonment, rape*, smear campaigns, framing then for crimes, blackmail, and various psychological attacks from taunting* to bullying* to conditioning* that can happen even in normal muggle games. Add in super powers, and the sky's the limit: mind control, possession, memory modification, petrification, paralysis, teleportation, power negation, sensory deprivation, illusions, curses, transformed into a lawn gnome, or captured in a little ball & held imprisoned there until summoned to fight for the guy with the balls. I could keep going, but (I'm typing all this on my phone, and) I hope you get the idea. Oh, and then there's the fact that you can also do all this to his friends and allies.

Why in the world would death need to be on the table, when you're looking at a buffet that would make The Blob explode? :smallconfused:

Also, note that, when the player attempts to take death off the table, they're probably communicating something about their preferred gaming style. Much like taking teleport in D&D communicates that long overland journeys are likely off the table now, this likely communicates a desire for continuity. Listen to your players, and, if their desires don't match what you intended, be prepared to discuss this with them.

Taking Innate (which I agree isn't appropriate for a Gaara espi) communicates that he isn't interested in you ****ing with his powers - and that he probably feels like you did that with his first character. It's not a guarantee, but it's still a good warning sign that you've lost his trust. You should work to rebuild it.

Lastly, if you got different responses when you posted on other forums, you should look at the differences between what you posted there, and what you posted here. And, presumably, probably learn to consistently communicate more in that style than the one you've used here. If you posted the same thing every time, I suggest you stop relying on those other forums, as GitP Playgrounders are clearly superior to standard forumites. :smallcool:

* don't do these without explicit player consent. Or, better yet, just don't do these.

FreddyNoNose
2017-07-07, 04:57 PM
Character design without GM input is a chancy proposition. He's designing characters that don't fit your game, but that's partially because he doesn't know what would.

I usually provide a 3-5 page document explaining the campaign and character requirements.

One paragraph from a game a few years ago:


Because they'd seen this, nobody tried to create a character with no weaknesses.

Such documents are critical when dealing with new people.

icefractal
2017-07-08, 12:49 PM
I have to say, I would have switched away from the ghost concept too once you kept bringing up ways of killing it. It's not that it's unreasonable for there to be ways to destroy a ghost, especially in a supernatural themed setting (which it seemed to be, based on the characters), but the fact that you kept focusing on that point would make me think you intended to bring those up all the time and/or kill the ghost at the earliest opportunity. People get immunity to things because they want to usually defeat those things. Occasionally having a foe who circumvents that is fine, doing it all the time is not cool.

Related to this - I find the focus on characters being killable strange for a superheroes game. If the goal is just "survive", then I can do that 100% with "Captain Wealthy" - his only power is enough money to move the **** out of this crime-ridden hell-hole to a nice island somewhere. But for most superheroes, they have people they want to protect, goals they want to achieve, and temporarily being out of commission is just as much a threat to those goals. If you want "personal risk of harm" to be the big threat in your campaign, I would say that's atypical enough for superheroes that you should make it very clear up front.

The second character, I can't speak to the mechanic issues as there's not enough info, but the "combat monster" part seems natural - from the player's perspective, you just told him the main element in the campaign is fighting and possibly dying, so of course he's going to make a character focused on that.

Quertus
2017-07-08, 01:11 PM
People get immunity to things because they want to usually defeat those things. Occasionally having a foe who circumvents that is fine, doing it all the time is not cool.

The second character, I can't speak to the mechanic issues as there's not enough info, but the "combat monster" part seems natural - from the player's perspective, you just told him the main element in the campaign is fighting and possibly dying, so of course he's going to make a character focused on that.

Well put.

Good call about the combat monster part - I had missed the logical connection that made this such a clear line of cause and effects. GM focuses too heavily on killing the first character, the second one logically is designed with that in mind.

It's no wonder the OP said that this player is normally not a problem - everything they've done is simply the logical response to the input they were given.

Anonymouswizard
2017-07-08, 01:32 PM
Related to this - I find the focus on characters being killable strange for a superheroes game. If the goal is just "survive", then I can do that 100% with "Captain Wealthy" - his only power is enough money to move the **** out of this crime-ridden hell-hole to a nice island somewhere. But for most superheroes, they have people they want to protect, goals they want to achieve, and temporarily being out of commission is just as much a threat to those goals. If you want "personal risk of harm" to be the big threat in your campaign, I would say that's atypical enough for superheroes that you should make it very clear up front.

Heck, in M&M it's trivially easy to make a character who can never be killed without resorting to Immunities or Immortality. Reaction (when attacked) Teleport 1 is only 5 points and teleports you 30ft whenever you're attacked. Sure, no reasonable GM would allow it to activate before the attack lands, but M&M is a low lethality system by design (especially 3e). The standard way to leave a fight is 'unconscious but stable' even if everybody is throwing around suns and your a normal person in a bulletproof vest. Combining it with a focus on surviving is exceptionally weird.

Yuki Akuma
2017-07-08, 07:05 PM
I do love how quick this forum generally is to call out GM mistakes. A lot of roleplaying forums seem to take the stance that the GM can never be wrong unless he's literally stabbing his players, but not here!

Anonymouswizard
2017-07-09, 06:16 AM
I do love how quick this forum generally is to call out GM mistakes. A lot of roleplaying forums seem to take the stance that the GM can never be wrong unless he's literally stabbing his players, but not here!

Heck, this forum once tried to argue that a poster overreacted to being stabbed (by his girlfriend/fiancé, who he didn't realise he was antagonising), but yes. This forum is generally of the mind of that the GM's job is to help the players have fun, and that while that does allow him to make requests/changes the players always have the right to leave.

As I once said:
-Rule zero: what the GM says goes.
-Rule negative one: if the players don't like it, they go.

I do see an annoying amount of 'the GM is always right', I've stopped using my screen (which used to have skulls, katana, and 'The DM is God' on it, we were all 14 once) to try and drive the point home that yes I am fallible, and at the end of the day I'm still a player and we're all playing this to have fun. I've started rolling openly for most rolls and allowing players to roll their own perception checks, just to get across the idea of 'I'm trying to be fair', I think the only checks I roll behind my hand are stealth and similar checks.

Pugwampy
2017-07-09, 10:18 AM
Quite the game or tolerate it . Any other action causes more trouble .

Talakeal
2017-07-09, 02:28 PM
Heck, this forum once tried to argue that a poster overreacted to being stabbed (by his girlfriend/fiancé, who he didn't realise he was antagonising), but yes. This forum is generally of the mind of that the GM's job is to help the players have fun, and that while that does allow him to make requests/changes the players always have the right to leave.

I still say beating someone half your size into unconsciousness after they have dropped their weapon and aplogized is not reasonable. But thats an old argument...

But as someone who has made more than my fair share of gaming horror stories from both sides of the screen I would say that some people are quick to blame the DM, some people are quick to blame the PC, some people are quick to blame the OP, some people are quick to defend the OP, and some men just want to watch the forum flame.

Quertus
2017-07-10, 12:13 PM
some people are quick to blame the DM

That's me. I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn't the first / only poster pointing out the GMs issues in this thread.


Heck, in M&M it's trivially easy to make a character who can never be killed without resorting to Immunities or Immortality. Reaction (when attacked) Teleport 1 is only 5 points and teleports you 30ft whenever you're attacked. Sure, no reasonable GM would allow it to activate before the attack lands,

Now, I don't know that I've ever claimed to be reasonable, but I might allow it. It has quite a few glaring holes:

It only triggers when you are attacked. So, explosions, falling debris, poison gasses, diseases, vacuum, etc will all still give you the "dead" status.

As a reaction, is it not dependent upon your senses? So, invisible attacks, sneak attacks, shots from behind will get through. Also, technically, lasers are impossible to see coming, and bullets ain't exactly easy to spot, either.

Lastly, you're on a narrow ledge, and get attacked. Oh ****.

Anonymouswizard
2017-07-10, 12:30 PM
I still say beating someone half your size into unconsciousness after they have dropped their weapon and aplogized is not reasonable. But thats an old argument...

Oh sure, I agree with that. My point was this forum doesn't consider being stabbed an automatic reason to be in the right, why would we assume that being a GM was.


Now, I don't know that I've ever claimed to be reasonable, but I might allow it. It has quite a few glaring holes:

It only triggers when you are attacked. So, explosions, falling debris, poison gasses, diseases, vacuum, etc will all still give you the "dead" status.

As a reaction, is it not dependent upon your senses? So, invisible attacks, sneak attacks, shots from behind will get through. Also, technically, lasers are impossible to see coming, and bullets ain't exactly easy to spot, either.

Lastly, you're on a narrow ledge, and get attacked. Oh ****.

Sure, there's ways around it, but my point was it only costs 5 points to be theoretically immune to any attack. You still have 145 points to spend, why not grab Teleport 2+ to get out of other situations (including falling) ASAP.

Oh, and no, reactions activate automatically based on their triggering circumstance, the example used in the rules is an aura that damages everything that touches you. Doesn't matter if you can't sense the attack, your powers teleport you. That's why I'd limit it until after the attack lands, negating multiattack, and recommend also having a high dodge and/or parry.

Although M&M is a high powered game, it's only 44 points to come back to life eight times a round (planning to spring that one on a GM at some point, there's no rule against sticking 50 points in Immortality (by my calculations you can come back to life 64 times a round at that level). Oh sure, you can still be knocked out, but I love the image of an explosion and then one person caught in it falls over dead before standing straight back up, ten times a second.

Grod_The_Giant
2017-07-10, 01:11 PM
Although M&M is a high powered game, it's only 44 points to come back to life eight times a round (planning to spring that one on a GM at some point, there's no rule against sticking 50 points in Immortality (by my calculations you can come back to life 64 times a round at that level). Oh sure, you can still be knocked out, but I love the image of an explosion and then one person caught in it falls over dead before standing straight back up, ten times a second.
Meh, as I touched on up-thread, I think Immortality is actually over-priced. If you get taken out by anything except death, it does bupkiss. Unconscious? Enjoy your nap. Dying? Good luck, you're bleeding out for the next minute until it kicks in. I can only think of a handful of times in my years of running the game that it would have actually helped win the encounter.

CharonsHelper
2017-07-10, 01:50 PM
Meh, as I touched on up-thread, I think Immortality is actually over-priced. If you get taken out by anything except death, it does bupkiss. Unconscious? Enjoy your nap. Dying? Good luck, you're bleeding out for the next minute until it kicks in. I can only think of a handful of times in my years of running the game that it would have actually helped win the encounter.

If you come back super fast though, depending upon how you come back you could actually use it for problem solving purposes.

Anonymouswizard
2017-07-10, 02:08 PM
Meh, as I touched on up-thread, I think Immortality is actually over-priced. If you get taken out by anything except death, it does bupkiss. Unconscious? Enjoy your nap. Dying? Good luck, you're bleeding out for the next minute until it kicks in. I can only think of a handful of times in my years of running the game that it would have actually helped win the encounter.

If you use it as a Toughness replacement I think it's fine, but it shouldn't be your only defence. That build tanks Dodge, Parry, and Toughness through the floor but maintains PL Fortitude and Will, it's primary weakness is stuff like nets. Even then it's a horribly suboptimal build, you're giving up a third of your points to resurrect sixty times a round, I've never been in an M&M encounter where you could have died more than eight times a round.

I've been in a few games where a character with Immortality 19 and tanked defences would have been useful, but yes I'd drop it to no more than 1 point per rank. I think it's at 2 points a rank to encourage the limited flaw, you're likely taking 10+ ranks of it anyway might as well nab the discount.

Honestly, considering how much it goes against genre to have the heroes remain dead I'm surprised that it's even a power at all, might as well just have allowed players to take Immunity to Death (for say 5 points? I'd rank immunity to unconsciousness at about 20-40). Sure, it doesn't allow the insanity of 'just how many times do you respawn a second', but I don't think many people want to play that character.

Grod_The_Giant
2017-07-10, 03:07 PM
I'm just saying, neutralizing that build is as simple as saying "I don't care how low your Toughness is, you're not getting insta-killed." The game defaults to superhero cartoon physics, after all.

Anonymouswizard
2017-07-10, 03:44 PM
I'm just saying, neutralizing that build is as simple as saying "I don't care how low your Toughness is, you're not getting insta-killed." The game defaults to superhero cartoon physics, after all.

Which is why I'd rate immunity to death at no more than 5 points, how often will it really come up? You'll still need toughness for a few other effects, and you'll still have to put points into dodge and parry.

Heck, I'd only instakill a PC in M&M is if they'd put a large number of points into Immortality, they put the points into it so I'll make it worth something. But I'd actually allow a 'rez after a fight' power as a one or two point feature, it's not like I'm likely to make much happen until you wake up (which I think is something the game designers didn't fully appreciate, such powers seem more priced for a dungeon game).

CharonsHelper
2017-07-10, 05:17 PM
I'm just saying, neutralizing that build is as simple as saying "I don't care how low your Toughness is, you're not getting insta-killed." The game defaults to superhero cartoon physics, after all.

What if you stab yourself in the throat to remove all damage conditions? It seems like a pretty effective tactic at times if you come back every round or more.

Yuki Akuma
2017-07-11, 08:59 AM
What if you stab yourself in the throat to remove all damage conditions? It seems like a pretty effective tactic at times if you come back every round or more.

Well, then it's a self-heal that costs all of your Hero Points. You could've done it with one!