A rant about bad table experiences; maybe also looking for advice

[quinron]

I'm currently running Pathfinder 2e's Age of Ashes: Hellknight Hill module. I wanted to try out this system, and I figured the first adventure they printed for it would be a decent start, at least mechanics-wise. I tend to think of myself as a good "teaching GM" and am thus prone to starting with a mix of new and experienced players in my group, but since this is basically my playtest of the system, I wanted to have a group that was familiar with RPGs to some degree. I pulled in my brother and 3 friends who I've run games for in the past; for my brother and one of these friends, I'm the only GM they've ever played with, and I think that might be the case for one of the other friends.

This group is spread out across about half a state, so we've been playing over Discord. Everyone except me has been using a bot for dice rolls. The past few sessions, my brother has started out the game in a bit of a funk from his day, and that combined with some frankly unbelievably bad luck has made him incredibly angry at every failed roll the past few sessions. He asked me to start rolling for him, but that didn't improve his luck very much; eventually I caught myself trying to convince myself that I'd rolled a die badly as an excuse to reroll it because I didn't want to have to deal with him getting pissed off again. It's getting to the point where I don't want to keep playing this game; I haven't heard anything from the other players, but I'm sure it can't be fun for them.

This is the first non-D&D 5e game that I've played with my brother, so it's the first non-D&D 5e game he's played. He really gravitates toward rogues (including the one he's playing now), mostly, it seems, because sneaking and getting advantage in 5e means he hits for big damage on almost every attack. I think part of the problem is that when he can't make every roll with advantage, he has a much higher chance of failure and thus a greater percentage of his rolls are failures. If he were more of a nerd and cared as much about being powerful as he does about looking powerful, I think he'd be a pretty awful munchkin. I think he's also misunderstanding how rogues work in this game - he likes sneaking ahead and landing single-strike takedowns in 5e, and he's playing his character like that, but the more skills-and-teamwork-oriented rogue of PF2e means he's getting into a lot of situations where he's just kind of useless because he's trying to go solo. At least a couple times it's resulted in him getting mad at one of the other players (the one he's least familiar with, therefore the one he's least concerned about alienating) when that player does something that annoys him or could be construed as messing up his plan.

I know the "correct" answer here: talk to him about his anger, and if he can't get it under control, cut him from the group. But I know from past experiences (including some pretty recent ones) that broaching this subject is just going to make him mad at me instead of at the game, and even if I could get him to tone it down a bit, I know that won't last indefinitely. That's why this is mostly just a rant. But if anyone has any relevant experience, either in terms of table problems with family members or dealing with players' anger issues, I'd really appreciate them.

[Pex]

His character is wrong for his style of play. He wants a sneaking warrior. Rogue works for that in 5E. Apparantly not in Pathfinder 2E. Look for a class more suitable to his style. He needs a class that does lots of damage on any hit not circumstantial. He probably doesn't want heavy armor and still needs roguish skills, mainly to hide and notice things. I'm guessing fighter or ranger would suit better. With lots of damage on every hit the occasional miss won't hurt as much. He can keep all roleplaying background that developed. No need to justify the change in game. It just is. Rearrange ability scores as needed and don't worry if the backgrounds he chose originally don't match. That can be fixed in the hypothetical next campaign for the new character.

It is also partially the game system's fault. Taking multiple attacks in a round provide a penalty. Even when hitting on your first attack your second, third attack in a round becomes easier to miss. That's a major difference from 5E where there is no penalty by default plus the Advantage/Disdvantage system. I've seen players have bad luck, even in 5E, so it's no picnic regardless of system but Pathfinder is not helping here with the multiattack penalty. It's a cheesey bandaid, but consider giving him a +1 or +2 magic weapon. It helps offset the attack penalty and gives him more dice to roll damage to compensate not getting sneak attack.

He is taking out his frustration on the other player. That does need to stop, but having the frustration is not entirely unwarranted.

[MoiMagnus]

I agree with Pex. The class is ill-fitted. That's possibly a failure of PF2, though I totally understand their decision of trying to distance the Rogue from the Dex Fighter by making the Rogue more of a team player and keeping the Dex fighter as the "I want to deal damage with a martial build based around ranged attack and/or stealth". Lashing out on other players is wrong, but there should definitely be a discussion about changing the class of the character (while keeping the same character, it's just that he will be a "rogue" that uses the features of another class).

[Faily]

Yeah, I agree with Pex and MoiMagnus that it just doesn't seem like PF2's Rogue is working well with him, and if he's accustomed to D&D5e, then I can see PF2 being a very different beast to tackle. And he might not like it (and that's ok, people can like different games).


As for the annoyance with failed rolls, speaking only for myself here, I would chalk that up to frustration with the escapism, that is the game, isn't providing what he wants. Which is success and the feeling of accomplishment. In the past year, for understandable reasons, I've noticed that that one is an overarching trend with a lot of players I know across different playgroups and systems - you just really want a sense of having some control and ability to affect the world, and this game-world will do, because it's certainly not working in the real-world nowadays. Last game I ran, I was much more forgiving and rewarding of the players (as well as reducing the difficulty of some rolls I had planned), because I just really wanted us all to have that escapism.

[quinron]

As for the annoyance with failed rolls, speaking only for myself here, I would chalk that up to frustration with the escapism, that is the game, isn't providing what he wants. Which is success and the feeling of accomplishment. In the past year, for understandable reasons, I've noticed that that one is an overarching trend with a lot of players I know across different playgroups and systems - you just really want a sense of having some control and ability to affect the world, and this game-world will do, because it's certainly not working in the real-world nowadays. Last game I ran, I was much more forgiving and rewarding of the players (as well as reducing the difficulty of some rolls I had planned), because I just really wanted us all to have that escapism.

I think this is closer to it than the class specifically not suiting him. He gets just as angry failing a sequence of skill rolls as a sequence of attacks. What has made me kind of upset with him is that he's getting so vocally angry. The other players are failing (or saving throws against their effects are succeeding) in roughly the same proportion as him and are taking it in stride, but because of how he's playing his character, he's actually making more rolls than the others. He's repeatedly mentioned how he's annoyed that certain things cut into his action economy (he didn't use those words, but that's what he's complaining about), so he seems to be prioritizing being able to make as many rolls as possible. But instead of viewing more actions as "more opportunities for a single failure not to matter," he seems to be treating it as "more opportunities for a single failure or series of failures to piss him off."

Honestly, I think this might just not be the system for him.

Thanks for the responses, though - I don't think it's the class that's the problem, but I probably wouldn't even have considered that if you guys hadn't brought it up. That's definitely something I'll keep an eye on for future upset players.