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Oslecamo
2008-09-27, 12:41 PM
Ok, here's the deal. I'm DMing a 12th level gestalt campaign in a PbP here in the forums. The only special rule in character creation was that no multiclassing or Prcing are allowed. It was someone else's idea and I took interest in DMing this madness.

So, people appear, character sheets are created and reviewed.

It's then that I find one particular sheet. A CG dwarf cleric/knight of Thor. With 14 Wis total. And even then with way more stats than the point buy I allowed.

I warn him, and so he goes and remakes his sheet. Still with 14 wis. With 6th level spells prepared. So I warn him again and so he buys a periapt of wisdom +6.

Then I notice his prepared spells are all messed up, sometimes with more spells than he's allowed and sometimes with less spells than he should have. And half those spells are cure spells.

So I point the incosistencies out and he says he'll just prepare the respective summon monster spells for each spell slot and then gets the domain spells right.

Oh, and he's wearing mountain plate, heavy armor that specifically slows dwarves down. Not enchanted, so his total AC is 23. He also took as lovely feats as improved critical:warhammer, endurance, diehard and great cleave despite going hammer and shield.

But I tell myself:He's half cleric, he'll manage to hold on his weight.

Right? Wrong.

First battle. Some undead incorporeal swarms. Nasty, but hey, it's a 12th gestalt campaign, and one of the party members had a paladin/cleric with BoED turning feats to rape undeads all day long, not to mention a swordsage/rogue with a ghost weapon and a crazy monk/swordsage with more attacks you can count.

What does the cleric/knight do? Simple attack. Completely unbuffed besides his +2 shock warhammer and +6 belt of giant strenght. When it was already clear they were fighting incorporeal swarms and he had only 50% chance to hurt them with just a magic weapon. While one of his allies is bleeding to the death just near him.

So I point out that that may not be the best course of action, so instead he starts summoning a hound archon. I stop caring for the moment and pray the rest of the party makes up for it.

Everybody else takes their actions and it's the dwarf again. Cure serious wounds in the bleeding ally. Hurrah!

And he rolls 2d8+6, saying he thinks his caster level is 6.

I start to panic. Does this guy knows how to play D&D at all?

So I come here and make this thread to ask you advice. I don't want to kick him. I know the 3.5 rules can be confusing, and sometimes people just need some advice. But we're talking about someone who doesn't know his caster level and doesn't know how much healing his spells do and didn't know how to properly make a prepared spell list.

How should I handle this player whitout hurting his feelings(too much) and at the same time keeping the campaign going as smoothly as possible?

valadil
2008-09-27, 12:55 PM
Out of game offer to help him with his build. You don't want to look like you're taking over the character - you're just helping him keep up with the other players. In game, let him choose his actions and then tell him what to roll to resolve them. If he chooses something less than effective you can present the rules as a question. Be like "that warhammer only does d8 + 6 if you hit, wouldn't blade barrier hurt him more?"

Kurald Galain
2008-09-27, 01:18 PM
I start to panic. Does this guy knows how to play D&D at all?

He is likely not as familiar with character optimization as most people on these forums.

sonofzeal
2008-09-27, 01:30 PM
Ugh, yeah, there's probably some serious problems. His sheet will need a full audit and will need to be fully notated, and everything double-checked and explained. Personally, I'd kindly ask him what his prior D&D experience is, whether he's played at this level before, whether he's done gestalt before. If he hasn't done either, I'd suggest that a high-level gestalt campaign may not be the best place to learn. If he still wants to play... well, I wouldn't mind auditing his sheet and clearing up any issues, if you sent it to me. I do that for most of my newbie friends already.

snoopy13a
2008-09-27, 01:37 PM
Just let him play and have fun but scale back the difficulty a little to take his play into account.

Oslecamo
2008-09-27, 01:38 PM
Well, here's the sheet if you wanna look, it's not like it's secret or anything:

http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheets/view.php?id=80127

Hey I just noticed now but he only has 3 ranks in concentration!

Kurald Galain:Sincerly, there's a diference between not being a good optimizer, and being unable to read what one of the most simple spells of the game does.

snoopy13a:Well, what I've been doing so far is making the things he summons fight to the top of their ability, and filling in whatever he forgets to specify. For example, he doesn't say where he wants the summons to appear, so I just make them appear where I think it would help the party more.

Diamondeye
2008-09-27, 01:50 PM
The character isn't too terrible, although not really optomized. I think the player is definitely focusing on the melee aspects of the character with the clerical aspects as secondary, while the party thinks its the reverse.

I also get the impression from your description of the problems in initially generating the character that he's unfamiliar with spellcasters, and that's being exacerbated by gestalt play.

sonofzeal
2008-09-27, 01:53 PM
Questions - how much gold should he have, what sort of base stat generation was used, and are there any special rules?

Oslecamo
2008-09-27, 02:00 PM
WBL for lv 12, 32 point buy, gestalt(duh), no multiclassing or Prc, diplomacy skill using the GiTP rules.

Diamondeye:Indeed it seems his trouble is more with the caster side of the build. And people still say casters are easy to play.

sonofzeal
2008-09-27, 02:07 PM
- his "Improved Critical" is illegal, since he supposedly took it at lvl 5 and is not even on the Knight Bonus Feat list to begin with.

- his "Dwarven Armor Proficiency" is similarly not on the Knight list.

- Talk to him about why his armor is Mithril; that's a huge price increase and offers very little benefit for him. At least let him know that, for the same price, he could improve its armor rating by 3 (up to 13).


SPELLS
lvl0 - 6/day - DC 15 - spontaneously cure 1
lvl1 - 7/day +1domain - DC 16 - spontaneously cure 1d8+5
lvl2 - 6/day +1domain - DC 17 - spontaneously cure 2d8+10
lvl3 - 5/day +1domain - DC 18 - spontaneously cure 3d8+12
lvl4 - 5/day +1domain - DC 19 - spontaneously cure 4d8+12
lvl5 - 4/day +1domain - DC 20 - spontaneously cure 1d8+12, 6 targets
lvl6 - 2/day +1domain - DC 21 - spontaneously cure 120
lvl7 - 1/day +1domain - DC 22 - Regenerate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/regenerate.htm)

sonofzeal
2008-09-27, 02:21 PM
- Ask him about Mithral on the shield while you're at it; all it does is reduce ACP for him, and the same money could increase the AC by 1.

- Skill rank budget: 30 Skill ranks spent: 51 (since craft:stone and craft:metal are two different skills). And yeah that Concentration needs work.


GP BUDGET: 88,000

Armor = 11501 gp (2500 base + 9000 mithral + 1 holy symbol)
Shield = 1021 gp (20 base + 1000 mithral + 1 holy symbol)
Weapon = 8012 gp (12 base + 8000 magic)
Belt of Strength +6 = 36,000 gp
Periapt of Wisdom +6 = 36,000 gp
Various other knicknacks = probably < 100 gp
Gold on hand = 14,980 gp

TOTAL: 107,514 + misc

- He's managed to simultaneously under-equip himself and STILL go over his budget. My advice is to reduce those +6 items to +4 items, and try to squeeze in a Cloak of Resist +1 and Ring of Protection +1 at the very least.

Oslecamo
2008-09-27, 02:54 PM
Thanks for spoting all those stuff. I really didn't bother to review all of it since the end result was so weak and I was short on time, but I'll try to point those out now and sugest a more effecient build.

EDIT:Actually, the mitral mountain plate could be effecient if he just casted magic vestment twice a day on the thing.

Diamondeye
2008-09-27, 03:10 PM
Diehard and Endurance are on the Knight list, so all he really needs to do is reassign feats to the correct slots; an easy fix.

sonofzeal
2008-09-27, 03:38 PM
EDIT:Actually, the mitral mountain plate could be effecient if he just casted magic vestment twice a day on the thing.
Mithral Mountain Plate is NEVER going to be efficient on a character with Armor Mastery:Heavy and Dex 12. He gets absolutely no benefit from that except lower Armor Check Penalty, and the only trained skill that applies on is Ride. He could get the same benefit out of a 900 gp magic item of +3 to Ride, and save himself 8,100 gp.

UglyPanda
2008-09-27, 03:43 PM
When was the last time this guy played and what did he play? How much roleplaying experience does this guy have? I personally think he needs to start rebuilding his character from scratch and reread the core three. He chould possibly sit out a session or two until he gets his stuff together.

-Races of Stone explicitly states that mountain plate always counts as heavy, regardless of material. So, how many books are you giving him access to and is he just skimming the charts and not reading the descriptions?
-What were his starting stats? Where did he spend the stat points from leveling up? Did he spend them on low stats rather than high stats?
-Try to get him to realize that a character is better if they spend their money on many average items rather than a few good items. Make him go over how much his items cost, just to make sure he overspent out of ignorance rather than malice.
-All of his feats, save power attack, suck. All of them except for one are also core. Did he just put down the feats and then refuse to change them no matter what other books he looked at?

Oslecamo
2008-09-27, 05:33 PM
Mithral Mountain Plate is NEVER going to be efficient on a character with Armor Mastery:Heavy and Dex 12. He gets absolutely no benefit from that except lower Armor Check Penalty, and the only trained skill that applies on is Ride. He could get the same benefit out of a 900 gp magic item of +3 to Ride, and save himself 8,100 gp.

Yeah, you're right, complete waste of money actually. My bad. I have so many books I many times skip important details.


UglyPanda:Unfortenetaly, I can't really afford to make a full questionare to everybody who appears in the recruitment thread.

I allowed EVERYTHING 3.5 under the sun, so that's one of the reasons I'm worried about his lack of optimization.


About items, when the campaign started, he had zero stat enanching items. He had just taken one freaking +5 shock warhammer and the plate. Persuading him to get stat enanching items so he could cast spells was hard by itself. Now working in trying him to get some minor items.

As for the feats, well, everybody has their tastes, and at least he hadn't more feats than he was suposed to. So I was focused in trying him to prepare a decent spell selection.

I've sent him a PM pointing out the errors with his sheet, and then with several sugestions on how to further improve his character. Still waiting for answer.

Thanks everybody for the sugestions.

Ricky S
2008-09-27, 06:59 PM
HI.

With regards to your player I suggest both you and the player sit down before a session and then create a new player sheet. Don't allow him to multi-class and talk him through the character creation. Ask him what sort of character he wants to play and then help him create that character. Just give him a specific few spells to cast to stop all the confusion. Only once he starts getting the idea then he can use more spells. Also giving him the players handbook helps a lot to figure out the rules and makes it easier to understand. I have only been playing for about a year and reading the rulebooks greatly helped me understand.

Or alternatively you could give him a different class without spell casting. Say a Dwarf Fighter instead? That way he doesn't have to worry about the spells at all. Assuming of course that someone else can play cleric.

You should generally let him play it is a lot of fun just get one of the other players to nudge him a bit during the game.

sonofzeal
2008-09-27, 08:13 PM
Good luck! I don't mind if you direct him to me for some additional answers/advice if needed.