How to prevent one of Talakeal's Gaming Horror Stories: PC Edition

[zinycor]

Yes, I am absolutely sure that Quertus meant that I had "failed to play correctly" by continuing to game with my friends rather than throwing them to the curb because we don't have a perfect relationship.

The color on that text is weird to me, since that seems like the obvious solution but you chose to say with sarcasm...

[AdAstra]

Her's a build question. Wisdom is used for downtime activities, but what else is it useful for? I would assume spellcasting, but you're not a caster.

From an optimization perspective, if your character has no abilities that are in any way assisted by Wisdom other than saves, and you don't want abilities that take advantage of your Wisdom, then any negative effects on your character are entirely your doing, since you chose to have high Wisdom rather than say, Strength. I'm not sure why you feel you need to be compensated for taking what seems to be a suboptimal stat spread for your "build"...

...unless you specifically designed the game to allow you to make any given character type through a variety of stat spreads. In which case, if you want a high-Wisdom non-crafting fighter to be viable, you should probably have designed other ways for Wisdom to be useful to such a character.

[Talakeal]

The color on that text is weird to me, since that seems like the obvious solution but you chose to say with sarcasm...

Its sarcastic because, while you might feel that way, I am fairly confident that is not what Quertus was saying, but I suppose we will have to wait for him to post again to be sure.


On a more general note, everyone has underlying issues with their relationships, and everyone has gotten into a fight or said something they shouldn't have to anyone they have ever spent a significant amount of time with. If I followed that "obvious solution", I am pretty sure I would have long since disowned my family, dropped out of school, quit my job, and given up on every hobby I ever had.

Her's a build question. Wisdom is used for downtime activities, but what else is it useful for? I would assume spellcasting, but you're not a caster.

From an optimization perspective, if your character has no abilities that are in any way assisted by Wisdom other than saves, and you don't want abilities that take advantage of your Wisdom, then any negative effects on your character are entirely your doing, since you chose to have high Wisdom rather than say, Strength. I'm not sure why you feel you need to be compensated for taking what seems to be a suboptimal stat spread for your "build"...

...unless you specifically designed the game to allow you to make any given character type through a variety of stat spreads. In which case, if you want a high-Wisdom non-crafting fighter to be viable, you should probably have designed other ways for Wisdom to be useful to such a character.

Every stat is useful for every character type.

The ability to play a character who is otherwise good in an area but has one deficit is exactly why flaws are in the game; so you can play a slow guy with a high dex, or a non-crafter with a high wisdom, or a blind guy with a high perception, or a one-armed man with a high strength, etc.

[zinycor]

Its sarcastic because, while you might feel that way, I am fairly confident that is not what Quertus was saying, but I suppose we will have to wait for him to post again to be sure.


On a more general note, everyone has underlying issues with their relationships, and everyone has gotten into a fight or said something they shouldn't have to anyone they have ever spent a significant amount of time with. If I followed that "obvious solution", I am pretty sure I would have long since disowned my family, dropped out of school, quit my job, and given up on every hobby I ever had.

I disagree with this idea, There is merit on knowing when to end a toxic relationship. You don't have to continue to share time with people that don't respect you as a person.

Every stat is useful for every character type.

The ability to play a character who is otherwise good in an area but has one deficit is exactly why flaws are in the game; so you can play a slow guy with a high dex, or a non-crafter with a high wisdom, or a blind guy with a high perception, or a one-armed man with a high strength, etc.

How is Wisdom relevant for your character then

[Talakeal]

How is Wisdom relevant for your character then

Allows me to resist magic and social influence, increases morale and pain threshold, and gives me a floating pool of "willpower points" which I can use to modify dice rolls.

[zinycor]

Anyway, back to the main topic:

In regards to how your group met each other, this seems like a pretty standard pirate crew.

Bob is an urchin with big aspirations, therefore he joins a pirate crew.
Sarah, is a mischeaveous pixie, she joins the pirate crew to run from people who didn't enjoy her pranks and travel around the world.
Your character is a ronin with no practical abilities outside of combat, joining a life of crime seems only natural to hide from whatever clan may be hunting you.
Dave can be the captain.

Seems like a pretty standard group.

[Excession]

Anyway, back to the main topic:

In regards to how your group met each other, this seems like a pretty standard pirate crew.

Bob is an urchin with big aspirations, therefore he joins a pirate crew.
Sarah, is a mischeaveous pixie, she joins the pirate crew to run from people who didn't enjoy her pranks and travel around the world.
Your character is a ronin with no practical abilities outside of combat, joining a life of crime seems only natural to hide from whatever clan may be hunting you.
Dave can be the captain.

Seems like a pretty standard group.

One lost boy whose friends don't grow old, a pixie, and a pirate. You're already a gritty reboot of a beloved classic, so you may as well lean into it ... how do you feel about humanoid crocodilians Talakeal?

Spoiler

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[zinycor]

One lost boy whose friends don't grow old, a pixie, and a pirate. You're already a gritty reboot of a beloved classic, so you may as well lean into it ... how do you feel about humanoid crocodilians Talakeal?

Spoiler

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That's amazing!

[AdAstra]

Its sarcastic because, while you might feel that way, I am fairly confident that is not what Quertus was saying, but I suppose we will have to wait for him to post again to be sure.


On a more general note, everyone has underlying issues with their relationships, and everyone has gotten into a fight or said something they shouldn't have to anyone they have ever spent a significant amount of time with. If I followed that "obvious solution", I am pretty sure I would have long since disowned my family, dropped out of school, quit my job, and given up on every hobby I ever had.



Every stat is useful for every character type.

The ability to play a character who is otherwise good in an area but has one deficit is exactly why flaws are in the game; so you can play a slow guy with a high dex, or a non-crafter with a high wisdom, or a blind guy with a high perception, or a one-armed man with a high strength, etc.

A question I forgot to ask before. Does crafting always require a specific skill to do? If so, it seems unnecessary to have both a build cost to craft, and a flaw that reduces your crafting speed. If you need skills to craft, and you don't have any crafting abilities to begin with, slow crafting is a no-brainer. Either you get extra build resources to do other things with, or you can use those points to get crafting abilities you wouldn't have at all otherwise.

I don't think using flaws is really appropriate for this. Compared to say, being blind, or having one eye, or an alcoholic, "slow crafting" doesn't seem like much of a hindrance from a storytelling perspective. It feels like a purely gameplay element, like "heals slowly" or "gets less damage when using axes". Rather than helping to make unique flawed character and not be hamstrung, this feels more like a minmaxer's tool. Plus "refuses to do manual labor" is far from an endearing character trait on the player side of things.

Nothing stops you from doing other things with your downtime, and also presumably, your other options aren't any worse than crafting. Your reduced crafting ability isn't really a meaningful hindrance if you can badger the other characters into making things for you, which could itself cause further inter-party friction. Item-crafting is something of a "party skill" due to items being transferable, so unless you've made it clear you won't ask other characters to make you things, you're not losing out on crafted items, other players are losing downtime making stuff for you.

That might be part of the concern for Brian. If you take the flaw, don't make anything yourself and expect other people to do the crafting for you, you're basically being rewarded with build resources for making other people do the work for you.

Therein might lie the key to convincing Brian if you're dead-set on doing that. Expand the scope of the flaw. Not only does your character refuse to craft, they're also too proud to accept items from other players without fair compensation. That way, you have assurance for Brian that you are actually putting yourself at a disadvantage. You'll always be behind a crafting character in terms of equipment without shelling out the cash, thus justifying your extra build resources.

[Quertus]

Yes, I am absolutely sure that Quertus meant that I had "failed to play correctly" by continuing to game with my friends rather than throwing them to the curb because we don't have a perfect relationship.

Its sarcastic because, while you might feel that way, I am fairly confident that is not what Quertus was saying, but I suppose we will have to wait for him to post again to be sure.

If I've kept the context here, this was in reference to

It seems pretty normal to argue your case when the DM rejects your character, or maybe its just my "bizarre world" experience.

Claiming that "I let my players do it" seems to be the natural counter to his claim that I was doing something in bad faith.

Shrug. Your GM took it a particular way. Because they took it that way, you have already failed at this particular task.

On a more general note, everyone has underlying issues with their relationships, and everyone has gotten into a fight or said something they shouldn't have to anyone they have ever spent a significant amount of time with. If I followed that "obvious solution", I am pretty sure I would have long since disowned my family, dropped out of school, quit my job, and given up on every hobby I ever had.

There is wisdom here / a certain nobility in perseverance.

Out of curiosity, what is the correct way?

Lost the context…

Also, do keep in mind that I have been conducting playtests for a long time now.

That… doesn't answer how the players perceive the game.

The system already includes almost all of that except for the planning, the political stuff, and the "unskilled laborer" stuff.

But the problem remains, there is absolutely nothing on that list that my character would have even the slightest bit of interest in doing.

Great! So, what will your character be doing during downtime?

Alternating between training, meditation, and failing at house-keeping.

I might have put some points into artwork to represent calligraphy or the like, but I certainly would never sell my work, which means that would make my character even weaker.

Well, that sounds suboptimal. Unless, of course, spending your downtime actions on those activities is actually balanced in your system. So, do "training" and "failing" improve your character - and, in particular, improve your character at an equivalent rate to "crafting"? Why / why not?

I could see adding a planning mechanic, that might be cool. I'll think about it.

Eh, I, personally, am probably not a fan of most likely implementations, so don't add it on my account.

I am not sure if I want to put a political system into the game; but maybe.

… you've never had anyone engaged in politics in downtime?

The unskilled laborer stuff mostly happens off camera and is exactly the sort of thing I don't want rules for.

… what? It would seem like the things that happen off camera would be exactly the things you'd want to sum up with a simple roll/rule.

However, who said anything about "unskilled"?

Speaking of, what is your character skilled at? Sense Motive? So, maybe they get a job as… a counselor… and earn money equivalent to what someone with equal crafting would produce.

I didn't keep alignment as such. There are no mechanical effects related to alignment, I don't actual use any of the D&D terms or definitions, and the section about it in the book is entirely in the section about creating a cohesive party.

A section which your party… rolled into a blunt and smoked?

There are really two questions packed together here.

I put crafting in the game because it is a tremendously important archetype in fiction. Iron Man and Batman derive the majority of their power from designing their own gear, and many other heroes have a gadgeteer supplying them behind the scenes, James Bond's Q being probably the most famous example. I wanted to make a system that was in stark opposition to the modern D&D approach of "You are an adventurer first, and whatever skills you have outside of the dungeon are irrelevant," and make crafters, scholars, and diplomats of various sorts into valid character archetypes; and they are typically very popular in my previous playtests.

Ability scores are there to provide a base level of competence. and part of intelligence and wisdom are providing boosts to crafting. The system has built in flaws in it so that you can recoup some of the points you put into those ability scores if you have no interest in those areas, but a character who is denied those flaws is going to be underpowered. Its not really a default part of the system; its just this particular DMs ruling, like how a wizard would be underpowered in a D&D setting where writing has yet to be invented.

So, if this were point-buy, and you could buy wisdom for 3 points each, or buy for 2 points each with the limitation, "does not apply to (number of) downtime (actions)", that would make sense, and I think most Playgrounders would accept that limitation.

However, when the Flash tries to buy his Dexterity with the limitation "does not apply to astral combat" or "does not apply when flying", it's likely to get shot down.

If Wisdom determines the number of downtime actions you get, and you've got a rich downtime system which allows you to do many things, then an optimizer who gets fewer actions to just one category will simply do the other things. If these downtime actions are balanced, then that won't impose too much of a problem (yes, sometimes, crafting really is the right answer, and they have to be slow, or take complex / suboptimal workarounds). However, when that's coupled with a skill system, and they haven't made any investment in bluff, a flaw that says, "you get fewer actions to run a con during downtime" doesn't sound like much of a limit.

Now, the theoretical "optimal" party would likely have either a dedicated crafter or crafting skills spread amongst several characters just so they can hit all the bases, but its no more important than any other character archetype. The team is more than the sum of its parts and all that.

Would an optimal party have a dedicated PR agent, a dedicated relationship manager, a dedicated rumormonger, a dedicated plot hook collector, a dedicated property manager, a dedicated financier? If not, why is crafting a more optimal use of downtime in your system?

That is VERY setting specific. Most undead do not reproduce naturally, and those that do are not bound to a necromancer's will. Heck, most bound undead won't kill random animals unless explicitly ordered to, and doing so will likely draw more attention to them from local churches and crusaders.

The undead hoard have standing orders to defend the hoard. A squirrel comes along, and triggers their orders - add one squirrel corpse. A hungry dog tries to gnaw on them - add one dog corpse. A sick brown fox dies, and gets lumped in with the lazy dog. The Necromancer checks on them, animates the dumb/sick/desperate creatures who chose to add themselves to the hoard.

That's what I meant when I said that the hoard grows by default.

Heck, the hoard could have a "deterioration rate", just like equipment apparently does if you're talking about "maintaining" it, and the Necromancer could use his downtime actions explicitly in a "grow the hoard" action. Their wisdom could represent their choice of where to park the hoard (elephant or dragon graveyards sound fairly optimal to me).

[Fable Wright]

Anyway, back to the main topic:

In regards to how your group met each other, this seems like a pretty standard pirate crew.

Bob is an urchin with big aspirations, therefore he joins a pirate crew.
Sarah, is a mischeaveous pixie, she joins the pirate crew to run from people who didn't enjoy her pranks and travel around the world.
Your character is a ronin with no practical abilities outside of combat, joining a life of crime seems only natural to hide from whatever clan may be hunting you.
Dave can be the captain.

Seems like a pretty standard group.

Suggested this back on page one. Got this response.

As for that specific example, Dave's character is a typical ogre, totally lacking in intelligence, charisma, or the skills that require them. I could easily see him as a crew-member or enforcer, but not a captain.

[zinycor]

I am playing a character who was raised as nobility and trained to fight at the exclusion of all else, with a team of servants to provide and maintain her equipment for her. I do not feel that it makes sense for such a character to have either the skills or the temperament to engage in manual labor.

Part of the value of the wisdom attribute represents patience and dedication, and as I have a very high wisdom score I am entitled to craft a lot of items, which I will never do. Thus I feel it is appropriate to provide some mechanical compensation for me choosing not to use a resource I am entitled to.

How is Trained to fight to the exclusion of all else = high wisdom? I don't think the character you described would be particularly patient or dedicated.

As you have described your chracter, my best proxy for someone in the current time would be someone who was raised on the high class, and was pretty spoiled as child, this person grew out to be very good at sports, but one time everything went to **** and they lost all support from their family. Now, this person needs to come rise to the ocassion on their own, despite the fact that they don't have many practical abilities for the daily life.

Now, I believe this could be a very entertaining character to play... I just don't see the wisdom in there... And in regards to the downtime activities this character would take part on.... I would imagine they would spend their time at parties (being pretty immature) or working on whatever (Desperate for money).

In fact, If I were in your position I would play this character as someone very superficial, who values money, race, and social standing above all, while trying to ascend... Maybe eventually lerning a valuable lesson about hard work or what matters is what is inside or whatever...

Suggested this back on page one. Got this response.

I see... But neither you nor me said Dave's character would be a great captain... So I don't think Tal's response applies...

[The Glyphstone]

In fact, the ogres terrible intelligence and charisma might be why the group is together. They are the only 'crew' willing to work for him, anyone else found a smarter/more charismatic leader.

[Kaptin Keen]

And finally, I had a bit of a conflict with Brian during character creation. Basically, I took a character flaw that greatly reduces the amount of items you can craft, but also didn't take any crafting skills. I felt that they were a natural combination, but Brian felt that it was an exploitative loophole. I told him that I wasn't doing it in bad faith, and indeed had allowed Bob to do the same thing in a previous campaign, to which Brian told me that he was the DM now and wanted to know why my previous decisions should hold any weight on his rulings. I backed down, because I really don't want to be a backseat DM, but I really really don't want to play a crafter and my character is going to be severely under-powered as a result.

This is why I don't allow any sort of drawbacks in my games. Turns out, if you tell people 'you cannot take any drawback that doesn't actually come into play' - no one wants them.

So I just hand out bonus feats. Keeps everyone happy.

[Lord of Shadows]

Just went back and re-read the thread... I had thought that some sort of effort had been put into pre-planning for this game, what is often called a Session 0. It seems that an effort was made, but that many issues still remain. Talakeal, you talk about how other players shrugged when asked about some things, and other things don't seem to have been discussed at all, often forcing you to have assumptions and expectations about how they are going to be handled. Chances are that the same applies to the other players and the DM as well. Since you say it is another month before this game starts, there may still be time to prevent many misunderstandings and problems in the party. You can even still do much of what makes up a "Session 0" before its too late. The rules system is chosen, and Characters are already created, but there are other issues that can be addressed. It doesn't have to be called a "Session 0" if that name would bother anyone. Call it a Planning Session, or a Strategy Session, or whatever. In fact let's just call it a Planning Session to make it as generic a name as possible.

Here are some of the issues you have brought up that a Planning Session could address:

Spoiler: Party Creation and Cohesion

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Brian is concerned about our alignments, as they are all over the place. He singled me out in particular here as I am the only one who actually wrote Evil on their character sheet. I tried to explain that, imo, LE is the alignment least likely to cause conflicts as you can just go along with the group, but I don't know if he bought it. Also, Sarah's character having both a trickster personality and being the only good character in the party is likely to cause a lot of tension.

Furthermore, we don't really have a reason to work together or a shared history. Brian gave us a document about the world, and asked us where we wanted to start. Everyone wanted to be from someplace different, so we compromised on setting the campaign in everybody's third choice location and everyone just had their character be an exile from the country they wanted to start in.

I thought Bob could be the nucleus for the party, playing a sort of mad scientist character and hiring the rest of the group on as minions or something, but he is playing an homeless exile who is less than half the age of anyone else in the group, so that seems unlikely.

And finally, I had a bit of a conflict with Brian during character creation. Basically, I took a character flaw that greatly reduces the amount of items you can craft, but also didn't take any crafting skills. I felt that they were a natural combination, but Brian felt that it was an exploitative loophole.

[..snip..]

I backed down, because I really don't want to be a backseat DM, but I really really don't want to play a crafter and my character is going to be severely under-powered as a result.

Spoiler: Party Goals

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I originally wanted to take riding, marksmanship, and survival, but I just didn't have enough points as I had to cover for other people's lack of necessary skills by putting points into intimidation, sense motive, and search instead. It was a tough choice.

[..snip..]

I don't care if the party steals or reneges on their contracts; although I won't do either. A party that never follows a play is just terrible in character and out.

Brian said it is the players job to come up with a working party, not his, and so I am mostly looking for advice on that front.

He did ask me for advice on dealing with a PC necromancer though, something which hasn't really been touched on in this thread yet.

[..snip..]

Bob said his ultimate goal was to establish a kingdom of undeath and try and take over the world with it, so I designed my character accordingly, as I can't really see a LN character going along with that.

Then I discovered he was playing a penniless street urchin.

Now, the theoretical "optimal" party would likely have either a dedicated crafter or crafting skills spread amongst several characters just so they can hit all the bases, but its no more important than any other character archetype. The team is more than the sum of its parts and all that.

[..snip..]

I asked the rest of the party about their character's long term goals. Dave and Sarah shrugged, Bob told me that his goal was to establish an empire of the undead. So I abandoned the character I wanted to play and instead made one that would work with Bob on both a practical and ethical level. It wasn't until after our characters were finished that he decided he was going to be an outcast street urchin.

Spoiler: Party Responsibilities

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The thing is, I designed my character as a follower rather than a schemer. I was really hoping Bob would take care of the scheming for he could play Palpatine to my Vader.

[..snip..]

The game doesn't have PC races per se, humans are the only default race and everything else is available as a DM option. I actually advocated for her to play a pixie because I thought it was cool for RP, but it turned out she just wanted flight and then chose to be a sprite instead for the invisibility.

[..snip..]

The biggest issue is that undead don't heal naturally and will be worn down over time, but the DM doesn't want to handle that level of bookkeeping and doesn't trust Bob to.

I don't think the retinue is a problem OOC, but I am pretty sure Brian is afraid Bob will insist on bringing a shambling horde of zombies into every combat with him.

[..snip..]

Edit: Yeah, our characters are all different species, drastically different ages, and from different continents. 90% of the things on that particular table just flat out wouldn't make sense even if we wanted to.

Spoiler: Undead in the Party

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I assume he doesn't want to enter a situation where the party is totally irrelevant to the game, and its just the three of us watching Bob takes turns for 900 undead minions.

I expect we will have a lot of undead servants to handle menial tasks for us.

Spoiler: Player Expectations

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Honestly, at this point I don't think I even want to play anymore. It actually sounds like all of the responsibility of DMing with none of the creativity.

At this point I actually kind of feel like I am back in school, where the teacher assigns a group project and I end up doing the whole thing myself because I don't want to fail and everyone else just bailed.

If you agree this is a good idea, you should probably start by suggesting it to Brian and explain how it could make his DMing job easier. Tell him to Google "Session 0" or shoot him the link at the beginning of this post. Some things won't apply (i.e., the rules system has already been chosen) and some things will. The reason the gaming community developed the "Session 0" idea was to avoid game play getting bogged down by problems later. Players can often become disillusioned, and even irritated, by disagreements and disputes over things that could have been resolved before the game even started.

You know your table better than we do... I could speculate about what certain reactions to this might be, but if Brian gets on board then it is really up to him at that point and how hard he wants to push it. Point out the likely consequences of a player who refuses to participate... Sometimes that may be OK, but as toxic as your group is, well, just think about it.

Also, keep in mind that this doesn't mean having to change characters. Many, many good ideas have been presented in the thread describing how and why this motley crew came together. A Planning Session would allow you to discuss those with the other players and the DM, who might want to incorporate something into his campaign.

Good luck...

[Pelle]

Also, having a flawed character is part of storytelling; you can't have a character arc if you start out without flaws. The idea that she was trained to fight and to lead armies but is currently in a position where she doesn't trust herself to do is the characters "tragic flaw" that will ultimately lead to her downfall.

So take the "Doesn't trust herself" flaw instead of the "Will not craft" flaw?

[Onos]

Welcome to my latest thread, a semi-continuation of the previous one, with the goal of preventing the new campaign into turning into another train-wreck. This time, from the other side of the screen!

Brian is taking over GMing for the group. We are going to be play-testing my Heart of Darkness system, link in the signature, but it is similar enough to 5E or E6 D&D that any advice to one will likely apply to the other and I will be using D&D terminology for familiarity sake.

So, we got together and created our characters:

I am playing a LE human fighter. My build is focused around playing the "defender" roll and protecting my allies, has no out of combat skills to speak of except for sense motive. I am a dishonored ronin, last survivor of my clan, currently working as a mercenary and looking for a chance to be part of something larger.

Bob is playing a N half-elf necromancer (although Bob's TN tends to be most people's CE). He is a 13 year old orphan who was chased away from his homeland for practicing dark magic and now lives on the street in a foreign land.

Dave is playing a CN ogre pirate. He can sail a ship, pick a lock, and beat someone to death with his bare hands.

Sarah is playing a CG pixie bard. She is focused on healing magic and scouting. She is a prankster, and plans to stay invisible or hidden as close to 24/7 as she can manage.



Some mechanical concerns:

Everyone in the party has the Iron Will feat and Wisdom as their highest score for some reason.
We don't have anyone with crafting or wilderness skills, and very little in the way of ranged attacks or social skills.
Bob has made his usual min-maxxed build and is playing an extreme glass cannon.
Sarah's pixie is going to be similarly difficult for him to deal with, flying and hidden, but without the AC or HP to survive anything that does manage to hit her (and she will often be out of range for the rest of the party to help).

Further, Brian is concerned with Bob amassing an ever increasing horde of undead and then forcing him to do all the book-keeping for him; and also being unwilling to accept any of the social consequences that come along with it or any sort of attrition mechanic for leaving his undead out in the wilderness and having them destroyed by wandering monsters or roaming paladins. This is probably the biggest issue.

On a broader scope;

Brian is concerned about our alignments, as they are all over the place. He singled me out in particular here as I am the only one who actually wrote Evil on their character sheet. I tried to explain that, imo, LE is the alignment least likely to cause conflicts as you can just go along with the group, but I don't know if he bought it. Also, Sarah's character having both a trickster personality and being the only good character in the party is likely to cause a lot of tension.

Furthermore, we don't really have a reason to work together or a shared history. Brian gave us a document about the world, and asked us where we wanted to start. Everyone wanted to be from someplace different, so we compromised on setting the campaign in everybody's third choice location and everyone just had their character be an exile from the country they wanted to start in.

I thought Bob could be the nucleus for the party, playing a sort of mad scientist character and hiring the rest of the group on as minions or something, but he is playing an homeless exile who is less than half the age of anyone else in the group, so that seems unlikely.



And finally, I had a bit of a conflict with Brian during character creation. Basically, I took a character flaw that greatly reduces the amount of items you can craft, but also didn't take any crafting skills. I felt that they were a natural combination, but Brian felt that it was an exploitative loophole. I told him that I wasn't doing it in bad faith, and indeed had allowed Bob to do the same thing in a previous campaign, to which Brian told me that he was the DM now and wanted to know why my previous decisions should hold any weight on his rulings. I backed down, because I really don't want to be a backseat DM, but I really really don't want to play a crafter and my character is going to be severely under-powered as a result.


So, anyone have any advice for me, Brian, or my fellow players on how to avoid the looming pitfalls before we actually start the campaign?

Alright, let's see if we can unpack this.

First of all, anywhere you're not using D&D stuff (like alignment) I'd strongly recommend marking this in some way, purely to stop people from picking at things which are irrelevant. Honestly something like "I'm playing a Lawful Evil(*) character with the Bad at Stabbing(*) flaw" would be fine.

While odd, all having the same highest ability isn't too big of a deal tbh. And in the same section "mechanical concerns" you've listed a lack of social skills - honestly if the bard is anything like a normal bard this should again be cool.

Bookkeeping for undead: unless there are any volunteers this is pretty straightforward. The necromancer deals with it. (That said, someone earlier in the thread raised the point that it may actually be to put DMs mind at ease. If that's the case that has to be explicitly voiced.) Likewise with the social consequences and maintenance, it's part and parcel of being lord of the grave. (Kind of setting dependant though, any Necrocracy for example would probably be chill with him.)

Alignment issues: honestly I think dealing with the specifics of your system would be better. "Loyal follower" and "Lawful Evil" could very easily be taken differently. I really don't mind (or use tbh) alignment at my table but even I would say there is a difference there. Unless it's going to have a big impact on the game I'd personally drop it altogether. Fair enough if you want to stick with it though, I get that alignment is a popular mechanic.

Personally I'm tentatively on your side with the flaws (would need to read the system fully to make a solid verdict but I agree with the semantics of your argument). But, it's not you or me running things, so you'll just need to put up with the ruling.

With regards to your character, you've mentioned that this was not your first choice and that your lack of Survival etc was also not your first choice. Honestly, if you're having major issues with this character, I'd suggest going back to what you had in mind before. Yeah it's not great but I'd rather use a character which will work at the table and save my super-awesome character for when it will get a chance to be used properly. Again, personal taste.

I'm getting major alarm bells from the sprite bard, like really major. Strongly suggesting a change of race to something a bit more standard.

As far as anything else goes, a proper session zero should sort you guys right out. In my experience it's not a great idea to have everyone make characters separately, and before the actual campaign has been decided to boot. Had some great times happen with a very dysfunctional party but generally more hassle than it's worth.

And my 2 pence why the party is together....well I really liked the idea someone had about the necromancer being a reincarnation of your previous master (honourable mention for "tricking" the ogre). Honestly though? You're a bunch of somewhat evil exiles and a fey. You happen to meet, discuss your respective lack of fortune (dumb ogre and naive kid spill the beans easy enough even if your samurai is too cagey), and the sprite is surprisingly down for whatever. Hey, fey are fickle, alright? Plus no reason you couldn't be out to corrupt the sprite, sprites also an exile from the feywild, the list goes on. At the point where you've made characters separately I don't see it as needing anything particularly iron-clad for a reason to adventure. DM could always throw the obligatory "prophetic dreams" or whatever if you guys really have to be tied together.

Best of luck Tal! Hoping for something slightly less horror-worthy from this campaign

[Thinker]

Sorry for the delayed response. I have been pretty busy lately. Some of this may have been resolved through additional commentary, but I haven't read through the entire rest of the thread.

Not really, no. But people who make glass-cannons tend to end up dead and pissed off.

Death is simultaneously a fantastic and painful mechanic. It represents the ultimate risk for the characters, the ultimate adventure failure-state. On the other hand, death in the middle of a dungeon or from a random encounter is disruptive and painful. Glass cannons are an extreme example of this risk-reward. If the GM is not willing to apply the risk, it ends up as all reward and an optimal way to play. A few ways to deal with it are to introduce alternative failure states, introduce death-cheating mechanics, and to have lesser objectives that can be failed. Alternative failure states would include things like getting knocked unconscious rather than killed in a fight; cost of resources; or addition of permanent disabilities. Death-cheating mechanics would be like a pool of fate points that can be spent to get out of death, but when it is used up the character is gone.

My favorite is to have lesser objectives, but it belongs in the "How to GM"" section, rather than the mechanics section. Essentially, have more than one objective for the mission. Not every fight should be to the death and escaped enemies may make another objective more difficult or impossible. Maybe the party doesn't have the resources to rescue the prisoners AND to seal away the ancient evil. There's a lot you can do to play with that.

The game doesn't have PC races per se, humans are the only default race and everything else is available as a DM option. I actually advocated for her to play a pixie because I thought it was cool for RP, but it turned out she just wanted flight and then chose to be a sprite instead for the invisibility.

I thought that the way 3.5e handled alternative races was elegant. Create a level track. At level 1, the sprite gets to be small and have some spell-like ability. When the player takes level 2 as a sprite, it gets levitation, at level 3 it can have full-on flight, at level 4 it can have some bonus to stealth, and at level 5 full-on invisibility. The trade-off is that taking these levels don't advance the primary class for the character. Otherwise, why wouldn't everyone just play super-powerful races?

The system doesn't have a hard cap, although spell slots are a lot more limited than they are in D&D. The biggest issue is that undead don't heal naturally and will be worn down over time, but the DM doesn't want to handle that level of bookkeeping and doesn't trust Bob to.

I don't think the retinue is a problem OOC, but I am pretty sure Brian is afraid Bob will insist on bringing a shambling horde of zombies into every combat with him.

The bigger issue, I think, is social consequences.

I think a way to handle that is to utilize some sort of horde rule for the mass of undead. Stat it as one entity with each additional undead adding 1HD to the horde. Whenever the horde takes a hit, the HD reduces by 1. Give the horde special abilities based on the number of undead. Something like at 2 HD the horde increases its damage die by 1, at 5 HD, the horde is Large-Size, at 7 HD sentient enemies need to make a morale roll or else be at disadvantage for a round. Then, you would just need an attrition mechanic - maybe every night the necromancer needs to make a spellcraft check. Based on the level of success, some number of undead may collapse. You could also give the necromancer abilities for dealing with more potent undead like vampires, ghouls, and the like.

I am not actually cribbing alignment from D&D; as I said I am using D&D terminology to avoid needing to provide constant definitions every post. My actual listed alignment is "Pragmatic Follower."

I am not sure exactly how allegiances work in d20 modern (please feel free to share), but my system does have an allegiance system; the problem is everyone is playing some form of exile from our homeland and we don't really know anything about the place where the campaign is taking place or its politics.

In d20 Modern, an allegiance is simply what your character believes in the most. The GM should come up with a list of allegiances relevant to the current campaign, but common ones include things like Justice, Good, The FBI, The God of Dragons, etc. Mixing that with more modern gameplay, I would probably make it so that acting to promote an allegiance allows the character to roll with advantage and acting against your allegiance makes you roll with disadvantage and limit it to one per scene. You could expand that to have additional benefits for classes that are heavily affected by their allegiance like paladins, clerics, samurai, druids, etc.

I am really wary of such things; have been ever since trying to play Spirit of the Century. I will give it a look though.

Edit: Yeah, our characters are all different species, drastically different ages, and from different continents. 90% of the things on that particular table just flat out wouldn't make sense even if we wanted to.

If they're all exiles in a strange land, maybe that is what binds them. They are all roughed up by local authorities, they all arrived on the same ship, or they were all arrested at the same time. You don't need a strong bond at first, but something to get them on the same page.

I don't see how forcing the players to chase good money after bad should be necessary.

If a fighter chooses a flaw that doesn't let them make ranged attacks, that should already be a big enough disadvantage without also requiring them to take weapon focus: longbow, if a specialist mage chooses to ban evocation, I don't see why you should require them to select magic missile as one of their starting spells, etc.

From a perspective of realism, you're right. Why would a character who cannot sing on-key try to be an opera singer? Clearly, they wouldn't. But in real life, the would-be singer doesn't get to be better at hitting things because they're worse at singing. From a game perspective, if the flaw is largely irrelevant, then it is just free points or abilities. If the flaw is the only thing enabling the character to succeed, then maybe the character's choices need to be further examined or the mechanics need to be tuned a bit more.

Conceptually, I like flaws. They're a handy way to make characters feel more unique. Ideally, flaws affect gameplay in some way, rather than giving static bonuses. Things like never going first in combat, being extra-affected by poison, having a weakness to cake, using twice as much material when repairing weapons and armor, providing disadvantage in specific scenarios, forcing a morale roll in the face of specific creatures, and the like are good ways to use flaws.

I have the link to my current playtest rulebook on my signature, if you would like to give it a look I love discussing any feedback you might have!

I will give it a look later. Like I said, I am very busy lately. Feel free to PM me if there is anything specific you are looking for feedback about.

[Friv]

I don't see how forcing the players to chase good money after bad should be necessary.

If a fighter chooses a flaw that doesn't let them make ranged attacks, that should already be a big enough disadvantage without also requiring them to take weapon focus: longbow, if a specialist mage chooses to ban evocation, I don't see why you should require them to select magic missile as one of their starting spells, etc.

The thing is, both of these things are situations in which they could have been able to do this. Would you consider okay for a fighter with Intelligence 18 to take a flaw that they can't cast evocation spells? Or even a flaw that says all their spells are much weaker? After all, they have high Intelligence, so they're mechanically suited to spellcasting, but also they can't cast spells. A flaw that weakens their spell-casting is meaningless.

This has sort of wandered off-topic, though; this is a thread about the party, not a thread about the game's design.

My on-topic belief is that this one is largely Brian's fault for not giving any kind of guidelines for the party or their composition. Party-construction is a pretty important step in a lot of games, especially if the GM doesn't already have a plan in mind.

[Reversefigure4]

A Planning Session would allow you to discuss those with the other players and the DM, who might want to incorporate something into his campaign.

Session Zeros are wonderful, wonderful things... but they do require a certain amount of basic co-operation and trust between the players and the GM to work. This group seems to be lacking trust in any facet, actively don't co-operate, and communicate their wants and intentions to each other very poorly.

If the GM says "This campaign is centred around you being gritty undead hunters, wandering from superstitious village to village in a Transylvania-like country":[LIST]

• the players need to trust that the GM isn't going to yoink them out of that by starting there then getting shanghaied into being pirates - a "surprise twist" that completely wrecks their character concepts.
• The GM needs to trust the players won't respond to that information by either:
• a)making a completely unsuitable character (a fey noble who lives in a castle in the Fairy Realms and is built for social politicking)
• b) a godawfully min-maxed undead fighter who can do nothing other than fight undead and will roll through every challenge in the campaign.
• c) combining the two, you get super necromancer who can do nothing other than control undead - min-maxed to wreck the campaign and totally against the point of it.

If the players have character concepts that don't mesh, everyone needs to be prepared to compromise - bounce ideas off each other until you come up with a party everyone, GM included, is relatively happy with. This doesn't work if nobody is prepared to compromise. It also fails if you can't trust people to live up to their word and show up with a completely different character for session 1 (Bob agrees to play the leader of a brigand group everybody is a member of... then shows up with an orphaned necromancer).

Players need to respect what the GM wants. If you're stranded on a desert island and the GM wants the game to be about scraping together improvised weapons by sharpening rocks, he bans Monks. For this particular campaign, they are both OP and don't fit the theme. It only works until the players complain bitterly about how they want to play a Monk because then it will be the strongest. If you don't want to play what the GM wants, then don't play - don't play and wreck it for everyone.

I think every mid-length campaign needs a Session Zero (I don't run campaigns without them, period), but I don't see Talakeal's group getting too far with it. It only works with groups who are prepared to somewhat work together and trust each other.

[Lord of Shadows]

Session Zeros are wonderful, wonderful things... but they do require a certain amount of basic co-operation and trust between the players and the GM to work. This group seems to be lacking trust in any facet

I think every mid-length campaign needs a Session Zero (I don't run campaigns without them, period), but I don't see Talakeal's group getting too far with it. It only works with groups who are prepared to somewhat work together and trust each other.

Oh so very true...<sigh>

[MrSandman]

The system already includes almost all of that except for the planning, the political stuff, and the "unskilled laborer" stuff.

I could see adding a planning mechanic, that might be cool. I'll think about it.
I am not sure if I want to put a political system into the game; but maybe.
The unskilled laborer stuff mostly happens off camera and is exactly the sort of thing I don't want rules for.

But the problem remains, there is absolutely nothing on that list that my character would have even the slightest bit of interest in doing.

Really? A noble who wouldn't do relationship maintenance? Or gathering information (from other nobles, obviously)? 😕

[Quizatzhaderac]

I agree, the character concept sounds like it should have useful skills (although it's another question if the system supports those).

A solider should be able to maintain their gear; a grunt absolutely needs to but an officers might benefit from knowing how.
War is 90% logistic;: an officer's main job is to get their soldiers to the battle on time, equipped, and healthy.
Feudal warriors aren't loyal to a nation state; if the commander doesn't inspire loyalty there is no loyalty.
Peasants grow crops. Nobles grow peasants. The power of a noble comes from their ability to grow/control/use people.

Regarding the character concept, if I may make a suggestion:

The character is a person who never asked "where should I go?" because they were always worried about "how do I get there?". And that she does in fact posses many leadership skills while missing the essential leadership characteristic of having a direction/goal. She always had a clear picture of what her life would be like (commander, lord, et cetra) but fate has unexpectedly cut that off from her.

She really has no idea what she wants to do now. She has many clear ideas what she doesn't want to do (mere farmhand, mere homemaker, mere et cetra), which is a huge personal problem as basically everything is unacceptable or unrealistic. Enter the party of misfits: wherever they're going, at least it's not "mere".

Idea for the start
Ontological mystery. Characters wake up in a field with their recent memories wiped. Characters find out they are geased and pointed at a target. BBEG's plan was to use transients that look like a stereotypical evil party do the deed and take the fall.

How that proceeds is matter of taste/player action/ system/ setting. Maybe they clear their names and kill the BBEG right away. Maybe they flee both the authorities and the BBEG. Maybe the BBEG keeps a hold of them and they spend their time trying to weasel out of doing his/her bidding.

Whatever the case, you've brought the characters together, forced them to work towards a goal, and left them in a situation where they don't have anything but each other.

It seems pretty normal to argue your case when the DM rejects your character, or maybe its just my "bizarre world" experience.

Claiming that "I let my players do it" seems to be the natural counter to his claim that I was doing something in bad faith.

I think the idea is that (as system designer) there is a much lower than normal bar for backseat DMing. Remember that you're not just politely stating your opinion/point of view you're exhaustively citing the game designer's intentions.

Also depending on your test goals, you may want to avoid even implying your intentions/ how you think the system works. If people read your text and interpret it as X, when you intended Y, play testing will show you those sorts of things. The more passive and detached you can be, the more of those things you can see.

[kyoryu]

Session Zeros are wonderful, wonderful things... but they do require a certain amount of basic co-operation and trust between the players and the GM to work. This group seems to be lacking trust in any facet, actively don't co-operate, and communicate their wants and intentions to each other very poorly.

If the GM says "This campaign is centred around you being gritty undead hunters, wandering from superstitious village to village in a Transylvania-like country":

If you have two possible problems:

1) Players showing up with a mismatched set of characters that don't work together because of not knowing what the game is
2) Players knowing what the game is about and explicitly subverting that in some way

I'd rather deal with problem #2. I don't think it's a good argument for "don't tell players what the game is about" because then what you're basically saying is:

1) I don't trust the players
2) I don't trust the players so much that I can't even deal with conflict with them in a reasonably healthy way
3) The chance of the players miraculously creating characters that work together is higher than the chance of them not sabotaging the game in some way.

I mean, really, it's just better to give the thumbnail, and if people do inappropriate things, talk like adults. If you're going to have conflict, then have it, but it's better to be up front about it than passive-aggressively trying to manipulate the situation around toxic personalities.

I mean I get that we're talking about gamers and all....

[Quertus]

Also depending on your test goals, you may want to avoid even implying your intentions/ how you think the system works. If people read your text and interpret it as X, when you intended Y, play testing will show you those sorts of things. The more passive and detached you can be, the more of those things you can see.

I just wanted to emphasize the correctness of this bit. The less attached you are to forcing your PoV on the game, the better equipped you are to see others' PoV.

[GrayDeath]

Given the very ... shall we say uncoordinated seeming group, did Brian actually give a theme/Game direction for you guys prior to you building your characters?
If so, what was it?

Regarding the other stuff, a lot of good posts already, I just want to add: Bob switched to being a pennyless kid after all the others had built their characters? If so, why didnt anybody say anything?
If he only told you then, given his prior way of palying, your fault for not aski8ng what exactly he played.
As it generally seems very, see above, uncommunicative given you are all starting a new game.

Still, you have a month to redo a lot of your at the moment pretty... wild mix of concepts, no?

[Duff]

It looks like your group would benefit from having a formal "Session 0" at the start of each campaign where you can "spitball" about character ideas. Let the GM and other players hear the sort of ideas you have around characters.

So if the GM is planning a lot of cross country trekking, they can jump in when no-one has any related skills with some suggestion. As a group you can discuss whether 2 glass cannons is how you want to play. It allows the GM to say - "Necromancer, do you want to do that much bookwork? If not, try a different concept"
It would allow the character relationship conversations to happen at the same time as the numbers happening.

I would say the whole "Everybody bring a character" approach works better if the GM has a plan to railroad the characters to the starting point. If the open words of the campaign are "You're in the market when [x happens]" or "You have felt compelled to come to this point. When you get here..." then there's your party cohesion. If you're a group who has to choose to work together for the campaign to happen, then it's a lot easier to make characters who will choose to work together if they are made with lots of cross talk

[Talakeal]

Sorry for the late response, holiday travels.

This is why I don't allow any sort of drawbacks in my games. Turns out, if you tell people 'you cannot take any drawback that doesn't actually come into play' - no one wants them.

So I just hand out bonus feats. Keeps everyone happy.

That has not been my experience. Well, I take that back, I did have one guy say that once, but he isn't part of my group anymore.

In fact, the ogres terrible intelligence and charisma might be why the group is together. They are the only 'crew' willing to work for him, anyone else found a smarter/more charismatic leader.

Maybe. And if the rest of the group goes that way, so be it, but I really don't want to play a pirate campaign in or out of character, and I think both Bob and I are a little too goal oriented to put up with an incompetent captain for long.

So take the "Doesn't trust herself" flaw instead of the "Will not craft" flaw?

That is a personality flaw, not a mechanical one.

Also, I am still stuck with the unused downtime actions that are really going to bug me and tempt me to do something passive aggressive at the end of every session.

Alright, let's see if we can unpack this.

First of all, anywhere you're not using D&D stuff (like alignment) I'd strongly recommend marking this in some way, purely to stop people from picking at things which are irrelevant. Honestly something like "I'm playing a Lawful Evil(*) character with the Bad at Stabbing(*) flaw" would be fine.

Good idea!

With regards to your character, you've mentioned that this was not your first choice and that your lack of Survival etc was also not your first choice. Honestly, if you're having major issues with this character, I'd suggest going back to what you had in mind before. Yeah it's not great but I'd rather use a character which will work at the table and save my super-awesome character for when it will get a chance to be used properly. Again, personal taste.

My original character concept wouldn't be any better, and it would be totally superfluous. I wanted to play an alchemist really bad, but Sarah really wanted to play a healer and Bob really wanted to play a mad scientist, and I wouldn't enjoy being in direct competition with them. And, without a strong tank, they will both die, and when Bob dies his undead will eat the rest of the party, including me.

I'm getting major alarm bells from the sprite bard, like really major. Strongly suggesting a change of race to something a bit more standard.

Same.

As far as anything else goes, a proper session zero should sort you guys right out. In my experience it's not a great idea to have everyone make characters separately, and before the actual campaign has been decided to boot. Had some great times happen with a very dysfunctional party but generally more hassle than it's worth.

We had a session zero. Its just that people were too headstrong during it.

Death is simultaneously a fantastic and painful mechanic. It represents the ultimate risk for the characters, the ultimate adventure failure-state. On the other hand, death in the middle of a dungeon or from a random encounter is disruptive and painful. Glass cannons are an extreme example of this risk-reward. If the GM is not willing to apply the risk, it ends up as all reward and an optimal way to play. A few ways to deal with it are to introduce alternative failure states, introduce death-cheating mechanics, and to have lesser objectives that can be failed. Alternative failure states would include things like getting knocked unconscious rather than killed in a fight; cost of resources; or addition of permanent disabilities. Death-cheating mechanics would be like a pool of fate points that can be spent to get out of death, but when it is used up the character is gone.

My favorite is to have lesser objectives, but it belongs in the "How to GM"" section, rather than the mechanics section. Essentially, have more than one objective for the mission. Not every fight should be to the death and escaped enemies may make another objective more difficult or impossible. Maybe the party doesn't have the resources to rescue the prisoners AND to seal away the ancient evil. There's a lot you can do to play with that.

Agreed. Still doesn't change the fact that he made a character who will die if someone so much as sneezes on him from a tactical perspective.

I thought that the way 3.5e handled alternative races was elegant. Create a level track. At level 1, the sprite gets to be small and have some spell-like ability. When the player takes level 2 as a sprite, it gets levitation, at level 3 it can have full-on flight, at level 4 it can have some bonus to stealth, and at level 5 full-on invisibility. The trade-off is that taking these levels don't advance the primary class for the character. Otherwise, why wouldn't everyone just play super-powerful races?

I didn't mind Savage Species progression.

Fairies aren't actually any more powerful than any other race, its just that the combination or flight + invisibility seems like it will create problems with party cohesion.

I think a way to handle that is to utilize some sort of horde rule for the mass of undead. Stat it as one entity with each additional undead adding 1HD to the horde. Whenever the horde takes a hit, the HD reduces by 1. Give the horde special abilities based on the number of undead. Something like at 2 HD the horde increases its damage die by 1, at 5 HD, the horde is Large-Size, at 7 HD sentient enemies need to make a morale roll or else be at disadvantage for a round. Then, you would just need an attrition mechanic - maybe every night the necromancer needs to make a spell-craft check. Based on the level of success, some number of undead may collapse. You could also give the necromancer abilities for dealing with more potent undead like vampires, ghouls, and the like.

House rules like that would be up to the DM. I'll pass it on.

I assume Bob will want to animate unique monsters we kill to employ their special abilities rather than simply adding to a horde though.

In d20 Modern, an allegiance is simply what your character believes in the most. The GM should come up with a list of allegiances relevant to the current campaign, but common ones include things like Justice, Good, The FBI, The God of Dragons, etc. Mixing that with more modern gameplay, I would probably make it so that acting to promote an allegiance allows the character to roll with advantage and acting against your allegiance makes you roll with disadvantage and limit it to one per scene. You could expand that to have additional benefits for classes that are heavily affected by their allegiance like paladins, clerics, samurai, druids, etc.

I do have something very similar in my system. I don't think the DM is far enough along in world-building for us to pick an allegiance yet though.

If they're all exiles in a strange land, maybe that is what binds them. They are all roughed up by local authorities, they all arrived on the same ship, or they were all arrested at the same time. You don't need a strong bond at first, but something to get them on the same page.

It works. But why would we stay together?

From a perspective of realism, you're right. Why would a character who cannot sing on-key try to be an opera singer? Clearly, they wouldn't. But in real life, the would-be singer doesn't get to be better at hitting things because they're worse at singing. From a game perspective, if the flaw is largely irrelevant, then it is just free points or abilities. If the flaw is the only thing enabling the character to succeed, then maybe the character's choices need to be further examined or the mechanics need to be tuned a bit more.

Conceptually, I like flaws. They're a handy way to make characters feel more unique. Ideally, flaws affect gameplay in some way, rather than giving static bonuses. Things like never going first in combat, being extra-affected by poison, having a weakness to cake, using twice as much material when repairing weapons and armor, providing disadvantage in specific scenarios, forcing a morale roll in the face of specific creatures, and the like are good ways to use flaws.

Agreed.

The friction is in the specific, not the general.

This has sort of wandered off-topic, though; this is a thread about the party, not a thread about the game's design.

My on-topic belief is that this one is largely Brian's fault for not giving any kind of guidelines for the party or their composition. Party-construction is a pretty important step in a lot of games, especially if the GM doesn't already have a plan in mind.

Brian very clearly told us that getting the party together and coming up with a motivation to stay together was our responsibility, not his. Good or bad, that's what it is.

Really? A noble who wouldn't do relationship maintenance? Or gathering information (from other nobles, obviously)? ��

I am an ex-noble. I have no living kin and am half the world away from my family's lands.

The character also has horrible survivor's guilt and is actively avoiding any positions of power.

I agree, the character concept sounds like it should have useful skills (although it's another question if the system supports those).

A solider should be able to maintain their gear; a grunt absolutely needs to but an officers might benefit from knowing how.
War is 90% logistic;: an officer's main job is to get their soldiers to the battle on time, equipped, and healthy.
Feudal warriors aren't loyal to a nation state; if the commander doesn't inspire loyalty there is no loyalty.
Peasants grow crops. Nobles grow peasants. The power of a noble comes from their ability to grow/control/use people.

Maintain, sure. But learning how to actually repair or craft gear seems kind of wasteful when you can just hire an expert metalworker.

My character likely would have been a very bad leader if things had ever gotten to that point; she actively scorned social abilities in favor of martial ones.

The character is a person who never asked "where should I go?" because they were always worried about "how do I get there?". And that she does in fact posses many leadership skills while missing the essential leadership characteristic of having a direction/goal. She always had a clear picture of what her life would be like (commander, lord, et cetra) but fate has unexpectedly cut that off from her.

She really has no idea what she wants to do now. She has many clear ideas what she doesn't want to do (mere farmhand, mere homemaker, mere et cetra), which is a huge personal problem as basically everything is unacceptable or unrealistic. Enter the party of misfits: wherever they're going, at least it's not "mere".

That was absolutely the idea. The problem is, nobody else in the party has a direction in mind either.

Idea for the start
Ontological mystery. Characters wake up in a field with their recent memories wiped. Characters find out they are geased and pointed at a target. BBEG's plan was to use transients that look like a stereotypical evil party do the deed and take the fall.

Remember, everyone in the party took Iron Will* and maximum wisdom; starting such a group off under mind-control is sure to piss somebody off.

Also depending on your test goals, you may want to avoid even implying your intentions/ how you think the system works. If people read your text and interpret it as X, when you intended Y, play testing will show you those sorts of things. The more passive and detached you can be, the more of those things you can see.

Agreed. Its hard.

Given the very ... shall we say uncoordinated seeming group, did Brian actually give a theme/Game direction for you guys prior to you building your characters?
If so, what was it?

No. He told us it was up to us.

Regarding the other stuff, a lot of good posts already, I just want to add: Bob switched to being a pennyless kid after all the others had built their characters? If so, why didnt anybody say anything?
If he only told you then, given his prior way of palying, your fault for not aski8ng what exactly he played.
As it generally seems very, see above, uncommunicative given you are all starting a new game.

He decided on it mid-session zero. I absolutely told him it would make it really difficult at the time, he shrugged and did it anyway.

It looks like your group would benefit from having a formal "Session 0" at the start of each campaign where you can "spitball" about character ideas. Let the GM and other players hear the sort of ideas you have around characters.

So if the GM is planning a lot of cross country trekking, they can jump in when no-one has any related skills with some suggestion. As a group you can discuss whether 2 glass cannons is how you want to play. It allows the GM to say - "Necromancer, do you want to do that much bookwork? If not, try a different concept"
It would allow the character relationship conversations to happen at the same time as the numbers happening.

I would say the whole "Everybody bring a character" approach works better if the GM has a plan to railroad the characters to the starting point. If the open words of the campaign are "You're in the market when [x happens]" or "You have felt compelled to come to this point. When you get here..." then there's your party cohesion. If you're a group who has to choose to work together for the campaign to happen, then it's a lot easier to make characters who will choose to work together if they are made with lots of cross talk

We absolutely had a session zero. I think the DM was trying to be hands off and let us come up with a direction before he started working on adventures or anything.

The thing is, both of these things are situations in which they could have been able to do this. Would you consider okay for a fighter with Intelligence 18 to take a flaw that they can't cast evocation spells? Or even a flaw that says all their spells are much weaker? After all, they have high Intelligence, so they're mechanically suited to spellcasting, but also they can't cast spells. A flaw that weakens their spell-casting is meaningless.

Evocation specifically, no.

But I absolutely think the game would be improved by compensating high intelligence fighters in some manner, as they flat out get less out of it than a caster would, and come out with an overall weaker character than your standard meat-head fighter.

How is Trained to fight to the exclusion of all else = high wisdom? I don't think the character you described would be particularly patient or dedicated.

As you have described your character, my best proxy for someone in the current time would be someone who was raised on the high class, and was pretty spoiled as child, this person grew out to be very good at sports, but one time everything went to **** and they lost all support from their family. Now, this person needs to come rise to the occasion on their own, despite the fact that they don't have many practical abilities for the daily life.

Now, I believe this could be a very entertaining character to play... I just don't see the wisdom in there... And in regards to the downtime activities this character would take part on.... I would imagine they would spend their time at parties (being pretty immature) or working on whatever (Desperate for money).

In fact, If I were in your position I would play this character as someone very superficial, who values money, race, and social standing above all, while trying to ascend... Maybe eventually learning a valuable lesson about hard work or what matters is what is inside or whatever.

That is a fine character, but it isn't the one I made.

Basically, my character is extremely focused and single-minded. She considered hobbies and socializing to be wastes of time. Think more of a Miko type to use an OoTS analogy.

I see... But neither you nor me said Dave's character would be a great captain... So I don't think Tal's response applies...

As I said, Bob and I are both very goal oriented; I can't see us putting up with an incompetent captain for very long.

Well, that sounds suboptimal. Unless, of course, spending your downtime actions on those activities is actually balanced in your system. So, do "training" and "failing" improve your character - and, in particular, improve your character at an equivalent rate to "crafting"? Why / why not?

Flaws give more character points, and I spent them to take additional martial techniques to protect my party. So yes, spending all of your time training instead of crafting has an effect in both fluff and crunch.

... you've never had anyone engaged in politics in downtime?

Not mechanically, no.

… what? It would seem like the things that happen off camera would be exactly the things you'd want to sum up with a simple roll/rule.

However, who said anything about "unskilled"?

I do not want mechanics for the player's "day-job." I want that to be something players should be free to come up with as they want rather than gamifying it into something that can be min-maxxed or won.

A section which your party… rolled into a blunt and smoked?

Metaphorically, yes.

Although one of our X-players might have done so literally at some point...

So, if this were point-buy, and you could buy wisdom for 3 points each, or buy for 2 points each with the limitation, "does not apply to (number of) downtime (actions)", that would make sense, and I think most Playgrounders would accept that limitation.

Terminology aside, yes, that is exactly how the system is supposed to work.

If Wisdom determines the number of downtime actions you get, and you've got a rich downtime system which allows you to do many things, then an optimizer who gets fewer actions to just one category will simply do the other things. If these downtime actions are balanced, then that won't impose too much of a problem (yes, sometimes, crafting really is the right answer, and they have to be slow, or take complex / suboptimal workarounds). However, when that's coupled with a skill system, and they haven't made any investment in bluff, a flaw that says, "you get fewer actions to run a con during downtime" doesn't sound like much of a limit.

Not all skills are equal in that regard. Skills that have a lot of active use during the adventure tend to be less useful during down-time and vice versa, they create a sort of balance.

For example, your earlier idea about allowing my character to make money equivalent to a crafter by using sense-motive is really unfair to actual crafters. (As an example, I always felt 3.5 tumbling was a BS skill because it was both one of the most useful combat skills AND did everything perform did, but was still budgeted the same as perform).

Would an optimal party have a dedicated PR agent, a dedicated relationship manager, a dedicated rumormonger, a dedicated plot hook collector, a dedicated property manager, a dedicated financier? If not, why is crafting a more optimal use of downtime in your system?

Ummm, no? Those aren't character archetypes in the game with mechanical representation. Class balance is good, that doesn't mean you need to invent a bunch of classes that aren't in the game.

The undead hoard have standing orders to defend the hoard. A squirrel comes along, and triggers their orders - add one squirrel corpse. A hungry dog tries to gnaw on them - add one dog corpse. A sick brown fox dies, and gets lumped in with the lazy dog. The Necromancer checks on them, animates the dumb/sick/desperate creatures who chose to add themselves to the hoard.

That's what I meant when I said that the hoard grows by default.

Heck, the hoard could have a "deterioration rate", just like equipment apparently does if you're talking about "maintaining" it, and the Necromancer could use his downtime actions explicitly in a "grow the hoard" action. Their wisdom could represent their choice of where to park the hoard (elephant or dragon graveyards sound fairly optimal to me).

I don't think the limit is sheer number of corpses, but rather spell slots and reagents. Honestly, if I were interested in animating small animals I would probably just bribe the local dog-catcher, its a heck of a lot easier and a lot less likely to draw attention from wandering paladins.

[zinycor]

That is a fine character, but it isn't the one I made.

Basically, my character is extremely focused and single-minded. She considered hobbies and socializing to be wastes of time. Think more of a Miko type to use an OoTS analogy.

And Single minded and extremely focused equals wisdom? I don't see it...

As I said, Bob and I are both very goal oriented; I can't see us putting up with an incompetent captain for very long.

Aren't you all friends? that's the reason to keep on going even with an incompetent captain... Is that not enough? If not, then look at it this way, Bob's character is a beggar, your character is a fugitive, You both can't get any better than this disfunctional crew to accept you.

[Talakeal]

And Single minded and extremely focused equals wisdom? I don't see it...

I would say that focus, determination, and willpower are all aspects of wisdom. Not the whole of it mind you, but a significant portion of it.

Aren't you all friends? that's the reason to keep on going even with an incompetent captain... Is that not enough? If not, then look at it this way, Bob's character is a beggar, your character is a fugitive, You both can't get any better than this dysfunctional crew to accept you.

No, we aren't friends. That's the problem. At this point we are all strangers with no reason to work together, and as everyone in the group is Evil and / or chaotic and suffering from numerous psychological disorders I don't think trust and loyalty are going to be high on anyone's list of motivations, at least at the start.

My character has no criminal history, nor any reason to become a common criminal. I guess I could see circumstances forcing me down that path, but that would take a lot of input / buy in from the DM. Currently I would rather (both in and out of character) rather work as a dockhand than a pirate.