Quote:
Originally Posted by vierasmarius
That degree of player stupidity seems like a self-correcting problem. They'll either learn from their mistakes, or spend half of game-time making new characters, or just get frustrated and quit. If they felt they were taking actions as dictated by their character's flaws (ie, "This character has Impulsiveness, Overconfidence and Pyromania, so he'll always run ahead to tackle problems without thinking and using fire spells") then they'll keep losing characters until they build one that isn't suicidal.
|
This was another "wise and thoughtful wizard" PC. He had had a great deal of success using fire spells. The bad guy used Divination to prepare for the confrontation. Fire spells obvious came up, so he prepared accordingly. The irony is that the PC had a great suite of spells from
ALL FOUR elements. He could have cast Stone Missile just as easily as Fireball as his final spell. Had he done so, he would have survived. Oh well.
And yes, it was eventually self correcting. I told him (the player) that using divination repeatedly on the same quest object would muddy the waters (effectively giving -1 to skill for repeated attempts). What did he do? Kept on casting until his effective skill was 3. Then he (er, I in secret) rolled a 16. Critical failure. They ended up going to a completely different continent and having a rollicking good side adventure. But the rest of the party starting treating that character as a clown (and the players were
****** because they all suspected that something was amiss, especially when I later told him that his near daily divinations were getting him no results whatsoever). He got angry at the rest of the players (and me for being "unfair" in spite of the fact that
EVERYONE BUT HIM clearly understood that he as a player had caused the problem, not simply bad die rolls as he claimed) and simply quit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Walrus
Isn't Common Sense specifically purposed for such cases?
|
Yes. He refused to take it, which is fine -- I
NEVER gave suggestions out of combat or told him he was doing something outright stupid
UNLESS it had to do with character knowledge that he, the player, lacked, or an obvious miscommunication between myself and him. He also refused to take Combat Reflexes, then proceeded to whine about it (it should be free since you need it to do well, he claimed). I think I posted something about this a long while back with respect to stupid player tricks -- i.e., the lack of taking CR and then complaining that he was stunned for most of a combat after being ambushed. Them's the breaks, especially when your starting point budget is around 200 points.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding
Or they will continue to do stupider and stupider things until nobody is having any fun and the campaign dies. Best just boot these cancers from your group before it comes to this.
|
He was a friend. But fortunately the situation sorted itself out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vierasmarius
True. Ideally, the GM can talk to them and guide them towards playing more responsibly, with traits like the above-mentioned Common Sense. Or at least towards playing a character more suited to their play style. A Barbarian or Knight might be able to survive tackling challenges head-on (at least until backup arrives). A wizard... not so much.
|
The only other archetype he'd play to was Ranger. Unfortunately for him, he really doesn't do anything in the outdoors, and so it was hard to get him to understand some of my descriptions. And it was hard for him to manage to aim long enough for a good shot to count. Though his one ranger type was his best character overall. His main problem was that he was terrible at taking risks, and when he did so, he was terrible at dealing with the consequences of failure (i.e., capture, serious injury, or death).
---------------
Sorry for the side track. But that situation probably needed a bit of clarification. I hope that the default action idea works as well for your players as it has for all of (the rest) of mine.