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[Pathfinder / 3.5 / D&D] Advice on an out of control Wizard (I use that term loosely)
Yygdrasil
Tree of AwesomeBostonRegistered User regular
Tree of AwesomeBostonRegistered User regular
Hey guys! Let me start by saying that I've been lurking on these forums for years and finally decided to register today (woo!)
I DM a Pathfinder compaign via a combination of Triapse OpenRPG and Skype with some friends of mine across the world. In the party, I have 2 Rogues, a Fighter, a Cleric and a Wizard. The thorn in my side is the Wizard.
I've never in all my years of DMing been the type to let my personal feelings toward the game dictate the way one of my players chooses to run their character. That being said, the Wizard in my group has yet to actually act like a wizard in any way shape or form. Instead, he's launched all of his feats and skills into some kind of rail gun. He wields a Heavy Crossbow and keeps Gravity Bow almost perminently cast on himself (his bow). His refusal to expend any of his other spells per day is nothing short of aggrivating.
I was excited to see that someone in my group actually wanted to play as a Wizard in the first place... so you can immagine my frustration when it turns out he wanted to play something so strange.
I can't deny that his choices have been effective. His damage is higher and more consistant than anyone else in the party.
That being said, I want him to be a Wizard... not a sniper rifle.
I've found myself daydreaming about having a Cave Troll rip his right arm from it's socket and leave him incapable of wielding the crossbow at all.
Instead, I appeal to the masses here to give me a different (perminent) option to prevent him from ever using his current tactic that doesn't involve severing an apendage.
Ideas?
I DM a Pathfinder compaign via a combination of Triapse OpenRPG and Skype with some friends of mine across the world. In the party, I have 2 Rogues, a Fighter, a Cleric and a Wizard. The thorn in my side is the Wizard.
I've never in all my years of DMing been the type to let my personal feelings toward the game dictate the way one of my players chooses to run their character. That being said, the Wizard in my group has yet to actually act like a wizard in any way shape or form. Instead, he's launched all of his feats and skills into some kind of rail gun. He wields a Heavy Crossbow and keeps Gravity Bow almost perminently cast on himself (his bow). His refusal to expend any of his other spells per day is nothing short of aggrivating.
I was excited to see that someone in my group actually wanted to play as a Wizard in the first place... so you can immagine my frustration when it turns out he wanted to play something so strange.
I can't deny that his choices have been effective. His damage is higher and more consistant than anyone else in the party.
That being said, I want him to be a Wizard... not a sniper rifle.
I've found myself daydreaming about having a Cave Troll rip his right arm from it's socket and leave him incapable of wielding the crossbow at all.
Instead, I appeal to the masses here to give me a different (perminent) option to prevent him from ever using his current tactic that doesn't involve severing an apendage.
Ideas?
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That being said, why not just throw enemies at this group designed to make him do more than shoot the crossbow? Find you something with some Dodge-like perks and crazy high reflex saves. Then again, I don't know anything about the Pathfinder part, so maybe you can't?
If he's not breaking the game, then I think you should leave it alone. I know it's not how you wanted the character played, but part of DM'ing is the give and take with the players. This is the character he wants to play, and while it's not your ideal wizard, if the campaign is flowing and things are moving, then I would let it slide.
If he's actually breaking the game with the build, then the best course of action is to talk to the player about it. Perhaps you guys can come to a compromise, perhaps with an in house rule that somehow curbs his power curve. Or perhaps once he realizes the character is causing game breaking issues, he'll be more pliable in terms of toning it back a bit.
Pathfinder is just D&D 3.5 with some minor tweaks and a different setting, it's based on the D20 open rules system.
This is what my husband does. You can do whatever the hell you want, make whatever you can dream of in a character, but you will encounter things you can't beat conventionally. You can look into creatures that are immune to physical damage. You can throw things at them that only a wizard with developed powers can tackle.. things like treasure boxes with complicated magic locks or doors to complete missions that you can't get into without casting an nth-level spell. Make him use it or the party misses stuff. You're the DM, you can do whatever you want. But I will point out here that he IS a wizard.. it's just that it's a concept character that only casts one spell because he's figured out that he doesn't need anything else. Make him want to cast other things.
The moral of the story, though, is that you need to be willing to set limits on what people can make in the first place, which stifles a lot of creativity and roleplaying opportunities, or you need to accept that your players aren't going to do what you want them to pretty much ever, and if you want to see a wizard in play as a wizard you'll need to hand over the reins for a game and play one yourself.
You're the DM, so you are allowed to bend the rules to your whim somewhat--put in skeletons or fleshy undead that are damage resistant vs. piercing/slashing weapons (skeletons), or piercing/blunt weapons (zombies, flesh golems).
Or just some dude in a magic suit of armor that repels conventional missiles.
You don't have to play in a completely fair way, especially if somebody has balled themselves up into a min/max machine to exploit the book definitions of how things work. If you can figure out a reasonable way to stop his build from being "optimal" he'll stop playing like that.
Edit: Oh, but if he's not breaking the game, maybe you could just talk to him about his character--maybe if his problem is just that he doesn't fit in with the local greybeard wizarding associations, he could start his own in-game guild of arcane snipers. That's cool, and makes him fit in better with the world, and makes him feel like he's legitimately affecting the world on a grand scale.
On a related note: There is one thing he is doing wrong that I have to find a creative way to rectify. To date, he has been responsible for killing 2 party members, one perminently. The first was an intentional attack on a party member that was meant as a smackonthebackofthehead... but ended up crit'ing and killing him where he stood. That player was leaving the game anyway, so I used it as a creative out for him. The second incident was more recently. Picture a 4x5 room with a 5 foot hallway to the east that stretches 30 feet. roughly 20ft down the hallway is a Goblin Sorcerer who was attempting to kill the party from the confines of the narrow hall. One of my Rogues stepped into the doorway and drew his bow to fire at the Goblin. Our wizard (awesome as ever) stepped DIRECTLY behind him and announced his intention to also fire his crossbow at the goblin. I warned him as he announced this... that should he critically fail this shot, he would instead fire the bolt directly into the back of the Rogue's head instead. He accepted this risk with the words "I'm ok with that". Our Rogue was at 27hp. His first roll was a nautual 1, his second... a 3. The party roared in laughter and I told him to roll for the damage. Now mind you, Gravity bow was cast and he has bolts that add 1d3 fire damage. In addition, he now has 2 attacks per round and Quick Reload. You see where this is going. In order to outright kill our Rogue, he would have needed to roll 37 damage... where the max he is capable of dealing with his current setup was 39. What were the odds?
(We did the math afterword. The odds were roughly 0.08%)
From the POV of the rest of the party, it looked as if he marched up behind our rogue and fired POINT BLANK into the back of his head. His reaction afterwords lacked remorse and he cried "bullshit" for the next hour or so. Fact of the matter is, I set terms understanding the HIGHLY IMPROBABLE outcome of him killing our rogue and he accepted the risk.
Now he doesn't understand why the party hates/distrusts/conspires against him. He's been taking this pretty personally out of character as well... not quite understanding the difference between in and out of character.
Due to his lack or remorse for his actions, I'm considering altering his alignment to the Evil spectrum. In addition, our LG Cleric's lack of reasonable reaction to what looked like blatent murder followed by casual indifference makes me want to alter his Alignment as well to one of Neutral Good (keeping within the cusp of his Diety's alignment spectrum and not stripping him of his Class).
Thoughts?
In a situation like that, it might've been better to slow things down, resolve the first critical failure, and then let the player decide if he wants to reload and try again, instead of having him fire twice and find that he'd shot the Rogue twice before resolving the damage. If I'd been either of the players, I would've been torqued.
Displacer Beast Cloaks I liked. Undead Hoards are also a good option.
Tonight's session will involve a sizable Cave troll who can only remain dead if killed with Fire or Acid. I'm trying to fiorce him to actually cast a damn spell and learn that there's more to being a wizard than Gravity bow *facepalm*.
Sounds to me like he's been playing too many MMO's and wants to be the glory hound who puts out phat deeps and gets the phat lewtz. His entire action and communication history, as far as it's described to us, screams "doesn't play nice with others".
As well as inserting some realism into his play, changing his character's alignment to evil may actually be enough to appease your group as well. He needs to see consequences for his roleplay choices, but as far as your group is concerned your players WILL eventually start to get antsy if his decisions continually wreck their shit with no negative consequence to the character whatsoever.
His choice. He rolled them together as he always does.
Our Rogue did complain about it but I'm not going to bend the rules to retroactively allow him to choose wether or not he opts to use both of his rolls AFTER they've been rolled.
"It's a 1 in 20 chance, bro!
I will help you kill this goblin sorceror, and then you'll thank me."
After his body hit the stone like a sack of rocks, his immediate reaction was:
"I'll brb guys, I'm getting a beer and re-rolling a Paladin"
The Wizard is my complainer. Everyone else rolls with the punches.
Nail on the head.
I agree... and I think I've come to the conclusion that I'm not going to break his arm... but rather, change his alignment and allow the party to make what they will of the change. He has enough enemies within the party at this point without me having to take direct action against him.
However, I'm strongly considering having an imp come in the night to pilfer pages from his spell book (including Gravity Bow).
*insert recovery side-mission here*
Given that you mentioned that his bolts add fire damage, this is not necessarily a viable option, since he'll still just be able to spam fire bolts to kill it, so you may want to adjust that.
It's textbook sociopath behavior, which I am almost positive is listed as an actual word in the Chaotic Evil description.
If he wants to put up a fight, just remind him that they'll stop attacking if he gets rid of every piece of metal he owns.
Yes, your crossbow has metal in it. Oh shit, there might be lead in the ink of the starter spells in your ol' spellbook. Rust monsters gettin' prickly.
"Your robe's got buckles. Better ditch it."
Splitting the party and having a member show back up naked is always funny.
Incidentally, the earlier idea of a Gravity Bow guild is a good one. Both for RPing opportunities for him and for NPCs for him to (have to) deal with...
0431-6094-6446-7088
Insert it (or a couple of them) strategically as a tank in a particularly well organized group of foes, and now instead of ripping this guy's arm off or making situations in which he is simply more useless, you've given him a fun positioning game to play, as well as given some lower damaging party members a real task to accomplish, and some supporting classes in your party a good role as well, via bull rushes, blocking, repositioning, etc.
Try to resist the urge to make encounters in which what he is trying doesn't work. That's lazy. The good solution is to take his character concept and swing it from mindless railgunning to intelligent railgunning.
He really should have rolled himself a Warforged Artificer.
I always try to roll a neutral evil character. In any game setting. Because turns out, that's kind of my personality anyway.
I got an idea! Have some piece of equipment he likes turn out to have been owned by a (blank.) Make that (blank) be something difficult to kill, and it wants its property back. Now, he's going to have to use wizard powers to defend himself from (blank.)
Briarthorn Mantle
Whenever the caster is attacked, they make an immediate attack roll against the attacker. If the attack roll succeeds, the damage is reflected back to the attacker immediately. If the reverse attack fails, the caster is given a reflex roll to half damage from the initial attack. If both rolls fail, the caster takes full damage as normal.
(Notice the attack, and attack roll, parts, this is very specific wording to stop magic from reflecting back...so our Roguizard decides he might want to use some spells against this dude)
Especially effective against a glass cannon with bad defenses (eg, a wizard)
The key is to use these ideas in conjunction with other normal things. You don't want to nerf this guy into nonexistence, you want to make him an interesting force on the battlefield, however you can.
10 STR
18 DEX
10 CON
16 INT
10 WIS
10 CHA
It gives me the willies just looking at it.
I don't see a need to break his arm, but taking away his most powerful weapon would essentially do the same thing.
Just be careful if you do this AND change his alignment, because he's likely to look for a store or traveler or other group on the quest and just rob/kill them for a new crossbow.
Having typed all that, and thinking about this for a while, I've got to say. The guy sounds a little immature, yes, and he IS min/maxing a little bit, but he's playing a wizard, even if it's not the classic wizard you want. Wizards are a great range class and he's getting what he wants, a ranged magic user, he just prefers to channel it through a weapon rather than his hands.
Note that these tiny arms are too small to actually reach the necklace, and too small to wield a crossbow.
Yes.
YES.
He gets captured by some entities known for their sadism (Goblins spring to mind here) who blind him in one eye (real hard to shoot a crossbow with no depth perception).
He gets haunted by the spirit of the Rogue who manifests as a poultergeist inclined to interfere with his shooting. A cleric might be able to get rid of the poultergeist, but given his recent actions, the party cleric might not want to until he mends his ways.
The party finds a Cursed crossbow, which he will surely claim. Again, a Remove Curse will help here, but who will cast it for him? Maybe he'll find an Evil cleric willing to do the job. But the thing about evil priests is that they're evil. Maybe the price will be higher than he wants to pay. Maybe he'll just get scammed.
All of these ideas need only be a temporary hinderance to his Railgunning, but they'll emphasize that a little versatility is a good thing. And also that he has to rely on the other members of his party.
My idea of a thorns spell was specifically tailored to make it so that it felt like a natural part of the campaign, but just happens to be to his detriment more than anyone else.