The fighter-tank refuses to tank

While most of these suck, there are ways the concept can be done well, it's a matter of not being a dick and fucking over the rest of the party, instead figuring out how it can add to the game.

I played a character who was a clone with cyborg augmentations, as they were built to be a super soldier. They hated that aspect of themselves, at least at first, and despite paying for it for a good year of the game I had them hide their nature and not use their abilities. The PC was still useful, using their skills and other talents to help out the party and pull their weight.

The revelation of their nature, the times they were pushed to use their abilities for the sake of their friends, and their eventual acceptance of their nature and who they were all followed on from that, forming a key part of the characters personal storyline.

All that from being a cyborg who, initially, refused to cyborg.

>> The cleric charges per heal
Man. Long ago I learned that it's the PCs player that needs to come up with a reason they their PC is adventuring with the party.
No the other players, not the DM- they can help sure, but each player needs to figure out why they are here in this team game.

I've had two healers charge for healing in previous games. I told them "No" bought a cheap heal wand, and then just said "Bye' to them. The rest of the players took my lead each time. Both times left that player standing here going "Umm."

>Playing a TTRPG like a MMORPG
Such is life in DnD

>Tank as a concept is very video gamey and was given birth mainly by MMOs. You shouldn't expect ttrpgs to function the same.
You're fucking stupid

If you rolled well enough to be a fighter you picked up the heaviest armor you could get, sat in front and played a tank.

This has been the case since at least 2e ad&d (my starting point). Not fucking mmo's

>Same user
Ok, person experience. But every game that uses rules more complex than Fiasco runs the same risk.

For instance in MY experience:
I currently have a player that keeps forgetting the rules we tell him, and refuse to get the book (thus read the rules) in my current Rogue Trader game.

>Start fights
>Get rekt
>Get bitched at for starting fights
Sounds normal?

You miss the point that it's the Wizards fucking fault for not helping out their party.

Maybe the wizard has had e-fucking-nough of this 'let's attack everything we see' nonsense.

Also, if this is any D&D game where wizards don't have awfully strong at-wills, this is a perfectly viable strategy. The wizard avoids making themself a target until it's tactically worth using their once/day slot. The wizard is often the squshiest and wasting all their resources will just get them killed whereas the others could take the beating.

Nope. You're talking trash and trying to backwards justify a player not participating in the game, which is basically always shitty.

If your PC isn't going to work with and help the group, then they can fuck off and you can roll a new character who will.

>Maybe the wizard has had e-fucking-nough of this 'let's attack everything we see' nonsense.
Then why is he playing d&d
>Oh no these monsters are attacking my group
>Nah I don't wanna help them though

They just fucking stepped in and saved everybody else.
You can't call them 'not participating'.

I will repeat: It is a viable strategy to not join in fights until you're needed as a wizard, as the wizard's role is utilitarian. He helps a lot outside of combat and in combat he has limited juice but can change the flow of things.

He might have thought 'I don't think they need me, but I'll step in if things get serious, but if I step in straight away they might go for the squishy spellcaster considering they're probably not total idiots'.

>Then why is he playing d&d
You can play D&D where you fight monsters FOR A REASON rather than 'just because it's a monster'.
>Nah I don't wanna help them though
But the wizard did help them. Unless you think 'not casting a really weak cantrip for 20% of the fighter's damage every round and potentially then dying' is not helping.

Then they'd have no call to be a cunt about it afterwards. Either way, the wizard player was being a cock.

Video game logic. "Saving" stuff for a later encounter they're sure that is to come, and will out class them is behaviour that's been engrained by years of formulaic video game action. Especially (action)RPG's, ironically enough. But because P&P games don't have a big, flashing "boss" sign over the boss' head and also no quickload button, things work out differently.

I especially hate the Cleric that's skimpy on heals. I had one of my players devolve into that behaviour, and his refusal to heal a character who was on half health and without gear ended up spelling the death of that character. Who's player then pinned it on ME as the DM, because I'm apparently not allowed to play my enemies with any degree of efficiency when their asses are on the line. And I'm a soft touch as it is.

Well, I can probably agree on that. But I can understand if the fight was completely unnecessary because he just had to waste one of his limited resources because some guy thought it'd be fun to fight life-threatening creatures for the heck of it.

>because I'm apparently not allowed to play my enemies with any degree of efficiency

This is always a very contextual thing, depending exactly what your players are expecting from the game. If they're all going hardcore on tactics themselves, do the same. If they're making suboptimal moves and doing things more for spectacle and theme, it's kinda dickish to always focus fire and such.

I do this, i think. I try to build interesting character, one that i would enjoy to play... but it often leads to it being not very powerful. I dont mind not contributing much to combat, but every other encounter someone goes down and we're often on the brink of TPK. I am awfully conflicted about this and other players are sometimes commenting my uselessness.

>Saving stuff for a later encounter they're sure that is to come
That makes perfect sense as a caster though. You have a limited number of spells each day, you gotta ration those spells out so you don't end up fighting a young red dragon with nothing but a single sleep spell left because you blew everything on that group of goblins

What did you do when an enemy ran past you to attack the wizard? 2e had no AoOs or any similar mechanic.

>woe is me, my fellow player is roleplaying

Here's a hint, fuckface: Your Wizard knew exactly what that spell would do.

And you don't get to bitch about a guy not helping when he, by your own admission, ended the entire encounter singlehandedly. And then there's your DM who figures it's reasonable to let enemies run away. Which it is, but many DM's wouldn't agree because they're shit.

Meanwhile, let's look at it from another perspective: One party member sees a bunch of enemies, and immediately attacks without even talking to his party like the murderhobo he is, and proceeds to get his ass handed to him because he expected to rely on the abilities of a person he never even fucking talked to before jumping in.

There's no obligation to attack these harpies at random. This isn't a video game where every encounter must be farmed for XP and loot, and where every enemy was painstakingly modelled and placed in the world. This is the DM pulling a stat block from the Monster Manual, which he can do again and again.

How is it meta gaming or video gamey for someone who in character knows they can only cast so many spells per day, to not want to use them for something he thinks is a waste of time.

If you're a wizard you've got high Int if you're not playing a retarded wizard. High Int in character should be smart enough to not blow their load immediately upon someone asking them to.

>2e had no AoOs
Yes it did, Players Option: combat and Tactics

Why the fuck would i ever read the rules if the dm already has are you stupid?

How did you tank in core?

Why should anyone GM for you if you care so little about the game that you can't even be bothered to read the rules?

Like I said, I'm a soft touch. Not a lot of PC's die during my games. But this was a situation where that PC had already been captured by enemies (they were liberating him), and the Cleric was legit fucking useless. He was at the other side of the map doing NOTHING while the rest of the party was in the line of fire. I don't think he understood the concept of characters facing permadeath if they're at low health and a big attack hits them.

Sure, it makes sense. Up to a point. Characters constantly saving their shit for attacks that never come... well, that's just annoying.

>What did you do when an enemy ran past you to attack the wizar
That enemy died, because unlike your example that is rooted in 3.PF, the fighter was far and away more dangerous than any caster in the vast majority of games that were played, and opening your back to them was a suicidal gambit.
Also, because there was no "rules" for it, a player could actually go, "hey, DM, I want to intercept the guy", and it would be up to the DM to figure out how it worked.
Ah, the piteous 3.PF generation, unable to imagine how to do anything if there isn't a rule for it already.
Only makes so much sense until your parsimony costs the party.
There is a middle ground between being conservative and still contributing to the party.

>when u a 9 int wizard

>That enemy died, because unlike your example that is rooted in 3.PF, the fighter was far and away more dangerous than any caster in the vast majority of games that were played, and opening your back to them was a suicidal gambit.

1st level fighter, no stats higher than 15, armed with a longsword. No specialisations, no magic, no kits, no feats, no options.
You have +1 ThAC0 and a 1d8 damage. That's 4 on average. Is there any monster from MM that has 4 or less HP?
Yes, you can also play "Mother, may I" with DM, that's true, but if he's got his Viking helm on, you're out of luck.

>any form of talking to the DM is "mother may I"
Holy shit. You 3.PF fags are so pitiable.

don't misinterpret what i said before. i posted a story about me wondering why someone plays the game a certain way. i was not accusing the player of being that-guy. he's had other characters that were plenty aggressive.

>Here's a hint, fuckface
sure take this to an aggressive place right off the bat

>ended the entire encounter singlehandedly
did you read my post? i said they casted a single spell, color spray i believe, and only because out other wizard was about to be dragged away.

and also to be clear, as some people have mentioned it's smart for wizards to not deal damage right away so they're not an immediate target. that was not the case in this scenario. the character didn't join combat because they were casting unseen servant as a ritual and didn't want to cancel the casting, and also because the character didn't want to step off the road into some mud.

and honestly, none of that was a problem. i get roleplaying, sure. i was roleplaying when i decided to rid the world of some harpies that were trying to lure people off the road and eat them. what bothered me was that the player was being passive-aggressive afterward.

>proceeds to get his ass handed to him
not even close. the enemies were really weak and i might have been able to solo them. the warlock went down because he has 10 hp and ran straight up to one of the harpies. a bad idea by his own admission. the other mage went down because she was ambushed mid-combat and none of us were close enough to help.

Well, no, what you mentioned was by definition 'Mother may I?'

The whole notion is the idea of direct negotiation with the GM to get something done, rather than having some basis in the rules for it.

'Mother May I?' isn't necessarily bad, but it's also not a replacement for well thought out mechanics. It's something you can always do, regardless of system, so it doesn't really apply as a defence or an excuse for a system lacking something quite important.

The modern conception of 'tank' most people use when they talk about it in the context of a ttrpg is the MMO definition, complete with the idea of 'threat'. Big beefy guy != tank.

>If you rolled well enough to be a fighter you picked up the heaviest armor you could get, sat in front and played a tank.
And then ranged enemies picked and chose targets and didn't care about you.

>This has been the case since at least 2e ad&d (my starting point). Not fucking mmo's
I'm doubting you played 2nd that much if your conception of a fighter is really 'big guy in armor' considering fucking kits ruined that.

There are zero aggro mechanics in any edition of dnd and abilities which would encourage monsters to attack the "tank" arent core abilities are few and far between, and there effectiveness is debatable.

But that MMO definition is directly descended from ideas that came from board games, wargames and RPGs. Treating it like something new or a sign of vidya influence on tabletop is ludicrous.

Look, user, you are baiting and it is damned obvious.
Negotiating with the GM is entirely supported in the vast majority of games, so your durr hurr argument is just sad and blatant. C'mon, you can try harder.

Well, 4e had defender marking, which is a very different implementation of the same ideas, but actually worked well in practice.

Uh. You might want to read my post again. I feel like you're missing the point.

It descends from it. I descend from a chimp, doesn't make me and a chimp the same. The modern definition of tank most players use when bringing it up has next to nothing to do with the wargame one in expected style of play.

>the mmo edition is sorta like an mmo

Your point is the same bait that is commonly used against games that don't fall into the hard coded rules trap that people on Veeky Forums who don't play games favor.
Just as boorish, just as ignorant, just as badwrongfun.

This meme is dumb and people should stop repeating it.

>doubles down on bait edition

At this point I'm pretty sure whatever you read has no relationship whatsoever to what I wrote.

My point was that 'The GM can fix it' is not an excuse for or a replacement for a missing or bad rule. That it can be universally applied to any game essentially means that mentioning it in that context doesn't really add anything to the conversation. It can be taken as read to the point that it doesn't really apply when discussing mechanics and how they work.

Except I don't think any MMO actually has any mechanics analogous to defender marking, because they wouldn't make any sense in that context? Defenders marks are a pure tabletop design idea. You could maybe see them in a tactics CRPG, but that's neither here nor there.

>Why do these people even play?
Why do you play with these people?

This still sounds like an uncoordinated bumblefuck, and you're basically blaming the other guy for not being uncoordinated in the way you like.

Look, if this is a structural problem, I get you. But it doesn't sound like it. And it sounds like you guys didn't even make a group decision. And again, there's no obligation to absolutely, positively have to kill those monsters the moment you see them. Sure, if they attacked the party, the Wizard seems more in the wrong. But still not very wrong, because he still ended the entire encounter by casting his spell. Whatever you have against him, he did actually step in and do beneficial shit.

>what bothered me was that the player was being passive-aggressive afterward.

Sure. I can't read into the situation, because you're the one who experienced it, and not me, but it sounds like typical aloof Wizard roleplaying. Tiresome? Maybe. Playing a class instead of a character can get really grating. But it's still proper RP, and it's still not like he made an active effort to screw over the party. He was casting his ritual, didn't want to drop it, and then stepped in when he was really needed.

> the enemies were really weak and i might have been able to solo them

See, I still don't see the problem. Your Wizard knows this, too. He's seen you in combat. Frankly, it sounds like the other two players were idiots for rushing into combat with low health, and by getting seperated from the party as a squishy against flying enemies. But in the end, you're coming down on this one guy while it's the choices the lot of you made that got you into that mess in the first place.

No it isn't. Anyone who's made it past D&D is committed to playing. They read the rules.

>ended the entire encounter by casting his spell
again, incorrect. he helped finish combat, sure. but he didn't save the day.

but most of the rest of what you said is pretty fair. again, i'm not super down on this wizard, he's a close friend. i saw a thread and decided to post a relevant story.

>were idiots for rushing into combat with low health
i find this funny. the warlock wasn't *down* to 10 hp. that's his maximum (give or take a HP or two) at level 3. he's aware that his character probably won't last much longer and he usually goes down in combat.

but yes, all in all the encounter was a mess, and the warlock and i are also partly to blame for not being more strategic

I feel your pain
>Wizard specs into healing and necromancy
>For the price of 1 (one) spellpoint could cure a party members ailments, stat damage, and heal them back to full
>Refuses to do so because it would mean they couldn't spend 10 spellpoints on damage

Look, the way you told it, he cast his spell and the harpies flew away. That sounds like saving the day, no matter which way you turn it. Helping, ending, it's all the same to me. Point is, he participated when he was needed. That's more than I can say for some of the players I've had.

And low health is low health. At 10 hp a single hit can still knock you into the negatives. I've had to slog through early levels with a character like that, and I played them like a paranoid pussy. Because I had to.

But all in all, I'm just saying this doesn't sound like a player being a dick. At worst, it's a slightly disfunctional party. And that's nothing our of the ordinary.