Got the weirdest fucking player. He's the classic definition of a power gamer, although instead of stats he goes around bragging about his character's diplomacy skills.
Not even the stats. Just talk-no-jutsu. I'm playing in a campagin with multiple player teams and he constantly brags to other teams how if he was there, he would've made that NPC our ally. How he'd redeem that villain. How he'd fuck that bitchy questgiver. How he'd solve everything singlehandedly just by talking. He posts imaginary conversations of him winning every NPC over in the game's chat.
>he constantly brags to other teams how if he was there, he would've made that NPC our ally. How he'd redeem that villain. How he'd fuck that bitchy questgiver. How he'd solve everything singlehandedly just by talking. So... Does he? Now I'm interested to hear how his actual exploits play out.
Cooper Hughes
I don't know, I haven't listened in to their team's sessions but from what I've heard others say he's pretty hit and miss.
Easton Clark
Share some stories OP
Isaac Morales
Minmaxers have different specialties. They pride themselves on the one thing they do extremely well. Basically, if there's some skill specialty or playstyle, there's a power gamer for it. It's not just the damage min-maxer. You've met the diplomacy min-maxer, who prides himself on potentially talking down whoever he wants. There's stuff like the stealth min-maxer, who prides himself on never being found ever, even in the most unreasonable situations. There's the athletics min-maxer, who can perform any given physical feet far above anyone else; this often results in the speedster, who prides themselves on their speed ("I'M FAST AS FUCK BOYYYYYY"). You can have the inventor min-maxer who can design, blueprint and build whatever you want in record time and with stunning effectiveness.
For every flavor of playstyle, there's a power gamer for it.
Carter Gonzalez
Most exposure i get to this individual is from the brags and shit talks he spews when he doesn't agree with how we handled things in our session.
When we failed to talk down a sentient, suicidal magic bomb he legitimately screamed at us in voice chat until a mod muted him. 30 minutes later, he posts a detailed conversation he would have had with the bomb and how it would work.
Rinse, repeat. Also, apparently he has a troupe of shitty npcs he managed to won over and from what ive understood none of them are actually plot important.
Justin Nguyen
And it's fucking exquisite every single time their one gimmick is completely invalidated. Guess you shoulda branched out a little bit and maybe not overspecialized, shitnuts!
Dominic Anderson
>30 minutes later, he posts a detailed conversation he would have had with the bomb and how it would work Oh boy, oh boy. Please share.
Luke Cooper
I don't know if that's something to be proud of. If a player clearly invested themselves in this one particular field, why not indulge them once in a while? If you have a character who identifies as a killer, and nearly everything they have and are capable of doing is specifically geared towards gunning down a motherfucker no questions asked, then give her a few targets to kill every once in a while. Just be aware that their playstyle will influence how they handle anything else in the game. When all you are is a hammer, and everything starts to look like nails, you probably don't want to be the one they send to just talk to or even threaten someone.
Julian Adams
i dont actually have permission to view their chat so ive just seen screenshots, ill ask one of the mods.
Angel Reyes
>When all you are is a hammer, and everything starts to look like nails, you probably don't want to be the one they send to just talk to or even threaten someone The problem generally arises when all you are is a hammer, and you walked in fully aware there would be precious little nails beforehand.
Christopher White
What if the dude was never meant to be treated as a nail, even if he comes across as one?
Colton Hall
I've never encountered a diplomancer. If I did while I was GMing, I'd emphasize the difference between diplomacy and mind control. Specifically, the target of diplomacy will ask the question: >What's in it for me ?
In some cases, it would be "do what I want or my mate here will get violent". In other cases, the deal could be more unusual. Which is where the potential fun comes in. Diplomacy will still be able to get the target of the diplomacy to do what they want, but only if the players agree to do something else in return.
The difference between a high and a low diplomacy roll is that the high roll can reveal deals that the low rolls can not.
Hunter King
The more details you can provide the better. This guy sounds like an absolute gem.
Levi Jackson
Oh dude, I wouldn't do that to a good group member. I'd never do that to any of my current group members. I'm not some douchebag GM who makes paladins fall just for being paladins, that's straight up a dick move.
I'd totally do that to a That Guy, though. If he wants to brag about his phat DPR with his mixed-splatbook five-template zero-backstory power fantasy, then I'll gladly invalidate his gimmick.
Zachary Sanchez
My rule of thumb is that if the campaign runs for a while, there will be one or two occasions where I will invalidate the players gimmick just to see how they react. But that will be a rare occurrence just to remind players that they need to be flexible in their approach.
Unless they are boasting about some minmaxed build they found online.
Aaron Jones
>Unless they are boasting about some minmaxed build they found online.
David Ward
Yeah, if you're going to shut down a character's specialty, at least make it meaningful and don't make a habit of it.
Connor Brooks
Had a guy in a recent campaign who was like that. Burned all his specialties into bluff, paraded his character around as if he was the best liar in history, and could get whatever he wanted. >I can just lie to these nobles and say I'm a direct descendant so I can obtain their status and power! I have 22 to my bluff checks, I can do that! >I could start a rumor about your character's dick size and since my bluff is so high, people would HAVE to believe it!
People like this are a complete anomaly.
Christian Ward
>People like this are a complete anomaly.
Going by the threads on tg, apparently not as much as an anomaly as we'd wish.
Ayden Baker
Sounds like a textbook power gamer
Jonathan Jones
I did this with a 4e Dragonborn Sorcerer for Intimidate once. Never actually made the character, but I would have had an intimidate score nearly twice Orcus's by level 30.
Ironically, I was too intimidated to ever use the character - I just never felt like I had the spirit as a player to back up the character's stats.
Nolan Cooper
I've had one of my power-gamers boast about diplomacy since it was one of his "max" skills (silent on the "min").
So... definitely a Power Gamer as defined at Robin D. Laws, however. Just not about murder. I've had all kinds of, "My dude is so good at X, holy shit look at these numbers", types.
Zachary Clark
To be fair, big numbers are fun
It feels really, really good when you find a way to boost some ability or stat much higher than itt's supposed to be. Even when you know it's not actually going to make your character even useful
I remember a pathfinder barbarian I had made once who was effectively guaranteed to kill anyone who tried to hit him with a melee attack on their turn. He was worse than a boring baseline barbarian when not being attacked, but being shit in other circumstances was worth it for those few moments when he got to counterattack someone to death
Nolan Peterson
Hate it when Diplomacy is treated like mind control.
All diplomacy does in my opinion is help increase your disposition in eyes of others, essentially making them like you more, which opens more options for you, such as being potentially able to get favors from powerful allies, but such favors need be repaid.
Brayden Perez
The weirdest powergamer I've met was a mundane equipment powergamer. Every corner he turned, he'd use a mirror on a stick to see what was around it without exposing his character. Any chest was opened with a 4 foot prybar "So only my arm is in reach of a trap with a 5ft range." He'd specify that his rations were mainly sticky rice so he could carry them in bags and throw sticky rice on invisible enemies. He'd carry dowels and planks so he could push heavy objects around. He claimed he should get bonuses on perception checks at doors because "Putting a glass cup to the door amplifies the sound." Pretty much every single situation he would have some sort of mundane 2 copper trash item that he swore would give him the advantage. We had to put a stop on it when he wanted the party to invest in a chicken coop "to save on money" because "You can carry live chickens in sacks and use them to check for traps. Hell you can attach string to them and figure things out by figuring out which ones are eaten by monsters or not. Their feathers can be used to make an eye and mouth irritant for combat use. You can release a bunch of them to make it harder for a large enemy to move around or light them on fire and have them spread fire." He had at least 20 uses for the fucking chickens and he insisted we all start carrying sacks of chickens with us.
He religiously tracked his character encumbrance and the weight of the 70 items on his character sheet. Even though the GM wasn't using encumbrance.
We were playing pathfinder. I don't know what kind of gm he had in his previous games to think his playstyle was going to fly.
Bentley Butler
>All diplomacy does in my opinion is help increase your disposition in eyes of others, essentially making them like you more >implying that's not enough
Diplomancers don't mind-control enemies into doing what they want, they make people like the character and then agree to somewhat one-sided deals. E.g. convincing the giant to settle down and help the village instead of rampaging through the fields. The downside is that in most systems you'll need to make the target sit down and listen first (not in D&D though).
Isaiah Morgan
He sounds like a normal annoying douche, which is rather common in /tg
>power gamer Yes, god forbid a player makes a useful character and derive any pleasure from it. The 90s were a dark age for RPGs and their legacy is a continual blight on /tg.
Zachary Richardson
>I don't know what kind of gm he had in his previous games An old school one.
Juan Young
Sounds like a great player and that you're lucky to have him.
Justin Howard
So in real life he's probably not very charismatic. When he's in his role he somehow performs decently. Experiencing the ability to influence others with words for an otherwise socially impaired person is a rush of energy.
Andrew Green
Seems like you had a real competent role player for once and you were too daft to realize it.
Jaxon Hall
He sounds like the best actually.
Your group sounds boring.
Tyler Edwards
I will generally add a situation every couple of sessions that exploit obvious lacks. >half the players refuse to touch anything ranged >when they hunt down a dragon it doesn't stick to the ground but flies around
Gabriel Jackson
Pathfinder is (ostensibly) a heroic, high fantasy type roleplaying. Not exactly the kind of system to be running around with a coop full of chickens for the purpose of throwing flaming chickens at people for, especially if someone wants even a part ways serious game.
Noah Garcia
Amazing. Except for the chicken play. That's never going to end well.
Noah Powell
Everything but the chicken thing sounds great to me dude.
Austin Campbell
Heroism isn't clean or baby proofed. Heroes have tons of ptsd and other psychological issues due to the horrors they face. A sack full of chickens is really not that much of a stretch.
Landon Miller
Do you not know the difference between real life heroism and heroic high fantasy? And while it's not much of a stretch, it's still just plain silly. It turns whatever scene it is into a comedy, because there's not many other ways to go when each PC is carrying around a sack of live chickens.
Michael Thomas
He had a lot of weird ambitions he kept trying to sell the party on. There was a bunch of refugees in the setting and he wanted us to buy huge tracts of land, fund construction and pay people to settle the land. He kept talking about how awesome it would be to rule a village and that we could have a personal militia to use for our adventures. This is the thing really. His play worked well sometimes but it usually felt like he was actively avoiding using the rules of pathfinder and trying to force our gm to improv. Things like instead of trying to actually do pathfinder combat, he'd try to dynamite the ceiling iover an enemy during battle to "collapse the room on them". It got even worse by level 10 though since he usually played martials or rogues and he'd always call dibs on "does a cool trick but isn't useful" magic items rather than trying to get a bunch of gear.
Ayden Johnson
Oh sorry user, missed the bit about high fantasy. Yeah you're right in that case. But the other stuff you mentioned weren't as bad tho. Not exactly kosher under the circumstances but not comically hilarious either.
John Hill
I'm not even the initial user, friend. But the other stuff is mostly fine, if not exactly in genre. Even so, at some point you have to realize you're not exactly meshing with the other players with your shenanigans, and it doesn't sound like the guy was meshing at all.
I will shut down one note characters 90% of the time. If you overspecialise, I WILL cripple you.
Christopher Edwards
>none of them are actually plot important. GM is biding his time until he can kill all of them off in one swoop.
Isaac Green
I love it when the GM THINKS I'm over specialising and I am, but I've done so in two areas and they can only be shut down by extremely contrived scenarios such as not having magic, teammates aren't there AND be heavily incapacitated by bindings, gags, or be rendered unconscious.
At that point I get to ask the GM if any of the other characters could even do anything in this situation.
Ryder Young
>He kept talking about how awesome it would be to rule a village and that we could have a personal militia to use for our adventures. This is literally my go-to fantasy adventure to run. Think Pathfinder's Kingmaker except the fact that the leaders go out personally on missions isn't retarded.
Carter Bennett
sounds more like a metagamer to me
Aiden Rogers
>Things like instead of trying to actually do pathfinder combat, he'd try to dynamite the ceiling iover an enemy during battle to "collapse the room on them".
It's called "improvisation" and it's a good thing. I guess he may be forcing it a bit too much.
Alexander Stewart
>If you overspecialise, I WILL cripple you. sounds more like a salty GM
Andrew Morales
t. brainlet that facetanks traps and encounters
Samuel Wood
what could I possibly be salty about?
Wyatt Campbell
if you have to be vindictive and punish specialists you are clearly salty about something they're doing.
Leo Robinson
Do you even know what "salty" means?
Dominic Robinson
>legitimately screamed at us in voice chat until a mod muted him. He might just be on the spectrum honestly.
Connor Clark
Good post user, I have long thought that rolling to win diplomacy was shitty after having the actual meaningfull discussion. This remedies that issue
Levi Miller
>Do you even know what "salty" means? The act of being upset, angry, or bitter as result of being made fun of or embarrassed.
Blake Williams
Indeed. So elaborate how a player could embarrass me when I'm the DM and can wipe his char from existence? I literally just enjoy fucking with autists who want to live out their power fantasy.
Michael Turner
>and can wipe his char from existence? thats a great way to make no one want to play with you.
James Morgan
Oh, is that your power fantasy?
Jayden Watson
>autists who want to live out their power fantasy
t. autist GM living out their power fantasy
Jaxon Moore
The whole one-sided deals part is the the thing. Diplomancy should never have the power to alter the motivations of the character they're dealing with or otherwise go against their own interests. That is what deception stats and swindling are for
Diplomancy is supposed to be used to build a character whose greatest weapon is the web of connections which they can utilize to make things that the party can't normally do happen by making deals that normally wouldn't be available. Diplomancers done right can be an awesome force in a party which is why you shouldn't allow them to be played by anyone who isn't an experienced roleplayer.
Oliver Richardson
Quad 4s is right.
There used to be a custom that before entering a newly-built house for the first time you'd let in a chicken so any potential curse on ill luck present there would fall on it. I wanna see that used more in RPGs.
Joseph Howard
I’m an Investigation and Insight Inquisitive Rogue min/maxer. Have the Observant and Alert feats too.
I figure if I’m to be good at something, it should be moving the plot forward by having the DM just TELL me the plot, where the hidden doors are, etc.
DM personally thanked me because everyone in the party can’t into moving the plot
