I’ve been a DM for about 3 years, and have predominantly run one-shots and short campaigns in DnD5e and PF2e. I have a player who persistently builds primary caster based characters, but then won’t do anything in combat but “I stab it with my dagger.” They rarely use cantrips, and basically won’t cast a leveled spell unless I suggest it immediately before their turn. They seem to enjoy playing despite the fact that they’re far too squishy to be a front-line melee character and don’t utilize most of their class features. I’ve talked with them explicitly about how their play style seems to be discordant with the kind of play they want to do, and that maybe next time they should try a paladin/champion or a fighter/rougue subclass with some minor casting. They agreed at the time that sounded like a good idea, but low and behold showed up to the next one-shot with a primary caster, and over 3 hours of play and 3 combats never cast a single spell, including a cantrip.
I enjoy playing with this persons as a whole. They are engaged in the fiction, and are particularly engaged during exploration activities. They tell me they also find combat quite fun, and they are requesting I run a mega dungeon in the near future.
As a general rule, I like to let people play how they have the most fun, but issues have arisen with this play style. Namely, all of my TPKs have been associated with this player charging a squishy character directly up to a significantly stronger villain and continuing to stab it with a dagger until they went down, significantly hindering the party in the action economy and resulting in a TPK. I feel I have to intentionally weaken all of my encounters to keep the party feasible in the face of such mechanically poor combat choices.
What else can I do to help drive this individual towards melee builds, and/or help encourage them to change their play style to better suite the caster classes they choose?
This sounds like someone that doesn’t take the time to read and understand the mechanics of their chosen class or the spells and how they work. That’s unfortunate.
Have you discussed how their actions are impacting the other players, and that their play is leading to the deaths of their friends? They may not realize how irritating it can be from the friends’ point of view.
It seems as though they want a wizard-warrior, almost like a Jedi–who fights with swords, but has magic spells too. There are many ways to achieve this character idea and I’m sure you’re more aware of them than I, but it could be as simple as a fighter with the magic adept feat.
I haven’t explicitly stated “your poor choices are killing your friends” but after the last TPK, they were sad and I apologized for killing them, but then immediately went into a discussion of “you know you were fully rested for this, why didn’t you use any of your more powerful spells?”
Unfortunately none of my players are exceptionally well versed in the rules of the system/their characters. They know the basics well enough. Unfortunately they (and I) have very demanding professional lives and reading a rule book is too low on their priority list to ever make it to the top.
I totally agree that the individual would be better suited to an eldritch knight, Paladin, arcane trickster rouge, etc. We’ve had that discussion twice, and it seems to go over well and they agree, until the next session comes up and they have made another caster character.
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This is a bit hostile, tbh.
Good DM’s don’t coddle players. There are consequences to choices, being at 75-80% of the parties ability SHOULD be a big deal.
OP has tried to address the issue already, and I can imagine that one player ignoring their abilities would be quite frustrating for the other players.
I don’t try and TPK my players, quite the opposite. I’m actively downgrading encounters and making mechanically disadvantageous choices to avoid them. The only thing I’m not doing is fudging rolls.
I am reaching out to the community to help me try and better understand how I can resolve this problem at my table, and everyone else in this thread seems to agree that this player’s choices are, at a surface level at least, baffling. I recognize it is probably reflective of some underlying assumptions that I have tried multiple times to elucidate so I can better understand the situation. But for some reason, you are the only person I have encountered who has become hostile and accusatory towards me. I don’t know if you’ve been butt-hurt by some DM in your past or if your games live by the rule of cool. Regardless, you’re being disrespectful and I don’t appreciate that. I won’t be engaging with you anymore.
As an idea, you could very easily begin your next session with all your players in Avernus, with a devil that sees “great potential” in them, and knows they have unfinished business and want nothing more than to continue their quest–and feels like giving them a second chance and a gamble for their souls.
But the cost! Oh! The cost of such a trade is enormous. So enormous in fact… That it will require ripping the magic potential away from one character irrevocably as compensation… They are free to try and scrape together what they can by taking feats, subclasses or multi-classing if you allow it, but they must re-spec their character in a 1-for-1 trade into whatever class you believe best suites their play style (sounds like Paladin, Fighter, or Barbarian).
And the ongoing cost of this contract… Occasionally have this patron reveal himself and task the party to go do questionable things so that eventually, the party gets it in their heads that they are strong enough to take him on and try to end the contract prematurely.
Just an idea, I hate causing players to remake characters to continue a quest and figuring out a plausible excuse for them to pick up where the original characters left off!
That’s a really cool narrative way to go about fixing this, though it does feel kinda rail-roady. I’ll give it some thought.
Yeah, that’s a fair criticism. Maybe you could ask your players which way they would prefer? Give them the option to build new characters, or if they want, keep their current characters for a price.
I also wouldn’t do this without talking to the offending player and making sure they are cool with it and that it isn’t a “punishment” as much as you trying to help them build something that works well for their play style. It might give the players an interesting “living backstory”
Best wishes! DnD is such an awesome thing and I love hearing other people’s experiences both as players and GMs!
Oh, absolutely, there was going to have to be a discussion well before I would be willing to do that. I’d never take unilateral control of a player’s character like that
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Maybe I’m blind or my instance isn’t federated with everywhere, but I see two whole posts of this, and the second one starts stating that it’s a cross post. You’re throwing a shitfit over nothing.
Beyond that, welcome to the fucking fediverse. If you’re looking for advice you might have to post it across multiple communities with the same theme on multiple servers, as any single community here is comsiderably less active than reddit. But fuck OP for wanting as much feedback as possible on this, right?
Plus, you’re the master of your own experience here. Stop being an asshat and just block OP if you’re so convinced he’s the worst DM ever. I know I’m blocking you, lol.
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