GM gripes about players..

Thank Cayden Cailean that I'm going on hiatus soon...

For once, Problem Gamer isn't my primary headache (he spent the last battle shooting arrows... maybe not his most effective move with his spell list, but at least it wasn't suicidal, aggravating, or stupid) in my Pathfinder game. This time, my issue is with someone playing a summoner - specifically, with his eidolon.

He gets his eidolon into position in one round, and suddenly announces in the next that he's taking a full-attack option... for three attacks. Given that he has a humanoid eidolon who never took either the extra limbs mutation or the bite mutation, huge surprise to me. He instead bought the claws mutation for his legs, and argued that this allows him to make kick attacks. I thought about this, and I ruled no - he has to support himself on two limbs. If he wants to kick, he then has to focus on using one of his arms for balance instead.

He immediately goes and throws a snit fit - monks get to use their legs! (Because it's an explicitly defined ability for monks - read the Core Rulebook.) People online suggested it for a build! (Great, play their Pathfinder game then.) He then even took time to Google the maneuver and pulled up what people ruled on the Paizo forums after I told him no. And he also complained that his build is absolutely ruined because of my ruling (even though he's not far from gaining a level, when he would be allowed to completely reallocate every evolution point if he so desired). And three days later, he sends a whiny email asking why I made my ruling, despite the fact that I explained the reason immediately.

Look, I know that some people rule the build as a valid way to get three attacks on an eidolon. I decided no; he needs to accept this and stop acting like a martyr. I particularly didn't like how he made a show at the session of claiming to follow Rule 0 "even though other GMs clearly rule otherwise" - if you're actually following Rule 0, shut up and accept the ruling instead of blatantly undercutting said ruling.

Maybe I'd be a bit more tolerant of his small fit if he was one of my better players. But he's not - he's all interested in combat, but I swear, you'd have to stick a cattle prod up his ass and activate it periodically to get him to do more than a token amount of role-playing... given that this was the first time in three sessions that I ran a combat, you could barely tell he was there outside of identifying magical items.

My game is about to go on hiatus to allow me time to be a player and recharge my batteries, with January 31st being the last session before the break. I'm really looking forward to February right now.

Out of curiosity, what level is he? Because I played a Summoner briefly; after the first two combats, I left my eidolon out of it in favor of at-will Summon Monster. A trio of dinosaurs (easily doable by 13th level) was far more effective.

Also, it's been a while, by I thought that spending the points for those kinds of mutations automatically granted the eidolon the ability to use them in combat, regardless of form; however, they are additional attacks, not full attacks. He should have had (for example) punch/kick/kick as a valid attack set. Eidolons I don't think get full attacks the way PC's do.

At the moment, he's third level. Keep in mind that even with just claw/claw, the eidolon doing absurd damage; I know that he's going to start lagging in three levels, but I've had issues readjusting CR for fights due to it.

There's a difference between "potential to use" and "ability to use." He does have the potential to use all four limbs for claw attacks right now. That said, to be honest, I thought he was working towards a pounce build, which was the only reasonable way I could see him getting in all those claw attacks. Now that I see what he's trying to do - I think it's patently silly, a bit of a pointless build regardless (it's like he doesn't even acknowledge the Summon Monster spells exist), and stupid given that he could have just taken the bite evolution and gotten his third attack without running into this issue at all.

Honestly? He just assumed. Regardless of whether anyone else agrees with the particular ruling (I honestly don't expect anyone to), I don't appreciate that he's continuing to whine to me in email about it. Suck it up and deal with the fact that you can only bend the game, not break it.

Wait until he gives his Eidolon wings and then tries to claw with hands and feet while flying? ;)

(Ok, from what you described thats probably a posisbility))

To be honest, I assumed that eventually building towards flight was what he had in mind as to why he added the claws on the legs in the first place (the other option I saw as possible was to take pounce, which would result in four claw attacks). Nope, he turned out to instead want to do something that I wasn't going to allow.

A few hours before game (i.e., one week since the incident at the table), and he's still pestering me in email about it.

Not only that, but he's also taken to complaining about me calling him "dumbass" at the table, saying he's a bit hurt about the implied lack of intelligence. A few things about that.

1. He calls others similar names at the table. Frequently.
2. He's currently dancing on my last nerve. I made it clear that he's doing so. And he keeps doing it. This does not speak well to his intellectual capabilities in my mind.
3. For all his complaints, he does tend to behave poorly at the table (there's one player in particular he enjoys picking on, although he'll take shots at nearly everyone; moreover, he's currently my number one source for OOC sidetracks), and calling him out like this typically gets a positive response (i.e. he pays attention to the game and stops distracting others).

I'm half-tempted to call the game early and watch the shitstorm develop over a lack of role-playing session. I might even get up the stomach to care about it.

EDIT: He dropped my game; I'm presuming that it's because I stopped responding to him (I honestly didn't have anything further to add; I already repeated myself once). Well, that's one less headache to endure.

edited 17th Jan '14 3:40:27 PM by 32_Footsteps

I have an entire table of dense players.

Situation is, my players have caught a possible team of assassins, but they don't have enough to be certain that they're assassins (they're actually spotters for a sniper assassin - apparently, none of my players have thought of this). They managed to get some scant info out of them (it didn't help that the players spent half of the session basically just out-and-out threatening them), and there was one major point in the interrogation where the possible assassin's alibi has a gaping hole in it (namely, they claimed they were following a thief... who jumped through an open window and jumped back out, while the possible perp claimed to have just burst through the back door instead of also going through the window).

All of my players caught it... and then immediately went "32, do you know how stupid that sounds?"

I stared at them, waiting for them to role-play... while thinking "Yes, I know exactly how stupid that is... you just caught the inconsistency in their alibi that you can start using to take it apart! That was intentional, people!" It took a full minute of the players staring at me like I grew a third head before they got back on track. And one of the players (Problem Gamer, to little surprise) said that it was awful role-playing on my part, to mess up a major scene like that.

I think my players are too used to "break down the door, kill the mooks, take their stuff" style of role-playing. And to some extent, it's my own fault for incorporating a attempted homicide investigation into a Pathfinder game instead of saving the set pieces for something like a new World of Darkness game or the like. I'm just... I was hoping for at least some critical thinking skills, and not just "32 no make words good."

Our group has a GM rotation, and I added my name to the roster today. I had 2 campaign ideas: the magic acadamy, and the Darklands campaign. Still working on my baby campaign, so those were the options. The reaction was all around lukewarm (and one livid player) to the magic acadamy campaign idea; to them it sounded like Harry Potter, when I was intending more Unseen University and College of Winterhold. This was prompted from a suggestion that after so many dark evil games we play something light and fun.

The second idea was a Darklands campaign, with the main action taking place in a large Drow metropolis. Evil party characters, who eventually are employed by the queen of the city as her personal squad of problem solvers, and there are a LOT of problems in the city. I didn't want to limit players to just Drow, so I said that any race with dark vision that could function in a Drow city. Two players wanted to roll up kobolds, and didn't budge. And this player is the LAST person you want playing a Kobold. I might just make everyone play Drow to have other ways to distinguish themselves.

edited 24th Jan '14 9:27:58 PM by Ninjaxenomorph

I so feel for you... I hate it when players accuse me of ripping off the wrong source. That happened with me when I had a bunch of treants sneak up on the party (to hem them in, not to attack). I was accused of copying Order Of The Stick, and I don't even read that. I stole from Tolkein directly, gol dangit!

Man, I just ran my group through the final session of an Edge of the Empire adventure. This was supposed to be the boss battle. They lured him into a warehouse, ambushed him, and critted him so many times he lost an arm and both eyes inside of 3 rounds. Poor bastard never even got off a shot.

Ah well, I'll take my revenge next session.

In a Star Wars D20 campaign a while back our party, through use of heavy weapons and critical hits, killed a feral rancor in one round before it got to act. DM was sorta depressed after that. But I wouldn't go out of my way to punish your players for good tactics/luck though.

edited 26th Jan '14 2:19:01 PM by Rationalinsanity

True. They may end up botching an encounter with street toughs through bad luck. Dice are fickle, and you shouldn't feel too bad that they got extra lucky. If anything, next time make sure the big bad has underlings willing to jump in front of blaster fire, giving him at least some time to do an epic attack or two before he dies.

Kidding, kidding, I'm not actually going to inflict a TPK on them because of some lucky rolls.

Good advice about giving him more lackeys though.

Absurdly lucky rolls are just the kind of situation that warrants some cheating on the GM's part IMO.

I would have, but I was doing open rolls at the moment, since the book recommended it. Maybe I need to rethink that...

I use exclusively open rolling, but that's just a thing that you do with online gaming.

I do about half of them open. Depends on what they're doing.

I only hide my rolls if I feel like the actual number roll would give away a lot. Maybe they're trying to hide from something that's inhumanly fantastic at perception or something.

Also, reading this thread, I feel like I should be thankful that my players are all well-behaved and good players since I laid out how awful the creepy player being legitimately creepy during Maid RPG was and how close I was to removing the next person to continue along that path.

the one time I closed rolled was to make them think they were being followed, and they actually weren't (so as to not question a plot point later, involving someone who is more powerful than they realize)

Same. In the New World Of Darkness the number of dice basically indicates Power Level for everything from skills to weapons to actual powers, so I would occasionally keep rolls and dice numbers hidden to make them have to guess the relative strength of opponents. Or make them paranoid about same. ;)

Interestingly, it also serves a purpose to not to cover them, as excessively large dice pools would ping their danger-dar from doing something stupid.

As a GM, the only time I hide dice rolls from the players is for things like passive Perception checks, when I don't want them to know the outcome. If we're in the middle of combat, or they're trying to sweet-talk an NPC on an opposed roll, then everything is out in the open. I've had a player accuse me of killing his character off deliberately because I didn't fudge dice rolls in his favor, so I started doing open rolls after that.

I do it to feign certain facts about the story. Does the NPC happen to see what was hidden there? Well, since he was the one who hid it there, yeah, but I'll roll anyway just to allay suspicion.

One of mine is continuously demanding a dinosaur. It's a running joke at this point, to the point of Actually Pretty Funny.

Pathfinder Summoner class. a 15th level summoner can drop multiple dinosaurs into combat.

"You do what?"

"I summon three triceratops. They all charge him, and if they miss, they do trample damage."

"Jesus f***ing Christ."

No Infernal Dinosaurs? ^^