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Orange DeviI
Nov 9, 2011

by Hand Knit
my D&D player-related problems have never been about gimmicky characters and the problem players I've encountered have never been the ones playing gimmicky/themed characters

they've mostly been variant human players in games without many houserules, which makes sense when you think about it

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pog boyfriend
Jul 2, 2011

Raenir Salazar posted:

I don't want to make it harder!

??????????????


Raenir Salazar posted:

I want them to be less immune so a turn by a player isn't, "I cast hold person... Okay they fail."

the concept behind my ideas are to mitigate that as well - as i agree it is boring to do this. having resistances to effects makes it less likely that people will burn spells just to get rid of legendary resistances which is boring gameplay(if you have to use a 6th level spell to have any effect, and you only have 4 of those, you arent using throwaway save or suck spells). having a group boss means you can cast hold person on a boss, and have another boss use a legendary action to cure the hold person. they still get to meaningfully affect the combat by burning a legendary action.

change my name
Aug 27, 2007

Legends die but anime is forever.

RIP The Lost Otakus.

Argh, my Sunday Eberron campaign was just canceled as well, even though we were already half of the way through. One of these days I'll play all of a campaign...

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Raenir Salazar posted:

So while I know what Legendary Resistances and Actions are supposed to do. Making dragons a threatening challenge and so on. But I find that every boss encounter my group has had last campaign came down to many of the same sort of plays in the broad strokes.

Someone expending all their resources trying to burn off their legendary resistances, and us basically consistently going all in on that because the boss is usually dealing so much damage and in some cases quickly downing some of us, so we seem to be forced to double down on save or lose spells/abilities to try to beat it because if we don't it seems to be dealing so much damage (or in the case of the beholder) is able to attempt so many save or suck/lose stuff on us that it isn't like we can not do it because we're taking so much damage.

I feel like Legendary Resistances should be more like, for example if Hold Person the legendary resistance lets them still take an action but not their whole turn, maybe they can burn a legendary action that turn to get an additional part of their turn?
Legendary Resistances aren't automatic. The GM should be holding them for stuff that "matters". So you cast hold person and the GM lets it happen because they know you have disintegrate waiting.

Hackan Slash
May 31, 2007
Hit it until it's not a problem anymore

Splicer posted:

Legendary Resistances aren't automatic. The GM should be holding them for stuff that "matters". So you cast hold person and the GM lets it happen because they know you have disintegrate waiting.

The fact that hold person gives all the martials advantage and auto crits means you absolutely need to burn a legendary on it.

Undead Hippo
Jun 2, 2013

Raenir Salazar posted:

I'm the guy whose going all in on a Bat theme.


I don't want to make it harder! My problem is the immunities/resistances! I want them to be less immune so a turn by a player isn't, "I cast hold person... Okay they fail." "They eyes glow and they save instead." As the sum total of a turn!

If instead of "nope" I am thinking its instead reduced down to a lesser version of that spell, so instead of noping away hold person it becomes something that still affects them, thereby not wasting the players turn, but doesn't cripple the boss and make the encounter trivial.

Here are some alt effects for immune creatures that are much less powerful, but still beneficial for the players:
Fear effects- Threat: The creature that would have been hit by the fear affect registers the source of the effect as a high threat, and will try to attack it if possible on its next turn
Paralysis/Stun effects- Stagger: the creature struggles off the paralysis but cannot use its movement this turn
Sleep effects- Drowsy: The creature loses its reaction for the turn
Prone effects- Stumble: The creature is pushed 10 feet away from the source of the prone effect
Blind/Deafen effects- Blind spot: The creature's senses dim momentarily, its passive perception is reduced by 5 and it has disadvantage on perception checks this turn
Push/pull effects- Anchored: The creature's movement is reduced by half the distance that it would have been pushed/pulled
Charm effects- Oblivious: The creature cannot target the source of the charm effect with reactions until next turn

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry

mind the walrus posted:

Saw this on the mostly-garbage /r/dndmemes today and ngl... I felt it:



It puts a DM in such a difficult place when all the players want to do is be goofy custom deviantart OCs before literally anything else about the campaign is known. Like none of those ideas are terrible in isolate, but they demonstrate a fundamental problem a lot of D&D players (and DMs) have which is-- thinking solely in self-interested terms. D&D is collaborative.

That's why I personally bar brand-new players from terribly exotic races/character concepts, especially homebrew. It's a bit like a baking student attempting macarons on day one instead of learning how to make cookie dough. Sometimes you really do need to start with the fundamentals and be willing to cede your personal hype to the rest of the group while you learn how to listen and collaborate.

Then eventually yes, they can end up as part of the wacky insane party where every character concept is wild homebrew and an anime princess sky-pirate teams up with a half-silicon/half-preying mantis Psionic Knight and a pile of sentient rocks that use abacus logic to cast mathematical magic. That stuff can rule... but it's kind of a privilege and not something you bust out at Session 0 your first time because "I don't see the appeal of pretending to be a Dwarf."

If you can't make a dwarf interesting, you can't make a rock-abacus-math wizard interesting either.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004

коммунизм хранится в яичках

mind the walrus posted:

Saw this on the mostly-garbage /r/dndmemes today and ngl... I felt it:



It puts a DM in such a difficult place when all the players want to do is be goofy custom deviantart OCs before literally anything else about the campaign is known. Like none of those ideas are terrible in isolate, but they demonstrate a fundamental problem a lot of D&D players (and DMs) have which is-- thinking solely in self-interested terms. D&D is collaborative.

That's why I personally bar brand-new players from terribly exotic races/character concepts, especially homebrew. It's a bit like a baking student attempting macarons on day one instead of learning how to make cookie dough. Sometimes you really do need to start with the fundamentals and be willing to cede your personal hype to the rest of the group while you learn how to listen and collaborate.

Then eventually yes, they can end up as part of the wacky insane party where every character concept is wild homebrew and an anime princess sky-pirate teams up with a half-silicon/half-preying mantis Psionic Knight and a pile of sentient rocks that use abacus logic to cast mathematical magic. That stuff can rule... but it's kind of a privilege and not something you bust out at Session 0 your first time because "I don't see the appeal of pretending to be a Dwarf."

Not going to lie here, you sound like you'd be terrible to play with.

Let people have fun. The goal of a GM isn't to make players sit though their Song of Ice And Fire knockoff, and there's nothing collaborative about telling your players they shouldn't bring their ideas to your game.

nelson
Apr 12, 2009
College Slice
It’s a bit on the gamey side but you can say “The monster used one of his legendary resistances against your spell. He has 2 left.” That way the player doesn’t feel his turn was totally wasted.

pog boyfriend
Jul 2, 2011

Liquid Communism posted:

Not going to lie here, you sound like you'd be terrible to play with.

Let people have fun. The goal of a GM isn't to make players sit though their Song of Ice And Fire knockoff, and there's nothing collaborative about telling your players they shouldn't bring their ideas to your game.

eh..? the way it was worded was weird but i dont see what is wrong with the mentality itself. players not asking the dm what they want to do and just coming in with a wild idea they have no idea how to incorporate without working it out is a real problem, it puts the gm in the hotseat and can destroy any tone that other players are working on(if everyone else is fully on board with their "song of ice and fire knockoff", and one person is the magic talking rock that speaks in a gilbert gottfried impression and collects seashells, then the game is going to be bad)

he1ixx
Aug 23, 2007

still bad at video games

pog boyfriend posted:

eh..? the way it was worded was weird but i dont see what is wrong with the mentality itself. players not asking the dm what they want to do and just coming in with a wild idea they have no idea how to incorporate without working it out is a real problem, it puts the gm in the hotseat and can destroy any tone that other players are working on(if everyone else is fully on board with their "song of ice and fire knockoff", and one person is the magic talking rock that speaks in a gilbert gottfried impression and collects seashells, then the game is going to be bad)

I agree with the sentiment too, speaking as a newly-returning DM and having a party which is almost completely made up of people who have never played before. We are playing through "Out of the Abyss" and there's a *lot* to keep track of, get a grip on and understand coming into that as a player completely new to D&D. Lots of NPCs to meet, none of them knew what ability and skill checks were and all assumed that combat was their first and only choice. Most of them were overwhelmed by just trying to inhabit their character to some degree. They were all playing fairly-well-fleshed-out characters there were very standard (dark elf druid, dwarf ranger, half-elf paladin, etc) but they started making them interesting and figuring out how to speak in their character's voice by the end of the first session. Everyone had fun and said they can't wait until next week so I took that as a good sign.

I feel like this need to have some wacky-rear end character in order to for things to be fun is serving a different need than me or anyone I've played with is trying to get out of D&D in general. The people I play with just want an interesting collaborative story and you can do that with a group of 4 gnome bards if you want. Hell I played a 5 year campaign as a human fighter and had a blast. Like most things, this game is what you make of it but I think trying to convince the DM in my first campaign that I should be able to play as sentient bread yeast which controls a monkey paladin/warlock through mind-spores is making things harder on everyone.

I'd play with you any day, mind_the_walrus :D

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

My rule has always been "Play what's interesting, but your character needs a reason to want to go along with the adventures we're doing."

I can just have townspeople say "Oh yes, of course our hotel serves small flocks of bats, duh" and leave the players to narrate the weird interactions between their weird character concepts and the local yokels they'd like to shock with their weirdness. They'll do it better than I would anyway. That said, I can't deal with a player whose motivation is "I am 100% a pacifist and am here to convert the rest of the party to pacifism" or "I am secretly evil and am planning to murder people during downtime segments" or especially "My goal is to try and drag real world knowledge I have into the game and will spent every gaming moment collecting poo poo off the enemies and the walls in an attempt to build a blimp."

I've always liked playing non-humans myself, and the weirder the better, and I know I've run into situations where I want to play something semi-offbeat (like, just a githzerai in 4e when that book is in play) and been told "No, we already have a team weird one." Playing as a weird thing seems like an odd thing to make a limited resource to go to first-come, first-serve players.

Also, the whole "players don't really know what they want" thing is patronizing and lovely. Sure they do, they're telling you. Maybe what they want and what you want aren't the same thing, and that's a conversation that needs to be had, but they're not just wrong for wanting to play weird stuff.

theironjef fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Sep 13, 2020

change my name
Aug 27, 2007

Legends die but anime is forever.

RIP The Lost Otakus.

theironjef posted:

or especially "My goal is to try and drag real world knowledge I have into the game and will spent every gaming moment collecting poo poo off the enemies and the walls in an attempt to build a blimp."


This is literally what our wizard is trying to do as his downtime business, I'm trying to steer him away from it...

Infinite Karma
Oct 23, 2004
Good as dead





pog boyfriend posted:

eh..? the way it was worded was weird but i dont see what is wrong with the mentality itself. [n]players not asking the dm what they want to do and just coming in with a wild idea they have no idea how to incorporate without working it out is a real problem[/b], it puts the gm in the hotseat and can destroy any tone that other players are working on(if everyone else is fully on board with their "song of ice and fire knockoff", and one person is the magic talking rock that speaks in a gilbert gottfried impression and collects seashells, then the game is going to be bad)
It's really this. I don't want to insist that elitist "high drama immersive improv" or something is the one true way to play D&D, but having a basic theme and tone to a campaign isn't a grognardy request. Playing a homebrewed anthropomorphic animal means one of the following: A) you're playing in a world full of anthropomorphic animals, so that's not weird, B) you're an anthropomorphic animal in a world where that's not a thing, so it's all anyone will ever talk about, or C) you're an anthropomorphic animal in a world where that's not a thing, but nobody cares - if they notice, it's just an offhand remark.

I have to assume that most DMs aren't up for A) unless it's planned ahead of time, B) is usually extremely disruptive to the game and the other players' spotlight time, and C) would have to be a very weird and unsatisfying result for the player who's trying to build in an outrageous character hook.

Speaking as someone who's more often a player than a DM, it's not fun to hear someone pause to narrate what weird bat thing their flock of bats does in every scene. It doesn't develop any character elements or intraparty relationships, and it's probably not advancing the plot, it's just set dressing. If you want to be weird, be weird in a way that the other players can satisfyingly react to, and flesh out their own characters in contrast to it. At the very least, be weird in a way that meaningful NPCs will react to instead of yokels.

Taciturn Tactician
Jan 27, 2011

The secret to good health is a balanced diet and unstable healing radiation
Lipstick Apathy

Liquid Communism posted:

I go the opposite way on this. Giving people Fighters as a newbie class is doing them a huge disservice because fighters have the smallest suite of ways to interact with the game mechanically and the least solutions to problems that aren't a monster to be stabbed.

Fighter is a class for people who want to engage heavily with the combat mechanics, and is best played by people who already know they find that their main locus of fun in playing.

My go-to starter for people is Cleric. They have a good selection of magic and decent martial abilities to back it up, and have a built in spot in the team dynamic.

I feel like you and I have vast gulfs in our perception of a "new player". To me, a new player is someone like how I was when I was first introduced to the game: they don't own any of the books, they've heard of D&D because of course they have but they've never done any tabletop before, and the challenge is getting them to the table and convincing them that doing all this paperwork to roll dice is actually going to result in a good time. If you start them as cleric, you are either half building their character for them, or you're giving them the massive assignment of "hey before you have any fun, can you go ahead and pick from this big list of subclasses that you have no idea about and read up on twenty two spells on top of all the poo poo already involved in making a character and us teaching you how rolling a dice to attack people works?" I can't think of a faster way to unsell someone on this hobby than frontloading all this poo poo. Even if you pick spells for them you're still going to have to explain a subset of them. Meanwhile, if you stick to martials, you basically just ask if they wanna be a dude in armour, a shirtless guy with a big axe, a kung fu fighter, or a sneaky guy, and then you completely ignore spellcasting and about the most complicated list of things for them to look over is what fighting style they want as fighter, and you defer subclass stuff until you've already had a few sessions and sold them on the idea. If they decide after a few sessions, actually, spellcasting looks really cool, conveniently wizards has given fighter a subclass where they can start doing that.

If someone is new to D&D 5e but ultimately is already "in" on tabletop or actively wants to play and is willing to do a bunch of research, yeah, probably fighter is gonna be a little boring. But if they're someone you're trying to draw in it doesn't have any homework for them to worry about while you teach them the game.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
When I hear "new player", especially if they just want to drop in and play, I think "I'm going to ask them broadly what kind of hero they want to be, then I'm going to make that character in D&D." Unless they want to be a rogue, they're probably gonna get a half- or full-caster because those classes have more buttons to experiment with, but either way I'll be picking their prepared spells for the first session. Once they're hooked then we can talk about "so hey, I set you up as a Light cleric, but you can change that if you want to one of these different archetypes" and "oh yeah, there's a bunch of other spells you could have access to, since we're taking a long rest you can swap out your current list for others."

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

The best newbie class is whatever class they want to play and you just trust that your friends are smart enough to figure it out, exactly like you did yourself a while ago. And if they need help, the next best newbie class is just answering questions as they come up.

My apologies if that wasn't correct and anyone in here was actually the little brother playing the little brother class, a thing that I have usually found to have way more of a theoretical than practical existence.

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

College Slice
One shot going well, I like using Detect Thoughts as a Lie Detector (DM seems to be generous and not forcing me to switching back and forth to avoid a will save/delving deeper).

Celebrity Ghost
Sep 26, 2007

SkySteak posted:

Thank you for your advice regarding guns. I'm going to be running a campaign a campaign soon myself and two things presented themselves to me which I wouldn't mind opinions on:

1. I am wanting this to be a reasonably low level campaign start and thus I was thinking between level three and level five. I find that level three is good as it avoids the 'made of glass' issues of levels one and allows the starting archetype to begin Level four is actually pretty tempting as it gives everyone their initial ASI /Feats whilst also allowing the next level up to be one which gives some cool stuff (Spell level & multi attack).

2. Has anyone here had any real experience with allowing racial bonuses to merely be put into whatever attributes people want? I suppose it reduces the 'identity' of each race but one of the larger problems I tend to see is character concepts just being undercut by the attributes of a race being in the wrong place.

3. I'm also toying with the concept of killing off Variant Human and just starting everyone off with a feat (with a few exceptions like Lucky, Weapon Mastery/Armor feats etc). I am wondering if it may be more a bit more flavorful and allow what would normally be suboptimal (and thus potentially shunned) feats a greater chance to shine.


First time DMing in a while so I am a bit averse to making sweeping changes, but hopefully these make sense.


You got some answers on this already but I'll say that I used every single one of these in my current campaign and I think they were only good things to the point they'll be standard in any game I run. It sounds like the race stuff is about to become a real optional rule anyway and the free feat already is.

The only reason I could see starting at level 1 is if you either have new players (just to overwhelm them less), or they want the satisfaction of starting "at the beginning". But in that case you could always have them go up one level a session or something.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004

коммунизм хранится в яичках

Taciturn Tactician posted:

I feel like you and I have vast gulfs in our perception of a "new player". To me, a new player is someone like how I was when I was first introduced to the game: they don't own any of the books, they've heard of D&D because of course they have but they've never done any tabletop before, and the challenge is getting them to the table and convincing them that doing all this paperwork to roll dice is actually going to result in a good time. If you start them as cleric, you are either half building their character for them, or you're giving them the massive assignment of "hey before you have any fun, can you go ahead and pick from this big list of subclasses that you have no idea about and read up on twenty two spells on top of all the poo poo already involved in making a character and us teaching you how rolling a dice to attack people works?" I can't think of a faster way to unsell someone on this hobby than frontloading all this poo poo. Even if you pick spells for them you're still going to have to explain a subset of them. Meanwhile, if you stick to martials, you basically just ask if they wanna be a dude in armour, a shirtless guy with a big axe, a kung fu fighter, or a sneaky guy, and then you completely ignore spellcasting and about the most complicated list of things for them to look over is what fighting style they want as fighter, and you defer subclass stuff until you've already had a few sessions and sold them on the idea. If they decide after a few sessions, actually, spellcasting looks really cool, conveniently wizards has given fighter a subclass where they can start doing that.

If someone is new to D&D 5e but ultimately is already "in" on tabletop or actively wants to play and is willing to do a bunch of research, yeah, probably fighter is gonna be a little boring. But if they're someone you're trying to draw in it doesn't have any homework for them to worry about while you teach them the game.

Bit disingenuous there, aren't we? Starting a new cleric, even at level three is 'so what kind of belief do you want your character to have' followed by 'glance over this list of spells and pick a couple to know'. You don't have to gently caress about with subclasses and the like, it's a new player's first character, they're not spreadsheeting out a min/max 20 level build for it and there's no reason that you as the DM can't let them change it later if they don't like how it rolls.

IT BEGINS
Jan 15, 2009

I don't know how to make analogies

Liquid Communism posted:

Bit disingenuous there, aren't we? Starting a new cleric, even at level three is 'so what kind of belief do you want your character to have' followed by 'glance over this list of spells and pick a couple to know'. You don't have to gently caress about with subclasses and the like, it's a new player's first character, they're not spreadsheeting out a min/max 20 level build for it and there's no reason that you as the DM can't let them change it later if they don't like how it rolls.

I don't think it's disingenuous at all. If you hand someone who has never played dnd before a loving third level Cleric, I would definitely be willing to bet they'd be confused at best and completely crushed by analysis paralysis on the average case. I think your conception of 'new player' is 'person who has played some RPGs before', whereas for many of us it's 'person who's never seen a d20 before, has maybe played some clicker games on their phone'.

IT BEGINS
Jan 15, 2009

I don't know how to make analogies
Like my friends that are new to the hobby spend 2-3 minutes per turn deciding between just Shocking Grasp and Fire Bolt, never mind any other spells. They're getting better but telling them 'run a Cleric with second level spells' sounds to me like one of the better ways to get them to never play the game again.

Baller Ina
Oct 21, 2010

:whattheeucharist:
Clerics get their entire spell list, not "a couple to know". Show a new player a list of 15+ spells and say "what do you want to cast today" and I feel like they'll be a bit overwhelmed. I think Artificer might be a good choice for a new player- in combat prowess mixed with a limited spell list, which you can curate for your new player.

Azza Bamboo
Apr 7, 2018


THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021
Sometimes it's not that they're slow or paralyzed but that the experienced players are planning their turns during other players while the new player is trying to see if they can learn something by spectating.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

"How much player weirdness is OK at our table" and "what should a brand new player play" are both questions that have been struggled with for decades and reasonable people can disagree on the answers.

Which means you guys need to be a little less hostile when discussing these with each other, please.

Fumbles
Mar 22, 2013

Can I get a reroll?

clusterfuck posted:

Also if I may, if you're enjoying Nort's Maneuvers please consider writing a review or giving it some stars. It keeps selling slowly but consistently but there's almost no community feedback which has made it less engaging for me to keep updating. I had a look around and found a little reddit discussion from people seeking opinions and getting them from people who haven't used it. I don't mind criticism but it's much more interesting and useful from people who are using it.

No problem, I'll go ahead and leave a review on it where I got it. It turns out that the character didn't take any that are super abusable: They ended up with Ignore Weakness, Great Cleave, Powerful Strikes, Parry and Riposte, Unyielding Avalanche, Volley Fire, Arrow of Slaying, Mighty Strikes and they accidentally messed up and took Executioner not noticing it needs Great Weapon Fighting style so they're working on picking a replacement.

Of them, the one that's shone most brightly was Parry and Riposte. I look at Arrow of Slaying and see that in theory it could cause some really severe sniping moments, but then I look over at my Sorceress with Fireball and figure that I'm okay if my Legendary Hero of Ancient Legend player gets to one shot a midboss with their cool arrow trick since the Sorceress could fry an entire minion encounter and possibly burn down a whole small town with one spell. I'll keep you abreast if there's any issues but so far from one session of multiple fights they haven't done anything I'd consider worrying when it comes to power.


mind the walrus posted:

Saw this on the mostly-garbage /r/dndmemes today and ngl... I felt it:



(snip)

This is my life. I haven't had a non-weirdo party in my entire career, with the closest being the time one player was "just" a half-orc half-goliath and one player was "just" playing a homebrew shapeshifter race. But I agree you're going too far. The best way I've found about this is to set the tone for the adventure you're telling and if people try to bring jokes to a serious campaign just ask them nicely not to play that character here. I've also found setting what races you're allowing should be done per game not per player because it feels really unfair if Bill gets to be a Tiefling but Susan is forced to be a Human or Elf. If everyone is told "no tieflings allowed, they're not a PC option here" there's typically no hurt feelings and most people are mature enough to understand that's not the kind of game you want right now.

Saying that- it's telling that the character in my party who's the most absolutely annoying is the Dwarf. The Furry Rogue is just a normal rogue who occasionally sniffs things and the Edgy Prostitute Tiefling is just background dressing who sometimes likes to flaunt how Totally Sexy My Character Is You Guys but otherwise just plays the game normally. Then I've got my two humans, an ancient hero and a modern knight. All the while the dwarf is bending over backwards to play his Nutty Professor archaeologist who swears the ancient elven ruins full of ancient elven statue and ancient elven documents and ancient elven technology were made by the Dwarves. Really. The elves just moved in later. Because they're mostly made of stone and Dwarves do stone so it has to be Dwarves.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

IT BEGINS posted:

I don't think it's disingenuous at all. If you hand someone who has never played dnd before a loving third level Cleric, I would definitely be willing to bet they'd be confused at best and completely crushed by analysis paralysis on the average case. I think your conception of 'new player' is 'person who has played some RPGs before', whereas for many of us it's 'person who's never seen a d20 before, has maybe played some clicker games on their phone'.
On the other hand giving them a fighter forces you to choose between watching the light slowly leave their eyes as they fail at every non punch based piece of roleplaying vs freeform roleplaying with a thin veneer of "roll initiative" every so often.

Which to be fair is how the podcasts they've been listening to do it.

Son of a Vondruke!
Aug 3, 2012

More than Star Citizen will ever be.

Taciturn Tactician posted:

I feel like you and I have vast gulfs in our perception of a "new player". To me, a new player is someone like how I was when I was first introduced to the game: they don't own any of the books, they've heard of D&D because of course they have but they've never done any tabletop before, and the challenge is getting them to the table and convincing them that doing all this paperwork to roll dice is actually going to result in a good time. If you start them as cleric, you are either half building their character for them.

If someone is this new, they probably shouldn't be asked to build a character. If someone has to be convinced that even the basic concept of the game is fun, you shouldn't be starting them off with paperwork at all. Just give them a pre-built to start off. If they give a try and like it then they can remake it later.

Psychedelicatessen
Feb 17, 2012

Son of a Vondruke! posted:

If someone is this new, they probably shouldn't be asked to build a character. If someone has to be convinced that even the basic concept of the game is fun, you shouldn't be starting them off with paperwork at all. Just give them a pre-built to start off. If they give a try and like it then they can remake it later.

Building a character on dndbeyond was one of the main things that got me in to actually playing dnd as a new player. Sure, my tiefling Fiend warlock was nothing unusual (except a few UA feats that I didn't know how to use), but I made it myself and it was mine. I got to pore over all the free spells & invocations, picked some bad ones, messed up my hit die usage all the time and multiclassed in to a druid later, but had a lot of fun along the way.

The premade fighter, rogue, cleric and wizards might be fine for some new players, but let them build their own enjoyable mess of a character on DDB if they want to, and then tweak it later if it's a problem that their monk with 8 dex/15 int can't do poo poo.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004

коммунизм хранится в яичках

Baller Ina posted:

Clerics get their entire spell list, not "a couple to know". Show a new player a list of 15+ spells and say "what do you want to cast today" and I feel like they'll be a bit overwhelmed. I think Artificer might be a good choice for a new player- in combat prowess mixed with a limited spell list, which you can curate for your new player.

That's the point. They can change it up at any remem, so the only pressure is 'pick a couple you want to be able to do at the start of the game', with zero pressure for it to be a long-term decision since the character's a good night's sleep away from a new spell list if this one sucks for the player.

SkySteak
Sep 9, 2010
Thank you for the replies, I decided to go with all three, presenting them all for the Session 0, wherein they went over quite well! Currently I am looking at giving everyone a more roleplay focused or at least, a lesser used feat (Excluding Variant Human from the roster of race options). I am debating if I want to allow the slight uptick in group power from a lot of feats having +1s in places, or if I want to just cut that out but keep the rest of the features. Generally however I don't want to be giving out heavy duty magic, armor, weapon, etc feats with some additional exceptions added on (Lucky).

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

SkySteak posted:

Thank you for the replies, I decided to go with all three, presenting them all for the Session 0, wherein they went over quite well! Currently I am looking at giving everyone a more roleplay focused or at least, a lesser used feat (Excluding Variant Human from the roster of race options). I am debating if I want to allow the slight uptick in group power from a lot of feats having +1s in places, or if I want to just cut that out but keep the rest of the features. Generally however I don't want to be giving out heavy duty magic, armor, weapon, etc feats with some additional exceptions added on (Lucky).
If they're not stacking to give themselves an 18 in their main stat then realistically there's not going to be much creep. Let them know they have a hard staring cap of 17 in their main stat and all the +1 will do is allow for some non standard race/class combos (which is good)

Baku
Aug 20, 2005

by Fluffdaddy
The thing about the Hypothetical New Player or Little Brother or whatever that annoys me is that every single time we have these discussions everybody sort of picks an arbitrary point to have the player start from, but even players who've never played a tabletop RPG before aren't the same. Do they play computer and console RPGs? Are they creative? Do they like playing with numbers, or are they terrified of math?

Not everybody is the same, which means the "new player approach" shouldn't be one-size. The best answer, as always, is to ask the individual yourself.

Giodo!
Oct 29, 2003

There isn't a single kind of new player. In my experience there are people who will be drawn to exploring all of the options and figuring out their character and spell sheets, and there will be people who enjoy hanging out with their friends and telling the story and have little or no interest into doing independent research into the game.

As someone who was new to TTRPGs and running games for my friends who were also new, I will say that working with the latter could be pretty exhausting. I won't put myself into a situation again where there's no expectation that anyone independently learn any of the rules. I had a blast with my friends but it was a lot of work by level 3 or so to translate the game mechanics into something they could digest and put into action on their turns. We also played maybe once every other month due to busy lives, so there wasn't a lot of retention. I ended up switching us to PBTA games because it fit the vibe of the group way better.

pog boyfriend
Jul 2, 2011

SkySteak posted:

Thank you for the replies, I decided to go with all three, presenting them all for the Session 0, wherein they went over quite well! Currently I am looking at giving everyone a more roleplay focused or at least, a lesser used feat (Excluding Variant Human from the roster of race options). I am debating if I want to allow the slight uptick in group power from a lot of feats having +1s in places, or if I want to just cut that out but keep the rest of the features. Generally however I don't want to be giving out heavy duty magic, armor, weapon, etc feats with some additional exceptions added on (Lucky).

until you hit level... 13, 14, or so? a savvy dm can just give power to players and not care in the slightest. proper encounter design will work even if you start handing out magic items like candy, giving bonus feats, skill training in downtime, etc. you can still make hard challenges. once you hit level 13 or 14 you have to be real careful with this though because you can overshoot the CR system and once you do that you are in unexplored territory where you have to homebrew literally everything to keep a challenge up.

Liquid Communism posted:

That's the point. They can change it up at any remem, so the only pressure is 'pick a couple you want to be able to do at the start of the game', with zero pressure for it to be a long-term decision since the character's a good night's sleep away from a new spell list if this one sucks for the player.

this is generally true of my experience with new players as well. i can give people recommendations for spells for cleric/druid to start with, and they can safely play around in that space having a comfortable thing to retreat back to, but they can always swap stuff out as they see fit without worrying about breaking the build. cleric/druid are not especially hard for new players to work with, they just have a very high skill ceiling.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004

коммунизм хранится в яичках
A very high skill ceiling is a really good way to put it.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Baku posted:

The thing about the Hypothetical New Player or Little Brother or whatever that annoys me is that every single time we have these discussions everybody sort of picks an arbitrary point to have the player start from, but even players who've never played a tabletop RPG before aren't the same. Do they play computer and console RPGs? Are they creative? Do they like playing with numbers, or are they terrified of math?

Not everybody is the same, which means the "new player approach" shouldn't be one-size. The best answer, as always, is to ask the individual yourself.

In the time it takes for one thread to hash through one conversation of theoretical newbie player, two newcomers to the game will open the book, go "Oh neat, druid gets a wolf" roll one up with help from people not busying lobbing arguments about it, and be ready to go.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸
Here are the things I have actually seen various flavours of new players have problems with:
Taking level 2 spells at level 2
Adding their proficiency bonus to armour they're proficient with
Confusing when to use their ability scores and their ability score mods
Confusing ability score modifiers and things that modify their ability score
Just completely loving up their ability score assignments, like wizards with 14 starting Int
Expecting having the highest possible starting value in a skill to translate to consistently succeeding at stuff
loving rolling for everything under the sun STOP ROLLING loving DICE TO WALK DOWN THE loving STREET GOD <- this is the only one that's on them

Things I have never actually seen new players have problems getting their heads around:
"You can use this ability as much as you like"
"You can use this ability this many times between snacks"
"You can use this ability this many times between sleeps"

I mean they're not going to be using their stuff "optimally" but I've never run into someone actually having trouble with the concept of "I cast fireball, I can do that two more times right?"

DeathSandwich
Apr 24, 2008

I fucking hate puzzles.

Liquid Communism posted:

That's the point. They can change it up at any remem, so the only pressure is 'pick a couple you want to be able to do at the start of the game', with zero pressure for it to be a long-term decision since the character's a good night's sleep away from a new spell list if this one sucks for the player.

Yeah, that's kind of where I'd be. I would agree that cleric makes a good starter (as does warlock, or eldritch knight fighers honestly) under the caveat that I wouldn't just dump all 22 level 1 spells on them and say 'have fun'. Ideally I'd be guiding them and let them know that they get _ number of spells they can prepare at any given time and can swap it out at a rest, and for their concept/dieity/backstory I would recommend X Y and Z but again that they can swap it out during a rest. I know people like to poo-poo on 5e rogues but I think a Swashbuckler or Arcane Trickster would also fit that niche of something being fairly easy to pick up and run with in combat and comes with the benefit of them getting a good amount of skills and stuff to use outside of fighting.

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Nehru the Damaja
May 20, 2005

We're progressing through the Baldur's Gate parts of Descent into Avernus and suddenly it hits me: How the hell am I going to voice Lulu?

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