I’m currently running a campaign with a few friends one of which, a cleric, is fairly new to D&D. at the beginning of the campaign he sent me a few videos of fun ideas, one of which was on pets and how to make them manageable for the DM. Early on in the campaign two players including the cleric rolled nat 20s on animal handling for bears, prompting them to be somewhat of the party’s pets. I was fine with this and thought it was fun but now he keeps trying to get more animals and says he wants to build an army. After a long rest he found the calm emotions spell which he thought would be great for taming animals into his army, I told him however it only worked on humanoid creatures, to which he asked if it could work on all types of creatures. I said no but said I may allow in the future the ability for it to work on humanoids and what would be considered “conventional animals” bears, wolves, dear, etc. to which he responded “that wasn’t what I really wanted.” I obviously can’t give him an army of any type of creature he would want and even giving him an army wolves is unbalanced. I’ve tried solutions like saying he can have an army of animals but only the previously tamed bears can fight, but every time I do he tells me I need to rewatch the video he sent me and then grows incredibly bored of the game and just sits on his phone. Are there any ways I might be able to fix this situation?
I think the best answer is just yo say, no, you can’t do that. Don’t debate it with him, tell him. Tell him you don’t care what a YouTuber thinks, this is your game, you’ll run it your way. And warn him that if he keeps having these passive-aggressive tantrums playing on his phone, you’ll have to ask him to leave the game. And if he wants a pet, there’s the beast master ranger (and a few others) and he doesn’t get to have class abilities from another class for free. That’s the better way.
If you want to be less confrontational, tell him the other animals are afraid of the bear, no matter how many nat 20’s he rolls, that won’t change. So they are unwilling to join the party. Also, within a few levels, this should fix itself. Bears are tough at low levels, but will soon be weaker, and taken down by more powerful enemies. And they’re not PCs, no death saves; the bear hits 0hp, no more bear.
I agree with Xalthu, your best bet is just to say no we aren't doing that. It's one of those things with no upside, if you do let them collect an army of bears they'll just end up getting frustrated because combat slows to a halt because they're trying to control a dozen or more stat blocks and that just gets worse if they're an army of different animals each with a differet stat block. And as Xalthu says as soon as you get to the level where enemies have decent area of effect spells that entire army is cooked in the first round and then you've got a player sulking because you killed the army they spent ages building. Far easier to manage expectations up front and just put a stop to it
Also if they're going to sulk every time they don't get their own way and aren't going to respect the time you put in as a DM prepping sessions then they're a problem player and you need to have a serious conversation with them about either stop that or they'll have to leave
You need to talk to them and just explicitly say that you do not want to deal with them having an army of animals because (1) it's not fair to the other players (2) it will make combat frustrating for you to design and run (3) you don't want to HB all kinds of stuff to make it work because that is also more hassle for you to keep track of and enforce. Let him know his choices are to play with the rules and game as you choose to run it or find himself another game or run a game himself as DM where he can allow whatever he likes.
Being army commander is a full time job. You are both leader, treasurer, commander and strategist, HR, plus everyone who has anything to say or ask about anything will come to you.
Yes, you can be an army commander. No, you cannot also be an adventurer.
Is what I'd say. Also, I have a non-negotiable rule that I point out: PC's are heroes. NPC's are not. Hence, NPC's never do meaningful stuff in combat. Maybe they can do basic stuff like 'guard the flank' or 'harry the archers' or something like that. But at the end of the day, NPC's in combat can die, but not provide meaningful damage.
But that's me. I'm highly idiosyncratic =)
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Being army commander is a full time job. You are both leader, treasurer, commander and strategist, HR, plus everyone who has anything to say or ask about anything will come to you.
This.
Take time and effort into consideration. The time it takes that player to build and maintain that army, the other players go on adventures. This technically makes the PC building the army an NPC...
To everyone who has been responding thank you all so much for your help I’m working to remedy the situation and I think my games are headed in a better direction. Thank you all.
I hope you're getting somewhere with this, as a DM you want to keep players happy and having fun but you also get to run the game you want to run. It very much sounds like you really don't want to have this 'army' which I get I wouldn't fancy running that kind of game either.
The only real option is just be honest and explain that. If they can't handle that then do you really want to play with them?
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I’m currently running a campaign with a few friends one of which, a cleric, is fairly new to D&D. at the beginning of the campaign he sent me a few videos of fun ideas, one of which was on pets and how to make them manageable for the DM. Early on in the campaign two players including the cleric rolled nat 20s on animal handling for bears, prompting them to be somewhat of the party’s pets. I was fine with this and thought it was fun but now he keeps trying to get more animals and says he wants to build an army. After a long rest he found the calm emotions spell which he thought would be great for taming animals into his army, I told him however it only worked on humanoid creatures, to which he asked if it could work on all types of creatures. I said no but said I may allow in the future the ability for it to work on humanoids and what would be considered “conventional animals” bears, wolves, dear, etc. to which he responded “that wasn’t what I really wanted.” I obviously can’t give him an army of any type of creature he would want and even giving him an army wolves is unbalanced. I’ve tried solutions like saying he can have an army of animals but only the previously tamed bears can fight, but every time I do he tells me I need to rewatch the video he sent me and then grows incredibly bored of the game and just sits on his phone. Are there any ways I might be able to fix this situation?
I think the best answer is just yo say, no, you can’t do that. Don’t debate it with him, tell him. Tell him you don’t care what a YouTuber thinks, this is your game, you’ll run it your way. And warn him that if he keeps having these passive-aggressive tantrums playing on his phone, you’ll have to ask him to leave the game.
And if he wants a pet, there’s the beast master ranger (and a few others) and he doesn’t get to have class abilities from another class for free.
That’s the better way.
If you want to be less confrontational, tell him the other animals are afraid of the bear, no matter how many nat 20’s he rolls, that won’t change. So they are unwilling to join the party.
Also, within a few levels, this should fix itself. Bears are tough at low levels, but will soon be weaker, and taken down by more powerful enemies. And they’re not PCs, no death saves; the bear hits 0hp, no more bear.
I agree with Xalthu, your best bet is just to say no we aren't doing that. It's one of those things with no upside, if you do let them collect an army of bears they'll just end up getting frustrated because combat slows to a halt because they're trying to control a dozen or more stat blocks and that just gets worse if they're an army of different animals each with a differet stat block. And as Xalthu says as soon as you get to the level where enemies have decent area of effect spells that entire army is cooked in the first round and then you've got a player sulking because you killed the army they spent ages building. Far easier to manage expectations up front and just put a stop to it
Also if they're going to sulk every time they don't get their own way and aren't going to respect the time you put in as a DM prepping sessions then they're a problem player and you need to have a serious conversation with them about either stop that or they'll have to leave
You need to talk to them and just explicitly say that you do not want to deal with them having an army of animals because (1) it's not fair to the other players (2) it will make combat frustrating for you to design and run (3) you don't want to HB all kinds of stuff to make it work because that is also more hassle for you to keep track of and enforce. Let him know his choices are to play with the rules and game as you choose to run it or find himself another game or run a game himself as DM where he can allow whatever he likes.
Give him the army but make the fights weaker, then put the party up against a dragon or something and massacre, you will get something out of it
Being army commander is a full time job. You are both leader, treasurer, commander and strategist, HR, plus everyone who has anything to say or ask about anything will come to you.
Yes, you can be an army commander. No, you cannot also be an adventurer.
Is what I'd say. Also, I have a non-negotiable rule that I point out: PC's are heroes. NPC's are not. Hence, NPC's never do meaningful stuff in combat. Maybe they can do basic stuff like 'guard the flank' or 'harry the archers' or something like that. But at the end of the day, NPC's in combat can die, but not provide meaningful damage.
But that's me. I'm highly idiosyncratic =)
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
This.
Take time and effort into consideration. The time it takes that player to build and maintain that army, the other players go on adventures. This technically makes the PC building the army an NPC...
To everyone who has been responding thank you all so much for your help I’m working to remedy the situation and I think my games are headed in a better direction. Thank you all.
I hope you're getting somewhere with this, as a DM you want to keep players happy and having fun but you also get to run the game you want to run. It very much sounds like you really don't want to have this 'army' which I get I wouldn't fancy running that kind of game either.
The only real option is just be honest and explain that. If they can't handle that then do you really want to play with them?