i convinced a group of coworkers to play DnD with me, we are in our fourth session and at level 3. Our team consists of a veteran player, a new but very try hard player who is a gamer and has immediately bought all source materials and digged into every kind content he could find. My other two players are completely newbies, one is here and eager to learn, he wanted to play Grisu the little dragon as a dragonborn wizard. He is fine, he is happy, he has a complicated character but he just enjoys burning stuff down.
Then there is Foghorn Leghorn. From Looney tunes. Foghorns player wanted to play the literal rooster from the comic and the way he described how the character was or would behaving, my veteran decided to build a Bard for him. Always loud, always confident and straight in the face of problems and always keeping the mood of his associated up.
My player really loves the character, half the game is dealing with running jokes about his bird and the innuendo, he also goes out of his way to find creative solutions for things even if they do not alway make sense rulewise and are inefficient, they are always fun.
Here comes the problem. A) he rolls like ass. B) he does not understand what makes a bard valuable and is visibly annoyed when he realizes what damage the damage dealers do and what damage he does. I do not think he wants to be taught to play the character well, he shows up, he has fun with his coworkers and he rolls dice if it's his turn and sometimes he even comes up with great things. Plus he understands Hideous Laughter!
So here is my thought, he is currently afflicted by a form of Mummy Rot, for me it's a plot device to get the players to go look for help. I have established, that healing on him is halfed (including hit dice) but apart from being told that he does not feel well, he currently does not have negative consequences. The group is currently in a place where a cleric is willing to perform restoration on him. That will probably go sideways. Instead, the strange curse will take hold of him a bit more but also manifest some strange abilites for the chicken. I am thinking to give him a cantrip, he likes to bonk people on the head with a club, cause the rooster does so in the comic, so either a magical melee attack requiring a weapon, using his charisma modifier,i am also thinking for now that it deals 2d4+CHA damage. It could also be as a bonus action on top of the next melee attack with his special club in that case though he would have to hit with a strength attack which he is also not good at, his CHA is 15, STR is 13 and DEX is 14. The former would allow him to hit better, dealing consistent damage, but less, the latter would mean he would have to hit with a +3 but if he hits, great damage and he has to think about his bonus action, which a bard can definately use differently as well. I would prefer to have it clean in the rules, but if i get him to use CHA while also hitting with the club, that would be best.
I also think he will be healed by half of the damage dealth by the cantrip. Which would make this insanely powerful for a cantrip, but if the curse remains on him, he needs a way to sustain if he keeps meleeing.
Depending on the way he deals with this change, i would then be able to either turn him into more and more of a negative energy half-undead monster that his friends desperately try to cure while he is super happy about being the avatar of something nobody understands. In that case the negative effects of the curse would become more and more pronounced as he gets more and more powerful.
Or he would decide that he has to fight this affliction, then i can take him aside and we talk about how to use his character better and how to have fun with the roleplaying of that.
Would love some feedback, how to scale the ability, how to counter it with negative effects, how to give him more fun abilities themed with this curse or why i really really should not do this.
First and foremost, it appears that this player doesn’t actually want to play a bard. It is possible to melee as a bard but there are better, more straightforward ways to go about it. The player didn’t choose the class and, although well intentioned, I don’t think the person helping out made the best choice for them. Any class can be “always loud, always confident and straight in the face of problems, and always keeping the mood of his associates up.” This is a personality not the mechanical definition of the actions the player wants to perform while playing the game, specifically in combat.
Second, IMHO, you may be doing your new players a bit of a disservice. I don’t think introducing such a high level of home brewing is appropriate in a group with two brand new players. I also question the choice to afflict this crazy home brewed curse on a brand new player. When learning a new thing, particularly something complex, it is almost always better to start with a basic version, to master the foundational skills, before progressing onto the more challenging aspects or considering alterations, improvisations or additions. The player won’t learn the value of a bard if you home brew bard into something entirely unrecognizable and who knows what ideas they are forming regarding how healing, curses and cantrips work—ideas that will inform their future gameplay and they may bring to other tables, to everyone’s surprise.
In my home group, we always allow any new player to remake their first character at any time. D&D is a complicated game. Many things that look good on paper do not bear out in gameplay. No one should be stuck playing a character they don’t like, especially the people who could not have known better through no fault of their own. Rather than chopping up and hammering bard into something that this player would enjoy, I’d recommend letting them re-roll their character using a class that more closely matches the things the player wants to do. Maybe a fighter so he can hit stuff good but with Fey-touched or Magic Initiate to get that Hideous Laughter spell he likes? The player likely has some idea of what appeals to them in actual play now that he has some practical experience.
As a side note, I would not personally enjoy the amount of home brewing in your game. The game is a system. Every change you make has consequences, some far-reaching, some unforeseen—worst case scenario, both. Home brewing lore is one thing but sweeping mechanical changes run the risk of not only bogging the game down but also the need to change more and more things to deal with the wacky conflicts you’ve created. KISS is a philosophy that stands the test of time IMHO. YMMV of course.
I would usually agree, it would be much easier to simply switch to fighter. I do not think though, that he will enjoy that either. To me, he seems somewhat invested when there are decisions for him in game, but completely uninterested, if they are presented outside of it. I have tried to approach him with the idea of respeccing and building something he feels better with, but basically we meet at/after work, then we start playing and this is when he starts to think about the play. We are also not meeting regularly, it's for him purely about being in a room with friends and having fun. SO i could build something different for him, but i would not know if he then would miss the old things he liked.
That's why i am thinking about not adapting the character at all, he can remain what he is, he just gets a temporary boon not based in his character but the plot. If he likes it, it might be woven into his character more or it fades away if he grows more comfortable. I am
Ah yes, Shillelagh, of course, that does what i need mechanical wise. I would still add the sustain in some way and maybe a small magical item that gives him +1 to hit and then we would be golden. Great idea, thanks.
I agree with having him switch class. Either swap him to Eldritch Knight Fighter so he can keep Hideous Laughter, or go all the way to Barbarian which sounds like what he actually wants to play, I don't know why your veteran made him Bard. If he wants to run in an face enemies head-on that is the definition of a Barbarian.
You can use the Cleric's healing as a narrative reason for how he swaps classes & changes his stats to match.
Alternatively if you want to homebrew stuff, homebrew him the equivalent of Eldritch Knight but with the Bard spell list and using Charisma, call it the "Herald" or something...
I would usually agree, it would be much easier to simply switch to fighter. I do not think though, that he will enjoy that either. To me, he seems somewhat invested when there are decisions for him in game, but completely uninterested, if they are presented outside of it. I have tried to approach him with the idea of respeccing and building something he feels better with, but basically we meet at/after work, then we start playing and this is when he starts to think about the play. We are also not meeting regularly, it's for him purely about being in a room with friends and having fun. SO i could build something different for him, but i would not know if he then would miss the old things he liked.
That's why i am thinking about not adapting the character at all, he can remain what he is, he just gets a temporary boon not based in his character but the plot. If he likes it, it might be woven into his character more or it fades away if he grows more comfortable. I am
Ah yes, Shillelagh, of course, that does what i need mechanical wise. I would still add the sustain in some way and maybe a small magical item that gives him +1 to hit and then we would be golden. Great idea, thanks.
D&D teaches us many valuable lessons. One is that we must learn to share the spotlight. There are three people in his group. He is not a part of everything that happens and he is not the main focus of the game, nor should he expect to be. Another is that we must operate as a team. There is no single character that can do everything. Paladin is closest. Bard is fairly close too but, much like this player can’t expect to be front and centre for every interaction, neither can he expect that he will have the tools for every solution. Part of playing the game is figuring out what activities you most want to prioritize and then making an interesting character that can do that.
If he’s a sporty kind of guy, team sports are extremely analogous here. No one player gets to score all the points, or make all the saves or tackles. Each player has a position that comes with certain responsibilities. No single player is involved in every moment of gameplay. It is always a player’s job to pay attention, even when they don’t have the ball or puck. If a player doesn’t pass the ball or puck, they are being selfish and probably hurting the team rather than helping it. Like team sports, D&D is a group activity. Players need to behave like team members not prima donnas.
Fighter was merely a suggestion. Maybe there is a more suitable class for doing the things he likes. Either way, he ought to make some choices and do some growing. Of course you are free to change anything you like however I will counsel against doing so again. When you cater to him, you risk setting him up with some rather undesirable player habits.
Ah yes, Shillelagh, of course, that does what i need mechanical wise. I would still add the sustain in some way and maybe a small magical item that gives him +1 to hit and then we would be golden. Great idea, thanks.
Shillelagh is a temporary solution at best. When the party hits level 5 and all the martials are making 2 attacks per action and he's still making only 1, he will become dissatisfied again. If he wants to hit stuff with a club, he needs to swap to a martial class. There are plenty for him to choose from many that offer options in combat - paladin, fighter, barbarian.
I've got to agree with everyone else here and say he's playing the wrong class, if he wants to be matching the damage of a damage dealing class he's never going to get that playing a largely support class like a Bard and that feeling will only get worse as you level up and everyone gets AoE spells and second attacks while he's still mostly being offered buff spells and healing. From what you've said he's a new player and was pretty much given a class by someone who probably thought he was helping so maybe he's just not realised that you can play almost any class as an "Always loud, always confident and straight in the face of problems and always keeping the mood of his associated up" and thinks he has to be a Bard to do that. I've seen plenty of Barbarians or Fighters fill that role in groups and I dislike the edgy loner trope for Rogues so much that all of mine are little rays of sunshine. I don't think you homebrewing spells or magic items is going to solve that underlying problem, at most you're buying yourself a few levels before the problem rises up again, and you risk putting too much focus on him at the cost of the other players
Thanks for all the feedback, but you are overanalyzing this. Like i said, it's a casual get together with drinks AND DnD. If i get him to stay with the activity for good (he also leaves the company in a few months) and we will probably not get to level 4 until then. I need a bandaid now. If in the future, he is telling me that he will keep with the group and wants to do epic andventures with his ex-coworkers, we will have to talk about his character again and then the bandaid will become his quest or he likes it so much, that his character will change to a warlocky melee. He is in no way a problem player that needs to be formed into a team player. He is just currently not invested in the game enough to actual care about the mechanics of his character and if that never changes and he still plays with us, i would be super happy. He brings an energy to the table i would not want to miss.
LOL. You specifically asked to hear why you should not do this. My recommendations aren’t infallible and my experience is not universal but I’ve introduced loads and loads of people to RPG’s over the course of many, many years. My main concern is that this is not about your game alone. This fellow’s first game with you will set the tone for games and groups down the road. This is why I keep mentioning that this course of action is a bit of a disservice to your player.
Why come to ask for advice when you’ve already made up your mind? At any rate, good gaming to you. Cheers!
Seriously, please do not be that guy. I think your points are in general valid and the reason why i am not immediately agreeing with you is that i know this player and you do not. This is not about "the game", gamer society as a whole or you to be judgemental on the internet. This is about a specific case where i already put a few dozen hours of thought in, came to a conclusion what to do about it, and asked other people for input how to execute it properly. I even got one very helpful reply to use Shillellagh, which i did not think of. And then tons of replies that were in general right, but miss the point because i cannot explain the whole situation, nor did i try.
So i am sorry if you feel betrayed because your input got ignored, but this was never about general best practises, but simply about a bandaid to have a player enjoy 8-12 hours in the next half year a little bit more before he stops playing DnD for good.
Seriously, please do not be that guy. I think your points are in general valid and the reason why i am not immediately agreeing with you is that i know this player and you do not. This is not about "the game", gamer society as a whole or you to be judgemental on the internet. This is about a specific case where i already put a few dozen hours of thought in, came to a conclusion what to do about it, and asked other people for input how to execute it properly. I even got one very helpful reply to use Shillellagh, which i did not think of. And then tons of replies that were in general right, but miss the point because i cannot explain the whole situation, nor did i try.
So i am sorry if you feel betrayed because your input got ignored, but this was never about general best practises, but simply about a bandaid to have a player enjoy 8-12 hours in the next half year a little bit more before he stops playing DnD for good.
Which “guy” is that?
The one who helpfully responds to you?
“Would love some feedback, how to scale the ability, how to counter it with negative effects, how to give him more fun abilities themed with this curse or why I really really should not do this.”
Or the one that wishes you good gaming when it becomes apparent you made up your mind before you even posted?
I don’t normally go around being a Negative Nancy like this but you specifically canvassed for the information.
Typically I never recommend a Multi Attribute Dependent class for new players - they are hard to play and it seems like you went with standard array which by and large makes them miserable to play.
Have him go Valor Bard and allow him access to the new True Strike Cantrip - He will get 1 True Strike melee attack and one normal melee attack per round that should solve the problem without giving him homebrew as then the other players will want home brew.
That said I run HB heavy campaigns all the time and personally have lots of fun with strong HB items and don't constrain myself with worries of power creep as another 2d10 on a monsters attack damage solve any power creep issues easily enough. Side benefit the players love feeling like super heroes even at level 6.
Just my $.02
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Hi gentle people,
i convinced a group of coworkers to play DnD with me, we are in our fourth session and at level 3. Our team consists of a veteran player, a new but very try hard player who is a gamer and has immediately bought all source materials and digged into every kind content he could find. My other two players are completely newbies, one is here and eager to learn, he wanted to play Grisu the little dragon as a dragonborn wizard. He is fine, he is happy, he has a complicated character but he just enjoys burning stuff down.
Then there is Foghorn Leghorn. From Looney tunes. Foghorns player wanted to play the literal rooster from the comic and the way he described how the character was or would behaving, my veteran decided to build a Bard for him. Always loud, always confident and straight in the face of problems and always keeping the mood of his associated up.
My player really loves the character, half the game is dealing with running jokes about his bird and the innuendo, he also goes out of his way to find creative solutions for things even if they do not alway make sense rulewise and are inefficient, they are always fun.
Here comes the problem. A) he rolls like ass. B) he does not understand what makes a bard valuable and is visibly annoyed when he realizes what damage the damage dealers do and what damage he does. I do not think he wants to be taught to play the character well, he shows up, he has fun with his coworkers and he rolls dice if it's his turn and sometimes he even comes up with great things. Plus he understands Hideous Laughter!
So here is my thought, he is currently afflicted by a form of Mummy Rot, for me it's a plot device to get the players to go look for help. I have established, that healing on him is halfed (including hit dice) but apart from being told that he does not feel well, he currently does not have negative consequences. The group is currently in a place where a cleric is willing to perform restoration on him. That will probably go sideways. Instead, the strange curse will take hold of him a bit more but also manifest some strange abilites for the chicken. I am thinking to give him a cantrip, he likes to bonk people on the head with a club, cause the rooster does so in the comic, so either a magical melee attack requiring a weapon, using his charisma modifier,i am also thinking for now that it deals 2d4+CHA damage. It could also be as a bonus action on top of the next melee attack with his special club in that case though he would have to hit with a strength attack which he is also not good at, his CHA is 15, STR is 13 and DEX is 14. The former would allow him to hit better, dealing consistent damage, but less, the latter would mean he would have to hit with a +3 but if he hits, great damage and he has to think about his bonus action, which a bard can definately use differently as well. I would prefer to have it clean in the rules, but if i get him to use CHA while also hitting with the club, that would be best.
I also think he will be healed by half of the damage dealth by the cantrip. Which would make this insanely powerful for a cantrip, but if the curse remains on him, he needs a way to sustain if he keeps meleeing.
Depending on the way he deals with this change, i would then be able to either turn him into more and more of a negative energy half-undead monster that his friends desperately try to cure while he is super happy about being the avatar of something nobody understands. In that case the negative effects of the curse would become more and more pronounced as he gets more and more powerful.
Or he would decide that he has to fight this affliction, then i can take him aside and we talk about how to use his character better and how to have fun with the roleplaying of that.
Would love some feedback, how to scale the ability, how to counter it with negative effects, how to give him more fun abilities themed with this curse or why i really really should not do this.
First and foremost, it appears that this player doesn’t actually want to play a bard. It is possible to melee as a bard but there are better, more straightforward ways to go about it. The player didn’t choose the class and, although well intentioned, I don’t think the person helping out made the best choice for them. Any class can be “always loud, always confident and straight in the face of problems, and always keeping the mood of his associates up.” This is a personality not the mechanical definition of the actions the player wants to perform while playing the game, specifically in combat.
Second, IMHO, you may be doing your new players a bit of a disservice. I don’t think introducing such a high level of home brewing is appropriate in a group with two brand new players. I also question the choice to afflict this crazy home brewed curse on a brand new player. When learning a new thing, particularly something complex, it is almost always better to start with a basic version, to master the foundational skills, before progressing onto the more challenging aspects or considering alterations, improvisations or additions. The player won’t learn the value of a bard if you home brew bard into something entirely unrecognizable and who knows what ideas they are forming regarding how healing, curses and cantrips work—ideas that will inform their future gameplay and they may bring to other tables, to everyone’s surprise.
In my home group, we always allow any new player to remake their first character at any time. D&D is a complicated game. Many things that look good on paper do not bear out in gameplay. No one should be stuck playing a character they don’t like, especially the people who could not have known better through no fault of their own. Rather than chopping up and hammering bard into something that this player would enjoy, I’d recommend letting them re-roll their character using a class that more closely matches the things the player wants to do. Maybe a fighter so he can hit stuff good but with Fey-touched or Magic Initiate to get that Hideous Laughter spell he likes? The player likely has some idea of what appeals to them in actual play now that he has some practical experience.
As a side note, I would not personally enjoy the amount of home brewing in your game. The game is a system. Every change you make has consequences, some far-reaching, some unforeseen—worst case scenario, both. Home brewing lore is one thing but sweeping mechanical changes run the risk of not only bogging the game down but also the need to change more and more things to deal with the wacky conflicts you’ve created. KISS is a philosophy that stands the test of time IMHO. YMMV of course.
There is the existing shillelagh cantrip.
I would usually agree, it would be much easier to simply switch to fighter. I do not think though, that he will enjoy that either. To me, he seems somewhat invested when there are decisions for him in game, but completely uninterested, if they are presented outside of it. I have tried to approach him with the idea of respeccing and building something he feels better with, but basically we meet at/after work, then we start playing and this is when he starts to think about the play. We are also not meeting regularly, it's for him purely about being in a room with friends and having fun. SO i could build something different for him, but i would not know if he then would miss the old things he liked.
That's why i am thinking about not adapting the character at all, he can remain what he is, he just gets a temporary boon not based in his character but the plot. If he likes it, it might be woven into his character more or it fades away if he grows more comfortable. I am
Ah yes, Shillelagh, of course, that does what i need mechanical wise. I would still add the sustain in some way and maybe a small magical item that gives him +1 to hit and then we would be golden. Great idea, thanks.
I agree with having him switch class. Either swap him to Eldritch Knight Fighter so he can keep Hideous Laughter, or go all the way to Barbarian which sounds like what he actually wants to play, I don't know why your veteran made him Bard. If he wants to run in an face enemies head-on that is the definition of a Barbarian.
You can use the Cleric's healing as a narrative reason for how he swaps classes & changes his stats to match.
Alternatively if you want to homebrew stuff, homebrew him the equivalent of Eldritch Knight but with the Bard spell list and using Charisma, call it the "Herald" or something...
D&D teaches us many valuable lessons. One is that we must learn to share the spotlight. There are three people in his group. He is not a part of everything that happens and he is not the main focus of the game, nor should he expect to be. Another is that we must operate as a team. There is no single character that can do everything. Paladin is closest. Bard is fairly close too but, much like this player can’t expect to be front and centre for every interaction, neither can he expect that he will have the tools for every solution. Part of playing the game is figuring out what activities you most want to prioritize and then making an interesting character that can do that.
If he’s a sporty kind of guy, team sports are extremely analogous here. No one player gets to score all the points, or make all the saves or tackles. Each player has a position that comes with certain responsibilities. No single player is involved in every moment of gameplay. It is always a player’s job to pay attention, even when they don’t have the ball or puck. If a player doesn’t pass the ball or puck, they are being selfish and probably hurting the team rather than helping it. Like team sports, D&D is a group activity. Players need to behave like team members not prima donnas.
Fighter was merely a suggestion. Maybe there is a more suitable class for doing the things he likes. Either way, he ought to make some choices and do some growing. Of course you are free to change anything you like however I will counsel against doing so again. When you cater to him, you risk setting him up with some rather undesirable player habits.
Shillelagh is a temporary solution at best. When the party hits level 5 and all the martials are making 2 attacks per action and he's still making only 1, he will become dissatisfied again. If he wants to hit stuff with a club, he needs to swap to a martial class. There are plenty for him to choose from many that offer options in combat - paladin, fighter, barbarian.
I've got to agree with everyone else here and say he's playing the wrong class, if he wants to be matching the damage of a damage dealing class he's never going to get that playing a largely support class like a Bard and that feeling will only get worse as you level up and everyone gets AoE spells and second attacks while he's still mostly being offered buff spells and healing. From what you've said he's a new player and was pretty much given a class by someone who probably thought he was helping so maybe he's just not realised that you can play almost any class as an "Always loud, always confident and straight in the face of problems and always keeping the mood of his associated up" and thinks he has to be a Bard to do that. I've seen plenty of Barbarians or Fighters fill that role in groups and I dislike the edgy loner trope for Rogues so much that all of mine are little rays of sunshine. I don't think you homebrewing spells or magic items is going to solve that underlying problem, at most you're buying yourself a few levels before the problem rises up again, and you risk putting too much focus on him at the cost of the other players
Thanks for all the feedback, but you are overanalyzing this. Like i said, it's a casual get together with drinks AND DnD. If i get him to stay with the activity for good (he also leaves the company in a few months) and we will probably not get to level 4 until then. I need a bandaid now. If in the future, he is telling me that he will keep with the group and wants to do epic andventures with his ex-coworkers, we will have to talk about his character again and then the bandaid will become his quest or he likes it so much, that his character will change to a warlocky melee. He is in no way a problem player that needs to be formed into a team player. He is just currently not invested in the game enough to actual care about the mechanics of his character and if that never changes and he still plays with us, i would be super happy. He brings an energy to the table i would not want to miss.
LOL. You specifically asked to hear why you should not do this. My recommendations aren’t infallible and my experience is not universal but I’ve introduced loads and loads of people to RPG’s over the course of many, many years. My main concern is that this is not about your game alone. This fellow’s first game with you will set the tone for games and groups down the road. This is why I keep mentioning that this course of action is a bit of a disservice to your player.
Why come to ask for advice when you’ve already made up your mind? At any rate, good gaming to you. Cheers!
Seriously, please do not be that guy. I think your points are in general valid and the reason why i am not immediately agreeing with you is that i know this player and you do not. This is not about "the game", gamer society as a whole or you to be judgemental on the internet. This is about a specific case where i already put a few dozen hours of thought in, came to a conclusion what to do about it, and asked other people for input how to execute it properly. I even got one very helpful reply to use Shillellagh, which i did not think of. And then tons of replies that were in general right, but miss the point because i cannot explain the whole situation, nor did i try.
So i am sorry if you feel betrayed because your input got ignored, but this was never about general best practises, but simply about a bandaid to have a player enjoy 8-12 hours in the next half year a little bit more before he stops playing DnD for good.
Which “guy” is that?
The one who helpfully responds to you?
“Would love some feedback, how to scale the ability, how to counter it with negative effects, how to give him more fun abilities themed with this curse or why I really really should not do this.”
Or the one that wishes you good gaming when it becomes apparent you made up your mind before you even posted?
I don’t normally go around being a Negative Nancy like this but you specifically canvassed for the information.
Good day.
Typically I never recommend a Multi Attribute Dependent class for new players - they are hard to play and it seems like you went with standard array which by and large makes them miserable to play.
Have him go Valor Bard and allow him access to the new True Strike Cantrip - He will get 1 True Strike melee attack and one normal melee attack per round that should solve the problem without giving him homebrew as then the other players will want home brew.
That said I run HB heavy campaigns all the time and personally have lots of fun with strong HB items and don't constrain myself with worries of power creep as another 2d10 on a monsters attack damage solve any power creep issues easily enough. Side benefit the players love feeling like super heroes even at level 6.
Just my $.02