This might be a tad long so bare with me. Tl:dr a friend of mine passive agressivly called me out in game because he couldn't do anything in combat. So I am wondering if I did something wrong or if he is over reacting

I run a game with my friends (level 15 pc's) and one of them (playing a bard) in the middle of the game said "This is the second character where I can't do anything." His first character sacrificed himself for party members (role play not because of combat). Here is some context. Currently they are raiding a mob base to rescue a friend npc (also their main magic shop owner). They made it through pretty wellntonthe base then made it to the boss chamber. The boss who runs the organization has a room that he trapped the PCs in that is loaded with traps (represented by lair actions). These lair actions run from opening up the floor, summoning minions, summoning machine that can heal the boss (an alpha werewolf of my own design), and summoning machine that cause an anti magic effect. All of these are controlled by a minion behind a force field (homebrewed). There is a way to take the field down but it's by physical means (or magical spells that do damage). They haven't anylized it enough to notice yet. Their complaint is that in all 3 rounds so far they haven't accomished anything because he tried to feeble mind the minion behind the field (before he knew there wad a field) and it scattered off of it. He then healed the party with mass cure wounds and in the final round the anti field was up so he damaged one of the machines and helped an ally destroy one side of the antifield (permanently). He feels he didn't accomplish anything other than healing. 

At the end of the night I reached out to him in a DM and said the following:

"Also, on a side note, I didn't really appreciate the comment in the middle of game when you said "Two characters in a row and I can't do anything." I am not trying to target you for anything specific, but I did say this fight was going to be hard. There are ways to stop things from going, but no one has solved it yet. Yes, I understand you haven't done what you wanted to exactly but you adapted, you healed people who really needed it and you took down the construct permanently (it wont be showing up on that side again for the rest of the fight). So you are still doing stuff that is important. I just wish you wouldn't say comments like that out for the party because then it makes me feel and sound like a jerk in the middle of game."

It took him a few days to respond and this was it:

"I wasn’t trying to come off that way it’s just that I can only do one thing each turn and the character is mainly magic wielding and when I couldn’t even do that it was like I can’t do anything with a second character is all. And my attacks have no bonus but proficiency bc I don’t even get bonuses to damage. The other one at least got a bonus there. So it felt like I couldn’t do anything in the fight and most of the fights have been against things that have been either forcing the save to go through on a fail or passing every time so I feel like I am only able to heal the party and that’s about it. So that’s why I feel like I haven’t been able to do anything really in combat but heal and if all I was going to be doing was healing I would have done a life or grave cleric."

My response to that was letting him know (even though he is also a dm himself of many more years than I am) that these high level boss battles are tough and with two paladins and a barbarian in the party the damage they inflict has me making stronger and stronger bosses. I can just increase the hp pool and leave the bosses vulnerable to all control spells. I even told him I was working on a feature that could help that will allow damage to occur (granted minor) if a creature succeeded on a saving throw (i.e. boss succeeded on a save of feeble mind takes 3d6 psychic damage)

His response was:

"I feel like that even in non-boss fights. And also the feeble mind was cast before the boss fight started and it’s a one off and my other stuff went off before minions were there so there was nothing else to target and that was also after [barbarian] attacked the barrier and couldn’t get through so I felt like I only had one possible target for anything. And I get boss fights should be hard but when your a spell caster and almost every spell is a save or suck for the class I’m really limited to what I can do. After the minions showed up all magic stopped that’s when I went for the construct and that was all in the two rounds of combat. And when I went to target a minion nothing happened. So the only thing that I feel like I did all combat was attack the construct and that was very little. So sitting for almost 3 hours and only doing that is really boring. So I honestly feel like im not doing anything and the only thing I’ve done is stuff like phantasmal force and that only worked on the one doctor. So I feel like I can only do stuff really outside of combat and in combat I’m just sitting there waiting for my turn to heal and then wait for a full round to do the same."

I then asked him what I can do to make things more enjoyable moving forward and told him I was willing to work with him. No response as of now.

I don't think you did anything wrong -- it sounds to me like he's unhappy playing a support class character. Maybe also remind him that he can do things like ready an action if no one's in range now but might be soon. Also what does he mean by his attacks only having proficiency but no bonus? Is that something that's an error in the character sheet, or just new stats, since I'm not sure what kind of attacks he means. The best solution though might be letting him swap characters again or redo his build (different subclass?) to something that has more combat options, if combat is really something he's interested in.

Quote from pocketmouse >>

I don't think you did anything wrong -- it sounds to me like he's unhappy playing a support class character. Maybe also remind him that he can do things like ready an action if no one's in range now but might be soon. Also what does he mean by his attacks only having proficiency but no bonus? Is that something that's an error in the character sheet, or just new stats, since I'm not sure what kind of attacks he means. The best solution though might be letting him swap characters again or redo his build (different subclass?) to something that has more combat options, if combat is really something he's interested in.

 What he ment by that was he was stuck in the anti magic field and since he couldn't cast a spell he had to rely on a melee weapon. He had no str or dex bonus to add to it just proficiency bonus so his attack roll just enough to hit.

Yeah, he's upset about playing support class when he thought he was going to be doing ore of a half-caster back up fighter type.

More accurately, he is upset because he felt like he wasn't able to contribute, and he handwaved the healing he did which may have been a major boon when the encounter was basically set up against any kind of magic use. He has a need to be part of things in a way that makes him feel like he is successful, but it has to be on his own terms.

You are not the Jerk in the broadest sense, as he is the one in charge of developing his character and making choices on spells and working to keep his melee up, not you.

If you feel especially ad about it (because, bottom line, he wasn't having fun and I get super guilty over that) maybe drop a "ring of facility" (I just made that up, it allows him to add proficiency bonus) as one of the loot bits.

Also, if you are able to look ahead and you have an idea of what he is packing (spells, tc) adjust the next encounter to have a way for him to have an impact with some spell.

Sounds like his character sucked, at least to his view, and he got frustrated because it's the second time. Reading that, it sounded like he made a rant about his character and you took it to be a criticism of you, which I don't think it really was meant to be.

It's hard to judge because I don't know what the rest of the party looks like. However, if he felt his last character sucked and now his new character, that was completely dependent on being able to cast, got stuck in an automatic field...yeah I can see why he might get bit emotional.

Assuming you continue playing with him, consider giving him a couple of chances to shine, where he can use his abilities to be really effective. That would help him a lot, I think.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Yeah, he's upset about playing support class when he thought he was going to be doing ore of a half-caster back up fighter type.

More accurately, he is upset because he felt like he wasn't able to contribute, and he handwaved the healing he did which may have been a major boon when the encounter was basically set up against any kind of magic use. He has a need to be part of things in a way that makes him feel like he is successful, but it has to be on his own terms.

You are not the Jerk in the broadest sense, as he is the one in charge of developing his character and making choices on spells and working to keep his melee up, not you.

If you feel especially ad about it (because, bottom line, he wasn't having fun and I get super guilty over that) maybe drop a "ring of facility" (I just made that up, it allows him to add proficiency bonus) as one of the loot bits.

Also, if you are able to look ahead and you have an idea of what he is packing (spells, tc) adjust the next encounter to have a way for him to have an impact with some spell.

 Yea I was thinking of that. One of the ideas I had was a feature (since they are hitting 16 when it's over) where save or suck spells can add some damage even if they save against the spell. For example hold monster if the creature saves against its effect will still take xd6 (depending on casted spell level) force damage because the strain of saving against the spell put on its muscles.

Quote from Linklite >>

Sounds like his character sucked, at least to his view, and he got frustrated because it's the second time. Reading that, it sounded like he made a rant about his character and you took it to be a criticism of you, which I don't think it really was meant to be.

It's hard to judge because I don't know what the rest of the party looks like. However, if he felt his last character sucked and now his new character, that was completely dependent on being able to cast, got stuck in an automatic field...yeah I can see why he might get bit emotional.

Assuming you continue playing with him, consider giving him a couple of chances to shine, where he can use his abilities to be really effective. That would help him a lot, I think.

 Just to give you some insight the party is him as a bard, a totem barb, a paladin, a blood hunter/paladin, a monk/fighter, and a sorcerer. 

His last character was a class he found in a homebrew book. It was a witch he played and it focused on crowd control and focused on curses (that also had saves). So both characters focused on saves made by enemy. I'm thinking of talking with him about a switch in subclass. That way he has more he can do. Or maybe combine two different subclasses into a homebrew.

I don't see anything wrong with the way you handled it. You were fair and you told him what you didn't like.

My two cents:
Ultimately, this seems to come down to him not being happy with his choice of character. I usually try to give support-class characters a bit more 'oomph' in the story by creating some situations where their choices have way more impact than the brute-force tactics of, say, those barbarians in your party. It's a balance thing.. it always is. :)

The idea to make him switch subclass is a courtesy you could offer him, but I'd also want to point out that it's good to draw a line. He made this character the way he wanted, as is his right. You shape the world around their choices. If he is unhappy with these choices, perhaps instead of catering to a switch demanded by the player, you can opt to let them make a new character... maybe his current character decides to go home after this predicament, feeling he should hone his skills at College a bit more. Introducing a new character is 'safer' for protecting your rule boundaries than allowing a subclass switch, which opens the door to a lot of what-about-me's from your other players, potentially.

I'll take a different direction to ask - how many players do you have? The player mentioned having only a few turns in 3 hours. How fast are your combats? I understand that boss battles might be a bit slower, but unless you're running a massive table then there should at least be more turns for the players happening. 

I run a game for an ungodly number of players (8 PCs) and we play in-person every week. Our combats take full sessions to complete, but even then we have more than three turns per person before it ends. 

How are you handling descriptors? Do you describe the action, do you leave it to the players, or is everything discussed over the table purely mechanical? If the bard attacked the machine and all they got out of it was you saying "Okay, you deal 6 damage. Onto the barbarian." or something along those lines, then they could definitely feel hamstrung. I agree with the others in saying to give the bard a chance to shine, but you can also do that throughout a game purely with flavorful descriptions. It doesn't have to be one fully realized Big Moment, you can have plenty of small moments for them as well. 

Yea we actually talked about it a but more now and he feels like switching from spell slots to spell points might give him more freedom in how he uses his spells and not make him feel like he is wasting his higher levels spells with no important to them.

Quote from VanZoeren >>

I'll take a different direction to ask - how many players do you have? The player mentioned having only a few turns in 3 hours. How fast are your combats? I understand that boss battles might be a bit slower, but unless you're running a massive table then there should at least be more turns for the players happening. 

I run a game for an ungodly number of players (8 PCs) and we play in-person every week. Our combats take full sessions to complete, but even then we have more than three turns per person before it ends. 

How are you handling descriptors? Do you describe the action, do you leave it to the players, or is everything discussed over the table purely mechanical? If the bard attacked the machine and all they got out of it was you saying "Okay, you deal 6 damage. Onto the barbarian." or something along those lines, then they could definitely feel hamstrung. I agree with the others in saying to give the bard a chance to shine, but you can also do that throughout a game purely with flavorful descriptions. It doesn't have to be one fully realized Big Moment, you can have plenty of small moments for them as well. 

 When it comes to the combat this fight its lair actions (run by a minion), boss (with legendary actions), 6 minions, 6 pc's, and 1 npc (a bard as well). When it comes to descriptors I like to describe their actions as they do them so they can feel it more. When it comes to the pcs he have 1 new player to dnd and an older player who takes time to figure out what they want to do. So with me doing 9 turns myself, plus the players 6 (with two of them taking longer) and my descriptions (this is all virtual too) it does take a bit of time. I do here and there having people step away from the computer either to take a bathroom break or they are called away from it (1 player in particular).