Don't want this to turn into another /misc/ thread but how do I get my players out of the mindset of "if you don't do damage you waste your turn" in games? Players that play utility/healing characters rarely ever give enemies status effects or buffs because they have a need to be the one to land a killing blow.
The only game that I haven't had a problem with this is when playing Pathfinder 2e since with 3 action a player cam attack AND use utility spells/abilities/heals
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Stop playing class-based games and the problem fixes itself.
Stop being a moron. Frick, what is wrong with you, how is it possible for you to be so fricking dumb all the fricking time, you dumb piece of shit.
Actually play a game once in your fricking life before shitposting on /tg/ already, you stupid homosexual.
Smash your laptop, rip out your eyes, do whatever you need to do to stop posting on the website already, and frick off until you actually figure out how to trick some idiots into playing a game with your disgusting, unloved, and generally despised self, you human cancer.
>anon suggests an answer that solves your problem.
>REEEEE! moron! moron!
But it does not solves the problem because the problem is the players are moronic. You would see that if you were not moronic yourself.
It does though, don't ask me WHY it does, but when I switched anyone I played D&D with over to something like Call Of Cthulhu (pulp rules to makes them a bit hardier) or even the Fantasy version Ceaphus System they just stopped being combat spastics.
And I'm talking a gaming career of 20+ years
Class-based systems, such as ubiquitous DnD, don't have this problem inherently. It's perfectly normal to open encoutner with Sleep which is not damage dealing effect, but still effectively reduces the number of combatants you have to deal with at a time.
>It's perfectly normal to open encoutner with Sleep
General consensus among the 5etards is that sleep is smelly poopoo garbo because it's not a damaging AoE
Then 5etards do not play their own game. The strongest apell in that game is hypnotic pattern.
You know, I agreed with you on sleep, its a pretty good spell when fighting low cr mobs like goblins and kobolds. But hypnotic pattern? You are a nogames whiteroom homosexual, its a thirty foot cube one and done wisdom save that is ended by damage or being snapped out of it.
nah, it's only the best spell at levels 1-4. def worth keeping around after that if your GM likes to mix up monsters though.
the problem is the game invalidates it against anything of a decent CR.
same with most if not all charm, sleep, etc. you get the picture.
this would be fixed by appending to "caused by spells of [caster/spell] level X or lower" as appropriate to a monster but 5e's "fixes" are just crawford getting everything wrong on twitter. more tires on the fire
Because they are usually correct. Damage negation by removing an enemy from play is usually better than healing in-combat. Not all status effects generate sufficient tempo to be worthwhile.
> Option 0
Show them it can be a superior option. Sleep-and-coup-de-grâce a motherfricker. Save-or-Suck another into fighting his own team. Have them fight illusions while spellcasters and ranged characters fling damage their way.
> Option 1
Introduce more save-or-die/suck? Doing damage is for chumps, so friggin' slow.
> Option 2
Don't play a combat simulator? Some game go so far as to call the "GM" a Storyteller, Programmer, Professor... and/or offer a plethora of non-combat encounters. Go A Song of Ice and Fire and introduce situations where an actual fight devolves into social fighting when a third party interrupt a battle.
> Option 3
Find better players? Seriously, if it frustrates you that much, just admit the game you run doesn't do it for you. Vet players, and try to find some who are more akin to the playstyle you want. Encourage the type of gameplay you want through character creation.
You're the GM, you can do whatever you want. It's just that sometimes, it causes players to leave, and you still need a couple around.
You can have this problem in WoD, Shadowrun and Heavy Gear. I agree D&D / Pathfinder / Star Wars Saga / Blades in the Dark are all bad games, but at least point out the real issue.
Hate to break it to ya but I just farted on my balls.
That's just how the cookie crumbles, cochise.
If you're playing 5e the only real advice I have to give is start using enemies that avoid damage.
5e combat is pretty structured to just nuke the enemy down, but if you start throwing out enemies that are hard to hit, or will just otherwise resist or avoid damage entirely, then it forces the players to adapt or die.
Alternatively, if you are playing D&D, have you tried not playing D&D?
I tried this with various Superhero in which there were secondary and even third conditions (save civilians, disarm bomb etc etc). They were ignored so the players could just beat on the villian causing civilian deaths or unnecessary destruction.
In one instance a player who had fire powers and faced against a villian immune to fire just skipped his turn everytime instead of trying to evacuate citizens or think of something creative.
Overall I think it's an issue of creativity as well
That fire player shoud receive a special scene in which everyone is having pizza and beer back at the cave when the local news runs a segment about Fricking Useless Man, who didn't even save civilians because he's a lazy piece of shit.
You don't have to be subtle about it.
This. If you can't tell your players they can be better or punish them for underperforming, they aren't going to get better.
>player makes a character that does a specific thing
>make an encounter where they can't do their thing
>get mad when they don't do anything
Frick you, let your group play the game.
>but muh civilians!
Then what? The player still gets to sit with their thumb up their ass while everyone else gets to have a fun fight.
>but muh creative solutions!
As GM, what's obvious to you isn't always obvious to the players. Even then, anything they try is a case of "mother may I?" and most likely will get shut down.
I don't blame the player from just passing in this situation. It's a bad encounter and entirely your fault.
Dogshit moron player detected
>They were ignored so the players could just beat on the villian causing civilian deaths or unnecessary destruction.
So punish them for it, dumbass. Like others have said, make it clear their actions - good and bad - have consequences - good and bad.
>In one instance a player who had fire powers and faced against a villian immune to fire just skipped his turn everytime instead of trying to evacuate citizens or think of something creative.
See above.
It's very much an issue of creativity - on your behalf. If you can't come up with consequences for their actions you shouldn't be a GM.
I stuggle to imagine how fire powers can be used to save people. I mean it can be life-saving in harsh winter for sure, or when marooned, or for powering industry, but I'm drawing blanks how to used it for saving people in the middle of a fight. Fire is more likely to kill people than to save them.
I think you can evacuate people without using any superpowers at all.
Unless I'm completely misunderstanding firefighters and stuff.
Yeah, but firefighters (at least now in modern times) have equipment and training to do that.
The superhero with fire powers that spontaneously decides he wants to rescue people is gonna do poorly. Of course if he also has something like superhuman speed, strength, and edurance it gets more optimistic.
Extinguish fires trapping people, blast a path through debris.
Unconventional solutions should be an option, not a requirement.
>spamming the moron forced meme
Please stop giving bad advice you think is good, and then torpedoing your own post by revealing you were a moron all along.
You have to admit. Not playing D&D is a great way to avoid the problem D&D causes.
>still trying to pretend you're not a moronic forced shitposter
Man, who is supposed to believe your spammed bullshit anymore?
>ah bloo bloo, d&d is the cause of all problems and not playing d&d solves problems that are not d&d specific or exclusive!
I kind of wish not playing D&D did solve all problems, because your mother not playing D&D would have resulted in your abortion.
Thanks for admitting you are a moron who never played D&D or any other tabletop game. The best level 1 spell in D&D is sleep and that does zero damage. the problem is not D&D the problem is OP's players are stupid like you.
>anyone who says dnd is bad has never played a tabletop game!!!
The absolute state.
If you need proof just look at the tards whining about D&D.
>completely outsmarted by
>still feels the need to keep shitposting
lol.
Frick, man, lol. You really are a moron.
Anon I know you hate D&D, but that doesn't actually make every problem a D&D thing, nor does it mean anyone who disagrees with you automatically wrong. Your obsession makes you just as bad as the worst D&Drone
>Knocking people unconscious at a battlefield doesn't count as damage so technically doing that makes you not violent
The frick are you gonna do to them while they're asleep, spoon them dipshit?
When they are asleep you can kill them easily. No one said anything about not being violent, moron
ummmm then why are you voting democrat?!?
>Knocking people unconscious isn't violence
Are you sure of this?
Don't play DnD if you don't want braindead DnD gameplay, dipshit.
>uuuhhhh im not playing dnd its pathfinder!
It's DnD. How are you shocked that you're playing games entirely built around killing things by doing enough damage to them, and now your players are trying to kill things by doing enough damage to them? They're ignoring all the other options in combat because they slow things down and your combat is garbage. They're trying to get through it as quickly as possible so they can do something fun instead.
>anyone who says dnd is bad is a troll!!!
The absolute state. Go back to watching critical roll you homosexual.
>t. moronic homosexual who never played any tabletop game.
I like how you think you can post like this and anyone would not be able to immediately call you out as a c**t and a troll.
It's part of who you are, mate. You're a c**t troll.
Provide alternate win conditions besides "kill all the things."
Have you tried playing 4e?
>The only game where my moron players don't frick the game is the game designed for morons.
Explains a lot. Personally, I've never had this problem in any game. I can only assume that you play with some kind of MMO-mongoloids worrying about "muh deepeess" or some shit.
>also, muh /misc/!
Reconsider living.
Still garbage, but not as garbage as PF2.
He's a shitter for whining about "having" to "waste" a spell slot on healing spells (which he wouldn't have to do unless he's Evil, but OK), because people b***hing and moaning is the worst, but let's just be clear that *on average*, pure healing is almost always the least efficient and least effective option available to a Cleric, and a Cleric should try to put effort into not having to do that, even if it means stocking up on alternate means of healing and managing that for the entire group.
>I desperately need to not play D&D but I absolutely refuse to do so!
Seriously, this brain-rot runs deep. You need to not play D&D, anon.
Not playing D&D is not going to make OP players not moronic like you.
This game had an even worse issue with just doing damage being the only useful thing.
I love 4e and play it to this day but that’s a terrible example since every single fricking class power is damage + effect
Have you tried playing Pathfinder 2e?
have the occasional enemy who needs to be debuffed to be defeated
have some npc allies show up sometimes who're only good if buffed
have some shit happen that can be stopped by utility things, like, I don't know, a ritual summoning Frickmother 9000, King Of Fricking The Player Characters' Moms, that's feeding off of blood magically flowing into a river on the battlefield leading to a weird magic bowl at the far end of the map. It stops if you freeze the river or disturb enough of the earth or bless enough of the water or whatever else narratively good enough to work. But killing the enemies without solving it will just summon him. And then he'll frick their moms.
>Frickmother 9000, King Of Fricking The Player Characters' Moms
you see, if they are invested in stopping the guy, they will be more likely to consider alternate solutions to slaughtering all the minions willingly throwing themselves on the party's blades in order to summon him
What are games in which dealing damage during your turn is not always the best (and only real) choice?
>Don't want this to turn into another /misc/ thread
>but
And as for your idiotic bait post - apply pic related
Your players aren't wrong. They are playing "roll math rocks to do damage to make-believe monsters for fake treasure". If they don't want to be forced to do gay shit then they're based and you're cringe for trying to make them do something else.
No one cares about your settings or your story. They are there to jerk off over combat and you are a glorified talking conflict-resolution machine.
Death is the greatest status effect there is anon
I have a player in my group who *always* plays Clerics but complains every time he has to waste a spell slot on healing spells, the most egregious of which was when we were quite literally in a fight with Strahd von Zarovich, who had already killed 2 PCs in previous encounters
homie YOU HAVE ONE JOB
He's right. Wasting Cleric slots on healing spells sucks and it sucks even harder when you have to do it in the middle of a fight.
If you don't like healing, don't be a healer
5e clerics aren't just healers. They're good at everything.
honestly the issue is in communication
"I am going to play a cleric" is not enough.
They just need to tell people whether they're focused on damage, utility, or healing.
Taking a healing spell or two is a must but expecting the guy who can continually damage and slow down everything for a solid ten minutes to spend their time chasing the fighter around to slap him with healing is just a dumb way to use resources.
Clerics have never been dedicated healers.
Cleric has become *that* class for 5e
4/5 times they are absolute shitters who aren't interested in the class itself. They don't want to play a holy man, they just want to guiding bolt + spirit guardians + spiritual weapon
I partially don't blame them because they are a direct upgrade to fighters, and a decent sidegrade from wizard. You lose out on some situational utility spells in favor of healing spells and armor.
When combat lasts less than 5 turns, why waste valuable actions and spells on making the enemies slightly less effective when you can just kill them?
Skill mastery will come with time.
>implying 90 percent of RPGs don't revolve around combat
>implying anyone bothers to play the ones that don't
Name five, hard mode , no Call of Cthulhu.
MaidRPG
Ryuutama
Golden Sky Stories
Ventangle
Everyone is John
nightmare mode: nothing by Ryo Kamiya
Gumshoe
Delta green
Ars magica
Vtm (in theory anyway)
Teenagers from outer space
Like 100 pbta games (not that I would play them but they exist)
OP is talking about combat
options in combat other than "attack" isn't the same as "not combat"
Monsterhearts
Belonging Outside Belonging
Good Society
Ars Magica
Brindlewood Bay
Monster of the Week
Blades in the Dark arguably, it revolves around criminal jobs like heists, though most GMs include combat in most jobs
Play stupid games, get stupid prizes.
I run gurps pretty much exclusively and do not have this problem.
At higher skill levels and various traits or heavy armor it's possible to be much more aggressive.
But starting characters who just run in and yell "I attack!' over and over instead of focusing on their defenses and positioning tend to spend most of the combat in a bleeding mess on the ground, and they become aware of this fairly quickly.
Give I most play on VTTs with line of sight control, it's also not unusual for someone to spend their turn just cautiously repositioning so they can see what the frick is going on somewhere else in the fight.
So ultimately the takeaway here is "Play games where combat's primary focus is on positioning and not DPS."
Have the enemies spend turns not doing damage too.
Lol this, a well-timed enemy healing makes players seethe like you wouldn't believe.
In any game, D&D or Pathfinder or anything else, you encourage options by making them rewarding. Make using an action to interact with the environment critical to success and time sensitive. Make using buffs clearly and mathematically better than just attacking. And make encounters very dangerous without using debuffs (which should be obvious) is a great way to push those.
In short, make other options 1) powerful, and 2) obvious.
Play PBTA, something happens every turn.
yeah every turn is uneventful
you "play" pbta like you "play" a book
Not a real game
frick off
He means the last thread got derailed you fricking spergs. Go dilate somewhere else.
>t. stupid sperg.
how does this even tangentially relate to /misc/
take this
https://ogc.rpglibrary.org/index.php?title=OpenD6
use it as core system and take parts of other systems you like and hack together a ruleset specific to your game/table/group/setting.
God damn anti-5e Shills need to fricking chill
When 30 peeps tell you to stop playing 5E, they might be onto something.
>popular thing bad
Yea
It is bad, independent of being popular.
You're playing the McDonalds of tabletop and sperging out that people are recommending eating at literally any other restaurant. They're not even saying you need to stop eating fast food, just that you could try eating literally anything else. That you've managed to convince yourself it's "shilling" to say you should eat somewhere besides McDonalds should be a reflection point in your life.
Dude, you're shitposting about a game every opportunity you get and inventing them when none arise.
You keep trying to justify your shitposting, but no one's dumb enough to fall for your lies. You exaggerate how bad you think the game is just so you can shitpost, because you don't play any games and shitposting is your hobby.
Dumb homosexual.
>Food analogy
That aside, NTA but following the metaphor I've eaten a lot of stuff including my own homemade dishes, but sometimes you just want those amazing fries and a mcdouble.
Sure I play other stuff but sometimes I'm just in the mood for class-based fantasy and considering the other options are:
>Other editions of D&D which are even worse for various reasons
>PF1e
>Shitter of the doo doo lord
>Obscure trash
5e comes out smelling like roses and is my go-to class-based fantasy game.
There isn't a single game you listed I wouldn't take over 5E.
>Food analogy sperging
Yeah, sometimes, sure. But it sounds like OP is dealing with a game where it's nonstop combat o'clock DPR races, and you're wondering why people are suggesting he try a game where 90% of the rules aren't centered around killing monsters.
This isn't an unreasonable suggestion by any stretch of the imagination. Trying a one-shot of Call of Cthulhu might be an excellent way to give the players experience with a game where fighting is dangerous and often the best thing that can be done against a monster is running away and finding clues for how to send it back to whence it came.
>But it sounds like OP is dealing with a game where it's nonstop combat o'clock DPR races, and you're wondering why people are suggesting he try a game where 90% of the rules aren't centered around killing monsters.
Except that's a blatant disregard for the fact that the rules also tell you to give XP for non-combat encounters. In fact, many modules straight-up support not only milestones but also XP rewards for non-violent solutions.
>with a game where fighting is dangerous and often the best thing that can be done against a monster is running away and finding clues for how to send it back to whence it came.
This is system-agnostic and danger is a bad way of deterring bad behavior. Players react better to rewards than to punishment, therefore the better solution is to give a better reward for choosing to do something that isn't just hitting it until it dies.
In OP's example specifically, it's more the mindset of the players who don't understand their role in the party. This is again a problem that is system agnostic. If a player doesn't understand what role their abilities serve, then they won't have fun and will try to match what other people who have different roles are trying to do.
I have a group who doesn't play D&D, we never have, and they still need it spelled out that they don't have to fight every battle to the death and that some enemies are receptive to diplomacy and discourse and that not every objective needs to be "kill a thing".
So no, this isn't a DNDalike issue, this is an issue with moronic players who probably played a lot of VRPGs where parleying isn't an option.
Why do you want to change their attitude? It seems desirable.
It's boring
And I never mentioned OP? YOU are talking about 5e, and then I replied to YOU about 5e.
You know that it's possible more than one person disagrees with you, right? And how on earth are you leaping from the "this guy doesn't like 5e" all the way to "this guy doesn't play any tabletop games"?
/tg/ actually has a pretty small population of posters, and one that's rapidly shrunk in the last few months. Even though there may be many people who may dislike D&D, there really can't be that many people who mindlessly shitpost at every possible opportunity, and then shamelessly try to defend their shitposting with the same moronic nonsense.
As /tg/ continues to die, in no small part because of your shitposting, your argument of "no, no, there's got to be a lot of us who keep shitposting regardless of how fricking moronic we look and how we keep getting called out on looking so moronic" becomes more and more hollow.
You're not really anti-D&D so much as you are anti-game discussion, because, surprise surprise, guess what RPG is played by the overwhelming majority of RPG players here. Of course you know, because the only reason you shitpost about it is because it happens to be the most popular game.
Introduce enemies that can't be taken down by brute force, preferably just straight out too strong for players to just unga bunga like idiots.
If they will not learn to strategize or even outright AVOID direct fight, they gonna die.
Or introduce rivals/enemies of PCs mirroring their skills and show them how similar team with superior strategies just fricks them.
I'm dah Jokah baby!
Not OP, but every time I've tried that the b***hing and sulking becomes unbearable. I'm not even running D&D, but 2 people in the party have made melee abominations that will tear the butthole out of anything up to and including giant robots if they get into melee with it. But they're utterly helpless if they can't close with their enemy, and we play a game where many weapons can reach out and touch someone a km away, and combat is often formation on formation, not 'normal' RPG combat. I've had people try and charge hundreds of meters across open terrain and then complain that "everything deals way too much damage" without a hint of irony when their weapons deal twice as much or more.
>Don't want this to turn into another /misc/ thread
...why would it...?
I visit /misc/, and I notice how it seeps in here once in a while, and I have no idea. Perhaps it has to do with how his group was formed, how shitty TTRPG corps have become, or "I seduce the dragon" being degenerate.
I suggest we don't.
Frick off
Mathematically explain why plain "damage per round" is lesser from utility healing and more. If you cannot even communicate or explain, you're a shit GM.
Have you tried not playing D&D? Not even memeing. It's amazing at how easily those moronic paradigms go away when you play a system that supports playstyles other than "bring that being's HP down to 0 ASAP."
>not even memeing
>he says as he spams a forced meme and delivers moronic advice that proves he doesn't actually play any games and has next to no knowledge about them
Shameful.
The issue crops up mostly in games that combine HP bloat with a small chance of missing. If a monster has 60 HP, I have a 80% chance of hitting, and I deal 1d8+4 when I hit, I average at 6.8 damage/round. That means I'll usually need to spend nine rounds just whaling on the monster in order to take it down. Every turn I spend setting up an attack is wasted since I'm unlikely to miss, and I probably have enough HP and decent enough defenses to survive the war of HP attrition, so spending a turn to stop the monster from attacking is also a waste. Add to this the fact that basic attacks are free while special attacks, spells, and the like normally cost some limited resource, and that the average RPG session has a ton of combats to get through so in-universe resources as well as player "resources" like effort and enthusiasm need to be rationed. In light of this, it's obvious that people are going to try and kill every monster in the least-exciting, least-involved way possible.
Compare this to systems where hitting something is hard, but most things go down in only one or two hits. Suddenly spending a turn feinting your opponent--or hell, a turn AND a spell slot paralyzing them--is worth doing because the difficult part is landing the hit. Spamming basic attacks and hoping you get a lucky roll is way less efficient than playing smart. You also will spend the time and effort keeping yourself safe if you can't just tank a dozen axe chops; you might even avoid combat because it's actually lethal, making the fights you *do* engage in worth actually paying attention to!
Just stop playing D&D.
Stop being stupid.
Either:
1) Make loot that makes their utility spells more attractive, give them a damaging component on cast or make them faster actions to use in conjunction with unga bunga offense
2) Remove the agency from killing blows and have them roll to coup de grace all major targets independently of their contributions. They might whine about it, but they'll forget about it quickly.
3) Create encounters that force them to utilize environmental objects for massive and necessary boons or highlight the effectiveness of buff actions through friendly or hostile NPC strategies. This one has a low chance of being picked up on though.
You're probably just a shit DM and your players are trying to blow through your garbage encounters as fast as possible to get it over with.
...what does this have to do with /misc/? im kinda confused why you brought it up.
>...what does this have to do with /misc/?
Easy. Obviously it's a well-known trait of the racially diverse white supremacists of /misc/ that the best defense is a good offense and they have a monopoly of offense.
Can you afford to use a different system? If so try to play a one shot low-powered GURPS with guns. Unless you design the game to be hacky-slashy you pretty much cannot attack every turn. Aiming takes a turn, Positioning takes a turn. Cover and concealment is incredibly important since you can't just tank hits or maybe just don't. It's called a combat encounter for a reason if your encounter design makes it so attacking is the most optimal option why wouldn't they? Realistically you wouldn't bugger around putting petty little hexes on your enemies when you can just kill them with the same effort. It doesn't help with the fact in DnD-like games status effect immunities are so common in monsters. The best thing you can do is maybe put them in situations they don't wanna kill the enemy.
Damage is ideal because the best status effect is death, but it's not always damage, it's about effectively contributing.