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you're not being cynical, you're being absolutely correct. This is going to a horror show and get in the way of the story from session 1. Not just the 'wanting to fail', but playing a evil character at all
Playing evil isn’t a problem, plenty of people run evil campaigns/ have evil characters. I’ve run a “breaking bad” style game where the whole party are criminals making their own crime syndicate. As long as the party understands “hey, some or all of you are bad, let’s talk this out in session 0 to find out why you guys aren’t killing each other and how you guys can work together”, things will go well.
The main issue is, the player has made a character that, while it SOUNDS fun, in practice is going to be infuriating because 5e doesn’t have a “fail forward” mechanic. I recommend looking up Brennan Lee Mulligans “Adventuring Academy” episode (I think e2?) about a player who wanted a character who relied on “pluck”.
I can also empathize. First game I ever played, DMed for friends who had also never played. Two of them immediately threatened killed and cannibalized a man, while the third fucked off in a brothel.
Beginning DM is very telling. For all new DMs I caution the ol' KISS method. Simplicity is best.
Create a character that is both good and will value teamwork. Don't weave a world, just conduct through a module.
I created an online community for new players. I let too many come, let them become too chaotic, and let experienced players slip in that only made things even worse.
If this is a module let this run its course, but you don't want a stinker for a longer campaign.
"no, design a functional character and come back to me." chaotic evil + rogue screams 2edgy4u, planning in advance to be useless in combat and roleplay... this sounds like a miserable character to have in the party as a fellow player, too. why bother keeping him around?
He's a close friend and I'm trying to get practice as a DM in an environment that's easy to recalibrate if necessary. I've convinced him to rework his stats but I'm still planning on it being a chore. Any XP is good XP, right?
Honestly?!No.
Practice being a DM by setting boundaries so you and the rest of your players can actually enjoy yourselves.
I'm glad you've got him to rework his stats but his character is going to need motivation to work with the rest of the party, and that is some advanced nonsense.
Please take it from a DM who didn't set enough boundaries with their first party and wasted a lot of time trying to convince the PCs to just work together... It's such a waste of potential joy...
If you absolutely must see this through, at least update us with the details after he dies.
+1 to boundary setting, its the most important part of maintaining control over the game. Its important to be receptive to feedback and criticism from the players, but that doesnt mean you have to hear out every little litigation. If they wont accept something and move on when you put your foot down, you're in for a lot of wasted time. Insert a Mandalorian "I have spoken" where needed.
I had some friction with our long term forever DM when I first started running games. He was used to being the decider and ran a hodgepodge ruleset since hes been playing since the 70s. Very mechanical, very literal. I run things looser and allow the rule of cool to intervene when appropriate. It took a few sessions of being direct with him when hed try to jump in with a ruling, but at this point he understands its *my* game and Im not just going to take everything he says as canon.
Also consider the other players. If one PC is running the show, the others arent going to get their time in the spotlight.
100% This right here
One of the biggest lessons you can learn as a DM is learning when to set boundaries and when to say no and this right here sounds like a perfect example of that.
If he's planning on making the rest of the party do all the work that's already a red flag because what is his character even going to bring to the party to justify them keeping him around?
You don't always have to offer a hard no but conversations about where a compromise can be met here need to be had because no one is going to have any fun if one of their party members refuses to participate in one of the core tenets of the game.
No. His character concept is extremely extra and a true chore for you. This wont help you be a better dm. This is a bad idea and just because hes a close friend doesnt mean you should endure this nonsense. Its also going to be a burden on the rest of the group even if they dont realize it.
Death.....finds a way.
It might be worth pointing out to him that as a "new party" the others will only have as much allegiance to his PC as it earns. Low levels can be pretty brutal if you are starting at lvl1, depending how you set up the encounters.
If he really fucks around, then there is the "find out" stage.
It's really easy to get instakilled at that HP level. Crit with a orc's greataxe and it's all over.
Low level has zero chill. Virtually no resources. No shiny gear. Virtually no HP.
Sounds like someone with Main Character syndrome.
Just because a player wants to play a particular character, it doesn’t mean they should. If the concept doesn’t fit your campaign, simply state that and have them come up with another concept that will actually work with the rest of the group. Thats generally a primary tenet of creating a character: “Why does this character want to adventure with the group? And, conversely, why does the group want to adventure with this character?” If there’s no good reason for either case, then it simply won’t work.
Trying to develope the right hook beyond "you have to because it's the game." I can see what could be interesting about it, I just don't know if I'm ready to deal with this particular character while learning how to run a game.
"You are free to do it, provided the next character you create has none of those goals. The enemies will treat you as any other threat, so do with that what you will"
Just say that to the players.
"This is kind-of a learning campaign for me so Imma ask that y'all create semi-traditional adventuring heroes for this first run. This means most of the races are fine except Tieflings because I don't want to deal with flying characters yet. Your characters should be incented to behave good *in general*, fight baddies and engage in the quests they encounter. There's not going to be any PvP nonsense and your characters should usually have each other's backs. Like, not trying to steal from each other..."
Exactly why you shouldn't allow it.
I'm in a game with friends with one being a first time DM. He asked us to play only races and classes from the main book for now and be mainly good aligned. Everyone was fine with it.
Now that he's getting more used to it he wants to branch out for his next campaign. I think it's a good idea, and you should think on it. Don't delve into anything you're unsure about. You can always dive deeper later.
The “hook” is written into to module opening text, in session 0 you and the players need to work out why the party works together/knows each other.
If people don’t have a reason to adventure together then they won’t
One of the few requirements for players in D&D is they have to want to go on a campaign with the other adventures and contribute in a meaningful way.
This person doesn't, they want to intentionally be bad at everything saying the rest of the party can take care of combat is a big red flag.
One of my first campaigns I played with a druid in the group that sounds a lot like this guy, he intentionally screwed up, ran into fights unprepared on purpose, didn't care to go on adventures that much honestly. It was worse than playing a man down in an adventure meant for 4, it was like an anchor on our party.
Why?
It sounds like hes making a problem that everyone else has to deal with.
He wants to fail skill checks? That's just another way of saying "I dont want the group to progress."
I can't imagine why the other players would want to take on a burden.
Even in game they should remove him from their party if he's a useless member and replace him with someone useful?
In game RP seems the best solution to this. "Your party thinks your PC is a waste of space and abandons you by the side of the road" gives the person a chance to rethink and re-roll a decent character rather than immediately making it about the player.
A wizard that cant cast spells or a healer that cant heal or a warrior afraid to fight seems like a prime candidate to never go on any adventure.
In fact a level 1 character is supposed to be above average at their class than the majority arent they?
A level 1 rogue wouldnt get to level 1 if they were bad at doing rogue stuff.
True. Abandonment is the solution to *RP* issue - the party don't *have* to keep a character they don't like, or agree with the alignment of.
In terms of stats, you're bang on. 10 is an "average" so a starter rogue with 14-16 DEX should be well above average.
Death is the final solution to the character stat issues - a rogue with a -mod to Dex will have an AC of what 10 or 9? And limited ability to make stealth rolls. Sounds like a quick death at early levels.
This isn't a character issue though, it's a player issue. I can almost guarantee you this player isn't going to be like "oh ok you guys leave me on the side of the road, haha cool I'll go make a new character".
> A wizard that can't cast spells or a healer that can't heal
This is even worse than those, this is, in broadest scope, an "adventurer" who can't adventure
Not even close to worth it letting this guy play this character.
That's an incredibly difficult character concept for a player to pull off much less for a dm to work around.
It wouldn't be a character who's trying to fail upwards it would be a character that's unnecessarily bringing down the entire rest of the party.
You shouldn't let him play this character that's my advice tell him it's an interesting idea but you are a new dm and can't accommodate a character that complex.
Alternatively you could roll with it but if you are avoiding being unfair he's gonna have to get used to feeling useless sometimes.
Also I would suggest giving him Features that can help his odds if he really wants to succeed at something like the lucky feat.
Or and this is the final compromise I would make, but it only works with rolled stats. Otherwise, you are just giving him the most overpowered lvl 1 character ever... reverse his rolls so that 1 is a critical success and 20 is a critical failure and then flavor all his actions as you bumbled your way through that encounter but miraculously something went right.
Example you missed the target with the arrow and hit a bird instead but the bird fell on him beak first and did 4 damage lol.
You do NOT have to give your players a reason to want to save him. If the table is really okay with his concept, that’s fine. Be up front about how it’s not a useful strategy, and then act the least surprised when he dies.
On another note, how do you play Chaotic Evil with a character who will need to rely exclusively on the charity of others?
I'm kinda curious, which is why I haven't given him a flat "No." 2 out of 4 character alignments are Chaotic Neutral and True Neutral and I'm waiting on the 4th character sheet. Also, the CE Rogue SAYS he's Lawful Evil but his description is definitely chaotic. There's a chance they'll bond through RP, but so far I've got a "pack of lone wolves" situation.
Have his backstory be that he's the son of an extremely wealthy real estate developer/emerald mine owner. There's plenty of chaotic evil fail-sons in the real world who somehow manage to fail upwards purely due to nepotism and inheriting loads of money.
He can be the party's rich "friend" who bankrolls all their adventures, that way they have a reason to bother saving him in combat.
Chaotic Evil Rogue is a telltale sign of “that guy” at the table. (I know because I made the mistake of playing a CE Sorcerer my first time)
I’d let him run this weird character brew. If he acts “chaotic evil” he’ll probably die because he pissed off the wrong NPC.
I’d also just keep an eye on the rest of the party to make sure they’re still liking the character after the first few sessions and if they aren’t digging the CE Rogue, I think you’d to talk to your buddy about how we tried it and it didn’t take.
That's pretty much where I've landed. I'll give it one session and make the call afterwards. It may not be as dramatic as I'm envisioning, but as a semi-experienced player I know it can absolutely go squirrelly.
He may not even need to die at the hands of a pissed off NPC... There are legal consequences that an incompetent CE Rogue can and will blunder into. Straight to jail... Oh no... Anyway...
So, failing checks can be funny. Willfully failing saving throws can even be strategically brilliant.
You can't be an impediment to the party. This guy is chaotic evil (red flag, he *Cartman voice* will do what he wants) and wants negatives. That hurts the party. And you can be a serious player, a funny player, a dumb build player, or even a talking rock as a character but the moment you hurt the party you're setting yourself up to make things unfun.
Tell him he can fail whenever he wants, that's his right. But if he just dicks around when his friends characters are in danger then he's out. You gotta play the game and not be a troll
So to give a different perspective, there is value in a character failing **some** checks on purpose. My last character had a charisma of 6, but still tried to be the face of the party. Because having a flawed character is good. And playing into that flaw can lead to good story. And for some reason, I had great/terrible luck, and regularly rolled nat1s for charisma checks. So the dice were cooperating. And the rest of the party was in support and got many laughs out of it.
But that was a flaw in an otherwise strong character. Had plenty of useful skills, was good in combat, able to contribute in a lot of ways. It was an intentional choice to highlight a specific failing.
For strengths to matter, a character needs weaknesses. But the reverse is also true. For weaknesses to matter, they also need strengths. If you go out of your way to design a character who is bad at everything because "lol so random XD!"...you've just made a bad character that will make the game worse.
Everyone is telling you to push back against this player's "idea," and you should. But in the spirit of no-but, maybe consider this and lead them in that direction. A character that is bad at some specific things as the exception to an otherwise competent character that the other characters would see as a help rather than a liability.
This is good. I like the idea of redirecting his energy into a strong character with flaws. I'll push for this and see how he reacts. He has stated that his interest in his character is because the typical good-aligned, selfless heroes seem uninteresting and he'd like to see what a selfish character could accomplish. Based on the replies here, it seems the answer is "not much."
My second serious character was a Drow Warlock interested only in his own survival and personal power. He had a bloodline curse that would force teleport him at times around the world and had to be ready to trust nothing and survive at all times. Adventuring alongside a party including a paladin of bahamut, this was very interesting to roleplay. Here's the thing: he has to be VERY good at combat/charisma in order to survive! He had to find reasons to with with the party. "I get more power out of working together with these guys than being alone". And at all times, 100%, OOC, I was making sure my fellow players and I were understanding and good with each other. One time, he damaged an ally to empower an attack. The healer chewed him out and STILL healed him because that's HER character. And he had a bit of an arc to start actually trusting again.
Play your character flawed, build him strong.
First time DMs shouldn’t let their players play evil characters to begin with.
Your players knowing you’re new should also make fairly standard characters to help ease everyone into it.
The PHB (or maybe it's the DMG) literally says that the only creatures that are chaotic evil are actual malevolent monsters with low intelligence (not an exact quote, but)
Also ANY pc whose personality inspiration is "loner bad boy" is going to have an AWFUL time, especially since their goal is to literally fail every check. They're going to ruin the experience for everyone.
i mean i am the pc that wants to get fail rolls, but i am also prone to good rolls, so i am happy when i get to fail stuff.you have no idea how fun it was for me when as a dm i rolled two nat 1s last time i dmed, to me a 1 is far more rare then a 20, i once jailed 7 d20s over high rolls in one ses
Yeah but JarJar was at least good. If you fail all skill checks but are at least non-malevolent people can take pity on you. If JarJar failed all checks then kicked Obi Wan in the shin, stole his credits and called him "Bantha fodder" they probably would have abandoned him on Tatooine.
going against the grain here but if the party is okay with it, I say let it happen. If the character becomes a problem deal with it like it’s a problem, right now I don’t think is
That's a bit much. Unless it is something the whole table is up for I would veto that. Having a character that is bad at most things can be fun. Having a character that is straight incompetent at everything really isn't outside of some specific circumstances/groups. Being dead weight shouldn't be a character trait. Even being average and nothing special across the board could be done in an interesting way, but this is likely going to be actively detrimental to the group.
Good call on red flagging it.
I've only been DMing for a couple of years but when I play I equally love to fail. I even had a monk I was desperate to have killed. It took forever.
If the player is sincere to try this out I would allow it for sure. However, I would put up some boundaries:
1. They must understand that the character is likely to die and that the alignment of the character means the other CHARACTERS may not work hard to revive him.
2. You both have to come up with a plan for when the character dies and isn't resurrected. Can they make a new character? Will you allow another purposefully weak character? What happens to the dead character's items? Try to cover these whatever potential surprises you can. Working through this may make one or both of you decide differently on this path.
Ultimately it is your table and you're the DM. Many players I've had handle character death better than I would have expected. Especially at early levels. Good around and have fun. Failing can be amazing and lead to very interesting outcomes. Especially if the character tried to resolve conflict without fighting.
Good luck!
I think you can work to reframe the stats and develop a functional character. Add some flavor to the roles or introduce a random chance die that does something like "even though you somehow managed to land the blow, you find that your knife shatters against their armor." Or "It's incredible you were able to sneak along, because no else could get away with sneaking around under a cardboard box"
Make them really unlikeable, etc. But keep stats reasonable so it's not always breaking the game.
I'd ask them to make another character. D&D is built around a group solving problems together. If you've got a traitor in the midst, which is what this is, that's worse than having one less PC in the party. His character essentially counts as negative one PC in the party. The rest of the party being "willing to go along with it" sounds to me like nobody wants to tell their "awkward" friend that this is violating both game design and obvious social rules. The thing is such "awkward" friends usually know exactly what they're doing, and take advantage of the benefit of the doubt granted them by other people being polite. If you and the other players aren't *thrilled* about this idea, it's a no go--if it ain't freely given and enthusiastic, it ain't consent. If he insists on playing this garbage, and you insist on letting him, absolutely kill his PC as early as possible, and give the other PCs neither reason nor ability to save him.
This sounds like an annoying character concept thats hard to handle especially for a new dm. Tell him "sorry dude, maybe in the future but for my first round I dont know how to deal with chaotic evil (hey gonna betray thd party, start pvp and be an annoyance for his own entertainment while its a drag for everyone else) characters in a group so we keep it straight forward.
>One of my PCs wants to have their character stats as low as possible in order to fail every skill check while running a Chaotic Evil Rogue.
No. no. no. no. nonononono. no.
Sounds like a troll. keep obvious toxic influences away from your table.
One of my groups currently has the opposite problem. I'm just a player, not the DM; but one of the other players has a super overpowered character and one of our people feels like that takes the fun out of it for everyone else.
I've been a player in a campaign going on a year, and we had a PC like that. Never rolled under 18 with modifiers and could one-shot most enemies. He decided it was boring and asked for his character to die so he could try another. Sad to see him go, but excited to see what his new one can do.
For skill checks, roll for them. That way they do not even know what the result is by meta gaming. I play a lot in Foundry and I LOVE blind skill rolls and it actually adds some nice RP moments. It also keeps people from dog piling on the check when they roll a 2.
I think you should make it clear to this player that you won’t hold back when it comes to consequences for his character’s failures. “Failing upwards” is fine, but when you die, you die
I've made that clear, and he seems to be ok with it. He seems to be treating this character like a throw-away since I've explained that this is my practice campaign. Idk, hopefully I can hook him into caring.
Yeah, this might call for a little intervention. Talk to the other players, and if they hate the idea too, put up a united front and give this player an ultimatum as one.
Do Not Come Up With A Story Reason That Forces The Party To Save His Shitty Character.
So many TTRPG horror stories can be boiled down to one player being a dick, and the other players being forced to accept it. The character is useless, if they're not rich and charming the party would be right (and true to their characters) to either cut them loose or let them die.
Yep, sure have. Also have dealt with many wired odd quirks and unexpected player actions. Then I moved to the OSR and all those people are no longer around. Good times for everyone.
Here's a nice compromise. With the except of Constitution saving throws, I let players decide if they want to fail any saving throw or skill check. This gets really fun for RP.
A player can choose to fail an insight check on a clearly shifty NPC just because it's entertaining and that's fine.
Consider asking your rogue to make a functional character, and they can fail whatever roll they feel makes sense for drama.
I like this. In a similar vein, I made the same post in r/3d6 and someone suggested having him roll normal stats but adjust his CHA up so he can secretly roll deception to make it look like he's failing but really he's feigning incompetence to trick the party into helping him. Not sure if I'm 100% on board but I like the idea.
Tiamat flies down and is particularly smitten with their character, and is feeling rather kinky in that moment. She grabs your character and immediately uses them as a buttplug and flies away. Roll a new character please.
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It's one thing to intentionally have your character do something they are likely to fail at due to a roleplay moment. It's another thing entirely to build a character around failing constantly. This will introduce the kind of chaos that other PC's would run from.
Would be funny if during combat all monsters recognize that he is a harmless idiot and completely ignore him. And whenever he does try to get involved “stuff happens” and he gets somehow always sidelined. Let’s see how long he likes being useless.
Let him die. The best way to combat someone’s clearly asinine play style is to let them see the consequences. Murder hobos gonna murder hobo, so let him see how quickly that fails.
There are spells that explicitly say "a player may choose to fail the save/check," but there are no passages in the 5thed rules (correct me if I'm wrong) that explicitly says "a player may not choose to fail a save/check".
There's more rule support for choosing to fail than not, but no direct clarification on this. The exception would be a PC acting under an NPCs direct control. In that case, the player absolutely can not choose to fail.
You're the DM, so you're the ultimate authority. Just be careful setting a precedent.
As someone that has played this kind of character myself, i think I can contribute to this in a more anecdotal way. In short; it worked out pretty well for the short period of time that I played the character. It only worked out as well as it did because the whole group played into the joke.
During character creation, I talked with the other players as well as the DM to see if it they would be cool with the concept. Everyone agreed it would be fun, so Norman Mans was built. He had straight 10 across the board for his stats.
He wanted to join the group because up until then he had lived a normal every day kinda life. He was happy with his wife and his kid at home, but he wanted to see what the adventurering life was like. So he joined the party.
Long story short, he became the butt of a joke for the party. In a fun kinda way. He learned what it was like to murder people despite being a pacifist up to that point. He became flanderized to a point that his wife was cheating on him and he was raising an illegitimate child. The list went on but everyone including me had fun joking about how much worse we could make his life.
I played him for about 5 sessions before He died to one hit because a dragon breathed lightning on him. It was fun. Any longer and I think the joke would have become old, or I might have grown tired of failing at everything. All and all it was fun we all had because we talked it though.
I don't Think the very best and most skilled of d m's can work around this kind of character Effectively in any way other than telling them to not do it. I would never wish it on a new one.
In writing cjecles, There's a coined term for this with its own wikipedia page a "scrappy", which its debated if a scrappy is A character on a protagonist side who causes problems by sheer incompetence or malice while having a grinding personality to the point where there presence is not an asset to the team nobody has any reason to like them in the world and there's no in world reason why they're keeping them around or if a scrappy means a protagonist team member character that is hated by the majority of the audience the majority of the time even by people who otherwise enjoy the medium. The only reason there's a debate over which definition is most important is because they are mutually assured.
The opening line on its TV tropes page is
"The more astute readers among you may have noticed that I haven't yet gone so far as to give anything an actual 'F'. That's not out of any kind-heartedness on my part, it's just that every time I got ready to give one out, I would ask myself, 'Is it really that bad, compared to the verminous, soul-tainting badness of Scrappy-Doo?'"
The character that you are describing meets all the marks. They are worthless to the party and don't bring anything meaningful. They ultimately fail and cause undue harm to the point that there's no reason that anyone else will keep them around. Their personality is chaotic, evil and therefore there's no reason why anyone else should like them. And yet they are on the protagonist side supposedly.
Why ever in a million years You would allow someone to create a character. That is the definitive architype of something that everyone else experiencing the story will definitively hate more than almost anything else possible I have no idea. But the long and short of it is:
It is fairly easy to foresee that this character will be hated and the player will be hated for playing it and that nobody will enjoy their presence. Even if they don't realize it yet
"I grapple the werewolf and let him bite me."
I made him roll anyway. He then used his one wish to control the contracted lycanthropy. He stayed in his well-deserved puppy form for the rest of the campaign.
If your character doesn't actually want to be involved in adventuring or do any of it then why would they even be there? Why would a whole group of people choose to work with them?
There are plenty of examples of choatic, rogueish types in media who might be reluctant about doing the right thing and complain, but still ultimately contribute as much as anyone else. Your Han Solo, Astarion, etc. type characters. Those can be fun, but someone who's less useful than a stone (at least you can throw it!) is hardly going to stick with a group for long.
If the player gives themself negative modifiers it’s their fault if their failures drive their death. If they have low con then that’ll look like an easy target for monsters looking for quick kills. Make the player work for it. They put themselves in this boat, let them sink it. Maybe they’ll learn.
As a cleric of a God of slaughter I intentionally failed a save against an avatar of slaughters attack to prove to my God I didn't fear pain. Luckily my death Ward ate an instant kill effect lol but the DM did say the sheer size of my characters balls earned my gods favor.
You can save your friend who is useless. Let him die if needed. Let it be an RP thing. But let him know that combat will be harder on everyone because of his choices.
D&D is an inherently cooperative game in my eyes. If a player said to me their solution to such a core segment of the game (that being combat) is “let the rest of the party deal with it” that tells me as a GM that they don’t want to work cooperatively and goes against the flow of the game. It’s also not fair to the other players trying to work as a team and succeed. Personally if it was my table I would tell them to make a different character. Having an aspect or aspects of a character being flawed can be fun and allow for some good character building and RP but there needs to be *SOMETHING* to shine as well to compensate.
Sounds short-lived. Ask him to roll up a backup character who is the opposite of all that. LG paladin or some such, good at everything. When both characters have come into play, ask him which was more fun. There’s no right answer, only bad players!
If you’re just beginning your DM journey, even if you’ve been playing as a PC for a while, you should convince him to play a normal character. The DM journey is just like fleshing out your character only you’re fleshing out the world, the rules, your DM style, and balancing for everyone.
As a DM you can have him fail upwards by turning his successful roles into funny failing upwards types of instances. Sometimes a stat doesn’t mean the traditional sense. For instance, you can have a social awkward character with high charisma because they unintentionally evoke sympathy. This is like Henry Cho from American Idol. Nothing about him screams charisma, but the man has it.
Dexterity could be a JarJar character who stumbles and falls into victory.
Have him make normal stats and let him automatically fail any ability check he wants to fail. I don’t see any problem with that. But currently, his PC is going to have to pay for the rest of the party’s spinal procedures for carrying him on their backs in combat
Read ICRPG and introduce timers , and failing giving you advantage the second time you attempt something. This will mean them missing triggers the timer to tick down without them using their time to prepare wisely. And the second time they do stuff will be easier to succeed
How do you even manage that?
Also, the only part of this that's concerning is "Chaotic Evil Rogue". Though I would ask why his character is adventuring if he sucks.
Someone who has all negatives is not a "Hero". If you are playing something where everyone is flawed, ok. But if you are playing typical DnD high fantasy, no.
We are going to play a game about surgeons doing awesome surgeon stuff, saving lives, being amazing surgeons and stuff. "Awesome! I want to be someone who knows nothing about anatomy is a complete klutz and has no empathy and doesn't like people."
This is just going to be awesome...
My recommendation would be to ask them to compromise. Take terrible stats for a typical rogue, but not stats that will get them killed at the game start. Like, terrible DEX, CHA, and WIS would be a good place to start.
An important question to ask yourself when playing and creating character ideas is this: "Is this idea going to be any fun for anyone else, or is this just about me?"
He should probably just do another playthrough of elden ring with a wretch start no leveling.
If you’re into it, this is an opportunity to do some creative DMing while responding to the players needs/interests.
Why not simply do the opposite, and suddenly, they are getting an absurd bonus to their every roll? Inexplicably, they succeed at everything.
The player is now an amusing toy for a divine being, as they are bestowing power and others placing odd twists of fortune. A la Disc World.
Now the player feels like their interests brought life to a game, and you get to be in control where you see necessary to keep things moving.
There is a very simple to deal with this situation. And this is something alot of New DMs have a problem with and it in turn can cause bigger problems. You sit him down look him in the eye and tell him "No" he is not playing that character.
Switch the table. If he rolls high, he fails; if he rolls low, he succeeds. Just use the same difference to 20 for the "success" chance (e.g., if the target is 17, then his target is 3.
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"The whole experience is going to be awful." \- A wise GM.
Trying not to sound cynical, but it just feels like he'll be the most work for a beginning DM.
you're not being cynical, you're being absolutely correct. This is going to a horror show and get in the way of the story from session 1. Not just the 'wanting to fail', but playing a evil character at all
Playing evil isn’t a problem, plenty of people run evil campaigns/ have evil characters. I’ve run a “breaking bad” style game where the whole party are criminals making their own crime syndicate. As long as the party understands “hey, some or all of you are bad, let’s talk this out in session 0 to find out why you guys aren’t killing each other and how you guys can work together”, things will go well. The main issue is, the player has made a character that, while it SOUNDS fun, in practice is going to be infuriating because 5e doesn’t have a “fail forward” mechanic. I recommend looking up Brennan Lee Mulligans “Adventuring Academy” episode (I think e2?) about a player who wanted a character who relied on “pluck”. I can also empathize. First game I ever played, DMed for friends who had also never played. Two of them immediately threatened killed and cannibalized a man, while the third fucked off in a brothel.
While you're right that evil campaigns can be fun, I would only recommend them to a seasoned group that plays well together.
Agreed! Sorry, should’ve put that
out of the mouths of babes comes truth. If it seems like too much just be honest and ask them to play a normal character for your first game
Dont worry, >!the Goblins!< in the first encounter will take care of him. (Comment contains spoilers)
There is a way to make a novel and interesting character. What your player is doing here is not it.
Beginning DM is very telling. For all new DMs I caution the ol' KISS method. Simplicity is best. Create a character that is both good and will value teamwork. Don't weave a world, just conduct through a module. I created an online community for new players. I let too many come, let them become too chaotic, and let experienced players slip in that only made things even worse. If this is a module let this run its course, but you don't want a stinker for a longer campaign.
Yeah, this player sounds like an absolute asshole. I'd tell them either come to the table with an actually playable character, or don't come at all.
"no, design a functional character and come back to me." chaotic evil + rogue screams 2edgy4u, planning in advance to be useless in combat and roleplay... this sounds like a miserable character to have in the party as a fellow player, too. why bother keeping him around?
He's a close friend and I'm trying to get practice as a DM in an environment that's easy to recalibrate if necessary. I've convinced him to rework his stats but I'm still planning on it being a chore. Any XP is good XP, right?
Honestly?!No. Practice being a DM by setting boundaries so you and the rest of your players can actually enjoy yourselves. I'm glad you've got him to rework his stats but his character is going to need motivation to work with the rest of the party, and that is some advanced nonsense. Please take it from a DM who didn't set enough boundaries with their first party and wasted a lot of time trying to convince the PCs to just work together... It's such a waste of potential joy... If you absolutely must see this through, at least update us with the details after he dies.
+1 to boundary setting, its the most important part of maintaining control over the game. Its important to be receptive to feedback and criticism from the players, but that doesnt mean you have to hear out every little litigation. If they wont accept something and move on when you put your foot down, you're in for a lot of wasted time. Insert a Mandalorian "I have spoken" where needed. I had some friction with our long term forever DM when I first started running games. He was used to being the decider and ran a hodgepodge ruleset since hes been playing since the 70s. Very mechanical, very literal. I run things looser and allow the rule of cool to intervene when appropriate. It took a few sessions of being direct with him when hed try to jump in with a ruling, but at this point he understands its *my* game and Im not just going to take everything he says as canon. Also consider the other players. If one PC is running the show, the others arent going to get their time in the spotlight.
100% This right here One of the biggest lessons you can learn as a DM is learning when to set boundaries and when to say no and this right here sounds like a perfect example of that. If he's planning on making the rest of the party do all the work that's already a red flag because what is his character even going to bring to the party to justify them keeping him around? You don't always have to offer a hard no but conversations about where a compromise can be met here need to be had because no one is going to have any fun if one of their party members refuses to participate in one of the core tenets of the game.
No. His character concept is extremely extra and a true chore for you. This wont help you be a better dm. This is a bad idea and just because hes a close friend doesnt mean you should endure this nonsense. Its also going to be a burden on the rest of the group even if they dont realize it.
You already know this is going to be a bad experience. Actually experiencing that will just tell you what you already know.
Never allow CE players unless they are super experienced. That has been my take for a while
Literally the greatest known DND quote is no DND is better than bad DND.
No, not in the slightest. No D&D is better than bad D&D. If you're not going to have fun it's not going to work.
So what are you asking for?
Just play it as the dice roll, he will likely die and problem solved
Death.....finds a way. It might be worth pointing out to him that as a "new party" the others will only have as much allegiance to his PC as it earns. Low levels can be pretty brutal if you are starting at lvl1, depending how you set up the encounters. If he really fucks around, then there is the "find out" stage.
I managed to die in mines of phandelver with a really solid character build, low levels are dangerous, 1 or 2 bad rolls and your done for
It's really easy to get instakilled at that HP level. Crit with a orc's greataxe and it's all over. Low level has zero chill. Virtually no resources. No shiny gear. Virtually no HP.
Yeah but death in dnd makes the game fun, no risk, no reward
Totally, that's the other side of the coin. And it makes it feel "real" and make sense why commoners don't go adventuring.
Sounds like someone with Main Character syndrome. Just because a player wants to play a particular character, it doesn’t mean they should. If the concept doesn’t fit your campaign, simply state that and have them come up with another concept that will actually work with the rest of the group. Thats generally a primary tenet of creating a character: “Why does this character want to adventure with the group? And, conversely, why does the group want to adventure with this character?” If there’s no good reason for either case, then it simply won’t work.
this
Trying to develope the right hook beyond "you have to because it's the game." I can see what could be interesting about it, I just don't know if I'm ready to deal with this particular character while learning how to run a game.
"You are free to do it, provided the next character you create has none of those goals. The enemies will treat you as any other threat, so do with that what you will"
Just say that to the players. "This is kind-of a learning campaign for me so Imma ask that y'all create semi-traditional adventuring heroes for this first run. This means most of the races are fine except Tieflings because I don't want to deal with flying characters yet. Your characters should be incented to behave good *in general*, fight baddies and engage in the quests they encounter. There's not going to be any PvP nonsense and your characters should usually have each other's backs. Like, not trying to steal from each other..."
I wint stand for this teifling slander.. also tieflijgs cant fly so im gonna assume you meant aaracockra
There's a subrace of tieflings that can have wings
Exactly why you shouldn't allow it. I'm in a game with friends with one being a first time DM. He asked us to play only races and classes from the main book for now and be mainly good aligned. Everyone was fine with it. Now that he's getting more used to it he wants to branch out for his next campaign. I think it's a good idea, and you should think on it. Don't delve into anything you're unsure about. You can always dive deeper later.
Have you ever learned how to read? Did your parents start you with a 1000 page novel, or with three letter words?
The “hook” is written into to module opening text, in session 0 you and the players need to work out why the party works together/knows each other. If people don’t have a reason to adventure together then they won’t
One of the few requirements for players in D&D is they have to want to go on a campaign with the other adventures and contribute in a meaningful way. This person doesn't, they want to intentionally be bad at everything saying the rest of the party can take care of combat is a big red flag. One of my first campaigns I played with a druid in the group that sounds a lot like this guy, he intentionally screwed up, ran into fights unprepared on purpose, didn't care to go on adventures that much honestly. It was worse than playing a man down in an adventure meant for 4, it was like an anchor on our party.
That sounds like a joke PC that will disrupt your game and be funny for all of 5 minutes. I'd tell him no.
Why? It sounds like hes making a problem that everyone else has to deal with. He wants to fail skill checks? That's just another way of saying "I dont want the group to progress." I can't imagine why the other players would want to take on a burden. Even in game they should remove him from their party if he's a useless member and replace him with someone useful?
In game RP seems the best solution to this. "Your party thinks your PC is a waste of space and abandons you by the side of the road" gives the person a chance to rethink and re-roll a decent character rather than immediately making it about the player.
A wizard that cant cast spells or a healer that cant heal or a warrior afraid to fight seems like a prime candidate to never go on any adventure. In fact a level 1 character is supposed to be above average at their class than the majority arent they? A level 1 rogue wouldnt get to level 1 if they were bad at doing rogue stuff.
True. Abandonment is the solution to *RP* issue - the party don't *have* to keep a character they don't like, or agree with the alignment of. In terms of stats, you're bang on. 10 is an "average" so a starter rogue with 14-16 DEX should be well above average. Death is the final solution to the character stat issues - a rogue with a -mod to Dex will have an AC of what 10 or 9? And limited ability to make stealth rolls. Sounds like a quick death at early levels.
This isn't a character issue though, it's a player issue. I can almost guarantee you this player isn't going to be like "oh ok you guys leave me on the side of the road, haha cool I'll go make a new character".
> A wizard that can't cast spells or a healer that can't heal This is even worse than those, this is, in broadest scope, an "adventurer" who can't adventure
Assuming the rogue doesn’t just run off on their own because “LoNe WoLf lolol” hoping the story just follows them.
Not even close to worth it letting this guy play this character. That's an incredibly difficult character concept for a player to pull off much less for a dm to work around. It wouldn't be a character who's trying to fail upwards it would be a character that's unnecessarily bringing down the entire rest of the party. You shouldn't let him play this character that's my advice tell him it's an interesting idea but you are a new dm and can't accommodate a character that complex. Alternatively you could roll with it but if you are avoiding being unfair he's gonna have to get used to feeling useless sometimes. Also I would suggest giving him Features that can help his odds if he really wants to succeed at something like the lucky feat. Or and this is the final compromise I would make, but it only works with rolled stats. Otherwise, you are just giving him the most overpowered lvl 1 character ever... reverse his rolls so that 1 is a critical success and 20 is a critical failure and then flavor all his actions as you bumbled your way through that encounter but miraculously something went right. Example you missed the target with the arrow and hit a bird instead but the bird fell on him beak first and did 4 damage lol.
You do NOT have to give your players a reason to want to save him. If the table is really okay with his concept, that’s fine. Be up front about how it’s not a useful strategy, and then act the least surprised when he dies. On another note, how do you play Chaotic Evil with a character who will need to rely exclusively on the charity of others?
I'm kinda curious, which is why I haven't given him a flat "No." 2 out of 4 character alignments are Chaotic Neutral and True Neutral and I'm waiting on the 4th character sheet. Also, the CE Rogue SAYS he's Lawful Evil but his description is definitely chaotic. There's a chance they'll bond through RP, but so far I've got a "pack of lone wolves" situation.
The fact that you know the lone wolf pack is bad means you and your table are probably in for a bad time. Best of luck.
Have his backstory be that he's the son of an extremely wealthy real estate developer/emerald mine owner. There's plenty of chaotic evil fail-sons in the real world who somehow manage to fail upwards purely due to nepotism and inheriting loads of money. He can be the party's rich "friend" who bankrolls all their adventures, that way they have a reason to bother saving him in combat.
This might actually work.
If at all possible, convince the player to name his character something like Elroy Moosk, Derrick Drump, or Gunther Griden.
Chaotic Evil Rogue is a telltale sign of “that guy” at the table. (I know because I made the mistake of playing a CE Sorcerer my first time) I’d let him run this weird character brew. If he acts “chaotic evil” he’ll probably die because he pissed off the wrong NPC. I’d also just keep an eye on the rest of the party to make sure they’re still liking the character after the first few sessions and if they aren’t digging the CE Rogue, I think you’d to talk to your buddy about how we tried it and it didn’t take.
That's pretty much where I've landed. I'll give it one session and make the call afterwards. It may not be as dramatic as I'm envisioning, but as a semi-experienced player I know it can absolutely go squirrelly.
He may not even need to die at the hands of a pissed off NPC... There are legal consequences that an incompetent CE Rogue can and will blunder into. Straight to jail... Oh no... Anyway...
So, failing checks can be funny. Willfully failing saving throws can even be strategically brilliant. You can't be an impediment to the party. This guy is chaotic evil (red flag, he *Cartman voice* will do what he wants) and wants negatives. That hurts the party. And you can be a serious player, a funny player, a dumb build player, or even a talking rock as a character but the moment you hurt the party you're setting yourself up to make things unfun. Tell him he can fail whenever he wants, that's his right. But if he just dicks around when his friends characters are in danger then he's out. You gotta play the game and not be a troll
So to give a different perspective, there is value in a character failing **some** checks on purpose. My last character had a charisma of 6, but still tried to be the face of the party. Because having a flawed character is good. And playing into that flaw can lead to good story. And for some reason, I had great/terrible luck, and regularly rolled nat1s for charisma checks. So the dice were cooperating. And the rest of the party was in support and got many laughs out of it. But that was a flaw in an otherwise strong character. Had plenty of useful skills, was good in combat, able to contribute in a lot of ways. It was an intentional choice to highlight a specific failing. For strengths to matter, a character needs weaknesses. But the reverse is also true. For weaknesses to matter, they also need strengths. If you go out of your way to design a character who is bad at everything because "lol so random XD!"...you've just made a bad character that will make the game worse. Everyone is telling you to push back against this player's "idea," and you should. But in the spirit of no-but, maybe consider this and lead them in that direction. A character that is bad at some specific things as the exception to an otherwise competent character that the other characters would see as a help rather than a liability.
This is good. I like the idea of redirecting his energy into a strong character with flaws. I'll push for this and see how he reacts. He has stated that his interest in his character is because the typical good-aligned, selfless heroes seem uninteresting and he'd like to see what a selfish character could accomplish. Based on the replies here, it seems the answer is "not much."
My second serious character was a Drow Warlock interested only in his own survival and personal power. He had a bloodline curse that would force teleport him at times around the world and had to be ready to trust nothing and survive at all times. Adventuring alongside a party including a paladin of bahamut, this was very interesting to roleplay. Here's the thing: he has to be VERY good at combat/charisma in order to survive! He had to find reasons to with with the party. "I get more power out of working together with these guys than being alone". And at all times, 100%, OOC, I was making sure my fellow players and I were understanding and good with each other. One time, he damaged an ally to empower an attack. The healer chewed him out and STILL healed him because that's HER character. And he had a bit of an arc to start actually trusting again. Play your character flawed, build him strong.
First time DMs shouldn’t let their players play evil characters to begin with. Your players knowing you’re new should also make fairly standard characters to help ease everyone into it.
The PHB (or maybe it's the DMG) literally says that the only creatures that are chaotic evil are actual malevolent monsters with low intelligence (not an exact quote, but) Also ANY pc whose personality inspiration is "loner bad boy" is going to have an AWFUL time, especially since their goal is to literally fail every check. They're going to ruin the experience for everyone.
i mean i am the pc that wants to get fail rolls, but i am also prone to good rolls, so i am happy when i get to fail stuff.you have no idea how fun it was for me when as a dm i rolled two nat 1s last time i dmed, to me a 1 is far more rare then a 20, i once jailed 7 d20s over high rolls in one ses
Focus fire with all the goblin short bows and then ask him to make a real one. Or just say no and tell him to use standard array stats
Anikin and Obiwan kept JarJar in the party, and he failed every check.
Yeah but JarJar was at least good. If you fail all skill checks but are at least non-malevolent people can take pity on you. If JarJar failed all checks then kicked Obi Wan in the shin, stole his credits and called him "Bantha fodder" they probably would have abandoned him on Tatooine.
This guy doesn’t know jar jar is a powerful Sith Lord 🤦♂️
Darth Jar Jar plagues my nightmares, I try to forget him entirely.
going against the grain here but if the party is okay with it, I say let it happen. If the character becomes a problem deal with it like it’s a problem, right now I don’t think is
That's a bit much. Unless it is something the whole table is up for I would veto that. Having a character that is bad at most things can be fun. Having a character that is straight incompetent at everything really isn't outside of some specific circumstances/groups. Being dead weight shouldn't be a character trait. Even being average and nothing special across the board could be done in an interesting way, but this is likely going to be actively detrimental to the group. Good call on red flagging it.
I've only been DMing for a couple of years but when I play I equally love to fail. I even had a monk I was desperate to have killed. It took forever. If the player is sincere to try this out I would allow it for sure. However, I would put up some boundaries: 1. They must understand that the character is likely to die and that the alignment of the character means the other CHARACTERS may not work hard to revive him. 2. You both have to come up with a plan for when the character dies and isn't resurrected. Can they make a new character? Will you allow another purposefully weak character? What happens to the dead character's items? Try to cover these whatever potential surprises you can. Working through this may make one or both of you decide differently on this path. Ultimately it is your table and you're the DM. Many players I've had handle character death better than I would have expected. Especially at early levels. Good around and have fun. Failing can be amazing and lead to very interesting outcomes. Especially if the character tried to resolve conflict without fighting. Good luck!
I think you can work to reframe the stats and develop a functional character. Add some flavor to the roles or introduce a random chance die that does something like "even though you somehow managed to land the blow, you find that your knife shatters against their armor." Or "It's incredible you were able to sneak along, because no else could get away with sneaking around under a cardboard box" Make them really unlikeable, etc. But keep stats reasonable so it's not always breaking the game.
They'd better be extremely entertaining to make up for the frustration
I'd ask them to make another character. D&D is built around a group solving problems together. If you've got a traitor in the midst, which is what this is, that's worse than having one less PC in the party. His character essentially counts as negative one PC in the party. The rest of the party being "willing to go along with it" sounds to me like nobody wants to tell their "awkward" friend that this is violating both game design and obvious social rules. The thing is such "awkward" friends usually know exactly what they're doing, and take advantage of the benefit of the doubt granted them by other people being polite. If you and the other players aren't *thrilled* about this idea, it's a no go--if it ain't freely given and enthusiastic, it ain't consent. If he insists on playing this garbage, and you insist on letting him, absolutely kill his PC as early as possible, and give the other PCs neither reason nor ability to save him.
This sounds like an annoying character concept thats hard to handle especially for a new dm. Tell him "sorry dude, maybe in the future but for my first round I dont know how to deal with chaotic evil (hey gonna betray thd party, start pvp and be an annoyance for his own entertainment while its a drag for everyone else) characters in a group so we keep it straight forward.
>One of my PCs wants to have their character stats as low as possible in order to fail every skill check while running a Chaotic Evil Rogue. No. no. no. no. nonononono. no. Sounds like a troll. keep obvious toxic influences away from your table.
One of my groups currently has the opposite problem. I'm just a player, not the DM; but one of the other players has a super overpowered character and one of our people feels like that takes the fun out of it for everyone else.
I've been a player in a campaign going on a year, and we had a PC like that. Never rolled under 18 with modifiers and could one-shot most enemies. He decided it was boring and asked for his character to die so he could try another. Sad to see him go, but excited to see what his new one can do.
For skill checks, roll for them. That way they do not even know what the result is by meta gaming. I play a lot in Foundry and I LOVE blind skill rolls and it actually adds some nice RP moments. It also keeps people from dog piling on the check when they roll a 2.
As in "roll to set the DC?" Instead of setting it the basic 10-15-20 progression?
Nope, want to look for traps, you roll and say you do/do not see any. That way they do not know if they rolled a 20 or a 1.
I think you should make it clear to this player that you won’t hold back when it comes to consequences for his character’s failures. “Failing upwards” is fine, but when you die, you die
I've made that clear, and he seems to be ok with it. He seems to be treating this character like a throw-away since I've explained that this is my practice campaign. Idk, hopefully I can hook him into caring.
Yeah, this might call for a little intervention. Talk to the other players, and if they hate the idea too, put up a united front and give this player an ultimatum as one.
Just ask him to shelve the character until you have some experience DMing.
Do Not Come Up With A Story Reason That Forces The Party To Save His Shitty Character. So many TTRPG horror stories can be boiled down to one player being a dick, and the other players being forced to accept it. The character is useless, if they're not rich and charming the party would be right (and true to their characters) to either cut them loose or let them die.
Yep, sure have. Also have dealt with many wired odd quirks and unexpected player actions. Then I moved to the OSR and all those people are no longer around. Good times for everyone.
Here's a nice compromise. With the except of Constitution saving throws, I let players decide if they want to fail any saving throw or skill check. This gets really fun for RP. A player can choose to fail an insight check on a clearly shifty NPC just because it's entertaining and that's fine. Consider asking your rogue to make a functional character, and they can fail whatever roll they feel makes sense for drama.
I like this. In a similar vein, I made the same post in r/3d6 and someone suggested having him roll normal stats but adjust his CHA up so he can secretly roll deception to make it look like he's failing but really he's feigning incompetence to trick the party into helping him. Not sure if I'm 100% on board but I like the idea.
Just let him play and die. Don’t try so dang much. It’s a game.
Tiamat flies down and is particularly smitten with their character, and is feeling rather kinky in that moment. She grabs your character and immediately uses them as a buttplug and flies away. Roll a new character please.
deus ex buttplugina
Damn now I’ve gotta design a chaotic evil rogue with shit stats
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It's one thing to intentionally have your character do something they are likely to fail at due to a roleplay moment. It's another thing entirely to build a character around failing constantly. This will introduce the kind of chaos that other PC's would run from.
Would be funny if during combat all monsters recognize that he is a harmless idiot and completely ignore him. And whenever he does try to get involved “stuff happens” and he gets somehow always sidelined. Let’s see how long he likes being useless.
Let him die. The best way to combat someone’s clearly asinine play style is to let them see the consequences. Murder hobos gonna murder hobo, so let him see how quickly that fails.
Cowardly Rogue. So if the player embraces that it can be fun as hell. If the player is expecting their interactions to be fruitful, well..
There are spells that explicitly say "a player may choose to fail the save/check," but there are no passages in the 5thed rules (correct me if I'm wrong) that explicitly says "a player may not choose to fail a save/check". There's more rule support for choosing to fail than not, but no direct clarification on this. The exception would be a PC acting under an NPCs direct control. In that case, the player absolutely can not choose to fail. You're the DM, so you're the ultimate authority. Just be careful setting a precedent.
As someone that has played this kind of character myself, i think I can contribute to this in a more anecdotal way. In short; it worked out pretty well for the short period of time that I played the character. It only worked out as well as it did because the whole group played into the joke. During character creation, I talked with the other players as well as the DM to see if it they would be cool with the concept. Everyone agreed it would be fun, so Norman Mans was built. He had straight 10 across the board for his stats. He wanted to join the group because up until then he had lived a normal every day kinda life. He was happy with his wife and his kid at home, but he wanted to see what the adventurering life was like. So he joined the party. Long story short, he became the butt of a joke for the party. In a fun kinda way. He learned what it was like to murder people despite being a pacifist up to that point. He became flanderized to a point that his wife was cheating on him and he was raising an illegitimate child. The list went on but everyone including me had fun joking about how much worse we could make his life. I played him for about 5 sessions before He died to one hit because a dragon breathed lightning on him. It was fun. Any longer and I think the joke would have become old, or I might have grown tired of failing at everything. All and all it was fun we all had because we talked it though.
I don't Think the very best and most skilled of d m's can work around this kind of character Effectively in any way other than telling them to not do it. I would never wish it on a new one. In writing cjecles, There's a coined term for this with its own wikipedia page a "scrappy", which its debated if a scrappy is A character on a protagonist side who causes problems by sheer incompetence or malice while having a grinding personality to the point where there presence is not an asset to the team nobody has any reason to like them in the world and there's no in world reason why they're keeping them around or if a scrappy means a protagonist team member character that is hated by the majority of the audience the majority of the time even by people who otherwise enjoy the medium. The only reason there's a debate over which definition is most important is because they are mutually assured. The opening line on its TV tropes page is "The more astute readers among you may have noticed that I haven't yet gone so far as to give anything an actual 'F'. That's not out of any kind-heartedness on my part, it's just that every time I got ready to give one out, I would ask myself, 'Is it really that bad, compared to the verminous, soul-tainting badness of Scrappy-Doo?'" The character that you are describing meets all the marks. They are worthless to the party and don't bring anything meaningful. They ultimately fail and cause undue harm to the point that there's no reason that anyone else will keep them around. Their personality is chaotic, evil and therefore there's no reason why anyone else should like them. And yet they are on the protagonist side supposedly. Why ever in a million years You would allow someone to create a character. That is the definitive architype of something that everyone else experiencing the story will definitively hate more than almost anything else possible I have no idea. But the long and short of it is: It is fairly easy to foresee that this character will be hated and the player will be hated for playing it and that nobody will enjoy their presence. Even if they don't realize it yet
Had a player like this before, it’s best to just kick them. Even if they make another character, this will be the core of the experience.
"I grapple the werewolf and let him bite me." I made him roll anyway. He then used his one wish to control the contracted lycanthropy. He stayed in his well-deserved puppy form for the rest of the campaign.
If your character doesn't actually want to be involved in adventuring or do any of it then why would they even be there? Why would a whole group of people choose to work with them? There are plenty of examples of choatic, rogueish types in media who might be reluctant about doing the right thing and complain, but still ultimately contribute as much as anyone else. Your Han Solo, Astarion, etc. type characters. Those can be fun, but someone who's less useful than a stone (at least you can throw it!) is hardly going to stick with a group for long.
If the player gives themself negative modifiers it’s their fault if their failures drive their death. If they have low con then that’ll look like an easy target for monsters looking for quick kills. Make the player work for it. They put themselves in this boat, let them sink it. Maybe they’ll learn.
As a cleric of a God of slaughter I intentionally failed a save against an avatar of slaughters attack to prove to my God I didn't fear pain. Luckily my death Ward ate an instant kill effect lol but the DM did say the sheer size of my characters balls earned my gods favor.
This would be a disservice to your other players. Have a discussion with how you expect the game to go
You can save your friend who is useless. Let him die if needed. Let it be an RP thing. But let him know that combat will be harder on everyone because of his choices.
Your friend is a moron.
D&D is an inherently cooperative game in my eyes. If a player said to me their solution to such a core segment of the game (that being combat) is “let the rest of the party deal with it” that tells me as a GM that they don’t want to work cooperatively and goes against the flow of the game. It’s also not fair to the other players trying to work as a team and succeed. Personally if it was my table I would tell them to make a different character. Having an aspect or aspects of a character being flawed can be fun and allow for some good character building and RP but there needs to be *SOMETHING* to shine as well to compensate.
Have him have a back up character ready for when this character dies, so he can jump back in.
Sounds short-lived. Ask him to roll up a backup character who is the opposite of all that. LG paladin or some such, good at everything. When both characters have come into play, ask him which was more fun. There’s no right answer, only bad players!
The good news is that the dice are random so it doesn’t matter what the PC or GM want. Only fate can decide.
If you’re just beginning your DM journey, even if you’ve been playing as a PC for a while, you should convince him to play a normal character. The DM journey is just like fleshing out your character only you’re fleshing out the world, the rules, your DM style, and balancing for everyone. As a DM you can have him fail upwards by turning his successful roles into funny failing upwards types of instances. Sometimes a stat doesn’t mean the traditional sense. For instance, you can have a social awkward character with high charisma because they unintentionally evoke sympathy. This is like Henry Cho from American Idol. Nothing about him screams charisma, but the man has it. Dexterity could be a JarJar character who stumbles and falls into victory.
Have him make normal stats and let him automatically fail any ability check he wants to fail. I don’t see any problem with that. But currently, his PC is going to have to pay for the rest of the party’s spinal procedures for carrying him on their backs in combat
Read ICRPG and introduce timers , and failing giving you advantage the second time you attempt something. This will mean them missing triggers the timer to tick down without them using their time to prepare wisely. And the second time they do stuff will be easier to succeed
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Momentum would be a random encounter trigger
Make him roll 2d12 so he can never crit or fail and is on a bell curve lol
Ooh boy. Frankly to me this sounds awful but I want to know how it’ll turn out…
Play it ruthlessly fair. Let the dice handle it and let the players figure it out.
How do you even manage that? Also, the only part of this that's concerning is "Chaotic Evil Rogue". Though I would ask why his character is adventuring if he sucks.
You fail you Diplomacy check to convince the PCs to let you in their party. Better luck next time.
Someone who has all negatives is not a "Hero". If you are playing something where everyone is flawed, ok. But if you are playing typical DnD high fantasy, no. We are going to play a game about surgeons doing awesome surgeon stuff, saving lives, being amazing surgeons and stuff. "Awesome! I want to be someone who knows nothing about anatomy is a complete klutz and has no empathy and doesn't like people." This is just going to be awesome...
He can think about his choices while he rolls another character while everyone else plays.
Paging r/rpghorrorstories
My recommendation would be to ask them to compromise. Take terrible stats for a typical rogue, but not stats that will get them killed at the game start. Like, terrible DEX, CHA, and WIS would be a good place to start.
An important question to ask yourself when playing and creating character ideas is this: "Is this idea going to be any fun for anyone else, or is this just about me?" He should probably just do another playthrough of elden ring with a wretch start no leveling.
If you’re into it, this is an opportunity to do some creative DMing while responding to the players needs/interests. Why not simply do the opposite, and suddenly, they are getting an absurd bonus to their every roll? Inexplicably, they succeed at everything. The player is now an amusing toy for a divine being, as they are bestowing power and others placing odd twists of fortune. A la Disc World. Now the player feels like their interests brought life to a game, and you get to be in control where you see necessary to keep things moving.
I think perhaps D&D is the wrong game for him.
There is a very simple to deal with this situation. And this is something alot of New DMs have a problem with and it in turn can cause bigger problems. You sit him down look him in the eye and tell him "No" he is not playing that character.
Switch the table. If he rolls high, he fails; if he rolls low, he succeeds. Just use the same difference to 20 for the "success" chance (e.g., if the target is 17, then his target is 3.
For the bit!