Tamarask -- or why I started worrying and stopped loving the
Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 5:18 am
This is something of a rant/dialogue I suppose. So be forewarned.
I'll admit it, upfront even. I love playing powerful characters. I do minmax/optimize/build generally better characters than many others I play with/whatever you wanna call it. But the way I realize the potential of any character's power per say usually comes as being a party face.
Primarily, I have always chosen to play a charismatic character who relies on his ability to talk his way out of a situation. Whether d&d, m&m, CoC, wuxia, hell paranoia, I have always relished being the party face.
When 3.5 came out, my gaming group of that time converted to 3.5 and I found two or three people who wanted to be the face and the charismatic one and they did not want me even being a backup face or an alternative face of any sort. They wanted to hold that end for a little bit and they said, rather nicely and not at all in a pointed way, that they would appreciate it if I didn't use Diplo/bluff/intimidate/innuendo etc... At this point, probably in my slight-inherent smugness, I pointed out that innuendo was no longer a skill in 3.5 and they glared at me and suggested I pick another class.
I agreed, a little annoyed at this point, and decided I'd go for a class that does not have to be the face.
I started 3.0 with a monk and decided to check up on the 3.5 monk. The 3.0 monk wasn't great but it wasn't bad either. But the 3.5 monk, whoo, he seemed worse than before. He had potential but he was also a one-trick pony. While face, I enjoyed the multitasking ability of the face who invariably was good at least one other set of abilities. But the monk was seriously a single tricker. Compared to other single trickers, he didn't compare.
So, I picked up my laptop and read that badly scanned 3.5 PDF. If I remember right, it didn't even have pictures.
I went through and weighed the classes and decided on the druid. Powerful, if necessary reclusive and charisma could easily be a dump stat. I remembered noting then that I would then be spending points in constitution even though the then pre-errata wild shape would let me have new hp totals each time I wild shaped into something with a different con score (usually higher).
I loved it. I didn't even look at augment summoning at that time. The group had just said no to using the 3.0 splat books and we decided on a core-only 3.5 game. I then learned how much the druid rocked. I mean, reading stat blocks and descriptions and knowing it rocks and playing a druid and experiencing that same rock-n-roll state of nirvana are two completely different matters. I learned though about two to three sessions into the game that I had to tone it down. We started level 1 and my wolf animal companion (I didn't know the efficiency of a riding dog at that point) dominated in battlefield control. I buffed a little bit and I didn't run out of spells with my ungodly venerable-age-induced wisdom. This just increased. The DM wasn't the best of DMs. His was the classic case of a monte-haller.
The other players were showing a few signs of malcontent so I focused on one role and I excelled at it. I would shift this role every once in a while. Whether it was being a summoner this moment or being a wild-shaped tank with my animal companion-tank the next or just buffing and battlefield control, I did it and, all humility aside, I did it very efficiently. Granted this could just be the ridiculous power of the druid. The others were okay with this. It was still more than what most of them could do but I wasn't showing off. I don't remember what happened to that game but it probably just fizzled off as most of my games in that gaming group usually did after a month or two. Granted we played all the time at that time.
Later on, I would find myself going back to playing party face or at least a damnably charismatic bastard in one way or another.
I was the n'er do well alcoholic card player in the western "Deadlands" who taunted monolingual Mexicans with a few words of Spanish. I played a binder in Sigil and I played a playboy ninja in "m&m" and recently played the jester in "F&K." I had a few wizards and a paladin or two here or there as well. Mostly the party face or similar.
But every so often I would go back to playing a druid. I liked the damage potential, the skill potential (nothing compared to other classes but still the druid doesn't have a bad list), the utility potential and at times I'd use items and feats to be a diplomancer of sorts.
It was good.
Then I quit gaming for almost a year. I got married, had a kid, got a full-time job, moved away from my gaming group of that time. I didn't have enough time to invest in both gaming and family. I made a choice. After that one year hiatus, I moved to a college town where my old gaming group had in essence shifted to.
I still couldn't play with them because of my odd hours at work. Finally I was able to join a game that virgileso was part of. It was a large game with 3 groups in one world with each dm handling about 4-6 people. I didn't know what kind of character to make so I opted to my easy default of a druid.
~
I decided on a summoner-druid with little use of wild shape. But my fellow players (virgileso aside) were the kind of players who found my use of strategy or my knowledge of game mechanics/rules annoying.
It boiled to a head about 3-4 sessions into the game when I had to leave on an emergency and virgileso played my character as well. One of the other players took this as the time to kill off virgileso's wizard (detailed elsewhere on this board) based on some shaky reference to him being chaotic and the wizard being lawful. Unable to handle the situation, my character fled the site. I came back in the next session and, probably in a very retarded fashion, killed him in the middle of the night with a few summoned griffons. The party fled and at the end of the session I talked the entire group into staying with an assurance that I could resurrect both the wizard and the recently-deceased barbarian.
The group had apparently been mulling over this sort of mutiny based on our (mine and virgileso's) ability to play the game in a fashion that involved some level of strategy in the use of battlefield control spells and this conflicted with the rest of the group's blindly charging into the middle of a swampy morass filled with Assassin vines and other crazy horrors.
I was annoyed but I decided to even cut back on my old tactic of playing a facet of the druid at a time and switching every few sessions or however else I'd plan that switch. I talked it over with the group and from their vague answers, I decided not to use any of my environment-changing spells and for a few games I was okay with this.
But then the annoyance started to set in. The druid summoner is no doubt one of the better summoners but I didn't just want to be able to do that. I wouldn't have minded the ability to wild shape and at least do a little damage but apparently this sort of versatility (not in one session but a versatility that basically melded into me playing a few different characters every few sessions, in essence) was also frowned upon. It was something that I had never encountered in a group before.
I toyed with the idea of dropping the druid and playing something else but in a party this size I would be stepping on a lot of toes if tried something. The only thing that I could possibly be was a rogue and I just didn't want to play a rogue.
I gritted and moaned and after a while it became a little better when those players were moved into a different group and I was moved into another group. I rejoiced a little bit and decided that I'd drop the summoning shtick for a little bit as that group lacked a pure-combat role, I decided to play a wild shaped front liner with an occasional buff here or there. This worked well. I recognized that I was still outperforming almost everyone else in several fields of combat. I kept myself purposefully rustic in my role playing and as the campaign was described as an EPIC campaign in its plot and material and its expansive range, I was pretty much not at all useful if we were in any social environment (mostly courts and such.) It was good. We were slowly reaching what our characters perceived as the end of our adventure. We were going to the island to fight the illithid cult and finally save the worlds as we knew them.
So, last session was that session. The now remaining two groups joined together as one massive group and we headed out.
To our characters, I had hoped that this was a major battle against a major foe. We had tried going to fight this battle sooner but our method of travel, a ship, was demolished by a Kraken they sent our way and in essence we ran to fight another day.
Virgileso's wizard had planar bound some powerful allies and I was hoping to take in some awakened trees with us. But the trees were too large for transport so I abandoned it and decided to focus on summons.
I assumed the rest of the party might have a level of preparedness that wasn't just donning their armor and heading out. Whether this might be buying some new equipment or deciding on tactics, it could have been something. But I assumed wrong.
We were now in an underground series of tubes/tunnels that lead to the illithid city. I pulled out the stops and summoned a few giant eagles to stop the strength draining mutated Ropers from getting to the players and in essence there were quite a few large minis on the mat controlled by three PCs -- two druids and the wizard with some of his creatures. One of the others, the barbarian, grumbled about how I was summoning too much even though this was my first summon and incidentally only summon for the session. Once again, I decided to stop summoning just for party unity and wild shaped and decided to cast a few spells with the chance to go into melee if needed. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful except for the grumblings tossed by the barbarian and maybe one other about how any sort of battlefield control or pulling out the stops was...something. I'm still not sure what the end point was.
In the end, I've started to hate playing a druid who I originally enjoyed for the flavor and the utility. But now even the flavor has started to disgust me.
There are three choices that I have.
One, leave the gaming group as they don't mesh well with my playing style.
Two, Grit my teeth and play a druid who doesn't do anything but one thing and that too in a deliberately poor fashion (to suit the others.)
Three, Toss Tamarask the druid into the played pile and make a new character.
The first choice isn't really doable as this has become my only source of social interaction these days aside from work and the family life. I don't have enough time to sink into alternate social interactions that are often more of a time-sink than a single 5-hour evening game a week.
The second choice is doable but I don't think I, as a player, would like to do it much based on multiple factors the least of which would not be my pride and ego and not to mention the fact that I don't like deliberately fail/lie to appease a party.
The third is both doable and not. If I do go this way, I would step on toes but as we are now a 12th level party and many of them have, in essence, spread their wings and diversified into different prcs and multiple classes; I could play a character without stepping on anyone's toes too much.
But, then, there is the factor that as a character, the druid wouldn't want to leave the game if he knew that the world is possibly not yet saved.
~
it is a murky situation because much of my argument is thrown to the dogs by the single fact that I do play the most powerful class in the normal d&d system and also a class that would probably be just as efficient if not a little more efficient than the rest of the Tome-verse classes. I feel like someone crying that others find his awesome toy to be too awesome and he is being forced into getting another toy. It is a rather odd situation that probably is more my fault than the other players. Maybe, I just don't know how to adapt myself to a purely hack-n-slash group that refuses to use strategy or see that there might be more than one way to do something. Maybe, I should become more constrained by their way of playing rather than expect them to at least accommodate a little towards my style.
But, in the end, I find myself not knowing what the optimal solution is and that is possibly, to my cocksure personality, one of the worst parts of this situation.
~~~
Edit: taking out some weird formatting errors and other things that got into the document mistakenly due to copy-pasting.
I'll admit it, upfront even. I love playing powerful characters. I do minmax/optimize/build generally better characters than many others I play with/whatever you wanna call it. But the way I realize the potential of any character's power per say usually comes as being a party face.
Primarily, I have always chosen to play a charismatic character who relies on his ability to talk his way out of a situation. Whether d&d, m&m, CoC, wuxia, hell paranoia, I have always relished being the party face.
When 3.5 came out, my gaming group of that time converted to 3.5 and I found two or three people who wanted to be the face and the charismatic one and they did not want me even being a backup face or an alternative face of any sort. They wanted to hold that end for a little bit and they said, rather nicely and not at all in a pointed way, that they would appreciate it if I didn't use Diplo/bluff/intimidate/innuendo etc... At this point, probably in my slight-inherent smugness, I pointed out that innuendo was no longer a skill in 3.5 and they glared at me and suggested I pick another class.
I agreed, a little annoyed at this point, and decided I'd go for a class that does not have to be the face.
I started 3.0 with a monk and decided to check up on the 3.5 monk. The 3.0 monk wasn't great but it wasn't bad either. But the 3.5 monk, whoo, he seemed worse than before. He had potential but he was also a one-trick pony. While face, I enjoyed the multitasking ability of the face who invariably was good at least one other set of abilities. But the monk was seriously a single tricker. Compared to other single trickers, he didn't compare.
So, I picked up my laptop and read that badly scanned 3.5 PDF. If I remember right, it didn't even have pictures.
I went through and weighed the classes and decided on the druid. Powerful, if necessary reclusive and charisma could easily be a dump stat. I remembered noting then that I would then be spending points in constitution even though the then pre-errata wild shape would let me have new hp totals each time I wild shaped into something with a different con score (usually higher).
I loved it. I didn't even look at augment summoning at that time. The group had just said no to using the 3.0 splat books and we decided on a core-only 3.5 game. I then learned how much the druid rocked. I mean, reading stat blocks and descriptions and knowing it rocks and playing a druid and experiencing that same rock-n-roll state of nirvana are two completely different matters. I learned though about two to three sessions into the game that I had to tone it down. We started level 1 and my wolf animal companion (I didn't know the efficiency of a riding dog at that point) dominated in battlefield control. I buffed a little bit and I didn't run out of spells with my ungodly venerable-age-induced wisdom. This just increased. The DM wasn't the best of DMs. His was the classic case of a monte-haller.
The other players were showing a few signs of malcontent so I focused on one role and I excelled at it. I would shift this role every once in a while. Whether it was being a summoner this moment or being a wild-shaped tank with my animal companion-tank the next or just buffing and battlefield control, I did it and, all humility aside, I did it very efficiently. Granted this could just be the ridiculous power of the druid. The others were okay with this. It was still more than what most of them could do but I wasn't showing off. I don't remember what happened to that game but it probably just fizzled off as most of my games in that gaming group usually did after a month or two. Granted we played all the time at that time.
Later on, I would find myself going back to playing party face or at least a damnably charismatic bastard in one way or another.
I was the n'er do well alcoholic card player in the western "Deadlands" who taunted monolingual Mexicans with a few words of Spanish. I played a binder in Sigil and I played a playboy ninja in "m&m" and recently played the jester in "F&K." I had a few wizards and a paladin or two here or there as well. Mostly the party face or similar.
But every so often I would go back to playing a druid. I liked the damage potential, the skill potential (nothing compared to other classes but still the druid doesn't have a bad list), the utility potential and at times I'd use items and feats to be a diplomancer of sorts.
It was good.
Then I quit gaming for almost a year. I got married, had a kid, got a full-time job, moved away from my gaming group of that time. I didn't have enough time to invest in both gaming and family. I made a choice. After that one year hiatus, I moved to a college town where my old gaming group had in essence shifted to.
I still couldn't play with them because of my odd hours at work. Finally I was able to join a game that virgileso was part of. It was a large game with 3 groups in one world with each dm handling about 4-6 people. I didn't know what kind of character to make so I opted to my easy default of a druid.
~
I decided on a summoner-druid with little use of wild shape. But my fellow players (virgileso aside) were the kind of players who found my use of strategy or my knowledge of game mechanics/rules annoying.
It boiled to a head about 3-4 sessions into the game when I had to leave on an emergency and virgileso played my character as well. One of the other players took this as the time to kill off virgileso's wizard (detailed elsewhere on this board) based on some shaky reference to him being chaotic and the wizard being lawful. Unable to handle the situation, my character fled the site. I came back in the next session and, probably in a very retarded fashion, killed him in the middle of the night with a few summoned griffons. The party fled and at the end of the session I talked the entire group into staying with an assurance that I could resurrect both the wizard and the recently-deceased barbarian.
The group had apparently been mulling over this sort of mutiny based on our (mine and virgileso's) ability to play the game in a fashion that involved some level of strategy in the use of battlefield control spells and this conflicted with the rest of the group's blindly charging into the middle of a swampy morass filled with Assassin vines and other crazy horrors.
I was annoyed but I decided to even cut back on my old tactic of playing a facet of the druid at a time and switching every few sessions or however else I'd plan that switch. I talked it over with the group and from their vague answers, I decided not to use any of my environment-changing spells and for a few games I was okay with this.
But then the annoyance started to set in. The druid summoner is no doubt one of the better summoners but I didn't just want to be able to do that. I wouldn't have minded the ability to wild shape and at least do a little damage but apparently this sort of versatility (not in one session but a versatility that basically melded into me playing a few different characters every few sessions, in essence) was also frowned upon. It was something that I had never encountered in a group before.
I toyed with the idea of dropping the druid and playing something else but in a party this size I would be stepping on a lot of toes if tried something. The only thing that I could possibly be was a rogue and I just didn't want to play a rogue.
I gritted and moaned and after a while it became a little better when those players were moved into a different group and I was moved into another group. I rejoiced a little bit and decided that I'd drop the summoning shtick for a little bit as that group lacked a pure-combat role, I decided to play a wild shaped front liner with an occasional buff here or there. This worked well. I recognized that I was still outperforming almost everyone else in several fields of combat. I kept myself purposefully rustic in my role playing and as the campaign was described as an EPIC campaign in its plot and material and its expansive range, I was pretty much not at all useful if we were in any social environment (mostly courts and such.) It was good. We were slowly reaching what our characters perceived as the end of our adventure. We were going to the island to fight the illithid cult and finally save the worlds as we knew them.
So, last session was that session. The now remaining two groups joined together as one massive group and we headed out.
To our characters, I had hoped that this was a major battle against a major foe. We had tried going to fight this battle sooner but our method of travel, a ship, was demolished by a Kraken they sent our way and in essence we ran to fight another day.
Virgileso's wizard had planar bound some powerful allies and I was hoping to take in some awakened trees with us. But the trees were too large for transport so I abandoned it and decided to focus on summons.
I assumed the rest of the party might have a level of preparedness that wasn't just donning their armor and heading out. Whether this might be buying some new equipment or deciding on tactics, it could have been something. But I assumed wrong.
We were now in an underground series of tubes/tunnels that lead to the illithid city. I pulled out the stops and summoned a few giant eagles to stop the strength draining mutated Ropers from getting to the players and in essence there were quite a few large minis on the mat controlled by three PCs -- two druids and the wizard with some of his creatures. One of the others, the barbarian, grumbled about how I was summoning too much even though this was my first summon and incidentally only summon for the session. Once again, I decided to stop summoning just for party unity and wild shaped and decided to cast a few spells with the chance to go into melee if needed. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful except for the grumblings tossed by the barbarian and maybe one other about how any sort of battlefield control or pulling out the stops was...something. I'm still not sure what the end point was.
In the end, I've started to hate playing a druid who I originally enjoyed for the flavor and the utility. But now even the flavor has started to disgust me.
There are three choices that I have.
One, leave the gaming group as they don't mesh well with my playing style.
Two, Grit my teeth and play a druid who doesn't do anything but one thing and that too in a deliberately poor fashion (to suit the others.)
Three, Toss Tamarask the druid into the played pile and make a new character.
The first choice isn't really doable as this has become my only source of social interaction these days aside from work and the family life. I don't have enough time to sink into alternate social interactions that are often more of a time-sink than a single 5-hour evening game a week.
The second choice is doable but I don't think I, as a player, would like to do it much based on multiple factors the least of which would not be my pride and ego and not to mention the fact that I don't like deliberately fail/lie to appease a party.
The third is both doable and not. If I do go this way, I would step on toes but as we are now a 12th level party and many of them have, in essence, spread their wings and diversified into different prcs and multiple classes; I could play a character without stepping on anyone's toes too much.
But, then, there is the factor that as a character, the druid wouldn't want to leave the game if he knew that the world is possibly not yet saved.
~
it is a murky situation because much of my argument is thrown to the dogs by the single fact that I do play the most powerful class in the normal d&d system and also a class that would probably be just as efficient if not a little more efficient than the rest of the Tome-verse classes. I feel like someone crying that others find his awesome toy to be too awesome and he is being forced into getting another toy. It is a rather odd situation that probably is more my fault than the other players. Maybe, I just don't know how to adapt myself to a purely hack-n-slash group that refuses to use strategy or see that there might be more than one way to do something. Maybe, I should become more constrained by their way of playing rather than expect them to at least accommodate a little towards my style.
But, in the end, I find myself not knowing what the optimal solution is and that is possibly, to my cocksure personality, one of the worst parts of this situation.
~~~
Edit: taking out some weird formatting errors and other things that got into the document mistakenly due to copy-pasting.