Ok, a bit of context:

One of the characters I play is a droid with 5 Intellect, basically made to be the group's go-to for anything mechanical/technical, and also a fall-back for other things where his innate smarts would be handy. It goes without saying that his dice pool for that kind of stuff just obliterates anything lower than daunting most of the time, and here's where I have my problem.

You see, as the game went on, I noticed that my character wasn't getting the same kind of checks as the others who went for more balanced characters (my guy is smart, but has the social graces of a Rancor with the physical capability of a Drall). While they experienced the whole range of difficulties for the tasks they undertook (ones pertaining to their specialties), almost everything that was put up against my guy's Intellect was at the hard difficulty level (with challenges), or greater.

At first, I thought I saw things from the GM's perspective. My guy was a genius, he needed to be challenged or he would just flip the tables with a Computers check. After all, why go through the trouble of planning/executing a bank heist (which would no doubt be a fun experience for the whole table), when your droid brainiac can just walk in and take over the facility's systems like he owned the place?

However, as time went on, it became kind of absurd. A hard check to unlock a door to rust-bucket ship, which the group owned? A hard check just to turn the lights off? There came a point where it was clear that things were just being made more difficult because my character was the one doing the check, which I just couldn't understand. After all, my character is as specialized as one can be, leaving plenty of ways of taking him down a few pegs without arbitrarily making the checks at he's good at harder.

So I ask, before I sit my GM down for a talk, is this truly wrong?

It's how some GMs run things. It's very much the opposite of how I go about things as a GM. I'm a big believer in the school of thought which says the world is independent of PCs. If there's a dragon on the mountain it's there whether you go up it or not. If you go up it when you're first level it will eat you. If you go up it when you're thirtieth level, it will probably slink off in fear. But either way, it is the type of dragon that lives on that type of mountain. The other school of GM'ing creates the world in response to the players. If they go down the left tunnel in the dungeon, that's where the adventure happens. If you go up that mountain when you're first level? You'll find a goblin lair instead. The two types of GM approach are about as compatible as oil and water and generally neither can understand the other's approach.

Your GM sounds like one of the latter type. That to me would drive me insane to the point of leaving their game as a player. Others are fine with it for reasons I hope never to understand!

Your GM may be doing this out of a couple of misguided reasons. Firstly, they may be well-intentioned and think that they need to provide you a challenge all the time or you'll be bored. That's probably most likely. Alternately they might feel threatened by your character and feel that it's just going to walk over everything they can put in the game and are trying to redress the balance. They may simply not know how to handle a character that good at something.

Definitely talk to your GM. I would just say something like "Can you stop making everything in the game really difficult for my character. It's really frustrating when other people get Average checks for things and all of mine are Hard and up. It's like there was no point in me specializing in all my skills because everything has just been upped to compensate."

If they're the "World is independent of PCs" type of GM (like me), you'll probably see a rapid adjustment. If they're the 'World Adjusts to PCs" type of GM, they may be a little confused as to why giving you challenges isn't making you happy. But in either case, the huge majority of GMs want to entertain their players and hearing it's bothering you they'll probably try to make it better.

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Honestly what the GM should have done if he disliked the path of your character is do what every Rule book says it can do and deny the character and tell you to create a new one.

Here are the things YOU did wrong:

• Let the GM continue going on a rampage with checks.
• Created a hyper-specialized character.
• No depth to the character.

What the GM did wrong:

• Let you make a character he/she disliked.
• Attacking a character with roll checks
• Not reading the rules.

Your way forward. You made a character with a goal of destroying any mechanism (early on, mind you) that the GM can throw that is a particular type. Basically eliminating 1/6th of the challenges the GM can throw, without expending a ton of effort to write a story that accommodates a crazy intellect. You knew this would be an issue but feel all "woe is me" when the GM punishes that sort of behavior. Don't get me wrong the punishment they chose was stupid, but the punishment was deserved.

The proof that you wanted to cause an issue is in how you commented about the problem. You listed "i am a droid with 5 intellect..." then went onto your rant. You did not say "I am a droid with 5 intellect. The reason I picked this is my character is like a crazy smart version of C-3PO. No social usefulness, no strength but if you need a smart computer type person I was there".

You focus yourself as a min-maxer/munchkin/number cruncher type that could give a crap about the role playing and just want to "beat the game" as if it was a video game. Keep in mind this is me calling this out because of the method you chose to talk about it. You have said ZERO about your story and focused on the same thing the GM did. This is likely why the GM chose what they did.

What I would have asked if you wanted to make this character:

• Are you doing this to destroy intellect checks or do you have a story and concept in mind?
• What benefit does it do the group to have you worthless except for this one set of things?
• How does that fit into your career and specialization?
• Could this same concept be grown in a way that fits with your group concept rather than just you as a character?
• Just making sure, but you do know you are pretty much demanding that the situations I put your team into require an intelligent solution to get out of, how will your team handle it if you are incapacitated or captured?

Those are the main issues I see and until you can answer all of them, I would never let that character see a single die roll.

I haven't read all the Force and Destiny Beta, yet. Do you get Conflict for a post like that?

Talk with the GM.Explain your frustration. And then listen and seek understanding with your GM. Compromise and Cooperate.

It could very well be that there are other issues at play.

Maybe your foes in-game are just upping their game, having come across your droid before and knowing a bit about his capabilities.

Maybe your GM is just ruling on the fly, and is making a call that looks about right. This can happen in either scenario that knasserll laid out (Adapting World vs. Independent World).

Maybe your GM just has a different perception on what is difficult.

I would go talk to the GM, but not assume that he's punishing my character with harder die rolls. My advice would be to give him the benefit of the doubt and go talk to him in a way that doesn't accuse him of being a jerk.

Funny, isn't this exactly how a lot of folks tell GMs to handle Combat Monsters? Just up the difficulty of their challenges (add more baddies) so the Player doesn't feel left out or battles can go on a bit longer?

In any case the OP's GM is obviously frustrated with this Min-Max'ed PC, and for good reason if you ask me, and although their solution isn't what I would do I do understand why they're doing it.

My advise is to ask your GM to allow you to re-spec your PC a little and drop your INT down a notch or two and spend those points on something else that is useful. I'm pretty sure they will agree. You'll still be a mental giant as far as the game mechanics go, but not such a pain in the a$$ to GM.

Full disclosure: If you haven't noticed I find Min-Max'ing one of the biggest problems built into almost any RPG. I think it's indicative of a poor imagination and is a pain to GM for or play along side of. Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.

Edit: Removed useful comments.

Seems like a lot of good advice here. I agree that the GM should find some things to challenge you, but they should be an appropriate challenge for your ability. Such as hacking an AI or repairing something that's pretty much unrepairable. Anything else that you'll get with ease should just be automatic success for you.

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Ok, I can see that more context is required. My bad, I deemed the background for my character to be irrelevant for the situation, since I just wanted to find out if the forum agreed with the general principle of this kind of thing falling under GM fiat. I will elaborate to answer the assumptions raised to the best of my ability.

Regarding my character, he was approved by not only the GM, but the group at large in Session 0. Originally, my plan was something close to what you put forward, fatedtodie, a smart, yet social-oriented C-3POish character. However, after seeing that another player was making a Face-that-could-shoot, I decided to skew more in favor of smarts than social skills. Not only because the group had nothing on the tech side of things, but also because I thought it would be fun to play in the role of the techie.

I put forward that my character was an old droid, unable to remember most of his past due to frequent memory wipes...up until he was apparently passed off to a smuggler crew that wanted his capabilities, but couldn't pay for his proper upkeep. In that position he carried out what he thought was his usual job: maintaining the ship. But as time went on, he and the other droids on the ship began to fall apart, leading to some rather horrifying (if a droid could be horrified) cannibalization of half the droids to keep the other half going. However, while my character lost most of his secondary functions, the mechanics the crew stuffed into his brain caused its ability to skyrocket (this is what created the situation around his characteristics). Eventually, the lack of a good memory wipe or general repair, my character gained sentience and was able to escape his masters by dropping a hint to the local authorities and forcing his former crew to run off-world without him. After that he bummed around a bit, finding odd jobs and work before running across the other PCs

His career/specialization is Engineer/Scientist, as I wanted to go in a direction that showed his technical ability along with the inquisitiveness he developed from gaining free will. He's motivated with a desire for Knowledge, not only in a general sense but also in a desire to rediscover his past. He also desires Droid Rights, so much so that there have been occasions where he hasn't lent his support to the group if they displayed that they were just going to turn their back and leave a situation where droids are horrifically oppressed (this has led specifically to some rather hilarious astrogation checks as a result).

The group situation as a result of this is that while the group is not helpless without him, his brain is such an asset that his quirks are worth suffering to keep around. He keeps the ship in working order, plots hyperspace courses, and keeps the Face well-informed so that she can get boosts to her negotiations or know how to flatter/intimidate the right people. The rest of the group also benefits from his intensive research to find just the right places all over the galaxy.

This idea was approved, and in the RP-side of things has worked quite well. It's because of that I didn't bring it up, since I only had a problem with the difficulty skewing.

Oh, and as for the frequency of the rolls, it wasn't a "check rampage". The situations in which rolls came up were, on their face at least, agreeable. It's just that those checks didn't seem like their difficulty matched the situation in which they arose.

I like that backstory. It sounds like the GM is trying to challenge you but he's not being reasonable with his challenges. It's good to challenge your players, but it's also good to show them how far they have come, and in that respect, a GM should not have to make everything difficult, only the things that matter.

Talk to your GM. Ask him if he has a problem with just how skewed your characters intellect is. Honestly, I find a 4 is incredibly sufficient to be an exemplar in that characteristic. Have you considered dropping that 5 to a 4 and maybe raising one of your 1s to a 3? or give yourself a few 2s.

It's how some GMs run things. It's very much the opposite of how I go about things as a GM. I'm a big believer in the school of thought which says the world is independent of PCs. If there's a dragon on the mountain it's there whether you go up it or not. If you go up it when you're first level it will eat you. If you go up it when you're thirtieth level, it will probably slink off in fear. But either way, it is the type of dragon that lives on that type of mountain. The other school of GM'ing creates the world in response to the players. If they go down the left tunnel in the dungeon, that's where the adventure happens. If you go up that mountain when you're first level? You'll find a goblin lair instead. The two types of GM approach are about as compatible as oil and water and generally neither can understand the other's approach.

Oil and vinegar don't mix either, but make a great salad dressing I have to admit I'm a mix of the two. Yes, very often if the players take the "left path" that's where the adventure begins...it rather depends on how much they know about the path and how much I have stocked. Given that players are usually off the rails, I find myself often winging most of the session anyway. That said, I try to be consistent about threats, and try not to be arbitrary about giving highly skilled PCs hard checks "just because"...that's silly on the part of the GM. Rather, I try to find challenges worthy of those highly skilled PCs.

So for the OP, I think you have a legitimate complaint, if the GM wants to give you harder checks there should be a solid reason behind it.

Edit: removed all comments.

Ok, I can see that more context is required. My bad, I deemed the background for my character to be irrelevant for the situation, since I just wanted to find out if the forum agreed with the general principle of this kind of thing falling under GM fiat. I will elaborate to answer the assumptions raised to the best of my ability.

Regarding my character, he was approved by not only the GM, but the group at large in Session 0. Originally, my plan was something close to what you put forward, fatedtodie, a smart, yet social-oriented C-3POish character. However, after seeing that another player was making a Face-that-could-shoot, I decided to skew more in favor of smarts than social skills. Not only because the group had nothing on the tech side of things, but also because I thought it would be fun to play in the role of the techie.

I put forward that my character was an old droid, unable to remember most of his past due to frequent memory wipes...up until he was apparently passed off to a smuggler crew that wanted his capabilities, but couldn't pay for his proper upkeep. In that position he carried out what he thought was his usual job: maintaining the ship. But as time went on, he and the other droids on the ship began to fall apart, leading to some rather horrifying (if a droid could be horrified) cannibalization of half the droids to keep the other half going. However, while my character lost most of his secondary functions, the mechanics the crew stuffed into his brain caused its ability to skyrocket (this is what created the situation around his characteristics). Eventually, the lack of a good memory wipe or general repair, my character gained sentience and was able to escape his masters by dropping a hint to the local authorities and forcing his former crew to run off-world without him. After that he bummed around a bit, finding odd jobs and work before running across the other PCs

His career/specialization is Engineer/Scientist, as I wanted to go in a direction that showed his technical ability along with the inquisitiveness he developed from gaining free will. He's motivated with a desire for Knowledge, not only in a general sense but also in a desire to rediscover his past. He also desires Droid Rights, so much so that there have been occasions where he hasn't lent his support to the group if they displayed that they were just going to turn their back and leave a situation where droids are horrifically oppressed (this has led specifically to some rather hilarious astrogation checks as a result).

The group situation as a result of this is that while the group is not helpless without him, his brain is such an asset that his quirks are worth suffering to keep around. He keeps the ship in working order, plots hyperspace courses, and keeps the Face well-informed so that she can get boosts to her negotiations or know how to flatter/intimidate the right people. The rest of the group also benefits from his intensive research to find just the right places all over the galaxy.

This idea was approved, and in the RP-side of things has worked quite well. It's because of that I didn't bring it up, since I only had a problem with the difficulty skewing.

Oh, and as for the frequency of the rolls, it wasn't a "check rampage". The situations in which rolls came up were, on their face at least, agreeable. It's just that those checks didn't seem like their difficulty matched the situation in which they arose.

Nice. I like that.

Droids cannibalizing droids. Always makes me think of those poor ones in the Cloud City scene or Jabba's palace.

Like everyone else, talk to your GM and be prepared to lower the Intellect if that will help, as Kaosoe suggests. 5 is actually extremely high in this game. EotE is not quite like a lot of other games in this respect. 2 is an average. If you have 3 then you're already above average. 5 is Stephen Hawking level.

It's how some GMs run things. It's very much the opposite of how I go about things as a GM. I'm a big believer in the school of thought which says the world is independent of PCs. If there's a dragon on the mountain it's there whether you go up it or not. If you go up it when you're first level it will eat you. If you go up it when you're thirtieth level, it will probably slink off in fear. But either way, it is the type of dragon that lives on that type of mountain. The other school of GM'ing creates the world in response to the players. If they go down the left tunnel in the dungeon, that's where the adventure happens. If you go up that mountain when you're first level? You'll find a goblin lair instead. The two types of GM approach are about as compatible as oil and water and generally neither can understand the other's approach.

Oil and vinegar don't mix either, but make a great salad dressing I have to admit I'm a mix of the two. Yes, very often if the players take the "left path" that's where the adventure begins...it rather depends on how much they know about the path and how much I have stocked. Given that players are usually off the rails, I find myself often winging most of the session anyway. That said, I try to be consistent about threats, and try not to be arbitrary about giving highly skilled PCs hard checks "just because"...that's silly on the part of the GM. Rather, I try to find challenges worthy of those highly skilled PCs.

So for the OP, I think you have a legitimate complaint, if the GM wants to give you harder checks there should be a solid reason behind it.

True. Salad dressing is nice!

On topic, I think whafrog is kind of putting his digit on the issue. It's not necessarily that the rolls are hard all the time, but that things that shouldn't be hard are hard.

When PCs are really good at something, I generally don't even bother with a roll. Except under especially trying circumstances. Skill checks are for risky situations, imo.

Regarding my character, he was approved by not only the GM, but the group at large in Session 0. Originally, my plan was something close to what you put forward, fatedtodie, a smart, yet social-oriented C-3POish character. However, after seeing that another player was making a Face-that-could-shoot, I decided to skew more in favor of smarts than social skills . Not only because the group had nothing on the tech side of things, but also because I thought it would be fun to play in the role of the techie.

Firstly, I like your back story as well. However I find people often make the same mistake as I see you doing here (emphasised above). Always make the PC you want to play not just a PC the "party" needs or because another Player made something similar. With some RPGs you need roles filled to be an effective combat unit (D&D comes to mind), but with EotE you really don't need to worry about this as much. It's true you should have a Pilot if you're planning on having your own starship but other than that you can get by very well with several PCs that individually have a broad set of skills. the game is pretty forgiving with skills as long as you throw a few EXP about.

The most important thing though is to play the PC you want.

See with that explanation your GM is just being a jerk if they had that beautiful backstory and punish it.

Can you explain one of these rolls that didn't match?

I mean you state in the OP that a hard check to open a rusted door? and a hard check for the lights. a rusted door can be a problem just like wooden door that you paint over, if you paint too much it can stick (especially on hot days).

I have had a hard check for finding lights for one of my players when it was pitch back in a room and the character had zero idea where a light switch would be. The room had several things they could bump into and cords everywhere. The hardness of it was related to the situation and while I could have added setbacks as well for the dark, I chose the difficulty only. The idea was basically that there was a real challenge that simply looking at things wouldn't immediately present the information and would require extra "looking" to find.

I just want to get the feel for why you feel bad about those checks? how where they presented?

Well, for the door, it was the door to our own ship that was locked by a wannabe shipjacker while it was in port. I just found it odd that it would be a hard check to unlock the door to my own ship, especially since the jacker had no time to mess with the ship's systems (we saw him enter the ship, but were too slow to stop him from locking the door behind him). I mentioned the rust-bucket thing to just give an idea of what the ship was like, not the kind of thing you would expect to have a sophisticated lock.

For the lights, it was in a cantina in a city when a brawl was about to break out, emphasis on "about to" (we hadn't rolled for initiative and no one had fired a shot. Weapons were drawn, but none of the baddies knew I was associated with the other PCs, whom they were drawing on). The lights were on and the cantina was a typical cantina. Again, a situation where I just don't think the effort to switch the lights off would've been that hard.

Regarding my character, he was approved by not only the GM, but the group at large in Session 0. Originally, my plan was something close to what you put forward, fatedtodie, a smart, yet social-oriented C-3POish character. However, after seeing that another player was making a Face-that-could-shoot, I decided to skew more in favor of smarts than social skills . Not only because the group had nothing on the tech side of things, but also because I thought it would be fun to play in the role of the techie.

Firstly, I like your back story as well. However I find people often make the same mistake as I see you doing here (emphasised above). Always make the PC you want to play not just a PC the "party" needs or because another Player made something similar. With some RPGs you need roles filled to be an effective combat unit (D&D comes to mind), but with EotE you really don't need to worry about this as much. It's true you should have a Pilot if you're planning on having your own starship but other than that you can get by very well with several PCs that individually have a broad set of skills. the game is pretty forgiving with skills as long as you throw a few EXP about.

The most important thing though is to play the PC you want.

Truth. However, when I'm making a character with the other members of my future team, I like to make sure we aren't deprived of a fun avenue of adventure if I can. Note the sentence after the one you emphasized. I already had interest in playing a tech, it was just the fact that we were already going to get a good Face that made me change gears. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm beyond just playing a role I like with disregard to what the group "needs". I'm actually about to start a game with a group that has a ship, sans pilot. The GM just decided to give us a NPC droid that would fulfill that role.

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Also next time rather than a impolite "that was so rude I bet that action generated conflict points" type response, maybe point out specifics that you disagree with. Last I checked this wasn't a elementary school playground where "ooo, burn!" was a useful response.

Um, you wrote a reply to the OP (whose first post it is in our community) containing such gems as how they were all "woe is me" (which I did not get from their post), told them that they "deserved their punishment", described their post as "going on a rant", you described the OP as "could give a crap about the role playing and just want to "beat the game" as if it was a video game". None of which has been bourne out by their later posts and honestly, people play in different ways even if that had been the case.

That's what I disagreed with in your post. But rather than singling that all out, I chose to go the funny route and make a mild joke so that the OP didn't feel too attacked on their first post in our community. And that was all I did.

But you've also been sending me PM after PM about this, each of which I've replied to civilly despite your accusations in them and unpleasant comments about what sort of person I am, and then you kept adding onto each PM you sent me that if I replied you would report me for "harassment". Which you now apparently have done. Then you sent me another PM saying I was harassing you, despite my never having initiated any of the PMs myself but only replied to yours and no more, and then blocked me, as if you weren't the one who kept PM'ing me! At that I would have left it, but now I find not one but two digs at me in the actual threads as well. Are you going to keep on making little comments like this until a Mod has to step in? You asked above what I actually disagreed with in your post in place of my mild humour. Well now I have answered AS YOU REQUESTED. Can this be an end of it now or am I just going to get endless comments about how I'm behaving like it's a "playground"? See how unpleasant this is getting? It's just silly.

Um, you wrote a reply to the OP...

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But you've also been sending me PM after PM about this...

Yeah, you wouldn't be the first recipient of this tactic. He initiates the PMs and blames you for not stopping. Nobody is fooled.

Crap. I just fed the trolls.