On 10/13/2017 at 10:33 AM, GroggyGolem said:

Yeah that's one of those weapons that shouldn't ever have been written into the game in that way. However, it presents a fun challenge for us as GM's to find a way of getting rid of that monstrosity of a weapon. My player nearly lost one to airlock last session, hoping I'll get one to break entirely soon. Just gotta roll that double triumph. You have to start giving your NPCs the Durable talent & more wounds if you want them to survive a hit or two from the T-7. That or just send wayyyyy more enemies at the PC's because they've essentially got a de-atomizer in their hands. To use NPCs with run of the mill blaster rifles their way just isn't going to cut it in terms of challenging them, the PCs currently have the combat stacked in their favor.

I've found Thermal Detonators to be very effective against PCs.

So my player really got to utilize his t-7 against humanoids last round and the first baddie target he took down he walks to the corpse ,"So I loot the body, what do I find?"

"You find a ton of awesome gear and weapons partially incinerated rendered worthless. You realize now that this weapon will destroy armor, weapons and gear of anything you kill with it."

My player immediately switched guns.

12 hours ago, _Thriven_ said:

"You find a ton of awesome gear and weapons partially incinerated rendered worthless. You realize now that this weapon will destroy armor, weapons and gear of anything you kill with it."

My player immediately switched guns.

It's a good thing that we don't loot corpses at all. We might steal star destroyers, and occasional grab lightsabers from dead baddies, but common theft?! Nah, we ain't murder hobos. T-7s here we come! ;-)

7 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

It's a good thing that we don't loot corpses at all. We might steal star destroyers, and occasional grab lightsabers from dead baddies, but common theft?! Nah, we ain't murder hobos. T-7s here we come! ;-)

So much sarcasm so little context

What about the use of environmental strain factors? Giving strain without a check just due to what's going on. For example: At the end of each round of combat giving more and more strain as the stress of battle wears on or they are in an area crawling with stormtroopers and constantly looking over there backs is stressful.

I would allow Cool tests for what HistoryGuy says, but I find his suggestion to be awesome.

*Scribles it down in his mental GM Datapad*

On 10/4/2017 at 9:39 AM, HistoryGuy said:

I do like this idea because a some of the players have told me that they feel kinda useless because he is trying to make himself so good at everything. I even had a player leave and another threatening to leave because of him. I do have support from a couple other players and the one that left to start a new group.

Some players like to build the "Uber" character....great at everything. We have one who reacts to each session spending XP to up whatever skill he failed in or get more WT/defense if he got hit a lot. They're like machines, they have to "win" every time. The same guy doesn't even want to roll dice if he has only two dice...."I only have two dice, I can't hit anything!" That's how they enjoy the game. You don't want to take away what he enjoys. Unlike a previous post in this thread, DO NOT try to "talk him out" of playing his PC the way its meant to be played. And don't throw some 20th-level-Jedi-Ninja-Sith-Master at him, that's just a poor approach for a GM who has no creativity.

How do I deal with this? I learn to carefully tiptoe around the sensitive points. I hand over an opportunity for him to use his uber-skills each session, but I also put his character in a position where his uber-skills won't get him out of the situation. I let that be a challenge to him. One without the other will seem like his PC is being targeted or ostracized. Never let him be shot at or targeted, and he'll feel useless. Always target his weakest attribute, and he'll get mad. yeah, he may never take much damage, but he MADE this PC to be invulnerable. He LIKES when NPC's miss, miss, miss him again and again. Let him have it. Don't get in an arms race in building uber NPC's. Let the NPC's mouth-off to him and insult him and he'll enjoy mowing down minions and rivals all day long.

I like to look down the character sheet and throw in checks that are challenging. Negotiate? Charm? Streetwise? Give'em problems a lightsaber can't solve. Friends? Allies? Family? Uh...."Hurt me and your friends die." In other words, challenging role-playing. And, again, let him mow down some henchmen and escape unscathed. He likes that. Carnal rule of GM'ing....let players play their characters.

Lastly, make his nemesis someone he can't quite reach. This works well in my group. The rival is behind layers of bureaucracy, insults the PC over a holovid, difficult to track down. 1-on-1, sure, the PC will win.....but you almost NEVER get a 1-on-1 showdown. Save that for near the end of a campaign. Your guys has all kinds of defense and parry? Well, this guy has none of that, but he can pull strings and set the PC up with authorities and other such nuisances. If he's bothersome enough, they won't care that he only has 11 WT and 2 Soak.

Sounds like you should change places. He has invested no travel playing at his own place. Maybe you're better off with you, wife, and cousin? That's the way the game goes. Don't like it, you can leave.

It's just the other players feel like they are losing their place in game. He wants to take control of the whole game. He is currently our tank, mechanic, face, scholar, and is now wanting to be our medic.

The other players should ask him to knock it off then. If that doesnt work, the other players should be telling him to go away.

One question though:

How came he has enough XP to be all the things you said he wants to be? I guess that the other players will be better than he is in SOME of those areas, right? They should be if they are getting a similar amount of XP....

I would boot the player myself for breach of the table contract, but just in case you have other plans...

On 12.10.2017 at 7:24 AM, HistoryGuy said:

I know he is weak compared to people who have played for a while, but compared to my other PCs he is a tank. He seems to be advancing faster than most of my other players. He was the first to get a rank in dedication.

I will start targeting him more in combat, but he'll probability fight me on that too. Lol

No no no no, but slight yes. Rather, fewer combat encounters, more social and other encounters. And when there is combat then focus on that character, make it his time. When not in combat, make sure you allow him some screen time, but give more to others. If he always carriers his big gun around, give setback to all social checks, as he is scaring the opposing party (If possible don't penalize him, by making the encounter escalate to violence, when he leaves his weapon behind). Once, make a social encounter, where opposing party is willing to negotiate only with him, because they value combat proficiency. (I'm assuming he is doesn't have superb social skills. If he has, as you hinted, then go to next paragraph of my reply) Make it challenging for him but not impossible. Sometimes give him amazing amount of minions to mow down. Give him his moment of glory. I'm just wondering how other players have are so inferior when compared to the player. If he is already "tank, mechanic, face, scholar" then how has he managed to take all those roles from other players. There are definitely discrepancies in player attitudes.

Personally, I would talk with player about his distrupting behavior ("We have a problem in our group. Your gaming style is not compatible with style other players have and that's why others are not enjoying the game as you get all the glory. How could we fix this situation, and make the game enjoyable for everyone?"), and if talking wouldn't help, I would fire the player from party. You have already lost one player, that will only get worse if the problem player doesn't change his ways. It seems that that player isn't playing the game for fun, but for his personal power fantasy at the expense of other players. E.g. "I'm between a rock and a hard place. Your gaming style isn't compatible with styles of other PCs. Your style is diminishing their fun. We spoke about this earlier and nothing has changed to better, so I have to let you go. This is nothing personal, it's a gaming style thing."

Of course, all this is written based on incomplete data I gathered from reading this topic, so I don't know how active your other players are (also, because of my limited knowledge on situation take this with a grain of salt). It is possible that they are too passive, and the "problems player" tries to fix that. Again, talking about this like adults is IMO the best way to fix the problem.

Personally, I would fire him just for continually challenging the GM (i.e. wasting time of other players), if he wouldn't stop it after one warning, as I almost did to my best friend who plays in our current game (he is actually kind of close the the problem player of this thread, except he doesn't hog all the screen time).

14 hours ago, DurosSpacer said:

Carnal rule of GM'ing...

Well, I've dated my players on a few occasions, and it's important to ensure you don't show any favouritism. The rest of the table are probably sore you're not dating them , and nobody likes the 'GM's Girlfriend' character who has twice the stats of everyone else and more magic items than the rest of the party put together. So you have to be equal to everyone, or be even tougher with the person you're dating just to show there's no favouritism. Relationships like that can destroy a table in no time.

Also, be careful in one-on-one role-plays. I remember in the early 90's, we played a lot of Vampire : Masquerade and I had a new flat, and so we'd just hang out in the bedroom, two or maybe three of us. A few drinks, lights low, music on... I know it sounds like a setup, but it really wasn't, I really am that naïve and clueless. Anyway, the gaming sessions were really like live-role-play rather than dice at a table, and the stories we were telling were personal, emotive and intimate, and so, on occasion, things might... kinda get out of hand, and -

Wait! Did you really mean ' cardinal rule of GMing'...?

<blush>

4 hours ago, Maelora said:

Wait! Did you really mean ' cardinal rule of GMing'...?

<blush>

I couldn't remember which one was the right one and was too lazy to look it up. Cardinal looked like a 'bird', so I went with the other.

It was very late at night.

2 minutes ago, DurosSpacer said:

It was very late at night.

So were our Vampire: Masquerade games

Oh bugger, it just occurred to me, I'm the GM's girlfriend character, although I'm a guy!*

OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Or; very early in the morning, depending on your point of view. *wiggles eyebrows*

My eternal gratitude to White Wolf for widening the audience of my favorite pastime and probably saving me from being a shut-in for my entire life.

22 hours ago, MonCal said:

One question though:
How came he has enough XP to be all the things you said he wants to be? I guess that the other players will be better than he is in SOME of those areas, right? They should be if they are getting a similar amount of XP....

The question was ask before.

It is a good question. The answer to it might resolve the whole situation.

5 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

The question was ask before.

It is a good question. The answer to it might resolve the whole situation.

Unfortunately I'm a newer GM and i haven't been keeping track of total XP I've given, and neither have my players. With the new group I will be.

How many sessions have you played and what's your average XP? FFG recommends 15 - 25. 25 late tree will get you one skill for sure. Class skills also matter since they cost less than non-class skills. Adding careers and specializations isn't cheap in this system either. I'd yank your problem PC's char sheet and take a couple pics for us cause this isn't making any sense. I ran a ~500 xp game and exactly zero of my PCs were experts at being multitalented. I had 7, and each was face wrecking at two or maybe 3 things total including force powers for the F&D classes.

1 hour ago, HistoryGuy said:

Unfortunately I'm a newer GM and i haven't been keeping track of total XP I've given, and neither have my players. With the new group I will be.

If you feel unsure about XP, and they seem unbalanced, you could calculate how much XP each character has used. It's pain in a bottom, but might give you a total XP tally. Oggdudes chargen makes it fairly easy, but it still takes at least few hours per PC. When I did that at one point, I noticed one PC had used ¨~60 XP (10%) more than others, we talked about it and it was accident. In our case it did not cause any imbalance. Of course, there is a possibility that the power hungry PC has cheated, but I want to believe he hasn't. Anyway, analysing the XP spenditure might give you a good idea why that one PC is so much better than others, and you might find good tips for other players. I can see that kind of imbalance happening, if one player is more experienced with system, or just invests more time to finding out system works.

Unofficial guide (by Jay Little) is that you give 5 XP per active game hour. Plus some bonuses for story points, and creative playing.

Once when we played Rogue Trader, one PC leveled much faster than others, we found out that reason for that was that GM gave us XP on small handwritten notes, and that one player always thought that GM's 100 xp (most common reward) was read as 700 xp and 150 was read as 750 (every PC got different amount according to how they played, and PCs voted (every player wrote a name to piece of paper and gave it to GM) a most entertaining or usefull PC who got small bonus). Result of this finding was that we all laughted 5 minutes. And the GM proposed a solution, which might have been that accidental cheater didn't get XP until first player exceeded his XP total.

1 hour ago, HistoryGuy said:

Unfortunately I'm a newer GM and i haven't been keeping track of total XP I've given, and neither have my players. With the new group I will be.

Trust is good. Control is better.

Make copies of all character sheets and work out the xp totals. Or let the forum community do it for you.

And then compare whether everyone has spent roughly the same amount of xp or if there's an outlier.

What Stan said.

15 hours ago, ASCI Blue said:

What Stan said.

Normally I am in the boat of trust is more important than control, but this is one of the cases were trust has been lost already anyway and checking ALL characters sounds in order anyway. Not only because the PG might have to much xp, but as well because the other players might have spend their XP in stupid ways and allowing a respec to them. If most of the other player's XP was wasted, guiding them a little to make their characters more into what they think they should be could be a good idea.

Here I would take the "trust, but verify" approach. Would love to see how these numbers pan out.

On 10/24/2017 at 11:47 AM, kkuja said:

Unofficial guide (by Jay Little) is that you give 5 XP per active game hour. Plus some bonuses for story points, and creative playing.

I hadn't heard this general guideline, but I like it. I'll have to find this guide and check it out. Thanks @kkuja

On 10/24/2017 at 0:14 PM, HistoryGuy said:

Unfortunately I'm a newer GM and i haven't been keeping track of total XP I've given, and neither have my players. With the new group I will be.

sounds like it's time for an audit of your characters to make sure everyone has the same amount of XP

3 hours ago, MamoruK said:

sounds like it's time for an audit of your characters to make sure everyone has the same amount of XP

I actually track XP for every single player.

Not because I think any of them would cheat, but because they sometimes forget to record them and then they're no longer sure if their total is correct.