Admiral Akbar Says…
(Twenty One Traps for Noobs)
This is the section where I give you a whole bunch of warnings on what not to do. You’ll notice there is no section on what you should do. That is because you should do whatever you damn well please. Seriously. There are enough handbooks and guides on how to build the ultimate Fill-In-The-Blank. Hell, check out my
Encyclopedia Vinculum Draconis if you need ideas. You see, if it’s fun, it’s not a bad choice. Even the following traps to avoid can be fun to play with. The only thing to remember is, you’re a noob, you’re going to make mistakes, you should learn from them.
Trap 1
Not making a character to fit the campaign. No, not to fit the party, the campaign.
I run a campaign which by anyone else’s standards is stingy and slow advancement. Players are normally below WBL, but a few times they exceeded it slightly. I track inherent bonuses against WBL. No magic mart. If you have a charisma of 6, chances of you finding some place to sell your magic items is next to nil. Hell, my players still bitch about the epic shit-fest they had to go through to acquire a stinking handy haversack. Advancement is slow as well. However, I run every Thursday for upwards of 8 to 12 hours. 50 weeks a year, going on year 8.
One of my players started playing with another group on Fridays. He went on and on about how awesome it was to start out at 10th and that advancement was one level a session and he had everything planned out for the next 10 levels. Then he discovered it didn’t matter what treasure the monsters had, because you could only have EXACTLY what your WBL allowed you to have. Also, you could have any magic item in the book just by going to town and buying it, so the other players had the most powerful magic items they could get for the money. He planned poorly, apparently.
Then after three sessions the DM got bored with running and wanted someone else to run. When he finally got back around to wanting to run again, he wanted to start a new campaign with new PCs.
My player went into that game with the idea that he was going to be able to play for another 10 levels. He built his PC around that idea. He was used to playing with me, where you can plan out the next 20 levels and know that I’m going to be here, every single week. The players in the other game were used to only having a few sessions then discarding the PC, so they planned short term.
Is one way better then another? No. I have a preference, but one is not better then the other. What’s important is to understand what to expect long term. Are we starting at 1st? How easy is it to get new magic items? How strict is the Wealth By Level enforced? Are we playing until we defeat the X? Is this an open ended campaign? What level should I expect to reach?
If it’s going to be a short run, plan your PC accordingly. Planning on being the Uber-Mage at level 15 means nothing if you never make it past level 8. Making the ultimate level 5 character means nothing if he has no room to grow and the campaign is going to last years.
In other words, the first trap is planning too much, or not enough, for the campaign you are playing in.
Trap 2
Self-nerfing.
The ugly truth of D&D is that 94% of everything is shit, 5% of everything is so awesome as to give the DM seizures, and that leaves 1% that is actually fairly balanced. I’m serious. See, as the game evolved, the developers got better at game balance. So the fairly balanced classes and feats and spells came late in the edition’s life cycle. That often means that if you want to get rid of the unbalanced crap, you’d be better off banning core. That’s right, the game works better if you get rid of most of the main rule books.
Well, that’s the DM’s job. He’s the one to figure out what’s balanced and what isn’t and what he can handle, and what’s out of control. It isn’t your job to limit yourself. It also isn’t a war. You are not trying to make the DM cry. You are not trying to stealth the ultimate combo past him. Talk to him. Lay out your plans. Ask for the combo of powers you want and let the DM decide if you are Son-Of-Pun-Pun, or if you’ll fit in the campaign.
Now, if your DM shuts down EVERYTHING you do, there are two possibilities. You are a twink and a powergamer or your DM is a dick. The solution is third party arbitration. Bring in the other players and point out the two options. Ask which one it is. Remember, the one consistant thing is all your failed relationships is you.
Trap 3
Everything has to be awesome.
Borderlands illustrates this absolutely perfectly for me. For those who are not familiar with it, it includes a weapon drop system that is randomized based on the power and type of creature that you kill, as well as the area in which you kill it. This leads to a phenomenon that most people who play the game are familiar with. You end up collecting terrible weapons that you wouldn't use even at 10 levels lower dropping from enemies at a frequent rate, weapons that you used to use at an uncommon rate, and then a new weapon to use every couple levels, or what seems like 15 bajillion hours later. People hated this (at least, people I knew), because, well, you just killed a boss, and he dropped some crap weapon that you can't use, they wanted something interesting dropping every time. While that makes sense from a player's standpoint, it's a horrible idea from a developer's standpoint. Those crap weapons need to exist to make the good weapons actually be good. If you constantly got better weapons (or even good weapons) you would end up with vastly overpowered weapons halfway through the game, and it would just not be fun. Not only that, but the choice would be hard, and people don't like that. And finally, it would make all of the guns seem the same (at least guns of a certain type). Does that last one sound familiar?
The reason so many guns were worthless was a mathematical certainty. If you have a good gun, then you have three options on any weapon drop: a better gun, the same gun, or a weaker gun. If there's a finite limit to power (which there is), then you will eventually run out of better guns, and every gun will be as good or worse. It's just a matter of how fast that happens. The slower you go, the more bad guns you'll experience on the way to the best, the faster you go the more time you'll spend with the best (making encounters too easy if you get better guns faster than you need them). And there's always room for complaint here because of it, since the balance is a subjective thing.
That same principle applies to D&D, though for a slightly different reason. In D&D, you have so many options that the likelihood of it not being a good option increases with each new system you add. Heck, each new tiny little ability (skill use, feat, etc.). It's a matter of complexity, it's so complex that it's absolutely impossible for any one person to look at every reaction and say "yup, that's going to affect this in this precise way". You can whine and such about how the core game is poorly balanced, but knowing what they knew then, it was balanced. Knowing what they know now, it's not. That's why ToB came out. And the classes like Beguiler, Warmage, Dread Necromancer, Binder, Incarnum, etc. The later you go into a system's development, the more reasonable the abilities become (note the balance and design on early supplements and core vs later supplements). And it's still really hard, because there's still combinations that they don't think of checking for.
So not every character has to be awesome. It’s okay to be okay. Sure, the game has a I-WIN mentality, but if you fit in with the group, then it’s okay to be average. And if you want to be the best, be the best, but don’t force everyone else to be the best right along with you. Every player is different and if you want to get people to improve, focus on talking about it in a friendly way, “Hey, ya know, if we work out your buffs ahead of time, we can really improve our chances of survival.” That’s a good way to put it. Ordering the Wizard to set aside certain slots for buffs, that you “need” because the combo is perfect with your X, will only make people want to strangle you.
Trap 4
Splitting Up The Party/Scouting/Being the Lone Assassin/Being the “Protagonist”
A problem noobs run into is what I call TV Blinders. You see a character on TV and want to play him, which is okay, except most TV characters don’t work on a team. Most protagonists wind up doing things alone while the rest of the cast is in a supporting role, or off camera entirely. So when you split up the party, run off as the scout, set yourself up as a lone assassin to kill the bad guy, or in general do anything that leaves everyone else sitting around for hours waiting for a chance to do something, you suck.
Not only do you suck, but everyone else will hate you, even if you do succeed in assassinating the Big Bad. Especially if you succeed and hog all the XP. That’s not to say that scouting sucks, but as a noob, avoid any concept, any tactic, or any power combo that involves going into another room and making the DM run back and forth to run the game.
That said, I’ve run sessions for only one player, but that’s was separate from my normal weekly game session. But that is up to your DM and his gaming style and how much time he has free to devote to the game.
Trap 5
Avoiding Information
I know I just said scouting is bad, but there is the other side of that, which is not gathering information. I’m not just talking the rogue wandering the city, but asking questions, pointing out you have knowledge skills and want to roll them so you know what you are fighting, asking the other players what they can do and how they do it and what you can do to help them and what they can do to help you. It means not working out combat maneuvers ahead of time. It means no planning, no rumors, and just barreling head long at the problem. It means not asking what’s going on.
You have to ask questions in character and out of character if you are going to learn.
Trap 6
Your class is your character.
The best wizard, if you aren’t going to exceed 7th level, is a ranger. It a mystic ranger/mystic theurge with a bizarre combo of questionable level substitutions and feats that let it double advance so he had 5th level spells at 7th. If your DM allows it, I can think of no stronger spellcaster at that character level.
Your class is not your character. Being a fighter does not limit you to fighting. Being a wizard does not limit you to spells. It is difficult to be something so contrary to your original class, but not impossible and sometimes pure advantage. There are many ways a wizard can do what the other classes do, and at high levels, he can often do them better.
Do not feel that there is nothing you can do. A wizard can still pick up a spear and fight in an antimagic zone. A fighter can pick up a few ranks in use magical device and keep a wand of fireballs in his pocket. At the higher levels, equipment is sometimes superior to a PC’s actual abilities.
As an example, Lancelot is a knight known for defying his king's orders and for going into wild rages when fighting. The knight class is practically his antithesis, and the paladin class doesn't work either. The barbarian class, on the other hand, fits his abilities well.
Another example, Gandalf is a servant of a deity whose powers are most effective against evil creatures. He is skilled with a sword, his mere presence makes people feel more courageous, and he can call a mystical horse to his side. He displays only minor magical abilities, most of which come from a magic ring related to fire. A D&D wizard is nothing like Gandalf, but the paladin class is a perfect fit.
Sometimes a title, is just a title.
Trap 6
Hording Resources
D&D is about resource management. Plan on three major encounters before you get a chance to rest and recharge and you should be okay. It is a major mistake of noobs to save their scrolls, wands, potions, and other non-replaceable magic items. Use them. You have a WBL, which means sooner or later you’ll replace those magic items you used. Okay, save one last Boom-Boom should you need to pull your ass out of the fire, but for the most part, noobs have a tendency to be too worried of being caught “defenseless” to use the big guns.
Trap 7
Spreading the damage
Which is more dangerous to you when you lose initiative? A level 10 fighter with one hit point, or a level 10 fighter with 100 hit points? Trick question, they are equally dangerous.
It takes a while to sink in, but D&D has a binary nature to it when it comes to hit points. You are just as dangerous with one hit point as with a hundred. Once you reach zero, you drop, but until then you suffer no ill effects. So a fireball that wounds a group of goblins is only useful in setting up a group of targets for a fighter with mighty cleave to go to town. It is far better to focus damage on one target, move to the next, then the next.
Another example, if you have a magic missile that will do 5 points of damage and you have a wounded target that is almost dead with one hit point left, and a target that has ten hit points, which one would you attack?
Well, in the real world, it would seem like the almost dead target would waste 4 points of damage, but in D&D, dropping a target this round means one less enemy to attack you next round. Better to over kill the wounded, then to leave two targets up to fight you next round.
Trap 8
Fighting at a distance.
First, most of the means of attacking at range do not actually let you attack at range. You're within 30 feet of the target or some other small distance. If you're going to be that close you might as well melee.
Second, the ones that do let you attack at range still don't give you THAT much range. Spotting distances are the biggest limiter here. Indoor encounters are going to put the enemies within melee range where a ranged weapon is nothing but a liability, outdoor encounters will put them close enough so it only takes a round or two to close at most... which brings us to the other half of that problem.
Third, those same things just don't do enough damage. Even on a ranged focused character you just can't kill things fast enough. If you're not ranged focused those ranged attacks will quickly become entirely ineffective. And that's before taking into account the many different things that shut down ranged combat.
Fourth, it costs too much to even try. In terms of feat costs, having to constantly replace your entire weapon several times, having to get the things you need in order to even attempt ranged combat...
Fifth, what about the rest of the party? If they're also ranged then you're not going to be able to kill things before they get to you. If they aren't... so you're hanging way back by yourself? There's a significant number of enemies that will be happy to take advantage of that and since archers are very easily killed you can imagine how that would go. You can only get away with that if you have some form of defensive abilities.
Sixth, there's a ton of things that stop ranged combat. From AC bonuses that only work vs ranged attacks to miss chances that only work vs ranged attacks to spells that stop all ranged attacks. They're even easier to shut down than sneak attackers. It doesn't help that the ones that are close range have all the same problems as sneak attackers in addition to the ranged problems, and in some cases there are far fewer solutions to the whole precision immunity/uncanny dodge/otherwise cannot get enemies unaware of you problems.
So, this means you shouldn’t play a ranged attacker? Well, as a noob, yes. Ranged attackers are occasionally effective. I’ve seen a few, but the chances of you pulling it off in your first few games is next to nil. Once you get to know the game, THEN you can experiment with ranged attackers and see what you can come up with, but right out of the gate, stick to something a bit more effective. Archery is something you do when you are waiting for the bad guys to close, not something you build as a noob.
Trap 9
Forgetting you have skills
Everyone has skills. Some skills are the bomb. Invisibility is countered by see invisible, whereas hide is countered by spot. If you have a hide of 40 and he has a spot of 20, guess who gets his throat slit? Whatever skill you take, make sure it’s something you actually will roll and has an effective on the game.
There are five basic skill types:
- Skills you want to max out: diplomacy, UMD, intimidate, concentration, certain knowledge skills, etc. These skills just get better, the more points you drop into them.
- Skills you want 5 ranks in for synergy bonuses: handle animal, bluff, certain knowledge skills, balance, etc. These skills give you a +2 to something else, you might want to roll them occationally, but that’s about it.
- Skills you want 1 rank in: obscure knowledge skills, anything that requires you to be trained in. This is for when you need a hail mary.
- Skills needed to qualify for PrCs and feats. These are basically a tax on qualifying for a given PrC.
- Finally, skills that are a waste of time. Profession: tailor is nice, but a waste of time if you never use it.
Trap 10
Taking your time
Speed Kills. I cannot stress this enough. Anything that lets you go first, go faster, move farther, hit sooner, improve initiative, and take more actions is awesome. Anything that slows your enemies down is also awesome. There are a number of save or suck attacks out there, meaning that if you don’t save, you are effectively dead/neutralized.
Don’t be slow. There may never be a next round.