Need Help With Players Who Act Randomly

[kevin_video]

I've heard of this before, and even had a DM tell me of this happening to him because his players were so random he had no idea what they had planned so he could never get anything ready ahead of time. He finally went ahead of made this speech, and this final boss character, and before he even got two sentences into his "I'm taking over the world and this is how I plan on doing it" speech, his players told him to roll initiative, and absolutely raided him because he was being caught flat-footed. He was in the middle of his speech, he wouldn't be ready.

I experienced that myself this year during my one-shot that I ran on Friday at a convention. I had an entire army coming to attack (250 people loaded with weapons), and when the mages in the party saw this, instead of gathering up the townsfolk like I had thought they'd do (and even suggested to them), they just looked over their character sheets, asked how far away they were from the ships, how close together the ships were, borrowed the battle belts from their melee friends, and fired off their major spells. I didn't think anything of it until I saw the ridiculous number of 6's and 10's coming my way. They were maxing out the spells without the Maximize Spell feat. Not to mention they rolled criticals. In one round they had wiped out the entire army. Granted they hadn't taken on the boss characters yet, but I was still stunned at what happened. I mean, 250 soldiers were wiped out by one wizard, cleric, and sorcerer. The only thing said afterwards were by the fighters going "Aww, you didn't leave us any?" Seriously?

How do you compensate for this? Is there even a way to do it? I mean, I had as much fun as everyone else, but I hadn't foreseen any of the players rolling that many criticals, nor maxing out their dice every time. Not to mention my rolls sucked, and I couldn't hit any of them until I finally got lucky and rolled a crit with max dice to knock a character to zero, but that was only the one time. At random points of the game I pretended to admire their dice while looking for a second 20 on the die (I know they exist because I have a set myself).

I'm not sure when the next time I'll be DMing will be, but I do do one-shots and tournaments at conventions so it'd be nice to know some tips and tricks for future games.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Talking is a freemediate action.  So you can't interrupt a villain when he's talking.  The speech bubbles would crush you to pieces.  

What level are you playing at, exactly?  Casters start completely screwing over everything else at mid levels, and you have to be prepared for that.  One possibility is that the army's commanders already were, and had dispelling screens/ counterspellers/ amulets of waterbreathing available.  Or the ship can submerge, and now has the element of surprise.

[kevin_video]

The level was mid-level. I had them all lvl 12 since it was a one-shot, and a new system. The commanders did have dispelling abilities, but their army of minions had wands of various offensive spells. Granted their armour all had DR, but it didn't mean a thing against variations of meteor storm.

[Radijs]

Meteor storm variations on level 12? That's strange.

But yeah at level 12 casters can tear through an army of mooks without too much effort. Especially if they start to use their bigger spells. Though that would leave them with little of anything else left to fight the big bad guys.

[archangel.arcanis]

1 round sounds a bit off to me. I could see in 2-4 rounds but not 1. 250 units wouldn't fit into a small enough space for AoEs to hit them all, even from 3 casters. And what is this about ranged touch attacks?

The only way i see this happening is if the army was on only 3 ships and each caster sank one. That is assuming you didn't let the guys try and swim away or any of them having water breathing or anything like that.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

1 round sounds a bit off to me. I could see in 2-4 rounds but not 1. 250 units wouldn't fit into a small enough space for AoEs to hit them all, even from 3 casters. And what is this about ranged touch attacks?

The only way i see this happening is if the army was on only 3 ships and each caster sank one. That is assuming you didn't let the guys try and swim away or any of them having water breathing or anything like that.

Belts of battle, so they got extra actions.

[archangel.arcanis]

I hear people talk about them here but they have never been used in a game i was in so I didn't know what they did.

[Radijs]

Belt of battle are from the MIC and can grant the wearer a limited amount of extra actions per day.

[Sinfire Titan]

Belt of battle are from the MIC and can grant the wearer a limited amount of extra actions per day.

And are underpriced. And somewhat unbalanced because there's no limit to how many you can wear in one day (they have no 24 hour attune limit, which is the big problem).

[PhaedrusXY]

Welcome to the DM chair.

Yeah, mid-level+ casters are that powerful. That's why the entire notion of army vs. army conflict in D&D is silly. Unless an army has magic users who expend their resources to keep it alive and effective, they're just so much meat when they go up against a powerful caster. The existence of high level magic totally changes the rules, as far as warfare goes. And 250 isn't really that much of an army (well... unless they're Spartans   ).

I don't see anything random about their actions, either. They knew what their characters were capable of more than you did. And another thing about mid-level+ casters: they usually have some kind of escape plan, for when they can't just win through the overwhelming application of magical firepower. 

[Hallack]

     Have to say the interrupting the villainous could just be a matter of not valuing what they could learn from it over the value of possible surprise attacks.  Or they simply may not have cared what he had to say at all which could be attributed to them not being interested/caring about the fluff/story of the game for whatever reason (just that type of player or DM not building enough interest).

     The wrecking of the fleet however was just a well thought out answer to a coming threat.  In such times as that it is simply time to giggle along with the players and enjoy the awesomeness and then spin the DM wheels in crafting consequences.  Said defense could spawn much more devious and subtle machinations from your villains that would have much more respect for the parties abilities.

Cheers

[dither]

And 250 isn't really that much of an army (well... unless they're Spartans   ).

This was my thought, pretty much.

A Roman century is 100 men, and a legion is 3k-6k troops plus 100-200 cavalry. The Battle of Philippi was an example of an incredibly large battle, with about 100,000 men on each side. In Peter Jackson's adaptation of the Battle of Helm's Deep, there was an invading army of 10,000 orcs.

When you consider numbers like that, 250 is more like an large gang of bandits. It might be only one or two clans, or a small tribe. Something in the order of 2,500 might be enough for a small army.

[kevin_video]

@ Hallack -- Oh, I laughed along with them after the initial wave of "OMG!" finally went away, and I had consequences for them. Like how they were on the beach, they had used major spells, and caused a wave of explosions. I had a tidal wave come after them. However, they rolled well and just got wet. The city behind them didn't fair that well though.

@ dither -- You're right that 250 isn't much of an army, and it wasn't. It was just the scouting party with a few enforcers who were to round up everyone in the village, and make them into slaves. The galleon they came from had 700 people.

[dither]

Oh, I laughed along with them after the initial wave of "OMG!" finally went away, and I had consequences for them. Like how they were on the beach, they had used major spells, and caused a wave of explosions. I had a tidal wave come after them. However, they rolled well and just got wet. The city behind them didn't fair that well though.

There's also some sea creatures that might've gotten a bit cheesed off by all the activity.

[kevin_video]

There's also some sea creatures that might've gotten a bit cheesed off by all the activity.

Possibly, but since this was a one-shot, and I only had so many hours to do it, I didn't push it any. The city's population getting made at them was enough.

[Hallack]

Ah, yep, One shoot run makes big difference.  Sounds like you handled it all well though.

[kevin_video]

Ah, yep, One shoot run makes big difference.  Sounds like you handled it all well though.

I didn't fly off the handle or cry in the corner, so I guess I did, yeah.

I don't think I used good enough examples to explain the randomness that ensued, but I do know that while I tried to compensate for every contingency, I failed epicly because it was obvious that I hadn't covered every angle. Not that you can foresee that many crits in one night.

[Alastar]

Improvisation is TEH key.

You have to be able to ably improvisate.

It takes experience thought

[kevin_video]

Oh I've come to realize that. At least I'd compensated enough for other things that I figured they'd do.

[PhoenixInferno]

Technically, the players aren't acting randomly - they're acting in an unanticipated fashion.  If it was random, they'd be rolling d20s and doing table look ups.

Semantics lesson over now.