How do I convince a DM I'm not a powergamer...?

[Crissa]

So, I read the board. I can do math. I like getting abilities every level.

How do I convince a new DM that I'm not a powergamer, just because I want to play a Sorceror/Paladin that has their Mount for their Familiar?

-Crissa

[Neeek]

1150317052[/unixtime]]So, I read the board. I can do math. I like getting abilities every level.

How do I convince a new DM that I'm not a powergamer, just because I want to play a Sorceror/Paladin that has their Mount for their Familiar?

-Crissa

Telling him you want to play a sorcerer/paladin wasn't enough?

[Username17]

Step 1: Show them The Wish and the Word.
Step 2: Show them anything else that you want to play.

That's usually worked for me. Start with a tirade about things that are actually broken and then talk about how you want to not play that sort of thing and instead want to play a character concept.

A Paladin/Sorcerer hardly counts as powergaming. It synergizes slightly better than any combo except Paladin/Dread Necromancer, and it's legal by RAW.

-Username17

[fbmf]

Step 1: Show them The Wish and the Word.
Step 2: Show them anything else that you want to play.

That's how I do it, though in 3.0 it was the air elemental octupus druid.

Game on,
fbmf

[RandomCasualty]

The idea isn't so much trying to convince the DM you aren't a powergamer, so much as convincing him that powergaming isn't all bad. Everyone powergames to some degree.

Really the thing you want to avoid is being labelled as an abusive powergamer.

And you avoid this label by doing a few things:

1. Design a backstory and personality for your character: The more you roleplay, the less you look like a series of optimized numbers.

2. Don't overshadow the other PCs: Most DMs get the warning light when one PC seems to totally steal the spotlight. I always like to look at the other PCs and see what they're doing with their characters. Great care should be taken not to overshadow any of the other characters.

3. If your DM isn't particularly rules savvy don't use abilities that absolutely require him to counter them. So generally you dont' want to cheese kill his monsters using fly to stay out of range and shooting them dead with a bow for instance, as this tends to make you look bad in most DM's eyes.

[dbb]

While these are excellent tactics for use on GMs of a logical, thoughtful bent when it comes to the rules, the fact that your GM is getting on you for wanting to play a paladin/sorcerer hints at the sort of GM who feels that anything more complicated than he or she personally would create is "powergaming". And -- while this may be unfair -- if it is that sort of person, showing them the Wish and the Word, or engaging them in any kind of comparative power-level discussion involving actual numbers, is a mistake. A command of the rules greater than that of the GM is often taken as incontrovertible evidence that you must be some sort of munchkin cheater -- the "st----lt" effect, as it were.

So you may -- and I emphasize "may", because it's totally possible that Frank's approach actually is the right one for this GM -- be better off skipping right to the "talk about the character concept at length" stage and not even mentioning rules or anything like that. If you can get the GM jazzed about the character you want to play, the battle is more than half won. If he or she then objects that something is too powergamey, be politely puzzled and ask what is it that he thinks is too powerful, and explain the conceptual reasons, rather than rules reasons, you have for doing it like that.

Ultimately, though, the method to use on a GM depends heavily on the individual GM. Good luck, though. It's awfully frustrating to have someone dismissively shoot down a concept for no better reason than "it's too powergamey", especially when it's not.

--d.

[PhoneLobster]

I say put the burden of proof on the GM.

So you are a power gamer hey? Tell the GM to prove it.

Make him explain, in detail and in the face of any number of rather easily formulated refutations exactly what power gamers are, what is bad about them and how that has any relevance whatsoever with the somewhat unpowerful character you want to play.

If you are sitting there trying to prove you are NOT this nebulous ill defined "power gamer" doing nebulous ill defined powergamery things you can't win because honestly fvck knows what you are actually trying to argue against.

Turn all the bullshit over to the person throwing the names around, make them explain the impossible in a way that stands up to scrutiny.

[Oberoni]

PhoneLobster's on to something - get the DM to explain exactly what the horrible part of your character concept is, and explain why it's comfortable. With facts and well-founded observations. Vague statements should be meant by "what do you mean?" and "how does that translate into game terms?"

[MrWaeseL]

1150337763[/unixtime]]I say put the burden of proof on the GM.

So you are a power gamer hey? Tell the GM to prove it.

Make him explain, in detail and in the face of any number of rather easily formulated refutations exactly what power gamers are, what is bad about them and how that has any relevance whatsoever with the somewhat unpowerful character you want to play.

If you are sitting there trying to prove you are NOT this nebulous ill defined "power gamer" doing nebulous ill defined powergamery things you can't win because honestly fvck knows what you are actually trying to argue against.

Turn all the bullshit over to the person throwing the names around, make them explain the impossible in a way that stands up to scrutiny.

I don't know about you, but when I want to get something done by someone, getting on their bad side always works!

He's the DM. He doesn't have to discuss it, he just says wether it flies or not. You need to convince him, not the other way around.

[erik]

On the other side of the coin, I've had a player get totally indignant when I let him know the skinny in my homebrew 3.clik campaign, letting him know that polymorph abuse was going to be curtailed, flight as a level 3 spell was going to require a full round action for airborne movement (thus delaying its unfairness in combat), and that he couldn't take spell focus as many times as he wanted to stack up for an unbeatable DC. When I explained that every encounter would end at after the first if there were DC 30-40+ spells he was still unphased. Hell, he didn't even care when I trotted out that while he might like unfair encounters that he always wins, but he will likely enjoy them less if I let the NPCs do the same and TPK the party whenever *they* win initiative, which will be about half the time.

Clik:"So you would enjoy shooting fish in barrels and having combats decided by initiative rolls?"
AbusivePlayer:"Yes."

That's about when I decided that further discussion of the point was a waste of my time.
Some people are not capable of comprehending what is broken and not, and some further do not care if something is broken or not. Hopefully your DM is not like some bizarro version of my nightmare player, Crissa.

The last session I had he was just bitching the whole time about how I've ruined the game. Ugh. I've pretty much put that campaign on an indefinite hiatus for now and if we start up again he won't be invited back without a gag.

[PhoneLobster]

You need to convince him, not the other way around.

He doesn't know that.

And he won't know what hit him either once he fails to satisfactorily explain his baseless name calling.

[erik]

Baseless? Hrmm. It is mistaken, but not baseless.

Depending upon how it works out, a mount-familiar might seem shady.

Example counter-argument from DM: If you get it for just having a couple paladin levels and 1 sorcerer level then the potential 5 paladin in the party will be fairly gypped. Also the familiar hangs around all the time and that's a further power-up on the summoned mount. You likely are asking to get something for nothing from the DM's perspective, and while I'm not going to argue that that something is at all unreasonable to get for free when splitting caster/melee levels, it does initially show up on the radar as cheesy.

To leave the odious odor of that cheese behind, it is may be best to offer to give something up, or show that you already are giving up a lot by mixing a caster class and melee class. This argument is harder to show to someone who hasn't already grasped the crappiness of that blend by now. Adding a stipulation that the mount-familiar shows up at least as late as level 5 could help ease things though.

Are you willing to pay a feat for this Familiar/Mount? A DM is a lot more likely to bite at that if they were only hesitant before. This also will keep other players from wanting a level 5 class feature bundled in early to their multiclassed characters for free.

[RandomCasualty]

1150375512[/unixtime]]On the other side of the coin, I've had a player get totally indignant when I let him know the skinny in my homebrew 3.clik campaign, letting him know that polymorph abuse was going to be curtailed, flight as a level 3 spell was going to require a full round action for airborne movement (thus delaying its unfairness in combat), and that he couldn't take spell focus as many times as he wanted to stack up for an unbeatable DC. When I explained that every encounter would end at after the first if there were DC 30-40+ spells he was still unphased. Hell, he didn't even care when I trotted out that while he might like unfair encounters that he always wins, but he will likely enjoy them less if I let the NPCs do the same and TPK the party whenever *they* win initiative, which will be about half the time.

Clik:"So you would enjoy shooting fish in barrels and having combats decided by initiative rolls?"
AbusivePlayer:"Yes."

Damn man, I feel sorry for you. This guy sounds like a total munchkin.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I don't bother trying to convince people I'm not a powergamer. People can hang whatever label they want on me.

I was accused of being a powergamer by a DM at the local gaming store. I rebutted by giving him the Stone Cold salute.

(As I was playing a single classed cleric at the time, I figured any arguments I could have made would have fallen on deaf ears.)

[PhoneLobster]

The familiar/mount is not cheese if anything its ANTI cheese.

Now niether the familiar nor the mount is that crash hot. They just are not that good.

But more importantly their abilities do not really stack and they DO over lap. So if you try and stack a bunch of levels of familiar progression on a bunch of levels of mount progression you end up with a critter doing things like getting the same non stacking features like "share spells" twice, and getting wierd stuff like extra hit dice that are probably overridden by a possibly inferior half casters hit points thing, and so on.

If she decided to have a mount AND a familiar separate to each other she would probably do better. (and still not be cheesey)

If she decided to have EITHER a mount or a familiar and insist on getting full progression of one of those for levels in either class she would probably do better. (and STILL not be cheesey)

But if she just multi classes and insists the mount and familiar features fall onto the same pony she probably loses out in the long run.

And that among other obvious reasons I don't think anyone needs to mention is why the accusations are baseless.

[Save_versus_Stupid]

I'm just curious here guys.

How does one get a familiar mount? As a sorcerer, don't you need to pick from the list of suitable options? Doesn't the paladin mount come in a few levels later?

Where does this overlap?

And if your GM has issues with the fact you can combine one Stat into two classes for "synergy", then he really hasn't looked at the rest of the game's balance very much.

I don't GM, but I see an immediate red flag when people start generating infinite money or breaking the game in half, not by stacking their familiar together with a mount (which is totally in character for the proposed sorcerer/paladin)

But as clikml has stated, I can understand why a GM would be suspicious of something like this - but to ban or limit it based on that is ridiculous. A sorcerer/paladin with a familiar mount isn't going to break the game, bottom line.

[Username17]

There are medium sized familiar options, you could ride any one of them.

Alternately, you could take like 5 levels of Paladin and a Level of Sorcer and declare your special mount to be your familiar. That would ensure that your mount never had less than half as many hit points as you did.

-Username17

[Save_versus_Stupid]

I see. Is there a paladin/arcane prestige class somewhere, or does this kind of character go into eldritch knight?

[Crissa]

However, the two tactics - Showing cheese, showing anti-cheese, and following the rules directly - are exactly the problem.

I can't get into his games if he thinks I know more about the game than he does - which while I do mechanically, he's more than able to keep up with Frank worldwise - it shouldn't stop the game cold.

Which it seems to. The moment I wrote a backstory why a low int Paladin from his dragon-ruled lawful kingdom would be adventuring with his group of sots, and what progression I was hoping for...

...Was the moment I never heard about the campaign again.

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

If this guy is so insecure about his abilities, why would you want to game with him anyway?

I know if I got pre-booted from a game for soemthing so stupid, I'd forget about it. And I don't live in a highly populated area liek you do, I literally can't find games if I turn the one I want to be in down.

[RandomCasualty]

Yeah, the DM sounds really powergamer paranoid.

Generally there isn't much you can do to convince those guys. Once they hear the word "build" or "optimized" or any other word that sounds remotely scary they immediately label you as a munchkin powergamer and try to kick you from the game.

Really, it's not worth it.

[Crissa]

Frank is a hard DM to follow? I'm picky? This guy is a great artist and writer and I'd beg him night and day to run anything?

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

In that case, don't do anythign that sounds like you're trying to get over with him.

I know a sorceror/paladin witha horse familiar isn't that great. You know it. Everyone here knows it.

But the fact you're asking for something that takes a bit of house-ruling means that this paranoid artist is goign to assume you're trying to pull a fast one on him.

I suggest don't even try it. Play something that his mind can comprehend. Something simple. If you have a build, don't ACT like you've planned it out, just act like you're picking things as you go.

If that fails, try sliding him a Franklin.

[User3]

Does he have a problem with sorcerers?

Because under those circumstances, I'd just play a sorc and RP the paladin half. You don't need some illogical CoC to tell you what to do, and you can already cast Mount or buy a horse.

If he does, and you're really that desperate, you might give him a concept and ask him if he'll build the character for you. But then again, he may not do any work which he thinks you should be doing. Then you're in a catch 22, and should buy some sodium pentathol, LSD, rope, and find a nice basement.

[User3]

If he's really staunch about it, I'd probably just do what he wants. Normally people's opinions about such things are set, and they get all offended if you start prodding them.

The best way to deal with such people is by showing. Show them games that have paladin/sorcerors that are run well. Suggest that he run a sample encounter with your character.

OR better yet, run a sample encounter for him, having him use your character. Include a list of tactics and tips, and tell him what your main 'schticks' are, and perhaps a few of your 'super nova death manuvers'

Once he realizes he's having his ass handed to him by Ogres and Kobolds, you probably have an argument.