D&D - How to deal with insanely high rollers?

[doomdragon6]

I follow the general rules of D&D and as such I feel like I give most traps and things fairly regular DC checks for their difficulty.

Thing is, my party-- who are leve 4, and by no means are min-maxers or anything like that, nor do they even have crazy magical items, have crazy-high rolls.

I can't hide ANYTHING from them. There's an elf druid that has a +15 to Perception, meaning she has a Passive Percep of 25-- which is enough to find damn near anything. If I make her roll for it, she gets 35 on average. Which is insane. I couldn't hide a speck of diamond at the bottom of a pile of dirt from that.

There's another person with Dungeoneering so high that they're able to, once a pressure plate has been found, guess exactly what it goes to and what might happen. Normally I'd be like "You're not sure" but when they get a dungeoneering roll of 30+, what am I supposed to do?

When it comes to stuff like Arcana, I understand and enjoy them rolling high-- I love that this person who has studied magic can identify lots of details about the magic around them.

But I cannot hide ANYTHING from the Perception girl. What can I do besides making the DC for mundane things incredibly high? Keep in mind, that would make it impossible for the not-Perception people to find anything, ever.

It's just frustrating to build really intricate trap rooms and have them walk in and she immediately goes, "I can see the very minute creases in the hatches that will open up, which are located there, there, and there, there's a hatch directly above us, and the pressure plates are located over there., which you two can teleport over, and then..." etc.

Seriously, how can I stop this beyond making DCs incredibly hard or blinding her character?

 

[Ravenpoe]

Introduce an enemy that likes to eat eyeballs.

I think you can take it from there.

 

[Gusto]

You claim you don't have min-maxers and yet someone has +15 Perception at level 4? If it's legitimate then yeah, unfortunately, that character's gonna nnotice stuff.

 

[doomdragon6]

Yeah, so I just looked, her perception is

Mod: +4
Half Level: +2
Race: +2 (Elf)
Trained: +5
Feat: +2 (Alertness)

The only thing there she could even be faulted for there is Alertness, and that's only a +2.

Guess I can make things discoverable, just unavoidable.

@Poe: I'm actually planning a crazy distorted world dimension where there's a sign that reads "Beware the Flight of Stares", which they'll notice is spelled wrong, and then they're come across a bunch of flying eye monsters.

 

[Gusto]

Exactly. Being able to see or hear something doesn't make you able to cope with it. And spending a feat on alertness is actually fairly underpowered, so if this character wants to focus entirely on perception then they're probably pretty bad at other stuff.

 

[Ravenpoe]

Add in some old god shit, where seeing things you shouldn't will drive you insane.

Use her perception against her.

 

[HCGLNS]

Use it against them.

If they so easily find things, make the things they find not worth finding.
You spot a secret door, it contains a horrible monster but no treasure.
You spot a trap, if they disable the trap the lock a door somewhere that is crucial.

Start applying modifiers, if she is bloodied -5 to her check.

Introduce a villain that makes perception redundant.

Bring in an NPC that alters the dynamic of her perception. ie: continually asks what she is doing while she is perceiving something.

Whenever they pause to examine something, attack them.

Kill them.

 

[Ravenpoe]

why try to punish the character for having a high trait that they've clearly worked hard for? Nothing annoys me more than DM that seems to go out of their way to minimize any special ability that I've spent hard-earned points into. It's easy to get into the "us versus them" mindset when DMing, because the DM ends up playing the role of antagonist throughout the gaming sessions. However, a really good DM will shake off the "us vs them" mentality and play to the characters strengths, challenge them where they are weak, and try to make the game session fun for everyone as a whole.

I would, for example, incorporate that trait into your story line planning. Say, the party runs finds a room with no apparent exits, but the druid spots a tiny rune inset in the wall that is very small, and appears to be worn smooth around the edges. Pressing it opens a secret door. Play up how the nobody else would have spotted it. The party is glad to have her along, she has something to brag about, and the story line moves forward.

Just realize that you're not going to be able to incorporate many perception-based challenges to the party, and have them be difficult challenges. However, it sounds like your party is kind of hyper-specializing: each member becoming insanely good at one particular trait that makes them powerful as a whole. This is good for the party--but what happens if they ever get split up? A house divided, and all that. There are other ways to challenge your party rather than trying to take away the good traits that each of them have worked hard to develop.

PC's are the enemy and must be punished.

 

[Allen who is Quiet]

Kill them all. Problem solved.

 

[Gusto]

I'm with Tin. If your player wants their character to be hella Perception and everythnig they've done is legal, then so be it. They'll be deficient in a lot of other skills and eventually all characters will need everything (athletics, stealth, endurance, and acrobatics come to mind).

As someone used to playing in groups with three players I'm usually in a situation where there's at least one "field" of skills/knowledge that we just completely don't have. Like a dumb party (no INT above 10).

 

[doomdragon6]

Oh, believe me, I reward my party members very well. I'm overly nice to them and I try to make everyone stand out.

That being said, I CANNOT HIDE ANYTHING FROM HER. She ALREADY brags about finding everything! There's no such thing as a dramatic surprise because she can hear, see, and smell anything that might be coming up. There's no point in hiding treasure because she'll find it. There's no point in hiding rooms because she'll find them. It wouldn't be "super cool" for her to find that one hidden thing that saves everyone, because she's expected to.

Anywho, I just wanted to see opinions. It's pretty much "Let her do it, and either kill everyone or make the traps unavoidable." Which I had to do the other night. I had a fun thrilling "boulder chase" planned and they were all "Here are the pressure plates, and there are some hatches over there, and a giant hatch in the ceiling. These two should teleport past the plates-"
Me: "I should have specified that the plates continue down the hall."
"Oh."
Other player: "I want to see what happens, so I toss this ore I found earlier onto the pressure plates."
Me: "... :3 That works." BOULDER!!!!

 

[Allen who is Quiet]

Also, don't worry about it. Just keep a few challenges that are solved by their heavily invested skills in there so they don't feel like they wasted points, but then just have stuff that'll challenge them in other ways.

 

[Jay]

Everyone always want to be in situations that they can cope with efficiently. This is true in the game as well as in real life but shouldn't be always possible when you run games. IMO to be a good DM you need to make the PLAYER work for it, don't simply give it to the character they play the easy solutions. That's what a cunning GM would do.

I didn't provide easy answers and when one player saw something, I gave them a clue and it also didn't mean everyone else saw it at the same time (I'd send discreet whispers). I didn't ask them questions unless they asked me and I played an inner clock that if they took too long searching around while other stood there, something "would eventually find them". I wanted players to roll for themselves, take chances. I hated the concept of "perception bitch", "Insight Guru"......I wanted people to participate. You want to try to lockpick with your +4 modifier? Ok, let's see what happens. You want to do a History check with your +1.... OK... this will be funny .... You want to check for traps with your +17 perception. Alright, what exactly are you looking for? I didn't accept, "I search the room for traps with my eagle eyes." Furthermore, if your traps are easy to find, place them more carefully.

Most importantly, drop the "need to win" notion about skill checks. If one player is the "go to guy" to find traps, then you should find ways to make the other players suspect their ability. Was she looking at the right thing? Are you using door listening checks? What if the enemy is on the other side of the door and the combat starts with a big elite in the face of your scout? Maybe your players will play smarter with tanks being more active at the front lines instead of doing whatever they are doing instead of started combat with the wrong person being in the wrong place.

Lastly, I agree that +15 Perception isn't a min/max for an elf but it's not far from it at all as she makes hard DC checks easy. This means you either should make perception checks more difficult in general or make them tell you EXACTLY they are looking for. I'd do both. Furthermore, defusing traps should be using the Thievery skill, not Dungeoneering unless they have that feat or you do it with a higher DC skill of +5 +10 +20. Are you using Dungeoneering as it should be use used? Identifying aberrations, identifying underground areas, forage food... etc.

I miss playing 4th edition.

 

[Dave]

Or you could say that passive perception is more like, "Something looks off." This means that the character notices that there's something weird about the wall, but not necessarily that it's a trap or a secret door. Make them have to do a non-passive search to figure things out. And even then a targeted search might bring up nothing more than "there's a false floor here" which could be a trap trigger or something more sinister like a giant trap-door spider. But just because you see that something is amiss, to see anything like a triggering mechanism you'd have to lift up the trap. Make them have to use other skills. Yeah, they can spot that something is up, but without a disable device or such they're gonna have to guess at what the thing does.

In short, perception is great, but it doesn't tell you shit.

 

[Dei]

I had a Paladin that had a +24 to Diplomacy at lvl 9. All of my other skills sucked nuts, but I could charm the heck out of anyone. The only real problem I see is if all their skills are extremely high.

 

[doomdragon6]

Hmm, I guess I can be a bit too specific sometimes. Instead of saying a "pressure plate" I could just say the floor looks strange, or that "there are strange seams around the blocks" which could mean a drop or a pressure plate.

As for the Dungeoneering question, it doesn't come up very often so sometimes I let people use it to determine if something is strange about the room (which is a dungeon) and potentially what that might mean, but I suppose that could be too generous. It's just that when you roll SO HIGH I feel compelled to give something.

Also, I totally relented on a puzzle last night when I shouldn't have. There were 8 differently colored gems in a box, and 7 slots on a door. The only other things in the room were the box, a plaque (which had been providing taunts or hints throughout the dungeon), and 2 torches.

They initially tried putting the rainbow order-- which caused the emerald (green) to explode on them, eliminating the 8th gem. They thought they'd gotten the first three right since they didn't blow up and were getting extremely frustrated at the puzzle. The key was to look at the plaque more closely, which said "Oops! Wrong room. Put your blades back." The reason it said this was because there was a fork previously that said <-- Brains Brawn --> and the rooms were switched, so brains went to brawn, brawn to brains (this puzzle). The key was the first letter in each word being the first letter of the color of the gem, where it would be orange, white, red, purple, yellow, black, blue.

Anyway, they were getting frustrated and telling me that my puzzle was retarded because it wasn't a puzzle, it was just guessing, etc. A regular DM would just sit quietly and smile, but I let one of the characters (who'd escaped the other room to come to this one) roll to notice that this plaque started differently than the other room's (the other room's plaque started with "Whoops!" insted of "Oops!"), which instantly gave the puzzle away.

I'm too nice of a DM.

 

[Dei]

Hmm, I guess I can be a bit too specific sometimes. Instead of saying a "pressure plate" I could just say the floor looks strange, or that "there are strange seams around the blocks" which could mean a drop or a pressure plate.

As for the Dungeoneering question, it doesn't come up very often so sometimes I let people use it to determine if something is strange about the room (which is a dungeon) and potentially what that might mean, but I suppose that could be too generous. It's just that when you roll SO HIGH I feel compelled to give something.

Also, I totally relented on a puzzle last night when I shouldn't have. There were 8 differently colored gems in a box, and 7 slots on a door. The only other things in the room were the box, a plaque (which had been providing taunts or hints throughout the dungeon), and 2 torches.

They initially tried putting the rainbow order-- which caused the emerald (green) to explode on them, eliminating the 8th gem. They thought they'd gotten the first three right since they didn't blow up and were getting extremely frustrated at the puzzle. The key was to look at the plaque more closely, which said "Oops! Wrong room. Put your blades back." The reason it said this was because there was a fork previously that said <-- Brains Brawn --> and the rooms were switched, so brains went to brawn, brawn to brains (this puzzle). The key was the first letter in each word being the first letter of the color of the gem, where it would be orange, white, red, purple, yellow, black, blue.

Anyway, they were getting frustrated and telling me that my puzzle was retarded because it wasn't a puzzle, it was just guessing, etc. A regular DM would just sit quietly and smile, but I let one of the characters (who'd escaped the other room to come to this one) roll to notice that this plaque started differently than the other room's (the other room's plaque started with "Whoops!" insted of "Oops!"), which instantly gave the puzzle away.

I'm too nice of a DM.

I actually think that's a good use of a skill check, depending on how long they were stuck on the puzzle. When puzzles start dragging out for a long time it slows down the whole pace of the story. Especially when you consider that they might be playing characters that are (for lack of a better word) smarter than they are.

 

[MindDetective]

I miss playing 4th edition.

Actually, me too...

 

[Frank]

You want to check for traps with your +17 perception. Alright, what exactly are you looking for? I didn't accept, "I search the room for traps with my eagle eyes." Furthermore, if your traps are easy to find, place them more carefully.

I don't agree with you here. This is forcing the player to play profiler with you more than it is just letting the game unfold and allowing them to use the skills of the character. My old, old game group had problems like this our old GM's puzzles. I was playing a dumb fighter, but I was way better at the kind of puzzles the GM would come up with than the person playing the wizard with 28 int. Kind of defeats the purpose. It's like obtuse adventure games where logical thinking is second to getting into the mindset of the person who created the puzzle.

 

[Dei]

Actually, me too...

I miss my paladin, who ran into this running gag where she'd always be at a ball when shit went down... and being a paladin of Sune there was no way in hell she was going to a grand ball in her armor. It finally got so bad that I spent all her money on Summoned Armor because even with her AC of half her level + crappy dex/int she would still insist on tanking. (GOT TO STAY IN CHARACTER OMG)

 

[Jay]

I don't agree with you here. This is forcing the player to play profiler with you more than it is just letting the game unfold and allowing them to use the skills of the character. My old, old game group had problems like this our old GM's puzzles. I was playing a dumb fighter, but I was way better at the kind of puzzles the GM would come up with than the person playing the wizard with 28 int. Kind of defeats the purpose. It's like obtuse adventure games where logical thinking is second to getting into the mindset of the person who created the puzzle.

Every DM is different. I prefer by far balanced characters than those who min/max. 4th edition easily caters to both. Everything is in character, so I'm very careful with how my players got around to doing things during puzzles and traps. Some characters are very stuck in their ways while I know their player is far brighter than their character (example would be Gusto and his dwarven fighter). I fully expect them to be in character and do what they can, even if they will fail or not. I don't like the "need to win" ideology, I want them to perform the best they can and enjoy the moment.

Heck, every few weeks I did the "hated skill challenges" and most were relatively successful and most importantly, absolutely entertaining. I had dwarf fighters face plant after failing to jump over a fence running after a fleeing enemy, wizards stuck at the bottom of wells failing endurance checks to inspect sunken treasure, the entire dream world being a huge skill check situation. Yes, there were characters that were +15 in something but in that situation they were useless in that certain skill, they did something else, more times than not, they accomplished something else with another skill they weren't very proficient at.

As far as the OP goes, your rules, your game. IMO, you're far too nice to your players and I think you need to re-think a few things on how traps/finding traps work. You mentioned they get frustrated when something is too hard for them. Maybe it's because they are used to being spoon fed answers and are being bratty about it. You have a choice to make, make them adapt and be better players or change your style with elmo style traps to keep them happy.

I miss playing D&D.

I hope 5th doesn't suck and they have a good online tool to play games instead of using 3rd party shit.

 

[doomdragon6]

Yeah, I'm a very nice DM compared to your playstyle. I even made a healbot NPC character to follow them around to stitch up any boo-boos.

We recently added a Leader to the group though, so my NPC might need to leave for a while. But whenever I suggest it they say they love the character. XD

 

[Ravenpoe]

Yeah, I'm a very nice DM compared to your playstyle. I even made a healbot NPC character to follow them around to stitch up any boo-boos.

We recently added a Leader to the group though, so my NPC might need to leave for a while. But whenever I suggest it they say they love the character. XD

Then that character's betrayal will be all the more powerful.

 

[Dave]

Yeah, I did the same thing once. The guy helped them out a lot until they got closer to the end of the mystery, where the bad guy was little Mr. Helper's real boss. They got into a fight and the guy said, "You've been poisoned!!" to the most powerful character. When he went to "help" the hold person spell he cast was a minus save because the character was letting the bad guy cast the spell without resistance. Failed. Oh, did I mention that character was the only one with Spellcraft and could figure out which spells were being cast? So now he's boned.

In the end it wasn't a TPK as the main fighter guy wised up in the nick of time - the helper had been picking off characters one by one - but the party never hired another NPC. Hell, Helper was with them for 5 or 6 levels! Oh, and the bad guy won as the party was fractured. So they were hired to stop this big bad guy from taking over an area. By the time the party got back up to full strength the bad guy had solidified his power base. The guy that had initially had hired the characters was assassinated and a puppet was put up in his place. The team had to flee the area, tail between their legs. They always vowed to go back but never did.

 

[HCGLNS]

Doom, just because they perceive things doesn't mean they understand them.

 

[Covar]

Agree with Dave on forcing active check. Passive should give players the heads up and allow the active roll. Also throw in false alarms. Things look off, "I roll my perception", you can't find anything. BOOM! instant paranoia. You can also have them make random perception rolls. It's a bit cheap, but so is a +15 perception at lvl 4. Also one of two feats on Alertness will catch back up with them later.

As for Dungeoneering, who cares, it's not Disable Device. Booby trap the door from the other side, or pressure plate then entire floor (you know what will happen but can you stop it?). This works great for the perception issue as well. It also allows for better railroadingguiding of the players. Directing their choices.

 

[Frank]

Agree with Dave on forcing active check. Passive should give players the heads up and allow the active roll. Also throw in false alarms. Things look off, "I roll my perception", you can't find anything. BOOM! instant paranoia. You can also have them make random perception rolls. It's a bit cheap, but so is a +15 perception at lvl 4. Also one of two feats on Alertness will catch back up with them later.

As for Dungeoneering, who cares, it's not Disable Device. Booby trap the door from the other side, or pressure plate then entire floor (you know what will happen but can you stop it?). This works great for the perception issue as well. It also allows for better railroadingguiding of the players. Directing their choices.

I used to do this all the time to characters with high perception. Fucking awesome for keeping them paranoid.

 

[Jay]

Agree with Dave on forcing active check. Passive should give players the heads up and allow the active roll. Also throw in false alarms. Things look off, "I roll my perception", you can't find anything. BOOM! instant paranoia. You can also have them make random perception rolls. It's a bit cheap, but so is a +15 perception at lvl 4. Also one of two feats on Alertness will catch back up with them later.

I used to do this all the time.

LOL.

Poor Rathkor.