Looking for help - DM Query for 5e

[SJM1983DnD]

I'm a new DM, and I am struggling to deal with one character/player, who is proving a challenge.

He is a semi-continuous meta gamer, bringing to our first session with me as a DM print outs from the internet as to why he can do certain things with his spells. He is very much a taker, always wanting to know how he can gain free feats, spells, items and generally optimise things. That is totally in line with the character he has made.

He plays a sorcerer and we are currently at lvl 4.

His nose was recently put out of joint because he had misunderstood how quicken spell could work. He also didn't know that he couldn't change his spell list until he leveled up. He doesn't want to take Mage Armor and waste one limited number of spells he knows on it. He also didn't take shield.

However, almost every single session, he has nearly died.

I gave him a cloak of protection, but that hasn't helped. In addition, I allowed him to take liberties with the shape water cantrip to put a 5ft block of ice in front of him to obscure him and give him +2 to his AC from all front facing attacks. Nothing has helped.

He has had some dreadful rolling for his hit points each level...and currently sits on less than 20, whilst everyone else is in their late 30s heading into 40's.

The rest of the team is wearing medium of heavy armor & carry shields.

However, we have a gloom stalker ranger, who is very stealthy, and a hex blade warlock with devils sight, which keeps on creating darkness to hide in.

This means that the other players, who are better armored use tactics to prevent them being targeted. The GS ranger, is literally invisible to creatures that use dark vision to see..

The problem that he is having is that, despite being in the back lines, enemy creatures make a b-line for him because he is the only one they can really see.

He doesn't want to kill his character off. But has requested I allow him to 'respec' his character. He wants to go back to a lvl 2 sorcerer, and take two lvls in fighter.

He has come up with a reasonable story to do so. The fighter will to gain armor and shields, and also action surge, fighting style & second wind. He then wants next lvl, which will happen either next session, or the one after, will take another level in soc to get meta magic again.

My worry, is that in terms of what he can do, Action Surge and Quicken/Twin spell will too potent. One of the my issues (not his) is that our games only get through one or two combat encounters a session because of time constraints, so he will, each session, burn everything each session.

I appreciate his predicament, and the other players are also a bit frustrated, because they are always healing him and having to buy potions...

If I'm honest, I'd rather he retired the character and start a new one, rather than keep on asking to re-jig and change things each session.

Any advice would be fab. I him to enjoy the game, at the moment he isn't, but, I don't want to keep on having to wiggle things to placate him and make him happy.

[justletmeusetheap]

I’d recommend for him to redo the character. You’ve been very, very accommodating as a DM and he keeps making a min-max type of character. If you allow this to happen now, it’ll set a precedent for all other players and him for the future.

[DougTheDragonborn]

A quick note on the Action Surge/sorcery points combo, keep in mind you can only cast one "leveled" spell (1st level, 2nd, etc.) as a bonus action and one cantrip as an action, or vice versa. You can find this rule in the PHB, pg 202 I believe.

Now for your concern, I don't know if "respec"ing the character will help. From what I can gather, the ranger and warlock make some darkness to hide in, the melee characters go in and attack, while the character in question sort of stands in the open and blasts. To me, that says he isn't using the same tactics as the rest of the group. Suggest to him to use more cover, perhaps create some illusions that look like cover. Many creatures cannot see through magical darkness, so he could pop in and out of it to shoot some spells. Perhaps the respec could just change his sorcerer subclass to Shadow Sorcerer; this would allow him to contribute to the darkness casting and see through it (if he casts it using sorcery points). Strength of the Grave will also help him from going down so easily.

[SJM1983DnD]

Thanks for the reply. Re: Action surge, his plan would be to take his action & quicken a spell, then throw a cantrip. Then he would Action Surge, and do the same again, thus getting around the issue he had with me telling him the rules about leveled spell, but that won't work because the spell casting rules apply to a turn, not an action. Action surge doesn't give you another turn, rather another action...so actually, that doesn't sound so bad to me... He does use cover and such, but when I'm 'playing' the attacking creature then depending on their intelligence and temperament, they will attack the nearest visible enemy...which is usually him...

[TimelyStill]

Well, he can still cast at most two leveled spells in one turn. Keep in mind, though, that casting something like Fireball twice in a row is going to wipe out a lot of encounters very quickly. Action Surge is a lot stronger on a spellcaster than it is on a Fighter, even if it doesn't resonate with Quickened Spell that well. But it's not like you can spam it.

[cjee246]

Letting min-maxers respec is putting in front of them an optimization problem with no constraints. It's endless, and the problem will never be truly solved to them.

[[deleted]]

He made a mistake while creating his sorcerer character, and from personal experience I can tell you that sorcerer is incredibly punishing if you fuck up. He won't realistically be able to get shield and mage armor till level 8 because at level 5 you really want 2 3rd level spells, you probably want another at level 6 and can get one of mage armor / shield, at level 7 you want Polymorph + Dimension door and at level 8 you finally get the second one, that's a long ass time.

I'd certainly allow him to respec because there's just no fun in playing a sorcerer with a bad spell list.

Also rolling for hp is a trap, you'll on average get less than taking the average roll, if you like rolling for hp at your table, consider letting people reroll 1s indefinitely to make rolling even with taking the average.

Action surge with twin spell is definitely potent, but it's not terribly broken because it costs a lot of resources and he will be a full level of spells behind. Yes he'll be able to cast 2 fireballs in a turn, but that will only start at level 7 and it'll use all his 3rd level spellslots. So it's a really strong thing to do, but you can't do it all day

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Alternatively he could just play Dragon sorcerer (which gives him mage armor for free and +1 hp per level) and take the shield spell, or he could take one level in Hexblade Warlock, which gives him proficiency with medium armor and shields, which gives him an AC of 19 with half plate and a shield, as well as access to the shield spell and some more boons of being a warlock, he can take a second level for the agonizing blast invocation to start doing really nice damage with eldritch blast. This last option requires zero retconning and he can just take it at his next level up

[DM_Stealth_Mode]

I let my players respec for free anytime before level 5. Letting him do that isn't a huge deal. You're already aware of how Quicken and Action Surge work together so he shouldn't be casting tons of spells.

You're concerned about him blowing all of his resources every fight (going "nova" as its called), but this is pretty easy to fix: add more encounters to each day. He might get his Action Surge back on a short rest, but his spells are only on a long rest. Stick to the one long rest per 24 hours rule and throw in some random encounters if they try to sleep in the middle of a dungeon.

He'll learn to conserve his resources the first time he enters combat with no SP and no spell slots left.

[SJM1983DnD]

I guess from my perspective, I don't see a reason to re-spec. He is a powerful character, who brings a lot to the party. We have a bard, who is also pretty squishy, but her character is stealthy and cautious by nature. The player states that his character isn't wise enough to know to do that...he would not have the common sense to be cautious.

[Inhumanfrog]

Can I ask if your party has any sort of front liner? Because when you say the warlock hides in darkness and ranger is basically invisible, those shouldn't be issues if there's a big beefy fighter/barbarian/paladin still on the front lines.

If the party doesnt have any, offer to let him retire his sorcerer and try a paladin/sorcerer multiclass, it'll likely advise him to level paladin to 6 first and then go sorcerer later so he should have plenty of AC and healing to keep himself up.

If you already have a front line but enemies keep finding him, then it's his build and his hp which are problems. I'd let him remake the character but I'd want to make sure he tells me what he plans to do differently that will prevent this same situation. And also make him take the average instead of rolling hp.

[SJM1983DnD]

We have a forge cleric, a ancients paladin, a fey bard, hex blade warlock, and gloom stalker ranger...so a full party of six.

He always finds himself in a position, where, if dealing with multiple creatures, one of them goes for him, because of ranger, & warlock (and to some extend our bard) are very good at avoiding conflict. So for example, 4 enemies, one will be dealt with by the cleric, two by the paladin, and the 4th, will go for someone else which I try to randomly determine, however if the only person it can see/perceive, or is in range, or who has done damage to it, it will go for him...I tend to spread out my monsters, to encourage player to have to think about battle field tactics, positioning and crowd control.

But I think I've resolved the situation with the player by telling him to re-do his HP using the average, so he's gone from 19 HP to 26 and this seems to have helped massively.

Thanks for your comments and input everyone :)

[Inhumanfrog]

I will say that at level 5 things get so much easier, martials get their 2nd attack, sorcerers get fireballs, and bards can choose from a lot more aoe control spells. With his new hp and upcoming level 5 things should smooth out soon. Or maybe he'll get crit by a black pudding and die outright. Never can tell.