Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 219 - Let Players Use New Abilities

Episode Date: April 14, 2024

Some DMs treat new character abilities as puzzles to solve or speedbumps on the path to kill the PCs.  As characters level up, they will get all kinds of abilities, some of which are carefully selected and crafted by the players.  In this episode, I give DMs some practical advice for embracing these new character abilities.   Resources: None

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. As characters grow, the players carefully select the abilities their characters have in the hopes of being better characters. My question for DMs is this, why would you ever take that away from them? Do you let the characters use these abilities to feel like badasses they are, or do you nerf the ability to oblivion. Thank you for listening to the Taking20 Podcast, episode 219. Some tips to my GM friends out there about handling new PC abilities. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Banks.

I used to go to my bank every other week to check on my savings, but eventually I lost interest. Boom! Checks my savings, but eventually I lost interest. Boom! Checks, savings, and interest. Three bad puns in one joke. I keep telling you people, your groans only make me stronger. We have a Ko-fi.com slash Taking20 podcast. It does cost money as well as time to research, write, edit, publish, screw up, and republish episodes.

If you'd be willing to make a one-time donation to help keep the podcast alive, I would greatly appreciate it. Almost all players, myself included, love leveling up. In the game systems where you have levels, your character gains powers, abilities, and other improved ability scores in some way as your character climbs to higher and higher levels. In this episode I want my beloved DMs out there to think about how we respond to these new abilities and capabilities the PCs bring to the table. I love leveling my characters. If you're blessed with the opportunity to play any number of game systems like either version of Pathfinder, any version of D&D, Starfinder, or any of a thousand other games, there's a leveling system of some sort.

Your character gets a certain number of experience points or reaches a certain point in the game and ding, your character levels. Leveling up means more abilities, more powers, more spells, more feats, and generally just more. Your character's complexity does grow, but so does your capability to respond to threats or interact with the world. I love seeing my feeble, low-level clerics, for example, gain powerful abilities like blinding an entire room of giants because they had the audacity

to think they would punt my character for yardage. Well, that's true, Jeremy, but why does this need its own episode? I could be playing Helldivers 2 right now. Okay calm down. I love playing Helldivers 2 as well but as my son is sick of hearing we do what we have to do before we do what we want to do. So shut up other voice I got stuff to talk about. To understand what I'm getting at I need to talk about the leveling process for characters. When your DM says those magical words, congratulations, you're now level 4 or whatever the equivalent

is at your table, most of us get a little shot of dopamine because leveling characters is generally fun. The higher the level, the more powerful the abilities we could get. Now comes the work. Taking the time to evaluate options and level up your character in a way that you want. Do you want to take that feat that allows you to be more effective in combat, or do you want to try to become a more well-rounded and social character? Do you take a min-max feat or one that's more suited to roleplay and character development? There's no right or wrong answer here. Certain games may push characters one way or another depending on what the GM and players want to get out of it, but generally players can

select whatever is allowed by the game system and DM when they level up. For the players who invest in their characters, this is a labor of love. We hunker down around the rule systems in the books, look up ideas online, and carefully select the ability that makes the most sense or sounds the most fun. And that's a fact that I want my forever DMs out there to never lose sight of. Player selection of character powers, spells, abilities, etc. should be both honored and respected by DMs. Many players weigh pros and cons of different selections, finally making the pick that they

think will most benefit their character in the party. A cleric I'm currently playing has made a number of feats and class ability selections that benefit the party the most. I've sacrificed my character's combat ability for better, more powerful, and more frequent healing of myself and my teammates. I'm not trying to be a martyr by making you say, oh woe is me, Jeremy has to play a character he doesn't enjoy. No, no, that's crap. I love playing Novius, and martyr by the way is one ability I selected, where I can damage myself to increase healing

given to others. He's a fun character. My point is that as characters grow, the players carefully select the abilities their characters have in the hopes of being better characters, better helping their teammates, and just generally being bigger badasses. My question for DMs is this, why would you ever take that away from them? And now, whoa, I hear what you're saying. I would never do that. I would never take that away from them. Leveling up characters is a part of the core game rules and I let them level up all the time. True. But do you let the characters use these abilities to feel like

badasses they are, or do you nerf the ability to oblivion? One of the most common discussions on this topic I've seen is with the Deflect Missiles ability monks get in 5th edition. In case you don't play 5e, the important part of the ability reads as follows. Starting at 3rd level, you can use your reaction to deflect or catch the missile when you are hit with a ranged weapon attack. When you do so, the damage you take from the attack is reduced by 1d10 plus your Dexterity modifier plus your Monk level. If you reduce the damage to zero, you can catch the missile if it's small enough for you to hold in one hand, and you have at least one hand free. Okay.

So once per round, since that's how many reactions most characters get, a third level monk can deflect arrows, crossbow bolts, even bullets as long as they have a hand free. Please note, nowhere does it say that the monk has to be aware of the attack to use the ability, so the monk has been blinded but could still catch an arrow and even return it at the person who shot at them, but that does cost a key point. That is, frankly, amazing, and if I were a player who wanted to play a martial arts master, that sounds like an ability I'd use the crap out of. However, I've seen DMs who, once their PC gets this ability, never shoots an arrow at that monk ever again. Boo! Boo!

That's boring! Plus, that means the PC took an ability and will never get to use it. And that's what I'm talking about in this episode. If a character gains the ability to catch an arrow, absorb magical energy, or breathe underwater, you should at least occasionally shoot arrows at them, let them find a source of magical energy to absorb, or carry out part of a mission underwater respectively. This allows A, the player to feel smart for picking that ability to strengthen their character,

and B, lets the character show how beneficial they are to the team with this new ability. Let's stick with the missiles thing for a minute. In Pathfinder 2e it's called deflect arrow and later can be improved with the snatch arrow feat. It's two separate feats but the idea is the same as in 5e. Suppose a monk character takes a deflect arrow feat in Pathfinder 2e when they turn fourth level. Imagine how that player will feel when the character deflects the first arrow that would have hit them without this ability. The other members of the party look on in amazement and the players say to each other how cool that was. Yeah, it was cool!

But for the character to use it, you have to fire an arrow at them. Imagine if instead you, the DM, used your knowledge of the player's feet selection for their character and never shot at them again. Somehow, every baddie from here to the negative energy plane somehow knows that this character can deflect or catch arrows shot at them. That is unrealistic, frustrating for the character, and it makes the player feel dumb for selecting the ability. Here's another example. Suppose you're running an arcane spellcaster of some sort and hit level five and finally get access to the arguably most popular spell in the history of tabletop roleplaying, Fireball. Don't come at me by the way with something like, oh, Bless is more popular and used more often. Yeah, very few players in the history of gaming have ever been excited about

getting access to the Bless spell. That being said, I bet you like that bonus to hit, don't you, allies? Yeah, yeah, you do. You'd better be damned happy you like that bonus to hit, don't you allies? Yeah, yeah you do. You'd better be damned happy I used a spell slot on that shit so you can hit more often. You're welcome, you overly proud fighter and cocksure rogue. You aren't good at combat and should stay back, Mr. Cleric. Yeah, well, who's keeping your ass standing right now? Me, that's why, and uh, sorry. Evidently I have some misplaced aggression about playing a cleric. Anyway, back to Fireball. The PC finally gets access to Fireball, which if you don't know does fire damage over a decent

sized area of the battlefield. It's a great crowd control because it's hard for those low-level thugs to hit you when they're fried extra crispy by the wizard. It works best when the baddies are grouped up so the spell can hit multiple of them at once. Every strategic player I've ever known will look for the right place to drop a small explosion on the battle map to hurt as many baddies as possible, and it makes sense. Dragons maximize the use of their breath weapons, see episode 217, and sorcerers maximize their area of effect damage. Imagine, suddenly after the PC gets this awesome spell.

None of the baddies ever group up. They're always just out of reach for one spell to hit two or three of them at once. Now that spellcaster is sitting on a spell that is nowhere near as useful, and whose power would be nowhere near as cool if you cast it and only kill one low-level monster with it. DMs. By deciding all of your enemies will stay spread out, you've robbed the player of an opportunity to demonstrate a really cool ability now that they have Fireball. The players have a cool new tool and they don't get a chance to use it. I mean this same argument can be made for Ancestry abilities, feats, spells, and anything

else that the players gain over time, including equipment, by the way. That helm has the ability to temporarily blind attackers that fail a save once per day? Oh gosh, suddenly there's a rush of opponents who don't have eyes. That is an awful thing to do to the players. What I want to encourage my beloved GMs out there to do is to give your players opportunities to use their abilities to show off as the badasses that they are. Allow those new powers to shine. But I can hear you right now. Jeremy in episode number whatever you said that we should play opponents as smart. Smart opponents wouldn't just clump up and let the wizard blast them. That is true and a good point. But my counter to that is that some baddies are smarter than others.

Most animals, magical beasts, or even a good chunk of humanoids won't know that this PC is a wizard or sorcerer or bard or magus or whatever that can sling fiery death from hundreds of feet away. So it would stand to reason that yes, some smart enemies, especially spellcasters, may be ready for that firebally deathcaster and prepare accordingly, but not every wolf or thug or ogre would know to stand exactly 35 feet apart from each other. If you do that, you're taking some fun away from your player. To sum up my point, if the enemies aren't super intelligent or are experienced opponents

like boss fights or if the baddies don't have detailed intel on how the pieces operate, give your wizard or monk or fighter or scout or whatever that picked up that new ability a situation where they can show off. Put the fighter with cleave in the midst of a bunch of low level monsters, give your fireball caster a group of enemies that they can bring the pain to and if your cleric can now do it give them a chance to counter spell the big baddie spells. Let your players use their new abilities in your game when they get them and if you do I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. If you like this podcast please help me

share it on social media and tell your gaming friends about it. I would be humbly honored if you would do that for me. Tune in next week when, thanks to a suggestion from Brenton Galbraith, I'm going to talk about ways you can set up your campaign to take a little break. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Banks. I had some more puns to give out, but I decided to stop. They just don't make much sense. Or dollars. I know, but I decided to stop. They just don't make much sense. Or dollars. I know, I know, I know.

You're over these jokes. This has been episode 219, a reminder to let players use their new abilities. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking20 podcast is a publishing cube media production. Copyright 2024. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.