I am currently running Lost Mines of Phandelver for a fluid group of about 10 people. We play once a week and on a given night 4-6 people will show up. We've been doing this for 4 months now. I have very limited experience as a DM so for all intents and purposes, I am new. At this point most of the players have a working understanding of how their classes work and what their various class and race specific quirks and abilities are.
Whenever someone forgets something relating to their class, I'll pass them the PHB or basic rules and let them look it up on their own. If there are questions regarding the rules, I look up the answer myself. I've never explicitly stated this but it's the precedent. It is very important that players are expected to be as self sufficient as possible because we have a large group and I'm stretched thin.
I have a problem player (PP) who wanted to be a sorcerer. I told him that he'd have to keep track of his spells and more stats than everyone else and that he'd probably have more fun playing a non-magic class but he insisted. I handed him the PHB to choose his spells and he chose all of them at random.
Below are the primary issues, most of which come up during combat, and what I've done to remedy them:
-
PP does not know what any of his spells do but tries to cast them anyway. Whenever he casts a spell I'll ask him what it does or if he
has the requisite materials and he'll say he doesn't know. This turns
into me pausing the flow of the game to look up the spell, explain it
to him, and then continue. I have tried asking him to write his
spells down but that results in the next problem. -
PP takes horrible notes. He'll write out a couple words on a spell that he can't decipher later or straight up write the wrong
spell down. He does the same with his ability scores and stats. We've
had to reroll his health before because he was not tracking max
health. He is so inconsistent and disorganized that we have to
recalculate his stats for every relevant action he takes.
This also annoys the other players because he is constantly losing
items. I give him unlimited crossbow ammo as a courtesy and match his
xp to the average of the other players. -
I've asked PP repeatedly to print out all his spells from the wiki or something but he forgets every time. I would do this for him but then
I'd have to do it for everyone (I have far too many players) and I
don't want to set a precedent of being a nanny. Also I'm afraid that
if I give him any more help he'll expect me to track everything for
him. So, I keep holding up the game to look up spells and ask him to do something about this. He understands the problem but does not deal with it. -
PP does not understand the larger meaning behind any of the numbers. All of the other players understand that difficult actions
require higher rolls and they have a feel for when their health is
low. PP doesn't get this and won't do anything (including self
preservation) but fire his crossbow unless the other players ask him
to. I encourage him to read the PHB. I've sent him links, I've put
the book in front of him, he'll open to a page to humor me but won't
actually read. I don't want to lend him my PHB to read on his own because he has a history of forgetting things at home.
I don't want to kick him out. He really shines during the RP segments (he even uses spells outside of combat very effectively) and he's a fun player but he is such an impediment during combat that I need help dealing with him. Other players will occasionally memorize spells for him or look things up while I'm doing other things but we're all new and the table gets easily frustrated.
What should I do?
Best Answer
If some of the other answers don't let you figure out the root of the problem and get him more involved in the non-roleplay segments, that's fine. Roll with it. As long as he has a sense of humour it'll be fine. I've shared a table with many an odd duck, and if they don't fit the game, but you want to keep them around, then you fit the game to them. Otherwise you might as well be playing DnD Online. So from your description, here's what I'd do based on past experience with similar (but not quite as difficult) players:
What you've got here is a stereotypical absent-minded wizard, only in sorcerer form. Just pretend he's role-playing through the middle of combat too. Potentially you might even encourage him to do exactly that since it seems to be his preferred mode of operation. Absent-minded wizards are usually NPCs, but that's not a hard requirement. Shift some of the things you might be tempted to reveal via an absent-minded wizard onto him. Tell them to him privately, with no repeats, and make him write them down himself. His horrible note-taking will play right into your hands. The frustration of knowing that he should know this critical piece of plot-relevant information will encourage him to start taking better notes.
He casts a spell and doesn't know what it does? That's fine, he's a sorcerer and brings magical effects into being by force of personality. If he's not focused enough to shape the forces he's channelling, then you get to just make something up. "Magic missal" sounds like it summons a prayer book for the cleric. "Meatier Swarm" sounds like the enemy is about to get pelted with steaks for a few d6 worth of damage. "Feather Fall" sounds like the party will be able to re-stuff their pillows and bedrolls once they dig themselves out of the pile at the bottom of the cliff. "Mold Earth" and "Burning Hands" could have nasty side-effects... Especially near steaks or feathers.
Don't explicitly tell him the combat's over. If he wants to keep shooting at things that are already dead, that's fine. People sometimes do this in real life too.
He can't come up with one of his stats within 20 seconds? That's fine, he's obviously too distracted to really be attempting the check anyway, so make up a number for him, say by rolling some number of dice (probably 1-3d6 depending on what you're replacing.) Don't tell him what it is, just have him roll the d20. Insert improbable explanations for successes or failures near the edges of the bell curve.
His talent for roleplay gets to be useful to the group. His ineptitude in combat gets to be entertaining, without dragging things out to the point where the delay becomes frustrating. In a group as large as yours it's ok to have a couple of characters who aren't combat-oriented. Have the cleric take charge of plunking him down somewhere with good cover at the beginning of a fight so he can shoot his crossbow one-handed over a rock without looking and hope for the best. If he's really into role-play then getting him to play a character in a fight, not just a collection of numbers looking for optimal paths to kill things may well be your last hope of getting him more involved, and a panic-prone, absent-minded magician fits what he's already doing, so it would be a good starting point. He can develop the character further as the plot thickens.