I've been a long time debating in my own head if this thread should be published here or into the "only DM'S" section. Finally i've concluded that the point of view of many players can help me to understand what is happening on my table and how can i be more or less responsible of it.
Let's set the scenario, i will try to keep it simple;
I've a group of 5 players, and they have created a very nice group in-role, with the few sharp edges that every group can have. However, in the last session i felt that something went wrong between them, and i'm not sure if one of these players was trying to influence in the way i build up encounters, or just sending a message in-role to the rest of the party.
Situation goes as follows.
The group; Ancestors barbarian/Divination wizard/arcane warrior/scout/moon druid. (lvl3)
After building a strong group and friendship in "Sunkenpig", a little town between Neverwinter and Deepwaters, the group managed to embarc in the "Champion of The Seas", a gargantuan gallion from Deepwaters. This was no easy feat, the group had to save the town first, discovering an evil plan brewed by the town mayor, a female triton called Khoril, and her lover, "Brelo", the cunning leader of "The Seaguls", a huge band of bandits acting in the area.
All that while they got trapped into an ancient dungeon full of savage magic, where a misterious order of solar elves were, centuries ago, trying to open a path to Evermeet through the use of dangerous magic...You get the idea, they made strong ties, saved one another and ended up beign the townsfolk heroes.
And so, two weeks after the gallion departs, they collide with an enormous section of frozen sea. Their mission is simple; climb down the mascaron of the ship and find a route through the weakest ice possible. They get lost in the mist, and end up beign attacked by 5 zombies and 1 zombie ogre, all of the zombis with swimming speed except for the ogre, who cannot swim propperly and moves 10 feet underwarter (this will be important later)
The real danger here is the environment of the encounter. All you need to know here is that the fight starts over the ice, but even if i drescribed how the ice shattered bit by bit, turn by turn, most of them stayed where they started the fight (surrounded), and so, the ice ended up craking, and they went underwater, taking cold damage by turn (CONS DC 10 1D4).
Things turn a bit ugly, part of the fight went underwater untill the group managed to get ou, but not without recieving hard blows!, and, once out, they start shattering the zombies to pieces while the monsters try tro climb out of the ice. The scout was down, but the wizard took him out of the water with a spell. The zombi ogre was underwater and out of the fight (remember, he's slow).
While the frontline takes care of the zombies remaining (3), the wizard stayed a bit far from them, helping from the distance, for about 4 rounds, until the hand of the zombi ogre shatters the ice under him and sink him with a grapple. They start sinking at 30' per turn, since the ogre just needs to let himself sink.
That character ended up dead, and that's not the only problem.
The problem is that the druid had all his spells, full HP in the first bear form, and 4 potions of healing with him. He did not turned his animal form, and didnt sink to help his friend untill the ogre had taken him to the very bottom of the water, drowning him. He also didnt turned to heal the scout, who happens to be a triton that could litteraly had RUN underwater to save the wizard.
So...my question here is...Was this a message to the group? "I'm not going to be your nurse even if that means you die?" (Wich the player claims this to be, because i talked to him about it). Or it looks more like a pressure point to the DM? Because i kinda feel weird now when building encounters, not because i think they are too hard, but because i feel there's one player that's not going to play in environments that dont let him play 100% of his animal forms. I mean, he could have saved the wizard pretty easily, he was full HP and had another animal form to turn into, also he was the only one in the group with potions (that he turned into the animal form)...all of this when the ogre was like half HP and atacks over him had advantage due to the grapple over the wizard.
I mean, if he was role playing the character, he did pretty well...if he wants to roleplay a rude druid, wich can be perfectly fine. But if he was not, well...
What do you think about it as players, and as DM'S? have you ever been in similar situations? this is somewhat new to me, and i dont feel like making encounters easier or optimal for the group just because they are not willing to help each other...
30 feet per turn sink is pretty fastb but yeah the druid coulda shoulda saved the Wizard.
Maybe it was just an error. Maybe the druid is a dick.
I have not been in/seen this situation before (I did have a situation where a charmed PC was all too happy to Attack my character, but that was mostly in good fun).
Were options suggested to him at the table? Maybe he was just hyper-focused on his own character's situation and goals, and then reframed it all after the fact in order to not appear inattentive or stupid? It's pretty common for folks to (given the option) prefer to be viewed as mean rather than stupid.
The only way to know for sure is to ask the druid's player what happened, and even that's not 100% since he might lie to save face or keep other people from getting mad at him. I will confess, I'm surprised that nobody, OOCly, looked at him player to player and asked him WTF he was doing.
The only time I've seen anything like this, I was the 'problem player', but one PC had been regularly bullying and insulting mine, and I had informed him, both IC and OOC, that if he didn't stop, I would render him no aid. He didn't stop harassing me (and I made it clear it was annoying me on both IC and OOC fronts), and when he looked to me for healing, I told him no and he asked 'What? Why the **** not?!' I rolled my eyes so hard I checked out my own ass.
In modern parlance ...
Me: "If you keep harassing me, I'm not healing you."
I don't think you as the DM need to do anything. You already spoke to the player and they didn't offer anything more. It's an in-party problem what they decided to do with him. The druid has probably lost face with the rest of the group. If the behavior continues and there is a loss of teamwork from it (cus I don't know how the Wizard player too his PC death) then you can all address it together.
You can simply say "We're all trying to have fun here together, we just need your help to do that. You're an important member of the group, we need you to help us out in fights."
I want to thank you all for the really nice suggestions and hints given to me.
I would like to update this to you, since you all helped: I talked with the player, he told me that he dont want the party to look at him as a nurse, but as a serious and almost rude druid that needs to be adressed in order to lift a finger for the others. "they will have to pay me the cost of the potions, or even cry for help if they want me to waste my animal forms just to heal them".
I dont know how will this end, i told him that the idea of the group was to have fun.
He told me to focus on the roleplaying aspect, and also the narrative, because "if they are grown ups" they will just roleplay in response to his character's behaviour.
I asked him, very calmly, if he was ready to "roleplay" a character that gets kicked out of the group for beign too rude with a bunch of adventurers that can find new companions all over the place, and dont have the need or the desire to waste their times with someone that preffer to see them die than helping without beign asked for it.
He said "we will see..."
And that's it. I hope the party can manage this and turn the situation in an interesting narrative group rather than a constant fighting over this issue.
Fyi, I wouldn’t describe this character as “rude”, but as “amoral psychopath”. Letting your traveling companion LITERALLY DIE is a bit beyond just “rude”!
For me, personally, I would be miffed if this happened to me. If my character died because another player decided to play his character to not be bothered to save mine when he was well equipped to do so, I wouldn't continue to participate.
However, I can be rather bitter.
Anyway, it sounds like this druid needs to go. As ftl mentioned, this is definitely a psychopath - not really a good fit for an adventuring group. I feel that the group would be well within their rights to make the Druid leave asap.
This should be a lesson for the player - if you're going to play DND, a cooperative game, then you need to play a character that is at least willing to pretend to make the effort to save someone who is going to die.
You could just have every creature only ever attack the Druid until he learns. If he won’t heal others, make him heal himself. When he complains just be like , well the creatures seen a big scary bear and a few scrawny humans or w/e races. He will eventually learn he is part of a team or rage quit. But at this current state he is going to cause your game to end without a finish.
So, I'd just like to say a few more words about why this is bad behavior "out of character", not just in-character - because acting like this deliberately blurs the line between IC and OOC.
In-character, the only SANE response to this is to ditch the druid ASAP. Adventurers are getting into fights together, going into dark dungeons, putting their lives at risk - it is lunacy to do this on a team with someone you don't trust to have your back. If the guy is callous enough to watch their party member die without lifting a finger to help, over the cost of a 50-gp potion, it would also seem in-character like he's the guy that might slit your throat at night for a different 50-gp potion, much less a magic item. This is NOT someone anybody would want to adventure with if they've got any choice. In-character, saying "you know, let's not travel with this guy anymore, he's untrustworthy" would be a no-brainer solution, and it would make no sense to even give the guy a second chance. You don't give second chances when YOU MIGHT LITERALLY DIE, AND ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS JUST DID.
And yet, that feels like a drastic step - kicking someone out of the party is something you agonize over, it's considered a last resort! Why is that? Out-of-character reasons. D&D doesn't give the party a neat way of kicking out a character without kicking out a player, so "you know, this druid is untrustworthy and just let my character's friend die, my character wouldn't want to adventure with him anymore" is tied into "this person is a friend who I'm sitting across the table from, I feel really bad telling him I don't want to play a tabletop game with him".
So the IC, the character stays in the party, for an entirely OOC reason - and I put the blame for that squarely on the person who's relying on the OOC pressure to keep his character in the party, while pretending he's "just roleplaying".
There's two ways out. One is to have an out-of-character chat with the player, and have him change his ways. The player can certainly get a second chance - it's just a game, after all, no hard feelings. (Though, by the way, what you posted about your interaction with the player does not indicate that he accepts that he's done something wrong. )
The other is for the party to deal with it in-character - but in-character, the obvious solution is for them to part ways with the psychopath druid, since he clearly can't be trusted. (The druid's player can be free to roll up a new character to rejoin the party, which now has two openings.)
There is a third way, which is for everyone to keep playing an everyone-out-for-themselves backstabbing party. But you have to (out-of-character) make sure all the players are interested in that, because that's often not what people are looking for from D&D. You can't make them resolve that out-of-character issue using in-character in-game actions.
depending on Alignment as DM I may do an Alignment shift (possibly with an Abilities penalty to Wis/Cha)
Why the ability penalty? Alignment's already absurd, but that's just stupid.
The alignment shift is a reflection of reality so that makes some sense. But I agree with FoxfireInferno on an actual penalty is a bit much. Unless they were a paladin violating their oath (which have rules), the only penalty might be social stigma. An actual penalty to stats is probably overdoing it.
Yea, as long as the Druid is in the party it is doomed. His mentality will kill any dnd game. This is a team game and without the team there is no game. That’s why I suggested only attacking him every round, with every creature. Because maybe there is a slim chance to fix him. More then likely he will rage quit though.
There are creative things to do to him to entertain the party and maybe get it through his head.but more then likely he will quit because he is stuck on the mentality of everything is about him and no one else is important. But if you want have a npc rob him off his potions while he sleeps. Have a npc mage mind control him and use them on his party. Or just never give him any spotlight or any reward or positive result for anything. either make him never be the center of any attention or the center of embarrassing attention that never achieves his goals. But basically he is a selfish individual and narcissist who will ruin your game and only cares about himself. As a fellow dm though, just kick him out off the group. It’s easier and better for you and your party in the end.
Yikes. I would honestly have just taken his character sheet (If it was IRL) and then handed him a blank one and said "Sorry, that doesn't work for my campaign".
Or I'd just have him pick from a list of pregens if he doesn't want to make a new one.
This seems like a very Adventure's League mindset, but not good for a home game. Maybe this player had a bad experience with feeling taken advantage of as a healer and is taking it out on everyone else. IMO don't play a healer then.
The "My Guy" attitude is not good for team work. Sure, "Your guy" might just be a roleplay thing, but your character does not control you; you make decisions and choices for your character. Either find out what will make "your guy" less of an ******* or make a new character that isn't as jaded. It's really not that hard. He sounds like he's on a serious power trip.
Yikes. I would honestly have just taken his character sheet (If it was IRL) and then handed him a blank one and said "Sorry, that doesn't work for my campaign".
Or I'd just have him pick from a list of pregens if he doesn't want to make a new one.
The guy sounds like a jerk. I don't think having him play another character will change anything.
Hellow fellow community!
I've been a long time debating in my own head if this thread should be published here or into the "only DM'S" section. Finally i've concluded that the point of view of many players can help me to understand what is happening on my table and how can i be more or less responsible of it.
Let's set the scenario, i will try to keep it simple;
I've a group of 5 players, and they have created a very nice group in-role, with the few sharp edges that every group can have. However, in the last session i felt that something went wrong between them, and i'm not sure if one of these players was trying to influence in the way i build up encounters, or just sending a message in-role to the rest of the party.
Situation goes as follows.
The group; Ancestors barbarian/Divination wizard/arcane warrior/scout/moon druid. (lvl3)
After building a strong group and friendship in "Sunkenpig", a little town between Neverwinter and Deepwaters, the group managed to embarc in the "Champion of The Seas", a gargantuan gallion from Deepwaters. This was no easy feat, the group had to save the town first, discovering an evil plan brewed by the town mayor, a female triton called Khoril, and her lover, "Brelo", the cunning leader of "The Seaguls", a huge band of bandits acting in the area.
All that while they got trapped into an ancient dungeon full of savage magic, where a misterious order of solar elves were, centuries ago, trying to open a path to Evermeet through the use of dangerous magic...You get the idea, they made strong ties, saved one another and ended up beign the townsfolk heroes.
And so, two weeks after the gallion departs, they collide with an enormous section of frozen sea. Their mission is simple; climb down the mascaron of the ship and find a route through the weakest ice possible. They get lost in the mist, and end up beign attacked by 5 zombies and 1 zombie ogre, all of the zombis with swimming speed except for the ogre, who cannot swim propperly and moves 10 feet underwarter (this will be important later)
The real danger here is the environment of the encounter. All you need to know here is that the fight starts over the ice, but even if i drescribed how the ice shattered bit by bit, turn by turn, most of them stayed where they started the fight (surrounded), and so, the ice ended up craking, and they went underwater, taking cold damage by turn (CONS DC 10 1D4).
Things turn a bit ugly, part of the fight went underwater untill the group managed to get ou, but not without recieving hard blows!, and, once out, they start shattering the zombies to pieces while the monsters try tro climb out of the ice. The scout was down, but the wizard took him out of the water with a spell. The zombi ogre was underwater and out of the fight (remember, he's slow).
While the frontline takes care of the zombies remaining (3), the wizard stayed a bit far from them, helping from the distance, for about 4 rounds, until the hand of the zombi ogre shatters the ice under him and sink him with a grapple. They start sinking at 30' per turn, since the ogre just needs to let himself sink.
That character ended up dead, and that's not the only problem.
The problem is that the druid had all his spells, full HP in the first bear form, and 4 potions of healing with him. He did not turned his animal form, and didnt sink to help his friend untill the ogre had taken him to the very bottom of the water, drowning him. He also didnt turned to heal the scout, who happens to be a triton that could litteraly had RUN underwater to save the wizard.
So...my question here is...Was this a message to the group? "I'm not going to be your nurse even if that means you die?" (Wich the player claims this to be, because i talked to him about it). Or it looks more like a pressure point to the DM? Because i kinda feel weird now when building encounters, not because i think they are too hard, but because i feel there's one player that's not going to play in environments that dont let him play 100% of his animal forms. I mean, he could have saved the wizard pretty easily, he was full HP and had another animal form to turn into, also he was the only one in the group with potions (that he turned into the animal form)...all of this when the ogre was like half HP and atacks over him had advantage due to the grapple over the wizard.
I mean, if he was role playing the character, he did pretty well...if he wants to roleplay a rude druid, wich can be perfectly fine. But if he was not, well...
What do you think about it as players, and as DM'S? have you ever been in similar situations? this is somewhat new to me, and i dont feel like making encounters easier or optimal for the group just because they are not willing to help each other...
THANKS IN ADVANCE!.
30 feet per turn sink is pretty fastb but yeah the druid coulda shoulda saved the Wizard.
Maybe it was just an error. Maybe the druid is a dick.
I have not been in/seen this situation before (I did have a situation where a charmed PC was all too happy to Attack my character, but that was mostly in good fun).
It sounds like either he was afraid of his Druid being killed or the entire group was having an off night or the group isn’t cooperating very well.
Professional computer geek
Were options suggested to him at the table? Maybe he was just hyper-focused on his own character's situation and goals, and then reframed it all after the fact in order to not appear inattentive or stupid? It's pretty common for folks to (given the option) prefer to be viewed as mean rather than stupid.
The only way to know for sure is to ask the druid's player what happened, and even that's not 100% since he might lie to save face or keep other people from getting mad at him. I will confess, I'm surprised that nobody, OOCly, looked at him player to player and asked him WTF he was doing.
The only time I've seen anything like this, I was the 'problem player', but one PC had been regularly bullying and insulting mine, and I had informed him, both IC and OOC, that if he didn't stop, I would render him no aid. He didn't stop harassing me (and I made it clear it was annoying me on both IC and OOC fronts), and when he looked to me for healing, I told him no and he asked 'What? Why the **** not?!' I rolled my eyes so hard I checked out my own ass.
In modern parlance ...
Me: "If you keep harassing me, I'm not healing you."
Him: *Keeps harassing me*
Me: *Doesn't heal him*
Him: *surprised Pikachu face*
I don't think you as the DM need to do anything. You already spoke to the player and they didn't offer anything more. It's an in-party problem what they decided to do with him. The druid has probably lost face with the rest of the group. If the behavior continues and there is a loss of teamwork from it (cus I don't know how the Wizard player too his PC death) then you can all address it together.
You can simply say "We're all trying to have fun here together, we just need your help to do that. You're an important member of the group, we need you to help us out in fights."
I want to thank you all for the really nice suggestions and hints given to me.
I would like to update this to you, since you all helped: I talked with the player, he told me that he dont want the party to look at him as a nurse, but as a serious and almost rude druid that needs to be adressed in order to lift a finger for the others. "they will have to pay me the cost of the potions, or even cry for help if they want me to waste my animal forms just to heal them".
I dont know how will this end, i told him that the idea of the group was to have fun.
He told me to focus on the roleplaying aspect, and also the narrative, because "if they are grown ups" they will just roleplay in response to his character's behaviour.
I asked him, very calmly, if he was ready to "roleplay" a character that gets kicked out of the group for beign too rude with a bunch of adventurers that can find new companions all over the place, and dont have the need or the desire to waste their times with someone that preffer to see them die than helping without beign asked for it.
He said "we will see..."
And that's it. I hope the party can manage this and turn the situation in an interesting narrative group rather than a constant fighting over this issue.
THANK YOU ALL GUYS!
Fyi, I wouldn’t describe this character as “rude”, but as “amoral psychopath”. Letting your traveling companion LITERALLY DIE is a bit beyond just “rude”!
Turnabout is fair play. The next time the druid needs assistance, the other players can simply give him a taste of his own medicine.
He will either learn, or leave the group in a rage quit.
For me, personally, I would be miffed if this happened to me. If my character died because another player decided to play his character to not be bothered to save mine when he was well equipped to do so, I wouldn't continue to participate.
However, I can be rather bitter.
Anyway, it sounds like this druid needs to go. As ftl mentioned, this is definitely a psychopath - not really a good fit for an adventuring group. I feel that the group would be well within their rights to make the Druid leave asap.
This should be a lesson for the player - if you're going to play DND, a cooperative game, then you need to play a character that is at least willing to pretend to make the effort to save someone who is going to die.
Just a bad character concept, if you ask me. :/
depending on Alignment as DM I may do an Alignment shift (possibly with an Abilities penalty to Wis/Cha)
Why the ability penalty? Alignment's already absurd, but that's just stupid.
You could just have every creature only ever attack the Druid until he learns. If he won’t heal others, make him heal himself. When he complains just be like , well the creatures seen a big scary bear and a few scrawny humans or w/e races. He will eventually learn he is part of a team or rage quit. But at this current state he is going to cause your game to end without a finish.
So, I'd just like to say a few more words about why this is bad behavior "out of character", not just in-character - because acting like this deliberately blurs the line between IC and OOC.
In-character, the only SANE response to this is to ditch the druid ASAP. Adventurers are getting into fights together, going into dark dungeons, putting their lives at risk - it is lunacy to do this on a team with someone you don't trust to have your back. If the guy is callous enough to watch their party member die without lifting a finger to help, over the cost of a 50-gp potion, it would also seem in-character like he's the guy that might slit your throat at night for a different 50-gp potion, much less a magic item. This is NOT someone anybody would want to adventure with if they've got any choice. In-character, saying "you know, let's not travel with this guy anymore, he's untrustworthy" would be a no-brainer solution, and it would make no sense to even give the guy a second chance. You don't give second chances when YOU MIGHT LITERALLY DIE, AND ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS JUST DID.
And yet, that feels like a drastic step - kicking someone out of the party is something you agonize over, it's considered a last resort! Why is that? Out-of-character reasons. D&D doesn't give the party a neat way of kicking out a character without kicking out a player, so "you know, this druid is untrustworthy and just let my character's friend die, my character wouldn't want to adventure with him anymore" is tied into "this person is a friend who I'm sitting across the table from, I feel really bad telling him I don't want to play a tabletop game with him".
So the IC, the character stays in the party, for an entirely OOC reason - and I put the blame for that squarely on the person who's relying on the OOC pressure to keep his character in the party, while pretending he's "just roleplaying".
There's two ways out. One is to have an out-of-character chat with the player, and have him change his ways. The player can certainly get a second chance - it's just a game, after all, no hard feelings. (Though, by the way, what you posted about your interaction with the player does not indicate that he accepts that he's done something wrong. )
The other is for the party to deal with it in-character - but in-character, the obvious solution is for them to part ways with the psychopath druid, since he clearly can't be trusted. (The druid's player can be free to roll up a new character to rejoin the party, which now has two openings.)
There is a third way, which is for everyone to keep playing an everyone-out-for-themselves backstabbing party. But you have to (out-of-character) make sure all the players are interested in that, because that's often not what people are looking for from D&D. You can't make them resolve that out-of-character issue using in-character in-game actions.
The alignment shift is a reflection of reality so that makes some sense. But I agree with FoxfireInferno on an actual penalty is a bit much. Unless they were a paladin violating their oath (which have rules), the only penalty might be social stigma. An actual penalty to stats is probably overdoing it.
Yea, as long as the Druid is in the party it is doomed. His mentality will kill any dnd game. This is a team game and without the team there is no game. That’s why I suggested only attacking him every round, with every creature. Because maybe there is a slim chance to fix him. More then likely he will rage quit though.
There are creative things to do to him to entertain the party and maybe get it through his head.but more then likely he will quit because he is stuck on the mentality of everything is about him and no one else is important. But if you want have a npc rob him off his potions while he sleeps. Have a npc mage mind control him and use them on his party. Or just never give him any spotlight or any reward or positive result for anything. either make him never be the center of any attention or the center of embarrassing attention that never achieves his goals. But basically he is a selfish individual and narcissist who will ruin your game and only cares about himself. As a fellow dm though, just kick him out off the group. It’s easier and better for you and your party in the end.
I agree with Joe and ftl, but there is also another option if you don't want to do what they suggest.
Have an npc cleric join the party who has a strong bias against druids and the druid faith, and will refuse to help him.
If you really want to stick it to him, have the cleric actively work to undermine everything he does.
Yikes. I would honestly have just taken his character sheet (If it was IRL) and then handed him a blank one and said "Sorry, that doesn't work for my campaign".
Or I'd just have him pick from a list of pregens if he doesn't want to make a new one.
This seems like a very Adventure's League mindset, but not good for a home game. Maybe this player had a bad experience with feeling taken advantage of as a healer and is taking it out on everyone else. IMO don't play a healer then.
The "My Guy" attitude is not good for team work. Sure, "Your guy" might just be a roleplay thing, but your character does not control you; you make decisions and choices for your character. Either find out what will make "your guy" less of an ******* or make a new character that isn't as jaded. It's really not that hard. He sounds like he's on a serious power trip.
The guy sounds like a jerk. I don't think having him play another character will change anything.
You're probably right. I was being optimistic about maybe they just need to roleplay a less rude character. But the dude IRL seems like an arse.