So, as we know murder hobos are controversial to say the least. Some people claim that they are the result of roleplaying, and celebrate them, in the belief that they make the game more fun.
Others say that they are detrimental to the fun that other people are having.
Where do you fall in this, are you for, or against murder hobos?
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Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
For example: I had a dwarf monk, with a criminal background, who went through major mood swings (Thief to hero, peacemaker to bloodthirsty, raging maniac, etc.). When his baby yeti was petrified, he went insane, and tried to kill the drow mage that did it. Unfortunately, right before being able to finish it, he was teleported off by the mage. He attempted to return and kill the mage before being attacked by a civilian, who he had previously robbed. He Killed the woman who attacked him. He was taken to jail before succeeding on a strength check to rip the cell door off. A guard knocked him out (without rolling to attack or damage.) Another character must have complained, so I was "warned," I am not in favor of playing if i can't play as my character would. So, I killed my character off and left the campaign.
Was I in the wrong to do so, (I usually like to finish the whole campaign)?
"It's what my character would do" isn't a valid defense for disrupting the game/other player's fun, because you can always choose not to play a disruptive character. See Matt Coville's "The Wangrod Defense" (https://youtu.be/JoYR3eCFqoA)
Maybe next time when creating a character and deciding "what that character would do", consider how also that character would work as part of a group, as teamwork is a basic premise of the game.
That doesn't mean you have to play a goody goody character all the time either, but lets say you wanna play a thief. Rather than simply stealing everything that isn't nailed down during the game and shifting focus from whatever else is going on to your thieving and its consequences, try talking to your DM out of game and telling them "I want to play a thief, can we talk about ways to incorporate that?" Then the DM might devise some high value heist targets you might be able to go after as mini sidequests, and maybe make the npc that has the object a dick so you can get your good aligned party members behind you on stealing from them, or the DM could prepare some other content that incorporates your theiving without taking away from other character's fun. Same could go for playing a "crazy" character. Run ideas by your DM, maybe come up with patterns of behavior, individual triggers that require Wis saves or something. You can still play the kind of character you want without it just being "lol randomz" and derailing the game.
I get what you're saying, but I disagree. By roleplaying, your different traits manifest themselves in different ways. Being random is part of the fun of a crazy player, just as when playing a barbarian, your job is to "Hit something and drink mead" and that's the fun of it, it changes things up and you can act differently. After all, it is "what the character would do if he's a stubborn, quick-to-anger, slow-to-forget, grief-stricken, hard-raised, somewhat unstable dwarf who swore to end someone who wronged him.
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Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
But then refer back to my first point: if you can't think of a way to play your character in a way that doesn't disrupt the game for the other players, then you still have the power to not play that character and pick a different one that can function in the group.
But also consider; you're never behaving "randomly." If you're trying to have a crazy character that acts random, they're still doing so through the filter of you the player actively deciding how they act at any given time. So you need to check yourself to see if you're playing truly randomly (generating random action tables and rolling at times to remain impartial and really get across the chaotic nature of your player), or simply using "random" behavior to act however you the player want the character to act without consequences? It's like the difference between playing a truly chaotic neutral character or using chaotic neutral alignment just to mean "I do what I want" without having to justify your behavior.
Third point, there are many ways to play a character who is "stubborn, quick-to-anger, slow-to-forget, grief-stricken, hard-raised, somewhat unstable dwarf who swore to end someone who wronged him" that doesn't threaten to derail other player's fun. The character you just described might be the type to keep a list of everyone who'd ever wronged them and mutter it to themselves like Arya from GoT, or they might suffer sudden flashes of aggression when mildly provoked before coming to their senses and grumbling that the person is "not worth the effort" if they're just some random towns person. They might be stuck on one of the stages of grief like denial or bargaining, slowly working towards acceptance by the end of the campaign. My point being there's a ton of reasonable ways to play the character you've described. You just seem focused on one way to play that character and when that brought you into conflict with the group, rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water, you could've used that as an opportunity to re-think your approach.
Last point: Playing a murder-hobo, like anything else in d&d, requires a certain amount of buy-in from the other players at the table. If everyone wants to play a non-serious game where you all can raise some hell in a fantasy world, then yeah have fun murder-hoboing it up. However, if other people are taking the game more seriously and trying to get in some good roleplay and tell a story, then 99 times out of 100, playing a murder-hobo in that game will distract from that and take away from the other player's fun. I wouldn't play a murder hobo in a game unless I had first, out of game, talked to the other players at the table and the DM and checked that that's ok with them.
Right, but then you have the other players. If you're a light-on-roleplaying group, of course you don't like murder hobos. But if they're heavy on roleplaying, it's more appreciated. You have the sane characters who maybe are more quiet, but hard fighters, (usually they take a fighter, wizard or ranger class) You have jokesters, (bards, rogues), characters who wouldn't think of doing anything "improper" (clerics, paladins), then you have the mixed bags (monks, druids, sorcerers, warlocks etc.).
So part of the fun for me if i'm playing with murder hobos, is the contrast, the attempt to keep them in line, you don't have to be them to have fun with them.
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Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
But then refer back to my first point: if you can't think of a way to play your character in a way that doesn't disrupt the game for the other players, then you still have the power to not play that character and pick a different one that can function in the group.
But also consider; you're never behaving "randomly." If you're trying to have a crazy character that acts random, they're still doing so through the filter of you the player actively deciding how they act at any given time. So you need to check yourself to see if you're playing truly randomly (generating random action tables and rolling at times to remain impartial and really get across the chaotic nature of your player), or simply using "random" behavior to act however you the player want the character to act without consequences? It's like the difference between playing a truly chaotic neutral character or using chaotic neutral alignment just to mean "I do what I want" without having to justify your behavior.
Third point, there are many ways to play a character who is "stubborn, quick-to-anger, slow-to-forget, grief-stricken, hard-raised, somewhat unstable dwarf who swore to end someone who wronged him" that doesn't threaten to derail other player's fun. The character you just described might be the type to keep a list of everyone who'd ever wronged them and mutter it to themselves like Arya from GoT, or they might suffer sudden flashes of aggression when mildly provoked before coming to their senses and grumbling that the person is "not worth the effort" if they're just some random towns person. They might be stuck on one of the stages of grief like denial or bargaining, slowly working towards acceptance by the end of the campaign. My point being there's a ton of reasonable ways to play the character you've described. You just seem focused on one way to play that character and when that brought you into conflict with the group, rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water, you could've used that as an opportunity to re-think your approach.
Last point: Playing a murder-hobo, like anything else in d&d, requires a certain amount of buy-in from the other players at the table. If everyone wants to play a non-serious game where you all can raise some hell in a fantasy world, then yeah have fun murder-hoboing it up. However, if other people are taking the game more seriously and trying to get in some good roleplay and tell a story, then 99 times out of 100, playing a murder-hobo in that game will distract from that and take away from the other player's fun. I wouldn't play a murder hobo in a game unless I had first, out of game, talked to the other players at the table and the DM and checked that that's ok with them.
Let me stop you right there: I don't watch GoT
Murder hobos are hardcore roleplayers. When i go with a murder hobo (not often, usually if i have a dwarf or an elf), I take stock of the action and carefully consider what the action implies. At the start of the campaign, he was picking pockets, not really doing any harm. Towards the end, he was trying to get vengeance. As for the villager, it was spur of the moment, they were one-hit.
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Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
Most of the people that I have played with in the past 35ish years would just consider you disruptive. I have seen groups kick the characters that they can't trust out of the party or turn them in to the authorities for the reward money. Sometimes the player gets the hint and makes a more suitable character that is part of the team or they leave, either way mission accomplished. This does not mean that you can't be a "loose canon", but murdering civilians tends to have unwanted consequences for the group as a whole no matter what alignment they are playing.
It's definitely fun to have a mix of personalities in a group, but personality isn't necessarily tied to class, and "going around murdering people" is not a personality. You can be a "sane character" and still be a jokester or a hard fighter, so I don't really see that playing a murder-hobo specifically adds much more to the game than it takes away.
And I would not consider it fun to constantly have to try and reign in the behavior of a single player and babysit them instead of doing the plot or side mission or what have you. I think the fact that your party reacted the way they did should mean they did not find it fun either.
Also I would definitely say a light-RP game would be more murder-hobo friendly as you generally get less character investment and run it as more combat-focused, while a heavy-RP game it's more likely to disrupt people who are trying to act in character and get invested in the goings-on of the campaign world, so that seemed a little backwards to me the way you said it.
In general I think the consensus is people do not tend to appreciate murder-hobos and find them needlessly disruptive, a kind of over-simplification of the morally ambiguous hero archetype.
Most of the people that I have played with in the past 35ish years would just consider you disruptive. I have seen groups kick the characters that they can't trust out of the party or turn them in to the authorities for the reward money. Sometimes the player gets the hint and makes a more suitable character that is part of the team or they leave, either way mission accomplished. This does not mean that you can't be a "loose canon", but murdering civilians tends to have unwanted consequences for the group as a whole no matter what alignment they are playing.
At the start of the campaign, he was picking pockets, not really doing any harm. Towards the end, he was trying to get vengeance. As for the villager, it was spur of the moment, they were one-hit.
There's nothing wrong with playing a character who wants vengeance, but the part that seemed to rub your party the wrong way was maybe your single-minded approach. Was this the campaign bad guy you wanted to kill? Were the other players invested in taking them down? Or were you putting yourself in the spotlight on your personal quest to avenge your yeti while everyone else was trying to move on to other things? Bear in mind that you can be vengeful without acting on it IMMEDIATELY. Your vengeance could take the shape of like a "you'd better hope we don't cross paths again" while you continue with your quest and constantly dwell on how in the future you're going to totally take them down, and you can RP that until maybe the party has heard you grapple with it to the point that they become invested and vow to help you, after which point *then* you can feel free to pursue it single-mindedly.
As for killing a villager in one hit, why even fight them at all? Even if they've attacked you, they're so below your radar do they even merit a response? Would a truly tough character really stop so low as to deal with someone who wasn't worth their time? Or couldn't you have dealt non-lethal damage? If anything the npc would've been the one in jail if you'd played your cards right.
I have to assume that there's something else you'd done or habitually done other then swear vengeance against a mage and kill an npc out of self defense that rubbed your party the wrong way that you might be able to reflect on, but if it really was just those two things, then there's two examples of how to handle that kind of thing in the future.
Maybe you’re unaware, but the term “Murder Hobo” refers to a character that would sooner kill a shopkeep and rob the store than actually pay the 1gp for a coil of Rope, Hempen (50 feet).
Most of the people that I have played with in the past 35ish years would just consider you disruptive. I have seen groups kick the characters that they can't trust out of the party or turn them in to the authorities for the reward money. Sometimes the player gets the hint and makes a more suitable character that is part of the team or they leave, either way mission accomplished. This does not mean that you can't be a "loose canon", but murdering civilians tends to have unwanted consequences for the group as a whole no matter what alignment they are playing.
I don't just do that for fun, they attacked me, and i was roleplaying. Dwarves are not really chill people, and that seemed like a reaction thet seemed warranted. Had I done that with my halfling druid, that would have been out of place, but it's a dwarf criminal, with a chaotic, neutral alignment with just a touch of mental health issues.
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Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
Most of the people that I have played with in the past 35ish years would just consider you disruptive. I have seen groups kick the characters that they can't trust out of the party or turn them in to the authorities for the reward money. Sometimes the player gets the hint and makes a more suitable character that is part of the team or they leave, either way mission accomplished. This does not mean that you can't be a "loose canon", but murdering civilians tends to have unwanted consequences for the group as a whole no matter what alignment they are playing.
I don't just do that for fun, they attacked me, and i was roleplaying. Dwarves are not really chill people, and that seemed like a reaction thet seemed warranted. Had I done that with my halfling druid, that would have been out of place, but it's a dwarf criminal, with a chaotic, neutral alignment with just a touch of mental health issues.
If they attacked you, and you fought back, then that’s not being a “Murder Hobo.”
Maybe you’re unaware, but the term “Murder Hobo” refers to a character that would sooner kill a shopkeep and rob the store than actually pay the 1gp for a coil of Rope, Hempen (50 feet).
At the start of the campaign, he was picking pockets, not really doing any harm. Towards the end, he was trying to get vengeance. As for the villager, it was spur of the moment, they were one-hit.
There's nothing wrong with playing a character who wants vengeance, but the part that seemed to rub your party the wrong way was maybe your single-minded approach. Was this the campaign bad guy you wanted to kill? Were the other players invested in taking them down? Or were you putting yourself in the spotlight on your personal quest to avenge your yeti while everyone else was trying to move on to other things? Bear in mind that you can be vengeful without acting on it IMMEDIATELY. Your vengeance could take the shape of like a "you'd better hope we don't cross paths again" while you continue with your quest and constantly dwell on how in the future you're going to totally take them down, and you can RP that until maybe the party has heard you grapple with it to the point that they become invested and vow to help you, after which point *then* you can feel free to pursue it single-mindedly.
As for killing a villager in one hit, why even fight them at all? Even if they've attacked you, they're so below your radar do they even merit a response? Would a truly tough character really stop so low as to deal with someone who wasn't worth their time? Or couldn't you have dealt non-lethal damage? If anything the npc would've been the one in jail if you'd played your cards right.
I have to assume that there's something else you'd done or habitually done other then swear vengeance against a mage and kill an npc out of self defense that rubbed your party the wrong way that you might be able to reflect on, but if it really was just those two things, then there's two examples of how to handle that kind of thing in the future.
The other people were continuing on with the quest, but, as I said, you hurt, me, i may kill you on the spot, but i won't go back to kill you, you hurt my pet.... I will never stop hunting you.
If there were some things other than this, they never mentioned it.
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Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
Most of the people that I have played with in the past 35ish years would just consider you disruptive. I have seen groups kick the characters that they can't trust out of the party or turn them in to the authorities for the reward money. Sometimes the player gets the hint and makes a more suitable character that is part of the team or they leave, either way mission accomplished. This does not mean that you can't be a "loose canon", but murdering civilians tends to have unwanted consequences for the group as a whole no matter what alignment they are playing.
I don't just do that for fun, they attacked me, and i was roleplaying. Dwarves are not really chill people, and that seemed like a reaction thet seemed warranted. Had I done that with my halfling druid, that would have been out of place, but it's a dwarf criminal, with a chaotic, neutral alignment with just a touch of mental health issues.
Maybe you’re unaware, but the term “Murder Hobo” refers to a character that would sooner kill a shopkeep and rob the store than actually pay the 1gp for a coil of Rope, Hempen (50 feet).
They bring up an interesting point. Part of your justifications for your action seems to be trying to prove you're *not* a murder hobo and that your actions were justified, but in the OP and title of this thread you self-identify your character as a murder-hobo.
Maybe defending yourself against this NPC is not the thing your party is mad about. Maybe that was just the DM trying to put you in a situation where you'd be held to account for your actions because you'd been a murder-hobo in the past. What other things has this character done for you to identify them as a murder-hobo? Is it possible that you have a different understanding of this term? Because we all take it to mean a very specific type of player that's not 100% congrouous with what you've described.
Most of the people that I have played with in the past 35ish years would just consider you disruptive. I have seen groups kick the characters that they can't trust out of the party or turn them in to the authorities for the reward money. Sometimes the player gets the hint and makes a more suitable character that is part of the team or they leave, either way mission accomplished. This does not mean that you can't be a "loose canon", but murdering civilians tends to have unwanted consequences for the group as a whole no matter what alignment they are playing.
I don't just do that for fun, they attacked me, and i was roleplaying. Dwarves are not really chill people, and that seemed like a reaction thet seemed warranted. Had I done that with my halfling druid, that would have been out of place, but it's a dwarf criminal, with a chaotic, neutral alignment with just a touch of mental health issues.
If they attacked you, and you fought back, then that’s not being a “Murder Hobo.”
Maybe you’re unaware, but the term “Murder Hobo” refers to a character that would sooner kill a shopkeep and rob the store than actually pay the 1gp for a coil of Rope, Hempen (50 feet).
Yeah, i have no problem paying for that, It was a drow mage who petrified my baby yeti, and i hadn't learned that it wasn't un-petrified yet.
It was a villager who attacked me because i had tried to pick he pocket several days prior and had already attacked me. I had already specified in the game that i was on the warpath for the petrification, and that when i had had vengeance things would return to normal. I had also said i would kill any who stood in my path; As an angry dwarf hell-bent on vengeance would have.
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Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
I love Homebrew
I hate paladins
Warrior Bovine
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So, as we know murder hobos are controversial to say the least. Some people claim that they are the result of roleplaying, and celebrate them, in the belief that they make the game more fun.
Others say that they are detrimental to the fun that other people are having.
Where do you fall in this, are you for, or against murder hobos?
Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
I love Homebrew
I hate paladins
Warrior Bovine
For example: I had a dwarf monk, with a criminal background, who went through major mood swings (Thief to hero, peacemaker to bloodthirsty, raging maniac, etc.). When his baby yeti was petrified, he went insane, and tried to kill the drow mage that did it. Unfortunately, right before being able to finish it, he was teleported off by the mage. He attempted to return and kill the mage before being attacked by a civilian, who he had previously robbed. He Killed the woman who attacked him. He was taken to jail before succeeding on a strength check to rip the cell door off. A guard knocked him out (without rolling to attack or damage.) Another character must have complained, so I was "warned," I am not in favor of playing if i can't play as my character would. So, I killed my character off and left the campaign.
Was I in the wrong to do so, (I usually like to finish the whole campaign)?
Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
I love Homebrew
I hate paladins
Warrior Bovine
"It's what my character would do" isn't a valid defense for disrupting the game/other player's fun, because you can always choose not to play a disruptive character. See Matt Coville's "The Wangrod Defense" (https://youtu.be/JoYR3eCFqoA)
Maybe next time when creating a character and deciding "what that character would do", consider how also that character would work as part of a group, as teamwork is a basic premise of the game.
That doesn't mean you have to play a goody goody character all the time either, but lets say you wanna play a thief. Rather than simply stealing everything that isn't nailed down during the game and shifting focus from whatever else is going on to your thieving and its consequences, try talking to your DM out of game and telling them "I want to play a thief, can we talk about ways to incorporate that?" Then the DM might devise some high value heist targets you might be able to go after as mini sidequests, and maybe make the npc that has the object a dick so you can get your good aligned party members behind you on stealing from them, or the DM could prepare some other content that incorporates your theiving without taking away from other character's fun. Same could go for playing a "crazy" character. Run ideas by your DM, maybe come up with patterns of behavior, individual triggers that require Wis saves or something. You can still play the kind of character you want without it just being "lol randomz" and derailing the game.
I get what you're saying, but I disagree. By roleplaying, your different traits manifest themselves in different ways. Being random is part of the fun of a crazy player, just as when playing a barbarian, your job is to "Hit something and drink mead" and that's the fun of it, it changes things up and you can act differently. After all, it is "what the character would do if he's a stubborn, quick-to-anger, slow-to-forget, grief-stricken, hard-raised, somewhat unstable dwarf who swore to end someone who wronged him.
Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
I love Homebrew
I hate paladins
Warrior Bovine
Part of the fun for THAT player. If you are doing a solo adventure it's no problem, but there are other people at the table.
But then refer back to my first point: if you can't think of a way to play your character in a way that doesn't disrupt the game for the other players, then you still have the power to not play that character and pick a different one that can function in the group.
But also consider; you're never behaving "randomly." If you're trying to have a crazy character that acts random, they're still doing so through the filter of you the player actively deciding how they act at any given time. So you need to check yourself to see if you're playing truly randomly (generating random action tables and rolling at times to remain impartial and really get across the chaotic nature of your player), or simply using "random" behavior to act however you the player want the character to act without consequences? It's like the difference between playing a truly chaotic neutral character or using chaotic neutral alignment just to mean "I do what I want" without having to justify your behavior.
Third point, there are many ways to play a character who is "stubborn, quick-to-anger, slow-to-forget, grief-stricken, hard-raised, somewhat unstable dwarf who swore to end someone who wronged him" that doesn't threaten to derail other player's fun. The character you just described might be the type to keep a list of everyone who'd ever wronged them and mutter it to themselves like Arya from GoT, or they might suffer sudden flashes of aggression when mildly provoked before coming to their senses and grumbling that the person is "not worth the effort" if they're just some random towns person. They might be stuck on one of the stages of grief like denial or bargaining, slowly working towards acceptance by the end of the campaign. My point being there's a ton of reasonable ways to play the character you've described. You just seem focused on one way to play that character and when that brought you into conflict with the group, rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water, you could've used that as an opportunity to re-think your approach.
Last point: Playing a murder-hobo, like anything else in d&d, requires a certain amount of buy-in from the other players at the table. If everyone wants to play a non-serious game where you all can raise some hell in a fantasy world, then yeah have fun murder-hoboing it up. However, if other people are taking the game more seriously and trying to get in some good roleplay and tell a story, then 99 times out of 100, playing a murder-hobo in that game will distract from that and take away from the other player's fun. I wouldn't play a murder hobo in a game unless I had first, out of game, talked to the other players at the table and the DM and checked that that's ok with them.
Right, but then you have the other players. If you're a light-on-roleplaying group, of course you don't like murder hobos. But if they're heavy on roleplaying, it's more appreciated. You have the sane characters who maybe are more quiet, but hard fighters, (usually they take a fighter, wizard or ranger class) You have jokesters, (bards, rogues), characters who wouldn't think of doing anything "improper" (clerics, paladins), then you have the mixed bags (monks, druids, sorcerers, warlocks etc.).
So part of the fun for me if i'm playing with murder hobos, is the contrast, the attempt to keep them in line, you don't have to be them to have fun with them.
Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
I love Homebrew
I hate paladins
Warrior Bovine
Let me stop you right there: I don't watch GoT
Murder hobos are hardcore roleplayers. When i go with a murder hobo (not often, usually if i have a dwarf or an elf), I take stock of the action and carefully consider what the action implies. At the start of the campaign, he was picking pockets, not really doing any harm. Towards the end, he was trying to get vengeance. As for the villager, it was spur of the moment, they were one-hit.
Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
I love Homebrew
I hate paladins
Warrior Bovine
Most of the people that I have played with in the past 35ish years would just consider you disruptive. I have seen groups kick the characters that they can't trust out of the party or turn them in to the authorities for the reward money. Sometimes the player gets the hint and makes a more suitable character that is part of the team or they leave, either way mission accomplished. This does not mean that you can't be a "loose canon", but murdering civilians tends to have unwanted consequences for the group as a whole no matter what alignment they are playing.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
It's definitely fun to have a mix of personalities in a group, but personality isn't necessarily tied to class, and "going around murdering people" is not a personality. You can be a "sane character" and still be a jokester or a hard fighter, so I don't really see that playing a murder-hobo specifically adds much more to the game than it takes away.
And I would not consider it fun to constantly have to try and reign in the behavior of a single player and babysit them instead of doing the plot or side mission or what have you. I think the fact that your party reacted the way they did should mean they did not find it fun either.
Also I would definitely say a light-RP game would be more murder-hobo friendly as you generally get less character investment and run it as more combat-focused, while a heavy-RP game it's more likely to disrupt people who are trying to act in character and get invested in the goings-on of the campaign world, so that seemed a little backwards to me the way you said it.
In general I think the consensus is people do not tend to appreciate murder-hobos and find them needlessly disruptive, a kind of over-simplification of the morally ambiguous hero archetype.
"Murder hobos are hardcore roleplayers."
I have never found this to be true. In my experience it is very much the opposite.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
This
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There's nothing wrong with playing a character who wants vengeance, but the part that seemed to rub your party the wrong way was maybe your single-minded approach. Was this the campaign bad guy you wanted to kill? Were the other players invested in taking them down? Or were you putting yourself in the spotlight on your personal quest to avenge your yeti while everyone else was trying to move on to other things? Bear in mind that you can be vengeful without acting on it IMMEDIATELY. Your vengeance could take the shape of like a "you'd better hope we don't cross paths again" while you continue with your quest and constantly dwell on how in the future you're going to totally take them down, and you can RP that until maybe the party has heard you grapple with it to the point that they become invested and vow to help you, after which point *then* you can feel free to pursue it single-mindedly.
As for killing a villager in one hit, why even fight them at all? Even if they've attacked you, they're so below your radar do they even merit a response? Would a truly tough character really stop so low as to deal with someone who wasn't worth their time? Or couldn't you have dealt non-lethal damage? If anything the npc would've been the one in jail if you'd played your cards right.
I have to assume that there's something else you'd done or habitually done other then swear vengeance against a mage and kill an npc out of self defense that rubbed your party the wrong way that you might be able to reflect on, but if it really was just those two things, then there's two examples of how to handle that kind of thing in the future.
"murder hobos" are just an excuse to go around wreaking havoc
Maybe you’re unaware, but the term “Murder Hobo” refers to a character that would sooner kill a shopkeep and rob the store than actually pay the 1gp for a coil of Rope, Hempen (50 feet).
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I don't just do that for fun, they attacked me, and i was roleplaying. Dwarves are not really chill people, and that seemed like a reaction thet seemed warranted. Had I done that with my halfling druid, that would have been out of place, but it's a dwarf criminal, with a chaotic, neutral alignment with just a touch of mental health issues.
Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
I love Homebrew
I hate paladins
Warrior Bovine
If they attacked you, and you fought back, then that’s not being a “Murder Hobo.”
Maybe you’re unaware, but the term “Murder Hobo” refers to a character that would sooner kill a shopkeep and rob the store than actually pay the 1gp for a coil of Rope, Hempen (50 feet).
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The other people were continuing on with the quest, but, as I said, you hurt, me, i may kill you on the spot, but i won't go back to kill you, you hurt my pet.... I will never stop hunting you.
If there were some things other than this, they never mentioned it.
Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
I love Homebrew
I hate paladins
Warrior Bovine
They bring up an interesting point. Part of your justifications for your action seems to be trying to prove you're *not* a murder hobo and that your actions were justified, but in the OP and title of this thread you self-identify your character as a murder-hobo.
Maybe defending yourself against this NPC is not the thing your party is mad about. Maybe that was just the DM trying to put you in a situation where you'd be held to account for your actions because you'd been a murder-hobo in the past. What other things has this character done for you to identify them as a murder-hobo? Is it possible that you have a different understanding of this term? Because we all take it to mean a very specific type of player that's not 100% congrouous with what you've described.
Yeah, i have no problem paying for that, It was a drow mage who petrified my baby yeti, and i hadn't learned that it wasn't un-petrified yet.
It was a villager who attacked me because i had tried to pick he pocket several days prior and had already attacked me. I had already specified in the game that i was on the warpath for the petrification, and that when i had had vengeance things would return to normal. I had also said i would kill any who stood in my path; As an angry dwarf hell-bent on vengeance would have.
Cult of Sedge
Rangers are the best, and have always been the best
I love Homebrew
I hate paladins
Warrior Bovine