- More than once, in the middle of combat: "Oh, I forgot. I wanted to go shopping for a different weapon before this adventure...". Cue throwing a fit and pausing the whole game while he weighed getting a greatsword or a greataxe.
For this one, couldn't you just have said "You forgot when you were in town, and there's no store here, you can't buy anything" or something similar?
Of course. That would be reasonable. But reasonable don't go around here. Not with this guy. That would just trigger him and the whole session would be shot as he would go into "I'm going to obstruct this game to punish you all for not giving in to me" mode.
Basically, imagine 4 people playing a game, and a 5th person there who has no interest in playingas part of the group, throws a fit whenever he doesn't get what he wants, and is intelligent enough to know exactly how to push everyone else's buttons... but the rest of the group feels it is their burden in life to try and involve this person no matter how awful he behaves. Until recently. And now he is gone and it is spectacular (but I feel guilty for enjoying his absence so much).
- More than once, in the middle of combat: "Oh, I forgot. I wanted to go shopping for a different weapon before this adventure...". Cue throwing a fit and pausing the whole game while he weighed getting a greatsword or a greataxe.
For this one, couldn't you just have said "You forgot when you were in town, and there's no store here, you can't buy anything" or something similar?
Of course. That would be reasonable. But reasonable don't go around here. Not with this guy. That would just trigger him and the whole session would be shot as he would go into "I'm going to obstruct this game to punish you all for not giving in to me" mode.
Basically, imagine 4 people playing a game, and a 5th person there who has no interest in playingas part of the group, throws a fit whenever he doesn't get what he wants, and is intelligent enough to know exactly how to push everyone else's buttons... but the rest of the group feels it is their burden in life to try and involve this person no matter how awful he behaves. Until recently. And now he is gone and it is spectacular (but I feel guilty for enjoying his absence so much).
That sounds awful. I totally get it.
There is a very simple answer - If it isn't his house tell him to leave, if it is his house find somewhere else to play and don't invite him to the new venue.
I went to grab a pry an emerald of a crown of an evil king I'd just killed. My teammate used her knife and did damage to me saying it was disrespectful. That emerald was critical to making a custom jewel encrusted sword I needed. We talked and fought a little. Then she nat 20 seduced me and had a kid (strangely already age 5) somehow after less than 10 minutes after the deed. She then threw the emerald off the cliff and handed me sole custody/responsibility of the kid.
I went to grab a pry an emerald of a crown of an evil king I'd just killed. My teammate used her knife and did damage to me saying it was disrespectful. That emerald was critical to making a custom jewel encrusted sword I needed. We talked and fought a little. Then she nat 20 seduced me and had a kid (strangely already age 5) somehow after less than 10 minutes after the deed. She then threw the emerald off the cliff and handed me sole custody/responsibility of the kid.
What????
This sounds like old-school bizarro non-consent MUSH RP. Why would any DM permit this?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I went to grab a pry an emerald of a crown of an evil king I'd just killed. My teammate used her knife and did damage to me saying it was disrespectful. That emerald was critical to making a custom jewel encrusted sword I needed. We talked and fought a little. Then she nat 20 seduced me and had a kid (strangely already age 5) somehow after less than 10 minutes after the deed. She then threw the emerald off the cliff and handed me sole custody/responsibility of the kid.
At our last campaign, one of the players was a Paladin that insisted on sparing the life of every enemy we came across (even though they were all obviously unredeemable evil cultist).
We were using milestone leveling, so xp didn't matter, but still, as a barbarian, I wanted to kill stuff.
At our last campaign, one of the players was a Paladin that insisted on sparing the life of every enemy we came across (even though they were all obviously unredeemable evil cultist).
We were using milestone leveling, so xp didn't matter, but still, as a barbarian, I wanted to kill stuff.
At our last campaign, one of the players was a Paladin that insisted on sparing the life of every enemy we came across (even though they were all obviously unredeemable evil cultist).
We were using milestone leveling, so xp didn't matter, but still, as a barbarian, I wanted to kill stuff.
... starting with the Paladin, I assume?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I went to grab a pry an emerald of a crown of an evil king I'd just killed. My teammate used her knife and did damage to me saying it was disrespectful. That emerald was critical to making a custom jewel encrusted sword I needed. We talked and fought a little. Then she nat 20 seduced me and had a kid (strangely already age 5) somehow after less than 10 minutes after the deed. She then threw the emerald off the cliff and handed me sole custody/responsibility of the kid.
What????
This sounds like old-school bizarro non-consent MUSH RP. Why would any DM permit this?
Yeah, that's utterly ridiculous nonsense, starting with the fact that the only charisma checks that actually affect a PC's behavior are Deception checks, and even then all it means is that you can't tell with any certainty that you're being lied to (but you can choose not to believe what you're told anyway).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
At our last campaign, one of the players was a Paladin that insisted on sparing the life of every enemy we came across (even though they were all obviously unredeemable evil cultist).
We were using milestone leveling, so xp didn't matter, but still, as a barbarian, I wanted to kill stuff.
I was in a game with someone like that. And while my character wasn't just hot to murder everything, we still had to have a discussion about the issue. He tried to justify letting enimes go if "they had a cause they believed in." We had to tell him that the guy was a a cultist of Tharzidun and destroying the world by releasing an evil god was not an admirable goal.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I went to grab a pry an emerald of a crown of an evil king I'd just killed. My teammate used her knife and did damage to me saying it was disrespectful. That emerald was critical to making a custom jewel encrusted sword I needed. We talked and fought a little. Then she nat 20 seduced me and had a kid (strangely already age 5) somehow after less than 10 minutes after the deed. She then threw the emerald off the cliff and handed me sole custody/responsibility of the kid.
What????
This sounds like old-school bizarro non-consent MUSH RP. Why would any DM permit this?
Yeah, that's utterly ridiculous nonsense, starting with the fact that the only charisma checks that actually affect a PC's behavior are Deception checks, and even then all it means is that you can't tell with any certainty that you're being lied to (but you can choose not to believe what you're told anyway).
At our last campaign, one of the players was a Paladin that insisted on sparing the life of every enemy we came across (even though they were all obviously unredeemable evil cultist).
We were using milestone leveling, so xp didn't matter, but still, as a barbarian, I wanted to kill stuff.
... starting with the Paladin, I assume?
If not, that group had their priorities messed up. Many people simply don't understand how to play Paladins and it doesn't help that the rules have gotten muddied over the years when people think Lawful Good equates with Lawful Nice.
At our last campaign, one of the players was a Paladin that insisted on sparing the life of every enemy we came across (even though they were all obviously unredeemable evil cultist).
We were using milestone leveling, so xp didn't matter, but still, as a barbarian, I wanted to kill stuff.
... starting with the Paladin, I assume?
If not, that group had their priorities messed up. Many people simply don't understand how to play Paladins and it doesn't help that the rules have gotten muddied over the years when people think Lawful Good equates with Lawful Nice.
Or more generally with Lawful Stupid....
As admittedly a paladin regular, I do feel the truth lies somewhere in the middle here. Paladins don't have to expect the absolutely irredeemable to convert to being nice, sure, but the path of the paladin is supposed to be a difficult one. A paladin should expect to be tested. And that's something the rest of the party, in my experience, doesn't always understand - and if they do, they're not necessarily ready to accept it. Regardless of what alignment means in the edition played or at a given DM's table. a paladin should stand for something. Players ignoring that can be a source of frustration too.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Speaking of Lawful-Good Paladins frustrating their fellow players....
I was as source of major frustration playing a goody-two-shoes character. It wasn't a Paladin, and it wasn't D&D. But I was playing Supergirl -- the original, pre-Crisis Silver/Bronze age version of the character -- in one of our Champions games. Classically, Supergirl has an "Absolute Code Against Killing" -- originally it was so extreme that at one point in the Silver Age she did something to a river to defeat a villain (I'm not sure what -- I don't have that issue), and in a later letter column (which I do have) the readers wrote in asking what about the fish? Doesn't her code against killing extend to the fish. And yes it did. Back then.
Anyway, my interpretation of this was that Supergirl would never attack someone with enough force to kill them. And, with a 60 STR, doing 12D6 damage per punch, she does an average of 12 BODY. A normal person with 2 PD and 10 Body, would be at 0 BODY from one of Supergirl's average punches, which means "dying" and they'd be dead in about 2 minutes of game time if not immediately stabilized by paramedics. Thus, her regular punch was a deadly weapon. This meant to me, she could not use that punch at full strength, unless she knew for sure the villain had enough defense that it wouldn't put him in the hospital.
Consequently in battles, I started out using half strength (only doing 6D6) and "pulling the punch" which gives a penalty to hit but does half BODY. This would maybe be enough to break a normal person's jaw (3 BODY vs 2 PD would do 1 BODY of damage on average rolls), but not enough to do any more than that. If she hit (which with the penalty she often did not) on the first attack, and it did nothing, then next time she'd do half-strength punch without pulling. Then she'd bump it up to 3/4 strength (9D6), and finally if none of that did any physical damage, she would go up to 12D6. By now we are 4 action phases into the Combat, which with her 5 SPD meant nearly 1 full turn. (In Champions, most battles last maybe 1.5 turns max, 2 turns if they are super close and drawn out). This meant that for most of the battle, Supergirl, who had the most powerful attack on the team, was not doing any real damage.
This drove the other players crazy. "Will you please do a REAL attack for crying out loud?!" They figured look, we know the GM didn't give these guys 2 PD/ED. The fight would be over too fast. Most villains have way more than 10 or 12 defense. Of course you can hit them full strength -- look, the rest of us are!
But again, my way of playing out her Absolute Code Against Killing was that she would be very, extremely careful with her strength and never use full strength power against anyone she wasn't sure could take it.
She also tried to reason with villains but she usually did it as part of the battle... Try to reason, pulled punch, try to reason again, stronger punch, try to reason, still not listening, OK, time for the big wahmmy.
BTW, the GM only let me have the 12D6 instead of the campaign max 10D6 because we discussed this ahead of time... and he reasoned that if I was doing half-strength attacks for part of the battle, it was OK to "make up for it" later with a bigger attack than anyone else can have. But the other players found it very frustrating -- because they knew if I had just had her fly up to the guy, push her punch to 14d6, and do a haymaker, the villain would be down in one hit.
I just refused to do it.
Well... until Darkseid showed up. Yeah, she did a pushed haymaker against him for openers. But then, well... Darkseid.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
In the game I run, I ran a mini-adventure just to buy time while I prepped the town they had just arrived in. They botched the social encounter and were at the point in the adventure where they were supposed to get the consolation prize result. But instead they decided to resist the guards and ended up killing one and letting the others get away. So there were guards sweeping the town looking for them. I was prepared to TPK them if they didn't wise up, but they took the bait when I gave them an ally to get them out. It took weeks to get them back on plot.
Reminds me of a stream series where the players are always overthinking or underthinking things.
In one episode, the players read an invoice about imported things delivered to people in town and took that as a sign to wait at the docks with items for export with one of the players expertly disguised as furniture and another Wild Shaped as a cat on the furniture. To get the point across, the DM put both of them on a boat out to sea, and when the furniture was insulted by a crewmember for being shoddy and the player spoke up without thinking, the DM took that as in-character and they were thrown overboard for being cursed. The party got back on track, but it was 15 minutes lost in a campaign that was on a IRL timer. (The DM took that as a learning experience that clues with flavor added can be too easily misunderstood with that party.)
In another, the players shanghaied a no-name macguffin character and integrated the character into their party under duress. The DM managed to make it work - with a little help from the players who gave the DM some hooks to build a complete character out of a throwaway character, and the DM turned the tables on the players by incorporating a former huge, devastating player blunder into the character's new backstory which immediately ended the jibes at the DM for being unprepared as it was one of the worst moments the players had out of their own faults and it was better if the NPC didn't know about it. (The DM took that as a learning experience that no character those players encounter will be throwaway ever again.)
(In a behind-the-scenes, the DM claimed that he was only 15 years old and that he looked 20 years older only because of the players.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I remember one time I was in a game at a convention with a party that wanted to spend 10 minutes (real time) exhaustively checking every door we came across for traps.
Since this was a convention, we'd paid to be there and there was a limited amount of time for play, so after the third door or so I had my character just start opening doors. Surprise! They weren't trapped. And even if they were trapped, that would have been more interesting than listening to two people argue about what they needed to do to check for traps without ever making a decision on anything.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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That sounds awful. I totally get it.
There is a very simple answer - If it isn't his house tell him to leave, if it is his house find somewhere else to play and don't invite him to the new venue.
Hard to kick someone out of the house who is family. Especially if they're going to be around the house for things other than the gaming experience.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I went to grab a pry an emerald of a crown of an evil king I'd just killed. My teammate used her knife and did damage to me saying it was disrespectful. That emerald was critical to making a custom jewel encrusted sword I needed. We talked and fought a little. Then she nat 20 seduced me and had a kid (strangely already age 5) somehow after less than 10 minutes after the deed. She then threw the emerald off the cliff and handed me sole custody/responsibility of the kid.
What????
This sounds like old-school bizarro non-consent MUSH RP. Why would any DM permit this?
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Okay...
I literally don’t know what to say to that
At our last campaign, one of the players was a Paladin that insisted on sparing the life of every enemy we came across (even though they were all obviously unredeemable evil cultist).
We were using milestone leveling, so xp didn't matter, but still, as a barbarian, I wanted to kill stuff.
😂😂😂😂
... starting with the Paladin, I assume?
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Yeah, that's utterly ridiculous nonsense, starting with the fact that the only charisma checks that actually affect a PC's behavior are Deception checks, and even then all it means is that you can't tell with any certainty that you're being lied to (but you can choose not to believe what you're told anyway).
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I was in a game with someone like that. And while my character wasn't just hot to murder everything, we still had to have a discussion about the issue. He tried to justify letting enimes go if "they had a cause they believed in." We had to tell him that the guy was a a cultist of Tharzidun and destroying the world by releasing an evil god was not an admirable goal.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Totally
If not, that group had their priorities messed up. Many people simply don't understand how to play Paladins and it doesn't help that the rules have gotten muddied over the years when people think Lawful Good equates with Lawful Nice.
As admittedly a paladin regular, I do feel the truth lies somewhere in the middle here. Paladins don't have to expect the absolutely irredeemable to convert to being nice, sure, but the path of the paladin is supposed to be a difficult one. A paladin should expect to be tested. And that's something the rest of the party, in my experience, doesn't always understand - and if they do, they're not necessarily ready to accept it. Regardless of what alignment means in the edition played or at a given DM's table. a paladin should stand for something. Players ignoring that can be a source of frustration too.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Speaking of Lawful-Good Paladins frustrating their fellow players....
I was as source of major frustration playing a goody-two-shoes character. It wasn't a Paladin, and it wasn't D&D. But I was playing Supergirl -- the original, pre-Crisis Silver/Bronze age version of the character -- in one of our Champions games. Classically, Supergirl has an "Absolute Code Against Killing" -- originally it was so extreme that at one point in the Silver Age she did something to a river to defeat a villain (I'm not sure what -- I don't have that issue), and in a later letter column (which I do have) the readers wrote in asking what about the fish? Doesn't her code against killing extend to the fish. And yes it did. Back then.
Anyway, my interpretation of this was that Supergirl would never attack someone with enough force to kill them. And, with a 60 STR, doing 12D6 damage per punch, she does an average of 12 BODY. A normal person with 2 PD and 10 Body, would be at 0 BODY from one of Supergirl's average punches, which means "dying" and they'd be dead in about 2 minutes of game time if not immediately stabilized by paramedics. Thus, her regular punch was a deadly weapon. This meant to me, she could not use that punch at full strength, unless she knew for sure the villain had enough defense that it wouldn't put him in the hospital.
Consequently in battles, I started out using half strength (only doing 6D6) and "pulling the punch" which gives a penalty to hit but does half BODY. This would maybe be enough to break a normal person's jaw (3 BODY vs 2 PD would do 1 BODY of damage on average rolls), but not enough to do any more than that. If she hit (which with the penalty she often did not) on the first attack, and it did nothing, then next time she'd do half-strength punch without pulling. Then she'd bump it up to 3/4 strength (9D6), and finally if none of that did any physical damage, she would go up to 12D6. By now we are 4 action phases into the Combat, which with her 5 SPD meant nearly 1 full turn. (In Champions, most battles last maybe 1.5 turns max, 2 turns if they are super close and drawn out). This meant that for most of the battle, Supergirl, who had the most powerful attack on the team, was not doing any real damage.
This drove the other players crazy. "Will you please do a REAL attack for crying out loud?!" They figured look, we know the GM didn't give these guys 2 PD/ED. The fight would be over too fast. Most villains have way more than 10 or 12 defense. Of course you can hit them full strength -- look, the rest of us are!
But again, my way of playing out her Absolute Code Against Killing was that she would be very, extremely careful with her strength and never use full strength power against anyone she wasn't sure could take it.
She also tried to reason with villains but she usually did it as part of the battle... Try to reason, pulled punch, try to reason again, stronger punch, try to reason, still not listening, OK, time for the big wahmmy.
BTW, the GM only let me have the 12D6 instead of the campaign max 10D6 because we discussed this ahead of time... and he reasoned that if I was doing half-strength attacks for part of the battle, it was OK to "make up for it" later with a bigger attack than anyone else can have. But the other players found it very frustrating -- because they knew if I had just had her fly up to the guy, push her punch to 14d6, and do a haymaker, the villain would be down in one hit.
I just refused to do it.
Well... until Darkseid showed up. Yeah, she did a pushed haymaker against him for openers. But then, well... Darkseid.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
In the game I run, I ran a mini-adventure just to buy time while I prepped the town they had just arrived in. They botched the social encounter and were at the point in the adventure where they were supposed to get the consolation prize result. But instead they decided to resist the guards and ended up killing one and letting the others get away. So there were guards sweeping the town looking for them. I was prepared to TPK them if they didn't wise up, but they took the bait when I gave them an ally to get them out. It took weeks to get them back on plot.
Reminds me of a stream series where the players are always overthinking or underthinking things.
In one episode, the players read an invoice about imported things delivered to people in town and took that as a sign to wait at the docks with items for export with one of the players expertly disguised as furniture and another Wild Shaped as a cat on the furniture. To get the point across, the DM put both of them on a boat out to sea, and when the furniture was insulted by a crewmember for being shoddy and the player spoke up without thinking, the DM took that as in-character and they were thrown overboard for being cursed. The party got back on track, but it was 15 minutes lost in a campaign that was on a IRL timer. (The DM took that as a learning experience that clues with flavor added can be too easily misunderstood with that party.)
In another, the players shanghaied a no-name macguffin character and integrated the character into their party under duress. The DM managed to make it work - with a little help from the players who gave the DM some hooks to build a complete character out of a throwaway character, and the DM turned the tables on the players by incorporating a former huge, devastating player blunder into the character's new backstory which immediately ended the jibes at the DM for being unprepared as it was one of the worst moments the players had out of their own faults and it was better if the NPC didn't know about it. (The DM took that as a learning experience that no character those players encounter will be throwaway ever again.)
(In a behind-the-scenes, the DM claimed that he was only 15 years old and that he looked 20 years older only because of the players.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
As a teacher I have often blamed each gray hair on my students. But I can see how DMs might blame their gray hairs on their players.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I remember one time I was in a game at a convention with a party that wanted to spend 10 minutes (real time) exhaustively checking every door we came across for traps.
Since this was a convention, we'd paid to be there and there was a limited amount of time for play, so after the third door or so I had my character just start opening doors. Surprise! They weren't trapped. And even if they were trapped, that would have been more interesting than listening to two people argue about what they needed to do to check for traps without ever making a decision on anything.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.