It's bad if the other players are getting frustrated with the one character, along with the DM. Playing a character in a way that makes everyone else at the table miserable is not acceptable.
I agree with this. In some cases I could see it being fine, but when this seems to be a constant issue your are simply going to have to deal with it in some way. I had a player that was so bad in the past about just going about and doing his own thing ALL THE TIME. It got old very quick for the whole group. I will say that there are times when players splitting up can work. One example is when the players are in a city going about looking for someone or even shopping, or simply gathering information. What I would do is in a case of an encounter is leave them out of the game for most of it. The encounter that is. Every now and then engage that player, but only briefly, you do have an encounter to deal with at the same time. As mentioned above you can do things to make things interesting for that player as well. If it is so disruptive that it is causing issues you are going to have to tale to that player. Be firm with them and do not give in. If they dont like it then thats just to bad.
As a DM I really try to let the characters do whatever they like whenever they like no matter what. That being said, I will tailor an encounter to curb behavior I feel is detrimental to overall play and fun. Everything has a consequence. Want to split the party? Go ahead, but that doesn't mean an encounter will be scaled down for a bad decision. Want to run away? No problem, the party leveled up but since you weren't there you get no xp and stay the same level. Sorry that you ran and just had to sit there for 2 hours during an encounter the party had, but that was your choice. Make it more beneficial to be a good party member and they will normally fall right in line. If not, then at least it won't have as much of an effect on the party who is working together and having fun.
There was an unspoken commandment in our game group back even in high school and college, which went something like, "Thou shalt not, as a player, deliberately take actions that cause the party to split up." If the DM decided to do it, fine. But as a player, we were not supposed to purposely be dividing the party into different areas.
Our reason for this was simple: There is only one DM. He can only work with one area of the dungeon/wild/etc. at a time. If we split the party up, half of us have to sit there and twiddle our thumbs and do nothing, while the other half get to play D&D. If a battle broke out, this could last an hour or more. Sometimes the whole night, depending on what's going on. This unambiguously sucks for the people not playing.
There was an implicit understanding that we did not all come over to the DM's house to sit there not playing D&D. We could have stayed home and not played D&D. We came here to play. Not to watch other people play while we sat there and did nothing.
Now, split-ups happen. My players often split up in town to visit different shops and NPCs, because it is more efficient "in character" to do that (although again, since there is only one of me, out of character it is no more efficient since the others have to sit there while the one guy in the trading post negotiates with the shop owner). I try to speed these along as much as possible because, again, people are not signing into Foundry and Google Meet to sit there and watch other people play D&D. They signed on to play.
So, if a player is regularly running away and is causing the party to actually split, I would explain the "commandment" to the player and why we have it, and ask him or her to stop as a courtesy to the rest of the table.
I know this is an old thread and I've posted it on here before, but I just remembered that old rule and thought I'd post it.
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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.
One of the characters claims that they are traveling WITH the group, with their little sister and mother and yet only one of them is only ever visible at a time? Are changelings known in this world? Are they common knowledge? Uncommon? Exceptionally rare? Completely unknown? What about doppelgangers? Presumably the disguise self spell or alter self spell is available so all the characters must know that some creatures CAN change their form. It should be somewhat commonplace in your game world since it is possible and characters would know to be on the look out.
The point I am making is that it should take less than a week, maybe only a day or two, for the more intelligent or perceptive members of the party to figure out something is going on and either confront the character or spy on them enough to figure out what is going on. If there is a wizard or warlock perhaps they send a familiar to follow the character to try to figure out what is going on. Anyone else is going to ask the character to see the rest of their family. If the male is the member of the group, WHY are the characters hanging around with the little sister or mother? They aren't adventurers.
In addition, have the little girl or older woman ever said or did anything, demonstrate knowledge they might not reasonably have, maturity beyond their years, personal mannerisms like how they walk, pushing their hair back, snapping their fingers ... anything. Adopting completely different identities including mannerisms, different patterns of speech, different word choices, different vocabulary, different cadence, different accents or pronunciations ... appearance is only one aspect of it. If they are spending time with the party in each of the different forms then there WILL be slip ups. You should be requiring deception and insight checks. This is the type of secret it is impossible to keep within a small group with which they interact on a regular basis. It might work for a day or two (maybe a week) of casual interactions ... anything more and the situation becomes obvious if only because you NEVER see any of the family members at the same time.
Overall, it seems to me this is a case of the players overlooking the logical fallacies in the character's story for role play reasons and accepting the resulting mess. The other characters however, should be figuring out what is going on and when they realize the one character has different forms AND the really poor decisions the one character has made ... then the rest of the characters could be pretty angry if the actions of the one character in any of their forms have endangered the rest of the party. Why would a party choose to adventure with a character that only wants to sow chaos and doesn't want to help the party achieve their goals. They would not. As a result, the party might well decide that they WON'T adventure with the changeling and they can roll a new character ... unless they can convince the rest of the characters that they might be useful in the party after all.
P.S. Splitting the party is something that happens depending on the kind of game you are running. Some players/characters follow the mantra of "never split the party" and others just try to role play their characters and there are characters that will make rash or dangerous decisions. If they do that and are either badly hurt or end up rolling death saves then the character learns a lesson which might affect their role playing. If the character dies, the player gets to roll up a new one. The worst thing you can do in the long run is to give the characters plot armor for their intentionally bad decisions since, from experience, they will tend to escalate over time doing more and more ridiculous things just because they can.
As for your situation, you are the DM. If the party splits and there are fewer for your planned encounter then modify the encounter by removing an opponent or two. The characters/players don't know what is coming so change it up a bit to make it difficult/challenging but not an automatic TPK just because half the party went somewhere else (or have the opponents take some prisoners). Either way, you need to teach the players that it can often be a bad idea to split the party up too much.
I agree with this. In some cases I could see it being fine, but when this seems to be a constant issue your are simply going to have to deal with it in some way. I had a player that was so bad in the past about just going about and doing his own thing ALL THE TIME. It got old very quick for the whole group. I will say that there are times when players splitting up can work. One example is when the players are in a city going about looking for someone or even shopping, or simply gathering information. What I would do is in a case of an encounter is leave them out of the game for most of it. The encounter that is. Every now and then engage that player, but only briefly, you do have an encounter to deal with at the same time. As mentioned above you can do things to make things interesting for that player as well. If it is so disruptive that it is causing issues you are going to have to tale to that player. Be firm with them and do not give in. If they dont like it then thats just to bad.
As a DM I really try to let the characters do whatever they like whenever they like no matter what. That being said, I will tailor an encounter to curb behavior I feel is detrimental to overall play and fun. Everything has a consequence. Want to split the party? Go ahead, but that doesn't mean an encounter will be scaled down for a bad decision. Want to run away? No problem, the party leveled up but since you weren't there you get no xp and stay the same level. Sorry that you ran and just had to sit there for 2 hours during an encounter the party had, but that was your choice. Make it more beneficial to be a good party member and they will normally fall right in line. If not, then at least it won't have as much of an effect on the party who is working together and having fun.
There was an unspoken commandment in our game group back even in high school and college, which went something like, "Thou shalt not, as a player, deliberately take actions that cause the party to split up." If the DM decided to do it, fine. But as a player, we were not supposed to purposely be dividing the party into different areas.
Our reason for this was simple: There is only one DM. He can only work with one area of the dungeon/wild/etc. at a time. If we split the party up, half of us have to sit there and twiddle our thumbs and do nothing, while the other half get to play D&D. If a battle broke out, this could last an hour or more. Sometimes the whole night, depending on what's going on. This unambiguously sucks for the people not playing.
There was an implicit understanding that we did not all come over to the DM's house to sit there not playing D&D. We could have stayed home and not played D&D. We came here to play. Not to watch other people play while we sat there and did nothing.
Now, split-ups happen. My players often split up in town to visit different shops and NPCs, because it is more efficient "in character" to do that (although again, since there is only one of me, out of character it is no more efficient since the others have to sit there while the one guy in the trading post negotiates with the shop owner). I try to speed these along as much as possible because, again, people are not signing into Foundry and Google Meet to sit there and watch other people play D&D. They signed on to play.
So, if a player is regularly running away and is causing the party to actually split, I would explain the "commandment" to the player and why we have it, and ask him or her to stop as a courtesy to the rest of the table.
I know this is an old thread and I've posted it on here before, but I just remembered that old rule and thought I'd post it.
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.
Ok ... are the other characters unintelligent?
One of the characters claims that they are traveling WITH the group, with their little sister and mother and yet only one of them is only ever visible at a time? Are changelings known in this world? Are they common knowledge? Uncommon? Exceptionally rare? Completely unknown? What about doppelgangers? Presumably the disguise self spell or alter self spell is available so all the characters must know that some creatures CAN change their form. It should be somewhat commonplace in your game world since it is possible and characters would know to be on the look out.
The point I am making is that it should take less than a week, maybe only a day or two, for the more intelligent or perceptive members of the party to figure out something is going on and either confront the character or spy on them enough to figure out what is going on. If there is a wizard or warlock perhaps they send a familiar to follow the character to try to figure out what is going on. Anyone else is going to ask the character to see the rest of their family. If the male is the member of the group, WHY are the characters hanging around with the little sister or mother? They aren't adventurers.
In addition, have the little girl or older woman ever said or did anything, demonstrate knowledge they might not reasonably have, maturity beyond their years, personal mannerisms like how they walk, pushing their hair back, snapping their fingers ... anything. Adopting completely different identities including mannerisms, different patterns of speech, different word choices, different vocabulary, different cadence, different accents or pronunciations ... appearance is only one aspect of it. If they are spending time with the party in each of the different forms then there WILL be slip ups. You should be requiring deception and insight checks. This is the type of secret it is impossible to keep within a small group with which they interact on a regular basis. It might work for a day or two (maybe a week) of casual interactions ... anything more and the situation becomes obvious if only because you NEVER see any of the family members at the same time.
Overall, it seems to me this is a case of the players overlooking the logical fallacies in the character's story for role play reasons and accepting the resulting mess. The other characters however, should be figuring out what is going on and when they realize the one character has different forms AND the really poor decisions the one character has made ... then the rest of the characters could be pretty angry if the actions of the one character in any of their forms have endangered the rest of the party. Why would a party choose to adventure with a character that only wants to sow chaos and doesn't want to help the party achieve their goals. They would not. As a result, the party might well decide that they WON'T adventure with the changeling and they can roll a new character ... unless they can convince the rest of the characters that they might be useful in the party after all.
P.S. Splitting the party is something that happens depending on the kind of game you are running. Some players/characters follow the mantra of "never split the party" and others just try to role play their characters and there are characters that will make rash or dangerous decisions. If they do that and are either badly hurt or end up rolling death saves then the character learns a lesson which might affect their role playing. If the character dies, the player gets to roll up a new one. The worst thing you can do in the long run is to give the characters plot armor for their intentionally bad decisions since, from experience, they will tend to escalate over time doing more and more ridiculous things just because they can.
As for your situation, you are the DM. If the party splits and there are fewer for your planned encounter then modify the encounter by removing an opponent or two. The characters/players don't know what is coming so change it up a bit to make it difficult/challenging but not an automatic TPK just because half the party went somewhere else (or have the opponents take some prisoners). Either way, you need to teach the players that it can often be a bad idea to split the party up too much.