So Friday night we played again, Charter in hand. He was upset at us for "bullying him" and "telling him how to play his character"... but he signed the charter nonetheless. Our group even split into two groups (we had 10 players) and some of us suggested he may not want to be in our group with the charter, but he decided to stay nonetheless.
In the first round of the first combat, a minion did 4 damage to a party member. His action: "I use lay on hands." The next round another PC had like 1 damage left after the warlord (me) healed him. His action, "I use my last lay on hands for the day on him." Keeping to the letter of the charter, he squandered his daily healing resources in 2 rounds-- resources that are far more valuable than say the warlord's 2/encounter healing- because the target does not need to have a surge left. We mentioned how it was a waste to use it like that-- that it should be saved for an unconcious PC... and a big smile just came across his face.
Needless to say, he cast lay on hands the first 2 rounds of every combat per day, even if it was just lowly minions that never bloodied us. We had party members DODGING his lay on hands, so he said, "I guess this means you don't want me to heal you anymore!"
Despite this new aggrivation, in combat he was more effective this time-- he actually marked BBEGs and threw daggers at them from behind a living wall of other PCs-- this meant that they at least took 5 damage and -2 to hit us (the previous session he only marked henchmen & let the BBEG beat the snot out of us).
The New DM gave us only 1 treasure: a suit of small-sized black-iron plate mail. Guess who got it (despite the healing annoyance, he was being more effective, and selling something for 1/5th price is just too painful). He was shocked, but very grateful that we let him have it-- I think that broke the ice for the end of the session discussion.
At the end of the session, I just went to him and frankly said, "I'm sorry about this charter thing-- I bet it made the game less fun for you." He agreed. I continued, "well XXXX, when you purposefully do things like that just to upset us, it makes the game less fun for us, too, and it is to the point that we don't want to play with you anymore if you keep it up. But I know you can do better. When you actually marked the BBEG, suddenly your daggers-throwing was useful. We were glad you were on our team then. That's why we wanted you to have the plate-mail. Do you think you can try the same thing with the lay on hands-- save it for when someone really, really needs it? So next game, what do you say we begin afresh, and just do our best to make sure the game is fun for everyone?"
He agreed, so hopefully this will turn out right.
