Advice needed: Poor DM decision, and something of a eulogy for a beloved character.

Advice needed, folks. Here's the story.

In my current campaign, I had a cleric named Arron Ghoulflayer. One of my favorite characters, actually. I had been playing him for quite a while, and I wanted a change of pace, so I had him leave the group to continue on in pursuit of his life mission, which was to find a rightously smite a vampire, named Trent, which had killed his entire family in front of him. This event sparked his anti-undead fervor and was the catylyst for him to take up the mace and scripture. Anyway, he had been with the group for quite a while, and as I said, he left after dying and being ressurected to go and pursue Trent on his own. He was sixth level at the time.

Fast forward several out-of-character months, to last session. I was not present at the game that day. The DM, without even mentioning to me his intentions in the slightest, has Arron attack the group. Apparently, Arron was now vampire spawn, having failed at his mission to smite Trent. Arron was casting spells along the magnitude of Harm and the like, which meant that he was at least 11th level. The druid of the group attacked him and chased him into a building, where he proceded on whipping the snot out of Arron and killing him. I believe the Druid was 8-10th level.

Arron despised undead with all his being. If he had become one, he would have killed himself on the spot. He was also very smart, not to mention amazingly wise, and would have known if he could have taken on a vampire of Trent's power. The DM used my character without telling me, and even then he played him poorly from what I understand. It enrages me that he would do that without even mentioning the fact that he was going to pull a kamikaze run with a semi-retired character that I had plans of bringing back. I was wondering what you folks would do in my situation. The DM has done things like this before, and I'm considering forming my own group. The problem, though, is that I like pretty much the rest of the group and don't want to leave them. What's a guy to do?

Hope someone can shed some light on a maddening situation,
-Craer

My condolences...

BTW, if he was around 11th level, he can't have been a vampire spawn; only an actual vampire...

Hmm...

Did you make it clear to your DM when you "retired" the character that you wanted to bring him back eventually? If so, than yeah, I think you have the right to be irked with the DM.

If not, though, the DM was entirely within his rights. If he honestly thought that you'd completely abandoned the character, that would have made him an NPC, just like any other.

I also think you should try sitting down with your DM and explaining--in a calm, rational manner--that you're upset with this. Perhaps the two of you together can still find a way to salvage this. Maybe the vampire can turn out to not to have actually been your character, but a minion made to look/act like him to confuse the party. Or maybe, now that he's beel slain as an undead, you can once more have him resurrected.

talk to the other players. maybe they're annoyed w/the DM too and you could form your own group.

poor Arron.
*sniff*

It was just a Dream. A horrible twisted dream.

Once a player turns over a PC to me to become an NPC, it ceases to be his character and becomes mine to play with. That being said, I have only ever turned one against the players. The player who's character it was had left the game.

But that's not what you did. You seem to have made it clear that you considered the character only 'semi' retired and wanted to take it up again later. In that case, I'd say your GM screwed you over.

Talk to the guy to salvage the situation. Tell him you want the character back, even if you're not planning to play him for a while. Who knows, maybe he can say that this was NOT your character, but a higher level imposter, attempting to make the rest of you think the guy had failed and turned. That's the ideal solution.

Sounds like you and your DM have a communicationproblem. That's never good no matter what. My personal advice would be to confront your DM and the other players at the same time to clear out any misunderstandings. Don't waste your time being bothered about this until then.

When ever I DM, I always used a rule of thumb never to use a former character of a pc, with out there permission. I see it as bad form to just pull a retired character out of no where and have him killed off. Your DM should have talked with you first. Maybe he did while u weren't there because he knew how u would react, and waited? Okay i'm sure a DM isn;t that petty though.

I understand how you feel, But talk to your player then DM, before you get to angry. and make sure you have a back up plan before confronting DM, just incase things totaly go the flip side.

Good luck man, hope it works out for you.

I think the other posters are being overly timid. Using an active player's character as an NPC without their express permission is extremely rude and I for one wouldn't stand for it. Especially when your character has been used in such a destructive and gimmicky fashion: "oooh! oooh! I know! I'll send 'em someone that they think is a friend at first but really turns out to be an evil, blood-sucking vampire spawn. That'll be a good trick. Let's see now, who's not with us this session..." Apart from being rude, it demonstrates a certain cluelessness on the part of your DM.

Try talking to your DM first. Tell him that you're pissed off and if he fails to see the error of his ways, then discuss it with the other members of the group and take it from there.

There is a certain amount of rudeness on the part of your DM. I'll even go on to say your DM is incompetant... no 8-10 level druid should be able to wack an 11th lvl Vampire Cleric (isn't this CR 15 or so?).

I'd call poor form.... I would quit and I might even spit on your DM. He deserves no respect from you for he exercised no toward you.

Maybe I'm a bit too fairy-tale minded for some peoples tastes, but...

My rule of thumb as a DM (And I have NEVER had a player not like this, FWIW), is that once a character is "retired", they will never get "worse" than when retired, untill they would reasonably expected to die of old age. In fact, they normaly get better (Become lords of a small territory, etc). Any major changes with an ex-character I still talk over with the person who played him, if I'm going to use him for a story.

My view is that, while retired, for many people old characters are still a part of them, mentaly. Old and dear ones more than most. And most people, when their characters reach retirement age (At least around here), generaly are glad to turn their beloved character over to "safe" hands. I feel it would violate their trust in me if I screwed with them.