How to punish a metagamer?

[Alishea]

So we have a bit of an issue. We have been able to finally find players that we like except for one. He is a major metagamer. For example, we had some party discord about loot essentially the fighter (metagamer) wanted to hold on to a magical item that was meant for a caster. The oracle (me) wanted the item. He refused to hand it over and the wizard cast a charm spell on him. Well, as soon as the fighter heard that the wizard had charmed him he waited until we had rested for the night and said that he was going to coup de grace the wizard during his watch.

This caused the rest of the group to get angry saying that he had no reason to hate or kill the wizard that a level 2 fighter would have no idea what the wizard did when he did his magic. In order for the group to continue on the DM allowed the wizard to go back and change his action after the spell.

Well the rest of the group went a long with it in an effort to keep the session going. But now that we have had time to talk we aren't a fan of this. The DM has stated that he would be willing to not allow PK but we think that if the roleplay context would make PK make sense then it should be allowed. We are now at a loss as to what to do. The DM has stated that he will never say to the fighter that his character doesn't do something (essentially he will never take control of the character). But this leaves the rest of us open to his metagaming and having to play based on the fear that he will kill our characters. The fighter doesn't care if his dude dies, since he does no roleplay, but the rest of us have a fondness for our characters and would be quite unhappy if they died under such circumstances.

Any suggestions?

We are thinking about clamming up and not saying anything and just passing notes the entire time.

*oh and kicking the metagamer out is not an option due to diplomacy issues that this would cause*

 

[OberonViking]

Let the metagamer know how you feel via email. It is easier on you, and ultimately he has to be told.

We had a player whose character collected body parts - from our enemies, from graves, from other people's battles, wherever he could. The rest of us were really uncomfortable with it, but just kept quiet.
Eventually someone sent him an email. He apologised, saying he didn't realise any one would feel that way, and he is now an integral part of the team.

 

[Alishea]

Let the metagamer know how you feel via email. It is easier on you, and ultimately he has to be told.

We have strait up told him and he just doesn't believe that a fighter would have no idea about a spell. He thinks that he would "feel" the charm and know what the wizard did, even though that would seem to ruin the entire charm spell and what it is used for.

 

[OberonViking]

We have strait up told him and he just doesn't believe that a fighter would have no idea about a spell. He thinks that he would "feel" the charm and know what the wizard did, even though that would seem to ruin the entire charm spell and what it is used for.

I tend to agree with him there. If I remember right, 3.5 under the Handle Animal skill said that you could use spells to help with training an animal, but more intelligent animals tend to resent that. PF doesn't say anything about using spells under Handle Animal.

But that is not the point, and your metagamer needs to know that.
Gaming with people involves an unwritten, unspoken social contract about having fun together.
He has broken that contract. Metagamers often call this selfish act "staying in character."
That is what you need to tell him. Its not all about him. Its not all about his player. It is about everyone having fun.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

As OberonViking said, it's about everyone having fun. Coup de grace on a fellow party member as they sleep is not fun for everyone.

If he's doing things that extreme I'd ramp up my punishments to make it very clear that I'm not going to allow it. Personally I'd change his alighnment to either Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil as soon as he starts to go through with the plan to kill a teammate (especially because it's petty revenge against actions they only had to take in the first place because he was being stupidly selfish). Then as soon as he raises his sword to kill the wizard the camp gets attacked by something-anything-that is far too strong for them to deal with and will have a justifiable reason for only killing him. Perhaps a (much higher level than the party) paladin was in the woods that night and stumbled upon their camp. He detected evil before approaching the camp to make sure it was safe and learned that the fighter was evil but none of the others were. Upon seeing him preparing to kill a sleeping innocent the paladin rushes in to save the other party members and smites the fighter to death.

And now he can enjoy rolling up his new character.

The paladin is just one example. It could be any sort of monster, NPC, trap, magic, etc as long as it can be justified.

We have strait up told him and he just doesn't believe that a fighter would have no idea about a spell. He thinks that he would "feel" the charm and know what the wizard did, even though that would seem to ruin the entire charm spell and what it is used for.

To this I'd like to point out that as the GM it's YOUR game. Enforce that you make the rules, and that metagaming goes against them, and that by coup de grace-ing the wizard in "revenge" he was using knowledge his character couldn't have and therefore metagaming, as in: "I don't care if you THINK you should be able to tell if you were charmed Mr. Fighter, because in fact you aren't the GM, you don't get to decide how the details of a spell cast upon you work, and in fact you could NOT tell".

 

[Is_907]

As OberonViking said, it's about everyone having fun. Coup de grace on a fellow party member as they sleep is not fun for everyone.

If he's doing things that extreme I'd ramp up my punishments to make it very clear that I'm not going to allow it. Personally I'd change his alighnment to either Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil as soon as he starts to go through with the plan to kill a teammate (especially because it's petty revenge against actions they only had to take in the first place because he was being stupidly selfish).

Also, if his alignment changes, he can't take divine healing
(Yeah, I'm assuming your healer is of an opposing alignment... they typically are, after all...)
Even if he (somehow) keeps this character alive, he'll be on his own for healing.

 

[Alishea]

As OberonViking said, it's about everyone having fun. Coup de grace on a fellow party member as they sleep is not fun for everyone.

Thank you so much for this! I have forwarded it to our DM and he will be taking it into account. We are lucky that the fighter won't be here tomorrow for the game and it will give us all time to talk about how we want to deal with him. Plus it will be nice to have a game where we don't worry about getting killed by him

 

[Alishea]

Also, if his alignment changes, he can't take divine healing
(Yeah, I'm assuming your healer is of an opposing alignment... they typically are, after all...)
Even if he (somehow) keeps this character alive, he'll be on his own for healing.

Since I play the Oracle, I told him when he wanted to coup de grace someone that I wouldn't heal him. He didn't seem to care (I guess because he really doesn't care if his dude dies). He even went so far as to run off by himself into a portal when the oracle and the wizard had NO spells left. He just got bored and decided to run off.

But the DM has been talked to about that as well, and we are ready for him to be much more heavy handed with the "punishment" of stupidity. We have a new guy in the group and this fighter thinks that he can tell the new guy what to do every single time. He truly is a pain in the ass gamer. But 40% of the time he is ok.

 

[Dykstrav]

Well... If you want to get in his face about his meta-gaming, I'd suggest that you point him to the Spellcraft skill. It specifically says in the description of the skill that one of its major functions is to identify spells as they are being cast. Furthermore, it's trained only. No ranks in Spellcraft, no possibility of him identifying the spell.

You really should directly discuss with the GM and the player about the importance of being a good sport. That includes not only making the game fun for everyone, but also being graceful when things don't go their way. If you don't get this straightened out, he's going to get worse over time, not better--try to imagine what would happen if his character dies, suffers a negative level, ability damage, or whatever.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Despite this:

*oh and kicking the metagamer out is not an option due to diplomacy issues that this would cause*

, I think booting him is the best option. He doesn't seem to care much about the game, his character, or the other players. So why on earth is he even there?

In any event, good luck with this. It sounds terribly frustrating to be so close to a great group, yet so far away.