Troublesome player/character

[billd91]

Excellent question.

For the moment I'm looking at his PRC choice as a potential plot hook, nothing more. It will affect how Clerics of other gods treat the character, and how that character should deal with them.

No, I mean at a more fundamental level. If he's always doing stuff like this, why play with him? Is he out of step with the rest of the group? Are you out of step with the group? Is it just you and the other DM you mentioned complaining? Do other DMs feel the same way?

 

[Grogg of the North]

I'm not sure how your group feels about things like Heroforge but my group's general rule is that you need to go over your sheet and make sure everything makes sense BEFORE you come to the table.

 

[TarionzCousin]

"Divine Intervention," was my first thought.

Have M's goddess send a personal servitor of hers, possibly an angel, to punish the character for failing to follow her divine teachings. Mechanically, the PC would have to atone for her "sins," and follow the correct path or lose all relevant (Prestige Class and other) abilities. If she acted out of line, she would lose the benefits, such as Mettle, until she atoned somehow.

Use the story to create appropriate mechanics.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

According to one guy in the group who knows him, he uses a character generator (possibly Heroforge, but I'm not sure) that can be manipulated to come up with wrong bonuses for skills and/or Saves. According to this other player there's a flaw that if you do the creation steps out of order it miscalculates things, giving higher totals than it should.

So he's a cheat?

Check his math. Publically.

 

[Greenfield]

This is according to the other player, and we have.

His defense is always, "Well, that's what the program says.". Hard to accuse him of willful deception when the sheet comes from an accepted character generator.

And I haven't, in fact, verified that this program glitch actually exists. We've just caught him with bad numbers, more thanonce.

 

[Grogg of the North]

What version of Heroforge does he use? I, for one, would be willing to plug in numbers for you.

Again, even though Heroforge is a great tool, it's just a tool. It's on the player to double check everything! There are some feats, classes, and abilities that Heroforge screws up.

 

[Greenfield]

I don't know. I'm not even certain that it's HeroForge.

I know his character sheet is frequently wrong. I'm being told, by someone who has played with him in other groups and who doesn't like him, that the errors are intentional.

I'm just going to have to keep an eye on him. I hate having to play prison guard with players. <grumble-grumble-grumble>

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You could also apply the sauce for goose/gander method, and when GMing for him, include special modifiers just for him. IOW, fudge away his cheat mods.

 

[Greenfield]

I'm actually thinking of a different tactic entirely.

I just finished brushing up on the character race, the Aventi, in Stormwrack, and the differences between what that says and what M says about the background look promising.

He's a mechanics player more than anything else. I'm going to try and make him into a story player.

Our game is on hiatus for a few months, due to time conflicts on the weekends, but I'm not going to let that time go to waste. I'm going to write this character an engaging back story, one that reconciles the fact that his peopl are all devout followers of Aventurness, the sea god, and are predominantly Lawful, with his character who is Neutral Good and follows Taiia.

I'm going to send it to him in pieces, as I get it written, and get his feedback. I want to draw him into the story.

Then, when I next DM, his character will receive a call for help, not from the land based church of Taiia, but from her home village under the sea. The Aventi, it seems, have no problems with either men or women advancing.

Since we're running something that's loosely based in an historical Earth, and his character comes from the Canary Island region off the coast of Africa, I looked up the local religious history. That region, off the coast of Morocco, used to be heavily influenced by the Berbers, as far as religion and culture go. (The Canary Islands have a sparse population, and no separate cultural identity that I've been able to dig up.) This Berber influence would explain the "Men rule/advance, women stay home and serve" attitude that the player has said his character left to escape. It ties in nicely.

Oh, and the Berbers' religion had Jewish, Greek, Roman and Egyptian influences. Easy to choose the monotheistic version, for her homeland.

By the book, M's character will be a very poor fit in either culture, being a religious apostate among Aventi and a cultural apostate among the Berbers. Which sounds like a very fertile ground for story.

When our last campaign ended, M was so committed tot he story of his character that he wanted story points resolved, to the point that I ran the "Date with an Angel" scene that I wrote about here. (It might be in Story Hour). He couldn't let it go.

By working in the same type of emotional commitment to the story, we might make a Role Player out of him yet.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm going to try and make him into a story player.

Wear a helmet while you beat your head against that wall.