Roleplaying dilemma - what would you do?

[radmod]

I will try to give all the relevant info (and hopefully ward off the nitpickers).

Last year, I joined a group of players who had been playing together for 10+years.

Setup: In this 3.5 world, we were playing a scoundrels campaign whose objective was to take over the criminal organization of a large city. Unfortunately, we failed in one of the encounters which, in part, triggered the invasion of our territory by followers of Orcus (for what reason we have yet to determine). The DM realized that we paltry scoundrels did not have the punch to fight off hordes of orcs, demons, and various magical beasties. So he decided to merge heroes from a previous campaign with our current ones. Of course, the scoundrels are primarily evil and the heroes (the Lords) are primarily good. Not really a problem since we both had the same objectives. Essentially, the scoundrels provided info on the invasion and the powers-that-be decided to assign them a role as guides to the Lords.
I did not have a Lord, so this gave me the opportunity to create a 14th level character. I decided to create a Wiz 3/Beg 2/ Ultimate Magus 9. Since I was 'new' to the campaign, I thought it might be interesting to play a total academic nerd who had spent all his time in the lab but never really adventured (the DM heartily agreed). As such, my character will be prone to rookie mistakes (like bringing all the junk his "Adventuring for Dummies" book tells him he should have but he really doesn't need) and over- or under-compensating at various times.

The problem:
One of the scoundrels is a chaotic evil Drow assassin/necromancer who is literally a madman. Extremely distrustful of authority and very paranoid he is terrified of joining the party as he is certain that the very-anti-necromancy Lords will kill him on the spot. Instead, the scoundrels were told he would 'join' us later. His version of joining was to follow us invisible.
I tend to play my character regardless of the consequences, so when I saw him (via See Invisibility) my char literally pointed him out to the Lords. This is when I discovered that, in this case, the other players wanted to metagame to allow the drow to 'be with' the party without actually being part of it. However, I kept on and eventually was able to prove he was hanging around. Meanwhile, he was motioning threatening gestures at me. This meant that a) I was annoyed as hell that these clearly less intelligent Lords were ignoring me, and b) I was freaked out by this dark robed, masked figure that was threatening me. As I was preparing to deal with the situation on my own, the DM introduced a coming encounter. One known only to two party members but not to me.
The real predicament is that of my available spells, I have to use an area of effect spell because I am unable to target the drow due to a better hide ability. My "Dummies" book tells me that I should only use things like fireball and cone of cold for relatively large groups of opponents. This essentially left me with one effective area spell: Evard's tentacles. Unfortunately for the drow, I'm pretty sure he has no way of teleporting/escaping on his own and the relative grapple checks mean I always win (his +6 vs. my +25). So within 12 rounds his character will be dead.

So, do I continue to play my (newly created) character and wipe out this guy who took years to create?
OR
Do I fudge/metagame to insure his survival?
OR
Do I abort my potential spell when I realize there is an encounter about to happen and focus on that?

Caveat: Metagaming, I know that this character is likely to try to kill me at a later time just because I saw him and, hence, made me his enemy. In character, I still don't know for a fact who this guy is and likely see him as an enemy and, in fact, may be a 'scout' or somesuch for the upcoming enemies.

Edit: For reasons I will not go into (but a tip of the hat to Ironwolf, I believe, for correcting it) Glitterdust is currently mostly ineffective.

What say you?

 

[Dandu]

tl;dr

Advise you to kill it with fire.

Edit: Read your post.

Recommendation: The conflict is inevitable if you do not talk with the player out of game to try and resolve this issue. If that does not work and he will try to kill you, strike first either by turning off See Invisibility and nuking him by accident, or doing it deliberately when he's not expecting it. If you do attack him deliberately, make sure there's no way for him to survive your surprise attack. Get your familiar to be the recipient of the Silence spell to prevent him from casting and initiate the tentacle rape.

 

[HoboGod]

Kill him and get somebody to revive him later. The DM could easily say that somebody "higher up" in power sees this assassin/necromancer as a valuable asset worth bringing back to life. That also puts him squarely in debt to whoever that may be, and possibly forcing him to join your group less discretely.

 

[Vegepygmy]

This is when I discovered that, in this case, the other players wanted to metagame to allow the drow to 'be with' the party without actually being part of it.

Always talk things over with your DM and/or fellow players first, but assuming that doesn't change anything...either metagame it like the other players want you to, or find a different group to play with. Ruining the game for everybody else is a dick move.

 

[Dandu]

About as much a dick move as killing a player because he can see your invisible drow assassin/necromancer.

 

[HoboGod]

Bah, it's a dick move to create an anti-social PC in a co-op role-playing game. If this player didn't metagame to join the group like everyone else, why should the OP metagame to save this player's life? Being anti-social out of character is fine. If a player wants to play the shy fighter who is a wallflower until it's time to crack skulls, it's fine by me. But if a player wants to be the grumpy assassin who doesn't play well with others, there's a problem.

Speaking from experience, the biggest problem a group will ever have with letting Chaotic Evil PCs exist is when they choose to be an insubordinate, unfriendly, and generally anti-social evil (coincidentally enough, that's roughly the same problem with Lawful Good.) Every Sunday, I DM an evil campaign as well. I've received multiple complaints from my players about the actions of a PC who wanted to play an Incubus. It was a nifty idea at first and I saw many opportunities for fun until he started harassing other players by using his spell-like abilities on the party for his twisted amusement. He went as far as using his suggestion to make one PC rape another PC. I talked to him repeatedly and warned him that he wouldn't be able to play that character if he kept it up. He pushed me and I had the character be murdered in game by the NPC who individually hired the party. The next character he made happens to be an assassin. He's better about what he does to other players, but he's just as insubordinate to his party members. Now instead of doing terrible things to the party directly, he tries to murder the other players' mounts, followers, and befriended NPCs. When he's not permitted to do these things, he wanders off. He has made no attempts to befriend anyone in the party. If I receive another complaint, I'm going to give him the same warning I gave his Incubus. Players should realize that their actions have consequences or the game becomes chaotic and irrelevant. The consequence of traveling invisibly with people who aren't your friends is that they mistake you for an enemy when you make threatening gestures at them. As Dandu said, kill it with fire!

 

[Elf Witch]

This kind of thing drives me crazy. Some metagaming is needed to keep a game going but this is just overboard. You have good characters being forced to travel with evil characters so tensions are running high. To add to that you have one PC of one group who is invisible who has been spotted by a PC of the other group. Expecting the player to just ignore it is just way to much metagaming at least at my table it would be.

What I would do is I would cast if I had it a dispel magic to get rid of the invisibility so ever one could see . If that didn't work I would stop and say out loud to everyone "hey guys did you know we are being followed by a drow" and see what happens.

 

[Dandu]

He said he's already proved it to them. Possibly through use of Faerie Fire or Glitterdust?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Even something as simple as walking through muddy or sandy ground (transmute rock to mud to make your own luck if DM just uses rlling grass meadows and solid rock dungeons?) would make it clear that there's another set of footsteps with the party...

 

[the Jester]

Bah, it's a dick move to create an anti-social PC in a co-op role-playing game. If this player didn't metagame to join the group like everyone else, why should the OP metagame to save this player's life? Being anti-social out of character is fine. If a player wants to play the shy fighter who is a wallflower until it's time to crack skulls, it's fine by me. But if a player wants to be the grumpy assassin who doesn't play well with others, there's a problem.

Yes. If he's planning on attacking you, why should you hold back and not attack him? This sounds a lot like the metagaming is slanted to favor certain pcs.

Every Sunday, I DM an evil campaign as well. I've received multiple complaints from my players about the actions of a PC who wanted to play an Incubus. It was a nifty idea at first and I saw many opportunities for fun until he started harassing other players by using his spell-like abilities on the party for his twisted amusement. He went as far as using his suggestion to make one PC rape another PC. I talked to him repeatedly and warned him that he wouldn't be able to play that character if he kept it up. He pushed me and I had the character be murdered in game by the NPC who individually hired the party. The next character he made happens to be an assassin. He's better about what he does to other players, but he's just as insubordinate to his party members. Now instead of doing terrible things to the party directly, he tries to murder the other players' mounts, followers, and befriended NPCs. When he's not permitted to do these things, he wanders off. He has made no attempts to befriend anyone in the party. If I receive another complaint, I'm going to give him the same warning I gave his Incubus.

This sounds like a player problem, not a character problem. I'd talk to the guy again and make it clear that if he keeps making anti-party pcs, you'll drop him as a player. It doesn't matter if he can only play each anti-social pc for one session if every session he brings an anti-social pc.