I think the issues with the dwarf player are going to turn out to be the easiest to fix
And now he is also upset over me and the cleric's player being upset with the dwarf over killing the necromancer.
I'm sorry to hear about disagreements in any RPG group, and wish you good luck on sorting them out. I don't want to give any gratuitous advice on how you and your roommate should go about doing this.
The rest of this post is only picking up on some of the comments on this thread that indicate various approaches to playing an RPG.
If the DM says something isn't evil, then in her world it isn't evil. The dwarf's player insisting it is evil is just an excuse for being a PITA.
From the way you phrase it, this player seems to be holding the rest of the group hostage to his way of playing (and his worldview, regardless of the DM).
the DM went out of her way to ensure that the player understood the norms. She informed the players that the items were not evil. She gave the player the option to make a Wisdom save before taking his action (which, in any group I've ever been in, means you're doing something you might want to reconsider).
It really does not matter what the DM says to the player about her world he does what he wants to.
This way of approaching the game is all fairly foreign to me. I'm used to the GM having the primary responsibility for presenting the gameworld, but the players having the primary responsibility for interpreting it in moral/political terms - so, for example, if the GM establishes a group of wizards who are both necromancers and (ostensibly) lawful good I assume that it is up to the
players to decide whether they morally approve of those wizards or regard them as wicked defilers of corpses.
This sort of judgement by the players is where the energy and direction of the game then come from.
Likewise, I think it's up to the players rather than the GM to decide what counts as loot (ie not just stuff that someone in the world might conceivably value, but stuff that their PCs are prepared to value). So if the GM places (for example) a Sphere of Annihilation or a life-draining intelligent sword or a Talisman of (forgotten adjective?) Evil I think it is up to the players to decide whether the PCs keep, sell or destroy.
How the GM should respond to these decisions - in terms of maintaining some notional "balance of treasure gained" - turns on the details of the rules system and campaign in question. As far as 4e is concerned, I agree with what Blue said upthread.
The player of the dwarf (the player, not the character) is a jackass. He is deliberately playing in a manner designed to inflict annoyance on the other players (not the characters, but the players), and justifying it in the name of "roleplaying".
"Roleplaying" is not a license to annoy the rest of the gaming group.
A good roleplayer does things in character while helping or at least not disrupting the party.
It isn't always easy to find "in character" solution that won't be "against" the party sometimes, but where is will, there is a way.
These comments resonate strongly with me. Particularly if individual players decide to present their PCs as engaging in some sort of moral or political disagreement, then there is an obligation - in order to preserve peace at the table, and in D&D also to preserve the viability of party play - that those conflicts be played out in a way that doesn't completely disrupt the party, and the other players, and thereby ruin the game. Given the degree of emotional investment that an RPG can generate (in my experience, at least), I think reciprocation, generosity and forbearance by all players should be the starting point here.
Part of the difficulty in conventional D&D play is that stuff that is really important to the basic play of the game - like getting treasure - is often very much at odds with conventional real-world evaluative judgements (which tend to frown upon killing and looting, and might also find trading in necromantic teaching tools somewhat distasteful). In my experience, this can tend to increase the likelihood of intraparty evaluative conflict if even one player has decided to play a character with strong and non-mercenary values. As a GM, my approach is therefore to downplay the signficance of looting by having treasure come from other sources (patrons, gifts from the gods, etc).
So like I said at the start of this post, I don't want to stick my nose into another group's intragroup disagreements. But considered in the abstract, I don't find the situation described in the OP to be an outrageous one. And I've had similar situations occur in my game, in which evaluative disagreements between PCs, which in part reflect differing evalauative (moral and/or aesthetic) responses by the players, have caused problems in working out what is an item of loot and what an evil artefact to be destroyed. In my view, that such a situation occurs does not, in and of itself, show that a player is being unreasonable. And I personally don't feel it's the job of the GM to "resolve" the situation by telling one of the players how to play his/her PC (whether via a Wisdom check mechanic or some other device). It's primarily up to the players to resolve, whether ingame (ie by roleplaying) or at the metagame level.
