D&D 5E Characters that annoy you (and/or the players who play them)

[SirAntoine]

The worst player that I have come across was a guy who thought it was a good idea to animate Zombies to use as bodyguards when the party was stuck in Ravenloft.

The worst I've seen was in the Night Below campaign, by Carl Sargent, where the party was given hospitality by the svirfneblin, a potential ally, and one PC robbed the graves in their crypt. He didn't trust the gnomes, and he thought they might be evil at the time. The party had to go the rest of the campaign without the gnomes' help, which could have made a pretty big impact but they pulled it out anyway.

 

[Lanefan]

I think what annoys me the most is when players who aren't in the scene or in the know contribute out of character hints and suggestions. One of my friends likes this because it allows a character to do or say something that otherwise would be missed. But it gives me no sense of accomplishment and feels rather cheap. Personally I would rather accept the consequences of failing on my own volition than be given the answer.

We used to have a problem with this until our DM pulled out a wonderful smackdown tool: if something was suggested by a player who had no character knowledge of the situation, whatever the suggestion was immediately became a banned action even if it made sense and-or was the right thing to do.

Example: party Thief has climbed over a castle wall and found to her dismay the postern door has an unexpected guard stationed just inside. Thief (and by extension, player) isn't sure whether to sneak past the guard and open the door, kill the guard, climb back over the wall and report, or whatever. Other player (Bob, whose Fighter is waiting outside the wall) insistently says "Sneak past the guard and let us in, it's obvious that's what you should do!". DM comes back with "Bob, be quiet. Thief: sneaking past the guard is no longer an option for you because of that suggestion. Waht do you do?"

It took a few character deaths and other mishaps but the point got across, and mostly remains to this day.

Lanefan

 

[Hereticus]

Maximizers - It's not about making an interesting character, it's about winning.

Players that hide behind "That's what my character would do."

Boring people who can't do interesting things with their character.

Rules lawyers who are killjoys, explaining why the fun thing that just happened can't happen.

People who are overly secretive. Some secrecy is good, but not with everything.

But most of all... players that send their characters out on solo missions, hogging the DM's time while the rest of us twiddle our thumbs.

 

[Paladerp]

Maximizers - It's not about making an interesting character, it's about winning.

Plenty of people in my party are "maximized", they do certain task REALLY well. My Paladin has been described as a mountain who attacks people with a Q-tip, our monk has been described as a glass cannon. Both of us would be in a VERY bad shape without help of other characters. Maximizing isnt necessairly about winning, for us it is about contributing something to the party.

 

[Cobalt Meridian]

The only thing I find annoying about some players is the failure to complete a character concept. One of my long-term players is especially guilty of this.
Once we were playing a series of adventures in the Al-Qadim setting. He created a proud nubian warrior that he claimed came from a noble family of horse traders who had fallen on hard times. Great concept. Except that he then called him "Barney Touchstone" and said that he'd also been a pirate and played the lute.

In fairness he had a lot of fun with that character, and the other players had similar odd details. I just always found the little incongruous details to be annoying.

 

[pukunui]

Which completely guts the point of a secret plot! If you-as-player have cooked up an in-character plot the other characters would have no way of knowing about ...

In my ideal world, players wouldn't have secret plots that the other players shouldn't know about. This is a cooperative, team-based game. I also don't think the whole character-knowledge vs player-knowledge dichotomy is as big a deal as some people make it out to be.

 

[Grainger]

You probably don't game after work with a bunch of people in their 40s with kids! .

Indeed. What's not being tired like? I haven't felt like that in a long, long time.

 

[Gnarl45]

I don't like player or PC disputes. PC disputes are fun to roleplay once in a while but I like the whole going on adventure part a lot more.

I don't like players that spend too much time talking about other things than the adventure.

I don't like playing D&D with drunk or high players.

None of the above are "bad" though. I just don't like them.

 

[Serendipity]

Let's see...drow, kender, tinker gnomes, green orcs, and lawful 'jack booted thug' paladins or other 'heroes of the people'. Player wise? Optimizers who don't like role playing, canon lawyers.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Example: party Thief has climbed over a castle wall and found to her dismay the postern door has an unexpected guard stationed just inside. Thief (and by extension, player) isn't sure whether to sneak past the guard and open the door, kill the guard, climb back over the wall and report, or whatever. Other player (Bob, whose Fighter is waiting outside the wall) insistently says "Sneak past the guard and let us in, it's obvious that's what you should do!". DM comes back with "Bob, be quiet. Thief: sneaking past the guard is no longer an option for you because of that suggestion. Waht do you do?"

It took a few character deaths and other mishaps but the point got across, and mostly remains to this day.

Lanefan

Totally gameable. Just tell the player to do everything except the option you want. "You should sneak back over the wall, or else kill the guard and go it alone."