How to deal with a "true roleplayer".

[MNblockhead]

I'm a very big proponent of solving character problems/conflicts in character, as long as the players are together/mature enough to keep it in character.

Emphasis mine. And here's the rub. The player in question was already talking down the DM and other players, even AFTER they retconned the encounter, slinging bad-wrong-fun all over his fellow players. I don't think he would have taken it well if they just ganked his character.

 

[James Gasik]

Short update: today's session went fairly smoothly. The new character was a Way of Mercy Monk who pretty much only used their ki for healing, which affected their damage output some, but didn't come across as inane or anything.

The new nuisance was the Bard, who apparently decided their character was super impatient (they found out their race has a short lifespan ooc, lol), and kept interrupting the NPC's when they tried to give us information.

I'm staying out of this one, I think.

 

[Andvari]

Short update: today's session went fairly smoothly. The new character was a Way of Mercy Monk who pretty much only used their ki for healing, which affected their damage output some, but didn't come across as inane or anything.

The new nuisance was the Bard, who apparently deci-

What's his character like?!

 

[James Gasik]

The Monk? Doesn't talk much, and when he does, he sounds like a fortune cookie, lol.

The Bard is one of the other players' characters, so until now the only issue I could see with him is that he didn't take any healing spells, but between my Healer Feat and the Cleric we've been doing ok on that front. And now we have Monk healing if we need it.

 

[CreamCloud0]

The new nuisance was the Bard, who apparently decided their character was super impatient (they found out their race has a short lifespan ooc, lol), and kept interrupting the NPC's when they tried to give us information.

being an adventurer your 'natural' lifespan is typically irrelevant to how long you live in contrast to how well you're prepared yourself to endure all those monsters and hazards in the wild which is a very large factor in how long you live, listening to those npc's is going to get you more living in the long run bard.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

A random comment this post reminded me of... In one interview, Brennan Lee Mulligan talked about the difference between what a character wants and what the player wants.

As a player, we want long, windy experiences and puzzles to solve. We want all these great encounters and stories years later. But a character? Look at Lord of the Rings - all Frodo wants to do is take the most straight-forward path to destroy the Ring and return home. He probably doesn't even appreciate how far he has to go to do that because of the scene in the farmer's field with the discussion about 'if I go one more step, I'll be farther from home than I've ever been'.

I have no problem with players who make suboptimal characters or ones who follow a weird path. I don't even have a problem with evil PCs in a game - as long as there's an understanding of 'party first' or 'you're all friends'. I'm not saying the player in OP's game is a bad player, but he has some ideas that don't seem to gel with the table he's at and may be perfect for a different table.

 

[Faolyn]

The Monk? Doesn't talk much, and when he does, he sounds like a fortune cookie, lol.

Does he give lucky numbers?

 

[James Gasik]

Does he give lucky numbers?

Sadly no, just "wish-they-were-Zen koans", lol.

 

[James Gasik]

being an adventurer your 'natural' lifespan is typically irrelevant to how long you live in contrast to how well you're prepared yourself to endure all those monsters and hazards in the wild which is a very large factor in how long you live, listening to those npc's is going to get you more living in the long run bard.

So the adventure we were on dealt with this slightly damaged Elven artifact that opens a portal to the land of the dead. Because of the damage, it needed to be charged to use. We had gathered that this would involve some sort of life force drain, and the Bard, tired of the debate, grabbed it and activated it.

He immediately aged 10 years, which brought up the question of how long his species lives for anyways. When told about 50 years, he apparently decided that time was too short to be wasting it, and developed this impatient streak. Again, it's one of those things that would be humorous in a let's play video to an audience, but was somewhat aggravating in play, when the rest of the party has to admonish the Bard to let the NPC speak- and of course, the Bard has the highest Charisma in the party lol.

 

[FrogReaver]

I have this friend. I'm willing to bet a lot of you have a friend like this. He is convinced that "making a good character" consists of the following steps:

*Give the character a detailed backstory.
*Give the character unoptimized ability scores, justifying them with said backstory.
*Have the character make decisions based on the personality he gave them.

Now some might say this is a great way to go about things, and I used to agree, but lately, I've grown tired of it.

His idea of a great character is making a Rogue with 16 Strength, 12 Dexterity, and playing them like a Fighter in D&D. Or playing a Fighter and giving that character a 16 Intelligence and Charisma. Then, rather than take actions that directly help the party, he'll fiddle with torches and oil for a few turns to hit enemies for 1d6 fire damage, running the risk of lighting himself or his allies on fire as well.

In a recent battle, the party Wizard cast Web to give the group some breathing room while fighting some zombies. At which point my friend goes "great, now that the zombies can't move, I'll light them on fire!", which of course, destroyed sections of the Web. When pressed on this, he stated "it's what his character would do".

Further, he seems to have a terrible attitude towards players who don't make characters the way he does, even when he struggles in combats to hit enemies because he's decided a 12 Dexterity makes him a perfectly acceptable archer, or he'd rather use a sling than select an attack cantrip. And when he talks about his characters, he brings up all of these things as evidence for how "superior" his characters are.

It came to a head last session where we had a TPK because he got it into his head to attack a Hill Giant that was in the area. The DM had told everyone they spotted the Giant, and could easily avoid it; it was simply a warning that there was a Giant in the area, not an encounter. My friend fired a crossbow at it to get it's attention, and said he would run from it and then the party could attack it from behind. So they all hid, and he led it on a chase into the woods.

Well, he thought it would be a chase, but the Giant has a speed of 40, and his Dwarf has a speed of 25. He tried to hide in the underbrush, in heavy armor, with his Dexterity of 9, and failed to get anywhere near the Giant's passive perception. Now, remember, this wasn't intended to be an encounter at all, and I don't think the DM was trying to kill anyone. Instead of attacking, the Giant taunted the "silly little man".

"I don't take insults at all!", says the Dwarf. "He has offended my honor! I jump out and attack him!"

The result was one splattered Dwarf, and the rest of the party decided not to engage the Giant. Afterwards, my friend had nothing but scorn for us for not following his "foolproof" plan, and complained that the DM was a "killer DM" for using a Hill Giant as an encounter. When the DM said that's not what was intended, the response was, "I'm a Dwarf! We hate Giants! If I see a Giant, I'm going to try and kill it! So yes, that's an encounter!"

I haven't heard anything but complaints from him since, about how it's the DM's fault, it's the system's fault for not rewarding his "good play", and then he backhandedly insulted me, because I'm playing a "min/maxxed character". I'm playing a Kobold Wizard with more Dexterity than Intelligence, who took the Healer Feat to help the Cleric keep the party healed! What in the...

I've known this guy for awhile and I consider him a friend, but what can I say to him to get him to realize that "good roleplaying" doesn't necessarily mean "sabotage your character, then try to blame everything else for your bad decisions"?

A ‘true role player’ would have had no problem watching their dwarf be splattered.

That said, it’s not quite clear to me why the others players didn’t intervene to try and prevent home from being splattered.

One thing that could help is framing enemy power levels instead of just naming a creature (especially with players that try not to play with meta game info). It can be the difference in instigating a fight with something to strong knowingly and doing so unknowingly.

Also, most players can’t roleplay a dumb character in a way that doesn’t actively harm/annoy the party. The solution there is to make a character that will mostly ultimately listen to the party about what to do and not and to telegraph your dumb moves such that they can intervene. I’d suggest this advice be given to him.

Followed by a - You can roleplay anything, but it’s your choice whether you roleplay a character that’s absolutely annoying to everyone else at the table. It’s also their choice if they want to cut ties with such a character - which will require a new character be rolled up.