Im ready to kill the warmage....

[Thanee]

And suddenly a pink piano appears above you and falls on your head. Ouch!

Just tell him plain and clear that what he does is cheating/metagaming/whatever you want to call it, and that he should stop it and play his character according to the character's knowledge not his own.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Set]

Go up to him before the session, put your hand on his shoulder, look him in the eye and say, 'Bob. Enough with the metagaming.'

And then ram your knee into his goolies.

It may not solve the problem, but it's always fun.

 

[wmasters]

Ok not really the warmage, more the warmage's character.

You've got a warmage player in your group? Wow. I'd cower in case you get fireballed.

The option I'd use is changing things around a bit. On the cry of 'quick, paladin, detect evil' it'll throw him if you're Demon is Lawful Neutral.

Talking to him is probably a good idea too. Sit him further away from you so he can't peer over the screen, and change your mosters around a bit. Make your kobolds purple with horns, or use gnolls with feathered wings and he'll never know what they are, but you can keep using the stat block.

I'm always reluctant to kick someone out, but he is cheating, and if he won't stop, then it's an option.

 

[Maggan]

Lots of good advice already given. I particularily like the idea of printing out stats for monsters and placing them at odd places in the rule books.

Something that could also help is to build the World's Largest DM Screen. And impose harsh penalties for those peeking behind it.

/m

 

[RangerWickett]

I'm serious, it's not the player's fault. Few things are worse than DM bias against a particular player. Go ahead and talk to the player and tell him what you're frustrated about, but a few people here are giving advice that seems far too vindictive. Killing his PC? Docking him XP?

Never use mechanical penalties to try to punish gamestyle behaviors. If you don't like what a player is doing, deal with the player as a human being, find out what his position is, and come to a compromise. Don't use the game as a proxy battleground for real-life complaints.

 

[gizmo33]

Don't use the game as a proxy battleground for real-life complaints.

QFT

Somehow I'm not surprised that a warmage is a metagamer. I always spell casters would cheat if they ever played DnD.

I'm usually careful about consulting the monster manual during the game. If you say "you meet a peasant" and proceed to flip open the monster manual, most players know that there's no peasant in the monster manual under P. My players don't go out of their way to cheat, but I try not to wave the monster manual at them every time there's an encounter.

Tape a fake cover on your monster manual that says "The Quintessential Helpful NPC".

 

[mmu1]

I agree that what this player is doing is rather excessive, and I can see how it can be disruptive.

On the other hand, I always had a problem with DMs who'd demand that, regardless of what they decide to do the party, we were never to metagame, and simply take whatever beatings were handed out. Being asked to walk into every fight blindfolded gets old real soon.

A judicious amount of metagaming is, in my opinion, an accurate reflection of the fact that while the players game a few hours a week, the PCs inhabit the world 24/7, and ought to know a fair bit about it, without constantly falling back on knowledge checks to see if they know the most basic things. (in particular since the skill system really does not encourage characters with a wide variety of knowledge skills - the majority of characters either have a low amount of skill points per level, or treat most knowledge skills as cross-class, or both)

Which isn't to say I ever ran a game in which "how to spot a succubus" was common knowledge.

 

[JVisgaitis]

I'm serious, it's not the player's fault.

Sorry, I have to disagree. You can't blame the DM or anyone else when someone cheats.

Don't use the game as a proxy battleground for real-life complaints.

Now this I agree with 110%.

 

[Scribble]

I agree with the suggestion of docking him XP for the night.

I also say that the players who enable him to cheat should also be docked. Like the paladin that detected evil based on the info gained by cheating. Paladin should be docked too.

 

[SteveC]

I'm now going to go into my broken record mode, even though I have been beaten to the punch for the most part.

Never try to solve an out of game problem in game, it just complicates the issue. If this guy is a friend of yours, be a friend and tell him what's going on: that you're getting pissed off!

If he's not a friend, let him know what the rules of the road are for your game and exactly how much out of character knowledge is acceptable to be used in game. As the GM, you have a right to have a good time as much as the players do.

Outside of that, I'd suggest saying that if he wants to use all of that out of game knowledge, he's going to have to buy the appropriate knowledge skills.

Oh, and no more killin' his character simply because he's annoying you! That's just as bad in the opposite direction.

--Steve