CyanideSprite said:
[...] I'm trying to find a way to handle the situation more specific to the character without making the consequences for his actions affect the whole party and railroad everything to him.
CyanideSprite said:
The game can hardly progress if we are constantly having to deal with his stuff. He's driving the action away from what everyone else wants to do. They might be having fun doing whatever but they don't have the freedom to role play and do their things when the only consequences for him role playing his character are going to bog down the campaign as a whole instead of targeting him specifically.
I don't think this is possible.
Let's look back at what I presume was Session Zero.
CyanideSprite said:
Yes it does, especially in the context of the character and the campaign, which had a lot to do with alcohol. The premise was for the party be going around the world trying to find the best drinks... A tavern hopping road trip. The Paladin works for the government and makes it his sole duty to find anything and everything wrong with these taverns so he can shut them down in the name of righteousness, no matter how petty the reason. The other party members have some of their own reasons for going tavern scouting, whether it's a fighter looking party and have a good time, or a pirate who wants the Paladin to succeed so he can make a killing by bootlegging.
What I gather from this is that Frank the Tank and Johnny Bootlegger decided to go on a realm-spanning journey to partake in lands' finest alcohols. For some unfathomable reason, they both agree that Dry McProhibition should tag along.
That, to me, is the first sign of a defective party.
If you ask me, the natural conclusion to this setup is Frank and Johnny ditching Dry, and/or Dry reprimanding Frank for his destructive behaviour and possibly shanking Johnny for aspiring to become an enabler and turning a profit from it.
In other words,
Dry set himself up to be an antagonist.
I seriously doubt there's anything you can do to him in-game that won't force the spotlight on him. His goal is contrary to those of his travelling companions. Of course anything that happens as a consequence of his actions will shift all attention to this one character.
And this why I agree with many other posters in this thread. This isn't a problem with the rules or lack thereof. It's a metagame problem; one about the players and their expectations.
I know you're thinking "No, it's not! I've already said it a bazillion times!" But when I look at the evidence, I can come to no other conclusion.
A number of players say "Let's go on an epic bender!" and this one guy answers "Cool, I'll be the one who won't partake, and whose goal is to prevent you from having that fun!"
That, right there, isn't the class or the oath talking and making those decisions. It's the player. No matter how much one tries to hide behind the age-old argument of "That's what the character would do!", this is one irrefutable truth.
A character, by itself, is nothing more than a collection of words and numbers on a page. It does not have a mind of its own, let alone control over a human being. It is a puppet, inert until a player breathes life into it by pulling the strings. If the puppet/character is being disruptive in any way, it's because of the puppeteer/player.
CyanideSprite said:
The end result that's probably going to happen is me telling him "hey just scale back the zealotry a bit". I don't want the campaign to be railroaded by him, and I know he's not trying to make it that way, but following his Oath so rigidly is making it that way.
You've already entertained the idea of talking about it to the player. Give it a shot. In my experience, not only is it the best solution, it's also the easiest.