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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4987277" data-attributes="member: 58197">As DM I'll go to a fair amount of trouble to protect the PCs from my mistakes, and I'll even try to cushion the impact of theirs to a certain extent. But if a player does suicidal things because he feels like being contrary, that's his problem and I'm not cutting him any slack. He's out of healing surges because he essentially threw them away? Tough.The important thing is not to punish the other players for his antics. For example, recognize that his rogue is not going to be worth a full character in combat - maybe half of one - and scale down the difficulty to compensate.Likewise, try to design adventures so that the ability of one player to pull down horrible trouble on the whole party is limited. Players of the type you describe have a habit of pissing off the city watch for no reason, or rousing the ire of big nasty things on their solo expeditions and then running back to the party with big nasty things in tow.So make sure the city watch is understanding and sympathetic to the other PCs, and big nasty things either a) won't chase the rogue too far, b) can immobilize or insta-kill* a solo PC, or c) aren't too big and nasty for the party to handle.I also agree with Janx that when a guy sneaks away from the party (as opposed to the party sending him to scout), he shouldn't be rewarded with extra "face time." If one group contains 3 PCs and the other contains 1 PC, then the second group should get roughly one-third the time and DM attention of the first.He still gets full-sized encounters, though, with predictable results.As for giving him tips: Don't bother. Judging by his behavior, he'll probably react badly to advice. Let him figure out combat tactics for himself, or not, and live with the consequences.[SIZE=-2]*I do not generally endorse monsters with insta-kill powers. However, if the heroic-tier party comes across an epic-level dragon, and this bozo goes and pokes the dragon with a sharp stick just for the hell of it, I think it's fine to have the dragon look down irritably and unleash an epic-level breath weapon that blasts the bozo down from full hit points to negative bloodied in one shot.[/SIZE]</blockquote>

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