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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Noumenon" data-source="post: 4420062" data-attributes="member: 70102">My first session as a DM was on Wednesday and already I had a player conflict.  My D&D experience consists of taking one wizard from level 2 to level 8 and a lot of reading, while the rest of the group has years of experience with all kinds of playgroups.  My questions are up front, with details about the situation below.Questions:How strongly do your characters react to having unknown spells cast on them?  How do you roleplay this reaction differently if it's a PC casting rather than an NPC?  I think you should play it differently; I think just drawing your sword and fighting them is right out.  Do you think casting charm person on someone is as aggressive an act as hitting them with a sword?  I don't, but the cleric player says "You've never been convinced to sit on a floating disc, then floated over the edge of a cliff and dropped, by your own party member."  Which is true.  If all players were like me, non-PVP, a charm person would be as likely to defuse a fight as start one.Could I have helped defuse this situation by asking for Diplomacy instead of Bluff vs Sense Motive?Would it be a good idea to just call for a "time out" in this kind of situation, to cool things down?Am I just conflict averse?Is it hopeless when your players have so much more history with each other and the game that they're just not gonna play a friendly game?Killing characters is so disruptive to adventuring and takes so long to get a new one that I don't like it at all, especially when it's PCs and has no dramatic value.  Do I have to bow to my players' wishes about the social contract and allow them to roleplay what their character would do?  Because I think what their character would do is not fun.  It's all fighting and recrimination.  They think "good roleplaying" is doing what your character would do, I think good roleplaying is finding something your character might do that wouldn't cause fights in the party.Can I say "no player killing in this game," or invent magic kittens that come out and cast Hold Person on you both and nuzzle you until you don't want to kill each other any more (or less overtly, have a distracting encounter ready to go off any time)?Should I ask the cleric not to try to skip my combats with Stone Shape unless there's a good reason?  I mean, people respect Piratecat for building entire dungeons and then letting one earthquake collapse the whole thing, but that seems like a big waste to me.In game situation: (not really important)Half-orc cleric makes a manticore basically explode with a crit as it swoops at him.  Rips its heart out and takes a bite.  Offers it to the sorcerer: "Take some!  You helped kill it too!"  Sorcerer pulls back (he's basically played like Michael Jackson, he's prissy).  Half-orc persists.  Sorcerer casts a silent, stilled charm person on the half-orc, who of course makes his Will save, but gets no Spellcraft check.  It's pretty obvious who the only magic user around is, and the sorcerer fails his Bluff versus Sense Motive.  Half-orc threatens to kill sorcerer, but doesn't.Out of game discussionAt this point the sorcerer's player pulls me aside and says, "I don't think I can go on with this character, he hates getting dirty, they won't get along."  I'm like, "Can't we find a resolution, like you get his church to discipline him for not respecting others' religion? And a new character is not going to help, because your problem is with the player."  Then I get the other player, and they're all like "I just wanted to charm you and make you clean yourself off," and "I don't know what spell was cast on me, so I have to assume the worst," and I don't believe them and think they're really fighting OOC more than in-character.The sorcerer's player also says the sorcerer is concerned that the half-orc and his brother are taking over the party, and the monk's player just goes along with whatever they say.  So that makes sense for his character, but is mainly an OOC thing, I think.  Because the cleric player just pretty much unilaterally decided there was no way they were going to fight all the monsters in the inverted ziggurat and they should just go home, and come back with stone shape.  Which sounds okay for the cleric, but not for anyone who likes combat and doesn't cast spells.</blockquote>

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