What would you do?

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

So I'm trying to gauge what to do in a situation that has been building for some time within the group I play in.

Background:

We play a PF game and this just completed session #7 in our bi-weekly game set in the Serpent Skulls AP. We have 6 players in the group, all of us are pretty much of "good alignment" except for our wizard who is CN. The wizard is the one in question here.

Quite a few times through-out the campaign thus far he has pretty much stopped play to try to get his own way in which 4 or 5 of the other group members have already agreed upon a certain path or direction in which we should collectively go. There was an instance in which we were walking down this path in the jungle and came upon a trap, he decided he wanted to "wait" until whoever set the trap came back to check it and see who it was. We already knew as a group that this island we are stuck on is full of undead and cannibals (though we hadn't encountered any cannibals up to this point). The wizard would not let go of it and we decided as a group to leave the trap alone and keep marching down the path we were on, for literally 45 minutes he was whining and complaining in and out of character that we should have waited. So after about another hour of game-time we encountered another trap, he started up again about wanting to see who set it.

We calmly explained we were 99% certain it was cannibals who we were going to encounter if we waited around. He kept at it like a dog with a bone, finally I stepped up and told the group to hide, I took a large stick and set off the trap and proceeded to howl as if in agony. Then I tried to hide as well. A few moments later a group of cannibals approaches and they see us (well my character specifically with his inability to be stealthy) and a big battle ensues where we came close to a TPK with a 3 people down and bleeding out until we turned the tide and were able to save the 3 downed PCs.

The build-up situation:

So on to the next thing that happened after you understand that everyone in the group is getting pretty fed up with what the wizard likes to do. My character is a Dwarven Cleric who likes to take a leak in his own water flask and use a spell to change it over to a golden brew of ale (it's my schtick). The wizard thinks it would be funny to cast his own spell on the liquid inside my container and makes it taste like feces. My character winks at him and continues to drink it down (though inside he is seething and ready to pummel the wizard). I figure I'd get him back later for his desecration of my holy brew (I follow a deity of drink so my ale is basically my holy water to me). So the wizard thinks he's got one up on me and giggles about what he did at the table and I don't do anything the rest of the session to interact with him.

The big fight:

The next session (this past Saturday night) - I send over a text at the table to the GM that I wanted to pull my own prank on the Wizard to "kind of get him back" for his prank on me. I text the GM that I wanted to steal the wizard's flask and urinate in it. We do our rolls (me stealth and him perception) and he turns around as he notices a tinkling sound and proceeds to stab me with a javelin, which actually hit and scored a decent amount of damage. I kick the flask back over to him and start to walk away to heal myself and the next thing he does is toss a flaming sphere my way and the initiatives are rolled. I dodged this and cast my own offensive spell and then he casts his most deadly spell at me that does 2d6 and no saving throw. By this time the other party members are getting involved, the wizard vows that this was going to only end in my death or his. I cast more spells and so does he.

The paladin jumps to my defense and scores a major blow on the wizard, my next spell lands about the same time and we drop the Wizard to negative hit points. Now the table is all upset as we have come to blows with deadly intent, with the wizard vowing to kill me, and with the paladin about to cut the wizard's head off (he only noticed the wizard sticking me not the prank my dwarf was doing). The paladin starts in that we need to have a trial and that the chaotic wizard needs to be put down if found guilty. The rest of the table start to argue, some wanting to tie him up and some wanting to just heal and wake him up. During this time the Druid stabilizes him so he doesn't bleed out and die. They turn to me and ask me what I'd like to do.

How it was resolved:

My character I feel is the one who is is wronged here. He didn't start the pranks and didn't start the fight with lethal force. I couldn't in good conscience kill the wizard outright right there because I'm a good cleric. I said that we should wake him, that if he acted in an irrational way again we'd put him down like the rabid dog he is and I stated that I would not longer offer my healing spells to him after his attack on me.

I feel he acted very much in his alignment to attack me, but still being in the same party I don't know if he SHOULD have done it with lethal force instead of a fistfight.

Suggestions/Comments?

• How would you have handled this situation?
• Would you have done the same thing or would you have killed him?
• Would you try to get rid of him in the proceeding sessions as he is the only CN character in the group and has own complete agenda and what he thinks is right and wrong?
• Am I over thinking it and being irrational myself?

Thanks for any and all advice and sorry for the big block of text!
Trav

 

[cattoy]

Feed the wizard to the cannibals. Eating a CN character will cause them to turn on each other within 24 hours, leaving you to clean up the survivors.

 

[Herobizkit]

I would invite the wizard to leave the party. I shall quote "Road House", which is awesome and the best way to resolve all issues.

"If somebody gets in your face and calls you a [dirty word], I want you to be nice. Ask him to walk. Be nice. If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice. If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you, and you'll both be nice. I want you to remember that it's a job. It's nothing personal."

If this turns the wizard into a homicidal maniac who must have things his own way, let the dice fall where they may. This sounds more like a player control/entitlement issue than a story-based piece of drama.

 

[kitsune9]

This is kind of a hard call because it seems like you all had a good time about this and it wasn't necessarily a player engaging in stupid behavior because he's got CN on his character sheet.

If it was, it's a simple discussion with the player that he should tone it down. However, if it was truly roleplaying this out, I cannot see how your characters would react to do anything different. You could have taken the high road and just let it pass, but you wanted to repay the prank with a prank and it escalates from there which by your description seems logical.

So in a word, I don't think I would have done anything differently.

 

[the Jester]

I think a trial, and possibly execution, is in order. Depending on your alignment, that is. But at a bare minimum, I'd kick him from the party.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I would invite the wizard to leave the party. I shall quote "Road House", which is awesome and the best way to resolve all issues.

"If somebody gets in your face and calls you a [dirty word], I want you to be nice. Ask him to walk. Be nice. If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice. If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you, and you'll both be nice. I want you to remember that it's a job. It's nothing personal."

If this turns the wizard into a homicidal maniac who must have things his own way, let the dice fall where they may. This sounds more like a player control/entitlement issue than a story-based piece of drama.

Yeah, I feel it's the player trying to go to extremes with the CN alignment and I know he's having personal issues IRL, so I believe that is also bleeding into the game with suppressed issues of rage that he is taking out IC on anyone he thinks has wronged him. I'm actually talking to one of the other players we came up with the plan to "accidentally" set off the wizard again with my cleric by taunting him when I'm "drunk" and do something in "self defense" so that we can get rid of the character if not the player as well... I feel he's a drag on the group with his constant arguing and bucking against what the rest of the group wants to do because he's acting like a spoiled child. I'm a player that likes to play not sit at the table and argue for an hour per session over the tiniest things, I don't like strife and this is the first time I've ever not liked a player/PC at a table.

 

[Slander]

From the tone of your post, I get the sense this was an OOC fight somewhat proxied as an IC fight. If that is the case, you need to address the situation with the player directly and not passive-aggressively through your characters.

Now if I'm totally off-base, and this really was an IC fight and there are no hard feelings OOC, that's different. In that case, the second lethal force was voluntarily initiated against party member, said initiator [the wizard] would no longer be in the group. Whether we'd out-and-out kill him, turn him into authorities, or just send him on his way would depend on the make-up of the group at the time. But there is no way characters in my group would trust or tolerate someone who willingly turned on a party member in such a fashion.

We've had plenty of fights in character ... where both blows and spells were traded. Hell, we've had pranks that caused some real bad IC blood. But never anything that would / could kill another PC. For our group, lethal damage is line that simply isn't crossed.

 

[pemerton]

Agree with those who say that, if it's a real-life issue - which from your second post (#6) it certainly sounds as if it is - then sort it out in real life. (Which seems to mean kicking the wizard play from the group.)

If it's purely in the game, then sort it out as seems best/most fun among you and your group. Years ago I had a player in my game who liked to play treacherous PCs. One of those ended up getting fed by the surviving members of the party to a demon that they summoned.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

I'd tell my Mom that he was smoking in the bathroom so that she kicks him out and he isn't allowed to come over anymore.

 

[innerdude]

Background:

...snip...

Thanks for any and all advice and sorry for the big block of text!
Trav

Funny, we had something very similar happen in a GURPS campaign earlier this year.

It wasn't quite to that level, but there was definitely some out-of-character (i.e., real life) issues with one of the players that was generally rubbing the group the wrong way. I'd handle that accordingly.

Our solution was to basically end the GURPS campaign, since it wasn't in a particularly interesting period anyway, and start a new Pathfinder campaign, basically telling the player, "Well, we're starting up a new campaign, and we've already got our group for this one. Sorry."

It was probably a little passive-aggressive on our group's part, but we'd had numerous conversations with this player before about learning to relax, actually "playing the game" (he spent 90%+ of his time with his head buried in books, looking for "uber" spells to use with his GURPS wizard), and about generally not being an immature doofus. To us, it seemed like a good way to simply "reboot" without totally bagging on him. Your mileage may considerably vary, of course. If you're right in the middle of an AP, you may have to approach it as a simple, "Look, our group dynamic just isn't meshing well with your playstyle," and have a real, down-to-earth chat with him about what's not working.

His reaction to the request will say as much or more about him as a person that what is actually said.