A PvP interaction

[hobbitkniver]

To start, I should explain our party. We have a catfolk rogue, elf duskblade, dwarven cleric, elf bard and a vampire Lurk (or some other psionic). I was the cleric. Our vampire was killed in a tough fight. He went back to his coffin inside a bag of holding and after the fight, the rogue and duskblade stole his gold because they were a bit upset at his ridiculous power levels. Later when we got him out of the bag, he raged and attacked us. The DM gave the vampire an extra attack at the start of combat because we definitely wouldn't have expected it. The vampire grappled the duskblade and failed, but when the duskblade attacked, he also missed. The rogue and bard decided to leave because they decided "their characters wouldn't care". So then the vampire got its actual turn and the duskblade failed all the wrong checks. I got my turn and killed the vampire in one turn with my strongest heal. Then, I tried to think of something to help the duskblade, but even a wish spell doesn't work, so I killed him too by out of game suggestion by his player.

After the battle, the duskblade was very upset, but had on a straight face. The vampire apologized to him, and there are no hard feelings. The DM was unsure of what to do, but I think he followed everything by the book. I'm sure the vampire doesn't mind his own death because he really didn't leave any other way and I'm a good aligned cleric. The DM texted everyone 20 minutes after we ended and asked us for our opinion on the session. I have the feeling the duskblade complained to him. What was he supposed to do? Was it bad that I intervened? I was expecting this fight for a while because ever character this guy has had in my presence (about 5 in all) has been a crazy race that he either scrapped or betrayed us and died/became an NPC villian.

[Tanngrisnir]

The Vampire did not betray the party here, the party (or at least the duskblade and rogue) betrayed the Vampire by stealing his gold. The duskblade should have expected something to happen as a result of that. Also, stealing a party members gold because you have an issue with them is pretty childish.

As a good aligned cleric you did nothing wrong.

[big teej]

as a DM, I have roughly two thoughts on the subject.

the first, as a DM, the moment PVP crops up in my game, I call a pause and make the conditions of pvp very clear.

one of those conditions is everyone at the table is 100% okay with it, and I explain to them what that means,

if anyone objects, I look at the people trying to PVP and tell them to stow it and/or find another way.

second, if everyone at the table okays it, I let it go. at that point, if the party shatters, I'll tell whoever's character I can still work with where we'll go from there, and everyone else to reroll. informing the party of this outcome also takes place during the original course of action.

last (yea I know I lied about having 2 thoughts)

if someone is purposefully trying to break my game, i tell them to leave.
and all of my players have expressed that they will back me up on something like that.

as for your actions, as I read it, you are a Good cleric, you destroyed a vampire (an Evil creature)
you acted in the right.

the Vampire (an Evil creature) reacted to treachery with violence,
he too acted in the right.

the duskblade and the rogue, stole from a party member. supposedly on grounds of "he's too powerful" and then ran away expecting no consequences.

as a DM, if such an event happend in my game, regardless of any in game consequences of these actions, these two players would bear the brunt of my ire as a Dungeon Master.

depending on just how disruptive this was to the group, I might even persue inquiries to remove them from the group.

[hobbitkniver]

Part of the reason that the DM totally allows PvP is that we all were recently in a game with a different DM who wouldn't let us kill a character who had stolen from us, poisoned and charmed our members, and did so with seemingly no consequences. Considering how upset this made everyone, the DM would have been a hypocrite to stop it because we had all stated that we were to allow PvP.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I think we're missing a small detail: How did the vampire become a vampire? Did he eat the +8 LA in character generation, or did he inherit the template in-game? If the former, he couldn't have been that powerful. If the latter, well, maybe your DM should think twice about putting PCs in situations where they can inherit powerful templates. It looks like that sort of blatant imbalance is causing problems OOC.