DM needs some advice.

[Hawkings]

Hello I’m currently running a campaign as the DM and my players are level 8, I’ve also got a side game of Xorvintaal (the Dragons Great Game MMV p38) going on and thus far most things have been great with a couple exceptions, so I have a few questions I’d like to ask.

First of all can an Eidolon (Ghost from ghostwalk p16) use magic items beside from ghost touch weapons and armor, and if he can use the items can he still walk through solid objects?

In addition to my normal game I’m also having my DM mentor playing Xorvintaal as a blue great wyrm dragonlich who has primarily undead and ghost exarchs and servants (enslaved or otherwise), his limitations involve pretty much describing a general dungeon or villain his dragon would like, and if I accept it I’ll tell him later whether or not it was successful against my current group and if he got prestige rewards, however his choice in servants for the game is something of a difficulty for me to put into the game, his first exarch got his ass kicked despite incorporeal traits because A: the group has magic weapons, and B: he had nothing but ghost touch weapons and armor.
Before anyone asks why I’m putting Xorvintaal into the game, it’s simple: it’s a good story hook that the players thus far seem to really like the premise and it lets me essentially use my DM friend for encounter ideas while getting to also play an otherwise impossible game concept, since the dragons game is nigh impossible to actually play.

The second question is how to handle a troublesome character. The problem I’ve been having is I have an exceptionally greedy player, let’s call him Mr. Greed, to sum up the campaign thus far he’s stolen and lied about every item he’s come across, taking items clearly meant to be for specific players and instead trying to pawn them to shops or using them himself despite it not making much sense, this has killed the motivation and mood pretty bad in my group (except for his) to the point where I have a hard time rewarding my players for their quest. I’ve tried subtly DM karma slapping him left and right but he’s yet to stop, I have literally given him the cursed items “Icons of Damnation” from the unholy warrior handbook (page42), when he found out his blunder he acted like I was the idiot for introducing such powerful items for him to klepo, anyway this isn’t about how bad he is but what to do with it, currently he has an obscured amount of money for his level and I’m not sure how to fairly remove it from him or discourage the behavior without outright murdering him, I figured a long chain of cursed items might drive a point, but now I have to damage control after he pawned a lot of them off. Thus far I’ve introduced a Kender hoping that’ll do something, aside from that my Xorvintaal side player wants to have a dungeon based on illusions that steals their items when they fall for a trap, not sure if that’s even possible, though it’d be a convenient way of handling this. I know there’s an unseen servant spell capable of stealing from a character including out of a bag of holding, but I think that’s a 7-9th level spell and a bit too high for their current level; though admittedly thieving illusions traps probably are too.

My third question is directly tied to the second, is it wrong to not tell your players their alignment as a means of countering meta-gaming? The reason I want to do this is because a couple of my players act outside of their proposed alignment consistently, the DMG said if a player does this that means they were simply wrong and should rewrite the alignment on their sheet, however I believe that if I tell Mr. Greed that he is in fact not Chaotic Neutral and instead Chaotic Evil then he’ll just say “Well if I’m evil anyway I’ll be really evil” and be even worse than he is now. The premise I’d use for not telling them is that aside from sense alignment spells one does not know their own alignment innately; they express it through their actions, and as such though their actions might seem justified to them, that doesn’t their personal opinion applies to the entire cosmos in itself. If you question whether or not being greedy is chaotic neutral, I have a scoundrel in my party who is also greedy but not evil in acquiring it. the list of evil transgressions (and I am using the evil defined in BoVD as a guideline here) is: lying to both party members and NPCs to get and keep goodies, stealing from party members and NPCs, trying to sell known cursed items without telling the buyers of its nature, tricking a sorcerer to wish away icons of damnations curse binding (he can’t remove them except with a wish/miracle) from Mr. greed and tricking said sorcerer into taking them without revealing their exceptionally dangerous nature, harassing and tormenting PCs and NPCs with various spells, tricks and insults (constantly), abandoning a fellow PC to the request of an Eye of Fear and Flame (BoVD p177) without so much as a second thought, convincing that he’s collecting the sum of the groups wealth to buy everyone gear just to spend 80-90% of it on his own items and giving them cheap level 1-3 trinkets. Among so many more evil acts I can’t even think of off the top of my head.

Point being I know his characters evil, I just don’t know if it’s wrong to tell him that in order to prevent meta thinking and making him even worse, he’s already proposed killing the other players and put his eye on some of their nicer items they actually were able to get.
As a side note none of the players classes can cast sense alignments otherwise this question would be pointless. If I’m in fact right to not tell his alignment I’d of course I’d tell him if any PC actually senses for it, and NPCs of course should respond to the alignment regardless of whether or not he’s aware of it, I’m just not certain if I’m in the right to make this call.

My DM mentor taught me that I should try to remain fair and impartial and also accommodate what the players want to do so long as it’s reasonable whether or not I like or agree with it, and allow karma to slap them for any of their evil unless they legitimately get away with it.

With that in mind all ideas, suggestions and advice are welcome, thanks in advice.

[Forbiddenwar]

Regarding a problem player:

The Number 1 rule of D&D:
It is a game. Unless I read it incorrectly, this player is seriously interfering with your and the other players ability to have fun.

The only solution to that is show him the door. And from what I read, it's beyond time for that. You tried talking to him, in game and out of game. Show him the door. There's nothing else you can do to.

If the player then promises to mend his ways, and if the other players still want him in the game, and if you still want him in the game, delete his inventory through rule 0 and tell him to start over. Stripped naked in the street by a paladin may give the player and the character some humility.

[Fox45]

I don't know if this will be of any help but something I might do in that situation is have some kind of goodly creature tell the other PCs what he's up to. Maybe a fairy decides to make it his buisness or something. And then when you have the inevitable dead fairy on your hands you have all his friends and extended family show up to get revenge. Of course then you might just end up with a bunch of dead fairies.

Another idea is somehow have all his evil acts come back and bite him in the ass. His face starts showing up on wanted posters, bounty hunters come after him, shopkeepers refuse to sell or buy anything from him. Maybe he pissed off some spellcaster who tracks him down and turns him into a newt. Or you could try a peer pressure approach and have these examples extend to the entire party, just make sure they know he's the one to blame.

Or maybe give him a "divine test." Some God is watching as he is presented an opportunity to do good or evil.

Whatever you do just try to make it fun for the whole group.

[Hawkings]

Both good points, I really could do the fairy thing and I think it's a good idea, I have enough things in the game already that I could throw in an NPC that says "I know what you've been doing" and how it's handled could be a trigger for a watching diety, that's a double whammy, nice idea thanks Fox45.

Forbiddenwar I'll admit my share of responsibility for not stopping it by now, I suppose by attempting to uphold my mentors guidelines I've let things get out of hand this far. I know he's acted similar with 3 characters he's played in previous campaigns; this 4th one is his first character in my campaign though.
I'm a sucker for trying to redeem characters, both NPCs and otherwise, so I'll give him a chance, his current character got the damned feat from the Icons of Damnation so he can't be resurrected, so killing the character forever will be easy. Maybe adding a vow of poverty to your idea on his next character would a good idea, because what he’s playing is not the kind of typecast character any player should play.

I'm really interested in the ghost thing though as I’d love to keep having ghost NPC enemies, they're just not my usual choice of enemies.

I appreciate the advice and any more is always welcome.

[Alabenson]

Regarding the problem player, I think you need to sit down with him out of game and spell out that his behavior needs to change. Honestly, the fact that this is apparently par for the course for him tells me that even if you do find some way to punish the character for his actions, the player's response will be to simply retire/kill his character, make a new one, and resume being a jackass.

[Saintheart]

I'm actually coming round to the view expressed out here that personal problems with players should not be resolved by raining hate on their characters. If you have a problem player, resolve it with him OOC, and if he's still a jerk about it, ditch him. If you have a problem character, rejoice that you're getting good roleplay from the non-jerk who's playing him. :smallbiggrin:

[Divide by Zero]

Out of character issues need to be handled out of character. Tell the player to fix his attitude, and if he doesn't, well, start figuring out how to adapt your campaign for one less player.

[Acanous]

actually, while the player is being greedy, his character is the one committing all these evil acts, and it is perfectly alright to have the character punished for them.

Since the player seems to make a habit of having his characters do this, you might have to explain the evil alignment to him.

A Chaotic Neutral person might, say, sell the party's unwanted treasure, useing diplomacy, bluff and appraise to get more than an item is worth, then report back to the party that he got full value, pocketing the extra for himself.

You could pitch this to the player out of game, giving him a way to amass wealth and be sneaky about it, without screwing over the party.

[Unseenmal]

Depending on the type of campaign you have...you could try the God's test thing and if he fails, do what our groups do. In most of my games I've played in or GM'd, evil characters are just not going to fit right with the story. So if a character's alignment shifts to evil, well now he's an NPC that the GM gets to take over and the player has to make something else. This has happened to me as a player and I have done this as a GM. But I really enjoyed this happening to my character as he became the BBEG the party then had to deal with. However, this is a houserule that ALL players are aware of beforehand. So to spring it on him would kinda suck but sounds like he needs something other than an OOC talking to or a slap on the wrist in character

OR 2 words....Rust Monster.... :smallbiggrin:

[NecroRick]

It is utterly inconceivable that he is doing all this without you being in some way complicit in it.

Why are you letting him steal stuff from other players and not be noticed? Has he somehow bluffed you into believing that only his skills/spells/whatever function while he is stealing from them? Give the other players spot checks with low DCs to see him doing this.

Giving him cursed magic items is certainly not the answer.

[Andorax]

Personal problems with players should not be resolved by raining hate on their characters. If you have a problem player, resolve it with him OOC, and if he's still a jerk about it, ditch him. If you have a problem character, rejoice that you're getting good roleplay from the non-jerk who's playing him. :smallbiggrin:

This is the first time in years I've seriously considered changing my sig.

[Ditto]

Stealing items isn't necessarily evil. Evil is all about causing harm to innocents and valuing life. Stealing the fighter's sword right before battle? Yes, that's evil. Bilking your partners out of profit for fun and... profit... that's just being a jerk.

That said, doing such things is bound to garner notice from people. Don't you think the pawn shop owner is going to report to the local theives guild that some hotshot comes in every few days with phat lewtz? Don't even need to introduce paladins into the equation. :smallbiggrin:

Also, don't offer him fair prices for his items. ESPECIALLY if he doesn't have appriase. My DM does this all the time to my group, and I'm the only one who knows what the book-prices should be, I just laugh. Pawn shops aren't required to take things for market value, they can and should turn down perfectly awesome items if they don't think they'll be able to re-sell them.

[Divide by Zero]

actually, while the player is being greedy, his character is the one committing all these evil acts, and it is perfectly alright to have the character punished for them.

Except he already punished the character, and nothing changed. Punishing him further is unlikely to remedy this.

[Hawkings]

Thanks for all the replies, still hoping for some info on ghosts issue though I'll scavenge through Ghostwalk until I find something, maybe I'm just not seeing it.
First I’d like to note that I’ve kept the details brief in regards to the actions of Mr. Greed’s character for the sake of brevity as no one likes long posts.


I'm actually coming round to the view expressed out here that personal problems with players should not be resolved by raining hate on their characters. If you have a problem player, resolve it with him OOC, and if he's still a jerk about it, ditch him. If you have a problem character, rejoice that you're getting good roleplay from the non-jerk who's playing him. :smallbiggrin:

The problem is both the player and the character are in unison in their behavior. I absolutely agree it’d be wrong to be overly cruel to a character if they hadn’t deserved it, I am of the belief that what happens out of character and in character should remain completely separate, as such I don’t blame the character for the player liking to play only cruel and greedy jerk PCs, but I can’t ignore the character abandoning his friend to die so he can make an easy buck; and yes he could have saved the friend easily but didn’t want to risk losing his loot.
As a side note my rogue player is a super great guy and really generous but his character is a total opportunistic jerk and I really do enjoy his antics.


Out of character issues need to be handled out of character. Tell the player to fix his attitude, and if he doesn't, well, start figuring out how to adapt your campaign for one less player.

Thanks Divide by Zero I’ll keep that in mind.


actually, while the player is being greedy, his character is the one committing all these evil acts, and it is perfectly alright to have the character punished for them.

Since the player seems to make a habit of having his characters do this, you might have to explain the evil alignment to him.

A Chaotic Neutral person might, say, sell the party's unwanted treasure, useing diplomacy, bluff and appraise to get more than an item is worth, then report back to the party that he got full value, pocketing the extra for himself.

You could pitch this to the player out of game, giving him a way to amass wealth and be sneaky about it, without screwing over the party.

I’d agree with the Chaotic Neutral part except he’s done worse than simply being a crafty haggler, I’m mostly associating the selling known cursed items without so much as a warning (or discount) to the evil acts pile.
I love the alternate way of gaining wealth idea and will absolutely pitch that as a far less evil means of gaining some spending coin.

Depending on the type of campaign you have...you could try the God's test thing and if he fails, do what our groups do. In most of my games I've played in or GM'd, evil characters are just not going to fit right with the story. So if a character's alignment shifts to evil, well now he's an NPC that the GM gets to take over and the player has to make something else. This has happened to me as a player and I have done this as a GM. But I really enjoyed this happening to my character as he became the BBEG the party then had to deal with. However, this is a houserule that ALL players are aware of beforehand. So to spring it on him would kinda suck but sounds like he needs something other than an OOC talking to or a slap on the wrist in character

OR 2 words....Rust Monster.... :smallbiggrin:

I love the concept and think it’d be a lot of fun to play, nothing says relatable villain like your old character, I might apply this if I ever have a good aligned campaign. This current one is mostly lawful neutral with a lawful good and chaotic neutral rogue, so he’s the only exception playing as if chaotic evil.
Throwing a rust monster at him would be a great idea except he’s a variant sorcerer and it’d be a lot less affective against him and cripple the barbarian, fighter and rogue instead. How is a sorcerer stealing everything may you ask? Clever use of Invisibility and ghost sounds as well as sneaking around the party enough to find the loot first and claim he didn’t find anything or less of what he did; I’m aware that this is CN and it’s not limited to this though it is the bulk. After a couple games I just started putting in more money than items but he just tossed it in a bag of holding… I just realized how stupid I am for not throwing in a mimic yet…BAH!

It is utterly inconceivable that he is doing all this without you being in some way complicit in it.

Why are you letting him steal stuff from other players and not be noticed? Has he somehow bluffed you into believing that only his skills/spells/whatever function while he is stealing from them? Give the other players spot checks with low DCs to see him doing this.

Giving him cursed magic items is certainly not the answer.
I’ll admit and take full responsibility for my part in this, I’m a novice DM having only had a few short campaigns and this being my first long one with a lot of players; that is no excuse of course, It’ more the cause explaining it. I have allowed them numerous spot, sense motive and other checks as situation allowed every time but the man’s rolls are dynamite, even with the 5 purely charisma bonus to bluff he rolls anywhere from 21-25 constantly while the other plays roll low to moderate, making him impossible for them to catch in character; And as mentioned before he’s snatching the items before they can get near and when asked what he found if anything he rolls a total 23 and their sense motives can range from 8 to 16. I’m not sure what a DM can about players that do or don’t roll great except give them low DCs, but they don’t ask NPCs or even snoop on the guy let alone question why he instantly goes to the shop each time he goes to town or has a big sack with him, a DC I’d make super low at this point.
Even with all that though I’m sure I could have done better to stop it, provided NPCs to facilitate informing the players, something like NPC: “Geeze you guys had a huge haul this time huh? I haven’t seen that many magic items in 20 years!” PCs: “what’re you talking about?” NPC: “oh didn’t you know your sorcerer friends been cornering the market all week?” that would have worked great, honestly I need to step up as a DM, though if I tried that he’d have rolled another 24 bluff, and what can be done about that? Come to think of it advice on how to handle high rollers would be great too, of course I’m sure that threads out there already.


Stealing items isn't necessarily evil. Evil is all about causing harm to innocents and valuing life. Stealing the fighter's sword right before battle? Yes, that's evil. Bilking your partners out of profit for fun and... profit... that's just being a jerk.

That said, doing such things is bound to garner notice from people. Don't you think the pawn shop owner is going to report to the local theives guild that some hotshot comes in every few days with phat lewtz? Don't even need to introduce paladins into the equation. :smallbiggrin:

Also, don't offer him fair prices for his items. ESPECIALLY if he doesn't have appriase. My DM does this all the time to my group, and I'm the only one who knows what the book-prices should be, I just laugh. Pawn shops aren't required to take things for market value, they can and should turn down perfectly awesome items if they don't think they'll be able to re-sell them.
I agree stealing isn’t inherently evil; I’ll go over the events in my head to rethink if he’s committed any truly evil acts in regards to theft. I still think it’s bad for him to steal from his own group, and when they find out they’ll probably team kill him. If I can ever figure out a way for them to learn about it that he can’t bluff his way out of, unfortunately this hasn’t happened. Would having a thief steal his bag of holding and in the pursuit of chasing the criminal having the contents spill into the street be too much? I’d love to see the reactions on everyone’s face when 50,000gp pours into the road and commoners start flocking at it like voracious seagull.
I was thinking of having tax collectors chase after him since he did most of his business through a completely lawful good shop in a major city, the capitol city come to think of it. Tossing in a thief’s guild who’ve heard of a chump getting a big hoard of cash is also a good idea, since that exactly what a thieves guild would be looking and gathering information for; the fact the shop keeper is naive and not good with keeping secrets or asking important questions like “where’d you get this?” would help that too, and the naive shopkeeper is probably why he’s favored the place.

I LOVE the idea, can’t believe I was so stupid not to think of that, he’s a sorcerer he doesn’t even have an appraise check, a diplomacy check or an anything check, I can’t believe I over looked something so obvious! Thank you sooo very much for pointing this out, you’ve no idea how much trouble and headache you’ve just saved me. Unfortunately though Mr. greed used to be a DM and knows the general cost of everything, I imagine he will inevitably look up all the costs I give him, regardless of his players at the time ability. Whenever someone haggled with him in the past if the price didn’t reach what he thought the price should be at he’d start jumping from place to place looking for a NPC he could somehow trick into buying it for more, this slowed game pace to a crawl on many occasions. That isn’t to say I’m disregarding what you said as I love the idea, just putting it out there incase additional information can help circumvent the OOC general knowledge of the games base economics.


Except he already punished the character, and nothing changed. Punishing him further is unlikely to remedy this.
I’ll admit maybe I haven’t punished him enough, or rather directly enough. Except recently I’ve sent a half dozen of monsters after him one after another seeking him and only him in order to gain his magic item he took from an ancient crypt and started trying to barter around town, this caught their attention and they started trying to get it from him, he hid behind his PC teammates the whole time denying he had the item to both them and the enemies and claimed it was a former PC now NPC that had it thus sending the enemies he could reason with after the poor innocent and unknowing NPC getting him horrifically tortured and killed (this is what I referred to above as sacrificing a friend for loot). Any he couldn’t trick he had his friends deal with, all the while convincing them it was entirely a misunderstanding.

Again I really hate his consistently high rolls, at least against the PCs who should know better, the NPCs I can DM magic to catch him (I don’t really like DM cheating too often) but I can’t when it comes to the PCs.
Come to think of it that is kind of the aforementioned thieves’ guild idea, except with less skilled monsters, and it didn’t even work… still love the thief’s guild idea though.

I really appreciate the feedback, you’ve help me see my own failings even more than my players, much appreciated.

Sorry for long posts, am I Quoting too much? I’m new to the forum so I’ll stop if I am.

[Madwand99]

An obvious consequence of certain individuals getting too much treasure for their level in D&D is that adventurers become very interested in them. You could create a group of much more powerful adventurers that teleport in, quickly subdue him, and rob him. Preferably when he's sleeping by himself. If they keep him alive, it's because he has proven to be a lucrative source of treasure. If he gets much over his wealth by level again, they show up again, having gained as many levels as he has in the interim.

I think I'd just kick him from the group though. Non-team players are no fun for anyone but themselves.

[Hawkings]

LOOOOOL! That's hilarious. I've actually got about a half dozen idea's to rob him of his wealth thus far, but yours is just too funny, it would cause so much whining but it’d be worth it, and is a lot more direct and still feasible enough to believe it could happen compared to my normal roundabout plotlines.
Honestly I'm less fearful of a PC getting too much money because it's so easy to take it away just like that; now getting too many or a single far too powerful items is the more tricky part I think.

In either case it boils down to whether or not the player will change his ways, if not there's not much to be done.
I feel like I’ve learned a lot from this thread already, thanks.

[Snails]

I agree you need to talk to the player OOC.

A Good Player should show up at the table wanting everyone have fun in the session.

Yeah, I am not always a Good Player. I admit it. But I often am. I am willing to amend my behavior to make the game more fun for other players or the DM.

Putting yourself first sometimes is part of the game. In moderation, it can make the game more interesting. Putting yourself first all the time quickly becomes dull and tedious, at least to everyone else.

At some point, a DM has to wonder if a 21st level Paladin coming out of nowhere and hacking a certain PC's head off would not make the game more fun. Would that be unfair? Should a DM care a whit about "unfair" if it helps more of the players have fun?

D&D can be amazingly fun when the players work together and the PCs work together. The combinations and surprises are more exciting.

Without good cooperation between the players, frankly, D&D is a very mediocre and tedious war game. I have played many war games. I like war games. When I am at the table for D&D, I am there for a different kind of experience.

And, BTW, the DM is the player behind the screen. He (or she) is properly given deference because of the enormous burden carried. He is there to have fun, too. We should ask ourselves, what have we players done lately to help our DM have fun?