Problem Players Anonymous

[FreakyCheeseMan]

I've seen a lot of threads lately that basically amount to "There's a problem player in my group, here's what he does," either as requests for help, or just wanting to share the (sometimes funny) experience.

I'm sure that a lot of us here have been on the other side of this issue as well - that we've been problem players ourselves, in the past if not in the present.

Anyway, I thought it might be useful - or at least interesting - to hear things from the perspective of the other side: what we were doing wrong, why we were doing it, what made us get better.

I'll start, but please don't make this thread all about my experience - I'd like one or two of you to confess your sins, as well. :smalltongue:

Personally, I had two big crimes - I didn't always get along with my fellow players, and I tended to make problem characters.

The former is a bit too broad of an issue to analyze here, as it ties in to my broader lack of social functionality, and in all honesty, some of the other players had their own issues, as well. It didn't help that the group member I got along with least was also our DM, and also happened to be (through some process that occurred while I wasn't paying attention, and remains unknown to me to this day) living in my house without paying rent.

For the second, I tended to build characters that had alignment conflicts with the party, sometimes in quite severe ways - my first characters included a monk who kept trying to take slaves, and an insane, jester-themed beguiler whose whole schtick was trying to corrupt good characters and trick/persuade them into committing evil acts.

Suffice to say, he was not welcomed by the party, who were too polite to kill him outright, though it really would have made sense for them to do so. I had a couple of other characters that had a similar issue, but that was by far the most extreme. My big problem was, I think, the same one held by Lawful Stupid Paladins, or Rogues Who Keep Trying To Steal From The Party - I was roleplaying a character that prevented my allies from being able to realistically play theirs, because there would be no reason for their characters to tolerate or assist mine.

It seems kinda obvious, but at the time, my thinking didn't go beyond "This is a cool concept for a character" - I completely failed to consider how it would function from other points of view.

My other big issue was just that I tended to get over-excited, and forget myself/my thinly-held veneer of social functionality. I'd think of something that struck me as outrageous or funny and go ahead with it, even though it was disruptive to the group as a whole. ("Bill the Idiot Druid" was a more recent example of this, but I ended my very first D&D session in a TPK when it occurred to me how funny it would be if I pushed over a shelf of explosive potions during a fight in an alchemist's lab.)

Thankfully, it didn't take me too long get over such habits - one of my fellow players was also an old and good friend of mine, and he was generally good about making sure I understood when I was crossing too many lines or getting on too many peoples nerves. Still ended up falling out with most of the rest of the group but, as said, there were other problems there as well.

Anyway. Who else has been on the wrong side of inter-player conflicts?

[Fates]

Honestly? The only time was when I chose to play a very well-optimized Swordsage in a party of t5/t4 characters with little mechanical aptitude and a DM who had never had a ToB character before. Despite the party's constant complaints about my character always stealing the spotlight (and it's true, I practically singlehandedly won every single fight we had) I dismissed it as mere playfulness until I killed the BBEG just after he'd been introduced. It was only at this point that I realized my mistake, killed off my character, and rolled a hexblade; but by then, I had already ruined the whole plotline the DM had planned. The game's gotten very sandboxxy now, and suddenly (I'm not quite sure how it happened) we're now predominantly evil and trying to bring an era of unlife over the entire plane. I still feel bad for what I did to our poor DM, though.

[Aegis013]

I prematurely ended a DM's game via over-optimization and simultaneously made a player feel useless.

Admittedly, these weren't entirely my fault, but I should have investigated more, as I could have prevented both issues. I was playing a Shadowcraft Mage, two of the other party members were new to 3.5 so I assisted them with their characters (a DMM Cleric and a Druidzilla) to make sure that we were on comparable power levels. These players had plenty of fun. The other experienced player brought a Warblade, and I piled buffs on him so he had tons of fun too.

One of the issues was that the DM claimed to have higher system mastery than he did. He was unfamiliar with even basic low level arcane spells such as Sleep and Color Spray and how effective these were. He gawked at my abilities to manipulate encounters with Color Spray and Silent Image. The further the campaign went, the further it became clear that he had no way to handle our characters and provide effective challenges (shy of DM fiat, which he did use on occasion). The reason that I went ahead with these characters in the first place was that I had done my best to fully explain them (and linked him all relevant material, handbooks, etc for perusal at his convenience) and tried to emphasize how powerful the options were while repeatedly saying that if he wanted it toned down I would make it happen gladly, and despite all of this he reassured me repeatedly that it was fine and that he could handle it.

The player who was overshadowed was a fairly new player who came in mid-campaign. He joined the group with a rogue, and I wasn't able to provide insight during the character creation (otherwise you can bet he would've been a Factotum), and since we had gone without a rogue for enough of the campaign that we were about level 8, I had picked up most of the faux rogue spells to fill that role. Even though I passed over things like my wand of knock and other transferable goodies to the rogue in question, he still felt powerfully overshadowed in our group, unsurprisingly.

It was a shame the campaign came to a close so early, but I feel that largely it was my fault for going over the top on preparation measures. He attempted to have a plot twist and I completely foiled it with some scrolls that I had procured in case anything went terribly wrong, and I took out one of the biggest threats in the campaign something like 6 or 7 levels early (alone) using a couple of other similar scrolls. I was largely able to get these because WBL wasn't followed and we had funds that hugely exceeded our level; specifically our party's last payday was free access to what we could carry sans extradimensional storage space from a Dwarven Kindgom's vault of coin and magic items. So we loaded up the druid, had him Wildshape into an elephant, loaded him up again, had him Wildshape again into an elephant, and so on and so forth, and carried out millions of gold around level 9 or so.

Overall the group had a good dynamic, but I think that if I hadn't gone so wild given the DM's op leniency, the entire group might have had a better time as a whole.

[Pandiano]

In general I am a very social person, quite dominant at times, but likable and empathic. But in my group is one friend who just has the talent to hit the right button. I'm constantly losing my temper listening to him and his plans and react clearly too extreme. If he makes a suggestion I can't put myself together and derange his idea.
I try to stay calm, but something in his behavior just ticks me off.

[Gwazi Magnum]

I have a feeling my thread was one of those that this one is talking about.

So it only seems right that I admit my own faults as well.

Though in truth I've only been a player in two d&d groups (well, three technically, but the third has barely gotten off the ground yet).

1st Campaign: I played a Sorcerer called Shiara. The concept was simple, ramp up Charisma. Inspiration being how I loved using the persuade option in video games like Dragon Age and Kotor and I wanted something similliar in d&d *cough*Diplomacy*cough*.

Though she was the 3rd most problematic character in the group. The two more problematic characters was a Rogue Halfling who stole gold from the party constantly (and had apparently planned with the DM to steal the main quest lines reward to pay off a debt), and a Wizard whose race I can't remember. This was a troll character (for those who have posted in my thread, this Wizard was played by Player L). He just all around trolled trying to take magic items, give a bad first impression of us to NPCs or just die in combat all time (Purposely having a Con of 8 to be a reliability).

My character had the issues of... she followed the good alignment a bit too strictly. I essentially turned her into some sort of insane feminist without even relising it. Where my goal was to treat genders equally, she constantly ended up being seen as 'Worship woman you man whore!'.

But... her character wasn't even really the issue, it was how I was as a player that was the issue. Our DM at the time was very by the book. He felt he had to look through and approve everything even if it was basic information like prestige classes in the DMG book, info that should automatically he considered approved he would find out was being planned on used and go "Hmmmm, I don't remember approving that".

And was very 'don't argue with me'. Granted there is the "DM is always right rule" but I feel like he took it too far at times just so the players could both be stream lined into a premade storyline and so they were weak enough to be messed with easily by challenging encounters.

As a player, I didn't like constantly being ran over and being taken advantage like this, challenge is a good thing. But not when it's only a challenge because the DM effectively cut off all ways of you being that effective, on top of stacking on penalties, taking gear away and only leaving minor hints you're walking into a trap like "you think you hear a light whisper or noise in the forest".

Pretty much I ended up constantly digging my heels in and saying "I refuse to go along with this because of __________" often making an issue out of something that may not of been a big deal or was actually realistic and probable for the DM to do. I had just gotten so tired of his over abuse of rules and DMs authority I had started to argued everything effectively it ended up putting the campaign to a screeching halt and end.

Though, for those who have been reading my thread. This same DM is the one whose taking over for the new campaign once our current one with Player D ends, and not only have I acknowledged my issues and he relised some of the places he went too controlling, but most if not all of our aggression was released by an IC rivialry anyhow so things should be better this time around.

2nd Campaign: This is the campaign with Player D in it for those who read my other thread.

However, there really isn't much if anything I do there as a player that's an issue. The issue is my character. In truth my guy isn't that broken, and could be easily countered and killed by a number of things. But the issue is that I'm the only optimizer in our group, so compared to a bunch of casual slapped together characters... mine kind of dominates the playing field.

Essentially he has a ridiculously high strength and one hit kills almost any monster throw against us. 3 World shifting spiders? Killed them before they moved. A Hydra? Seered it's heads off with a flaming sword?

Kraken attacking the ship? Did so much damage it should of died in turn 1 so the DM had to rule "This is a special kind of Kraken" just to keep the adventure going. And he uses this same strength to break through walls, doors, vaults. He's legit strong enough to pick up a dragon and toss him across the town too.

But he is a melee only guy which is the 'balance' bit. He needs to be in close combat to be doing much. And he is mostly fighter levels so despite his broken build he almost breaks even with the groups sorcerer instead of becoming massively worse like most fighters tend to do.

If this guy was with other optimizers (like people on these forums) he wouldn't be anything special at all. But it's the fact he's in a group where players either don't care to make their characters so effective, or lack the knowledge to do so that makes him as powerful and broken as he is for the campaign.

[Wings of Peace]

I don't know if this story counts but I'll save that reason for the end. I made an optimized Warblade in a fairly newbie (including the dm) group of level 5 characters. I mowed down pretty much everything that we came across and the DM didn't mind because my character sucked up to the dmpc and had some jokes that made the DM laugh.

My reason for doing this was that I hated the campaign but since it was compromised of my late-night/drinking buddies I didn't want to just quit either so I used the character to drive the campaign's excitement into the ground till it disbanded because people were bored with how the adventure was progressing. I don't know if this story counts is because I was a problem player for very intentional and calculated reasons. I'd like to be able to say I regret the way I handled the situation, but it was really nice going out for drinks again and I've found other groups.

[Callin]

Me and a friend collaborated to screw over the DM in this one game that i was previously in and then he started back up. I decided to created a new character because the older one I feel had been played out. It was an Epic Undead/Evil Game. Everyone was ECL 22 and he made me and my friend come in at ECL 16. Thats when we decided to screw him over real bad. Made some plans and actually got it approved by WoTC so there was no fussing about it. In the first Game we went from ECL 16 to ECL 50. Using various Psionic and Magic tricks to Summon really bad nasties and then merge with them and then clone the body and then accelerate the growth and inhabit said body. Only to start all over again, thus increasing our power quickly. On our own private demi plane as well so we could no be bothered.

We ended up killing a god and Absorbing his Divine Rank as well... and that was game because then we just redid our trick and got infinite Divine Rank.

Other than rare times like that im not really a problem character. I did get shot at once though at a game. That was interesting. You dont hand the self proclaimed mentally unstable person a revolver without FULLY checking that it is unloaded. He was pointing it at the ground at an angle at Me, and two other friends and pulling the trigger. Click Click Click BANG. Honest to god i almost wet my pants.

[ArcturusV]

Well, the most recent example personally is a campaign where one of the players really wanted to be a Mary Sue type. Even to the point of cheating on his rolls so he could instantly be better than even trained professionals at things he hasn't even studied.

He irked me. On top of that, he stole from my character and used Enchantment Magic on him (And I found out ICily).

... so I crafted a 5 month long campaign alongside the campaign, with the DM, to just DESTROY his character. I systematically went after everything. Everything. All entirely in character (I was also playing Lawful Evil alignment)... but it still probably wasn't a good idea. On the plus side the DM did tell me several times that my campaign to destroy the fellow PC is the only reason he continued the campaign. He got fed up with the blatant cheating but didn't have it in him to really confront the player.

So, after 5 months of side campaigning, I finally reveal everything in the final arc of the campaign where I end up just destroying his character in every way short of killing him. Permanently wounded him, killed his ally/lover, got him excommunicated by his own Goddess that he wanted to be a saint of, destroyed his Plot Widgets and Uber Equipment, everyone he ever thought was his friend, confidant, lover, etc, ended up lining up behind me to take a swing at him. I got him exiled from his homeland and set to die on a podunk rock where there was practically no one for him to try his mindjacking tricks on.

... the player got upset enough to cry, and swore never to game with us again.

Of course that lasted about 4 days, after which he wanted a sequel campaign to "get me back" and "Put my character on trial for my crimes". Of course the moment he found out I heard about it, and would be playing in that campaign as well he suddenly got a lot less piss and vinegar in his system.

That is probably my worst one, as a player.

A lesser one I've done in 3.5?

Group tells me they need a Cleric. No one picked a cleric. They need one, I was the last one in the group, so it was my duty to roll up a cleric.

I did. A cleric who used Negative Energy and was something of a Debuffer and part time Necromancer.

We go adventuring, no one has a problem. They don't think twice about the fact that I'm using spells like Bane, etc. We run into an undead on the third adventure in.

I rebuke it, ends up that I was high up enough I Commanded it instead. They heard the DM describe how it drops on one knee and calls me Master, etc.

Suddenly the table looks at me and goes "YOU'RE EVIL!"

The DM and I just look at them and say, "... so?"

"But we needed you to play a healer and now you can't heal us anyway! Roll up a REAL cleric!"

"That is a real cleric."

"You knew what we meant!"

[Wings of Peace]

Well, the most recent example personally is a campaign where one of the players really wanted to be a Mary Sue type. Even to the point of cheating on his rolls so he could instantly be better than even trained professionals at things he hasn't even studied.

He irked me. On top of that, he stole from my character and used Enchantment Magic on him (And I found out ICily).

... so I crafted a 5 month long campaign alongside the campaign, with the DM, to just DESTROY his character. I systematically went after everything. Everything. All entirely in character (I was also playing Lawful Evil alignment)... but it still probably wasn't a good idea. On the plus side the DM did tell me several times that my campaign to destroy the fellow PC is the only reason he continued the campaign. He got fed up with the blatant cheating but didn't have it in him to really confront the player.

So, after 5 months of side campaigning, I finally reveal everything in the final arc of the campaign where I end up just destroying his character in every way short of killing him. Permanently wounded him, killed his ally/lover, got him excommunicated by his own Goddess that he wanted to be a saint of, destroyed his Plot Widgets and Uber Equipment, everyone he ever thought was his friend, confidant, lover, etc, ended up lining up behind me to take a swing at him. I got him exiled from his homeland and set to die on a podunk rock where there was practically no one for him to try his mindjacking tricks on.

... the player got upset enough to cry, and swore never to game with us again.

Of course that lasted about 4 days, after which he wanted a sequel campaign to "get me back" and "Put my character on trial for my crimes". Of course the moment he found out I heard about it, and would be playing in that campaign as well he suddenly got a lot less piss and vinegar in his system.

That is probably my worst one, as a player.

A lesser one I've done in 3.5?

Group tells me they need a Cleric. No one picked a cleric. They need one, I was the last one in the group, so it was my duty to roll up a cleric.

I did. A cleric who used Negative Energy and was something of a Debuffer and part time Necromancer.

We go adventuring, no one has a problem. They don't think twice about the fact that I'm using spells like Bane, etc. We run into an undead on the third adventure in.

I rebuke it, ends up that I was high up enough I Commanded it instead. They heard the DM describe how it drops on one knee and calls me Master, etc.

Suddenly the table looks at me and goes "YOU'RE EVIL!"

The DM and I just look at them and say, "... so?"

"But we needed you to play a healer and now you can't heal us anyway! Roll up a REAL cleric!"

"That is a real cleric."

"You knew what we meant!"

I like you.

[Moriwen]

Well, I will cop to playing a problem character compatibility-wise now and then, although they tend to be less "kill everybody!" and more "convince the paladin to turn evil within the first 10 minutes of gameplay."

Really, though, my vice is the same as in real life: I talk too much. I tend to steal the spotlight and react before other players have a chance to. I respond well to a verbal smack upside the head and "hey, Mori, shut up a minute while I say what my cleric does," so I work well with similarly extroverted people, but I end up overshadowing anyone shy.

[elonin]

This appears to be a problem with one player clashing with the roleplay style of the group they are in.

[Kane0]

My father and I recently formed a group at our local Gaming store with some guys. One is new, one mostly plays PF and the DM and his mate both play 4e most of the time. We decided to go a loose 3.5 before we started, trying to keep it simple.

That is where everything got iffy. I bought my complete arcane book and got permission to play a modified warlock (in my sig somewhere), and the PF guy decided to play a wild mage while my father decided to be an evil cleric that hid his spellcasting abilities and refused to heal us beyond healing kits and herbalism.

So between the three of us we made a party that rules wise was a mess and the other two players (dwarf fighter and halfling rogue) felt sort of left behind.

RP wise the group is great, but our DM has to work hard to keep on top of the rules, especially since he comes from playing 4th ed. He is a great DM though and the campaign has been a blast so far.

In game my vice is not extreme but it is there. I try to always be part of what's going on and have my character do something, just not to the point of taking over other people's attention. For example my warlock has to discharge magic energy every hour or so and that alone leads to far more time and attention than I (IC and OOC) want. I also end up being the party leader or quasi-leader most of the time since I always have something to say or do.
So more or less the opposite of how I normally am IRL :smallamused:

[Gwazi Magnum]

A lesser one I've done in 3.5?

Group tells me they need a Cleric. No one picked a cleric. They need one, I was the last one in the group, so it was my duty to roll up a cleric.

I did. A cleric who used Negative Energy and was something of a Debuffer and part time Necromancer.

We go adventuring, no one has a problem. They don't think twice about the fact that I'm using spells like Bane, etc. We run into an undead on the third adventure in.

I rebuke it, ends up that I was high up enough I Commanded it instead. They heard the DM describe how it drops on one knee and calls me Master, etc.

Suddenly the table looks at me and goes "YOU'RE EVIL!"

The DM and I just look at them and say, "... so?"

"But we needed you to play a healer and now you can't heal us anyway! Roll up a REAL cleric!"

"That is a real cleric."

"You knew what we meant!"

I don't see this as a player problem.

Evil Clerics are still fully capable at healing, just not spontaneously.
Besides, if they needed a cleric that bad one of them should of played one. They shouldn't force you to make a certain type of character to just compliment what they got.

[TuggyNE]

I don't see this as a player problem.

Evil Clerics are still fully capable at healing, just not spontaneously.
Besides, if they needed a cleric that bad one of them should of played one. They shouldn't force you to make a certain type of character to just compliment what they got.

Oddly, some people seem to believe that lack of spontaneous healing means you literally can't prepare or cast cure X wounds spells at all.

[Pont]

As far as I know, my only episode as a problem player was one night many years ago where I forgotten we were playing D&D (yes the old one..)

I had a lot to drink before someone called me and told me I had to come, there was this new guy who was to be DM, and I as an experienced player was needed.

Unfortunately his adventure was horrible boring, tame and kliché filled, so I spent most of my time laughing at him, not taking anything serious and just being a pain in the ***

Eventually he started raining rocks on my char until he died. Then I started to ask the other players if they wanted a drink and eventually everyone except the DM was drunk. Needless to say he was quite angry...

[ArcturusV]

Well, it's because of lines about how Cure spells are Positive Energy, and Inflict are Negative Energy. A cleric that uses one, cannot use the other. Least that's where people get the idea. It's not really true. But they think it.

Mostly the group in question (And several I've been in) were of the mindset that Clerics were just walking HP factories and had no other purpose. MAYBE making magic items for them as well.

[prufock]

I'm not a high optimizer, but I sometimes end up with a specialty that can wreck things - like my fear-based caster that could make even the big bads crap their pants and/or die of fright. My current bard has a +30-something to diplomacy. I try not to abuse these specializations, though. IE I don't try to end boss encounters through diplomacy checks or anything like that.

On the flip side, my characters often seem to get killed/knocked unconscious a lot. Not sure if this is due to their builds, the way I play them, the DM picking on them, or just bad luck - probably a combination of factors.

As a player, I'm greedy in the sense that I want my character to be able to do everything, which is why I love the factotum class so much. It isn't that I want to overshadow the party, but that I want to be independent. I like characters that can handle themselves even without the rest of the party.

Finally, I have a tendency to try to game the system just a little bit. Not anything game-breaking, but to give the party a slight edge. For example, in our current game we've got a couple days of down time before we move on to the next adventure, and our party spellcaster wants to craft some wondrous items for the party. However the DM is putting us on a time crunch. So I find the rule in the DMG that you can add restrictions to items based on race, class, alignment, or skill use for a discount. This makes the items both cheaper AND quicker to make.

[nedz]

Oddly, some people seem to believe that lack of spontaneous healing means you literally can't prepare or cast cure X wounds spells at all.

One of the groups I play with uses the Spontaneous Domains variant. This means that unless you take the healing domain, and no one does, you cast your domains spells spontaneously instead. This makes for much more flavoursome clerics, though at low level they tend to prepare healing spells and then utilise their domains spontaneously.

[Jesterface]

I think my two guiltiest crimes as a player have to be a cleric of Talos I played in my only ever FR game, and a binder in an Eberron game.

The problem with the cleric was his alignment, Chaotic Neutral, in a party that was about 80% CN, with a single Lawful Neutral monk (who tried to talk her way out of fights, interesting roleplay, but was often disruptive in combat with opponents who clearly had no interest in or ability to talk). For the most part, the CN characters were all straining to go their own ways, held in this alliance purely by 'Act of God'; namely being strongarmed into our quest by an NPC at least 10 levels higher than us. The only character I came close to getting along with was the wannabe assassin in the group, and we still bickered frequently (kind of a bromance really). Things became a little more interesting when another cleric joined the group and, while CN, sucked up to the LG NPC quest-giver. Generally, every character was a problem person, made even worse by squabbles over loot, eventually leading to the game ending in an unsatisfying manner.

The Binder was a much more interesting character, a student of magical theory who turned to Pact magic following the deaths of his family, leading to a vengeance-fueled attack on the gangsters responsible, and lost his sense of self in the act, becoming something of a bland person, who only showed any personality if he was maintaining an active pact. I'd built him to favour Amon (the Vestige he used in his revenge act) and he was only reasonably competent without Amon bound (something like 14 Str, 16 Con and high Cha). With Amon bound, he became a war god, leading to the DM scrapping half of the adventure we were currently undertaking as he'd planned us escaping a complex made of corridors filled with barricades and guards. The fiery breath line attack granted by Amon made short work of the barricades and guards, much to his chagrin. That said, it allowed a crowning moment of awesome when the binder was swallowed by a Tendriculos and was resisting both the paralysis and acid damage, but due to using a spear, had no way of breaking free of the creature. Then I realised I only needed to be able to breathe to utilise the fiery breath, and proceeded to Godzilla my way out of the creature.