A thread for the DMs: Worst players you've had

[Ken Murikumo]

So, i've seen dozens of threads and arguments for worst experiences with tyrannical or idiot DMs/GMs (things that make me feel I'm doing a good job of not being that) but i've yet to see a thread or discussion about some of your worst players while DMing.

Other players can join it too about people they've played beside, but i'd like to get some stories from the DM perspective.

My first game i ran was a D20 modern, set far in the future, using a Ghost in the Shell D20 pdf i found online and ALL d20 modern material that was available to us. I had run 3 sessions before that during a round robin 3.5 game, so i had someidea of how to do it. I wasn't too familiar with the rules and was very willing to learn as i go. I was very naive as to how breakable the system was. I was also very willing to say yes, because i wanted strong players for fight my wicked-super-ultra-mega powerful/badass antagonist (he was in my mind, at least).

So there's the pretext, now for the meat:
One of the players was the kind of guy who would almost literally read the books from cover to cover. He covered every class feature and feat and began to make this monster of a character. I didn't know the rules nearly as much as he did and he would ask almost every session if he could have something, a feat, an item, a bending of the rules to make the two work better together, or an ability not in the books. I agreed but awarded the whole party these things because i had calculated the antagonist doing over 1000 damage average (more than the parties collective hp) so i figure they need to be stronger. In the end he optimized so much he could oneshot ANYTHING and what really grind-ed my gears was he did it to someone who couldn't have known he was abusing the system (and my ignorance). But in the end, the campaign came to it's finale, they (unsurprisingly) decimated the antagonist, and we all had fun doing it.


So a my next campaign was a traditional d&d (well gestalt pathfinder) game and i toned down on giving things out for free. He created a drow noble rogish thing that would deeper darkness sneak attack EVERYTHING to death (with the help of items and technicalities that would allow him to do it to everything). Expert warriors: dead, Liches: dead, DRAGONS THAT ARE LIKE 8 CR HIGHER THAN HIM: DEAD. He basically could've solo'd the campaign. Even out of combat, with his items and SU & Spl abilities (most at will) he could overcome even the most difficult challenges without trying. He was literally better than the entire party combined at everything. This became a textbook example of Dm vs Player. Long story short, by the time the campaign ended all important enemies were DM fiat tailored to get around only his abilities and some encounters were designed to keep him busy with some fruitless task of stabbing an HP punching bag so the other players could actually have a challenging battle. But again the campaign ended on a good note, and the party pretty much had fun regardless.

Actually the only enemy that he had 0 hope of defeating because of his strategies was a homebrewed golem that i'm still quite proud of. You had to attack it with a physical attack then a magic attack and back and forth. Any attack that violated that pattern would be 0% effective and after 10 incorrect attacks, it would increase in size category. Needless to say with his 7 attacks a round and him being to caught up trying to sneak attack it as much as possible, they finished the battle against a gargantuan+++ golem that was literally getting ready to TPK them with a stomp. And before anyone calls unfairness: i did give them (almost literally) neon signs to inform them that this is how the golem works.


Now i've become quite good at DMing. I've learned a lot from my past mistake (and train wrecks) and am very aware of what not to do and how to handle certain situations that allows the players to do what they think is appropriate and progress the story in a very rule of cool fashion. This player has toned it down, too. I'm not naive or ignorant of the rules anymore and most of the time can tell when he stretching the rules to make his character come way out on top, so i just call him out on it and politely "refresh" him of the rules he is in clear violation of. Now i'm not really a rules lawyer, but when he's trying to make an attack on every enemy in the area for drawing a weapon, i'll politely inform him that he is wrong, it does not provoke AoOs.

[Roxxy]

As much as I love my friends, I cannot play with them. I'm the serious immersive type, and they are the non-stop hilarious shenanigans type. If I write up a serious French courtly knights game, they will start up a competition to see who can make embody the most French stereotypes and antagonize the most foreign types. It's not a wrong way to play, it's just not what I want out of gaming. So, I do not play Pathfinder with my friends anymore.

Hmm. My worst player experience is really tame, I guess.

[atemu1234]

My worst player wasn't a bad player, he just treated another member of our group OOC like ****.

[Greymane]

Worst players? Huh. Well, back in high school I had some players who would constantly lie about their dice rolls. As in they would roll the dice, pick it up and examine it super closely before anyone else could see it and declare 15+ as their roll. Probably the worst I've had, which in hindsight isn't so terrible.

Some of my current players are problematic, but that's because they're wildly different in play styles. I like to run roleplay-heavy games, and one of my players is into that. Two other players just like the mechanical aspect of building characters and doing combat. One of those two is also pretty big into optimization (Ardent / Warshaper), and the others... not as much (Binder/Sorcerer and a Warlock), and balancing encounters is a nightmare. I'm running Red Hand of Doom and I have to rebuild every single encounter in the book from scratch, or else the Ardent would just curbstomp everything.

[j_spencer93]

mine would be a player who uses barbarians but refuses to rage and wants to wear heavy armor (idk why). wants to make rogues but not use sneak attack. play as super intelligent orcs and throws a fit about their racial penalties. wants to rape every women they see in game. and thanks chaotic means you kill everything else (not even kidding). also he thinks all elves are uptight and bisexual (thanks to that freaking book or erotic fantasy)
also he throws a fit when a bad guys beats him claiming im making his characters to weak or making the antagonist to strong. he also swears i cheat for other players when they do not fumble and even worse when they score critical hits. also...every freaking mage he picks must use all illusion spells or all enchantments and then throws a fit when creatures are immune to those (alot are...)
also he disregards how skills work and thinks if he makes a check then they instantly work as how he wants, example, he thinks any success at diplomacy means they become instant friends and do as he wants. same actually goes for charm person. regardless of type or anything else. really brings down the game alot

[Crake]

I haven't had much experience with bad players, the worst I think was a player who tried to out rules-lawyer me when he rolled a 20 to hit a creature with total concealment, he insisted that the 20 was an automatic hit, regardless of the concealment miss chance. When I declared that he still missed, he had a hissy fit and the table devolved into arguments (I was guest DMing for a group of something like 10 people, it was rediculous). It didn't even matter, because he attacked the wrong square anyway, so it didn't matter what he rolled, he would have swung at air.

[Oddman80]

So I was not the DM for this game, but a fellow player who could see the anguish this one guy was causing our DM.

The problem was that the player had far better system mastery than the DM and the rest of the group, but wasn't able to (or straight out refused to) build at the group's level.

His first character had the perfect alignment of race/traits/feats/abilities/equipment, that gave him 30 AC AT LEVEL 3-4, a +20 to hit, and could do 100 damage per hit. Ummm... We had a universalist wizard with a focus on linguistics and knowledge, a monk that could only hit 25% of the time, a Halfling barbarian, and a war priest that likes to play field medic instead of focus on damage... So this guy would always hit (roll of 2 or better) and the DM could only ever hit him on a crit. After an especially dominating encounter, he was asked to tone down his character

He came back the following week with an lunar muster oracle, that worked 100% off charisma, could still deal major damage per round between he and his extra advanced, celestial magic beast animal companion, and his lowest save at level 5 was a +19.... The GM, again couldn't touch him without critting, but he claimed he wasn't doing anything wrong since his guy was now "back line"

The GM spent 40 minutes trying to explain how ridiculous it was to consider this "toned down" before I recommended the two of them work on a build together,that the DM would find acceptable.

Apparently, over the course of the week the DM looked at 10 or so different builds, each of themore highly optimized than the previous. Finally, the DM sent me a copy of build #12, as it looked tame to him, and wanted a second pair of eyes on it.

Yeah, at first glance it looked like he had built a purposefully weak rogue... Then I saw how the pieces went together... At level 6, he could get 2d6+36+16d6 Sneak attack on a charge, with a free intimidation attempt that, due to feats/traits/abilities, would actually make the target frightened and run away (triggering another 1d6+18+8d6 damage AoO).... But if the demoralize failed, he still got a free trip attempt....

Yeah that was what he could do when NOT having his full attack available to him... Oh, and if everything hit, he would get a +24 dodge bonus to AC for the round!!!

This guy just is incapable of building an Unoptimized character....

[Brookshw]

Let's see, one player comes to mind though he was a good friend. He'd remake new characters every 5 sessions or so to try out something new. Not normally a problem but the group would pool their wealth which he'd then decimated to gear up the new character. And then do it again in a few sessions. Made characters that didn't fit for games, such as an illithiad savant CE in a campaign focused where the party was exhalted good. Just always found ways to fight the group and setting.

[Darth Ultron]

Just a weekend ago.....

Player Scrooge. So his big thing was he wanted to loot each body as he killed it, in the middle of combat, and then hide the loot. It was annoying enough that he would want to loot after doing something like a full attack, and I'd tell him he has no actions left to take that round. Then he would ignore foes, even ones right next to him, to loot on his next turn....and get all upset when he was attacked when looting. And he would want to appraise and detect magic every item as he put them away so he could ''organized his sheet''. Again I told him that doing so would take actions, but he did not think that they should.

And to top it all off, he thought the whole rest of the group should not know. His reasoning was that everyone was so ''into'' the battle that they would not notice what he was doing. Most of the other players were not happy.

And, oddly, he never even used any of that loot for anything...he just kept filling his backpack.

[Ermac]

They attacked everything in sight, took nothing seriously, and decided to commit suicide at level six because they were bored.

[atemu1234]

I have to say, when I first started DMing, there was an issue. I taught some of my friends how to play, and most enjoyed it and put forth the effort to learn the game. Except for one. This one put forth no effort, he wouldn't make a character so I had to (because he was too popular with the group to kick out) and every session or so he'd tell me he didn't like his character and tell me to make a new one.

[splashing.cat]

I've been at this for almost 8 years, since early high school. There have been 3 for me.
1. A wizard who wanted to save his spells, so used a dagger and got really mad when he died. He played LG paladins in a CE campaign.
2. Narcissist who couldn't handle other players doing things by themselves, so would try to use dominate person on other players. Constantly called other players names and refused to work as part of the team. Plus he eventually got really drunk and declared his undying love for me. No thanks.
3. A player I actually really liked as a person, but he was so insecure. He cheated constantly- eventually I started asking everyone for their roles and recording the numbers in a table. All 6 other players, and myself, averaged 10, 11 or 12 every time. His averages were 15, 16 or 17. He would play mercenary type characters and then demand payment for his services from the party leader, til poor party leader was totally broke. I kept telling the party leader: just say no, buddy will have to either accept the no or wander off. The player would be the only one to pass spot checks in the group, but he would never tell any other players what he found. I tried to remind him that the other characters may not know what's going on, but the other players saw that he's withholding information. He would only pay attention when some part of the game was exactly up his character's alley and wouldn't help otherwise, and would take out his laptop to 'look stuff up' for his character- there was a window behind him and I could see the reflection on his screen of some RTS. Sad. I wish him better in the future.

[Ssalarn]

We had one player whose "magic" dice forced us to institute a rule requiring everyone to roll their dice on the middle of the table (somewhat awkward and frustrating when the bulk of the table is already occupied by the map, minis, and DM screen and you've got 6 people).

Another player would leer and otherwise behave in a manner that made the female players extremely uncomfortable, but seemed to have no idea he was doing it. Eventually canceled the game and then restarted it a couple weeks later without telling him; I couldn't think of a better way to handle it, and the gentle hints and such I tried to give just weren't getting through.

Probably my least favorite player though was a guy who refused to play the same game as everyone else, and who took great delight in telling the other players why their skill monkeys, debuffers, and healers were "doing it wrong". He'd pick fights with the plot hooks, loudly complain about other players whose characters refused to dig his character out of the messes he created for himself, and would commit crimes with justifications like "It's a small town, there's no way anyone here is more than 5th level, so they can't stop us from doing whatever we want". I once had a village go all Seven Samurai and hire a group that included surprisingly high level adventurers because word had got out that he might be passing through. Also, while I think that the game you have fun playing is the right game regardless, I absolutely cannot stand people who want to tell other players how to play. Helpful advice is one thing, as long as it's either sought out or gratefully accepted, but once someone's decided what they're going to do and made it clear they don't want your assistance, it's time to lay off. In some ways, the worst part was that his "superior" builds were inevitably glass cannons with soap bubble defenses, and despite being the most common casuality throughout the course of the game, he still insisted that he knew best.

[(Un)Inspired]

As much as I love my friends, I cannot play with them. I'm the serious immersive type, and they are the non-stop hilarious shenanigans type. If I write up a serious French courtly knights game, they will start up a competition to see who can make embody the most French stereotypes and antagonize the most foreign types. It's not a wrong way to play, it's just not what I want out of gaming. So, I do not play Pathfinder with my friends anymore.

Hmm. My worst player experience is really tame, I guess.

My friend I feel your pain. One group of friends I played with briefly took to the idea of being murder hobos like a duck to water.

As soon as I brought a party containing a group of my friends together they proceeded to hit the nearest bar to get drunk and find prostitutes. One of the asked a waiter if the sold tobacco at the bar.

When the waiter informed him they did not he yelled "wrong answer" broke a beer bottle and stabbed the guy.

Hilarious and memorable and not the type of game I was hoping to run.

[Ssalarn]

My friend I feel your pain. One group of friends I played with briefly took to the idea of being murder hobos like a duck to water.

As soon as I brought a party containing a group of my friends together they proceeded to hit the nearest bar to get drunk and find prostitutes. One of the asked a waiter if the sold tobacco at the bar.

When the waiter informed him they did not he yelled "wrong answer" broke a beer bottle and stabbed the guy.

Hilarious and memorable and not the type of game I was hoping to run.

Right up until the last sentence I thought this story was about things the actual players did, IRL. I was picturing you getting everyone together for D&D, one of your buddies suggesting you all go play at this bar he knows, and then things going downhill incredibly fast.

[(Un)Inspired]

Right up until the last sentence I thought this story was about things the actual players did, IRL. I was picturing you getting everyone together for D&D, one of your buddies suggesting you all go play at this bar he knows, and then things going downhill incredibly fast.


Haha yeah I guess I could have been a little more clear about that.

[redwizard007]

Right up until the last sentence I thought this story was about things the actual players did, IRL. I was picturing you getting everyone together for D&D, one of your buddies suggesting you all go play at this bar he knows, and then things going downhill incredibly fast.

I had EXACTLY the same reaction.

My worst ever player was a classic Lawful Jackass paladin. In the process of ending his tenure at my gaming table he actually attacked other players for ridiculous reasons... We haven't had a paladin in the last 15 years.

[Honest Tiefling]

And I thought my groups were bad to keep giving me stories. I don't want to know about the people you two play with to even make that remotely feasible.

As for the worst player, I've known a player who:

Ignored the direct orders of their goddess...As a cleric.
Frequently ignored what the DM said at any given point
Insisted that they were paying attention, even after they asked 'What king?' about 2 hours into negations with said king
Insisted on being big on roleplaying, but seemed to do whatever it took to get loot
I don't think he understood that by playing in an established setting, they could not in fact invent new countries for their back story.


So yes. He was one of the worst players I've ever had.

[(Un)Inspired]

I had EXACTLY the same reaction.

My worst ever player was a classic Lawful Jackass paladin. In the process of ending his tenure at my gaming table he actually attacked other players for ridiculous reasons... We haven't had a paladin in the last 15 years.

Oh man. What sort of attacking did he do?

[redwizard007]

Oh man. What sort of attacking did he do?

In game. Not the bartender stabbing kind. If I recall correctly it was a poorly optimized charge/power attack.

I have seen the guy upend a table, drag in character arguments into real life, lie, cheat, steal, etc. Never saw him eat any kittens, but I wouldn't put it past him.

[(Un)Inspired]

In game. Not the bartender stabbing kind. If I recall correctly it was a poorly optimized charge/power attack.

I have seen the guy upend a table, drag in character arguments into real life, lie, cheat, steal, etc. Never saw him eat any kittens, but I wouldn't put it past him.

Well that's not as bad I suppose. He still sounds like a turd.

[Curmudgeon]

My worst player was a guy who always played Wizards and continually tried to extend the characteristics of spells past their RAW descriptions. He attempted, for instance, to use Prestidigitation to create dirt under the feet of enemies (and sometimes allies) to cause them to slip and fall. He thought that
It cannot deal damage or affect the concentration of spellcasters. was a license to deal nondamaging status effects like prone, and to require everybody except spellcasters to make Concentration checks.

With Animate Rope he tried to make a throat-height "trip line" to cause enemies to become incapable of speech (via "nondamaging damage" :smallconfused:).

He attempted to apply Shatter to anything not liquid or gas (an anachronistic modern chemical definition of "solid"), rather than brittle objects, and he was incensed that he couldn't Shatter leather armor.

With Mirror Image he claimed that enemies couldn't use their brains and attempt to ignore distinguishable targets (those "walking" above the ground, for example) and that all targets must be considered indistinguishable. (Being able to distinguish potential targets/non-targets is just guessing, and isn't guaranteed to work. A smarter Wizard might have cast Mirror Image then Levitate, and appeared to be an ignorable figment by pantomiming walking mid-air.)

He tried lots of Explosive Runes shenanigans, like claiming to be able to read the Runes while not adjacent to them, and saying he could auto-fail (rather than auto-succeed) on Dispel Magic checks vs. his own spells.

With Reduce Item he kept expecting to be able to (1) throw the item and immediately use a (standard action) command word to cause it to expand in the air; (2) make it cease forward movement and drop straight down; and (3) auto-hit whatever was under it (rather than needing an attack roll to hit the square, and having a Reflex save for the character in that square, as per the rules).

When he got high enough level to cast Telekinesis he thought that

greatswords would use their melee damage statistics when used as improvised ranged weapons (rather than the weight formula supplied in the spell for items which aren't hurled weapons);
he would be granted weapon proficiency with whatever he hurled; and
hurled weapons wouldn't be subject to range penalties.

Wizards already get the greatest amount of power in the game by having full access to the biggest spell list. This player wanted an http://www.online-dating-automator.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/easy-button.png button as well. :smallfurious:

[Crake]

My worst player was a guy who always played Wizards and continually tried to extend the characteristics of spells past their RAW descriptions. He attempted, for instance, to use Prestidigitation to create dirt under the feet of enemies (and sometimes allies) to cause them to slip and fall. He thought that was a license to deal nondamaging status effects like prone, and to require everybody except spellcasters to make Concentration checks.

With Animate Rope he tried to make a throat-height "trip line" to cause enemies to become incapable of speech (via "nondamaging damage" :smallconfused:).

He attempted to apply Shatter to anything not liquid or gas (an anachronistic modern chemical definition of "solid"), rather than brittle objects, and he was incensed that he couldn't Shatter leather armor.

With Mirror Image he claimed that enemies couldn't use their brains and attempt to ignore distinguishable targets (those "walking" above the ground, for example) and that all targets must be considered indistinguishable. (Being able to distinguish potential targets/non-targets is just guessing, and isn't guaranteed to work. A smarter Wizard might have cast Mirror Image then Levitate, and appeared to be an ignorable figment by pantomiming walking mid-air.)

He tried lots of Explosive Runes shenanigans, like claiming to be able to read the Runes while not adjacent to them, and saying he could auto-fail (rather than auto-succeed) on Dispel Magic checks vs. his own spells.

With Reduce Item he kept expecting to be able to (1) throw the item and immediately use a (standard action) command word to cause it to expand in the air; (2) make it cease forward movement and drop straight down; and (3) auto-hit whatever was under it (rather than needing an attack roll to hit the square, and having a Reflex save for the character in that square, as per the rules).

When he got high enough level to cast Telekinesis he thought that

greatswords would use their melee damage statistics when used as improvised ranged weapons (rather than the weight formula supplied in the spell for items which aren't hurled weapons);
he would be granted weapon proficiency with whatever he hurled; and
hurled weapons wouldn't be subject to range penalties.

Wizards already get the greatest amount of power in the game by having full access to the biggest spell list. This player wanted an http://www.online-dating-automator.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/easy-button.png button as well. :smallfurious:

sounds like he was just trying to be creative, which you weren't taking very well.

And I'm pretty sure he was right about about telekinesis and how it interacted with weapons.

[goto124]

In the process of ending his tenure at my gaming table he actually attacked other players for ridiculous reasons...

For a while I thought he'd attacked IRL :smalltongue:


sounds like he was just trying to be creative, which you weren't taking very well.

Is this one of those 'DM hits player over the head with the book' situations? I see that term whenever someone comes up with a perfectly-by-the-rules OP build.

Some of the examples are pretty bad/OP, tbh.

[jjcrpntr]

I have two.

1) A player that bitches whenever anything bad happens to him. IE, while in a dungeon like area he walks into a dark room without looking and gets surprise attacked then bitches about it.

2) My first time DMing I had a player playing a rogue. A NPC used a scroll and the guy playing the rogue stopped the game and demanded to know what the spell was (note he refused to wait until the wizard did a spell craft check). When I explained to him that he's a rogue and wouldn't know what it was if it were a fireball were flying at his face. He later stopped the game and argued with me, eventually causing me to lose my **** something I greatly regret afterwards, when we had a guy playing a monk that we decided was a follower of Desna. The monks were a traveling band of monks so the player and I decided having them pay honor to Desna made sense with his backstory. The problem player argued and argued that no monk would EVER follow a non-lawful deity. I explained to him that monks aren't tied to a deities alignment in any way it was simply a small part of the players backstory. But this guy went on and on finally I had enough and lost my crap on him. It almost broke the group up. I felt bad about it and looking back I know I handled it wrong but the guy had been a problem brewing for a long time. Now the group has been going for about a year and things are good.

Then again I probably should have known when a player openly brags about "fing with the DM being the best part of the game" that he would be an issue.

[Oryan77]

1. A player wanted to flirt with "the best looking woman in the bar" in hopes to have sex with her in his room. He expected me to tell him their Cha score without telling him their Cha score, but he was never satisfied with my description of how "hot" she was. If I said she was a "ten", he would argue with me about what kind of a "ten" she was, "Does that mean she has around an 18 Cha, a 22 Cha, or more like a 30 Cha?" When I told him I wouldn't metagame by giving the actual score, but instead I explained again that she's the best looking woman in the tavern and definitely "hot", he still wasn't satisfied with that.

This went on for 30 minutes until I realized how annoying and pathetic this was and I got mad and just told him, "You find a woman that has at least a 30 Cha, she agrees to go to your room, you guys have sex, and now can we move on with the game?" I couldn't believe he got me wrapped up in that.

2. I interviewed one player as a potential new player to the group. Within 10 minutes of meeting him at Starbucks, this guy would ask for my opinion about a rule and then argued the rules with me, and I didn't even know him. It wasn't a friendly debate, the guy was arguing with me like we knew each other and were in the middle of playing a heated game. I was baffled. I interview new players because we game at my house and I'm not about to let a weirdo into my home much less game with him. I understand others also want to meet me to make sure I'm not a weirdo DM, but this guy had an attitude like he was interviewing me to make sure I was worthy enough to DM him & not to make sure I was a good guy. He acted like he would be doing me a favor if he made a presence at our table. My wife was with us (she plays in our game) and as soon as we walked out of Starbucks, she said, "OMG, he is definitely not playing with us!"

It turned out that the guys was actually the DM to a new player of ours at the time (who is still gaming with us to this day 7 or so years later). They didn't know they both were meeting me until I told the guy that I would not be allowing him into the game. The new player told me all kinds of horror stories about him as a DM, and that yes, he actually was interviewing me to make sure I was a DM that would be worthy enough to DM him.

3. I had a player claiming to be new to D&D join the group. I told him I do not allow powergaming which he said he understood. He made a Divination Wizard that was a copy/paste from any Wizard guide build you'd find online. There was no deviation, even down to his spell selection. He chose the most powergamed options and every time I questioned him, he swore that he was not using these build guides. He said he's just good at picking good options. He was so good at it that he would even request the most obscure alternate feature, flaw, PrC, magic item, or whatever else that is known to overpower an already overpowered class.

I remember being new to the rules, and I've played with dozens of new players. It is impossible for a new player that is not using a build guide to not pick at least one spell that is not known to be an optimized spell to pick. I had to question him at every level and he always swore he was not using a guide to pick his options. Even the other players knew he was full of crap.

I've got dozens of stories like these that I could write about. Some other highlights are:

a. A female problem player that ranted about me online and called me sexist (my wife was pissed about that one). She was so argumentative that when my wife once politely asked her not to argue during the game, she responded saying that she encourages arguing during a game when she DMs.

b. The guy with the hairy belly that kept lifting his shirt and rubbing his stomach as he would stand over everyone while deciding where to move his miniature. This guy had all kinds of issues and annoying habits.

c. The guy that had an alpha dog complex and hated playing with me so much to the point that when I asked him if he wanted to do a rescue mission to save fellow party members from dying, he agreed, and the DM told me that he complained about me after the game (again) because I attempted to rescue them. The other PCs were dying, it was a hard encounter, we were unsuccessful with our rescue attempt, but him and I still got away unharmed since we were both smart & tactical players. I didn't want to put him in danger if he wasn't ok with it, which is why I asked him if we should attempt the rescue.

[ericgrau]

sounds like he was just trying to be creative, which you weren't taking very well.

And I'm pretty sure he was right about about telekinesis and how it interacted with weapons.
He was mostly wrong. Not sure about telekinesis. He's not that creative because almost every trick was pulled from forums. Maybe the prestidigitation tricks were too and I haven't seen it before, but I've seen the rest.

[slade88green]

Wow, reading through some of these make my bad players not seem so bad anymore. I have had several.
I had a player that was on pain pills because of an injury that didnt think about the effects of alcohol on said pain pills. I thought we were going to have to drive him to the hospital for a little bit.
I had a player that wanted to try a different class at every game, so near the end of every game session would commit suicide in one fashion or another, usually in a very game interrupting way such as attacking plot NPCs.
I had players that thought personal hygiene wasn't a thing the people sitting next to him cared about. I was sad, because he was a fantastic role player, but the other players couldn't handle his smell.
I have had a couple of people that would cheat on dice rolls. One in particular was constantly getting rolls of 15+ until one game session when I asked everyone to roll in the middle of the table. All of a sudden their dice were unlucky. That same player always wanted to use classes/feats/spells from obscure sources that they found online. When I would tell them that we are using only the rules that we have books for, they would download a book and try and use it. They got upset when I said no to that.

[DrMotives]

I never played with the guy, but just talking about potentially playing with him really bugged me. He insisted on pronouncing words wrong, like necromancer was NEEK-romancer to him. I just couldn't move past that.

[atemu1234]

I never played with the guy, but just talking about potentially playing with him really bugged me. He insisted on pronouncing words wrong, like necromancer was NEEK-romancer to him. I just couldn't move past that.

To be fair, I sometimes can't help but mispronounce certain words. For instance, I consistently refer to antibiotics as an-t-ib-e-otics.

[Curmudgeon]

sounds like he was just trying to be creative, which you weren't taking very well.
No, being creative would have been using Mirror Image and Levitate to pantomime walking mid-air, and having enemies dismiss his Wizard as an "obvious" figment. Whining — that amounts to Mirror Image prevents enemies from using their brains — is not creative.

And I'm pretty sure he was right about about telekinesis and how it interacted with weapons.
Can you point to the parts of Telekinesis which grant weapon proficiencies, or change their range increments? I certainly can't find those provisions in the spell description.

[Solaris]

My worst player wasn't a bad player, he just treated another member of our group OOC like ****.

A recent experience of being the player on the receiving end of that, and the DM essentially blaming me for being the victim while they're talking crap to me in my own house, is why I'm leery about joining already-existing groups or being a player.
It seems there's just certain aspects of social behavior that gamers utterly fail to understand, "Don't thoroughly disrespect a man in his own house" among them. They're lucky to have walked out of there intact; I'm not by nature a... non-violent person when angry.
But apparently I was 'childish' for walking away from the table instead of breaking noses before kicking them out of my house.
Not that I'm bitter about that or anything.
I think it's that I've been spoiled by my groups in high school and in the Army; all three of the different groups were stellar.
... Well, except maybe the creepy guy who'd always play scantily-clad female nymphomaniacs modeled after the, ah, 'bouncier' females in fighting games. That one wasn't so much on the stellar side.
... And that one guy in Alaska who joined our table while we played in the local comic book shop. Ol' boy played a mongrelfolk, and judging by his personal hygiene habits I'd say it was because he empathized with them hideously unpleasant types a little too much. I've had my nostrils scorched by cordite fresh from the howitzer's breech, breathed deep in clouds of CS gas, and walked down the road beside open canals of raw sewage on a day so hot you could literally have fried an egg on the pavement and that guy still reeked to even my deadened senses. He was only there for the one session, but he certainly left an impression. We shortly abandoned the idea of gaming at the shop and instead gamed in my barracks room.

As a DM, however, I'd say my worst experience was the last time I tried to run a PbP game. The ones that died a month or two in were bad enough (seriously, players, die in a fire), but the one where pretty much all of the players moaned and complained for the two weeks leading up to the game about the house rules that were there when they frikkin' joined, (hyperlinked and everything, right at the top of the game description, couldn't miss 'em) and even about the game system being used... needless to say, that game never got off the ground and I've sworn off PbP. I like my whiny little nerds within dope-slapping range, thank you very much.

[Crake]

No, being creative would have been using Mirror Image and Levitate to pantomime walking mid-air, and having enemies dismiss his Wizard as an "obvious" figment. Whining — that amounts to Mirror Image prevents enemies from using their brains — is not creative.

Can you point to the parts of Telekinesis which grant weapon proficiencies, or change their range increments? I certainly can't find those provisions in the spell description.

It says you use bab+int or cha mod on your attack roll, you aren't performing a weapon attack, so proficiency doesn't come into it, or are you also saying that hurled objects should get -4 for being improvised weapons (despite it not being stated in the spell at all). And you can use telekinesis to throw weapons that aren't specifically throwable weapons. "Weapons cause standard damage" not "Thrown weapons cause standard damage".

As for the range, it's stated in the spell, 10 feet per caster level, range increments dont even come into play.

So a hurled greatsword would have an attack bonus of bab+int/cha, a range of 10ft per caster level and deal 2d6 damage.

[Curmudgeon]

And you can use telekinesis to throw weapons that aren't specifically throwable weapons.
Yes, you can. In fact, there's a formula in the spell (based on weight) for items which are not normally hurled weapons, telling you what damage is dealt in such a case.

"Weapons cause standard damage" not "Thrown weapons cause standard damage".
What's the standard ranged damage of a greatsword? It's nonexistent, normally; the weapon has a range increment of "—".

As for the range, it's stated in the spell, 10 feet per caster level, range increments dont even come into play.
You're stating the range of the spell effect, not the range increment of a hurled weapon; they're different game elements. The fact that the spell has a maximum range doesn't change the game mechanics required (proficiency, range increments, & c.) to use hurled weapons. For those mechanics to be ignored, the spell description would need to say exactly that. Instead, it's silent on the issue, meaning the other rules of the game operate normally.

[Crake]

You're stating the range of the spell effect, not the range increment of a hurled weapon; they're different game elements. The fact that the spell has a maximum range doesn't change the game mechanics required (proficiency, range increments, & c.) to use hurled weapons. For those mechanics to be ignored, the spell description would need to say exactly that. Instead, it's silent on the issue, meaning the other rules of the game operate normally.


You can hurl one object or creature per caster level (maximum 15) that are within range and all within 10 feet of each other toward any target within 10 feet per level of all the objects

You should read the spells a little more clearly. Technically, if your CL is 10, the object is 100ft away, and your target is 100ft feet further away, with the weapon directly inbeween you and your target, you can hurl the weapon, which is 100ft away, 100ft toward the target.


Yes, you can. In fact, there's a formula in the spell (based on weight) for items which are not normally hurled weapons, telling you what damage is dealt in such a case.

The fact that a greatsword is a weapon, and that the spell says weapons do their standard damage, a greatsword does 2d6, not whatever that formula calculates it to be, that's for non-weapon objects.

[Curmudgeon]

The fact that a greatsword is a weapon, and that the spell says weapons do their standard damage, a greatsword does 2d6, not whatever that formula calculates it to be, that's for non-weapon objects.
You're mixing apples (melee weapons) and oranges (ranged weapons). A greatsword is not a ranged weapon, because the rules say it has range increment "—". As a hurled item a greatsword is just a weight of sharp metal.

[Milo v3]

You're mixing apples (melee weapons) and oranges (ranged weapons). A greatsword is not a ranged weapon, because the rules say it has range increment "—". As a hurled item a greatsword is just a weight of sharp metal.

Where does range increment come into it?

You can hurl one object or creature per caster level (maximum 15) that are within range and all within 10 feet of each other toward any target within 10 feet per level of all the objects.

Also:

Weapons cause standard damage (with no Strength bonus; note that arrows or bolts deal damage as daggers of their size when used in this manner). Other objects cause damage ranging from 1 point per 25 pounds (for less dangerous objects) to 1d6 points of damage per 25 pounds (for hard, dense objects).
No mention of only allowing thrown weapons for the standard damage at all. A greatsword is a weapon, thus it has it's damaged determined as "standard damage with no strength bonus.

Either way, my worst player was a rogue who thought that rogue = I'm allowed to steal from the group when they sleep, including taking holy symbols.

[Vertharrad]

Many of those rogues end up dead by party. You might want to let him know what he's heading for when the party figures it out.

[AnonymousPepper]

Frankly, my group has just had this one guy who is out-and-out dumb as a brick. I mean, it's funny sometimes, but at other times it's frustrating as all get-out.

I played with him in our previous campaign, and he played in a separate one without me but with the other guys, but being a DM has given me new insight into just how bad it is.

The most shining example was a case where the party was in Skullport and decided to pick up a scrying mirror - arcane focus, 1000gp silver mirror of specific dimensions - while they were there. So they sent this guy - let's call him P, he's playing a gnome - to go buy one. He walks into a pawn shop, wearing his full snazzy armor, owned by a CN gnome (I forget what his name was, but he's an actual established character from the 2e sourcebook on Skullport).

P asks for a scrying mirror, to which the gnome responds that it's an expensive item that he might not even have. P responds, "Oh, don't worry, I have money!" The shopkeeper walks into the back and starts rummaging around for a bit. P yells back, "I have the money for this!" So this gnome comes back out and offers him the mirror for 3500 gold, because he's a total cheat and P has been advertising his wealth and lack of brains the whole time.

P responds - remember, the only requirements for this item are that it be A. a silver mirror B. of the right size C. worth 1000gp - that that's awfully expensive, so he makes his counteroffer.

3000gp.

The shopkeeper can't believe his luck, but he stands there and thinks for a moment before sighing and saying, "You know, you're gonna make me go broke here, but since you're a gnome, I can cut you a deal. 3250 for the mirror."

"Done."

The rest of the party could do nothing but shake their heads.

Later, the entire group had a year of in-game downtime between acts - this was basically me explicitly throwing the group's Artificer a bone. P proceeded to walk off and spend a large chunk of money on buying outright (he didn't even try to roll diplo to haggle it) a +4 stat item. When the group had access to its own personal artificer with plenty of downtime to spare. When the artificer found out, he was furious, because the savings, combined with the rest of the party's wealth, would have been enough to buy the group an airship.


The guy isn't a bad person, but he's frustratingly slow.
Nobody in the group particularly likes him - opinions range from neutral to strongly negative - but he hasn't done anything actually bad and I really haven't the heart to boot him. Plus he at least consistently shows up every week, which is more than I can say for our Oracle. :smallmad:

[Slayer Lord]

Some of my worst:
- Girl who played a half-silver dragon elf druid. Liked to go on and on about her tragic backstory and how her parents were in a forbidden relationship, and was also a princess on both sides, and it just didn't really make sense for the setting, and tended to act really random just for kicks and giggles. To be fair, she was used to playing campaigns with her family where they just liked to goof around, while the rest of us had a more plot-driven play style.
- Guy who always played Chaotic Neutral characters, but always acted Chaotic Evil and then argued about it. Came dangerously close to raping an NPC once. Good thing she was the big bad in disguise. He also liked to argue a lot about rules, was on his laptop all the time when we didn't do anything that interested him, and would try for physical intimidation IRL if we didn't let him have his way. On the plus side of things, he did provide us with one of our group's funniest combat moments when he one-shotted an orc by throwing a crowbar at it. All in all, though, we weren't terribly sad when he left.

[Extra Anchovies]

Some of my worst:
- Girl who played a half-silver dragon elf druid. Liked to go on and on about her tragic backstory and how her parents were in a forbidden relationship, and was also a princess on both sides, and it just didn't really make sense for the setting, and tended to act really random just for kicks and giggles. To be fair, she was used to playing campaigns with her family where they just liked to goof around, while the rest of us had a more plot-driven play style.

That character sounds like they have a serious case of Special Snowflake Syndrome. At least they aren't a Planetouched.

[YossarianLives]

There was this one guy... Let's call him Y.

Y would change characters EVERY session. Not a exaggeration every single week. He was extremely aggressive IC and one time attacked a gang of hardened warriors in a tavern. He got thrown through the window and bled out. OOC he acted like he was really cool and better than us. He would also refuse to go through with any plan that he didn't come up with.

Eventually he left the group because I'm sad to say we got a bit rude with him by the end.

[danzibr]

Another player would leer and otherwise behave in a manner that made the female players extremely uncomfortable, but seemed to have no idea he was doing it. Eventually canceled the game and then restarted it a couple weeks later without telling him; I couldn't think of a better way to handle it, and the gentle hints and such I tried to give just weren't getting through.
Now this is an excellent fix.

[ZamielVanWeber]

I was warned this player was bad but I didn't believe it cold have been this awful: I was running a heavy psionics campaign so we had a motley crew, a Divine Mind, Ardent, and Soul Knife/Warblade. He joined as a lurk focusing on range. Except he didn't take the feat that let him use his augments at range. He knew it existed, he SAID as much, but somehow by level 9 was unable to find room for in a ranged focused build, insisting he would take it next time a feat was available. His biggest contribution to a fight ever was running into a fight, distracting some ogre skeletons and immediately being dropped by them due to his terrible AC and no miss chance generating items.

[Jergmo]

I had someone spend all of their starting wealth on dogs trained for war outfitted with chain shirt barding, and rage quit because smuggling themselves into a city ravaged by zombies to evade the quarantine required that they traverse the sewers, which his dogs could not do conveniently.

It's not that bad, but we all found it very strange. Now that I think about it, there was a player who was playing a bard that was along because one of our players that I'd known previously was his girlfriend. The two of them spent every session having their characters make doe-eyes at each other and he played music constantly to serenade her while they were wandering through the hostile, unforgiving wilderness and got angry with me because his incessant noise attracted predatory monsters.

[Vertharrad]

In my short tenure as a DM for 3e I've had at least three players that come to mind.

Marc - makes characters that eventually antagonize the party to the point where he suicides the character to bring in another. He also makes ome of the weirdest decisions I know. In one campaign he fudged a "god call" and the evil deity he got required a sacrifice of a living creatures heart, to which he agreed and decided totake the rogue toward assassin by way of changing his alignment. Then at a point not long after decided to gain back his former deities favor by sacrificing 12 hearts to a good deity of luck...

Jesse - Making a character wanted a CN half-silver dragon barbarian, I told him no further than two steps away on the alignment chart from LG. He tried to get the adjusted hit die and skill points from RHD as a human half-silver, I let him get d20 for 1st lvl HD but normal thereafter and didn't budge on the skill points...this argument took up 1 1/2hours by the way. His character was exceedingly greedy NG half-silver barb who multied as rogue and wanted to save his skill points till he got rogue levels. He found ways to defraud the party out of treasure to the point I assigned a treasure person from one of the other players. His character was arrogant to the point he was the first in party line-up but if he faced a superior combat challange would hide in back. Mot only were the other players getting annoyed I was also getting angry to the point of setting up a "event" to kill his character...fortunately the fact that the party had gotten big enough to take my ftr/der DMPC out of the party he also had his character go along. His next character admittedly was LN Oa samurai/shugenja/bladedancer that I had no problems with and fit almost seemlessly with everyone else.

Nicholas - most noted character was a pseudodragon that stole from one of the villages in the area that had acrued more wealth due to the PC's efforts. His grasp of the rules was as suspect as Jesse, tried to convince me that he could use bonus spells from spell levels he couldn't cast to fuel the breath weapon he got by a feat, instead of arguing too long I capitulated and wished I hadn't. This pseudodragon considered itself descended from red dragons...I had less problems from the human half-shadow dragon with wings ftr. Even the drunk(druid w/rgr mnk ACF's out of UA i think) didn't give me such a headache in the 3e adjusted version of NightBelow I was running.

[Cirrylius]

I never played with the guy, but just talking about potentially playing with him really bugged me. He insisted on pronouncing words wrong, like necromancer was NEEK-romancer to him. I just couldn't move past that.

Oh God, I've got one of these. It's always Ne-CRO-mun-cey. For some reason multiple people at the table can't seem to wrap their heads around "tome", either, pronouncing it "toom". The best had to be when I got into a ten-minute argument over a monk trying to attempt a feint... to play dead:smallconfused: Turns out he played for like ten levels never realizing that feint didn't mean "faint".

[Ssalarn]

Oh God, I've got one of these. It's always Ne-CRO-mun-cey. For some reason multiple people at the table can't seem to wrap their heads around "tome", either, pronouncing it "toom". The best had to be when I got into a ten-minute argument over a monk trying to attempt a feint... to play dead:smallconfused: Turns out he played for like ten levels never realizing that feint didn't mean "faint".

Some of my "favorites"-

"Paizo" pronounced "Pee-aht-zo".

The word "brazier" getting confused, either in pronunciation or meaning, with the word "brassiere".

The numerous ways I've heard the monster name "vargouille" mispronounced, up to and including "vaar-gwee-lee".

Once had a guy who read "wight" as "wheat".

[Vhaidara]

The word "brazier" getting confused, either in pronunciation or meaning, with the word "brassiere".

That must have been a confusion on par with Eric and the Dread Gazebo.

[sakuuya]

The numerous ways I've heard the monster name "vargouille" mispronounced, up to and including "vaar-gwee-lee".

How is vargouille pronounced? I've always said it var-gweel, but I suspect that's wrong enough to get me booted from DrMotive's table. :smallwink:

Anyway, on topic: A gentleman (let's call him mr. sakuuya, because that's who he is) built a diplomancer who wasn't great in combat, so during the single combat encounter in a session that was otherwise all puzzle-solving and social interaction, he went and took a nap on the couch and told me to play his character for him. In retrospect, I should've killed off his character, but at the time I was focused on keeping my cool because nobody needs awkward marital drama during RPG time.

[Vhaidara]

Anyway, on topic: A gentleman (let's call him mr. sakuuya, because that's who he is) built a diplomancer who wasn't great in combat, so during the single combat encounter in a session that was otherwise all puzzle-solving and social interaction, he went and took a nap on the couch and told me to play his character for him. In retrospect, I should've killed off his character, but at the time I was focused on keeping my cool because nobody needs awkward marital drama during RPG time.

I've done that! Admittedly, for me it was when my bard got Pounced before his first turn in the boss fight, but still.

[sakuuya]

I've done that! Admittedly, for me it was when my bard got Pounced before his first turn in the boss fight, but still.

Did he get knocked out? Temporarily leaving the table because your character is incapacitated is different than doing so because you can't be bothered with part of the adventure. If he was still standing, though... grumblemumble...

[Vhaidara]

Did he get knocked out? Temporarily leaving the table because your character is incapacitated is different than doing so because you can't be bothered with part of the adventure. If he was still standing, though... grumblemumble...

Instant KO. It wasn't the most dignified leaving to nap on the couch.

As I explained to the GM later, I was more upset because it meant my character didn't see the fight. So he couldn't write the tale first hand (he had a habit of making songs out of our adventures)

[Cirrylius]

How is vargouille pronounced? I've always said it var-gweel, but I suspect that's wrong enough to get me booted from DrMotive's table. :smallwink:

I've always pronounced it as "gargoyle" with a V; I'm a pretty experienced reader, but now that I'm actually looking at the damn word, I'm not sage enough to say whether I've gotten it right or not.:smallannoyed:

[Extra Anchovies]

The numerous ways I've heard the monster name "vargouille" mispronounced, up to and including "vaar-gwee-lee".

This is now the canonical pronunciation for "vargouille" in any game I may run in the future.

[Ssalarn]

I've always pronounced it as "gargoyle" with a V; I'm a pretty experienced reader, but now that I'm actually looking at the damn word, I'm not sage enough to say whether I've gotten it right or not.:smallannoyed:

This is correct the way Bruce Cordell and a panel of Wizards of the Coast judges decided it was pronounced at PAX Prime 2011.

[atemu1234]

I always pronounced it var-ghoul.

[MilesTiden]

This is correct ;)

Ahem. (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnDArchives_FAQ.asp) Var-gweel is correct.


How do you pronounce...?

Here are some commonly mispronounced words and their dictionary pronunciations where they are available and common-practice pronunciations or TSR rulings where they not. For more general pronunciation help, see the article "Ay pronunseeAYshun gyd" by Frank Mentzer in Dragon #93 (Jan. 1985). For help pronouncing words and names specific to the Forgotten Realms setting, see the Forgotten Realms box and the trilogy of Forgotten Realms deity books. For help pronouncing the names of the various tanar'ri and baatezu types, see MC8 Outer Planes Appendix.

...
Vargouille: var-GWEEL
...

[Rakoa]

I always pronounced it var-ghoul.

It looked sort of French to me, so I go with "var-goo-ee". (Apologies if that isn't even proper French pronunciation).

[Ssalarn]

Ahem. (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnDArchives_FAQ.asp) Var-gweel is correct.
That's fair (https://www.howtopronounce.com/french/vargouille/). Bruce Cordell owes me a t-shirt though.

[Toilet Cobra]

I've had a few, usually some variation on people who wanted to play in my games but then refused to learn the game, speak up or even really participate. The worst guy was the dire-version of that: sullen, uncooperative, rarely talked and sometimes just straight up ignored direct questions. It would have quickly come to a head, but it was a 6-7 player group, so he tended to just fade back into the couch while the A-types took charge. He was playing a rogue, and the group kind of needed his help to win most combats, but he didn't care about any of his options (4th ed) and would do things like make basic attacks against non-flanked enemies.

Plot twist: Turned out, my player was at the time sliding into alcoholism or something close to it. I thought he was just being a jerk during the game, but I later heard it from his roommates that he was being like that all the time, and my game was the least of the stuff he was effing up.

Eventually he pulled out of his nosedive, swore off alcohol, and has been back to his great pre-alcohol self. That was a few years ago and we're actually good friends again. I'd gladly invite him to my current game except he's on the road all the time, usually for multiple week stretches.

[atemu1234]

I've had a few, usually some variation on people who wanted to play in my games but then refused to learn the game, speak up or even really participate. The worst guy was the dire-version of that: sullen, uncooperative, rarely talked and sometimes just straight up ignored direct questions. It would have quickly come to a head, but it was a 6-7 player group, so he tended to just fade back into the couch while the A-types took charge. He was playing a rogue, and the group kind of needed his help to win most combats, but he didn't care about any of his options (4th ed) and would do things like make basic attacks against non-flanked enemies.

Plot twist: Turned out, my player was at the time sliding into alcoholism or something close to it. I thought he was just being a jerk during the game, but I later heard it from his roommates that he was being like that all the time, and my game was the least of the stuff he was effing up.

Eventually he pulled out of his nosedive, swore off alcohol, and has been back to his great pre-alcohol self. That was a few years ago and we're actually good friends again. I'd gladly invite him to my current game except he's on the road all the time, usually for multiple week stretches.

Well, I'd say that's a happy ending.

Also, on an unrelated note:

Remember kids! Stay in D&D, eat your D&D, and don't do D&D!

[big teej]

Some of my "favorites"-

"Paizo" pronounced "Pee-aht-zo".

The word "brazier" getting confused, either in pronunciation or meaning, with the word "brassiere".

The numerous ways I've heard the monster name "vargouille" mispronounced, up to and including "vaar-gwee-lee".

Once had a guy who read "wight" as "wheat".

yeah, because nobody has ever struggled with homonyms ever. :smallsigh:
like that one time the party was sent after the brassiere of summoning

[sakuuya]

Instant KO. It wasn't the most dignified leaving to nap on the couch.

As I explained to the GM later, I was more upset because it meant my character didn't see the fight. So he couldn't write the tale first hand (he had a habit of making songs out of our adventures)

This is at least an understandable response to a frustrating event, if probably not the optimal one. Mr. sakuuya is just the weird inverse of those players who pull out their phones as soon as combat's over. I've never played with one of those guys, but it's that "Oh, a part of the adventure that's designed to let someone else shine? Screw that, I'm out" mentality that gets to me.


Ahem. (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/DnDArchives_FAQ.asp) Var-gweel is correct.

AW YEAH. :smallcool:

[LoyalPaladin]

The worst player I have ever had was actually one of my good friends. We had been playing at his house (for spacial reasons) and I swear every 13 seconds that guy was picking up a controller, walking out of the room, or fiddling on his phone. I tried everything from starting bar fights with his character to making plots specifically involve him to try and grab his attention but nothing helped. Like I said, love the guy but I would probably murder him if I had to actively play with him again.

[Ken Murikumo]

Wow, didn't expect this big of a following!

Some of these stories makes me feel i have a pretty good group, granted everyone has there annoying tendencies and all.

My friend played with us a few times. She was the kind of person who believed Chaotic Neutral was a ticket to do whatever she wanted, regardless of the situation or penalty. She eventually slipped into straight up Chaotic Evil and got mad about it (not "walk out" mad, but she squawked a bit)...

Even now my group has a running joke when somebody chooses to be CN, we ask, "D&D CN or M's CN?"

[Ssalarn]

yeah, because nobody has ever struggled with homonyms ever. :smallsigh:
like that one time the party was sent after the brassiere of summoning

Literally none of the words quoted was a homonym (http://www.bing.com/search?q=homonym&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IE8SRC)....

Although my response does remind me of probably the number 1 behavior that gets under my skin as a DM - that player who shows up from time to time who is 100% convinced that he is both

A) Smarter than everyone else at the table

and

B) The number 1 rules authority, period.

I used to get that guy at every table I ran before I transitioned into mostly playing/DMing in groups with other couples (something about couples groups seems to inherently balance the table), and there is probably nothing that drags a game down worse than someone who feels the need to constantly argue with the DM about every rule/ruling, try to "correct" other player's builds, etc. The worst are those really unnecessary arguments, like trying to correct someone's math because they forgot to include their bonus to hit from Point Blank Shot, despite the fact that they beat the target's AC by 5 points, or telling everyone at the table that the target should have been hit on an XY or was supposed to be immune to Z, using entirely OoC knowledge and the sure certainty that I as the DM couldn't possibly have modified the creature in some way. It's a permanent rule at our table that once the DM has made his call, you roll with it for the rest of the session and if there's something potentially problematic about it, you go FAQ diving between games to back up your position and show up early for the next game to make your case, but I find that generally if you need the rule you're already gaming on shakey ground. The flipside of that, of course, is that as the DM you need to be familiar with the rules and what materials you've allowed at the table; if you okayed something in a player's character build and it's proving problematic, mid-session is not the time to address it unless it's really disrupting the other players' fun.

[Tvtyrant]

When he got high enough level to cast Telekinesis he thought that
[LIST]
greatswords would use their melee damage statistics when used as improvised ranged weapons. this one is stall true if you read the Telekinesis description on violent thrust. It is also a cornerstone of ghost and ring of Telekinesis builds.

[Uhtred]

Had a player who was a compulsive hoarder, collecting trash. Dead cats, empty potion bottles, random stuff that nobody considered loot. He also took fixtures, like carpets, doors, and chairs, and since he had a Class IV BoH, nobody challenged it. But then things turned weird. He tried to "craft a custom weapon" using a rolled-up rug as a handle, into which were thrust a bunch of vines tied to rusty daggers he'd looted from some long-dead corpses, and called it a "Flail-ish."
He was also fond of solving problems by lighting his many looted rugs on fire and lobbing them around as "distractions." He contemplated chucking one down a dark staircase to see what was at the bottom, and hemmed and hawed for so long another player legitimately kicked him down the stairs.
He was a half-orc barbarian who refused to use his axe because "he would chip or dull it."
He enjoyed ditching the party and "going hunting." For farm animals. Goats in particular. His goat fondness inspired me to throw half a dozen templates onto a goat to create the infamous Omni-Goat of Legend to challenge him next time he tried. A goat with all four half-elemental templates AND Monster of Legend applied.
He was not invited back.

[Solaris]

Although my response does remind me of probably the number 1 behavior that gets under my skin as a DM - that player who shows up from time to time who is 100% convinced that he is both

A) Smarter than everyone else at the table

and

B) The number 1 rules authority, period.

It's fun when you get a table full of that guy. Had a bunch of MI kids who thought they were clever. It made for some interesting discussions when they'd try to rules lawyer their way out of a death earned through mind-boggling stupidity ("What's that? I'm being shot at? Guess I'll walk into the middle of the road and cast a spell.")

[Crake]

Although my response does remind me of probably the number 1 behavior that gets under my skin as a DM - that player who shows up from time to time who is 100% convinced that he is both

A) Smarter than everyone else at the table

and

B) The number 1 rules authority, period.

I hate to admit it, but I frequently find myself to be that guy. My friends have been helping me through it and I'm slowly getting rehabilitated, but some bad experiences with an untrustworthy DM have just led me to question everything. It's probably why I prefer to DM these days.

[(Un)Inspired]

He ... hemmed and hawed for so long another player legitimately kicked him down the stairs.

I hope to Glob that you mean the other characters kicked his character down the stairs. Otherwise I'm terrified of you're vigilante SM style.

[atemu1234]

I hope to Glob that you mean the other characters kicked his character down the stairs. Otherwise I'm terrified of you're vigilante SM style.

I'd do both. If a staircase presented itself.

[Barbarian Horde]

Me as a player, I tend to argue about rules when not applied correctly or not at all. Checking other parties character sheets without the DM to point out fudged sheets.

[mvpmack]

This thread is therapy for me. It also feels good that others have to put up with at least some of the awful people I've had at my table.

When I was a young lad in high school, some of my friends would bring absolutely ridiculous characters to the table. We had a lot of games going at the time (it was a big group, with a few GMs and lots of players) and players kind of expected to be able to bring whatever they wanted into your game. A lot of GMs didn't screen their players, so it was frequent to get someone who would bring in some exceedingly high level character, or more often, a character with items or granted powers that completely destroyed the game. Some of these people did not get the hint when I threw them out of my games. Honestly though back in those days, people really did just want to play and have fun. I miss those days.

Fast forward a few years and I was GMing for fellow enlisted servicemembers in Uncle Sam's fine Marine Corps, and we had this one guy who was always completely oblivious to everything going on. He would more or less follow the directions of other players, but he could not be bothered to actually carry out anything on his own, nor do any sort of complex task like investigation. When asked to do so, his character would go off and do something suspicious, frequently illegal, then get into trouble with the police which would inevitably result in him violently resisting arrest. I was happy when he just stopped showing up.

A few years later, I was running a game where a young lady was too tired and bored of whatever was going on at the time, and she incredulously claimed that I should just NPC her. I'm not even joking, "NPC me" literally came out of her mouth. I think I knocked out her character and took her captive the moment she was away from the other characters. Fortunately, her antics were so aggravating to the other players that they came down on her very hard for not participating in the game.

In another game, I was a player. There was another player, a different young woman, who sat very far away from me. In this particular game, I frequently rolled very poorly, and she rolled very well, rolling critical hits nearly every time she attacked. This was so frequent that the DM actually adjusted the difficulty of enemies to compensate for her insane dice. Instead, I posed the idea that perhaps everyone should roll dice where at least one other person could confirm the dice result. For some reason, she stopped rolling frequent criticals, and the other melees in our party were able to contribute more meaningfully. It didn't help me roll better, though. To this date, "pulling a Jenny" is our term for cheating on die rolls as a player.

I took up the mantle of GMing again, and a third young lady (sorry, it's not sexist, I swear!) would play Tetris on her laptop whenever we were not in combat. I enforced experience penalties for people playing games on laptops or browsing social media, and did so by quizzing people on events that occurred during the game. She was almost never able to identify key plot elements and frequently forgot her own connections (she was an elf archaeologist with the appropriate profession skills, and despite being a campaign largely about the gameworld's ancient history, she rarely provided her skills when needed). Fortunately she quit and was replaced with another young lady who was very involved in the game.

Most recently, I am currently a player in a game. We have had one person come in and out of our game twice, and both times it has been full of the worst kind of buddy-****ing before he was told to either fix himself or leave. The first time, he got our party into trouble with the local authorities, put assassins on our trail, picked a fight with a player and had to be subdued (which spent a lot of our spells healing people), then spoiled our party's ambush of an enemy force, then offered to side with the enemies. He was promptly shot in the back by our NPC employer (bless his dwarven heart).

Later, he rejoined as a druid alchemist drug dealer, and insisted on keeping contraband items that we explicitly told him were not OK. After a long fight (verbal) in-character over why he should not carry around the contraband, he threw an IRL hissyfit and was ejected from the game by the DM.


I think I just attract awful players.

[Bloody Peasant!]

I've only played with one group in real life who are all close friends of mine, so I don't really have much to say about them...and I can't really talk about PbP players either because every PbP game I've played has been on this site.

[Curmudgeon]

this one is stall true if you read the Telekinesis description on violent thrust.
Actually not true if you read the Violent Thrust section carefully: "Weapons cause standard damage". What is the standard ranged damage of a greatsword? The answer is on page 112 of Player's Handbook.
Weapons are grouped into several interlocking sets of categories.

These categories pertain to what training is needed to become proficient in a weapon’s use (simple, martial, or exotic), the weapon’s usefulness either in close combat (melee) or at a distance (ranged, which includes both thrown and projectile weapons), its relative encumbrance (light, one-handed, or two-handed), and its size (Small, Medium, or Large). A greatsword has no listed usefulness at a distance; its standard hurled damage is nil. Luckily for us, Telekinesis has a clear directive of how to treat objects other than those designed for hurling:
Other objects cause damage ranging from 1 point per 25 pounds (for less dangerous objects) to 1d6 points of damage per 25 pounds (for hard, dense objects).

It is also a cornerstone of ghost and ring of Telekinesis builds.
I've noticed that ignoring inconvenient rules is a cornerstone of many D&D builds.

[MilesTiden]

Weapons cause standard damage (with no Strength bonus; note that arrows or bolts deal damage as daggers of their size when used in this manner). Other objects cause damage ranging from 1 point per 25 pounds (for less dangerous objects) to 1d6 points of damage per 25 pounds (for hard, dense objects).

You're taking those sentences out of context. Unless you're implying a greatsword is not a weapon?

[Curmudgeon]

You're taking those sentences out of context. Unless you're implying a greatsword is not a weapon?
I'm stating as a fact that a greatsword is not a weapon, if the context is ranged weapons.

[A_S]

I'm stating as a fact that a greatsword is not a weapon, if the context is ranged weapons.
The context is not "ranged weapons." The context is "weapons," because the spell description says "weapons." If the spell only dealt weapon damage (rather than hurled object damage) with ranged weapons, it would say "Ranged weapons cause standard damage," or perhaps "Weapons cause their standard ranged damage" and you would be right. But that's not what the spell says. The spell says "Weapons cause standard damage." There is no reasonable interpretation of a weapon's "standard damage" other than "the damage it does when you use it as a weapon."


Telekinesis has a clear directive of how to treat objects other than those designed for hurling.
No, Telekinesis has a clear directive of how to treat objects other than weapons. You can tell, because the subject of the preceding sentence is the word, "weapons."

You are applying rules where they do not apply. The spell says what it does in its description. So it does that. End of story.

[icefractal]

Actually not true if you read the Violent Thrust section carefully: "Weapons cause standard damage". What is the standard ranged damage of a greatsword?So - care to provide a source for your assertion that "ranged damage" is even a thing? Because it appears to be a concept that you've fabricated whole cloth. I'm looking at the weapon chart right now, and it does not in fact have a separate column or listing for "ranged damage".

Also, fun fact, the rules specifically state that you can throw a Greatsword (with your arms, not with TK), with a range increment of 10 feet. If your assertion was true, then throwing it would cause no effect.


And since I recall that you like to jump arguments at this point, I'll just pre-emptively say that:
1) An improvised weapon, such as a rock, also has a range increment of 10 feet.
2) Throwing an improvised weapon, such as a rock, would take an attack (or possibly standard action), and there's no way you could throw 15 of them as a standard action.

So if your new argument against Greatsword-TK is that it would have a short range and/or take a full-round action per-sword, I'll simply point out that giving those rules priority over the spell description would make TK unusable for throwing things at all.

If your argument is that Greatsword-TK causes damage out of line with being a 5th level spell, that's fair, although there are mitigating factors. It's very much not the same as "you can't do this by RAW" however.

[Curmudgeon]

Also, fun fact, the rules specifically state that you can throw a Greatsword (with your arms, not with TK), with a range increment of 10 feet. If your assertion was true, then throwing it would cause no effect.
Throwing a greatsword will cause whatever effect your individual DM decides, because it's an improvised thrown weapon. It won't be the weapon's melee damage — unless your particular DM decides that's the case.

[Seruvius]

A mate of mine, great guy but a **** of a player. Kept wnating to play stupidly unbalanced Homebrew, when is aid no demanded I just balance the game around his character, then got mad when i told him ti was unfair on the rest, complained he had tried evyer character concept possible after having played 4 characters in 2 campaigns, then once I allowed a few feats so he could have fun, then turned up to 2 out of 25 seshs for a campaign, worst player AU 2014.

[icefractal]

Throwing a greatsword will cause whatever effect your individual DM decides, because it's an improvised thrown weapon. It won't be the weapon's melee damage — unless your particular DM decides that's the case.
Ok, so on the one hand, you have the rules for throwing weapons that aren't normally thrown. Now sure, those rules could be disfunctional, it's happened before. But they are at least a strong implication that weapons would deal their damage when thrown.

On the other hand, you have ... nothing. You have still not provided one scrap of evidence that "melee damage" and "ranged damage" are separate things. Again, I'm looking at the weapon chart and it simply lists "damage". Please provide some citation for this assertion - otherwise it can only be considered a house-rule.

[F1zban]

Been a GM for many years, fortunately with the same (more or less) group of friends. There have been arguments aplenty, falling out, making up, and general bull **** but there are 3 that really stick out.

1. My wife, always goes against the campaign idea, and only in my games! Wanted to be a primitive in a sci-fi game. Wanted to be a werewolf in a vampire game, wanted to be a gunslinger in an oriental game..... you get the idea. EVERY DAMN TIME! If I didn't love her with every fiber of my being we wouldn't be talking lol.

2. Two of my players love to optimize, this is offset by the fact that they never metagame or break character when in character. They are insistent upon following the 'tier' system and ask me what tier my game will be, I will say tier 3, they build tier 1 characters. One of them always plays power hungry characters too. Will go out of his way to get more powerful. In my current game he arranged (with great difficulty so I gave it to him) an audience with the primary evil god. Made a deal which of course was heavily in my favour, just to get the soulless template! And he's even playing the emotionless part perfectly! Credit where it is due.

3. In a recent game I hosted on Fantasy Grounds, I had one player that wanted to be a fighter and a cleric at the same time. Not getsalt, but both. He wanted a level 1 fighter and a level 1 cleric in the same character! He wanted to change the world to facilitate his origin story. He appointed himself as defacto party leader. He assumed instant proficiency with unknown/new weapons (they went to a kingdom with firearms) just because some book told him they were martial weapons. He ended up leaving after I said no for the 100th time.

[Curmudgeon]

Ok, so on the one hand, you have the rules for throwing weapons that aren't normally thrown. Now sure, those rules could be disfunctional, it's happened before. But they are at least a strong implication that weapons would deal their damage when thrown.
The highlighted part isn't backed up by the rules. They deal the damage of the weapon the DM determines is a reasonable match for the improvised use. One DM might determine that the most reasonable weapon match for a thrown greatsword is a javelin; another might find the most reasonable match is a dart.

[Sir Chuckles]

3. In a recent game I hosted on Fantasy Grounds, I had one player that wanted to be a fighter and a cleric at the same time. Not getsalt, but both. He wanted a level 1 fighter and a level 1 cleric in the same character!

Cut down for emphasis.
I'm confused by this one. Do you mean he wanted to be Gestalt in a non-Gestalt campaign?
Because what you're describing sounds like he was trying to crossclass, and I don't think that's it.
Was he asking for a d8 and a d10 hitdie at the same time for one level? :smallconfused:

[Peebles]

Poor hygiene has been a problem with some of my players in the past. Had a guy who had actual tide marks around his wrists where the dirt stopped and his hands began. I know as an archetype we gamers aren't exactly known for our cleanliness, but gawd. :smalleek: It also didn't help that he played a cardboard cut out that could swing a sword rather than an actual character, but for me that was secondary to the tide marks. Yeesh.

My latest one is a fellow player, and it's really confused me. He's, without a doubt, the best DM in our group, and the best I have had the pleasure of experiencing, and for the last eight years I have had the sum total of zero problems with him. But in our new 5th edition game he seems to have become a cheater. We've been playing for two months and he has never missed with an attack role. He's never failed a skill check either, and with skill bonuses etc has never announced a total lower than 15. It's bizarre; he's never done this before. We've been level 1 or 2 for all of this period, so of course he's wrecking house, and putting other characters in the shade. But he's such a nice guy, excellent DM, and well liked in our group, that no-ones managed to broach his blatant cheating with him yet.

[AnonymousPepper]

The highlighted part isn't backed up by the rules. They deal the damage of the weapon the DM determines is a reasonable match for the improvised use. One DM might determine that the most reasonable weapon match for a thrown greatsword is a javelin; another might find the most reasonable match is a dart.

Guys. Guys. You're getting it all wrong, because your point is totally moot. The weapon would clearly do its statted daWizard (http://selinker.livejournal.com/32929.html).

[F1zban]

Cut down for emphasis.
I'm confused by this one. Do you mean he wanted to be Gestalt in a non-Gestalt campaign?
Because what you're describing sounds like he was trying to crossclass, and I don't think that's it.
Was he asking for a d8 and a d10 hitdie at the same time for one level? :smallconfused:

It was a non-gestalt campaign, and he didn't want to be gestalt, he wanted the D8 & D10, same with saves, skills, he basically wanted double of everything.

[Vertharrad]

Curmudgeon - Friendly advice, your argument is getting pretty long please make a new thread.

[sakuuya]

It was a non-gestalt campaign, and he didn't want to be gestalt, he wanted the D8 & D10, same with saves, skills, he basically wanted double of everything.

That is bonkers. Why did he think you'd be okay with this?

[Vhaidara]

That is bonkers. Why did he think you'd be okay with this?

Only reason I can think of would be that he was used to playing 2e. That was actually how multiclassing worked in 2e, IIRC: If you were a Fighter/Cleric/Mage, you have ALL the benefits of a Fighter 1, Cleric 1, and Mage 1, but your experience was actually divided between your 3 classes (this was also when different classes levelled at different XP values)

[jjcrpntr]

Literally none of the words quoted was a homonym (http://www.bing.com/search?q=homonym&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IE8SRC)....

Although my response does remind me of probably the number 1 behavior that gets under my skin as a DM - that player who shows up from time to time who is 100% convinced that he is both

A) Smarter than everyone else at the table

and

B) The number 1 rules authority, period.



See I try very hard not to be that guy, I also try very hard not to metagame. If I see a ghoul pop up on the screen I immediately think "oh ghoul fever" but if I'm playing a fighter and no one makes the knowledge check I run up and start smacking away like I don't know any better. It's hard sometimes but I hate people who meta game.

At the same time I don't pretend to know all rules 100% but the ones I do know it bugs me when people do wrong. For example I'm joining a game this sunday and we had a pre-session session (short game, making characters and such) and two players were interacting. The dm says "roll a diplomacy check" (guy gets a 16) he turns to PC2 and says "ya you believe him". I started twitching like .. no... no that's not how it works. But I thought about the situation and it KIND of makes sense (long story) so I ran with it. But if that's how it works normally in his full on game I wont be sticking around.

I have a general rule as a player that I understand rule 0. I understand that DM's change things or how things work to fit a campaign/setting. So I try not to give DM's too much crap. For example in the current campaign I'm running there are no gods, there is a category of Dragons above Great Wyrm (in this campaign they are Elder Wyrms) that are living embodiment of magic and all magic is drawn directly from them. One of my players has been DMing dnd for about 10 years than I've been playing and he questioned things a few times, but he understood that different setting different mechanics as long as things make some semblance of sense.

[Crake]

At the same time I don't pretend to know all rules 100% but the ones I do know it bugs me when people do wrong. For example I'm joining a game this sunday and we had a pre-session session (short game, making characters and such) and two players were interacting. The dm says "roll a diplomacy check" (guy gets a 16) he turns to PC2 and says "ya you believe him". I started twitching like .. no... no that's not how it works. But I thought about the situation and it KIND of makes sense (long story) so I ran with it. But if that's how it works normally in his full on game I wont be sticking around.

This is exactly how I feel about it, I just can't stand it when people so blatantly misuse the rules system, and I have the overwhelming urge to get them to do it correctly. Not because I'm some arrogant prick who wants to feel above everyone else, but because if you don't use the rules system, why even play the game, just play freeform roleplay.

[icefractal]

The highlighted part isn't backed up by the rules. They deal the damage of the weapon the DM determines is a reasonable match for the improvised use. One DM might determine that the most reasonable weapon match for a thrown greatsword is a javelin; another might find the most reasonable match is a dart.Why would you state the improvised weapon rules have any bearing on this situation? I'm talking about the "Thrown Weapons" section of the rules, found here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#thrownWeapons), not the improvised weapon rules. You do take a -4, but that doesn't mean it counts as an improvised weapon, any more than flanking and charging count as the same thing.

[Raphite1]

Had a player who was a compulsive hoarder, collecting trash. Dead cats, empty potion bottles, random stuff that nobody considered loot. He also took fixtures, like carpets, doors, and chairs, and since he had a Class IV BoH, nobody challenged it. But then things turned weird. He tried to "craft a custom weapon" using a rolled-up rug as a handle, into which were thrust a bunch of vines tied to rusty daggers he'd looted from some long-dead corpses, and called it a "Flail-ish."
He was also fond of solving problems by lighting his many looted rugs on fire and lobbing them around as "distractions." He contemplated chucking one down a dark staircase to see what was at the bottom, and hemmed and hawed for so long another player legitimately kicked him down the stairs.
He was a half-orc barbarian who refused to use his axe because "he would chip or dull it."
He enjoyed ditching the party and "going hunting." For farm animals. Goats in particular. His goat fondness inspired me to throw half a dozen templates onto a goat to create the infamous Omni-Goat of Legend to challenge him next time he tried. A goat with all four half-elemental templates AND Monster of Legend applied.
He was not invited back.

Whaaat?? This guy sounds awesome, and a ton of fun to play with!

[Oddman80]

So I was not the DM for this game, but a fellow player who could see the anguish this one guy was causing our DM.

The problem was that the player had far better system mastery than the DM and the rest of the group, but wasn't able to (or straight out refused to) build at the group's level.

His first character had the perfect alignment of race/traits/feats/abilities/equipment, that gave him 30 AC AT LEVEL 3-4, a +20 to hit, and could do 100 damage per hit. Ummm... We had a universalist wizard with a focus on linguistics and knowledge, a monk that could only hit 25% of the time, a Halfling barbarian, and a war priest that likes to play field medic instead of focus on damage... So this guy would always hit (roll of 2 or better) and the DM could only ever hit him on a crit. After an especially dominating encounter, he was asked to tone down his character

He came back the following week with an lunar muster oracle, that worked 100% off charisma, could still deal major damage per round between he and his extra advanced, celestial magic beast animal companion, and his lowest save at level 5 was a +19.... The GM, again couldn't touch him without critting, but he claimed he wasn't doing anything wrong since his guy was now "back line"

The GM spent 40 minutes trying to explain how ridiculous it was to consider this "toned down" before I recommended the two of them work on a build together,that the DM would find acceptable.

Apparently, over the course of the week the DM looked at 10 or so different builds, each of themore highly optimized than the previous. Finally, the DM sent me a copy of build #12, as it looked tame to him, and wanted a second pair of eyes on it.

Yeah, at first glance it looked like he had built a purposefully weak rogue... Then I saw how the pieces went together... At level 6, he could get 2d6+36+16d6 Sneak attack on a charge, with a free intimidation attempt that, due to feats/traits/abilities, would actually make the target frightened and run away (triggering another 1d6+18+8d6 damage AoO).... But if the demoralize failed, he still got a free trip attempt....

Yeah that was what he could do when NOT having his full attack available to him... Oh, and if everything hit, he would get a +24 dodge bonus to AC for the round!!!

This guy just is incapable of building an Unoptimized character....

As an update - the DM allowed the Non-Lethal/Demoralizing/Sap Master/Rogue to play in a session to decide if it was too OP or not. While he did have a couple incredibly high DPR moments in the session, he didn't come across quite as OP as some of the other characters he had used.

Fast Forward to the following week. The party is summoned to a local wizard who wants to hire our guild to retrieve a dangerous tome from a bothersome necromancer. The previously mentioned player just blurts out "Not Interested!" to the annoyance of the rest of the party members who are all excited that our reputation is finally reaching levels where we are actively being sought out for quests, rather than having to seek them out ourselves.

The party decides they want to do the adventure, and the player complains that he isn't going to go. (Now personally - i have no problem leaving him behind at this point) We ask him why he is SO opposed to going he says his guy wont be able to do anything against anything we face on the quest, as he is focused on non-lethal damage, sneak attack and demorilization. Now this is a Pathfinder Game, so our DM reminds him that he can sneak attack undead, and just use a weapon besides his sap - we have plenty of extra +1 and even +2 weapons we haven't sold off yet, as well as ample party funds if he wants to purchase a more powerful weapon.

"No, I would rather do a different quest"
(again - in character this is a "new guy" that has only been with us for a day and we aren't exactly taking orders form him)

Another 20-30 minutes of bickering and us getting frustrated that he is unwilling to play the game unless he is in his ideal scenarios - and the DM just wants to get to the awesome dungeon he spent the week planning out... so he asks (to our shock) if the player can take 15 minutes to make a character he would be willing to play today on this quest. the player says sure. 15 minutes later, he turns in a character sheet with an Aasimar Fighter focusing on ranged attacks - basic ranged feat progression (point blank/precise shot/rapid shot/many shot/weapon focus - long bow/weapon specialization - longbow), a +2 longbow that's stated attack bonus is +11, and damage output is 1d8+4.

The first encounter begins, and on his first full attack (level 7) fires 5 arrows - all at +15 to hit. 3 hit, and he says it does 3d8+78+6d6 for 109 damage.
When DM calls B.S. - he starts saying how he gets everything, and the +2 longbow is now a +1 Composite Longbow (+3 strength rating) with Bane (Undead). He has added multiple other feats/traits/items to increase damage output and attack bonus.
DM and players start calling B.S. and he falls back on the fact that he only had 15 minutes to put the character together - he hadn't finished and so he was just doing now what he normally would have done....

He couldn't get it through his head why people thought it was B.S. to make a character custom tailored to the quest you know the party is going on when you didn't want to play your normal character due to it being too ineffective... its like he doesn't actually want to be a player running a single character - but rather a head of an organization that employs adventurers, and is able to choose the ideal adventurer to send out on any given mission... not a bad game concept - just not the one anyone else happens to be playing.

[jjcrpntr]

He couldn't get it through his head why people thought it was B.S. to make a character custom tailored to the quest you know the party is going on when you didn't want to play your normal character due to it being too ineffective... its like he doesn't actually want to be a player running a single character - but rather a head of an organization that employs adventurers, and is able to choose the ideal adventurer to send out on any given mission... not a bad game concept - just not the one anyone else happens to be playing.

This crap drives me nuts. I hate it when people do this. For example I have a player right now (very good player) who is playing an illusion specialist wizard. First bit of real combat he gets with the wizard the creatures happen to be immune to his spells he had selected. It wasn't intentional at all. He laughs and and basically says "well guys, guess I'm a red shirt now".

Then I have a player who is playing a Palabarian (paladin but lets be honest, it's a barbarian without the rage). Who is starting to get really upset that not everything they fight is evil, doesn't really understand or care to learn how use a paladins skills (IE diplomacy) and just wants every adventure to be fight, fight, fight and every fight to be , I hit you, you hit me, rinse and repeat until one of us dies.

Not every fight or campaign is going to be great for your character.

[T.G. Oskar]

Sorry to start with a tangent based on the secondary discussion of this thread, but...what would be the damage of a +1 Throwing Greatsword?

On to responding to the most amusing tale (and the vibe I'm getting from another)...


Had a player who was a compulsive hoarder, collecting trash. Dead cats, empty potion bottles, random stuff that nobody considered loot. He also took fixtures, like carpets, doors, and chairs, and since he had a Class IV BoH, nobody challenged it. But then things turned weird. He tried to "craft a custom weapon" using a rolled-up rug as a handle, into which were thrust a bunch of vines tied to rusty daggers he'd looted from some long-dead corpses, and called it a "Flail-ish."
He was also fond of solving problems by lighting his many looted rugs on fire and lobbing them around as "distractions." He contemplated chucking one down a dark staircase to see what was at the bottom, and hemmed and hawed for so long another player legitimately kicked him down the stairs.
He was a half-orc barbarian who refused to use his axe because "he would chip or dull it."
He enjoyed ditching the party and "going hunting." For farm animals. Goats in particular. His goat fondness inspired me to throw half a dozen templates onto a goat to create the infamous Omni-Goat of Legend to challenge him next time he tried. A goat with all four half-elemental templates AND Monster of Legend applied.
He was not invited back.

I recall someone else saying it, but that character seemed pretty amusing. If it weren't because of the penchant for "hunting", he'd be a pretty funny player. Maybe he was bored of the adventure, or found fun in being just plain crazy? I mean, the lit rug "distraction" and using it as a source of light are, IMO, pretty creative ways to do stuff. Done correctly, they'd add some color to the game. I guess the player was just a bit disconnected and tried to derail the adventure for fun?


My latest one is a fellow player, and it's really confused me. He's, without a doubt, the best DM in our group, and the best I have had the pleasure of experiencing, and for the last eight years I have had the sum total of zero problems with him. But in our new 5th edition game he seems to have become a cheater. We've been playing for two months and he has never missed with an attack role. He's never failed a skill check either, and with skill bonuses etc has never announced a total lower than 15. It's bizarre; he's never done this before. We've been level 1 or 2 for all of this period, so of course he's wrecking house, and putting other characters in the shade. But he's such a nice guy, excellent DM, and well liked in our group, that no-ones managed to broach his blatant cheating with him yet.

Have you played with him otherwise? There's only two reasons why he might be doing that - either that's the way he plays (and thus why he's relegated to being a DM), or he's not fond of the system. I'm getting the vibe of the latter, but it seems like too little information to make proper judgment. With skills and ability scores, that means the player has to roll, as a bare minimum, between 9 and 15 on every roll (accounting for a +0 bonus on the check, and the situations where you get max ability score bonuses AND proficiency bonuses on top). Maybe it's just dumb luck?

[Crake]

Have you played with him otherwise? There's only two reasons why he might be doing that - either that's the way he plays (and thus why he's relegated to being a DM), or he's not fond of the system. I'm getting the vibe of the latter, but it seems like too little information to make proper judgment. With skills and ability scores, that means the player has to roll, as a bare minimum, between 9 and 15 on every roll (accounting for a +0 bonus on the check, and the situations where you get max ability score bonuses AND proficiency bonuses on top). Maybe it's just dumb luck?

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the system. 5th has annoyed me to the point where I had to quit the campaign i was in entirely due to the system. I just can't handle the incredibly flat leveling slope, it feels like my character doesn't change except for getting more hit points.

[MrMercury]

Oh God, I've got one of these. It's always Ne-CRO-mun-cey. For some reason multiple people at the table can't seem to wrap their heads around "tome", either, pronouncing it "toom". The best had to be when I got into a ten-minute argument over a monk trying to attempt a feint... to play dead:smallconfused: Turns out he played for like ten levels never realizing that feint didn't mean "faint".

I believe tome is actually pronounced "toom"

Like tombstone

I live in new Zealand btw

[ArcanistSupreme]

I believe tome is actually pronounced "toom"

Like tombstone

I live in new Zealand btw

It's pronounced "tohm" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tome?s=t) (rhymes with "Rome").

I have a buddy who knows the correct pronunciation but says "mee lee" for "melee". Ew.

[Rhyltran]

So I got one and this is back when it was just 3rd edition and we only had the three core books. We had a Lawful Good Paladin that I will call Joe. So the party ends up assembled and the group of adventures get their fist hook and head off to the dungeon in search of treasure. They see a merchant on the road and the rogue asks the party if they want to check out his wares. The rest of the party agrees and they meet up with the merchant. This is the first time the Paladin shows off his weird behavior. He takes this opportunity to try to con the merchant out of his goods. Everyone is puzzled by this because he's supposed to be a lawful good Paladin.

One of the players characters pipe up mentioning that he hasn't ever heard of a Paladin behaving in this manner. That he thought they were supposed to be perfect. The Paladin responds to the fighter, who we will call Jack, that no one is perfect. Not even a Paladin. At first I don't think much of it. The merchant doesn't get conned but I decide to keep a close eye on the Paladin's behavior in the future. Later in the adventure Jack triggers a trap that causes a small cave in. Jack gets buried under rubble while being rendered unconscious. The paladin steps forward informing the party he knows what to do and brandishes his sword.

The party becomes puzzled at this point but does nothing. As the storyteller I'm concerned at this point as well. Suddenly Joe the Lawful Good Paladin informs Jack, "You have failed us." and attempts a coup de grace. The rogue immediately asks for an initiative roll, I grant it, and the rogue succeeds on beating the Paladin's initiative and uses disarm. The party argues for awhile and the now ex paladin (I took away his abilities after this) tries to make his point.

"I'm totally acting within my alignment. As a person who devotes himself to Justice this Fighter's stupidity is punishable by death. The fighter has endangered the group with his rash actions therefore he must be eliminated." The argument erupts ooc as people begin telling him that is not lawful good thinking. He goes into a subjective morality debate (which we tell him doesn't exist in D&D) and then into another debate about how the ends justify the means. After awhile he decides to leave the party in order to redeem himself in the eyes of his Deity. The party lets him wander off while continuing on their adventure.

Joe encounters a Nymph who appears to be caught in a trap. I used this as a hook to see if he can do the right thing. In an attempt towards redemption. So he rescues the Nymph. At first I'm thinking things are going well but they take a turn for the worst.. he tells the Nymph that he deserves some kind of reward for rescuing her. She offers him some treasure she doesn't need. Hidden away in the hollow of the tree. Joe tells the Nymph he wants something other than treasure. The nymph is confused. Then he tries to "grapple with the Nymph" while telling us ooc he's going to have his way with her. Because as a Paladin he deserves to be rewarded for his actions.

She blinds him using blinding beauty and vanishes. He gets mad OOC and IC claiming he's going to slaughter any nymph he sees. I end the session here while never inviting him back to play with us.

Needless to say it was a very.. "interesting" session.

[Inevitability]

She blinds him using blinding beauty and vanishes. He gets mad OOC and IC claiming he's going to slaughterany nymph he sees.

Bit of a problem here... :smalltongue:

[Rhyltran]

Bit of a problem here... :smalltongue:

Lol, indeed. :smalltongue: One of our players comment on that after he left. "Well, I guess he won't be killing any nymphs since he can't see them." Not that it mattered. He wasn't coming back. :smallbiggrin:

[atemu1234]

So I got one and this is back when it was just 3rd edition and we only had the three core books. We had a Lawful Good Paladin that I will call Joe. So the party ends up assembled and the group of adventures get their fist hook and head off to the dungeon in search of treasure. They see a merchant on the road and the rogue asks the party if they want to check out his wares. The rest of the party agrees and they meet up with the merchant. This is the first time the Paladin shows off his weird behavior. He takes this opportunity to try to con the merchant out of his goods. Everyone is puzzled by this because he's supposed to be a lawful good Paladin.

One of the players characters pipe up mentioning that he hasn't ever heard of a Paladin behaving in this manner. That he thought they were supposed to be perfect. The Paladin responds to the fighter, who we will call Jack, that no one is perfect. Not even a Paladin. At first I don't think much of it. The merchant doesn't get conned but I decide to keep a close eye on the Paladin's behavior in the future. Later in the adventure Jack triggers a trap that causes a small cave in. Jack gets buried under rubble while being rendered unconscious. The paladin steps forward informing the party he knows what to do and brandishes his sword.

The party becomes puzzled at this point but does nothing. As the storyteller I'm concerned at this point as well. Suddenly Joe the Lawful Good Paladin informs Jack, "You have failed us." and attempts a coup de grace. The rogue immediately asks for an initiative roll, I grant it, and the rogue succeeds on beating the Paladin's initiative and uses disarm. The party argues for awhile and the now ex paladin (I took away his abilities after this) tries to make his point.

"I'm totally acting within my alignment. As a person who devotes himself to Justice this Fighter's stupidity is punishable by death. The fighter has endangered the group with his rash actions therefore he must be eliminated." The argument erupts ooc as people begin telling him that is not lawful good thinking. He goes into a subjective morality debate (which we tell him doesn't exist in D&D) and then into another debate about how the ends justify the means. After awhile he decides to leave the party in order to redeem himself in the eyes of his Deity. The party lets him wander off while continuing on their adventure.

Joe encounters a Nymph who appears to be caught in a trap. I used this as a hook to see if he can do the right thing. In an attempt towards redemption. So he rescues the Nymph. At first I'm thinking things are going well but they take a turn for the worst.. he tells the Nymph that he deserves some kind of reward for rescuing her. She offers him some treasure she doesn't need. Hidden away in the hollow of the tree. Joe tells the Nymph he wants something other than treasure. The nymph is confused. Then he tries to "grapple with the Nymph" while telling us ooc he's going to have his way with her. Because as a Paladin he deserves to be rewarded for his actions.

She blinds him using blinding beauty and vanishes. He gets mad OOC and IC claiming he's going to slaughter any nymph he sees. I end the session here while never inviting him back to play with us.

Needless to say it was a very.. "interesting" session.

Well, for lack of a better term, this guy sounds like an *******.

Seriously, sexual assault on an NPC is the point at which I hit someone. Personal reasons.

[LoyalPaladin]

Well, for lack of a better term, this guy sounds like an *******.
I agree with Atemu, this player is not LoyalPaladin approved.

[(Un)Inspired]

So I got one and this is back when it was just 3rd edition and we only had the three core books. We had a Lawful Good Paladin that I will call Joe. So the party ends up assembled and the group of adventures get their fist hook and head off to the dungeon in search of treasure. They see a merchant on the road and the rogue asks the party if they want to check out his wares. The rest of the party agrees and they meet up with the merchant. This is the first time the Paladin shows off his weird behavior. He takes this opportunity to try to con the merchant out of his goods. Everyone is puzzled by this because he's supposed to be a lawful good Paladin.

One of the players characters pipe up mentioning that he hasn't ever heard of a Paladin behaving in this manner. That he thought they were supposed to be perfect. The Paladin responds to the fighter, who we will call Jack, that no one is perfect. Not even a Paladin. At first I don't think much of it. The merchant doesn't get conned but I decide to keep a close eye on the Paladin's behavior in the future. Later in the adventure Jack triggers a trap that causes a small cave in. Jack gets buried under rubble while being rendered unconscious. The paladin steps forward informing the party he knows what to do and brandishes his sword.

The party becomes puzzled at this point but does nothing. As the storyteller I'm concerned at this point as well. Suddenly Joe the Lawful Good Paladin informs Jack, "You have failed us." and attempts a coup de grace. The rogue immediately asks for an initiative roll, I grant it, and the rogue succeeds on beating the Paladin's initiative and uses disarm. The party argues for awhile and the now ex paladin (I took away his abilities after this) tries to make his point.

"I'm totally acting within my alignment. As a person who devotes himself to Justice this Fighter's stupidity is punishable by death. The fighter has endangered the group with his rash actions therefore he must be eliminated." The argument erupts ooc as people begin telling him that is not lawful good thinking. He goes into a subjective morality debate (which we tell him doesn't exist in D&D) and then into another debate about how the ends justify the means. After awhile he decides to leave the party in order to redeem himself in the eyes of his Deity. The party lets him wander off while continuing on their adventure.

Joe encounters a Nymph who appears to be caught in a trap. I used this as a hook to see if he can do the right thing. In an attempt towards redemption. So he rescues the Nymph. At first I'm thinking things are going well but they take a turn for the worst.. he tells the Nymph that he deserves some kind of reward for rescuing her. She offers him some treasure she doesn't need. Hidden away in the hollow of the tree. Joe tells the Nymph he wants something other than treasure. The nymph is confused. Then he tries to "grapple with the Nymph" while telling us ooc he's going to have his way with her. Because as a Paladin he deserves to be rewarded for his actions.

She blinds him using blinding beauty and vanishes. He gets mad OOC and IC claiming he's going to slaughter any nymph he sees. I end the session here while never inviting him back to play with us.

Needless to say it was a very.. "interesting" session.

That sounds like just about perfect role playing for a pathfinder antipaladin.

The player sounds like a turd. Thematically inappropriate up until that nymph thing which is kinda terrifying if it reflects how he actually feels.

[Verikus]

It's been said before, but some of these guys make my 'bad' players seem just fine lol

Worst (as a fellow PC) was a guy who wanted to go psionic, and played chaotic evil, claimed he played a lot before but knew nothing, and I mean NOTHING about a psions abilities or when they could do certain things, or whatever. He also went out of the way to do pointlessly chaotic things (starting fights in towns that he could never win for one). Found out later he had been just playing it by ear with psionics and was making half of it up (we had a new group, and a new DM). Also the 'my character wants to be rape-ey for no reason' stuff got brought up from time to time. That never feels like it has a place in D&D for me in any explicit way, especially from a PC.

As a DM, my least favorite was a guy who, although helpful and more experienced than I, had a way of changing from helpful to condescending at the drop of a hat. Changed his characters' accent halfway through (to a really strange and goofy british accent considering he was an orc) to throw everyone off, and once I started to really piece together his backstory into the main one, just quit showing up with no notice.

So not that bad, maybe he was just frustrated with an inexperienced DM, I just take issue with being condescended to under the guise of being helped.

[Guyver87]

My gaming group is quite big (Up to nine people) and we have pretty laid back approach to D&D, playing it for fun, with lot of goofing around both IC and OOC. Because of that our DM has to be very patient, and flexible, and he actually is, but we once had a player even he couldn't stand.

She was a then-girlfriend, now fiancée of the veteran player, who brought her in to play with us, as a way to introduce her to his friends.

Now, as we quickly found out, outside of the game she is a very nice and reasonable person, and being an enthusiastic reader of fantasy she quickly got into the plot, asking inquisitive questions etc, so we were pretty happy she would join.

She observed us for one session, to get acquainted with the rules, DM also borrowed her his Player's Handbook, so she was more than ready to get into the game next week.

Or at least she would be if she bothered to actually read the book she was given... But OK, it's not a big problem, DM had helped her to create a character, she decided to be an Elf Bard.

And then demanded that her Elf had wings.

Why? Because "Winged Elves are pretty", and it "fitted her vision of the character".

Well, OK why not, we had Aasimar Paladin, Tiefling Sorcerer, Half-Dragon Barbarian, Half-Fiend Fighter, a Wood Elf Druid, and a Gold Elf Wizard, so our group couldn't get any weirder anyway...

So through the Powers of the Internet we had found Avariel stats (Since none of us had "Races of Faerûn" with us), and informed her of the +3 Level Adjustment, and what it meant. She said, she was OK with it, so we continued.

She then spend over 1,5 of an hour on getting her character's equipment.

It does happen, so it's not unusual, but she wasn't looking for good, useful stuff for her character. Nope, she was actually reading descriptions to get "pretty" and "elegant" stuff, and had written how the runes on her Elf's corset are glittering in the sunlight, how her rapier is decorated with silver adornments etc.

Also, since she blew most of her starting cash on frivolous things like that, she actually had to borrow gold from her OOC boyfriend, to buy some essentials. Well, in the game proper their characters hadn't even knew each other, but DM just handwaved it, since he wanted to start the session already.

Now, up to this point she hadn't rolled for Stats, chosen Skills, nor created backstory for said character, or even came up with a name, but we all knew how pretty her elvish Bard was, so there is something...

Another problem came when she did rolled Stats.

She rolled poorly, and demanded a re-roll, since "she was just a beginner" and "didn't knew how to roll well" (?). Now, we have a Houserule, that if someone has a very poor rolls during character creation, he or she can try again with two dice of his/hers choosing, but she wanted to roll them all again.

She also claimed, that "rolling dice is stupid, because it is so random", but let's leave that...

Nobody wanted to argue, because her boyfriend backed her up, so after five re-rolls (!) she was finally satisfied, and we could start.

Problems arose during the first fight.

Due to the fact we had such a big group DM had a rule, that he rolled a dice to determine which monster is going to attack which PC in the first phase of the fight. Lady Luck was apparently against her, since her char got three Goblin spears in her, and angrily accused us of being "chauvinist pigs that attacked her only because she was a woman".

She was explained how we determine the target of an attack before, but was angry nevertheless. To pacify her group's Cleric (Her boyfriend btw...) had to become her meat shield, and heal her all the time, to "make it fair", since we had "characters with more HP than her" (Which was very untrue for Wizard...).

Oh, and she was next to useless, since she hadn't bothered to put points into Skills, deciding them "not important". Her way of dealing with it? Claiming she had "(x) points invested in the Skill she tried to use", changing it whenever she needed points for something else.

All in all it wasn't a very good session...

Her boyfriend actually apologized to us, and swore that she would be better next time.

So, two weeks later came the next session.

She actually had her character sheet prepared this time, and claimed she had read Player's Handbook, and understood rules better, so we had some hopes for her.

She ruined them immediately by bitching about how it was unfair, that her character got so little xp for the last session. As I mentioned before, she was aware how LA worked, but somehow it was still unfair, and we did it because she was a woman...

Not to mention the fact, that she ignored the game most of the time, occupied with cuddling DM's cat, so her boyfriend eventually just played her character for her, instead of hopelessly trying to get her attention every five minutes.

Then she woke up, and bitched to him about getting her character wounded, when she was "occupied"...

She never played with us after that, and two sessions later we actually had a little celebration with killing off her character. She really is a nice, and reasonable person in everyday life, but she was a very lousy player...

[skypse]

My worst player in terms of attitude is unfortunately my best friend. Lots of you here have said before (and in other threads as well) not to play with your best friends if you can't control it. Well, it's not like I can't, but part of controlling the situation is about compromising with some stuff.

So things that the specific player does during game:
Texting with his gf EVERY time his character doesn't speak.
Playing video game in his phone when "his energy is filled up".
Leaving the room to go smoke when someone else is speaking and/or his character is not in the room where the dialogue is happening.
He shows no faith whatsoever to the rest of the players, trying to be the face of the party no matter his character's stats, trying to take every important decision because he believes he is correct and generally trying to be the leader of the party and expects everyone else to just follow him.

[Curmudgeon]

Why would you state the improvised weapon rules have any bearing on this situation? I'm talking about the "Thrown Weapons" section of the rules, found here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#thrownWeapons), not the improvised weapon rules. You do take a -4, but that doesn't mean it counts as an improvised weapon, any more than flanking and charging count as the same thing.
Yep, you're right. I had looked at those two rules sections (weapon that isn’t designed to be thrown, and improvised weapons) and thought they had all the same elements. However, there's nothing about adjusting damage in the rules for melee weapons not designed to be thrown, so they're not exactly the same rules, and thus the damage remains that specified for the weapon's normal (melee) usage.

I apologize for the error, and needing so much prodding in the right direction here.

[Ken Murikumo]

Throwing weapons aside, i'm glad to see this thread popping up every so often. Like i said, there must be dozens of threads about worst DMs (including the one created by that guy in lieu of this thread). I had never encountered a thread from the DMs point of view and there was no way that EVERY player any DM has had was perfect.

It must feel good to vent, though. Get it all off your chest and whatnot.

[Azoth]

This is going to seem tame to some of you, but it was infuriating for me at the time. I was new to DMing, but always a fan of the game as a player. I had just gotten a hold of the Ebberon books, and they were the first expansion outside core my friend had seen. So I start up a game at his request to take some strain off of him coming up with sessions every week for our group. No problem right. I start them at level 5. Something new compared to the usual lvl1.

Party is a Shifter Monk, elven cleric (healbot), and a human wizard. The wizard announces that with his spell selection the only way I could kill him is if I gunned for him. Then I look at his sheet and see an 8Con. I suggest maybe putting a higher stat there, but he declines saying his spells will handle it.

So campaign starts, and they trounce the first few encounters solidly. This includes utterly wrecking a 6 headed pyrohydra in less than 2 turns.

They get a quest to go and clear out a rebel encampment that is stockpiling weapons and training soldiers to use them. The monk sneaks in and disables the guards at the front gate quick and quiet thanks to a silenced stone in his pocket. Once inside, the party sees barrels of black powder being loaded onto a cart, and before I can finish the description of what is going on in the base the wizard fireballs them.

Yeah...he let's loose all hell from the get go. The enemies are scrambling into ranks and closing in on the group. Cleric drops obscuring mist to buy some time, and the monk throws caltrops down in front of the door closest to them. Wizard starts joy riding a flaming sphere through the courtyard.

The enemies get a lucky shot through the concealment and hit his 12AC with a bog standard crossbow bolt. This promptly puts him in the negatives...and starts his screaming about unfairness. That I was gunning to kill him. That I had it out for him ect.

They retreat dragging him behind them, and get unexpected support from a ranger with a tiger companion. He helps them escape, and as soon as he is patched up the wizard picks a fight with the Ranger, and then whines that the ranger didn't get caught in his own entangle that was used to restrain them from fighting further.

So they tell the ranger to piss off, and shortly there after sone of the rebel army sneaks into the city and starts attacking during a festival. Everyone else tries to get away or out of the crossfire, not the blast happy wizard who is throwing lightning bolts and fireballs around indiscriminately.

They manage to find a sea hag in the sewers who offers them an old outdated air ship in exchange for her safety...he fries her on the spot.

They go to start up the ship and only get a few hours flight before it auto lands outside a village. They poke around and notice it is missing its bound elemental. They try to figure out how itwas had any power to begin with, and when the wizard touched the couplings he has a few cantrips drained from him after a failed Will save.

Now it is another load of arguing and whining that he was low on spells and just lost more. It should have drained the cleric too, and why wasn't she affected when she had spells. No amount of explanation that air ships run off the arcane power of bound fire/air elementals would appease him. He refused to believe that a magical engine could tell the difference between arcane and divine and that the cleric should automatically loose spells for touching it too.

Then after pointing out a diesel engine won't run on gas or a gas engine won't run on diesel, he got up to cool off or so I thought. Nope, he got in my face less than a handspan from me and started screaming about favoritism since my girlfriend at the time (now ex) was playing the cleric, that my campaign was just a story and not a real campaign since mine flowed well and concisely, and that I was a horrible player and worse DM who didn't understand the game and how to play it yet alone run it.

The other two players had been enjoying themselves immensely and wanted to continue, but without him there... So there was that at least.

[Ken Murikumo]

Snip

How exactly could a single crossbow bolt have taken him down?

[Vhaidara]

How exactly could a single crossbow bolt have taken him down?

Wizard, 8 Con, 3.5 can have below 10 HP through level 7.
Starts with 3. 50% chance on each level up to only get 1 HP (1d4-1, min 1).

Since he was chucking fireballs, he was clearly unoptimized and therefore just blasting. Clearly he thought pure offense was enough to protect him

[Solaris]

Throwing weapons aside, i'm glad to see this thread popping up every so often. Like i said, there must be dozens of threads about worst DMs (including the one created by that guy in lieu of this thread). I had never encountered a thread from the DMs point of view and there was no way that EVERY player any DM has had was perfect.

It must feel good to vent, though. Get it all off your chest and whatnot.

What about this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?373664-The-Worst-player-you-ve-ever-had-seen-been-heard-of) one?

[Ken Murikumo]

Wizard, 8 Con, 3.5 can have below 10 HP through level 7.
Starts with 3. 50% chance on each level up to only get 1 HP (1d4-1, min 1).

Since he was chucking fireballs, he was clearly unoptimized and therefore just blasting. Clearly he thought pure offense was enough to protect him

I forgot that some people actually roll their HP per level. I have never had to do it so i often forget it's there.


What about this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?373664-The-Worst-player-you-ve-ever-had-seen-been-heard-of) one?

After some quick reading, that thread had been inactive for about a month before i made mine. Given how quickly things move on this forum, it was probably buried under a few dozen pages.

[animewatcha]

So I was not the DM for this game, but a fellow player who could see the anguish this one guy was causing our DM.

The problem was that the player had far better system mastery than the DM and the rest of the group, but wasn't able to (or straight out refused to) build at the group's level.

His first character had the perfect alignment of race/traits/feats/abilities/equipment, that gave him 30 AC AT LEVEL 3-4, a +20 to hit, and could do 100 damage per hit. Ummm... We had a universalist wizard with a focus on linguistics and knowledge, a monk that could only hit 25% of the time, a Halfling barbarian, and a war priest that likes to play field medic instead of focus on damage... So this guy would always hit (roll of 2 or better) and the DM could only ever hit him on a crit. After an especially dominating encounter, he was asked to tone down his character

He came back the following week with an lunar muster oracle, that worked 100% off charisma, could still deal major damage per round between he and his extra advanced, celestial magic beast animal companion, and his lowest save at level 5 was a +19.... The GM, again couldn't touch him without critting, but he claimed he wasn't doing anything wrong since his guy was now "back line"

The GM spent 40 minutes trying to explain how ridiculous it was to consider this "toned down" before I recommended the two of them work on a build together,that the DM would find acceptable.

Apparently, over the course of the week the DM looked at 10 or so different builds, each of themore highly optimized than the previous. Finally, the DM sent me a copy of build #12, as it looked tame to him, and wanted a second pair of eyes on it.

Yeah, at first glance it looked like he had built a purposefully weak rogue... Then I saw how the pieces went together... At level 6, he could get 2d6+36+16d6 Sneak attack on a charge, with a free intimidation attempt that, due to feats/traits/abilities, would actually make the target frightened and run away (triggering another 1d6+18+8d6 damage AoO).... But if the demoralize failed, he still got a free trip attempt....

Yeah that was what he could do when NOT having his full attack available to him... Oh, and if everything hit, he would get a +24 dodge bonus to AC for the round!!!

This guy just is incapable of building an Unoptimized character....

I would like to know how half of that is even possible at low levels... or were you giving wide range of level areas?

-edit- *still reading through the thread and failed to notice time of the post*

[atemu1234]

I forgot that some people actually roll their HP per level. I have never had to do it so i often forget it's there.



After some quick reading, that thread had been inactive for about a month before i made mine. Given how quickly things move on this forum, it was probably buried under a few dozen pages.

Also, who plays a wizard with less than 14 CON?

[Sliver]

Also, who plays a wizard with less than 14 CON?

People that think that Fireball gives you such a high deflection bonus to armor that if the DM even manages to target you, he must be cheating.

[Chester]

Ages ago, while I was DMing, the group was exploring a small cave tunnel, which led to a door.

Worst Player: "There are no doors in caves."

:smallannoyed:

[Vhaidara]

Ages ago, while I was DMing, the group was exploring a small cave tunnel, which led to a door.

Worst Player: "There are no doors in caves."

:smallannoyed:

Hang on. Did he just say that, or did he try and actually fight you on it? That sounds like something that I or one of my players would say, to which the rest of us would just laugh.

[Chester]

Hang on. Did he just say that, or did he try and actually fight you on it? That sounds like something that I or one of my players would say, to which the rest of us would just laugh.

No, he really felt that doors could not be in caves.

These days, I'll say it for comical effect, in sort of mocking tone.

[Olfgar]

Well lets see.

- He would complain if you use a module for a one off type of game or string together a couple to make a short fun campaign because it means he wouldnt be able to get into his character since it would "essentially be meaningless". **He felt like it meant that character would only be used for that and be discarded. Remember this last bit for later.

- He would complain if you didnt put in enough effort at creating and describing a world you created for your own campaign. He wanted to make sure his character would be believable for the campaign world and needed as much detail for it as possible. This part in it self isnt bad, the following reason is why it is here.

- He would then ignore everything you created and wrote and design his characters to be a Lawful Good Werewolf Paladin princess from a LG Werewolf kingdom, who while in her human shape would still have wolf like ears and a tail. No, I am not exaggerating, and I know for a fact there is at least one of the people who play with him who frequent these forums.

- He only EVER played a female human paladin with a great sword. Ok I lied, he played a male Hellbred(?) Paladin...with a great sword.

- Bitch and moan if anyone suggests running a campaign where he cant feasibly be a human female paladin, such as a shorti-ish campaign where the party plays as a group of goblins for funsies. Everyone but him are on board with the idea. (Speaking of, if anyone could PM some quick ideas for it I would love you).

- Refuses to learn the game mechanics, ie, the only one. What dice do I roll. By some Miracle of pelor, he has finaly remembered you use the d20 to roll your attack just based on repitition...it doesnt mean how ever that he knows how to calculate his attack roll.

- Worst and most damning of all, he NEVER creates his character, but instead shows up on game day (a minimum of 1.5hours late) and gets someone else to make it for him, with the only inpout he gives being then name, gender, race and what class (as you have already learned, are all always the same) while he watches youtube or plays something like BlazBlue on our buddies console.

[bjoern]

Our group has been playing together for 12 years. One guy, who well call "M" , is one of the stronger optjmizers in the group. Whenever we make new guys he always makes a top notch character that is more than capable of contributing to the party. The only problem is when he plays the role of the beat stick.

Most recent example: we encounter a group or monstrous bugs of some kind or another. There were 6 bugs up front and one huge bug in the back. First thing he does is to charge past all the smaller bugs, provoking AoO from them all (most miss) , and go straight for the big one. Now there is nothing between the party squishies and the 6 bugs. He finds himself overwhelmed by the larger one and gets eaten. The rest of the party had to change roles to try to keep the bugs off the weaker party members. Frustrating.

Would have been a good encounter too, some dumb bugs with no mind for tactics. We could have team worked the whole lot of em of we had fought as a unit.

[dascarletm]

Also, who plays a wizard with less than 14 CON?

When you want to be Mr. Glass.

[Synar]

On the subject of vargouille pronunciation, I would like to point out that in french, gargoyle is spelled "gargouille" and pronunciated GAR-GOO-YE, while vargouille is spelled, well, "vargouille", so I just kind of assumed it had the same pronunciation. So having vargouilled become VAR-GWEEL in english does seem quite weird.
I would assume it would either be pronunciated as in french (as it seems like a french word [words in -ouille being quite common in fench]), or as gargoyle.

[The Random NPC]

On the subject of vargouille pronunciation, I would like to point out that in french, gargoyle is spelled "gargouille" and pronunciated GAR-GOO-YE, while vargouille is spelled, well, "vargouille", so I just kind of assumed it had the same pronunciation. So having vargouilled become VAR-GWEEL in english does seem quite weird.
I would assume it would either be pronunciated as in french (as it seems like a french word [words in -ouille being quite common in fench]), or as gargoyle.

I think you're in the wrong thread.

[Crake]

I think you're in the wrong thread.

there was a discussion on page 2 about it

[The Random NPC]

there was a discussion on page 2 about it

My bad, there was a thread about pronunciations and I didn't recall the discussion.

[Th3N3xtGuy]

Well lets see.

- He would complain if you use a module for a one off type of game or string together a couple to make a short fun campaign because it means he wouldnt be able to get into his character since it would "essentially be meaningless". **He felt like it meant that character would only be used for that and be discarded. Remember this last bit for later.

- He would complain if you didnt put in enough effort at creating and describing a world you created for your own campaign. He wanted to make sure his character would be believable for the campaign world and needed as much detail for it as possible. This part in it self isnt bad, the following reason is why it is here.

- He would then ignore everything you created and wrote and design his characters to be a Lawful Good Werewolf Paladin princess from a LG Werewolf kingdom, who while in her human shape would still have wolf like ears and a tail. No, I am not exaggerating, and I know for a fact there is at least one of the people who play with him who frequent these forums.

- He only EVER played a female human paladin with a great sword. Ok I lied, he played a male Hellbred(?) Paladin...with a great sword.

- Bitch and moan if anyone suggests running a campaign where he cant feasibly be a human female paladin, such as a shorti-ish campaign where the party plays as a group of goblins for funsies. Everyone but him are on board with the idea. (Speaking of, if anyone could PM some quick ideas for it I would love you).

- Refuses to learn the game mechanics, ie, the only one. What dice do I roll. By some Miracle of pelor, he has finaly remembered you use the d20 to roll your attack just based on repitition...it doesnt mean how ever that he knows how to calculate his attack roll.

- Worst and most damning of all, he NEVER creates his character, but instead shows up on game day (a minimum of 1.5hours late) and gets someone else to make it for him, with the only inpout he gives being then name, gender, race and what class (as you have already learned, are all always the same) while he watches youtube or plays something like BlazBlue on our buddies console.

I don't mean to be a ******* here but it seems to me like hes has some repressed sexual fantasies involving a half animal-half anime character.

[(Un)Inspired]

I don't mean to be a ******* here but it seems to me like hes has some repressed sexual fantasies involving a half animal-half anime character.

What makes you think his fantasy is sexual in nature?

It doesn't seem like it's a repressed fantasy if he keeps bringing it up.

[Barstro]

He only EVER played a female human paladin with a great sword.

This sounds like he believes D&D is one long single story and that you are wrongly ruining the story by inexplicably altering the world. His issue seems to be that he "just doesn't get it".

[LoyalPaladin]

- He only EVER played a female human paladin with a great sword. Ok I lied, he played a male Hellbred(?) Paladin...with a great sword.
I mean... as long as he worships Torm...

Honestly though, as long as he enjoys the one archetype that is probably fine. I think the blatant disregard for the rules or his own character creation is the bigger problem. Have you just tried talking to him? I swear it fixes 90% of all problems. If he's too big an issue, just tell him to walk. I did that to one of my players, low and behold, they shaped up because they didn't want to ship out.

[goto124]

If the paladin was male I would've said he was compensating.

There's a rarer version of female compensation, but I don't think it'll be done with swords.

[Vhaidara]

If the paladin was male I would've said he was compensating.

There's a rarer version of female compensation, but I don't think it'll be done with swords.

Giant "Shields"?

[Toilet Cobra]

Have you just tried talking to him? I swear it fixes 90% of all problems.

Words of wisdom. Most of us have seen players (many of whom are detailed on this very thread) who refuse to get their act together even after an honest discussion of the problem, but sometimes it seems like people are afraid to do the easiest and most obvious thing and instead just let bad players do whatever they want to the game while they sit there brooding in silence.

[SangoProduction]

Power of one guy who intentionally broke his character (https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS4Z43xT1bWYEf_jV1NYhc3AgvnqJJXO i9F3u86K9hkmaxv7ZZz)

Power of the party by comparison (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/248/1/1/ninja_kittens_by_popeyetheob-d6l3lfz.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-326224.html&h=460&w=620&tbnid=DkVp8ca9RiDmKM:&zoom=1&docid=FzCc74SmUnhcAM&ei=GvTtVKrpHYOXyAS1qoKgBw&tbm=isch&ved=0CEwQMygoMCg)

[Vhaidara]

...You know, the first one looks more fun...

[LoyalPaladin]

Words of wisdom.
You've got to have wisdom to be a Paladin. :smallwink:

[Th3N3xtGuy]

What makes you think his fantasy is sexual in nature?

It doesn't seem like it's a repressed fantasy if he keeps bringing it up.

It doesn't necessarily have to be sexual related. But there is some psychological tick if he keeps having the same character with a certain look race/class/etc. Honestly I wouldn't be able to stand this guy.

[(Un)Inspired]

It doesn't necessarily have to be sexual related. But there is some psychological tick if he keeps having the same character with a certain look race/class/etc. Honestly I wouldn't be able to stand this guy.

What's a psychological tick?

Isn't it one of those 2e psionic monsters?

[LoyalPaladin]

What's a psychological tick?

Isn't it one of those 2e psionic monsters?
You better tell me where that is located. Because I am having a session tomorrow and our resident Psionic is going to have a bad time.