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Duke Malagigi
2007-07-03, 04:00 PM
I'm not quite sure if this counts as a nightmare party or just a really strange one. I'd like to know.

Doctor Edward Philips: A Chaotic Good human necromancer wizard played by me. I convinced the DM to add some healing spells to his list under the Necromancy school. Hit the party fighter with a chill touch to try to stop him from killing a non-threatening lunar moth.

party fighter (can't remeber his name): Think of a combination of Eddie (from Ed, Edd & Eddie), Edmund Blackadder and Zapp Branigan with just a hint of Milo Menderbender. He kept a pair of robes and holy symbol of each major religion so he could con them out of all their money. His alignment was Lawful Neutral (I'd say he had at least tendancies towards Evil). He pushed my character out of the way and slaughtered the innocent lunar moth. Then he cut off the wings, hid the body, seathed his sword then walked off as if nothing happened. He also is trying to convince a small rural town that its founder is a vampire so he could bilk them out of their money.

party cleric of Pelor with ADHD: He was a human cleric of Pelor and former friend of the party necromancer (me). I say former friend because he attacked the stone altar instead of defending the lunar moth. Why did he attack the altar? Were the temple priests Evil? No, he just wanted to smash something.

party barbarian: Didn't like me at the start. How was I supposed to know he wouldn't like the idea of me putting his pet dog in a zoo? That said he sided with me in the fight with the party fighter. But only in spirit. Probably Chaotic Neutral.

party druid: Friendly to me at the start, Neutral Good and with a bison instead of a dog. Otherwise, see barbarian.

TheAlmightyOne
2007-07-03, 04:07 PM
yep. psycotic elf rogue/wizard played by me. stick up his arse elf ranger. retarded half-orc barbarian, kleptomanic human bard (party leader) and a the elf cleric who's sole wish is to ride a yellow osterich named mr. chuckles

practicly every session goes along these lines.
me: i want to blow it up
ranger: but then i'll stab you for blowing up innocnet civilians
me: (bluff check on half-orc) he stole your're candy
half-orc strats raging
bard: ok. lets just go kill something and demand money
cleric: i still dont see why you wont let me have an osterich
me: screw this i set fire to that trader

Dairun Cates
2007-07-03, 04:11 PM
I don't think it's a question of whether anyone was in a party like this at one point, but rather is there anyone who's been playing for more than a year that HASN'T been in a party like this?

One of my favorite examples in our group of this (and one of the few times I wasn't GM'ing):

Shaman: Sarcastic apathetic twin to the Sorceror. Very fatalistic. Believes someone up there is out to get him. Turned out he was half right when he ended courting a God by accident. All the bad luck in the party eventually diverts to him. Keeps a calm head in most situations. Considered the dumb sibling (and with a 14 int vs. 16 int at the beginning. It was technically true). Black sheep in a noble family. Got sent to military school at a young age. Hates that sister got off easy by going to Finishing school.

Sorceror: The Shaman's twin Sister. Almost an exact opposite in personality. Also semi-sarcastic at time, but only towards people she dislikes. Otherwise very beautiful and well-liked. Has a very Charismatic appeal. However, she's very hot-headed and takes most insults with violence. Despite the spell-casting twins being famous, she's the only one they remember even when the Shaman is standing right next to them. Derives small pleasure out of making sibling suffer by making him live in her shadow. Hates that brother got off easy by going to military school.

Rogue/Wizard: Actually a very famous actor. Writes plays and performs them. Secretly desires to insult and taunt every single bad guy in the universe to his face and get away with it. Possessed by a Chaotic Evil Basilik that is often bored. Hates majority of the party later because they destroy the Thieves guild by accident and can't go in a bar without starting a fight.

Bear Warrior: A Bear Warrior that talks in sub-titles. A loyal friend to the twins... kinda. Despite harsh loyalty, Mr. Bear takes any and all chances to make the Shaman suffer and be humiliated. Does occasionally to other characters with either more violent results or no reaction. Therefore, Shaman is most fun. Shaman gets revenge on bear when he can. Hated wildly by the rogue for being one of the two common causes of the constant bar-fights.

Loremaster/Cleric: Lowest wisdom score in the party. Has absolutely no common sense. The other cause of the bar fights. Frustrates everyone at some point except the Shaman who mostly sees his antics as harmless and good-natured. Doesn't hate anyone. Actually fails a wisdom check at one point and makes best-friends with his own doppleganger.

Needless to say. Dysfunctional isn't strong enough of a word.

Duke Malagigi
2007-07-03, 06:06 PM
So as another question, who would you side with in the one round fight, the party necromancer (played by me) or the party fighter?

Drider
2007-07-03, 06:09 PM
So as another question, who would you side with in the one round fight, the party necromancer (played by me) or the party fighter?
Whichever side had more people...if both are the same, whichever has more casters...

Duke Malagigi
2007-07-03, 06:15 PM
Whichever side had more people...if both are the same, whichever has more casters...

There was only one caster in the fight, my necromancer. At the same time the cleric was too busy smashing things to be bothered, the barbarian just watched and the party druid walked off until the fight was over.

Fhaolan
2007-07-03, 06:15 PM
It depends on the character I'm playing at the time. Given my own gaming tendencies, I'd probably have a character that would side with the necro, up to a point.

Honestly though, I've played in completely disfunctional adventuring parties, and although there is a moment where it's all kind of funny and silly, it wears *really* fast. There has to be something very dire going on to convince any character of mine that continuing to work with these bozos advances his/her goals in a meaningful way.

And, after years of gaming, it's become pretty apparant that if the adventuring party is totally disfunctional to the level of aggrivation you describe, the playing group is as well. And no matter how much they might be my friends, all it's going to do is turn that disfunction into active dislike of each other.

Joltz
2007-07-03, 06:43 PM
So as another question, who would you side with in the one round fight, the party necromancer (played by me) or the party fighter?
I would attempt to incapacitate both of you because if one of you died that would be 1 less distraction/meat shield for me. Since I'm unlikely to knock both of you unconscious in one turn, I think I'd attempt to knock out the one who has fewer hp (probably you) unless I thought the fighter would kill you if I knocked you out.

Basically I'd attempt to use lots of nonlethal sneak attack damage to prevent lethal damage from being dealt. If I didn't think you'd kill each other or disrupt the game for too long I'd ignore you (and try to convince the rest of the party to do something more profitable than smash random stuff).

LotharBot
2007-07-03, 06:56 PM
If I was in a party with that kind of thing going on, I don't think I'd side with anybody. I'd just let the group know that I'm going to go watch TV or something, and once they're done being stupid they can give me a call.

CabbageTheif
2007-07-03, 07:38 PM
i would wonde why anyone who was lawful was conning anyone. that stikes me as a fault on the DMs part.

Duke Malagigi
2007-07-03, 09:02 PM
If you want further information the party was going on a self appointed quest to gather the material components to craft a shield of protection from negative energy and one of ingredients was a pair of luna moth wings. So this fighter decided to kill a non-threatening luna moth that was held as sacred by a group of "special" clerics who worshiped darkness. By darkness I simply mean the absence of visible light, not Evil or even secrecy. Hence these clerics were "special". And this was after the party's leader (the fighter again) swore not to harm any of the luna moths.

Xuincherguixe
2007-07-04, 01:21 AM
One great game I was in featured a Half Celestial Rogue, his catch phrase was "I leave the room". We wrote the first couple lines of a song for him "My ADD Angel". It was to be Emo.

Another was a human bard. He was a bit of a con artist. The character didn't have any real identifiable quirks but he wasn't a boring character either really. He changed gender once as retribution for one of his cons.

There was a Lawful Good Cleric, he was a Librarian. He helped pack our supplies effectively. He also tended to write down a lot of the strange things I did. He was very busy.

I never was able to really figure out that much about our Arcane Caster. Was she a sorceror or a wizard? Either way though, she had low self esteem and was a good demonstration of why Female adventurers need to be tough. Either way it was amusing.

We had a fighter with a Horse and a Dog. He was basically a Thug. We got along fairly well.

We had relaxed alignment restrictions, and I was playing a Chaotic Evil Monk. He was not especially evil but he was selfish, and fairly arbitrary. I was careful not to step across the line, but I did tend to pester the rest of the characters. He did awful things to people not in the party though. I made fun of the beliefs of the strange westerners, and had fun pointing out all the contradictions. There were a few Buddhist tones to the character too. Extremely violent too.

The campaign died sadly, but Hauc Feng (Black Wind) is going to become one of my regular characters :P

Zoraciel Ivtel
2007-07-04, 02:39 AM
Oh yeah...for some reason with my group, all our parties end up like that...luckily (or not), I'm usually DM-ing, but in the one group I'm playing in right now...well, I'm probably half the problem.

I'm a half-elven chaotic-evil dual-wielding fighter-thief (so many hyphens!), and have been using the Book of Vile Darkness almost more than the Players handbook (she's a sarcastic sadist). On top of this, just to annoy my DM, I speak in elven half the time. (see avvy if you really want a picture).

We have a gnome-thing druid that can turn into a cat for some reason, and decides that clearly its a brilliant idea to sit on the sadist fighter-thief's head. I've come very close to killing him a number of times, and I actually got the DM to give me permission to do so, should I deem it neccessary.

Then we have the Lawful-evil monk, the only person in the party stronger than I am, who utterly despises me for no reason I can see, other than the fact that I want to run around recklessly killing people, and she's lawful.

Next, the emo cleric (literally) who became a cleric because he wasn't allowed to have sharp objects anymore. He often writes bad poetry, generally leading to me chasing him around with my sword.

Finally, the airhead sorcerress, whose special DM-granted ability was to be able to understand the word 'shiny' in any language...which pretty much sums up her personality.

And we're expected to save the world?

Foolster41
2007-07-04, 03:30 AM
My party was somewhat dysfunctional, but not as much like the examples here.

Our party contained a Cleric control freak ("Do What I say or no healing"), a dwarf barbarian who's catchphrase was "fireball!" (He loved that necklace of fireball) and a Halfling (I think) who was obsessed with making herself tiny and flying for god knows what reason.

Rad
2007-07-04, 07:05 AM
I guess that next time that fighter gets a hit from an axiomatic greatsword he is going to realize something about his life... that said, your fellow players seem not to take the plot or roleplaying aspects quite seriously and/or are just using them to have fun doing the weirdest things they would never be able to do in real life. You're just not playing the same game and then having an argument about its rules...
As I always say in those cases, first choose what game you want to play. There are 1001 ways to play D&D and most of them are better when you do NOT try to mix them. Just pick one.

Hope this helps

Swooper
2007-07-04, 07:27 AM
I've been playing with the same people most of the time during my.. what, eight or nine years of roleplaying or so. Not once have we had party members turn on each other in any way, save for mild pranks (I (as a gnome sorcerer/wildmage) pretty recently Sovereign-Glued a bell to the dwarf spellsword's helmet. He didn't exactly like it when I explained to him that I had no Universal Solvent, and that we were months from the nearest port city.)

Duke Malagigi
2007-07-05, 01:46 PM
If you want to see the other comments about this party go here (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?p=12968187#post12968187).

SurlySeraph
2007-07-05, 07:29 PM
Usually I play fairly straightforward games, but this party was an exception.

Marshal Silas Matar: me, a sorcerer/paladin of Jergal. Jergal is a minor death god in the Forgotten Realms. Despite being Lawful Neutral, he handed down most of his divine powers to three psychopaths basically just because he was bored. His followers' philosophy is based around "advancing the cause of death in the world." The way I played a LG character who follows him was simple: we're all going to die, but our duty is to make sure that all of the bad people die first. Thus, I turned a blind eye on the frequent occasions that the rest of the party went off and slaughtered evil and/ or chaotic people.

Silfirein: half-fire-elemental elven blaster mage. Psychotic Neutral. During one session, his player decided that he would use the word "fire" in every sentence he spoke. Given the number of things that he set on fire all the time, he didn't sound much different from normal. He burned down about two-thirds of Calimshan over the course of a week. Once, when the DM was really sleep-deprived, Silfirein's player persuaded him to let him research a spell to make water flammable. This proved critical in his plan to burn down Calimshan, because he set the sewers on fire. And the public fountains. And the harbor.

Kazdy: Chaotic "Good" human ranger. If you've played Baldur's Gate, think Minsc except twitchier and with a shorter temper. "Shorter temper" as in "Kills people for confusing him, having become confused only because he intentionally failed a Wisdom check to understand their conversation." Kazdy's player rules-lawyered the DM into letting the same creature be his animal companion and Silfirein's familiar. The creature, incidentally, was a telekinetic awakened ferret named Bubbles.

Bubbles: Bubbles didn't start out awakened, of course. And she didn't start out with psychic powers. But if you let the PCs hire NPC wizards to cast spells for them, they'll eventually ask if they can get druids to cast spells for them. And when a familiar/animal companion has unusually high HD because it gets the progression of both a familiar AND an animal companion, someone will ask if it can take class levels instead. I missed the session when they decided Bubbles had psychic powers, and coming back to learn that a freaking FERRET was usurping my role in the party was more than a little bit disturbing.

Kaire Celen: Neutral Evil aasimar rogue. That about says it all. She used a ring of non-detection to avoid being smote by me IC, and I didn't know she was evil for a long time OOC - she took assassin levels without anyone other than the DM knowing. Oh, and later she took a level in blackguard. The campaign ended before she could get a fiendish servant, mostly because the DM decided to speed things up when Kaire's player announced that she was going to have Bubbles be her fiendish servant.