Aasimar(5e) - "My Aasimar Paladin character would act like this..."

[JohnRidd]

So, as the title says, we've got a PC in our party who is an Aasimar Paladin(CG). We just got ahold of Volo's, and so a couple of us are playing the new playable races. The Paladin's player made sure to tell us, OOC, the he won't be healing any of us. During the session, we got to the tavern the evening before we would be able speak to the NPC that would give us all the details of our mission. While we were at the tavern, the barkeep asked our PCs to take care of a rat infestation that was in the basement, out of the five of us, four of us took on the mission(there was also a mimic down there), while the Paladin stayed upstairs drinking and occasionally talking to one of the locals about the dragon problem the town had.

After the session, a couple of us asked the player about why he doesn't help the party, he insisted that his character's guide would disapprove of any mission outside of our current mission to kill the wyrmling that has been 'attacking' the town, and that 'this is what my character would do.' That's also the reason that he won't heal anybody other than himself if there are injuries in the party. He told us before the session at some point, that once he gets to level 3 that if we fight in melee, he isn't responsible if we get injured by his character's aura(I'm assuming that he's playing a Scourge Aasimar) because his character won't care who is in range when he uses it.

Am I wrong to say that this is a tad bit BS?

I mean, I get that maybe the Aasimar's guide might get a bit annoyed if the Aasimar gets majorly sidetracked from a main mission to defeat evil, but does this mean that he should just avoid side quests at all? Or to say that the character won't heal anyone other than himself? I mean, in working to defeat the 'greater evil,' wouldn't healing party members who are also working to defeat the greater evil be a thing that the Aasimar should get behind?

[JohnRidd]

Whoops, just realized I put this in the wrong sub-forum...

[Dezea]

"My character concept means I'm not playing your game, and everyone should align on what I want do to and how I want things to be" is usually a shortcut for "I want this game to exist solely for the purpose of my fun, and screw everyone else.

Get this problem talked about OOC, and don't fall into the trap of making this an In-Character argument. If a character can't be played cooperatively in a cooperative games, then the solution is simple : This character is not meant to be played at all.

If I were you, I would act fast on it, and not let to much resentment build upon it.

Good luck !

[Mystral]

Sounds like you have a bad case of "that guy".

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/That_guy

[Das_Tabby]

That doesn't sound chaotic good (at least not as far as I see the good alignments)
Doesn't being good mean to help others who are in some kind of need?
And don't willingly hurt or damage other, especially not your comrades? (At least as long as there is no really good reason to do so... Don't paying attention to who runs into your aura sounds more neutral for me)

Maybe his patron should realle have a word with him... in form of his GM and fellow players

[Zanos]

I'm not very familiar with 5e, but a paladin who refuses to help people and who would actively cause them indiscriminate harm doesn't sound much like a Paladin to me.

Are you guys Evil or something? What could possibly be his justification for not healing his companions?

It definitely sounds like he's at fault though. Even if his character was justified in his beliefs, he doesn't get to dictate the path of the entire adventure.

[Grod_The_Giant]

he insisted that his character's guide would disapprove of any mission outside of our current mission to kill the wyrmling that has been 'attacking' the town, and that 'this is what my character would do.'
...

'this is what my character would do.'
:smalleek:

'this is what my character would do.'
:eek:

'this is what my character would do.'
:eek: :eek: :eek:

"That's what my character would do" is a pox on roleplaying. It's a coward's excuse for disrupting the game. The Giant had a good article on the subject (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/tll307KmEm4H9k6efFP.html); it boils down to "decide to react differently." The relevant text, which you should force your fellow player to read on pain of folding chairs:

Good roleplaying should never bring the game to a screeching halt. One of your jobs as a player is to come up with a reason why your character would be interested in a plot. After all, your personality is entirely in your hands, not the DM's.
Your character is the one thing you as a player have absolute control over. It's entirely up to you how much of a jerk "your character" is.

[Zanos]

Grod speaks the truth. People aren't I/O machines that only ever react one way to a scenario. Someone can respond to a scenario in a multitude of different ways and still be entirely in character. If one of the options is antagonistic to the game itself, you should probably pick a different one. There are scenarios that can push this to a breaking point where nearly every in character option results in grief, but that's uncommon and usually a symptom of an ongoing problem.

[Deophaun]

That may be what his character would do.

What my character would do, meanwhile, would be to not adventure with such an unreliable, reckless albatross. The aasimar is no longer part of the party. The aasimar's player is now free to make a new character, one that would do things aligned with the party's interests.

[JohnRidd]

I went and read, and then re-read, Volo's bit on the Aasimar, and I think I've figured out the problem(at least to a degree). There's a bit on the Aasimar and their Angelic Guide, and I think this player has a fundamental misunderstanding on his character's relationship with his guide. Here's the relevant portions(emphasis mine).


NOTE TO THE OM: PLAYING AN ANGELIC GUIDE
As OM, you take on the role of an aasimar's angelic
guide and decide what kind of advice or omens to send
in dreams.
The deva, or other celestial being, is your chance to add
special roleplaying opportunities to the game. Remember,
a deva lives in a realm of absolute law and good. The deva
might not understand the compromises and hard choices
that mortals must grapple with in the world. To the deva,
an aasimar is a prized student who must live up to high,
sometimes inflexible standards.


Even aasimar wholly dedicated to good sometimes
feel torn between two worlds. The angels that guide
them see the world from a distant perch. An aasimar
who wishes to stop and help a town recover from a
drought might be told by an angelic guide to push forward
on a greater quest. To a distant angel, saving a few
commoners might pale in comparison to defeating a cult
of Orcus. An aasimar's guide is wise but not infallible.

So, essentially, this player seems to think that he has to play what his Guide would do. Which this is something like a Warlock and their Patron. The Patron or the Angelic Guide have their own motivations, and those don't necessarily have to mesh with the PC, and the PC doesn't have to strictly follow their guide/patron. The PC can choose to act against their Guide, and unless they are turning evil(in the case of the Aasimar), there aren't necessarily any major implications.

Which, this is why the PC chose not to aide the rest of the party in killing the rats and the mimic. Those things weren't involved in the fight against the "Greater Evil." Now, we weren't choosing to do B instead of A(the 'Greater Evil'), we just did B while we were waiting for information to go after A. Which, I mean, it's a perfectly valid life choice to not get involved in exterminating rats for the barkeep, and I wouldn't necessarily get upset about that. Except this player is just not going to do any side missions unless his Guide approves it I guess. Which just seems to me to be a misunderstanding on his character's relationship with his Guide.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Agreed, and I think the Warlock comparison is apt-- the goal is to create tension and interesting roleplaying where the DM tugs the character one way while the player would prefer to go another, not to give the DM absolute control over the character or to force the character to live purely according to some outside code.