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Crow T. Robot
2007-09-25, 07:05 PM
I felt this would make a nice companion to "Worse DM..."

One that come quickly to mind is "In need a sheath for my Knife" guy. It has been nearly five, maybe six years since met him, and it was only for a night. And oh what a night it was.

We spent six damn hours listening to him bitch and moan about the kind of sheath he wanted. GM tried to make him buy it, but he wanted to role play the whole thing, and describe it in painful detail.

And, other, hugely uncomfortable things.

Such as his collection of videos.

From barnyards.

He never came back, and he became a former friend of the GM.

Guy_Whozevl
2007-09-25, 07:15 PM
The worst party member our group has ever had was only there for one session. We still talk of his stupidity afterwards.

We roll up characters and he becomes a sorcerer. We object because he doesn't even know what spells ARE, let alone how to use them. He seems facinated with whips, especially magic ones, so our DM gives him a shocking whip to humor him. The player lacks proficiency in it, but heck, it shut him up.

The party was traveling between Tethyr and Waterdeep (Faerun) and the DM took liberty to describe our surroundings.

He begins, "You are walking on a dirt path, worn by several years of use. There are some trees around you, but not much other foliage. There are some birds flying in the sky..."

The whip-sorc. immediately exclaims, actually serious about what he is about to say, "I use my electric whip!"

The DM, flabbergasted, responds, "The birds are easily 100 feet in the air. You can't reach them from the ground."

Whip-sorc thinks for a moment and replies with equal seriousness, "I THROW my electric whip!"

The electric whip incedent has always been brought up whenever someone does something stupid in our group; at least it wasn't THAT stupid.

....
2007-09-25, 07:25 PM
For the Age Of Worms game we ran, we started with a party of four characters: an Abjurer (barred from Evocation and Necromancy), a VoP Druid with that VoP cheese that lets you wildshape all the time, a Paladin who wanted to be a barbarian/fighter, and a warlock.

It was not the most streamlined party, and as we learned, Age of Worms was apparently made to screw powergamers.

Anyway, the reason the guy playing the warlock wanted to be a warlock is because he found out he could cast shatter and spider climb at will. As we played through the adventure, he'd shatter everything in sight. At the one point in the game where you come across a bathroom, my abjurer walked into the room to check it out and he shattered the toiler; then proceeded to laugh for about twenty minutes about how Asher was covered in old ghoul **** and how I should roleplay it.

Well, after a few sessions he digs up that book with the PrC in it for a warlock/cleric. Favored soul, I think? And starts taking levels in cleric so he can be an awesome cleric/warlock badass.

So, now he's like the most usless character in the group. He's a level 3warlock/2cleric with bad wisdom. We walk into the room of one of the BBEGs (the cleric of Hexxtor for those who've played the game), cleirlock (as we dubbed him) decides to immediatly climb up a wall (like he did in every fight) away from our party, thus making himself an excellent target for the archers, and sweetening the deal by screaming to us, "Don't worry! They don't know I'm a cleric! If you get hurt I'll drop down and heal you!"

He said that in character. After both we (the players) and the DM asked if he really wanted to do that.

Well, two rounds and eight arrows later he was a squashed pincusion and we had a TPK.

DM was forgiving, though, and let us "restart" the game just outside of the BBEG's room with a new player playing a cleric of Heronious and another wizard and no cleirlock.

In addition to the aformention stuff, the guy just had no idea how to play. After over ten sessions he was still asking what he added to hit with eldritch blast and what a Fort save was. Ugh.

starwoof
2007-09-25, 07:41 PM
Such as his collection of videos.

From barnyards.
:smalleek:

Mine is similar, actually. This is the same player I was talking about being a bad GM on the worst GM thread.

Since we met him after the campaign started, we decided to invite him to the game. We introduced him when the party was about... I think 7th level. I had just dropped them into my setting's underdark last session, a huge sewer type system built under the whole continent. New Guy made a drow... something. I forgot once. We had already done a solo adventure to inure him to my DMing style (hey uh, you guys are level 4 right? you meet a gang of trolls. CR is a set of guidelines...), where he had stomped his way through a dungeon with magic. Near the end he fought an ogre that grappled him. He killed it, castrated it, and kept the danglies in a bag.

I emphasize freedom in my games. Sometimes to my detriment.

Well upon meeting the party (and earning trust through helping them kill more drow) he stashes the ogre bits in the pack of the player thats providing all of the party's food while down here. None of us were very amused, except him, who thought it was uproarious and brings it up on every occasion. Well I didn't like things like that in my games very much. He got a warning. When he failed to shut up, rocks fell and he died.

Next session, he makes a new character, a tibbit warlock. He can turn into a cat and shoot eldritch blasts and all sorts of other BS (shatter). He was also a noble or something (I told him it didn't actually grant him anything, but he did it anyway). Well using warlock/assassin cheese or something, managed to invisible death attack like every monster. He died messily on the boss. It was a frost paraelemental (and it was there before I discovered his cheese).



Anyway, the reason the guy playing the warlock wanted to be a warlock is because he found out he could cast shatter and spider climb at will. As we played through the adventure, he'd shatter everything in sight. At the one point in the game where you come across a bathroom, my abjurer walked into the room to check it out and he shattered the toiler; then proceeded to laugh for about twenty minutes about how Asher was covered in old ghoul **** and how I should roleplay it.

This is why I hate warlocks.

He made a kobold sorceror because he bought races of the dragon (most of his deaths were suicides, btw). While fighting a Humanoid Tyranosaurus Rex the fighter managed to fumble terribly (and crit himself like 3 times), then get eaten. New Guy casts baleful polymorph to transform it to a newt, and tells me its a will save. T-Rex fails. New Guy rationalizes that the dwarf inside it would cause it to die in the shrinking. This part is just bad DMing for me, but it pisses me off anyway. I was really tired and let it slide, because I had never looked at polymorph (nobody plays casters in our group, except me, but I play illusionists). I found out later it was a fort save that was un-failable.:smallmad:

Well the kobold fell into the lava surrounding them (I think the rogue or archer pushed him) and New Guy makes a new char. He makes a warforged psionic warrior/something/something. He told me that he didn't cheese it out or anything, so I accepted him without giving his sheet a real look over (it all seemed to be in order, nothing terrible or weird that I didn't recognize). Well apparently this warforged did 32d6 damage! Not cheesed, eh?! Then when following the BBEG into the Fire Giant Crypts (the party is like 12th level) the group captures a Naztharune Rakshasa assassin sent to slow them down (they had a little experience with these things, on killed the dwarf's whole clan). Well when she didn't talk to them, New Guy takes initiative and rapes the rakshasa. Everyone kind of stares at him dumbfoundly, while he kind of laughs at his wit. Rocks fall. Everyone dies.

Im sick of DMing.

This guy comes in and ruins a year and a half of campaigning! I couldn't DM for 2 years because of him. I don't like powergamers! Everytime I see him my blood boils! I have 6th period english with him! Argh!

We don't invite him to sessions anymore, but were still... ah... friends. He follows us around. Also we don't invite him to Warhammer because he's a cheese monger.



:smallmad:

Tor the Fallen
2007-09-25, 07:46 PM
Anyone who has played a monk, ever. They tend to have the same "hey, whoa dude" attitude, think "oh man, like monk's don't need gear, they're so zen and ****!" Later they realize that they, do, in fact, need gear, as they've been craptastic for 10 levels. At that point, who wants to share with the moron who you've been shoveling heal pots, spells, and diamonds on since he keeps overestimating his kung-fu ass?

I can't stand monks, and I can't stand the people who are drawn to monks.
"2d8 with my fists? Whoa!"

Driderman
2007-09-25, 08:08 PM
Hmm, probably not the worst, I've most likely blocked out something more horrible but there was this one guy...

We play an evil party in the Scarred Lands setting, but we're actually half-decent. We're agents of the queen of Calastia (The Evil Empire), although officially sentenced to death by the King, and have been sent to The New World to save a colony from monsters and corrupt officials. We're like, the evil 3 musketeers.
Anyway, party is composed of a former military unit under the command of a priest of Chardun (Lawful Evil Deity, The Enslaver) but since we're technically exiled and no longer part of the military we're not much for following orders any more. As the story progresses the the priest makes a lot of lousy judgement calls and bosses us around until our characters decide to tell him he's not in charge anymore. He then proceeds to throw a tantrum out of character: "but you have to do what I say, I'm the leader". No, not anymore.
He then bitches about it for about 2 hours and effectively kills the campaign.

Now that I think of it, it was the same guy who got angry when my character defeated his character in a challenge for leadership in a Werewolf game. Even though I had warned him ooc'ly that if I challenged him, choosing a physical fight would probably be poor judgement on his part since I played an Ahroun (basically, fighter) with a crazy soak of 7 in human form...

Renrik
2007-09-25, 08:08 PM
Worst player ever? Easy. The first character he played was a Drizzt clone that used two katanas. He insisted, however, thathe wanted to be a dark elf with wings. Eventually, to shut him up, I had to invent a new subrace of winged drow that were like avariels (becausehe refused to be a half-fiend). Then he declares himself to be good-aligned. Then he betrays the party and joins with the evil side (so does one other party member, but that one admitted to being evil). Now evil, he trains as an assassin for a while before betraying the evil side and turning good before quickly turning evil again then turning goodd then evil then... you know what? I lost track. Eventually, the pissed of players tracked him into the elemental plane of air, grappled him, and ripped his wings off with rusty knives so that he fell into a portal to hell one of them had opened right below him. He insisted he wanted to be alive in hell. When we said he was dead, he freaked out and attacked me and two other players. We had to wrestle him to the ground.

His next character?
An elven samurai with wings that used two katanas.

God, I hated that prick.

Tren
2007-09-25, 08:08 PM
For me the worst was a guy in my general gaming circle who could never play a typical character. He wasn't really a min/maxer at least not a good one, but everything he played had to have some sort of template or LA, and use all sorts of variants. This always got messy because in the middle of combat he'd pull out some weird racial ability or spell or whatever he found in the obscurest of splat books and want to use it. And he would not roleplay at all, his characters had no personality, never spoke, and he just relied on whatever bizarre template he decided to apply to constitute his "character".

He tried multi-headed, vampire ghost, half-dragons galore, some of those bizarre statted races you only find in monster manual 19, anything you could think of adding wings to, and senseless class/race combos like elf priest of Gruumsh.

But I guess that's not as bad as the DM with the prediliction towards gnomes and semen.:smalleek:

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-25, 08:20 PM
what happened with gnomes and semen?

starwoof
2007-09-25, 08:23 PM
Do we want to know?:smallconfused:

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-25, 08:24 PM
Good question/answer! :smalltongue:

Orzel
2007-09-25, 08:40 PM
The "I cast fireball at the guy 5' infront of me" sorcerer. The bum bought a chain lightning scroll and targeted the weapons guy since "all the orcs are within 30' of him"

I was the weapons guy.


He managed to KO me, himself, the dragon, the princess, all the kobold minions, and all our horses in one fight.

CockroachTeaParty
2007-09-25, 08:49 PM
I have had bad experiences with several players, almost all of them beginning with the phrase "I want to be a warlock" or "I want to be a dread necromancer."

Why does everyone want to play one in almost every game I run? GAH!

The WORST offender, and this was before I grew a spine and started putting my foot down, was when this guy played a 6-year-old girl dread necromancer. There was no explanation, no real reason that I should have allowed this, but I did. That campaign lasted all of one session, ending somewhere between her raising the town cemetery as her army of slaves and me projectile vomiting.

Here's my message to the world:

IF YOU WANT TO PLAY IN ONE OF MY GAMES, DO NOT MAKE WARLOCK / DREAD NECROMANCER CHILDREN.

DraPrime
2007-09-25, 08:50 PM
We had this idiot that do the most suicidal things because he thought they were funny. He once ran at a bunch of enemies and cast fireball on himself. This wasn't the worst thing yet. He had ranks in Craft (trapmaking) so he made himself a trap that poured a river of acid out of the ceiling and killed tons of people. So he lures some enemies by standing under the trap in plain sight. Enemies come, idiot triggers trap, maims the whole party, and barely survives. The dialogue went something like this.

Idiot: Hahaha! I poured acid on myself.
Me: You're an idiot
Player1: Never do that again
DM: GET THE F*CK OUT OF MY GROUP!!!!!!!!!!!

SilverClawShift
2007-09-25, 08:57 PM
He insisted he wanted to be alive in hell. When we said he was dead, he freaked out and attacked me and two other players. We had to wrestle him to the ground.

His next character?


Whoa. You let someone keep playing with you after they attacked you? Jeez. I would have refused to be in the room with them after a spectacle like that.


I have had bad experiences with several players, almost all of them beginning with the phrase "I want to be a warlock" or "I want to be a dread necromancer."

Why does everyone want to play one in almost every game I run? GAH!

They're bad players because they want to try certain classes? :smalltongue:

BetaFlame
2007-09-25, 09:00 PM
Man.

Idiots are drawn to the Warlock class like flies to crap. Please don't look badly on us smart Warlock-liking people :\

There was a guy I used to game with that made a wizard with yellow eyes (shaped like hour glasses) Wizard. Who was evil. And wore red robes. With a 6 Con. And asked if he could play two characters so he could make his brother. The warrior. Who was nice. With a big sword.

#$()&^ PLAY SOMETHING ORIGINAL, PEOPLE.

Xyk
2007-09-25, 09:04 PM
most pf these were worse than mine but one time i was dming and the party found a barrel of wine. The newb drak all of it. needless to say he failed his fortitude save and passed out. the party left him there for being an idiot.

ANother is a different kid who bought a whole bunch of useless junk, went into a bar and found military tryouts. he asked if he could join. they looked at him (he was a gnome) and said no. He then drew his sword and threatened them. They kicked him out. he drew his bow, shot and killed one of them. alarms were sounded, guards came running, and he shot at a couple and for whatever reason threw his bow (still had arrows left) at one and his sword. Now he was surrounded and had nothing in his bag but useless junk. He through butter at them hoping they would slip. They stepped over it, knocked him out and he was arrested and later executed.

starwoof
2007-09-25, 09:06 PM
Man.

Idiots are drawn to the Warlock class like flies to crap. Please don't look badly on us smart Warlock-liking people :\
Its inexplicable! Actually, it probably has something to do with "I CAN USE MAH POWERS AS MUCH AS I LIKE!"


There was a guy I used to game with that made a wizard with yellow eyes (shaped like hour glasses) Wizard. Who was evil. And wore red robes. With a 6 Con. And asked if he could play two characters so he could make his brother. The warrior. Who was nice. With a big sword.

#$()&^ PLAY SOMETHING ORIGINAL, PEOPLE.
Oh no, no he didn't. *facepalm*

Abstruse
2007-09-25, 09:18 PM
More annoying than truly bad, maybe, but I've only had one session with this guy so far. Half the party, my gnome wizard among them, are fleeing across rooftops in a city siege. We're spotted by a flock of gargoyles in league with the forces attacking the city, and they begin to descend upon us. Powergamer-boy, who's playing a cleric ("Of an ideal, not a god! STORMS!" Honest.)/stormlord, decides to negate their flight by starting the combat off (he won initiative) with Control Winds (an Air domain spell which, thanks to the Stormlord PrC, he is immune to the effects of).

He creates a 40' tall, 400' radius cyclone with the winds blowing straight downwards. The gargoyles are blown down to the surface of the roof. Unfortunately, most of the party also fails its Fortitude save against the spells effects (did I mention he claimed to have taken Pious Boost, whatever that is, from Complete Divine, so his resist DC was 26?), so we're mostly prone.

There's no way my character can ever make this Fort save, so he wisely dimension doors the hell out of the spell's area. We mention to the stormlord that he basically screwed the rest of the party with his spell. His reaction? "I don't care!"

*makes stabby gestures towards stupid player* I hate WoW-types who indisciminately blast everything in sight.

BetaFlame
2007-09-25, 09:32 PM
Its inexplicable! Actually, it probably has something to do with "I CAN USE MAH POWERS AS MUCH AS I LIKE!"


Oh no, no he didn't. *facepalm*

He did. In fact, he later insisted on DMing a game (we all loved Forgotten Realms, and he liked Dragonlance, for the record)

We told him we were not really into DL, and he said it was fun, he would run in FR. Well, through the adventure, the aforementioned wizard shows up on the back of a great wyrm red dragon. He kills Elminster, and does all sorts of other way over the top stuff, including an army of Dragon riding Fighter/Wizards that worshipped Tiamat (Tahkesis, according to him!)

I think I finally got up, grab the books with Raistlin in them, and slammed them on the table and said "Can I save you the trouble and tell you how it ends?"

This was in 2e, for the record.

Jack Mann
2007-09-25, 09:40 PM
I was in a campaign that combined D20 Modern and D&D. We were having a bit of downtime in one of the major cities of the world, and one of the other character decided to go to a bar. He was a soldier type, with a number of different modern-era weapons. He decided to pick a bar fight, and as it went on, used progressively more destructive weapons, until he started throwing grenades at the guards come to arrest him.

This was bad, but what really made me want to smack him was how he couldn't understand why his character was arrested and executed.

Drider
2007-09-25, 09:41 PM
This happened once, we were all starting off and barely knew what to do, it took us a while to make a character. Anyway, after helping someone make a lvl 4 gnome (which everyone, except the player, had to take 30 minutes for) due to their own laziness to not look at the books. He was just introduced to the group, looks at his feat list, and says he thinks power attack is stupid, and gets mad at us for picking it, and commits suicide, before demanding a new character. it was a gnome paladin with a greatsword(the only things he actually looked at the book to decide on.

starwoof
2007-09-25, 09:42 PM
He did. In fact, he later insisted on DMing a game (we all loved Forgotten Realms, and he liked Dragonlance, for the record)

We told him we were not really into DL, and he said it was fun, he would run in FR. Well, through the adventure, the aforementioned wizard shows up on the back of a great wyrm red dragon. He kills Elminster, and does all sorts of other way over the top stuff, including an army of Dragon riding Fighter/Wizards that worshipped Tiamat (Tahkesis, according to him!)

I think I finally got up, grab the books with Raistlin in them, and slammed them on the table and said "Can I save you the trouble and tell you how it ends?"

This was in 2e, for the record.

:smallbiggrin: That was probably the best finisher ever, on your part!

DraPrime
2007-09-25, 09:46 PM
Forgot to add one. Our party was forced to fight in some emperor's army. Our task was to scout out some village that had reports of undead in it. So when we get there, sure enough there are zombies flooding the streets. So the idiot player jumps in the well and loses his sword there. The rest of us run like hell and start shooting arrows into the town. Meanwhile idiot spends 10 rounds looking for his sword. He climbs out of the well, and then promptly jumps back in because arrows are raining down on the town. He gets out again, with the bucket from the well on his head, and runs into some random building. There he finds a small tool that sets stuff on fire. So naturally he sets the village on fire and nearly torches himself in the process. We all get back, and the idiot is put on trial. During the trial he says to the judge (god knows why) "YO MAMA!" Judge threatens to execute him if he does that again. Judge asks question, and guess what answer he gets. That's right, "YO MAMA!" Idiot gets hanged, and then asks the DM if he can come back as a ghost. Honestly, WTF!!?!?!?

Solo
2007-09-25, 09:51 PM
Whoa. You let someone keep playing with you after they attacked you? Jeez. I would have refused to be in the room with them after a spectacle like that.



There shouldn't have been enough of him left to re join your game.

Krimm_Blackleaf
2007-09-25, 09:54 PM
Holy... How old was this kid?

LemonSkye
2007-09-25, 09:59 PM
I've got a couple of candidates for this one. Here's the first:

We were playing a d20 Modern game where modrons played a vital role (our DM loves modrons, and was really looking forward to using the updated ones in a campaign). To be fair, we were all acting like idiots in this one--everyone felt the need to affect an accent for their characters. We had a deep southern dwarf (as in short) bounty hunter, a street thief from Brooklyn, a Russian noble (who claimed that Richard Nixon was his father, and whose "Russian" accent sounded like he was trying to imitate Jacques Cousteau), and a British musician who spoke with a very thick (to the point of incomprehensible) Cockney accent. We had only played one session before the DM started getting tired of us. He invited a friend of ours (who had never role-played before, but wanted to try it) into the game, with the hope that we'd calm down, stop being idiots, and help out the new guy.

In this particular campaign, all of the players were assigned duodrones to help them out. New guy uses his duodrone to steal a door from a closed hardware store (telling the police that showed up at the scene that the modron had gone rogue, thus marking him for destruction). He then proceeds to have the duodrone replace the door to his apartment with the new one, and puts the old door in front of one of the other players' apartments, nearly trapping him in his room when we come under attack from some lizardfolk (who'd put marks of death on all of our doors earlier).

The DM abandoned the game, and the new guy has been barred from ever playing in one of his games ever again.

The second candidate would have to be one of our regular players. He's changed his characters so many times I've lost count. In one game, he started out as a flynd gnoll battle sorcerer/blood magus/dread witch/ghost-faced killer. We stopped playing that game for a couple of months, then came back to it. The player wanted to streamline his classes some, so our DM let him do it, so long that it stayed true to the spirit of what the character was and he didn't lose any ablities/feats/etc. that he had already used. He dropped all his classes and made it a dread necromancer. Our DM was furious.


I have had bad experiences with several players, almost all of them beginning with the phrase "I want to be a warlock" or "I want to be a dread necromancer."

Why does everyone want to play one in almost every game I run? GAH!

They're bad players because they want to try certain classes? :smalltongue:

Those classes in particular have a nongood alignment restriction, which poses a problem if a DM likes running all good parties. But that may or may not be the reason in this case.

SurlySeraph
2007-09-25, 10:23 PM
I've never been in a group with a really bad player, though I've had some really annoying stuff happen in-character (we tend to have a lot of intra-party conflict). The worst example was an Underdark campaign we had. I was an elf paladin. He was a "human" (more on this later) rogue. To make a long story short, he used a Wand of Paralysis on me and sold me to the drow we were fighting to get them to let us pass through their city freely, when we could have a) JUST GONE AROUND THE FREAKING CITY or b) called the duergar we had good relations with to help us storm the city. Two sessions after he sold me, after I'd failed a solo adventure escape attempt and created a new character, it turned out that the rogue was himself a surface elf. He'd been hiding this from us both IC and OOC with a really high disguise check. Furthermore, he'd also been hiding that he was Chaotic Evil, using a Ring of Hidden Alignment.

The DM said it was metagaming when I tried to kill him for betraying his race.

Also, two sessions later the drow (who'd been protecting the party, giving us magic items, etc. as a reward for the rogue) betrayed us. This time rogue tried to sell the entire party, made his bluff check to convince them that he wasn't an elf, and basically would have succeeded if the DM had let him. After that, the DM got him killed, in a nicely ironic manner (my elf paladin had become a Death Knight worshipping Kiaransalee, the drow goddess of undeath and vengeance). Said Death Knight became the BBEG's second-in-command to replace the BBEG's original second-in-command, whom the rogue had killed with poison (along with 4 other NPCs) before we were even knew who she was. At a banquet we went to in the duergar city, the rogue poisoned the food of all the named NPCs, since we knew that one of them was working with the drow to undermine the city's lord, and he reasoned that that was the only way to be sure.

That DM's ability to cope whenever we massively derailed the plot still amazes me.

Raolin_Fenix
2007-09-25, 10:56 PM
Those classes in particular have a nongood alignment restriction, which poses a problem if a DM likes running all good parties. But that may or may not be the reason in this case.

Warlock doesn't have an alignment restriction. They're predisposed toward evil ('cause, y'know, the whole demonic pact and quest for personal gain thing), but some of them repent for those pacts, and some of them just gain their powers from other beings than demons. They can be any alignment.

With Dread Necro, on the other hand, yeah, you're right. :P




On topic: the worst player in any of my groups has always been... uh, me. Barring a few stupid decisions on other people's parts, and those are isolated incidents that don't make them bad players.

My first character was a sorcerer. First mistake*: my only experience with D&D was Baldur's Gate, and I took up a casting class when I didn't really fully understand my own spells. Second mistake: I took Rope Trick as my second-level spell. For a sorcerer, yeah. Fourth mistake was using Prestidigitation to change the flavor of an attacking hill giant's saliva to that of sheep crap. After he putted me across the battle grid with his club, the DM said, "Oh, and if it makes you feel better, he's spitting a little." I managed to survive, though, until the party TPKed. Lesson learned: stop being quite so stupid.

*Some of you will suggest that playing the Sorcerer instead of Wizard was my first mistake. Fie on you. :P

Next we started playing gestalt (and have ever since). Actually, I think the first setting was gestalt, and I just single-classed and took the extra XP. I came in as a Psion-Scout (where Scout in this setting was actually a Ranger with no spellcasting or animal companion, and a bunch of bonus feats). When we got attacked by ghouls and most of the party (including me) were paralyzed, I dropped an Energy Burst (lightning), since I could take mental actions. Most of my party made their saves and had evasion, one of them failed (and lived), and the ghouls were crippled. But this was the first session with these characters, and they'd just met, so my character was hauled in for attempted murder. He survived his Trial of Pain (which constituted jumping off a 200-foot building, which he simply levitated down the last ten feet), and was subsequently eaten by a troll while exploring the sewers ALONE seeking secret doors, while the rest of the party slept in an inn, in order to prove to the party that he was worth keeping around. Lesson learned: Don't hurt the party as much as or more than your enemies; and also, don't ever go off alone. Ever.

Enter my third character, a dwarven fighter/rogue (gestalt, remember). He was pretty hard to screw up, but a few instances come to mind -- like that time I was fighting some bureaucrat spellcaster (alone again, but it wasn't my fault!), and he set a stool between us, and I kicked the stool up in his face instead of stepping around it and hitting him with my axe. I scored a critical hit, for 1d4+5 damage, and broke his nose, but he was fine, and I ended up jumping out the third-story window. Naturally, the DM later told me that I should have been able to handle that fight without any problem, but the guy's first spell scared me. It hurt. Then there was the time I got forcibly separated from my party (Prismatic Ray, teleported me). The rest of the party finished up that fight and several others, and I followed the trail of corpses until I found them again. They were then fighting a bunch of grunts and two wizards. I shouted, "DON'T WORRY, LADDIES, BRAGNUS'S COMIN' TO SAVE THE LOT O' YEH!" Then I ran up to the first wizard (couldn't charge, because there were too many corpses between us), and proceeded to fumble. The wizard turned to me and Disintegrated me. I made my save, took only half of my remaining HP in damage, and laughed: "IS THAT THE BEST YE CAN DO?!" Then the second wizard Disintegrated me for the rest. I was eventually resurrected, though. I finally retired him. He's one of the only two characters I've had that has lived, to date. Lesson learned: don't mock wizards until they're already dead.

Enter my own wizard (wizard/techmaster, to be precise, a homebrew) in a hoverchair. (It was a semi-futuristic setting, wherein magic powered technology.) His legs had been cursed into uselessness in his backstory. He did fairly well, too, except that wizards were frowned upon in this setting. Most arcanists here were sorcerers. So, roleplaying it, I never wanted to use my spells. Almost cost the party a fight, before I came to my senses and forced it. His death actually wasn't my fault. A dragon (a fight we were unprepared for) ended up grabbing him and throwing him into a lava pit. The damage reduced me to 5 hp on the dragon's turn, and my own turn promised my demise. Now, I'd cast Energy Immunity: Fire on one of my companions earlier on, so I was like, "Okay, he'll jump in and save me." Nope. He didn't care. Finished off the dragon and watched me burn beyond resurrection. Lesson learned: don't trust anyone who isn't good-aligned, and also, don't let dragons grapple you. Oh, and if you have full spellcasting? USE IT.

This brought in my fighter/monk. 'Nuff said, but in his defense, he was the second of my two characters ever to avoid a perma-death. But that may have been because he contributed so little to combat, and avoided hits so readily. That's not to say he didn't die a few times, though. Especially when fighting DR-heavy demons with his fists. Plus, for some reason, the party hated him on a personal level. Maybe just because he was played by me, and they knew what to expect. I actually finished the campaign with this guy (though, to be fair, he joined the party like three or four sessions prior to the end). Lesson learned: don't play monks.

Next up: low-level again, a bard/rogue (still gestalt). Only this guy thought he was a devotee of Bane. But, he had been brought up believing a lie -- his entire monastery's Holy Texts had swapped Bane's name with Torm's, many years ago. So he was actually a good guy, preached all the good things, and heralded Bane as an awesome deity to whom everyone should bow down and pay homage. He died to an Orc trap which he blundered into even though he knew it was a trap: the ol' maiden-in-distress-who-is-actually-an-orc-in-disguise trick, and then a dozen more orcs rush in from the side. He didn't want to take the risk that it wasn't actually an Orc in disguise, 'cause he didn't have Detect Magic and he was too much of a good guy. Lesson learned: don't be an idiot.

Another Fighter/Rogue came next, beginning my streak of really terrible luck with rolling. He died after trying to disable (and rolling poorly enough to trigger) several nasty spell-traps, then opening the door into a room full of hellhounds. Lesson learned: let the clerics heal you before opening strange doors. Oh, and don't block the rest of the party in the narrow hallway while stepping into the room full of hellhounds to be surrounded, flanked, and burned.

Then comes a fighter/barbarian, mounted-combat specialist. He attacked a drow compound; his horse got blinded, and he blundered in anyway. After absorbing a dozen-odd crossbow bolts (and making his Fort saves), he finally went unconscious, and subsequently got burned to death by a pair of fireballs by a pyromaniacal drow wizard with a staff of fire. Lesson learned: don't charge in on a blind horse and deal enough damage to make people nervous. When you're horribly crippled, try to look nonthreatening.

I'm now playing an archer (fighter/ranger), and, in another campaign, a wizard/warlock. We'll see how it goes. In two sessions, the archer has already suffered as many near-death experiences. As for the wizard/warlock, he's been knocked out in every single fight barring one so far, but somehow he's managed to stay alive. I figure it's only a matter of time, on both counts.

I'm doing my best, though! Lessons learned with each death, and everything! Trying to become a better player. It's not really working, but I'm trying. At least I'm getting a little better about not doing stupid things. Someday, somehow.

So yeah. So far the worst player in all my campaigns has been me. Maybe I should take a hint.

NEO|Phyte
2007-09-25, 10:58 PM
Warlock doesn't have an alignment restriction. They're predisposed toward evil ('cause, y'know, the whole demonic pact and quest for personal gain thing), but some of them repent for those pacts, and some of them just gain their powers from other beings than demons. They can be any alignment.

Eh? I could have sworn they were any evil or any chaotic. *checks*

Yep, Any evil or any chaotic. Sounds like an alignment restriction to me.

Tren
2007-09-25, 11:06 PM
After that, the DM got him killed, in a nicely ironic manner (my elf paladin had become a Death Knight worshipping Kiaransalee, the drow goddess of undeath and vengeance). Said Death Knight became the BBEG's second-in-command

That DM's ability to cope whenever we massively derailed the plot still amazes me.

It's those little acts of serendipity like a vengeful death knight that can make an impromptu storyline really shine.

Raolin_Fenix
2007-09-25, 11:08 PM
Eh? I could have sworn they were any evil or any chaotic. *checks*

Yep, Any evil or any chaotic. Sounds like an alignment restriction to me.

Eh? *rechecks*

I'll be. Color me wrong again. Sometimes my idiocy leaves me to amaze even myself.

CockroachTeaParty
2007-09-25, 11:47 PM
They're bad players because they want to try certain classes? :smalltongue:

"Idiots are drawn to the Warlock class like flies to crap. Please don't look badly on us smart Warlock-liking people :\"

That pretty much sums it up right there. In all seriousness, I'm sure it is quite possible to run an intelligent, compelling, and interesting warlock or dread necromancer. But for some reason, these two classes in particular seem to compel several people I know, and even more people that I don't know on the internet, to flock to them like moths to a flame, all with the same backstory.

"ZOMG! Okay, i'm a warlock with dark powers. my dad wuz a demon and i was picked on as a kid so now i'm all powerful and stuff!1!1!! lollerscates i'm gonna make zombie's and noone can stand in my way cuz i'm cool like batman!!"

Seriously, there seems to be no valid reason they want to play these 'dark hero' classes other than a desire to be generically pseudo-evil. You could just as easily play a fighter with a dark past, or an unpleasant ranger, or a surly sorcerer, but no, they HAVE to be warlocks or dread necromancers, dress all in black, talk only in whispers, coup de grace all enemies they defeat, bottle their blood, defile corpses, gibber and froth.

The main reason I'm angry about it is that I give my players the freedom to use all sorts of different sources and options, and inevitably most of them land on Warlocks or Dread Necromancers. I'm not running an evil game! And they get all indignant about it when I start telling people that they CAN'T be those classes. Not every hero in the world is a misunderstood half-vampire hexblade / warlock / dread necromancer / acolyte of the skin / alienist / fleshwarper.

All I ask is a *speck* of creativity occasionally. A farm boy who turns out to be The Chosen One sounds more creative to me anymore than Mortos der Soulstealer, damned soul of the Lost Realms, Lord of Darkness and spooky powers. Give it a friggin' rest.

Solo
2007-09-25, 11:48 PM
Eh? I could have sworn they were any evil or any chaotic. *checks*

Yep, Any evil or any chaotic. Sounds like an alignment restriction to me.

Chaotic isn't too bad...

geez3r
2007-09-25, 11:49 PM
The worst one at our group is also the best. They always play a bard, and really play it well, and they do everything believably in character, and they even come up with great ideas all the time. What makes them bad? Horrible, horrible luck. In our current campaign, we've had 4 sessions and they have yet to roll above a 15. It's not their dice either, they've used everyone's dice, but their bad luck sticks with them. But the thing is, is that our group consists of like 7 people, so the magnificent bard had decided to take the "Bumbling Sidekick" shtick and run with it.

MeklorIlavator
2007-09-26, 12:04 AM
The main reason I'm angry about it is that I give my players the freedom to use all sorts of different sources and options, and inevitably most of them land on Warlocks or Dread Necromancers. I'm not running an evil game! And they get all indignant about it when I start telling people that they CAN'T be those classes. Not every hero in the world is a misunderstood half-vampire hexblade / warlock / dread necromancer / acolyte of the skin / alienist / fleshwarper.

All I ask is a *speck* of creativity occasionally. A farm boy who turns out to be The Chosen One sounds more creative to me anymore than Mortos der Soulstealer, damned soul of the Lost Realms, Lord of Darkness and spooky powers. Give it a friggin' rest.
Well, the player could always be CG of CN, though from what your saying, they would likely be CN on Paper, CE in reality.

My first warlock was a Warlock/Cleric/Eldrich Disiple, who was similar to the run of the mill Repentant soul, complete with horrible skin condition, but I think I wasn't too run-of-the-mill. I even got a hat of disguse to hide my skin condition, and we had some pretty good RPing once the others found out.

starwoof
2007-09-26, 12:06 AM
*snip*

"My mommy was a fairy! I get my powers from nature and sunshine and happyness! Tra la la!"

Thats the warlock I'd like to see. Because its Any Evil or Any Chaotic, not Any Chaotic Evil.

Serpentine
2007-09-26, 01:08 AM
Ilky. Well, that was the character's name, not the player, but anyway. My goodness. Elven wizard. Fine so far, no? 18 strength. Wore a broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his face and coat-style robes with a big collar folded up around his cheeks, and peered around furtively at people. Subtle. Ah Ilky... One incident in particular comes to mind. We began, at 5th level, in Montgomery Snakes Elevated Academy for adventurers. So:
Ilky decided to find out about... an old hero who'd gone to the academy or somesuch, so he went to talk to the arms lecturer. This big burly man, spotting Ilky's huge muscles, sent him in to get kitted up for practice. He goes in, puts on a chain shirt, grabs a mace, and goes out again to fight some student. I'm fuzzy on the details, but he accidently hit the lecturer or something and ends up getting chased. He goes inside again, and is faced with two doors. Oh noes, the humanity! After umming and ahhing for about 10 minutes over which one to take, he finally chooses the left one (the lecturer subsequently chooses the right one and disappears from the story). He finds himself in the women's baths, face-to-face with a voluptuous, beautiful (3d6 = 18 Cha) red-headed fighter. A bit of "uh-buh-wha?", and then he runs out again and into a room in which another character is giving a lecture. He decides to "sneak" in - still wearing the chainmail and holding a mace, mind you - and hide out. The cleric giving the lecture finishes up, and then confronts Ilky.
Garahdel: Why do you have that stuff?
Ilky: ...stuff?
G: Yes, stuff. Why do you have it?
I: ...
G: ...?
I: ... I'm going to... go... now...
Ilky then climbed out the window. Shortly after, he decided to search the offices for information of some sort.
Ilky's player: I find a filing cabinet!
DM: What? This is a medieval setting, they haven't been invented! You do not find a filing cabinet.
And so on. A little later, we come up against a Living Spell. This is Ilky's test-thingy. With a Knowledge(arcana) check, he knows what they are and how to kill them. He decides not to tell us.
Oh! And then there was the time we were in some town, and he decided to go wandering around on his own. He came to a tavern called "Gruumsh's Eye". Full of unsavoury-looking half-orcs. Does he go looking for some other place to hang out? Ooooooh no.
Ilky: I disguise myself as a half-orc.
DM: ...you're an elf. Do you have any ranks in Disguise Self?
Ilky: No.
DM: Roll Int.
Ilky rolls decently.
DM: Right. Ilky knows there's no way he could disguise himself as a halforc. He might be able to pass as a human.
Ilky: Right! I disguise myself as a human and go in!
DM: >headdesk< Everyone stops and stares at you.
Fortunately for dear Ilky, I think he just got kicked out.

kpenguin
2007-09-26, 01:37 AM
Thankfully, I've never had any really bad party members. Disintrested and distracted party members, yes, but nothing that really handicapped our party. The worst thing I've ever had a party member do is the dwarf barbarian sitting down and barbequeing some worgs... while we were still fighting their pack-mates. Of course, the DM made the mistake of interrupting the him, resulting in enraged trail of worg destruction.

"Nobody messes with me cooking! Nobody!"

Bassetking
2007-09-26, 01:42 AM
"My mommy was a fairy! I get my powers from nature and sunshine and happyness! Tra la la!"

Thats the warlock I'd like to see. Because its Any Evil or Any Chaotic, not Any Chaotic Evil.

Almost, but not quite, playing in my current campaign.

His mother was a fairy.

His familiar is a Humming bird.

His eldritch blast is a bolt of sparkling rainbows.

He is prone to wisecracking.

Momma was a fairy... of the Unseelie court. Sidhe court of winter? Court ruled by Mab, bitter Queen of Air and Darkness? Brutal, savage, chilling, "dead babe at its own mother's withered teat" fairies?

Guy plays him brilliantly. Mad, uncaring abominations of twisted whimsy have his balls in a vice, and he plays it off as dark humor. Ambulance driver, Med Student style gallows humor.

But yeah, my kingdom for a little originality around here. :smallamused:

Raolin_Fenix
2007-09-26, 02:02 AM
*snip*

Well, like I said, I'm currently playing a Wizard/Warlock (gestalt). The premise of my character's power was originally sort of a takeoff on Zelazny's Amber series: he was going to be a Lord of Chaos, way, way, way, way, WAY down the descendant line. Like a drop of Chaos blood in his body. So rather than some Demon Lord, he would have gotten his power from the Logrus. With at-will powers like Shadow Walk (to name but one), I couldn't really pass it up.

I altered the original concept for the Planescape setting, though. Essentially, instead of some Demon Lord, one of his distant ancestors made a blood pact with a really, really powerful Slaad (essentially, the outsider native of the Chaotic Neutral region, which is as close as it comes to the Courts of Chaos, equivalent to a demon or an angel). He has no idea of his legacy at all, and considers himself to be a simple, full-blown Wizard. The fact that other wizards can't do everything that he can just confuses him, and maybe makes him a little smug. All of his spells are "tainted," somewhat, with his heritage -- I'll be taking levels in Geometer, so that there will be a bonus to the DC to identify his spells as he casts them. He just casts spells slightly differently from other wizards, tapping into his boundless source of energy to fuel some portion of his spells, instead of going to some other plane for it.

That being said, he started at level one, middle-aged, never having been able to master a single spell under tutelage. With personal study and a couple decades of trial, error, and effort, he finally mastered a few cantrips and a couple of slightly more powerful spells, so he carved himself a powerless staff, donned a robe, grew a beard, and pronounced himself Wizard. Needless to say, he's ridiculously excited about being a Wizard, and acts sort of like Hiro of Heroes. As time goes on -- IF he manages to survive, which is unlikely given my track record -- he'll gradually become more awesome (less excited) while retaining his idealism and humor. Primarily, he's a wizard in truth, using Eldritch Blasts and invocations pretty much only when he runs out of spells. I also RP his Warlock powers as taking some of his own energy, resulting in a fearsome appetite. All my characters have some sort of obsession with food. :smallsmile:

He's made it to level three so far, 60 XP away from level 4, so we'll see what happens. But I like the idea. He started Chaotic Neutral, by the way, and is gradually gravitating toward Chaotic Good.

Irreverent Fool
2007-09-26, 02:18 AM
Ilky's player: I find a filing cabinet!
DM: What? This is a medieval setting, they haven't been invented! You do not find a filing cabinet.


I don't see why there couldn't be a filing cabinet or some manner of similar furnishing given that Ilky here is wandering around an academy for adventurers with lecturers and offices and a women's bath...

Serpentine
2007-09-26, 02:54 AM
1. Filing cabinets are decidedly modern things. Some shelves, or draws, or a chest... any of those would be fine! But a filing cabinet? Nuh-uh.
2. He declared that he found it. He didn't say "I look in here, what do I see?" ooooh no. DM's world? Pfffffft. I control reality!

Kurald Galain
2007-09-26, 04:26 AM
Hm, I've had more of these than I've had bad DMs. let's see...

*The PC with an intentionally modern name in a fantasy game, that spend the session asking every single NPC on a date. Regardless of gender. Or species. Or the fact that we were fighting them at the time.

*The PC thief that used the pick pocket skill to rob other party members. Of course, my bard had the same skill, so I ended up robbing everything back from her and giving it back to the owners, until she promised to stop that.

*The whiny girlfriend of the doormat DM, who threw temper tantrums if her character got mildly injured, to the point where she was given Ref saves to avoid melee attacks, and high priests teleported in to heal her wounds when needed.

*The player who is always at least half an hour late, frequently more than that, and never brings any snacks with him even though everybody else does, and gets upset when this subject is brought up. He eventually "concluded" that I must hate him and left in a huff.

*And finally, my ex-gf who wanted to continue playing in the campaign I was DM'ing, but insisted on treating me like absolute dirt anywhere else. Then again I didn't put up with that for long, and kicked her out after a few sessions.

Serpentine
2007-09-26, 04:36 AM
*The PC with an intentionally modern name in a fantasy game,
In the first game I ever played, one guy called his character "Mac Daddy" :smallsigh: 'Course, this is the same guy who said in his backstory that he saved a city from flocks of red dragons and took out a chain devil with a flare and a crossbow bolt, and who still complains about how he was forced to play with all us horrible nasty people who hated him for no reason. He also performed in this little scene:

Just Barely Civil Red Dragon: Ignorance is no excuse.
Mac Daddy: Well I don't know about that, but...

At this point, if he were roleplaying properly and not being excessively nice to the twit, the rogue should have slit his throat.
I would like to mention, though, that a minute later said rogue managed to get a natural 20 on a bluff to convince the red dragon that a tougher gold dragon was about to arrive.

Glaivemaster
2007-09-26, 05:11 AM
I only run one-off sessions, so luckily this bad player can't ruin any of my lovely campaigns. If I did have any campaigns, I'm fairly sure he'd ruin them before they get off the ground though.

There are two things he does while playing D&D, and a third outside of D&D that make him a bad player and which means he'll not be coming to any of my sessions again:

Firstly, every character he makes is a completely paranoid, mostly chaotic-evil rogue-type, who refuses to get on with other members of the party. Now, in my evil adventure session, that was kinda ok, and I figured he wouldn't do it again, because it's so disruptive. But in this next game he was a rogue/shadowdancer, who was just as much as a psycopath/paranoid character as his Assassin.

Whenever the party got into a fight his first action was to run away and hide, claiming that he'd come back in a bit to help. Then he'd take massive berths around the enemies in order to come round to flank them (taking three turns as opposed to the one that he'd need to position himself). Generally by the time he got into position the enemies were dead. When people complained he wasn't helping in combat, he complained they weren't helping him in his effort to flank and thus he was useless. While partially true, he also never asked them to help, and didn't tell them why he was leaving combat like he was.

The worse part is his refusal to use common sense or do anything the simple/easy way. For example, when the party was arrested by the guards for murder, and then brought out of their cells to see the Baron, he decided to pickpocket one for the keys. Now, this is an unarmed kobold, surrounded by about 10 armed guards, all of whom were watching the characters carefully. He was beaten up, and thrown back into the cells.

And the time outside the Arcane Guild. I described it as a large, forboding place, which gave off a disturbing aura and which people generally avoided. The first time he came, he knocked on the door, which gave him a mission for him and the party to complete (search the dragons' hoard for a book). The party happily went and defeated the dragons, but couldn't find the book anywhere. So they go back to town, and this person has to go and tell the Arcane guild of their failure by himself.

I don't know why he thought it was a good idea, but instead of simply knocking on the door again, and telling them, he thought it might be fun to try and break into the Arcane Guild. He tried scaling the walls, which were inexplicably smooth. He looked around for other entrances, of which there were none, excpet the high up open windows. He decided to see what would happen if he threw his magical returning dagger through a window (why? Why would you do that?). Suffice to say, it didn't return, and he was stuck having to knock on the door as his last resort. He asked for his dagger back (Hey, I just threw a knife through your window intending presumably to hurt someone. Can I have it back?), which they obviously didn't give him, and then told him to return to the cave and search more carefully for the book before he could get his dagger back.

Now, the cave is about two days away, on foot, normal speed, one day of which is through a forest (fine for a shadowdancer) and one of which is open fields. The party had previously met dangerous creatures on their travel to and from the caves, not to mention that the cave itself was in use by dragons at the time. The rogue, rather than going to the party and asking for them to help him find the book, decides to walk alone (slowly so he can hide/move silently), without a weapon of any sort to the cave. The only reason he didn't die was because this was the first of three days of D&D at his house, and I couldn't be bothered making a new character

Saph
2007-09-26, 06:51 AM
One guy tops the list. He was a 16-year old kid, playing in our Star Wars game. His character was supposed to be a bounty hunter with 'really cool martial arts', who was also a woman, called 'Leeloo'. This was bad enough, except that he also insisted his character looked like Witchblade, in this outfit (http://kazan.ws/wallpapers/pictures/Witchblade_11150081323pm974.jpg).

Five minutes of ridicule from the rest of the group followed, but he refused to back down. So our Star Wars party set off, accompanied by Leeloo Multipass the Terminally Frostbitten.

Everything went fine until one mission where we were supposed to be infiltrating a base in the Corporate Sector. Leeloo decides to go off by herself, find one of the guards, who's drinking in a bar, and try to 'get him to help us'.

Player: "I go up to the guard and say hi."
DM: "Okay . . . Are you wearing your normal outfit, by the way?"
Player: "Yeah."
DM: "Okay then. The guard seems . . . happy to see you."
Player: "Cool. I sit around talking to him and try to make friends."
DM: " (Imitating a Southern drawl) 'Sure, baby, I'd be real happy to be friendly with' ya.' Oh, and he's trying to stroke your leg."
Player: "Ha! I bet this guy's going to give me what I want!"

The rest of the players were watching with a mixture of disbelief and hilarity. It's worth noting at this point that the DM was very experienced, had an evil sense of humour, and was a subscriber to the DM philosophy that you shouldn't screw the players over - you should let them do it themselves.

DM: " (Still playing as the redneck guard) 'How 'bout you and I go for a ride on my speeder bike, little lady?' "
Player: "Sure."
DM: " 'You'll have to hold onto me tight.' "
Player: "Okay."
DM: "He drives you out of town on the speeder bike, onto the plains. About ten miles out. It's pitch black."
Player: "Cool. Once we've gotten off I start asking him about the base he guards."
DM: " 'Well, now, that ain't what we've come out for, is it?' "
Player: "Huh?"
DM: " 'He tries to kiss you.' "
Player: "What? I push him off!"
DM: " 'Oh, you like it rough, huh?' He grabs you around the waist and pushes you to the grass. Roll Strength."
Player: "Wait! What's he trying to do?"
Other Player: (who up until now has just been watching and shaking his head) "Dude, what do you think he's trying to do?"

The funniest part was the look on the kid's face. He seriously hadn't figured out what was going on. His character eventually managed to kick off the guard, at which point the pissed-off guard got back on his speeder bike and drove off back to town, leaving the kid stranded in pitch darkness ten miles from anywhere. This is a good point to mention that the plains around the town were inhabited by rancors. And at this point he decides to call in the rest of the party to bail him out.

We ended up blowing a hole in the rancor's chest with our starship's laser cannons. The worst part was that the kid was too dumb to even realise what our characters were mocking him for.

Leeloo ended up dead when she was told that an area of cave contained a floor trap that would drop anyone who walked on it into a bottomless pit to certain death - and walked on it anyway. One failed Jump check and five minutes of falling later, she was a pancake. If only that had been enough to get rid of the player, but he just kept coming back . . .

This whole episode is an example of why some gamers ban playing cross-gender. But several other guys in the group played female characters without it being a problem. Personally, the lesson I learnt was "don't play with anyone under 18". I still won't, unless they act adult enough that their age isn't obvious.

- Saph

Citizen Joe
2007-09-26, 07:23 AM
One guy tops the list. He was a 16-year old kid, playing in our Star Wars game. His character was supposed to be a bounty hunter with 'really cool martial arts', who was also a woman, called 'Leeloo'. This was bad enough, except that he also insisted his character looked like Witchblade, in this outfit (http://kazan.ws/wallpapers/pictures/Witchblade_11150081323pm974.jpg).

Actually, that character was taken wholesale from the movie the Fifth Element. Leeloo is a contraction of an entirely too long name. The innocent nature of the character, combined with the violent reaction to kissing is actually completely in character for the character in the movie.

Saph
2007-09-26, 07:27 AM
Actually, that character was taken wholesale from the movie the Fifth Element. Leeloo is a contraction of an entirely too long name.

I know. That was where the 'Leeloo Multipass' thing came from.


The innocent nature of the character, combined with the violent reaction to kissing is actually completely in character for the character in the movie.

Trust me, he wasn't playing in-character. He just thought it would be cool to be a 'hot girl', and then was totally unprepared for dealing with the consequences.

- Saph

PnP Fan
2007-09-26, 07:28 AM
We had one guy in my group that wasn't a bad player so much as he was just a RL jerk. I knew that he was something of a misfit, and like so many gamers, I was willing to put up with a lot of jerk/weird behavior, just to make sure we had a game every two weeks. What I didn't realize was that he was antagonizing the rest of my players outside my house (I hosted the game for about 2-3 years) before and after the game. Apparently to the point where it had come close to fists flying once or twice. But for a year or two, no one was willing to say anything, or complain. When this stuff, and other things, finally came to my notice, I closed his open invitation. This guy used to tick people off so much, we don't even use his name any more. We refer to him as "He who shall not be named".

Thankfully, there was no police involvement. I'd hate to have an experience like Lanky's.

illyrus
2007-09-26, 07:33 AM
This one party member who played the Chantelle character never listened and made dumb choices 95% of the time. Sadly, the player never seemed to shut up in or out of game.

The headmaster was actually a thrall to a vampire and was trying to prevent her from scrying on his new master, this was Chantelle's version that she told
Daren: Wow you look pretty beat up, what happened out there?
Chantelle: Oh, I invoked blood magic and killed the headmaster of the wizard's guild.
Mordrik: What, you killed the headmaster, the leader of our guild here, why?
Chantelle: He didn't want me to invoke blood magic and tried to talk me out of it.
Party: ...

The party enters a hallway and sees a room with a HUGE demonic symbol on the floor.
Victoria and Daren simultaneously: DON'T GO INTO THAT ROOM.
The party takes a side passage away from the Demon Symbol Room.
Chantelle: I'm casting Summon Monster.
Rest of the Party: Why?
Chantelle: So that it can explore for us.
The monster is summoned and sent into the Demon Symbol Room. Predictably a Really Big Demon(TM) is summoned.
Rest of the Party: Why?!
Chantelle: I wanted to see what would happen.

Daren is currently grappled by a vampire spawn.
DM: The vampire spawn deals you another negative level.
Daren: Ouch, this is looking bad, but I think I have a plan.
Chantelle: I cast web.
DM: Centered on what?
Chantelle: The vampire spawn.
DM: Daren give me a saving throw
Daren: *rolls* I fail.
DM: You and the vampire spawn are stuck together, grappling.
Daren: ... Was there a part 2 to this plan, or were you just trying to assure my character's death?
Chantelle: Well I didn't want the spawn coming after me after he got done with you.
Daren: Does he get experience for killing my character?

Chantelle: I cast fireball here. *points*
Party: That will hit all of us and only 1 monk-like bad guy, who we already know has evasion. You may want to rethink that.
Chantelle: I deal 25 damage, reflex save 17.
DM: The monk evades.
*1 round later*
Chantelle: I fireball again. [same setup on the map as before]
Party: ...Why?

Greyen
2007-09-26, 08:08 AM
I have a very rememberable experience with one of the worst players my group had experienced.

This guy had taken the angsty goth experience too far. He wasn't just playing anymore he was just a miserable excuse for a person. His presence was generally a downer at the game seesion in the first place. Of course he played a depressed a-hole character. So he gets mad at the party for some reason and decides to go off by himself. He is a poorly built rogue so is barely survivable on his own.

Now the current DM had issues with running for a single player when the rest of the party was around and his house rule was that if you wandered off the visible combat map then you had "Adventures on the Floor". This consisted of the DM letting you go where ever you liked the hitting you with a random encounter. I mean random - open book (MM usually) with out looking, point to monter with eyes closed, roll 2d100 for number encountered, yes 2d100 no type there. Normally this was used as a threat to drive the player back to the group to forward the story. If the player would not back off and return to the party then all heck would break loose.

We are about 10th level, and the party consist of a wizard, a fighter/barb, a cleric, a monk/rogue, and a young and dumb pally (thats another funny story). We are all back at camp, while Mr. Mopey is off having his adventure on the floor. He runs into something like 170 gibberlings (FR) at night asleep in piles. He decides to hide/sneak through them to get even further away. DM decides, I know railroading and all, that one wakes up. Dice rolls follow, rogue is spotted, combat ensues. At this point the player is having a hissy over how can a bunch of CR 1-2 mobs find his level 10 rogue? Well math makes the world go round in DnD so we all know how that works.

Anyways, he ends up fighting a mass of little mobs that can only hit him on a Nat 20. And dies horribly, our characters being good guys go to look for our rogue and find his mostly eaten shredded corpse. (Player is being an absolute dirt bag at this point whining and acting like a child over the death of his character that he brought upon himself) Gibberlings spot us and fighting happens, we wipe the floor with them being smart players. DM does the math we end up leveling.

Mr. Mopey is now BENT. He begins to throw things and is yelling...naughty player, bad house guest. At this point the DM tosses him out and we never play with this guy again. DM's wife is not too happy either as she was asleep during the tirade, game over for us. We had to make nice for 2 months before she would let us play there again.

fireinthedust
2007-09-26, 10:48 AM
"My mommy was a fairy! I get my powers from nature and sunshine and happyness! Tra la la!"

Thats the warlock I'd like to see. Because its Any Evil or Any Chaotic, not Any Chaotic Evil.


They're called Carebears.

you think I'm kidding, but you know it's true. LG warlocks.

BadJuJu
2007-09-26, 11:36 AM
Chaotic isn't too bad...

Except, too many people see chaotic as crazy. Its not. Its just a disreguard for laws. Like CN. Its not crazy or wacky or anything like that, its just unmotivated to do much.

blademaster42
2007-09-26, 11:45 AM
I think the worst party member I ever had was when my little brother played his first serious game. I was DMing, and he was playing a thief. Absolutely horrible. It was my first real DMing, and I think I did fairly well, except for my one trap. (tunnel that shoots endless arrows. looks good on paper, but dumb oonce people start asking questions) Unfortuanately, my brother was attacking lots of people for no reason. He kept either stabbing them or whipping daggers at them. when he stabbed the fourth person in the same night, I decided he would have to scrap the character.

He started a wizard character, who was quickly annihalated. he didn't play for a while.

Crazy_Uncle_Doug
2007-09-26, 11:45 AM
I've been in a party with a fellow I like to call, Mr. Friendly Fire.

It was an evil campaign being run in the Forgotten Realms. I was playing one of the few characters that could walk around in public without getting lynched, a human cleric of Shar (note: I didn't advertise the Shar part). Mr. Friendly Fire decided he wanted to play a Shadowvar (or whatever that Shadow-Race is called) Psion/Psionic Warrior.

It wasn't that he deliberately wanted to harm the party, or that he thought doing so was particularly funny. He frequently made battle calculations involving Area Effects with areas that included our party. Later on, he'd defend his strategy, but the results were always the same: frequently the party was hindered more often than helped.

The first was the Web incident. It was bad enough that he thought webbing the area the party was fighting monsters was a tactically sound idea, but he also decided to take advantage of the fact that the webbing from the Web spell is in fact flammable. After that fight, we banned him from using web.

Later, we are fighting clerics and minions in Mulhorand. The party and enemies are fairly well spread out over the battlefield. It is as this point that Mr. Friendly Fire decides that Mind Blast will take out enough enemy. He also figures we'll make our saves. A little over half our party did not. The rest of us had to fight off the enemies (about half who saved) without party assistance.

However, he's most famous for our siege against a caravan. We were making up battle plans, and he decided that his character would come flying in on a zip line. To this day, we're not sure what exact strategem was perceived there.

Sadly, I think we dealt with him unfairly in the end. He was gone for a session, and we had his character make a decision that ended his character's life. He never showed up for another game after that. And though we justified it in our heads at first, in the long run I think we shouldn't have done as we had. :smallfrown:

CrazedGoblin
2007-09-26, 11:59 AM
Forgot to add one. Our party was forced to fight in some emperor's army. Our task was to scout out some village that had reports of undead in it. So when we get there, sure enough there are zombies flooding the streets. So the idiot player jumps in the well and loses his sword there. The rest of us run like hell and start shooting arrows into the town. Meanwhile idiot spends 10 rounds looking for his sword. He climbs out of the well, and then promptly jumps back in because arrows are raining down on the town. He gets out again, with the bucket from the well on his head, and runs into some random building. There he finds a small tool that sets stuff on fire. So naturally he sets the village on fire and nearly torches himself in the process. We all get back, and the idiot is put on trial. During the trial he says to the judge (god knows why) "YO MAMA!" Judge threatens to execute him if he does that again. Judge asks question, and guess what answer he gets. That's right, "YO MAMA!" Idiot gets hanged, and then asks the DM if he can come back as a ghost. Honestly, WTF!!?!?!?

hrmmmm that sounds strangely like someone i know hrmmmm :smallbiggrin:

Nerd-o-rama
2007-09-26, 01:52 PM
*The PC with an intentionally modern name in a fantasy game, that spend the session asking every single NPC on a date. Regardless of gender. Or species. Or the fact that we were fighting them at the time.
I have to ask...was the character's name Jack Harkness?

axraelshelm
2007-09-26, 02:05 PM
okay lets see a bard that does nothing or the sorceror that remembers none of his abilites hmmmm.
Well the halfling bard didn't do much but sing in the game and the player was a very boring man who wanted to be a writer but very uninspiring. Who belittle or just ignored the other players grrrrrr!
The half elf sorceror took loads of abilities from god knows how many splat books by god knows how many publishers and complained that his character was a piece of crap, this was the same player that complained that he didnt have enough magical items and was bitter about another past game we had.

these two are not with us and shall stay that way. grrrrrrr

Kurald Galain
2007-09-26, 02:06 PM
Except, too many people see chaotic as crazy.

Well, yes. That means it's a poorly-chosen term. According to my thesaurus, chaotic is a synonym of ]uncontrolled, purposeless, riotous and deranged. Small wonder that people think it means you have to spread whimsy and chaos everywhere.

Tormsskull
2007-09-26, 02:30 PM
We had this guy, we'll call him Bob, that was a real PITA. Everytime we killed enemies he would shout out "I search the bodies!" And he would assume that anything that he found belonged to him. And we would explain to him over and over that the group shared the loot, but he would always fight with us.

The worse part is that the DM is sort of an enabler, as he didn't want to lose that player.

rankrath
2007-09-26, 02:45 PM
This one guy, let's call him Sam is really good friends with one of my players who we'll call Jacob, is staying at Jacob's house for the weekend, and Jacob neglects to mention this. I know Sam from school, and sufficient to say, never want to be within ten feet of him again.
So we go over to Jacob's house to play, and Sam is sitting there. Jacob explains the situation, and asks that we include Sam tonight. I don't really want him to play, but I relent, so Sam starts making a character. (Jacob had taught him the rules.) He ends up making a sorc 1, ranger 7, arcane archer 6, called the mayor of munchkinland, and says he has a bunch of gnome followers.
I immediately veto the name and followers, as he didn't take the leadership feat. Sam flips out, starts yelling about how I'm abusing my power as DM, ect, then changes his race to human for the extra feat, and when I point out the fact that arcane archers must be part elf, he throws another temper tantrum. He finally drops the idea of gnome followers, and the game gets under way. The game begins with a couple roleplay encounters, and Sam blows then up by going, IC, "shut up and bow to me, I'm the mayor of munchkinland, you are inferior to me."
I tell him, right there at the table, that this is a roleplay heavy adventure, and that if he continues to act like he has been, I'm kicking him out, regardless of were he's sleeping. He flips out again, and after that, whenever we make a small joke or crack, he yells "this is roleplaying, not comedy, be serious!" after he does this a few times, I take his character sheet away from him and tell him to leave the table.
He goes and starts watching TV, turning the volume all the way up, and we ask him if he can turn it down a bit. He flips out yet again, and starts throwing food at us, calling us all Stalin and Hitler reincarnate. Jacob intervenes at this point, before I just beat the cr*p out of Sam, and I allow him to play with us again, as he seems to have cooled down a bit. The group runs against the BEEG, and Sam charges forward, shooting, rolls all ones and twos. The BBEG goes next, and crits him four times in a row. (I wasn't fudging all rolls are make in the open) Sam flips out a final time, throws a half filled soda can at me, so I start pounding him, (he's about 5' 3", I'm over 6' 2") Jacob intervenes once again, and the game breaks up. No one at that session but Jacob even talks to Sam anymore.

Solo
2007-09-26, 02:57 PM
Whenever I hear one of these stories, I am thankful I've never met anyone as mal-adjusted as them.

Can't believe they can have friends in real life, though.

rankrath
2007-09-26, 03:09 PM
Whenever I hear one of these stories, I am thankful I've never met anyone as mal-adjusted as them.

Can't believe they can have friends in real life, though.

yea, It seems that something about dice and character sheets turn people into jerks, to put it nicely. I blame the D4.

axraelshelm
2007-09-26, 05:01 PM
yea, It seems that something about dice and character sheets turn people into jerks, to put it nicely. I blame the D4.

awww please dont say you hate wizards!

Just Alex
2007-09-26, 06:52 PM
OK, as a preface to this, the worst player (Mitch) I ever played with was the roommate of one of the other players (Dan) for almost the whole time we played together. Dan qualifies as a saint for putting up with him and wanted to keep Mitch in the game despite any problems he caused. I don't quite qualify for sainthood, but I woked hard to stay friendly.

The first game both Mitch and I were involved in was a high-powered DnD campaign I was running. I basically told the players to build level 12 characters, and I'll run them until my campaign finishes, which should end around level 20. After that, we'll do something else for a bit and then go epic. I tell them to play non-evil as I'm running heroic, and the characters are already friends, to cut down on drama. One player wanted to do something nature orientated, but not a druid. He liked the idea of totem animals for a background. I suggested Barbarian going into Bear Warrior. He ends up changing the totem animal thing to totem dragon and builds a half-dragon (gold, I think) Barbarian. Not terribly fancy, but there's a dragon sub-theme to the campaign, so it fits.
My bad player wants something simple. He's never done DnD before. I suggest something like a power-attack fighter. I even offer to make a spreadsheet to help him deal with power attacking. He declines after seeing the half-dragon. He decides he wants a half-celestial Knight. This is a poor choice, given that he didn't want spells or spell-like abilities.. Then he decides to focus on feats like Fly-By Attack and Power Dive. Mind you, I told the players there would be significant dungeon crawling.

Regardless, the campaign starts. The characters gain a level or two before the bad starts. Mitch is finding his Knight doesn't nearly match the damage output of the Barbarian. Ignoring the fact that the Barbarian has Rage and a high strength with a 2-hand weapon, he also has feats which directly helped him in damage output (read: Power Attack). During a lull in the adventure, he retires the Paladin. Thanks to the PHBII's "quick character guide", he's able to create the human power-attack fighter I initially suggested. Fortunately, the Barbarian recently met his end, thanks to the void card in the Deck of Many Things. He creates a less extreme version of CoDzilla and the two new characters are introduced as brothers and plot devices, I mean people bearing news of the next adventure.
Things actually go smoothly again for the next few months or so of playing. Then, the party comes across an artifact level Greatsword. I say artifact level, but it's only artifact level within the confines of the campaign itself. It's designed to beat up the major demon baddass that's the BBEG. The party vaguely knew how tought the BBEG was, so finding this sword was important for them. It's not a super cool sword against non-super demons, but is still a decent weapon (something like +3 Holy Axiomatic). Naturally, the big tough fighter gets the sword. He suddenly decides he's the toughest thing this side of Kord. Whenever he gets overly wounded or fails a will save, he throws a hissy fit. I put up with it for the dual sakes of my friend who lives with him and my desire to see the campaign close. The party manages to finish it.

By this time, I've been running for about a year and am ready for a break. Fortunately, Dan has an Eberron campaign he wants to run. Naturally, he wants his roommate to play too. Either way, we roll up characters and another friend of ours joins up. We end up with a fun mix of characters and backstories. Except Mitch. He plays a clone of his high level character, except it's a Warforged instead of a Human. Learning from the high level game, he actually intends to prestige class, looking at the Warfoged Juggernaught. We play a few sessions, level up a few times, and then encounter an interesting issue. The party combats many followers of the Lord of Blades. Mitch has not only stated his interest in playing the Juggernaught, but in character shown some sympathy towards the Lord of Blade's philosophy. Needless to say, this caused some party tension. Now, while the rest of the players could seperate the game from reality, Mitch couldn't. He complained that we didn't like/trust him and generally behaved like a brat. Rather than solve the issue, he threw away his character sheet and made a new character, a valenar elf ranger. This caused a fun set of issues as there was no real way to justify bringing his character into the game at the point we were at. What the hell would a valenar elf be doing in the middle of the mournlands?

He misses a few sessions until the GM can bring his character in. We manage a few more sessions without incident. The next issue arises when we get to a major gala at one of the universities (I think zilargo). There's a big donation of stuff from Xendrick and a party is being held to commemorate. The party believes that someone will be attempting to make off with a portion of a giant schema. We've been hunting down these schemas and suspect that they may have something to do with warforged, so are ready for both the Lord of Blades followers and House Cannith followers to attempt to steal it. One of the PC's is a part of the hospitality house and gets half the party into the gala as waiters. Not perfect, but all 3 of us who went in specialized in highly concealable warfare (dagger rogue, daggerspell mage, psi-blade). The bow ranger and Mitch's double-scimitar ranger found vantage points on buildings to watch the event in case anything got hairy. Naturally, something happened and things sucked bad because the party was split up. The group of 3 had to deal with a high level Knight and a bunch of mooks while the bow ranger dealt with about a half-dozen mooks. The TWF Mitch, on top of a building, tried to out range attack a Warlock on another building. The death of Mitch resulted from him leaping building to building after the warlock until the warlock used the illusion+dimension door spell. The illusion jumped off the side of a building. Mitch jumped after him. 4 stories. After already taking 6 rounds or so of Eldritch Blasts. Mitch died. Then got angry. Then threw away that character too.
*About this time, Mitch moves out into another place.*

The GM, in his infinite patience, again allowed Mitch to bring in a new character. This time, it was an exact clone of his high level character except at a much lower level. This character lasted 3 sessions. The first, he was introduced and failed to do much else. In the second, we were in a submarine which had gotten caught on sahuaguin nets. We climb out to cut the ropes. A Huge Dire Shark shows up. My mage Alter Self'd into an aquatic critter to quickly cut ropes. The 3 other party members used underwater crossbows to harass the dire shark. Mitch's job was to help cut ropes. Instead, when the shark engaged me in melee, Mitch charged... a creature with 15 foot reach and Improved Grab. He threw a tantrum upon realizing that a creature 8 times his characters size grapples much better than him. The party still manages to cut the nets and escape with Mitch's character in tow.
The next session marked the end of Mitch playing with us. Now, we play Saturday nights. Mitch is scheduled to work Saturday during the day. Now, the GM and I are nerds, and got together with a few other nerds to play our nerd games, in this case the L5R CCG. Now, Mitch also plays this. It's about 5 in the evening, about the time that Mitch is scheduled to get off of work. He calls me, asks what we're doing. I tell him, and innocently enough invite him to come play. He says he'd rather not, he was just calling to say he wasn't going to game that night and was giving his sheet to another one of the players so we can just NPC him that night.
That night, we have Mitch's character sheet, and the player who brought it said that Mitch said he didn't want to play anymore. Now, this is odd, considering Mitch is a big nerd and won't be playing in any other games without this. We discover the reason behind this is that another friend of ours was hanging out with Mitch's new roommate. Mitch had taken the day off of work. When he asked where Dan and I were, he was told what we were doing. He then got angry that we didn't invite him. Mind you, to our knowledge, he works 9-5 on Saturdays. When he called, he was hoping that I would lie about what I was doing. He's done this before, as it gives him, in his mind, justification for being a **** to someone. Since I not only answered truthfully, but acted in a way that would actually be considered friendly, it threw him off and he wanted to sit alone to wallow in self-pity. At this point, rather than NPC the character, Dan simply killed him off. Since then, Mitch has called neither Dan nor I, let alone contacted in any way.

Tallis
2007-09-26, 08:22 PM
I have 2 people that I consider the worst players I've ever been stuck with.
The first was actually a competent player and a very good role-player (from ann acting standpoint). The problem is that he considered it a players job to give the DM a hard time and try to derail the plot. If he knew the adventure was in a certain direction he'd go the opposite way. If the party went one way, he'd go the other. If the party was doing things in town, he'd walk off into the wilderness. If they were supposed to meet with the mayor, he'd try to break into his estate. He was the only player I have ever had to kick out of a game.
On a side note, the DM of another game that I played in a couple years later had him come in and play the villain for a few sessions. He was very good at it and it made for a great challenge.

The second (and more recent) player was a friend of one of my other players. He joined a western European themed game with a ninja. Not too big a deal, I'm generally willing to work with peoples character ideas, but he had no background or reason why his character would be there. Whatever, I figured I'd give him a chance.
Shortly after he joined the party they got into a fight with a group of evil adventurers. As soon as the first one went down he dropped out of the fight and started looting bodies. The rest of the group confronted him about this after barely, and in one case not, surviving the encounter. He denied it even though he'd done it right in front of them. when they pressed the issue he grabbed the party's bag of holding, turned invisible and ran for it. He went to the sherriff of the nearest town and accused the group of killing the dead party member and attacking him. The group managed to track him down while he was still talking to the sherriff. When the sherriff tried to get their side of the story he expanded his lies, saying they had also killed a number of local loggers. Luckily he had not bothered to ask what size the town was and picked a number that would have included most of the people in it. When he saw that the sherriff wasn't buying it he once again turned invisible and ran. He later tried to plant evidence against the party in their inn and when they chased him off he went and murdered the mayors butler, again trying to frame them.
That didn't work either because he was simply a very bad liar. Finally he left town, never to be seen again. He was told to make a new character if he wanted to continue to play. He asked if it was okay to be evil. "Sure, just play someone that can work with the group. " We never heard from him again.

nobodylovesyou4
2007-09-26, 08:24 PM
well, these are all pretty bad, but im the worst player ive ever encountered. for the longest time i complained about literally everything. one quote i said that my friend always repeats whenever im getting indignant is "wtf? 4 feet away you cant charge!" that really gets on my nerves. eventually, the dm got sick of it and kicked me out (imo hes the worst dm ive ever encountered, but thats another topic). sure showed me, and i havent complained since.

now, im the dm right now with an entirely different group of people than im normally with (all noobs, except the guy who always quotes my charging line). one of the noobs seems completely oblivious to the fact that magic items exist. they found a necklace of +1 nat armor, and he said, "oh, well just throw that in my pack and sell it later". i gave them a +1 composite shortbow (his weapon of choice), and he threw that in his pack. they found a wand of magic missile (which i even described as "carved with glowing blue runes"), but he tossed that in his pack too. they even found a huever's handy haver sack which he threw in his pack (im not kidding). if they dont get the hint soon, hes going to be fighting big ass monsters and wont be able to stand up to them.

RandomNPC
2007-09-26, 09:06 PM
first of all, my gamers talk amogst themselves, and if IC someone would attack an ally for some reason, i allow it. currently its the only things other than santa (a leshay) keeping our groups assassin from clearing off the northern hemisphere. another thing i hate to admit, people seem to ask me to NPC them right when the party decides to kill them off. In all honesty i don't plan this.


so in math class someone mentions they had to fold their poster project in half because the D&D grid he made was on the other half. so i bring it up and invite him to a level 3 game, and yes, bring a friend you game with.

so i was prepared for a 1st level character with ECL +2, i told him if it was in the monster manual to go for it. i was not expecting a retooling of the halfdragon template, including something that resembled powerful build (years before powerful build came into being) with no drawbacks on the dragon or powerful build style of the character. he also used a greatsword for a large (acceptable with the powerful build idea) that was made from a scale of each color from evil dragons. apparently the scales were indestructable (but were worked into sword shape?) his only benifit is knowing about, keep in mind knowing about and useing are two different things, yes, knowing about the difference between character knowledge and player knowledge.

so then there's his friend. he's a good one for this thread. a weretiger with stretchy chain mail that fit all his forms. not only this, but he needs to see a map. not a city map or a battle map. he needs to see every square inch of territory you have drawn out. an "existing" world map if you will.

everyone started within sight of eachother, the weretiger asks to be somewhere else, so i start him down the street around a corner. the barbarian, a little to in character walks away, the half dragon flies up 20 feet and threatens civilians. so the weretiger comes around the corner, walks right up to the sorcerer and asks how shes doing. she says the dragon guys threatening folks and the weretiger says "oh, he's upset at being here. his parents were killed by hobgoblins, do you have any illusion spells?" the idea being an illusion of hobs will make him attack the illusions and not townsfolk.

lets go over what i just stated. a weretiger with elastic chainmail armor walked up to a complete stranger, being threatened by a complete stranger half dragon, and told the first stranger that the half dragon had a dramatic past and would go for illusion spells.

anywho.

so the barbarian, ranger, and sorc. made a halfdragon buckler and a weretiger rug in the second session, frankly i don't blame them. somehow the half dragon had DR 15/- and without telling me how any of his character came into being left me with an illegible character sheet telling me to NPC him and his friend next game they'll be back for the next one. i felt pretty bad telling him he was a buckler now, but when he said "what? how did they get past my damage reduction? i told him the truth, in an attempt to defend himself he critted away half of his own HP. its the truth, everyone watched the dice roll.


my other one...... yea.

so this guy i meet at a meideval combat group (we fight, no roleplay, so i don't consider it LARP.) and invite him and his roommate over for a game. roomie wants to recreate his level 25 2nd edition character. i tell him he can make a 3rd level whatever he wants and build for it, but he can't start off with 24 levels over the party. the other one makes a palemaster (3.0 not 3.5) style build, aiming to take the presteige class as soon as he can.

well his roomie was fine, he gave up on the epic wizard and made a TWF fighter, by the end he shone through with a +1 flaming B.sword and an acidic twin of it. he was cool.

Mr. Palemaster however, he tried to kill a party member for the sake of zombie making, got my wives charater killed for something the dwarf did (PM asking about dwarf slap, I dare you) and was generally unkind.

so when the party runs into a group of four humans and four kobolds (kobolds manning a balista on a cart) the fighter let the kobolds load the balista then ran up and wiped them out. he ended up shooting the palemaster wanabe, and there was much rejoicing.

Crow T. Robot
2007-09-26, 09:31 PM
This guy used to tick people off so much, we don't even use his name any more. We refer to him as "He who shall not be named".


Hey, wait a second. Was this in Vermont by any chance?

Lord Tataraus
2007-09-26, 10:14 PM
Well there was this one player, a foreign exchange student that was staying with my best friend. We invited him to play with us so he did. Most of his characters were passable, but two really stick out. The first was in a naval campaign where the party were pirates and had their own ship, the guy wanted to be the captain so I wrote up a leader class for him based off the bard. However, he did not want to fight, in fact all he really did was command the ship which wasn't much. There was a huge argument about his character's role in battle as well. The second instance was the worst. We tried a Mutants and Masterminds game for the first time. I was pretty familiar with the rules and got everyone setup. This guy wanted to play a Jean Grey type character, so he dumped everything into telekinesis and a some telepathy with a little flight. It wasn't that bad then then there was his saves, Toughness? 0. Constitution? 10. Fortitude? 0. Reflex? 0. Will? about 5. Defense? 0.The ultimate glass cannon. He rationalized this with saying he would stay far from the battle so he would not get hit. So what does he do? Jumps right into battle and wonders why he is always unconscious and hardly gets to do anything.

nobodylovesyou4
2007-09-26, 10:56 PM
The second instance was the worst. We tried a Mutants and Masterminds game for the first time. I was pretty familiar with the rules and got everyone setup. This guy wanted to play a Jean Grey type character, so he dumped everything into telekinesis and a some telepathy with a little flight. It wasn't that bad then then there was his saves, Toughness? 0. Constitution? 10. Fortitude? 0. Reflex? 0. Will? about 5. Defense? 0.The ultimate glass cannon. He rationalized this with saying he would stay far from the battle so he would not get hit. So what does he do? Jumps right into battle and wonders why he is always unconscious and hardly gets to do anything.

not only this, tataraus, but dont forget that he jumped into combat COMPLETELY unarmed, using his fists. he seriously got KO'd every battle we fought, and he actually managed to get all his skin burned off at one point. (DO NOT ASK)

and lets not forget his other characters, bless his poor soul... we played a cyberpunk campaign, and ill be damned if he didnt make a useless character there too... im not kidding when i say all he did was talk on his phone and drive the van. i was the computer nerd, another player was the stealthy one, and the other player was the sniper (who was also a bad player, but ill let tataraus relate THAT story to you). the cell phone guy actually had the nerve to put a gun to my head (in char, of course) and say "you want to try me?" when i made him angry. little did he know the sniper guy and the stealthy one ("russky" and "sunshine", respectively) both had closer ties to ME than to this random ass, useless mercenary. ah, how i miss him so...

leperkhaun
2007-09-26, 11:44 PM
iv had luck with playing with good players

Worst one is one i currently play with. Every single one of his characters are the same, he Tries to be a super power gamer and gets pissed when it doesnt work out like he wants, despite playing for over 3 years he still cant remember simple things.

He never adds his BAB or AC or skill or damage right. Everytime we play its lke we have to teach him how to play all over again.

He actually got pissed when the DM told him he couldnt play his Hulkling Hurler of Doom.

Lord Tataraus
2007-09-28, 04:22 PM
Well, i have to talk about "that other bad player" in the cyberpunk game. He was a sniper and part of a mafia. He wasn't bad, but he did make one stupid mistake, of course in cyberpunk one stupid mistake means you're dead. The party was trying to break into a maximum security prison, so the sniper goes across the street, stands on a building in plain view and snipes at the guards on the prison roof. He brings down 2, but needless to say, the other 50 or so sniped him. 2 hits in the chest and one head shot later he is dead.

To expand upon the player nobodylovesyou mentioned, his character was built as an information guy in a mercenary game. He knew before hand and I as the GM tried to work towards that without getting off track, but he still didn't do much. At least I talked him into getting a little bit of skill with a handgun and with driving.

internerdj
2007-09-28, 04:45 PM
"I cast contagion on the thief."
"I cast contagion on the paladin's mount."
"..."

Kilbia
2007-09-28, 04:59 PM
Anyone who has played a monk, ever.

I've not run with enough monks to have such a generic low opinion of them, but the worst player with whom I've ever run was a monk who was very much guilty of overestimating his kung-fu. He did not understand the concept of "meatshield" (we had a tank fighter in the party) and kept leaping into the thick of battle, and even the NPCs started expressing amusement when bad things happened to this guy.

What didn't help was that he eventually got his wife into the game, *and* then started bringing their two small children along on nights when they couldn't find a babysitter. Into an apartment that was by NO MEANS childproof, and into a gaming campaign where half the party and the DM are NOT used to small children and do not appreciate the inevitable disruption they are.

The worst part was that he followed the same deity as my dwarven cleric of Pelor (who had no name due to this heresy). Though it was funny when "Dwarf" was just frazzled and praying for solace, and the DM decided this called for a percentile roll, and he rolled 100. Pelor decided to comfort me by causing the sun tattoo on the monk's forehead to start glowing with a continual flame spell. Permanently. No more sneaking ahead for him!

RandomNPC
2007-09-28, 05:09 PM
i already gave my good stories, but i recently have had a few good players have their moments.

i invited a gamer with a solid chunk of game experience to take over for our recent loss (gamer got grounded for bad grades and i kicked him out untill later notice) so he brings in an artificer, and explains how he could potentially crank out magic items. thats when every member of the group asks for something, all at once, and he says "we're in the middle of the desert, how am i going to make anything here?

then theres simple things, like when the sorc mopes about wanting to use touch spells but doesn't want to get close, and the arcane archer keeps bragging about his arrows with the spell storing quality he got from the guy who lives at the north pole, but nobody makes the connection.

also, its a LeShay on the north pole, not an imortal fat human obsessed with red furry clothing who sneaks into peoples houses and leaves them gifts.

Xan
2007-09-29, 01:21 AM
The only bad player I've ever worked with was a cleric, and the problem wasn't that he was disruptive, so much as he refused to play his party role. Now, as a battle cleric he did quite well, and was responsible for a lot of the damage dished out. The problem was that our party was very, very good at dishing out damage, and he was the only healer. He never once prepared a True Res spell (we were playing epic) unless someone had already died. On one day we had just started, got into our first fight, and lost a party member. Yet sure enough, the cleric didn't have a single resurection spell, so after fifteen minutes of fighting, when we knew that time was a factor, we had to stop to rest so he could prep the spell to bring the character back. He was constantly putting off healing our front-line fighters so that he could toss off another Disintegrate spell or smack someone with the intelligent greatsword he decided he had to have.

Kurald Galain
2007-09-29, 04:59 AM
The only bad player I've ever worked with was a cleric, and the problem wasn't that he was disruptive, so much as he refused to play his party role.
Did he state in advance what role he wanted to play? Did you ask him to play the healbot? Or did everybody just assume that because he was a cleric, he would be healbotting?

Xan
2007-09-29, 09:17 AM
Did he state in advance what role he wanted to play? Did you ask him to play the healbot? Or did everybody just assume that because he was a cleric, he would be healbotting?

He had agreed to be a cleric specifically because we needed a healer.

Leicontis
2007-09-29, 01:59 PM
You have to love the players that assume that just because they picked "Lawful Good" as their character's alignment, that's what they are and always will be...

This guy played a gnomish wizard item crafter shopkeeper who had made himself a lens of Detect Evil at will. Whenever anyone of Evil alignment commissioned an item from him, he put a curse on it. And considered himself Lawful Good. There's also the fact that he took Leadership to have a cleric cohort, making him essentially a munchkin spell monkey.

Aside from that, it's mostly the standard inattentive/sleepy players that you have to keep snapping back to the game and/or waking up to keep things moving.

Roderick_BR
2007-09-29, 02:20 PM
Finally a bad player thread.
Okay, I explained about the whiner that believes that Vampire is the the better (and only) RPG (I don't mind that he prefers Vampire, but he claims that D&D shouldn't even be called a RPG because it has no real roleplaying):smallconfused: . He complains when someone DMs and rides the dice, saying that we are ALWAYS cheating.
So, I made this short story. Orcs are raiding some villagers, and the PCs are hired to find out what's wrong. Whiner makes a paladin. He buys only a scale mail, and a greatsword. Nothing more. He picks improved initiative, and weapon focus. After some fights (and a lot of hissy fits when things don't go his way), they find a cave. They have information that the place is full of orcs.
They enter. The place is completely dark, as the orcs don't need light. The dwarf notices some orcs armed with greataxes and half spears. He points out what looks like a big hole on the middle of the room, probably to throw in trash, and that the others players may fall if they are not careful.
The orcs start throwing their spears at the players. One of the PCs light an arrow and throws it towards one of the orcs. The arrow lands close enough to an orc so people can see him. The paladin charges, and misses (just a bad roll, as the orcs are not wearing any armor).
Notice, the paladin, with 10 or 11 HP, with a small armor, and no shield, ran into the dark, close to several orcs with greataxes, without waiting help from his allies. The orc hits and crits him. I let out a little "oops", and Whiny starts complaining about 10 minutes about how "you shouldn't kill off characters in D&D" and blah blah blah. I was just going to deal normal damage (that would drop him to -1 or -2) and let the others players rescue him, but he kept going on and on about how bad a DM I am, how everything I did was to crap him, how these things doesn't happen in Vampire (oh no? hahaha). So I let him be killed at -33. No one felt like continuing that one story.

And this is the one that DMed the story with the monkeys wearing half-plates (look for it on the Worst DM thread). We invited him to play. We showed him how AD&D (2nd edition) worked and all that. He picked a wizard. That used a whip. And had a pet cat. Not a familiar, a pet. And he was a taxidermist.
He asked EVERY person in the game (starting with me, and going to every person that arrived): "I'm a taxidermist. You know what is a taxidermist?"
To this day I'm not sure if he was just too proud of himself, or he thought we were all dumb. :smallconfused:
Night time, party is sleeping. Something is approaching. The PC that is in guard notices and is about to check it. The wizard asks if his cat won't wake up with the sound, pull out his claws, make noise, and wake him up. The others players suggested me to make his cat a familiar. I did so, and the story went on.:smallannoyed:
At other time, the group fought an ogre in the middle of the city. After it was defeated, the city guard had put it into manacles (the party left it alive to interrogate it later). WHILE the guards are taking it to prison, the wizard runs after it, stopping the guards. Then he wraps his whip around the ogre's neck to strangle him and interrogate him.:smallsigh:
And finally, after some gaming time, the players got a clue, and checked a map I hurriedly drew, to see where to go next. They needed to go to another town to look for info there.
Wizard: "What are these things in this corner?"
Me: "Mountains."
Wizard: "I want to go there."
Me: "... why?"
Wizard: "I want to go there!"
Me: "But why? The rest of the group is going in the opposite direction."
Wizard: "I want to see what is there."
Me: "But you are in the middle of a mission. Your friends already agreed to check the other town."
Wizard: "I want to explore."
Me: "Okay... you can go, but I don't have any story ready for it. You'll be out of this session until the others are finished, then I can pay attention to it."
Wizard: "Fine, I'll go with them."
Now, I'm not one for rail-roading players, but wanting to split from the group when everyone else want to go somewhere, just to do something useless? :smallmad:

Same player playing Vampire (this was the Whiner's campaign)
He played a ventrue. Several times he though that for being a ventrue, we all should stop and listen to him (not uncommon for experienced ventrues, though). After a few scenes, he ended dying (because while Whiner thinks that Vampire is better than D&D because it has more "roleplaying", he always makes his Vampire sessions have more combat than any D&D game I ever played). Then what my friend asks? If he make a new ventrue, if he can feel obliged to "revenge" the other one. I said the new ventrue wouldn't give a rat's ass to what happened to the other, but he insisted in some "brotherhood's responsibilities" or something.

Ah, funny to note on how this guy kept trying to put "realistic logic" into games, like, if a character has a Int score too high (18 in D&D, 5 in Vampire) he should get mental problems like making Freudian slips all the time, or something, because that's what happens with people too intelligent in real life, or how big explosions (like from energy weapons) should cause EMP and damage electronic systems around it, and all these kind of things.

PlatinumJester
2007-09-29, 02:54 PM
hrmmmm that sounds strangely like someone i know hrmmmm :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, that monk guy was quite annoying.

WrstDmEvr
2007-10-14, 08:44 PM
That would be one of my players, unfortunately. Let's call him Bob.

So, Bob is controlling a rouge with an ECL of 3,(level 1) and has the stats to become an assassin, as well as a psion who will be able to kill a god in around 10 levels(level 11, in other words). Both characters like insulting this level 40 superboss, who can't do anything because i haven't finished his sheet yet:smallfurious: . Whats more, now he is arguing over a vial of blood because it has poison in it.It's supposed to be a plot detail:smallannoyed: So, between now and next time we meet, I have to counter them, hopefully with a small army of rats they will kill next.

webgem
2007-10-14, 10:04 PM
I don't exactly know if I've had a worst player, but maybe a worst party member I guess. Really it was a couple of my friends, and we always had a great time, but they were still probably the worst party members. Mainly the half orc sorcerer who liked to hit stuff with his great club. He died fighting a celestial moose in h2h, it was amazing. My other friend played a gnome cleric with so many pc's that by 20th level he had a lower base attack bonus than a straight wizard, low strength, and little buffing, yet he spent all of his money buying the best axe money could pay for. He would get into hand to hand a lot as well. Yet, it all paid off one time when we were in a campaign where the pc's got separated.

It is important to note that the character had armor spikes on, but didn't have prof. for an additional -4.

So he is fighting his own personal bbeg, and is out of spells has been disarmed, and is very low on hp, but the bbeg has tripped near the gnome. Bear in mind we didn't exactly follow the rules correctly, but here is the situation.

Player: Do I have a spike on my codpiece?
DM: Ummm, yes....why?
Player: I attack with my codpiece!
DM: roll it.
Player 1d20+5 = 25
DM: roll to confirm
Player: 1d20+5 = 25....holy ****!
DM: blinks in surprise, roll for insta kill
Player 1d20+5 = 23
DM: Hit, it's dead.
Player: Spiked codpiece of doom!

Khanderas
2007-10-15, 05:01 AM
<snip>
All I ask is a *speck* of creativity occasionally. A farm boy who turns out to be The Chosen One sounds more creative to me anymore than Mortos der Soulstealer, damned soul of the Lost Realms, Lord of Darkness and spooky powers. Give it a friggin' rest.
I would feel quite the opposite, seems to me its always the sheltered farmboy who turns out to be The Chosen One (tm). Even if it is a warlock.

Blanks
2007-10-15, 06:10 AM
Seriously, you guys are way too forgiving :)

My first rule is:
If i don't want to talk with you out of game, i don't want to play with you.

People disrupting campaigns just to spite others or making obscure characters just to bend the rules get the boot. Not by my decision (the campaign is the GMs domain, the group isnt), but by the group as a whole.


Not that people can't learn:
My older brother was the GM for a group once where one player (lets call him V) knew the rules a lot better than the others. So everybody gets a shield + the skill to use, explained by V. Later on, GM realizes that he has taken another, and vastly better shield skill. What happens ?
V's shield break during combat and suddenly NOBODY sells shields and we never find another shield in the campaign. No biggie for the rest of us, but kinda sad for V's "im created to use shield" character :)

Oh, and he learned, but sadly reverted to his former ways and we sort of forgot to invite him again...

Wraith
2007-10-15, 08:34 AM
The worst player I ever had was Stu, and he was the DM. :smallconfused:

Perhaps I should phrase that differently - he invited me to his place for a night of Vampire: The Masquerade, a game that I always enjoy and am quite happy to play with just about anyone, including (as was promised that night) people that I had never met and/or had never played before.

I arrived promptly, only to be told: "No one else is coming, there's just Me, You and my Girlfriend. Oh, and you're going to DM for my character."

Oh. Alright then. Nothing like 20 minutes notice to get the old creative juices a-flowing, right? I like a challenge, and I know most of the lore backwards so throwing together a simple "There's an assassin loose in the city, find out what it is and kill it" plot line takes alomst as long as finding a pad to write it out on.

5 minutes into the game, when asking for the characters to describe themselves to each other, Stu comes out with Lasombra Antitribu, 6 Ranks of Generation and Wealth, 4 of Status (Carmarilla) and Age and a total of 11 dots in his Disciplines. Of which he had 5. Among other things.

....Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Turns out 'His Character' was infact a pivotal NPC from the game he was supposedly going to run, and decided that the game could be set in "his city".

The game devolved from there, despite gritting my teeth and trying to have a night of roleplaying because it was fun. Quote of the night went along the lines of this:

Me/GM: "Now we're in combat turns, everyone please roll initiative."
*Stu rolls a thunderous amount of dice and, unsurprisingly, went first.*
Stu: "I use my Darn-Into-A-Pool-Of-Pure-Darkness power, crawl up the wall, across the ceiling, drop down and crush the Assassin to death."
GMe: "Fair enough, that'll be a (random-but-kind-of-accurate) dice roll to determine damage in a non-humanoid form..."
*Stu starts rolling another, larger fist of dice*
GMe: "....What are you rolling those for? You just took your turn."
Stu: "This is the damage for my attack, now you have to soak it."
GMe: "That is going to happen in 4 turns time, when you complete the transformation AND your move action AND account for what your opponent is doing."
Stu: "Oh, the transformation happens immediately. I've done it like that since I first started playing."
GMe: "That's nice, but have you read the printed rules from the book that *I* am using or just used house-rules?"
Stu: "I glanced at them a little while ago."

It may be elitist of me, but when I run I expect people to at least try to know what they're doing. Unfortunately, Stu tries this sort of thing in everything he's ever done - D&D, V:tM, LARP - and as such I find it very hard to believe that what he claims is good-natured ignorance isn't just incompetant cheating. He's apparently asked another DM that we mutually know for "a skill that makes me a better fighter, because I'm not very good" in a LARP game.

A. LARP. GAME.

I haven't RP'd with him since.

Kel_Arath
2007-10-15, 02:08 PM
Where to start?
First off, I started playing with this guy in my first session. He had this god modded character that I (and my friend who was also just starting D&D) saw what he did and we were all "OMGWTFHAXBBQ!" and thought it was crazy cool. Then after learning some rules I looked at his character and realized his ECL was about 9 levels higher or so than ours, and on top of that he had alot of stuff that wasn't legal for players (I don't remember what, but it was a while ago). The worst part is that this was all allowed because the DM (who claimed to have been playing D&D her entire life) knew less than me about D&D (I had been playing for about 2 weeks now).
On to the next thing. He pulls out some character sheets and starts bragging about these powerful characters, one of which being a wizard. With two familiars. With CR over the wizards level by at least 5. He also had about 5 extra feats, tens of thousands worth of gold in magic items more than he should have had, and all this other stuff. So I look at his character sheet and say "Wow, the DM allowed all this stuff?" Heres the good part, he responds "Well I'm the DM."... ...? So I tell him I could make a better character that was level one, pull out a char sheet, give him 100's in all stats, 3000 BAB, and 10000 HP with stuff for an AC of 200, full arcane and divine casting unlimited times per day with at least 100 in every skill etc etc. Then he complains that the character I made was broken, and I start to giggle.
These memories are getting me angry, I wont even continue to the bad stuff...

North
2007-10-15, 04:17 PM
My and my roommates first time playing World of Darkness. Mixed group of a mage a wolf(me) and two vamps. My roommate has played dnd before this.

So were investigating this warehouse (has a shipment we need to steal) and theres a couple of guards in front of it. The plan is me and him go up to the door and then grr out and take out the doors. I dispatch mine quick. He proceeds to rip his throat open and drink his blood through a straw while tangoing...

Later him and the other vamp went to Elysium he proceeds to insult Maxwell ( the prince), punch him, and when the hound stepped in he killed the hound! Huge amount of cheese in his guy four strength, four brawl, aggravated damage from claws. Because every former metal drummer is an expert brawler....

Oh and he also slept in a potted plant.

Xandias
2007-10-15, 04:34 PM
Ok.. There was this guy (No names mentioned) in my group, he had the worst luck with dice that I have ever seen. He failed every single check, nomatter what, in the words of :elan: : I GOT A 4!!!
He caused so much trouble for us, ya know things like: Giving us away to the enemy, not seeing the Horde of enemys not 50 feet away. and the worst part was we had him check doors for traps (hoping that he would finally suceed) No such luck. The only high rolls he made were his innitiative, but he would always miss.
We eventually kicked him out because he killed off our entire party for lying about his chaotic evil alignment to a silver dragon who told us he would kill anyone near an evil being....

Thyatira3902
2007-10-15, 09:28 PM
we've had it pretty good compared to some of these. i guess some of the worst are these two guys we've been playing with pretty consistently.

the first has horrible dice rolls. he always makes a spell caster as well. we play gestalt, but he'll near always do two spell casting classes. and instead of using damage dealing spells... he does illusions... and bad illusions at that. he once made a cleric warmage sorcerer or something. He had a low int but was trying to get up to the mystic thuerge. he literally couldn't take the PC because he didn't have enough skill points to do it. he only got 1 or 2 per level. it was going to take him until lvl 13 or something to get into his PC. Going back to the horrible rolls, we're climbing down a 450 ft tube. we have enough rope but decided he could go last. big mistake. he failed his climb check... which meant he started dropping. he failed a reflex save to catch the rope. failed a grapple check to catch the rope. the DM made him roll something like 4 times and he got 1's and 2's on every roll... he's less bad now with the rolls, but still does the illusion thing.


the other guy metagames and breaks every character he builds. not just a little, a lot. currently he's playing a sorcerer/ranger/arcane archer that deals something like 54 damage with a comp longbow.... he doesn't have it imbued with anything. he has a 17 strength, but manages to crit at least 3 times a battle, usually once every other round. he fudges his rolls all the time and everyone knows it. if we call him out on it it's like it's not big deal. he "misses" his next attack and then starts hitting again. He once tried to play a character that was rather incompetent in terms of his spell casting ability. which is great. the character was good, and he was supposed to be playing it like he was an amateur spell caster anyway, not really knowing what spells to cast/not doing a load of damage. when he saw that the rest of the party was doing more damage than him because they were semi broken and had good rolls he pretty much committed suicide and then made the arcane archer... it's been crits for him ever since.

de-trick
2007-10-15, 09:34 PM
what one? i have to many

ill tell you about one, we'll call her nina

Nina is a rollplayer, and is the leader of the party, not one in one all of them and she makes the game go her way or the highway. She has taken almost all the magic items that the party has got. The rest of the group can handle horsing around or screwing up something but when nina shows up she starts yelling at us and calling us stupid

Crow T. Robot
2007-10-15, 09:50 PM
This will be long. Sorry.

I have a story about a "He who shall not be named" (sound a bit familiar PnP Fan?)

We played war hammer 40k in college. We could never get ourselves togther to actuality role play much, so a 2-3hr battle once every couple of weeks was easy to manage. The club had a large number of individuals with demanding majors, and several who were learning better ways of putting larger, better holes in bad guys and that takes lots of spare time. And with the back story completed, onto the story.

HWSNBN (I am not typing out the whole thing) played tyrannids (think Alien if don't know). He was the only one with a codex, which he kept hidden. A little fact that made us suspicious, but we get the gaming shakes is we didn't play. And he was willing...

So the various things that wouldn't quite add up were the ways he deployed troops. He had genestealers are he grunts. He borrowed mine to have something like 30 and he was always sure to deposited a handful when he had them deep strick and laugh "Ha! A hand full looks right!" And he modified the hell out of the genestealers.

Which once we got a copy of the tyranid codex things became clear. Genestrealers were something called "Geno fixed". other then a few specific genestealer mods, they can't take most of the cool stuff. And he would pile on four or five of the stuff he wasn't allowed. If he weren't cheating he would get pulverized since his army only had close combat guys, who all mysteriously had rather large armor ratings and a perplexing army list. Since he used an unusual interpretation of the point limit rule and was 500 above everyone at least.

Though I did crush his soul in the last battle we had. We had a copy of the official rules for home made vehicles. So when he made his ludicrous vehicle we watched him like a hawk. We were onto him, and he knew it, so he was playing it straight. For once.

So his burrowing beast carrying most of his troops emerges right next to my command squad which as fortune would have it, was near my wraith guard who have neat little guns that on a roll of six disintegrates the target and pretty much ignore any defenses it has.

Well his beasty was not technically a vehicle, but has things called mass points to absorbe auto kills. He had two, so when I open up on him and see a six smiling up at me the following takes place.

Me: HA! You guys is toast!
HWSNBN: HA! My mass points absorb the hit. My 30 guys unload right next to you command unit. have a fun next turn.
<I look at my dice>
Me: OK, then the second six I just rolled eats the second mass point...
HWSNBN: Eh, big deal.
Me: ...and the third six kills him...
HWSNBN: Huh!?
Me: And kills all the troops inside.
HWSNBN: NO! NO!

And to PnP Fan if you are who I think you are. If you neoggedon didn't check out rules wise 100%, we would have burned you at the stake for that unkillable behemoth. Though the transport ship for the solitaire was really funn becuse it was HWSNBN2 that you played it on.

Uthug
2007-10-16, 05:16 AM
Well once we were playing a one-off adventure and there was this guy playing a straight rouge. It was our first adventure and we started on ECL 11. So anyway, in this encounter where we had to interrogate some guy, the guy attacked us. While the rest of the party was fighting the guy, after the rouge saw him deal high amounts of damage, he immediately declared: I hide! (Note that we were in a rectangular room without any cover. He did not have HIPS). He was eventually finished off by the DM when he stopped playing through an assassination for his in-game character's incompetence. In his backstory, he was the ldr of some guild...

cheesecake
2007-10-16, 11:38 AM
Man the 40k stories bring back memories of my troubled youth!

Anyways. This story is about me, and a stupid DM. We were in a small town in the mountains. Well it just so happened I was wanted for the murder of a territory tax collector. The tax collector told me I owed him 10% of my gold because I happened to be in said area. I killed him. To make a long story short we were in this town and the bounty hunters came through looking for me. I said I am going to hide and rolled my d20.

Me: Ha! 28 hide check
DM: How are you hiding?
Me: Well.
DM: You drown
Me: How did I drown?!
DM: You said you were hiding in the well and I rolled it and you fell down the well and drowned.
Me: I didn't say I was hiding in a WELL. I said I was hiding well.
DM: No no you said you were in a well you are dead.

To this day we still laugh about it. I now only use the term good to describe my actions.

serok42
2007-10-16, 12:05 PM
Not to come done on girls playing DnD but...We had a girl playing a halfling ranger. She had no idea how to play despite claiming to have played for years. The DM would explain everything to her and she continues to make the same mistakes over and over and over. Casually glancing over at her character sheet I'd see that her level 8 ranger had a BAB of +49 or something weird like that. I'm pretty sure she wasn't cheating she just added all of her stats together and divided by the halfling's body mass index or something like that. :smallbiggrin:

For the sake of the campaign she was supposed to be a real good friend of my character (having saved my twin brother when she was first introduced to the game) but it was real hard to not scream at her, which I eventually did shortly before the group dissolved. this was mainly because not only did she not have a clue what was going on but if you so much as added wrong on your attack roll or some other tiny mistake she would make fun of you for it.

So the group dissolved mainly because of her and the fact that the DM didn't have time to run anymore. We reformed it with only my character and his twin brother letting all of the other characters be killed in a dramatic battle trying to save the village we were protecting.

Edit: One other thing, I swear she was a female version of Butthead "Hu Hu shut up Beavis" :smallsigh:

Generic PC
2007-10-16, 10:19 PM
i once had a player who was adamant that any item we found was magic, so he would roll like 7 extra d6 at each attack roll for his +2 corrosive, flaming, Icy Burst, Shocking, sonic booming (which added a d6, but not on crits. i think he made it up.) and some other weird stuff. at one point he had a +6 Longsword of +3d6 arcane damage, with a home brewed Transmuting (bypasses all DR, basically.) oddly enough, most of his items got sundered or stolen by an epic level catfolk dude who was helping us sometimes. you know, cryptic info, no combat help though. always had a random reason (seeing how well you would do...) for not joining in, like most well run DMPCs... but ya, the extra dice sorta annoyed the hell out of me. He didnt roll exceptionally high or anything. his character sheet was fine except for the mass of magic items. he had a few multiplying coins.

Telok
2007-10-17, 07:24 AM
October 14th, 2007. 6 PM.

The cleric (myself) casts Mark of Justice on the sorcerer. The next time he/she harms a party member of innocent bystander with magic... -6 Chr. It's a 7th level sorcerer with 15 Chr and a +2 cloak, so this will reduce him to first level spells.

I'm not trying to kill him. Yet.

I did mention that if his charisma had been higher, I would have put the penalty on his constitution instead. He apparently would have liked that better. Oddly three people (GM included) could not convince him that losing 21 of his 34 hit points in the middle of combat was not survivable if he'd already taken 18 points of damage (the average for him hitting himself with his own Empowered Fireball, assuming he made the save). After five minutes of this I was moved to make a regrettable remark.

"I can tell who dump-statted his Int."

The room went silent for a minute.

Sorcerer player: "No, I've got a 12 in that."

I'm going on vacation for two weeks. We'll see if we have a sorcerer when I get back. It's questionable if the GM will allow him to locate a 10th level caster willing to remove that Mark. I may be able to stop preparing multiple Wall of Sand spells.

"We're in a tight, maze-like slum full of wooden buildings. Why do you think I counterspelled your Fireball?!?!"

comicshorse
2007-10-17, 08:06 AM
Worse player I've known is the same guy, he's not terrible so we keep letting him back into games but occassionally he does monumentally annoying things.
One example : We're playing a Stormbringer game and he asks the G.m. to join in. We're already a few months in so the G.m. asks him to turn up a couple of hours before the game and does a solo session to get him to the point where he can join up with the group.
His character is a very rich knight who is guarding a chest which contains a gateway to the void ( a force of utter negation we'd later use to kill the Creature Doomed To Live but that's another story). Anyway his knight is harried by forces of darkness and barely survives to make it onto the ship where the rest of the group are also travelling.
That night he is attacked by this wraith-like creatures that walk through the ships walls. The group rushes to his aid and pitch in, these creatures have a fear causing scream and some of the group fail and flee but pull themselves back together and return to the fight and with some effort we put down the monsters.
Our groups leader seeling to get us joined up says " You have fearsome enemies, luckily my group would be prepared to gaurd you for a modest fee."
He replies " If I want slaves I'll pick some who don't run away at the first sign of danger."
Thre is a stunned silence broken only by the groan of the G.M. as he see's all his work go straight down the drain.
Ona related note the chest was vital to the g.m.s plot so we later found it by the corpse of a certain knight.

Lolzords
2007-10-17, 12:57 PM
I just started a brand new campaign, level one, playing "the worlds largest dungeon" with my form tutor.

Anywho, one of the players is REALLY inexperienced and keeps blurting out stupid comments.

DM: Ok, you get off the pig cart, with a wave and some flatulence, he leaves you.
Player: AWWWW-I-WANTED-A-PIG!!
*later*
DM: Being, sober, sensible adventurers...
Player: NOT ME! I'M ALWAYS DRUNK!!

He's called his character "drunken git" and has used names such as eric and bob for characters in the past.

If I were DM I would take him always being drunk and spin it right round and make him take a -4 penalty to every roll for being intoxicated, also, I would keep that penalty until the character "rethinks his ways" when he next levels up.

Though, that's just my solution.

Edit: Now he's dropped the drunken attitude and now he's called his character midget instead (Despite being a six foot human) and his contribution to the group over three sessions has been "I CHARGE FORWARD!"

Zim
2007-10-17, 01:36 PM
We've had a few players back in the day when we played Harnmaster that were real winners. Two were creepy guys we met through the university gaming club who insisted on playing busty women (probably the inspiration for that character in Goblins for all I know) and another who insited on playing a pimp (who incidentally got the who party killed by arguing with the ship's captain while we were in a crisis situation...crash!). None of them lasted past one session because we...uh...decided to play something else...yeh, that's it.

skeeter_dan
2007-10-17, 01:39 PM
Anyone who has played a monk, ever. They tend to have the same "hey, whoa dude" attitude, think "oh man, like monk's don't need gear, they're so zen and ****!" Later they realize that they, do, in fact, need gear, as they've been craptastic for 10 levels. At that point, who wants to share with the moron who you've been shoveling heal pots, spells, and diamonds on since he keeps overestimating his kung-fu ass?

I can't stand monks, and I can't stand the people who are drawn to monks.
"2d8 with my fists? Whoa!"

You've played with some crappy roleplayers unfortunately. Sure the monk class is underpowered, but that's no excuse for having an idiotic attitude about them. I have played monks before as have my friends, and we have never had Keanu Reeves attitude about playing them.

I've had pretty good experience with people I've played with. The worst was a guy who insisted on getting high instead of actually playing the game. He played a barbarian and his stock response (his only response) was to bash everything with his great club. He didn't stick around for very long.

Doresain
2007-10-17, 03:26 PM
im usually a good party member, but every now and then i make a character that just completely screws over the rest of the group...example, we were playing a pirate campaign based in eberron...i was a wizard of some sort, but my character was completely based on Darrell Hammond playing Sean Connery from the SNL skit...in the end, i managed to gamble away two ships, only one of which was ours within the first 5 minutes of the game...after that, i begged the DM to let me change to a swashbuckler, and he did...unfortunately we stopped playing that game shortly after

ive also dealt with a number of other bad characters that de-railed games...there was "beardyface" the dwarven cleric with a kitten that lived in a portable hole placed beneath his beard, "one-shotty" the elven ranger/cyrean avenger that managed to one shot a cleric 5-6 levels higher than him through a slot in a door (not to mention an large number of other high level baddies), some stupid catfolk rogue my friend made that was played by the book on everything it did, warforged artifcier that managed to replace its arms with swords, and there is a ton more...my favorite was the insane paladin that thought he was good, he was actually evil and managed to keep all of his class levels due to some evil god being his patron for laughs...his detect "evil" actually just detected random things as being evil, which caused him to attack chairs, gnomes and a number of other things that were deemed as "evil"

Swordguy
2007-10-17, 03:53 PM
Oh, good. A place to vent about a problem player I've had.

We'll call him James, since that's his name. Long-haired neo-pseudo-Viking mediveal reenactor with an aggression problem and a rap sheet for assault with a deadly.

Why was he in my game? Because when I met him at the first rehearsal for a Shakespeare acting gig, he seemed sane, and he'd been a friend of mine for a few years.

So, he spent a couple years dating this girl, also in the group, and they broke up under friendly circumstances. Then after about a year, she and I started dating. When we announced some time later we were going to get married, he accused me of molesting children in the food court of a nearby shopping mall, told me he was going to rescue my fiancee, and that "they will never find your body."

He ended this by trying to knife me.



He is no longer welcome in our group, for those who may be wondering, and has attacked me three more times over the last few years. (Those recalling the Calibration article where I talked about getting in a real-life swordfights...this is the guy.) The police won't do anything, even with the written death threats I've gotten from him, because he lives across state lines (I'm in KY, he's in OH), and the KY cops aren't on good terms with the Cincinnati cops. Add to that the fact that he's managed to get away before the cops bother showing up.

Yes, I can safely say that Mr. James A. M. (don't know what the board policy on calling out someone's full real name is), he of the 5'10", long black hair, medium build, and green eyes, has taken the prize of my biggest problem player.

Nerd-o-rama
2007-10-17, 03:58 PM
Wow. Um.

Consider calling the Cincinnati cops. Repeated assault cases shouldn't be swept under the rug due to politics.

nobodylovesyou4
2007-10-17, 04:00 PM
huh, thats almost lanky - like, except that lanky's DM didnt try to kill him, just throw a rock through his window. imo, yours takes the cake.

my player isnt bad by any means, but his char was TECHNICALLY evil (we rescued a dying woman from a torture chamber and he demanded compensation), so when the ret of the party escaped the pirate ship they were on, they left him behind. we dont kick him out, but he kind of has to make a new character.

Swordguy
2007-10-17, 04:02 PM
Wow. Um.

Consider calling the Cincinnati cops. Repeated assault cases shouldn't be swept under the rug due to politics.


Both sets of cops responded with "Buy a gun. We can get the guy after he kills you, but we can't stop him from doing so".

Fortunately, I have many. The Army taught me to love and respect pretty explody toys even more than I already did. And Kentucky is an open-carry state, and I've got my CCW in both. :biggrin:

No incidents for 4 months! It's a new record! And growing every day!

PlatinumJester
2007-10-17, 04:06 PM
Oh, good. A place to vent about a problem player I've had.

We'll call him James, since that's his name. Long-haired neo-pseudo-Viking mediveal reenactor with an aggression problem and a rap sheet for assault with a deadly.

Why was he in my game? Because when I met him at the first rehearsal for a Shakespeare acting gig, he seemed sane, and he'd been a friend of mine for a few years.

So, he spent a couple years dating this girl, also in the group, and they broke up under friendly circumstances. Then after about a year, she and I started dating. When we announced some time later we were going to get married, he accused me of molesting children in the food court of a nearby shopping mall, told me he was going to rescue my fiancee, and that "they will never find your body."

He ended this by trying to knife me.



He is no longer welcome in our group, for those who may be wondering, and has attacked me three more times over the last few years. (Those recalling the Calibration article where I talked about getting in a real-life swordfights...this is the guy.) The police won't do anything, even with the written death threats I've gotten from him, because he lives across state lines (I'm in KY, he's in OH), and the KY cops aren't on good terms with the Cincinnati cops. Add to that the fact that he's managed to get away before the cops bother showing up.

Yes, I can safely say that Mr. James A. M. (don't know what the board policy on calling out someone's full real name is), he of the 5'10", long black hair, medium build, and green eyes, has taken the prize of my biggest problem player.


A bullet proof vest would be wise investment for prolonged life.

I was gonna say guns but you seem to have got that covered.

When he next attacks you shout "Alright you primative screwhead. Listen up. This is my BOOMSTICK"

Nerd-o-rama
2007-10-17, 04:14 PM
Both sets of cops responded with "Buy a gun. We can get the guy after he kills you, but we can't stop him from doing so".

Fortunately, I have many. The Army taught me to love and respect pretty explody toys even more than I already did. And Kentucky is an open-carry state, and I've got my CCW in both. :biggrin:

No incidents for 4 months! It's a new record! And growing every day!
New plan: move to a region where the cops aren't incompetent ass holes.

That's if you mind killing in self-defense, of course.

RandomNPC
2007-10-17, 04:30 PM
Both sets of cops responded with "Buy a gun. We can get the guy after he kills you, but we can't stop him from doing so".

Fortunately, I have many. The Army taught me to love and respect pretty explody toys even more than I already did. And Kentucky is an open-carry state, and I've got my CCW in both. :biggrin:

No incidents for 4 months! It's a new record! And growing every day!



you should be able to get him on intent at the verry least, maybe menacing. and there's always the self defence laws, if he actually comes at you with a weapon you're allowed to stop him. I'm fairly certain the Ohio laws allow enough self defence to stop him, so if you shatter his leg or something you can get away, breaking a leg then doing other stuf would be self defense followed by asult.

anyway, if 4 months is a record hire a lawer and go after the police stations for allowing him to harras you for so long. at the very least call the police stations and tell them you called a lawer.

Swordguy
2007-10-17, 04:48 PM
New plan: move to a region where the cops aren't incompetent ass holes.

That's if you mind killing in self-defense, of course.

It's more of a question of if my wife gets a bead on him first.

Mr. Moogle
2007-10-17, 04:51 PM
what happened with gnomes and semen?

:smalleek:

boomwolf
2007-10-17, 05:04 PM
well.
as sad as it is.
the worse player ever in a game i played was me. but the GM was an idiot that lead to this.

you see, i got SO rich (had about 5000 platinum at level 6) that i bought EVERYTHING, my first respond to any encounter is "i hire them" and to any building "i rent that".
luckily i did good and got rid of it quickly. (i wasted all my money on useless junk)
but, at that part, i was still the worse player ever.

other then that, there was a player that had a skeleton fighter (again. idiot DM), and that player kept doing disgusting things (taking clothes off, and he is hell fat) and stupid IG things (attacking the city guard) that kept getting us near-killed.
anyway, i got rid of him with a good roleplaying way.
i had a gnoll, and at one point we had no money, so i ate the skeleton.

Solmage
2007-10-17, 07:46 PM
Both sets of cops responded with "Buy a gun. We can get the guy after he kills you, but we can't stop him from doing so".

Fortunately, I have many. The Army taught me to love and respect pretty explody toys even more than I already did. And Kentucky is an open-carry state, and I've got my CCW in both. :biggrin:

No incidents for 4 months! It's a new record! And growing every day!

Assuming this is the whole story, contact your favorite local newspaper. Get a restraining order. Etc.

WrstDmEvr
2007-10-17, 08:31 PM
So, he spent a couple years dating this girl, also in the group, and they broke up under friendly circumstances. Then after about a year, she and I started dating. When we announced some time later we were going to get married, he accused me of molesting children in the food court of a nearby shopping mall, told me he was going to rescue my fiancee, and that "they will never find your body."

He ended this by trying to knife me.

:smalleek:


I think this one takes the lot for problem players/dms, he DOES sound pretty crazy/insane. I feel sorry for you.

Tor the Fallen
2007-10-17, 09:02 PM
A bullet proof vest would be wise investment for prolonged life.

I was gonna say guns but you seem to have got that covered.

When he next attacks you shout "Alright you primative screwhead. Listen up. This is my BOOMSTICK"

Bulletproof vests don't stop knives.

Stormcrow
2007-10-17, 10:58 PM
Fullplate does. Good fullplate that is. Or maybe some really heavy chainmail.. that seven linked stuff...

Personally I'd recomend the paper thing, don't forget to add "The police said they couldn't do anything unless he killed me" bit. That'll make a newspaper story for sure.

MrNexx
2007-10-17, 11:41 PM
Bulletproof vests don't stop knives.

Unless, of course, they're the variety with the anti-knife inserts.

http://bodyarmour.safeshopper.com/208/cat208.htm?666

For example.

Truestrike
2007-10-18, 11:36 AM
This story is not of me or of one of my players/teamates. It is a sad tale of My GM's Last 3.0 D&D game. The quest was to recover a Medalion From a Ninja master and when they found him the dwarf ran up and started grappling with him. they struggled back and forth for 2 turns. when the cleric decided that he was going to Flame strike the Ninja master. The ruling was that he would hit the dwarf also. The Cleric said sacrifices must be made! and boom they both failed their saves and the he started roling saves for all their gear. The Dwarf was carrying explosive rounds for his gun and the pouch fail and all 100 pre mixed shots went off 1d10/round and if he rolled a 10 he had roll it again and add it together. The dwarf was destroyed and the ninja master used his ability to drain life from his sub ninjas and likked all of them to stay alive grabbed the medalion and ran off. the party was so stuned they didn't know what to do. and thats how the campaign came to an end. Many an enemy were made that game.

WrstDmEvr
2007-10-22, 06:33 PM
So, Bob(same guy from my last post) comes over to my house to play, only to find nobody else has shown up. So we had 2 hours to pass by, and i got bored, so i allowed him to level up his drow assassin to lvl 20 for whenever nobody else arrives, so we can still have fun. And i gave him +5 kamas, plus pumped up the drow sleep poison DC. And he gets around 7 attacks per round.

Long story short, he gets into a fight with a balor. He wins init and immediately attacks him. Balor fails fort save. Then, Bob does a coup de grace and hits for 252 damage, for a total save DC of 262. Needless to say, the balor failed.

All i can say is that i am thankful i did not start my campaign at level 20, otherwise he would kill everything in the village, the country, the continent, and the campaign world.

Knight_Of_Twilight
2007-10-22, 07:09 PM
To remember my worst player ever, I have to go back 12 years, my 3rd year of gaming and my 1st of middle school. I guess some of this silliness can be excused, we all did stupid crap when we were 11- but I still chuckle about this kid to this day.

So we had let a new guy in our group- he wanted to play two characters, a boy and a girl. Ok, whatever. We all had odd PC's anyway.

3 sessions in they are married. All roleplayed in the creepy way that only a strange 11 year old boy can play.

When we decide to make a new campaign, he wants his new character to be the son of the first two he made. Ok, whatever. We've all had characters related to others- its fine.

So this kid has all the equipment that his 15th level parents had. And a brand new dagger that his parents made him...

...which kills anyone he attacks with it. We go nuts- "What the heck, _____, thats way to powerful for any character to have!" he gives in, stating: "Ok, ok, I'll let them have a saving throw."

The Linker
2007-10-22, 07:21 PM
I remember quite clearly an incident a year or two ago when the party wizard had a necklace of fireballs. You throw a piece of the necklace, you get a fireball. So, we find a room with a few gargoyle statues in a dungeon, mouths wide open. He runs up to one, LEAPS ON TO ITS BACK, and stuffs a FIREBALL DOWN ITS THROAT.

He thinks; a big explosion will emerge from its mouth! That'll be awesome!

What happened; Everyone died except the bard who happened to be just outisde the range of said fireball.

There was some green angel-type thing in the dungeon, in another room (I think one of those things flying around in the background in OOTS in heaven, before Roy is approved for his true afterlife.) which came and kindly resurrected all of us with a Mass True Ressurection spell or something of the sort. Then he killed the wizard again, thinking he was evil. No complaints there.

There was another incident, just last tuesday, where one of our players was missing, so another filled in. He was tasked with guarding two prisoners tied to a tree.

Now, this player had some weird morals. Because he was playing a character who had an alignment he didn't like, and didn't have a good wisdom score, he decided to roll a random wisdom check and act based off of that.

He rolled a one.

"I release the prisoners and play Hide-and-Seek with them!"

What happened next was a long argument trying to convinve him that it was a very stupid reason to release the prisoners, in-game and out. Eventually the DM just ruled not to let him do that, since no sane person would. Unfortunately, it killed the campaign; we ended it minutes after.

Kultrum
2007-10-22, 08:12 PM
Hmmm... that would be my "friend" and his grapple monkey. Every combat h would try to grapple something then ask what he was supposed to do i.e. what to roll then what happened next then would spend ten minutes complaining about who he could rip them in half or what have you. to make things worse the Dm had a crush on him and let him do whatever so there he was a human grappling a colossal dragon :smallyuk:

Ninja Chocobo
2007-10-23, 06:09 AM
This whole episode is an example of why some gamers ban playing cross-gender. But several other guys in the group played female characters without it being a problem. Personally, the lesson I learnt was "don't play with anyone under 18". I still won't, unless they act adult enough that their age isn't obvious.

We're not all like that guy, really. One bad example shouldn't make you write off our entire age.
Maybe 16 year old new players. We've got one who spams the chat (we play online through a D&D client) with stuff like "Yeeeaaah boi", and another who seems determined to make my character(NE Dwarf Wizard) die indirectly (such as telling the Silver Dragon (homebrewed progression) to breathe ice in a manner that would hurt me, or asking the DM to get everything to attack me). He's LE, so he doesn't have the excuse of a, say, Paladin.
For the record, we're all level 3.

Note: I apologise for the first part of my post being out of context by roughly 3 pages. That's what I get for formulating a post when I'm less than halfway through reading a topic, I suppose.

Wow, that's a lot of parentheses.

Logic Cannon
2007-10-23, 02:56 PM
There's an infamously bad roleplayer in my group who is quite a chore to put up with. She's the wife of one of the regulars, which makes her immune from being kindly asked to leave. She's generally well-known for playing characters that have zero interaction with the rest of the group, not playing out dice rolls ("I gather information!" - about what? "Idunno"), being completely dumbfounded by relatively simple rules and speaking far too much, far too loudly, with far too little of any importance to say. If you've ever wondered what somebody else just said, she'd be happy to repeat it to you, all over again, at three times the volume. Except you never ask for this assistance, it happens by default.

Worst case:
Her character was a rogue, profiting off of petty crime in order to provide for a large family and a crippled father. Ostensibly, she was supposed to be very socially skilled, but this was never acted out in game (see the aforementioned I GATHER INFORMATION side tangent). Later in the campaign, the group returns to her player's hometown after fearing the worst - it seems like the quasi-undead monsters from outside of space and time that they had been fighting off just barely throughout the campaign had attacked her family's town, dragging away her character's father and all of her brothers and sisters into the sea, where they would likely be added to the growing legions of the undead sins-against-god. Her character's only remaining family member is her mother, who tells her of the horrific events in between horrible fits of sobbing. Her character's response? An extremely flat "that's interesting." This is the kind of roleplaying excellence we're dealing with here.

Runner-up:
She's currently playing a druid in a recent campaign, and this druid exemplifies all of the fine qualities of the earlier-played rogue. This character figured it would be a druid one day because it discovered as a child that it didn't like metal. Yes, kids, that's right, you can tell you're destined to be a Buddhist monk if you grow up not liking meat. Because of this child's bizarre distaste for metal, he loathed his blacksmithing parents and spent all his time being emo in the woods, where he made best friends with a wolf. He's never been good at social interaction (at least this is roleplayed properly this time), has weird taboos and distastes, and only seems to care about this wolf companion. In short, this character likely has Asperger Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome). As usual, this character has nothing to do with the group in general and it's baffling why we let him follow us around considering how creepy he is and how little he seems to care about anything around him (why are you adventuring anyways?!?). The most baffling part of this character is that HIS ONLY EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT IN THE WHOLE WORLD is to his wolf. The same wolf that is mercilessly thrown into the bloodiest combats imaginable ahead of the druid while the druid pulls out a folding chair and a martini to observe the action. Now this would be understandable if the wolf was the only thing that could defend the druid, but there are 3 melee fighters just dying to get at the enemies that usually can't because the Stockholm Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome) Wolf is raging off at the enemies getting its fluffy ass kicked.

Consolation Prize:
Another player who always plays total jackasses, regardless of alignment. The current incarnation is a paladin who is hell-bent on getting high and sexually molesting as many women as possible. Yep, that's lawful goodness for you. Even after the group's psion nearly blew a hole in his chest after a "handful" of indiscretion, he's still doing his best to get half the party killed when the powder keg finally goes off.

Dragor
2007-10-26, 06:05 AM
My worst player just happens to be the person who introduced me to D&D- and is also my current DM. Some of you may remember this thread a while back, but if you weren't there, I'll explain.

So, it's my turn for DM'ing and I decide to do something different to what the previous DM (we'll call him Vamp) usually does- which is usually a big 'Kill the demons who are coming through the rift' adventure. Which we all enjoy, but I decided to mix it up.

I decide to start the adventure in the desert. One player rolls up a Rogue called Ryan who focuses on acrobatics and was fairly innocent and naive. This was fine by me (considering he thinks monks are a good thing) and I was focusing on making the BBEG screw with Ryan's head.

So, Vamp decides to play, guess what, a vampire. A 1000 year old vampire who's exceptionally uber in all aspects- he's all a big fan of the Hellsing anime (Alucard anyone?) My alarm bells are already ringing, and Vamp insists that I should give him some sort of plot device that allows him to be immune to the sun. I'm almost at the end of my tether, and tell him that he can't be a vampire- the ECL, the special abilities and the general stupidity. He throws a hissy fit, and rolls up a Goblin Commoner with all negative modifier stats bar in Dexterity, where his modifier is 0.

God damn, I don't know what got into him.


Runner-up:
She's currently playing a druid in a recent campaign, and this druid exemplifies all of the fine qualities of the earlier-played rogue. This character figured it would be a druid one day because it discovered as a child that it didn't like metal. Yes, kids, that's right, you can tell you're destined to be a Buddhist monk if you grow up not liking meat. Because of this child's bizarre distaste for metal, he loathed his blacksmithing parents and spent all his time being emo in the woods, where he made best friends with a wolf. He's never been good at social interaction (at least this is roleplayed properly this time), has weird taboos and distastes, and only seems to care about this wolf companion. In short, this character likely has Asperger Syndrome. As usual, this character has nothing to do with the group in general and it's baffling why we let him follow us around considering how creepy he is and how little he seems to care about anything around him (why are you adventuring anyways?!?). The most baffling part of this character is that HIS ONLY EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT IN THE WHOLE WORLD is to his wolf. The same wolf that is mercilessly thrown into the bloodiest combats imaginable ahead of the druid while the druid pulls out a folding chair and a martini to observe the action. Now this would be understandable if the wolf was the only thing that could defend the druid, but there are 3 melee fighters just dying to get at the enemies that usually can't because the Stockholm Syndrome Wolf is raging off at the enemies getting its fluffy ass kicked.

Considering my brother has Aspergers, that's part insulting and part pitiful.

miggyboi
2007-10-26, 06:33 AM
Well, in our party, we have one particular party member who bitches and complains a lot when something bad happens to his character, and he's not even a good player. He plays a half-elf rogue/fighter, and whenever theres an encounter, this is his FOREVER FIRST LINE:

"Can they see me? I'm sneaking."

I mean, wtf. He even did it on a mountain cliff/edge pathway where there were frost giants. Seriously, HOW can you SNEAK? He ended up getting squished by one of the frost giant's thrown boulders (hehe serves you right).

Anyway, one particular gaming session, he was in front of a sorceress (who wasn't really stupid, but did whatever she's about to do all the same just to piss the guy off). Then, this sorceress cast a ray spell (lightning bolt i think?). And since ray rules mean that ANY character gets hit as long as he's in the line of sight, they have to make a reflex save. Lets just say he wasn't able to make the reflex save. At that moment were he died (already pissed and shouting at that player before making the reflex save roll, "what the hell [insert girl's name here]! I can't believe you did that! *throws pencil at the wall* F*ck! Are you STUPID?!? Why did you do that? *slams the table*), he just snapped and stood up and shouted and had a BIG tantrum, threatening the girl player that he's gonna hurt her and insulting ehr to high heavens. I was just laughing the whole time.

The DM ruled no exp for the sorceress though for doing that, and didn't let the guy's character die, just 1hp left though. hahaha what a baby. First and foremost, its a game. Well, i tried to calm him down and he was saying "But my character died man! If that happened to you, you'd react the same way!" and I'm like "uhhh... no? I'd just laugh at it". Man, he was a loser.

But he still kept on playing even though we were giving him hints that we don't want him in the group. Oh well, more people to make fun of. hehe


that was before though, i don't play anymore, schools been very busy. =\

Tiak
2007-10-26, 06:08 PM
my party consists of two rangers and a barbarian.
and the second ranger is a centaur. centaurs suck a pc's, he's always the first one to die.
also, i am not a pixie, i don't know how to change that yet.

Toliudar
2007-10-26, 06:18 PM
In my PNP group, I have a player we'll call Randall, because that's his name.

Randall played a lot during first edition D&D, and the start of second edition, and just two years ago got back into gaming. I think he has a slightly rosy hindsight view of that system. When we brought him into the group, we sort of took him through a tutorial session, lent him the rulebooks, and walked through concepts with him as we went. At the time, we were playing 3.0, and gradually segue-ing into 3.5 rules and adding bits of splatbooks as we went.

Randall's favourite line in this process has become "that bites." As in: "This new rule isn't the same as I remember from 1st edition? That bites." "I'm over six feet tall, but don't get a bonus for grappling sombody five feet tall? That bites." "I lose levels if I take a race other The fact that - correct me if I'm wrong - I'm not even sure 1st edition HAD grappling rules, let alone ones that accommodated small differences in physique, all seems lost on him.

We've gotten it down to a couple times a session now, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to bring him more completely into the here and now. Any suggestions on this?

Veridian
2007-10-26, 07:04 PM
Worst player I can ever think of...let us call him Will. (Convenient, as this was his name, and all.)

Will always played a paladin. Always an elven paladin. The exact name eludes me at the moment, but it was always the same for every paladin. He would always take leadership, and insist on having a CN gnome illusionist henchy. Who would basically be portrayed as a snivelling suckup to the paladin at every opportunity, and agreeing to everything the paladin did or said.

Now. The party consists of mr. paladin and mr. suckup, an elven ranger/mage/arcane archer, and my own character, a CG human bard who had a deck of illusions, and a fixation with (non-malicious) pranks.

Now. We are all 11th level, and preparing to approach this orcish fortress (all the orcs had class levels in Warrior or Fighter, so they were all around lvl 5-6 'PCs' themselves, to make it actually challenging). We four are discussing how we are going to get in. Will immediately decides that we are going to storm it with a direct assault from the front. Not giving any of the others an option (and with gnome toady agreeing), he storms the fort. And after seeing our arcane archer firing her bow (surprised?), he stops what he's doing, runs over and screams at her that shooting people with projectile weapons is dishonorable, and breaks her longbow. Yep. And then she proceeds to almost get killed in melee combat (if it wasn't for my bard's timely assistance). Will then proceeds to threaten, and browbeat everyone into getting his own way.

Oh yes, and Will also seemed to believe that his detect evil ability was in fact a 30 foot range radar, that automatically told him whenever evil came close (as opposed to running it how it states in the manual. No amount of persuading would make him understand otherwise), and the DM was forced to start making every creature in the campaign neutral. This of course, had Will complaining loudly that his smites werent effective anymore.

Will's paladin met a grisly end, when the fed up DM sent a baalor lord to kill him and take his soul to Hell to recieve his just reward. Not that it stopped him from rolling up a clone, but it was satisfying for the rest of us :smallamused:

Can't believe we put up with that guy for as long as we did...his solution was to hit anything until it stopped being a problem. Lawful good? Not even lawful stupid...it wasn't deserving of that title. I preferred 'Chaotic Psychophant'

MrNexx
2007-10-26, 07:41 PM
Randall's favourite line in this process has become "that bites." As in: "This new rule isn't the same as I remember from 1st edition? That bites." "I'm over six feet tall, but don't get a bonus for grappling sombody five feet tall? That bites." "I lose levels if I take a race other The fact that - correct me if I'm wrong - I'm not even sure 1st edition HAD grappling rules, let alone ones that accommodated small differences in physique, all seems lost on him.


Open your 1st edition DMG to page 72, and you will see that, indeed, there are grappling rules, and they do take into account the differences in physique you call "small". Between a 5' tall person (60") and a 6' tall person (72"), assuming equal weights, strengths, and dexterities, there would be a +10% advantage to the taller combatant; 5% per 10% difference (in this case, 10% being 6 inches).

In the specific case of grappling, tell him the rules are closer to those in Unearthed Arcana than those in the 1st edition DMG.

MrNexx
2007-10-26, 07:43 PM
Will always played a paladin. Always an elven paladin. The exact name eludes me at the moment, but it was always the same for every paladin. He would always take leadership, and insist on having a CN gnome illusionist henchy. Who would basically be portrayed as a snivelling suckup to the paladin at every opportunity, and agreeing to everything the paladin did or said.


This is why I like the old rule that a paladin's henchmen had to be LG.

Veridian
2007-10-26, 11:37 PM
I'm not really sure if it would have made any difference, given the paladin tended to get his own way via intimidation and bully tactics.

The DM was a saint to try and put up with it, I think. (As were the rest of us)

Crow T. Robot
2007-10-27, 12:56 AM
There was a Star Wars d20 game that lasted exactly one session. It was a "Respond to distress signal, uh oh trouble" situation. The problem was a darksider who died and passed on to a big nasty tree. The reasoning was the GM wanted to hide the bad guy until later, and hit us with branches when the time came.

There was a Jedi, a force adept, a R2 unit, and a cleaning droid.

The last one was the most obvious problem, but the rest had their moments.

The player passionatly insisted on being a cleaning droid when he say it in one of the books. He spend hours demanding the cleaning droid, and out of frustration the GM gave in. He then took 7 levels of soldier. There was no justification. The GM no longer cared and just wanted to start. Also the cleaning droid had no way to hold a weapon.

The R2 was an R2 droid. Besides threatening to zap me, he mostly spent his time complaing that we were morons and should listen to him, and fallow the lead of the R2. Which we couldn't becuse R2s can only beep, and there were no protocal droids. Besides his ideas were crap anyways.

The Jedi and Adept has bizarre builds. They were both claimed to be adimatly light side, but loaded up on dark side powers. Before the end of the night they qualified for most the the dark side prestige classes. And they never picked up on the fact their force lightning was ineffective until both I and the GM spelled it out several times. Then he used his light saber, finaly.

Me? I was a Trandoshan ex-marine who blew almost every credit on a heavy repeating blaster and a decent set of armor. The GM basically ignored everyone else after the third turn and consentrated on draining me energy packs. It worked in the end, but the damage was done, and we won.

This took place during a time when most of the players were either in a state of bordom with gameing/each other/life in general and would make impulsive and weird desisions and stick to them. The GM told me that he was a bit supprised on how things spiraled out of control.