Looking for an opinion on what happened last game night.

[Ineedadvice]

Before we get started,

SPOILERS: DESCENT INTO AVERNUS:


So our three player group is approaching the end of the campaign. We are at the ruins trying to recover Zariel's sword and are being swarmed by mummies.
Our sneaky boy slips in the half opened door, takes the sword for himself and has an angelic transformation. He then comes back out, proceeds to threaten my character (L/E Cleric) with death and stated that my plans will now be stopped (the player out of game, not the character in game, knows about the schemes I had been running), targets our dragonborn paladin by saying his god is ashamed of him (which causes him to fall) then goes off and murder's the mummies without our assistance. At this point he gets ready to head off for the final fight with Zariel. This is where the session ended last night.
My cleric cast banishment on himself to return to the prime material plane and I then just told the DM to treat him as dead and I wouldn't be making a new one just for the final fight.



So any advice on what I should do going forward? Up until this point the party had worked together well and everyone was having fun. After this myself and the paladin are upset. I love the guys I play with, but this has left a severely sour taste in my mouth, and I am unsure if I should even bother trying to make a new character for the next campaign if one person can take the spotlight like that and make everything go off the rails at the last minute.

Thanks for any advice or comments in advance.

[Lacco]

Just going to reiterate the golden rule here:

OOC issues require OOC discussion amongst the involved.

Now to specifics:
You are the one with the OOC issue (sour taste in your mouth), so you should start the discussion. I'd approach it only after I'd be calm about the situation - if you are not okay, you will force the other guy to go on defensive instead of just explaining.

Step 1: calm down, rethink it, get used to the idea of what happened.

Step 1.5: decide if you want to continue or not. It's fairly important to know this - because you may have to deal with concessions and compromises and you don't want to ruin the game for the others (if they are having fun).

Step 2: ask questions. Most people respond well when you ask them a question. "Why did you do that?" or "What were your intentions?". Open questions are better, and especially - do not go into the discussion with a goal (as "force them to apologize for destroying the game for you") because this will lead to loaded questions.

Step 3: salvage the situation. You had lots of fun playing, maybe try to see what the player did as new game. Find a way how to enjoy the game now. Maybe it's time for a new character. Maybe your old character should come back as BBEG of the next game - or maybe the guy has a plan for his character to be the BGEG of the campaign. Who knows?

Go into it with no expectations.

That's my advice.

[Pauly]

This is a GM/module problem not a player problem.
I would say the other player RPed the situation well within the limits of what he was given. The problem is he was given
- an angelic transformation, re-writing his character.
- the ability to forcibly re-write the other player’s characters, made worse by the fact that in angelic form he also has the in character motivation to do so.
- a transformation so powerful that the rest of the party are reduced to on-looker status in combat.

On the face of it what the player did was perfectly reasonable role playing. Now it’s up to the DM to salvage the situation.

[Ineedadvice]

So after talking everything over, the DM is just scrapping the campaign and starting over. Only player that wasn't upset (including the dm) was the thief that ruined it. Even he agreed to just start over when he saw how everyone else lost heart. I guess the city will never be saved but that may be for the best.

[Lacco]

Good for you, seems to have worked out at least on personal level with the GM and other players.

I wouldn't hold it against the thief though - put yourself in his shoes for a moment. You are given this crazy stuff by the module (not the GM) and you are told "do this...". Yeah, the module's not well thought out, but that's not his mistake. His mistake is maybe going a bit wild with it - however, I'd still discuss this with them.

Ideally, you do not want to end the campaign by saying "You ruined it." - I missed the part about the module, which Pauly mentions and he is correct - the module should be blamed before the thief.

Also: I foresee a postapocalyptic campaign in the future :smallbiggrin:. Destroyed city, crazy angelic figure as BBEG... good basis for a campaign.

[icefractal]

Why would being insulted cause the Paladin to fall? It seems like either a lot is missing here or there's some weird fiat going on.