Outing the Dhampir players

[ciopo]

Greetings fellow forumites

many times (more than four) in different campaigns, I find myself in this situation:

for one reason or another there is a bit of player turnouts.
New player joins the existing group, and their description or behavior makes me think their character is a dhampir. Usually some combination of beign pallid and being dark&edgy.

I OOC ask the player directly : "is (character name) a dhampir?" usually I elaborate that I want to make sure healing them won't be a problem, because accidentally killing an allied PC once was one-time-too-many.

if the answer is some variation of "you'll have to find out", I tend to do just that right there and then, because so far they've always typecasted themself into "looking emaciated/sick/(insert adjective here)" or some such that gives my character plausible deniability for attempting to heal them there and then, i.e. I promptly switch to IC, ask "(character name) you don't look too good, here, let me help you!" of some such.

The IC relative drama that follows is preferable to me to the OOC drama that would follow accidentally killing their character because such healinghappens in combat, as so far none of those dhampir players had much in the way of self-sustain.


Would you say I'm too heavy-handed in forcing the "issue" early while the characters are in a safe area and so on? perhabs they want to play out the mistery, and I've ruined it for them? I've not received complains about it

[Dezea]

I would say this issue is 100% dependant on the way your group handle roleplaying among player.

It could be an interesting turn of even to have one hidden Dhampir, if you dig those kind of roleplay secret getting slowly out of the box, with some drama and so on. Not my preferred kind of RP, but to each their own. I would be suspicious tho if it becomes a cliché, and every new character turns out to be some edgy wanabee vampire.

On the other hand, if your friends are more mechanically focused, and you meet mostly to efficiently slay stuff - no judgment here, I'm pretty we've all enjoyed some good ol'dungeonering - this could obviously be a huge nuisance.

This being said, I would clearly not turn this into a possible friendly fire just to make sure, if only because I feel it kinda rude for the other player if it was some meticulous RP opportunities planned on his part. But I would ask OOC if this is some RP element he wants to bring to us, or if it's just some edginess for the sake of it.

[Wintermoot]

I think it's hilarious that this keeps happening to you. It's such an unlikely thing to happen multiple unrelated times.

Personally, there's the "what I should do" and "what I want to do" responses, in your place.

"What I should do"

me: "Are you a Dhampire?"
them: "You'll have to find out."
me: "Okay, OOC I'm asking because when we get into combat I will be casting heal spells and don't want to accidentally kill you. This has happened to me before. So I'm happy to let you RP your mysterious Dhampire, but OOC there's a risk we need to anticipate."


"What I want to do"

me: "Are you a Dhampire?"
them: "You'll have to find out."
me: "OK"
...later...
DM: Okay the gnolls hit Player 1 for 10 dmg. You're up."
me: "Quite a lot of damage to several of us. Okay I'm going to cast mass cure serious wounds on the whole group. Let's see... 17 HP back everyone.
them: "Wait!"

Basically, let them screw themselves.

Now, what I wouldn't do is what you did. Take that OOC knowledge and force it into an action that I don't consider it reasonable for your character to take. Lots of people look sickly or poorly and I don't think you are walking down the streets of towns casting cure light wounds on everyone with a sniffle. Especially as you would know that cure light wounds has no effect on disease or malnutrition or anything other than HP dmg. I feel like your actions were hostile and provoking and you're lucky you haven't had any confrontations about it. But I understand your point of view as I find these "I'm a mysterious stranger with secrets" player characters to be droll, repetitive and annoying.

If I was you, I'd try to elaborate on why you are asking the question like in my first example instead of heal-attacking them. If their response to the elaboration is "I'm still not answering, you'll have to find out" then I'd wait until we were in the middle of combat and out them there where it makes sense.

[Maat Mons]

From an RP perspective, it's inadvisable to bring a character's big secret out into the open before that character trusts the other characters. Just because the player trusts you doesn't mean their character trusts your character.

I remember one time, I played a secret undead and told the other player, because I figured he could keep his out-of-character knowledge separate from his in-character actions. He couldn't. I had to retire the character, because he was doing so much snooping that I couldn't justify my character sticking around with this guy he'd only met two days prior. Not with undead being kill-on-sight in this campaign setting.

Or, at least, I tried to retire the character. The other player decided to make it a major goal of his character to track down my character and expose his secret. The dude couldn't stand that his character didn't know something he knew.

[Telonius]

I'm assuming you're a fellow player in the party, not the DM. For the DM, "You'll have to find out" is not okay. For a fellow player, I'd let it play out. If your character has a reason to ask, ask; if not, leave it alone. Cure spells do have a Will Save for half damage attached to them for Undead targets, so it's not exactly an auto-kill. Maybe weaponize it if you're fighting undead just to tip him off that it's a possibility that could really hurt. But it is a pretty obvious risk for the player (and the character) to be taking. Doesn't want to be up-front? He knew the risks.

[Eldonauran]

Now I am tempted to make a healer that carries around a disclaimer and terms of service for the party he is adventuring with.

"The adventuring group, hereby referred to as 'the party', acknowledges that I, [insert character name], hereby referred to as 'the healer', will provide aid and service by the means of positive energy to heal wounds and other maladies acquired during the duration of the adventuring relationship. If such services result in the harm of any individual within the party, and such individual has not made such a risk clear and present, the healer will not be held responsible for the harm, up to and including final death, such services provide. Should any member of the party disclose any potential for harm from the services in question, the healer is bound by oath and contract to not reveal that information to any third party, and to make reasonable accommodations in which to offer alternative sources to provide such aid and service. Reasonable accommodations are not those that involve breaking of previous oaths, contracts, or the moral beliefs of the healer."

Then you get all the party members to sign. Case closed. Matter solved. :smallamused:

[Zanos]

It's always somewhat amusing to me when someone wants to play a character secretly of a well-known "hated" race with obvious physical features and acts like it's OOC when you point out that they have pale skin, red eyes, and fangs. Especially when you're a wizard with maxed knowledge about undead, or just anyone who isn't blind moron, really.

But yes, I'd just handle it IC. If the character obviously has bizarre features and your character would be concerned about that, I would push the issue. I'm not about to have a dude with red eyes and fangs that looks like death guard my back without some information about what his deal is.

[JNAProductions]

What kinda tables did this happen at?

Because, in my experience of gaming with friendly folk, we all know one another's characters. Not every last detail, but unless there's a specific DM pitch that involves keeping secrets, we've a good idea of who and what our party members are. Our PCs might not know as much, but that's okay.

[icefractal]

I'd call it heavy-handed, yeah. Presumably if someone's setting up a reveal they want it to happen in a more exciting way than "random downtime healing before the adventure really starts", and if the point is to be ambiguous they'd probably rather stay ambiguous for more than half a session.

I mean, sure, "secretly a dhampir" isn't the most original, but heck, most character concepts I've seen and used aren't the most original, so singling one out feels like throwing stones from a glass house.

Also, ironically, a "cleric" who I'd just met deciding to heal me out of the blue "because you don't look well" in the absence of specific injury is something I'd (IC) find somewhat suspicious. Like, if this was a "PvP allowed" campaign, I'd probably be making a saving throw and/or refusing it, because it seems like it could be a ploy to land a spying/control spell on me disguised as healing.

[pabelfly]

My table is much more chaotic. While we don't do PvP and wouldn't try to kill other players, someone would probably try heal the dhampir character and hurt them a little, and that would be the height of comedy.

[DarkOne-Rob]

Now I am tempted to make a healer that carries around a disclaimer and terms of service for the party he is adventuring with.

"The adventuring group, hereby referred to as 'the party', acknowledges that I, [insert character name], hereby referred to as 'the healer', will provide aid and service by the means of positive energy to heal wounds and other maladies acquired during the duration of the adventuring relationship. If such services result in the harm of any individual within the party, and such individual has not made such a risk clear and present, the healer will not be held responsible for the harm, up to and including final death, such services provide. Should any member of the party disclose any potential for harm from the services in question, the healer is bound by oath and contract to not reveal that information to any third party, and to make reasonable accommodations in which to offer alternative sources to provide such aid and service. Reasonable accommodations are not those that involve breaking of previous oaths, contracts, or the moral beliefs of the healer."

Then you get all the party members to sign. Case closed. Matter solved. :smallamused:
My love for playing Asmodeans is really encouraged by this! What a perfect bit for a [Lawful] healer!

[Satinavian]

So far i had every player of undead PCs make sure that the group knew to avoid the positive-energy friendly fire.

I kind of see it as their responsibility as well. If you have special needs that the group needs to be aware of, then make the group aware.

[Railak]

I've actually got a dhampir character, thing is he was raised in seclusion believing he's human. Most of the weird things about him, he either thinks are normal or that it's cause he was a "sickly" growing up. Like he knows positive energy hurts him, not why, he relies on a lot of non spell healing because of it. He turns down any offers of spell based healing.

Course he fights with a chain weapon, and gets things that increase his reach, so he's not right next to his opponents.

[Peat]

My group had a "no OOC secrets" rule for a bit to avoid stuff like this.

In OP's shoes... I mean, that's a table to table thing. I'd personally assume they wanted to play it out and wouldn't force the issue.