Handling a kamikaze player.

[Idea Man]

I had a player once who made one character per session, and one between sessions, and played just about all of them to their glorious/tremendously stupid ends. The weird thing was that he wasn't trying to get himself killed, or so it seemed at the time. I chalk it up to designing novel/movie/video game character concepts, then deciding they were boring and letting them "run their course". Heck, the most fun he had was with a 2ed wild mage, and he was constantly on the verge of death (or beyond) whenever he tried casting, and he even gave up magic to prevent such catastrophies from happening again (Do we remember how unforgiving dual-classing was in 2nd ed? Fortunately, I'm a nice guy.)!

But, aside from that one glorious character, he lost about two a meeting. I was wondering if anyone else had met such a player, and how they handled it, if at all. Was corpse looting a problem for your wealth by level?

I will miss the moment he cast a fireball at the shadow dragon, rolled a surge instead, and someone hoped aloud "Boy, the worst thing that could happen now is if you hasted him instead of fireballing him!" That was the hardest fight ever! Once we stopped laughing.

[Icewalker]

Well, I was going to say just let him die. But it seems that you are doing so and it is leading to problems...hmm

The simplest solution is to try to stop him from dying, by convincing him to take a different course of action.

[Ulrichomega]

Ah, to have never played 2e...

Anyway, I usually play characters like this. Only, they never die. The DM always takes pity on my soul, and puts me at -9 instead of death.

But if you want to handle it, just force him to play one character all the way through, don't let him get bored and let the character die. Force him to try to keep the character alive.

[paigeoliver]

Hee hee, some of my friends have said that I will jump off a cliff with a wizard to try to hit a flying baddie with my staff rather than waste an action, and they are basically right.

With me it is partially liking to play cinematic characters and partially the fact that I absolutely hate to waste an action (3.5 combat is soo freakin slow that I am going to do SOMETHING when my turn comes up, even if it kills me).

My fighters and rogues and archers and such do very well and have long heroic careers. However my wizards, druids, monks and barbarians tend to die glorious deaths at very low levels. In fact I don't think I ever had a monk level through 2 game sessions in a row.

[mostlyharmful]

You could try revnanting one of his PCs, cursed by God/Fate/taco-bell to walk the earth until they do something or other... "You heroically suicide for no good reason. Well done. You wake up two hours later at the bottem of the mound of corpses without a pulse and a nagging need to slay all the chromatic dragons in the world."

It can occassionaly be quite funny to have a PC that wants to die a heroic death but gets impedid by gods that what something finished for them first. Just make sure that dying doesn't become an easy way out or fun for them, easy to do with corpse looting, burial, slow regeneration back to human appearance, no slow regeneration back to mortal appearance at all, etc...

[Signmaker]

Ring of Vengeance sounds like it's in order...

[Kizara]

Perhaps consider giving one of his characters an 'edge'.

Maybe its a unique, ancesteral item that works only for them.

Maybe its considerably better stats then normal.

Maybe its a discounted LA on a non-ridiculous race (like free assimar or something).

Maybe its a really cool and hot girlfriend. Is he really fond of any celebrities? Maybe his sister, girlfriend or lifelong friend is Elizibeth off Pirates, or Arwen. Maybe change the name, but leave the persona 90% in tact. Chances are he will eat it up.

Regardless, combine it with a really cool backstory/character identity (cool meaning something he will really get into/think is the best thing ever). Does he have a thing for The Hulk? Help him build a character that actually can be something like The Hulk (some kind of super-rage).

Don't let him totally overshadow the other players, but do give him a fairly big spotlight.

Basically, the goal is to make him value the character enough that he wants him to live.

[enderrocksonall]

At first glance I would seem to be one of those players. In the last 5 game sessions I have died 5 times. All with different characters.

But it has to be taken into account that I am level 6 with an average party level of 10 and we are fighting "modified" CR 13 encounters everyday. When I say "modified", I mean that the monsters have had useless feats taken away and replaced with DR or extra damage or higher AC. So in reality, its more like a CR 15 encounter, although our DM can't figure it out since(it recently became clear to us), he's never read the DMG for anything except to get magic items. He didn't even know there was a table for figuring out the EL of multiple creatures until last week when I showed it to him, and he's been DMing for about 2 years on this one campaign.

Anyway with my rant over, I would say that doing things that seem suicidal like jumping off tall things in order to hit someone, while stupid, should be taken as a sign of boredom.

The occasional "what the hell" moment aside, most people are fanatics about staying alive, and an action that is clearly going to end up with them dead should be prefaced by a comment like "You can tell that that would not be the best of all possible actions, and would probably end with you lying in a broken heap of bones and flesh 200' below. Are you sure you want to do that?"

As far as keeping them interested goes, for pious characters I like to get deities involved in minor ways. Maybe the deity sends a small archon, in the form of a bird with a broken wing, to follow the character. The character is charged with caring for the bird and at a time of need, if the bird is well cared for, the archon can do something amazing for the guy. Like catching his dumb butt when he jumps off the cliff.

That way, it seems like the deity knew that this particular bit of jack-assery was coming and took steps to prevent it. The DM looks even more omniscient than normal!!!

And if all else fails, start him out at level 1. There is absolutely nothing that a player dreads more than seeing a character that they nurtured from level 1 to level 15 die. Believe me if he isn't just in the game for the funny deaths, then taking the character from level 1 should be just the right motivation to NOT DIE!!!!

[Blayze]

I've got three words for you: The Nameless One.

Take that as you will.

[Seffbasilisk]

As a DM I have a rule that when a character dies, thier next character comes in at thier level -1.

Also, I tend to make circumstances so each players gets attached to thier PC, starts to relate to them and such.

[loves_to_laugh]

As a DM I have a rule that when a character dies, thier next character comes in at thier level -1.

Also, I tend to make circumstances so each players gets attached to thier PC, starts to relate to them and such.

I agree with this. In my group we always start a newly made character at average party level -1. So that more often than not the person has a penalty but isn't completely crippled. And if the DM is feeling more heartless about it they take -2 from the average party level. We have a person who tends to kill their character every session but doesn't as much anymore because of the handicap of being a level below.

I personally think it works well because it gets the point across without being too mean about it.

[EvilElitest]

Bert Muggens was a PC once who just kept dying, at first it was bad luck, then his being stupid, and just being used as arrow fodder. He would die so much that he just name every character Burt muggens. Finally, i made a deal with him. Every time he died he would come back as a the same dude with a level equal to the lowest PC player but he would be a warrior. He still died a lot, eventually NPCs started aiming for him
from
EE

[seedjar]

I would be inclined more to just let the PC die as much as he wants, without letting him roll new characters. Or maybe give him a "1 character per four sessions" quota or something. The hook would be to make him play as an inanimate corpse for a while once the quota ran out. That probably sounds kind of harsh, but the idea is that in D&D, dead isn't always really dead, and things like getting raised aren't impossible. Hopefully, I would subtly nudge the party at large towards not allowing that particular PC to die/stay dead all the time. But I don't always have the most reasonable solutions to these problems.
~Joe