My Girlfriend Stabbed Me

[TempusCCK]

Well... actually, my girlfriend's assassin stabbed my sorc/wiz hybrid. Basically what happened was another assassin died, one the the DM designed specifically to nullify my magic threat by including in her gear a Ring of Spell Reflection (Maximized Magic Missle, oW!).

Anyway, the assassin dies, and I go to loot her body. I don't know if my girlfriend was upset that I was trying to dishonor her friend or what, but she stabs me with some nasty poison and knocks me out. She heals me right after, but still... My character is not one to take such things lightly.

So... here's my plan for getting revenge. My character is going to Dominate her. I figure she's rogue 9/assassin 1, that's a +2 or 3 Will save mod, plus her... +1 or +2 in Wis... the DC for my Dominate will be... 20, or 22 if I cast a Fox's Cunning on myself beforehand. I figure she has anywhere between a 15 to 18% chance to make the save, rolling a 17 or 18 + on the save. Good odds for me.

So, I guess the point of all this, from being an interesting little story is... do you folks know any quick ways of ensuring the Domination will work... or... do you have another suitable option that will show her that my wizard does not appreciate being stabbed and will teach her not to do it again next time, without taking her out of the game at all/completely?

[Azerian Kelimon]

I'd suggest getting a scroll of programmed amnesia or modify memory. Proceed to go wild.

[Rachel Lorelei]

Dominating one's girlfriend is something for the bedroom, not for D&D (and only if she's into that).

Interparty rivalry is bad. Once the PCs start doing stuff to each other, the game disintegrates.

If you do do something, talk to her out of game about it first.

If you have to do something in character, limit it to snark, not providing buffs, etc.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Unless you're playing a game purposefully geared to intraparty conflict, of course.

[Riffington]

Get an item from the body you were looting. Say, a comb. Every so often, hold it up and say "damn that's a nice comb. Best purchase I ever made." Under no circumstances should you admit that it was looted from her friend's body.

Also, purchase a comfy couch.

[Chronicled]

Dominating one's girlfriend is something for the bedroom, not for D&D.

Mind if I sig that? Or would you rather I included the parenthesis?

[North]

Explosive Ruins!

[Talya]

Unless you're playing a game purposefully geared to intraparty conflict, of course.

I'm running a decidedly "not good" swashbuckling campaign populated by brigands, power-mad wizards, pirates, assassins, and villains of all types. I started with the assumption that they were going to be at each others throats, and said all such things would be fine. So far, they haven't so much as stolen from each other. It's irritating...

[North]

I'm running a decidedly "not good" swashbuckling campaign populated by brigands, power-mad wizards, pirates, assassins, and villains of all types. I started with the assumption that they were going to be at each others throats, and said all such things would be fine. So far, they haven't so much as stolen from each other. It's irritating...

Maybe put up reward money for only one of them?

[TempusCCK]

-I- personally could care less that she stabbed my character, since she brought him back to consciousness right away and it had little to no effect on the game. However, after some careful consideration, it would be entirely in the characters personality to be angry and seek a solution.

The idea with the dominate would be "You will not have an outburst like that again, you may proceed to act normally and even question my commands, other than you will not attack me again without my permission. I will have no more of this nonsense!"

Basically saying "I don't want to mess you up, but you're forcing my hand here by acting like a child" (which she really was)

[Starsinger]

I'm running a decidedly "not good" swashbuckling campaign populated by brigands, power-mad wizards, pirates, assassins, and villains of all types. I started with the assumption that they were going to be at each others throats, and said all such things would be fine. So far, they haven't so much as stolen from each other. It's irritating...

Part of the fun is that it's not allowed. By allowing it you've taken away part of the fun, and where's the fun in that?

[Rachel Lorelei]

Mind if I sig that? Or would you rather I included the parenthesis?

If you're going to do it at all, include the parentheses--it's an important qualifier!

[Chronicled]

Oh, I suppose. Even if it hurts the timing, it's still funny.

[Epic_Wizard]

Yeah there are loads of things that you can do to her that are funnier (this shouldn't really be harmful or capricious) and much more fun for her to RP especially if she knows about them.

For example contaminate some of her gear with Troglodyte Musk and then use a spell on her so that only SHE can't smell it. Some sort of illusion would do the trick or possibly a suggestion that the stuff is perfume and she should wear it every day. Hilarity ensues and the musk could actually create a combat advantage. XD

Try for something along this theme. The real issue seems to be the humiliation that you experienced more than the fact that she stabbed you.

If you insist on the dominate angle the don't use it on her. Use it on someone else (preferably an NPC) and use them to place her in embarrassing situations. This does require a measure of your DM's cooperation though so know your DM before you say anything in case s/he is likely to tip off your girlfriend.

One last though would be to give her a pair of interesting footwear that function as boot of dancing and then tell her you will only help remove them if she apologizes (under a Zone of Truth).

[Brawls]

You, my friend, are on a one way road to loneliness. If you are going to retaliate, make sure it is whimsical. Dominating her character will probably be perceived as pretty extreme. Unless you are certain she will not take it personnaly, I would suggest you find something less direct. Work with your DM on something appropriate. Maybe a suggestion spell that everytime she draws the weapon she stabbed you with, she gets an rush of remorse for attacking a friend unprovoked. The fact that the spell is Divine, lends plausible deniability that you were involved.

Dominating one's girlfriend is something for the bedroom, not for D&D (and only if she's into that).

Remember your safe word!


Brawls

[dyslexicfaser]

will teach her not to do it again next time, without taking her out of the game at all/completely?

Or else it will teach her that nxt time she stabs you, she shouldn't heal you afterwards, but finish the job.

Of course, the initial stabbing was a pretty extreme reaction to begin with.

[Orzel]

My wizard recently magically forced my friend's fighter to rub her feet after he broke her favorite crossbow-boot.

An ex's barbarian ate my animal cohort once. I polymorph her horse into a rat and threw it at an owlbear.

No one messes with my characters anymore.

[Kompera]

I'm running a decidedly "not good" swashbuckling campaign populated by brigands, power-mad wizards, pirates, assassins, and villains of all types. I started with the assumption that they were going to be at each others throats, and said all such things would be fine. So far, they haven't so much as stolen from each other. It's irritating...

The problem should be obvious. You have pirates, but not ninjas. You've got to have both to have a decent inter-party fun-fest of double crossing and betrayal.

[Twin2]

I think you shouldn't go out of your way to outright hurt her as it'll just cause an escalation. That doesn't mean you can't not help her when she's in trouble and you could lend a hand, after all why help someone who has a history of playing pin the knife on the party member.

[Kristoss]

I had a similar experience once.

We had just started the campaign I was playing an evil barbarian my friend was playing a necromancer and my girlfriend was playing some sort of half-orc warrior.
The game began and characters were interacting. Anyway her character started to irritate the rest of the party. The result of said interaction was the necromancer killed her character and my character decided to eat the corpse.

She didn't talk to me for a week.

TempusCCK your probably better of having your character forget about it, even if that is meta gaming to a certain degree.

[FoE]

So for looting her friend's corpse, she stabbed you and knocked you out, but healed you right after? Sounds like you're even. Leave it alone. What, are you drunk?

[Rutee]

The problem should be obvious. You have pirates, but not ninjas. You've got to have both to have a decent inter-party fun-fest of double crossing and betrayal.

...That doesn't work either. Betrayal requires there to have once been trust, and ninjas and pirates never trust each other.

[dyslexicfaser]

So for looting her friend's corpse, she stabbed you and knocked you out, but healed you right after? Sounds like you're even. Leave it alone. What, are you drunk?

Seriously. Sure, she almost killed you, but you got better! Why are you holding a grudge?

[ShadowSiege]

I'm running a decidedly "not good" swashbuckling campaign populated by brigands, power-mad wizards, pirates, assassins, and villains of all types. I started with the assumption that they were going to be at each others throats, and said all such things would be fine. So far, they haven't so much as stolen from each other. It's irritating...

From my experience, evil parties will stay tight knit unless a character is particularly annoying. Hasn't ever gotten to the point where any one of them could say "You've outlived your usefulness," and killed them in their sleep, though there was one party where the cleric was so obnoxious we would have killed him the next session, if the campaign hadn't randomly fallen apart. Then again, it was a railroad plot so it wasn't much fun anyway. We lived only at the whim of greater beings.

[FoE]

Seriously. Sure, she almost killed you, but you got better! Why are you holding a grudge?

The operative phrase there is "you got better." He's not dead, he didn't lose any valuable resources, and she healed him afterwards. All she did was teach him a lesson for acting like a jerk, and if he was smart, he would take the lesson to heart. You think he should lose his girlfriend for the sake of some petty vengeance?

@V: The Snark has it right. Try to be funny about it.

[The_Snark]

I don't have specific ideas, but as more general advice, I'll echo what some people have said... If you decide to retaliate, do it in a way that is humiliating for the character, but amusing for the players. Getting her character very drunk and proceeding to make a fool of the assassin would work, if she's playing along. If she's not playing along, your character is showing that he's holding a grudge IC, which satisfies realism, and it probably means that she doesn't want her character to be humiliated or attacked, which means attempting any further revenge wouldn't be a terribly good idea.

Your Dominate idea, I think, is not terribly funny. It might have been reasonable to do it right at the time (hard to hold anything when you've just stabbed someone), but now it might come across as if you resented this out-of-character.

[TempusCCK]

I must apologize, for the sake of saving myself some time I did leave out some very important facts. One of them being that while my girlfriend likes the assassin, I'm not all that sure that she was really on our side, this campaign was full of all kinds of double agents and the like, anyone who has played this understands that it can get kind of complex.

She stabbed my character for looting the other characters body because there was a cleric we had recently saved nearby, and my girlfriend, in her ignorance, thought that I should have had the cleric cast a resurrect on her "friend" in the middle of a battle, before the guy bolted. After I explained to her that "Resurrect" is a spell that requires 5000 Gold worth of diamonds that in all likelyhood the Priest did not have... she got very very quiet.

Honestly, I believe for all intents and purposes, the Domination in the way I intend to use it would be better than what all of you are suggesting. She can become extremely childish and self-centered during games and if she realized that I was openly playing constant pranks on her, it might become more of an issue, whereas that particular wording of the domination would only prevent her from getting upset and trying to knife me again.

That being said, however, it would be possible to arrange something with my DM that would be my revenge in a less subtle way, but even if she constantly smelled something funny, I doubt it would prevent her from getting angry at me for looking out for my characters best interest and taking a swing at me again, which is what I'm trying to prevent.

I kind of like the Suggestion of feeling bad for stabbing me everytime she draws not just the particular dagger, but any dagger.

[Varnithis]

My advice to you is to forget the whole thing and let it slide.

I'm getting red flags all over the place on this one.

[Dervag]

On the one hand, I can't blame your character for trying to take some security precautions to protect his life from Ms. Dolly Dagger.

On the other hand, I strongly suggest that you as a player should be trying to find solutions to in-game problems that do not lead to stupid vendettas between characters, especially characters played by people who would very much like to get along fine outside the game.

[Fuzzy_Juan]

honestly it all depends on her and how the game is going...if characters do crap to each other and everyone is 'ok' with it, or it is good natured...things go pretty well...the instant it becomes something damaging or humiliating...things get problematic.

There were plenty of times I decided that I would not retaliate against the party for slights and injuries because it would be bad for the party...but then things usualy then got me killed...their excuse was 'my character would do it'...eventually I played an evil assasin and when they gave me a reason I murdered them all...refreshing, but of course...not good for the party...new campaign...

main rule from then on was...play nice, or the party will self wipe. Happens all the time.