D&D: THAT person in the group

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Lupus80

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Jan 9, 2011
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As a GM I have always been pretty accomidating but the one problem-player that will always raise my ire will be a guy (who I shall refer to as "Rob") who outright cheated all the time with his character.

Rob was the worst kind of munschkin no matter what game we were playing. We mostly played the old World of Darkness back in the day, with pretty loose settings where the characters could play vampires, werewolves, etc- whatever they wanted.

One time we were making beginning characters for Werewolf: The Apocaylpse. We were all using the character creation guidelines from the book. For those not in the know the characters were leveled by "ranks" in the game, 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. Your rank determined what kind of Gifts (or magical/supernatural powers) you got. Obviously Rank 1 characters could only get Rank 1 Gifts (3 of them at character creation). So we all just spent an hour or so making our Rank 1 characters. We had just all finished when I looked over at Rob's sheet (he was beside me). Somehow, someway, Rob's character was Rank 5 and had over 20 Gifts of various Ranks. The lowest attributes and skills were 4 (they are rated 1 to 5, 2 being average, and you are lucky to have one or two at 4 with a beginning character). I immediately called him out and demanded to know what the hell he was doing. Rob did the stupidest thing: He claimed ignorance. He actually claimed he "had no idea" and thought "everything was legit." I called foul, saying that he obviously knew what he was doing since he planned out his Gifts and everything. Then things got even more stupid: Rob then argued that we should let him play the character as is because it would be a waste of time for him to make another character. Needless to say we left him sulking in the corner while we played our game.

But even when Rob was playing a balanced character he managed to be a a-hole. He would often try to kill other player characters "by accident" (throwing grenade weapons in their midst while they were in melee with an enemy) or go out of his way to screw over the other characters so he could "win."

The last game we played with Rob was a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game I GM'd. I made sure his character was balanced. The characters were a werewolf pack claiming some territory and making a name for themselves, pretty simple. The pack decided to clean up some crime in a neighborhood by taking down a drug dealers den. They came up with a good plan and executed it quite nicely, it was a good and simple challange for the players to flex their muscles. When all the drug dealers were dealt with (the werewolves subdued them all and tied them up, planning to call the police afterwards), they found 2 briefcases and a duffel bag. After discovering that one of the briefcases was full of money Rob decided that, since all the characters saw what the briefcase had in it and he couldn't sneak away, he held them up with a pistol loaded with silver bullets. To understand the context: this is a werewolf pack, they have sworn to each other like a close family, they have a spirit totem that makes their unity mystically important- and here was a werewolf betraying all of that and threatening to kill them over money and drugs. I let slip that the duffel bag was full of drugs, which the characters earlier found out was laced with Wyrm toxins (the Wyrm was the big bad of W:TA). Rob just shrugged and said his character would sell the drugs and make more money. So now he was not only betraying his pack he was pretty much in leage with the werewolves sworn enemy. Anyway I didn't make this easy for Rob. He tried to explain how his character holds the other characters at bay with his pistol while he simply scoops up the two briefcases and duffel bag. When I asked him how he would do that he was confused "What do you mean? I just pick them up with my free hand." I pointed out that it would be pretty tricky to pick up two briefcases and a duffel bag with only one hand, while keeping a pistol aimed, so I demanded a roll (with penalties). Rob shrugged, thinking he was awesome and nothing could go wrong. He failed, and ended up with his four ex-pack mates beating the crap out of him, stripping him nude, then using thier supernatural strength to bend metal chair legs around his body to tie him up. They then left him in the locked basement of the house. I was surprised they didn't just kill him, but one player commented they didn't want to stoop to his level.

Already long story short: Rob's character woke up while the police arrived at the house, turned into werewolf form and went on a rampage. Keeping to his idiotic MO he strolled down the public street as a blood and gore encrusted werewolf where he encountered a police firing line that, with the overwhelming firepower, blew away his character to kingdom come.

I never heard the end of it from Rob (we went to the same high school), but that was the last time we played with him (or even socialized). He tried to come back into the group but I vetoed it (I was the best GM in the group and had the majority rule).

So far Rob has been the only player I refused to game with, which is pretty impressive for 15 plus years on pen and paper gaming.
 

Revnak_v1legacy

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Mar 28, 2010
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Jitters Caffeine said:
Revnak said:
Jitters Caffeine said:
Oh boy, don't get me started on the "THAT guy" we had in your group. He had some kind of pathological fear of making a reasonable character. The first one he wanted to make was a simple order, he wanted to make an assassin. Easy right? APPARENTLY NOT! He ended up making a Rogue/Scout/Assassin/Master Thrower/Swordsage. Our DM wasn't doing anything, so I put my foot down and said no, he had to make something that made sense. So that ended up with making a Raptoran Scout/Master Thrower/Stormtalon. Again, I said no to this because being a race with natural flying is bullshit. It's like he just COULDN'T make a character that made logical sense. Eventually, I had to say that if our DM couldn't reel him in on his bullshit and stop him from turning the campaign into his own personal self-insert animoo, then me, my house, my books, and all the other player were walking.

Needless to say, he's sticking with a much more appropriate character now.
I remember this! I was part of that thread!

OT- I am the closest thing my group has to that guy, but not much of one at all in the end. I just can tell when a build will be completely boring.
Heh, yeah my ass is everywhere. I believe I remember your avatar in there. Luckily we were able to reign in our "problem" before anyone did anything TOO crazy.

I won't lie and say I haven't been accused of some Class-A Munchkineering, but I've always kept my fellow players in mind. We all want to have fun, someone running around like an asshole in every fight isn't fun.
Precisely. What really matters is that nobody is hogging the limelight too much. I think it's important to remember to involve everyone and make sure nobody winds up excluded. Some games have balance issues that can make this difficult, but a good DM can work around that. What can never be fixed is a broken player.
 

karloss01

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We had a crazy druid player who rode a giant gorilla who he had an "intimate" relationship and also like other animals to join in on the fun, most of the time it was forced. Right at the beginning of the campaign he decided to rape the pack mule which died of shock and pissed off the player who spent his gold on it.

He died by my character?s hand who was being mind controlled by a vampire, cleaved both him and his ape with a single swing of my greatsword.
 

Tazzy da Devil

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In the one game I played, me and one of the other players had a competition to see who could preform the craziest kill. The results were entertaining. I killed a goblin with a frozen chicken, and he killed another one by crushing it with a door. I think we were both that guy.
 

Battleaxx90

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There was this one guy in our group, his character was called Eli Tapioca. A gnomish bard who would've been the next Beklar Bitterleaf if he wasn't so hillariously bad at it. Don't get me wrong, he knew how to cause trouble, it's just that our DM is very good at making his actions come back and bite him on the ass. I lost count how many times he got mugged, or missed out on loot due to his Chaotic Stupid ways.

Eventually, the DM imposed a handicap on him. After our first "mission" (read: community service after we burned half the city down, long story) he was forced to wear this collar around his neck, with two long chains attatched to it. Anybody holding these chains could veto any action he did in order to keep him in line. Ah, good times.

Eventually, though, Eli ended up getting removed from the game (we had to restart the whole campaign, don't ask) and has since been replaced by a human Monk whose name escapes me. He still counts as THAT person in the group, but in a Chaotic Good kind of way, instead of his old Chaotic Stupid way. After all, that collar was HELL for him, he didn't want to face that kind of fate again.
 

Don Savik

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I'm not going to post a long story that nobody is going to read, I'm just going to say something from what I believe.

The game is about having fun conversing with a group of friends. The universe of DnD is filled with wacky and crazy nonsense and magics.

So what I'm saying is that I encourage being out of the ordinary for pen and paper rpgs.
 

Leadfinger

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Apr 21, 2010
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It was in Call of Cthulhu Masks of Nyarlathotep. We enter a room and there's this big, creepy throne in the middle of the room. So our "special player" says "I go over and sit on the throne." My first thought was, "He didn't just say he was going to sit on the throne, did he?" My second thought was, "Maybe if we pretend nothing happened the DM won't have heard what he said." I saw the other other players kind of tunelessly whistling and looking down at the floor. But the DM had heard. "So, you sit on the throne!" As Narly took over the player character's gibbering body, I actually made the first san roll. Even successfully making the roll, I still lost 25 san. Nobody else was left standing to make the second roll.
 

pffh

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ArmorKingBaneGief said:
Kyrian007 said:
I was part of a whole group that was like that. Our GM had us making characters for a new Greyhawk game he was starting up. We had the idea that we would be a whole party of Clerics, all 7 of us, but all of different faiths. As the creation was winding down, the GM asked the player to his left what his character's name was. He replied (after giving it like 2 seconds of thought) "Luke." The next guy he asked answered almost immediately "Bo." And so it went... from "Daisy" to "Cooter" to "Roscoe" to "Enis" to my character "Uncle Jessie." It wound up being fairly epic though.
I -really- want to see what a party of Clerics would be like. How did you guys handle encounters?
Assuming 3.5 they probably handled encounters pretty bloody brutally considering that the cleric is one of the most powerful classes in 3.5.

OT: Well powerwise I would be that guy since I like optimizing but I'm usually the DM so that curbs it a little bit. But what I do have in my group is a player that makes the weirdest choices and creates characters that are so incredibly weak that I often have a problem balancing encounters so they are a challenge for the rest of the group while not slaughtering him.

Example build would be a a rogue/swashbuckler focusing on charisma that spent two of his feats on glowing in the dark (and doing 1d4 damage to undead) and using a single rapier. This is without a way to move and get full attack reliably and almost never getting a sneak attack off. In a party with a druid, sorcerer and a swordsage.
 

Your once and future Fanboy

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Feb 11, 2009
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"That guy" can be controlled as a player, but you haven't seen anything before "that guy" tries his luck in the DM chair.
I won't go into details, but i'll say that it was D&D 3.5, and he had gotten his hands on a couple of PDF's with a full list over 3.5's playable races, core and prestigue classs, class options and to our dread; a full list of templates.
BTW, we saw some homebrew'd shit as well on our short, short lived campaign.
It lasted just 2-3 hours before we gave up.
 

Wintermoot

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Aug 20, 2009
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I never played D&D but I do know the dungeon master has complete control over the story.
can,t you throw a lightning bolt at his character?
 

beniki

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Well... my guild of friends is based on a semi-religious following of a demonic rabbit from Monty Python's Holy Grail. Our characters all have ridiculous, tongue in cheek back stories, and most of them are related to each other... even across different games.

So I guess we're all those guys :)

We didn't bat an eyelid at someone wanting to make a half-tree, half moose were-cow. It was tricky to build rules around, but it worked well in the end, with some interesting stuff happening down in the Underdark. Our bard and cleric kept having to cast light so he wouldn't starve to death, and once a month we all got free milk!

We even crafted a Bunny Bible for our guild, reputedly first inscribed in blood on leaves of cabbage. Some pages are missing, with teeth marks on others showing that they went to a greater cause.

We're silly gamers, but that's just what we like to role play... Mad Hatters and March Hares all. Particularly March Hares.

Cute but psycho- it evens out.
 

malestrithe

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I was that guy. The DM allowed me to play a Minotaur back in the AD&D days, but I was limited to warrior types. I chose fighter. Essentially, I was a tank and played as such. Thanks to how the rules were worded back then, the only way you could hurt me was by rolling an 16 or better on a d20. By the time the campaign ended, the DM was pissed off at me. I was doing the Leeroy Jenkins thing and slaughtered legions of enemy combatants and unlike Leeroy, I lived.

The Dm tried to hinder me by exclaiming that Minotaur specific magical items were rarely stocked in the dungeon. That was fine for me because, at the time, magic amulets and rings increased their size to fit the wearer. Also, we were fighting a lot of big things, so I can use their weapons. The rest of the group pissed the DM off by pooling their gold and purchasing me some custom fitted magical full plate armor. I was not the best player, but I was the most useful.
 

zefiris

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Not D&D, but a german roleplaying game called "THe Black Eye".

We had a pretty grey group, with a witch (who usually hide their magic), a druid (pretty frowned upon class), a kind of rogue (the variant in this game is less like an assassin and more like a swashbuckling thief), and a mercenary whose main god was a rather ruthless (but not evil, just not all nice and justice) one.

Fifth player came, and made a character. He insisted on making a particular kind of cleric, a Praios cleric. Praios is the god of justice, truth, and anti-magic. They are usually portrayed as goody-two-shoes-never-lie, and this player took the cake. He tried to imprison both druid and witch for casting spells (not illegal, and in the case of my witch he only knew she had casted a spell because of metagaming), and tried to arrest the rogue for entering the house of a suspect. For a murder case that we couldn't solve otherwise.

Lessay that nobody was happy with him, and the party ended up ditching him one night. The question being: Why did the player even do it? It was just disruptive. It wasn't fun for anyone.
It pretty much ruined the session, and even the GM apologized for approving the character in the first place. Still.
 

getoffmycloud

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Zeckt said:
I miss my lizardman Ranger who rode a donkey with a Skunk familiar!
That has to be the best sounding character ever.

OT I once had a fighter that rode a camel that was secretly a druid that would be my next character which led to my fighter being the most powerful in my party and my camel being the second most powerful i had great fun with that :)
 

Thammuz

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Nov 21, 2010
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A human rogue, aspiring to become an assassin (3.5e, by the way).

He metagames constantly, never roleplays properly and is a general thorn in the side. I started engaging in serious mutilation. Last time he got poisoned with arsenic (because he didn't have knowledge(poisons) or streetwose or anything that could remotely fit) and lost 7 CON (out of 13).

He's currently lying severely crippled in the back of the wagon the players are using to travel. If next session he tires to pull something, i have big fight with a barbarian tribe scheduled, and i have a tribe leader with two axes with his name on them.
 

WindKnight

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Unfortunately, that person for me was my GM, in two games (only one D&D though, so I'll focus on that) where uncomfortably similar things happened.

The game starts, and the entire party is, through a variety of manners, enslaved - this is how we meet up. The other characters are playing males, so their outfits are passed over, but as I'm a female thief, he goes into a little too much detail on how much (or rather how little) my outfit consists of. When the plot leads to us being freed, its specifically noted that one of the other pc's owns me, and thus gets to decide what I do, and what I wear, etc.

After the 2nd game... yeah, I quietly avoided any game he GM'd, and was luckily enough to be in a club where several games ran side by side (at the time at least).
 

Rblade

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one time our DM decided to run a Hackmaster campaign

my buddy made a ambidexterous half giant with 20 str 20 con, dual wielding a greater scimitar and a kopesh. He was called robert ben furo but we stuck with "bob" or the more fitting "the meat grinder". His call sign was eating the hearts of his fallen enemies.

among his feats was 2 shotting a warlord at the very start of a major battle by hitting him with his lance and then carving him open with his battle axe (yes he was dual wielding those for that particular occasion)

yeah...

my cleric grew out to be the herald to his furious anger, healing him where needed (rarely) and dealing with the diplomatic side of things.

Hackmaster is such an unbalanced, yet awesome, game.
 

Danzavare

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Oct 17, 2010
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Overall most our players have a strange mix of races, classes and backgrounds. Mechanically, we don't use anything that isn't accounted for by the D&D character generator. As DM I try to incorporate the strangeness of the characters into the story, trying to establish serious reasons for why seemingly silly things are the way they are. The closest thing we had to 'that' guy was a friend of mine who insisted on introducing out-of-character knowledge to make incorrect assumptions about NPCs and mislead the party. It's a real pain to have half a town absolutely hate the party because someone misread something but touted it as undeniable truth regardless.

Problems like this extended into mechanical problems, where it got to the point where I had to prove to the player that yes, I could in fact read the number on my DM screen for a particular check he didn't agree with. When playing D&D I absolutely HATE being pulled out of the game to argue about numbers that are clearly printed in front of me. Annoyingly, I had to bring him behind the DM screen just to show him he was wrong. Being questioned isn't frustrating, having the player refuse to listen to or accept my answer is, especially in clear-cut cases.

In all fairness everyone is playing better now, including that player (We're still new to D&D) but I can still recall my rage at the time.