D&D: THAT person in the group

[Zen Toombs]

Honestly, those people are the often part of what makes the game fun. Mind you, not the people who cause problems with it or who are being purposefully obstinate/trying to ruin the fun of others, but it tends to be the guys who are willing to think outside the box that make funny and cool stories and characters.

I was the kind of person who tried to come up with odd solutions to RP problems.

Spoiler

Example: We were fighting a young ice dragon in a cave made of ice. I asked if there were icicles on the ceiling? When DM said yes, I used Ice Plane to levitate myself and our warrior up to the largest one. He cut off the icicle, I used Mana Ray to turn it into a death laser. Two action points, and a combined roll of 68 on 4 D20s resulted in a REALLY fucked up dragon. We burned its wing off, and left it with less than 6 HP.

Example two: We were fighting kobolds, and I asked their weight. When DM asked me why, I said it was important. He said 3 lbs. I used Grab Object, lifted a kobold that was a foot away into the air, stuck my sword out, and repeatedly moved him back and forth on the sword, since I was allowed to move him 10 feet. BEST D&D MOMENT EVER.

Very interesting stories, but I am confused by your definition of Roleplaying problems.

 

[Hemlet]

I have 2 moments like that:

Spoiler: Roleplaying Shenanigans

I've been that guy before. I don't even mean to, it just kinda happens sometimes. There was one game where I was playing the rogue (as usual) and was being introduced to the party. The group barbarian was currently in a fistfight with a caravan guard to negotiate a free ride (not sure how that came about) and as part of the rules of the fistfight, the barbarian had to take off all his magic gear. Me, playing the rogue who was not QUITE yet affiliated with the party, decided that I was going to steal the barbarian's magic axe.

You see, the PLAN was that the barb wasn't going to leave town without his best weapon in tow, and as a result the party would eventually hunt me down (it was a small town, it wouldn't have taken long even with a lot of successful hide checks on my part), give me a slap on the wrist, and I'd offer my services as a sneaky bastard in return for not getting my face cleaved in by an angry barbarian.

What HAPPENED was I figured I'd need a proper distraction to ensure the actual guards wouldn't be paying attention to me, and so used my flint and steel to discreetly light a small fire beside a house. The DM made a few rolls, and then the house caught fire. Then another one. And another. Soon about a fourth of the town is in flames, the barbarian has landed a crit while his opponent was distracted by shouts of "fire! Fire!" and accidentally caved his skull in, and the guards have caught me red handed when I made my move for the axe and I'm currently running like hell in the exact opposite direction the DM intended for us to go. The group hears about me from the guard's shouting, and splits up to help catch my dumb ass.

5 minutes into the game, and I completely derailed the campaign. All because I wanted to roleplay my class.

Spoiler: The Tale of Bittles The Gnome

Another "That Guy" moment comes from a friend of mine. Granted, this particular moment was awesome as all hell in the end and created a true hero of legend in the mythos of our D&D campaign. You see, our friend wanted to be a particularly special character, and with the DM's consent and help created a Gnome. To be more specific, a Gnome who had been permanently shrunk to about 5 inches in height thanks to wayward spells. This Gnome's name was Bittles. Bittles was too small and weak to wield anything more threatening than a toothpick, and so opted to be a skill-roll based character instead.

To survive in the campaign, our action figure sized gnome took up permanent residence in our barbarians backpack. For fights, he would contribute by rummaging around the barbarians backpack, rigging up some harebrained fire-and-forget weapon, and popping up and throwing/firing/launching said weapon over the barbarians shoulder. Bittles was not expected to live much longer than the second or third session.

He survived the entire campaign.

At first he was like a novelty, but as he gained experience and levels by virtue of being with the group, his skill roll modifiers started to outpace the penalties associated with trying to build improvised weapons mid-combat. The barbarian had the foresight to realize that she basically had an autoturret living in her backpack at this point, and would spend her excess gold on building materials for Bittles. All while traveling, Bittles would be either be putting the arrogant wizard in his place with a verbal beatdown or whipping up some throwing weapons/improvised weapons in advance. Thanks to his size plus being wholly concealed most of the time, Bittles was also incredibly difficult for enemies to actually hit. The DM would have our foes realize that a barbarian that would be brutalizing whatever was close to her while a tiny gnome popped out of her bag and blew whatever was behind her or even far away from her to smithereens with some terrifying contraption that launched homemade alchemists fire or flaming bolas or nets was kind of a big goddamn threat. Thus, enemies would frequently charge the barbarian in the hopes of taking her down and eliminating the surprisingly effective team the two made.

However, our group had actually grown quite fond of Bittles and his ability to provide minor artillery for the group if the wizard or druid happened to be low on spells or otherwise out of commision, and so we would go out of our way to specifically ensure that the barbarian, and thus Bittles, would make it through fights relatively healthy. Thus, Bittles eventually went on to be the group scientist, eventually outfitting everyone with some kind of James Bond style gadget and outfitting his barbarian "mount" with a shoulder-mounted repeating crossbow that he aimed through a periscope, fired from inside the barbarians backpack, and reloaded with a separate mechanism.

 

[Zantos]

We don't really have one of those guys. We all, including the DM, will joke about and have a laugh, but not in any way that ruins the game. My character is a Goliath tank with a bloody big axe, who makes an axe pun with every killing blow. "Let me axe you a question!" "A most axe-ellent battle!". I do stop if I run out though.

When we play Dark Heresy it's a different matter. Everyone is one of those guys. Still, it works and we have fun.

 

[Pat8u]

sadly Ive never played DnD I have always been meaning to and my friends all want to but for some reason we haven't.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Sorry to interrupt.. but isn't D&D the perfect game for doin' bullshit?
It's so over-the-top stereotypical, who can't resist to go all bonkers in this system.

It's a basically a pen and paper sandbox hack n' slay.

<3 my Kenku warrior.

 

[EHKOS]

I think what you are referring to in tabletop gaming is called a "Malkavian". I play with at least one everytime. Usually me and me.

 

[Quakester]

My old group had two of "THAT" guys for completely different reasons. The first was a rules lawyer who could min/max the hell out of a character but never really did. He usually just found a concept for a character he liked then ran with it to the extreme. His characters did tend to end up a little to a lot overpowered but that was never really his intent. His downfall was that no matter how good his saves, he would always fail a crucial save to resist a compulsion to kill the rest of the group. He would then proceed to slaughter everyone and resist every attempt to break the compulsion. It was never intentional, the dice just hate him. We'd face vampires, they'd try to dominate him and we'd know the 1 was coming.

The other tried to be a rules lawyer but always missed a critical sentence in any description. It turned out that no matter how sure he was he was almost always wrong. For example, back in 2nd edition, the party had to cross a fairly wide river. Two of us had rings of jumping and hopped over to secure a line for the rest of the party to pull themselves across. My buddy, who at the time was a dwarf in full plate, thought he'd simply use his ring of water walking to walk right over. I reminded him (and our DM) that at the time, dwarves had a 10% chance of any magic item that wasn't armor or a weapon would fail. He laughed and said (and I quote), "What are the odds of that happening?". He proceeded to roll a 7%, fell thru the water and we all reminded him that the odds were 10%. We spent the next few minutes scrambling to save him before he drowned.

 

[RJ 17]

I was a pretty ruthless DM back in the days when I played D&D, and yet everyone always wanted to play my games because, challenging and a bit silly at times, they were always the best (probably because I was so good at writing a narrative). "The DM Giveth, the DM Taketh Away" was my motto...I'd have instant/unavoidable death traps that were rather easy to fall into, and yet I also was pretty generous with loot dispersal. Allow me to give an example of both.

Deep within a cave the party I was DMing for once found an ancient hidden temple. The insides of the temple were still mostly intact and bathed in a golden light that seemed to come from nowhere. At the heart of the temple was a Goblet of Immortality. All one had to do was drink from it to gain unending life. And it worked! The first player took a sip from the completely unguarded goblet and was promptly turned undead. The golden light that filled the temple was sanctifying energy that reduced any undead caught within it to a pile of ash. >:3

Now for an example of my generouosity, when defeating a boss or finding a very well hidden treasure, there was a chance that Lil Flubber Blubbs could appear. LFB was a cute baby harp seal covered in white fur and was just absolutely adorable...and utterly indestructible. Any attack levied against it is returned by a magnitude of 5. But LFB is never there to fight, he's quite docile, actually, and loves giving out presents! Go up and rub his belly and roll your dice, see what happens! Oh look! He caughed up a legendary "Sword of Infinite Awesomeness!" Or even better: "Shield of Yo' Momma!" Along with amazing stats that I forgot since it's been so long, it also makes you immune to Yo' Momma insults!

 

[DrgoFx]

How very off-topic of you. I believe he was asking about "That guy" in "DnD" not "WoW".

I interpreted it as a "So this happened to me. Your gaming in RPGs with groups?" But that's just me, I have weird perspectives.

As far as actual DnD...there's not really any story except I did have one friend who would always cast magic missle when he had nothing to attack. Then we'd get surrounded by mobs, and I'd try my best to stay quiet while our one rogue would rage countlessly because at the time, he was not well built. I was a Paladin. A Warforged Paladin. Odd, I know.

 

[BlindTom]

One particular party I know of has this tendency to go a bit overboard with the pacifism thing. If they meet anything that expresses any kind of intelligence then they always stabilise it and/or tie it up before moving on. There was a girl in the party who would regularly pass me notes, Paranoia style, informing me that she slits all their throats and leaves them in compromising positions. The group spent a very long time convinced that they were being followed by some kind of perverse butcher without ever realising that the group mage was just a little unstable. She had to take a few alignment checks too after the party subdued a pair of lawful good monks following a "misunderstanding." (They rescued a villain upon discovering that turning him in was going to lead to his execution)

 

[Blunderboy]

Threads like these make me really want to try pen and paper RPGs. The sense of freedom sounds incredible.

Captcha - Gone Dolally.
How apt.

 

[Fappy]

I had a guy in a Star Wars game I was running who tried to convince me to let him dual-wield double sided lightsabers... *sigh*

 

[pffh]

I had a guy in a Star Wars game I was running who tried to convince me to let him dual-wield double sided lightsabers... *sigh*

Don't see why that wouldn´t be possible. The -8 to hit and the fact that he could still only attack with one end of each saber at a time would make it look badass but be functionally useless.

 

[YawningAngel]

We have seven of us! My entire group is people who screw around, works nicely enough.

 

[Fappy]

I had a guy in a Star Wars game I was running who tried to convince me to let him dual-wield double sided lightsabers... *sigh*

Don't see why that wouldn´t be possible. The -8 to hit and the fact that he could still only attack with one end of each saber at a time would make it look badass but be functionally useless.

He wanted to be able to attack with both sides of each saber in the same round. I told him he'd end up chopping himself in half

 

[Micalas]

I had a guy in a Star Wars game I was running who tried to convince me to let him dual-wield double sided lightsabers... *sigh*

Don't see why that wouldn´t be possible. The -8 to hit and the fact that he could still only attack with one end of each saber at a time would make it look badass but be functionally useless.

He wanted to be able to attack with both sides of each saber in the same round. I told him he'd end up chopping himself in half

Theoretically it would be possible. Vertical slash with one end followed up by an "uppercut-slash" with the back end. It would look retarded and not very elegant as far as swordplay goes but it wouldn't cut him in half.

 

[cjspyres]

Sorry to interrupt.. but isn't D&D the perfect game for doin' bullshit?
It's so over-the-top stereotypical, who can't resist to go all bonkers in this system.

It's a basically a pen and paper sandbox hack n' slay.

<3 my Kenku warrior.

I had a guy in a Star Wars game I was running who tried to convince me to let him dual-wield double sided lightsabers... *sigh*

Don't see why that wouldn´t be possible. The -8 to hit and the fact that he could still only attack with one end of each saber at a time would make it look badass but be functionally useless.

He wanted to be able to attack with both sides of each saber in the same round. I told him he'd end up chopping himself in half

Yeah, If I remember correctly, in order to attack with both sides, you have to take a full-round attack, right? And that's just with ONE. It would be near impossible for him to dual-wield two saber staffs AND effectively fight.

 

[Fappy]

I had a guy in a Star Wars game I was running who tried to convince me to let him dual-wield double sided lightsabers... *sigh*

Don't see why that wouldn´t be possible. The -8 to hit and the fact that he could still only attack with one end of each saber at a time would make it look badass but be functionally useless.

He wanted to be able to attack with both sides of each saber in the same round. I told him he'd end up chopping himself in half

Theoretically it would be possible. Vertical slash with one end followed up by an "uppercut-slash" with the back end. It would look retarded and not very elegant as far as swordplay goes but it wouldn't cut him in half.

How is he supposed to block, parry and feint? Melee in most d20 systems is vaguely described and its assumed these kinds of things are happening. He'd be cut to ribbons trying to parry incoming blows without killing himself. Plus it would be murder on his wrists

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

**snip**

I have had a number of "that guys" over the years. As to the type you describe, well...

There was this guy who, whenever he saw an altar - to any god - he would run up, cut himself, and bleed on it (his character, I mean).

Beautific goddess of healing - he'd bleed on her altar.
Horrific elder god of destruction - he'd bleed on its altar.
Gnomish god of commerce - he'd bleed on his altar.

Oh, and one time he had ongoing fire damage, so he decided to put out the flames with his flask of whiskey. Yeah. I was very tempted to kill him off at that point, but one of the other characters aided him before he could do more than get into negative HP.