The Gaming Den

Anyone got story of a session being ruined because of someone's character, not necessarily the player? I know these two things are related, but I was looking something for more someone making an armored troll with a minigun in Shadowrun or someone making a character that's way too weak for a combat-oriented RPG.

We narrowly averted this situation the other day. We were going to play in a setting that's pretty grim and hopeless but our heroes were going to try to bring some light back to the world. Everyone was lawful good except for one character, who wanted to own slaves--which was not only legal but encouraged in this setting. The problems created by this should be obvious.

Well, it hasn't wrecked the game yet, but...

In my current game, I have a Sun Elf that despises the drow. This enmity is part of the character's background and there was no special reason to suspect that drow would be involved in the game. Sure enough, we have had a few weeks on drow and their mindflayer overlords and this character constantly acquires the drow items found (gemmed gaming dice, idols of Lloth, magical trinkets, potions bearing the spider symbol and the like) and destroys them the moment they are found. The rest of the group is far more pragmatic about using drow goods for their own ends.

The party has almost come to blows over it a few times and it is a constant source of strife in the sessions, especially since the party is a bit poor for their level and needs all the help they can get.

The outright disurptive player, like a guy making an armored minigun troll in a Shadowrun game where everyone else tries to be stealthy, really needs to be treated as a player problem not a character problem. The player really has to make some effort to fit in with the rest of the group and it's player dickery not to. If everyone else is stealth based and the missions are stealth based, then your character shouldn't be making noise equivalent to a NASA launch.

The second guy is simply someone who is out of balance with everyone else, but not necessarily a problem concept. Either he's too effective, or not effective enough. In general, this is best handled through rules changes. Someone who takes weaker choices should have those choices improved and someone who takes more powerful ones should get nerfed down somewhat. I usually keep the changes fairly gradual unless the power differential is huge. In some cases with underpowered characters, it's just a case of the guy choosing too many useless abilities. If someone burns feats on skill focus (Basketweaving) or decides to go pure cleric/wizard instead of mystic thuerge, there really isn't anything you can do for them except suggest a better build.

That being said, I don't have a problem with some degree of mixed PC motives, like the situation Lich-Loved had with his PC destroying drow items. That's actually fine and to some degree encouraged. While you shouldn't make a character deliberately to sabotage the other PCs, your character should act according to his own principles which may sometimes mean not always doing the smartest thing. That's just generally good roleplaying, unless the player did it specifically to annoy.

I actually like some party dissension among the characters, because real groups do have disagreements over how to handle things. The "we are one big happy family" approach to PC parties has always annoyed me.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:If everyone else is stealth based and the missions are stealth based, then your character shouldn't be making noise equivalent to a NASA launch.

Unless they're a diversion.

There was a game where we had a Druid player that refused to play a Druid competently. He loved Firetrap and his Owl Animal Companion and did not Wild Shape.

Some of us got annoyed that fights would be much easier if he would actually do something useful.

There was another game where I played a Necromancer with a Death Knight cohort and I killed half of the party and the other half ran away (I was being disruptive then).

I've wrecked a few sessions. One of my groups no longer lets me play prep casters due to my penchant for gishes that break the RNG.

ubernoob wrote:I've wrecked a few sessions. One of my groups no longer lets me play prep casters due to my penchant for gishes that break the RNG.

That's understandable. I can't see what the fun is in playing a character who has already won other than to brag that I can. If that was you're penchant I probably asked you to play something different as well or at least to re tool so you were putting everyone else to shame.

My trouble player was a guy who always played "concept" characters rather than anything that was actually any good. It would have been ok if I thought his concepts were actually interesting but they always fell into the quixotic (=annoying) and as DM I never actually wanted to see him do cool things because...well he wasn't cool to begin with. The kind of guy who thought a serious of strange quirks meant he was "role" playing

more of a player problem than a character problem, but i had a friend who tended to make very powerful characters whose ability to kill things was entirely based on house rules he came up with....that he didnt bother to share with me or the dm. he also just completely cheated most of the time, like how he usually would just flip his dice when the dm wasnt looking so he would always get a hit or occasionally a crit that he didnt deserve.

In Champions, a player wanted to bring out a character who had the power to send pacifist thoughts into people to make them stop fighting. Oh my goodness, most boring character ever. Superillain shows up, Peacemaker's power either works or it doesn't. If it works, the game is over for everyone else. If it doesn't, the game is over for him. Fucking retarded.

-Username17

I have a friend who plays Champions for the personal lulz and fuck everyone else's enjoyment. We played an Avatar-style game, and his character was a Firebender with 'broken' kung fu, which is a classic of the martial arts genre and seemed promising. The build he put together was specifically useless in a fight because any use of his martial arts KO'd him, but he could, once in his life, explode himself and kill everyone around him.

I built him a more moderate version of the character, who could contribute moderately most of the time, occasionally nova, and wouldn't TPK us, but he wouldn't even look at it.

What gets me is that he's not a bad guy, he just fails to grasp that other people don't find his style hilarious. And because he's not a bad guy, the usual Champions GM refuses to exclude him from games.

In the end, though, almost all character problems are in fact player problems. Who made the character? The player. Who decided the character was going to not fit in with the group/agenda/setting? The player.

well there's the time my elf barbarian wound up weilding the party cleric as a thrown weapon... but that didn't ruin the game, the cleric survived and everyone thought it was hilarious.

Then there's the time I abused Entice Gift to get a couple free magic items.. (my group tends to use "Ye Olde Magic Item Shoppe")
But that didn't really ruin things either... just got us a free wand of identify...

on the other hand... let's see...
Athatch Monk with Vow of Poverty... that was fucking abusive... (not mine)
Athatch Barbarian (possibly had VoP)... also abusive... (also not mine, same player though)
then there was the point where the Athatch became king of a human kingdom through hereditary rite and a lucky bluff check on his partner's part (though the dm [me], was an idiot and used crit success rules for a skill check and no common sense... though it was funny at the time...)

just off the top of my head.

edit: Just realized that last one was a stupid dm ruining things, not a character... and that the the "Entice gift" was a player...

I played a Vow of Nonviolence/Peace monk in Red Hand of Doom. Was fairly invulnerable thanks to the calm emotions aura and fortitude save to have weapons shatter when attacked. Right up until the dire boars, and the wyvern-riding barbarian with the high fort save. Not sure it was wrecking the game tho.

ckafrica wrote:

ubernoob wrote:I've wrecked a few sessions. One of my groups no longer lets me play prep casters due to my penchant for gishes that break the RNG.

That's understandable. I can't see what the fun is in playing a character who has already won other than to brag that I can. If that was you're penchant I probably asked you to play something different as well or at least to re tool so you were putting everyone else to shame.

That's more or less what happened. There was one player that thought fighters are awesome and didn't believe me... I rolled up an incantagish real quick. Two sessions later (when the fighter's player walked away from the table due to being overshadowed so much) we all mutually agreed that the character was going to be retired and that I'd stop bringing prep casters to the table.

The sorcerer's player actually thought the whole thing was hilarious (since I was tanking better than the fighter player, so he didn't have to worry about pulling agro from tossing out flesh to stone every round). The DM thought it was hilarious right up until I killed the Tarrasque alone. Without taking a single point of damage. In melee. At level 13.

Yeah, I don't play prep casters with those guys anymore. Just the whole "don't be a dick" thing.

I had a holy word cleric that was much more powerful than I expected. He pretty much began each fight by making all enemies blind and deaf, which meant it was pretty much over.

My demolitions dwarf could have easily broken my shadowrun game, but my group liked the character so we made the change from a group of people that conducts industrial espionage by sneaking into buildings, stealing files, and abducting people to a group of people that conducts corporate espionage by blowing buildings up.

We have a fighter who constantly ends up being ignored by stuff because she can't be hurt and also apparently can't hit anything, even though she normally has the best to-hit of anyone.

But feels horrible when my rogue boxes something up against her and kills it.

*sigh*

At least the monk is all about failure.

-Crissa

There was a planescape campaign in which I playing an awakened squid who though he was a spawn of limbo and acted like one but was still intelligent enough to enslave a genie in a group where slavers and slavery was detested. Knowing this, I forced the genie to be my friend and take on rituals and rites to remove useless feats and such that it had to get better metamagic feats. I was a douche. The group suspected but had no way of proving it in game.

I may have damaged a game with a slightly bent reading of the rules involving Jack of All Trades (alternate bard ability from PHB2) and a feat that allowed you to count all skills at 0.5 Ranks. Essentially, the dude had every skill at ranks equaling half his level. He could out Iaijutsu most samurai without ever having learned the skill. Now, this alone would be not a source of problems, but combined with his hideous Use Magic Device skill, over 1000 scrolls, and simple bardic ingenuity, he essentially solved most problems before they even became problems.

I eventually changed him into a Factotum, and the campaign died a while after. +24 to trips, ftw.

FrankTrollman wrote:In Champions, a player wanted to bring out a character who had the power to send pacifist thoughts into people to make them stop fighting. Oh my goodness, most boring character ever. Superillain shows up, Peacemaker's power either works or it doesn't. If it works, the game is over for everyone else. If it doesn't, the game is over for him. Fucking retarded.

-Username17

Built as a straight-up mind control and/or transform, that character is stupidly all-or-nothing.

Built as an area suppression field which reduces attack powers and/or a change environment that gives offensive penalties it's workable. Add some telepathy and a couple presence skills to let the character understand motivations and try to talk villains into reforming, the character could actually be tactically interesting and a way to highlight villains' psych lims.

In the end, though, almost all character problems are in fact player problems. Who made the character? The player. Who decided the character was going to not fit in with the group/agenda/setting? The player.

Yes, but, the character problem may not be the same as the player problem.

Yes, we've all had the socially maladjusted player who played the character whose only goal was to be disruptive - and in that case the problem is that this guy is just starved for attention, and the solution is to just not let him in your game in the first place.

But I've also seen

• The new player who didn't understand the system well enough to build an effective character (hello fighters as hazing ritual);
• The guy who wanted to play a carbon-copy of <Character> from <popular work of fiction> without understanding the such character was inappropriate to the setting and/or would not be as effective in a group RPG as it was when it was the main focus of a work of scripted fiction;
• The DM's girlfriend who doesn't know how to use the uber-character she got handed as she's really just there to hang out with the DM, yet her character has abilities essential to making it through several of the challenges in the game.
• The guy whose character this session's adventure hinged on have to bail due to changes in work schedule or other real-life issues.

And in these cases, the problem is more of a matter of ignorance and miscommunication than outright dickery.

Deesix wrote:I may have damaged a game with a slightly bent reading of the rules involving Jack of All Trades (alternate bard ability from PHB2) and a feat that allowed you to count all skills at 0.5 Ranks. Essentially, the dude had every skill at ranks equaling half his level. He could out Iaijutsu most samurai without ever having learned the skill. Now, this alone would be not a source of problems, but combined with his hideous Use Magic Device skill, over 1000 scrolls, and simple bardic ingenuity, he essentially solved most problems before they even became problems.

I eventually changed him into a Factotum, and the campaign died a while after. +24 to trips, ftw.

That makes... no sense at all.

That feat just lets you make rolls in skills as if you had training. It isn't actually giving you any skill ranks; and a 0.5 rank was never actually added, ever, to your dice rolls.

Blantant misreading rules text will always fuck up a game.

Well, I think he means the alternate bard class feature from PHB 2, like he said. It's called "Bardic Knack", and it works differently than the feat "Jack of All Trades". Close, but different.

You get 1/2 your bard level (rounded up) on any skill, even if untrained, and you can do the skill. But you can't take 10 on unranked skills, since you need actual ranks to do so.

Josh_Kablack wrote: And in these cases, the problem is more of a matter of ignorance and miscommunication than outright dickery.

Yeah, I agree, that is usually what the problem is. Very rarely are you actually friends with people who are just jerks.

One guy at one of my old groups was a bit of a tool, and would always make troublesome characters - to the point that, when a few of us formed a triad and decided to make big lists of the ideal "What we do and don't want in a game" game, one thing written was actually just because of this guy:

"No mutants or traitors or secret chaos cultists or ogryns with eleven toes".

In Geneseed, his first character apparently disappeared or died due to treason before I joined the group. His second one was an ogryn... turned out she had eleven toes and was a chaos worshipper. Yeah, ended up killed in the violent mutant purge of (planet I can't remember the name of). His third one was a squat technologist, one so obsessed with machinery that he made his own cybernetic implants (which led to his wife divorcing him due to tainting his spirit) and... he was always making devices that ended up being more trouble than they were worth. Such as the gun that teleported (via the Warp) ammunition into the enemies. After we all needed to be cleansed of radiation poisoning we banned him from using it. The character ended up on a very tight leash, as both Inquisitors in the party (and the Commissar, AND the psykic assassin) considered him to be on very thin ice indeed.

Basically all his characters in any game tended to, to some degree, work against the pa

LL's party: That's coming out of YOUR share.

Problem solved.