Belligerent Character; belligerent player [Archive] - Wizards Community

Belligerent Character; belligerent player [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Nate Jones
05-14-06, 09:58 PM We all have had them, some of us to higher degrees than others, those antagonistic players who seem to seek only to destroy a DM's hard worked campaign. I have had a player in my group who ceaselessly derails adventures with his inappropriate antics, and takes personal slight when anything bad happens to his character. I never enjoy playing the bad guy, and hate to enforce the dire repercussions of unwise or immoral actions. But today I put my foot down. The character had gone too far.

This player character (CN Rogue/Wannabe Assassin), who has, for the most part, been quite belligerent most of the campaign, decided he would take out his frustration and boredom today by unleasing a frenzied berserker within the Temple of Lathander, hoping that the barbarian would kill an annoying, high-nosed high priest. Well, sure as expected, the berserker regained consciousness and flew into a battle frenzy, promptly lopping off the head of the doting cleric. I told the player (Whose character just idly watched on and laughed as this took place), that this was a serious step toward chaotic evil, and, as I run a good campaign, his character would soon become an NPC if he didn't shape up.

This character has a long history threatening death to NPCs who no more than bat an eyelash in his direction. On one occasion, he was thrown in jail after assaulting an innkeeper and two town guards, but was pardoned after a lengthy (And well role-played by his party members) trial. He did not get off completely free however, and was placed under the Mark of Justice spell, set to activate were he to threaten or assault any unarmed citizen within that city's walls. Six sessions later, he verbally attacks an aloof shopkeeper, threatening to murder his spouse and four children. He then produces a knife, and hurls it at the man's head. Zap...the curse takes effect, and the character is reduced to a Charisma of 2.

At this point the player set about to be as antagonistic as possible, until his run-in with the aforementioned cleric (Who, I had hoped, would provide some sort of side quest in order to remove the curse).

My game today, however, concluded with the removal of this character from my game. After side-tracking most of the session with his antics, the group finally tired of the rogue, and set off to do some adventuring. In the meantime, the character headed to the bar, and attempted to reenact that oft-heard DnD bar scene (Roll a die to see if I'm getting drunk...Are there any chicks nearby?). I informed him that there was a portly dwarf female who appeared to desire his company upstairs. He followed, and exclaimed, "I keep drinking until I pass out." I allowed him to do so, and then shifted the action back to the rest of the rather bored party.

When the party returned to the inn, they found the character up in his room, completely naked. The player was outraged, and accuses me of cheating. I just blew it off, and tried to continue with the game. One of my better players set off to track the thief, which conveniently led them to their next plot point. When the party arrived at the other bar, they discovered the female dwarf upstairs alongside their contact man. The party then convinced the man to accompany them down to the main room to talk about business, and hopefully, barter to reacquire the rogue's gear. As soon as they descended, however, the rogue doubled back, lept into the room, and embeded a dagger in the woman's back. She cried out in pain, and pleaded with him to stop. Once again the party came to the rescue, and separated the two. As they were busy attempting to administer healing, the rogue launched another dagger, scoring a critical hit and instantly felling the female. At this point, as civilly as possible, I informed the player that his character's alignment has shifted to CE, and was therefore, now an NPC. The player broke down into a fit of spiteful accusations and hasty justifications for his character's actions. I ended the game soon thereafter, and told everyone it was time to leave.

What’s done is done, and the particular character will no longer be playing. I told the player to bring a new character to the next session. Hopefully, this was simply a character rather than a player incompatibility. In any case, I guess I'm looking for a little feedback. Was I too harsh or unfair? How should an inexperienced DM respond when beginning players try to press the boundaries of acceptable conduct by threatening civilians, attacking non-threatening NPCs and generally anti-social and antagonistic? What would you have done, were you in my place?
Archon151
05-15-06, 01:25 AM Seems like you gave the guy plenty of chances to straighten himself out. As far as im concerned he is glad the character simply wasent killed out of hand. I would seriously look into his next character and make sure to approve it before hand. Players like that tend to make a chain of identicle characters cause thats what they like to play. If he continues to be this way I would give him the big boot.
SoldierOfFortune187
05-15-06, 01:42 AM As stated above, players like this lean very much towards venting in less than constructive ways (for a player party) about however they may be feeling. One CN rogue is replaced by another, who is replaced by an identical twin brother, who is replaced by a distant cousin (did I mention, all CN and with some aspirations to play an evil-restricted PrC?).

Anyways: Yeah, you did the right thing and really shouldn't lose any sleep over it. I would strongly advise you to sit down with the player (should they prove mature enough to do something besides attacking make-believe people), and discuss your (the DM's) views of what it means to be a part of a party, and guidelines to what is and is not in line with certain alignments (I find the Neutral ones to be the most often discussed... gee I wonder why?).
TheChilliGod
05-15-06, 01:50 AM I reckon you did the best possible thing you could have done.

Many people in my gaming circle have this three strike system, where, if you die or do something destructive to game play in-character, your character looses a strike. 3 strikes and your character is either properly dead, or an NPC. We have yet to actually kill off a character as a result of this scheme, but it works fine in our group to keep the odd out-of-control players in control somewhat.
I don't use this method myself; I prefer a stricter approach in that, if I am really, absolutely fuming about what your character does, he goes Arrow-thru-neck. Note that it takes a lot of work to make me that fuming, but at least the... assurance seems to be working (with the worst thing that's happened in most recent games being a shatter'd ale mug or two)

In either case, you gave the rogue three, "innocent slaughters," and the character apparently, really, absolutely fired you up. And you did the right thing to NPC the character. They tend to make for absolutely wonderful BBEG's or BBEG assistants, as a future note (so long as you ask for permission using the character as such, or have made this clear beforehand).
DracoPhoenix
05-15-06, 07:55 AM Hmm, lets see, you gave him 50ft rope, hemp. Unwound it foot by foot, while building a gallows in plain sight.

And he has the cheek to act the injured party dispute the fairly clear warnings you gave him...?!

No you gave him every oppertunity to change his character style to something appropriate for the campaign. Though given his outburst once final judgement was passed, expect the next character to be blatently CE, and viloent to boot.

For your next trick, leave him a magic +2 desireable item. cursed, with change alignement LG. Penalty for breeching it: 2D6 damage per attempt. (harsh, but lets say the gods track re-incarination and stack the karmic decks)
Ralphius_Maximus
05-15-06, 08:37 AM I say you did the right thing. I only wish more GM's were inclined to enforce alignment like that. And as has been mentioned, he can now be a useful NPC. A CE rogue/assassin with a grudge against the party for abandoning/exiling him? Brilliant! And they did it all themselves. Why not have him stalk them for the remainder of the campaign?
Jarrad
05-15-06, 08:44 AM I'd say that you handled it admirably, and so did the rest of your group from the sounds of things. You followed the rules, gave him fair warning, let his character do what he wanted to do and gave a reasonable account of the repercussions. Well done you.

Give the guy a chance though; let him roll up his next character without providing any dire warnings or restrictions, otherwise he'll labour under the impression that you're out to get him and will almost certainly go out of his way to break things again. If the type of character he brings back in is disruptive to your game and spoiling it for you and/or other players, you're well within your rights to restrict his alignment choices or at the least announce that you're not prepared to countenance anybody playing a character headed for an evil-only PrC.

Frankly though, he sounds like he'd make a terrible assassin. Flipping out and killing random NPC's isn't the mark of a sophisticated killer, it's the mark of a puerile nutjob with unresolved self-confidence issues... playing a character with similar traits ;)

If he continues to screw up your sessions: Kick Him Out. You don't need the accusations and the whining if it's causing you to finish sessions early. This guy sounds like he's wasting everyone else's time by screwing up the game and that's not fair to you or to anybody else.
imperialjunkie
05-15-06, 09:36 AM You definitely gave him a lot of chances. Your decision to change his character's alignment to evil was more than warranted. And if you have a pre-stated rule that PCs who become evil become NPCs (helpful rule) then you did nothing wrong. Another sign of your patience with him is allowing the party to split up so drastically. That is tough to DM and can easily become a game-buster.

It does appear that it is not simply a character problem, i.e. the player roleplaying the character well and the problems flowing out of the character type. It looks like the typical 'I want to be evil but I can't, so I'll be CN and then do what I want giving lame excuses for my actions being neutral instead of evil.' I wouldn't put up with that. As someone stated above, chances are the next character this player rolls up will have a 'N' at the end of his alignment that really means 'E'.

I would suggest talking to the player privately about his play style conflicting with the group. You don't have to be a hardass, but you can be honest. If the guy is a friend, then hopefully he'll listen. If he's just a gaming associate, chances are he'll leave and find a group more compatible to his play style.

Good luck.
Nate Jones
05-15-06, 06:50 PM The player and I had a short discussion today about his previous character. I can tell that this player genuinely wants to play and be act as an upstanding team member. As a person however, it seems he is prone to rash decisions, and is a little timid in real life to boot. This was his first character in his first Dungeons and Dragons campaign. I do not mean to point fingers, but I nonetheless found it interesting that he mentioned that is only previous roleplaying experience was World of Warcraft.

The short of the matter is, the player felt like he wasn't getting what he wanted out of the game. I believe the DMG II details a player motivation as the "supercool" factor. This pretty much pegs this particular player. Unfortunately, he lacked enough playing experience to wholly understand the relation between power level and character level. I watched as he became increasingly frustrated as his "super smooth" Dual Dagger Weilding 1st Level rogue continued to abysmally miss with sneak attacks in combat. This frustration only multiplied as he discovered his "doesn't take guff from no one," 8 charisma character was about as effective in social situations as he was in combat.

It was somewhat of a snowball effect. A store keep would give him a dirty look and then proceed to deal with a more charismatic member of the party. The character would take offense and then initiate verbal hostilites with the storekeeper. Things would escalate from their.

After talking with him, I found that he felt almost as if he was forced into this role. I believe you said something along the lines of, "Its almost as if you threw me down in a hole, took away the ladder and then got angry when I kicked the side of wall." I admit now, that I can see where he is coming from. His options as a character were extremely limited. He was poor in combat and people always seemed to give him the gimp in town. Nevertheless, I still feel that those outcomes were ultimately his choice, and it is not responsibility as a DM to allow him to do "whatever he wants." Reflecting back, perhaps I should have cut him a bit more slack, as he was a new player. On the other hand, sometimes the school of hard knocks is the best teacher.

In any case, the two of us discussed what is and is not appropriate behavior in this current campaign. We decided that if his next character (He still hasn't decided what he will be) has a low charisma and a similar outlook, it would be both more fitting in a metagame-group cohesion sense, as well as an intelligent, in-character sense, if he simply kept more to himself during the more mundane social interactions. Sure, that shopkeeper might give him a dirty look, but his character just laughs to himself, knowing full-well how superior a physical specimen he is to the overweight clerk. We also decided that such an attitude would not prevent him from being fresh with important, meaningful NPC's, although I would try to give him a heads up if he starts pushing things too far.

All in all, I feel we came to an adequate compromise, both allowing him to maintain some semblance of "supercoolness" and alleviating a number of headaches for me. From what I can tell, he really doesn't want to cause a lot of problems. He just looses some reasoning ability when a lot of bad things start happening to him in a short period of time. We'll see what happens from here on out, I'll keep a look-out for blatant "evil masquerading as Chaotic Neutral" and keep you posted. Thank you for all of your responses!
DracoPhoenix
05-16-06, 03:38 AM Glad it worked out for you.
Hope your future sessions will be more fun now that you both understand eachothers positions.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Nate Jones 05-14-06, 09:58 PM	We all have had them, some of us to higher degrees than others, those antagonistic players who seem to seek only to destroy a DM's hard worked campaign. I have had a player in my group who ceaselessly derails adventures with his inappropriate antics, and takes personal slight when anything bad happens to his character. I never enjoy playing the bad guy, and hate to enforce the dire repercussions of unwise or immoral actions. But today I put my foot down. The character had gone too far. This player character (CN Rogue/Wannabe Assassin), who has, for the most part, been quite belligerent most of the campaign, decided he would take out his frustration and boredom today by unleasing a frenzied berserker within the Temple of Lathander, hoping that the barbarian would kill an annoying, high-nosed high priest. Well, sure as expected, the berserker regained consciousness and flew into a battle frenzy, promptly lopping off the head of the doting cleric. I told the player (Whose character just idly watched on and laughed as this took place), that this was a serious step toward chaotic evil, and, as I run a good campaign, his character would soon become an NPC if he didn't shape up. This character has a long history threatening death to NPCs who no more than bat an eyelash in his direction. On one occasion, he was thrown in jail after assaulting an innkeeper and two town guards, but was pardoned after a lengthy (And well role-played by his party members) trial. He did not get off completely free however, and was placed under the Mark of Justice spell, set to activate were he to threaten or assault any unarmed citizen within that city's walls. Six sessions later, he verbally attacks an aloof shopkeeper, threatening to murder his spouse and four children. He then produces a knife, and hurls it at the man's head. Zap...the curse takes effect, and the character is reduced to a Charisma of 2. At this point the player set about to be as antagonistic as possible, until his run-in with the aforementioned cleric (Who, I had hoped, would provide some sort of side quest in order to remove the curse). My game today, however, concluded with the removal of this character from my game. After side-tracking most of the session with his antics, the group finally tired of the rogue, and set off to do some adventuring. In the meantime, the character headed to the bar, and attempted to reenact that oft-heard DnD bar scene (Roll a die to see if I'm getting drunk...Are there any chicks nearby?). I informed him that there was a portly dwarf female who appeared to desire his company upstairs. He followed, and exclaimed, "I keep drinking until I pass out." I allowed him to do so, and then shifted the action back to the rest of the rather bored party. When the party returned to the inn, they found the character up in his room, completely naked. The player was outraged, and accuses me of cheating. I just blew it off, and tried to continue with the game. One of my better players set off to track the thief, which conveniently led them to their next plot point. When the party arrived at the other bar, they discovered the female dwarf upstairs alongside their contact man. The party then convinced the man to accompany them down to the main room to talk about business, and hopefully, barter to reacquire the rogue's gear. As soon as they descended, however, the rogue doubled back, lept into the room, and embeded a dagger in the woman's back. She cried out in pain, and pleaded with him to stop. Once again the party came to the rescue, and separated the two. As they were busy attempting to administer healing, the rogue launched another dagger, scoring a critical hit and instantly felling the female. At this point, as civilly as possible, I informed the player that his character's alignment has shifted to CE, and was therefore, now an NPC. The player broke down into a fit of spiteful accusations and hasty justifications for his character's actions. I ended the game soon thereafter, and told everyone it was time to leave. What’s done is done, and the particular character will no longer be playing. I told the player to bring a new character to the next session. Hopefully, this was simply a character rather than a player incompatibility. In any case, I guess I'm looking for a little feedback. Was I too harsh or unfair? How should an inexperienced DM respond when beginning players try to press the boundaries of acceptable conduct by threatening civilians, attacking non-threatening NPCs and generally anti-social and antagonistic? What would you have done, were you in my place?
Archon151 05-15-06, 01:25 AM	Seems like you gave the guy plenty of chances to straighten himself out. As far as im concerned he is glad the character simply wasent killed out of hand. I would seriously look into his next character and make sure to approve it before hand. Players like that tend to make a chain of identicle characters cause thats what they like to play. If he continues to be this way I would give him the big boot.
SoldierOfFortune187 05-15-06, 01:42 AM	As stated above, players like this lean very much towards venting in less than constructive ways (for a player party) about however they may be feeling. One CN rogue is replaced by another, who is replaced by an identical twin brother, who is replaced by a distant cousin (did I mention, all CN and with some aspirations to play an evil-restricted PrC?). Anyways: Yeah, you did the right thing and really shouldn't lose any sleep over it. I would strongly advise you to sit down with the player (should they prove mature enough to do something besides attacking make-believe people), and discuss your (the DM's) views of what it means to be a part of a party, and guidelines to what is and is not in line with certain alignments (I find the Neutral ones to be the most often discussed... gee I wonder why?).
TheChilliGod 05-15-06, 01:50 AM	I reckon you did the best possible thing you could have done. Many people in my gaming circle have this three strike system, where, if you die or do something destructive to game play in-character, your character looses a strike. 3 strikes and your character is either properly dead, or an NPC. We have yet to actually kill off a character as a result of this scheme, but it works fine in our group to keep the odd out-of-control players in control somewhat. I don't use this method myself; I prefer a stricter approach in that, if I am really, absolutely fuming about what your character does, he goes Arrow-thru-neck. Note that it takes a lot of work to make me that fuming, but at least the... assurance seems to be working (with the worst thing that's happened in most recent games being a shatter'd ale mug or two) In either case, you gave the rogue three, "innocent slaughters," and the character apparently, really, absolutely fired you up. And you did the right thing to NPC the character. They tend to make for absolutely wonderful BBEG's or BBEG assistants, as a future note (so long as you ask for permission using the character as such, or have made this clear beforehand).
DracoPhoenix 05-15-06, 07:55 AM	Hmm, lets see, you gave him 50ft rope, hemp. Unwound it foot by foot, while building a gallows in plain sight. And he has the cheek to act the injured party dispute the fairly clear warnings you gave him...?! No you gave him every oppertunity to change his character style to something appropriate for the campaign. Though given his outburst once final judgement was passed, expect the next character to be blatently CE, and viloent to boot. For your next trick, leave him a magic +2 desireable item. cursed, with change alignement LG. Penalty for breeching it: 2D6 damage per attempt. (harsh, but lets say the gods track re-incarination and stack the karmic decks)
Ralphius_Maximus 05-15-06, 08:37 AM	I say you did the right thing. I only wish more GM's were inclined to enforce alignment like that. And as has been mentioned, he can now be a useful NPC. A CE rogue/assassin with a grudge against the party for abandoning/exiling him? Brilliant! And they did it all themselves. Why not have him stalk them for the remainder of the campaign?
Jarrad 05-15-06, 08:44 AM	I'd say that you handled it admirably, and so did the rest of your group from the sounds of things. You followed the rules, gave him fair warning, let his character do what he wanted to do and gave a reasonable account of the repercussions. Well done you. Give the guy a chance though; let him roll up his next character without providing any dire warnings or restrictions, otherwise he'll labour under the impression that you're out to get him and will almost certainly go out of his way to break things again. If the type of character he brings back in is disruptive to your game and spoiling it for you and/or other players, you're well within your rights to restrict his alignment choices or at the least announce that you're not prepared to countenance anybody playing a character headed for an evil-only PrC. Frankly though, he sounds like he'd make a terrible assassin. Flipping out and killing random NPC's isn't the mark of a sophisticated killer, it's the mark of a puerile nutjob with unresolved self-confidence issues... playing a character with similar traits ;) If he continues to screw up your sessions: Kick Him Out. You don't need the accusations and the whining if it's causing you to finish sessions early. This guy sounds like he's wasting everyone else's time by screwing up the game and that's not fair to you or to anybody else.
imperialjunkie 05-15-06, 09:36 AM	You definitely gave him a lot of chances. Your decision to change his character's alignment to evil was more than warranted. And if you have a pre-stated rule that PCs who become evil become NPCs (helpful rule) then you did nothing wrong. Another sign of your patience with him is allowing the party to split up so drastically. That is tough to DM and can easily become a game-buster. It does appear that it is not simply a character problem, i.e. the player roleplaying the character well and the problems flowing out of the character type. It looks like the typical 'I want to be evil but I can't, so I'll be CN and then do what I want giving lame excuses for my actions being neutral instead of evil.' I wouldn't put up with that. As someone stated above, chances are the next character this player rolls up will have a 'N' at the end of his alignment that really means 'E'. I would suggest talking to the player privately about his play style conflicting with the group. You don't have to be a hardass, but you can be honest. If the guy is a friend, then hopefully he'll listen. If he's just a gaming associate, chances are he'll leave and find a group more compatible to his play style. Good luck.
Nate Jones 05-15-06, 06:50 PM	The player and I had a short discussion today about his previous character. I can tell that this player genuinely wants to play and be act as an upstanding team member. As a person however, it seems he is prone to rash decisions, and is a little timid in real life to boot. This was his first character in his first Dungeons and Dragons campaign. I do not mean to point fingers, but I nonetheless found it interesting that he mentioned that is only previous roleplaying experience was World of Warcraft. The short of the matter is, the player felt like he wasn't getting what he wanted out of the game. I believe the DMG II details a player motivation as the "supercool" factor. This pretty much pegs this particular player. Unfortunately, he lacked enough playing experience to wholly understand the relation between power level and character level. I watched as he became increasingly frustrated as his "super smooth" Dual Dagger Weilding 1st Level rogue continued to abysmally miss with sneak attacks in combat. This frustration only multiplied as he discovered his "doesn't take guff from no one," 8 charisma character was about as effective in social situations as he was in combat. It was somewhat of a snowball effect. A store keep would give him a dirty look and then proceed to deal with a more charismatic member of the party. The character would take offense and then initiate verbal hostilites with the storekeeper. Things would escalate from their. After talking with him, I found that he felt almost as if he was forced into this role. I believe you said something along the lines of, "Its almost as if you threw me down in a hole, took away the ladder and then got angry when I kicked the side of wall." I admit now, that I can see where he is coming from. His options as a character were extremely limited. He was poor in combat and people always seemed to give him the gimp in town. Nevertheless, I still feel that those outcomes were ultimately his choice, and it is not responsibility as a DM to allow him to do "whatever he wants." Reflecting back, perhaps I should have cut him a bit more slack, as he was a new player. On the other hand, sometimes the school of hard knocks is the best teacher. In any case, the two of us discussed what is and is not appropriate behavior in this current campaign. We decided that if his next character (He still hasn't decided what he will be) has a low charisma and a similar outlook, it would be both more fitting in a metagame-group cohesion sense, as well as an intelligent, in-character sense, if he simply kept more to himself during the more mundane social interactions. Sure, that shopkeeper might give him a dirty look, but his character just laughs to himself, knowing full-well how superior a physical specimen he is to the overweight clerk. We also decided that such an attitude would not prevent him from being fresh with important, meaningful NPC's, although I would try to give him a heads up if he starts pushing things too far. All in all, I feel we came to an adequate compromise, both allowing him to maintain some semblance of "supercoolness" and alleviating a number of headaches for me. From what I can tell, he really doesn't want to cause a lot of problems. He just looses some reasoning ability when a lot of bad things start happening to him in a short period of time. We'll see what happens from here on out, I'll keep a look-out for blatant "evil masquerading as Chaotic Neutral" and keep you posted. Thank you for all of your responses!
DracoPhoenix 05-16-06, 03:38 AM	Glad it worked out for you. Hope your future sessions will be more fun now that you both understand eachothers positions.