I play an eladrin wizard who values strategy and rationality above all else. He used to be good, but upon being told (and explicitly shown by his epic-level employer) that his values would be useless in the coming conflict, as preparation would be pointless for such a massive threat to life on our plane, is now unaligned and a lot more gung-ho. Then he turned evil, thanks to a certain party member completely destroying his mind.
Which brings me to the other player. He's an evil tiefling infernal warlock with a flair for intimidation, brute force, and general disregard for the safety of others. He's about 50/50 with this approach: sometimes is works absurdly well, getting the information we need out of a tight-lipped enemy, etc. Sometimes, however, it leads to some severe nuisances to the party, such as awakening a group of previously undisturbed skeletons.
Now, my character complains a lot about how nobody listens to his plans, which is part of the problem. Most of the time, my character is right, and his plans make things a lot easier (or when they are disregarded, are proven to have been a much better alternative to the kick-down-the-door attitude exuded by most of the rest of the party). This culminated in the following scenario:
We're in a dungeon, trying to find a gem that can apparently restore the lives of several hundred civilians that perished needlessly. My character adopted his gung-ho approach for this task because of how desperately and urgently he wanted this revival to happen. The dungeon had a bunch of pieces of a clay disk that was pretty obviously the key to get the gem at the end. Now, on this day, we were 2 PCs down, which is part of the problem: if either of them were actually there, they might have prevented what happened.
It started around the second floor of the dungeon. We found the ladder down, but the rest of the floor was unexplored. The warlock reasoned that we should explore the rest of the floor to see if we could find another piece or two of the disk first. While out-of-game I knew that this was the best option, my character would have wanted to just go straight down and find the gem. If we couldn't get it without the disk, we'd come back for it. I complain about it, but eventually agree.
On the other side of a floor we find a seemingly endless corridor. A high perception check shows us that the corridor is magically extending as we traverse it, and I raise the point that we should turn back, or at least another one of us should turn back and see what's going on at the beginning of the corridor. (we had already walked for about a half an hour, and my character was getting impatient.)
Now, we had 2 other PCs. A Ranger who is pretty indifferent, as her player is kind of a PnPRPG newb, and is a little shy to the whole role-playing thing. The other PC wasn't really a PC: he was a member of our party being played by the DM because the player was absent. The character in question is pretty stubborn, and the DM played him that way. I couldn't persuade anyone to agree with my conjecture.
Another 30 minutes of walking, and I'm fed up. I complain that I'm usually right about stuff like this, and that we don't have time to waste walking down an endless corridor. I turn around, and sure enough, after some more walking, I find a hidden compartment with a piece of disk in it. Angry at my stubborn companions, I explore the rest of the floor on my own.
So I come to another room: upon a pedestal is another piece of disk. Any other day my character would have checked for traps, but in my haste and desperation I end up at the bottom of a pit, with an anti-magic field fizzling my Feather Fall.
Eventually the party gives up and comes to my location. I had tried with no success to scale the pit. they lower a rope for me, and I climb up.
Here's where things get messed up: the warlock pushes me back into the pit, apparently to punish me for my whining. I fall again, nearly dying from the 2 sets of falling damage. The cleric, baffled by the idiocy, pushes the 'lock into the pit with me, bringing me quite literally to the brink of death.
Down in the pit, where the cleric is letting us remain to cool off for a while, the 'lock actually tries to lecture me about needing an attitude adjustment. My character can't take it anymore: someone who values logic and reason is being shown someone who disregards it almost entirely. To him, this is absolutely absurd, and the mere existence of someone like this is driving him insane. (And this is far from the first instance of this kind of behavior. Earlier, the lock Eldritch Blasted a room of burial mounds in frustration after losing an argument to my character. Earlier rooms such as these contained undead, and a horde of skeletons awakened by his blast proved that this one was no exception.)
My character, in the hours he spent in the pit, in a confined space with his malignant comrade, became very angry at his comrades for allowing such behavior repeatedly. His alignment shifts to evil: if they're going to let the warlock do whatever he pleases without reproach, why should he have to adhere to any standards?
Blah blah blah, we get out of the pit and end up on the last floor of the dungeon. We encounter a pair of drow (a race which happens to be the main enemies in the game, to oversimplify), and my character does the unthinkable: as the only party member who speaks Underc... I mean Deep Speech, I say "My brothers, I have delivered you this prey," and give them the pieces of the disk. One takes me into another room while the party fights the other.
What ends up happening is they succeed in killing one of drow. The other one, who led me into the back room, mysteriously disappeared. What the party finds is a mysterious figure sucking the soul out of my body, leaving my character completely incapacitated until the party somehow reclaims his soul. (I'm playing a fighter in the meantime, and I doubt he'll not get along with the rest of the party.)
So here's the deal: according to the DM, my character will be coming back, but with some of his memories erased, so that he won't remember the warlock's general dickery. In essence, I'll be back to my original self: good. The rest of the party realizes that my betrayal is essentially the 'lock's fault. The warlock is apparently incredibly guilty over what he drove me to, because something similar happened to him.
Somehow I don't think this will be enough for our characters to get along, simply because of our wildly different approach to the whole adventuring shtick. The sad thing is that when we do collaborate, we form a destructive force from which no enemy can hope to escape. Out of game, we constantly laugh our asses off at the ridiculousness of the interaction between our two characters.
So, how would you do it? How would you find a way to get along?
EDIT: Ah yes, here it is - http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=070630
This is roughly the beginning of the short story-arc of White Mage turning evil.
Do a fun check with everyone at the table. If everyone's having fun watching these two idiots nearly kill each other, the rest of the party, innocent bystanders, and random sheep, then let it be. If anyone's tired of it, tone it back. The warlock can behave himself (since he feels so guilty), and you don't remember, so you may not remember WHY you disliked him, and may have some sort of male-bonding thing (assuming you're both male) killing orcs or some such. (And, if the DM is wiping your memory, HE (or she) may be sick of it.)
Hm... The two players involved are laughing their tails off about what's going on. How do the rest of the PLAYERS feel? (Players, not characters.) Is everyone having fun? Is the DM having fun? If so, it ain't broke, roll with it.
Do a fun check with everyone at the table. If everyone's having fun watching these two idiots nearly kill each other, the rest of the party, innocent bystanders, and random sheep, then let it be. If anyone's tired of it, tone it back. The warlock can behave himself (since he feels so guilty), and you don't remember, so you may not remember WHY you disliked him, and may have some sort of male-bonding thing (assuming you're both male) killing orcs or some such. (And, if the DM is wiping your memory, HE (or she) may be sick of it.)
This.
Cookie for RainkissRainkiss dispenses good advice and I agree here as well.
Hee, my first cookie! :bounce:
I know that although the DM and the other PCs visibly get a kick out of it most of the time, they're also slightly annoyed because we have a tendency to sometimes fail in the most basic acts of teamwork.
Well, we'll see what happens once I get resurrected.