D&D: THAT person in the group

[Biodeamon]

Ever heard of the welsh's rules? it's to keep people in line who act like that.

 

[ArmorKingBaneGief]

Ever heard of the welsh's rules? it's to keep people in line who act like that.

Tell us more about Welsh's Rules, for those of us who don't know and are deadly allergic to googling.

 

[GasMasksAreForChumps]

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.

That is the funniest thing I've heard all day, jesus I can't stop laughing. What did the other party members do when he was ummm "intimate" with the pack mule?

 

[Podunk]

I had one player in my last campaign I could go on all day about. He just had no common sense, and frequently circumvented the rules until he got caught.

So much worse than that, though, was the Warlock who joined my campaign for just a few games. He decided he wanted to be evil, and he wanted to have undead minions. While I had no problem with this, the rest of the party and I expected him to roll-play in order to be accepted in the party instead of them just letting this evil undead-spawning guy they've hardly met in their group. So he threw some concealing robes on his minions and a game or two later they went to the astral plane and the undead, being mindless, couldn't move. So he puts them into his bag of holding and the party just stares.(Bags of holding, as I'm sure I don't need to mention, have a limited supply of air and are generally not comfortable to travel in when filled with goods.) The party mage asked him, in-character, "What are you doing there?" to which he sullenly replied out of character "Does it really matter?" Gah. No one really wanted to throw out their entire suspension of disbelief for the guy, and I remember him leaving the group shortly after.

In short, I'd much rather have a player who role plays poorly then one who refuses to role play at all.

Captcha: face the music

 

[Iron Criterion]

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.

Can't tell if trolling, or made typo on "our" and is serious.....

Edit: Just so I make it clear, I'm talking about when you're trying to have a serious campaign. Believe me, I've had my share of silly games(Giant British octopus attack our ship, because a team member got sea sick and puked on his crumpets and tea).

yeah, it was a typo. But yes, it's IMPOSSIBLE to have a campaign with any air seriousness when one of your players is trying to play an Orangutan with arm flaps that it uses to fly... Which IS a real race, and he DID try to use because of it's retardedly high +6 racial DEX bonus.

To be honest, you're THAT guy not him.

 

[SmileyBat]

My first campaign I decided I wanted to be a cleric specialized in necromancy. I joined late into a group that was already 'lead' by an egomaniac paladin, backed by a pair of monks. I posited that using the corpses of kobolds etc to keep harm from our allies was essentially a good thing but it never flew with the group. The group was excessively large, working out of a community center of sorts, and other oddball types were starting to show support to my side. I decided to bring the whole team down instead of following the lawful good quest, making things interesting. The 'good' team wound up using out-of-game knowledge to counter my actions and tried to kill me (ironic that these were the lawful and/or good characters doing it), at which point the team split to separate campaigns partly to help with the numbers, good and evil.

Was I that guy? Yeah, I was. While things did get interesting, in hindsight it was just selfishness that drove my actions even though I was a newcomer to an existing campaign and peeps got mad. I got more moderate in my following games once I was past my maiden voyage.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

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.

Can't tell if trolling, or made typo on "our" and is serious.....

Edit: Just so I make it clear, I'm talking about when you're trying to have a serious campaign. Believe me, I've had my share of silly games(Giant British octopus attack our ship, because a team member got sea sick and puked on his crumpets and tea).

yeah, it was a typo. But yes, it's IMPOSSIBLE to have a campaign with any air seriousness when one of your players is trying to play an Orangutan with arm flaps that it uses to fly... Which IS a real race, and he DID try to use because of it's retardedly high +6 racial DEX bonus.

To be honest, you're THAT guy not him.

How? By trying to make sure everyone had fun and not wanting to be the background singer in some asshole's personal self-insert animoo? Every fight was his retarded Bird-person throwing daggers from the sky while everyone else twiddled their thumbs. He also made sure he was the prototypical "snarky, smart ass protagonist" just so he could solidify himself as the obvious main character. No one was having fun because he demanded the spotlight in every encounter, no matter if it was combat, diplomacy, or a skill check.

Not only that, but he complained in every encounter that was indoors or in a dense forest by claiming it was "especially tailored to screw him over" because he couldn't cheat his way through it by claiming nothing could hit him because he was flying, and according to his own personal interpritation of the rules, meant he got some stupid bonus to his AC based on factors no one could find in any book. Not to mention he used homebrew rules he found online without telling anyone, like saying he wasn't hindered by the EXP penalty for having levels in like 6 different classes because quote "it would be unfair to him". So no, I wasn't going to stand for it.

 

[elvor0]

Technically our now current DM was that guy, but he always bent the rules in such a way that it just ended up being funny. He always runs murderous campaigns anyway, so he encourages rule exploitation as much as possible, it's damn fun but by god in the first session our rogue had his arm torn off in the first encounter, then we travelled 1000 years into the future to a what was essentially a dead planet where everyone had lost faith in the gods who had become shades, leaving our cleric and paladin as the only ones left who could channel the divine.

A had another friend who could spawn infinite chickens, created a hydrogen bomb, "grenades" and various other stupid shit.

One of the reasons I could never really get into D&D was because of the fairly strict race/class restrictions that the game imposed.
Want to play a ranger, Elves or Half Elves report to the lobby, Want to play a theif? Halflings queue up to the left. Barbarian more your cup of tea? Well the Half Orcs can be found just down the hallway.

It's boring.

I had more fun playing that game was my half Elf Barbarian or my Halfling Fighter than I ever did playing "which LotR character with a different name do you want to play this time?"

You don't have to play specific race class combos y'know... any race can be any class. It makes sense an Orc would get bonuses to strength, as yknow, they're orcs, their race is sort of genetically pre disposed to that. Play what you want to play, granted you wont be as strong as an orc if you play an Elven Barbarian, but if that's what you want to do, do it, no one cares.

 

[Laser Priest]

Currently, I'm in an attempt to do an experimental Fallout d20 with some friends.

Needless to say, one of our group members plays an idiot who somehow ended up with 150 grenades which he uses at every opportunity.

Also, in my first campaign, the DM made the mistake of giving me an attack that would be an instant kill on the target if it were to crit. I abused it, so he sent a basilisk as punishment. After I killed that, he just decided he wanted to kill me, so he sent a god at us.

After I killed the god in one attack, he decided we needed to start a more balanced campaign.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

Currently, I'm in an attempt to do an experimental Fallout d20 with some friends.

Needless to say, one of our group members plays an idiot who somehow ended up with 150 grenades which he uses at every opportunity.

We used GURPS for our Fallout d20 game. Works just fine.

 

[Brown Cap]

There is a human warlcok in my group.

His name is "Velociraptor Jones"
And he swears to me that it's possible to pee on armor and enchant it.
Also, he made a coin purse out of a goblin scrotum.

 

[Storm Dragon]

We had a guy once who sat in the crow's nest of a ship, loaded a grappling hook into his crossbow, and then launched it at an enemy standing on the deck. His intention was to hook the target with the grappling hook, and then jump over the other side of the mast, using the yardarm as a pulley to slow his descent while yanking the enemy upwards.

Can you spot the flaws in his plan?

 

[Laser Priest]

Currently, I'm in an attempt to do an experimental Fallout d20 with some friends.

Needless to say, one of our group members plays an idiot who somehow ended up with 150 grenades which he uses at every opportunity.

We used GURPS for our Fallout d20 game. Works just fine.

Not sure what that is.

Could you provide links?

And either way, we love having his character, as it's hilarious. He's already turned several factions hostile to us, but it's still hilarious.

 

[elvor0]

-bugger- double post.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

Currently, I'm in an attempt to do an experimental Fallout d20 with some friends.

Needless to say, one of our group members plays an idiot who somehow ended up with 150 grenades which he uses at every opportunity.

We used GURPS for our Fallout d20 game. Works just fine.

Not sure what that is.

Could you provide links?

And either way, we love having his character, as it's hilarious. He's already turned several factions hostile to us, but it's still hilarious.

GURPS is the Generic Universal Roleplaying System. It's basically a series of source books for people to use for exactly that, making their own games in whatever genre that want. Be that horror, apocalyptic, giant-robot anime, sailor moon (which is real), etc. Literally anything.

One of the reasons I could never really get into D&D was because of the fairly strict race/class restrictions that the game imposed.
Want to play a ranger, Elves or Half Elves report to the lobby, Want to play a theif? Halflings queue up to the left. Barbarian more your cup of tea? Well the Half Orcs can be found just down the hallway.

It's boring.

I had more fun playing that game was my half Elf Barbarian or my Halfling Fighter than I ever did playing "which LotR character with a different name do you want to play this time?"

Spoken like a true cynic who's never really looked into the game. Sure, you CAN just make an Elf Ranger who dual wields Scimitars, and has a wolf familiar. But that's what we call a boring ************. I'll grant you that 4e is VERY boring. It basically just hands you the prototypical race/class combo based on the Class you want to play. But 3.5 is the wild west, pretty much anything goes. But it' when someone goes through every source book they can find to min/max themselves into a truly rediculous character that it gets out of hand.

 

[Laser Priest]

Currently, I'm in an attempt to do an experimental Fallout d20 with some friends.

Needless to say, one of our group members plays an idiot who somehow ended up with 150 grenades which he uses at every opportunity.

We used GURPS for our Fallout d20 game. Works just fine.

Not sure what that is.

Could you provide links?

And either way, we love having his character, as it's hilarious. He's already turned several factions hostile to us, but it's still hilarious.

GURPS is the Generic Universal Roleplaying System. It's basically a series of source books for people to use for exactly that, making their own games in whatever genre that want. Be that horror, apocalyptic, giant-robot anime, sailor moon (which is real), etc. Literally anything.

Sounds interesting.

I've got other campaign ideas in the works. And idea on where I can find this... er... GURPS?

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

Currently, I'm in an attempt to do an experimental Fallout d20 with some friends.

Needless to say, one of our group members plays an idiot who somehow ended up with 150 grenades which he uses at every opportunity.

We used GURPS for our Fallout d20 game. Works just fine.

Not sure what that is.

Could you provide links?

And either way, we love having his character, as it's hilarious. He's already turned several factions hostile to us, but it's still hilarious.

GURPS is the Generic Universal Roleplaying System. It's basically a series of source books for people to use for exactly that, making their own games in whatever genre that want. Be that horror, apocalyptic, giant-robot anime, sailor moon (which is real), etc. Literally anything.

Sounds interesting.

I've got other campaign ideas in the works. And idea on where I can find this... er... GURPS?

You could probably look at Used Book Stores or on Amazon for the source books you want. But finding PDFs online would be much cheaper. I'd suggest just searching online for them.

 

[kickyourass]

Well my group doesn't really have a 'That guy' we're more a 'that group'. It's mostly because our DM actively encourages us to try silly crap (If you try something crazy and it works you'll probably get something cool out of it), people have thrown trees as ranged weapons (they missed the monster and hit ME), people have been pulled in half, one guy got his soul eaten and came back by exploding out of the guy's stomache.
This kind of stuff is more the rule then the exception, a week actually stands out if some variety of nonsense DOESN'T happen.

 

[SmileyBat]

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.

Bittles is freaking epic. Very nicely done.

 

[Malyc]

I've been that guy before... Werewolf ranger who convinced (accidentally, I might add, because I was thinking about something else) an entire continent that lycanthropes were weak to platinum rather than silver. High level cleric failed the hell out of the sense motive check, and we managed to convince him to tell his friends. Currency ensued, until the Greek Pantheon decided to intervene before we broke the economy.

Other party members were an elven warlock, Cpt George Carson (he had a level in damn near everything...), A human fighter, and a half orc (or full orc, can't remember) druid. This was a campaign that was a break between serious campaigns, so only the rule of cool applied. Oddly enough, werewolves also make very good anti-ship ballista bolt in a pinch... particularly when equipped with flint and steel... and the target ship uses cannons.