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Can a character who has yet to have access to a weapon proficiency, take weapon focus in that weapon?
For example, can a Druid take weapon focus in a natural weapon, before having access to that natural weapon? (Via wildshape, multi-classing, etc.)

Sorry if this seems like a rule question. Just want to understand the game better.


I'm facing a problem with a fellow player (who is also our group's "main" GM) interfering with the current adventure's GM.
Lets call this "main" GM, Alpha.)

Alpha is our group's "main" GM and the most senior in terms of age and time spend playing Pathfinder. He runs our group's main Serpent's Skull adventure and we play at his house.

Alpha is great as a GM, and we enjoy playing at his table. Early on, we decided that we would spend every other month or so playing some other Pathfinder Modules or homebrews, ran by the rest of us in the group. This is to allow Alpha to prepare the next section of adventure.

The problem starts when Alpha becomes a player. He takes on a very "commanding" role and makes a point to dictate what the party does.
This is far from normal, as we usually try to reach a consensus when options differ. With him, we need to make an effort to convince him otherwise, or he would just shoot us down or berate us for disagreeing with him.
This "problem" wasn't that bad at first, but as the months past, his commanding attitude is getting more prominent.

Recently, Alpha started interfering, rule lawyering or disagreeing with certain rules at the table. This reach the point where he even berates the current GM for certain actions that the GM made in the advanture. (Both in-combat and out.)

Alpha would criticize the amount of monsters send against the party, the decisions or actions of NPCs and Monsters, complain about the rest of us not supporting or healing him enough, questions why certain powers don't behave the way he thinks they should or just plain panic whenever a player drops.

He just don't seem to trust any of us to GM for him. And it shows.

What should/can I do as a player?
We are months into Serpent's Skull, and don't feel like leaving the group over this.
We also do love his GMing, and our playing location is his house, but his behavior is getting far from pleasant as a player...
... and it doesn't help that since he is older, we don't feel appropriate/able to tell him.

Help?


LilithsThrall wrote:

The issue, as I understand it, is that you feel he's keeping your PC from being as powerful as he could be. So? Your character is imaginary. Why should you care how powerful your imaginary character is? Now, if he were hogging the shine time from you so that your character is getting pushed into the sidelines, I could understand your reason to be upset. But that's not what you've said. In fact, you've got a pretty interesting character arc getting ready to happen as soon as your character figures out what's happening.

But to complain that he's playing wrong because his imaginary character is keeping your imaginary character from having all the imaginary gold you want to pretend he has is like two six year olds playing cowboys and Indians and getting in a big fight over who is supposed to play dead.

He is keeping me from enjoying the game, aka having fun.

We spend 6 hours a week siting down for a game. We could have been playing video games, going out or do some other thing.
But we all came down to play, have fun and enjoy the story of the adventure.

We are not trying to get the perfect outcome, or the most gold or treasure or experience points. We just want to role play our characters and have fun.

He is taking that joy away from the game. Is that something I should be ok with?


Wow... 100++ posts. Roleplaying seems to be a point of issue for everyone...

Thanks again for all your insights into this problem. It has been an eye opener and I feel much more informed on how to approach this player on his RPing.

Just answering some questions.
@DeathQuaker,
I am not trying to defend him. Its just that given my own shortfalls on the rules, I feel that I should take some responsibility for the outcomes of his actions.

On Saves and such,
I am not sure, but I think that player has via base ability and spells, able to reach pretty high scores on hiding his actions against us.
I AM reading up more on the rules and the specific spells to guard against his actions. Not... all of us have good perception. (Facepalm.)

On RP VS Roleplay,
Some posters feel that the party is not RolePlaying, but rollplaying and therefore against a RPing player. We are all RPing in the adventure, its just that when face with a scenario, we usually come up with a variety of choices and pick the one that both allow us to role-play our characters as well as benefit the party. Even if the action brings harm to the party its usually one that help makes the adventure immerse.
The Player mentioned, does whatever "its what my character would do" at that point of time, regardless of other possible options. Its a very one track way of thought and more often then not it brings some kind of unwanted result on the party.
This is still acceptable to most us, but he does this every single time.

If he feels his character MUST do something, he will do it. There does not seem to be other options as far as he is concern.

On Munchkining,
Don't think his character was Munchkined, its only optimized for its role. Its just that none of our characters are a proper counter to his actions.

What I think I need is a way to tell the player, that his role-playing actions are less then appreciated, without me, myself appearing as the one that is the Prick.


Thanks for all the insight into this. I guess this problem is quite common among play groups.

I'm going to try to answer some of the questions posted,

The player is really quite a good role-player. We have played with him before in other games and he really embodies the character he rps. Its just his current character is stated as a "trickster/stealth/spy" type character... so he often does things that makes life REALLY INTERESTING for the other players.

As for saves, catching his character in the act and other such things, the thing is most of us switch over from 4e. (Yap, we dumped 4e. :) )
And as such we are still not 100% when in comes to the rules. This is especially so for the details in spells and use of skills.
So often, for the sake of the game, we just move things along and only look it up after the game. Of course by then, its usually too late to rewind time to change things. Examples would be him casting a spell and only after the game do we realize that the spell was more limited then we thought.

Our DM is quite fair on things and is quite kind to our parties overall mistakes since we are still kinda new, but his stand is that we all have freewill and we are responsible for our actions.
The DM has talk the player out of certain actions and give him bad outcomes in others, but I guess he is just too kind and as the player is RPing and can be kinda defensive, the DM don't want to make an issue out of it.

Overall he is not killing the game. The party can still and most likely will complete the adventure. Its the pain that comes with his "actions" that makes the game feel kinda bad at the moment.


Answering some of your questions.

1) We can't take action against him in-character, cos our character don't know his character is the source of the problem. For example he does not really steal from any of us, but say uses Sleight of Hand to pocket one of the loot items, using stealth to prevent us from discovering it.

Or he cast a spell that read our thoughts and force us to stat explicitly what our character is thinking and use that information against us. He uses it in such a way we can't even suspect his character... sigh.

2) Our DM is not taking action against him as he is not disturbing the game to the extent that the game cannot go on. The player does not do anything that kills off the storyline. Also the DM allows us to play/interact as we wish.

3) Finally while making life harder for us, the player does help out the party. He can fight, is kinda of a skill-monkey and can cast a bunch of useful spells in combat.

Over-all he IS roleplaying what his character is like, its just that it often comes at the expense of other players.

Finally, attempts at confronting him has been fruitless as he takes such attempts as us trying to control his character's behavior.

What can we do?


I am in a game where we just had a player join the party.
Problem is he seems set on roleplaying against other members of the party.

I can tell he is not really trying to make life miserable for the rest of us, it just that he ROLEPLAYS his character too much...
He does whatever he feels his character WILL DO, even if such actions are harmful to other party members.

For example, he will use bluff, steal from and use spells against other member of his own party. When asked why he does this, his reply is that he is roleplaying his character. As there are no evil party characters in our adventure, care to guess what his alignment is?

To make matters abut worse, I and the other member of the party are NG and due to the nature of our characters, we can't really "take actions" against his character for in-character reasons.

He seems a nice guy out of the game, but goes "in-character" during the game. When told about how some of this actions are not helping the party, he seems offended and insist that the action make logical sense and is "what his character will do". When questioned further, he starts saying that we are nitpicking on his character and goes on to defend his actions.

What can we do to convince him that his roleplaying is getting on the nerves of the other players? AND get him to understand it without going all defensive?