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So here I am, level 3 session 1.
My character?
Skinwalker (witchwolf of gnollish decent cause lol)
ragechemist vivisectionist Alchemist 2/urban barbarian 1
twf/extra discovery vestigial arm
discovery vestigial arm
we use hero points/anti hero so anti hero feat was power attack
My guy is a mocking joke on the outcast. the whole idea is that when I was young a prevalant alchemist and his men killed my pack and took me in to be experimented on... out of humor
not knowing this i saw him as my creator and father figure... though he always hated me, keeping me as a mutant assistant and servant.
his real son showed me some sympathy, actually bonding as brothers and was the only human i had ever met who was considered a friend
so i try to impress my "father" with an experiment, but i fail... destroying valuable equipment in the process. while trying to "Put me down like the dog i am" he wound up in a swordfight with my brother who tried to protect me... they killed eachother in the duel, leaving me in a cage for a week staring at their rotting corpses until a freak acciedent let me out.
so i go about town(Where the lab was) looking for companionship. but i'm a four armed gnoll in a xenophobic city, where i find two potential friends...(Both lawful evil finding that i can be exploited because i want companionship so badly) who wound up hiding me from prejudiced guards.
Now player four enters... The "Assassin" he's an android ninja "Sent back from the future to kill one of the party members"
as I slept in the wagon and the others slept in an inn, he broke in and attempted to assassinate one of my "friends"
it is important to note that the DM had a contigency for this, giving him a high will save to actually be able to pull off the attack due to "Coding errors" (He was never supposed to kill her)
but someone went for help... and found the guard dog (Me). I went running into the inn screaming mad with two falchions at the ready, seeing only him retreating and one of my companions firing her bow at him. knowing only that this threat was in my friend's room, and that she was trying to kill him, i did what anyone with 8 int and social dependency issues would do.. I did pcp (Mutagen) and jumped out the window screaming wildly, caught up to him and hacked him to pieces.
Now i had taken damage from the fall, lowering my int by a total of 4 during the run, and he hit me once when i caught up to him.. so my int was 2.
Now I had figured that (Out of character) the dm had a plan for this... like guards knocking me out or dues ex machina styled savior for my ill-fated party member. but apparently i hit him past his death spot in a round (25 str will do that at level 3 against a dex/wis player)
So should I have meta'd more and not dealt the death blow... or stopped my pursuit of him?
Idunno it seemed like character persona vs pking. I feel jerkish but yeah
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I'm not really sure what you just asked me but the one thing I gathered was that you're running an Alchemist with 8 Int?
Wut?
I'm not really sure what you just asked me but the one thing I gathered was that you're running an Alchemist with 8 Int?
Wut?
I'm building a dex/str character and I dipped alchemist for the mutagen and discoveries
I killed a character who i had no prior interaction with on the grounds that he had attacked my only "Friend" in the world.
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Sounds like you did the only thing your character *should* have done. And remember androids should *always* be hacked to pieces.
@Dustyboy - where is that race/subrace (Skinwalker/witchwolf) from?
I'd say the android got what he deserved.... because that's just... Nevermind.
Your character acted appropriately I would say given the (strange) circumstances.
To me, it sounds like a situation that should have ended out in GM intervention (especially as that seems to have been the point of this PC introduction anyway).
Your killing blow could easily have been hand-waved into "a non-killing blow but it shakes something loose, rebooting his programming, and leaves him out cold on the ground for an amount of time for it to make it meaningful for you to stop killing".
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Perhaps given your character's obsession with body modification and unnatural experiments they might piece the android back together again, bringing it back to life and resetting the programming back to 'factory default' so that it no longer wants to kill your friends.
This would appear consistent with the story so far, the characters described and would bring the party together in a significant way.
Yes, it would require GM approval, but since they messed up the character introduction this would seem like a good way for them to recover.
Dice do kill. It's a hateful situation but they're the ones to blame - you've done what you were supposed to + crappy ninja that can't outrun you given a head start. I'd try try to get around with the player and GM and simply talk.
One of the topics being if the player feels bad about what happened and would like to somehow see his character still alive or is he ok with that such things happen and it's not such a big deal to make a new character.
If he wants his ninja badly that's where the GM should come in and agree on some solution that will bring him back to life. The android had already gone back in time once, so that's a hint.
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The first commandment of the "Evil PC Campaign": Thou Shalt Not PvP.
Seriously. Don't.
There is always a point where you can decide to attack or betray another PC because, "That's what my character would do!" It's a lame excuse. Don't use it. Don't do it.
Your DM has done a lot of work to create adversaries for you. Your fellow players have not.
From what you wrote, it sounds like the GM screwed up the introduction of the new character to the party. GMs can do that sometimes.
I have had it happen to one of my characters... and that was in a party of neutral to good PCs... and I only realized that the GM was at fault for the death of my character in retro-spec.
Basically, the GM set the new character up to fail. I am really curious as to how the android was supposed to have gone from trying to assassinate one of the party to being an accepted member of the group. I know that I would never trust someone who had tried to kill one of my party (and I never play evil characters).
Also, as other posters have said, the GM could (and SHOULD) have ruled that the damage you did was not fatal somehow. The GM is, after all, the arbiter of what happens in the game. He is the story teller. He was in control of the introduction of the new character. In my opinion, a GM is actually REQUIRED to fudge the dice rolls if it makes for a better story.
Something similar happened to me a while back albeit with an NPC, and incidentally it got me booted from the game. Long and the short of it, new character showed up claiming he was a "prince" but had no support to his claim. My character (being a suspicious spellscale warmage, this was a long time ago) decided not to trust him, especially since he was getting really cozy way too quickly. The rest of the party fell into the all-too-normal "sure total stranger, join us, guard us in our sleep, share our food." So one evening when he snuck off during his watch, I followed him (I specifically told the GM that I would stay up during his watch to ensure he wasn't doing anything suspicious) and found him. I found him off in the forest talking with some shady characters. Thanks to a botched listen check, all I heard were the words "sleep" "helpless" "kill" and "gold". Which of course, being the suspicious m*!!!!$$~!*& I am, thought that he was betraying the party. As such, I unloaded the flaming hand of fiery doom upon him and his two shady compatriots.
As it turns out, it actually WAS the prince, and he was enlisting us to help kill his father the king who had gone insane. The GM was so pissed at me for ruining his plot that he kicked me out of the game, and retconned the evening's events.
I'd say it's the GM's fault, but I'm sure they can work around it.
Sounds like you did the only thing your character *should* have done. And remember androids should *always* be hacked to pieces.
@Dustyboy - where is that race/subrace (Skinwalker/witchwolf) from?
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/other-races/more-races/skinwalkers-10-rp
Werewolf-Kin (Witchwolf)
Witchwolves are skinwalkers of the open field and quiet forest, almost human in their ingenuity and free spirits, yet carrying a seed of those most terrible and brutal monsters—the werewolves.
Witchwolf
Ancestry Werewolf
Typical Alignment CE
Ability Modifiers +2 Con, –2 Int (+2 Wis while shapechanged)
Alternate Skill Modifiers Perception, wild empathy
Alternate Spell-Like Ability magic fang 1/day
Bestial Features
Bite attack that deals 1d6 points of damage
2 claw attacks that each deal 1d4 points of damage
Darkvision 60 feet
+2 racial bonus on all saving throws
Werewolf-kin are found in many areas, ranging from misty moors to dark alleys of bustling cities, and theirs is perhaps the most common visible skinwalker heritage to be found throughout the Inner Sea region and beyond.They often dwell with werewolves or others of their kind in small, isolated settlements that resound with howls on the night of the full moon. Many werewolves and witchwolves live in seminomadic bands as traders, mystics, adventurers, or entertainers, allowing them to wreak havoc in remote settlements before slipping off into the darkness to escape the subsequent suspicion and hostility of townsfolk. Most such bands include only werewolves or only werewolf-kin, but occasionally one group adopts a member of the other sort out of circumstance or convenience, particularly if the two share common blood.
Werewolf-kin generally have prominent eyebrows that grow together, long index fingers, or wild hair that seems impossible to tame. Witchwolf packs are often led by witches trained in a tradition of curses and transformation tied closely to the original curse of lycanthropy; these witches are also usually the most powerful members of their packs, though exceptions exist where a witch leads with the aid of a favored ally of incredible strength. Because werewolf-kin cannot recruit ordinary humans the way werewolves can, they tend to be more cautious and maintain closer bonds with their fellows than true werewolves usually do, and their bands typically consist of only one or a few extended families or possibly longtime friends.
When witchwolves take bestial form, their eyes typically take on an amber or pale blue hue, their canines sharpen to points, patches of fur form on their skin, and their ears elongate as their senses are drastically heightened.
Werewolf-Kin Characters
Werewolf-kin are often passionate and intimidating. Their first transformation commonly occurs during puberty or shortly thereafter beneath the light of the full moon.
Werewolf-kin are most often drawn to a life of adventure by a desire to prove themselves, either to earn a place as a pack alpha or even a pack lord, or else to fight against the image of werewolves as violent monsters.
The latter often turn for inspiration to the legends of the Hounds of Good, rare and blessed witchwolves who retain human dignity and virtue despite their lycanthropic heritage. Such goodly witchwolves form cabals dedicated to defending a particular area from fiends, evil lycanthropes, and other monsters, or start adventuring parties that seek out their sworn enemies wherever they can be found.
Like their werewolf relatives, witchwolves are feared and despised for the savagery that characterizes the majority of their kind, and not without reason. While not all are monsters, certainly many werewolf-kin bands are happy enough to rob and murder fellow travelers who will not be missed or hire themselves out as mercenaries. Since they can be found throughout the world, witchwolves come in as many varieties as there are wolves.
Skinwalkers are found mostly in human populations. However, because of the nature of lycanthropy, skinwalkers can feasibly be of any intelligent humanoid race. So while uncommon, a lycanthropic bloodline can descend through non-humans like halflings, dwarves, orcs, or elves.
Non-human skinwalkers perhaps more closely resemble their non-lycanthropic parent race, but possess the same statistics as human-descended skinwalkers with the exception of size and effects dependent on size, such as the damage die of natural attacks. For example, a gnome skinwalker is Small, but otherwise is statistically identical to the base skinwalker race presented here (unless, of course, the character is descended from an alternate skinwalker heritage, in which case she has the statistics of that heritage).
Regardless, skinwalkers of non-human descent are typically raised in the same culture as their parent race, and thus usually have the same cultural understanding and education that anyone in their community possesses. So while a half-orc skinwalker raised in an orc tribe might not gain automatic proficiency with the orc double-axe, that doesn't necessarily preclude him from honing his aggressive battle tactics and learning how to fight like an orc.
First, this is clearly an "evil" campaign.
Second, this PC and the GM were clearly designing a PVP encounter. You just did what was designed.
So, evil players PVP-ing each other, and someone dies. Inevitable outcome. I blame bad character choices (impetuous raging mutagen monstrosity and a future android assassin on a PC-killing mission) as well as bad DM choices (hey, having them fight each other to the death is a great intro).
Ergo, this is only partially your fault (you did, after all, create the impetuous raging mutagen monstrosity). The rest is everyone else's fault.
The first commandment of the "Evil PC Campaign": Thou Shalt Not PvP.
Seriously. Don't.
The Crusader is 100% correct here. Every evil campaign, EVERY SINGLE DANG ONE OF THEM, falls apart, usually before it even really gets started, unless there is a very good, VERY GOOD, [b]iron-clad/b] reason to avoid PVP. (OK, there is one type of evil campaign with PVP that might not fall apart - the kind where everyone kills each other whenever they want and they just roll their next character and carry on, but even that gets super tedious very quickly).
So, if you're playing THAT kind of campaign, the assassin-droid just needs to roll his next character and carry on. Otherwise, the GM and EVERY player needs to agree, out of game, to find some in-game, in-character reason to NEVER PVP each other or this campaign of yours will never happen.
First, this is clearly an "evil" campaign.
Second, this PC and the GM were clearly designing a PVP encounter. You just did what was designed.
So, evil players PVP-ing each other, and someone dies. Inevitable outcome. I blame bad character choices (impetuous raging mutagen monstrosity and a future android assassin on a PC-killing mission) as well as bad DM choices (hey, having them fight each other to the death is a great intro).
Ergo, this is only partially your fault (you did, after all, create the impetuous raging mutagen monstrosity). The rest is everyone else's fault.
The first commandment of the "Evil PC Campaign": Thou Shalt Not PvP.
Seriously. Don't.
The Crusader is 100% correct here. Every evil campaign, EVERY SINGLE DANG ONE OF THEM, falls apart, usually before it even really gets started, unless there is a very good, VERY GOOD, [b]iron-clad/b] reason to avoid PVP. (OK, there is one type of evil campaign with PVP that might not fall apart - the kind where everyone kills each other whenever they want and they just roll their next character and carry on, but even that gets super tedious very quickly).
So, if you're playing THAT kind of campaign, the assassin-droid just needs to roll his next character and carry on. Otherwise, the GM and EVERY player needs to agree, out of game, to find some in-game, in-character reason to NEVER PVP each other or this campaign of yours will never happen.
Of course, i'm actually *shudders to admit* chaotic nuetral, because i'm blatenly not lawful and i simply act to try to get friends.
my idea was (The party all shifted three times with alignment and I said "Ok time for something i don't have to remake") my guy would either be "redeemable/valuable" by good campaign standards, and "Laughably exploitable" by evil campaign standards.
Something similar happened to me a while back albeit with an NPC, and incidentally it got me booted from the game. Long and the short of it, new character showed up claiming he was a "prince" but had no support to his claim. My character (being a suspicious spellscale warmage, this was a long time ago) decided not to trust him, especially since he was getting really cozy way too quickly. The rest of the party fell into the all-too-normal "sure total stranger, join us, guard us in our sleep, share our food." So one evening when he snuck off during his watch, I followed him (I specifically told the GM that I would stay up during his watch to ensure he wasn't doing anything suspicious) and found him. I found him off in the forest talking with some shady characters. Thanks to a botched listen check, all I heard were the words "sleep" "helpless" "kill" and "gold". Which of course, being the suspicious m~@+#+!%$#%* I am, thought that he was betraying the party. As such, I unloaded the flaming hand of fiery doom upon him and his two shady compatriots.
As it turns out, it actually WAS the prince, and he was enlisting us to help kill his father the king who had gone insane. The GM was so pissed at me for ruining his plot that he kicked me out of the game, and retconned the evening's events.
I'd say it's the GM's fault, but I'm sure they can work around it.
wait, the dm arbitrarily chose to let you hear only the most suspicious possible words in a sentance, and then got pissed when you acted on it? Wow...special kinds of lame. He probably did you a favor removing you from the group. What did he think you were going to do? Think, oh he's going to kill us in our sleep, excellent, let me give him the chance to do that...
OK, so you're the non-evil guy in the bunch. Still, it's an evil campaign and you made your character CN but still able to fit in with the evils, so long as they're your friends.
Fine.
Doesn't change anything I said.
Me, as a GM, I have these rules for character creation:
1. You will be in a group, therefore you MUST make your character to be someone who functions well in a group. No "lone wolf" types, no "angsty whiny" types, no character concepts that will obviously annoy or irritate the other PCs, nothing to make us wonder why the rest of the group bothers to keep someone around when all he does is cause problems.
2. If you want to break rule #1 for some reason, you must clear it with me AND with every other player. If you want a secret hidden reason to break rule #1 without telling the other players, then I'm 99.9% certain to veto it, but you're welcome to ask.
3. If you want a character that starts off breaking rule #1 but is "redeemed" along the way, then YOU need to provide me with reasons your initially broken character wants to be in a group and YOU need to provide the other PCs with reasons that they want to deal with you - present this to me and the players before we start.
4. I will not tolerate "chaotic-neutral" as a pass for your character to be a jerk, irritate other PCs, or cause continuous problems with the campaign (e.g. always messing with town guards and NPCs and making life intolerable for the more reasonable PCs who have to associate with these NPCs). If that's your character idea, consider it vetoed.
5. Finally, some players might want to make annoying paladins or other "lawful-irritating" characters. These are just as disruptive as as "chaotic-irritating" characters and are equally vetoed - make your paladins smart and reasonable with degrees of tolerance for his fellow adventurers or make a different character concept.
These rules are not to make my players' character concepts "un-fun" nor to straight-jacket them into boring team roles. It's just that after nearly 4 decades of RPGs, I've seen it all, and I know what kinds of characters are disruptive to campaigns and what kinds of characters are beneficial to campaigns, and while I'm open-minded about redeemable characters (with full group buy-in), I'm very much unwilling to let one player ruin a campaign or cause constant irritations for everyone else. THAT is "un-fun" on a daily basis for the whole campaign and I won't force my players or myself to endure it for the sake of one player with an irritating character concept.
Short version, make a character that doesn't annoy the other PCs or players, or, if you insist, then make sure the entire group of players and GM agree to play with your annoying character concept.
You, OP, have created such a concept. Redeemable, which is good, but nonetheless annoying and problematic. If this were my campaign, you would not have been able to create that character without getting approval from every player and, here's the important part, if they all pre-approved this, then they can have no complaints when their actions led to your predictable PK moment.
wait, the dm arbitrarily chose to let you hear only the most suspicious possible words in a sentance, and then got pissed when you acted on it? Wow...special kinds of lame. He probably did you a favor removing you from the group. What did he think you were going to do? Think, oh he's going to kill us in our sleep, excellent, let me give him the chance to do that...
Yeah, I think he was expecting me to go back and wake up the party to try and warn them, not go Duke Nukem on the guy's face. No great loss really, I left the party without too much of a hassle, since it was pretty clear that the GM wasn't going to listen to reason.
You, OP, have created such a concept. Redeemable, which is good, but nonetheless annoying and problematic. If this were my campaign, you would not have been able to create that character without getting approval from every player and, here's the important part, if they all pre-approved this, then they can have no complaints when their actions led to your predictable PK moment.
They all knew in advance and shared no qualms with my character's "Complex" and race(s?)
It turned out that his backstory also mentioned that he had stolen all of his gear since he couldn't take anything back, and went on a rampage bombing Inns... so When I was caught by the guards they let me off, even though i was a beast race (Which they made very clear that I was still a beast to them regardless of the service I had done to the community)
Though he doesn't pick fights, he simply defends his friends in any fight they're involved in. So please do see the line there. Yet i should have had the forethought to ask how I would be received in this world being an abomination of science and all.
Well, there you go. Your GM and fellow players knew who your character is and all of them, including the GM, including the now-deceased android-ninja, were OK with who your character is. The GM set up the circumstances, those players did nothing to change the events or give you a reason to behave differently, complete with full advance knowledge of your character.
Everyone bought into it and everyone played the event toward that conclusion, fully aware of where it would lead.
Therefore, nobody can complain about events ending the way they did.
And stuff like this is why I flatly disallow PvP.
And stuff like this is why I flatly disallow PvP.
Probably irrelevant, since the GM set up this encounter deliberately so it seems the GM here has so such ban on PVP. But, I almost agree - I disallow character concepts that make PVP desirable or inevitable or even probable. That said, if a situation comes up where it makes sense, I won't intervene, but I will make sure all the players are OK with the idea and the reasoning and will be able to accept the outcome. If not, I suggest (yes, metagaming) that they find a better in-character solution without PVP.
And stuff like this is why I flatly disallow PvP.Probably irrelevant, since the GM set up this encounter deliberately so it seems the GM here has so such ban on PVP. But, I almost agree - I disallow character concepts that make PVP desirable or inevitable or even probable. That said, if a situation comes up where it makes sense, I won't intervene, but I will make sure all the players are OK with the idea and the reasoning and will be able to accept the outcome. If not, I suggest (yes, metagaming) that they find a better in-character solution without PVP.
Not all metagaming is bad. This is a fine example of an example where it isn't.
And stuff like this is why I flatly disallow PvP.Probably irrelevant, since the GM set up this encounter deliberately so it seems the GM here has so such ban on PVP. But, I almost agree - I disallow character concepts that make PVP desirable or inevitable or even probable. That said, if a situation comes up where it makes sense, I won't intervene, but I will make sure all the players are OK with the idea and the reasoning and will be able to accept the outcome. If not, I suggest (yes, metagaming) that they find a better in-character solution without PVP.
I'm pretty much in the same boat. I don't like people who build characters with even the remote scenario of PVP in their minds, because usually it makes them far more willing to do it.
I myself only ever participated in PVP once, and it was because of a jackass in my group. I was playing a Frenzied Berserker, and the jackass in question was a wizard who thought it was funny to keep lobbing Fireballs on top of me and everyone I was fighting. So, at once point, I decided it would be funny to see how he liked it, and attacked him. I crit, and killed him in one blow.
My character was arrested, but was released by my party paying off my fines and a strict warning to "never due it again under penalty of death". They also made me pay for the wizard's resurrection. I told the player in question that if he ever did it again, he'd regret it, to which he laughed, telling me that I'd just have to pay for his resurrection again. So I gave all my money to homeless people, and wrote up a will that said my gear was to go to my In-game son and filed it with our local Lord, all only to the GM without any other players knowing. Sure enough, come the very next battle, he does the same thing, and I just turn around and offed him again. My character was summarily executed.
Completely worth it.
If this is even a bad thing (group that arranges internal dynamics like this may not consider a properly RP'd PVP incident a bad thing) it's the fault of the GM and the android's player for setting up a Terminator ripoff backstory programmed for PVP. Once things started it sounds like it was appropriate to the way your group operates to play your character to the hilt.
This.
Whether the GM intended this outcome or not, he basically asked for it.
I call this "being set up for failure." Don't sweat it. It's not really your fault.
But expect more of the same sort of outcome so long as the GM keeps setting his games up with all sorts of contingencies and complicated backup plans without much regard as to the nature of his unpredictable players.
But expect more of the same sort of outcome so long as the GM keeps setting his games up with all sorts of contingencies and complicated backup plans without much regard as to the nature of his unpredictable players.
There's the problem right now. Man, these games would go so much better with predictable players. Robot players. Yeah, that's it...
Oooooh, or no players...
(side note, I'm just being silly, like when our marketing department director at work said "this job would be so much easier if we didn't have any customers to try to please" - it's not an attack against the person I'm quoting, or the OP, or anyone else)
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The first commandment of the "Evil PC Campaign": Thou Shalt Not PvP.
Seriously. Don't.
There is always a point where you can decide to attack or betray another PC because, "That's what my character would do!" It's a lame excuse. Don't use it. Don't do it.
Your DM has done a lot of work to create adversaries for you. Your fellow players have not.
That is not a view shared by all players and GMs. If someone's character was built for the express purpose of causing PvP to happen, exactly why should they be given a free pass on consequences? There's quite a lot of us that believe PvP is perfectly acceptable if someone in the party has gone above and beyond the call of asking for it.
I myself only ever participated in PVP once, and it was because of a jackass in my group. I was playing a Frenzied Berserker, and the jackass in question was a wizard who thought it was funny to keep lobbing Fireballs on top of me and everyone I was fighting. So, at once point, I decided it would be funny to see how he liked it, and attacked him. I crit, and killed him in one blow.
My character was arrested, but was released by my party paying off my fines and a strict warning to "never due it again under penalty of death". They also made me pay for the wizard's resurrection. I told the player in question that if he ever did it again, he'd regret it, to which he laughed, telling me that I'd just have to pay for his resurrection again. So I gave all my money to homeless people, and wrote up a will that said my gear was to go to my In-game son and filed it with our local Lord, all only to the GM without any other players knowing. Sure enough, come the very next battle, he does the same thing, and I just turn around and offed him again. My character was summarily executed.
Completely worth it.
So wait wait wait wait wait. This wizard set your character on fire. REPEATEDLY. Let me reiterate; REPEATEDLY. ... And your character was the one punished for defending itself? That just has all sorts of derp on it. You PAY to rez him, and he still doesn't learn his lesson. Immediately does it again, and you put him down again despite the prior incident, the warnings, etc. Your party kills your character for lashing out at someone, KNOWING it is a frenzied berserker of all things, that the wizard has caused it repeated (and clearly unwanted) harm, and everyone is just perfectly cool with this? That's one of the dumbest things I've heard about happening in a while. Good grief.
That is not a view shared by all players and GMs. If someone's character was built for the express purpose of causing PvP to happen...The first commandment of the "Evil PC Campaign": Thou Shalt Not PvP.
Seriously. Don't.
There is always a point where you can decide to attack or betray another PC because, "That's what my character would do!" It's a lame excuse. Don't use it. Don't do it.
Your DM has done a lot of work to create adversaries for you. Your fellow players have not.
Let me stop you right there. If someone's character was built for the express purpose of causing PvP to happen... then they have very obviously broken the first commandment.
...exactly why should they be given a free pass on consequences? There's quite a lot of us that believe PvP is perfectly acceptable if someone in the party has gone above and beyond the call of asking for it.
Sure, there should be consequences. But, if you establish upfront that PvP is off limits, then it should never come to that point. You can certainly play with the PvP button turned to "on", but I have never seen that practiced that it didn't derail the campaign sooner or later. It is too easy to backstab a PC, and there are too many circumstances when it can happen.
Players have to have some basic trust, or the game grinds to halt. The alternative is, as DM Blake said, to just plan to reroll a lot of characters in a never-ending tedious cycle.
I've played PvP campaigns that were so bad that we had 12 character deaths before we even got out of the first inn, much less set out on our first "adventure". And it's pretty much always a chaotic, evil campaign where you spend half your time running from the authorities one of your party members decided to tick off. It can be fun, but you have to accept that your characters are going to die. Over. And over. And over again. (Our dead pile in that campaign broke 200.)
(1) Given the scenario you described, I ascribe to you 0% guilt. You played perfectly, in character, with a character that everyone had agreed you could play. I will NEVER get angry at a player for playing a well-thought-out character in character, as long as that character has a sound concept. (I like yours. I can give examples of characters whose entire concept was, "Act in a completely random manner to derail the adventure." Those, I'm not so OK with.)
(2) Your GM and the other player, on the other hand, send up red warning flags all over the place. Allowing another character to 'introduce' him(or her-)self with an attempted assassination of another PC? Having another player who wants to introduce his (or her) character by attempted assassination? Given the description of the setup you gave, I would have predicted a 100% chance of someone dying. And now the GM is mad because someone died? Hmmm...
My recommendation is very similar to previous posters: Sit everyone down. Ask, "Is this going to be a PvP campaign or not?" Do not accept "maybes". The WORST players are the ones who insist they don't want PvP, but then spend all their time maxing out Sleight of Hand so they can quickly pocket the best of the loot for themselves, or who sell out their party to the enemy for a hefty profit. The other players sit there seething, knowing they're being betrayed, and knowing they agreed not to do PvP so they can't kill the wretch.
Either you're 100% allowed to hose each other, up to and including combat or death, or no one pulls that stuff. Anything in between the two extremes will upset somebody.
EDIT: Or, in response to Chengar's excellent post below, doing stuff to taunt another player into attacking them. That's a famous one that's gotten me to boot players...
The thing is, if you make PvP off-limits, you also need to make things that must logically provoke PvP off-limits. Otherwise, you just give out character shields to allow dickish behavior, like in FlySkyHigh's story. I'm all for having a no PvP rule on account of the problems it causes, but it's a bit more complicated than just not letting PC's take swings at each other. You can't really have one PC attempting to murder another PC's BFFs and not expect the other PC to respond peacefully.
The thing is, if you make PvP off-limits, you also need to make things that must logically provoke PvP off-limits. Otherwise, you just give out character shields to allow dickish behavior, like in FlySkyHigh's story. I'm all for having a no PvP rule on account of the problems it causes, but it's a bit more complicated than just not letting PC's take swings at each other. You can't really have one PC attempting to murder another PC's BFFs and not expect the other PC to respond peacefully.
"(Name), please stop being a dick."
Usually works.
The thing is, if you make PvP off-limits, you also need to make things that must logically provoke PvP off-limits. Otherwise, you just give out character shields to allow dickish behavior, like in FlySkyHigh's story. I'm all for having a no PvP rule on account of the problems it causes, but it's a bit more complicated than just not letting PC's take swings at each other. You can't really have one PC attempting to murder another PC's BFFs and not expect the other PC to respond peacefully.
DM: You just got hit by a syphilitic boulder.
Problem solved. But, seriously folks... No PvP means No PvP.
Stealing from a PC = PvP
Killing an ally just to get a rise out a player = PvP
Dickish moves that put your fellow PC's in imminent and/or constant danger of death = PvP
Very simply, treat all the other players like you are a group of LG/NG characters all of the time. Don't try to make excuses for bad behavior, just don't behave badly. Either that or get hit by syphilitic boulders.
The thing is, if you make PvP off-limits, you also need to make things that must logically provoke PvP off-limits. Otherwise, you just give out character shields to allow dickish behavior, like in FlySkyHigh's story. I'm all for having a no PvP rule on account of the problems it causes, but it's a bit more complicated than just not letting PC's take swings at each other. You can't really have one PC attempting to murder another PC's BFFs and not expect the other PC to respond peacefully."(Name), please stop being a dick."
Usually works.
Yeah, when players get called out on being dicks by the GM and told to stop, it usually works. However, as evidenced by the stories in this thread, not all anti-PvP GMs rein their troublesome players in when they need to.
This is why evil campaigns are best run using a predetermined lawful evil organization... just being lawful prevents a lot of pvp. You are all part of cobra or whatever, and you have shared goals and a reason to not slice throats over a nice magic item.
Throw a bunch of random psychopaths together and you are just asking for trouble.
Especially at higher levels when someone is a wizard and someone else isn't. It gets bad.... it aalllways gets bad.
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The best way to keep evil PCs from killing one another is to provide some sort of common enemy or goal. If they've got an actual reason not to shank one another, they probably won't.
As a side note: The PvP-rage train must have worn those tracks down awfully far by now with how often people go on about it. Having had bad experiences does not mean everyone should simply ban PvP from their games. If a GM wants PvP in their game then where's the harm? It's their call, after all There are times where it is not only warranted, but should be encouraged to maintain a touch of realism in the story. Yeah, I agree not every party is suited to it, but a group of sufficiently mature players (which honestly, you don't need to be that mature to display common sense) ought to be fine doing a little inter-party stabbing. There is absolutely nothing dickish about killing another player's character if warranted. If you're doing it at complete random, that IS going a bit far.
Speaking of things going a bit far, terminator. /end statement
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Throw together and you are just asking for trouble.
Evil or not, that is just about the quintessential definition of ALL adventuring parties. Ignore the law, run off to places where other creatures, often other sentient beings live, slaughter them all (usually without provocation - just the fact that they're there and they're worth XP is often enough reason) and then take all their stuff.
Sure, some groups justify it by usually obeying many of the the laws in their home town or home kingdom or by taking a quest from some "good" npc who wants them to slaughter "monsters" for some reason or other, but ultimately, even the nicest party of adventurers are tomb robbers, mass murderers, war-mongers, and greedy looters of corpses and homes and lairs.
Even if they don't call themselves "a bunch of random psychopaths", you can bet any survivors of the places they "visited" definitely do, and many of the NPCs back home probably whisper it about the adventurers, at least when they're out of earshot.
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Throw together and you are just asking for trouble.Evil or not, that is just about the quintessential definition of ALL adventuring parties. Ignore the law, run off to places where other creatures, often other sentient beings live, slaughter them all (usually without provocation - just the fact that they're there and they're worth XP is often enough reason) and then take all their stuff.
Sure, some groups justify it by usually obeying many of the the laws in their home town or home kingdom or by taking a quest from some "good" npc who wants them to slaughter "monsters" for some reason or other, but ultimately, even the nicest party of adventurers are tomb robbers, mass murderers, war-mongers, and greedy looters of corpses and homes and lairs.
Ahem.
But expect more of the same sort of outcome so long as the GM keeps setting his games up with all sorts of contingencies and complicated backup plans without much regard as to the nature of his unpredictable players.There's the problem right now. Man, these games would go so much better with predictable players. Robot players. Yeah, that's it...
Oooooh, or no players...
(side note, I'm just being silly, like when our marketing department director at work said "this job would be so much easier if we didn't have any customers to try to please" - it's not an attack against the person I'm quoting, or the OP, or anyone else)
My point was that you never know in what way the players are going to react to "derail" a situation. Planning some kind of contingency is part and parcel of GMing. (Flexibility and good improv skills are really the best tools.) But this particular GM seems to have set up some pretty convoluted and rather complicated backup plans to his already unusual scenario. Like lying to cover up a lie, the more convoluted the situation you create for yourself, the more insane things are going to get when somebody inevitably does something you could not anticipate.
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Throw together and you are just asking for trouble.Evil or not, that is just about the quintessential definition of ALL adventuring parties. Ignore the law, run off to places where other creatures, often other sentient beings live, slaughter them all (usually without provocation - just the fact that they're there and they're worth XP is often enough reason) and then take all their stuff.
I call gorgoncrap on that. I haven't been in a game like that since I was twelve. If that's how you play, enjoy, but I highly doubt that's the default of any game that isn't being played by prepubescent highschoolers.
[I call gorgoncrap on that. I haven't been in a game like that since I was twelve. If that's how you play, enjoy, but I highly doubt that's the default of any game that isn't being played by prepubescent highschoolers.
Wow. Sheeeesh. A guy tries to make a joke...
So wait wait wait wait wait. This wizard set your character on fire. REPEATEDLY. Let me reiterate; REPEATEDLY. ... And your character was the one punished for defending itself? That just has all sorts of derp on it. You PAY to rez him, and he still doesn't learn his lesson. Immediately does it again, and you put him down again despite the prior incident, the warnings, etc. Your party kills your character for lashing out at someone, KNOWING it is a frenzied berserker of all things, that the wizard has caused it repeated (and clearly unwanted) harm, and everyone is just perfectly cool with this? That's one of the dumbest things I've heard about happening in a while. Good grief.
It always boiled down to 2 things. 1) his excuse was that the enemies were always thickest where I was, so he could do maximum damage that way (which was true, because that's where my character always went) but that really wasn't much of an excuse. 2) was the fact that I had a ring of fire resistance 10, and I almost always made my reflex saves, and with my generally really high HP while raging, most of the party viewed it as "no great loss", since I usually at most lost 5 or so hitpoints per fireball.
I completely agree with you though. I let them kill off my character because I was tired of dealing with the b&!~~%!~. The next character I made was an Incantatrix, just so I could out-wizard the wizard.
[I call gorgoncrap on that. I haven't been in a game like that since I was twelve. If that's how you play, enjoy, but I highly doubt that's the default of any game that isn't being played by prepubescent highschoolers.Wow. Sheeeesh. A guy tries to make a joke...
1. Lack of voice inflection or body language over the internet makes determining what is and isn't a joke impossible without further indications ('j/k!')
2. There are people around here who actually think that's true (anybody who uses the phrase 'murderhobo'), so I assumed you were one of them.
The first commandment of the "Evil PC Campaign": Thou Shalt Not PvP.
Seriously. Don't.
There is always a point where you can decide to attack or betray another PC because, "That's what my character would do!" It's a lame excuse. Don't use it. Don't do it.
Your DM has done a lot of work to create adversaries for you. Your fellow players have not.
Exactly. Poor excuse, and a "Richard' move.
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The assassin got what he was asking for. No use crying over spilled lubricant.
One time in a game of mine, the LE rogue told the CG ranger that if the ranger got in face he'd kill the ranger's girlfriend while making him watch before he killed the ranger. The rogue then failed a sleight of hand roll vs the ranger's perception while trying to apply poison to his dagger. On seeing that, the ranger killed the rogue. The rogue's player then whined about how PvP shouldn't happen. You're playing characters who usually respond to threats by stabbing the threat. I don't want PvP in my games, but if you really want to avoid it, don't do things that beg for it. Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'.
Exactly. Poor excuse, and a "Richard' move.The first commandment of the "Evil PC Campaign": Thou Shalt Not PvP.
Seriously. Don't.
There is always a point where you can decide to attack or betray another PC because, "That's what my character would do!" It's a lame excuse. Don't use it. Don't do it.
Your DM has done a lot of work to create adversaries for you. Your fellow players have not.
I still say that the GM was at fault. I don't know whose bright idea it was to have the new character try to assassinate a party member, but the GM should have known better. It is the GM who is ultimately responsible for introducing a new character to the party.
If the method of introduction was the plan of the player, the GM should have vetoed it. If it was the GM who came up with the idea, I don't know what to say.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, I had a GM set up a character of mine to fail once. The OP's story is an even worse introduction of a new party member.
Did someone say Richard?
I... really feel the urge to break out into song now.
"It's Herbert"
But back to the OP. You're not in my doghouse. If I were the GM, I'd role with it. :)
I'd have another android assassin from the future show up(without the failsafe of bad programming, this one really will kill your target). And then another(un-fail-safed), and then three, with the third one having the failsafe, and played by the android player. And I'd keep you all jumping until you'd levelled, at which point the uplevelled PC android can reveal he's managed to destroy the time-sending magic circle, but it's only a matter of time before another is made...
Because really, once you're messing with time, things don't happen again, they happen before.
Anyway, OP, I think you done good.