I have an issue with a player in our group who always seems to be the source of conflict. He creates damaging levels of in party conflict, seems to go out of his way to derail the plot (for our primary GM as well as myself now), takes role-play to a socially awkward almost pathological level, and is also generally difficult to deal with out of game. He's like a power-gaming thespian rules-lawyering antagonist extraordinaire. Normally we'd just not allow him to play anymore, but we have sessions during downtime at work... so it would almost be more awkward to leave him out.
His characters are always min-maxed to the extreme. While the rest of the group is content with above average fantasy adventurer status, he always wants to be like a demigod. If he fails at anything he starts to get petulant and look for ways to off the character or remove them from the party... usually at the expense of other players (he's very fond of murdering our characters in their sleep.)
He uses every little excuse he can find to cause conflict and always goes from zero to sixty. You're character talks down to him: "How dare you, I'm going to kill you." You accidentally set of a trap: "You tried to kill me! Better not go to sleep tonight!" You heal somebody else first: "I guess I'm not important to you, see if I help you when you need it." The party doesn't go where he wants: "I'm going to go off on my own." And every single loot drop is a knockdown drag out argument that nearly gets somebody killed. Every. Single. One.
His RP is also weird and extreme... he always makes characters that have some sort of companion and then likes to have drawn-out sidebar conversations with them, out loud, in front of the group, often in a made up language, and acts like we're ruining his day if we don't entertain his odd asides... as if his make believe conversations are somehow world changing.
He also rules lawyers to the extreme... everyone else just rolls with it if our normal GM or I fudges something for story purposes or makes up something to add interest... he whips out the book and acts like we just violated the constitution. As far as he is concerned, the books are inviolate... we're getting really tired of having to say "Because I'm the GM and I said so." umpteen times during every session.
Maybe there is no good way of dealing with him. Maybe I just wrote this to vent, I don't know. But he's really sucking the fun out of GMing for both of us, and out of the campaign for everyone else. I'm really ready to just say "No more Pathfinder at work." Even if we do go hours on end with nothing to do.
