So my party is currently investigating the moathouse in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. (Retooled for PF) I'm playing a battle cleric of Gorum, although I am CG instead of CN.
The fighter of the party decided that he wanted to enter a room guarded by an Ogre skeleton, even though it didn't aggro when we opened the door.
The rest of the party did not. We're currently looking for the Cleric or Clerics in charge, not random monsters that aren't actively attacking us. We voted up or down to go in the room and he was the only one who wanted to go in.
The fighter ended up being grappled by our Monk (aided by our Gunslinger)when he attempted to go in and was told in no uncertain terms that if he went into the room that he was on his own. The rest of the party went out into the hallway before the fighter was released from the grapple.
He promptly entered the room with the Ogre. By the time the party retreated to the courtyard upstairs (to give us more room to fight the Skeleton) he was at one hp. Other members of the party were attacked by the Ogre and saved only by a combination of poor dice rolls by the DM and good buffs. The skeleton was defeated.
But the party was forced to retreat from the moathouse in part because of the increased spell consumption due to this fight and the fighter still being bloody after downing his two cure light potions. I told him "I refuse to heal your stupidity and lack of common sense." even though I had cures available before we rested for the night. I did offer long term care overnight, which was accepted. He is still bloody now as we are poised to head deeper into the moathouse.
In short the fighter acted against the wishes of the entire group. He displayed a complete lack of common sense, proper tactics (by going in alone and aggroing it back to us, and failure to listen to the will of the party.
Everyone seems to be fine with what happened (DM included), but I thought I would check with those of you who have experience with Gorum to see if this is character appropriate.
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"I refuse to spend six seconds healing you. However, I will spend eight hours healing you, denying myself sleep in the process."
Are you sure the fighter is the stupid one here?
You should not only back down, but you should do what you need to do to smooth feelings over at the table. Yes, the fighter acted out, but you also played a role by issuing ultimatums. You're this close to PvP here and you need to be the better man and do what's necessary to avoid that.
I'd agree with the others, but I see where you are coming from as well. As roguerogue said, it's best to avoid ultimatums at the table if possible.
I'm not about to tell another how to play their character, but I might suggest giving a quick apology for the upset remark, then adding something like "please listen to our warnings next time though." or something like that. Try to make him understand in a calm and polite way that had he listened to the group, you may have been nearly done with the dungeon by now.
Good luck.
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"You could have gotten us killed by taking an unnecessary risk for stupid reasons! Therefore my petty grudge requires me to leave you near death as we move into combat and rely on you to hit and tank for us, making it that much more likely that we will all die for no good reason."
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The group needs to talk to each other OOC.
If the "group vote" means "do what I want, or I'm going to do what i want anyway" then you need to discuss that and work it out OOC. You can /not/ solve that problem in character. It is an issue of player vs group.
And if "well its what my character would do" is the answer, remind him that what the group would do is leave him in town next time.. (i.e. "My character is a jerk" isn't an excuse to be a jerk. You made the character. FIX IT.)
-S
If you are going to issue an ultimatum, stick with it. Of course it is far, far better (in life as well as in game) not to issue ultimatums because people will take you up and then you'll either have to follow through with a potentially self-destructive course of action or else lose credibility.
If you are running an XP based game, you need to expect players to react according to the reward system in place. Which means some players are going to see everything as piles of XP to gain. And since XP opens up the door to everything that is desirable in the game, that's a hard temptation to avoid.
I am more than a little bewildered by the decision to not use heal spells, but stay up all night tending to wounds. That seems to be a course of action that potentially put the whole party in danger for no reason other than spite or petulance.
Good luck with your continued adventures. It sounds like this is a party that needs some serious discussion about what it means to adventure together.
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"Tanky T. Fighter, we held a vote, and you're no longer part of this adventuring group. We thank you for your contributions and all your hard work. We wish you well. The door is that way."
And of course explain to the player, OOC why you do this.
But not healing him is un-wise if he continues to adventure with you.
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You're the cleric, he's the fighter. He's your shield, your armor and your HPs. Well you know what I mean.
And not simply yours, you can stand your own ground to some degrees, but the wizard?
By not healing him, you pretty much remove his protective function from your group, and in reality you're punishing the entire group.
Better to say "Do that again, and we kick you out. Here now let me patch you up" or dock a cut of his share of the loot till he promises to behave better (at which point you'll give it to him).
All that said, I can understand your frustration with the situation, and you should consider if this was simply an IC behavior or actually is an OOC problem, in which case above methods will not work, and only a talk with the player will.
Which should probably happen anyway, just so everyone knows where the other side is coming from. Having a voting system that gets ignored when it doesn't vote in favor of one person is not a voting system.
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So my party is currently investigating the moathouse in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. (Retooled for PF) I'm playing a battle cleric of Gorum, although I am CG instead of CN.
The fighter of the party decided that he wanted to enter a room guarded by an Ogre skeleton, even though it didn't aggro when we opened the door.
The rest of the party did not. We're currently looking for the Cleric or Clerics in charge, not random monsters that aren't actively attacking us. We voted up or down to go in the room and he was the only one who wanted to go in.The fighter ended up being grappled by our Monk (aided by our Gunslinger)when he attempted to go in and was told in no uncertain terms that if he went into the room that he was on his own. The rest of the party went out into the hallway before the fighter was released from the grapple.
He promptly entered the room with the Ogre. By the time the party retreated to the courtyard upstairs (to give us more room to fight the Skeleton) he was at one hp. Other members of the party were attacked by the Ogre and saved only by a combination of poor dice rolls by the DM and good buffs. The skeleton was defeated.
But the party was forced to retreat from the moathouse in part because of the increased spell consumption due to this fight and the fighter still being bloody after downing his two cure light potions. I told him "I refuse to heal your stupidity and lack of common sense." even though I had cures available before we rested for the night. I did offer long term care overnight, which was accepted. He is still bloody now as we are poised to head deeper into the moathouse.
In short the fighter acted against the wishes of the entire group. He displayed a complete lack of common sense, proper tactics (by going in alone and aggroing it back to us, and failure to listen to the will of the party.
Everyone seems to be fine with what happened (DM included), but I thought I would check with those of you who have experience with Gorum to see if this is...
It's like reading the tabletop RPG version of a WoW dungeon finder group...
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Wait. So a cleric of the god of battle got miffed when a fighter went into battle? Then acted petty about it after the foe was defeated...
REALLY???
You're a cleric. You can convert ANY spells remaining to cures. You lose ALL SPELLS when you rest and recover spells anyway.
I'm all for natural selection and punishing stupidity. But he made it through the fight and is still here, and you are choosing to literally throw away free resources to keep him from being a worthless liability the next day (unless you give in and heal him before the end of that day, in which case your whole moral stand was just idiotic self-spiting). Was it his fault that those remaining spell slots became a "free resource"? Yes. Does that mean you should make a horribly illogical decision that will very likely cost the entire party dearly the next day (specifically, the tank being unable and unwilling to tank) when doing otherwise would cost you absolutely nothing? NO!
works and is smart in a MMO, at a table top, it is understandable, but self-destructive.
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As jarl said, Gorum is the god of battle. If you're going to stick to role play reasons for your actions, then your cleric should have rushed in for the glory of taking down the animated corpse of an Ogre. Now you're punishing the fighter. Makes no sense from a role play perspective at all.
The description of Gorum in the campaign setting says he often acts impulsively and emotionally. Sees your fighter did just that as well.
I'm not going to comment on inter party conflict, as your initial post said everyone was fine with what happened, but if you're going to start using the "my character would do this" then make sure it's actually in line with what your character represents. One of the issues of playing followers of a deity is that you have to "follow" the deity.
Cheers.
You're a cleric. You can convert ANY spells remaining to cures. You lose ALL SPELLS when you rest and recover spells anyway.
I'm all for natural selection and punishing stupidity. But he made it through the fight and is still here, and you are choosing to literally throw away free resources to keep him from being a worthless liability the next day (unless you give in and heal him before the end of that day, in which case your whole moral stand was just idiotic self-spiting). Was it his fault that those remaining spell slots became a "free resource"? Yes. Does that mean you should make a horribly illogical decision that will very likely cost the entire party dearly the next day (specifically, the tank being unable and unwilling to tank) when doing otherwise would cost you absolutely nothing? NO!
Where does it say you lose spells when you rest?
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A healer heals, period. It doesn't matter what god you worship. There are other ways in game to deal with this kind of behavior, but never violate the sacred trust that your comrades place in you: to bring them back alive.
Make the fighter buy a int/ wis item from his own resources, and have him address himself as "the big stupid fighter type who has given up his right to make sound decisions by himself," whenever he has NPC interactions or is asked a question by an NPC.
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A healer heals, period. It doesn't matter what god you worship. There are other ways in game to deal with this kind of behavior, but never violate the sacred trust that your comrades place in you: to bring them back alive.
I get he distinct feeling you haven't read all the healer threads on these forums hehehe.
A healer might heal, if that is the path you've taken. However not every cleric is a healer.
Cheers
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Where does it say you lose spells when you rest?You're a cleric. You can convert ANY spells remaining to cures. You lose ALL SPELLS when you rest and recover spells anyway.
I'm all for natural selection and punishing stupidity. But he made it through the fight and is still here, and you are choosing to literally throw away free resources to keep him from being a worthless liability the next day (unless you give in and heal him before the end of that day, in which case your whole moral stand was just idiotic self-spiting). Was it his fault that those remaining spell slots became a "free resource"? Yes. Does that mean you should make a horribly illogical decision that will very likely cost the entire party dearly the next day (specifically, the tank being unable and unwilling to tank) when doing otherwise would cost you absolutely nothing? NO!
You don't, but if you don't use the spell slot for healing before rest, you lose an opportunity. Since you only have a fixed number of spell slots, you're better off using them for healing just before rest and starting next day fully reset with everyone on maximum potential.
I think this is what stream of the sky meant
Cheers.
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A healer heals, period. It doesn't matter what god you worship. There are other ways in game to deal with this kind of behavior, but never violate the sacred trust that your comrades place in you: to bring them back alive.
Nope. It's everyone's responsibility to heal by putting resources aside to buy wands of CLW for the group.
Clerics =/= healers.
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"You could have gotten us killed by taking an unnecessary risk for stupid reasons! Therefore my petty grudge requires me to leave you near death as we move into combat and rely on you to hit and tank for us, making it that much more likely that we will all die for no good reason."
Impulsive fighter charging in to unwanted battle = Heroic, well role-played fighter just trying to get better.
Cleric not wanting to heal someone who went against the rest of the party = Petty, vindictive little brat.Got it?
Seriously, if you're going to make a cleric then it's your job to heal the wounded people. You don't get to role-play your character when someone else is hurt, you're just the party healbot. Don't want to heal people, don't play a cleric.
/sarcasm
Seriously, this is how some people think.
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Several issues here
1) Clerics are not necessarily healers and should not be looked on to be totally responsible for party healing, that's a collective responsibility.
2) That said witholding healing from a fellow party member to teach them a lesson is a bad move.
3) A follower of Gorum would applaud the fact that the fighter ran in.
4) A CG character wouldn't leave their fellow party member to face risk alone, no matter how stupid he's being.
5) This is not an IC problem, this is an OOC problem. Sit down like adults and voice your concerns.
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i think it was a bad idea to give the fighter long term care instead of just healing him.
it denies you sleep, and denies you the ability to recover slots for a day
a smart cleric would have used the slots and rested, no matter how frustrated.
and doesn't Gorum encourage boldness and bloodshed anyway?
maybe if you guys would have fought the skeleton together. you could have some some extra loot, and the iron lord would have rewarded your coordination.
but the iron lord doesn't reward vindictiveness, he rewards battle for the sake of battle.
as a cleric of Gorum, you shouldn't be avoiding potential foes, though retreating is fine, you should be charging in and killing stuff alongside your fighter buddy.
there is a reason a lot of his followers are berserkers, axe crazy serial killers, and Valkyries. fight for the sake of combat, for the pleasure of bloodshed, and for the joy of making corpses.
if any deity choice gives you an excuse to be Leeroy Jenkins, it is Gorum.
If your character was a cleric of Torag or Erastil or something like that and the fighter is the usual good for nothing CN as***le mercenary then i would probably agree with you (although i would also say to him not to come with us the next day since he isn't healed) BUT since your character is a cleric of Gorum then i would probably have your cleric fall.
I never said "a cleric heals, period." I said "a healer heals, period"
From what I can tell, there is a cleric, fighter, monk, and gunslinger in the party. I may be out on a limb here, but I am going to bet that the cleric does the majority of the healing here...
And btw Camelot, sarcasm is always an answer (maybe not always the best answer), the best way to learn from your mistakes, is to own them... If it brings you a laugh or two along the way then everybody wins!
Seriously though, I agree with almost everything written above for both sides of the argument... I do think that an alignment shift may be in order for the cleric though.
An alignment shift is a bit much. It's not like he refused to heal him during combat, and he did treat his wounds the hard way.
No, not an alignment shift.
An alignment shif warning?
i do know how frustrating it is to have a PC not listen to the group and then get you all in a jam
it just sucks that he is vital to the group
if a PC provokes PvP in this manner, as a GM i wouldnt be opposed to the wizard casting charm person or something to make the fighter not do dumb things, im also not really opposed to PvP as long as its based IC and not OOC which is the case here
the best solution, tell him "if you go in there, im not healing you" if his character goes in there anyway, his character will be making a grave error, and you as a player should not be punished for someone elses behavior
its not fair to the rest of the table, and tho it may be agreeable that you should have supported his decision to attack, choosing to agree with the rest of your team doesnt make you the bad guy, less you would take an alignment hit anyway
i also agree with what AD said above where he pointed out everything as XP, which is one of the main things i dislike about the mindset that all battles have to be won in combat to get XP, im playing a game right now where the GM simply has encounters, and regardless of how you overcome them you get the same XP
i got out of having to fight like 10 guards because my paladin rolled an amazing diplomacy check and a knowledge local check to know and make friends with one of them, and i still got all the XP for it
its WOW fallacy to feel the need to fight everything in order to advance your character, and im glad that there are players who can point this out, it may be a good idea to mention that kind of thing to your group, if the players arent worried about being shorted XP, or shorted rewards, they may be inclined to do less stupid things and be less greedy about it
If you are running an XP based game, you need to expect players to react according to the reward system in place. Which means some players are going to see everything as piles of XP to gain. And since XP opens up the door to everything that is desirable in the game, that's a hard temptation to avoid.
I'll admit, I'm curious... what ELSE was in the room? Any treasure? any clues?? You describe teh ogre skeleton as GUARDING the room....
What was he GUARDING??
As a player OR as a Fighter, I'd be curious whether xp is a factor or NOT...
If there was ANY treasure in there... then the FIGHTER made the right call in starting that battle.
And really, I gotta agree with the others, if you HAVE healing available... and choose not to help my guy, then I'd chalk the cleric down as a grade A jerk...
Looking up your God the fighter acted exactly as disciple of Gorum should he marched bravely forward and showed his enemies the taste of steel, in fact he honored Gorum better than you did.
true.
unlike those scimitar wielding little girls who worship Sarenrae and wet themselves in fear the moment they see a huge honking giant with a 2hander and frequently complain about the asthma derived from breathing in so much smoke.
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I guess I am the only one who has no problem with this whatsoever.
I say good on you. I don't know gorum that well, but is he the god of dumbass stupid battles? If so then I retract my statement
"You could have gotten us killed by taking an unnecessary risk for stupid reasons! Therefore my petty grudge requires me to leave you near death as we move into combat and rely on you to hit and tank for us, making it that much more likely that we will all die for no good reason."Impulsive fighter charging in to unwanted battle = Heroic, well role-played fighter just trying to get better.
Cleric not wanting to heal someone who went against the rest of the party = Petty, vindictive little brat.Got it?
Seriously, if you're going to make a cleric then it's your job to heal the wounded people. You don't get to role-play your character when someone else is hurt, you're just the party healbot. Don't want to heal people, don't play a cleric.
/sarcasm
Seriously, this is how some people think.
I'm not sure whether you misread my post or just clicked "quote" in front of the wrong post. But since your response makes no sense otherwise, I'm assuming one of those two things happened.
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You should have healed him, but given him a speech on tactics also.
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This was not written by me, but it fits.
"I'm a warrior of my god, not a magical bandaid! I'm capable of tending to wounds after battles, or during in the case of extreme injuries, but I'm not running a nursery for children playing with knives! Sharpen your wits and stop leaving yourselves so open to attack, before my god decides you're not worth healing anymore...""
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With regards to Gorum, maybe you should have supported his decision to enter the room.
But you held a vote about whether to attack or not, and collectively decided not to. You warned him that he'd be on his own if he went in anyway, and he did.
You gotta back up your threats. Gorum would want it that way.
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That said, don't let this get out of hand. The next morning, say that spending the night suffering the pain from his wounds was enough of a warning, and heal him up enough to be fit for battle. But inform him that this time it's a warning, but your patience is finite.
it... denies you the ability to recover slots for a day
Not true. Divine casters don't require 8 hours of rest to prepare spells, their requirement for spells is to pray at the appropriate time of day.
@OP: I think you should have healed him and warned him (IC, that is) that if you can't trust him to follow the group's wishes then he shouldn't be a part of your group, as well as that you can't afford to have to keep an eye on him or restrain him (!) every time the group decides not to do something he wants to do.