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Actually the "getting XP for killing things" came from 2.0 long before WOW. Don't blame this on MMO's. First XP was when you got loot back in 1.0. 2.0 you got it for killing things. It wasn't until 3.5 when the idea of bypassing encounters in other ways got you xp for them (I believe the exact section of it can be found on page 35 or so of the book of exalted deeds).
My intro box adventure to AD&D offered up DMs the advice to give players as much XP or more for bypassing encounters through cleverness instead of just fighting them, so that idea isn't a 3.X thing.
I can't say for certain at the moment, but I'm pretty sure the terminology has always been "defeat" the encounters or foes, which is slightly more inclusive (and occasionally challenging) than "kill."
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"Comrade, your valor is impressive as always! However, your poor discretion is going to lose us the war for the want of a battle. Not all foes are equal, and that mindless stack of bones cannot appreciate your bravery and skill. There was no reason to give it the glory of your injuries. I insist you take our search for the more worthy foe seriously- we need not test my patron for the virtue of patience."
There, a good in-character way to gently scold.
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I once played a cleric of Thor and when my allies took some damage after the first combat of the day they wanted healing. My response was:
"Verily I have communed with Thor and he hath said thou shalt suck it up princess. Art thou an adventurer or art thou a milk-maid fresh from the farm? Thou shalt be cured when it is neededeth, verily I shall not swap out the lightning of Thor to fixeth thy tiny booboo."
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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...
Does the fighter have some special RP reason why he had to go into the room right then (eg sworn to kill all undead on sight)? If not, it was pretty stupid to endanger the mission by fighting it at that moment. Still, as was pointed out by others, you need him at least until you get back to town and find a new tank. Rather than withholding healing, you could take the cost of all resources expended (at going rates for spellcasting, for instance) out of his share of the loot. IMO, you guys didn't issue an ultimatum, the fighter did by forcing you to accept a fight that you didn't want to. He's lucky you didn't close and lock the door behind him and leave him like you said you would. Anyway, good luck sorting this in or out of character.
I can agree that it would have been nice to still heal the fighter. It's poor tactics as much to leave him injured for future fights as it was for him to initiate extra combat.
However, I definitely don't think the OP is in the wrong here. The party took a group consensus and everyone except for the fighter wanted to skip the room. Despite this, the fighter then went ahead and got into combat, nearly got himself killed and drained the party of more resources than they wanted to spend (hence the skipping it part).
I'm surprised to see how many people are unhappy with the Cleric's actions here. When a character does something that undermines the goals of the rest of the party, they absolutely deserve some criticism and/or consequences in my opinion. And that's exactly what the fighter did - rush into combat against the wishes of the rest of the party (which were made extremely clear) and became a drain on the resources of the party, primarily the cleric's healing, but some other stuff as well. Fighter definitely deserves some flak for that.
Eh, my 2cp anyway.
Worse still
are the cowards who flee battles they could win if their hearts were strong,
Though your religion is about death and destruction, it is also about facing those things head-on.
Gorum’s is an all-or-nothing faith... Gorum demands only that his faithful constantly prove themselves in battle.
Gorum disagrees with your avoidance of a worthy battle, even temporarily. The healing is insignificant for the deity. I would consider that a player concern as much as a character concern.
the fighter may have drained the cleric's resources
but not fighting the skeletal ogre goes against the wishes of Gorum. the god of violence for the sake of violence.
a party of 4 could have easily defeated that ogre skeleton
Gunslinger hits touch, ignores ogre skeleton's DR, and ogre skeleton has poor Dex, Poor Cha too, so little health
Fighter 2hands club, Ogre Skeleton takes great damage, Clubs are free
Cleric could also 2hand club to beat ogre skeleton, club is free
monk pummel ogre skeleton with fists, skeleton wounded bad
mindless skeleton have no feats due to being mindless, crippled corpse, no combat reflexes, let alone power attack.
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.
Yes, thank you. I said when you "rest and recover spells." I'm assuming a cleric that prepares spells in the morning, but IME most tend to and I think my point still stands regardless of the time of day he gets a new day of spells. When you do so, any remaining slots from the previous day go to waste, so if you have someone injured and you don't burn those soon-to-be-trashed-anyway slots on healing him, you're basically "no thanks" to free benefits. And if you later heal the fighter anyway, that's like turning down free benefits, only ot pay money for them the next day. It's illogical and ultimately you're just screwing yourself. Is all I'm saying.
You're perfectly within your rights to make bad decisions. But then you're not much better than the "idiot fighter" you're complaining about.
Worse still
are the cowards who flee battles they could win if their hearts were strong,Though your religion is about death and destruction, it is also about facing those things head-on.Gorum’s is an all-or-nothing faith... Gorum demands only that his faithful constantly prove themselves in battle.Gorum disagrees with your avoidance of a worthy battle, even temporarily. The healing is insignificant for the deity. I would consider that a player concern as much as a character concern.
(This post is intended as good natured but tongue in cheek. It not a sarcastic rip at any of the posters here. I'm going for chuckles, not outrage.)
I think the biggest problem was that the OP decided to be a cleric of GORUM. From the sound of it, the cleric should be shouldering aside the fighter to charge blindly into the merest hint of battle while shouting the holy battle cry "Leeerrroooooooooyyy Jeeeenkiiiiiiinnnss!!!"
I've heard Paladins called Lawful Stupid quite often, but this is the first time I've seen Chaotic Stupid!
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This is alot more about "How do you handle one player disregarding the decision of the group" and alot less about healing or whatever kind of cleric the guy is.
If you just go in with the guy and heal him up after and say "gee what a battle" what you've really done is just had one guy tell the group "See your vote? Screw it. Take that stick and shove it. I'll do what I want, and if you want to be part of my group you'll come with me."
*that* is the issue. And it needs to be solved at the table, not "in game" because "in game" the way you handle it is to let Dipstick the Fighter die, and move on with the group's plan.
In character its "Hey. You. Yeah, YOU, the one bleeding on my shoes. No, I'm not healing you. You know why? Because we took a vote and WE SAID TO NOT GO IN THERE. Yeah. You speak common, right? Good. Next time you go running off by yourself after we said to go a different way? We'll notify your family the general location of your remains. You are either with the group, or not. You Decide."
But players don't tend to like their characters getting ditched, even for good reason.
Deal with it at the table before the game.
-S
Huh.
Lame all the way around.
However at my table the cleric of Gorum would be spell free for a day or three for displaying cowardice.
It appears the fighter can fight but the cleric can't cleric. The fighter might not have displayed the best tactics but refusing to heal an obviously potent resource is displaying worse tactics.
As a player I would rather than vote the out cleric than the fighter. .
My 2cp.
while the iron lord respects the need to retreat
he does not respect ignoring a fight that is relatively winnable if the party devoted resources to it.
and either way, you would have to eventually have murdered the ogre skeleton. better sooner than later.
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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...
So in essence, you refused to heal him the night before even with spells left, choose long term care at the expense of you not sleeping. THEN the fighter is still not at top form, you're taking him back into the dungeon and you consider that a good idea?
I'm sorry, who exactly is the stupid one here? Granted I see your point, but seriously, by refusing to heal him your hurting not only the fighter but yourself as you head back into the dungeon. While I understand the point, having played the healer for 18 levels over 4 years, including having a HP black hole known as the party barbarian, but really, you're not punishing him but hurting your parties chances at survival.
Seriously, lets say you sneak through the dungeon and find the cleric, and minions, and combat starts and the fighter is already fighting hurt and drops in two rounds due to lack of healing?
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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 itActually the "getting XP for killing things" came from 2.0 long before WOW. Don't blame this on MMO's. First XP was when you got loot back in 1.0. 2.0 you got it for killing things. It wasn't until 3.5 when the idea of bypassing encounters in other ways got you xp for them (I believe the exact section of it can be found on page 35 or so of the book of exalted deeds).
There has been XP for killing things ever since original edition. Third Edition is the one that took away practically everything else a character could do to earn XP.
good way to punish the cleric?
include a penalty to concentration checks that lasts until he proves his manhood to his god.
Has anyone considered that the main objective was much more important than a silly skeleton? That their might be time constraints, and delays would cost the party? I understand that without a goal, and just party bent on destruction, the cleric would have gone in, and channeled energy the thing to death if he so chose. However, they had a goal. Also, these characters do have an intelligence. I think that a lot of players forget that they have a wisdom score and an intelligence score. A wise cleric, which most all are(even so called battle clerics), would certainly understand that sometimes not all enemies must be fought immediately. It certainly seems to me that the skeleton would still be there after the mission. And laid out a plan tactics, and was agreed upon by the party except for the fighter. Gorum is a Chaotic Neutral Deity. I believe that Gorum can understand a Cleric refusing to heal a stupid fighter. However, I think after the refusal of healing the fighter, the entire party should have realized they were down a necessary member of the team and go back to town, and find a more sensible person to be the shield of battle, one with a bit more intelligence and wisdom.
There has been XP for killing things ever since original edition. Third Edition is the one that took away practically everything else a character could do to earn XP.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 itActually the "getting XP for killing things" came from 2.0 long before WOW. Don't blame this on MMO's. First XP was when you got loot back in 1.0. 2.0 you got it for killing things. It wasn't until 3.5 when the idea of bypassing encounters in other ways got you xp for them (I believe the exact section of it can be found on page 35 or so of the book of exalted deeds).
to me, WOW fallacy isnt that the idea comes from WOW directly, but its the mindset that players have in WOW that they bring to table top RPGs
the obsession with everything playing like a video game, and having it only reward you for combat is the mindset, be it from WOW or not, pretty much all players that come with that mindset are used to it from that kind of game
that said, i do acknowledge that the idea of needing to fight and kill everything has been around for longer, personally i hate it because all my coplayers forgo any role playing and always choose to play something CN just so they can get away with killing things
the best ways i can see to fix it are:
1) get rid of XP entirely
2) reward NOT killing enemies that dont need to be killed
3) take away XP from characters that kill for no reason (this is the worst solution, and sadly the most effective, but its also the one that gets the most flack, and no DM should tell the player how to play)
its always better to reward than to punish, but rewarding characters who dont kill will lead to the players that do kill complaining about preferential treatment or some crap... best way ive come up with is nixing XP
on topic, this relates directly to how your players are behaving in game, as you cannot escape the metagame, and being aware of things that go on in game that your character shouldnt know (another WOW fallacy thing) and it leads to more rash or unfriendly decision making
responsible and decent players should be willing to consider what their character would be thinking, and how their character interacts with the other players characters, less they become leroy jenkins, and yes another reference to WOW fallacy
I had mixed feelings about this, because I wanted to say good job on letting the stupid figther suffer. However, the term "meat shield" exsists for a reason. You wouldn't let your weapons go unmended, you don't let the fighter go unhealed.
I don't have Faiths of Balance(though now I know another book to get) however one of his domains is glory and glory tends to be demonstrated. Two portfolios are strength and battle. I'm not saying you played him wrong, but if it were me I'd probably be with the fighter on taking down the ogre skeleton.
Though this is coming from a person that generally plays wizards or sorcerers, so fighters are needed to protect me from death.
All in all, love the statement however as they've said bad call.
I need some cleric-fication.
1) if the ogre skeleton wasn't triggered, how did anyone know there was an ogre skeleton to fight in that room?
2) why did the fighter want to go into that room?
3) why did the party NOT want to go into that room?
I understand the part objective of wanting to stay focused on the goal of killing the bad guy, but it sounds a bit of meta gaming went on here.
You are using terms like "triggering" and "aggro"
It seems the door to the room was opened? and the party could see in? There were no hostile forces inside shouting death and dismemberment to all.
Perhaps the party could clearly see a large humanoid skeleton inside but it was not moving or attacking? (Im not sure this wasn't clear)
Sp how could anyone know 1) that that wasnt just a dead thing in the room and 2) there was or wasnt danger in the room?
Did a spell caster detect undead? Seems logical, fighting evil cleric and minions, in dungeon, see big dead thing....it could be remains, it could be undead...let's find out shall we?
Did a rogue type try looking for traps?
The idea of leaving unexplored rooms in a dungeon/building/castle to your rear is tactically idiotic.
"Let;s not go in that room... there might be bad guys, and we want to get moving" ??????
!!!!!
The process for room clearing used my the military/FBI/ every dumb cop show.. has invaders/investigators clear every room/corner in sequence.... why?
Because no one wants to be trapped between bad guys and more bad guys. How does modern military/police know to do this?
Too many people slaughtered in history during castle fighting.
"hey guys lets all hide in the cellar and wait for the invaders to pass us on the way to the throne room"
"CHARGE on to the throne room"
"ok...now let's sneak up behind them"
Next let's talk about the aggro thing.
Your saying the fighter went into said room, and action which then "activated" the ogre skeleton, the fighter engaged it, and then retreated toward the party. IS that what happened?
there is NO AGGRO in table top gaming. That is a techie term for MMO that helps a monster dictate what it does and where it goes, in absence of a mind ( a GM) to make it's decisions.
Essentially AGGRO is an algorithm.
I'm still at a loss for what guts and glory wanted to go into the room for?
What was his argument?
I'm not leaving this unexplored room to my rear?
I just want to see what's in here?
I want to go poke the dead thing with a stick?
You're talking about a three person grapple and a rather heated dispute. What was the fighters point?
For me. I WOULD NOT have risked going forward without making sure my rear was secure. which includes checking out this room, or somehow satisfactorily guarding it or sealing it off.
Who's to say that ogre skeleton couldnt have come out of that room and attacked you later when you were already in another battle?
It seems to me the party was using this idea of rooms and triggers (if you dont go in, that encounter doesnt exist) is a meta gaming way.
There is no way your characters could have had that kind of knowledge.
What if your fighter went into the room, the skeleton was just dead bones and he found all sorts of treasure in there, including a super magical scared holy symbol of Gorum? Would he still be on his own? Could he have kept all the wealth meant to be divided amoung a whole party for himself, because he was on his own?
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Eh, I refused to heal someone in a living game because he dashed in. In all fairness, he was always on his damn mount and the cave was two squares wide. We wouldn't have been able to use reach weapons either! I'll be g!! d~@ned if he didn't say screw it and ran in. Oh, of course he went top speed so we didn't even get to enter combat until two rounds later.
Course that's a living game, and that player always rubbed everyone the wrong way so I didn't feel so bad when he fell down. ;p
He also didn't get healed on his idiotic melee bard in another adventure.
I'm super impressed by how many of these posters are wanting to penalize and berate the cleric when the core issue here is that the fighter's player was a jerk and essentially pissed on the wishes of the group.
Did the cleric act against the wishes of Gorum? Maybe. But maybe the issue was time sensitive or the cleric saw the value of going with the group's wishes. Clerics are wise by mechanical requirement, and a lone cleric in a dangerous environment is often a dead cleric. However, that's not our problem.
Our problem is a player problem. The fighter's player waited for a group vote/consensus, in which s/he was the only one wanting to fight the skeleton. After the group decided the fighter's player decided that nobody else's opinion mattered and attacked anyways.
This is not an RP issue. This is a player issue.
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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
Gorum is a God of Battle for battle's sake anything that leads to battle is desirable, even surviving to battle again later. So the figther wanting a battle is desirable, the drawn out battle that resulted was a great result. Gorum would be pleased. Heal the guy, buy him a drink even.
OP: If OOC you would rather be part of a group that always works together then maybe you should consider a Lawful or at least Neutal deity and character.
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Not everyone interprets Gorum as Leroy Jenkins because not everyone owns Faiths of Balance. Nothing in the core material gives any indication he's the god of Darwin Award "Winners."
Unless the group had FoB when the character was rolled up penalizing him based on non-OGL fluff heard second hand on a forum is not good GMing.
Even if you own Faiths of Balance you don't have to interpret Gorum as the Leroy Jenkins god. Being a cleric of Gorum doesn't mean you have to run head-first into every battle, screaming like an idiot.
Since your original question was "does this jive with Gorum", my answer is "yes". The fact that your original plan was to draw the ogre skeleton out into an ambush is definitely in line with Gorum's teachings. It's a smart tactic that would have extended your adventuring day and allowed for even more delightful combat.
You recognize the place of brains in battle, because stupid people die quickly. You appreciate tactics and the thrill of outmaneuvering an enemy—indeed, these are crucial skills—but they pale next to the blood and sweat of melee itself. You are not an idiot charging blindly into battle; Gorum teaches that it is better to retreat strategically so that you can fight another day than to throw away your life in vain.
Providing or not providing healing is a wash either way as far as Gorum is concerned. He's not a god of healing or companionship. The fighter has to stand on his own feet. His skill at arms will decide when he dies. If you, as his companion, chose to lift him up and heal him so he can be more effective in combat later then great. If not, and he has to lift himself up and overcome his own weakness, then that's great too.
The companionship of others can lift you up for a time, but in the end you must prove your powers every day or risk coasting on past glories."
Oh, and remember that if your decision not to heal him creates strife within the party and leads to argument and conflict between the two of you then that is a-ok with Gorum too.
As long as people struggle against themselves and each other, Gorum’s teachings live on.
Gorum wouldn't punish or take away your powers for this because he really, truly, honestly doesn't care about you. He's not watching over you. He's not micromanaging your life. If you want a warm blanket of faith and a litany of rules to live your life by then you should probably go worship someone else. Gorum doesn't care about your feelings or your philosophy.
Gorum is Crom in a suit of armor. Pick up a copy of Del Rey's collected Conan stories in their original, unaltered form (The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, The Bloody Crown of Conan, & The Conquering Sword of Conan). Read them, love them, and every time you play your character just ask yourself What Would Conan Do (W.W.C.D)?
Oh, and if you get a chance you should re-watch the first (loosely adapted) Conan movie. The prayer to Crom near the end is both awesome, and appropriate to Gorum. My own priest of Gorum character likes to end his morning prayers with some variation of "And if you do not listen, then the hell with you!"
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I'm super impressed by how many of these posters are wanting to penalize and berate the cleric when the core issue here is that the fighter's player was a jerk and essentially pissed on the wishes of the group.
Did the cleric act against the wishes of Gorum? Maybe. But maybe the issue was time sensitive or the cleric saw the value of going with the group's wishes. Clerics are wise by mechanical requirement, and a lone cleric in a dangerous environment is often a dead cleric. However, that's not our problem.
Our problem is a player problem. The fighter's player waited for a group vote/consensus, in which s/he was the only one wanting to fight the skeleton. After the group decided the fighter's player decided that nobody else's opinion mattered and attacked anyways.
This is not an RP issue. This is a player issue.
Why is there this idea on the forums that proliferates that a player can't play his character but must concede to the party's wishes?
The entire party votes to kill the captive, the paladin disagrees with killing a prisoner... but MUST go along because if he didn't it would be a PLAYER issue? OH my goodness.... someone didn't cow tow.... heaven forbid, dungeon exploring democracy has crumbled and fallen!
Setting aside the Gorum issue, if I was the Cleric I would have healed him, then say that some of his share of the treasure is going to be going to picking up a cure light wounds wand or two, so when he does something like this again, you'll be able to keep going without wasting spells.
I might warn him first, if this was the first time he did something like it.
thieves could get a bunt load of xp just for recovering treasure, they never had to defeat a single enemy, that's why in the older editions, the thief was always known for sneaking off during the battle and grabbing all the loot.... ie never trust a thief in your party.
Treasure XP was taken away in 3e... thats what the post you quoted was getting at.
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My first thought is to ask if you're party is a group of friends or a gaggle of competitive strangers bent on mercenary wealth and fame. An adventuring group should be friends, or at a minimum "brothers in arms". If someone in my group is a tool and I'm the designated medic, or even just someone capable of healing, I should still be healing them. IC, you're braving dangers together and putting your lives in each others hands.
Otherwise you're pretending to be angry adolescents wandering the wilds with sharp sticks.
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The fighter put the party in jeopardy by going off half-cocked. He did it not once, but twice (in that he was stopped initially when his fellow adventurers grappled him and the second time when he continued on after he escaped).
How is this OK? Because a player should be able to play his character the way he wants and if it doesn't jive with the other players/characters, then that's just too bad? Either the character is arrogant and selfish and the player is just role-playing or the player is arrogant and selfish and not role-playing.
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A very similar situation happened in one of my games. We were 3rd level characters in an underground crypt where an undead wizard had made his lair (we did not know it at the time as he was not our objective). I was playing a goody goody fighter who would avoid bloodshed when he could. Another player was playing a Dwarf Fighter/Cleric who had a nifty Warhammer of Undead Bane.
When we came upon the undead wizard, he told us to stop being so d*mn noisy and get the h*ll out of his laboratory. It was pretty obvious to most of us that this guy was way beyond the power of our characters. With him being pretty pissed off, several of us decided it would be best to apologize and back off...but not the dwarf. No, not the dwarf. While we are saying "Yes, sir. Sorry sir. Humble apologies, sir", the dwarf charges in hammer-a-blazin, certain that this undead needed to be blasted from existence. The dwarf botched his attack, because I recall that he dropped his hammer to the ground (critical failure homebrew rules). The undead wizard responds with pretty nasty spell (disintegrate I think) which luckily missed.
We all shout at the dwarf to stand down, but the player flatly ignored us...so I tell him if he's not going to listen to sense, I will make him. I had my fighter pick up his hammer up from the ground and calmly stride out the door. The player was livid. His character chased down my fighter, shouting at the top of his lungs to give his weapon back (the player was actually shouting). I explained that I would be happy to give it back after we had a nice, calm chat about how we should work together as a party. The player would not calm down until his character got his hammer back. For the rest of the session, he silently moped.
It was obvious to most of us that the player running the dwarf put the party at risk. We dealt with it then and there. Yes, the player was pissed for a while and we did have to have a few OOC conversations about it. In the end, the player understood that not only were we role-playing our characters given that situation, but we also had trouble trusting his play after that event, which made for a less pleasant game for everyone. The game did get better for a few sessions until he had to move out of the area. The game actually went really, really well after he left, though. :)
I don't think this is a "player" issue. The guy (cleric) played his character. Not every table is full of petty, childish players (and to assume as much is foolish). Perhaps the guy playing the reckless fighter isn't sitting up all night tearing his hair from his head thinking, "Damnit! My character is right, and they're wrong! How dare theeeeyyyy?!" It's a game.
I'm super impressed by how many of these posters are wanting to penalize and berate the cleric when the core issue here is that the fighter's player was a jerk and essentially pissed on the wishes of the group.
Honestly, if the situation was presented a bit more humbly... I may have sided with the cleric player. (gorum issues aside, I don't know much about that...)
However, this whole OP has an attidude about it. Kind of an "I showed him!!! Look how dumb HIS character was!" and a sense of 'bragging' that he's leaving his partner to die.
That sits poorly with a lot of people.
Was the fighter a jerk who did something dumb? Maybe. Was the Cleric Right up there too for leaving the tank nearly dead and laughing about it? Ohhh yeah.
I'm super impressed by how many of these posters are wanting to penalize and berate the cleric when the core issue here is that the fighter's player was a jerk and essentially pissed on the wishes of the group.
Did the cleric act against the wishes of Gorum? Maybe. But maybe the issue was time sensitive or the cleric saw the value of going with the group's wishes. Clerics are wise by mechanical requirement, and a lone cleric in a dangerous environment is often a dead cleric. However, that's not our problem.
Our problem is a player problem. The fighter's player waited for a group vote/consensus, in which s/he was the only one wanting to fight the skeleton. After the group decided the fighter's player decided that nobody else's opinion mattered and attacked anyways.
This is not an RP issue. This is a player issue.
Why is there this idea on the forums that proliferates that a player can't play his character but must concede to the party's wishes?
The entire party votes to kill the captive, the paladin disagrees with killing a prisoner... but MUST go along because if he didn't it would be a PLAYER issue? OH my goodness.... someone didn't cow tow.... heaven forbid, dungeon exploring democracy has crumbled and fallen!
So 5 people in a group- one says to go left the rest say to go right. One guy says "screw you" and goes left anyway.
Do the rest follow? or go right afterall?Why have the vote or discussion if you are just going to follow the one guy anyway? Skip it and follow him like sheep and be done with it.
But if folks are going to agree to the discussion of what to do, and then agree to have a vote on it then complicit with that is the thought of doing whatever the majority votes to do. Majority, or whatever percentage of group vote the group decided gets to decide what they do.
And it matters because In Character the decision is "let the moron die, we'll find someone smarter next time we're in town. or we won't. But at least we won't have Captain Moron charging off on a whim". But we're playing a game here where the people at the table are, presumably, more important than the ones in the game.
And "Lets leave Captain Moron behind" doesn't usually end well at the /table/ when CM is run by Bob who's now pissed off that you let him die.
This isn't a character issue. Its a player issue. The actions of the character and party will upset the player of said characters. It should be handled accordingly.
Don't be a jerk. Its not just a PFS rule.
-S
Why is there this idea on the forums that proliferates that a player can't play his character but must concede to the party's wishes?The problem is, none of my characters would have traveled with the fighter after this point. A couple of them would have left him to die. From everything I've heard, the same players who will play the fighter as attacking something the party absolutely doesn't want to attack will get all upset when the other players play their characters and tell his character to get lost (or just let him die).
It's pretty unrealistic to say in the middle of a combat theater, "I will no longer travel with you"
after leaving the dungeon, and returning to town, it would be realistic to part ways.I'm not saying I would have healed the fighter, there by rewarding his passive aggressive 'ill do whatever I want because you will heal me", however I also wouldnt have wasted the spells before praying for new ones.
I may have with held them, and he may have died because of that at some future time, but if those spells werent needed before the next day, I would have lent them to him with a stern warning, not to consider me his puppet for future senseless endeavors.
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What amuses me is that if the other player were to post on these forums and present 'his side,' he'd be blasted for being 10 different kinds of fool. So it's not really an issue of who's right and who's wrong. It's that whoever actually posts about it in the forums is wrong.
I'm strongly reminded of the Monty Python sketch "Argument Clinic."
"I want to have an argument!"
"Oh... sorry. This is abuse. Argument is two doors down."
There were optional rules for the rogue classes to get XP for treasure. Yes, the optional individual class awards disappeared after 2nd edition, and optional rules for per-adventure awards (that could have the characters doing anything) showed up. That's hardly "Third Edition is the one that took away practically everything else a character could do to earn XP."thieves could get a bunt load of xp just for recovering treasure, they never had to defeat a single enemy, that's why in the older editions, the thief was always known for sneaking off during the battle and grabbing all the loot.... ie never trust a thief in your party.
Treasure XP was taken away in 3e... thats what the post you quoted was getting at.
No those weren't optional rules, you got 1 xp for every gp recovered. Most XP was gained in 1E through the mountains of treasure recovered vs. the monsters killed (which were much less of a reward than they are now).
The finder, was the one who received the XP, so while everyone was fighting the thief was off skulking to pocket gems an easily concealable trinkets worth much moolah, which also meant a larger share of XP. It was an optional (and selfish) TACTIC, but a standard rule.
I'm super impressed by how many of these posters are wanting to penalize and berate the cleric when the core issue here is that the fighter's player was a jerk and essentially pissed on the wishes of the group.
Did the cleric act against the wishes of Gorum? Maybe. But maybe the issue was time sensitive or the cleric saw the value of going with the group's wishes. Clerics are wise by mechanical requirement, and a lone cleric in a dangerous environment is often a dead cleric. However, that's not our problem.
Our problem is a player problem. The fighter's player waited for a group vote/consensus, in which s/he was the only one wanting to fight the skeleton. After the group decided the fighter's player decided that nobody else's opinion mattered and attacked anyways.
This is not an RP issue. This is a player issue.
Why is there this idea on the forums that proliferates that a player can't play his character but must concede to the party's wishes?
The entire party votes to kill the captive, the paladin disagrees with killing a prisoner... but MUST go along because if he didn't it would be a PLAYER issue? OH my goodness.... someone didn't cow tow.... heaven forbid, dungeon exploring democracy has crumbled and fallen!
So 5 people in a group- one says to go left the rest say to go right. One guy says "screw you" and goes left anyway.
Do the rest follow? or go right afterall?Why have the vote or discussion if you are just going to follow the one guy anyway? Skip it and follow him like sheep and be done with it.
But if folks are going to agree to the discussion of what to do, and then agree to have a vote on it then complicit with that is the thought of doing whatever the majority votes to do. Majority, or whatever percentage of group vote the group decided gets to decide what they do.
And it matters because In Character the decision is "let the moron die, we'll find someone smarter next time we're in town. or we...
You're saying this guy has to do what everyone else decides to do, because majority rule is always right? Yea, that's always proven to be true.
My buddies all think we should go out drinking and driving, I have to follow along because they all decided it was right.
The players made a meta-game decision (according to the OP) to not go into the room because they didn't want to "activate" the "aggro". Totally meta game, there was no reasonable in game conversation that could have taken place between the characters. It was ALL out of character jibber jabber (and essentially cheating)
How did they know there was an active ogre skeleton in the room?
And if they DID know it was there, WHY would they leave it there and continue on, knowing full well it was somewhere behind them?
Sure, you can sneak by an encounter if you need to, but if room 1 has the ogre skeleton in it, and room 2 has the BBEG, then don't you think this ogre skeleton is going to get involved anyway?
You would have to have reasonable belief that you would be able to sneak past it and get far enough away from it before there was another encounter that it would be totally bypassed.
But the characters are in the Temple of Elemental EVIL. The entire place is a ward of evil psychos who are all out to get you. Random troll encounter in the woods on the way to the temple? sure avoid them. Deep dungeon crawl?
Leaving enemies to your rear is suicidal.
The idea of trying to spend up as much or all of your resources to get to the end fight sooner, with more is very very dumb, what if you have to retreat? now instead of running backwards through empty hall ways and cleared rooms, you have enemy to your rear between you, safety and your supply line.
So again, why was by passing the room a good idea?
Meta game, dont activate the encounter and it wont exist!
Not a good reason, besides, there could have been treasure in there or even something that could have helped with the end goal.
Do you think there was a reason why the Allies invade normandy first? Why not just jump straight into berlin and kill hitler with a tightly rolled up news paper?
its true, the longer a conversation goes on on the internet, the clock just starts counting down until nazis get dragged into the argument
happens every time
To bring it away from Hitler, I don't think it's a player issue, yet.
It's a player issue when the player takes exception to his character being left behind.
I've had games as a player where the character development of the party drifted in different directions, mostly due to character death leading to new characters with a fresh slant that gradually pulled the party in to a different perspective.
It has been the case that my character was not on board for an episode of killing a fort full of guards to protect a berserking friend, because my guy wasn't willing to kill dozens of guards on decent-but-not-solid evidence the lord had at some point killed a lot of people in a village. I was pretty sure that when my character put his foot down he was either going to be killed by or ejected from the party. And I was cool with that, because that was pretty much the apex of his character development and discovering who he was, what he stood for, and what he'd really risk his friends and life for.
It helped that I had a GM who was cool about XP transfer to new characters. And while there were a few grumbles about HOW I had my character take his stand, doing so fell short of an inter-player problem.
No those weren't optional rules, you got 1 xp for every gp recovered. Most XP was gained in 1E through the mountains of treasure recovered vs. the monsters killed (which were much less of a reward than they are now).1E had official XP for treasure rules. The 2E rules that give XP for treasure were optional and only for rogues.
Ah, I didn't 2 e much.... used complete warrior, bard kits, things like that, didnt buy all the new core rule books... seemed redundant.
was the ogre skeleton a nazi?
sorry, couldn't help it.