Is intra-party conflict good?
As a player, no. I was a NG gnome rogue (built explicitly to be paladin code-of-conduct safe) in a party with a DMPC human rogue, 2 human paladins, and a LN gnome cleric. Due to rolled stats and class differences, the paladins were overpowered in combat compared to me without flanking.
(Note: We have since learned that we should build characters together and discuss our choices, I know this is a terrible party.)
Despite my character not breaking paladin code at all, she still ended the campaign being flanked by a pair of ex-paladins. This is because the paladin players both thought the Blackguard prestige class was awesome, and even more awesome if you were an ex-paladin. Our incidents, in chronological order:
1. The exploding rift. We were sealing a portal to the elemental plane of fire with this elemental frost crystal that was hanging from a necklace. The cleric throws the crystal at the rift with the rest of the party ~10 feet away. I shoot a crossbow bolt through the necklace and grab the crystal, which is being pulled toward the rift. This allows cleric to make a Knowledge (planes) check to realize the rift would explode as it sealed. I rush everyone out of the way, set the crystal on the floor 10 feet away from rift, and run. Everyone is out of blast radius, except for paladin Thor the Mighty, who runs back in to toss the grick at the rift right as it explodes.
2. The alchemist's fire. We find some treasure, including coins, a gem the DMPC tries to claim is worth only his share of the gold, and 4 flasks of red liquid. The paladin picks up a flask and uncorks it. I yell not to drink it, saying the cleric should inspect it first. Paladin ignores me, drinks flask, takes 2d6 fire damage. I hide the rest of the flasks on my person. Paladin points a sword at me, demands flasks. I wonder if they would all go off if I got hit, and hand them over.
3. Antitoxin. All of us get hit with some trap that I thought was a delayed poison. I realize I am the only one who purchased a flask of antitoxin, and it is only enough for one person. After realizing the cleric was out of range of the trap, I drink the flask without a thought. It was, however, not actually a poison trap, so the paladins and DMPC are fine.
4. Alchemist's fire, round 2. I am inspecting strange, possibly trapped runes on a column and am standing in a square next to it. Paladin throws a flask of alchemist's fire at the column. Luckily, it misses, so I don't take splash damage. I say that if this happens again, I am drawing my loaded crossbow.
5. We are in a hallway after fighting goblins. Paladins, who are side-by-side ahead of us, suddenly turn around and throw alchemist's fire at me, becoming ex-paladins. They were built like fighters before, with terrible CHA, so this doesn't sting too much. I attack with my crossbow. DMPC joins me, cleric stays out of it. DMPC and I are reduced to ⅓ health. Paladins are barely scratched, and can heal, while we cannot. We both try to run DMPC succeeds. Paladins easily catch up to my gnome. I surrender, and while walking handcuffed and flanked out of dungeon, make many weirdly observational complaints "I cannot believe that you attacked me, forcing me to surrender, and then handcuffed me and are marching me out of this dungeon at swordpoint!" and loud clanking noises for the benefit of the DMPC, who is hiding somewhere.
6. We make camp in desert outside dungeon. DMPC follows a few miles behind us on stolen warhorse. My character plans to pretend to fall asleep, then run for it. Ex-pallies plan to kill my character while she sleeps. These plans combine, leading to my character, waiting for paladins to be more than 5 feet from her, suddenly notices both of them standing over her with swords drawn. She tries to talk her way out of it. "Why do you want to kill me?" "So we can take your share of the treasure." "You can do that without killing me, you know. Keep the pack mule, even. Just let me go!" "No." "All right, what was your big plan anyway? It's not like I will be able to tell anyone." "Erm… I don't know?" (note: this was not a bluff). I try to run, eat 4 attacks of opportunity by longswords while at 4 hp and die. Cleric is still hiding out in dungeon. DMPC finds the blood and tracks and figures out what happened. My corpse gets thrown into cart on top of the gold pieces, my weapons, miscellaneous items I bought such as 5 yards of canvas, ink, paper, soap (I thought it would help the paladins' interpersonal skills), and more.
So, this is why I hate intraparty conflict. However, arguing in-character over what to do, especially with multiple good options, sounds fine as long as nobody draws blades or ammunition, or readies spells.
It is not fun for me as gm or as an uninvolved player.
In a word yes. We hardly do it at all anymore, but there is nothing as exciting and thrilling as fighting another player. You know it's him or you and not just some BBEG the GM won't mind having die.
If done right it can be a lot of fun. Even if we're not outright fighting eachother, but also the plotting and scheming. One GM I know does this really well, but usually we work together nowadays.
There is also the added excitement of opponents facing off that do know eachother's strengths and weaknesses.
Is intra-party conflict good?
As a player, no. I was a NG gnome rogue (built explicitly to be paladin code-of-conduct safe) in a party with a DMPC human rogue, 2 human paladins, and a LN gnome cleric. Due to rolled stats and class differences, the paladins were overpowered in combat compared to me without flanking.
(Note: We have since learned that we should build characters together and discuss our choices, I know this is a terrible party.)
Despite my character not breaking paladin code at all, she still ended the campaign being flanked by a pair of ex-paladins. This is because the paladin players both thought the Blackguard prestige class was awesome, and even more awesome if you were an ex-paladin. Our incidents, in chronological order:1. The exploding rift. We were sealing a portal to the elemental plane of fire with this elemental frost crystal that was hanging from a necklace. The cleric throws the crystal at the rift with the rest of the party ~10 feet away. I shoot a crossbow bolt through the necklace and grab the crystal, which is being pulled toward the rift. This allows cleric to make a Knowledge (planes) check to realize the rift would explode as it sealed. I rush everyone out of the way, set the crystal on the floor 10 feet away from rift, and run. Everyone is out of blast radius, except for paladin Thor the Mighty, who runs back in to toss the grick at the rift right as it explodes.
2. The alchemist's fire. We find some treasure, including coins, a gem the DMPC tries to claim is worth only his share of the gold, and 4 flasks of red liquid. The paladin picks up a flask and uncorks it. I yell not to drink it, saying the cleric should inspect it first. Paladin ignores me, drinks flask, takes 2d6 fire damage. I hide the rest of the flasks on my person. Paladin points a sword at me, demands flasks. I wonder if they would all go off if I got hit, and hand them over.
3. Antitoxin. All of us get hit with some trap that I thought was a delayed poison. I realize I am the only one who...
Ganked and you had bought them soap. The lowest of blows.
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If you're players are legitimately creating characters and wanting to roleplay them in realistic fashion, there will be intra-party conflict unless they deliberately suppress it. By the games very nature (classes that are as divided philosophically as they are my fighting style), each character is going to disagree with another on some level.
That said, I think it can be a great thing. Stories where everyone always agrees on everything are far less compelling, and I'm a storyteller first when it comes to running games. I work under the philosophy of "Let them figure it out, I'll just interpret the dice rolls".
I will admit there are SOME times when in-character choices resulted in some real irritation/anger from a player, but the choice itself was fueled by an OOC motive, not an in-character one: the player was bored, so he decided to off the forlarren that the party had defeated and tied up while another was trying to learn why it was there and why it was so angry.
So it was really player against player, not character against character.