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View Full Version : Sweet Revenge against those darned TKers



Korivan
2009-06-27, 01:12 AM
As im sure many of you have seen, theres been threads here about problem players, obnoxious dms, and for builds against team killers. But what about those of us that with no warning, held off that person or persons that TK. I'd like to hear if anyone managed to give what some of these jerks had coming to them. So go ahead, share your stories, how did you survive.

I'll start. Back in 2nd edition I was playing a psion, I was having problems with a guy I was friends with back then so I knew it was coming. I know metagame thinking is bad, but hey, this would have been the 3rd team member he killed in 4 sessions, enough is enough. So anyways, I made my skin covered in acid using my psionics, so when he killed me in my "sleep", I melted his hand, played it off as my defense when sleeping.

Another time was (with same guy year earlier) he stabbed my character with poison tipped dagger. Luckily I had a ring that made me immune to poison and diseases, so while I pretended to be dead he ran off, I got the whole city guard to chase him down and imprison him.

Lastly, I was using a mage a little more recently, and while the rest of the group was engaged in battle, (same guy as before) turned around and came after me. Since I was only a level 1 mage and he was a level 3 fighter, I didnt have much chance. So I pulled out some tricks I've learned over the years. Used regular caltrops to slow him down, bag of flour to blind him, using a couple of potions we found but didn't identify I made a poisonus gas disabaling him (this dm grew up with 2nd edition where mixing potions almost always weilded bad things)and killed him off with sling bolts.

Saph
2009-06-27, 01:37 AM
Well, the group we've put together now at my gaming club is a very good one, so we don't get random TKers.

However, there have been other times . . .

About a year ago our usual DM was away, so one of the players was running a D&D one-off. He did a good job of it, too, especially since players kept leaving and joining throughout the session (had a total of 9 players over the game, though there were never more than 6 playing at once).

As usual with one-off fill-in games, there wasn't much party cohesion. There was the usual slight fudging to explain why each of our characters was willing to go on a dangerous combat-filled mission with a bunch of total strangers, which everyone went along with. As things turned out, all the party conflicts were good-humoured, and everyone did their best (with varying effectiveness) to help out the group - with one exception.

One of the players was playing a sorcerer. He'd already caused a certain amount of trouble by firing a lightning bolt down a tunnel where the party was fighting a huge earth elemental. The DM helped him out by suggesting that he aim over the heads of his fellow party members, but the player seemed to have difficulty grasping why the rest of us did not appreciate him firing area-effect spells into the middle of a melee.

The final battle of the adventure pitted us against a pair of modified babaus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#babau). Although there were six of us, all level 6, most of the characters weren't tuned for combat, and things quickly got dangerous. After seven rounds, the party monk was on the ground at -6 HP and stable, and everyone else (apart from the sorcerer) was wounded to some degree and engaged in melee around the babaus. The sorcerer's turn came up.

Sorcerer: "I cast lightning bolt."
DM: "You can't cast it from your position without hitting Elwin." (The party duskblade; me.)
Sorcerer: "Okay."
DM: "What?"
Me: "What?"
Sorcerer: "Oh, wait. If I step to here, the babaus are in a line in front of me, right? I cast it from there."
DM: "Okay . . . but now the monk is on the ground in front of you. You'll hit him as well."
Sorcerer: "Yeah, I do it."
DM: ". . . Roll caster level against their SR."

The babaus, being immune to electricity, took a bath in the lightning bolt and laughed. The monk died horribly.

We eventually scraped a win with several more people on negative HP but no further deaths. Once we'd healed up, I had to figure out what to do about the sorcerer. What do you do when one of your supposed allies has killed another party member and doesn't seem to realise that there's anything wrong with it?

We were in an uncharted dungeon in the wilderness miles from anywhere, so we were on our own to make the decision. The options I was considering were:

a) Boot him from the group. Pros: no more threat of him fragging us. Cons: would lose his (minimal) firepower, no way to know what he would do once ejected.
b) Warn him not to do it again. Pros: would maintain party harmony. Cons: felt like a major underreaction for killing a teammate.
c) Kill him. Pros: satisfying retribution for his Darwin-Award-level stupidity, would get to keep his stuff. Cons: possibly slightly evil.

My character was Lawful Neutral and is a professional adventurer/soldier. I went for warning him in the end, telling him that if he hit any of us with his spells again, he'd be dead by the end of the battle. I was severely tempted by c), though.

Out-of-character, the problem was simply that the sorcerer's player was an idiot incapable of grasping the concept of teamwork. One player suggested a Helm of Opposite Alignment, but the only thing that would have helped would be if we'd managed to find a Helm of Opposite Mental Capacity. In real-life, I mean, not in game.

In the end the problem was solved when the player didn't show up for the next session. Several months later, though, the same guy tried to join my Red Hand of Doom campaign, when I was DMing. He didn't get in.

- Saph

Korivan
2009-06-27, 01:50 AM
Our current group has one of those... Whenever he's a wizard, its all magic missile, or fireball (which have thier use of course, but a mage is capable of so much more). Right now we're playing a gestalt campaign because its a small group in a magic items are insainly rare world and he wants us to excel. Anyways, he's a ranger/rouge...? not sure if it can be optimised (has a 10 wisdom). No matter how many times we explain BAB he keeps trying to add ALL his modifiers to his attack and damage...Leveling up with him takes around 20-40 minutes

woodenbandman
2009-06-27, 09:23 AM
I'm going to record this story for future telling:

So there's this guy who was in my group. A huge jerk. Nobody liked him. Anyway, he butted heads with everyone, but one guy in particular really made him lose it. So one time, he was talking to this mail carrier guy who had just delivered us a giant pile of explosive runes. He said to the guy "Hey man, let me buy you a drank." Or something like that. Player that he butts heads with asks "hey man, how come all your characters buy people drinks?" Not the most polite thing to say, but this guy flies off and yells at him "BECAUSE MY CHARACTERS ARE NICE, AND DECENT, UNLIKE YOUR CHARACTERS! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT TO DO IN THIS SITUATION, SO JUST SWING YOUR SWORD AND LEAVE THE MAGIC TO ME." Now knowing the fact that this guy was playing a half kython wizard/sorceror/ultimate magus and my friend was playing a psychic warrior with a psion cohort, that exchange was really hilarious. My friend points this out. He gets even more angry and finally yells "You know what, make a will save"

Shocked, my friend is like: "What?"
"Make a will save"
"Dude, really, come on. This is really stupid"
"Make a Will save."
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
"MAKE A WILL SAVE. PICK UP THE DAMN DICE AND MAKE A WILL SAVE."
"FINE!" *Rolls* success.
"Okay, I made it, what happens to me?"
"You take 1 point of int and charisma damage. You'll get it back at the end of the day." * (FYI not a real spell)
"Okay, make a will save."
"What?"
"Make a will save"
"Oh come on, man, it's just one point!"
"No, come on, man, make a will save"
"Okay." *rolls, fails. FYI dude, if you're cheating, the time to cheat would've been now.*
"Okay what happens"
"You take 12 charisma damage"
"I still have 4 left" (He actually didn't, he had only 12 to start. Which was weird for a sorceror/wizard/ultimate magus *snicker*)

Then the sword came out and the sparks flew and long story short he don't wanna play no more, and he stormed off ranting about how we were *******s.

Decoy Lockbox
2009-06-27, 04:35 PM
this dm grew up with 2nd edition where mixing potions almost always weilded bad things

This has absolutely nothing to do with TKers, but this rule was great! And if you rolled 100 on the d%, you "gained super powers", whateve that meant. In our AD&D group, we used a strategy we called "potion bombing" whenever we needed a hail mary type strategy, and were out of options. It consisted of us grabbing our two least useful potions out of our bag of holding and throwing them at the enemy.