(Any) Your most annoying player...

[crizh]

Rogue with +6 DEX, +13 ranks, +feat/class/item/synergy boosts.

Yea, when he rolls a 4 or 8 or whatever it was, with a ton of boosts, against a Nat20 (25) + level in ranks, I don't feel bad at all about it.

Yeah, well at that level if he doesn't have Skill Mastery he's got nothing to complain about.

It's not like this is difficult math. If max spot/listen for mooks is CR+25 then at CR10 he only needs a skill of 26 to be a total ghost if he takes 10.

You're right, he's an idiot.

(would have been easier to understand if you'd explained the house rules in the first place... )

[Greenish]

It's not like this is difficult math. If max spot/listen for mooks is CR+25 then at CR10 he only needs a skill of 26 to be a total ghost if he takes 10.

Yeah, idiot rogue for not having 26+ skill mod on hide and move silently on level 10… wait, what?

[Lev]

I actually don't mind camping, as long as I have something to write with, I was just quoting 8 out of 10 cats.

I have some fond memories of camping with my GCSE class. Nastasja, who brought her credit card, triped over a the tent cabals twice and swore she would not use the toilet until she got home. Even better, Dijana, who wanted to bring her hair dryer (when asked where she would plug it in, answered "I don't care, but I need to have it"), left the tent flap open with a half eaten choclate bar at the entrance, then was startled by the ants and when asked her mother to take her home, her mother responded "Sure thing sweetie, what is gthe name of the hotel are you in?" (the mother than then sent Dijana's baby sitter on the 1.5 hour car drive to pick her up).

See? It's a good filter!

[Il_Vec]

Yeah, idiot rogue for not having 26+ skill mod on hide and move silently on level 10… wait, what?

13 ranks + 6 Dex + 7 from items = 26 and is higly doable for level 10 WBL.

[Drakevarg]

13 ranks + 6 Dex + 7 from items = 26 and is higly doable for level 10 WBL.

Assuming you have access to whatever magic items you fancy, which is not always the case.

[Gralamin]

Me: Statistics says there is a 10 in 20 chance of me rolling a nat20. Or 50%.

The chance of rolling at least 1 natural 20 in 10 rolls is actually 40.1%.

The probability was also closer to 40%

1 - (0.95)^20

Oh hey, someone else got it right. But that should be (1 - (0.95)^10). and is at least 1 natural 20. Which is the probability you stated, but not what you wrote down

---

Luckily for me its easy to plan around what my most annoying player is likely to do, and be ready for his stupidity. Luckily as well, I tend to game with mature people and don't actually suffer problems.

[Greenish]

13 ranks + 6 Dex + 7 from items = 26 and is higly doable for level 10 WBL.

So you need custom masterwork items and cloak/boots of elvenkind to be able to reliably sneak past standard NPCs.

[MachineWraith]

So you need custom masterwork items and cloak/boots of elvenkind to be able to reliably sneak past standard NPCs.

No, to be guaranteed to sneak past standard NPCs.

[Boci]

See? It's a good filter!

What do you mean by filter?

[For Valor]

I play with a guy who insists on the power of the monk, using some characters he created. 1) Shadow Sun Ninja PrC + Monk. He got it by switching into the prestige class ASAP... he can teleport once per encounter through shadows and shoots of 4d6 light damage when someone hits him... (Will save 1/2 damage) at level 15. 2) Tatooed Monk PrC + Monk. He switched into the PrC ASAP as well, and also changed out the Monk feats for shifter feats (he played the Shifter race). DR of X/anything could stop him.

Apparently that makes monks good. wtf.

Also, I DM-ed with a guy who anheroed/killed his party at every available opportunity. Needless to say, we no longer play together.

[Il_Vec]

So you need custom masterwork items and cloak/boots of elvenkind to be able to reliably sneak past standard NPCs.

So you need custom masterwork items and cloak/boots of elvenkind to be able to autosucess sneaking past standard level 10 NPCs. If you're able to take 10.

What I meant is, if he is the rogue and expect pulling that sort of thing out, he should put his money there. Or in wands. Level 10 wbl is 49,000 GP. A competency bonus of + 10 costs 10,000. Wand of greater invis is 21.000. Skillmonkeys should have the needed contacts to find such items.If he didn't specialize in his proposed role, he shouldn't complain. These were not level 1 mooks. It was a room full of level 10 watchers.

[James the Dark]

Most annoying player? My best friend for quite a few years definitely qualifies.

First of all, he's needlessly antagonistic. Both in games where we were both playing and in the ones which I ran, he took the most insignificant slights as a reason to ignite a blood-feud. In nWoD Werewolf, his white Japanophile Rahu (yeah, he was bad for that, too) almost killed my POLICE OFFICER because I called him on breaking the law. He also picked a fight with Tartarus and called the essense of Death itself 'a coward' because Tartarus naturally kills all mere mortals in its presence. Picked a fight with a daughter of Hades because she just happened to be on the opposite side of a confrontation which ended without a drop of blood spilt, and she made no hostile move against him. He picked a fight with an obviously more powerful villian who had taken over a town he established, just because the villian wouldn't agree to be his lackey.

Next, he's prone to insanely... I don't want to say ill-thought-out. Rather, he just utilizes Insane Troll Logic to make his decisions, sometimes. When I was running Scion for him, I made a sheet of paper and entitled it "Crap **** has done to completely derail the session for no purpose". He keeps trying to get some guns and rob the Mafia. He tried to assemble a cannon in a post office, claiming 'it wasn't illegal'. FWI, creating a device which puts those in the viscinity in mortal peril is against the law. We had to talk him down from robbing a fortress' worth of dwarves, of the belongings of their honored dead. Not smart.

Great guy, just a bit difficult to deal with, sometimes.

[Galileo]

One of my friends insists that Fighters are equal to Wizards. He genuinely believes that you can build a fighter equal to a wizard. It's gotten to the point where our next session will kick off with a showdown between me as a sorceror 20 and him playing a fighter 20. I think I may be looking forward to this too much.

He also likes doing moronic things for no reason. For example, after we freed a town from a demon summoning cult and persuaded them to give us a ship so we could get back to the mainland, he took a dislike to them. I can't remember what he did, but it ended up with us hiding him in the hold and telling the angry mob he'd gone and hid out in the forest.

[Mystic Muse]

One of my friends insists that Fighters are equal to Wizards. He genuinely believes that you can build a fighter equal to a wizard. It's gotten to the point where our next session will kick off with a showdown between me as a sorceror 20 and him playing a fighter 20. I think I may be looking forward to this too much.

He also likes doing moronic things for no reason. For example, after we freed a town from a demon summoning cult and persuaded them to give us a ship so we could get back to the mainland, he took a dislike to them. I can't remember what he did, but it ended up with us hiding him in the hold and telling the angry mob he'd gone and hid out in the forest.

Make sure you set it up so that it's in his favor and use only core spells. It'll be so much more satisfying.

Enervation and energy drain are nice spells. Of course there are a bunch of other really nice spells you can kill him with in core.

Also make sure you know any rules of the battle before hand so the judge (if there is one) doesn't say "Sorry, summoned monsters don't obey you. The Balor attacks you instead of the fighter" or something.

[Lin Bayaseda]

One of my friends insists that Fighters are equal to Wizards. He genuinely believes that you can build a fighter equal to a wizard.

To be honest, we all went through this stage once.

[Private-Prinny]

To be honest, we all went through this stage once.

I didn't do it in the traditional way. My first Wizard was a specialist Evoker, and I was still outpacing the party Fighter.

One of my friends insists that Fighters are equal to Wizards. He genuinely believes that you can build a fighter equal to a wizard. It's gotten to the point where our next session will kick off with a showdown between me as a sorceror 20 and him playing a fighter 20. I think I may be looking forward to this too much.

Start on the defensive. Counter his every move while making none of your own, making sure that every blow he tries to land is just barely averted. Then, when he thinks he has a chance of beating you if he just stalls and runs down your slots, speak the two words that will turn his fight into a living nightmare. "Arcane. Spellsurge."

[The Glyphstone]

I'd suggest the 'panoply of options' beatdown. Choose your spells known to be capable of crushing him in as many different ways as possible, and after each loss, offer to fight him again with the same build but different tactics.

i.e: First battle, Enervation spam him to death. 1 4th level spell known.
Second battle, Summon Monster VIII and deluge him with hordes of summoned beasties. Only takes an 8th level slot.
Third battle, Shapechange into something ridiculous after self-buffing and take him on in melee. 1 9th level spell known, probably a couple 2nd levels.
Fourth battle, burn him down with horrific amounts of direct damage, in multiple energy types.

This is to stop him from saying that you just got lucky, or that those spells are overpowered - when you beat him every time with completely different spells, it gets the point across better.

[lyko555]

I actually quite like doing this. Though I might be one of those crazy guys (no, really?) that actually enjoys camping. As long as you don't get smoke up your eyes, the scenery is awesome for setting the mood for a campaign.

do your camping trips involve 7 year old children screamin daddy daddy daddy at 6 in the morning after said dad was told "dont bring your kid or dont come."

[Drakevarg]

do your camping trips involve 7 year old children screamin daddy daddy daddy at 6 in the morning after said dad was told "dont bring your kid or dont come."

Admittedly, no. They don't involve being set on fire either, but I generally don't account for extenuating circumstances when deciding whether or not I enjoy an activity.

[Moofaa]

My best friend is often a terrible player.

1.) First, he alway tries to make the exact same type of character no matter what rules system we use. Hes always a rogue, theif, smuggler, or assassin type of character. Not once in 15 years can I recall him playing anything else, other than one time being a fighter. (this includes PC games, as he played a rogue only when we played WoW together)

2.) He never keeps track of anything. No matter how many times I update his character sheet, he always has to ask what equipment he has.

3.) His characters never have any history. He won't even develop a satisfactory description of their appearance. I usually have to do it for him.

4.) He pays little attention to his own skills/feats/abilities. I have a homebrew fantasy campaign using my own version of the ToB. He always forgets he can do more than just announce an attack and roll a d20.

5.) He requires railroading. In order to really get him to do anything I always have to basically light a fire under his bum. This is especially true if there is any investigating/ROLE-playing/Conversation type of quest to be done. Basically he wants NPCs/other players to do all that, and he just steals/kills things. Since hes about the only person I know that is available for gaming with my wierd work hours, this basically leaves me running games where I feel like I am the only player.

Its not all that bad. He did recently switch to playing a fighter in my fantasy campaign (I was shocked), although he still forgets he has abilities aside from rolling a d20 for an attack. He also has taken some actual interest in the campaign outside of "what am I supposed to be fighting next?". I take credit for this last part since I created his whole backstory and have created an adventure that finally got his interest.

[Saint GoH]

Hrmmm.... I have one player that refuses to tell what he does with his characters, claiming he's "protecting" his secrets. Then he does 16 touch attacks a round at level 6. I don't really play with him anymore.

Annnd we all have a Miss Can't Add. Except some are worse then others. Like Miss Can't Add But Does Anyhow Apparently Adding Ridiculous Numbers Like Getting +20 To Attack and Damage With a Horrible Unoptimized BARD (of all things) At Level 3.

Lastly we have basically everyone else at the table. At least once after key levels, I always hear a "Oh, I still need to pick feats!"

[Ponce]

Oh hey, someone else got it right. But that should be (1 - (0.95)^10). and is at least 1 natural 20. Which is the probability you stated, but not what you wrote down

Yes the 20 should be the number of guards (my bad), but in retrospect each guard gets both a listen and a spot check, meaning you have 20 chances to roll a natural 20, since either one is sufficient to detect him (I'm guessing). Thus in reality the guards had around a 64% chance of finding out something was up (though again this relies on the idea that a natural 20 somehow is an auto-win).

[Hendel]

To be honest, we all went through this stage once.

I generally still go through it at levels 1 to 7 (as my casters are running on empty half way through the adventure), but once my caster gets into the groove, I always recall why I like casters better.

[Rauthiss]

I've got this one too. He makes characters who are completely unreasonable and believe they are right in all things. Generally they have one really defining feature: either hating whoever or whatever killed him last or hating the party leader. Further they try to be the most important thing going on all the time. They almost always have very high stats, lots of magic items (cause he's making new characters so I let him have his full wealth, oddly the party almost never loots his corpse).

I have this player too. Probably the most memorable occasion was when I was running a quasi-intrigue campaign where the PCs were formerly brainwashed slaves. Of course, he has to create a character who refuses to lie. That game died fast.

The other player I've really disliked was also a DM for a time. Normally, I'm fine with DMPCs, mainly because I understand that playing is often as fun as DMing, in addition to the fact that, if done well, it can lead to easier plot hooks and stuff. That said, this guy played a DMPC the TEXTBOOK WRONG way.
To start things off, he was a LE character in a good party. This was understandable, as he was bound to his "partner in crime", A CG character, as a PLOT POINT. However, the first thing his partner (CG, remember) and him tried to do was get the rest of the party violently addicted to a drug accessible only by the CG one... who refused to give us any.
This would have been bad enough, but he proceeded to make himself the most powerful character in the party by giving himself a number of powerful magic items, supposedly rolled for randomly.
And, to top it all off, his character decided to give us a plot summary. Cool, right? Makes things easier for everybody, including me. (Who had joined in halfway through the campaign) Turns out the whole thing was a lie, and none of us got a sense motive.
Needless to say, I never played with him again.

[Gralamin]

Yes the 20 should be the number of guards (my bad), but in retrospect each guard gets both a listen and a spot check, meaning you have 20 chances to roll a natural 20, since either one is sufficient to detect him (I'm guessing). Thus in reality the guards had around a 64% chance of finding out something was up (though again this relies on the idea that a natural 20 somehow is an auto-win).

Oh right, 3e splits it for some reason. I'm way to used to playing with a "Stealth" and "Perception" skill

[Dairun Cates]

One of my friends insists that Fighters are equal to Wizards. He genuinely believes that you can build a fighter equal to a wizard. It's gotten to the point where our next session will kick off with a showdown between me as a sorceror 20 and him playing a fighter 20. I think I may be looking forward to this too much.

You know. I never understood this "party has to kill each other" gladiator combat that seems to emerge from basic disagreements. D&D's designed for people to work as a team. Team killing seems like kind of a waste of time for the other players involved and seems to serve no purpose other than ultimately rubbing it in someone's face. I honestly can't see a situation where this doesn't end up poorly for someone. Doing it on the side as a test, sure, but in the actual campaign. Seems to be just a bad idea in general.

Of course, I also don't typically get the point of starting a campaign at a level higher than 10 and going beyond 20th level. So, maybe I'm crazy.

BUT I digress...

I'm mostly fortunate. Most of my players are well-behaved, and the few times they act up, it's usually funnier rather than game halting. My players have actually probably broken Pirates vs. Ninjas as hard as it can be broken (doing 150 damage a turn without a crit, putting a forge in a mobile vehicle so the craftsman can use his level 5 all the time, replacing seduction with just about every skill check, and building a rock wall character so invincible he forced an enemy squad to kill themselves out of shame). Nothing that isn't amusing, and it definitely allows me to balance some of the worse problems with the system.

Of course, I occasionally get the player that acts up. Nothing too serious though. Refusing to build a character with the GM and then complaining when there's a massive oversight in their character that makes the character unplayable, absolutely refusing to go along with any adventure hooks until the party drags them kicking and screaming, not going along with any parts of the session meant for them to shine and then complaining about a lack of "face time". Things like that. I think we've all got that guy somewhere. Everyone has moments where they're hard to work with.

Matter of fact, I think truly the worst I've managed is one of players actually trying to argue that his witch hunter that interrogates completely innocent peasants at knife point and kills them when they genuinely don't know anything was a LAWFUL GOOD character. Why? Because he's hunting witches (which weren't all evil in this universe) and he had a code (kill all witches and anything he suspects might be a witch... which was half the NPCs). Pretty ridiculous, but nothing that 7 years of GM'ing didn't allow me to keep from destroying the game.

[PersonMan]

You know. I never understood this "party has to kill each other" gladiator combat that seems to emerge from basic disagreements. D&D's designed for people to work as a team. Team killing seems like kind of a waste of time for the other players involved and seems to serve no purpose other than ultimately rubbing it in someone's face. I honestly can't see a situation where this doesn't end up poorly for someone. Doing it on the side as a test, sure, but in the actual campaign. Seems to be just a bad idea in general.

I'm fairly certain that these battles are never in the actual campaign. And at times, showing that you are right beyond a shadow of a doubt is the only way to end a long-standing disagreement, which can be quite annoying at times.

[chaos_redefined]

Worst player: The DM in this game started us seperately with the intention of getting us together with relative speed. 3 of us got together by essentially letting the DM railroad us. (Hey, it was a relatively new idea for him, and he needed all the help he could get.) This player went off on a tangent for any possible reason he could. His character had been isolated from society since egyptian times, so he was stopping and playing with any form of technology, while we were all waiting for him to catch up. But this isn't the worst thing that someone has done for a game, and I'm surprised noone has done something similar.

Worst DM: He starts a new game for me and a couple of mates that we were introducing to D&D. He said he'd play whichever was more popular: 3.5 or 4. Since they were new, I gave them the quick rundown, but it may have been more favoured to 3.5 (my experiences with 4e at that stage were a very short-lived level 1st level game that we collectively said "Screw this, let's go back to 3.5"). He says that's fine, and he prefers it since he's more familiar with 3.5. So, to demonstrate this, I make my character and one of the new players (we'll call him Mr. S) while he makes the other new players (we'll call him Mr B.) Mr S says he wants a rogue, so I start working through it with him. To help move things quickly, I write up a list of feats and describe what each of them does, and he selects from that. That was the closest to railroading that I did. In the meantime, the DM had asked Mr B whether he wanted melee or ranged, Mr B said melee, so he was getting a paladin. Because, apparently, everyone who wants to be a melee guy wants a paladin... The paladin is so underpowered it's not funny. He has an AC 1 higher than the rogue, 10 more HP (at level 10), and no offense to speak of. The rogue was pwning everything (although this may have had something to do with my beguiler casting improved invisibility)

A couple of weeks later, the DM decides he'd prefer 4e, so he has us switch over. He tells me this in advance and I say "As long as I can still play an illusionist, whatever." And he says this is fine. So, I come along to the session ready to make an illusionist, and I get told that the nearest thing to an illusionist is a blaster mage. I ask him something along the lines of "So, they got rid of all the fun and interesting spells in 3.5 and left behind the blaster c**p?" He says yes. Eventually, I find out that he has lied and that illusionists are in the game, but I figured that it was a noob mistake, since he had said that he was new to 4e. Later on, I say to him something like "Look, I'm sorry, I hate blaster mages, and have done so for ages. Can I switch over to something I might enjoy?" It turns out that, without actually asking me anything to determine this, he had decided that it was impossible for me to enjoy illusionists, and that it was a definite that I would enjoy strikers. Even though I had said that I found blaster spells boring...

One of the last sessions before we stopped speaking to him, I was on 1 HP with a druid and in melee with an enemy. So, I try to shift out and get out of harm's way. He starts calling me a coward. I point out that I'm on 1 hp and that staying in melee on one hp isn't bravery, it's plain stupidity. So he "accidentally" misreads the rules for being dazed, gives the creature threatening reach, and does whatever he can to make it so I can't move out of it's grasp. Surprise surprise, I end up 2 points short of permanent death. He does not see why I might be annoyed with those events.

[Dairun Cates]

I'm fairly certain that these battles are never in the actual campaign. And at times, showing that you are right beyond a shadow of a doubt is the only way to end a long-standing disagreement, which can be quite annoying at times.

1. People killing other party members without being evil characters does happen in campaign. There's certainly enough threads about this kind of stuff (from both the "look how awesome it was" side of things and the "what's wrong with my players" side of things). And I have seen in campaigns GM'ed by other people (either where I was the player or just sitting on the sidelines) where people so obsessed with who has a better character actually interrupt a session to fight on the spot. USUALLY the GM stops them, but there have been stories on the boards of characters killing another character to show they could. Not common, but not unheard of.

2. In the scenario ACTUALLY shown, you only prove that your character can kill the other. It does not prove effectiveness as a character in the campaign itself (unless the entirety of combat is with other PCs), and does not prove your character's ability to defeat other characters of the same class. This is something that can only be proven with an extensive amount of testing to remove as much margin of error as possible.

3. No one ever wins an arguments. Differences of opinion, minor disputes, and ideas, maybe. But if the other person cares about their opinion, anything you do to prove it wrong will be seen as an attack and shut down. If the player really is as annoying about his opinion as the original post suggests, then if the Sorceror wins, the fight player will call luck or loss by some other extenuating circumstance. If the Sorceror loses, then the Sorceror's player will do the same. One victory does not guarantee a side will give up. If anything, it usually motivates them.

So, I honestly can't believe that a 1 on 1 fight is going to prove anything. The best you can hope for is winning your argument and feeling better, but the other person isn't just going to bow down to you. That's not how people work.

This is also why I really don't let people get into this kind of thing unless it's for FUN and not an argument. If two people want to spar to see who would win and there's not a bit of hurt feelings going on, then yeah, I'll let them, but if this happens because of an argument where names and insults have been flung, I'll stop it.

And seeing as the original poster has already listed said player as "clearly wrong and annoying", I don't think this is in 100% good jest. So, ultimately, this is doomed to cause more problems.

"Quarrels would not last so long if the fault lay only on one side." -Francois De La Rochefoucauld

[hawkingbird]

In the group I play with, we tend not to optimise too much. that is, we use only the core rulebooks and tend not to multi-class. Most of us focus on making interesting characters, ones who have some personality, except one guy. When it comes to ability scores (using point buy system), this guy dumps everything he doesn't need (eg, no points to str or wis, barely anything into con and int for a gnome sorcerer, all to start with 16 dex and 18 cha). In the same game, he also had a fighter since we only had 3 players, so each person got 2. The guy is a bit of a damage whore, and disliked anything which didn't do damage (fighter used a greatsword and had massive str).

My main concern with him is that he doesn't understand that there is an element of D&D which ISN'T damage based, and whenever there was no combat, his characters were useless. furthermore, he never really understood magic, and being DM and a wizard lover, I had to guide him how to play. and he's never really worked out counter-spelling (which I used against him very effectively once... mostly coz they were talking to the dungeon boss and he said "one move and i'll fireball you")

His other problem is a lack of faith in other players. He started with a monk but switched to fighter because the barbarian and archery ranger in the group "wouldn't do enough damage"... partially true for the barbarian but the ranger topped the damage