A thread for the DMs: Worst players you've had

[Curmudgeon]

sounds like he was just trying to be creative, which you weren't taking very well.

No, being creative would have been using Mirror Image and Levitate to pantomime walking mid-air, and having enemies dismiss his Wizard as an "obvious" figment. Whining — that amounts to Mirror Image prevents enemies from using their brains — is not creative.

And I'm pretty sure he was right about about telekinesis and how it interacted with weapons.

Can you point to the parts of Telekinesis which grant weapon proficiencies, or change their range increments? I certainly can't find those provisions in the spell description.

[Solaris]

My worst player wasn't a bad player, he just treated another member of our group OOC like ****.

A recent experience of being the player on the receiving end of that, and the DM essentially blaming me for being the victim while they're talking crap to me in my own house, is why I'm leery about joining already-existing groups or being a player.
It seems there's just certain aspects of social behavior that gamers utterly fail to understand, "Don't thoroughly disrespect a man in his own house" among them. They're lucky to have walked out of there intact; I'm not by nature a... non-violent person when angry.
But apparently I was 'childish' for walking away from the table instead of breaking noses before kicking them out of my house.
Not that I'm bitter about that or anything.
I think it's that I've been spoiled by my groups in high school and in the Army; all three of the different groups were stellar.
... Well, except maybe the creepy guy who'd always play scantily-clad female nymphomaniacs modeled after the, ah, 'bouncier' females in fighting games. That one wasn't so much on the stellar side.
... And that one guy in Alaska who joined our table while we played in the local comic book shop. Ol' boy played a mongrelfolk, and judging by his personal hygiene habits I'd say it was because he empathized with them hideously unpleasant types a little too much. I've had my nostrils scorched by cordite fresh from the howitzer's breech, breathed deep in clouds of CS gas, and walked down the road beside open canals of raw sewage on a day so hot you could literally have fried an egg on the pavement and that guy still reeked to even my deadened senses. He was only there for the one session, but he certainly left an impression. We shortly abandoned the idea of gaming at the shop and instead gamed in my barracks room.

As a DM, however, I'd say my worst experience was the last time I tried to run a PbP game. The ones that died a month or two in were bad enough (seriously, players, die in a fire), but the one where pretty much all of the players moaned and complained for the two weeks leading up to the game about the house rules that were there when they frikkin' joined, (hyperlinked and everything, right at the top of the game description, couldn't miss 'em) and even about the game system being used... needless to say, that game never got off the ground and I've sworn off PbP. I like my whiny little nerds within dope-slapping range, thank you very much.

[Crake]

No, being creative would have been using Mirror Image and Levitate to pantomime walking mid-air, and having enemies dismiss his Wizard as an "obvious" figment. Whining — that amounts to Mirror Image prevents enemies from using their brains — is not creative.

Can you point to the parts of Telekinesis which grant weapon proficiencies, or change their range increments? I certainly can't find those provisions in the spell description.

It says you use bab+int or cha mod on your attack roll, you aren't performing a weapon attack, so proficiency doesn't come into it, or are you also saying that hurled objects should get -4 for being improvised weapons (despite it not being stated in the spell at all). And you can use telekinesis to throw weapons that aren't specifically throwable weapons. "Weapons cause standard damage" not "Thrown weapons cause standard damage".

As for the range, it's stated in the spell, 10 feet per caster level, range increments dont even come into play.

So a hurled greatsword would have an attack bonus of bab+int/cha, a range of 10ft per caster level and deal 2d6 damage.

[Curmudgeon]

And you can use telekinesis to throw weapons that aren't specifically throwable weapons.

Yes, you can. In fact, there's a formula in the spell (based on weight) for items which are not normally hurled weapons, telling you what damage is dealt in such a case.

"Weapons cause standard damage" not "Thrown weapons cause standard damage".

What's the standard ranged damage of a greatsword? It's nonexistent, normally; the weapon has a range increment of "—".

As for the range, it's stated in the spell, 10 feet per caster level, range increments dont even come into play.

You're stating the range of the spell effect, not the range increment of a hurled weapon; they're different game elements. The fact that the spell has a maximum range doesn't change the game mechanics required (proficiency, range increments, & c.) to use hurled weapons. For those mechanics to be ignored, the spell description would need to say exactly that. Instead, it's silent on the issue, meaning the other rules of the game operate normally.

[Crake]

You're stating the range of the spell effect, not the range increment of a hurled weapon; they're different game elements. The fact that the spell has a maximum range doesn't change the game mechanics required (proficiency, range increments, & c.) to use hurled weapons. For those mechanics to be ignored, the spell description would need to say exactly that. Instead, it's silent on the issue, meaning the other rules of the game operate normally.

You can hurl one object or creature per caster level (maximum 15) that are within range and all within 10 feet of each other toward any target within 10 feet per level of all the objects

You should read the spells a little more clearly. Technically, if your CL is 10, the object is 100ft away, and your target is 100ft feet further away, with the weapon directly inbeween you and your target, you can hurl the weapon, which is 100ft away, 100ft toward the target.

Yes, you can. In fact, there's a formula in the spell (based on weight) for items which are not normally hurled weapons, telling you what damage is dealt in such a case.

The fact that a greatsword is a weapon, and that the spell says weapons do their standard damage, a greatsword does 2d6, not whatever that formula calculates it to be, that's for non-weapon objects.

[Curmudgeon]

The fact that a greatsword is a weapon, and that the spell says weapons do their standard damage, a greatsword does 2d6, not whatever that formula calculates it to be, that's for non-weapon objects.

You're mixing apples (melee weapons) and oranges (ranged weapons). A greatsword is not a ranged weapon, because the rules say it has range increment "—". As a hurled item a greatsword is just a weight of sharp metal.

[Milo v3]

You're mixing apples (melee weapons) and oranges (ranged weapons). A greatsword is not a ranged weapon, because the rules say it has range increment "—". As a hurled item a greatsword is just a weight of sharp metal.

Where does range increment come into it?

You can hurl one object or creature per caster level (maximum 15) that are within range and all within 10 feet of each other toward any target within 10 feet per level of all the objects.

Also:

Weapons cause standard damage (with no Strength bonus; note that arrows or bolts deal damage as daggers of their size when used in this manner). Other objects cause damage ranging from 1 point per 25 pounds (for less dangerous objects) to 1d6 points of damage per 25 pounds (for hard, dense objects).

No mention of only allowing thrown weapons for the standard damage at all. A greatsword is a weapon, thus it has it's damaged determined as "standard damage with no strength bonus.

Either way, my worst player was a rogue who thought that rogue = I'm allowed to steal from the group when they sleep, including taking holy symbols.

[Vertharrad]

Many of those rogues end up dead by party. You might want to let him know what he's heading for when the party figures it out.

[AnonymousPepper]

Frankly, my group has just had this one guy who is out-and-out dumb as a brick. I mean, it's funny sometimes, but at other times it's frustrating as all get-out.

I played with him in our previous campaign, and he played in a separate one without me but with the other guys, but being a DM has given me new insight into just how bad it is.

The most shining example was a case where the party was in Skullport and decided to pick up a scrying mirror - arcane focus, 1000gp silver mirror of specific dimensions - while they were there. So they sent this guy - let's call him P, he's playing a gnome - to go buy one. He walks into a pawn shop, wearing his full snazzy armor, owned by a CN gnome (I forget what his name was, but he's an actual established character from the 2e sourcebook on Skullport).

P asks for a scrying mirror, to which the gnome responds that it's an expensive item that he might not even have. P responds, "Oh, don't worry, I have money!" The shopkeeper walks into the back and starts rummaging around for a bit. P yells back, "I have the money for this!" So this gnome comes back out and offers him the mirror for 3500 gold, because he's a total cheat and P has been advertising his wealth and lack of brains the whole time.

P responds - remember, the only requirements for this item are that it be A. a silver mirror B. of the right size C. worth 1000gp - that that's awfully expensive, so he makes his counteroffer.

3000gp.

The shopkeeper can't believe his luck, but he stands there and thinks for a moment before sighing and saying, "You know, you're gonna make me go broke here, but since you're a gnome, I can cut you a deal. 3250 for the mirror."

"Done."

The rest of the party could do nothing but shake their heads.

Later, the entire group had a year of in-game downtime between acts - this was basically me explicitly throwing the group's Artificer a bone. P proceeded to walk off and spend a large chunk of money on buying outright (he didn't even try to roll diplo to haggle it) a +4 stat item. When the group had access to its own personal artificer with plenty of downtime to spare. When the artificer found out, he was furious, because the savings, combined with the rest of the party's wealth, would have been enough to buy the group an airship.


The guy isn't a bad person, but he's frustratingly slow.
Nobody in the group particularly likes him - opinions range from neutral to strongly negative - but he hasn't done anything actually bad and I really haven't the heart to boot him. Plus he at least consistently shows up every week, which is more than I can say for our Oracle.

[Slayer Lord]

Some of my worst:
- Girl who played a half-silver dragon elf druid. Liked to go on and on about her tragic backstory and how her parents were in a forbidden relationship, and was also a princess on both sides, and it just didn't really make sense for the setting, and tended to act really random just for kicks and giggles. To be fair, she was used to playing campaigns with her family where they just liked to goof around, while the rest of us had a more plot-driven play style.
- Guy who always played Chaotic Neutral characters, but always acted Chaotic Evil and then argued about it. Came dangerously close to raping an NPC once. Good thing she was the big bad in disguise. He also liked to argue a lot about rules, was on his laptop all the time when we didn't do anything that interested him, and would try for physical intimidation IRL if we didn't let him have his way. On the plus side of things, he did provide us with one of our group's funniest combat moments when he one-shotted an orc by throwing a crowbar at it. All in all, though, we weren't terribly sad when he left.

[Extra Anchovies]

Some of my worst:
- Girl who played a half-silver dragon elf druid. Liked to go on and on about her tragic backstory and how her parents were in a forbidden relationship, and was also a princess on both sides, and it just didn't really make sense for the setting, and tended to act really random just for kicks and giggles. To be fair, she was used to playing campaigns with her family where they just liked to goof around, while the rest of us had a more plot-driven play style.

That character sounds like they have a serious case of Special Snowflake Syndrome. At least they aren't a Planetouched.

[YossarianLives]

There was this one guy... Let's call him Y.

Y would change characters EVERY session. Not a exaggeration every single week. He was extremely aggressive IC and one time attacked a gang of hardened warriors in a tavern. He got thrown through the window and bled out. OOC he acted like he was really cool and better than us. He would also refuse to go through with any plan that he didn't come up with.

Eventually he left the group because I'm sad to say we got a bit rude with him by the end.

[danzibr]

Another player would leer and otherwise behave in a manner that made the female players extremely uncomfortable, but seemed to have no idea he was doing it. Eventually canceled the game and then restarted it a couple weeks later without telling him; I couldn't think of a better way to handle it, and the gentle hints and such I tried to give just weren't getting through.

Now this is an excellent fix.

[ZamielVanWeber]

I was warned this player was bad but I didn't believe it cold have been this awful: I was running a heavy psionics campaign so we had a motley crew, a Divine Mind, Ardent, and Soul Knife/Warblade. He joined as a lurk focusing on range. Except he didn't take the feat that let him use his augments at range. He knew it existed, he SAID as much, but somehow by level 9 was unable to find room for in a ranged focused build, insisting he would take it next time a feat was available. His biggest contribution to a fight ever was running into a fight, distracting some ogre skeletons and immediately being dropped by them due to his terrible AC and no miss chance generating items.

[Jergmo]

I had someone spend all of their starting wealth on dogs trained for war outfitted with chain shirt barding, and rage quit because smuggling themselves into a city ravaged by zombies to evade the quarantine required that they traverse the sewers, which his dogs could not do conveniently.

It's not that bad, but we all found it very strange. Now that I think about it, there was a player who was playing a bard that was along because one of our players that I'd known previously was his girlfriend. The two of them spent every session having their characters make doe-eyes at each other and he played music constantly to serenade her while they were wandering through the hostile, unforgiving wilderness and got angry with me because his incessant noise attracted predatory monsters.

[Vertharrad]

In my short tenure as a DM for 3e I've had at least three players that come to mind.

Marc - makes characters that eventually antagonize the party to the point where he suicides the character to bring in another. He also makes ome of the weirdest decisions I know. In one campaign he fudged a "god call" and the evil deity he got required a sacrifice of a living creatures heart, to which he agreed and decided totake the rogue toward assassin by way of changing his alignment. Then at a point not long after decided to gain back his former deities favor by sacrificing 12 hearts to a good deity of luck...

Jesse - Making a character wanted a CN half-silver dragon barbarian, I told him no further than two steps away on the alignment chart from LG. He tried to get the adjusted hit die and skill points from RHD as a human half-silver, I let him get d20 for 1st lvl HD but normal thereafter and didn't budge on the skill points...this argument took up 1 1/2hours by the way. His character was exceedingly greedy NG half-silver barb who multied as rogue and wanted to save his skill points till he got rogue levels. He found ways to defraud the party out of treasure to the point I assigned a treasure person from one of the other players. His character was arrogant to the point he was the first in party line-up but if he faced a superior combat challange would hide in back. Mot only were the other players getting annoyed I was also getting angry to the point of setting up a "event" to kill his character...fortunately the fact that the party had gotten big enough to take my ftr/der DMPC out of the party he also had his character go along. His next character admittedly was LN Oa samurai/shugenja/bladedancer that I had no problems with and fit almost seemlessly with everyone else.

Nicholas - most noted character was a pseudodragon that stole from one of the villages in the area that had acrued more wealth due to the PC's efforts. His grasp of the rules was as suspect as Jesse, tried to convince me that he could use bonus spells from spell levels he couldn't cast to fuel the breath weapon he got by a feat, instead of arguing too long I capitulated and wished I hadn't. This pseudodragon considered itself descended from red dragons...I had less problems from the human half-shadow dragon with wings ftr. Even the drunk(druid w/rgr mnk ACF's out of UA i think) didn't give me such a headache in the 3e adjusted version of NightBelow I was running.

[Cirrylius]

I never played with the guy, but just talking about potentially playing with him really bugged me. He insisted on pronouncing words wrong, like necromancer was NEEK-romancer to him. I just couldn't move past that.

Oh God, I've got one of these. It's always Ne-CRO-mun-cey. For some reason multiple people at the table can't seem to wrap their heads around "tome", either, pronouncing it "toom". The best had to be when I got into a ten-minute argument over a monk trying to attempt a feint... to play dead Turns out he played for like ten levels never realizing that feint didn't mean "faint".

[Ssalarn]

Oh God, I've got one of these. It's always Ne-CRO-mun-cey. For some reason multiple people at the table can't seem to wrap their heads around "tome", either, pronouncing it "toom". The best had to be when I got into a ten-minute argument over a monk trying to attempt a feint... to play dead Turns out he played for like ten levels never realizing that feint didn't mean "faint".

Some of my "favorites"-

"Paizo" pronounced "Pee-aht-zo".

The word "brazier" getting confused, either in pronunciation or meaning, with the word "brassiere".

The numerous ways I've heard the monster name "vargouille" mispronounced, up to and including "vaar-gwee-lee".

Once had a guy who read "wight" as "wheat".

[Vhaidara]

The word "brazier" getting confused, either in pronunciation or meaning, with the word "brassiere".

That must have been a confusion on par with Eric and the Dread Gazebo.

[sakuuya]

The numerous ways I've heard the monster name "vargouille" mispronounced, up to and including "vaar-gwee-lee".

How is vargouille pronounced? I've always said it var-gweel, but I suspect that's wrong enough to get me booted from DrMotive's table.

Anyway, on topic: A gentleman (let's call him mr. sakuuya, because that's who he is) built a diplomancer who wasn't great in combat, so during the single combat encounter in a session that was otherwise all puzzle-solving and social interaction, he went and took a nap on the couch and told me to play his character for him. In retrospect, I should've killed off his character, but at the time I was focused on keeping my cool because nobody needs awkward marital drama during RPG time.

[Vhaidara]

Anyway, on topic: A gentleman (let's call him mr. sakuuya, because that's who he is) built a diplomancer who wasn't great in combat, so during the single combat encounter in a session that was otherwise all puzzle-solving and social interaction, he went and took a nap on the couch and told me to play his character for him. In retrospect, I should've killed off his character, but at the time I was focused on keeping my cool because nobody needs awkward marital drama during RPG time.

I've done that! Admittedly, for me it was when my bard got Pounced before his first turn in the boss fight, but still.

[sakuuya]

I've done that! Admittedly, for me it was when my bard got Pounced before his first turn in the boss fight, but still.

Did he get knocked out? Temporarily leaving the table because your character is incapacitated is different than doing so because you can't be bothered with part of the adventure. If he was still standing, though... grumblemumble...

[Vhaidara]

Did he get knocked out? Temporarily leaving the table because your character is incapacitated is different than doing so because you can't be bothered with part of the adventure. If he was still standing, though... grumblemumble...

Instant KO. It wasn't the most dignified leaving to nap on the couch.

As I explained to the GM later, I was more upset because it meant my character didn't see the fight. So he couldn't write the tale first hand (he had a habit of making songs out of our adventures)

[Cirrylius]

How is vargouille pronounced? I've always said it var-gweel, but I suspect that's wrong enough to get me booted from DrMotive's table.

I've always pronounced it as "gargoyle" with a V; I'm a pretty experienced reader, but now that I'm actually looking at the damn word, I'm not sage enough to say whether I've gotten it right or not.

[Extra Anchovies]

The numerous ways I've heard the monster name "vargouille" mispronounced, up to and including "vaar-gwee-lee".

This is now the canonical pronunciation for "vargouille" in any game I may run in the future.

[Ssalarn]

I've always pronounced it as "gargoyle" with a V; I'm a pretty experienced reader, but now that I'm actually looking at the damn word, I'm not sage enough to say whether I've gotten it right or not.

This is correct the way Bruce Cordell and a panel of Wizards of the Coast judges decided it was pronounced at PAX Prime 2011.

[atemu1234]

I always pronounced it var-ghoul.

[MilesTiden]

This is correct ;)

Ahem. Var-gweel is correct.

How do you pronounce...?

Here are some commonly mispronounced words and their dictionary pronunciations where they are available and common-practice pronunciations or TSR rulings where they not. For more general pronunciation help, see the article "Ay pronunseeAYshun gyd" by Frank Mentzer in Dragon #93 (Jan. 1985). For help pronouncing words and names specific to the Forgotten Realms setting, see the Forgotten Realms box and the trilogy of Forgotten Realms deity books. For help pronouncing the names of the various tanar'ri and baatezu types, see MC8 Outer Planes Appendix.

...
Vargouille: var-GWEEL
...

[Rakoa]

I always pronounced it var-ghoul.

It looked sort of French to me, so I go with "var-goo-ee". (Apologies if that isn't even proper French pronunciation).

[Ssalarn]

Ahem. Var-gweel is correct.

That's fair . Bruce Cordell owes me a t-shirt though.