In 2nd out DM would drop things on us because send armies at us usually leveled 6 or 7 times. I was squished by a giant whale once.
I was DM’ing a game once and a player was really getting on my nerves. I was personally upset with one of the other players and so his characters wouldn’t agree to anything that other player’s character said or did. this ended up splitting him from the main group. Luckily they were headed towards a large scale battle and wanted time to prepare and thing, so I spent the next 45 minutes leading the player’s character on an awesome adventure through the forest and eventually into the underdark. I was letting him get very nice loot too, and this was annoying the other players a little. Finally he ends himself in a dead end with 40 or 50 drow soldiers surrounding him. I let him detail his own glorious death. But being the sadistic SOB that I returned to a point in the very beginning of his little side adventure where he was knocked out by a rock from tree and awoke in an old woman’s cabin who helped him find the underdark entrance. He awoke from a deep dream to find his arms and one leg missing and the old lady standing over him cackling. He bleed out on the floor of her cabin. After that meta gaming really dropped off.
My more evil characters that are willing to humorously kill other PCs usually try to get them killed by other people as even my character’s are lazy. Like walking into the kings an audience chamber and announcing that we are there to kill the very king that sits less then 10 feet from us. Then I cast invisibility and watch the party go down hard. Coup de grace the king and port out. My favorite 3.5 wizzy, he went through 3 whole parties before the DM got annoyed.
I had a PC in a 2nd edition campaign be a summoner who wanted his only combat tactic to be summoning beasts in the air and have them crush his enemies. In addition, he was an incredibly annoying person who sucked all the fun out of the game from the instant he joined. So I went the passive-agressive route and crushed both his first and second characters with landslides. =)
I also had a player who waaaay overused the “power word” line of spells. He ended up being polymorphed into a goat, and then stolen by goblin nomads. =P
I had a gnome druid in very early 3.0 who had a habit of hitting random NPC’s with chairs, After having the 16th level fighter. (he’s 3rd) both hurl him over the citywalls then later tie him to a flag pole three stories up. (He broke two chairs over his back). I had him eaten by a purple worm at the end of the adventure as the party exited the ruin temple. I simply didn’t invite him back again and the campaign continued on without him.
The closest I’ve ever come is using death as the excuse for why a PC left the party after the player left the game for whatever reason, and even that I didn’t use very often.
I don’t recall killing a PC for that reason. Once, a player was extremely obnoxious (2nd edition, he was a specialist wizard, I think either invoker or illusionist) because he wanted a wolf pet to help in combat. After pestering the DM a lot and getting no’s, he eventually started just yelling in sing-song, “I want a wolf, I want a wolf, I want a wolf!” The DM, rightfully, got fed up and told him to get the hell out. The guy had the gall to tell the DM he couldn’t expel him, since it wasn’t his (the DM’s) house - it was mine. So I said “It’s MY house, GO AWAY”. Needless to say he didn’t come back after that.
I have not killed a PC for that reason. We did get fed up with some players (they were a couple that was highly annoying, rude and generally fun-sucking). During the month of May we had a few weeks that the group didn’t meet (graduations, our wedding, family in town, etc.). We just chose not to call above said players back and deal with the issue when they called. Well, they never called me...maybe they got the hint.
Nah, wouldn’t do that. Although I’ve killed plenty of people via combat, and I’ve died more times as a player than all of my other players combined. I also DM 90% of the time, if that tells you anything else about the ratio.
At first glance this sounds like a very childish approach to the problem to me.
Admittedly, I play with a group of (mostly) friends only, so… they shouldn’t be that annoying to warrant such measures.
IF you play with random people or just very ‘young’ (read: childish) people who won’t listen to you as a DM, then I’d probably just tell them at some point that it’s not working out, not being fun and that they ought to leave. Or not come back next time or whatever.
Hhrhmm… when they are gone, THEN it might be fun to let their character die a funny death.
No, I’d rather go for communication as opposed to direct DM whale-intervention to solve such an issue, but I haven’t had too bad issues in the first place so far.
Alas, I am the youngest in my group and I’m 30. That might play a role.
We used to joke about “blue bolts from heaven” as a way of dealing with annoying players, but I don’t think any DM I played with ever went that far.
Also, in D&D, there’s dead and then there’s DEAD.
I played in a game where there was just 3 of us and 2 of us took turns DMing. AS Such, we would run 3-4 characters at a time. Needless to say, we all ended up with quite a few characters, but none more than the player who didn’t DM. He also had a high level cleric that he managed to make all of his other characters related to. Whenever any of his characters died, they could always rely on Uncle Cleric to resurrect them.
In a game I ran, two of his characters were captured and charged with spying on the evil Duke. The player just shrugged. When word came down that they were to be executed, he just shrugged. When they were publicly executed, he just shrugged. When the adventure was over and the evil Duke defeated, his other characters went looking for the corpses so they could take them to Uncle Cleric. What they discovered was that the bodies of executed prisoners were fed to the royal hounds and there was nothing to resurrect.
Back in 2nd Edition and into 3rd Edition, because of our extensive use of role-playing, we became very annoyed with bards very fast and their players because they had to act out their parts. Needless to say the running gag soon became the “Lightning Bolt from Valhalla” appeared and reclaimed their minstrel for Ragnarok.
As a player, I once played a Halfling rogue that was raised in a sadistic “halfling-way house” for troubled children and he had dual personalities similar to two-face from Batman, but instead of flipping a regular coin to decide everything he flipped a piece of another child’s skull he had killed with one side pristine and the other scarred and torched. Needless to say the others player’s characters tied him up, stuffed him in a large sack, and skewered him until he stopped laughing.
As a DM, I have never had to “purposely” kill a player’s character unless it was part of the plot or the player was leaving the group permanently (each of which was discussed with the player ahead of time). But, I think I would use the discussion route instead of just killing the character, this way you keep both the character and the player.
At first glance this sounds like a very childish approach to the problem to me.
Easily spoken words but when you’ve already had 3 to 4 talks about a player’s attitude and meta-gaming there isn’t much else to do to show them that it’s just a game and that there behavior is inappropriate. Since college I won’t play if I don’t get along with all of the players in the group. I put in my time with bad players, so I just thank them for their time and move on now. As the adage says, live is too short (to deal with stupid). Besides, I’ll always have the memories.
