Stupid PC- imperial punishments...

[Tahlorn]

Alright, here we go.

There is a guy in our group that isn't the smartest of players. He believes that if you have a huge Strength attribute and big weapons, you can do anything, even though all my missions usually require a ton of tactics, precisions, and intelligence (on both player and PC) to get anywhere. The group was given 3 bounties- take out a "acquirer" (kidnapper for scientific research), capture an imperial lieutenant that was involved in said experiments, and rescue a patient that was being used for said experiments. So this fellow's bounty hunter gets to the imperial hospital where this is all going on underground, comes in his armour and with all his weapons, and asks the security gaurd that comes up to him where to find the Lt., or some info about him. This is where it starts.

After being asked by the officer that he is meeting with why he is here, he says he is going on a bounty.

1- Conspiring against the Empire

He is brought into a room for further questioning (no torture stuff in view). He uses the officer as a meat shield and attacks the stormies, and is rendered unconcious.

2- Assaulting an Imperial Officer

The other players after inquiring find he is imprisoned. One places a bounty on him (the one working for the Naboo military), claiming he stole her speeder bike. They come to get him, and are told that they can have him once they have figured out his punishment and fines.

3- Theft of a government vehicle

The stupid PC is in prison. He breaks out of the cell right as the officer and two stormies come to get him.

4- Destruction of Imperial property

And then attacks and kills the officer and one of the stormies before being rendered unconicious again.

5- Murder of an Imperial Officer and Military Personel

He is gurneyed out, and they think he is going to be out for some time, but his race heals uber fast. So he comes to, and attacks the worker that is gurneying him out, before the escort (that he did not detect due to his groggy state) shoots him, and the PC pretends to be unconcious.

6- Assaulting an unarmed Imperial Citizen

He is then taken into a room on the gurney, and given a shot of something that the fellow giving the shot (he kept his eyes closed so did not know who) said it would keep him under for around a month.


So, with all this, what punishment does he get? I figure execution and worse. Though, I am tempted to send him off into where these medical experiments have been taking place, wreaking havoc with his stats and the like, and giving iether the other PCs a mission to rescue him (which may not work, becsaue niether like him, especially as one is Imperial aligned due to his bounty hunter guild), or give him an adventure where he will have to escape, and most likely die in the process.

[Jedi Skyler]

This player thinks that his character ought to be able to do anything?

Alrighty then, you can do this:

His character is now in Imperial custody. Personally, given the nature of the adventure, I'd say he's fodder for the mad scientists. He's already big and strong, and heals very quickly. Lobotomize him, make him an NPC, (and of course, with MUCH better stats than he had as a PC) and turn him loose on the party. Feel free to have this character have some irrational reason for specifically targeting the NEW character your brainiac player has to stat up in order to continue the adventure. Perhaps even allow for some redemption at the end... the brutish character deep down in his psyche recognizes his former teammates and spares them (after a protracted battle, of course). He MIGHT even be persuaded to spare the new character, although I'd personally work hard to avoid that. If the new character happens to survive, either make the player choose which character he's going to play (making sure he understands that there are a LOT of new drawbacks to his 'revamped' character) or simply keep the brute as an NPC, stating that you need to keep things fair.

Hopefully the loss of a beloved character might spark a little more intelligent gaming. If not, lather, rinse, repeat.

If THAT doesn't work, you might take this guy off to the side and explain to him, away from the gaming table, that he really needs to work on his creativity with his characters. Stress how your games play quite heavily toward using one's brain, and also make sure he understands that while skills he personally lacks might be required for a given situation, if his character has the skills, all the player needs to do is make the rolls. Let him see some success in that and he might just start developing his characters beyond the shoot 'em up type.

Or, simply keep using him as bounty hunter/blaster/lightsaber/<insert gruesome death here> fodder...

[Pel]

Feed him to the Ran-cor! Feed him to the Ran-cor! Rah! Rah! Yayyyyy!

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Props to Jedi Skyler. Those are most excellent ideas.
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Aha!

[Tahlorn]

Jedi Skyler-

This is one who has not learned that lesson, nor ever will. Continuing issue, the rest of us see it as a form of grim comedy relief (in the fact that he usually puts the other PCs in danger). I like the idea of putting him in the medical testing, and wouldn't be to make him mightier per-se, though that may be a side effect. Drugs and modifications that are meant for military purposes, but don't want to waste soldiers on it . Think Blue Sun from Firefly or the like.
He has plenty of other characters like this, so making him decide between them would not work. I also have a thing for not killing characters outside of the layer's control. If he had been killed in one of his episodes, that would have been fine, but not going to off him from experiments or execution. Perhaps give him a chance to escape, or a mssion where he is living the hel land tries to get out, and through that get offed if he doesn't think it through, because there is no way to get out by just muscles.

[Pel]

If the guy isn't disrupting your campaign, you could always keep him around for comic relief. We did much the same with our resident Wookiee's player. All muscle and no brains, always looking for the physical solution. Got us into more scrapes than I can count, but it sure was fun!
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Aha!

[themuffinman1201]

Kill this character and make him play a 100 year old senator

[Pel]

Nah, make him play a Kid. Make him actually roleplay it and have the requisite small animal (alive or dead) in his pocket. 8)
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Aha!

[Jedi Skyler]

Since this person persists in performing like an ignoramus, I guess you and the other gamers need to decide if this person is actually a detriment to your experience, or if the comic relief he offers outweighs the problems he poses for you all. If so, then keep him around. He provides some much-needed laughter, and if he's not causing the group to lose characters right and left, then the only real harm would be to your carefully laid plans- but ALL players are prone to disrupting those. It'd hardly be fair to hold this one person responsible for something all RPGers the world over do on a regular basis.

If his characters ARE causing your players' characters to die at an alarming rate, then I'd suggest possibly altering your tactics to step up any attacks made against his character. For example, the groups that come against your party (be they stormies, bounty hunters, whatever) might suddenly start having leaders (or even individuals) who possess high Tactics skills, and can therefore make a battlefield determination that his "Hulk" characters are ALWAYS the greatest threat to everyone else's well-being, so everyone guns for him first. If the player is truly that stupid, he'll never even miss a beat.

If, however, he's just stubborn, and is causing more grief to the group than you're all willing to tolerate, there might be nothing for it but to ban him from the group. I know that's a harsh, drastic step, but if he's truly ruining everyone else's gaming experience, then this might be the only option left- unless you think he might respond to being pulled off to the side and told to knock that kind of playing off (provided you haven't already done so).

Personally, I like the idea of having him run a solo escape-attempt mission where the odds are so incredibly stacked against him that the only way he could POSSIBLY survive it would be for a corps of Jedi Knights to suddenly up and rescue his butt... I agree, though, that his character should die while the player is controlling him. That way it doesn't feel quite so arbitrary- even if it is.

[Tahlorn]

[Jedi Skyler]

True. Sounds like you have the situation well in hand. Kudos to you for looking for creative ways to deal with the problem.

Please do let us know how it went. It sounds, from everything you've said, that he is simply providing you with more and more opportunities to prove your own creativeness (and that of your other players) than he is actual harm to their character or your adventure.

Game on!

[Tahlorn]

Just got back from the session. Here is how it went down.

He wakes up in his cell, and is shot with a sedative. Experiements of drugs are done on him, behavior studies, and the like. Shot with blasters to study how certain military drugs work, sedatives, toxins, steroids. Lots of sensory deprevasion. He gets violent at one point, so wakes up with a band on his arm. Measures certain levels of his system, the moment he gets aggressive or similar thoughts it shoots him a downer / sedative. In other words, difficult / very-difficult willpower roll to do anything in the state of any aggression. This is after he has surgery and decides to dig his claws into where they had done stuff, as he thought they had put something in him (player's paranoia). Needless to say, he passes out before he gets the chance to tear his guts to shreds. He didn't seem to concerned about the huge scar on the back of his head for some reason, or the shaved head.

This goes on for weeks. He starts to get patches in his memory, only recalling certain parts of what is done to him. Scenes of creepy things, devices, procedures, and voices he can not make out clearly. If anyone is familair with Cowboy Bebop, think the fat killer guy that is at the amusement park. He sees that some of the patients are dissapearing. He sees them in the common room (only plae he can socialize with others, which no one ever talks), a 50mx150m 3 story tall room, with automated gun implacements (stun of course) in the cieling in a 25mx25m grid. I inform him that if he doesn't try something, he is going to be there probably for a few more weeks or months, slowly being broken, until one of the experiments kills him. He tries to escape (rips the downer thing off of his arm), kills a scientist, and gets knocked out.

Put in a gas chamber to be disposed of. Too dangerous, even after they declaw him. Calling some character points and rolling high on his strength (I had to suggest him using the CP, else he would have died right there), he busts out of there 2 rounds before he would die. He runs. Meets two armed gaurds, and takes them down, not before getting wounded twice status. Had a funny episode of the wounded twice gaurd on the floor, shooting at the PC, and the PC just couldn't kill him. 5D strength kick to the 2D str gaurd's neck, and I rolled a 28. PC decided to leave him alive after many rounds, with GM hinting that more would come. So he runs and runs and runs.

In the mean time, the other PCs have taken back up the original bounty, which leads them right into the stupid PC (they followed down some gaurds and Imperial Officers so didn't need access keys). The stupid PC, at wounded twice, instead of begging the other PCs for help decides to go on and give a useless warning about the facility. Actually, the first thing he says to them is a threat, "Are you enemies?" and reaches for a gun that a downed gaurd had. He almost got killed by a PC right there, and I wouldn't have blinked an eye at it. He goes upstairs, and tries to heal himself. Gets 1d for first aid after taking time. Gets to Wounded (CP and 2 sixes). Comes to a stairwell, at the top a double door to a garage. 2 Stormies agaisnt one of the walls. He can see through a glass window in the door. He could sneak in, and run through a side exit (though I did not make this obvious). So what did he do?

He did a stupid. He shot through one of the windows. I thought that was great, free shot on the stormies (he got a 5d gun off of one of the gaurds). No, he just shot out the window, and waited down the stairs so the landing acted as cover when the sormies came. They came and had the same cover as well by logic (he didn't think that one through). So he charges. Kills one of the stormies. The other stormie hits at point blank range. I rolled 21 for damage. He is wounded twice now, has 3d to roll, and gets a whopping 2. Rolled location, head. He got blasted right under the jaw, and his corpse tumbled down the very stairs he wanted as cover.

It felt so good.

The other PCs got the bounty. Used the alarm caused by the other fellow as an advangtage, as no one was watching the security cameras, and thus could run free as they wished. Later they got caught for tresspassing on a military base (with the rescue bounty in toe). What did they do? Served thier 1 day in jail and the 2000 credit fine. The employer compensated them for this.

[apologies for spelling errors, wrote this at 1:30 am, tired, and is too long for my brain to proof read]

[Pel]

Sweet! I especially enjoyed the ending. Wonderful imagery!
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Aha!

[the_assassin_nox]

It was beautifully played. (I'm one of the PC's in this mission). You handled the whole situation tactfully, fairly, and smoothly. Regardless of the outcome, the process was really interesting to watch. You weave a wonderful tale.

Thank you,

~Nox

[darkclown789]

I'll bet that was fun to watch!!!

We have a similar player like that in our group... ALWAYS tries to solve everything with combat!

Darkclown
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Throw me to the wolves, and I'll return leading the pack.

Wolves do not concern themselves with the opinions of sheep.

[garhkal]

Personally, i would have had the imps stake him out in the sun, with a sign, "WARNING THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LAW BREAKERS"
around his neck...
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!