Party Perception of your character

[lianightdemon]

Resolve this in character, argue with your party about their comments and depending what your character is like then you can decide what actions to take as a result. Even if the party doesn't get along that just makes for fun roleplay.

Just remember keep it IG. Make it clear that this is in fact an entirely IG problem. Explain it to them if not.

[Cagemarrow]

Well as I suspected it would the problem has vanished now that I can provide unlimited healing to the group by summoning Brelani with their Cure Serious Wounds 2/day. I suppose it also helps that I stepped up and tanked when our Druid, Scout, and Paladin missed a session and allowed our group of 3 remaining characters plus my bard cohort, to take down 3 dragons in one encounter. An Adult Blue, A young adult or juvenille white, and a young green. Dhalvar-Nar saved our lives as I managed to get the sheild self ability to take on the Blue, Damage Reduction FU is very very nice. Then I kept myself up by having the Summons heal me every other round while the dragons tore into me and hurt their leader when they could hit my AC of 30. Gave our sorcerer and swift hunter time to drop the other two.

[dither]

In my Saturday 4e game, I play a wizard/cleric character (controller/leader) who joined a party of 2 rangers (strikers) and got a lot of abuse for not being able to do much damage. So here and there I would "allow" an attacker to slip through the front lines and harass the rangers, and I withheld healing until just after they dropped, rather than healing them when it would have saved them a turn bleeding on the ground. I've always managed to convince the DM that my character is a poor choice of target for our enemies, so there was no problem making sure that enemies hounded the rangers and not me.

Honestly, I lost all patience with the guys and was going to just let them get themselves killed (they're reckless and single-minded in their attacks), and then we came across the perfect trap room: one of the guys got cut off from the rest of us, which meant that without my ability to conjure an attacker using my line of sight into the room, he would've had to face the trap room by himself, and it was kicking the crap out of him. When he survived that trap room, he finally acknowledged that my character was, and always had been, useful to the party. Sweet, sweet vindication.

Not that they listen to me before we get into trouble, but still. You'll have to put up with some abuse, but know that you aren't alone.

[Tenebrus]

Is there some sort of role playing law that the player most inappropriate to be a leader naturally tries to assume that role?

In a new campaign, I'm the sorcerer. There's a ranger, a cleric, a fighter, and a Halfling thief.  None of them are really power gamers.  Yes, I think their survival will often depend on me.  But there's this Halfling yapping at me all the time and ordering me to do this or go there, and of course he is played by the most personally abrasive and chaotic human in the room.  My character has verbally told him to desist and will soon magically tell him to desist if that doesn't work.

The DM has told me I have as many free Color Sprays as I need to keep the Halfling from monopolizing the table.

[AndyJames]

Is there some sort of role playing law that the player most inappropriate to be a leader naturally tries to assume that role?

It is not a RP law. It is a law of human social interaction. In the old days, before WoW and its brethren came about, the MUDs were full of them. So were games like Counterstrike and the like.

[Kajhera]

Is there some sort of role playing law that the player most inappropriate to be a leader naturally tries to assume that role?

It is not a RP law. It is a law of human social interaction. In the old days, before WoW and its brethren came about, the MUDs were full of them. So were games like Counterstrike and the like.

It's also a Murphy's Law that anytime I try to play a low-charisma character, they wind up trying to lead.

...i.e., not just true of players.

[Garryl]

It's a common thing, and not just in the fields of RPG leadership.

"Those who seek power are invariably the least fit to wield it." - Plato
"Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane." - Dilbert (Scott Adams)

[dither]

The DM has told me I have as many free Color Sprays as I need to keep the Halfling from monopolizing the table.

You must be playing 3.5, as the Fourth Edition color spray would eventually kill him.

[E-mail]

The DM has told me I have as many free Color Sprays as I need to keep the Halfling from monopolizing the table.

You must be playing 3.5, as the Fourth Edition color spray would eventually kill him.

Have you considered that it might be the goal in the first place? Giving another player free fireballs is just not subtile enough for some people to work with.

[LordBlades]

I've been told once by the player of an archer ranger that my Batman wizard was 'worthless because it deals no damage'.

So yeah, some people are really obtuse.

[AndyJames]

Next time, hit him with one of your spells that renders him helpless and then ask him, "How would a coup de grace on your worthless ass feel right about now?"

A similar thing happened when I was playing my 20 int, 12 dex, 12 con grey elf wizard (at level 1). The next fight, I CdG'd 4 goblins with a scythe (Sleep spell for the win). I simply looked at the barbarian and raised an eyebrow (or rather, my character did).

[Tenebrus]

The DM has told me I have as many free Color Sprays as I need to keep the Halfling from monopolizing the table.

You must be playing 3.5, as the Fourth Edition color spray would eventually kill him.

We've been agnostic on 4th Ed but this little tidbit might make us more favorable toward importing some rules.  On Color Spray, for example. 

[Barbarossa]

I play a fairly low-level campaign in Eberron on Sundays, and for the longest time I was having about the same problems as you were. My party consisted of...

• Half Silver Dragon sorcerer - Their sorcerer spells are heavily limited by their bloodline levels, but 6d8 cold damage in a huge cone once per day isn't too shabby at level five.
• Human Barbarian - This campaign being low leveled, a greataxe powered by obscene strength along with Great Cleave works wonders for mass decapitations.
• Human Fighter/Bard/Rogue - This is our party leader, a mildly evil sort that uses diplomacy a lot, and uses fancy tricks like Disarm and Bluff inside of combat.
  
• Human Cleric - A spiked chain cleric that mainly trips things and makes the barbarian bigger and stronger.
• My character is a Grippli (small sized tree frog person) ranger focused on sneaking about and taking enemies by surprise, but seemingly insignificant in combat.

Or at least I was, until I put my sneakiness to good use. I used my climb speed and obscene move silently bonus to crawl underneath one of the great floating walkways of Sharn, break into the target house, climb to the roof, and then proceed to get a critical on the potshot I took against the paladin trying to Smite our party leader. I've done things like this several times now, and my party has finally realized that you don't need to be a balls-to-the-walls attacker to be helpful in combat. Party being captured by the police? How about I duck into an alley and break them out later?

[Absolon]

I'm known in my gaming group for doing things that aren't necessarily overpowered but surprising/unpredictable/crazylikeafox.  My DM would argue that I'm twisted and insane for doing things like having a quickened Prestigitation ready for a bad guy who got turned to dust after being defeated in battle to make sure that if he comes back, he's staying with us  >=D

I made my character's personality quite professorial, unaware, highly academic/theoretically predisposed, family oriented, and staunchly Lawful Neutral.  As such, he's sorta like a mix between Emmet L. Brown and Waldorf from the Muppet Show.  We have a lot of laughs and the other party members are routinely treat him like as slightly crazy and don't take him seriously a lot of times.  Even though he's exactly right about most story problems/villain plans.  He just thinks about them in the most logical manner possible (he can't pick up people's motivations or deceptions in person, but he reasons his way though them like a math problem).

That said, my DM knows that my wizard could dominate the world and when I was nearly turned into a vampire one fight (wizard/sorcerer vampire) he was both delighted and shaken with all the harm he could do with him under his control (he's seen me work and I'd help him because it'd be fun!).  We're all trying to be the "good guys" as much as we can but if our DM pushes us too far, I've told him things could get ugly.  Ugly in that we would have to consider going to plan B.

Plan A: Be the good guys, save the world and eat pie.

Plan B: If Plan A fails, join Team Evil, dispense with silly moral quandaries, and crush all opposition brutally with the liberal application of high level arcane and divine magic.

Plan C: If Plan B fails, learn the name of an Eldritch Abomination in the Far Realm, push my fellow wizard's caster level as high as it will go and cast Gate.  No Cthulu-like monster would pass up the opportunity to come to the material plane!  If he destroys the other BBEG (sorta an Eldritch Abomination himself) then he can have the planet.  The bad guy cult will suddenly become the good guys who are trying to save the world from being devoured so it can be conquered!  Then, once the fighting is just over and we have a winner...we swoop in and kill the winner with everything we've got.  Win the game.