FYI, that's more true in 2nd edition. It is literally a battle of wits of players versus DM. Go read the Hackmaster Player's Handbook (a hilarious read in general) if you are curious about this attitude, where it EXPLICITLY makes this so for a D&D style game. But because of the amount of options and the core assumptions behind them in 3rd edition, I don't think this is viable... you would need a more limited set of rules with fewer player options and fewer DM options... Just tell him, "You know, this isn't 2nd edition AD&D. They threw out the DM vs Player thing a long time ago, and I thought we were playing 3rd edition; you didn't make it clear at game start that you were specifically playing an adversarial game style rather than a cooperative game style, which is the default assumption. Changing this drastically changes the players assumptions about the game and how players are apt to play and see the game."
I'm aware of that, although I am pretty sure he isn't. The next time it comes up I will make it clear that this is the incorrect way to view D&D 3.5.
However, when I take over as DM I will be having a detailed discussion about how I view the system, and how the developers intended it to be played. Unfortunately, we have been pretty much stuck in dungeon crawl after dungeon crawl with this guy, since that's pretty much all he has bought lately (he only buys stuff, and never changes it). Hopefully when he sees that people don't really like the idea of "I'm going to try to kill you and take pleasure in it." The concept of roleplay is completely foreign to him, and even INT 1 creatures have the battle strategy comprehension of Sun Tzu.
