Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Suffering Fools

I don't suffer fools well. Not in 'real life' and certainly not at the gaming table.  This can make me GM that rarely gives a sucker a break (sorry, but 'they had it coming') and it also means that I find myself 'facepalming' when my fellow players do something painfully silly.

Gosh, that sounds rather arrogant, and it's really not meant to. I don't think I'm one of those 'difficult' players than GM bemoan (but then I would say that, right?) and would like to think I'm a team player.

Take tonights game as a perfect example of having to suffer fools amongst the people at the table (and I apologise to my friend - but you really did deserve that title tonight).

Picture the scene.  We're fighting some nasty fungoid-skeleton things that hit rather hard with their scimitars. My Paladin of Iomadae (we're playing D&D 3.5 BTW, and the Pathfinder AP 'Curse of the Crimson Throne') is up front battling away.  The party is spread out acros a rope bridge and the Halfling Rogue is in a bad way.  One of the skeletons is after him.

The halfling is hit for 13HP which puts him on 0HP.  He's conscious but any standard action will cause 1HP and cause him to fall over unconscious and start to die.  He tumbles away to safety (a move action), and says

Rogue: "Oh! I don't have any healing potions!" (it's worth noting at this point that the same rogue was sent out the previous day by the party to buy every oil of Bless Weapon he could find in Korvosa..)

Me: "What?!"

Rogue: "Yeah I gave my last one away" (to our cleric of all people, and from a Neutral rogue, of all people..")

Me: OK....*shaking head slowly*.

The next thing the rogue does (from his place of relative safety now), is use his Cloak of the Mounteback to dimension door back into the middle of combat - a standard action (activating the item), which means he falls over and starts dying.  One of the the characters (our bard) then has to use a spell to save him.

Me: *facepalm*

See?  I just don't know what to do with some people!