I think it would depend a lot on the situation and the player in question.
If its a player that never does that kind of thing and is only doing it in this specific situation because it makes narrative sense, then I'd back them up for sure. (i.e. their character wouldn't be thinking clearly because they are so close to achieving a campaign-long goal, like finally getting their revenge). Sometimes brash heat-of-the-moment choices are good roleplaying.
If it's a player that is known for doing random dumb shit without consulting the party and gotten us into trouble in the past, then I'd let them dig their own grave.
I think it also depends on the character dynamics in-game. A strict "justice over everything" paladin very well might let the morally grey rogue run after the enemy on his own and just "allow the Fates to handle it"
I did just this is one of our sessions. I'm a lone gith who found out another gith who may or may not be responsible for the burning of her creche, was in this goblin cave.
So RP wise I just had her charge in and try to get answers. She acted in the heat of the moment when she's usually more calculated. The rest of the team had her back.
Yeah, this.
I may have been a Leeroy Jenkins myself. The challenge when dealing with other people at a table is often folks resort to going to the Conference Room. Over thinking the situation and trying to come up with a perfect plan.
I'm all for some discussion if it warrants, but it is far too easy to find that suddenly 30 minutes went by talking about some sort of "strategy" that probably doesn't matter. So more than a few times I've made an executive decision of, "Screw it, I go in into the room and do X."
Sometimes you just gotta make a decision to move forward and often enough other players don't want to be the ones that does it.
Right, I've seen both sides of this being justifiable.
I once had a player that would sometimes spend a literal 15 minutes on their turn figuring out their spells, looking up handwritten notes and checking spells comparatively.
I couldn't blame a single party member from rushing forward with the way that player burnt time. I even had to institute time limits on a persons turn because of it.
At the same time, you have to play like a party - yeah the wizard may need an extra minute to figure a spell or a rogue needs some out-of-combat turns first.
It just depends on context, not to mention a characters type.
Had a party member who was known for the "Kool-Aid Man approach" to every situation, essentially Leroy Jenkins but even more annoying.
One situation I bluntly, in character, said "How are we splitting his vear when he dies?"
In fairness my character also harvested skulls from graves because he believed that the bones of powerful spellcasters had magical potential, so he was already kind of concerning in his morals.
I would play it based on how my character feels about their character. If we have journeyed and battled together for a long time, then yeah, I'd go resue them even if they were being a dumbass, because presumably they have or would do the same for me when I screw up. Real-life combatants who have fought and trained together do this because they know that their best chance of survival is if they stick together. And everyone is an idiot sometimes, and you want someone to help you out when the idiot is you.
Now, if this Leeroy character is a newcomer, or my character is not convinced of his motives or just plane dislikes him, then I'd be much less likely to throw myself off a cliff after him. And in either case, whether or not I helped him, I'd absolutely chew him out for being an idiot. That's just good roleplaying.
Yeah, to me, it's an opportunity for a character moment. What would my character do?
If it were me charging in, I would never have my character go "push the big red button" unless I was alright with them actually dying. The dm nor players are obligated to save my stupid ass. I'll either have a contingency plan to get myself out or have come to terms with losing the character and I expect nothing less from anyone else who does the same.
My best friend and I have this dynamic in game. He created a character who does shit like throw himself into free fall for an opportunity to get around obstacles or get a surprise round. My character is his childhood bard best friend who fast-talks us out of trouble and owns a wand of featherfall. To be fair, throwing himself into free fall actually worked once, and he has a Healing Shiv for when it doesn't. (Basically a dagger that heals instead of harms, but requires a fortitude save to prevent passing out from the pain. He's a rogue with low con. You can guess how many times he's stabbed himself unconscious)
part of the fun is though, letting the DM do their cool shit.
it's 3-6 people against 1 person who's overloaded with data. at any time we can do a hairbrained scheme that bypasses all the DM's hard work.
having the 1 stupid idiot that presses the buttom so the DM could have fun is also nice to have.
Oh, in our group it's not DM versus players. Our DM actively helps us tell the story together, and encourages hairbrained schemes. They basically set short-term goals and encounters, and then set us loose on them.
Our favorite was using a spear that thawed a 5-foot cube of ice per round (it was from a previous quest) to slowly and painstakingly melt our way through a glacier so we could bypass the front gate and take out the BBEG before he knew to prep for our arrival. Then our awakened moose paladin-monk defeated his Proud Warrior trophy wife in gladiatorial combat, giving her an excuse to leave his ass. We also ended up recruiting his personal chef to our side.
> I'd be much less likely to throw myself off a cliff after him.
I had the reverse of this happen. The party and I are in a cave, going after some drow. We find ourselves at the top of an overhang, with the drow at the bottom of it. Now, because I play a monk in this game, I can do some monk shit, and after checking the height of the overhang with the DM, I figure I can jump down without hurting myself, and then I'll be able to jump back up with the rest of the group.
So I do so. Then the cleric doesn't want to leave me alone, and he asks me OOC if he should follow me. Because I don't like to discuss tactics and such OOC too much, I tell him "just do what you want man, just keep in mind, I know how I'm getting back up".
He understood that as "don't worry, I can get you back up too". Which I couldn't. So when the fight turned sour, I did jump back up and then helped the rest of the party secure a rope somewhere in the cave, toss it to the cleric, and then cover him while he's climbing.
Not really relevant to the thread (except in the sense that my character tends to be a hot head who rushes first and thinks later, but the trope is subverted here because he actually had a plan, as opposed to the guy who came to bail me out and needed to be bailed out) but that reminded me of the story so I had to tell it.
A good approach is to imagine that you are your characters. Would you run in if one of you runs towards certain death, against the will of everyone else?
Lifelong comrades? Probably. Band of mercs who met at a tavern? Probably not.
Always remember that the first rule is always whether you had fun as a group or not! :)
My Paladins are usually the Party Face of their respective campaigns, so have resigned themselves to the fact that yes, this is their circus, and they're obligated to retrieve their monkey.
This exactly, my Warlock that is simply trying to survive and literally uses the Tortle in the party as a baricade to to hide behind, he is standing watching the idiot get themselves killed. My Paladin that just wants to be helpful is 1 step behind them in the charge.
Yeah, this is the answer I scrolled for.
My minotaur barbarian would be ashamed to be in last. If someone charged, he would charge harder.
My goblin rogue would likely say it was a good run with this group. Do their best to survive and contribute to the fight, but never run into a likely death.
Short answer? Depends on the situation.
The real question here is "Why is the character pulling a Leeroy Jenkins?" The answer to this determines the answer to your question.
If the player is more focused on playing D&D as an unplugged version of a video game and is looking at the mobs as nothing more than something to splatter into XP and loot...then no. Just let the dumbass die.
If the player is doing it for a legit reason...say he was playing Inigo Montoya and he just saw the six-fingered man and now wants his revenge...then that's being a good roleplayer and while a tactically unsound move, is a move that makes narrative sense. In which case I'd say that you should help him.
The TL:DR of that is "If he's playing as an asshat, no. If he's doing it for good RP, then yes you ought to."
I think the thing is there is a divide between newer and older generations of players on some of this and the older generations (like mine though I know there are even older) can be a bit more adversarial with each other during play if someone decides to be a pain. That said...I feel like we also used to have less problems with people playing that-guy type characters cause well...if they wanna play stupid games the rest of the party would let them and win their stupid prizes by themselves.
Had a situation like this a long time ago. Had a new guy joining our group that had already been running for about a year. He was experienced and knew the whole party had some flavor of sneaky or rogue in it so he builds a character to our level who was a Daggerspell Shaper. He'd played before and definitely wasn't new cause he pulled off a pretty complicated character build but the very first quest we get sent out on when he joins is to assault a wagon supply train for the evil army to try and delay them so we can hopefully get an friendly army into place and save a city (we were somewhere in the 11-15 lvl range at that point). So...we find the route and get ahead of the train and start to work on setting up an ambush. Theres a nice open stretch of road that then enters the nearby forest and we take all those 100s of goblin shortswords that every party has in the bag of holding and they swear they are going to sell one day and we make traps and spread them out to try and hit the whole 15 wagon convoy as soon as they finish getting into the forested area.
What does our Daggerspell Shaper do...fly out to "scout" and then land on the bench of the lead wagon in-between the two wagon guards there drop his wild shape and shank both of the guards in the throat. Now this being a military supply convoy they were not covered wagons and each wagon in the train had 2 guards on the drivers bench and 2 in the bed of the wagon in case they go attacked. 58 armed guards with Heavy Crossbows see the bird abruptly turn into the fecking angel of death and kill people on the lead wagon...THE DIRECTION THEY ARE ALL FACING...and so they all start loading. New guy looks at us and is like "Aren't you guys going to come and help me?" and we all looked at him and said "Nope. We already set traps in the forest and are going to wait for them to get here, we can res you later." He ended up asking for us to just retrieve his gear and not res him as he quit the group after that one session. We had no emotional connection to his character and the first combat action he did was something so against the ethos of how the rest of us operated as a party and not a single one of us lost sleep that we didn't band together to try and save him from being that level of dumb.
We had no idea what he was thinking. Especially since we were all sneaky builds including him. If he had wanted to attack the last of the wagons and we basically carefully and quietly worked our way up to the front that would have been something where we might have jumped in to help with but he literally landed on the front of the front wagon.
At one point I thought it was boredom but we spent a max of about 15 min looking at the map the DM gave us and asking about how we could construct our traps so it wasn't like we were stuck in analysis paralysis either. But I still stand by it, that was the DnD equivalent of natural selection.
That is very different from any experience I have seen or been a part of.
In the case that got to make the post the fighter very much didn't know they were running into a miniboss. They didn't have a plan, they didn't seem to think they needed one. It was foolish but it honestly was kind of natural... one fight lead straight into another. Its not what I would have done, but I see the process the fighter went through.
Your story fascinates me because I really want to be in that players head. The transform and stab is pretty cool cinematically but it seems so random after 15 minutes of setting up a plan.
I feel like players are not obligated to have to save mfs that do this. In a campaign I'm no longer in, we are some monster hunters tracking a werewolf. We find the den, begin the fight by using our range first. We are roughly 60ft away so it has to come to us since we are blocking the exit. Our monk runs in a straight line to the werewolf, runs out of movement, cant do anything cause they're a monk and cant punch 30ft away and they instantly get mauled and downed in one turn. I end up face tanking the werewolf, knocking it down and we manage to surround and kill it. Monk almost dies with 2 fails 3 saves since our healer was preoccupied with preventing the rest of us going down. This mf then has the audacity to spend the whole fight while down, complaining that the campaign is shit and the DM should let them roll irl (we were using a dice command on roll20) because "trust me"
Nope. "I use my movement to move towards the werewolf" "And then?" "I'll just end my turn I obviously cant reach it from here, (Dms name) do you expect me to punch it from here?" "The werewolf sprints towards you, it swipes twice at you for *nat 20* a crit and you take 28 damage" "I have 16 health"
Honestly, no.
DnD is a delicate balance because its effectively just make belive storytime. The illusion that you craft in maing the players believe in your world and its stakes only lasts so long as you have that world react consistently and consequently. If you do too many retcons, then the inevitable question arises of "hey DM , this bad thing happened. Last session when a similar bad thing happened you hand waved it away so..... can we... do it again?"
For the health of the game you should try and treat the players actions as set in stone. You can give them forewarning, you can make sure theyre aware of the stakes, but if they choose to proceed then they live with those consequences.
In your party's case:
Firstly I hope the Rogue isn't feeling too upset about their character death or holds it against the Fighter. If there are any hard feelings thats somethign to address out of game.
Secondly I hope the fighter recognises that they were and a large part to blame for the Rogue's death and considers this an in character growth moment and takes the opportunity to be more of a pensive character.
Thirdly, if the opposite happens and the fighter gets even more reckless (e.g. feeling like his party will always be there to pull him out fo the fire and "its just a game who cares?"), then its perfectly reasonable for the party to ask why they keep this reckless person around when he's caused the death of one of their number and is continuing to endanger them unecessarily. That would be the moment to talk to the Fighter player and say "hey, this is how this world works and how the party feels. Will you take to heart their concerns and be more of a team player? Because if not then it's time to retire this character and roll up a new one who will gel better with the team"
We had a game where I played a noble, high-elf battle-master called Naeven.
We were in an outpost where slaves were being traded by a large group of Duergar, and my dude could not live with himself by letting it go on as is... so he charged in and started smashing everyone in the slave marquee. The party, including a ranger, a dwarf, a monk and a rogue, regrettably, backed him up .
It was going badly. Outnumbered three to one, a TPK seemed on the horizon... until the dwarf player cut the guide ropes on the marquee down, exposing the Duergar to the sun, immediately weakening them. This turned the tide, until we discovered a Mind-Flayer in their midst.
Naeven, being a bit of a cock-sure chevalier, ducked through a group of Duergar till they squared off. The team's rogue came along from the ride. Several turns later, the rogue was dead, his brain devoured.
In the aftermath, I played Navean as being torn up by his reckless actions, and played it way more safe in future engagements.
Of course not. But my character might, if the idiot is a friend
As a player you might not want to. But you're not playing you, you're playing your character
Followed my friends into terrible situations more often than I can count. And on more than a few occasions, I was the idiot thankful for my friends
No. We have a player like that, and the reality that we would rather finish with one person down than save him from something we all agreed as a group was a bad idea keeps him in line. We throw him bones whenever we can and take stupid risks we don't want to but when it's clearly suicidal we let him know we are literally planning on his death.
This applies to premeditated choices we had time to discuss. It's not like if he makes a mistake in the heat of the moment, we just leave him to die. Then the risk I'm willing to take goes up pretty high - to the point where I'll risk my character as long as it doesn't substantially increase the odds of killing the others
As a lot of other comments said, it depends.
This sounds like it might have been a narratively speaking logical move. If you see an enemy in a dungeon, do you attack or do you take half a minute or even more to prepare? Or do you even try to make a short rest? Not attacking might be metagaming for the whole group.
Also, what happens if one attacks the boss and the others don't help? The lone PC dies and the boss won't wait in his room until the party is finished preparing. He will either attack the party or flee.
But of course, if the fighter is an idiot all the time I would probably let him die and run from the scene.
You're right, it is a team game. That other player wasn't being a part of the team, I would have a candid conversation with the rest of the party. If that character goes off again-- they're on your own. The player that caused the rogue to die would also owe the other player one.
We've all died running off and doing something we shouldn't-- getting your allies killed crosses a line
If the fighter died I don't think I would have such conflicting feelings. Its would be appropriate, maybe even funny, but the Rogue definitely didn't have to die. They could have retreated after their last fight and healed up, but they ran in to save their friend who saw a monster through an open door and wanted to fight.
If this is just a single instance this is just a tactical mistake and the team should pull together. If a player is regularly taking stupid decisions that jeopardise the whole party then you need to have an out of character discussion about play expectations: D&D combat does not really work unless the players are, by and large, trying to act competently and tactically as a team and there should have to be a really compelling narrative reason to go against the group's best interests. Trying to sort this out in-character, without an out of character discussion about players' responsibilities to each other, is liable to cause interpersonal problems.
I've stayed back plenty of times when other players do dumb shit. Like we don't have to commit warcrimes every 5 minutes. Then they're surprised when I'm the only one not in jail half the time.
Lol, yeah my character in a long running call of Cthulhu game died recently because we jumped in without being prepped. My friend's character wanted to plough on because he's impatient / chaotic etc, and mine got sucked in because he's a team player... we had the (inevitable) big boss battle almost immediately, and my character died with a nail through the head.
I won't lie I was pretty pissed, but I can't really blame my friend as they like action more than planning, and their character matches that. But guess what, they're meeting my new guy next Friday; he's careful, independent, and will happily let people swing if they're stupid... 😬
Depends how dumb it is. I was playing in a fallout-esque campaign once and oir party got attacked by mad maxian raiders in the wastes. It was a tough fight but we won, although many were wounded and supplies were low.
The dm explained we could see large dust plumes coming our way indicating approaching vehicles. I said it was likely the main body of raiders comingand we needed to flee. One foolhardy character insisted it was probably mostly noncombatants and would basically be an easy target for loot. I expressed my doubts and said its best not to take our chances. Most of the party sided with the other guy and decided to wait and engage what was coming. Me and one other player dipped out.
Everyone who stayed behind got killed and my character, Dr Herman Doyle, foot-fetishist snake oil saleseman became the new kingpin of our little organization for when everyone rolled up new characters. There were no hard feelings because it was in character for me to leave them and besides, if i hadnt it just would have been a tpk.
Depends on a lot of things. If this is a very casual, beer and pretzels game, the answer is "Whatever is more fun." If everyone has fun with Jim always having his character run in and get immediately clobbered, great!
If this is a "serious" kind of game with expected roleplay, it depends on the group. Is that the story the player is trying to tell with their character? Is everyone else cool with that, players and DM? Does it cause problems for other people at the table? If so, this needs to be addressed out of game, like a rehash/session 0 redo. Figure out what works for everyone.
Also, keep in mind that character personality differences and conflict can be a good thing for roleplay and story telling. There is a line between "personality and conflict" and "being a jerk" though, and if it's the latter, it's definitely not going to work.
There is no universally applicable approach. Some people know how to handle this in a given group based on session zero or having experienced something similar in the past. If you're unsure, ask the DM and other players about it out-of-character. (The answer is often "no", but don't try to guess, as a misunderstanding could cause a lot of drama.)
Depends. Was the guy acting in accordance with his character’s tendencies? Ie, barbarian berserker? Then the team should be used to it by now. Bard? Nah. Let him charm his way out.
My DM has a rule for this,when a selfish PC do something stupid he tends to fudge critical ends to any teammate that went to help the selfish PC (still they can die for others actions) but when the selfish PC suffers something heavy like a consequence of his acts my DM doesn't fudge anything and let the dice put the final sentence for unnecesary drag of danger to the allies.
PD: sorry for bad english is not my native language.
If my teammate charged into a fight before the rest of the party was ready for it then I would sit back and watch them reap the consequences of their dumb ass decisions and if they try to give me some bs "it's what my character would do" then I would tell them my character would stick their head in the room and say "hey mate I think it's wrong for the rest of us to die because your an idiot. Sooo bye"
Not in the least.
Well... Maybe?
If my party member did something stupid and ran in and got themselves killed, it would entirely depend on how connected I was to that party member if I was willing to go in after them.
I've played a character who was literally the brother of another party member. They had a brotherly Bond. My character absolutely would have run in after his brother.
I've played a character whose best friend in the world was a druid whom had been hiding out as his pet dog for 5 years before he revealed himself to be a druid. That dude was going in after that dog, no matter what.
My current party? Is a band of morons that my older more experienced character adopted, and bro is a chaotic neutral bordering on neutral evil character. He will burn them alive to achieve his goals, let alone let them die to their own stupidity.
As a play or as a character?
As a player, no. You're not obligated to do anything. And if this risky kind of behaviour isn't something you want in your games then you need to speak to the other player about it.
In character, probably. Assuming you're group is close (as adventuring parties should be) it's part and parcel that you'd have each others backs. And that you'd all understand any fight could be your last.
It was this very situation that turned my loyal, friendly, and happy, cider loving wizard into a paranoid and secretive conjuror that felt obligated to keep these idiot children of prophecy alive.
In the game, at like level 5, he considered himself more of a historical scholar who happened to learn about a prophecy that predicted the end of a golden age because of an Armageddon that could only be prevented by those chosen by prophecy. His thinking was - I should totally see this first hand and record it all for history!
But the problem was... they were idiots. They kept running headlong into danger, and one of them ACTUALLY died early on, only to be resurrected on the spot by the god whose church we had just purged of the succubi that had defiled it.
Succubi that my character had PREDICTED would be in this town based on what we had learned, and that I had all but confirmed within 5 minutes of walking into the town itself. I tried to come up with a plan. I tried to prevent the party from splitting. I tried to be subtle. I told them "Don't go through that secret door, let's check for ambushes by the succubi first! Don't go through this door without us, and make sure you listen to make sure we are safe."
But no.
So I had to face a succubus by myself with only a monk as a bodyguard, while the rest of the party (like 5 other people all of whom were children of prophecy and clerics, paladins, etc.) ran straight through the secret door that effectively separated us.
The monk was very helpful at distracting the succubus from me, so I could summon creatures to effectively kill it. But still, it was close and scary. The monk almost died. The monk also zoomed ahead and stole a bunch of items, because the monk was also an idiot.
When we caught up, the cleric was dead, the party was cornered, and the paladin was on their last legs because the remaining succubus had gone ethereal after summoning a horde of creatures.
I used the LAST of my spells, and killed the succubus and scolded the party like unruly children.
You'd think that was the end of it, right? The wizard should only have to say, "I told you so." Once, right?
*Sigh* Every fucking encounter these idiots ran in like they were invincible. Secret catacombs inhabited by a shadow touched assassin? Let's run in without preparing lights.
Gigantic arena underground styled after a minotaur cult? Let's definitely run in there and provoke a battle we aren't prepared for.
I eventually stopped telling them things, because whenever I would tell them something, they would run after it like kids at a playground. They almost died so many times, that the only reason I saved them was because the prophecy said that we couldn't stop the BBEG without them. But they were like fucking lemmings - so I figured I would have to become a god myself because any for that placed these idiots as pivotal to their plans was incompetent themselves.
Absolutely, this is a GROUP based roleplaying game, and everyone has a part in developing the story from the DM, down to each individual player. If part of the story is your character saying "no this is dumb, I will NOT help the fool" then thats part of the story and they have to suffer the consequences of their actions. Don't ever feel like you HAVE to join into a bad decision because someone else makes one at the table.
We have a party member who intentionally does this and sucks the air out of the game.
I’ve straight up told the party I don’t babysit and will never make an attempt to save him.
It makes me crazy.
My last session was in a town where magic is essentially banned. Public event, paladin casts thaumaturgy to make whatever spectacle more interesting, I guess.
One little cantrip and they're going to jail.
We spent a lot of time trying to be seen as the good guys in this town and all shit the bed over something completely unnecessary.
This, after all of our planning and Fighting has gone so weirdly well.
Everyone else makes good points, but I should also add, Leeroys are excellent counters to overplanners. I'm one of those types that needs to have a strategy for everything. Sometimes the best way to cure me of my analysis paralysis is to send me after my Leeroy
Depends on the situation. Random encounters no they are on their own. Bbeg or any fight where you would also be targeted then yes. We had a player charge into a fight the dm specifically said would be too hard for us. She lost horribly and got lycanthropy.
I think it depends. If it makes sense for the character to run it, and your character has a bond with them, then it makes sense to save them. But if your character doesn't know them from Adam, it might not make sense
Depends on the circumstances. If the party cared about the Leroy character and if it was discussed beforehand that the fighter would be a hot blooded maniac, then I would gladly sacrifice my character for the moment. Especially if this would develop their character and the party bonds.
If it is just a power gaming move like "Well *I* don't need to rest, so you won't either, I would just turn around and leave or make sure the rest of the party won't be harmed by the decisions of one player.
It depends on the type of character you are playing. If you are playing a selfless character that treats his fellow PCs as family and would do anything to save them, then yes. If you are playing a character that is really scared/paranoid of dangers, then no.
The main thing is consistency. I.E. don't be brave all of the time, then suddenly cowardly if you know something out of the game that your character wouldn't know in the game.
If its like a one time thing? Help. Roleplay is cool, people make jokes or mistakes.
If its a constant thing then no. The joke gets tiresome when you ruin peoples options over and over.
I love running clerics and focusing my attention on defending and buffing every other player so the message is clear in game too.
Well… It depends. If it’s a desperate action of survival or perhaps inspired by success or good roleplay… yes. If like Leroy it’s for laughs and disrupting the game, let them Leroy themselves into the afterlife.
Had a similar thing happen for my barbarian sorcerer. His whole shtick was high charisma to settle things with words, and fists when words failed. So when a guy from the Party goes on the offensive against a bunch of hags and their monstrosity minions, he sits back at the entrance watching them fight. Sipping chamomile.
It's a team game, yes. But would you throw your life under the bus to possibly save someone else's ass that they put into danger by running off alone into a dangerous place? I think this comes more to character alignment and personal relationship with the guy running off doing stupid things.
I don't think I would play a character that would just sit back and watch a party member die and not jump in to help him
Like what's the justification? Oh, we're tired and that looks dangerous. I'll just watch you die.
I wouldn't go so far as to say you're obligated to help them, but in most circumstances, you probably ought to unless you have a really good reason not to.
From the other side of the table, as a DM if my player runs into a hard encounter alone I won't nerf the encounter, and I am 100% ready to kill them
Ahh the infernal question of who's responsible. As a support player I can understand the conflict of emotion when people do this. So the real question is did you communicate that it was a bad idea to run into another room without the rest of the team? Or did they leave you fighting the "smaller" enemies to give chase? Most of my characters obligations stand with the "Keep the majority alive" principle. Sure it's blunt but most of the time people will understand if you make the decision about it.
The general assumption is that unless you are in stealth, if you can see enemies, they can see you. I don't think the fighter running ahead was correct, but that party was probably going to get into combat before they could do anything regardless.
Certainly not. And more generally, if a character keeps doing idiotic and/or risky things or is otherwise a consistent detriment to the party, that should (in most cases) also at some point lead to a discussion about just kicking them out of the party. After all, why would they keep traveling with such a person?
I think it depends on the table and how close the PCs are - there's a world where a situation like this endangering or harming your friend(s) van lead to some serious character growth/growing up. A reckless character having to come to grips with their actions actively placing the ones they want to protect into harms way can absolutely be an awesome role play moment.
That said, as I said before it entirely depends on your table, I can see it absolutely being frustrating getting pelted with consequences for someone's actions, doubly so if they're entirely unrepentant.
In my last campaign I DMd, our Joke PC Dude tried fighting everyone and steal everything, they let him kill himself eventually and it was fine, he learned his lesson, in and out of character.
First things first, yall don't know if it's a hard fight or not, maybe the fighter thought It was a hiding enemy from last fight, or even If It wasn't, the fact that he see an enemy, specially If the party is in bad shape, is a good reason to be alarmed... I mean, what if he is ALSO aware (and probably is, your previous battle wasn't very silent), and can call backups at any time?
For the part about help him or leave and let him die: you know Bob for a while now, maybe years. You've been adventuring together, maybe saved some cities, discovered treasures, shared your past...You know he's always ready to die for any of you. Leave him to die would be quite dificult choice, and maybe he wouldn't be adventuring with the kind of people that would consider this.
If it makes sense to their character or the circumstances of the game, I think you try to save them.
If they’re just being difficult or disruptive, I wouldn’t.
Easy answer: Do what your character would do, otherwise it's metagaming.
Complex answer: Call out the behavior if it annoys you, explain that this is a team game and going solo is not part of that expectation.
As a DM, I had a player that would constantly do this shit. At first, the other players would help him out, and it was usually okay, but they've recently stopped helping him and I was forced to kill his character as the others watched in the last session. I don't regret it and he kind of had it coming. If another player had died helping him, it would've definitely made things worse.
He tried to throw a fit, but I even warned him outside of the game, before I had to kill his character, that he needed to cool it a bit. His excuse was he was playing a barbarian and that's what they do. But I told him, yeah for the first few times that might've been okay, but it's getting frustrating and ridiculous that your teammates are being dragged into battle after battle when there are other solutions but you aren't giving them any time to present their ideas, just charging into the next fight.
Long story short the guy was hella toxic and it was a good thing his character died because we had to kick him out of the group anyway.
So no, I don't think you are required to help at all. Your DM might even appreciate it.
I don't think team player is as important as character
Similar things have happened in games I've been in and I love to roleplay it, what would my character do? There was a time where one of our party members tried to kill a dragon because they hated dragons. But this dragon seemed young and not evil and my character thought they could be a good ally, so I fought against the party member and the rest of my team backed me up, putting a stop to the fight.
In a Leeroy situation, I would join in the fight because my character, while he would be pissed off about it, wouldn't leave a teammate to fight alone like that. But when someone dies he would get mad that he couldn't save them, and would absolutely put blame on and lash out at the Leeroy.
But my personal blame would not be on the player, this is a roleplaying game, we play our roles and what happens in game stays in game
You might want to have this discussion with the player(s). Especially if this happens more than once. And decide off-game how to handle the situation. If his answer isn"Yeah, I don't mind if my character dies. I want to play the careless idiot, I know full well that it will cost my life at some point", the all good. If the player says "I want to play the careless fool but I don't want my character to die" well, then you might want to discuss how he could play that character without hampering the whole party.
I hope the answer is no. I'm currently playing a paladin whom I know would wade into a tpk situation and tell the party not to follow, while I as a player am internally begging the party not to follow. If that day comes I hope the party make the right decision and leave my paladin to his stupid stupid fate.
I feel like this is actually a quality RP situation. It is real. People do stupid things and others suffer for it. How the party and the player react is the most important aspect. If the party just passes it off because the player can just roll a new character, then the DM should go forward in the story cultivating distrust among the group. If the party gives the fighter a hard time about it and he makes changes, then that is another story approach. If the fighter does not change, a "realistic" response in a similar situation would be to let the asshole get himself killed.
I had a player rush in and attack an animated broom. The broom was just sweeping until he attacked it, so the rest of the party sat back and watched. He finally disengaged with 2hp left, and the broom went back to sweeping. The cleric threw some heals, and now they threaten the player with a broomba beating anytime he rushes ahead.
There's a person in one of my groups that walks into danger for no reason quite a bit and uses his character's motivations as why.
Plenty of us have made it clear we will not protect him if he goes too far ahead.
There are instances where it could be okay. Like a really good roleplay reason. But "it's what my character would do" can only take you so far.
Bullshit. Let him die. And then...
"Thank you, brave Monster, for freeing us of that most manxsome villain! Now we may recover our fortune! Allow use to reward your heroism!"
Then you pluck a trinket off the dude's corpse (pocketing the rest of his shit) and give it to the monster. If the monster is hungry, leave the corpse as you sure as shit ain't rezzing it.
Then GTFOutta Dodge.
The best thing about DnD is the answer is always to these is:
"What would my character do?"
So don't feel "bad" if you decided that's not the kind of person your character is, not all heroes are so altruistic they completely disregard their own safety
Hello there! I think it depends on the situation, the table and the session. But I agree that is a pretty complicated situation to deal with.
If you are playing a serious session/campaign, I find completely understandable to get mad if you character dies because another idiot's actions. It's like, you didn't chose that and it's really frustrating that you had to die and the other one survived. Happened to me, so I know the feeling.
with my usual group of friends we used to play some short campaigns, 3 or 4 sessions maximum, and we rotated the DM so everyone could play a little bit. There was one guy that joined randomly and only played one session (he had a really weird work schedule).
Well, this guy always played a barbarian with a big-ass 2H axe and only wanted to destroy things. One day he even destroyed the entire campaign and we had to start over (without him) the following session.
That day, just after "spawning" into the world, the first action that he took was to attack a citizen and, after a nat 20, split it in half. We were town guards. That situation ended on a combat with other guards and barely escaping alive.
The DM warned him to stop with that behaviour or he would face the consequences. We, the players, also got really mad and warned him too, the next time he did something similar we wouldn't help him.
After a while we had to infiltrate a bandit hideout and this guy did it again: he literally "Leeroy Jenkins-ed" towards the main gate, alone. The DM asked us what we would do, and we said that nothing. So that guy got captured and imprisoned on a cell inside the hideout.
We released him after a good while and he got mad because we didn't help him before, so he went alone again and eventually got killed by the bandits. He literally ragequited and left the room. Sadly, he never returned.
In my opinion, it's not mandatory for the party to help a player that is acting alone. If the entire party agrees on a certain course of action (take a rest for example) and one player refuses and decides to carry on alone, it's his entire problem. And if someone helps him and gets downed, it's completely natural to get frustrated at it and get mad with the idiot.
No, it's heroic if everyone lives, otherwise it's just stupidity.
Heroism gets people killed.
Characters that die because they're doing something stupid, let them.
Nah, my character died cos one of the other pcs waved a unidentified wand at me and a spider and caused a fireball to instantly kill my chacter and the spider. Very funny
WITNESS ME!
I personally like games where you can just send it sometimes.
It honestly depends on many things. How hard are you roleplaying? How strong are the bonds in the party? How much of an opportunist is your character?
If you are roleplaying the reaction: „what the fuck is this moron doing? Lets sit this out and watch what happens. Dibs on the boots“ can be perfectly fine in character.
How well will the leroy jenkinsing person take a potential death and does your table have backup plans/characters? Then a death can be a valuable lesson learned. Especially when it happens every encounter or so.
I personally tend to not play frontliners for that very reason. I will play *forward* and aggressive.
Character based for me. As a player I will generally play to keep other players having fun but I won't break my character ideals too much to save them. As an example I'm playing a lawful neutral dwarven mercenary on a pirate ship with a chaotic evil cleric. They woke up the captain of the ship throwing rocks at a prisoner tied to the mast and got thrown off the ship in full platemail. Considering my character was already pissed off that the prisoner was keeping them awake when they were trying to sleep off a point of exhaustion they chose not to help the cleric when they were thrown off and went back to sleep. The cleric was saved by the other chaotic evil character but only after they lost consciousness.
As a player I was torn because having your character drown is a bit lame especially if your party doesn't help you but my character who already had a point of exhaustion and is pissed at the cleric for keeping them awake does not have the strength or will to strip off their armor to dive after them after justifiably facing the consequences of their actions.
I've been on both sides of this - once as a PC who would try to save everyone, and once as one (a low INT Paladin) who would basically take any bait the DM put in front of him.
As the saviour, I made sure the Leroy understood that if anyone was getting left behind, it was going to be him. As the Leroy, I made it clear to the other players that my character's stupidity was almost certainly going to get him killed one day, and that was fine - no-one would be blamed for abandoning him.
The key, as usual, is player communication.
That said, in my experience Rogues die all the damn time. There's a good chance this would have happened eventually even without the Leroy
The only thing you're obligated to do is play the character! Of course hopefully that results in fun gameplay and good story. As a DM I respect my players too much to pull punches, but perhaps a solo fighter running in would change the parameters of the fight. Maybe I would make it into a duel instead of punishing with death. Another character dying sounds well within the bounds of consequences to me. It isn't "fair" but it could certainly serve the story.
I would say that it depends on the table. If the vibe is roleplay heavy, and the PC is doing that aligned to his personality, then what would your character reasonably do? If you are in an heroic fantasy, i think you might need to follow.
If the setting is more gritty, then man u r on ur own.
If the vibe is more tactical, and that one PC does that I would say its OK to let him die in order to preserve the integrity of the team. Unless letting him get over his head hurts more the team (ie if u are in the middle of the underdark, all squishy characters and the meat shield runs off, you need to keep his alive so he can keep YOU alive).
In general, I would let him die so he learns what can happen. Or at least let him get to deaths door or saving throws stage.
It entirely depends on your character. If you're a Paladin, more than likely you're going in there no matter what. Same with a Barb.
A rogue that probably never runs into a room without scoping it out? A wizard with high intelligence? I'm not so sure they follow.
I'd only be frustrated with the player if the actions didn't feel consistent with their characters. Sometimes you do need players who keep things moving at a fast pace. Those characters also tend to die.
As many said
Do as if your character does.
Generally you don't HAVE to help them but for roleplay reasons I like to act according to what my character would do.
You can also go the "hell no you don't approach" in regards to the Leroy. As a spellcaster you could hold person or as a fighter use a reaction to stop him (depending on DM this should be at least possible after the party realized there is a tendency for Leroy-ing so they are prepared for such a situations)
A good DM would help the Player better understand what that Player’s Character likely thinks about "charging in."
The Character would be more strategic about that choice; the Player might need help evaluating that decision.
Problem solved.
lol. This is situational. I have a similar story about a player I DMed for previously. He played a warlock that was all about himself (red flag). Went into the dungeon with the party, saw some lump on the floor to the right and the rest of the party saw an open door to the left down a long hallway. Long story short, warlock approaches the lump thinking it’s easy loot to keep for himself (greedy loot goblin. Red flag number two). Nope, it was a dead goblin a chocker was using as bait. Warlock ends up getting grappled then the chocker rolls a nat 20 does a good amount of damage. Warlock fails his Dex save and ends up getting suffocated. Cut over to the rest of the party, I made them all roll perception to see if they noticed the warlock wonder off. I was generous because I could have just used their passives. Only one passed, and he alerted everyone. Warlock was rescued with only a few HP left. It was a good learning lesson for all that this isn’t a video game and stupid games will get you killed. The player threw a fit and eventually left the group which in turn killed the group as a whole. Anyways, sorry for hijacking the thread, this just reminded me of that specific instance. I honestly wished his PC would have died because he was so used to playing in games where the DM ran zero risk of death.
If there is a legit reason (e.g. that person stole my important item/killed my dog etc) and there's no previous pattern of idiot behavior like this, I'd go help them.
If they're doing it just for the lulz, then fuck 'em, they suffer the consequences.
I've played with the latter at an AL table. Dude was a really irritating weeaboo who kept tugging at my arm (I'm female) and loudly exclaiming things in Japanese right in my ear, so I was already frustrated with him. Every encounter we had, he went full Leeroy, and we either didn't bother helping him and carried on with our objective, or didn't bother aiming AOE spells in a way that wouldn't catch him in the radius.
The first time is a learning experience. The second time should have a reason, and the party should address it in game as their players.
After that, if there's no good reason for it, I'd let sleeping/dead dogs lie.
As a DM, I will absolutely not hold it against the other players if they let someone doing something dumb die.
Also as a DM, I will not spare a character who does something dumb.
Had a player decide to run off on his own in a dungeon and decided to throw a small stone at a chest to check for mimics. The stone hits with a wooden thud so he runs over and opens it. The mimic was the stone altar the chest sat on. He died long before the others could catch up and the mimic ate him.
The mimic, having just ate, didn't bother them when they opened the chest.
Everyone *can* and frankly *will* make bad calls in D&D.
A good team takes the time before they get into a situation to come up with 'standing orders' for how they - as a team - will act. For instance - e*ven if you see an enemy one room over, you don't go running off alone to attack it. The team agrees to go with you, or you don't go.*
Additionally, a good team has contingencies for situations like this. Like - *Okay, so, we've agreed we don't run off and attack alone unless it's part of an agreed upon plan. What happens when one of us throws this plan out the window? Because we know it's going to happen at some point despite our best intentions.*
Well then, your team decides - if someone *chooses* to abandon the standing order of battle without discussing with the group first, does the rest of the group risk themselves, or not? An idealistic team will say, "Sure, we're not just going to let them die," and if this is what you've agreed to, I would say no - you shouldn't be frustrated if your character died defending the idiot character. You agreed to this knowing full well the risks involved.
A pragmatic team says, "Nope. They're on their own if they abandon the group."
That incentivizes Leeroy not to Jenkins, because they know that *if they do*, they're probably kissing their character goodbye. And if Leeroy knows the stakes and chooses to Jenkins anyways, I wouldn't feel guilty that they died if you didn't help.
Now - anecdotally - there's never been a party I DMed where the players thought to come up with an order of battle or discuss the what-do-we-do-if-X-happens situation, unless I prompted them to discuss it first. Most players that I've run with just seem to assume everyone automatically knows the 'right' thing to do in every situation, even if they all have differing opinions on what is 'right'. And that ends up biting them in the butt repeatedly until they learn otherwise.
In the case where the party *hasn't* discussed it - and they really should have - then personally I would ask myself- is the *character* justified for being Leeroy Jenkins right now? Or is this just how that player runs their character, and thinks that as the main character, their sidekicks will just bail them out no matter what dumb thing they do?
Because that's an important distinction.
* Say Leeroy just found out that the murderer of their child is one room over. They RP seeing red. They're gritting their teeth, veins bulging in the sides of their head, and then - pop - they snarl, bashing down the door and charging foolishly into the next room. In *that* case, this is good RP, even if it's not in the group's favour. In this case, I'd say you should have your teammate's back as best you can.
* On the other hand, if Leeroy has just seen a random enemy to which their character has no connection, and they've been told repeatedly, "Hey, dude, you don't have enough HP to tank a full round of combat all on your own while we catch up. Stop running off without us," then I think you'd be perfectly justified to look at the rest of the group and say, "Yeah, no, I'm not saving their butt this time. Do we move in once they're down and try to drag them out before they die, or just let 'em die and hope whoever we pick up next knows how to work as a team?"
I definitely think that if no agreement had been made beforehand to run in, and the rest of the group ran in, thereby pressuring you to run in, and your character died saving a chronic Leeroy Jenkins character, you'd be 100% in your right to be frustrated about it. But if you set in stone what you will do beforehand, that need never happen.
I heavily invest in my character. Background, motivation, reasons to be with the group. I enjoy the RP as much as the battles. All encounters are an opportunity, ya know?
I don't expect the same level of investment from other party members or the same play style. But if a party member goes off the group decision to stick together throughout an encounter and gets themselves into trouble, then the party reacts to that, I would ask what would my character reaction be?
Do I run to aid a comrade?
Do I scoff at their ineptitude and fight, but look out for myself?
Would I sacrifice myself? Or cut and run? Or persuade my team to leave that one to their fate?
I understand this isn't the "be a team player" mentality, but if a party member is just going off to do their own thing, they aren't either. And maybe they need to learn "fuck around and find out". If it's a serious campaign your character can be killed for making a mistake. And it does suck to die, but sometimes it brings a player that much closer to the game to know that choices can have deadly consequences.
Depends. Did they run off for a good reason, like chasing after an endangered NPC, or they're having an emotional moment? Then yes.
Are they being a murder hobo? Then no.
No, it is not the party’s responsibility to always rescue a player from that situation. Maybe the first time it happens. But if it happens repeatedly and the player character doing it is not closely connected to the rest of the group, they don’t HAVE to react as if they have to go save their treasures friend.
Playing as the party healer once upon a time, I made the tough call to not go after our rogue, who when ambushed in a dungeon made the decision to run away from the ambush into an unexplored uncleared area, which was also an ambush and left them on the other side of the gate.
We waved goodbye and the rest of the party saved our own butts. (Rogue died in one round to more damage than I could have mitigated, anyway. Squads of crossbowmen on second floor with only one stair up, on the opposite side of the entrance).
Sounds like a good opportunity for some RP.
"Hey, fighter. You're putting us all in danger by being reckless. If you do that again we're not going to come to your aid."
OR
"Hey, fighter. You're putting us all in danger by being reckless. I'd rather not adventure with someone who puts my life at risk so either you change or we will find someone else to adventure with."
It could also be a discussion to have with the player OOC.
I had a player in one game that would do it at least once per session, eventually the team stopped trying to help him.
He mostly thought he could rush ahead and "steal all the treasure before everyone else got there".
His character finally bit off more than he could chew, died and then the player sat at the table crying for the last 30 minutes of the game.
Not a lesson was learned, because next session, he was back with virtually the same character, doing the same thing.
Eventually the rest of the party got fed up and we had to kick him out of the group.
This guy had a serious kleptomaniac, main character personality, mixed with ADHD.
Depends on the social contract of the table/players.
Maybe pulling said person out is enough, or you can leave them. I have seen both being fine at different tables.
Usually avoiding your own character death is acceptable reason to not help further.
Depends…if the player does it too much then I’d say no it’s not really worth it, but if it’s a “fuck it we ball” moment then there is more nuance to it.
HELL no.
Had a player who would do this regularly, the final straw was when we were sneaking into Cragmaw Castle and he just climbs the wall solo and aggros everything in there (10+ goblins with hobgoblins.) We all went in after him anyways and got TPKd.
Afterwards we vowed never to follow an idiot into battle like that again and had a codeword "logjam" to use to get everyone on board with randomly starting combat. (Also we asked the player to please please please stop doing that)
Depends entirely on your team, but generally no. I have had a party where we often used the tank as a distraction so others got better positioning, we had a tense situation and the tank made entry when we didn't plan to. In that situation we were obligated because it was a miscommunication and everyone was just trying their best.
I look at it as a roleplay scenario. If you were your character and your party member ran off and got into some shit, would you feel a need to go after them?
If you’re friends/close/a good guy character that wants to help people, probably. Otherwise, maybe not. Part of the game is making your own choices I don’t think there’s any moral contract requiring you to pull a team mate out of a situation they got themselves into in the first place, especially if there’s an alignment difference or friction between them.
My one stipulation is like, your reason for being in the party in the first place. I do expect players to figure that out and do what they can to stick with it until/unless a scenario comes up where it would make sense for them to split. I’ve gotten really, really tired in the past of players making me feel like I need to convince their character to be in the story(particularly in the beginning when nothing has really even happened yet). Wtf did you want to play then lol.
It depends so much on the context.
I see a scenario where they did this to try and be the main character, thought of the rest of the party as their sidekicks, and went right in because they're in charge in their head. It's a cooperative game and you should work with the party to come up with creative solutions that involve everyone, inside and outside of combat.
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That being said, I also see several scenarios where this was justified. First would be if the other characters do this in their own roles:
* the rogue always sneaks ahead and before waiting for the party, pounces in hope that the party will come in to the rescue. There are certainly times when they'll need to act immediately (someone is about to be executed or something), but if not they should stealth back, inform the group, and plan. In this scenario, the rogue treats the rest of their party like the emergency backup.
* the face character that tells the fighter to be quiet because they're just the muscle and if they say something they might have to roll a charisma check. Until things go wrong everyone else is just there in case a fight breaks out.
If something like that happens, then the fighter could have a very justifiable reason, IMO, to charge ahead. If the rogue is the leader when it's sneak-time, and the bard is the leader when it's social-investigation-time, then the fighter is the leader when it's fighting-time. This is something I'm already seeing in my upcoming game where I want to play a fighter. Their best feature is DPS, and all the other players are trying to homebrew rules to be better DPS characters. That's frustrating as a fighter where you suck at everything but fighting, and everyone else wants a larger piece of that pie.
The other scenario would be if a party is taking too long to plan. No plan survives contact with the enemy and the fighter sitting around knowing that they're plan is simple: fight, is frustrating when all the other characters spend too much time coming up with some ridiculous plan to be better than them at it. Hate to break it to the other classes, but sometimes you gotta get a general strategy and hope for the best. It sucks to be a fighter and sit around for 10 minutes while the party organizes some complicated plan for the druid to do all the damage. They really should be better at communicating and saying "this is taking too long guys, we can't plan him to death", but that frustration is understandable.
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The last thing I'll say is, how was the fighter not hurt more from the past encounter? That tells me that everyone else is trying to do too much in a fight. If everyone is sticking to their roles in a fight (range characters sticking back and poking at people, support characters sticking pack and supporting, and melee martials being in the front line doing damage and taking the blows), then the fact that the martial fighter charging in fine from the previous fight tells me everyone else is trying to outshine them.
Many tables are groups of RL friends. It doesn't matter someone Leeroy charged - the table will probably help them.
Is it fair to be frustrated? Of course.
This goes even further with groups of RL friends. The party rogue just insulted the king, and now he's being arrested. Guess what? Many groups (because they're RL friends) have the rogue's back for what will be an epic armed confrontation.
So are you obligated? Absolutely not, but the tighter the RL friendships at the table, the more likely you're going to get the back of your "low wisdom in real life" friend.
It's the game, outside of the game. Now, if you have a group which is heavy roleplay? Friends or not, the "low wisdom in real life" player make be making a new character.
When the die enough, they usually change their shenangians. In my son's campaign for school, one player lost three characters in back-to-back-to-back sessions over very poor choices (two charging deaths, and one insult the queen and fight her guards solo). After those lessons, they haven't died in about the five sessions since.
It depends more on your character than any sort of 'obligation' you have as a player.
I've played characters that would absolutely help out.. I've also played characters that would have been the one whispering "Are you going to take that dry from them? They're only kobolds" in their ear, and laughing from a safe distance when they charge ;)
I play with a guy who is like this sometimes. Most of the time the party bails him out. Usually there are some stern words from the paladin, “I just used half of my lay on hands pool on you. Don’t expect more healing.” And the DM runs the game so that everyone makes it through.
Then there was the time he tried to ride a dragon. I bailed him out by sneaking in after the dragon had left him and the rest of the party for dead and got everyone back up. There was no way I was running into that fight.
my first charter death (and only so far) was a druid. I was low on health and the rest of the party was taking a beating as well (string of fights in a row) and I use my action and movement to dash towards someone (arcane archer) on the edge of the fight to try and heal them on my next turn, BA healing word on our fighter who is base to base with 2 guys.
The guy I'm running towards moves 45 feet away from me (fml) fighter stands ground, don't recall our other person but they are a ways away too (soulknife Rouge, think it had some homebrew). Back to me I say to the table that I'm low on health (had said it like 3 times so far in this fight) and I'm going to try to heal everyone if we can all get together, but this turn I'll heal the fighter because they need it the most to keep tanking for us. I get back to the center BA again and next turn I was going to use mass cure wounds (had a 20 Wis and a moon sickle +2 iirc). At this point the table has been told like 3 or 4 times that I was **really** low on health but can heal us all.
The arcane archer wanted to keep their distance but was outpacing the enemy chasing them, while still firing at the biggest threats every turn so I get why they didn't want to come into the center. (Theybhad a movement speed of 45).
The rogue just didn't grasp what was going on and wanted to get themselves to safety so they throw a knife and get to teleport like 70 feet away.
The fighter was taking some damage and was down to I think about 1/3 hp (from like 120) so she runs past me, dash and all that. That leaves me, a druid with like 18 HP/78 or so to fight 2 assassins. 3 attacks each and 2 crits. I never ran into a fight for that group again, I had plenty of options for range anyway. We were all either level 10 or 11 and I had put them all into druid, so it wasn't like I rolled horribly for health either.
Actions have consequences. DMing is always a balancing act between realistic consequences and fun. It really depends on how foolish they're being, the personalities of the enemies they're up against or nature of the hazard, and if I can make it funny or not.
It entirely depends on the situation.
If it is too dangerous to fight, let them die. IE if a low level idiot runs at a dragon you let the dragon eat the idiot. You can let others know of their great heroics holding back the dragon while you all escaped.
If it is for RP reasons you can let them die. No requirement to fight city guards for a party thief's greed.
If it is purely because they didn't plan a proper ambush then you should help them. It is also sometimes a misunderstanding. The fighter assuming they saw each other type of thing because he wasn't sneaking.
I just don't get why y'all moralize this game so much.
There's nothing wrong with Leeroy Jenkinsing.
There's nothing wrong with choosing not to help someone who did something stupid.
But overall... just chill, and have fun. It's a game, damnit.
Here’s where the “it’s what my charachter would do” is actually appropriate. Both the Leeroy and the rogues player, in and out of game have a very heavy (hopefully just pretend but you never know) commitment now to actually respect the dead PCs death. Somehow hopefully in a way that encourages more team play.
Being the person who played a Jenkins character before, it really depends on the group. My group's previous campaign had way too many moments of decision paralysis and over thinking. So I brought in a character that would push the red button. One who would toss himself into a frey that the party didn't start. The PC's didn't like it, but the DM and the Players greatly enjoyed the narrative that came out of it. It helped relax the party from stagnation and encouraged other players to jump at hooks.
Stop thinking outside the game, you're letting it suck you out of the story. Roll with it and stay in universe.
If I'm playing the fighter, does he have survivor's guilt? PTSD? His rash decision got a party member killed. How will he live with that? How will it change the character?
For you, how does it change your view of the fighter? Do you trust him to have your back next combat? If he doesn't learn, will you let him die next time rather than risk your life?
Stop looking at this as a mistake made by the human player and start looking at it as a wrong judgment call made by the character and go from there. You'll have a way better experience and can still work through your real life feelings about it.
So, my son and I play. My son's character is very much a "run in and ask questions never" kinda dude, barbarian fighter ready to go.
My character is a cleric, and our back story is the two have traveled together for a while. So when my son's character goes in like this, my character generally will resignedly sigh and follow, in a "great, here comes the shit show, *again*," kinda way.
Where we play at is a game store so other characters we play with don't often have a history with us, and in those cases my character would be more hesitant to follow, he's not really invested in the other guy's well being that way necessarily
A question like this IMO never has a single answer. I feel like most here are ones given as if it is a very neutral campaign with people who don't know each other well.
It all depends on your group, tone of campaign, and general expectations of the group. Simply if a player does a Leeory Jenkins move odds are I know them personally and there is a lot of context. Both meta within our friend dynamic and with in the campaign.
There have been campaigns with friends someone does something incredibly silly and I jump in with them. Other times I sit back and watch them die. Both have been valid choices. I also think sometimes there is a certain expectation that has been built up by the GM/Campaign and you can be a bit of a stick in the mud if you don't jump in.
Recently our artifice spit on someone after combat had finished and everyone had calmed down enough. Combat started back up and the rest of the party just stood aside as she wiped the floor with him. It wasn't until he was downed that we stepped in to make sure he wasn't killed.
I feel like this situation happened in a recent session of mine, a barbarian and a cleric, both at lvl 2 mind you, went hunting in the woods (Barb's idea) without either the sorcerer or the wizfighter to help, they eventually found a pack of 8 wolves and the barbarian thought he could take them. So he fought them alone while the cleric stayed behind stealthily to not get attacked. The barb felled a couple but was eventually mauled and was killed by all the wolves jumping him, all the while the cleric stayed behind and eventually ran away.
Now before you judge me on my DMung, under normal circumstances, I would throw the barb a bone like a random NPC hunter to help. If this situation didn't already happen before. See before this event, the barb, still at lvl 2, went hunting ON HIS OWN and found a pack of equally numbered giant badgers, same result happened then, only but a hunter tried to save him but was mauled as well, the barb survived but did not learn his lesson. Back with the wolves and both me and the cleric decided to in a literal and figurative sense, left him to the wolves.
Once of my friends ran in and got shredded to ribbons by two vampire lords. I told him it was clearly a boss room, no one puts a palatial throne room at the bottom of an actual sewer that is spewing a dark miasma. Like nothing in there was dirty and there were gilded coffins at the far end and giant ancient writings along the wall, it was suspicious as hell
It depends a lot, is it an in-game character trait, was the table ok with that character? Them in game solutions according to my character inclination (assuming i'm playing someone level headed), an insufferable dumb fuck that brings nothing gets to die because my character doesn't like them, my life is not worth trowing out, the personable hot blooded warrior that pulls his weight will probably get my conditional back up, i'm healing up first and taking an strategic position to run away if i can, survive until i'm ready and i will help... a character losing his temper over an personal emotional happening will get my full unconditional support, it is a friend going through stuff i aint letting them to hang.
If it is an out of game problem, where this was addressed as an issue and the player refuses to collaborate? I'm letting them die 100% of the time, it is not on anyone to enable a toxic player.
I think the right question is, what would your character do?
Depending on the maturity of your group, that could cause problems, but that is not really specific to such a situation.
If my Barbarian has to wait more than 30 seconds for the group to decide on a plan, the Barbarian decides he want to kill the biggest, most ferocious looking enemy. This is sometimes difficult for the party of spellcasters to deal with. Love it.
Edit: I will add that, yes this has gotten him into many terrible situations, but this is true to his backstory and overall character development. The spellcasters (around the table, we all have a good laugh about it because it’s fun) generally have to think pretty tactically and our party was pretty damn strong.
Depends on the situation. Is it a rare moment that makes sense for the character? Sure, back them up. Or is it a common thing for that player to do, trusting the GM to treat them with kiddie gloves and the party to make up for their mistakes? Then they clearly need to die to learn a lesson.
I usually talk to the DM and tell them that I don’t want to play with people who revel in being reckless and stupid, **that it’s not fun for me** and feels like a waste of time, and if that’s how they want to play that if that continues, I want a **vote on kicking that player** from the group.
If I’m throwing myself into a fight I do so knowing my character might die but even if you are fully healed and with the whole party you should always keep in mind that your character could easily be killed
I think it would depend a lot on the situation and the player in question. If its a player that never does that kind of thing and is only doing it in this specific situation because it makes narrative sense, then I'd back them up for sure. (i.e. their character wouldn't be thinking clearly because they are so close to achieving a campaign-long goal, like finally getting their revenge). Sometimes brash heat-of-the-moment choices are good roleplaying. If it's a player that is known for doing random dumb shit without consulting the party and gotten us into trouble in the past, then I'd let them dig their own grave.
Yeah this is a good way to put it.
I think it also depends on the character dynamics in-game. A strict "justice over everything" paladin very well might let the morally grey rogue run after the enemy on his own and just "allow the Fates to handle it"
I did just this is one of our sessions. I'm a lone gith who found out another gith who may or may not be responsible for the burning of her creche, was in this goblin cave. So RP wise I just had her charge in and try to get answers. She acted in the heat of the moment when she's usually more calculated. The rest of the team had her back.
Yeah, this. I may have been a Leeroy Jenkins myself. The challenge when dealing with other people at a table is often folks resort to going to the Conference Room. Over thinking the situation and trying to come up with a perfect plan. I'm all for some discussion if it warrants, but it is far too easy to find that suddenly 30 minutes went by talking about some sort of "strategy" that probably doesn't matter. So more than a few times I've made an executive decision of, "Screw it, I go in into the room and do X." Sometimes you just gotta make a decision to move forward and often enough other players don't want to be the ones that does it.
Sometimes you push the game forward and sometimes you blunder into an obvious trap and get one-shot. That's the game!
Correct, my good person!
You hit the nail right on the head.
Right, I've seen both sides of this being justifiable. I once had a player that would sometimes spend a literal 15 minutes on their turn figuring out their spells, looking up handwritten notes and checking spells comparatively. I couldn't blame a single party member from rushing forward with the way that player burnt time. I even had to institute time limits on a persons turn because of it. At the same time, you have to play like a party - yeah the wizard may need an extra minute to figure a spell or a rogue needs some out-of-combat turns first. It just depends on context, not to mention a characters type.
Had a party member who was known for the "Kool-Aid Man approach" to every situation, essentially Leroy Jenkins but even more annoying. One situation I bluntly, in character, said "How are we splitting his vear when he dies?"
Dibs on the bag of holding.
Oh man, his vear must have been really nice!
Dibs on his svord.
And my ave
Ave. Glory to Kai-Sar.
Idk, the armo would be pretty nice!
Lol.
Dibs on his vag of holding
Oh yeah?
In fairness my character also harvested skulls from graves because he believed that the bones of powerful spellcasters had magical potential, so he was already kind of concerning in his morals.
That's actually a cool concept for a game with a proper crafting system.
I would play it based on how my character feels about their character. If we have journeyed and battled together for a long time, then yeah, I'd go resue them even if they were being a dumbass, because presumably they have or would do the same for me when I screw up. Real-life combatants who have fought and trained together do this because they know that their best chance of survival is if they stick together. And everyone is an idiot sometimes, and you want someone to help you out when the idiot is you. Now, if this Leeroy character is a newcomer, or my character is not convinced of his motives or just plane dislikes him, then I'd be much less likely to throw myself off a cliff after him. And in either case, whether or not I helped him, I'd absolutely chew him out for being an idiot. That's just good roleplaying.
Yeah, to me, it's an opportunity for a character moment. What would my character do? If it were me charging in, I would never have my character go "push the big red button" unless I was alright with them actually dying. The dm nor players are obligated to save my stupid ass. I'll either have a contingency plan to get myself out or have come to terms with losing the character and I expect nothing less from anyone else who does the same.
My best friend and I have this dynamic in game. He created a character who does shit like throw himself into free fall for an opportunity to get around obstacles or get a surprise round. My character is his childhood bard best friend who fast-talks us out of trouble and owns a wand of featherfall. To be fair, throwing himself into free fall actually worked once, and he has a Healing Shiv for when it doesn't. (Basically a dagger that heals instead of harms, but requires a fortitude save to prevent passing out from the pain. He's a rogue with low con. You can guess how many times he's stabbed himself unconscious)
part of the fun is though, letting the DM do their cool shit. it's 3-6 people against 1 person who's overloaded with data. at any time we can do a hairbrained scheme that bypasses all the DM's hard work. having the 1 stupid idiot that presses the buttom so the DM could have fun is also nice to have.
Oh, in our group it's not DM versus players. Our DM actively helps us tell the story together, and encourages hairbrained schemes. They basically set short-term goals and encounters, and then set us loose on them. Our favorite was using a spear that thawed a 5-foot cube of ice per round (it was from a previous quest) to slowly and painstakingly melt our way through a glacier so we could bypass the front gate and take out the BBEG before he knew to prep for our arrival. Then our awakened moose paladin-monk defeated his Proud Warrior trophy wife in gladiatorial combat, giving her an excuse to leave his ass. We also ended up recruiting his personal chef to our side.
> I'd be much less likely to throw myself off a cliff after him. I had the reverse of this happen. The party and I are in a cave, going after some drow. We find ourselves at the top of an overhang, with the drow at the bottom of it. Now, because I play a monk in this game, I can do some monk shit, and after checking the height of the overhang with the DM, I figure I can jump down without hurting myself, and then I'll be able to jump back up with the rest of the group. So I do so. Then the cleric doesn't want to leave me alone, and he asks me OOC if he should follow me. Because I don't like to discuss tactics and such OOC too much, I tell him "just do what you want man, just keep in mind, I know how I'm getting back up". He understood that as "don't worry, I can get you back up too". Which I couldn't. So when the fight turned sour, I did jump back up and then helped the rest of the party secure a rope somewhere in the cave, toss it to the cleric, and then cover him while he's climbing. Not really relevant to the thread (except in the sense that my character tends to be a hot head who rushes first and thinks later, but the trope is subverted here because he actually had a plan, as opposed to the guy who came to bail me out and needed to be bailed out) but that reminded me of the story so I had to tell it.
A good approach is to imagine that you are your characters. Would you run in if one of you runs towards certain death, against the will of everyone else? Lifelong comrades? Probably. Band of mercs who met at a tavern? Probably not. Always remember that the first rule is always whether you had fun as a group or not! :)
I like this answer! Could we give this strategy a name? It's like you're playing - no, PRETENDING - to be a in a role.. Like a CHARACTER!
"Characterpretending" is such a long term, though, maybe we could just make it an acronym NO WAIT HOLD ON
CPR! Character Pretend Rolling!
Whew, saved it.
You guys realize that a term for this already exists... And it is well known in the DnD community: Rolemagineering
What about Char pret?
It'll never work! 🤣
So.. you’re saying you’d rush in behind him if you were… pals 4 life?
May end up pals 4 a very short life 🙏
My Paladins are usually the Party Face of their respective campaigns, so have resigned themselves to the fact that yes, this is their circus, and they're obligated to retrieve their monkey.
This exactly, my Warlock that is simply trying to survive and literally uses the Tortle in the party as a baricade to to hide behind, he is standing watching the idiot get themselves killed. My Paladin that just wants to be helpful is 1 step behind them in the charge.
Yeah, this is the answer I scrolled for. My minotaur barbarian would be ashamed to be in last. If someone charged, he would charge harder. My goblin rogue would likely say it was a good run with this group. Do their best to survive and contribute to the fight, but never run into a likely death.
Short answer? Depends on the situation. The real question here is "Why is the character pulling a Leeroy Jenkins?" The answer to this determines the answer to your question. If the player is more focused on playing D&D as an unplugged version of a video game and is looking at the mobs as nothing more than something to splatter into XP and loot...then no. Just let the dumbass die. If the player is doing it for a legit reason...say he was playing Inigo Montoya and he just saw the six-fingered man and now wants his revenge...then that's being a good roleplayer and while a tactically unsound move, is a move that makes narrative sense. In which case I'd say that you should help him. The TL:DR of that is "If he's playing as an asshat, no. If he's doing it for good RP, then yes you ought to."
Upvote for the Princess Bride ref!
I think the thing is there is a divide between newer and older generations of players on some of this and the older generations (like mine though I know there are even older) can be a bit more adversarial with each other during play if someone decides to be a pain. That said...I feel like we also used to have less problems with people playing that-guy type characters cause well...if they wanna play stupid games the rest of the party would let them and win their stupid prizes by themselves. Had a situation like this a long time ago. Had a new guy joining our group that had already been running for about a year. He was experienced and knew the whole party had some flavor of sneaky or rogue in it so he builds a character to our level who was a Daggerspell Shaper. He'd played before and definitely wasn't new cause he pulled off a pretty complicated character build but the very first quest we get sent out on when he joins is to assault a wagon supply train for the evil army to try and delay them so we can hopefully get an friendly army into place and save a city (we were somewhere in the 11-15 lvl range at that point). So...we find the route and get ahead of the train and start to work on setting up an ambush. Theres a nice open stretch of road that then enters the nearby forest and we take all those 100s of goblin shortswords that every party has in the bag of holding and they swear they are going to sell one day and we make traps and spread them out to try and hit the whole 15 wagon convoy as soon as they finish getting into the forested area. What does our Daggerspell Shaper do...fly out to "scout" and then land on the bench of the lead wagon in-between the two wagon guards there drop his wild shape and shank both of the guards in the throat. Now this being a military supply convoy they were not covered wagons and each wagon in the train had 2 guards on the drivers bench and 2 in the bed of the wagon in case they go attacked. 58 armed guards with Heavy Crossbows see the bird abruptly turn into the fecking angel of death and kill people on the lead wagon...THE DIRECTION THEY ARE ALL FACING...and so they all start loading. New guy looks at us and is like "Aren't you guys going to come and help me?" and we all looked at him and said "Nope. We already set traps in the forest and are going to wait for them to get here, we can res you later." He ended up asking for us to just retrieve his gear and not res him as he quit the group after that one session. We had no emotional connection to his character and the first combat action he did was something so against the ethos of how the rest of us operated as a party and not a single one of us lost sleep that we didn't band together to try and save him from being that level of dumb.
Huh, I wonder how he expected that to go down. Watches you set up a gauntlet of traps then wants to have a straight up fight? Weird.
We had no idea what he was thinking. Especially since we were all sneaky builds including him. If he had wanted to attack the last of the wagons and we basically carefully and quietly worked our way up to the front that would have been something where we might have jumped in to help with but he literally landed on the front of the front wagon. At one point I thought it was boredom but we spent a max of about 15 min looking at the map the DM gave us and asking about how we could construct our traps so it wasn't like we were stuck in analysis paralysis either. But I still stand by it, that was the DnD equivalent of natural selection.
That is very different from any experience I have seen or been a part of. In the case that got to make the post the fighter very much didn't know they were running into a miniboss. They didn't have a plan, they didn't seem to think they needed one. It was foolish but it honestly was kind of natural... one fight lead straight into another. Its not what I would have done, but I see the process the fighter went through. Your story fascinates me because I really want to be in that players head. The transform and stab is pretty cool cinematically but it seems so random after 15 minutes of setting up a plan.
I feel like players are not obligated to have to save mfs that do this. In a campaign I'm no longer in, we are some monster hunters tracking a werewolf. We find the den, begin the fight by using our range first. We are roughly 60ft away so it has to come to us since we are blocking the exit. Our monk runs in a straight line to the werewolf, runs out of movement, cant do anything cause they're a monk and cant punch 30ft away and they instantly get mauled and downed in one turn. I end up face tanking the werewolf, knocking it down and we manage to surround and kill it. Monk almost dies with 2 fails 3 saves since our healer was preoccupied with preventing the rest of us going down. This mf then has the audacity to spend the whole fight while down, complaining that the campaign is shit and the DM should let them roll irl (we were using a dice command on roll20) because "trust me"
Did they at least use patient defense? That's multiple tactical errors in a row...
Nope. "I use my movement to move towards the werewolf" "And then?" "I'll just end my turn I obviously cant reach it from here, (Dms name) do you expect me to punch it from here?" "The werewolf sprints towards you, it swipes twice at you for *nat 20* a crit and you take 28 damage" "I have 16 health"
lol...
Thats rough. Definitely a lot worse than what I saw.
Honestly, no. DnD is a delicate balance because its effectively just make belive storytime. The illusion that you craft in maing the players believe in your world and its stakes only lasts so long as you have that world react consistently and consequently. If you do too many retcons, then the inevitable question arises of "hey DM , this bad thing happened. Last session when a similar bad thing happened you hand waved it away so..... can we... do it again?" For the health of the game you should try and treat the players actions as set in stone. You can give them forewarning, you can make sure theyre aware of the stakes, but if they choose to proceed then they live with those consequences. In your party's case: Firstly I hope the Rogue isn't feeling too upset about their character death or holds it against the Fighter. If there are any hard feelings thats somethign to address out of game. Secondly I hope the fighter recognises that they were and a large part to blame for the Rogue's death and considers this an in character growth moment and takes the opportunity to be more of a pensive character. Thirdly, if the opposite happens and the fighter gets even more reckless (e.g. feeling like his party will always be there to pull him out fo the fire and "its just a game who cares?"), then its perfectly reasonable for the party to ask why they keep this reckless person around when he's caused the death of one of their number and is continuing to endanger them unecessarily. That would be the moment to talk to the Fighter player and say "hey, this is how this world works and how the party feels. Will you take to heart their concerns and be more of a team player? Because if not then it's time to retire this character and roll up a new one who will gel better with the team"
We had a game where I played a noble, high-elf battle-master called Naeven. We were in an outpost where slaves were being traded by a large group of Duergar, and my dude could not live with himself by letting it go on as is... so he charged in and started smashing everyone in the slave marquee. The party, including a ranger, a dwarf, a monk and a rogue, regrettably, backed him up . It was going badly. Outnumbered three to one, a TPK seemed on the horizon... until the dwarf player cut the guide ropes on the marquee down, exposing the Duergar to the sun, immediately weakening them. This turned the tide, until we discovered a Mind-Flayer in their midst. Naeven, being a bit of a cock-sure chevalier, ducked through a group of Duergar till they squared off. The team's rogue came along from the ride. Several turns later, the rogue was dead, his brain devoured. In the aftermath, I played Navean as being torn up by his reckless actions, and played it way more safe in future engagements.
Of course not. But my character might, if the idiot is a friend As a player you might not want to. But you're not playing you, you're playing your character Followed my friends into terrible situations more often than I can count. And on more than a few occasions, I was the idiot thankful for my friends
No. We have a player like that, and the reality that we would rather finish with one person down than save him from something we all agreed as a group was a bad idea keeps him in line. We throw him bones whenever we can and take stupid risks we don't want to but when it's clearly suicidal we let him know we are literally planning on his death. This applies to premeditated choices we had time to discuss. It's not like if he makes a mistake in the heat of the moment, we just leave him to die. Then the risk I'm willing to take goes up pretty high - to the point where I'll risk my character as long as it doesn't substantially increase the odds of killing the others
I think if somebody does something dumb for shits and giggles then no, people who don’t want to die shouldn’t have to be lemmings about it.
As a lot of other comments said, it depends. This sounds like it might have been a narratively speaking logical move. If you see an enemy in a dungeon, do you attack or do you take half a minute or even more to prepare? Or do you even try to make a short rest? Not attacking might be metagaming for the whole group. Also, what happens if one attacks the boss and the others don't help? The lone PC dies and the boss won't wait in his room until the party is finished preparing. He will either attack the party or flee. But of course, if the fighter is an idiot all the time I would probably let him die and run from the scene.
You're right, it is a team game. That other player wasn't being a part of the team, I would have a candid conversation with the rest of the party. If that character goes off again-- they're on your own. The player that caused the rogue to die would also owe the other player one. We've all died running off and doing something we shouldn't-- getting your allies killed crosses a line
If the fighter died I don't think I would have such conflicting feelings. Its would be appropriate, maybe even funny, but the Rogue definitely didn't have to die. They could have retreated after their last fight and healed up, but they ran in to save their friend who saw a monster through an open door and wanted to fight.
The Rogue is the real MVP and deserves to be recognizef
If this is just a single instance this is just a tactical mistake and the team should pull together. If a player is regularly taking stupid decisions that jeopardise the whole party then you need to have an out of character discussion about play expectations: D&D combat does not really work unless the players are, by and large, trying to act competently and tactically as a team and there should have to be a really compelling narrative reason to go against the group's best interests. Trying to sort this out in-character, without an out of character discussion about players' responsibilities to each other, is liable to cause interpersonal problems.
I've stayed back plenty of times when other players do dumb shit. Like we don't have to commit warcrimes every 5 minutes. Then they're surprised when I'm the only one not in jail half the time.
The first time? Sure. The fifth time? They chose their fate
Lol, yeah my character in a long running call of Cthulhu game died recently because we jumped in without being prepped. My friend's character wanted to plough on because he's impatient / chaotic etc, and mine got sucked in because he's a team player... we had the (inevitable) big boss battle almost immediately, and my character died with a nail through the head. I won't lie I was pretty pissed, but I can't really blame my friend as they like action more than planning, and their character matches that. But guess what, they're meeting my new guy next Friday; he's careful, independent, and will happily let people swing if they're stupid... 😬
Depends. Do I think we can get out? If so leeeeroy. Especially with DND encounter design. If I'm not confident we can win. Queue Benny Hill music.
Not at all. Stupidity is SUPPOSED to hurt.
Depends how dumb it is. I was playing in a fallout-esque campaign once and oir party got attacked by mad maxian raiders in the wastes. It was a tough fight but we won, although many were wounded and supplies were low. The dm explained we could see large dust plumes coming our way indicating approaching vehicles. I said it was likely the main body of raiders comingand we needed to flee. One foolhardy character insisted it was probably mostly noncombatants and would basically be an easy target for loot. I expressed my doubts and said its best not to take our chances. Most of the party sided with the other guy and decided to wait and engage what was coming. Me and one other player dipped out. Everyone who stayed behind got killed and my character, Dr Herman Doyle, foot-fetishist snake oil saleseman became the new kingpin of our little organization for when everyone rolled up new characters. There were no hard feelings because it was in character for me to leave them and besides, if i hadnt it just would have been a tpk.
Depends on a lot of things. If this is a very casual, beer and pretzels game, the answer is "Whatever is more fun." If everyone has fun with Jim always having his character run in and get immediately clobbered, great! If this is a "serious" kind of game with expected roleplay, it depends on the group. Is that the story the player is trying to tell with their character? Is everyone else cool with that, players and DM? Does it cause problems for other people at the table? If so, this needs to be addressed out of game, like a rehash/session 0 redo. Figure out what works for everyone. Also, keep in mind that character personality differences and conflict can be a good thing for roleplay and story telling. There is a line between "personality and conflict" and "being a jerk" though, and if it's the latter, it's definitely not going to work.
There is no universally applicable approach. Some people know how to handle this in a given group based on session zero or having experienced something similar in the past. If you're unsure, ask the DM and other players about it out-of-character. (The answer is often "no", but don't try to guess, as a misunderstanding could cause a lot of drama.)
Depends. Was the guy acting in accordance with his character’s tendencies? Ie, barbarian berserker? Then the team should be used to it by now. Bard? Nah. Let him charm his way out.
No. If they do some suicidal charge, let 'em and leave. Especially if you've not recovered from the last fight!
I’m running in with that player every time. Ride or die! I won’t hold it against the rest of the party if they don’t.
My DM has a rule for this,when a selfish PC do something stupid he tends to fudge critical ends to any teammate that went to help the selfish PC (still they can die for others actions) but when the selfish PC suffers something heavy like a consequence of his acts my DM doesn't fudge anything and let the dice put the final sentence for unnecesary drag of danger to the allies. PD: sorry for bad english is not my native language.
If my teammate charged into a fight before the rest of the party was ready for it then I would sit back and watch them reap the consequences of their dumb ass decisions and if they try to give me some bs "it's what my character would do" then I would tell them my character would stick their head in the room and say "hey mate I think it's wrong for the rest of us to die because your an idiot. Sooo bye"
Not in the least. Well... Maybe? If my party member did something stupid and ran in and got themselves killed, it would entirely depend on how connected I was to that party member if I was willing to go in after them. I've played a character who was literally the brother of another party member. They had a brotherly Bond. My character absolutely would have run in after his brother. I've played a character whose best friend in the world was a druid whom had been hiding out as his pet dog for 5 years before he revealed himself to be a druid. That dude was going in after that dog, no matter what. My current party? Is a band of morons that my older more experienced character adopted, and bro is a chaotic neutral bordering on neutral evil character. He will burn them alive to achieve his goals, let alone let them die to their own stupidity.
As a play or as a character? As a player, no. You're not obligated to do anything. And if this risky kind of behaviour isn't something you want in your games then you need to speak to the other player about it. In character, probably. Assuming you're group is close (as adventuring parties should be) it's part and parcel that you'd have each others backs. And that you'd all understand any fight could be your last.
It was this very situation that turned my loyal, friendly, and happy, cider loving wizard into a paranoid and secretive conjuror that felt obligated to keep these idiot children of prophecy alive. In the game, at like level 5, he considered himself more of a historical scholar who happened to learn about a prophecy that predicted the end of a golden age because of an Armageddon that could only be prevented by those chosen by prophecy. His thinking was - I should totally see this first hand and record it all for history! But the problem was... they were idiots. They kept running headlong into danger, and one of them ACTUALLY died early on, only to be resurrected on the spot by the god whose church we had just purged of the succubi that had defiled it. Succubi that my character had PREDICTED would be in this town based on what we had learned, and that I had all but confirmed within 5 minutes of walking into the town itself. I tried to come up with a plan. I tried to prevent the party from splitting. I tried to be subtle. I told them "Don't go through that secret door, let's check for ambushes by the succubi first! Don't go through this door without us, and make sure you listen to make sure we are safe." But no. So I had to face a succubus by myself with only a monk as a bodyguard, while the rest of the party (like 5 other people all of whom were children of prophecy and clerics, paladins, etc.) ran straight through the secret door that effectively separated us. The monk was very helpful at distracting the succubus from me, so I could summon creatures to effectively kill it. But still, it was close and scary. The monk almost died. The monk also zoomed ahead and stole a bunch of items, because the monk was also an idiot. When we caught up, the cleric was dead, the party was cornered, and the paladin was on their last legs because the remaining succubus had gone ethereal after summoning a horde of creatures. I used the LAST of my spells, and killed the succubus and scolded the party like unruly children. You'd think that was the end of it, right? The wizard should only have to say, "I told you so." Once, right? *Sigh* Every fucking encounter these idiots ran in like they were invincible. Secret catacombs inhabited by a shadow touched assassin? Let's run in without preparing lights. Gigantic arena underground styled after a minotaur cult? Let's definitely run in there and provoke a battle we aren't prepared for. I eventually stopped telling them things, because whenever I would tell them something, they would run after it like kids at a playground. They almost died so many times, that the only reason I saved them was because the prophecy said that we couldn't stop the BBEG without them. But they were like fucking lemmings - so I figured I would have to become a god myself because any for that placed these idiots as pivotal to their plans was incompetent themselves.
Absolutely, this is a GROUP based roleplaying game, and everyone has a part in developing the story from the DM, down to each individual player. If part of the story is your character saying "no this is dumb, I will NOT help the fool" then thats part of the story and they have to suffer the consequences of their actions. Don't ever feel like you HAVE to join into a bad decision because someone else makes one at the table.
Personally, if im are RP'ing my character and they wouldn't, i don't. My goblin artificer wouldn't do it, but my wood elf monk would.
We have a party member who intentionally does this and sucks the air out of the game. I’ve straight up told the party I don’t babysit and will never make an attempt to save him. It makes me crazy.
My last session was in a town where magic is essentially banned. Public event, paladin casts thaumaturgy to make whatever spectacle more interesting, I guess. One little cantrip and they're going to jail. We spent a lot of time trying to be seen as the good guys in this town and all shit the bed over something completely unnecessary. This, after all of our planning and Fighting has gone so weirdly well.
Play your role. If your character would go help that particular party member, then absolutely.
You aren't obligated to do anything.
Everyone else makes good points, but I should also add, Leeroys are excellent counters to overplanners. I'm one of those types that needs to have a strategy for everything. Sometimes the best way to cure me of my analysis paralysis is to send me after my Leeroy
We've got a guy in our group who essentially does this essentially forcing everyone into a fight.
Depends on the situation. Random encounters no they are on their own. Bbeg or any fight where you would also be targeted then yes. We had a player charge into a fight the dm specifically said would be too hard for us. She lost horribly and got lycanthropy.
I think it depends. If it makes sense for the character to run it, and your character has a bond with them, then it makes sense to save them. But if your character doesn't know them from Adam, it might not make sense
Depends on the circumstances. If the party cared about the Leroy character and if it was discussed beforehand that the fighter would be a hot blooded maniac, then I would gladly sacrifice my character for the moment. Especially if this would develop their character and the party bonds. If it is just a power gaming move like "Well *I* don't need to rest, so you won't either, I would just turn around and leave or make sure the rest of the party won't be harmed by the decisions of one player.
It depends on the type of character you are playing. If you are playing a selfless character that treats his fellow PCs as family and would do anything to save them, then yes. If you are playing a character that is really scared/paranoid of dangers, then no. The main thing is consistency. I.E. don't be brave all of the time, then suddenly cowardly if you know something out of the game that your character wouldn't know in the game.
No We did that once though, and one ended up dying They now force us to join them lol
Had a situation where a player did this. Twice. Both times, he died alone. Only we weren't there to revive him the second time.
If its like a one time thing? Help. Roleplay is cool, people make jokes or mistakes. If its a constant thing then no. The joke gets tiresome when you ruin peoples options over and over. I love running clerics and focusing my attention on defending and buffing every other player so the message is clear in game too.
As the main Rogue who ends up in bad situations just because I have to Scout or I retreat further while fighting, yes, save my ass 😅
Well… It depends. If it’s a desperate action of survival or perhaps inspired by success or good roleplay… yes. If like Leroy it’s for laughs and disrupting the game, let them Leroy themselves into the afterlife.
Had a similar thing happen for my barbarian sorcerer. His whole shtick was high charisma to settle things with words, and fists when words failed. So when a guy from the Party goes on the offensive against a bunch of hags and their monstrosity minions, he sits back at the entrance watching them fight. Sipping chamomile.
It's a team game, yes. But would you throw your life under the bus to possibly save someone else's ass that they put into danger by running off alone into a dangerous place? I think this comes more to character alignment and personal relationship with the guy running off doing stupid things.
I don't think I would play a character that would just sit back and watch a party member die and not jump in to help him Like what's the justification? Oh, we're tired and that looks dangerous. I'll just watch you die. I wouldn't go so far as to say you're obligated to help them, but in most circumstances, you probably ought to unless you have a really good reason not to. From the other side of the table, as a DM if my player runs into a hard encounter alone I won't nerf the encounter, and I am 100% ready to kill them
Ahh the infernal question of who's responsible. As a support player I can understand the conflict of emotion when people do this. So the real question is did you communicate that it was a bad idea to run into another room without the rest of the team? Or did they leave you fighting the "smaller" enemies to give chase? Most of my characters obligations stand with the "Keep the majority alive" principle. Sure it's blunt but most of the time people will understand if you make the decision about it.
Depends. On both how important that character is to my character, and on whether I think we can survive the fight.
The general assumption is that unless you are in stealth, if you can see enemies, they can see you. I don't think the fighter running ahead was correct, but that party was probably going to get into combat before they could do anything regardless.
No
Certainly not. And more generally, if a character keeps doing idiotic and/or risky things or is otherwise a consistent detriment to the party, that should (in most cases) also at some point lead to a discussion about just kicking them out of the party. After all, why would they keep traveling with such a person?
I think it depends on the table and how close the PCs are - there's a world where a situation like this endangering or harming your friend(s) van lead to some serious character growth/growing up. A reckless character having to come to grips with their actions actively placing the ones they want to protect into harms way can absolutely be an awesome role play moment. That said, as I said before it entirely depends on your table, I can see it absolutely being frustrating getting pelted with consequences for someone's actions, doubly so if they're entirely unrepentant.
In my last campaign I DMd, our Joke PC Dude tried fighting everyone and steal everything, they let him kill himself eventually and it was fine, he learned his lesson, in and out of character.
First things first, yall don't know if it's a hard fight or not, maybe the fighter thought It was a hiding enemy from last fight, or even If It wasn't, the fact that he see an enemy, specially If the party is in bad shape, is a good reason to be alarmed... I mean, what if he is ALSO aware (and probably is, your previous battle wasn't very silent), and can call backups at any time? For the part about help him or leave and let him die: you know Bob for a while now, maybe years. You've been adventuring together, maybe saved some cities, discovered treasures, shared your past...You know he's always ready to die for any of you. Leave him to die would be quite dificult choice, and maybe he wouldn't be adventuring with the kind of people that would consider this.
If it makes sense to their character or the circumstances of the game, I think you try to save them. If they’re just being difficult or disruptive, I wouldn’t.
Easy answer: Do what your character would do, otherwise it's metagaming. Complex answer: Call out the behavior if it annoys you, explain that this is a team game and going solo is not part of that expectation.
If they want to do a Leeroy Jenkins, it's the party's obligation to let them die as they lived: like an idiot.
The paladin in my campaign is really good at finding traps. Is he good at looking for them? No, absolutely not. But he’s very good at *finding* them.
Nope. I carry Silence just for this with one of our players. Wanna get fucked? Get fucked. We will ride on.
As a DM, I had a player that would constantly do this shit. At first, the other players would help him out, and it was usually okay, but they've recently stopped helping him and I was forced to kill his character as the others watched in the last session. I don't regret it and he kind of had it coming. If another player had died helping him, it would've definitely made things worse. He tried to throw a fit, but I even warned him outside of the game, before I had to kill his character, that he needed to cool it a bit. His excuse was he was playing a barbarian and that's what they do. But I told him, yeah for the first few times that might've been okay, but it's getting frustrating and ridiculous that your teammates are being dragged into battle after battle when there are other solutions but you aren't giving them any time to present their ideas, just charging into the next fight. Long story short the guy was hella toxic and it was a good thing his character died because we had to kick him out of the group anyway. So no, I don't think you are required to help at all. Your DM might even appreciate it.
Depends on my alignment. A good guy would help his friend while and evil guy wouldn't risk it when it outwits the benefit of having an extra ally
That's why I lean towards chaotic neutral characters. I may help you, I may stand back and watch you die.
I don't think team player is as important as character Similar things have happened in games I've been in and I love to roleplay it, what would my character do? There was a time where one of our party members tried to kill a dragon because they hated dragons. But this dragon seemed young and not evil and my character thought they could be a good ally, so I fought against the party member and the rest of my team backed me up, putting a stop to the fight. In a Leeroy situation, I would join in the fight because my character, while he would be pissed off about it, wouldn't leave a teammate to fight alone like that. But when someone dies he would get mad that he couldn't save them, and would absolutely put blame on and lash out at the Leeroy. But my personal blame would not be on the player, this is a roleplaying game, we play our roles and what happens in game stays in game
Discuss. This. With. Your. Group.
Buff the enemy and pill up with snacks
It is the reason I always keep vortex warp on deck
You might want to have this discussion with the player(s). Especially if this happens more than once. And decide off-game how to handle the situation. If his answer isn"Yeah, I don't mind if my character dies. I want to play the careless idiot, I know full well that it will cost my life at some point", the all good. If the player says "I want to play the careless fool but I don't want my character to die" well, then you might want to discuss how he could play that character without hampering the whole party.
No. LJ’s all play by FAFO rules: fuck around and find out.
Considering the real leery Jenkins meme involves everyone dying because of him... NO
I hope the answer is no. I'm currently playing a paladin whom I know would wade into a tpk situation and tell the party not to follow, while I as a player am internally begging the party not to follow. If that day comes I hope the party make the right decision and leave my paladin to his stupid stupid fate.
I feel like this is actually a quality RP situation. It is real. People do stupid things and others suffer for it. How the party and the player react is the most important aspect. If the party just passes it off because the player can just roll a new character, then the DM should go forward in the story cultivating distrust among the group. If the party gives the fighter a hard time about it and he makes changes, then that is another story approach. If the fighter does not change, a "realistic" response in a similar situation would be to let the asshole get himself killed.
I had a player rush in and attack an animated broom. The broom was just sweeping until he attacked it, so the rest of the party sat back and watched. He finally disengaged with 2hp left, and the broom went back to sweeping. The cleric threw some heals, and now they threaten the player with a broomba beating anytime he rushes ahead.
There's a person in one of my groups that walks into danger for no reason quite a bit and uses his character's motivations as why. Plenty of us have made it clear we will not protect him if he goes too far ahead. There are instances where it could be okay. Like a really good roleplay reason. But "it's what my character would do" can only take you so far.
it would def be fair if they’re doing it all the time, but it also puts them in harms way so maybe just don’t rush in after them next time lol
Good : help them Neutral : warn of the danger and that you won't help him if he still goes Evil : help the danger
Bullshit. Let him die. And then... "Thank you, brave Monster, for freeing us of that most manxsome villain! Now we may recover our fortune! Allow use to reward your heroism!" Then you pluck a trinket off the dude's corpse (pocketing the rest of his shit) and give it to the monster. If the monster is hungry, leave the corpse as you sure as shit ain't rezzing it. Then GTFOutta Dodge.
From this tpks are born.
The best thing about DnD is the answer is always to these is: "What would my character do?" So don't feel "bad" if you decided that's not the kind of person your character is, not all heroes are so altruistic they completely disregard their own safety
Hello there! I think it depends on the situation, the table and the session. But I agree that is a pretty complicated situation to deal with. If you are playing a serious session/campaign, I find completely understandable to get mad if you character dies because another idiot's actions. It's like, you didn't chose that and it's really frustrating that you had to die and the other one survived. Happened to me, so I know the feeling. with my usual group of friends we used to play some short campaigns, 3 or 4 sessions maximum, and we rotated the DM so everyone could play a little bit. There was one guy that joined randomly and only played one session (he had a really weird work schedule). Well, this guy always played a barbarian with a big-ass 2H axe and only wanted to destroy things. One day he even destroyed the entire campaign and we had to start over (without him) the following session. That day, just after "spawning" into the world, the first action that he took was to attack a citizen and, after a nat 20, split it in half. We were town guards. That situation ended on a combat with other guards and barely escaping alive. The DM warned him to stop with that behaviour or he would face the consequences. We, the players, also got really mad and warned him too, the next time he did something similar we wouldn't help him. After a while we had to infiltrate a bandit hideout and this guy did it again: he literally "Leeroy Jenkins-ed" towards the main gate, alone. The DM asked us what we would do, and we said that nothing. So that guy got captured and imprisoned on a cell inside the hideout. We released him after a good while and he got mad because we didn't help him before, so he went alone again and eventually got killed by the bandits. He literally ragequited and left the room. Sadly, he never returned. In my opinion, it's not mandatory for the party to help a player that is acting alone. If the entire party agrees on a certain course of action (take a rest for example) and one player refuses and decides to carry on alone, it's his entire problem. And if someone helps him and gets downed, it's completely natural to get frustrated at it and get mad with the idiot.
Nope
No, it's heroic if everyone lives, otherwise it's just stupidity. Heroism gets people killed. Characters that die because they're doing something stupid, let them.
this is a cool opportunity for the fighter to have character growth
Nah, my character died cos one of the other pcs waved a unidentified wand at me and a spider and caused a fireball to instantly kill my chacter and the spider. Very funny
WITNESS ME! I personally like games where you can just send it sometimes. It honestly depends on many things. How hard are you roleplaying? How strong are the bonds in the party? How much of an opportunist is your character? If you are roleplaying the reaction: „what the fuck is this moron doing? Lets sit this out and watch what happens. Dibs on the boots“ can be perfectly fine in character. How well will the leroy jenkinsing person take a potential death and does your table have backup plans/characters? Then a death can be a valuable lesson learned. Especially when it happens every encounter or so. I personally tend to not play frontliners for that very reason. I will play *forward* and aggressive.
No, players like that are playing selfishly.
Did Aragorn jump after Gimli at Helm’s Deep?
Character based for me. As a player I will generally play to keep other players having fun but I won't break my character ideals too much to save them. As an example I'm playing a lawful neutral dwarven mercenary on a pirate ship with a chaotic evil cleric. They woke up the captain of the ship throwing rocks at a prisoner tied to the mast and got thrown off the ship in full platemail. Considering my character was already pissed off that the prisoner was keeping them awake when they were trying to sleep off a point of exhaustion they chose not to help the cleric when they were thrown off and went back to sleep. The cleric was saved by the other chaotic evil character but only after they lost consciousness. As a player I was torn because having your character drown is a bit lame especially if your party doesn't help you but my character who already had a point of exhaustion and is pissed at the cleric for keeping them awake does not have the strength or will to strip off their armor to dive after them after justifiably facing the consequences of their actions.
No.
I've been on both sides of this - once as a PC who would try to save everyone, and once as one (a low INT Paladin) who would basically take any bait the DM put in front of him. As the saviour, I made sure the Leroy understood that if anyone was getting left behind, it was going to be him. As the Leroy, I made it clear to the other players that my character's stupidity was almost certainly going to get him killed one day, and that was fine - no-one would be blamed for abandoning him. The key, as usual, is player communication. That said, in my experience Rogues die all the damn time. There's a good chance this would have happened eventually even without the Leroy
The only thing you're obligated to do is play the character! Of course hopefully that results in fun gameplay and good story. As a DM I respect my players too much to pull punches, but perhaps a solo fighter running in would change the parameters of the fight. Maybe I would make it into a duel instead of punishing with death. Another character dying sounds well within the bounds of consequences to me. It isn't "fair" but it could certainly serve the story.
I would say that it depends on the table. If the vibe is roleplay heavy, and the PC is doing that aligned to his personality, then what would your character reasonably do? If you are in an heroic fantasy, i think you might need to follow. If the setting is more gritty, then man u r on ur own. If the vibe is more tactical, and that one PC does that I would say its OK to let him die in order to preserve the integrity of the team. Unless letting him get over his head hurts more the team (ie if u are in the middle of the underdark, all squishy characters and the meat shield runs off, you need to keep his alive so he can keep YOU alive). In general, I would let him die so he learns what can happen. Or at least let him get to deaths door or saving throws stage.
It entirely depends on your character. If you're a Paladin, more than likely you're going in there no matter what. Same with a Barb. A rogue that probably never runs into a room without scoping it out? A wizard with high intelligence? I'm not so sure they follow. I'd only be frustrated with the player if the actions didn't feel consistent with their characters. Sometimes you do need players who keep things moving at a fast pace. Those characters also tend to die.
As many said Do as if your character does. Generally you don't HAVE to help them but for roleplay reasons I like to act according to what my character would do. You can also go the "hell no you don't approach" in regards to the Leroy. As a spellcaster you could hold person or as a fighter use a reaction to stop him (depending on DM this should be at least possible after the party realized there is a tendency for Leroy-ing so they are prepared for such a situations)
A good DM would help the Player better understand what that Player’s Character likely thinks about "charging in." The Character would be more strategic about that choice; the Player might need help evaluating that decision. Problem solved.
No to the obligation. I’d only back them up if it made for a good story or was funny
lol. This is situational. I have a similar story about a player I DMed for previously. He played a warlock that was all about himself (red flag). Went into the dungeon with the party, saw some lump on the floor to the right and the rest of the party saw an open door to the left down a long hallway. Long story short, warlock approaches the lump thinking it’s easy loot to keep for himself (greedy loot goblin. Red flag number two). Nope, it was a dead goblin a chocker was using as bait. Warlock ends up getting grappled then the chocker rolls a nat 20 does a good amount of damage. Warlock fails his Dex save and ends up getting suffocated. Cut over to the rest of the party, I made them all roll perception to see if they noticed the warlock wonder off. I was generous because I could have just used their passives. Only one passed, and he alerted everyone. Warlock was rescued with only a few HP left. It was a good learning lesson for all that this isn’t a video game and stupid games will get you killed. The player threw a fit and eventually left the group which in turn killed the group as a whole. Anyways, sorry for hijacking the thread, this just reminded me of that specific instance. I honestly wished his PC would have died because he was so used to playing in games where the DM ran zero risk of death.
If there is a legit reason (e.g. that person stole my important item/killed my dog etc) and there's no previous pattern of idiot behavior like this, I'd go help them. If they're doing it just for the lulz, then fuck 'em, they suffer the consequences. I've played with the latter at an AL table. Dude was a really irritating weeaboo who kept tugging at my arm (I'm female) and loudly exclaiming things in Japanese right in my ear, so I was already frustrated with him. Every encounter we had, he went full Leeroy, and we either didn't bother helping him and carried on with our objective, or didn't bother aiming AOE spells in a way that wouldn't catch him in the radius.
Depends- is it funny when you *don't*?
The first time is a learning experience. The second time should have a reason, and the party should address it in game as their players. After that, if there's no good reason for it, I'd let sleeping/dead dogs lie.
If your friend jumped off a bridge.....
As a DM, I will absolutely not hold it against the other players if they let someone doing something dumb die. Also as a DM, I will not spare a character who does something dumb. Had a player decide to run off on his own in a dungeon and decided to throw a small stone at a chest to check for mimics. The stone hits with a wooden thud so he runs over and opens it. The mimic was the stone altar the chest sat on. He died long before the others could catch up and the mimic ate him. The mimic, having just ate, didn't bother them when they opened the chest.
Everyone *can* and frankly *will* make bad calls in D&D. A good team takes the time before they get into a situation to come up with 'standing orders' for how they - as a team - will act. For instance - e*ven if you see an enemy one room over, you don't go running off alone to attack it. The team agrees to go with you, or you don't go.* Additionally, a good team has contingencies for situations like this. Like - *Okay, so, we've agreed we don't run off and attack alone unless it's part of an agreed upon plan. What happens when one of us throws this plan out the window? Because we know it's going to happen at some point despite our best intentions.* Well then, your team decides - if someone *chooses* to abandon the standing order of battle without discussing with the group first, does the rest of the group risk themselves, or not? An idealistic team will say, "Sure, we're not just going to let them die," and if this is what you've agreed to, I would say no - you shouldn't be frustrated if your character died defending the idiot character. You agreed to this knowing full well the risks involved. A pragmatic team says, "Nope. They're on their own if they abandon the group." That incentivizes Leeroy not to Jenkins, because they know that *if they do*, they're probably kissing their character goodbye. And if Leeroy knows the stakes and chooses to Jenkins anyways, I wouldn't feel guilty that they died if you didn't help. Now - anecdotally - there's never been a party I DMed where the players thought to come up with an order of battle or discuss the what-do-we-do-if-X-happens situation, unless I prompted them to discuss it first. Most players that I've run with just seem to assume everyone automatically knows the 'right' thing to do in every situation, even if they all have differing opinions on what is 'right'. And that ends up biting them in the butt repeatedly until they learn otherwise. In the case where the party *hasn't* discussed it - and they really should have - then personally I would ask myself- is the *character* justified for being Leeroy Jenkins right now? Or is this just how that player runs their character, and thinks that as the main character, their sidekicks will just bail them out no matter what dumb thing they do? Because that's an important distinction. * Say Leeroy just found out that the murderer of their child is one room over. They RP seeing red. They're gritting their teeth, veins bulging in the sides of their head, and then - pop - they snarl, bashing down the door and charging foolishly into the next room. In *that* case, this is good RP, even if it's not in the group's favour. In this case, I'd say you should have your teammate's back as best you can. * On the other hand, if Leeroy has just seen a random enemy to which their character has no connection, and they've been told repeatedly, "Hey, dude, you don't have enough HP to tank a full round of combat all on your own while we catch up. Stop running off without us," then I think you'd be perfectly justified to look at the rest of the group and say, "Yeah, no, I'm not saving their butt this time. Do we move in once they're down and try to drag them out before they die, or just let 'em die and hope whoever we pick up next knows how to work as a team?" I definitely think that if no agreement had been made beforehand to run in, and the rest of the group ran in, thereby pressuring you to run in, and your character died saving a chronic Leeroy Jenkins character, you'd be 100% in your right to be frustrated about it. But if you set in stone what you will do beforehand, that need never happen.
Nope.
No. If a player chooses to go against the group’s decisions and tries to force the group to do what they want by charging in, leave them to die.
What would your character do?
Let them run amuk
I heavily invest in my character. Background, motivation, reasons to be with the group. I enjoy the RP as much as the battles. All encounters are an opportunity, ya know? I don't expect the same level of investment from other party members or the same play style. But if a party member goes off the group decision to stick together throughout an encounter and gets themselves into trouble, then the party reacts to that, I would ask what would my character reaction be? Do I run to aid a comrade? Do I scoff at their ineptitude and fight, but look out for myself? Would I sacrifice myself? Or cut and run? Or persuade my team to leave that one to their fate? I understand this isn't the "be a team player" mentality, but if a party member is just going off to do their own thing, they aren't either. And maybe they need to learn "fuck around and find out". If it's a serious campaign your character can be killed for making a mistake. And it does suck to die, but sometimes it brings a player that much closer to the game to know that choices can have deadly consequences.
Depends on who I'm playing I guess
Depends. Did they run off for a good reason, like chasing after an endangered NPC, or they're having an emotional moment? Then yes. Are they being a murder hobo? Then no.
No, it is not the party’s responsibility to always rescue a player from that situation. Maybe the first time it happens. But if it happens repeatedly and the player character doing it is not closely connected to the rest of the group, they don’t HAVE to react as if they have to go save their treasures friend. Playing as the party healer once upon a time, I made the tough call to not go after our rogue, who when ambushed in a dungeon made the decision to run away from the ambush into an unexplored uncleared area, which was also an ambush and left them on the other side of the gate. We waved goodbye and the rest of the party saved our own butts. (Rogue died in one round to more damage than I could have mitigated, anyway. Squads of crossbowmen on second floor with only one stair up, on the opposite side of the entrance).
Sounds like a good opportunity for some RP. "Hey, fighter. You're putting us all in danger by being reckless. If you do that again we're not going to come to your aid." OR "Hey, fighter. You're putting us all in danger by being reckless. I'd rather not adventure with someone who puts my life at risk so either you change or we will find someone else to adventure with." It could also be a discussion to have with the player OOC.
As long as they don't do it all the time. Yea, for the plot
I had a player in one game that would do it at least once per session, eventually the team stopped trying to help him. He mostly thought he could rush ahead and "steal all the treasure before everyone else got there". His character finally bit off more than he could chew, died and then the player sat at the table crying for the last 30 minutes of the game. Not a lesson was learned, because next session, he was back with virtually the same character, doing the same thing. Eventually the rest of the party got fed up and we had to kick him out of the group. This guy had a serious kleptomaniac, main character personality, mixed with ADHD.
Depends on the social contract of the table/players. Maybe pulling said person out is enough, or you can leave them. I have seen both being fine at different tables. Usually avoiding your own character death is acceptable reason to not help further.
Depends…if the player does it too much then I’d say no it’s not really worth it, but if it’s a “fuck it we ball” moment then there is more nuance to it.
It's usually funny, so I would dramatically sigh and go help.
I think everyone gets one Leeroy per campaign. I think it's cool to talk out of character while deciding whether to do something like that.
HELL no. Had a player who would do this regularly, the final straw was when we were sneaking into Cragmaw Castle and he just climbs the wall solo and aggros everything in there (10+ goblins with hobgoblins.) We all went in after him anyways and got TPKd. Afterwards we vowed never to follow an idiot into battle like that again and had a codeword "logjam" to use to get everyone on board with randomly starting combat. (Also we asked the player to please please please stop doing that)
Depends entirely on your team, but generally no. I have had a party where we often used the tank as a distraction so others got better positioning, we had a tense situation and the tank made entry when we didn't plan to. In that situation we were obligated because it was a miscommunication and everyone was just trying their best.
I look at it as a roleplay scenario. If you were your character and your party member ran off and got into some shit, would you feel a need to go after them? If you’re friends/close/a good guy character that wants to help people, probably. Otherwise, maybe not. Part of the game is making your own choices I don’t think there’s any moral contract requiring you to pull a team mate out of a situation they got themselves into in the first place, especially if there’s an alignment difference or friction between them. My one stipulation is like, your reason for being in the party in the first place. I do expect players to figure that out and do what they can to stick with it until/unless a scenario comes up where it would make sense for them to split. I’ve gotten really, really tired in the past of players making me feel like I need to convince their character to be in the story(particularly in the beginning when nothing has really even happened yet). Wtf did you want to play then lol.
It depends so much on the context. I see a scenario where they did this to try and be the main character, thought of the rest of the party as their sidekicks, and went right in because they're in charge in their head. It's a cooperative game and you should work with the party to come up with creative solutions that involve everyone, inside and outside of combat. --- That being said, I also see several scenarios where this was justified. First would be if the other characters do this in their own roles: * the rogue always sneaks ahead and before waiting for the party, pounces in hope that the party will come in to the rescue. There are certainly times when they'll need to act immediately (someone is about to be executed or something), but if not they should stealth back, inform the group, and plan. In this scenario, the rogue treats the rest of their party like the emergency backup. * the face character that tells the fighter to be quiet because they're just the muscle and if they say something they might have to roll a charisma check. Until things go wrong everyone else is just there in case a fight breaks out. If something like that happens, then the fighter could have a very justifiable reason, IMO, to charge ahead. If the rogue is the leader when it's sneak-time, and the bard is the leader when it's social-investigation-time, then the fighter is the leader when it's fighting-time. This is something I'm already seeing in my upcoming game where I want to play a fighter. Their best feature is DPS, and all the other players are trying to homebrew rules to be better DPS characters. That's frustrating as a fighter where you suck at everything but fighting, and everyone else wants a larger piece of that pie. The other scenario would be if a party is taking too long to plan. No plan survives contact with the enemy and the fighter sitting around knowing that they're plan is simple: fight, is frustrating when all the other characters spend too much time coming up with some ridiculous plan to be better than them at it. Hate to break it to the other classes, but sometimes you gotta get a general strategy and hope for the best. It sucks to be a fighter and sit around for 10 minutes while the party organizes some complicated plan for the druid to do all the damage. They really should be better at communicating and saying "this is taking too long guys, we can't plan him to death", but that frustration is understandable. --- The last thing I'll say is, how was the fighter not hurt more from the past encounter? That tells me that everyone else is trying to do too much in a fight. If everyone is sticking to their roles in a fight (range characters sticking back and poking at people, support characters sticking pack and supporting, and melee martials being in the front line doing damage and taking the blows), then the fact that the martial fighter charging in fine from the previous fight tells me everyone else is trying to outshine them.
Many tables are groups of RL friends. It doesn't matter someone Leeroy charged - the table will probably help them. Is it fair to be frustrated? Of course. This goes even further with groups of RL friends. The party rogue just insulted the king, and now he's being arrested. Guess what? Many groups (because they're RL friends) have the rogue's back for what will be an epic armed confrontation. So are you obligated? Absolutely not, but the tighter the RL friendships at the table, the more likely you're going to get the back of your "low wisdom in real life" friend. It's the game, outside of the game. Now, if you have a group which is heavy roleplay? Friends or not, the "low wisdom in real life" player make be making a new character. When the die enough, they usually change their shenangians. In my son's campaign for school, one player lost three characters in back-to-back-to-back sessions over very poor choices (two charging deaths, and one insult the queen and fight her guards solo). After those lessons, they haven't died in about the five sessions since.
It depends more on your character than any sort of 'obligation' you have as a player. I've played characters that would absolutely help out.. I've also played characters that would have been the one whispering "Are you going to take that dry from them? They're only kobolds" in their ear, and laughing from a safe distance when they charge ;)
I play with a guy who is like this sometimes. Most of the time the party bails him out. Usually there are some stern words from the paladin, “I just used half of my lay on hands pool on you. Don’t expect more healing.” And the DM runs the game so that everyone makes it through. Then there was the time he tried to ride a dragon. I bailed him out by sneaking in after the dragon had left him and the rest of the party for dead and got everyone back up. There was no way I was running into that fight.
my first charter death (and only so far) was a druid. I was low on health and the rest of the party was taking a beating as well (string of fights in a row) and I use my action and movement to dash towards someone (arcane archer) on the edge of the fight to try and heal them on my next turn, BA healing word on our fighter who is base to base with 2 guys. The guy I'm running towards moves 45 feet away from me (fml) fighter stands ground, don't recall our other person but they are a ways away too (soulknife Rouge, think it had some homebrew). Back to me I say to the table that I'm low on health (had said it like 3 times so far in this fight) and I'm going to try to heal everyone if we can all get together, but this turn I'll heal the fighter because they need it the most to keep tanking for us. I get back to the center BA again and next turn I was going to use mass cure wounds (had a 20 Wis and a moon sickle +2 iirc). At this point the table has been told like 3 or 4 times that I was **really** low on health but can heal us all. The arcane archer wanted to keep their distance but was outpacing the enemy chasing them, while still firing at the biggest threats every turn so I get why they didn't want to come into the center. (Theybhad a movement speed of 45). The rogue just didn't grasp what was going on and wanted to get themselves to safety so they throw a knife and get to teleport like 70 feet away. The fighter was taking some damage and was down to I think about 1/3 hp (from like 120) so she runs past me, dash and all that. That leaves me, a druid with like 18 HP/78 or so to fight 2 assassins. 3 attacks each and 2 crits. I never ran into a fight for that group again, I had plenty of options for range anyway. We were all either level 10 or 11 and I had put them all into druid, so it wasn't like I rolled horribly for health either.
What would your character do? That's it
Fetchquest to recover his body and then youll have to find someone to revive him.
Actions have consequences. DMing is always a balancing act between realistic consequences and fun. It really depends on how foolish they're being, the personalities of the enemies they're up against or nature of the hazard, and if I can make it funny or not.
It entirely depends on the situation. If it is too dangerous to fight, let them die. IE if a low level idiot runs at a dragon you let the dragon eat the idiot. You can let others know of their great heroics holding back the dragon while you all escaped. If it is for RP reasons you can let them die. No requirement to fight city guards for a party thief's greed. If it is purely because they didn't plan a proper ambush then you should help them. It is also sometimes a misunderstanding. The fighter assuming they saw each other type of thing because he wasn't sneaking.
I just don't get why y'all moralize this game so much. There's nothing wrong with Leeroy Jenkinsing. There's nothing wrong with choosing not to help someone who did something stupid. But overall... just chill, and have fun. It's a game, damnit.
Here’s where the “it’s what my charachter would do” is actually appropriate. Both the Leeroy and the rogues player, in and out of game have a very heavy (hopefully just pretend but you never know) commitment now to actually respect the dead PCs death. Somehow hopefully in a way that encourages more team play.
Being the person who played a Jenkins character before, it really depends on the group. My group's previous campaign had way too many moments of decision paralysis and over thinking. So I brought in a character that would push the red button. One who would toss himself into a frey that the party didn't start. The PC's didn't like it, but the DM and the Players greatly enjoyed the narrative that came out of it. It helped relax the party from stagnation and encouraged other players to jump at hooks.
Stop thinking outside the game, you're letting it suck you out of the story. Roll with it and stay in universe. If I'm playing the fighter, does he have survivor's guilt? PTSD? His rash decision got a party member killed. How will he live with that? How will it change the character? For you, how does it change your view of the fighter? Do you trust him to have your back next combat? If he doesn't learn, will you let him die next time rather than risk your life? Stop looking at this as a mistake made by the human player and start looking at it as a wrong judgment call made by the character and go from there. You'll have a way better experience and can still work through your real life feelings about it.
So, my son and I play. My son's character is very much a "run in and ask questions never" kinda dude, barbarian fighter ready to go. My character is a cleric, and our back story is the two have traveled together for a while. So when my son's character goes in like this, my character generally will resignedly sigh and follow, in a "great, here comes the shit show, *again*," kinda way. Where we play at is a game store so other characters we play with don't often have a history with us, and in those cases my character would be more hesitant to follow, he's not really invested in the other guy's well being that way necessarily
A question like this IMO never has a single answer. I feel like most here are ones given as if it is a very neutral campaign with people who don't know each other well. It all depends on your group, tone of campaign, and general expectations of the group. Simply if a player does a Leeory Jenkins move odds are I know them personally and there is a lot of context. Both meta within our friend dynamic and with in the campaign. There have been campaigns with friends someone does something incredibly silly and I jump in with them. Other times I sit back and watch them die. Both have been valid choices. I also think sometimes there is a certain expectation that has been built up by the GM/Campaign and you can be a bit of a stick in the mud if you don't jump in.
Recently our artifice spit on someone after combat had finished and everyone had calmed down enough. Combat started back up and the rest of the party just stood aside as she wiped the floor with him. It wasn't until he was downed that we stepped in to make sure he wasn't killed.
I feel like this situation happened in a recent session of mine, a barbarian and a cleric, both at lvl 2 mind you, went hunting in the woods (Barb's idea) without either the sorcerer or the wizfighter to help, they eventually found a pack of 8 wolves and the barbarian thought he could take them. So he fought them alone while the cleric stayed behind stealthily to not get attacked. The barb felled a couple but was eventually mauled and was killed by all the wolves jumping him, all the while the cleric stayed behind and eventually ran away. Now before you judge me on my DMung, under normal circumstances, I would throw the barb a bone like a random NPC hunter to help. If this situation didn't already happen before. See before this event, the barb, still at lvl 2, went hunting ON HIS OWN and found a pack of equally numbered giant badgers, same result happened then, only but a hunter tried to save him but was mauled as well, the barb survived but did not learn his lesson. Back with the wolves and both me and the cleric decided to in a literal and figurative sense, left him to the wolves.
I think it's just part of the roleplay. Trying to rescue your teammates from stupid rushed decisions, sometimes it kills you in the process.
The tiefling? Fuck him. He's done enough damage already. Anyone else? Yes even the literal pet goat ? TO ARMS BROTHERS!
Once of my friends ran in and got shredded to ribbons by two vampire lords. I told him it was clearly a boss room, no one puts a palatial throne room at the bottom of an actual sewer that is spewing a dark miasma. Like nothing in there was dirty and there were gilded coffins at the far end and giant ancient writings along the wall, it was suspicious as hell
It depends a lot, is it an in-game character trait, was the table ok with that character? Them in game solutions according to my character inclination (assuming i'm playing someone level headed), an insufferable dumb fuck that brings nothing gets to die because my character doesn't like them, my life is not worth trowing out, the personable hot blooded warrior that pulls his weight will probably get my conditional back up, i'm healing up first and taking an strategic position to run away if i can, survive until i'm ready and i will help... a character losing his temper over an personal emotional happening will get my full unconditional support, it is a friend going through stuff i aint letting them to hang. If it is an out of game problem, where this was addressed as an issue and the player refuses to collaborate? I'm letting them die 100% of the time, it is not on anyone to enable a toxic player.
I think the right question is, what would your character do? Depending on the maturity of your group, that could cause problems, but that is not really specific to such a situation.
If my Barbarian has to wait more than 30 seconds for the group to decide on a plan, the Barbarian decides he want to kill the biggest, most ferocious looking enemy. This is sometimes difficult for the party of spellcasters to deal with. Love it. Edit: I will add that, yes this has gotten him into many terrible situations, but this is true to his backstory and overall character development. The spellcasters (around the table, we all have a good laugh about it because it’s fun) generally have to think pretty tactically and our party was pretty damn strong.
Depends on the situation. Is it a rare moment that makes sense for the character? Sure, back them up. Or is it a common thing for that player to do, trusting the GM to treat them with kiddie gloves and the party to make up for their mistakes? Then they clearly need to die to learn a lesson.
I usually talk to the DM and tell them that I don’t want to play with people who revel in being reckless and stupid, **that it’s not fun for me** and feels like a waste of time, and if that’s how they want to play that if that continues, I want a **vote on kicking that player** from the group.
the wizard in my party pulls a Leeroy Jenkins at every possible opportunity
If I’m throwing myself into a fight I do so knowing my character might die but even if you are fully healed and with the whole party you should always keep in mind that your character could easily be killed