3 things to do when Involved in Player vs Player - Player Character Guide

This is great advice. I have a good friend that was a good player but toxic to the group as an individual. One of those small doses kind of people. We had to ask him to leave the group. I played with him on a one on one basis for a time. But sometimes you have to.let a player go.

I watched this pretty soon following your Evil Character video. I think this video is actually nuanced commentary on that one.

Rise of Tiamat. I'm playing a NE oathbreaker paladin/warlock, and this sorcerer just had no regard for aoe, all in character I warned him after he did it the 2nd time, the 3rd time I'm taking his head. So right in the middle of combat he drops a synaptic static on half the party and enemies. 30 dmg if you saved, everyone did thanks to my aura, but my turn I used command and commanded one of the monsters to attack him. But I couldn't get to him next turn, and next turn I flanked him as the monster was considered an ally until the start of his next turn, and beat him into a pulp in one round, right in the middle of combat. No one even attempted to stop me. Most was already tired of his shit and they was good aligned players, but I think this one time they needed that nessesary evil for the greater good of the party and let me have at it. The player was fine, he knew I stay true to char no matter what, and he had warning, just as he stays to char. But we've all been playing for 3+ years now so that helps. Don't be like me in a new group lol.

No PVP in my game, it's disruptive whether it's role playing or actual anger it denies the rest of the payers game time.

Dude If I ever started getting any of my PCs raped I would erase and destroy my character sheets and burn the whole house before it gets robbed.
I have read so many people talking about how other have raped their characters and what I don't understand is how you haven't beat the shit out of them.

i prefer to avoid PVP. but it doesnt matter if we are friends, it doesnt matter if i like you, if your character does something that would cause mine to become hostile-- our friendship has nothing to do with them and may the odds ever be in your favor. Usually I DM, id rather the players not PVP... but i dont ever suggest someone make a character and the do things with it they know are not that character-- such as not killing an idiot that keeps doing stupid things and almost getting them killed.

I have a pretty good example of players turning on a player. I was a lawful good Paladin, my brother the GM, and our 3 friends were a lawful neutral monk, lawful good witch, and the chaotic neutral halfling barbarian raised by orcs. You could guess which one caused the problem. We saved a girl from her zombie parents when a necromancer gave her a amulet that could bring her parents back to life, blag blah blah, me the paladin gives the girl 10 gold to take care of herself while she's parentless and we move into town. The halfling goes back, robs her, then threatens that if she tells he'll kill her. Then heads back to the market. As we shop around, were preparing to travel. So me and the witch decide to go check on the girl and see how she's holding up because a day and a half has passed in game time. We convince the girl to tell us why she's scared of us approaching, then we head back to the market to confront the halfling. He pretty much refuses to return her money and belongings and straight up attacks me. He gets ganged up on and I do a strength test against him for a grapple after he was low health, and cut his finger off as punishment. He was pissed off hahaha

I allow pvp. Let them fight.

When I dm people know I might kill them. I've only had one tpk. They did stupid. Never split the party. Also when you sneak by 50 baddies realise they don't disappear. They are coming.

The last time in game it even came close to getting into a PC vs PC battle was in a group of 5. A kobold sorcerer,human ranger, Elf druid and an orc barbarian. I was a 3.5 game and I was playing a sanctified dragonborn cleric. We were 7th level and we came across a water pixie that asked us to clear the monsters from her waters and that she would give us a reward. I being LG really wanted to help. But I explained that not only am I a horrible swimmer but also that my full plate armor makes it even worse. I would be of no good if I drown. So the water pixie gave me her ring and said that it has water breathing. So we went in and took care of the monsters. When we return, the pixie told me to keep the ring and still gave us some scroll. When we went back to town I notice the ring has writing on it. As I read it it sounds like a riddle. As I figure out the pieces of the riddle it unlocks more abilities on the ring. Eventually I gain the wither ability and wall of ice and a few other abilities. Fast forward to level 9. We come across the book of vile darkness, that will unleash the next apocalypse if it falls into the wrong hands. The rest of the PC's want to trade the book to gain information about our current dungeon. As the cleric I am not having this and will not turn it over. I manage to get all but the barbarian convinced to let me leave and destroy the book. Now when talking to the barbarian it literally took our entire 5 hour game session with her not budging. So I finally said. The only way I am not leaving is if you kill me. And you are to weak to kill me. Even with the rest of the group non of you stand a chance. I explained I would use the ice wall on the ring to block in the kobold sorcerer. The ranger was a coward and would run away. I would use wither to fatigue the barbarian so she couldn't rage. Then I would kill the druid and whe n.v the only threat is gone wipe the floor with her. Luckily the group was behind me and she backed down.

It depends the system and the game but I've rarely seen where PVP is a valid element of a tabletop RPG. It's usually the fault of an obnoxious or disruptive player who is allowed by the GM to screw over or bully other players/characters at the table.

It was a common thing at any tabletop RPG in some of my groups to have supernaturally-bound contracts that forced players to face (eventual) supernatural consequences if they screwed over other players. Of course the worst of the worst would still do it and find a way to get through the (eventual) consequences.


I lost count on the number of times I heard, "I'm playing a Chaotic Neutral thief, this means I'm gonna try and rob and murder the party every time we sleep because my alignment allows it." or "I'm playing a Samurai/Barbarian/Paladin who will take immediate violent response to anything and everything that angers me but that's because my culture allows for it".

The game is not made for PvP
A fighter with battlemaster is just so strong

Hell I've turned PvP into adventure climaxes. Nothing like the rogue going to the dark side over the course of a few adventures, stealing a powerful item from the party, sticking his knife in someone's kidney, and bouncing out to join the big bad. Then the party (that character becomes an NPC for a while) has to track him down to recover the artifact and either redeem or kill the PC. DM Tip, never be afraid to take advantage of a PC heel turn.

One of the best encounters I've ever had was a PvP moment. My friend's character was a wild, crazy sort of guy while my character was more stoic and regimented. Needless to say, these characters simply did not see eye to eye on ANYTHING. At all. We had this dynamic going where his character would frequently say or do something that would get on my character's nerves, my character would tell him to piss off or something to that effect. But, things eventually reached a boiling point between the two of them (not us, them) which led to a duel between them. My character started out strong seemingly beating the snot out of his before he turned the tide and ultimately won the duel. It truly was an epic fight and all of us at the table really enjoyed it. It was certainly the highlight of that session. PvP done properly (much as described in this video) can become a memorable and fun experience. Just don't take it personally. When it was all said and done, my friend and I were complimenting each other on what was a truly amazing fight and it ultimately led to our characters having greater respect and understanding towards each other despite their personality differences.

This video is clickbait.
I was expecting you to teach me to beat the living crap out of another player with a bag of dice.
I am dissapointed.

So i hand a p.v.p. thing at my FLGS so small back story i was playing a CG not Chaotic Stupid teifling abjurer and the other player was playing a LG human evoker their were like 6 others but they aren't really relevant it was a one shot so we were hired to find a magical simagicalthat was plaguing a nearby town on our way we were attacked by a hag and before the killing crossbow bolt could kill her she pulled out a doll and it took the bolt and she teleported away the doll was left it was a little girls soul trapped in a doll body i(my character) being a local librarian/day care owner started to care for her promising her we'd get her back home or i would take care of her the evoker kept trying to kill her cause she was with the hag so she must be evil. I got most the group to side with me that she was an innocent later when we got to the hags lair lily(the doll) disapperred i assumed it was the hag so i doubled my efforts to find them skip to boss fight 3 hags one of them missed the evoker but hit his backpack lily fell out of the backpack i ignoring the hag who was right on top of me rushed over to save her taking a hit to the back picked her up and right after i did that the evoker said f*ck this and cast burning hands at me and lily i was fine cause i was a teifling but lily burnt up dying the bard LN cast tashas hideous laughter on the evoker and i helped finish off the hags afterwords i 2anted to kill the evoker but the dm said no its not in my alignment i said and killing an innoccent littlevoker and attacking a party member was in his pointing to evoker any way that was the end of that one shot but i irl was pissed

One of my PCs died, and because of some lore stuff he eventually became the big bad, so its PvP warranted then?

I have killed another one of my own characters with another character of mine because they just did not get along and hated each other. It's fine if PCs fight but it cannot about PvP just PCvPC lol.

In my second D&d game as a Gm, first with that group, there was a bunch of pvp and murder hoboing, and at one point one of the players was killed by another with burning hands. Needless to say we only ended up playing four sessions.

Our group is usually pretty good about keeping character vs character conflict in the game. It can be a lot of fun when the common cause (e.g., fighting for survival) that unites them is gone, and the underlying incompatibilities of the PCs come out. Where I've seen it break down and turn into player vs player conflict is when the players try to push their characters' agendas by trying to speak for the entire party:
- "We do this!"
- "No, we don't! We do that!"
- "No, we do this!"
- "We do that!"
- "Why do you always..."

I don't allow "persuasion checks" against living breathing human beings. If they want to be persuasive, they need to actually persuade the person to do/give up the thing they want. Otherwise, use magic or force.

My husband has had issues with some of our group of friends while gaming the past few times we've played a campaign. The guys are all real min-maxers, the ones who know the page numbers of specific things in the books, etc. They plan their characters levels ahead and build their powers & abilities to be the most powerful PC they can be. That's just to get a sense of things. The issue my husband has is that the others constantly question and challenge him on his character's abilities. Example for some combat:
Friend: Ok I do this and this and it's a save or die. If you pass the save you take 6d6.
DM: Ok, bad guy fails his save, he's dead."
Hubby: Ok I do this and this and it's a save or die. If you pass the save you take 6d6."
DM: What the fuck that's disgusting how are you doing that?!

A different example:
Hubby: My character does this.
DM: Are you able to do that because of this and this skill and ability?

He's called them out on it before and they laugh like it's a joke but it irks and really frustrates him. It's got to the point where I don't think he even wants to play rpgs anymore. I really want to start a new game, any game, and he's pretty ho-hum about it. I guess it's one friend who is particularly bad (the DM from the first example, the Friend has toned it down). The hubby plays local tournaments for a game called Malifaux with this one friend, and the last time they played against each other, my hubby forfeited the game and walked out because the friend was complaining the whole time about how overpowered his army is, how this power is too sick and that he can't defend against anything when the armies are pretty equal across the board. While playing other people he's joking/laughing/having a good time but when he plays my hubby he's losing his shit. The army is all standard from the book, powers that other people playing the same army have, etc.

Hi Guy, I have a question for you: regarding player v. player in terms of role playing and that involves the spotlight. Do you have a video that talks about how one can know if they are hogging the spotlight? Like "10 things that indicate to you that you are hogging the spotlight?"

I love the idea of a D&D campaign played by the same GM but with two different groups.
Each different group is the bad guys in the other game. Even if they don't play evil characters. As the GM, you can spin it that the other group is messing up the world, or messing with the status quo. Gives the world a bit of life and it gives each group a "real" enemy. Should the two ever meet? No idea. But think of the world building.

To me, I can never wrap my head around hating a character so much you have to leave, and that it's the GMs job to make sure you all get along. Conflict between characters are good to push each other and to get easy arcs for characters.

I do pvp events once yearly just for fun. No death just bragging rights. Teams are randonly picked. And its setup similar to fairy tale guild battle event. Two skill based and two actual fights. Everyone has fun and its cool to see the combos they use on each other.

Thank you so much, your account of the brothers in the sci-fi campaign really gave me a concrete answer as to why something in particular bothered me in a game I played in.

Another player in the party, he's kind of a noob. Not much knowledge at all about the mechanics and principles of playing a tabletop RPG. It was the first campaign I'd played in as well, but I personally know more about it already since I'd studied up when preparing to GM, and just have played more RPG video games than he has.

So he wanted his character to be a lone wolf, edgy ninja kind of thing. My character was a lying, greedy, thieving, fast-talking Goblin. So he ended up singling my character out for his to hate. And I would've been fine with a rivalry. But it should've been like those brothers. Two people who hate each other, but when other things are more important they will work together.

But instead what I got was constant death threats and insults toward my character by the edgy ninja (almost the same exact way every few minutes), and never working together. It got old and I switched my character.

Even though I loved played the character, and everyone loved the character. He was funny, I did a voice and everything, he had a lot of character. That other player soured it for me by grating down on me with his and his character's bad attitude.

D&D is not design for PvP, it's just not

Playing an ambassador character in a PvP group was quite a fun challenge. Until there was a bleed over to real life...

Something I have done to deal with tension is I do a pre game before the campaign and have a street fighter style player vs player fight. Nothing is cannon in the story. It has actually helped a lot and now turned into a ritual. But this works for my players it may not work for everyone. If there is a real issue at the table I pull the players aside and talk to them.

In my first real campaign (had a couple stop-starts) I was playing with my close group of friends, who I still play with to this day. One of these friends has a bit of an anger issue and tends to be a little petty and antagonistic. We had a couple of PvP moments because both as his IRL friend and as a straight-up Fighter character, I did not put up with his shit at all. He started both of them, as I try to avoid PvP unless it is friendly and in some way indicated before hand. In both situations, we stopped before it got too out of hand and it worked to help him get out a little of his frustrations. I strangely enjoyed it, and so did he. The rest of the group was a mixture of concerned and bored though. Concerned because they knew we pissed each other off sometimes, bored because we were playing 4E and it took AGES to get through the combat, which they were not involved in. Did result in some memorable moments, though.

I'm legitimately unsure if this is because I asked for a video on inter-party conflict in the comments of a previous video or if others were clamoring for this or something, but, either way, thanks for making this. This is probably going to give me a lot of things to consider in the future.

If your party members are acting like dicks and making awful morally repugnant decisions and you’re supposed to be playing a good aligned character then it makes perfect sense to pvp both in and out of character because it makes no sense that if your party members are doing something evil and you’re supposed to be good that you’d just stand around and let them do it

Today as of writing this, I had a session of D&D where the morals and honours of the characters naturally split the party in two. There was a mix of players and NPCs on both sides, creating a wild brawl with weapons and magic. 3 characters and several guards died, with many more ending up unconscious and imprisoned. In essence we caused a complete riot in this town, without compromising the overall story. It was one of the funest sessions I've ever played

PvP moments can be really dramatic, but it's most important to keep the conflict in the game. The moment the hard feelings start to spill over out of the game, it's probably best to pause and deescalate the situation. Also, it is probably better to not keep going on with the same characters after PvP breaks out unless you are absolutely certain that the players are ready to assume that the issue is resolved. One of the biggest mistakes made in the campaign I had where PvP broke out was that the party reunified without the tension being resolved, and it led to a lot of backroom dealings, secret deals and bargains, and in general, it left the group feeling way more tense than we wanted it to be.

A good friend of mine and I had characters duke it out in the jungles of chult. A shadow cleric with a decaying sense of morality, vs an Orcish barbarian with a borderline knightly sense of honor. Our group and DM were horrified, but my friend and I were hellbent on following through. Why? We both believed that was exactly how our characters would have approached that situation.

But then, our table veers more from the - - aspect of the game into a characterization not unlike that of a novel. So they will do things to the detriment of themselves (for the more selfless) or the group (for the selfish), if it means coming closer to realizing the characters’ stories.

I actually just began a conflict between my larp character and another player's just yesterday. I immediately contacted her after the event to make sure that it is okay that our characters are against each other.

What's interesting is that a previous character of mine and that character of hers were close friends and still are. (He moved back home) So me and the player are friends; so I wanted to make sure everything was cool with her that our characters are becoming enemies. To make matters more trying; my character's best friend is good friends with her. So he is caught in the middle; and of course I've talked to him about it too. Guy's advice ringing through :)

I love love love love Machination based PvP. Instead of direct conflict you scheme against one another with intent. So you are like "Okay fine he wants to hoard all the good loot. Well I will have to find a way to take it off of him while he isn't paying attention in a way that he doesn't know it was me" and so you hire thugs to attack in the next town where the person will have to confront them and nick the good silverware from their pack as they are distracted or something.

Or in the case of one of my World of Darkness game my character was a Mage who was drawing up districts for different groups of supernatural creatures based on Ley Lines and one of the players just hated how bureaucratic the characters was because he was playing a nightmare based Vampire so he decided to throw together a court case to try and discredit my character and pin some crimes on him, at which point the whole case backfired on him when I used an ability to keep people from lying and deceiving one another which only overcame his machination because I was given a day to prepare and he couldn't detect magic.

Like scheming is a great way for player PvP to overtake the GM and create a really interesting group, but you need the right people to do so.

I always liked the idea of characters having thier own personal goals hidden from other players (unless that players character reveals it through action or confession). This is not to say that I am promoting character killing one another. For instance, one character may have the hidden goal of having accepted a bounty on another character and has to bring them, alive, to a certain city. What the bounty hunter does not know, however, is that the character being retrieved is running from thier destiny as a sort of chosen one for thier people. In this, player conflict is rich and layered and surprising the players with the reveal of all the tie-ins just adds to the satisfaction of everyone involved. In the above example, should the bounty hunter mistreat the other character, then they will certainly have to answer for it to thier employers. Should the players talk and begin to suspect what may be going on, great! See how they move forward with it. If the bounty hunter fails, he may be hunted himself and certainly more hunters would be dispatched to retrieve the 'chosen one'.

Mr GM i have star wars saga group who will not take the story i kept show them and not take my story

I'd probably allow PvP if there was a good, in-character reason for doing so. The Monk and Paladin's differing Lawful ideals clash over something, and they need a clear way to decide which one submits? That's the characters dealing with each other like people might.

PvP just because someone did something dumb, or because one player disliked another is absolutely stupid, and only threatens to create (or grow) a rift within the group.

My girlfriend's character and my best friends character have come exceptionally close to fighting eachother for very good character reasons. Vel (my friends character) is the chaotic neutral douche of the party and has a slight penchant for doing a little evil every now and again, Heidra (gf's character) is about chaotic good/neutral good with strong morals, so when Vel murdered a young lad he was interrogating (the guy was racist but young and naive) Heidra had a very serious conversation with him which he blew off and every time since when vel has come close to killing someone in cold blood, Heidra keep's crowd controling him and letting said prisoner go which keeps making Vel angry so there ddfinately heading towards a confrontation

ive seen some pvp scenarios, and actually, one of my characters in particular(drow combined with a short temper... that ended poorly) sparked a few fights, but i made it clear it wasn't me trying to attack a player, it was my character bristling to a remark thrown her direction. what you might do too, if its something like this where you made a poor character creation choice, talk to the DM and ask about modifying it. in my case, i was able to narrow the characters temper flaw to comments expressly anti-drow in nature, and the players at the table knew it, so they just made sure they didn't make any comments like that in the vicinity of my character.

one other scenario that i was in, but was closer to a murder, was my character tried to kill a party member who was a doppleganger the party had been hunting previously. this doppleganger was a serial killer, who went in alphabetical order. i was isolated with him, and he killed an npc whos name started with "r". well, my characters name started with "s", so i felt very threatened, and attacked him. well, when the party became aware of this, without question, EVERY other player in the party attacked my character, killing them, and the serial killer ended the fight with an energy blast to the head with the utterance "s". now, the guy who was controlling the doppleganger, i dont blame at all. he was playing his character, i was playing mine, and we both had agreed the fight was necessary to our characters, given his doppleganger nature combined with my characters name being the direct next in sequence. the rest of the party though, considering i had previously called the characters doppelganger nature out with this specific character, i think just wanted my character dead, for whatever reason. the guy controlling the doppelganger had expected his character to die, something he had been ok with, and he was actually pretty shocked when the party turned on me instead of him.

I just a week ago had my first ever player vs. player experience. Other character was possessed by a spell and was ordered to attack me. I rolled to see if I would see what was happening, my character was completely oblivious. To him, it seemed like his friend had just joined the enemy's side and was attacking him. So I decided: ok. give it a full go then and unleashed my warlock's full power on him. Neither of us managed to knock each other out before the spell ran out, but it was interesting. They ended up having a walk together along a river to gather supplies to improve our party's boat and got it sorted out, which was nice... I would have wanted a bit more role play into it but that side was a bit awkward... but I guess that stuff comes with experience as none of us seem to be very experienced with roleplay in general :D

but I did enjoy this aspect of the game.

We recently had a pvp where the oath of vengeance paladin, who was already on a dark path and has now become a fallen paladin, was attacked by the chaotic neutral monk because he had previously killed another character who was friends with the monk. My character intervened after the pally knocked the monk out, and the pally actually healed him up. Monk woke up and went berserk again, and the paladin just looked over at the group and said, "I tried." Then he ripped the monks head off. Pretty gruesome, but very effective in the general direction of the party, and EVERYONE involved, even the veteran DM, said it was the best roll playing session we've ever had. My character was already feeling torn, having finally found his lost love, and that gave a very plausible reason for him to leave the Party and go home with the girl.

I'm having a Roll20 game going as a player, and there is a another player whom I really want to kill IC (Maybe even a bit ooc to), he is just so annoying, takig up to half of GM's and sessions time with stupid things like what he can steal and what mischief he can do and what woman npc's he can hit on.. just wasting time, and his even a Sorcerer not a rogue. I freaking hate it. But I don't know what to do about it.

Another fun thing is sparring in your game

We had an in party fight where the monk took the rouge out in one punch, the players are chill with each other because it was more for story development.

This guy rolled a natural 20 on charisma. I think his beard might give a charisma bonus as well