Whipping Boy!

[Blue]

No, it's anot a new bondage sidekick for Batman.

I'm referring to that one guy in your group of players who always seems to get the worst of it, no matter what you are playing or how things may have started out in his favor.

In our group, there's one guy who is usually the GM, but somehow with me as GM, he has become the whipping boy! I assure you (and him) that it's not intentional.

So we're in a fight. He's got a mentalist and they are fighting a group of high-powered agents (Essentially, goons in powered exoskeletons, around 280pt characters). I roll a 4D6K against his hapless mentalist and roll 21 BODY and 105 STUN. Then of course there's knockback damage.

Earlier, they are fighting at a building and he levitates up the outside and takes on the badguys through the window. He makes the mistake of not putting his Line-of-sight to it's limit and remains close enough for one of them to squeeze of a round and nail him. Now he'd have fallen to his death if another character hadn't flown down and done a beautiful grab manuver. So at that point he's the only guy to have been knocked out, and it's happened twice.

Last game his character arrives late for the fight and charges the sniper in the outfield. His character this time is a very tough brick. The gunman proceeds to shoot and nails him with a 3D6K AP. I roll 16 BODY and 64 STUN. With his defenses halved, he takes BODY and his STUNNED. And it aint easy to stun a brick most days!

So now he's thinking I have it in for him or something.

The Question: Does your gaming group have a guy who always seems to be on the short end of other player's activities, GM rolls, and worse yet--his own good intentions?

[GenreFiend]

It seems like I am almost always fufilling the role of whipping boy in my game group. Sometimes it's bad luck, sometimes it's bad decisions, but more often than not it's because the other PCs (for some reason), like to show me up. When I haven't done anything to them. Sucks.

[CourtFool]

Llama has been there too.

[JMHammer]

Maybe it's time for you as GM to create an adventure which centers around Whipping Boy and will really give him a chance to shine. Design a plot that revolves around the character, highlights his background, brings together all of his current plotlines - and even resolves some of them - and gives him a chance to totally kick some patootie in the final combat scene.

A scenario which includes a puzzle-challenge for which you know your player might have some particular affinity, opponents who are particularly vulnerable to his special powers, and an opportunity to rescue all the other PCs will quickly erase the bad taste out of his mouth and make him feel the way this game ought to make a player feel - like a hero!

John H

[Mark Taylor]

Originally posted by Blue
The Question: Does your gaming group have a guy who always seems to be on the short end of other player's activities, GM rolls, and worse yet--his own good intentions?

No, but we have the reverse: one guy who always has the most outrageous luck! I have been playing with this guy for over 10 years and he has never once lost a character! (Except in Paranoia, which hardly counts). He's the kind of guy who always pulls a critical hit out of his hat when he most needs it, who enemies screw up their attacks against with alarming frequency. His characters are rarely even touched, let alone badly injured! (And while he's careful, it's not like he's an overly cautious player). This guy is a menace to the best laid plans of any GM, if there is a way out of a tricky situation through pure lucky dice rolls, he will find it and get just the lucky dice rolls he needs. We let him off with all this though, because he's a good player. :D

P.S. He is also the ONLY player I have ever known to finish a Call of Cthulhu campaign with more sanity points than he started off with, which of course is possible (due to sanity awards), but HIGHLY unlikely - especially considering that in this campaign the rest of the characters ended up with almost no sanity left, and his was exposed to exactly the same sanity risks as the rest of them!

[Stephen Mann]

The Question: Does your gaming group have a guy who always seems to be on the short end of other player's activities, GM rolls, and worse yet--his own good intentions?

Yeah, and it's been me for years. See, the problem is that most of the time I have horrible luck with the dice. If I need to roll a 12 or higher (AD&D), I roll no higher than a 7. If I need a 7, I roll no higher than a 4. And it's never while I roll for NPCs, it's just my own characters.

Scene: several AD&D PCs (roughly 5th-7th level) are fighting pirates on the pirates' ship. My PC, a ranger, is up in the crow's nest plunking away with his short bow. The dwarf fighter PC (whose player is absent, so I'm running him) is naked and unarmed (former galley slave), and in a berserk rage, leaps over the side of the ship into a dinghy carrying about 20 escaping pirates.

The Fight:
For the life of me, I can't roll higher than single digits to hit with my bow. I go through two quivers of arrows without a single hit.

I also (being the GM) can't roll well enough to let any of the 20 pirates hit the naked dwarf.

When rolling for the dwarf's attacks, I rolled seven 20s in a row (witnessed by the players)! Followed by a series of 19s and 18s! End result being that the naked unarmed dwarf kills all 20 armed and armored pirates without suffering a single wound.


While this is an extreme example, I'm used (in AD&D games) to going through entire multi-opponent fights with only one or two hits.

In Hero games, I don't do so bad. It must be that single dice thing.

[Killer Shrike]

Bell curves help the luck impaired....

Or group has Wily Quixote who is one of the luckiest people alive. And Im not kidding. People always think Im kidding, but after theyve seen it in action they become believers.

This is a guy who has won a trip to Hawaii -- which he didnt actually use -- by calling to request a song at a radio station --TWICE!

He was in the middle of that huge pile up in LA 5 or 6 years ago; the cars all piled up around him, leaving a nice little pocket around his truck -- dead center and not even a scratch.

He drove around for 5 odd years on a pair of Firestone tires, including several trips cross-country. Same pair mind you. During the same period of time I went thru 2 cars and about 6 pairs of tires between them. He comes in one day and says "Im starting to show thread; I think I need new tires", so Im like "when was the last time you changed them out?" and he's like "never; those are the ones the truck came with."

The very next day the evening news is on and one of the stories is Firestone was issuing another recall. WilyQ looks up and says "Huh. I think thats the tire Ive got on my truck". Sure enough, it was. So he took it in to a recall point and got 4 new tires. Firestone sent him a reembursement check that was 4 dollars more than what he paid -- so basically after almost 5 years of using them he got paid 4 bucks to get a new set of 4 tires! :mad:

It goes on and on and on. Dumb luck in truck loads. And thats just out of the game. IN the game its ridiculous. He regularly rolls 16+ dice in Champions and gets nothing but 4s, 5s, and 6s -- mostly 6's. In d20 he was the crit master. Keen? Who needs that. Just roll 19's and 20's all the time and youre solid :rolleyes:


As far as whipping boy, our groups is probably the player of John Wrath in our current campaign. He's not very good with game mechanics, and makes really strange decision in character. So he gets "WTF'd?" a lot and takes a lot of (probably deserved) abuse. However, as the GM I try not to let any of my players get harrassed too much. Its no fun for the recipient and a bad habit for a group to get into....

[lemming]

Originally posted by Realms of Chaos
P.S. He is also the ONLY player I have ever known to finish a Call of Cthulhu campaign with more sanity points than he started off with, which of course is possible (due to sanity awards), but HIGHLY unlikely - especially considering that in this campaign the rest of the characters ended up with almost no sanity left, and his was exposed to exactly the same sanity risks as the rest of them!
I've got a character who wound up being the creepy gardner in the superhero game. He started out as a Call of Cthulhu PC. He went up in sanity while being the sole survivor in several scenarios. He came out fine after a dozen games. Everyone else had lost at least two characters. It wasn't because he was tough, just damn lucky. Always made his San rolls at the right time. He once didn't make a San roll and had to stand there frozen for a second. One of the other characters went ahead and got torn to bits.

[BlackSword]

<sheepishly raises hand so as not to get hit by random NPC>

I had a GM tell me, "I'm not picking on you." Yeah, my character has been the whipping boy from time to time. Sometimes my own doing, the time I curbstomped a noble both of his bodyguards jumped me. Other times I just end up at the wrong place at the wrong time and the NPC come after me. There was a series of about six games where I was the first one attacked every combat we had. Needless to say my character started to hold back for a few fights to recover from wounds.

[Tim]

Originally posted by GenreFiend
It seems like I am almost always fufilling the role of whipping boy in my game group. Sometimes it's bad luck, sometimes it's bad decisions, but more often than not it's because the other PCs (for some reason), like to show me up. When I haven't done anything to them. Sucks.

Been there, not been kissed afterward.

[DocMan]

In my experience, I take more abuse from my dice than from the players or the DM. I have Strange Luck with my dice. If it doesn't really matter, they roll cruddy. If my back is right up against it, they roll exactly what I need to sqeak through. Of course, if my back is up against it, the GM's dice start rolling critical hits against my character.

Had one D&D combat where the highest roll my character had was a 7. For half the combat people kept having me try their dice instead. I got all the low rolls out of their dice. Such a collection of 4's, 3's and 2's on 20 sided dice you've never seen before.

Of course, that's not as bad as the player who rolled something on the order of 11 straight 1's.

Doc

[CrosshairCollie]

For some reason ... I will *NEVER* understand why ... whoever is sitting on my immediate right when I GM will get completely screwed all night long. I vividly remember one old 4th Ed game ... the character was a martial artist. 33 Dex, and was being shot at by a home-brewed LeRoy The Awesome Exoskeleton Man (Dex 18, 1 Ranged Combat Level). The PC, unsure of LeRoy's capabilities, Martial Dodged and threw all 4 of his combat levels into defense. DCV 20.

I hit him with a 3. But, hey, it's only a 2d6 EKA laser, right?
12 Body, 60 Stun.
KO.
:eek:

The GOOD news was, he was only out to single digits, so he would recover on post-12 and be capable of fighting (or seeking cover) ... except that the team brick, seeing he was unconscious, picked him up and used him as an impromptu missile.
He missed the target and slammed head-first into a brick wall. Double damage. REALLY KOed.:eek:

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by CrosshairCollie
The GOOD news was, he was only out to single digits, so he would recover on post-12 and be capable of fighting (or seeking cover) ... except that the team brick, seeing he was unconscious, picked him up and used him as an impromptu missile.
He missed the target and slammed head-first into a brick wall. Double damage. REALLY KOed.:eek:

After I woke up were I that MA, Id put together a See Dick Run style slide show for the brick entitled "Why people do not make good missiles -- for DUMMIES"

[lemming]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
After I woke up were I that MA, Id put together a See Dick Run style slide show for the brick entitled "Why people do not make good missiles -- for DUMMIES"
One of my MAs was plastered by the team brick. (He decided to throw a car on top of her and the MA she was fighting.
Later that day, we're in a heliocopter and Calico points out the door:
"Hey Road Warrior! What's that?"
Road Warrior leans out to take a look.
*push*

[Dr. Anomaly]

Originally posted by Blue
The Question: Does your gaming group have a guy who always seems to be on the short end of other player's activities, GM rolls, and worse yet--his own good intentions?

Well...kinda-sorta, not really. I've had a couple of experiences as GM where things tended to turn out oddly for a character. In both cases the players as well as the characters were female. Both involved breasts.

First Case: Wooden Ships and Iron Men. Among other things, the game includes a location chart to see where you hit / got hit after a successful attack. This one particular female character got it in the breasts every single time. I even started rolling the location dice in front of the players so they'd believe me. The game also includes a roll for each wound to see if it heals cleanly or leaves a scar. This same player got a "clean heal" result on every single one of those breast shots. The other characters nicknamed her "Iron Tits" because of this. :cool:

Second Case: A fantasy game with a high-cinematic component: your results in doing things (like fighting) are based partly on your stats, but in large part on how descriptive and vivid you are when telling what your character does. The female character in question in this game (also played by a female player, but a different one) ended up with damage usually going to her character's breasts. Don't ask me why; it didn't happen with the character of the other female player in the group, nor did it happen with earlier or later characters of the same player. It just seemed as if this particular character had "damage magnet" painted on her chest area. :confused:

[MoonHunter]

I will swear, up and down, on a stack of Champion's editions, that two of my players have 1-3 dice of unluck.

One player blew a 99% chance in a game and had his ambidextrous theif's hand cut off by a trap.

The other player rolled 32 times on 3d6 and did not roll under a 13. While I don't have the odds for this one with me (we did calculate it), I think we can all intuitively figure out that it is a huge chance.

These kind of issues plauge their playing, as people who throw off the statistical curve. In addition, it spills over into their real life as well. One of the player's life is a series of bizzare events, leading to him getting the short end.

So yes. Unluck is a viable disad in any game.

Even real life.

[BlackSword]

Originally posted by BlackSword
<sheepishly raises hand so as not to get hit by random NPC>

I had a GM tell me, "I'm not picking on you." Yeah, my character has been the whipping boy from time to time. Sometimes my own doing, the time I curbstomped a noble both of his bodyguards jumped me. Other times I just end up at the wrong place at the wrong time and the NPC come after me. There was a series of about six games where I was the first one attacked every combat we had. Needless to say my character started to hold back for a few fights to recover from wounds.
Yes quoting my own post. A follow up on this character was this weekend when another player looked up at me after a second spell targeted my character and said, "Wow, Tim (the GM) really has it in for your character." This isn't entirely true, the spell works best against low mind characters and my character has the intelligence of a wet rag so it made sense to target me.

[misterdeath]

In my previous campaign, it was a guy named Steve.

Steve was a wonderful guy, with the suckiest luck with dice.

He bought his Spatial Awareness (and a lot of his other powers) with Activation rolls. Never once got SA to turn on. Not in the weekly campaign we played over 6 months. Never.

He's attacking a Mentally Paralyzed guy (DCV 0) in hand to hand combat, and missed him 6 times in a row.

"18's an automatic miss, right?"

Hell of a role-player. Not so lucky with dice.

D

[misterdeath]

In the current campaign, it's Joe.

Joe, well, he games so that he can do stuff. Sometimes its not the most clever stuff (I'll post that story in the other thread). But, he's always getting nailed by the GM.

My wife (the GM) has a large d20 that she rolls on the table when it's a life and death situation.

This die is now known as the "Joe die". Mainly because every time it comes into play, Joe dies.

She's not picking on him, it just seems to be bad luck.

D

[Wormhole]

I was, once.

When I first started out my dice luck was horrible, so back then my characters were the ones that got hosed the most. As for today, let's just say if I had half the luck in real life that I have at the game table these days, I'd be living in a mansion right now surrounded by a harem of supermodels.

Part of what gives the escapism of fiction and fanstasy their appeal is just how much of a suckfest the real world can be at times. But I digress. :rolleyes: