I'm a player in an RPG group that's organised by my school. Another player is playing the party wizard, but I'm fairly sure he was just told to join the group by his parents or something, because he never. Does. Anything.
He is a dead weight on our party, taking gold and XP that the rest of us could have used and just sits there texting. Every single session, all he does is text, grunt and occasionally mutter about the rest of us being too loud. The only useful thing he's done in this campaign, which has been going six months, is melt a door with Fireball in the first session.
We have talked to him. Or tried to, anyway. He basically ignored us. And the GM is a teacher, and is not allowed to kick someone out unless they legitimately break the school rules or damages the game. He's still okay, technically– he hasn't done anything that has actually hurt anyone, it's just incredibly annoying.
It's driving me insane.
Does anyone have advice on what I can do, that you have done or heard about being done in this kind of situation?
Best Answer
From a "game difficulty" perspective, I recommend not worrying about it. Unless the DM is sticking very closely to a module, the xp and gp you get are basically going to be whatever the DM wants you to have. If you somehow got rid of your deadweight player, the DM would start giving the group that much less xp and gp to compensate.
From a problem-players perspective, the good news is that your problem player is easy to ignore. :) Frequently when we get questions about problem players, it's somebody that is acting out -- attacking NPCs for no reason, stealing from the other party members, taking up the DM's time with pointless roleplaying. Your player isn't doing any of that -- he's just sitting there. I recommend getting him a seat at the back of the table so he's not between you and the DM, and then just ignoring him.