How do I help my kamikaze player

Veeky Forums, I have a player who won't stop diving headfirst into suicidal situations. I've played with him and run games that he has been in in the past, and it keeps becoming an issue. If he were building characters with the intent of kamikazeing them that would be one thing, but instead he is making characters, getting invested in them, and then he is unhappy when he gets them killed. I want him to be a happy player, hence I am coming to you.

I've seen him run straight into the pitch blackness of a cavern, a blackness that was spitting salvoes of arrows at the party, "until I run a far as my move will take me or I hit something". He proceeded to run into an enemy, who had darksight, and they surrounded him and stabbed him to death with spear. He was already low on health and out of spells when he did so. I've seen him take on a demon in single combat, a demon that is supposed to be combat for 4 people, not one. I've seen him charge a line of police officers with assault rifles who were telling him to freeze, and shortly thereafter he was shot to death. I've seen him blitz the boss character who was surrounded by her warriors, only to be set upon by said warriors and destroyed. No matter the system, he keeps charging in heedless of danger and dying, and subsequently becomes unhappy with the game and detaches himself in sessions.
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I have tried talking to him about it outside of game. I've brought up tactics that he might use, suggested that he make a more durable character in the future or counterattack enemy close combatants to protect the gunners in the group. He's told me that waiting for the enemy to act is boring, if he's reacting to the enemy he feels like a robot not a player. I've tried to sit down with him and see what he wants, and he always comes back to close-combat powerhouse. I've provided the books to him that he might learn the rules better and pursue something that he wants to do, but I'm fairly certain he hasn't looked at them once. Often he sits down to game, tired from the day leading up to the session, with a glass of wine in hand and spaces out until it's combat time, where he dives headlong in once again. I'm... really not sure what to do. I want him to be happy, and he wants to play roleplaying games, but how do I help him?

I had a player like this once. He'd start fights and beg the GM to "give us combat, I have class soon" and all sorts of terrible things. His entire character (tiefling warlock, IIRC) only ever wanted to fight, and he did indeed charge off alone to his death once while the rest of the party fled. This isn't Keywork is it?

Let's confirm then, that asides from the kamikaze behavior, that this player you have is even a good player. The one I had was not.

I'm not sure if I can confirm that he is a good player. He shows up regularly, but is usually pretty quiet. He can engage in party shenanigans from time to time, but he also often just lets everyone else do their thing. He has never sought or asked to have any skills outside of combat, I suggested that he might become a character that could use specialized intelligence based skills to help the party investigate mysteries in ways they weren't able to, and he shrugged it off under the presumption that it would make him less effective at combat.

>Often he sits down to game, tired from the day leading up to the session, with a glass of wine in hand and spaces out until it's combat time, where he dives headlong in once again.
>he wants to play roleplaying games

Sounds more like he wants to play Mortal Kombat, because he's currently roleplaying as a Lord of the Rings extra.

I had a player like this to some extent, he told me flat out he didn't like to read (this was a text RP, freeform) and hated social segments of the campaign. Without bending over backwards to please that one guy there's really nothing you can do. You can flavor the campaign to some extent around what he wants to do (a party of questing knights, a party of XCOM soldiers, a Deathwatch kill team, etc) but at the end of the day you can't fix the need to die for the Emperor.
If his only tactic is to floor it into close combat and damn the torpedoes, he needs to suck it up and either bring five character sheets to the game, or make something other than a cross between a berserker and an assault ram.

The reason I'm posting is actually about the Dark Heresy campaign I'm running. He lost a fate point in the campaign in the core rulebook, and again in Edge of Darkness to the local corrupt police force who all carry autocarbines and came running when the corrupt magos biologis secret hideout was being investigated. The cops came running because the player in question did a flying hip-check ("dick first", as he declared) into the head of the soup kitchen that two other players were interrogating. The man cried for help, and after 10-15 minutes the cops showed up with guns.

Dark Heresy, as you probably know, is a fairly lethal system, and I stressed this again and again to my players going into it. He got gunned down as the rest of the party fled, rolled up a new melee character to fill in while the party tried to recover his old character the next session, only to charge straight into close combat and die with the new character in that very session

I've got to be honest OP, it sounds like your player is bored. This isn't something on your end, he'd just rather be rolling dice and killing things 24/7, and when that's not happening he feels like he has nothing to do. Hence him being "usually pretty quiet". He's just waiting for combat.

I've admittedly done something a bit similar. My crossbow-toting beefy cleric (not the main healer, chill) began kicking doors in because I was getting tired of the wasted minutes while we checked for traps on every single door, and half the time did actually find a trap. I lead with my pavise improvised as a tower shield to improve my good armor, and most of the traps we got through just fine and it saved time.
I was rushing in entirely because I had, out of character, become impatient with the pace of the adventure. Me thinks this is the same problem your player is having, except he came for the combat, while I was trying to get past the combat faster.

>The cops came running because the player in question did a flying hip-check ("dick first", as he declared) into the head of the soup kitchen that two other players were interrogating.

The fact this guy is so eager to affirm thousands of years of blessed Krieg's military tradition aside, this is the kind of shit that you usually hear right before the sentence "He wasn't invited back to the game."

You need to sit him down with a cup of decaf or something non-alcoholic and explain to him that he must pick one of the following:

1. Running headlong into danger until he suddenly halts in place as he has been reduced to pulled pork.

2. Getting sullen about No. 1

If he picks 1, congratulations, you have successfully graduated an Ork Boy to a Kommando. If he picks 2, well, there's worse things to be than the human equivalent of a TOW missile. In my experience, both detract from good games, though constant character death and introduction is FAR worse than someone who's just overtly aggressive from a storytelling standpoint.

Ask your other players how they feel and proceed from there, but I can tell you as a ForeverGM I'd have shitcanned this guy, or at least forcefully discussed with him the idea of changing his ways.

I'm not sure what I can do to keep him from getting bored, though. I try to keep the game moving along, if it slows down because people are having game-related conversations between players I allow it as they're roleplaying out how they are planning their attack, otherwise I try to keep things moving briskly. It also bothers me that he doesn't seem to use much for tactics, there are at least a dozen different moves he could use in combat and he either uses all-out attacks or regular attacks that allow him to dodge/parry.

Part of my out of game talks with him included a bit where I told him there were a variety of melee characters he could make that all brought something slightly different to the table. From a dual-wielding guardsmen to a greatweapon toting assassin to a techpriest with robot hounds to a psyker (Biomancer) augmenting his abilities and punching holes through the enemy. I also mentioned he might consider another type of character, more utility or ranged combat, or if he wanted to take a short break from the game he would be welcome back. He told me that he prefers to play "tankbuster" type characters, high-damage dealers that can easily overcome an enemy's damage resistance, and that playing anything else seemed relatively pointless. I haven't mentioned anything to the other players, but, I am now considering it...

>Melee "tankbuster" in DH when you're not even playing a space marine
>Not going sniper for 3d10+whatever.