Considering the entire story that is "Do You Like A Mother Whose Normal Attack Is A Double Hit On All Targets?",a step-mom DnD animated series would be awesome.
@-...dj...- I'm gonna assume the genders of the players here, but you'd be absolutely flabbergasted by how far dudes will bend over backwards to pretend they're not having the emotional issues they are, in fact, very clearly having. The immaturity of the two players (really the group as a whole), the somewhat pivotal nature of the opposing characters' relationship to the character the woman is playing, the fact the conflict bleeds over into real life... Yeah, it's not set in stone, but there's absolutely grounds to the theory these dudes are silently beefing over their lady friend, and neither have the emotional clarity to understand, let alone admit to it.
The person I feel the most for in that book burning story was the 4th party member: relegated so far to the sidelines on this group that we don't even get a class or pseudonym.
Or you know OP posted the part that was relevant to the argument and #4 didn't interfere with other people's agency at the table either way and therefore gets no mention for being well behaved and Fing normal.
@@janschievink1586 i don't know why you responded in an offended tone to this. They said they felt bad for the fourth party member so why are you responding like they insulted them? Did you misread the post?
@@spiderbug7615 There being conspiratorial when the post literally doesn't say anything about what the fourth party member was doing presuming #4 was getting sidelined in the campaign because they didn't do anything relevant to the incident is silly.
In the book burning thing, it was 80% Dave's fault IF the op was to be believed as is. It would be the equivalent of saying "Hey, I really don't like to be touched, so no handshakes or anything like that, cool?" and the party agreeing, only to have one of them that agreed point their finger super close to your face over and over saying "I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!" and then getting offended when you essentially hit them for doing it over and over. A crybully, if you will.
Except the provocation was... Lemme check: Using magic to clean someone else's armour which then got the totally equivalent action of attacking the character. Then threatening to burn Dave's spellbook for... using any sort of magic on OP, helpful or not. Shocking Grasp is as much an offence as Healing Word or Haste. I'm not on Dave's side, he was petty af but OP was like "I don't like to be touched, so if you touch me then I will kill your dog".
@@mouthyschannel2474 1. They only burned the spellbook after the Wizard initiated PVP after the Ranger did the roleplay equivalent pf slapping the Wizard's hand away. They mentioned that the attack did no damage. 2. Shocking Grasp is in no way comparable to Haste or Healing Word, one does damage the other two heal or buff.
@@mouthyschannel2474 Here's the thing though: The character's anti-magic stance was noted before the campaign even started and everyone agreed to it and acknowledged an said it wouldn't be a problem. Dave comes in and *makes* it a problem. He suddenly takes an absurdist "Wizards can do nothing wrong" stance out of nowhere and takes a wizard class, even after being reminded about the other character in the party (And tried to bait out a fight in his reply as well.) Dave gets a verbal warning that if he casts magic on the magic-hater, he's gonna face some REAL bad consequences. Dave ignores *all of the above* and decides to poke the bear. The reaction might have been harsh, but if you're going to willfully ignore warning after warning after warning, then I'm not all that sympathetic when the consequence bus rolls into town. You may not agree with the proportionality of 'if you touch me I'll kll your dog'. But there were at least THREE different signs that TOLD everyone "If you touch me, I will kill your dog".
@@phazonmetroid1 Yea I don't really get why people are upset at OP when everyone was okay with his idea from the very start and everyone knew of it. I thought DnD is about freedom to make characters you want but suddenly mage hater is bad? And it's all on Dave for ignoring every warning throughout entire campaign just to spite OP.
Sorcerer have six spells at level 1, when wizard have 7. At level 7-10 of course wizard would have more spells but on low levels sorcerer spell list not so small.
@ I think it explains the one guy dramatically changing position out of nowhere and trying to get closer to the girl while the first guy gets angry at him for it.
@@Unknown-qj9sm I’d understand that if they weren’t in their 20’s. That’s like, 13yr old behaviour lol Idk why people always assume everyone gotta be so horny haha but tbf, the Community is down bad.
EXACTLY OP litterally told dave if he casted a single spell on him he would burn the spell-book, Dave casted a spell and OP did the slash as a warning and Dave pushed it
As someone that does theater, the last story just sounds like someone who knows how to act with someone who doesn't. For actors, it is easy to remove the situations from real life. Even the physical touch part. That's something that we do in improv or scenes. It comes with the territory. I think the step mom didn't see it as an issue because was used to being able to remove themselves from the given circumstances. Something OP wasn't able to do without theater training.
Late reply but 100%, this is someone able to compartmentalize IC vs OOC. He wasn't her stepson, he was a character interacting with her character and that's all it was to her. Lowkey actually means she was probably on another level to them as a player (in the storytelling/RP avenue).
Being surrounded by a family of theater kids, 100%. Definitely sounds like OP in that story just wasn't familiar/aware of how invested actors will get into a character. Despite not being a theater kid myself, it's actually something I really admire and strive for in my own RP~
Ngl, I went into mageslayer fully expecting them to be the AH, but I absolutely came around I don't like if they were specifically limiting other ppls class choices, but this felt more like they said "hey, this is my concept, will this bother anyone or should i switch?", then when Jess wanted to play sorc they took the reasonable route of "this could be the roleplay dynamic between us, would that work for you?" Even when Dave took a level in wizard, mage slayer was just like "remember i dont do well with arcanists" but they continued trying to make it work and just saying, keep that magic off me and youll be fine Burning the spellbook was probably too far, but after having another player explicitly breach consent by casting a spell, then continuing to escalate it from rp to fullblown pvp, i really cant feel bad for the guy who had to face consequences for pushing buttons repeatedly
Yeah the take on that one... rubbed me hella wrong. However you feel about the character concept itself, the OP didn't DO anything to Dave's character up until Dave quite literally assaulted OP. Unwanted touch is assault, just like unwanted magic (that you have REPEATEDLY SAID NOT TO FUCKING DO) is assault. You DO NOT do that shit to another player's character, especially when they both in and out of character have warned and asked you to not do that. After that, what happens to your character is the result of your stupid consequences. Would these people shitting on OP feel the same way if the OP was simply anti-rogue and someone who showed no interest in being a rogue suddenly dipped into it and started constantly stealing stuff, helping baddies steal stuff or trying to excuse the baddies stealing, and also 'jokingly' showing off the things they'd stolen right in front of them? AND OBVIOUSLY ONLY DOING THIS TO ANTAGONIZE THE OP, even when it is not anything their character had ever been interested in before and had no reason to be doing? And then to further antagonize the anti-rogue, they proceeded to repeatedly steal things FROM THEM? And after being told both in and out of character that if they ever dared steal from them again they'd beat the shit out of them they PROCEEDED TO STEAL FROM THEM AGAIN? Obviously you'd deserve the goddamn consequences at that point, so why is this any different just because it's "anti arcane magic"?
Also burning the spell book was not as big a loss as the rest of the party who are mad made it out to be. he had a level one spellbook- he has four levels in fighter to work with until he can remake his spellbook. dave is not totally crippled as a character.
Dude very clearly said “if you cast a spell on me, your book goes in the fire”. Dave said “bet”, and now here we are. Seems like a perfectly reasonable cause and event that was built up to through established roleplay. Player emotions aside, I don’t think anybody acted unreasonably, and everyone stayed true to their characters. The game has rules for allowing a wizard to replace their spell book for a reason. And if Dave was still a level 1 wizard when that happened, he probably didn’t lose many spells in the first place.
14:15 I disagree, the idea of a character who loathes magic due to his cultural upbringing is an unbelievable idea for a character. He had checked with everybody beforehand and they all said he was good. Dave knew what he was getting into and instigated it from the beginning.
Yeah, gotta say it was pretty telling that their opinion on that story was already set in stone when they went on a rant about this being a character that needs to be cleared with the group, then when they got two whole sentences into the story and it was shown that he *did* clear it, they tried to excuse it as “well technically they didn’t all say they were okay with it just that it didn’t matter to them!” and acting like burning the spellbook of the Fighter4/Wizard1 is somehow crippling to him.
Yeah, I agree. The trope of a character who loathes magic already existed in D&D itself - back in 3e, I remember a prestige class for barbarians where the whole idea was that they hated magic, were superstitious against it, and you couldn't allow yourself to have magic willingly cast on you. In fact, if I remember correctly, you got spell resistance against all magic and *couldn't* lower it for helpful magic. And it went so far as to the character not having magic items - they had to *destroy* magic items to gain their powers. And, of course, it hinders fun and interesting growth of the characters. Like you said, the player okayed the character concept with the group - if anyone was planning on playing a magic character, *that was the time to raise the issue*. Dave completely instigated *everything* in that story, just to get at OP, kept needling him. And like someone else said...losing your spellbook, especially in 5e, isn't that disastrous. And he was warned against it to begin with, with the exact threat of "If you cast magic on me, I'll destroy your spellbook". Cause and effect.
At the start of the story, the warrior character sounded like he'd be a problem player, but I was pleasantly surprised to find he played it well and reasonably respectfully. It would have been poor behavior on the player's part to attack the wizard or destroy his spellbook as soon as he multiclassed into wizard, but he didn’t. He set boundaries and said 'just don't cast spells on me!' A very modest request which the other player did not respect. When a prank was played on his character with magic, his reaction was violent, but the player used it as a character moment and did not inflict harm. It was a warning shot. So when the wizard full on attacked him with magic and said he did want to have pvp, I would not have had any problem with the warrior decapitating the wizard at the end of combat. Instead, he just burned his spellbook. Restrained and appropriate considering he'd already used that threat as part of his boundary-setting warning which the wizard had violated. Making a new spellbook would be time-consuming and expensive, but doesn’t permanently cut that player off from regaining access to those class features eventually. If anything, it'd be good lesson in not poking a sleeping bear by screwing around in ways that deliberately tick off other prople at the table. I give the warrior a thumbs up for his actions in this situation.
Yeah, the DM was making no real attempt at curbing the wizard's instigating behavior, even after the other players started complaining to him above table about it. OP had to do something with genuine consequences if he had any chance at getting the nagging to stop. Dude f'd around, and he found out. From an outside perspective, I actually think the fresh faced wizard having to grumpily replace his spellbook in a party that distrusts his new class is actually really good storytelling too - but the player instead resorts to whining.
Yep. Dave was a bully, fucked around and found out. He should have been booted from the group the moment he started trolling OP, in the first place. Jacob's take honestly pisses me the fuck off because it shows him to be a bully, just like Dave. He's piling on the _victim_ for a frankly well measured response. What a fucking douchebag he is.
@Soulessblur And also really what is the Ranger supposed to do in this situation otherwise? The DM didn't step in to stop it, he didn't instigate beyond saying not to do that and the Fighter doing it anyway, and he followed through on his established claim of what he would do in this situation.
@@lordpepper6932 This reminds me of a bad take from Critcrab regarding a stolen healing item where like these two they decided on a villain of the story at the beginning of the story and ignore anything that say otherwise. They will ignore and downplay anything the person they don't deem the "villain" does while going after the "Villain" for any small thing or even for not doing stuff that the "Villain" even said they did in the story. The part that genuinly peeved me is them going whatever to the Wizard betraying the party and forcing them to make checks to convince them to stop fighting against them.
12:20 shitty situation, but if someone says "if you do A, I will do B" and then you proceed to do A, you don't get to complain when they follow through on doing B
To be fair, being antagonistic towards arcane magic is absolutely D&D. Back in like 1e, it was called the barbarian who couldn't use magic and actually got XP for destroying magical artifacts.
Regarding the Dave magic hater story: My first impression was that this might have been a setting thing, since Jess' sorcerer also viewed her powers as a curse. I suspect that the setting was set up so that arcane magic is generally considered evil. With Jess willingly playing a sorcerer who is avoiding using her magic, it really seems like that was a core idea that was okay with the group. There's probably more missing context, but assuming everything at face value I would say that the orc player should have gotten with the other players and set up some kind of more believable in story reason for his character to start becoming a wizard and to roleplay that aspect of it harder rather than just seeming like they did it to spite Dave. Besides, losing a lvl1 spellbook at character lvl 5 is hardly a big deal
I also thought this. A lot of things like tribes that hate arcane magic, enemies that are all specifically spellcasters convincing them to join their side, and the choice to pick the mage slayer feat all seem like things specific to the setting. No hate at all to Jacob whatsoever, but they went into the story questioning the player as much as possible, to the point where basic stuff they say like “talk to the players about this” is just actually brought up later by the writer. It feels like they jump the gun on a lot of their criticisms. Even though they acknowledge that something they said is brought up, they make it about “hating Dave” rather than what might actually be happening.
Some of that is the nature of reaction content; you want to give your gut reaction the moment you get it so that you're not sitting there quietly reviewing something to give a super correct and thought out response at the end... that's a different kind of video
Yeah that entire story Jacob seemed extremely baised against this guy's character for no reason? Like straight up dave does something really inconvienient for the party and its literally "whatever". Not to mention apparently dave openly explaining he hated mages to his entire party and them all not objecting wasn't ENOUGH clarification according to Jacob, and he needed to further elaborate on specific clauses like picking a mage class later down the line? Like screw off i main wizard/necromancy in like every dnd and I see nothing wrong with mageslayer, dave is just being a prick.
@@commiterror404irl5 It wasn't for no reason, like Jacob mentioned a lot of details about his character would otherwise traditionally be gigantic red flags in any more traditional campaign. And considering that it's an AITAH story on Reddit, people usually leave out small details and paint the scenario to make them look as great as possible to garner sympathy. Or it's entirely made up like a lot of the AITAH stories on Reddit are, and it's intentional to get people to argue about assumptions in the comments, Reddit has gotten pretty good at content farming over the years.
@@RutilusMonachus I mean sure but my issue is with his reaction regardless of the validity of this information, he said "whatever" to dave trying to talk with the evil necromancer they were fighting and wasting turns while nobody else was doing that, and I'm sure if mageslayer did this same thing against some anti-mage opponent Jacob would be on his case.
I am 110% on the side of the Magic hating Ranger. They had been willing to play with the guy who became a wizard so it's not like they were blocking them. They kept playing/parting with the wizard despite constantly using magic showing they were willing to rp this. They did not attack them when they became a wizard and destroyed there spell book, instead it was only after they had metaphorically been backed into a corner that they did so. They had sworn that if they cast a spell on them they would retaliate, then the wizard went out of their way to cast a spell on the Ranger. It could not be played of as a accident or that the wizard did not know what would happen. If it was me and after all that the DM turned around and said 'No you didn't' about burning the spell book I'd be PISSED. They let it reach that stage and only then stepped in to turn Ranger into a lier would suck. I like spellcasters so not really a shoe in this fight but I still stand with Ranger in this case.
I also disagreed with their take. Magic is really important in DND but I think it's a super interesting character IF everyone was okay with it, which they were in the beginning. It seemed like, before Dave started shit, it had really interesting character work and implications. It would have also been really cool if Dave started trying to kickstart character development in a way that Wizard Hater agreed with, that could have been super cool for the story too. But Dave decided to start shit in-game and get upset when there were consequences. You don't spell a wizard-phobic asshole who has threatened you before!! Something's gonna happen.
The magic hating guy didn't try to PvP Dave when Dave became a Wizard or when Dave would constantly use magic to annoy his character. Even though his character hated wizards he found a way to still adventure with one. All he wanted was for him not to cast any magic on him, which Dave couldn't be bothered to respected and so cast a completely meaningless cleaning spell on him for no good reason. It seems like Dave just thought it was fun to constantly undermine the guy and antagonize him at every opportunity. Dave was clearly being the problem player. Dave even used the "its what my character would do" defense to justify why he was doing shitty stuff to the party. I wouldn't have even let him take any levels in being a Wizard because he said his character was not smart and that he wouldn't be playing a wizard. I might have let Dave be some other type of caster but certainly not the one that is literally based on being intelligent and definitely not after Dave used being dumb as a defense for his previous actions.
Yeah if I had been the DM then I would have made Dave stick to the "my character is dumb" and not allow a multiclass into a caster class until Dave did something in-game to increase his intelligence. However as DM I would not have let the player pull the "my character is dumb" card to begin with in the scenario outlined in the story and would have out of character told them to stop being disruptive to the rest of the party. There are ways people can play a character that may not be aligned with the rest of the party but you have to be careful how you go about it. Dave just seemed to want to cause pain.
Regarding the Mage-slayer story: Generally, "I hate arcane magic" is going to be a problematic personality trait for most tables, but this table appears to have been willing to test it out. "I mistrust arcane magic" is a lot easier to work with, and could easily be what mageslayer meant, but we can't know for certain. But Dave? Dave took actions specifically to be annoying. Abstaining from combat against a random wizard because "They're smarter than me" is immensely flimsy - especially if there is not extreme amoral lust for power in the character, there's no reason to betray the party for a stranger - and blocks party cohesion. Moreover, taking a late level in Wizard like that is transparently motivated by a desire to stir shit. Which was made evident when he non-consensually cast Prestidigitation. Jumping straight to a violent outburst without one final warning isn't a decision I like, though. Nor is destroying the spellbook. OP ought not have done either of those things. But really it was up to them to (say it with me now) communicate with one another. Like. Who woulda guessed.
I agree, except on the last bits. Damage wasn't dealt, that *was* the final warning, and Dave decided to keep anyways and is the one that started the actual PvP(I've done that before as well, where my character threatened another's briefly, and I've had it done to my characters before too, each situation never went farther than that, but it also didn't include any OOC reasoning or pestering). OP may have been a little childish occasionally, but it doesn't seem like they forced the personality trait on anyone, they asked about it above table, and everyone didn't have a problem with it until Dave started acting up randomly. I agree that burning the book was petty AF, but, I'm also petty AF, I probably would've done the same. Doesn't make it right, but, dude also kinda had it coming when Dave was blatantly trying to stir shit
@@xpandorasboxx Whether or not damage was dealt isn't exactly my point. Moreso that leveraging a feat to perform an attack - even with the caveat it will be a damageless attack - is going to come off as "asshole behaviour", at least some of the time. Its not the biggest problem, as it didn't do anything but express OP's character's anger. But it does come across as adversarial, and isn't a decision *I* would make. I absolutely agree Dave had the spellbook burning coming, though. On an emotional level, 100% deserved. But having characters be mechanically hurt in that way is also pretty rough.
@@smefgrimstae7845The deciding factor for me is that he was warned that his spellbook would be burned if he cast a spell on the dude, and then escalated it to a duel.
considering the sorceror seemed to be his best friend i have no issue with "I hate arcane magic" because it never crossed over into "I hate arcane mages" until dave intentionally tried to make that happen.
What in God's name is going on in that second story!? What in the hell. Spencer's idea of them both crushing on Jess makes a lot of sense though. I woulda never thought of that.
I was like there’s no reason burning another player’s spell book is ever acceptable and then I heard the context and I was like oh. You know what. That’s kind of fair. I think Dave shouldn’t have been mad. He was told what would happen if he did that. There’s still ways to continue the story after that. It’s just one level in Wizard. “Dave becomes an annoying wizard partway into the adventure and then loses his spellbook in an act of hubris and goes back to being a fighter” is a storyline.
I clock Dave's type immediately. Granted we don't get his side of the story so there's a good chance I'm wrong, but I've been in a game w/that type of play. OP is at least looking for reasonable in-party tension & giving lots of warnings (tho there should've been OOC warnings and discussion too), but dave is only looking to be a Hero™ against something he IRL thinks is deplorable, instead of considering the other player at the table. I was in a game where me & the only other player were both paranoid & picked a fight w/someone who we were wrongfully fearful of, next session 2 new players showed up, saw us attacking the guard, and immediately attacked us. We let it happen for a while but didn't want to die (or kill them), so OOC we stopped the fight & said we should stop. They cried "IT'S WHAT MY CHARACTER WOULD DO!1!1!!!!" so we were like, ok, let's find a way for the fight to be _interrupted_ long enough for us to talk, but they whined & refused & said our characters HAD to die for doing something ~unforgivable~. That's Dave's type. he doesn't want the party to have fun, he just wants to lord over his Moral Righteousness over another pc he's deemed bigoted w/out caring about the player behind it. OP should have stopped & talked OOC, made sure he knew the spellbook threat was Real, discussed being uncomfortable w/his behavior, and worked out a solution. But tbh there's ways to save a spellbook. if the 4th player was so mad their character could've done something to get it out. the DM could've had it rain. they could've made a quest out of getting a replacement. but there's nothing that can save that petty pushing another player into a corner like that. IC problems (spellbook) are easily solved w/imagination & creativity; the spellbook isn't REAL. the players are, so OOC pettiness is the worse problem, hands down.
it sounds like there was OOC discussion and not just from OP but from the entire party on multiple occasions, unless im misinterpretation what was said.
@@outcastedOpal what I mean is before it becomes a serious problem, pulling the guy aside and saying "Hey, this is making me really uncomfortable. let's discuss what we want to have happen in this game and plan how we should handle our respective characters."
@@Pinkstarclan yeah i got the impression thats what happened no? asside from him clearing his character concept in session 0, the whole part talked to him about siding with evil wizards, Op talked to him about how its totally fine that hes a wizard now but to remember not to push boundaries, and even when the characters started pvp, it seemed that he told the party that he didnt want pvp to happen until Dave sorta pressured him into it.
@@outcastedOpal it didn't read to me like they talked past the intro until the problem happened, but I suppose that's the downside of these AITA posts: only 1 side of the story, always leaving out details & letting a lot be inferred
i obviously dont have the full context of the situation you mentioned, but i wouldve had the guard arrest all four of the PCs for disorderly conduct and put them in jail. hopefully that'd give everyone in-universe some time to cool off and an excuse to figure each other out without knifing each other, like when you introduce dogs to each other from opposite sides of a locked gate or something. (then everyone gets bailed out by a significant NPC, or you can have a session where everyone has to work together to break themselves out)
I back the ranger, they triple checked, they make sure, and they give warning, twice. Once when the fighter level up, and then when threating burning the spellbook. And then the wizard takes the first initiative, and they only defend.
One of my favorite characters that I played that is dangerously close to that trope of hating magic was a barbarian who didn't believe magic was real. It was really fun because I had to come up with excuses why all the casters in the party were actually just trying to trick me
@@BlakesGamez Did this once on a Marvel-Like game. My character was an detective that was sure that everything happening was some Conspiration Theory and everyone excpet him was brainwashed. ... having extreme luck on dices against super powers and only taking damage from guns surelly didnt help. The RNG Deities wanted the mf'er with his Tinfoil Hat.
I'm in a Vaesen campaign (magical creatures in 19th-century Sweden) and my character is basically this. He's an Irish businessman with a traumatic backstory related to the Vaesen so he chooses to believe they don't exist, and I get to come up with all sorts of wacky reasons why the very clearly supernatural things that happen actually aren't supernatural at all.
DAT MAGIC HAND JUST FLOATS WITH STRINGS!!! YOU JUST THREW A BURNING BOTTLE OF ALCOHOL AT THAT GUY, THAT'S NOT A FIREBALL... wait we did buy some Fireball whiskey, maybe it was a fireball
I was in a campaign as a wizard, the half-orc barbarian had a deep distrust of magic despite being a totem barbarian and the other half was elf, making him an inherently magical character. It was fun
Playing devil's advocate for OP in the second story: I feel like it'd be pretty hard to have a character arc about learning to accept magic when between the only two magic users in the party one thinks it's a curse and the other is being openly antagonistic and unhelpful.
@themenagerie5247 Is that official, or buried in a UA somewhere? "If a character's arc isn't resolved by the time they reach level 5, that arc can never be resolved, and the character must leave the party and retire from adventuring, as their personal growth is now a Lost Cause (tm)."
I'm not a DnD player myself so I don't know how big of a deal losing a spellbook is (or can be), but as a man of my word, I would feel dishonest not to act according to my previously made threat once the conditions are met in spades. I might still help repairing the damage done afterwards, though, as an act of good will.
It costs like ~100 gold and a day of scribing to replace a level 1 spellbook. It's not a "permanent crippling" of the character in any way. I completely agree.
11:21 I love this. Love the RP. (I usually don't allow pvp; haven't allowed it yet) I think as far as pvp goes, this isn't too bad. Especially at such a low wizard level, they probably lost only a couple spells at most. Dave is 100% in the wrong, the writer is 20% in the wrong.
Taking Mageslayer OP's story at face value, they had a character concept, they checked with the group, no one disagreed about it and the one sorcerer said it would work out well with their character concept, and the antagonistic player was purely toxic and combative the entire time. Unless there's a ton of missing context, OP does not seem like the asshole. But agreed, they shouldn't play together. They clearly don't like each other, otherwise they'd just talk about it.
Definitely seems like an ESH, but yeah, at face value, it seems like Dave was specifically trying to get under OP’s skin and was shocked when OP followed through
The biggest offense is Dave being upset. I personally love creating characters that can rub other PCs the wrong way because of their strong opinions. When you take on that role as an aggravator for a group, it can really spice up roleplay but you can't get upset when things don't play out in your favor. It's the position you've put yourself in to roll a boulder uphill, against the grain, and if you can't handle the boulder rolling back down with grace then you shouldn't have started rolling it up in the first place.
I actually think that what Spencer said may be kinda accurate. At least partially. OP may not have had a crush on the sorcerer, just liked the character connection, but fuckin Dave may have been jealous of that connection, whether above table or between characters, and was clearly seeking group focus with the combat interruptions prior. Like, thats one thing that I actually think was the DM's fault here, that should have been talked out above table. Playing dumb in every encounter and trusting obvious badguys all the time cause lulzrandum is disruptive and dumb. Whether this is just how the guy plays, or because they were jealous of the attention OP had from the start and just kept escalating? Who knows. Could be either honestly. But I agree, unless there is loads of missing context(there oculd be, OP *could* be a dick and be misrepresenting things), Dave is 100% at fault and OP is justified in burning the spellbook. It was a direct clarified threat and Dave had every opportunity to back down after the first exchange. DM also should have stepped in here, pvp over clear out of table pettiness is stupid, but regardless Dave is definitely an instigator.
Like this was just how it worked when I was in theatre. We're all actors, we're all comfortable with each other, we do all kinds of stuff. We understand not to take things too far, but, other peoples' boundaries are WAY different than ours. So, that's a really interesting story, and puts things into perspective for me!
Yeah, the way she didn't realize why the guy was uncomfortable until he points it out is gold. Like, for her she is just "doing what her character would do", and she even made her character completely based on what she knew of the game based on a campaign she saw, so it's not like she created a flirty character because she loves it, but because that was her information on how the game plays out. It is just so funny watching the guy get extremely uncomfortable because Alice was immersing herself completely and he wasn't. Like, if you create a character that loves to flirt and they get deeply inspired by someone else, it is a classic trope that they will start learning "true love", so she was playing this out. It makes so much sense, but also sounds deeply embarrassing for someone who can't dissociate from the character too much like the guy.
@@TunaHorns The way you phrase it makes it sound like it's his fault. It's only normal to have a harder time fully immersing when you're in an awkward situation. It's not as simple as him not dissociating enough.
With the spellbook story, I feel like if the wizard wasn't constantly pushing them, they might have had a character arc involving trusting magic, but in the end they set clear lines in the sand, asked permission before hand, and played their character as well as they could in the circumstance. Rule one of life is f around find out, and the wizard kept "flicking" him, he was bound to find out
With the 1st story... It was just a level 1 spellbook. Ranger made the threat and everyone was okay with the character creation, and he was given ample warning and intentionally antagonized the Ranger in game and in the table. The Spellbook absolutely should have burned. There was no reason for it to not burn, the Wizard/Fighter absolutely should accept the consequences of what he did, and rebuild his petty spellbook.
The second story. It's also a matter of consent. Op told the new wizard dont cast magic on me and the wizard ignored that. That alone is not okay. Nvm him multiclassing just to piss Op off.
About the dave story: Dave's just in the wrong. From what op described it gave this weird vibe that "Dave the player" related a bit too much to "Dave the character" (those players that just have a hard time not mixing ), and when he saw op and jess interacting and roleplaying got a little jealous and wanted to do this "love triangle twilight esque" bs but began going too far cause he actually wanted to annoy op (beyond just "oh were having fun with this lil rivalry" thing). The constant use of magic at every unnecessary moment knowing op's character's distaste for arcane and incesant pestering of Jess to "come to his side" might be fun as a bit of a bit (ha) and overall as a trope, but as someone who has hanged with the sthereotypical nerd, I feel op was most likely being sincere in how exagerated that was and probably dave was doing some type of "in-game showing off your superiority to a potential irl mate" strategy. Regardless of all that, he had been constantly warned time and time again and KNEW about the feat. If he actually cared so much about his speelbook he should be no putting it at risk just to be a bully. He freaked around and found out, simple as that.
@@stargateproductions is it common that people make worlds that dislike magic? I thought it'd be pretty rare tbh (an avid dnd lurker but not player lol)
In our Strength of Thousands game, my friend rolled up with a Matanji Orc (known to hunt demons and demon worshippers). Hearing this, I pitched. Beykar Tiefling (known to worship "demons" (actually devils)). Its been fun being snarky and learning to cooperate in character, but outside of some occasional AoE damage, we've never hurt or worked against each other. The story with the burned spellbook could have been such a fun arc for both characters, but they squandered it, imo.
The post is probably biased for sure, but yeah, if I was at a table with opposed/frictional character concepts like that I'd be checking in after every session to make sure things are going well. Character friction can be great if it's two players agreeing to put their Dudes in Situations but it sounds like this was intended specifically to tweak noses across the table.
Honestly, Dave is way more in the wrong in the spellbook burning post than OP. Obviously neither are entirely justified, but setting aside character choices, it really feels like Dave was doing it all just to get on OP's nerves? Like, OP's character idea was problematic, but he expressly went out of his way before the game started to ensure that it wouldn't be a problem for anyone at the table. The issue was arcane magic, and the only person playing an arcane caster had a viewpoint that aligned with his in a way that made for a compelling dynamic. Nobody else planned on playing one, so the issue would only be relegated to OP's characters having a heavy distrust of certain NPCs - which isn't a gamebreaking issue. And then, after OP cleared this with the rest of the group, Dave decides to make his character multi-class into Wizard and use spells in suspiciously high frequency, even down to having his character be so lax with it as to break another characters' boundaries in terms of magic. The whole thing, including his attempted dynamic with Jess, feels really forced - especially if Jess was having as many problems with it as OP, and from the sounds of it she was. It feels like Dave wanted to retroactively change his character to be OP's character's foil without clearing that with the rest of the group, and couldn't pick up the hint that it was a bit forced and a lot more antagonistic - both in and out of character - than it probably seemed.
Intentionally and openly doing something that violates boundaries, that were explicitly established and weren't outlandish, is too much. At most I could tell OP "dude, probably don't make a character that full of hate" but to Dave it's just "aight, go fuck right off"
@@stevefilms1997 If you start making it about the validity of the post rather than its content you've lost the plot you might as well conclude the whole thing's fiction designed to rile you up and not interact with it at all.
@@EnraiChannel as its written the writer is 100% in the right and dave is 100% in the wrong obviously we dont know all sides, but considering the 2/3 of the other people sided with the guy doing the book burning, including the DM, while the 1/3 people who didnt, didnt because they just thought it was harsh, im VERY inclined to believe the writer is at least mostly truthful
12:25 i think the Dave player is in the wrong. The guy seems like a "it's just a prank bro" type dude who likes to push buttons. He keeps pushing, until someone pushes back, then gets all offended when someone follows through on a warning they gave him. Yeah, mechanically it was kinda crippling, but story-wise, OPs character sounds like they'd do that. They warned everyone ahead of time, everyone was chill with it, then Dave started to be a douche. Idk, maybe he did have a crush on jess, and was low key jealous OP had all these rp interactions with her. Or had some weird vendetta against OP, idk, idk these people. Either way, the dm should have probably stepped in early like Spencer said and made sure everyone was doing all of this sincerely and didn't have issues with what's been going on above table. So, no, OP is not the asshole. Imo
I think I agree with the burning of the spellbook. For one thing, he has one whole level as Wizard. He lost like 4 spells at most and only has 2 slots right now anyway. Plus, he has been deliberately instigating, poked the bear and got bit, and reaped the EXACT repercussion the character SAID they would do. I don’t think for a second that Dave was right there, and I think OP was in the right. You willingly chose to do something you knew another player was directly against, flaunted it in his face while he warned you not to, and cried when you got your reward? Yeah, don’t be a stupid big dawg. You did this to yourself.
spellbook one: - it wasn't a spellbook he had invested a ton into, it was a lvl 1 spellbook, so he didn't lose a ton other than the time and gold it would take to make a new one - it was a consequence his character explicitly stated would occur in game if his character's in game boundaries were violated - this character trait was discussed well before anyone came to the table, and the other character wasn't even a wizard until it had been on display for an extended period There was not really anything wrong with this. The other player intentionally wanted to cause friction with not only his choice to be that well after the fact, but then also explicitly violating the one boundary that the op had that would allow this friction to exist without there being any real consequences. Them being upset that his character didn't suddenly not have any of the traits he always had/not being 100% ok with his only boundary being violated is on him.
OP was absolutely in the right in the mageslayer story, dozens of warnings, had everyone agree about everything before he started, had a storyline ongoing only for Dave to start needling for no reason. And for the people saying that OP couldn't work with wizards at all and that was bad for RP, the fact that Dave got the level for it AND was trying to convince the girl player to do more magic AND was constantly casting magic for everything and OP was tolerating all of it shows that OP was even going against character to keep the party together, and still had it in him to warn Dave one last time only to be the one to get damaged by him first. Dave changed the nature of the agreement first, Dave kickstarted the provocation and was the one doing it the most, Dave was the one who started counter RPing OP's own storyline with the Sorceror for no understandable reason (though it was probably jealousy) and it was Dave who did damage first. That said, OP also should have had a frank talk about it above board, probably should have brought the DM into it more and DM should have been putting his foot down to minimize pvp and player sabotage.
13:10 I will allow pvp to happen at my tables given all problems are in character. If two people start pvp and they clearly have beef I stop it. IF the action had been done without the pettiness I’d have allowed it. It takes time but you can remake a spell book and from strictly a in character perspective. “Hey don’t use magic on me” *Uses magic on him* “I warned you” is completely justified.
I think a good rule of thumb is if both sides are okay with either outcome then PVP is fine. If one player is going to be upset if the other player wins then it's a lose lose situation and should be talked out OOC.
Second Story: I feel like OP's character is justified, specifically for the reason of "it's what my character would do", as awful as that may sound. This is a character that, from the start, has stated that he hates magic to everyone, in and out of game, and then another member of the group decides to worship and eventually become an arcane caster, seemingly specifically to rile this guy up. Like, everything Dave did seemed to be to push OP's character's buttons. Him throwing the spellbook into the fire seems like a thing that a guy who hates magic and is pissed off in the moment would do. Also, the fact that Dave's immediate response to OP's character flinching and swinging at a spellcaster for using a spell on him is to outright attack him just sort of shows Dave's hand, that the entire point of this game, to him, is to frustrate OP into fighting him for some reason. I do agree that these are two people that shouldn't play together in a group.
As someone who DM's a family campaign (my parents, my sister, and her husband, we started in the first year of COVID as a way to stay in touch), I have (at multiple points) ended up flirting with all of my family members in some capacity, and that changes you. I didn't steer them into it, they all took it there on their own, but that doesn't make it any easier XD
Nah, nah y'all. Dave and the ranger was pure game gold. I would allow that all day, but they need to know they in game not outside. So many stories from my game group where my wizard grew in power way over the party's cleric. My CN character loved to torment him, eventually leading to his death, reincarnation and death again. Long story. But outside of the game we are best of friends, and it made forever memorable stories for the whole group. Just reading along with that story was awesome, the way the guy wrote it was worth every penny.
The thing I think a lot of people are missing about the AITA story is that everything was fine until Dave started making weird and disruptive decisions like antagonizing other party members, siding with evil wizards who were actively attacking them, and lying about his stats to brush off why his character was doing these things. I can't say if Dave's reasoning for those decisions might have been at all justified, as we don't know what he was thinking since OP either also didn't know, or didn't include that information, but at the end of the day, one player was being a nuisance, and the other retaliated only after his warnings to knock it off were ignored multiple times.
For the “I hate arcane magic” I had a similar thing with the game I’m currently working on starting up. One of my players wanted to stick with an idea of being against revival magic and wanting to stop it happening. I worked with him to make a backstory as to why, and then dial it back to instead being distrustful. It’s an Eberron game so we had the decision that in his past, he revived someone, the wrong soul came to their body, and it was a malicious one. My biggest thing is if this thing will fuck over the party, no. So instead we had it shift to distrusting, or he’s basically “if we are reviving this dude, we need to do every single step possible to make sure it goes right and then he’s keeping his eyes on that person to make sure it’s really them.” It added depth but won’t keep someone permanently dead if they got downed. So I’m excited to see how it goes, I trust the player to not be a dick, or at least if I tell him to stop he will listen.
That stepmom story was the best TTRPG Reddit story I have ever heard 😆 If I was one of dude’s friend in that campaign, I would (jokingly) give him shit about his hot stepmom until the end of time 😂🤣😂🤣 ~_~
In the second story, assuming he is being honest, the guy was petty, but the orc wizard was so much worse. The DM should have stopped it ages ago and told the orc to stop being a dick. OP seemed to check all teh boxes for playing contentious characters and no one said anything, and one character was even into it.
About that first story: i cant imagine a DM letting a solo person play and not include the table for 4 hours straight, im also a DM and dont get me wrong ive had solo major sessions or micro session but they are always planned out and I dramatically use the other players having them play other NPCs or characters, having them roll dice frequently to determine things like the weather/chance or playing bosses/mooks in combat
In my campaign the wizard distrusted sorcerers because they weren't trained in how to control their magic, but through interacting with the party sorcerer and several evil wizards over the course of the campaign, he realized that it's not about where your magic comes from, it's about what you do with it. It was some nice character growth that didn't involve PVP or kneecapping another player's character
To be fair I think you would be tempted to do so if a sorcerer kept prodding you and when you decided to take a pure roleplay swipe at them that does no damage after they did something your characters said not to do to them, and the sorcerer decided to initiate combat. You would make do the threat you said you would do. Besides while not great losing a spellbook at level one is something that can be worked past, it won't be easy but it not completely crippling and serves as consequences for pushing somebody's clearly labeled boundaries. Heck the DM could give them a spellbook next session to give them the problems with not having a spellbook while not mechanically kneecapping them for long.
I think Dave in the second story was pretty firmly in the wrong. OP had a character concept and made sure everyone was cool with it, it had some interesting chemistry with another player's character, THEN Dave started trying to start stuff. It sounds like Dave decided basically at random that his character loves magic and everyone who uses it to the point where, as in that necromancer example, it repeatedly became problematic for everyone else at the table. He ignores the warnings of the friction it'll cause with other characters and continues to egg OP's character on, even to the point of straight up attacking OP's character, then, despite all of the times Dave's caused problems for other players, the ONE time someone else causes a problem for him, he gets mad. Dude fucked around and found out, which is 100% on him. And honestly? If the players really wanted to, this could be salvageable from a story perspective. It feeds into OP's character's belief of arcane magic being evil when his previously-normal teammate started using magic and then acted like an asshole because of it, and it could be a moment for Dave's character to reflect on what he's done now that his spellbook is gone and this power that got to his head is now missing. Maybe he backs out of being a wizard entirely, or maybe he doubles down and tries to make a change to himself to show OP's character that no, arcane magic isn't evil, and I'll prove it to you myself. As-is, though, it sounds like Dave is just making himself really hard to work with and has pretty serious double standards about causing issues for others at the table. He was fine acting """in-character""" (in a way that seems like it made no sense) even at the expense of the other players, but he takes issue with someone else acting actually in-character at his expense one time after repeated warnings.
In the burned spellbook scenario, I feel that Dave was given ample warning. He was flat-out told "if you ever cast a spell on me, I'm burning your spellbook." This wasn't something that came out of nowhere, this was Dave making the conscious decision to escalate. I agree that the whole magic-hating vs magic-worshiping thing is kinda dumb and they could've played it better, but this was the premise that was discussed and agreed on by the table as a whole. As such, the consequences are theirs to reap and if anything, it sounds like Dave's the one who started making things weird first. Both OP and Dave are part of the problem, but it sounds like Dave's part is bigger.
In regards to the first story, as a forever DM, I would have opted for a compromise. He made plenty of warnings about his character's aversion to magic and warned him he would destroy his spellbook if he didn't back off. I would have let some of the pages from his spellbook be destroyed causing him to lose a spell or two, or maybe I would have him roll a percentile to also include the opportunity that it burns off some page fragments thus altering the nature of the spell instead. I think the ultimate cure would be a talk outside of the game rather than any actions within it. That being said the DM can also make narrative decisions that would push the players together more. What if it's not just some evil mage attacking them but also corrupting something they care about? What if they run into a situation where the ranger MUST use magic to save the day? Or if they come across a magic user who is persecuted even despite being innocent? Plenty of ways to encourage character growth, you can't expect them to grow if you don't give them the narrative tools to do so
12:29 So, the ranger did nothing wrong... Provoking another player's character to a fight by spamming mage hand, prestidigitation and whatnot isn't a way to convince a mage-hating person that magic is good. I believe it could have been achieved via role-playing dialogues between the sorcerer and the ranger, but definitely not an orc fighter who gets 1 level of Wizardry out of nowhere and starts pissing ranger out. He even violated his warnings. Dumbass got what he asked for and then started crying over his little spellbook. Ranger McGuire: cute spellbook. did your husband give it to you? The guy's character idea was actually pretty good, it's a shame that sometimes you get idiots playing with you.
First story Ranger sought the party's approval first, and everyone was okay with it. It even sparked an interesting RP with the Sorcerer. That is totally a fine way to play DnD. The Fighter siding with wizards they're already in combat with and saying his character would do it because he's dumb (when stat-wise, he's way above average intelligence and even average wisdom, which was the point of telling us that) yet then also becomes a Wizard (well gosh, I thought he was dumb? Yet he's been apparently training to be a Wizard this whole time?) was trolling him. He was also warned ahead of time not to cast spells on the Ranger and what the Ranger would do in response if he violated that, which he then proceeded to do anyway. He absolutely got what he deserved. Also, of course the mage hating Ranger took Mage-Slayer, why wouldn't he?
Yeah, I don't know why they made fun of OP mentioning Dave's character's stats. Dave was making his character do things that hindered and harmed the party and defended it by saying it's what his character would do because is character his dumb while his character has average wisdom and exceptional intelligence.
@@AAAAAA-613 I think it's because OP came off as fairly incessant about a character trait that has the potential to be annoying and controlling throughout the post, so the stat mention came across as a red flag. I personally felt more on OP's side after finishing the story. Also after that point Dave really showed how much of a asshole he was.
@@DrgnDrake Yeah, Dave was definitely the issue. OP was reasonable at every step and warned Dave of the consequences of casting on him well in advance. Dave chose to cast on him, he has no right to be upset that OP followed through on his warning. That's fair and consistent RP. Dave was just trying to be an ass to be annoying.
@@FromMan2Monkey mentioning that a character is smart when the player is saying they are dumb isnt a red flag its just showing that the player isnt playing the character
So much this, and I'm surprised they didn't pick up on it. The story poster checked with the group and they said it was ok (this is even kind of mocked in the video as people only saying they're not going to play a wizard/sorcerer.) They get good RP out of it. Then another player decides he is suddenly going to start having a trait that antagonizes the poster (with no mention of out of character conversation about it.) Said fighter then does several things to antagonize said poster. Poster gives a warning. Fighter/Wizard after getting the warning antagonizes him again. Player responds with an attack but does no damage as a warning (this would normally be called good RP.) Fighter/Wizard then starts a fight by actually attempting to do damage. Like there could be more to this story, but as it is written it's pretty clear that the poster is not in the wrong. Someone deliberately adjusted their character - without group conversation - to antagonize members of the group, repeatedly antagonized a character, and then got upset when their actions had consequences. At my table? Spellbook stays destroyed, and you're on notice to stop antagonizing other players and provoking PVP if you're going to whine when there are consequences. Or do we really think the fighter/wizard was just going to leave the magic hating person who is trying to help the sorcerer cure their magic unconscious?
14:30 Hard disagree here. I know this was a one-side of the story but Dave was a Wizard for several sessions and OP at least hasn't tried to kick him out of the group or anything like that. Even though his character hated magic, he was willing to make concessions in favor of keeping the group together. Heck, his character even became friends with the Sorcerer of the group which means he wasn't hostile towards the character.
Nah, dave totally deserved getting his spellbook burned. he was entirely warned of that consequence beforehand and chose to do it anyway. if you as the dm warned a player "hey if you try to do X, just know [punishment] will happen" and they just go and do it anyway, you punish them. from the sounds of that story, dave was definitely trying to mess with things on purpose, and I can guess why. notice how a big focus of him becoming a wizard was to try and "encourage" jess about her powers? dave was probably jealous of how much character time OP was spending with her, and all this crap was his way of trying to get back at OP. that's why it seems so childish, because dave's being immature. can't say the same about OP though; he clearly talked about the concept to make sure it was fine, addressed the issues as they came up above table, and gave ample warnings to dave about what would happen. you can't find a mature solution to things if the other party refuses to engage.
Dave was extremely funny and good but also deserved getting his spellbook destroyed. I cant imagine what outcome he was expecting with that behavior. I wouldve guessed he WANTED that fight to happen the entire time and was just building up to it
I actually know a weird thing similar to story 2. Knew a guy who had a Warhammer 40K DM who was constantly nitpicking people on lore. However, the DM encouraged everyone to play different races at the start. So players would try to work together, and the DM would get upset
It seems pretty obvious to me that Dave was jealous with op and Jess's roleplay and was trying to get with her in game, maybe even irl. And figured the best way to do it was to go the opposite of their roleplay to try and turn her to his side and way of thinking, molding her character into what he desired. He was also likely trying to just be antagonistic to op as a way to 1 annoy the player and 2 make him seem horrible in game and irl so as to try and drive a wedge between op and Jess.
Taking that second one at face value, I think up to the point of burning the spellbook OP was a bit childish at worse, but definitely not in the wrong - he had discussed it with the group, the friction was because of active decisions made by someone else a fair bit down the line, and the instigating 'attack' was a warning shot. Burning the spellbook definitely veered more childish (although I'm also of the mind that if you're poking someone holding a glass of water, and they tell you "if you poke me one more time i will splash you", and you poke them again, and they splash you... you don't have much of a leg to stand on). I've also definitely had my fair share of players in games that will act the way Dave (allegedly) did, intentionally doing things that another player has explicitly said bothers them and then playing the victim when retaliated against. That being said, OP's the one who decides how they phrase everything and absolutely can just weave whatever narrative they want, it's not too hard to do the whole "good argument but unfortunately I've portrayed you as the soyjack and me as the chad" bit. I'm curious if there was any followup from if other players found this, would be interesting to hear the other side of things.
2nd player was 100% in the right he only went an "anti mage" guy with the express permission of everyone at the table, dave only went a mage AFTER allowing the anti mage guy to be a thing, and went a mage knowing the anti mage guy would be against that dave in character tried to antagonise the anti mage guy, got warned in character (and out of character) about how the anti mage guy would react, and still provoked it pvp between players is 100% a thing that can and should be allowed if everyone is ok with it, just blindly saying "pvp should be allowed" is just daft if the players are cool with it so dave, allowed an anti wizard character, then having allowed this, and knowing it exists rolled a wizard (he could easily have said beforehand "i will want to multiclass later so please dont") dave then deliberatly in character provoked the anti wizard guy, then got warned in character and out of character about how the anti wizard guy would react, and still chose to act in the way he did he engaged in pvp of his own volition, activly instigating it of his own choice, knowing that the other character would react in a certain way, and having previously given permision for that character to exist the writer is 100% fine, he did nothing wrong also jacobs absolute aversion to pvp is just....weird if both players are ok with it, why as the DM do you want to stop it? you are just preventing them from roleplaying and playing their characters, you are railroading if you are so utterly against pvp that you never want it to happen (despite it being a perfectly valid tool within a roleplaying game) then you dont put your foot down when its about to happen, you put your foot down when people are making characters that might clash OP asked for permision, and was given it by everyone at the table, dave after the fact chose to multiclass into wizard knowing ops character, if you are so against pvp its not op who was making the antagonistic character here, it was dave, because "the party hates magic" was already established at the point he CHOSE to make a wizard also the attitude that you ARENT ALLOWED to make a character who dislikes magic, and if you do you HAVE to make your character grow to like it, is just WILD to me thats absurd DM railroading and character control and the arguement that "magic is all over the place, you cant dislike/distrust it" is just dumb at best, guns in the real world are all over the place, you still have plenty of people who hate guns and think they should be illegal, the idea that someone thinks magic is bad in a setting with lots of magic isnt just perfectly ok, it activly makes sense you have a VERY very weird take on that story and tbh, based on your attitude towards it, you really sound like a bad dm
i think the reason they're against pvp in general is specifically that it's really easy for feelings of resentment from the character to jump to the player, and you don't want a game for fun to hurt someone's friendship irl. it can also make things worse for people who aren't involved, because they might feel like they have to or be pushed to taking sides. in the dm's shoes i would've probably asked dave not to take a level in wizard, sorc or warlock could be interesting rp, if i was afraid of just asking dave not to antagonize op so much. ofc, it's also only arcane magic that op's character has a problem with, so dave multiclassing into (say) cleric or paladin to argue for arcane magic by proxy could be interesting
I actually don't agree with you. Not all D&D is Forgotten Realms (or even 5E) where everyone and their mother can cast magic. You can 100% make the character who hates magic for whatever reason work, even if there's a magic user in the group and never ever change his views. It's those players pettiness that made this thing go wrong.
Even then they don't HATE magic its more so untrusted as I DM a lot of low magic sure people distrust magic but not many out right hate it as it exists it just is rare.
There are plenty of cultures even within the Forgotten Realms that distrust arcane magic. It's a perfectly valid way to roleplay, because there are real cultures with those same opinions (against occult topics, or even modern technology), which should be given the humanity and introspection they deserve.
@@ShinyAvalon I wrote a post just a moment ago about how bad their take on it was, but kreiyu is right, its definitely hillarious... for us... for the group probably it was horrible.
Yeah it's hard but sometimes you really should do it anyways. Also I had this bit about adult pants that was supposed to descend into a gag about the pants not always being pants and stuff, I lost the plot.
@@janschievink1586 I mean yes, it's beneficial to do. It's just not something that's as easy as 'gawd, just DO it, if I was in that group I would be the gigachad and say 'NO STOP IT' and then everyone would clap'
@@sephy26946 I mean it's not even the best option every time sometimes it gets you nowhere anyways and sometimes the whole situation is such a lost cause it's not even worth trying it's the right option when it's the right option. Maybe I've just lost my patience for struggling through bad situations or tolerating bad people as I've gotten old. Anyways I hope you can manage it when you should.
normally i get my reddit stories from smosh and they always say something along the lines of, well your kinda an asshole for not confronting the guy who everyone agrees is in the wrong. an i always feel guilty when they say stuff like that because its terrifying and not all of us have a fight response to perceived danger.
I played a Barb/Druid that was distrustful of non-druidic magics, to the degree that he wouldn't even let a non Druid heal him for fear of "their kind of magic". His backstory was that he was a hermit, abandoned after a battle at a young age. He was a barbarian but came to adore nature as a result of being surrounded by it all the time, so his journey starts because he wants to be a druid. Because he is a hermit, he was also generally inept at socialization and generally kept to himself. This meant that I could RP a character who didn't necessarily trust mages and magic but who wasn't just a bigot all the time. Because he didn't really mix with anyone, he didn't come off as particularly rude to any group or person. And the biggest thing I would say to take from this is that you should only roleplay elements that might be a detriment to YOU, never something that could negatively influence the party or anyone else individually. It even set up a cool character moment where deep in the campaign, my barb had to accept healing from a non Druid because the party was almost finished, so you get this cool set piece of the barb accepting the heal, finishing the threat, and saving the party. He's realized there's something greater than fear and mistrust and it became a huge development milestone
If you, as a DM, have a PC who goes off by themselves, don't wait till their scene or whatever is "resolved" before moving on. One of your biggest powers as a DM is moving focus and controlling the pace of the game. So while one person is doing something, think in terms of action economy. It doesn't have to be one to one with combat, but think in terms of turns. Give everyone a turn. So if the lone ranger is off buying things, you do a couple back and forths, or a check to find the store, then you bounce around the table to see what everyone else is doing, then you bounce back. It keeps things going, everyone takes a turn (or passes) and no one feels left out.
That is precisely what the couple DMs in my group (they take turns so one is never stuck as forever DM) do and like you said it keeps things moving and makes sure everyone has a chance to do something.
1) Your character, in a game, should never limit what other people can do with theirs. "Sorry, no one can play a bard, because music sends my character into a blood rage, due to my designed background - an orc bard, 'Taylorc Swift' robbed my family and murdered them!" 2) "Dave" was 100% trying to provoke the other player, by provoking that player's character in game. I wouldn't be surprised if the player "Dave" had a crush on the girl playing the sorcerer, that the other guy was interacting with and building a closer bond in game with... Dave, trying to piss him off quite openly, screams 'jealous and petty'. The GM should never allow a character that imposes limits on other people.... if limits are to be imposed, it should be the GM that is imposing them, and it should be a part of the campaign affecting everyone equally. (Like the world I made that had a historical reason why there were no Halflings.- their disappearance was tied into the overarching story that would evolve) Also, a GM seeing this type of toxic interaction between players, and not recognizing it, or not caring, is not doing his job as a GM.
6:36 exactly what I was thinking. In the ad&d unearthed arcana, the barbarian class had a built-in fear of magic that the character would grow to overcome with level ups. I always loved that about the class. If I remember correctly, the earlier levels couldn't even use potions. There was a magic user in the group which by the end of the campaign who he had grown to be friends with.
Burning the spell book. To be clear it never should have been allowed to get to that point in the first place. It's like watching a steam roller come at you slowly and not moving lol. The stepmom story. yes that is exactly how real friends would be toward the guy. Giving him crap and teasing him lol. As for the flirting, yeah AWKWARD lol. She was certainly all in on the theater aspect. I am super glad it ended well with her being willing to dial it back in and not ACTUALLY trying to hook up with players etc.
Jacob, I have to disagree with you on Mageslayer being in the wrong at all. He asked the table and it was all established in the Session 0. If everyone agrees to the concepts at a Session 0 with one player actively liking the concept, and a player suddenly changes their mind and is antagonistic, it's not the Mageslayer who's in the wrong. NuWizard should have discussed the multiclass and how to proceed with the arc and trust magic rather than randomly turn antagonistic and butt in where he never was before. NuWizard had several warnings of what would happen, and could have even made an in character apology to Mageslayer, but instead he initiated PvP long after being told "Cast spells on me and I'll burn your book." NuWizard should have apologized, and offered his book as a peace offering, with Mageslayer setting his grudge aside for his companion. Of course, buildup beforehand would have needed to be different, but still.
12:26 sooo this story is really rough above table, but in character it sounds so interesting!! It would be frustrating as a wizard… but they did train in weapons… but the fighting level gap… this is ROUGH. I would try to be more adaptable in the wizard’s place, not reallly sure what else to say… but my gosh is it a good story.
26:22 I’m now imagining PC, his wife, Alice, and his dad sitting at the dinner table. Alice asks for the salt and PC responds in this way. No one else has any context. I need to see this happen
I agree with the guy who burned the spellbook. I think he can make that character work, and it sounded like he had growth planned, but the other dude is an absolute theater kid about it and ruining potential growth. I probably wouldn't have burned the book, but I would have checked him above the table. And PF2e is such a slog.
It's amazing that Paizo learned nothing from PF1 and 5e's huge success, and make the most pointlessly complicated system. Like why are skill feats even a thing? Why is it an interact to put my hand on a weapon?! Why are there full Vancian casters in this game despite casters being nerfed?!
the fact that he had 5 levels in ranger implies that he took the mage slayer feat long before dave took a level in mage, he checked with everyone in the group if they were fine with his character concept(and everyone was), dave was the only one being childish about the whole thing, heck if he wanted to play an arcane caster he should have just picked eldritch knight as a subclass instead of randomly deciding to take a level in wizard for no good reason
"For no good reason" is a key phrase here. We're given so few hints as to why Dave would go from a perfectly normal player in the first few sessions to so obviously wanting to frustrate OP specifically that it feels like OP is leaving something important out of the story.
@@softreyna I mean... wouldnt call a player that constantly betrays their own party and force them to lose actions mid battle to "convince" him with actual diplomacy rolls a "perfect normal player", but... If anything, the whole story seems like it could've been a good time but this kind of "I'll do dumb things because that's what my character would do" from Dave is the problem since the start.
@@albertonishiyama1980 Well, yeah, that's not the part where he's a perfectly normal player. The story says something like "for the first few sessions everything went great" and that's what I meant
@@softreyna - Some malicious troublemakers _do_ play cool for a while, to scope things out and see what they think they can get away with. Then they start pushing boundaries, until they find which ones give them the reactions they crave.
Holy crap, he looks like a person and not a pre-neckbeard! 11:30 Good. It's important to allow PvP when someone is being disruptive on purpose. In-game actions should have in-game consequences. Also, Impractical Jokers is hilarious.
Get some cool art with Displate here: displate.com/xptolvl3 (discount is automatically applied at the checkout) or use my code: XP for a discount!
new cut has you lookin like bling bling boy
No thanks man, displate hires AI "artists" for a lot of their stuff, so I'm definitely good without one.
Jaob you look so muh bttr with th hair ut, sorry som of th kys on my kyboar ar brokn, hop its not too har to unrstan
Good look on the haircut, Jacob!
For a great horror movie. Check out Smile.
Or some urban legend based japanese ones.
The last story is such an anime premise
"My Pirate Stepmom Flirted With Me in Another World!?"
🥇
This stepmom is also 3 years older than him 🤔🤔🤔
I'd watch this
Considering the entire story that is "Do You Like A Mother Whose Normal Attack Is A Double Hit On All Targets?",a step-mom DnD animated series would be awesome.
Right to the watchlist
"They have a crush on Jess."
The face Jacob made. The sudden realization. Suddenly everything is clear.
It accidentally paused at that moment so I thought the realization just broke Jacob
it doesnt seem like that at all tho, just simple pettiness
@@-...dj...-I can see Dave having a crush on her, but not really op
@@boopinoop4545 I did rather believe a person wouldn't completely change an rpg character concept instead of hitting someone up on insta or smth
@-...dj...- I'm gonna assume the genders of the players here, but you'd be absolutely flabbergasted by how far dudes will bend over backwards to pretend they're not having the emotional issues they are, in fact, very clearly having.
The immaturity of the two players (really the group as a whole), the somewhat pivotal nature of the opposing characters' relationship to the character the woman is playing, the fact the conflict bleeds over into real life... Yeah, it's not set in stone, but there's absolutely grounds to the theory these dudes are silently beefing over their lady friend, and neither have the emotional clarity to understand, let alone admit to it.
"What are you doing step-pirate?" that fkn cracked me up
Help! I'm stuck in this Mimic!
ah, I've seen this plot before
Bah dum dum Tsh dudum Tshhh
@@battery2720One Shot Questers made that same joke about Strahd
Fuckin right? I laughed so hard I started crying lmao
The person I feel the most for in that book burning story was the 4th party member: relegated so far to the sidelines on this group that we don't even get a class or pseudonym.
He's just a side character in the "Naruto-Sasuke" rivalry relationship of ranger and fighter.
Or you know OP posted the part that was relevant to the argument and #4 didn't interfere with other people's agency at the table either way and therefore gets no mention for being well behaved and Fing normal.
@@janschievink1586 i don't know why you responded in an offended tone to this. They said they felt bad for the fourth party member so why are you responding like they insulted them? Did you misread the post?
@@spiderbug7615 There being conspiratorial when the post literally doesn't say anything about what the fourth party member was doing presuming #4 was getting sidelined in the campaign because they didn't do anything relevant to the incident is silly.
@@janschievink1586 bro the funny part is you're projecting onto an unnamed stranger just as much as the others are
In the book burning thing, it was 80% Dave's fault IF the op was to be believed as is. It would be the equivalent of saying "Hey, I really don't like to be touched, so no handshakes or anything like that, cool?" and the party agreeing, only to have one of them that agreed point their finger super close to your face over and over saying "I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!" and then getting offended when you essentially hit them for doing it over and over. A crybully, if you will.
Except the provocation was... Lemme check: Using magic to clean someone else's armour which then got the totally equivalent action of attacking the character. Then threatening to burn Dave's spellbook for... using any sort of magic on OP, helpful or not. Shocking Grasp is as much an offence as Healing Word or Haste.
I'm not on Dave's side, he was petty af but OP was like "I don't like to be touched, so if you touch me then I will kill your dog".
@@mouthyschannel2474 1. They only burned the spellbook after the Wizard initiated PVP after the Ranger did the roleplay equivalent pf slapping the Wizard's hand away. They mentioned that the attack did no damage.
2. Shocking Grasp is in no way comparable to Haste or Healing Word, one does damage the other two heal or buff.
Exactly. Dave came in not liking op for some reason irl and decided to be an instigator in a game to roleplay irl conflict
@@mouthyschannel2474 Here's the thing though: The character's anti-magic stance was noted before the campaign even started and everyone agreed to it and acknowledged an said it wouldn't be a problem.
Dave comes in and *makes* it a problem. He suddenly takes an absurdist "Wizards can do nothing wrong" stance out of nowhere and takes a wizard class, even after being reminded about the other character in the party (And tried to bait out a fight in his reply as well.)
Dave gets a verbal warning that if he casts magic on the magic-hater, he's gonna face some REAL bad consequences.
Dave ignores *all of the above* and decides to poke the bear. The reaction might have been harsh, but if you're going to willfully ignore warning after warning after warning, then I'm not all that sympathetic when the consequence bus rolls into town. You may not agree with the proportionality of 'if you touch me I'll kll your dog'. But there were at least THREE different signs that TOLD everyone "If you touch me, I will kill your dog".
@@phazonmetroid1 Yea I don't really get why people are upset at OP when everyone was okay with his idea from the very start and everyone knew of it. I thought DnD is about freedom to make characters you want but suddenly mage hater is bad?
And it's all on Dave for ignoring every warning throughout entire campaign just to spite OP.
Level 1 wizard to presumably level 5 sorcerer: “hey baby’s how about I teach you a thing or two about magic 😉”
BG3 Gale-ass thing to say lol
Sorcerer have six spells at level 1, when wizard have 7. At level 7-10 of course wizard would have more spells but on low levels sorcerer spell list not so small.
@@_rpaqp_ wow u really did not get the point
@@_rpaqp_ This is what happens when you're too desperate to try and show off to the point you have no idea what the conversation is about
@@toolittletoolate they raise a valid point lmao, stfu
Spencer’s call on them crushing on the girl seems like a great read.
100% - Didn't see that at all, until she said so - now it's obvious lol
It's entirely possible even the players themselves (nor the DM) didn't see that.
I think that’s just collective ptsd lol.
I didn’t get that read, not every situation with 2 guys and 1 girl is a love triangle.
@ I think it explains the one guy dramatically changing position out of nowhere and trying to get closer to the girl while the first guy gets angry at him for it.
@@Unknown-qj9sm I’d understand that if they weren’t in their 20’s.
That’s like, 13yr old behaviour lol
Idk why people always assume everyone gotta be so horny haha but tbf, the Community is down bad.
HAIR JUMPSCARE
jumpsc hair
AH
@@LogCabinMusiclmao
They call him the drink
A hairscare?!?!
13:19 this problem was caused by Dave. He INTENTIONALLY did all of this to upset the Ranger. He got exactly what he asked for
EXACTLY OP litterally told dave if he casted a single spell on him he would burn the spell-book, Dave casted a spell and OP did the slash as a warning and Dave pushed it
As someone that does theater, the last story just sounds like someone who knows how to act with someone who doesn't. For actors, it is easy to remove the situations from real life. Even the physical touch part. That's something that we do in improv or scenes. It comes with the territory. I think the step mom didn't see it as an issue because was used to being able to remove themselves from the given circumstances. Something OP wasn't able to do without theater training.
Late reply but 100%, this is someone able to compartmentalize IC vs OOC. He wasn't her stepson, he was a character interacting with her character and that's all it was to her. Lowkey actually means she was probably on another level to them as a player (in the storytelling/RP avenue).
Being surrounded by a family of theater kids, 100%. Definitely sounds like OP in that story just wasn't familiar/aware of how invested actors will get into a character. Despite not being a theater kid myself, it's actually something I really admire and strive for in my own RP~
Well, and also she's his step-mom. I feel like maybe he could've maintained the separation if she weren't a family member, but she was.
@@NoriMori1992 One time me and my sister got cast as characters that shared a romantic relationship. That sort of thing is normal in acting.
@@sammco6704 But you signed up for that. He didn’t.
Ngl, I went into mageslayer fully expecting them to be the AH, but I absolutely came around
I don't like if they were specifically limiting other ppls class choices, but this felt more like they said "hey, this is my concept, will this bother anyone or should i switch?", then when Jess wanted to play sorc they took the reasonable route of "this could be the roleplay dynamic between us, would that work for you?"
Even when Dave took a level in wizard, mage slayer was just like "remember i dont do well with arcanists" but they continued trying to make it work and just saying, keep that magic off me and youll be fine
Burning the spellbook was probably too far, but after having another player explicitly breach consent by casting a spell, then continuing to escalate it from rp to fullblown pvp, i really cant feel bad for the guy who had to face consequences for pushing buttons repeatedly
Yeah the take on that one... rubbed me hella wrong. However you feel about the character concept itself, the OP didn't DO anything to Dave's character up until Dave quite literally assaulted OP. Unwanted touch is assault, just like unwanted magic (that you have REPEATEDLY SAID NOT TO FUCKING DO) is assault. You DO NOT do that shit to another player's character, especially when they both in and out of character have warned and asked you to not do that. After that, what happens to your character is the result of your stupid consequences.
Would these people shitting on OP feel the same way if the OP was simply anti-rogue and someone who showed no interest in being a rogue suddenly dipped into it and started constantly stealing stuff, helping baddies steal stuff or trying to excuse the baddies stealing, and also 'jokingly' showing off the things they'd stolen right in front of them? AND OBVIOUSLY ONLY DOING THIS TO ANTAGONIZE THE OP, even when it is not anything their character had ever been interested in before and had no reason to be doing? And then to further antagonize the anti-rogue, they proceeded to repeatedly steal things FROM THEM? And after being told both in and out of character that if they ever dared steal from them again they'd beat the shit out of them they PROCEEDED TO STEAL FROM THEM AGAIN? Obviously you'd deserve the goddamn consequences at that point, so why is this any different just because it's "anti arcane magic"?
Also burning the spell book was not as big a loss as the rest of the party who are mad made it out to be. he had a level one spellbook- he has four levels in fighter to work with until he can remake his spellbook. dave is not totally crippled as a character.
Dude very clearly said “if you cast a spell on me, your book goes in the fire”. Dave said “bet”, and now here we are. Seems like a perfectly reasonable cause and event that was built up to through established roleplay. Player emotions aside, I don’t think anybody acted unreasonably, and everyone stayed true to their characters. The game has rules for allowing a wizard to replace their spell book for a reason. And if Dave was still a level 1 wizard when that happened, he probably didn’t lose many spells in the first place.
14:15 I disagree, the idea of a character who loathes magic due to his cultural upbringing is an unbelievable idea for a character. He had checked with everybody beforehand and they all said he was good. Dave knew what he was getting into and instigated it from the beginning.
Yea I feel like they skipped over that and just went , well don’t play dnd this way, feels like they loath the Idea of conflict and growth
Yeah, gotta say it was pretty telling that their opinion on that story was already set in stone when they went on a rant about this being a character that needs to be cleared with the group, then when they got two whole sentences into the story and it was shown that he *did* clear it, they tried to excuse it as “well technically they didn’t all say they were okay with it just that it didn’t matter to them!” and acting like burning the spellbook of the Fighter4/Wizard1 is somehow crippling to him.
@@Hunter-sw3rl that seems to be a a common take with ttrpg players; they want growth but only as much conflict as to not have real ramifications.
Yeah They both seems to ignore the fact that the players were fine
Yeah, I agree. The trope of a character who loathes magic already existed in D&D itself - back in 3e, I remember a prestige class for barbarians where the whole idea was that they hated magic, were superstitious against it, and you couldn't allow yourself to have magic willingly cast on you. In fact, if I remember correctly, you got spell resistance against all magic and *couldn't* lower it for helpful magic. And it went so far as to the character not having magic items - they had to *destroy* magic items to gain their powers.
And, of course, it hinders fun and interesting growth of the characters. Like you said, the player okayed the character concept with the group - if anyone was planning on playing a magic character, *that was the time to raise the issue*. Dave completely instigated *everything* in that story, just to get at OP, kept needling him. And like someone else said...losing your spellbook, especially in 5e, isn't that disastrous. And he was warned against it to begin with, with the exact threat of "If you cast magic on me, I'll destroy your spellbook". Cause and effect.
At the start of the story, the warrior character sounded like he'd be a problem player, but I was pleasantly surprised to find he played it well and reasonably respectfully. It would have been poor behavior on the player's part to attack the wizard or destroy his spellbook as soon as he multiclassed into wizard, but he didn’t. He set boundaries and said 'just don't cast spells on me!' A very modest request which the other player did not respect. When a prank was played on his character with magic, his reaction was violent, but the player used it as a character moment and did not inflict harm. It was a warning shot. So when the wizard full on attacked him with magic and said he did want to have pvp, I would not have had any problem with the warrior decapitating the wizard at the end of combat. Instead, he just burned his spellbook. Restrained and appropriate considering he'd already used that threat as part of his boundary-setting warning which the wizard had violated. Making a new spellbook would be time-consuming and expensive, but doesn’t permanently cut that player off from regaining access to those class features eventually. If anything, it'd be good lesson in not poking a sleeping bear by screwing around in ways that deliberately tick off other prople at the table. I give the warrior a thumbs up for his actions in this situation.
Yeah, the DM was making no real attempt at curbing the wizard's instigating behavior, even after the other players started complaining to him above table about it. OP had to do something with genuine consequences if he had any chance at getting the nagging to stop.
Dude f'd around, and he found out. From an outside perspective, I actually think the fresh faced wizard having to grumpily replace his spellbook in a party that distrusts his new class is actually really good storytelling too - but the player instead resorts to whining.
Yep. Dave was a bully, fucked around and found out. He should have been booted from the group the moment he started trolling OP, in the first place. Jacob's take honestly pisses me the fuck off because it shows him to be a bully, just like Dave. He's piling on the _victim_ for a frankly well measured response. What a fucking douchebag he is.
@Soulessblur And also really what is the Ranger supposed to do in this situation otherwise? The DM didn't step in to stop it, he didn't instigate beyond saying not to do that and the Fighter doing it anyway, and he followed through on his established claim of what he would do in this situation.
14:28
It didn’t hinder the game at all until Dave decided to antagonize OP.
Yeah somehow they both miss that cause "muh muh...muh magic"
@@lordpepper6932 This reminds me of a bad take from Critcrab regarding a stolen healing item where like these two they decided on a villain of the story at the beginning of the story and ignore anything that say otherwise.
They will ignore and downplay anything the person they don't deem the "villain" does while going after the "Villain" for any small thing or even for not doing stuff that the "Villain" even said they did in the story.
The part that genuinly peeved me is them going whatever to the Wizard betraying the party and forcing them to make checks to convince them to stop fighting against them.
No wonder they were all into the step-mom, she’s basically the same age as them
yeah I'm shocked that wasn't brought up, he calls her his stepmum but she could just as easily be his sister or schoolfriend!
Yeah, there's like what, 4-year difference between the OP and the 'step-mom'? wtf
Bill & Ted, Missy vibes 😂
Bro got tha Future Trunks hair cut, Jacob is now The Drink
a beverage of sorts?
when he was the kid, they called him the juice box
They looked at his liquidity and at his rizz
Does that make the Wizard the Cup?
a beverage of sorts
12:20 shitty situation, but if someone says "if you do A, I will do B" and then you proceed to do A, you don't get to complain when they follow through on doing B
Regarding burning the spellbook: OP said he would do it, he was simply following through on a clear and credible threat. Dave brought it on himself.
it just seems like Dave is that guy who thinks he's playfully insulting his friends then wonders why nobody wants to hang with him
To be fair, being antagonistic towards arcane magic is absolutely D&D. Back in like 1e, it was called the barbarian who couldn't use magic and actually got XP for destroying magical artifacts.
God, the step mum story... I want the ground to swallow me and it didn't even happen to me!
I got the ick when he was the same age as his step mom. And then it got worse.
tbf I suspect it didn't happen to anyone
I would die 😭
Regarding the Dave magic hater story: My first impression was that this might have been a setting thing, since Jess' sorcerer also viewed her powers as a curse. I suspect that the setting was set up so that arcane magic is generally considered evil. With Jess willingly playing a sorcerer who is avoiding using her magic, it really seems like that was a core idea that was okay with the group.
There's probably more missing context, but assuming everything at face value I would say that the orc player should have gotten with the other players and set up some kind of more believable in story reason for his character to start becoming a wizard and to roleplay that aspect of it harder rather than just seeming like they did it to spite Dave.
Besides, losing a lvl1 spellbook at character lvl 5 is hardly a big deal
I also thought this. A lot of things like tribes that hate arcane magic, enemies that are all specifically spellcasters convincing them to join their side, and the choice to pick the mage slayer feat all seem like things specific to the setting.
No hate at all to Jacob whatsoever, but they went into the story questioning the player as much as possible, to the point where basic stuff they say like “talk to the players about this” is just actually brought up later by the writer. It feels like they jump the gun on a lot of their criticisms.
Even though they acknowledge that something they said is brought up, they make it about “hating Dave” rather than what might actually be happening.
Some of that is the nature of reaction content; you want to give your gut reaction the moment you get it so that you're not sitting there quietly reviewing something to give a super correct and thought out response at the end...
that's a different kind of video
Yeah that entire story Jacob seemed extremely baised against this guy's character for no reason? Like straight up dave does something really inconvienient for the party and its literally "whatever". Not to mention apparently dave openly explaining he hated mages to his entire party and them all not objecting wasn't ENOUGH clarification according to Jacob, and he needed to further elaborate on specific clauses like picking a mage class later down the line? Like screw off i main wizard/necromancy in like every dnd and I see nothing wrong with mageslayer, dave is just being a prick.
@@commiterror404irl5 It wasn't for no reason, like Jacob mentioned a lot of details about his character would otherwise traditionally be gigantic red flags in any more traditional campaign. And considering that it's an AITAH story on Reddit, people usually leave out small details and paint the scenario to make them look as great as possible to garner sympathy.
Or it's entirely made up like a lot of the AITAH stories on Reddit are, and it's intentional to get people to argue about assumptions in the comments, Reddit has gotten pretty good at content farming over the years.
@@RutilusMonachus I mean sure but my issue is with his reaction regardless of the validity of this information, he said "whatever" to dave trying to talk with the evil necromancer they were fighting and wasting turns while nobody else was doing that, and I'm sure if mageslayer did this same thing against some anti-mage opponent Jacob would be on his case.
I am 110% on the side of the Magic hating Ranger.
They had been willing to play with the guy who became a wizard so it's not like they were blocking them. They kept playing/parting with the wizard despite constantly using magic showing they were willing to rp this.
They did not attack them when they became a wizard and destroyed there spell book, instead it was only after they had metaphorically been backed into a corner that they did so. They had sworn that if they cast a spell on them they would retaliate, then the wizard went out of their way to cast a spell on the Ranger. It could not be played of as a accident or that the wizard did not know what would happen.
If it was me and after all that the DM turned around and said 'No you didn't' about burning the spell book I'd be PISSED. They let it reach that stage and only then stepped in to turn Ranger into a lier would suck.
I like spellcasters so not really a shoe in this fight but I still stand with Ranger in this case.
I also disagreed with their take. Magic is really important in DND but I think it's a super interesting character IF everyone was okay with it, which they were in the beginning. It seemed like, before Dave started shit, it had really interesting character work and implications.
It would have also been really cool if Dave started trying to kickstart character development in a way that Wizard Hater agreed with, that could have been super cool for the story too. But Dave decided to start shit in-game and get upset when there were consequences. You don't spell a wizard-phobic asshole who has threatened you before!! Something's gonna happen.
The magic hating guy didn't try to PvP Dave when Dave became a Wizard or when Dave would constantly use magic to annoy his character. Even though his character hated wizards he found a way to still adventure with one. All he wanted was for him not to cast any magic on him, which Dave couldn't be bothered to respected and so cast a completely meaningless cleaning spell on him for no good reason. It seems like Dave just thought it was fun to constantly undermine the guy and antagonize him at every opportunity. Dave was clearly being the problem player. Dave even used the "its what my character would do" defense to justify why he was doing shitty stuff to the party. I wouldn't have even let him take any levels in being a Wizard because he said his character was not smart and that he wouldn't be playing a wizard. I might have let Dave be some other type of caster but certainly not the one that is literally based on being intelligent and definitely not after Dave used being dumb as a defense for his previous actions.
Yeah if I had been the DM then I would have made Dave stick to the "my character is dumb" and not allow a multiclass into a caster class until Dave did something in-game to increase his intelligence. However as DM I would not have let the player pull the "my character is dumb" card to begin with in the scenario outlined in the story and would have out of character told them to stop being disruptive to the rest of the party. There are ways people can play a character that may not be aligned with the rest of the party but you have to be careful how you go about it. Dave just seemed to want to cause pain.
Dave sounds like he got an itch to be a troll, and decided to full send it halfway into the campaign 😂😂😂
Regarding the Mage-slayer story:
Generally, "I hate arcane magic" is going to be a problematic personality trait for most tables, but this table appears to have been willing to test it out. "I mistrust arcane magic" is a lot easier to work with, and could easily be what mageslayer meant, but we can't know for certain.
But Dave? Dave took actions specifically to be annoying. Abstaining from combat against a random wizard because "They're smarter than me" is immensely flimsy - especially if there is not extreme amoral lust for power in the character, there's no reason to betray the party for a stranger - and blocks party cohesion. Moreover, taking a late level in Wizard like that is transparently motivated by a desire to stir shit. Which was made evident when he non-consensually cast Prestidigitation. Jumping straight to a violent outburst without one final warning isn't a decision I like, though. Nor is destroying the spellbook. OP ought not have done either of those things.
But really it was up to them to (say it with me now) communicate with one another. Like. Who woulda guessed.
That "violent outburst" was without damage, though. That *was* the final warning. It was ignored.
I agree, except on the last bits. Damage wasn't dealt, that *was* the final warning, and Dave decided to keep anyways and is the one that started the actual PvP(I've done that before as well, where my character threatened another's briefly, and I've had it done to my characters before too, each situation never went farther than that, but it also didn't include any OOC reasoning or pestering). OP may have been a little childish occasionally, but it doesn't seem like they forced the personality trait on anyone, they asked about it above table, and everyone didn't have a problem with it until Dave started acting up randomly.
I agree that burning the book was petty AF, but, I'm also petty AF, I probably would've done the same. Doesn't make it right, but, dude also kinda had it coming when Dave was blatantly trying to stir shit
@@xpandorasboxx Whether or not damage was dealt isn't exactly my point. Moreso that leveraging a feat to perform an attack - even with the caveat it will be a damageless attack - is going to come off as "asshole behaviour", at least some of the time. Its not the biggest problem, as it didn't do anything but express OP's character's anger. But it does come across as adversarial, and isn't a decision *I* would make.
I absolutely agree Dave had the spellbook burning coming, though. On an emotional level, 100% deserved. But having characters be mechanically hurt in that way is also pretty rough.
@@smefgrimstae7845The deciding factor for me is that he was warned that his spellbook would be burned if he cast a spell on the dude, and then escalated it to a duel.
considering the sorceror seemed to be his best friend i have no issue with "I hate arcane magic" because it never crossed over into "I hate arcane mages" until dave intentionally tried to make that happen.
What in God's name is going on in that second story!? What in the hell. Spencer's idea of them both crushing on Jess makes a lot of sense though. I woulda never thought of that.
Love Jacob's expression when she mentioned that.
it makes so much sense, especially if these are high school aged kids or something
I had a look at the thread because it really did sound like petty teenagers, and...
"I'm 19, Jess and Dave are both 22.
We're all just friends."
@@Tachii31 Yep, that all checks out then.
I assumed that was the case for the Fighter but I wasn't sure about the Ranger.
I was like there’s no reason burning another player’s spell book is ever acceptable and then I heard the context and I was like oh. You know what. That’s kind of fair. I think Dave shouldn’t have been mad. He was told what would happen if he did that. There’s still ways to continue the story after that. It’s just one level in Wizard. “Dave becomes an annoying wizard partway into the adventure and then loses his spellbook in an act of hubris and goes back to being a fighter” is a storyline.
I clock Dave's type immediately. Granted we don't get his side of the story so there's a good chance I'm wrong, but I've been in a game w/that type of play. OP is at least looking for reasonable in-party tension & giving lots of warnings (tho there should've been OOC warnings and discussion too), but dave is only looking to be a Hero™ against something he IRL thinks is deplorable, instead of considering the other player at the table.
I was in a game where me & the only other player were both paranoid & picked a fight w/someone who we were wrongfully fearful of, next session 2 new players showed up, saw us attacking the guard, and immediately attacked us. We let it happen for a while but didn't want to die (or kill them), so OOC we stopped the fight & said we should stop. They cried "IT'S WHAT MY CHARACTER WOULD DO!1!1!!!!" so we were like, ok, let's find a way for the fight to be _interrupted_ long enough for us to talk, but they whined & refused & said our characters HAD to die for doing something ~unforgivable~. That's Dave's type. he doesn't want the party to have fun, he just wants to lord over his Moral Righteousness over another pc he's deemed bigoted w/out caring about the player behind it.
OP should have stopped & talked OOC, made sure he knew the spellbook threat was Real, discussed being uncomfortable w/his behavior, and worked out a solution. But tbh there's ways to save a spellbook. if the 4th player was so mad their character could've done something to get it out. the DM could've had it rain. they could've made a quest out of getting a replacement. but there's nothing that can save that petty pushing another player into a corner like that. IC problems (spellbook) are easily solved w/imagination & creativity; the spellbook isn't REAL. the players are, so OOC pettiness is the worse problem, hands down.
it sounds like there was OOC discussion and not just from OP but from the entire party on multiple occasions, unless im misinterpretation what was said.
@@outcastedOpal what I mean is before it becomes a serious problem, pulling the guy aside and saying "Hey, this is making me really uncomfortable. let's discuss what we want to have happen in this game and plan how we should handle our respective characters."
@@Pinkstarclan yeah i got the impression thats what happened no? asside from him clearing his character concept in session 0, the whole part talked to him about siding with evil wizards, Op talked to him about how its totally fine that hes a wizard now but to remember not to push boundaries, and even when the characters started
pvp, it seemed that he told the party that he didnt want pvp to happen until Dave sorta pressured him into it.
@@outcastedOpal it didn't read to me like they talked past the intro until the problem happened, but I suppose that's the downside of these AITA posts: only 1 side of the story, always leaving out details & letting a lot be inferred
i obviously dont have the full context of the situation you mentioned, but i wouldve had the guard arrest all four of the PCs for disorderly conduct and put them in jail. hopefully that'd give everyone in-universe some time to cool off and an excuse to figure each other out without knifing each other, like when you introduce dogs to each other from opposite sides of a locked gate or something. (then everyone gets bailed out by a significant NPC, or you can have a session where everyone has to work together to break themselves out)
I back the ranger, they triple checked, they make sure, and they give warning, twice. Once when the fighter level up, and then when threating burning the spellbook. And then the wizard takes the first initiative, and they only defend.
Short Hair Jacob and Long Hair Spencer is the spookiest thing today
It's like Freaky Friday......but on a Thursday 😂
ZOMG - you're right - 100% reversal complete!
One of my favorite characters that I played that is dangerously close to that trope of hating magic was a barbarian who didn't believe magic was real. It was really fun because I had to come up with excuses why all the casters in the party were actually just trying to trick me
@@BlakesGamez Did this once on a Marvel-Like game.
My character was an detective that was sure that everything happening was some Conspiration Theory and everyone excpet him was brainwashed.
... having extreme luck on dices against super powers and only taking damage from guns surelly didnt help. The RNG Deities wanted the mf'er with his Tinfoil Hat.
Your character was basically Hercule from DragonBall Z and I love that, even down to the tricks part
I'm in a Vaesen campaign (magical creatures in 19th-century Sweden) and my character is basically this. He's an Irish businessman with a traumatic backstory related to the Vaesen so he chooses to believe they don't exist, and I get to come up with all sorts of wacky reasons why the very clearly supernatural things that happen actually aren't supernatural at all.
DAT MAGIC HAND JUST FLOATS WITH STRINGS!!!
YOU JUST THREW A BURNING BOTTLE OF ALCOHOL AT THAT GUY, THAT'S NOT A FIREBALL... wait we did buy some Fireball whiskey, maybe it was a fireball
I was in a campaign as a wizard, the half-orc barbarian had a deep distrust of magic despite being a totem barbarian and the other half was elf, making him an inherently magical character. It was fun
Playing devil's advocate for OP in the second story: I feel like it'd be pretty hard to have a character arc about learning to accept magic when between the only two magic users in the party one thinks it's a curse and the other is being openly antagonistic and unhelpful.
Five levels is enough for someone to get over their bs
@@themenagerie5247 could have started at level 3 or 4
@@themenagerie5247 "five levels is enough" acting like you know how many sessions were between those levels lmao
@themenagerie5247 Is that official, or buried in a UA somewhere? "If a character's arc isn't resolved by the time they reach level 5, that arc can never be resolved, and the character must leave the party and retire from adventuring, as their personal growth is now a Lost Cause (tm)."
@@themenagerie5247yeah. Like Dave could have
I'm not a DnD player myself so I don't know how big of a deal losing a spellbook is (or can be), but as a man of my word, I would feel dishonest not to act according to my previously made threat once the conditions are met in spades. I might still help repairing the damage done afterwards, though, as an act of good will.
It costs like ~100 gold and a day of scribing to replace a level 1 spellbook. It's not a "permanent crippling" of the character in any way. I completely agree.
11:21 I love this. Love the RP. (I usually don't allow pvp; haven't allowed it yet) I think as far as pvp goes, this isn't too bad. Especially at such a low wizard level, they probably lost only a couple spells at most. Dave is 100% in the wrong, the writer is 20% in the wrong.
Taking Mageslayer OP's story at face value, they had a character concept, they checked with the group, no one disagreed about it and the one sorcerer said it would work out well with their character concept, and the antagonistic player was purely toxic and combative the entire time. Unless there's a ton of missing context, OP does not seem like the asshole. But agreed, they shouldn't play together. They clearly don't like each other, otherwise they'd just talk about it.
Dave choosing to take a level in Wizard instead of Fighter 5 seemed like it was specifically done to piss OP off.
Throwing the spellbook into a fire was also a threat from several sessions prior, so even that was justified. Fair warning is fair warning!
Definitely seems like an ESH, but yeah, at face value, it seems like Dave was specifically trying to get under OP’s skin and was shocked when OP followed through
The biggest offense is Dave being upset. I personally love creating characters that can rub other PCs the wrong way because of their strong opinions. When you take on that role as an aggravator for a group, it can really spice up roleplay but you can't get upset when things don't play out in your favor. It's the position you've put yourself in to roll a boulder uphill, against the grain, and if you can't handle the boulder rolling back down with grace then you shouldn't have started rolling it up in the first place.
I actually think that what Spencer said may be kinda accurate. At least partially. OP may not have had a crush on the sorcerer, just liked the character connection, but fuckin Dave may have been jealous of that connection, whether above table or between characters, and was clearly seeking group focus with the combat interruptions prior.
Like, thats one thing that I actually think was the DM's fault here, that should have been talked out above table. Playing dumb in every encounter and trusting obvious badguys all the time cause lulzrandum is disruptive and dumb. Whether this is just how the guy plays, or because they were jealous of the attention OP had from the start and just kept escalating? Who knows. Could be either honestly.
But I agree, unless there is loads of missing context(there oculd be, OP *could* be a dick and be misrepresenting things), Dave is 100% at fault and OP is justified in burning the spellbook. It was a direct clarified threat and Dave had every opportunity to back down after the first exchange. DM also should have stepped in here, pvp over clear out of table pettiness is stupid, but regardless Dave is definitely an instigator.
That third story brings back WILD memories about theatre classes, and I genuinely miss theatre.
For the record. Alice is 100% a theatre kid.
Like this was just how it worked when I was in theatre. We're all actors, we're all comfortable with each other, we do all kinds of stuff. We understand not to take things too far, but, other peoples' boundaries are WAY different than ours. So, that's a really interesting story, and puts things into perspective for me!
@@LaughingThesaurusYeah acting out romantic scenes is incredibly common, but if you're not used to that, it could be extremely awkward 😂
@@ratoh1710 With your stepmom in front of your friends no less.
Yeah, the way she didn't realize why the guy was uncomfortable until he points it out is gold. Like, for her she is just "doing what her character would do", and she even made her character completely based on what she knew of the game based on a campaign she saw, so it's not like she created a flirty character because she loves it, but because that was her information on how the game plays out. It is just so funny watching the guy get extremely uncomfortable because Alice was immersing herself completely and he wasn't. Like, if you create a character that loves to flirt and they get deeply inspired by someone else, it is a classic trope that they will start learning "true love", so she was playing this out. It makes so much sense, but also sounds deeply embarrassing for someone who can't dissociate from the character too much like the guy.
@@TunaHorns The way you phrase it makes it sound like it's his fault.
It's only normal to have a harder time fully immersing when you're in an awkward situation. It's not as simple as him not dissociating enough.
Jesus, the step-mom story... I laughed so hard I feel like someone beat me up 🤣🤣
With the spellbook story, I feel like if the wizard wasn't constantly pushing them, they might have had a character arc involving trusting magic, but in the end they set clear lines in the sand, asked permission before hand, and played their character as well as they could in the circumstance. Rule one of life is f around find out, and the wizard kept "flicking" him, he was bound to find out
With the 1st story... It was just a level 1 spellbook. Ranger made the threat and everyone was okay with the character creation, and he was given ample warning and intentionally antagonized the Ranger in game and in the table. The Spellbook absolutely should have burned. There was no reason for it to not burn, the Wizard/Fighter absolutely should accept the consequences of what he did, and rebuild his petty spellbook.
0:11 you can't fool me, you're both fully dressed up - gold dragons in disguise!
Do they look like yellow canaries to anyone else?
ok lemme cast Trueseeing real quick…
oh shit
"Remember when I asked your mom to the prom?" "Shut up, Ted!" - Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, 1989
Bless you for that deep cut. 😆
The second story.
It's also a matter of consent. Op told the new wizard dont cast magic on me and the wizard ignored that. That alone is not okay. Nvm him multiclassing just to piss Op off.
About the dave story: Dave's just in the wrong.
From what op described it gave this weird vibe that "Dave the player" related a bit too much to "Dave the character" (those players that just have a hard time not mixing ), and when he saw op and jess interacting and roleplaying got a little jealous and wanted to do this "love triangle twilight esque" bs but began going too far cause he actually wanted to annoy op (beyond just "oh were having fun with this lil rivalry" thing).
The constant use of magic at every unnecessary moment knowing op's character's distaste for arcane and incesant pestering of Jess to "come to his side" might be fun as a bit of a bit (ha) and overall as a trope, but as someone who has hanged with the sthereotypical nerd, I feel op was most likely being sincere in how exagerated that was and probably dave was doing some type of "in-game showing off your superiority to a potential irl mate" strategy.
Regardless of all that, he had been constantly warned time and time again and KNEW about the feat. If he actually cared so much about his speelbook he should be no putting it at risk just to be a bully. He freaked around and found out, simple as that.
"I dont think he should have burned the spellbook"
Wizard bias showing
Burning a wizards spellbook is a unforgivable crime.
@@stargateproductions Not in a world where people don't like magic :3
@conquer535 I don't main wizards because of this inherent issue
@@stargateproductions is it common that people make worlds that dislike magic?
I thought it'd be pretty rare tbh (an avid dnd lurker but not player lol)
@@conquer535 It's not super common but I preferer sorcerers to wizards because of their meta magic.
In our Strength of Thousands game, my friend rolled up with a Matanji Orc (known to hunt demons and demon worshippers). Hearing this, I pitched. Beykar Tiefling (known to worship "demons" (actually devils)). Its been fun being snarky and learning to cooperate in character, but outside of some occasional AoE damage, we've never hurt or worked against each other. The story with the burned spellbook could have been such a fun arc for both characters, but they squandered it, imo.
PF2e gang rise up!
The post is probably biased for sure, but yeah, if I was at a table with opposed/frictional character concepts like that I'd be checking in after every session to make sure things are going well. Character friction can be great if it's two players agreeing to put their Dudes in Situations but it sounds like this was intended specifically to tweak noses across the table.
Honestly, Dave is way more in the wrong in the spellbook burning post than OP. Obviously neither are entirely justified, but setting aside character choices, it really feels like Dave was doing it all just to get on OP's nerves? Like, OP's character idea was problematic, but he expressly went out of his way before the game started to ensure that it wouldn't be a problem for anyone at the table. The issue was arcane magic, and the only person playing an arcane caster had a viewpoint that aligned with his in a way that made for a compelling dynamic. Nobody else planned on playing one, so the issue would only be relegated to OP's characters having a heavy distrust of certain NPCs - which isn't a gamebreaking issue.
And then, after OP cleared this with the rest of the group, Dave decides to make his character multi-class into Wizard and use spells in suspiciously high frequency, even down to having his character be so lax with it as to break another characters' boundaries in terms of magic. The whole thing, including his attempted dynamic with Jess, feels really forced - especially if Jess was having as many problems with it as OP, and from the sounds of it she was. It feels like Dave wanted to retroactively change his character to be OP's character's foil without clearing that with the rest of the group, and couldn't pick up the hint that it was a bit forced and a lot more antagonistic - both in and out of character - than it probably seemed.
Intentionally and openly doing something that violates boundaries, that were explicitly established and weren't outlandish, is too much. At most I could tell OP "dude, probably don't make a character that full of hate" but to Dave it's just "aight, go fuck right off"
Ye but also the dude wrote it. So you know I mean ye, Dave is questionable in his status the dude who wrote it is guaranteed immature.
No winners in that story.
@@stevefilms1997 If you start making it about the validity of the post rather than its content you've lost the plot you might as well conclude the whole thing's fiction designed to rile you up and not interact with it at all.
@@EnraiChannel as its written the writer is 100% in the right and dave is 100% in the wrong
obviously we dont know all sides, but considering the 2/3 of the other people sided with the guy doing the book burning, including the DM, while the 1/3 people who didnt, didnt because they just thought it was harsh, im VERY inclined to believe the writer is at least mostly truthful
12:25 i think the Dave player is in the wrong. The guy seems like a "it's just a prank bro" type dude who likes to push buttons. He keeps pushing, until someone pushes back, then gets all offended when someone follows through on a warning they gave him. Yeah, mechanically it was kinda crippling, but story-wise, OPs character sounds like they'd do that. They warned everyone ahead of time, everyone was chill with it, then Dave started to be a douche. Idk, maybe he did have a crush on jess, and was low key jealous OP had all these rp interactions with her. Or had some weird vendetta against OP, idk, idk these people. Either way, the dm should have probably stepped in early like Spencer said and made sure everyone was doing all of this sincerely and didn't have issues with what's been going on above table. So, no, OP is not the asshole. Imo
YTA make paragraphs stay in school
@@1Peasant bro cant read
@@calebwithrow4250 bro doesnt know how to meaningfully engage in analysis
I think I agree with the burning of the spellbook. For one thing, he has one whole level as Wizard. He lost like 4 spells at most and only has 2 slots right now anyway. Plus, he has been deliberately instigating, poked the bear and got bit, and reaped the EXACT repercussion the character SAID they would do. I don’t think for a second that Dave was right there, and I think OP was in the right. You willingly chose to do something you knew another player was directly against, flaunted it in his face while he warned you not to, and cried when you got your reward? Yeah, don’t be a stupid big dawg. You did this to yourself.
spellbook one:
- it wasn't a spellbook he had invested a ton into, it was a lvl 1 spellbook, so he didn't lose a ton other than the time and gold it would take to make a new one
- it was a consequence his character explicitly stated would occur in game if his character's in game boundaries were violated
- this character trait was discussed well before anyone came to the table, and the other character wasn't even a wizard until it had been on display for an extended period
There was not really anything wrong with this. The other player intentionally wanted to cause friction with not only his choice to be that well after the fact, but then also explicitly violating the one boundary that the op had that would allow this friction to exist without there being any real consequences. Them being upset that his character didn't suddenly not have any of the traits he always had/not being 100% ok with his only boundary being violated is on him.
OP was absolutely in the right in the mageslayer story, dozens of warnings, had everyone agree about everything before he started, had a storyline ongoing only for Dave to start needling for no reason.
And for the people saying that OP couldn't work with wizards at all and that was bad for RP, the fact that Dave got the level for it AND was trying to convince the girl player to do more magic AND was constantly casting magic for everything and OP was tolerating all of it shows that OP was even going against character to keep the party together, and still had it in him to warn Dave one last time only to be the one to get damaged by him first.
Dave changed the nature of the agreement first, Dave kickstarted the provocation and was the one doing it the most, Dave was the one who started counter RPing OP's own storyline with the Sorceror for no understandable reason (though it was probably jealousy) and it was Dave who did damage first.
That said, OP also should have had a frank talk about it above board, probably should have brought the DM into it more and DM should have been putting his foot down to minimize pvp and player sabotage.
13:10 I will allow pvp to happen at my tables given all problems are in character. If two people start pvp and they clearly have beef I stop it.
IF the action had been done without the pettiness I’d have allowed it. It takes time but you can remake a spell book and from strictly a in character perspective. “Hey don’t use magic on me” *Uses magic on him* “I warned you” is completely justified.
I think a good rule of thumb is if both sides are okay with either outcome then PVP is fine. If one player is going to be upset if the other player wins then it's a lose lose situation and should be talked out OOC.
“Do you want salt or a reallll deep connection” is CRAZY to hear as any bystander without context
Second Story: I feel like OP's character is justified, specifically for the reason of "it's what my character would do", as awful as that may sound. This is a character that, from the start, has stated that he hates magic to everyone, in and out of game, and then another member of the group decides to worship and eventually become an arcane caster, seemingly specifically to rile this guy up. Like, everything Dave did seemed to be to push OP's character's buttons. Him throwing the spellbook into the fire seems like a thing that a guy who hates magic and is pissed off in the moment would do. Also, the fact that Dave's immediate response to OP's character flinching and swinging at a spellcaster for using a spell on him is to outright attack him just sort of shows Dave's hand, that the entire point of this game, to him, is to frustrate OP into fighting him for some reason. I do agree that these are two people that shouldn't play together in a group.
Imagine going to your DM like "I swear to god if the next inn we go to doesn't have enough beds for each of us I'm gonna flip this table."
As someone who DM's a family campaign (my parents, my sister, and her husband, we started in the first year of COVID as a way to stay in touch), I have (at multiple points) ended up flirting with all of my family members in some capacity, and that changes you. I didn't steer them into it, they all took it there on their own, but that doesn't make it any easier XD
Just move to Alabama. It will be allright.
Geschichten aus dem Saarland
Interesting…
Nah, nah y'all. Dave and the ranger was pure game gold. I would allow that all day, but they need to know they in game not outside. So many stories from my game group where my wizard grew in power way over the party's cleric. My CN character loved to torment him, eventually leading to his death, reincarnation and death again. Long story. But outside of the game we are best of friends, and it made forever memorable stories for the whole group. Just reading along with that story was awesome, the way the guy wrote it was worth every penny.
I was worried about where the stepmom story was going when it started with "my stepmom is 3 years older than me".
The thing I think a lot of people are missing about the AITA story is that everything was fine until Dave started making weird and disruptive decisions like antagonizing other party members, siding with evil wizards who were actively attacking them, and lying about his stats to brush off why his character was doing these things. I can't say if Dave's reasoning for those decisions might have been at all justified, as we don't know what he was thinking since OP either also didn't know, or didn't include that information, but at the end of the day, one player was being a nuisance, and the other retaliated only after his warnings to knock it off were ignored multiple times.
For the “I hate arcane magic” I had a similar thing with the game I’m currently working on starting up.
One of my players wanted to stick with an idea of being against revival magic and wanting to stop it happening. I worked with him to make a backstory as to why, and then dial it back to instead being distrustful. It’s an Eberron game so we had the decision that in his past, he revived someone, the wrong soul came to their body, and it was a malicious one.
My biggest thing is if this thing will fuck over the party, no. So instead we had it shift to distrusting, or he’s basically “if we are reviving this dude, we need to do every single step possible to make sure it goes right and then he’s keeping his eyes on that person to make sure it’s really them.” It added depth but won’t keep someone permanently dead if they got downed. So I’m excited to see how it goes, I trust the player to not be a dick, or at least if I tell him to stop he will listen.
Alice was just a really good method actor
That stepmom story was the best TTRPG Reddit story I have ever heard 😆
If I was one of dude’s friend in that campaign, I would (jokingly) give him shit about his hot stepmom until the end of time 😂🤣😂🤣
~_~
Dave was warned, and he did it anyway. Torch the book
In the second story, assuming he is being honest, the guy was petty, but the orc wizard was so much worse. The DM should have stopped it ages ago and told the orc to stop being a dick. OP seemed to check all teh boxes for playing contentious characters and no one said anything, and one character was even into it.
About that first story: i cant imagine a DM letting a solo person play and not include the table for 4 hours straight, im also a DM and dont get me wrong ive had solo major sessions or micro session but they are always planned out and I dramatically use the other players having them play other NPCs or characters, having them roll dice frequently to determine things like the weather/chance or playing bosses/mooks in combat
In my campaign the wizard distrusted sorcerers because they weren't trained in how to control their magic, but through interacting with the party sorcerer and several evil wizards over the course of the campaign, he realized that it's not about where your magic comes from, it's about what you do with it. It was some nice character growth that didn't involve PVP or kneecapping another player's character
To be fair I think you would be tempted to do so if a sorcerer kept prodding you and when you decided to take a pure roleplay swipe at them that does no damage after they did something your characters said not to do to them, and the sorcerer decided to initiate combat. You would make do the threat you said you would do. Besides while not great losing a spellbook at level one is something that can be worked past, it won't be easy but it not completely crippling and serves as consequences for pushing somebody's clearly labeled boundaries. Heck the DM could give them a spellbook next session to give them the problems with not having a spellbook while not mechanically kneecapping them for long.
I think Dave in the second story was pretty firmly in the wrong. OP had a character concept and made sure everyone was cool with it, it had some interesting chemistry with another player's character, THEN Dave started trying to start stuff. It sounds like Dave decided basically at random that his character loves magic and everyone who uses it to the point where, as in that necromancer example, it repeatedly became problematic for everyone else at the table. He ignores the warnings of the friction it'll cause with other characters and continues to egg OP's character on, even to the point of straight up attacking OP's character, then, despite all of the times Dave's caused problems for other players, the ONE time someone else causes a problem for him, he gets mad. Dude fucked around and found out, which is 100% on him.
And honestly? If the players really wanted to, this could be salvageable from a story perspective. It feeds into OP's character's belief of arcane magic being evil when his previously-normal teammate started using magic and then acted like an asshole because of it, and it could be a moment for Dave's character to reflect on what he's done now that his spellbook is gone and this power that got to his head is now missing. Maybe he backs out of being a wizard entirely, or maybe he doubles down and tries to make a change to himself to show OP's character that no, arcane magic isn't evil, and I'll prove it to you myself.
As-is, though, it sounds like Dave is just making himself really hard to work with and has pretty serious double standards about causing issues for others at the table. He was fine acting """in-character""" (in a way that seems like it made no sense) even at the expense of the other players, but he takes issue with someone else acting actually in-character at his expense one time after repeated warnings.
In the burned spellbook scenario, I feel that Dave was given ample warning. He was flat-out told "if you ever cast a spell on me, I'm burning your spellbook." This wasn't something that came out of nowhere, this was Dave making the conscious decision to escalate.
I agree that the whole magic-hating vs magic-worshiping thing is kinda dumb and they could've played it better, but this was the premise that was discussed and agreed on by the table as a whole. As such, the consequences are theirs to reap and if anything, it sounds like Dave's the one who started making things weird first. Both OP and Dave are part of the problem, but it sounds like Dave's part is bigger.
Point being dave casted more than one spell on him, but there was only one book to destroy. Dave still came out ahead
Honestly stepmom Alice sounds like a really cool person and any group would love having her at the table
In regards to the first story, as a forever DM, I would have opted for a compromise. He made plenty of warnings about his character's aversion to magic and warned him he would destroy his spellbook if he didn't back off.
I would have let some of the pages from his spellbook be destroyed causing him to lose a spell or two, or maybe I would have him roll a percentile to also include the opportunity that it burns off some page fragments thus altering the nature of the spell instead.
I think the ultimate cure would be a talk outside of the game rather than any actions within it. That being said the DM can also make narrative decisions that would push the players together more. What if it's not just some evil mage attacking them but also corrupting something they care about? What if they run into a situation where the ranger MUST use magic to save the day? Or if they come across a magic user who is persecuted even despite being innocent?
Plenty of ways to encourage character growth, you can't expect them to grow if you don't give them the narrative tools to do so
12:29 So, the ranger did nothing wrong... Provoking another player's character to a fight by spamming mage hand, prestidigitation and whatnot isn't a way to convince a mage-hating person that magic is good. I believe it could have been achieved via role-playing dialogues between the sorcerer and the ranger, but definitely not an orc fighter who gets 1 level of Wizardry out of nowhere and starts pissing ranger out. He even violated his warnings. Dumbass got what he asked for and then started crying over his little spellbook.
Ranger McGuire: cute spellbook. did your husband give it to you?
The guy's character idea was actually pretty good, it's a shame that sometimes you get idiots playing with you.
Spencer's horror is my horror as well. Secondhand embarrassment is far more terrifying than any slasher film
First story Ranger sought the party's approval first, and everyone was okay with it. It even sparked an interesting RP with the Sorcerer. That is totally a fine way to play DnD. The Fighter siding with wizards they're already in combat with and saying his character would do it because he's dumb (when stat-wise, he's way above average intelligence and even average wisdom, which was the point of telling us that) yet then also becomes a Wizard (well gosh, I thought he was dumb? Yet he's been apparently training to be a Wizard this whole time?) was trolling him. He was also warned ahead of time not to cast spells on the Ranger and what the Ranger would do in response if he violated that, which he then proceeded to do anyway. He absolutely got what he deserved.
Also, of course the mage hating Ranger took Mage-Slayer, why wouldn't he?
Yeah, I don't know why they made fun of OP mentioning Dave's character's stats. Dave was making his character do things that hindered and harmed the party and defended it by saying it's what his character would do because is character his dumb while his character has average wisdom and exceptional intelligence.
@@AAAAAA-613 I think it's because OP came off as fairly incessant about a character trait that has the potential to be annoying and controlling throughout the post, so the stat mention came across as a red flag. I personally felt more on OP's side after finishing the story.
Also after that point Dave really showed how much of a asshole he was.
@@DrgnDrake Yeah, Dave was definitely the issue. OP was reasonable at every step and warned Dave of the consequences of casting on him well in advance. Dave chose to cast on him, he has no right to be upset that OP followed through on his warning. That's fair and consistent RP.
Dave was just trying to be an ass to be annoying.
@@FromMan2Monkey mentioning that a character is smart when the player is saying they are dumb isnt a red flag
its just showing that the player isnt playing the character
So much this, and I'm surprised they didn't pick up on it. The story poster checked with the group and they said it was ok (this is even kind of mocked in the video as people only saying they're not going to play a wizard/sorcerer.) They get good RP out of it. Then another player decides he is suddenly going to start having a trait that antagonizes the poster (with no mention of out of character conversation about it.) Said fighter then does several things to antagonize said poster. Poster gives a warning. Fighter/Wizard after getting the warning antagonizes him again. Player responds with an attack but does no damage as a warning (this would normally be called good RP.) Fighter/Wizard then starts a fight by actually attempting to do damage.
Like there could be more to this story, but as it is written it's pretty clear that the poster is not in the wrong. Someone deliberately adjusted their character - without group conversation - to antagonize members of the group, repeatedly antagonized a character, and then got upset when their actions had consequences.
At my table? Spellbook stays destroyed, and you're on notice to stop antagonizing other players and provoking PVP if you're going to whine when there are consequences. Or do we really think the fighter/wizard was just going to leave the magic hating person who is trying to help the sorcerer cure their magic unconscious?
14:30 Hard disagree here. I know this was a one-side of the story but Dave was a Wizard for several sessions and OP at least hasn't tried to kick him out of the group or anything like that. Even though his character hated magic, he was willing to make concessions in favor of keeping the group together. Heck, his character even became friends with the Sorcerer of the group which means he wasn't hostile towards the character.
Nah, dave totally deserved getting his spellbook burned. he was entirely warned of that consequence beforehand and chose to do it anyway. if you as the dm warned a player "hey if you try to do X, just know [punishment] will happen" and they just go and do it anyway, you punish them. from the sounds of that story, dave was definitely trying to mess with things on purpose, and I can guess why. notice how a big focus of him becoming a wizard was to try and "encourage" jess about her powers? dave was probably jealous of how much character time OP was spending with her, and all this crap was his way of trying to get back at OP. that's why it seems so childish, because dave's being immature. can't say the same about OP though; he clearly talked about the concept to make sure it was fine, addressed the issues as they came up above table, and gave ample warnings to dave about what would happen. you can't find a mature solution to things if the other party refuses to engage.
Dave was extremely funny and good but also deserved getting his spellbook destroyed. I cant imagine what outcome he was expecting with that behavior. I wouldve guessed he WANTED that fight to happen the entire time and was just building up to it
I actually know a weird thing similar to story 2. Knew a guy who had a Warhammer 40K DM who was constantly nitpicking people on lore. However, the DM encouraged everyone to play different races at the start. So players would try to work together, and the DM would get upset
It seems pretty obvious to me that Dave was jealous with op and Jess's roleplay and was trying to get with her in game, maybe even irl. And figured the best way to do it was to go the opposite of their roleplay to try and turn her to his side and way of thinking, molding her character into what he desired. He was also likely trying to just be antagonistic to op as a way to 1 annoy the player and 2 make him seem horrible in game and irl so as to try and drive a wedge between op and Jess.
Taking that second one at face value, I think up to the point of burning the spellbook OP was a bit childish at worse, but definitely not in the wrong - he had discussed it with the group, the friction was because of active decisions made by someone else a fair bit down the line, and the instigating 'attack' was a warning shot. Burning the spellbook definitely veered more childish (although I'm also of the mind that if you're poking someone holding a glass of water, and they tell you "if you poke me one more time i will splash you", and you poke them again, and they splash you... you don't have much of a leg to stand on). I've also definitely had my fair share of players in games that will act the way Dave (allegedly) did, intentionally doing things that another player has explicitly said bothers them and then playing the victim when retaliated against.
That being said, OP's the one who decides how they phrase everything and absolutely can just weave whatever narrative they want, it's not too hard to do the whole "good argument but unfortunately I've portrayed you as the soyjack and me as the chad" bit. I'm curious if there was any followup from if other players found this, would be interesting to hear the other side of things.
2nd player was 100% in the right
he only went an "anti mage" guy with the express permission of everyone at the table, dave only went a mage AFTER allowing the anti mage guy to be a thing, and went a mage knowing the anti mage guy would be against that
dave in character tried to antagonise the anti mage guy, got warned in character (and out of character) about how the anti mage guy would react, and still provoked it
pvp between players is 100% a thing that can and should be allowed if everyone is ok with it, just blindly saying "pvp should be allowed" is just daft if the players are cool with it
so dave, allowed an anti wizard character, then having allowed this, and knowing it exists rolled a wizard (he could easily have said beforehand "i will want to multiclass later so please dont")
dave then deliberatly in character provoked the anti wizard guy, then got warned in character and out of character about how the anti wizard guy would react, and still chose to act in the way he did
he engaged in pvp of his own volition, activly instigating it of his own choice, knowing that the other character would react in a certain way, and having previously given permision for that character to exist
the writer is 100% fine, he did nothing wrong
also jacobs absolute aversion to pvp is just....weird
if both players are ok with it, why as the DM do you want to stop it?
you are just preventing them from roleplaying and playing their characters, you are railroading
if you are so utterly against pvp that you never want it to happen (despite it being a perfectly valid tool within a roleplaying game) then you dont put your foot down when its about to happen, you put your foot down when people are making characters that might clash
OP asked for permision, and was given it by everyone at the table, dave after the fact chose to multiclass into wizard knowing ops character, if you are so against pvp its not op who was making the antagonistic character here, it was dave, because "the party hates magic" was already established at the point he CHOSE to make a wizard
also the attitude that you ARENT ALLOWED to make a character who dislikes magic, and if you do you HAVE to make your character grow to like it, is just WILD to me
thats absurd DM railroading and character control
and the arguement that "magic is all over the place, you cant dislike/distrust it" is just dumb at best, guns in the real world are all over the place, you still have plenty of people who hate guns and think they should be illegal, the idea that someone thinks magic is bad in a setting with lots of magic isnt just perfectly ok, it activly makes sense
you have a VERY very weird take on that story
and tbh, based on your attitude towards it, you really sound like a bad dm
100%
i think the reason they're against pvp in general is specifically that it's really easy for feelings of resentment from the character to jump to the player, and you don't want a game for fun to hurt someone's friendship irl. it can also make things worse for people who aren't involved, because they might feel like they have to or be pushed to taking sides. in the dm's shoes i would've probably asked dave not to take a level in wizard, sorc or warlock could be interesting rp, if i was afraid of just asking dave not to antagonize op so much. ofc, it's also only arcane magic that op's character has a problem with, so dave multiclassing into (say) cleric or paladin to argue for arcane magic by proxy could be interesting
Leon Kennedy arc incoming?
I actually don't agree with you. Not all D&D is Forgotten Realms (or even 5E) where everyone and their mother can cast magic. You can 100% make the character who hates magic for whatever reason work, even if there's a magic user in the group and never ever change his views. It's those players pettiness that made this thing go wrong.
Please don’t bring up player’s moms on this video
@@9000ethanator LoL
Even then they don't HATE magic its more so untrusted as I DM a lot of low magic sure people distrust magic but not many out right hate it as it exists it just is rare.
There are plenty of cultures even within the Forgotten Realms that distrust arcane magic. It's a perfectly valid way to roleplay, because there are real cultures with those same opinions (against occult topics, or even modern technology), which should be given the humanity and introspection they deserve.
someone snatched Jacob’s wig
On the one hand, we're only hearing about this from one side, but it sounds like Dave went out of his way to force a confrontation.
Dave was 100% the antagonist
and 100% hilarious, lol.
@@kreiyu - Oh...you're one of _those._ 🙄
@@kreiyuOh… you praise assholes who do nothing but cause drama and problems…
@@ShinyAvalon I wrote a post just a moment ago about how bad their take on it was, but kreiyu is right, its definitely hillarious... for us... for the group probably it was horrible.
Thank you for making the point about confrontation being awkward and difficult for some.
Yeah it's hard but sometimes you really should do it anyways.
Also I had this bit about adult pants that was supposed to descend into a gag about the pants not always being pants and stuff, I lost the plot.
@@janschievink1586 I mean yes, it's beneficial to do. It's just not something that's as easy as 'gawd, just DO it, if I was in that group I would be the gigachad and say 'NO STOP IT' and then everyone would clap'
@@sephy26946 I mean it's not even the best option every time sometimes it gets you nowhere anyways and sometimes the whole situation is such a lost cause it's not even worth trying it's the right option when it's the right option.
Maybe I've just lost my patience for struggling through bad situations or tolerating bad people as I've gotten old.
Anyways I hope you can manage it when you should.
normally i get my reddit stories from smosh and they always say something along the lines of, well your kinda an asshole for not confronting the guy who everyone agrees is in the wrong. an i always feel guilty when they say stuff like that because its terrifying and not all of us have a fight response to perceived danger.
I played a Barb/Druid that was distrustful of non-druidic magics, to the degree that he wouldn't even let a non Druid heal him for fear of "their kind of magic".
His backstory was that he was a hermit, abandoned after a battle at a young age. He was a barbarian but came to adore nature as a result of being surrounded by it all the time, so his journey starts because he wants to be a druid.
Because he is a hermit, he was also generally inept at socialization and generally kept to himself. This meant that I could RP a character who didn't necessarily trust mages and magic but who wasn't just a bigot all the time. Because he didn't really mix with anyone, he didn't come off as particularly rude to any group or person.
And the biggest thing I would say to take from this is that you should only roleplay elements that might be a detriment to YOU, never something that could negatively influence the party or anyone else individually. It even set up a cool character moment where deep in the campaign, my barb had to accept healing from a non Druid because the party was almost finished, so you get this cool set piece of the barb accepting the heal, finishing the threat, and saving the party. He's realized there's something greater than fear and mistrust and it became a huge development milestone
If you, as a DM, have a PC who goes off by themselves, don't wait till their scene or whatever is "resolved" before moving on. One of your biggest powers as a DM is moving focus and controlling the pace of the game. So while one person is doing something, think in terms of action economy. It doesn't have to be one to one with combat, but think in terms of turns. Give everyone a turn. So if the lone ranger is off buying things, you do a couple back and forths, or a check to find the store, then you bounce around the table to see what everyone else is doing, then you bounce back. It keeps things going, everyone takes a turn (or passes) and no one feels left out.
That is precisely what the couple DMs in my group (they take turns so one is never stuck as forever DM) do and like you said it keeps things moving and makes sure everyone has a chance to do something.
1) Your character, in a game, should never limit what other people can do with theirs. "Sorry, no one can play a bard, because music sends my character into a blood rage, due to my designed background - an orc bard, 'Taylorc Swift' robbed my family and murdered them!"
2) "Dave" was 100% trying to provoke the other player, by provoking that player's character in game. I wouldn't be surprised if the player "Dave" had a crush on the girl playing the sorcerer, that the other guy was interacting with and building a closer bond in game with... Dave, trying to piss him off quite openly, screams 'jealous and petty'.
The GM should never allow a character that imposes limits on other people.... if limits are to be imposed, it should be the GM that is imposing them, and it should be a part of the campaign affecting everyone equally. (Like the world I made that had a historical reason why there were no Halflings.- their disappearance was tied into the overarching story that would evolve)
Also, a GM seeing this type of toxic interaction between players, and not recognizing it, or not caring, is not doing his job as a GM.
6:36 exactly what I was thinking. In the ad&d unearthed arcana, the barbarian class had a built-in fear of magic that the character would grow to overcome with level ups. I always loved that about the class. If I remember correctly, the earlier levels couldn't even use potions. There was a magic user in the group which by the end of the campaign who he had grown to be friends with.
Burning the spell book. To be clear it never should have been allowed to get to that point in the first place. It's like watching a steam roller come at you slowly and not moving lol.
The stepmom story. yes that is exactly how real friends would be toward the guy. Giving him crap and teasing him lol. As for the flirting, yeah AWKWARD lol. She was certainly all in on the theater aspect. I am super glad it ended well with her being willing to dial it back in and not ACTUALLY trying to hook up with players etc.
Jacob, I have to disagree with you on Mageslayer being in the wrong at all. He asked the table and it was all established in the Session 0. If everyone agrees to the concepts at a Session 0 with one player actively liking the concept, and a player suddenly changes their mind and is antagonistic, it's not the Mageslayer who's in the wrong. NuWizard should have discussed the multiclass and how to proceed with the arc and trust magic rather than randomly turn antagonistic and butt in where he never was before.
NuWizard had several warnings of what would happen, and could have even made an in character apology to Mageslayer, but instead he initiated PvP long after being told "Cast spells on me and I'll burn your book."
NuWizard should have apologized, and offered his book as a peace offering, with Mageslayer setting his grudge aside for his companion. Of course, buildup beforehand would have needed to be different, but still.
Furthermore, the guy did a Fighter 4/Wizard 1 multiclass. Does anyone believe he did it for ANY reason but to further disrupt the table?
Im convinced Jacob didn't pay attention or is just willingly ignorant of how the problem player was Dave the prick who antagonized OP for no reason
The stepmom story is so funny, but so embarrassing to the OP, that's some comedy gold.
12:26 sooo this story is really rough above table, but in character it sounds so interesting!! It would be frustrating as a wizard… but they did train in weapons… but the fighting level gap… this is ROUGH. I would try to be more adaptable in the wizard’s place, not reallly sure what else to say… but my gosh is it a good story.
26:22 I’m now imagining PC, his wife, Alice, and his dad sitting at the dinner table. Alice asks for the salt and PC responds in this way. No one else has any context. I need to see this happen
I agree with the guy who burned the spellbook. I think he can make that character work, and it sounded like he had growth planned, but the other dude is an absolute theater kid about it and ruining potential growth. I probably wouldn't have burned the book, but I would have checked him above the table.
And PF2e is such a slog.
It's amazing that Paizo learned nothing from PF1 and 5e's huge success, and make the most pointlessly complicated system. Like why are skill feats even a thing? Why is it an interact to put my hand on a weapon?! Why are there full Vancian casters in this game despite casters being nerfed?!
The flirting step mom story is both the stuff of nightmares and the stuff of comedic genius XD
the fact that he had 5 levels in ranger implies that he took the mage slayer feat long before dave took a level in mage, he checked with everyone in the group if they were fine with his character concept(and everyone was), dave was the only one being childish about the whole thing, heck if he wanted to play an arcane caster he should have just picked eldritch knight as a subclass instead of randomly deciding to take a level in wizard for no good reason
Yeah, it's very clear Dave wasn't just playing the game but specifically doing dumb things and going out of his way to hose the OP.
"For no good reason" is a key phrase here. We're given so few hints as to why Dave would go from a perfectly normal player in the first few sessions to so obviously wanting to frustrate OP specifically that it feels like OP is leaving something important out of the story.
@@softreyna I mean... wouldnt call a player that constantly betrays their own party and force them to lose actions mid battle to "convince" him with actual diplomacy rolls a "perfect normal player", but...
If anything, the whole story seems like it could've been a good time but this kind of "I'll do dumb things because that's what my character would do" from Dave is the problem since the start.
@@albertonishiyama1980 Well, yeah, that's not the part where he's a perfectly normal player. The story says something like "for the first few sessions everything went great" and that's what I meant
@@softreyna - Some malicious troublemakers _do_ play cool for a while, to scope things out and see what they think they can get away with. Then they start pushing boundaries, until they find which ones give them the reactions they crave.
Holy crap, he looks like a person and not a pre-neckbeard!
11:30 Good. It's important to allow PvP when someone is being disruptive on purpose. In-game actions should have in-game consequences.
Also, Impractical Jokers is hilarious.