The Player Pleaser Worst Ways to GM in D&D 5E
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- Опубліковано 15 вер 2024
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The Player Pleaser Worst Ways to GM in D&D 5E
Whether we are talking about picking favorites, going full Monty Haul, or focusing the spotlight only on some of the players these all traps. Traps that lead to making for the worst kind of DMing. Sure it feels good to make your players feel good and make them happy but not at the expense of the game itself.
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Hello men of Nerdarchy! I know this is late but Happy Thanksgiving! While reading through the lore of D&D, and learning of the Abyss, an idea for an endgame boss over a long campaign occurred to me. Would you like to read about it? The start of it is a general summary right now, I definitely need to edit it, but the second is better in structure.
The worst DM favoritism was my friend Greg, he was the DM and always favored another player who was his best friend. So I was able convince Greg my DM into letting me make a werewolf character who would betray the characters. This was in second edition and we just started a new campaign. So everybody was first level. The issue was the favored character showed me his character and I was like WTF. He started with a lot of 18 abilities scores, max hp, a powerful magic weapons, and other stuff. His character was well beyond my characters. I was just frustrated because even to start he would crush me, as usual and he never made his character when we wear around. The thing was he was the character I wanted to kill since he was always over powered and everybody in our group knew it.
It's not always solely a GM problem. I used to play in a group with a verbally abusive, manipulative player who would craftily back DMs into the corner in order to get what he wanted. You might ask 'why not kick this player out?' well, the answer was that for a long time no one understood how much he was breaking the game. He was polite in game, and his argumentative nature was very subtle and subversive. But he would text and talk to the DM between sessions until he got exactly what he wanted. He ended up being, by far, the most powerful character in the party, but because he specialized in ranged weapons he placed himself in the back. He spent all his gold on personal upgrades but relied on the party to supply torches, ropes and other equipment. Every time the GM stood up to him he would undermine the GM and subtly belittle the GM making sure that no matter what the GM was not thanked or appreciated unless this player got his way. When the GM finally tried to correct it, this player slandered the GM , calling them a terrible GM, saying it was a bad game and generally getting the majority of the players to complain about every little nitpicky thing the GM had ever done wrong. Long story short: that game died that day, the group broke apart, some of the players *still* won't talk to one another years later and the GM quite GMing for three years. So sometimes player pleasing is a defense mechanism against a player that needs to be removed from the group sooner rather than later
You need to not only worry about over-buffing a character with loot - you also need to worry about having one character's items outshine the abilities of the other characters. I'm thinking of dropping out of my only local campaign (Adventurers League). I made a thief-specialized rogue, and enjoyed the scouting, trap/lock disabling, climbing, etc. However, due to magic items awarded to the other players, I am now pretty much useless.
Two characters can fly, and the monk can run up walls, so my climbing skill is not needed. The wizard can magically transport the party past any traps or locked doors, so my thieves kit gathers dust. I took expertise in perception, and boosted my wisdom, but now another character's item usually beats my skill roll. The only thing I have left is stealth, but the party now prefers to just charge in, relying on their item-based might to carry the fight.
Jeff Bangle the monk could already run up walls so that's just out of the game. The rest sucks dude that's just so dumb
Jeff Bangle Yeah, that sucks. I'd talk to the DM about it before leaving and if it doesn't get solved, I'd find a new group
Tomb tappers and aurumvoraxes could in an extreme case fix a fair bit of over loot giving to PCs.
I just had a 5 hour game this weekend with about half the time being exclusively focused one one character who's the best friend of the DM.
Incredibly annoying as the rest of the characters weren't even present for most of that time. On top of that when we actually got a turn, the DM just basically told us what happened and didn't give us an opportunity to really roleplay the situation.
Interestingly enough I was a player in a long running campaign which ended up revolving around my character, but much of the reasoning for it came from the decisions of the other players.
Through a lot of long term ground work on my part, the manipulation of other characters my group managed to make me the lord of the area in which we were playing. I did my best to make sure the rest of the party benefited from this.
I like to run a story where instead of a "chosen one", it's a "chosen few". Kinda like the 4 heroes from the Fable 2 prophecy.
The biggest problem seems to be the existence of bags of holding.
Whilst characters having to consider what they carry or have to organise followers or mounts to carry their stuff may not be fun, it gives the player the option to either micromanage, or just choose the best items and move on. Rather than "lol i get to carry everything in my bag of holding"
I know they're part of the DnD culture by this point, but i honestly hate them from a game design point of view. Especially at lower levels.
We had this situation come up where the combo of character min/maxing and a bit too much magic just made the party unstoppable. Combine this with murder-hobo-ness, and the DM wasn't enjoying it. So, the super-healing cleric (my character) had to come to a heroic end. To save the world, naturally. And oops, all her stuff was incinerated. I've come in with a bard: bit less healy, bit more talky.
I rarely DM, but I tried it with Out of the Abyss. Had only two players so I had them make their characters a little stronger than normal via rolling instead of point buy. One player had ungodly levels of luck. She constantly wound up rolling really well, and it caused the other player to kind of fade into the background. I tried to set up an encounter for him since he was playing a dwarven battlerager. Two enemies (Gricks) waiting in ambush on the other side of a rope bridge. They had decided marching order would have him in the front, and her in the back after several NPCs they were traveling with. Figured it was a perfect way to give him a chance to shine. Lo and behold, they reach the bridge and he decides to do something he normally doesn’t and rp… by being concerned about his spiked armor snapping the bridge. He has the other player go first while stating he’d go across last. So what was meant to be a chance for him to shine became another chance for her to not need him, and he started actively playing less and less until he practically just left and it turned into a solo campaign that ended abruptly due to wild magic surge table lightning.
Hmmm... next time give the really well rolling player another dice. See if something changes. If it does, keep the dice. If players run in a really sticky situation you hand them the dice and compell them to use it for that particular event. There is luck and there are dice. Dice does not equal dice in my experience. People can get pretty obsessive over it ;)
animefan3794 Er, sorry, but is there a reason you couldn't just have the enemies attack the party from behind? Just have the gricks pop out from beneath the bridge, and leave everything else the same?
It seems like Ted was made to describe this because he was being punished
DM started us at LvL 10 but had to be gestalt characters. His favorite player was the only one with out that requirement. So he opted to make a lvl 10 Sorc making him have access to stronger spells. He killed everything for everyone. Later the difference in power was explained away that he was the son of a god and a dragon that hooked up. Clearly he was the main character in our minor tale to save this handful of villages.
I enjoy giving them items that encourage to their play style. I try to figure it out or ask them some ideas on what they want. But, i do not give it to them early or without working for it. When they get it, they feel they earn it and that it encourages to play more into their character. I don't think giving items to characters is bad, i feel favoritism is the bad thing
Yeah, first game I played of d&d the DM basically had to run the story by one of the other players. Previously before I had joined the campaign her original character had become some kind of god. Second session we were getting thrown into basically like the underdark as one big prison and she didn't want that to happen to her paladin character from the first session. While the law we broke was done inadvertently, having imperial magic rings, that character was just as 'guilty' as the others in our group but she wasn't there, without any explanation of why. So we were a Teifling (naturally suspicious of strangers), a Changeling with a Spy background, a Rogue (traditionally not quick to trust), an old codger of a druid and me a former soldier. We had just got our magic rings confiscated and thrown in jail-underworld by the elvish imperium then la de da here's her charscter we were told we'd have to trust: an elf that happens to have magic rings smuggled in some how. From what I heard this is not the worst of the things where her character was shoehorned in to be super important to the plot, just two sessions into my first expirience. Left that game for a multitude of reasons though.
i only please my players during character creation as long as their ideas are interesting. I end up with Electric Guitars and Muskets in my game but everyone has fun so im fine with that.
Guilty as Charged. I often start players out with an ability or feat that flavors the character based on the backstory, making them unique. I also make magic items, titles, and weird stuff and tailor them to the party, never random rolling anything. I never give a war hammer to a group of rogues. I try to avoid giving a ton of stuff though, and I like Mercers solution to get items that can upgrade. Most of my worlds have access to potions, or scrolls or npcs with magic spells....but I don't usually have fluff items like +1 swords.
"Monty Hall DM"?
You mean he tells the players what the decisions they had not taken do?
Who do you blame when your player's a brat
Pampered and spoiled like a Siamese cat
Blaming the player's a lie and a shame
You know exactly who's to blame
An now they'll have a rather different set of friends. Oh rather different set of friends...
I have a campaign that takes place in the Fey Courts. There is a central player, The Princess Nymara, who is the Daughter of the Archfey The Queen of Air and Darkness, and She got three magic items at level 3. A crown that gave her witch bolt at will. A ring that didn't work till higher level, and a cloak of displacement. She Also played an home brew class called The Princess. The rest of the party were refugees from the Queen court when somebody attacked and " destroyed " the Queen. So the Princess has to flee, and is also one of three children to the Queen. So everybody is trying to kill her. Also when any of the PC's "allied" with by oath or deed they got advancements, powers essentially equivalent to magic items or feats etc. So while this campaign worked out fine.... I totally see why it should have been avoided.
I was so guilty of this the first time i was the DM. My players got stat increases each lvl and lots of other goodies. We had fun though, got really hard to balance combat and enemies had ton of hp to even have a chance.
When i gave a Greatsword that gives one addictional attack plus fire damage after i made the player character throw the weapon to close a portal the player quit the game. Yeap i screw it...
Being too stingy or creatively stifling can be just as bad if not worse than being a player pleaser. There is a happy medium and I hope you all address this.
Tristan Knight Yeah, but everyone already talks about the stingy GM.
I try to scatter in monsters and items for every character. it's a conscious effort ot keep things relatively even, and if I (for instnace) have an area where everything's immune to lightning, I'll toss in an encounter or two afterward to let the Storm Sorcerer go wild as recompense. the way I see it, it's part of my job to make sure everyone has a chance at fun. if they chuck it aside or give it all to one guy that's their issue, but I try to make sure everyone gets thier chances to shine and thier share of gear.
Now then again, I'm very magic light. I'm the only guy our group knows of who actually almost staved a party to death, caused a party in-fight because they were lost in a minotaur maze and told the ranger that they were eating his companion if they didn't get out soon. The ranger was perfectly willing to kill them if they tried. had to shunt in another encounter or two so they could steal some rations from the bodies XD
I just had a very morbid thought of "couldn't the ranger just resummon the companion?"
I play online only and here is My first campaign and one of the worst experience.
playing a dragonborn druid from level 1.
so A gm once gave me a staff of woodland at level 3.
an after a ridiculous amount of stealthing of like 3 sessions we came into a slave camp.
so fighting a loosing battle I alone was captured and took away my stuff. alone in the enemy stronghold.
this was the 3rd time I got captured and the second time I lost all my stuff (once was the very beginning of the game like we arrived from a shipwreck so I dont really count it if I did it would be 3 times)
and then letterly continued the game without armor or any item. "like 7 sessions and three level later" while other players had flying swords and bromes, dwarven and mithril plate armors, oathbow+1 and fire imbued weapons. while I was in a studded armor with a druidic wand "more like a twig".
later I rolled a 20 in arcana for a potion the GM said that I ingested the poison and fell unconscious, I was ready to make a new charcter but instead he let my character soul be stuck in the ethereal plane while every body was fighting I was just floating ... doing nothing cant touch the enemy cant cast spells.
we were always bickering about rules so a player was unconscious and he rolled a 20 so the GM said that you are up and your turn ended. seeing this was an important moment I argued that they still take their turn because death saves is done at the start of a round.
after 5 minutes of arguing they said fine and the battle continued later they said that my charcter feels like fading from existing. then said "would you listen to the DM or that's it for your charcter" I remained silent so we talk after the game.
after the game I brought up the fact that I feel they are targeting me that I feel unjust. that I talk about rules because its a common ground between the GM and the players.
he said that how dare I saying such a thing. I only do stuff because the story.
Later I was just joking about how he botched a rule. he ended up kicking me out of the game and the group.
Just like that 6 months like it were nothing. I liked the group I loved the game (It always gave me anxiety but I LOVED that!!!) and I thought of them like friends !!! DM included.
thats really horrible and i hate hearing about bad experiences, D&D is supposed to be a fun game, those people sound like jerks. I hope you find a better group in the future.
no . its just the DM that done this.
the others were really friendly.
death saves are at the end of round. you're a druid, how could you not wildshape and escape, druids can't wear metal armor. and Potion ethrealness, is a potion of ethrealness, it does what it does. and bickering isn't fun, make your point and move on.
death saves happens at the start.
Every rule every sage advice says so.
because wild shape at level 4 gives you a max of 4 hours. and running away from a place you and your team were tasked to infiltrate is backward.
Potion etherealness that activate on an identifying a potion with arcana check... yeah right.