"You cannot use Insight against anyone that you do not know. Its unrealistic." Instantly my Inquisitive Rogue was completely useless in the campaign, who relied on his Insight for combat. I explained as much, he said to bad... I left the group.
Seems like someone has no idea how patterns work. There are behavioral patterns that apply to a lot of people, simply because most people aren't aware of them and/or they don't try to hide them. I can understand not telling you the exact intentions or emotional state of a random creature you never met, but a random humanoid or goblin that doesn't know and doesn't bother to hide his tells should be no problem. Also, being able to know how someone will act when you've known them for a while doesn't sound like skill, more like common sense.
Has that DM never seen anything about interviews in criminal investigations? Cops do that EVERY DAY. Furthermore, Idk this DM, but I have decent enough insight to know they're full of shit.
People forget that the roll in DND is meant to factor in things like being unaware of a persons tells. Edited: A natural 20 generally means picking up on their tells immediately whereas a Nat 1 usually means being unable to read them at all. The people you know well enough are the ones you shouldn't have to role insight on because you know their tells, so there is no probability of failure. One can make the same argument for every skill that a player can make. Everything in the game is new on some level to the player, that's why they have to role to determine whether they succeed. Being the petty person I am, I would refuse to do any skill check that this D.M. asks to make on the ground that it's a new place, a new person, a new lock ect. until the D.M. got the memo. I can be really petty when I want to be.
@@sharkjumpingwalrus6744 exactly right, and I'd like to add that dc exists for a reason. Wanna represent how reading someone you don't know that well, use a higher dc than for someone who would be a known quantity to the player character. I don't know if i'd ever not ask for the roll outright, anyone can be off their game for a reason or another. But i think a good DM would account for that kind of nuance, also accounting if the other is actively trying to conceal, deceive, deflect etc
I dont need to know "Micheal from Microsoft" with an indian accent personally to know Microsoft doesnt ask for payment in gift cards. Aside from just knowing BS when you see it, a lot of tells are instinctual, so they are the same for everybody.
I once had a DM who asked me to "roll for spell effectiveness" for a Wish spell. My wish? As a Paladin, to be able to cast Spirit Guardians once a day at its lowest level, following all other spellcasting rules. A very reasonable request. I rolled low, and he ruled that I only had one instance of it ever. But apparently flying cows with lightning udders that attack the party and self replicating hats are okay. The kicker? I saw him write down that the next monster we fought was immune to radiant damage, and it wasn't anything heavenly we fought
I mean, if I remember correctly, the wish spell has that built in. A way to prevent like mega-wishes from happening. But making an enemy immune to radiant against a Paladin is a rude move for sure..
@@l_ndonmusic Targeted hate that doesnt make sense is just harassment, plain and simple. Harassing your players is _never_ a good way to go about it, unless theres a valid reason in the story.
Mimicking another lower level spell for no cost is literally a core function of the wish spell thats even listed in the rules for the main example of its possible use. The spell being so ineffective that it only does its baseline function and nothing else is only one step removed from it straight up just failing and doing nothing. Imo such a result could only ever be justified if you had rolled a straight up Nat 1. Edit: STOP FUCKING "CORRECTING" ME ON HOW WISH WORKS. READ THE OTHER COMMENTS IN THE THREAD FIRST. I CLARIFIED LIKE 3 TIMES ALREADY WHAT I MEAN.
I had to miss one game. On that game, the DM: - Let other players play my character - Let them kill my character - Rule it that he is for some reason unresurrectable. Quit right there.
I won't lie. I've been guilty of that exact situation as a new DM. I used to believe all PCs should be available every game because I was so stuck on narrative consistency. It was absolutely a series of unfortunate events in-game that lead to the character's death. I apologized to the player and tried to see the different alternatives. Ultimately, he opted for a new character (since he was the second assassin in the group and felt that was a bit overkill and squishy at the same time). I immediately opted out of having players play other people's characters. In hindsight, that was a dumb idea from the get-go.
@@Kalenz1234 What are you talking about??? There was consent. We all thought that was fine until this happened. All the rules I used back then were talked and vetoed by the whole table. That was the way we played for a full year without any issue. I'm just sharing a story, man. Btw, there are a lot more ways to play than whatever you or I think is best. Stop giving cookie-cutter advice, especially when you don't have the context...
DMs who go overkill on racial drawbacks. "I want to attack." "roll disadvantage." "why?" "sunlight sensitivity." "we're underground." "you're in bright light." "You said this place is all dim light." "this room has a skylight." "but we're like 20 feet underground." "and there's a skylight. roll disadvantage." drives me insane....
@@FritzTheGerman light doesn't have a distance, but light can't penetrate SOLID ROCK, just like dungeons 20 feet underground can't magically have a SKYLIGHT appear for the express purpose of screwing me over DM was in the wrong
@@penguinmaster7 I´m sure with some good (Dwarven) engineering and magic, an underground skylight is entirely possible. It´s still BS for one to randomly appear just to crew you over tho....
I was playing with my school buddies at a new " friends" home. RAVENLOFT as anyone who has played it. Is lethal. The new guy didn't want me at his place, so as soon as we( the party) open the entrance hall doors, the 4 stone Red dragons, decided to basically eat my ass. Everyone laughed, I died, and I realized that my friends weren't my friends. They just liked my transportation. I stopped playing afterwards for a long time. Broke my heart.
We had a group at Gen-Con one year, and the GM we landed was notorious for TPKs, he would chant '5 go in, none come out' and had a group of GMs doing that with him. After being stuck in one of his campaigns before, when we landed him again, he 'started' the adventure, and the whole group decided to do a clam bake on the beach and screw 'saving the world'.
This is so damn cringe. "Let me do a TPK by purposefully overtuning the game and using over-powered shit so that basically the players have little chance to win" is the equivalent of putting a high school athlete in the Olympics and hoping for him to win. Some actually might, but 99% of them won't. And so, I salute your clam bake! Save yourselves before saving the world lmao!
Unless that guy was running Tucker’s Kobolds pulling a TPK isn’t anything to brag about. Any idiot can throw an Ancient Red Dragon being ridden by a Demilich with an endlessly respawning army of Pit Fiends as backup. But taking about 20 CR 1/4 monsters and turning them into a nightmare of a fight takes actual skill
GM from a Pathfinder game kept telling me my spells failed to cast. Why you ask? Because he wanted to get with the new player who joined us a few sessions in. She wanted to play an illusion focused Sorcerer and hated the fact my wizard was an illusionist (even though I had been there since the beginning of the campaing). That GM didn't seem to get why I didn't want to come back.
@user-jq5ur7nc2t oh I have, though apparently after he started badmouthing me for leaving, his ex (who was playing with us at the time, I don't know why) up and kicked him in the face for being an idiot.
That's literally a horrible ruling. If you took a subclass first and were with it for a while already, it's so petty that a different player had the DM sabotage you just for them to take the spotlight. I don't get why some people don't just ask the other player if they can use the same subclass, maybe focusing on different aspects of it.
@mihile4631 it's a mix of DM wanting to sleep with the new player and new player not liking someone using the same school of magic even though we were different classes.
the first DM admiting he did something completely wrong and didn't try to justify himself with BS is kinda a rare thing to hear. He sound he will become a great DM
He seems like he’d be a bit of a pushover though. He fucked up the ruling, yes, but he considers fudging the roll and damage all because a player threw a hissy fit over a bad roll (which wouldn’t even make him lose the fight). So long as he doesn’t fudge often to make players win unscathed he should be fine
Really? Thinking he should ignore the enemies feat? Or just flat out cheat and say the guy missed? Or another idea, cheat and make up the damage? What did he do thats "Completely wrong" He remembered to use the feat, as it is supposed to be used. There is nothing worse then when the party is having a great fight, then it loos lie its over, Total party kill. and suddenly no enemy wants to use its multi attack, lair actions disappear, and they stop applying fire damage on top of the physical.... Wooooow! Real great DM-ing! Being that there are no constant rules, and zero risk, why dont we just sit around and make up stories about baddass stuff we have all done while the DM pats us on the back. When you play monopoly, and someone is out, do you just give them a tile on mayfair a couple grand and some hotels? He sounds like he will appease stroppy brats that need rules bending for them. How do the other party members feel knowing that they have a harder journey than the guy who needs his rolls fudged, only to then have to share the hard won celebration with the guy playing in kid mode, with the baby gloves on? TEAM GAME! TEAM! as in a group of people working together. I mean the baby isn't even dead, just down. This guy needs to be an impartial game master. Not biased towards certain players. No one lies playing on an uneven field, and no one likes playing without any risk, or braindead npcs.
@@alexevans4877 i mean the issue with that post is that he fucked up the usage of the feat. The spell was meant to come out before the reaction, which could have potentially killed that enemy. The feat was used wrong. I do mostly agree with you though, dms shouldn’t hand everything to you
There is no such thing as an impartial GM. There is no such thing as a cheating GM. There is only a good GM (one that helps everyone at the table have a good time) and a bad GM (one that favors a subset of the party or thinks that honoring what strangers wrote in a book they bought is more important than them and their friends enjoying themselves). If the party likes pushovers, so what? If the party likes a relentless meatgrinder, so what? But don't pretend that the GM can be impartial when they are the sole arbiter of what challenge you are facing. The only reason your enemy has an ability, the only reason there aren't more enemies, the only reason there's an enemy at all, is because the GM decided it.
After making a charisma based character with a focus on diplomacy and bluff, I wasn't actually allowed to roll those skills because "You don't have to convince the NPC, you have to convince me."
If a DM pulls shit like this on you, just ask if a strength based character have to pull weights every time he has to do a strength check, or if an intelligence based character suddenly has to turn into a wikipedia in front of the DM every time they pull a intelligence check. Special treatment like this is just so bull.
Thats how role playing used to work, you role played rather than roll played. There didnt used to be skills for diplomacy or bluff they came in 3rd. You had reaction adjustment based off of charisma for 1st impressions and bards could alter reactions with bard song thats it otherwise you had to acctually talk your way out of shit, that was the point. I understand that bringing those skills in from 3rd onwards has allowed more introverted people to take social roles in parties but it has taken most of the role playing out of the game in my experience
I joined a table at a game shop after a long-running campaign I ran had ended. Excited to break out of being a "forever DM", I had some fun building my first PC that wasn't intended for a one-shot. I asked the DM of this game several questions, one of which being "are we going to encounter a variety of enemies, or primarily one type?" I asked because most of the spells and abilities my character would have had no effect on undead or constructs, and told him as much. He replied that we would be "facing a smorgasbord of enemies" and that I shouldn't worry about it. For the first 3 levels (9 sessions, as I recall), we faced almost nothing but undead. DM said "Don't worry about it, it's just for this story arc." We finished the arc, had a session of RP-only, and the DM laid out the hook for the next arc of the story. An inventor's control unit had been stolen, so his underground lab was overrun with insane constructs. I reminded the DM privately after the session that my character was essentially useless against both undead AND constructs. I wasn't looking forward to another two months of being little more than a spectator, so I asked if I could play a different character that fit the setting better. He said "no" because my current character had already agreed to enter the lab, and the door locked behind us, so there would be no feasible way for a replacement character to join the party. I said "That makes no sense - what if one of our characters die? How would their new character enter the game?" He said "They would just have to wait until the end of the arc." I said "Good to know, thanks," and announced in the group chat the next day that I would not be returning.
That reasoning as to why you can't change PCs was bullshit. He is literally the DM, he can make up whatever he wants if he wants to. Whether a new character could enter or not is entirely up to his arbitrary judgement.
@@Birthday888 "The wizard stays back to find a way to unlock the front door in case you have to flee. As your party walks around a corner you stumble onto someone who apparently was locked in this laboratory for some time. Please introduce your character" Done
The only time I actually walked away was back in college. Maybe 1990, 2E DnD. We were playing Dragonlance, and i was a 7th level Knight. We entered a fortress, I dont remember why. A room was a big pit trap. We all fell in, and were sent to seperate small cells. Each with a wraith in it. Got hit twice before i could act. Lost 4 levels. Now 2nd level, I was facing a uninjured mid level monster. Those familiar with 2E know those level drains were not temporary. I complained the fight wasnt fair. Was told suck it up. Got up and went to my dorm room. Campaign collapsed that day, and never restarted.
As someone who was introduced on 2E AD&D I can tell you, those were some of the most bullshit unfun rulings. Loosing stats permanently and levels ruins a lot of what makes the game, which is meant to be a bit of a power fantasy, fun
@@Caragoner Well some people like the game more for a challenge, those types of creatures can be a lot of fun to fight, as they risk far more then just a nebulous "tpk," that being said... as a DM you have to be *really* careful with them and this... wasn't that. 😂
@@markusnixon3156 They can be if there's a narrative reason for them. However how many of them were incorporated it simply removed the creature from potential encounter variety because most people don't like loosing permanent stats/levels in random or minor encounters. If they were more formulated into optional abilities rather than core features of many of these creatures attacks then they could have been much more fun (think ala modern Legendary actions).
Had a dm rule that my otherwise squishy magic user was stripped of all magical and racial abilities by a ring and then said that a 19 base role plus my con modifier wasn't enough to remove said ring and that I wasn't able to cut it off or tell the others something about it. Yea that was the last time I ever played with that dm
I got something going on like that right now myself. Doesn't take anything away from my character, but anyway. I'll try to keep it short. My guy, during a carousing roll, gets married to this woman, her ex curses me with some black gem in my chest, it's apparently doing me some harm, so the guy clearly wants me dead, right? Accept when I do die three sessions (or so) later, to a mimic, I'm brought back to life with my charisma lowered(?) and when some uber powerful wizard, and a druid familiar with alllll sorts of powerful mumbo jumbo try to remove it from me, they say they've ne seen anything like it. So I'm left wondering, how the hell is this guy, that can just put such powerful curses on me for banging his ex? And the hell is his motive, if it keeps me from dying? Lol whole thing is just bizarre reasoning.
@jasonrustmann7535 yea I tried to talk to the dm about it and he got real pissy saying it would be a good role playing experience.... he left it open to interpretation how the ring worked so my character with a 18 wisdom score suddenly became gollum about the ring. But yea the dm didn't even offer a way to remove it that wouldn't take forever and probably get the party killed (I was the healer and had been using every spell slot to keep us alive)
Got one of my brothers group that the DM said explicitly at first game "this is my game, my world and your characters are mine. If you don't like it, you can quit." They did
Before my group dropped their foreverDM, he had the mindset of "Death isn't a punishment, it's a release." This mindset basically meant that stupid decisions wouldn't result in the logical consequence of the character winning a Darwin Award. One such instance that made me stand up and walk out from the group until he was dropped, was his tendency to torment one particular player by punishing his foolish and reckless actions with other things, such as destroying a plot-important quest item, or openly branding his "true name", which- when spoken- forces the PC to follow the speaker's instructions. In front of the entire party. I once had a character in a "Devil Beasts" setting (still have no clue what it was about, everything in the games were pretty much homebrew), that was made to be unlucky. But just so I could do that, the DM said I had to roll luck on every single basic action. While a few moments were funny and are joked about to this day (Breaking a futuristic unbreakable chair just trying to sit down on it for example), I checked out the moment the DM turned my punishments towards other players, making my bad luck awaken a character's Devil Beast transformation, which they had successfully suppressed for several sessions before I joined. There was a lot of bitter tension in the air, and I just walked out after several more sessions of me being constantly sidelined and or humiliated by the DM every chance he got when I failed these luck rolls. It was hell. I still play with this group and ever since the DM was removed, things have been so much better.
>devil best transformation Did the setting by chance involve said transformations imparting an urge to eat people? Details given here reminds of shin megami tensei: digital devil saga
@@yoshifan2334 As far as I recall, no. The PC in question was part of a military group in a setting where having such a transformation would have a bounty put on your head if anyone were to discover it. This PC had kept their character's transformation hidden for several sessions before I joined, and when a failed luck roll on menial tasks resulted in a whole pot of boiling coffee during basic roleplay being poured over them, that was enough to blow their whole cover. Tension was pretty thick for a while after that.
It surprises me that people are capable of being just massive, pathetic losers in situations like this, and dont have the capability to know when to act more mature and civilized
@elliotwintersdemanagabei9437 Thankfully the rest of the group talked to me some time after I walked from the group and assured that we were chill, it wasn't until later that everyone decided it was best to drop the DM from the group as even as a player when others soon attempted to DM themselves and give the original one a chance to be a player, he would attempt to take control of the story with a minor main character complex. He wasn't argumentative or hostile, but he was overbearing and just not a good fit for the group. I eventually came back shortly after he was removed from the group and nowadays the mentioned incident with my unlucky character is more of a lighthearted joke with satirically exaggerated frustration from the affected player, who happens to be my brother in law. I do love my tabletop group for being so chill and communicative with me.
yeesh, i've always ran material spell components really leniently, in the sense that you still have to procure them, but i ask for simplified ingredients generally
@@stargateproductionsalso if the setting was some sort of low mana world where the most magic one sees commonly is holy magic and the classes are either melee or hybrid. Interesting background to play, awful imposition on regular games.
One of my experiences that nearly put me to leave was the use of the GURPS command spell: -Tldr: Spell is two words that you must do/act upon in a single second (1 turn) -I was attacking a mage with said spell, swinging for his neck -Cast “Cut Leg” -Instead of then changing the target to the mage’s leg, the GM ruled that I would cut my own leg, to which I then amputated, despite the fact that it was physically impossible to reach it. -Argument ensued. -They basically went “DM final say on it” and crippled my agile combat character over it.
I honestly respect the guy that admitted he was afraid to let the cart of hay be taken simply because he was afraid of the plot being derailed, instead of just pulling rank or telling the players to just deal with it (even though he resisted revealing the reason for a while). I hope he's improved, learned to improvise, and gained (reasonable) confidence in his skills since.
I didn’t leave the table immediately on this one, but I never played with the Gm again. I once had a GM who really didn’t like my character. I had built a divination wizard with lucky and silvery barbs, designed to be a support caster who mainly focused on protecting allies, negating crits and applying status effects like restrained. This of course meant that I was able to shut down a lot of the worst that would come to the party, additionally I was kitted with defensive spells like Shield and Absorb Elements, along with invisibility that let me survive a lot of situations that I probably shouldn’t have (like the 3 separate times the gm sic’d a dragon on my wizard) See, at these points I felt like I was being targeted, probably because the GM wanted me gone so I would stop negating his crits and stop saving the party from every bad luck (or poor decision made) but what was really the last straw was when I scouted an area ahead with my familiar and found out the cieling was full of giant spiders. So I stepped around the corner and instantly casted fireball into the cieling to damage the spiders and burn away the webs. The gm ruled that because I was casting fireball indoors, everyone in the party had to make a Con save or be stunned for 1 turn because the flames sucked all the oxygen out of the room. this caused my allies to lose concentration on their long duration spells, along with other obvious penalties. To mention, this room was a fortress room above a portcullis, roughly 60ftx40ft with dozens of arrow slits leading to outside, and large holes in the floor that also led to outside. Him making enemies focus on me was one thing, but what made me not wanna play with him again was when he started introducing new rules to punish me for playing my character
So we were given a plot hook to recover a baby treant that was kidnapped by orcs as it was being born. We spent the best part of five sessions tracking down the orcs responsible in order to recover the thing, and had already given it a nickname within the party despite never having met it. When we finally reach the altar where the treant is being sacrificed, the odds are stacked against us, but I manage to slip past the front line of orcs and interfere with the sacrifice - barely surviving against the orc chieften by myself, but at least screwing up the ritual so that it couldn't be carried out, and surviving long enough for the rest of the party to get past the orcs and save my ass, along with the treant. Now, in retrospect, I get what happened next, and I understand why the odds were so heavily stacked against us. However, in the moment, none of us were aware that the DM was planning for us to fail, as it was part of the plot. By succeeding, we had completely screwed up his plans, so in order to get things back on track, he ruled that as the sorcerer (wild magic, who had already been causing all sorts of chaos throughout the campaign) stepped up to the altar to free the treant, the ritual interacted with his magic and suddenly completed, obliterating the baby treant we had spent ages and risked our lives to rescue, and leaving behind a magic staff which was presumably the key to the next part of the campaign. I say presumably, because we never got that far. The whole party sat in stunned silence for a few moments, before one of them asked if there was any chance of saving the treant, and the DM awkwardly said that it had been blown to splinters. Another party member asked if there was any chance of reviving it, and the DM reiterated that all that's left is the extremely powerful and plot-relevant staff, and a few inert chunks of wood. Of course no one actually cared about the staff, as we were far too bummed out about the fact that we had effectively failed, and allowed a newborn to be destroyed - and worse, we were somehow complicit in the act, as the sorcerer's magic was what did the deed in the end. To his credit, the DM offered to walk it back and undo things, but clearly didn't want to change the way the plot was going, and frankly it had already killed any enthusiasm. I'd already had enough things happen that meant I was thinking of dropping out anyway, and a week later the first lockdown basically put the nail in the campaign anyway. Lesson to be learned there: Never ever make your plot entirely dependent on your players failing; they'll find a way to succeed against all the odds. For that matter, never make it entirely dependent on succeeding, because they will absolutely screw things up.
He had a perfect out too. Wild Magic is perfect for altering the game's reality to let the players have their cake and eat it too. All he had to do is state that the Wild Magic interacted with the ritual completing it with his remaining spell slots instead of the treant child. Make him unable to use magic for a day after as a sort of arcane recovery period and yall would have succeeded and the story would have continued forward.
Man, I see so many stories of bad times for players that basically boil down to "The GM wanted us to fail for plot reasons but also had zero preparation or creativity for if we somehow succeeded in the game made of random numbers and uncertain outcomes"
We were playing a homemade game once. After I successfully sneak to the miniboss and tried to knock him out with a shotgun, I got one. "You mixed up the end of the shotgun and shot yourself in the face" the GM said. I was already low on health, so I died. My frustration was indescribable.
I once had a game in which the GM designed the entire dungeon specifically so that my character couldn't do anything of use. After the session I told him I didn't have any fun and he told me that that was the point. I left the group.
I just cannot wrap my head around the mentality this GM and others like them. If I was so upset at a person that I would even consider doing something like this... I'd just uninvite the player or leave the game instead. Why the hell would I invite a person to game night, then prep and run all that just to make us both miserable? 🙄
In the 1980's I played in a AD&D campaign where we made characters inspired by fictional characters from other media. I chose to make a character inspired by Lion-O from the ThunderCats (my friend made one inspired by Mario). We took turns DMing and would design adventures so the characters would slowly acquire the abilities and equipment that the fictional ones had, and the themes often included villains from their stories. We were having a blast until "problem DM" decided to run a game. I can't remember what his character's theme was, but immediately the DMPC and his brother are gifted +6 weapons and armor from the quest giver along with some artifact level magic items. By this point my character had gained powered down versions of the Sword and Gauntlet of Omens and the ability to communicate with and command cats of all sizes. So I thought he just felt like his characters hadn't powered up at the same rate as me and my friend. We meet the BBEG and he has two entire prides of lions in cages around him. I figure "Hey, this is my time to shine!" I ask the lions for help and agree to free them. They IMMEDIATELY ATTACK ONLY ME. I figure they must be under some kind of magical control, but no, the DM says that they want to kill me because ThunderCats are "gay" and the Sword of Omens is stupid. The DM and his brother then side with the BBEG and turn on us. That group never played together again. I still played with my friend though.
I think what bothered me more than having my character targeted was the fact that my friends character was punished just because his player was my friend. He had a dwarf character that could become an 8 foot tall ogre by eating a magic mushroom and could essentially cast firebolt for one minute if he ate a special flower. You get the idea. To target him for misery because they didn't like MY idea was just wrong.
Yep one shot game. Had me roll a die and less than 5 minutes in I was permanently blinded and it was immune to aby attempts to be healed. I have never gone back despite the other campaigns running. I found a different group where the DM doesn't believe in doing that.
I could see it (no pun intended) if there was a way to cure it built into the one shot, or maybe a way to counter the effects, but just blinding someone like that is crappy.
@@badnewsBH I mean, for a one shot, I really don't think that's the way because you basically put someone in the passenger seat for the whole game. It's boring for everyone involved, I feel like. A one-shot is a short, fun affair and usually, nothing more. I did make a player blind in a really long campaign. He got blinded by the taint they were trying to ward off their world. He nearly died and that ended up being his long-term wound from it. The character could be cured, but not easily. The party then decided whatever they needed to had to wait before basically doing a sidequest to heal him. The party trying to cooperate with him, help him in fights and just make curing him their first priority was a GREAT dynamic. But this was supported by a group of actual friends irl who I knew were fine with this, a long-standing campaign with player involvement and a clear way to cure him.
I had a DM who wouldnt give us loot, ever. He would only give gold, and whenever we went shopping, items either needed weeks to be crafted (while the DM was rushing the party to leave the next day otherwise "the BBEG would win") or were 10 times more expensive than the whole party's funds. One time at level 7, our warrior finally found... a leather armor. 1 hour later, we enter a room with a slime and before initiative, the enemy melted that armour entirely. The DM saw it as revenge because "we kept begging". That same session, he also resurrected the rogue's love interest NPC who showed up in front of him... then a shadow beheaded her and peaced out. The rogue quit, then the warrior, who then also stole the DM's gf IRL.
In your case, I would have told the DM that if they have no equipment for us to loot, then they have no equipment to attack us with or protect themselves from our attacks...one or the other, it can't be both... It also sounds to me like that person thinks a DM's Job is DM vs. the Players when in fact the DM's job is to ensure everyone (including the DM) has fun...
@@HappilyHomicidalHooligan yeah they were definitely the "DM vs players" type. And they also kept telling us "it's fine, I'll remove enemies if you struggle" and when we inevitably did, it was "damn, you couldn't even beat that? That's because all you do is fight back you gotta do more than that" The DM thought Rolling diplomacy against enemies who shot first was what we needed to do. Or tripping them, which was harder to succeed than a hit
I had a DM like that except instead of crafting we had to "barter" and every "barter" was just them magically knowing how much gold each party member had then charging more than that. They refused to go down in price at all, no matter what we said or rolled, so it actually wasn't barting in any way, shape, or form.
In a Descent into Avernus campaign I was in, we were making pretty good progress through the area and had all agreed to try to save as many people as we could. In our party of fairly classic heroes, we had an edgelord who's tragic backstory somehow involved him being screwed over by both angels and demons, and thus didn't like either. He swore that his character would still go along with our party willingly and be helpful despite us having a literal angel as one of the PC's, plus an NPC hollyphant Well, at one point in our adventures, we saved a half dozen angels from being used as fuel for a ritual which left them drained and defenseless. No biggie, we had a caravan of vehicles to take them to this Bazaar where all of Avernus would respect the non-violence rule set in place there, and send them on their way out of hell. Arriving there we were all but spent, and took some much needed rest with the DM going around the table asking what we did to prepare for the end of the night. After getting past all of us, he arrived at the edgelord, who decided that he was going to trade the angels we had just saved to someone in the Bazaar for a +2 bow for his ranger. According to the DM, No, we were not allowed to speak up and change or prevent the deal, we were doing other things already! The real kick in the nuts, I was an artificer who was 2 levels away from being able to just make a +2 weapon if it really came down to it. Not that edgelord needed it, he already had a +1 bow and did buckets of damage. When we were told that there was nothing we could do and woke up to the angels being gone, it was safe to say the session was over. The DM is a great player, but this was his first and so far last try at being DM. The edgelord hasn't been invited back by anyone at the table.
My DM forced my giant shark polymorphed pc to rise to the surface of the water because the cleric previously casted water walk. I argued it granted the ability, but he would not hear me out and I didn't want to intrude on the session too much. He even said "you will not be able to convince me otherwise". I showed him the verbiage in the spell and then said ok, all abilities are forced to be used every turn, to which he quickly stepped aside and said that is how his 1st edition dm used to run the spell and he never thought about it.
Technically your DM is right, because RAW the spell is stupidly worded. It indeed "grants the ability to move across any liquid surface", but the being submerged part just happens. It says that "the spell carries the target to the surface", nothing about being granted the ability to in this section. Thus RAW you can turn off waterwalking and start bouncing up and down, as the moment you become submerged, the spell kicks in. I can't be sure if the spell was intended to be always on or togglable, but don't blame your DM for interpreting this mess
The spell also says it can target "Up to ten *willing* creatures you can see within range", i'd argue that your character should have not be targeted at all since unwilling.
I'm not sure if you'd call an alignment question a ruling, but I had a DM tell me that I was being "too evil" in an evil campaign and that I should "stop instigating with the other players" despite the fact I had gone through a rather extensive check to see if everyone was fine with me playing a Starscream type villain. The entire game devolved into everyone being too nice to play actual villains and me getting alienated cause of it, so I just walked. We still play regular games as good characters, that was just the one that made me realize trying to play a villain with them was going absolutely nowhere.
Dude Starscream was my favorite villain when watching transformers, why play a game dedicated to being villains if at the end of the day you're still good.
@@mihaiioc.3809 My entire plot for the game, which I ran by the DM for the record, was that I was gonna become the BBEG by the end of the campaign. I was going to do a mix of a Starscream style coup (which if the party won I had a whole thing where I was gonna ham it up and have a blast with everyone) and a Kefka Palazzo level plot to disrupt the world balance if they lost. I had a whole plan to essentially destroy the capitol city as a massive testament to the might of my character's god, a god of destruction. Drove me NUTS that they just WOULDN'T BE EVIL.
That DM would hate my evil-aligned character In an evils campaign, the party was tasked with capturing and ritualistically sacrificing a princess. We started in a tavern or pub (I can't recall) which gave my CE golden dragonborn rogue an idea. We had been given a Bag of Holding, so I asked the tavernkeeper for a keg of the most alcoholic drink they had. I put it in the Bag of Holding, then we moved on. I didn't tell anyone my plan before I enacted it. Fast forward to we have the princess's guards restrained and her ready to be sacrificed. I pull the keg out of the Bag of Holding, empty it onto the restrained guards, then use my breath attack. A golden dragonborn's breath attack is a 15 ft cone of fire with a Dexterity saving throw of 8 + Constitution modifier (for me it was +4, for a total of 24 to save) and the target takes 2d6 on a failed save. I'm fairly certain that was the character's first session, too.
One of my old lgs i would help out with the d&d Expeditions. (I was there 3 days a week. One to help the store with Expedition on a sunday. I would come on a Saturday to play with my group and thursdays i would either play wargames or board games). I started to receive alot of requests to do the Wednesday night encounters. And started to receive alot of people wanting to join my group. So i went to the owner and was like what's up? He said he noticed a bunch of people stopped showing up on Wednesday for d&d. So we agreed i would come on a Wednesdays join a couple groups to see what might be problems. So i joined with one of my second tier characters (a divination halfling wizard aka the super lucky wizard) and he was trying to rule i couldnt use my divination dice, or my inspiration, or my lucky feat. He was like that to the other players. And he was purposely messing with the players and the other players thought they had to bribe the gm. The night after the owner spoke with me i informed him but from the influx of players were newish i want to check out the other table the low tier. So it was the guy's brother i used a pregen halfling rogue. The guy's brother was a creep and said we couldnt use our base abilities or spells. And was hitting on the gals in tge group. After half an hour i stood up and was like no im done with this. The brother tried to gaslight me and did the whole you dont know how to play or how tge adventure league works. I informed him i helped run the Expeditions on sunday. Mid (2 and eventually 3) tier in the morning and low tier in the afternoons. I informed them their actions where unacceptable and i was going to inform the owner. I got up and left and the store employees seemed very confused. I called up the owner told them what happened. The next time i went there the owner was there he said he spoke to some people who were at their tables and some said exactly what i said. So he banned them from the store and i ran the encounters on thursday for about 4 months (princes of the apocalypse) until they got someone to run it on Wednesdays again
Close one, but I didn't walk away immediately: You can't crouch behind a boulder, which is painted as an obstacle on the map, in order to get 3/4 cover, be happy with 1/2 cover. But enemies can crouch behind a table to get full cover. Three sessions later, from the same DM: Oh, I forgot to prepare some enemies in the back, and you sneak behind the enemy? Let me place some enemies from the front to the back right now, so you can't surprise them (I got down to 3 hp in that fight) Two sessions later I left, after DM got mad at me a few times (in one case, for hearing that he rolled a dice twice when enemy didn't have advantage. He almost always rolls behind cover) I didn't walk away immediately, in isolation these situations didn't feel bad enough and only irritated me, but one day I sat down and thought about things and realised "yup, it's pretty toxic", and then left (Citing lack of character choice as the main reason when DM asked). That DM usually isn't like that in most campaigns, I have no idea what was wrong with this (still ongoing, and from what I heard seemingly better now) campaign.
I once heard of a DM who told a player with the Magic Initiate feat that, because he was a Battlemaster Fighter and therefore didn't regain spell slots after a Long rest (due to not having any), he _also_ wouldn't get the 1st-level Wizard spell back from Magic Initiate either, unless he took at least one level in Wizard so he could regain spell slots after Long rests. I can't personally recall any "bad rulings" off the top of my head, at least none bad enough that I quit a game, but I do prefer not to play with DMs who insist on strict readings of the rules exactly as they're written, because that's how you get nonsense like an Aasimar taking damage from their own Radiant Consumption (it deals damage to "each creature within 10 feet of you", and _you're_ within 10 feet of yourself), or being in combat outdoors during full daylight and an enemy lights a torch, so now because you're in the "dim light" radius of the torch your ranged attacks and vision-based Perception checks have disadvantage.
Technically, you are not "within 10 feet of you," you are you, to be within 10 feet of something you would have to be near it, not literally at it's position, if the spell said, "centered on you extending 10 feet in every direction," that would be a different matter.
The initial version of Aasimar clearly states that you and each creature within 10 feet of you take damage, but you also have resistance to the damage type. The revised rules lowered the damage to PB instead of half your level rounded up and they very clearly don't mention you taking damage. What I'm getting it is depending on which rules you used would depend on if they were doing it RAW or not. But judging by them not doing magic initiate as RAW and them ignoring RAW to do whatever they want, I daresay they lowered your damage to PB and said you take damage from it plus you're somehow not resistant? They seem like the type to completely fuck up rules for the sake of being an arse.
It was several rulings in quick succession. 1. A specialized fey creature of his own design was making uncomfortable amorous advances, wouldn't stop, and was immune to everything. 2. Another player was allowed to make a "called shot" and shoot my character directly in the eye. 3. When I went to retaliate against that player, suddenly an attack roll against AC wasn't good enough, the player was also granted a Reflex save to "just not be in the square I'm attacking". It was at that moment I realized that bad D&D really is worse than no D&D.
One of my biggest gripes especially as a wizard in a number of campaigns has been some my old table's on and off again guest DMs was that he wouldn't allow us to have or create any golems or constructs. At one point I had actually had to rework and homebrew the entire golems and constructs tables because types of golems don't take into account upgrading building materials and/or constructing them to different sizes. As an example, the shield guardian as a primary is classically constructed from wood, bronze, stone, and steel. However why would one use stone when one has access to better materials and that's not even getting into the types of wood or their properties as a basis. Basically all constructs can be called into question in that regard and my biggest axe to grind is that the constructs tables doesn't even really acknowledge below small. So you basically have to home brew something like a clockwork spider construct that's fairly disposable as a scout and that's not even getting into the fact that the shield guardian proves that control can be tethered to an item rather than a caster so they can be traded or given to say other party members for use. That as a preface, said guest DM decided he was basically going to "rocks fall" what was effectively a party mascot construct we had that our usual forever DM had very much cosigned and even GIVEN us as a long standing party member/tool. So he literally killed our clockwork dog with out reason or even consent from our usual DM who wasn't DMing because he wanted to play as a player for a change as well and he also didn't even ask the rest of us if that was ok ether. Pretty much everyone walked away from that and he wasn't allowed back as a DM at all.
yeah, if i were the usual DM i would bar him from the table completely and completely nullify everything he ever did as a DM, if he's like that as a DM i guarantee he would be a "That Guy" player
@@GinaRanTruthEnforcer He did get table banned from being the DM but he was allowed back as a player. He wasn't consistently a player due to schedules but he did make semiregular appearances. He actually wasn't that bad as a player though.
Reminds me of the time in Pathfinder where I built a bunch of intelligent constructs and accidentally ascended to godhood because they were worshipping me as a creator deity. Good times
Got downed by a Will-O-Wisp and DM asked for a constitution check against death (5e). I rolled a 10, the DM ruled on the spot that the DC was 11 and told me not only did my character die, he couldn't ever be resurrected because the creature ate my soul. I was done.
That reminds me of one time a DM randomly changed the death save rule to be you had to roll an 11 or higher instead of a 10 or higher for my character who had just gone down. I ended up succeeding but it was like why the fuck did this rule get changed for me here and now!? 😅
I think the core issue of most of these DMs, as well as most of the ones described in the comment section, is that they care more about being in control and doing what they want than about the players having fun. Sometimes, allowing your players to take control of certain story elements can greatly benefit everyone's enjoyment of the game, including the DM. Food for thought.
Had a DM who set up a main quest encounter at level 2 against a dozen salamanders in an enclosed space and then had the gall to be indignant when people pointed out that there was no way ANYONE was ready for that kinda fight and all it achieved was forcing most the party to roll up new characters. The ruling/remark that actually made me and most of the the players walk away was the "You're not allowed to question the DM" anymore and "Y'all just suck at this". If there was a plot related reason for everyone to perish in that fight that's one thing. But his responses made it clear that wasn't the case. He was just a bad DM with a complex and an attitude.
Last time I played with people I didn't know prior, a player misunderstood a rule. A very basic rule that is central to how the game works. I explained it to him and he argued. I'm like no that's not it, and he said look you had your say now it's my turn. GM takes his side. The very same GM who put the time and effort into providing all those cheat sheets that clearly explains the rules. He didn't refer to his own cheat sheets. I don't want to rule lawyerize but I can't play with stupid people.
Can't forget that GM has final say about ALL rules regardless of what the book says, heck when I used to dm I would change some rules/ignore rules outright to make it more fun for my players because at the end of the day I wanted them to have fun which in turn meant I was also having fun, even if they derailed the plot every time lol. Miss DMing for that group, good times.
my paranormal investigator who could literally call forth images of things that happened in a location, could literally talk to the walls was told 'you dont find anything' but the guy who rolled mid happened to find a clue. had to walk away from that one and explain to the DM that if my super specialised character couldnt do the one thing he's good at then what was the point of playing him?
My last group we were playing a western inspired pathfinder 2 game, I picked the gunslinger. Like half the monsters were resistant to piercing damage... That's literally all I got. I picked up a club at one point just to have another option. But yeah the "fun" in that was an all time low .
@@summonsays2610 pretty well all guns in pf2e have concussive, which means they deal piercing or bludgeoning, depending on which the creature has less of a resistance to
Not me, but I was at the table. It was a Pathfinder adventure path. Something about giants. We were in a city being attacked by Orcs trying to save it and we get attacked by this tough Shaman that nearly beats us. I think the Shaman went unconscious and one of the players said he was going to Coup the guy. GM says the player will get an alignment penalty if he does. Player counters we're in a warzone with no way to safely take a prisoner and he's too dangerous to risk letting him live. GM and Player go back and forth about how bad it is and how circumstances need to be considered and so on until the player packs up his stuff and leaves. Last session of that campaign. I still played with the player fir awhile and his thinking was the GM wanted the shaman to give us info but couldn't think of a way to tell us without an interrogation scene.
Dm added extra cold damage to people weating any type of plate armour. Plus receiving cold damage when taking a full rest. Exclusively for people wearing plate mind you. Regardless if there is a fire or not to keep the players warm
Do people not know that knights and man-at-arms wore soft padding underneath their armor to prevent things like abrasion injuries? Their bodies were pretty well insulated, unless they get soaked, which affects most clothing anyways
Almost. I finally bit the bullet and tried my hand at DMing. I had a fun idea of using the Commoner "class" for 5e (10s in 4 stats, 12 in one, 8 in last, get to level 5 and evolve into level 2 PC with bonus HP) and the twist is the players are children who go on imaginary adventures (revealed after all but one were slaughtered by a band of goblins). After a handful of sessions, the shoe dropped. The BBEG burned their village down and killed their families. They survived by "chance" (playing in the forest as usual). Fast forward 15 years, in game, and now they are full-fledged adventurers and hear rumor of a chimera (the BBEG's mount and pet) sighted by a nearby village. They arrive and it turns out the Baroness of the village has the people under her control. ("Rolled and Told"'s vampress Baroness adventure.) They make it to her castle, trigger a fight that leaves them battered and on the brink of death. Then, one of the players (the one who had been DMing) goes to move some debris, which housed a swarm of centipedes. This swarm proceeded to kick their asses worse (a trap literally in the book) but they beat it. Now hanging on a thread, they short rest and leave everything alone (good thing as there was 2 or 3 more swarms hidden). They go into a room they KNOW houses sleeping vampire spawn with the plan to stake as many as they can. Now, there are 4 PCs (5th was AWOL) and 8 or 9 Spawn. So I have them roll Stealth vs the Passive Perceptions of the Spawn (which I clearly said). They roll okay... but one rolls bad. Really, really bad. So I described how it jolted up and howled in death (as seen in every vampire movie) and did a check for all the vampire spawn to see if they woke. They did. The party is then wiped out and the Paladin (who the mad Baroness believed was her husband) was merely knocked out and dragged to her. The other DM (who was playing a Fighter iirc) rolled his Death Saves and got a Nat 20. Rather than escape, he followed the Spawn to "save his friend". Instead, he watched the Baroness turn his friend... who then came to turn him. Fighter then fled, swearing he would save his friend. Now, I was planning to have him find a new group of adventurers to continue the story... other DM instead had a complete fit, openly complaining about calls I made (even though nearly all were following the adventure, specifically the trap he set off). He then demanded to DM again and run his homebrew world. Okay, I prefer to play. I tell him about a Paladin I made that he loved the idea of a month prior (Half-Troll raided by a Cleric and so becomes a Devotion Paladin). "Sorry, my world doesn't have trolls because regeneration doesn't exist in the real world, so it would make the species go extinct." Never mind that in the real world, we literally have animals that regenerate limbs or even their entire bodies from their heads. Fine, I will make him Half-Orc. Whatever. Mission is to clear out undead, AWESOME! My Pally can shine here, and does. Too bad it is a gambling den, and the DM tries to say I would be breaking my Oath as an LG to even enter or accept money (payment for the job). I post out that I wouldn't know if the place is run legitimately or if they heat people, nor is it my concern. It isn't my place to judge people, just protect them. (For the record, I am a Christian and my DM doesn't like Christians due to understandable baggage.) We move on and on the road get ambushed by a Gorgon, which tries to petrify me, I succeeded the save with a Nat 20 (DM implied I cheated). Later that day, we make camp and just after dawn are attacked (on my watch) by a rust monster. Above ground. So to save my armor, I mounted my horse and threw a cast iron pot, the most ferrous item we have as I know the lore of them and how ironic their favorite meal. The RM ignores the pot that is 5 feet away and charges the mounted Paladin 30 feet away. Even with it missing its attack, he ruled my armor was damaged and AC dropped by 1. I was done after that. Thankfully, another player wanted to DM so 'other DM' played in this Tal'Dorei set game... as a Bard who had to be the focus at all times. The game only lasted a few more months, then 'other DM' and his partner got new jobs and moved across the state.
I apologize but may I have a summary? As much I want to read that I’d like to at least understand what’s crazy so my brain feels included and intrigued to read the rest of it.
@@samuelguzman9210basically >guy runs Adventure Module as written >TPK >That Guy flips out, demands to be given the DM chair >OP makes LG Paladin >DM goes out of their way to screw over OP at every opportunity >group collapses due to real life stuff
My DM (with a lot of experience) organized a few short sessions for my group (almost all new DnD players except for one guy) for us to get used to combat. We were told that there won't be a lot of interaction with NPCs, mainly just fighting (which I was sad about, but I was still extatic that I'm finally gonna play DnD). I knew about the stereotypes, but I still made myself a sassy tiefling warlock (fiend pact) character, because I'm a huge sucker for sassy devilish magicians. I did research and thought up a tiefling name for her, "Enigma" (which I was very proud of), but when I really wanted to gave her a surname "Darklight" (maybe a little on the nose, but super cool in my opinion - I used it before in video games), my DM decided it was too cringe/too edgy and straight up refused to call her that, writing a standard tiefling surname from the Player's Handbook, "Kosirra", instead, on my character sheet (which he helped me create). And then through the whole (short, but still) campain he repeatedly called my character by the surname "Kosirra" instead of her name "Enigma", despite me correcting him every time. I was very disappointed, bitter and honestly surprised why he made such a big deal out of it. It was just a name but it felt like he didn't care about my character at all.
Back when I had a run of Rise of the Runelords, I was playing the wizard in the final boss battle. The DM had ludicrously buffed the enemy wizard on top of his existing buffs just to make it harder. As wizard, it is my job to deal with such stuff and I was prepared with the exact thing for it. Mage's disjunction. Instant "every spell gone, do not roll save" to not have to do like 10 rolls against the guy's already buffed casting level. The DM would not have that, so unwilling to have all those walls of force and all the other defenses instantly come down, so he goes "contingency counterspell exactly for this". Thing is, I was ALSO prepared for that. I am a wizard. It is my job to be batman. Item bond free spell once per day to recall that spell and use it again. So next turn... I try to drop his ludicrous buffs again. Obviously, DM still thinks we should somehow deal with ten buffs while being incapable of even getting near the guy while he is bombarding us with spells, so he does the contingency thing again. Obviously, then comes the argument that you can't have two contingencies active at the same time (I know there are some very specific conditions, but he used up his one dm fiat) and as the conversation goes he decides to do the ruling of "oh, you tried to use it on an artifact. Lose all ability to cast spells. Period." which is not how that works but the man just continued holding the point and dismissing me. So here I was trying to do my job and reduced to a peasant. I left in the middle of the fight and didn't even look back. Not sure how or even IF they managed to beat the guy because it looked like the DM had the disease of boss attachment even if it wasn't his own.
I was the dm but I walked away. Was running a campaign with college friends. Things were fine for a few sessions. Getting to a point in the story that Drow involvement would come up. They took a long time in a hostile area so I had the leader of the camp start making her way there. My thought process on the elder was Drow society is matriarchal, so the head of this force would obviously be a woman. Out of nowhere the players start devising a trap with teamwork I've never seen. So I was like, alright, you're working together getting creative. That's cool. Let's lean into that. They get her trapped and shut her magic down. I'm thinking this is where the interrogation for details starts so I'm so lost in thought of coming up with what she knows and DC's for various charasma checks, I missed the part where they wanted to start stripping her. And doing....more...after that. I packed up and left right there and never met with them again. Made my skin crawl.
I had a DM who said the duration of a round in combat (Which is 6 seconds in DnD 5e) is "Up to interpretation". We didn't argue about it, but when he said my Bless lasted "1d4" rounds, I almost quit then. it spectacularly nerfed my Twilight Cleric support build, in which my ONLY source of damage was a sickle and who relied on buffing everyone else. I didn't have to quit because the DM not long after had life happen, but I was severely disappointed.
i was a human paladin with relatively high strength and asked the dm if i could break the chain, he said if I rolled high enough that I can, i got a nat 20 and then he asked me what race i was, to which i replied human and he then overruled the natural 20 and said i couldn't break it
I had a few close "walk-away" moments, but it would take a lot for me to walk away from the table. It would have to be absolutely fucked up for a ruling for me to walk away from a table.
This isn't really an example of what the video is about, but funny story so I want to say it anyway. I was in a game with a DM who I hadn't previously met, as I'd been brought into the group by my friend who knew the DM from work. The game never actually got finished, but it was one of my only chances to actually play the game and I remember it fondly. Our party was hired to go check out a windmill and the surrounding cottage a bit outside of town where a few people had disappeared when travelling to or near. When our party got there and entered the windmill, there was a chest in the corner and little else. The rest of the party wanted to go for the chest, but I stopped them, having played a ton of Dark Souls and therefore being conditioned to *never* touch a chest until it has been thoroughly Mimic checked. So one of our party cast a spell (I don't have a lot of experience with the game so I'm not sure which one, but I think it was Detect Magic) and the chest was found to, in fact, be magical and alive. The DM was very obviously annoyed by this as I guess he'd figured somebody would fall for it and get eaten. We didn't try to fight it and just left it alone since it was one of the very first things we did in the campaign, but when we came back later we found that it was in a different spot and there was a bunch of blood on the floor where it had been before, so we ended up killing it there since we were stronger and more confident. Still not sure why somebody had apparently been stupid enough to try to open it since we left a "Mimic, do not touch!" note by it to indicate that it was dangerous, but some people can't read, I guess.
I was in a group with a new dm. We found a large box and when someone asked if they could open it, our dm has him make a con save. He succeeds to which the dm says “you find it in yourself to not open the box and walk away” (???) when someone else wanted to open it, he failed the con save and something flew out of it upon opening it. “What is it?” “It’s indescribable” “no like…what does it look like?” “It’s indescribable.” I left that party afterwards
@@sekiyo_ I agree, sounds like he just couldn't paint a picture of the horror he had in his head. This is definitely not bad, just needs more creativity.
I was once part of a play session where I was a mele class. It was already not going so swell for me since I was trying to take the game somewhat seriously and the other 4 players were skirting the lines of being murder hobos. Last encounter I was very inaffective, so understandably I wasn't in the best mood. What was the final encounter of that campain, when I tried to intimidate my opponent, it did nothing. The DM gave me the impression that nothing I could do would have any affect outside of pure combat. So I start using my turns to hit the monster. Which apparently not taking negative rolls for extra attacks was wrong, and also taking negative rolls for extra attacks was wrong. The session ended early, and the DM proceeded to chew me out for not having a good time. In front of my kid. For a one shot. Did I forget to mention this is my husband? I stopped playing not only DND, but tabletop games entirely.
I respect the word's DM as law most of the time (as long as they're not power tripping) but if I ask if I can do something that seems completely sensible I am going to expect a more comprehensive answer than "no" as a response.
Haven't walked away from this group, but some of the GMs rulings drive me UP A WALL. We were traveling west across an open desert during the day. I'm a scout with expertise in survival, *and I can fly.* I roll a 46 survival. (Mind you, this is 5th edition d&d.) The DM tells us that we wind up going off track and heading almost due north instead. Can't I see the path of the sun? Can't I see the entire desert around us? Hell, we're like a day and a half from our destination, I should already be able to see the place from the air!
We were setting up for a custom Pathfinder 2e campaign and the DM had given us some free archetype feats for extra fun in creation. I made a goblin alchemist grenadier mounted on a camel. I could free action command the camel to move allowing my character to throw the maximum bombs possible per turn. A beautiful "mobile turret" build. We introduce our characters and set off...into a catacombs that the doorway is too narrow for my camel but of course it opened into a giant underground area. I walked away on that one.
My first ever D&D session had something that still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that if I had access to other groups and it happened now, I would've left. I will admit it's petty and a fairly insignificant issue, but since it was the first time I had ever played D&D, it pisses me off. I wanted to use Prestidigitation to make a rock sparkle to distract a group of goblins we needed to get past. The DM said his homebrew goblins don't have that trait. As far as I could tell, that was the only difference from the canon goblins. I was so proud of my idea, too. *_That's_* what pisses me off.
Ya that's some bs. It sounds like the DM didn't have much else planned for the session, and getting out of the combat would've made hurt his pride. Thankfully my DM let me do something similar where we distracted and lured goblis out of rooms to make combat easier before we fought a bugbear. Interacting with the world is a huge part of ttrpg. Otherwise, we could all just roll dice in combat scenarios on our own.
@@TyRaff We still didn't even enter combat, if I remember correctly. (I may be remembering wrong, I have brain damage, and this was in 2020.) It was a really stupid quest, too. We were tasked with stealing a pie from an old woman. Granted, he did make a choice later on that while it was equally unfair, it was in my favor. My character should've died, but he spared me the pain of losing my character that early.
@disableddragonborn I mean to be fair not all goblins should be dumb idiots but I would've made the goblins roll and some get distracted (never enter combat) and some don't and fight the party. Makes your idea work and combat happen so idk
@@Enclave_Sergeant He just straight-up said "My homebrew goblins don't have that trait." I wouldn't be so bitter if it weren't my first session and an idea I was so proud of as a new player.
i once had a DM that literally banned me from using the shield spell because i kept using it to protect my character, who wasn't otherwise great defensively. The character's background was in artifact/treasure hunting and therefore he developed a fighting style around quick fights that shield is very good for. Basically he's best when he has all his spell slots and uses all or most of his first level ones to cast shield whenever he gets targeted. DM didn't like this when i used this strategy in multiple quick battles at the beginning of the campaign, even after I carefully explained that the strategy was completely within the rules of the game, didn't work after a few turns, and told him my backstory's reasons behind it. I only finished that first session and then left. Worst part was that most of the other player agreed with him.
One of my DMs ruled an auto crit on my character because I hadn't been hit in a combat scene once - because I was succeeding my stealth rolls. We're level 2 and my con was shit. Incapacitated immediately.
@@yasone7873 bro fuck if I know, literally watched him roll a d20 for some archer to hit me, land on a 14, and he just says 'nat 20,' and snags the dice back. hadn't played since
A DM rule lawyered forge cleric's channel divinity so hard it was not only extremely uselss everywhere, using it creatively was shutted down (yes, including the "turn normal locked locks into open locks"), i couldnt profit 1 copper in any way shape or form. But the most stupid was not allowing to barricade a 5ft wide hallway with a door to block the 10ft wide boss from squeezing in. And complaining when his boss who was proned, grappled and hit with our last resources died (when it dealt half of our healthpools in damage in one spell. To all of us. On one turn). I just had my dwarf forge cleric walk away from this afterward. Pretty fucking sad when the players were kind.
The first one now makes me wonder about more times in which a DM actually makes an honest mistake in their ruling, whether or not it makes someone salty. No one's perfect, after all. Crap happens, and in the heat of the moment, it can be difficult to think clearly and recall the rules correctly. Times in which players make honest mistakes in their stuff even if it may not particularly be dumb could also be good.
Not me, but one of my players. I tried to get back into TTRPG, so I decided to get together with some friends who lived an hour away from where I lived. The group was pretty small, so I made a short Pathfinder campaign based on my novels' world as a setting. Character-wise, there was Raltz - a Human Monk -, Markus - a Half-elf Hexblade Assassin - and another character, but that player didn't stay very long due to living further away and not being able to visit often. To help round up the party, I added my story's main character - Karyana, a human Spellblade. During the quest, Raltz decided to take an Oath of Silence as part of his monastery's teachings (though it may have been a misread on his part, as he was new to the game), and spent less time at the table and more around it. Given it was his house, we kept the story going, but I figured that it was best to wrap it up quickly, as our host was becoming less interested in playing. It turns out that he just wanted us to hang around, and didn't care all that much about the game. It pretty much killed TTRPG for me after that...
whilst I am sympathetic to how it went in your particular case...if a DM of mine wanted me to play in the world setting of his novel, and the party was escorted by the main character of that novel...I would take the dash action out the door and not stop walking until I got home. that's about as many red flags as you can put in a single sentence.
I know this might sound petty, but... it was an online D&D game that I was playing in 3-4ish years ago. This was my first time playing with this group, so I didn't really know what to expect from them. I was playing a paladin, which at the time was my favorite class. This detail isn't too important to the story, but I was going for a paladin who wasn't obsessed with stopping the evil of fiends and undead but more of like the everyday evils of the world, however the entire party would make jokes about how my paladin would instantly freak out anytime there was an undead nearby. Like I said, it was not a very important detail to the story, but it was still something going through my head during the session. One detail that is important, though, is that at the time, my mic wasn't working, so I had to type out all my actions or dialog out in the chat. Back to the story. We got in a fight with an assassin, and it was going fairly poorly for the assassin. I was the only one within melee range, and the assassin decided to start running. I was able to take an attack of opportunity on the assassin, and I did. I asked the DM if the assassin was still up, and they said yes. The next thing I typed was okay, then I'm going to dump a second level smite on to them. The DM said you need a bonus action in order to do that and then proceeded to carry on with the story the assassin got away. I will say yes, I know that some smites need a bonus action to activate on your turn. However, I was using Divine Smite the Smite that every paladin gets, and that's a free action to use. I would understand if they made a ruling ahead of time that mentioned I have to use a bonus action for even Divine Smite, but that never came up. So, with that ruling, my mic not working, and the party making incorrect assumptions about my paladin, I just decided it would be better if I left the group.
you could have just completely broken my brain because it's literally impossible to escape magic in D&D it is literally everywhere nature itself is magical proven by druids if it was Homebrew it could work but dear God you would have to change so many subclasses it wouldn't be worth playing
@@PikachuLittle You can have a lot of fun with limited or no magic. i ran a game where there was no magic (or well, none besides what gods and certain creatures could perform), but someone wanted to play a wizard so i had to clue them into some important plot details. such as there is magic, its just that no one has ever seen it before from a mortal, and that me and him are going to be spending some long nights together making the first mage ever some custom spells. Honestly it turned out really fun, seeing a guy take incidents in the game, rationalize spells for them, and then crafting them with him. You can have a ton of fun with it, its all about making something interesting, rather than saying "no magic" and never expanding on it.
As a DM, I had a player drop out of my games for what I was told, a silly misunderstanding. I'm starting a new long-running campaign with my 3 friends as the core players. I've explained to them and 3 other players that they're my core adventuring group, with back-stories and everything, while the other 3 players will have characters that can more easily drop-in / drop-out. It was the second session this new player joined, and aided the main group with some zombies that invaded their camp during the night. They managed to easily fight back and win the encounter. After a long-rest, one of my player's character pulls out a pipe to share. We've home-brewed the drug that was in it (It's more or less dope). Their characters are tolerant to it, but they pass it to the new character, whom I asked for a Con save. He failed it miserably. It was late RL, so we called the game there so we could pick up next time with the new players trip experience. I typed out this whole thing where he goes through a forest and sees some visions & stuff... The next game we're all there and ready to play except for him. It was about an hour & a half before we found out he wasn't showing up because he wanted to watch a hockey game. Well, I told my players that his character goes semi-catatonic, and to leave him at the camp so we can progress. I was annoyed at him for saying he'd be there, but not telling us he cancelled until BEYOND last minute. When he found out, it enraged him so much he just quit. Didn't even tell me. He told his friend that he was upset for "killing" off his character... It was just a misunderstanding, and I'd still have him join us if he wanted to come back... but he's gone.
One time my DM said that you cant seduce a dragon since the females died out long ago. My friend (The Barb) immediately left the table as he heard it, he said "If i can't seduce a female dragon, i dont want to play"
Not a ruling in my case but rather the combination of 2 very "dominant" personalities and a rather new DM. My character was about to deliver a finishing blow to an enemy when that enemy tried to talk its way out of it. Now, the DM said this was my finishing blow so it was my decision. The 2 others decided my character would not make that finishing blow. Just like that. I was not mad that I could not finish the enemy and that we were now talking to that enemy, I was mad that the DM let 2 other players take over my character. If you want to stop my character's actions, do that in game. Heroically block the finishing blow and talk me out of killing the guy or what not. There's many ways to do this! But don't you dare play my character for me or I will throw my character sheet at you and quit cause, why the f* am I there then?
I'd have said no, I kill him because it's MY character and if they had a problem with that then I'd probably attack them in game as they just saved the villain, and to show that yea I'm done with this table
I played with a DM who hated to he corrected in any fashion. I am a veteran at DnD since i played since 3rd edition and read so many of the books. Not bragging just saying i understand the game very well. The DM hated my character, a Warforged Monk, because somehow i kept rolling high and he coukdnt manage to hit my character. I wasnt cheating or anything. He demanded i roll 7 different types of dice and i still wasnt hit often. He eventually cheated in 2 ways. Basically even the weakest of creatures or enemies had an unblockable AOE attack towards me. That alone pissed me off. Then what made me quit was he forced me to use a specific set of dice i learned later were loaded dice so i rolled low always. The reason he did this to me? Because i corrected him one time about how i had advantage on something when he said i didnt. Literally had to pull out the book to prove it and he finally gave me advantage. Like i said, guy didnt like to be corrected at all...
I once had a DM for a 5e D&D campaign set in Eberron. There was a series of questionable houserules and a lot of homebrew content (including a friend of the DM playing a crazy-broken Artificer that combined wizard and artificer features in one class with no tradeoff). The one that made me walk, however, was when the DM ruled that we, as newly hired crew members on a flying ship, have to roll 20+ Wisdom saves to disobey the orders of our NPC captain. Including disobeying him 'in spirit'.
I admit that as a DM, I did once make my whole party quit playing. To be fair, I did warn everyone at the very beginning not to beg for any items as it would not end well. This was also 2nd edition if I remember right. One of my friends kept asking every session for a deck of many things. After about 5 or so times of him asking, I decided to give him one. Only it was a homebrewed version that was cursed. Every card pulled would cause a roll to compel him to pull another card (was unneeded at the end as he kept pulling cards hoping for a better result). The cards would do things like reduce stats, change gender, change appearance, etc. This was something he gained after the party went through an entire maze (2 - 3 sessions) and was getting their rewards from the treasure hoard. So he kept pulling cards that caused bad things to happen until he got the last card, which gave the wish spell (of course I had set it to be a monkeypaw kind of wish). He wished he had never found this deck. I asked if he was sure that was his exact wish and he said yes. Ok... so now time rewound for the entire maze encounter back to before they all entered. All items and experience gained during this was lost for the whole party. He left saying he would never play with me again. The rest of the party quit too. 20 years later they did in fact play again with me as DM in what they said was one of the best campaigns they ever played. I like to think I grew as a DM to do better by my players.
Of all things, asking for a Deck of Many Things is deranged. I could see some other tame object, but that thing just causes horrific things to happen in any game it's dropped in.
I almost didn't make it to session 1 cause of a DM wanting to make up odd rules for character creation that only effected me. Essentially every player had a 1 on 1 with the DM to craft our characters so he could integrate our characters into the story, no big deal there and I appreciate the effort. Problem was that we started off as level 3 adventurers and it was DND 5E. I wanted to make a hexblade warlock, and I had flavor for my patron and everything cause I actually read the rule book. Well the DM says that hexblades can only have black razor as their patron, so my custom patron idea wouldn't float. So when I asked if that meant I wanted to be a hexblade I would be getting black razor or a weaker version of it at start. He said he wouldn't let a new character have such an item and black razor would never inhabit a weaker form of itself for my PC. The DM then followed this by claiming this was all book rules, and it just meant that I would have to pick something else and multiclass into hexblade much later. This was all over discord, and I was literally reading the book as we went along so of course I thought the dude was freaking high. When I told him I wasn't interested in playing if he was gonna make up lies on the spot to keep me from playing something he changed his tune immediately. This guy wasn't a much better player he'd brow beat whatever DM was in control that he could attack with a great sword with two hands and then use an off hand attack with a dagger without dropping the greatsword or something else along those lines.
It was one of my first 5E games and I was playing a Champion Fighter because the expanded crit range excited me. After reaching level 3 and rolling a 19 on the die, I get very excited saying that's a critical hit for me. DM: "nah that's too overpowered, it's a regular hit." In hindsight I should have stood up for myself and asked what my new feature should be since he had effectively robbed me of one of the reasons I wanted to play Champion. Instead, I meekly rolled with it and then quit from that table the first opportunity I could.
A 5% extra chance to crit is overpowered? I think leaving the table would still be a good choice, even if you stuck up for yourself chances are they would've done something else equally stupid down the line.
The first time i played D&D (and the last time for a LONG while), i was playing a rogue. I forgot the race, but part of it was that i had the ability to detect traps. However, no matter how well i rolled, i was rarely able to actually detect traps, even obvious ones. I was accused by the other players of not doing a good enough job building my rogue, hence why i doing so badly. Towards the end, i wanted to cry because the group really hated me and the DM, who was someone i called a friend, barely defended me. It wasn't until i rolled a 19 and another player boosted me that we found out what was going on. Apparently the DM wrote down that i had a penalty that reduces the effectiveness of my detect trap skill because of a cursee object that i didn't know i had. I believe it was a bracelet i started with that belongee to my characters first love or something. But without telling me or anyone, it was cursed to make me fail the check more often than not. EVERYONE, especially me, was pissed off at the DM. He had not even asked me if this was ok to do, he just did it. I had a miserable time because of him and they even lost a character because of it. I stopped being friends with him and only recently started to learn how to play again.
Dm of a Gundam 5e campaign, threw a cr 12 enemy at us when we were only level 1-3(don't remember exact level, only that this was session 1), did 5 attacks in a single turn only telling us "mounted weapons are a free action" AFTER KILLING A MEMBER OF THE PARTY, AND THEIR MOBILE SUIT, IN ONE TURN FROM FULL HEALTH, also, no, and when confronted they were revealed to have a god complex Mounted weapons in Gundam 5e are the same as any other weapon, they don't have rules allowing for "free action attacks" which should never be allowed in the first place. My friend and I both chewed out that DM and most of the group left the game after that, it was a 6 person party, I think 1 person stayed and that dm duped others into joining a revolving door of people joining and leaving the campaign. We had become friends with the person who stayed before leaving the campaign, so we heard about what happened after we left. The worst part was that the campaign was organized in a discord server of someone who reads dnd horror stories on youtube. It was like this dm took them as inspiration, rather than stories of what not to do.
Years ago, I was playing in a Dark sun campaign, as a druid that could turn in to a swarm of flies I think. Details are a little hazy at this point. First session we all start out locked in cells/cages. I said I was going to turn in to a swarm to extricate myself. DM said it doesn't work like that. It felt like something he just ass pulled to stop me from escaping. I'm all for being an easy going player, and all he had to do was say "Out of character, please don't do that, I have something lined up" or "the cage has an anti magic field" and that would have been the end of it. Just never sat with me and has stuck in my craw. DM was one of the best DM's I've ever played with though, just one instance of annoyance.
I wasn't a player but a co-dm to who had a rule he never allowed bags of holding. Ever. He was convinced players would fill it to the brim with daggers, and then in combat, turn it inside out and the daggers would shoot out like a volley from a cannonesque-bag. No amount of telling him that's not how the spell worked, would change his mind. Oh and the DM who refused to let me search for someone who stole from us. Because my character grew up in the faewild and didn't know cities, so I wouldn't understand how to search for someone in a city. I mentally checked out. 3 real world hours later, the rogue (who had stolen something and was another PC) kept out-stealthing the party. We finally told him, keep it, don't want you in the party anyway.
@firstnamelastname7244 idk. I tried to convince him it did work that way to no end. He wouldn't budge even when I told him, that as DM, he could even make a rule it didn't work that way.
My very first experience for DnD was when 5e first dropped. A group from my college brought me in and wanted me to join, with me having zero knowledge on any of it, and I barely fumbled my way through character creation. So for a pirate campaign planned for the seven seas, I became Alduin, the Red Dragonborn Barbarian (I give all the bows for my 10 out of 10 name I had to make up on the fly, inspirations unknown). Listening to the DM on how to build a Barbarian, I made them physically tough, and tanky, with little brains and not much going for mental stats. Alright fair enough. When we began to play however, we had a Paladin in the party who had higher stats than me basically overall all around. Now normally that doesnt necessarily mean alot, but it was apparent from the very beginning I was NEVER able to roll well, as I think throughout all of the sessions, Alduin managed to legitimately land 4 hits on his given attacks with his Greatsword, and maybe succeed in 3 skill checks throughout his time. We started in jail, of which even with damaged bars I could not attack my way out of in a Rage, but a cannonball from a pirate attack broke them. That Pirate comes through with his crew of 2, himself and his first mate Patches, the Peg legged Dwarf. Attempting to test our worthiness against them so we could be hired, Alduin attempted with his other rage to fight, but we immediately just beaten down. A few rolls from one of the players shows diplomacy was the way to go, and so session 1 has nothing for my character. The next few sessions play out in similar fashions, where either story beats either dont play to the favor of the bronze, or if it was for muscle, I rolled so poorly, I did something like toss patches not onto the enemy ship, but face first with a crit fail into the mast of our ship, knocking him unconscious, and damaging it (it was ruled I wasnt intelligent enough to load a cannon, so I had no range). After a few sessions, I finally went to the DM and said, "Hey, is there anything I can do to improve this? I figured I would be the muscle while figuring things out, but things genuinely just dont play out that well seemingly ever. On top of that, the other players are getting rather nasty about it." At that point it had been expected that Alduin was just a failure, and being my first experience, it was getting to me like I just didnt get how to play because I was one of 2 new players at the table, but the other had no issues. And comments and remarks began quickly, but would turn at jabs at both my character and me, and I simply wanted to improve my time there. "Ya, give me a bit of a rewrite on your backstory, flesh it out a bit. You have that trinket, so work with it a bit. The next island you land on I have plans to work you in if you can get me something." With that, I crafted the toy soldier missing its arm. Given my background was Outlander, I made it that I was originally a tribe, out in the lands of an island. The strong needing to prove themselves, only those who were weak would perish. This ideal would carry my tribe to its grave as I returned from the field one day playing to find it in ruin, the tribe buried under it's homes in fire. Going to my home, I would find my slain mother and father, and crushed under the home, my brother with his broken, charred toy. Alduin would then go out into the world alone, no family remaining, and wander to survive. This would be why the 5 year old Dragonborn could only could get stronger, why his mental skills suffered as he had no education, nor social grace: They burned and crumbled with his tribe that day. My DM approved my new backstory quite alot. As the crew landed on their destined island, Alduin recognized it faintly, but it felt... like it had been a long time. His loin cloth draped in symbols he barely remembered walked forward off the ship to take note of the land, the DM noting he believed he does in fact know the place. A survival check with advantage to navigate the terra- oh never mind, high score of 8. Not good enough as I got the group lost. Lovely. More groans from the party about Alduin's incompetency. Then a Red Dragonborn tribesman came wandering through, hunting attire. A similar garb to my own. Stunned, we asked. It was in fact Alduin's tribe. Some had survived, unknown to my character. Scattered about out of the village like I had been while out. He took us back to the tribe, now able to help us get directions to where we needed to go. However, they were not trusting of outsiders, even with myself as a tribesman of their tribe there. "Roll persuasion" goes my DM. I wont bother saying how well that went. An attack on the village then happened, in which we did help to defend them from the oncoming attack. Alduin was also knocked unconscious for that fight near the beginning of Round 2, which in a tribe of people who value strength over everything else, was probably the absolute worst thing imaginable. After this happened, the chieftain looked to us with thanks, except for myself. The DM allowed for me, and Only me, to attempt to make one more persuasion attempt to have the tribe help guide us to where we were going and.... a 2. And the party berated me and called me stupid for trying, not even Alduin at that point. The session ended and I didnt return, as I was being made a fool, players were harassing, and the DM kept putting the new player into situations they werent prepared for nor able to handle. IT took me 3 years to return to DnD after that, and now since I have remained a near forever DM.
I left a game on 2 occasions... The first was a Palladium Rifts Campaign when the GM got annoyed with what our Party was doing and hit us with Drake, a creature that looked Human but was MDC, had so much Regeneration (that couldn't be suppressed) that he was effectively unkillable and who's weapons did 7-10x the damage listed in their book stats and basically never missed (he had so many bonuses to hit, he needed a Nat 1 to miss)...we couldn't even run before he killed all our characters so the entire table got up, told the GM to go Sodomize themself with a spinning, 2 ft. diameter, Ghost Pepper Puree coated Brain Cactus (in far cruder language) and walked out...after spreading our tale of woe among the rest of the local Gaming Community, they quickly lost the ability to recruit new Players for any game they were running...To paraphrase Rob from Karma Comment Chameleon, Screw You Kat! The second was when the DM (AD&D 3.0) got so frustrated about not being able to keep everyone on track, he got so Pissed that the next person that did something that didn't advance the Plot, a cow fell on them from several hundred feet up and instantly killed them (and made one HELL of a mess in the process, there wasn't even enough intact meat to make one sausage...SPLAT didn't even begin to describe it...😄😁😆😅😂🤣)...aside from the no way to dodge Insta-Kill, the group told the DM off because at the moment the cow landed, everyone was 200 feet underground cleaning out a Goblin infestation in a mine tunnel with 10 foot ceilings...Like the first instance, after spreading the tale, he too failed to find anyone willing to play in his Campaigns...
An issue that I have personally experienced multiple times is that, while a DM is obviously necessary for any tabletop game, because the DM pretty much has full control over the world, the position of DM very frequently attracts some of the most narcissitic, god-complex people on the face of the planet, and that really does suck. I have a couple good examples of bad DMs making me walk way from the table. There was a campaign that I joined through my university's D&D club that was an already in progress campaign that had been going on for a couple months at that point, so the PCs were level 7. The whole theme of the campaign was that there was a zombie apocalypse that had started through unknown means and it was threatening the entire land. I decided to make a firbolg wildfire druid named Carric who was the son of the leader of a reclusive enclave of druids living deep in the forest. His people thought their isolated location would keep them safe from the zombies, however they were eventually found and Carric's father was killed during the defense and evacuation of the enclave, leaving Carric and his twin brother Farric in charge. Farric stayed to protect the remaining members while Carric set out to try and discover what caused the zombies and to hopefully put a stop to it. I sent my character to the DM and she approved it. So fastforward to the first session after I joined and the DM immediately plops my character in the middle of the forest about half a mile from the rest of the party, without ANY of the gear I was supposed to have, so with nothing more than commoner clothes, not even a druidic focus. She then proceeded to sick two boneclaws on me. That's right, _she put two CR 12 undead up against an unarmed level 7 druid with no possibility of getting help from the rest of the party._ Needless to say my character died and the DM told me that she didn't like my character (that she approved) and that's why she killed him, so I had to make a new character. I walked away from that table immediately after hearing that and never joined a campaign ran by that woman ever again. That woman in particular was the president of the club and while I never played at her table again, I heard tons of other horror stories about things she did from other members of the club. She would apparently routinely make non-sentient monsters explicitly target the PCs of players who she was annoyed with despite those creatures having no to target a single person. She had a habit of just killing off PCs she didn't like, often without even giving a chance for the character to actually survive. For example, one of my friends told me that she had it be so that when his character walked into _his own house_ some unseen monster jumped out of the rafters and decapitated him. No save, no roll to see if the attack hit, just instantly dead. How did this monster get into this guy's home in the middle of a major city without anyone noticing, who the hell knows. She also seemed to, how to put this, have a serious issue with consent and would routinely force things on the PCs. I'm talking sicking a succubus with ridiculously buffed charm spells on a player character who it was part of his backstory that he loved his wife and he was fighting for her. She would routinely favor her boyfriend who played in pretty much every campaign she ran, often giving him insanely powerful items and abilities. She would frequently tell people who weren't in a specific campaign about her plans for it and then when people gave her advice like "that boss will be a bit too weak for that party, maybe buff the boss a bit or combat will be over in like 2 turns" she would pretty much always ignore the advice and then pitch a fit when exactly what people said would happen happened. She'd even be a nightmare in campaigns that she wasn't DMing. She joined a campaign that I had been in for a couple months late. My character in that campaign was a deep gnome divination wizard who was previously a college professor who taught magical archaeology, but his work dealing with newly uncovered magical artifacts led to him coming in contact with an artifact that gave him a premonition of a great disaster that was about to occur, so he set out to prevent it which is how he joined up with the party. This woman made a bard who supposedly was a big fan of my character and his work, was obsessed with my character and eventually ended up getting kicked from the table a few sessions in when her character tried to SA my wizard. When the DM kicked her, she threw a tantrum and said that they couldn't kick her because she was the president and she made the rules. The DM told her that he didn't care if she was the president, she wasn't playing at his table, so she kicked all of us from the club. Last I had heard, she had driven pretty much everyone except for her BF, and two other people from the club within a couple months of that happening and they had to disband the club because they didn't even have enough people to fill the necessary officer roles. That woman was an absolute nightmare and I'm glad I no longer have to deal with her.
I still remember almost leaving the first game I ever played. It was Pathfinder and I was playing a Magus (sword wielding half caster that attacks with his sword after imbuing it with a spell). I had build my character from level 1 to use wands with his sword, as there were a few feats that allowed him to. At around level 6 I'd finally gotten the feat to allow wielding a wand and sword and using with my spell strike ability, and he THEN rules that it only allows me to cast the wand but not through my sword. This completely shafted the character I'd been playing for half a year, and when I asked about retraining he gave me a crazy long retraining time. I instead opted to suicide in combat by making dumb decisions and making a new character. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth to this day.
started a game with a new DM that had this weird rule in combat were we had to roll to check if our weapons didn't slip from our hands after a few rounds because of the blood of our enemies staining the handle XD
I once asked if I could cast Spike Growth on a ceiling in order to deal with a Drider that was harassing us from above. Another player pointed out that it could only be a floor based on the spell description, but the DM told me I could try it if I did an arcana check (as a 10 int ranger). I rolled a 19, and was told I was 1 point off and 'wasted my spell slot'. You could have just said 'no', you jerk.
I once had a party in 5E tell me their Elf Rogue would be walking ahead in total darkness looking for traps. I ask for perception checks at disadvantage as they begin walking into a trap and I explain how darkvision lets them see but at disadvantage because nobody had any light sources whatsoever. The Elf Rogue leaves the game and her 2 friends ask me where I found this dumb house rule. I point out it’s not a house rule and darkvision also causes you to see only in shades of grey. This completely killed their head canon where dwarves and Elves see perfectly in color (They were big Pathfinder players too; no penalties for Darkvision) so they sulked and made rash decisions till they left my game as well.
In a 1st edition AD&D campaign the DM, who played plenty but never DM'ed before, hated Wizards and made them persecuted by the church. In addition to THAT spell slots weren't recovered overnight they were recovered weekly. Lastly, for a spell to affect a person the caster had to know their "soul name". I stuck it out for as long as I could because I knew I could still stick it to him with unconventional uses of spells while still hiding it from the church inquisitor in the party. That campaign lasted 3 sessions before everyone bailed. Looking back I think it was personal.
I was playing a witcher RPG, My frustration started when we were Creating the characters, The DM had already created the characters' background and drew the dice to see who would get who. I got the elf, who could be a druid or a priest, I could choose. Ok, So far so good, then the DM told us to roll the dice again for each attribute. And that would be its value. I got a nat 20 in dexterity. The DM said I couldn't keep that value, because it wasn't compatible with the character's lore, even though he was an elf.. I asked to remove some points and reallocate them to other attributes that were low, which "matched the character's lore better" But he didn't let me, and I had to roll the dice again and unfortunately a low value came up. Anyway, I kept playing, since I wasn't any use in battle, I tried to do my best in diplomacy, Which was difficult, because some other players were taking the roleplay too far, and were usually always looking for a fight because "my character's is like this" But ok. The final straw was due to two occasions. The first was when the big boss was introduced for the first time. When we were fighting him for the first time, (again, I remember that my character was useless in battles, and I was always a little frustrated that I couldn't help in them) I saw that crossbow close to me and I decided to use it against the boss, I went ALL in. I spent one turn aiming for the head, and the next I shot with disadvantage, nat 20. He asked to roll the dice again, after all, I was at a disadvantag, The critic passed by, and I was quite happy, I was finally going to help with something, I was super eager to roll the damage, but the DM interrupted me and simply described that "The arrow went towards the Boss's forehead and when it was about to hit, it stopped, the boss laughed, said how useless we are, and teleported away. I protested that I was a critic, but he threw out the "DM's word is final" bullshit. Yeah..big frustration. The second was when we were ambushed in a forest. Again I was useless and tried not to get in the way. However, I again tried to help in some way, I just asked DM if there was any rocks on the ground, He said yes, I picked it up from the ground and threw it at one of the enemies. Nat 20. He asked me to roll again, after all, - disadvantage- I went there and, yaaaay, another critic!, At that moment I was extremely hyped, shouting praises, But again, he interrupted me again. He told me to roll the dice again. Yep. "The disadvantage of the disadvantage", What. The. Fu***. He gave an bullshit explanation, That I actually had to roll 3 dice and choose the lowest number, DM's word is final bs again, And then I roll the dice again. A f**** NAT. 1. Yeah. A nat 1. Critical error. Everyone laughed at me, I had no more patience, I exploded and rage quit. Later, when I calmed down and went to see if they were still playing, they told me that the campaign would no longer be going, and they blamed me for having "killed the RPG". Wtf. I was upset with everyone for almost a year, I stopped talking to them During this time, and to this day they say it was my fault. The funny thing is that I heard they made another RPG without me from scratch, the same story but with someone else to replace me. And suprise suprise, the RPG died again. And the problem was me, Right? Anyway, it's been a few years now, I've already forgiven them,
I walked away from a table I had been playing at for more than a year, because I realized the expectation I had from the campaign were different from all the other player's (and the GM's). No bad blood, and it broke my heart, but sometimes it's just not working. To give a bit of context: we were playing as government-backed superheroes (the GM also had another table, in the same universe, with vigilante superheroes - think "Civil War" kind of scenario, it was great). And on our sides, things were going downhill, session after session... which meant months in real life because we could barely squeeze a session every month at best. Eventually, the GM and I decided to kill off my PC (which I LOVED playing as) for 1/ the shock value and 2/ so I could reroll a character most suited to the situation... and the rest of the PCs. *someone* had to be a good guy in that team so I essentially roll a "lawful good", always enthusiastic, always happy to help, no-compromises-with-baddies new character. Three sessions later, we've spent the *entire* game trying to *investigate* someone who clearly was a bad guy with good publicity (Lex Luthor expy essentially). Everybody in the team knew he was a bad guy, but the GM stopped dead every attempt to expose the guy even slightly, and I got really frustrated. At the end of the game, ensued a long discussion, during which it became obvious the GM had planned for the situation to get even worse for at least a couple more sessions, before it could get any better. So to me that meant two precious RPG sessions, over four or six months, playing a character essentially fighting against FATE ITSELF. But all the other players were OK with this! And it turned out that everybody else (except the GM, bless his soul) expected the government-backed sups team to be borderline vilains, so... my new PC didn't have a place in that team, my old PC was dead (*because* of the team, did I mention that? In-universe the bastards barely cared), and I couldn't continue with that game. I played a few more sessions on a third game with them tho, where we were the "B team" and unambiguously murderous assholes (my PC was a *literal*, *card-carrying* nazi baron warlock - it was hilarious). And to this day this GM is by far my gold standard, he set the bar so high for player enjoyment.
@@JerdMcLean Punishing players for missing a session by literally selling their characters into slavery completely ruins the game for the affected players. I honestly don't know who I'm more mad at, the asshat players that came up with the idea, or the idiot DM that greenlighted it. It served no reasonable narrative purpose and was seemingly done purely to spite the players.
@@JerdMcLean It is a game you set aside untold amount of time to play, bro. Clearing a schedule to meet up, spending however many hours in a session wanting to get SOME enjoyment out of it. It's not just a game, it's time you'll never get back
My first time ever playing I was trying to build a character. I’d never played never really read up on lore so part of this might be on me, but the “DM” relentlessly mocked every decision I made with a level of superiority the Simpsons Comic Book guy would call excessive. This was my first year of college. I never played again until a few months back my buddy started up a game and I joined in it’s just a few of us but it’s chill and fun
First time ever playing DnD. I played a druid with a wolf familiar. It was with a large group and a good chunk of us haven't played before. It was going ok for us till we started delving into a cave. The DM had a lot of random saving throws or checks absed on even remotely bad rolls from other players. The party got split up, and one group found themselves in front of an angry elder dragon (we're all lvl1, btw). My group continued fighting goblins, teying to escape. Once we exited the cave, one player down was carried by my familiar. The DM had the other group, and the other half of players met us outside. DM has the dragon use its firebreath on us. My wolf dies, and DM rules that since my familiar dies, I die as well. Turns out the DM planned to do a full TPK from the beginning because he thought it was funny. I didn't play any DnD for a few years before I found a DM I was willing to trust.
I had a DM for PF1 (many years ago, before PF2e) that constantly contested everything I did. The last straw was when I was playing a catfolk with savage warrior, using my cat's claws. When I attacked and added the bonuses from savage warrior, he immediately ruled that cat's claws don't count as/can't be used as natural weapons, so I won't be able to get the bonuses. I tried showing him the rules to say that they can be used as natural weapons but he stated that he is the DM and what he says, goes. So I said alright, well if I can't play the character I built, I may as well not be here. So I left. AFAIK all his players eventually left a while after. They played the game I was in and their characters ascended to godhood and went on god-tier campaigns, which were either boring or just frustrating according to one other player I kept in contact with and still play with to this day.He recounted a ratlike creature [seriously fighting rats as gods?] doing a ton of damage in one session, and then in another session they were just mowing down armies without much tension. On top of that he seemingly got worse, and was a real ass sometimes when some tough encounters were made trivial by players' thinking, he would rule on the spot that x or y couldn't be done or the enemy was unaffected. The players got frustrated and slowly backed out of his games one by one.
I has a play-by-post game where the group was going through a lot of stressful stuff at the moment. a manipulative black dragon poisoning the water supply, a corrupt senator working with the dragon and blaming the poison on the downtrodden refugees, one of the party's past as a criminal coming back to haunt them, etc. The whole party was split and doing their own thing to wrap up loose ends before trying to take down the dragon. My character had recently made a huge fuckup and was really down in the dumps, and the other player characters had basically said "Sit down and stay out of trouble before you make things worse." So my character was trying to confide in her Wyvern companion, the last true friend it felt like she had, trying to convince him to skip town with her, or at least give her a reason to not immediately leave. And then two weeks pass. This wasn't "Two weeks of nothing happening" mind you, this was two weeks of nothing happening FOR ME. The DM was responding to every other player's stories and giving them progress, while i was just sitting there waiting for a conversation to continue. Frustrated after multiple comments in the OOC thread of "Hey, I'm still waiting here", i make another post basically saying "And then my character starts to pack up to leave town. Here's your last chance to stop it!" because the Wyvern just wasn't talking to her. This resulted in a lot of OOC talk, me calling out the DM for ignoring me, the DM saying "Yeah i was TOTALLY going to reply to you next!" which i didn't even remotely believe, and i gave an ultimatum: Reply to my original post of talking to the Wyvern, and try to give me a reply at least once a week, or i walk. The DM said that sounded "Hostage-ish", so i left. i made one more post wrapping up my character leaving town and setting up her own village somewhere far away. Someone else then came in to play as the Wyvern, and some retcons had to happen so there was someone for him to actually interact with, and the party went out, killed the dragon, but then ultimately the game puttered out right as they were trying to wrap things up. Still wish things didn't turn out the way they did, but that on top of a few other things was just the straw that broke the camel's back. It was a great game otherwise, and i was having fun. I just couldn't handle being ignored while I'm trying to have an emotional and dramatic moment, seeking the comfort of my animal companion while my character was at her lowest, while watching everyone else get multiple replies to their own story arcs, time progressing for them, but standing still for me. Not cool bro.
A different system called Rifts, but at one point our group had to charter a ship to cross the ocean. The ship captain had a strict "no weapons allowed on deck" rule, and made everybody put ALL their equipment into this impenetrable safe in the hold... which was fine, right up until the ship got attacked by a sea monster and nobody had the ability to get to their weapons to fight it, so the ship wound up getting destroyed and sunk. Even the magic-user couldn't use his magic, because he was the type of character that relies on specific items to be able to cast them (think of foci in D&D), and those items had been locked up in the safe with everything else. The PCs (and only the PCs) survived, but literally nobody bothered to come back the next session now that every PC had been more or less rendered into level 1 commoners.
Was playing a druid in abyss. And dm had us fight a giant with a second tumor like head. I chose to fight the Giant as a Giant Lizard and the party made a joke of me being yoshi. I didn't particularly enjoy the joke myself but I let the party have their fun. While fighting this Giant I missed an attack roll to bite and the DM took it too far. Basically forced me into making a tounge attack against the Tumor and went into a pretty gross scene. I wasn't particularly pleased with it at all and he punished me by making me roll on the madness table then stunned me for 60 Turns... left right then and there. Wasn't the first time He took my wild shapes into his own hands and I was never really comfortable at that table anyway.
@7:40 I have found that if you need the characters to be "overwhelmed but not killed" and that you want a "desperate but ultimately futile battle" that is going to advance the story, and that no-one is going to be perma-killed - then the BEST way to deal with it is to _tell_ the players that's what's going on. They can enjoy hamming it up and not panick or be too upset - they can even try things they'd never try when risk is on the line. Because they aren't desperate they can enjoy the story scene without really panicking about actually being wiped out. There's time when stepping out for the meta-game can really help the experience. No one is going to sht themselves over a LeroyJ move or the wizard pulling his dagger and charging for giggles, if they -know- this is a once off/very rare "It's ok to lose because you're not going to die/lose gear/lose millions gp" situation.
I had a campaign where we were about 6 months into, I was a level 9 wizard. Our dm enjoyed having mechanics going on that none of the players knew about. The previous session we had all received amulets which provided the light spell at will. Unfortunately, the dm omitted the fact that if you're wearing an amulet and fall to 0 hp you then turn to dust rather than fall unconscious. After a difficult fight I had 1 hp, and while a big bad guy finished his combat ending speech, the dm advised that the bad guy was going to shout his last words and then die. He would deal for dramatic effect 1 sonic damage to everyone in the party. He ruled I turned to dust (I had no idea) and that for the next session I would have to roll up another character as resurrection was apparently not available in his campaigns.
The obvious solution it to show up with the exact same character sheet and play as your previous character’s secret twin who has come to avenge their sibling’s death
@@PikachuLittle bonus point if you give that twin suspiciously the exact same experiences up to the last encounter, every single memories perfectly identical down to the most minute detail. oh and they also have the same equipment as the "previous one"
Yes: well more a series of rulings. I was invited to play in a game of Rolemaster. if anyone has every rolled a Rolemaster character you'll know how much of an absolute pain in the ass it and how super narrow skills are. I rolled a Longsword / LongBow rangers (I was 18 and brought up on LotR sue me) Session 1: the DM removed all out gear and we were moved to another world. 6 painful session later I was still without a sword and had to roll everytime I used to my jury rigged bow I put together to see if it broke. We come into a clearing and theres a longsword sticking through a skeletons ribcage. Expecting it to animate and fight me to the sword I took my time to draw the blade. It was a nature destroying cursed sword. I left the table and left my character sheet on the table. The Cleric Joined me at the bar about 5 minutes later apparently every told him he was a douche and they all quit.
I had a gm a while ago, was a bit...scatterbrained, we were playing bathfinder, he thought bards had spellbooks and other things that were...wrong. He used a lot of third party stuff, which is whatever, msotly, but there was a point where trying to get a question from a defeated combatant(and it was not very powerful and it was a simple request), I managed a 49 diplomacy check, this was a failure. Which was annoying, but worse than that, later on the DM used a third party dragon that drained strength with its breath weapon, this took out most of the party in one go, with our paladin managing to drag us out. this ended the game because they ruled this was a perfectly fine creature to use, even though it would literally take days for us to recover the ability to move properly from a SINLGE breath attack from a dragon we both didn't know existed and wasn't even a boss. Me and the paladin ditched it.
I was the DM, had a player with literally Impossible perception (I allowed it at the cost of nerfing another stat into the ground)...Player was always rolling perception checks, always thinking EVERY SINGLE NPC they came across was the BBEG...EVERY SINGLE TIME... They came across a wandering trader in a forest, player rolls a nat 20 (+10) and was like: "Does he seem familiar? Have any of us ever met him before? etc. etc. 2 more rolls later: "You are 100%, without a doubt, absolutely completely positive this person has no ill intentions and that you've never met and they're not wearing a disguise..." Dude did a metaphorical table flip and left...Like, sorry dude, sometimes a wandering trader is just a wandering trader...
The problem is that he made a build and didn't get to use it. This is where it may be appropriate to tailor some encounters to leverage the player's abilities. For example, a plot hook that starts with running into someone who is very obviously hiding something. Another possible issue is that some players have a player vs. DM mindset. If they don't ask for a perception check, then the DM will happily let an entire army of orcs walk right in front of them without them noticing. Let the player know that they don't _need_ to ask; they're always keeping an eye out and _you_ will ask for a roll if there's anything to see. Addendum: Passive Perception is also a thing for a reason. If you need to call for an actual roll, I would proceed it with something suspicious they notice about the NPC, e.g. "You notice a bulge under their robe." Depending on how they roll, and depending on if there's actually anything to find, then you can explain further. "You hear the clink of a _lot_ of coin. He seems like he's in a hurry and is trying to conceal the bulge." But skipping the roll and just using Passive Perception is also a fine option, and in most cases should even be the default if the player isn't actively searching. Edit: In the case of the wandering trader, don't even allow him to roll. Just tell him that he doesn't notice anything off about the trader and he seems like a normal trader. No roll. If you let him roll, and he gets a 20, then he _expects_ to find something. If there's nothing to find, there should not be a roll. You can also let players take 10 or take 20 as an alternative to rolling, so they can be certain that there's either nothing to find or nothing that they are _able_ to find.
Fighting on a thin bridge over a moat of lava. "I want to push the other guy off of the bridge." "Uhh... You can't do that. You can only push someone directly backwards." I couldn't leave the table there since that would have involved making my ride take me home at the time, but whew lad. That was the moment I left that group.
My current DM and I have had several disagreements, but thankfully nothing so bad that I've had to walk away. He's made mistakes (he was just starting to DM when I joined) and I've CERTAINLY made mistakes. But we respect each other. I've thanked him and the rest of the party when I've misunderstood something and they corrected/enlightened me. He's a reasonable guy and I certainly try to be as well
"You cannot use Insight against anyone that you do not know. Its unrealistic."
Instantly my Inquisitive Rogue was completely useless in the campaign, who relied on his Insight for combat. I explained as much, he said to bad...
I left the group.
Seems like someone has no idea how patterns work. There are behavioral patterns that apply to a lot of people, simply because most people aren't aware of them and/or they don't try to hide them. I can understand not telling you the exact intentions or emotional state of a random creature you never met, but a random humanoid or goblin that doesn't know and doesn't bother to hide his tells should be no problem. Also, being able to know how someone will act when you've known them for a while doesn't sound like skill, more like common sense.
Has that DM never seen anything about interviews in criminal investigations? Cops do that EVERY DAY. Furthermore, Idk this DM, but I have decent enough insight to know they're full of shit.
People forget that the roll in DND is meant to factor in things like being unaware of a persons tells. Edited: A natural 20 generally means picking up on their tells immediately whereas a Nat 1 usually means being unable to read them at all. The people you know well enough are the ones you shouldn't have to role insight on because you know their tells, so there is no probability of failure. One can make the same argument for every skill that a player can make. Everything in the game is new on some level to the player, that's why they have to role to determine whether they succeed.
Being the petty person I am, I would refuse to do any skill check that this D.M. asks to make on the ground that it's a new place, a new person, a new lock ect. until the D.M. got the memo. I can be really petty when I want to be.
@@sharkjumpingwalrus6744 exactly right, and I'd like to add that dc exists for a reason. Wanna represent how reading someone you don't know that well, use a higher dc than for someone who would be a known quantity to the player character. I don't know if i'd ever not ask for the roll outright, anyone can be off their game for a reason or another. But i think a good DM would account for that kind of nuance, also accounting if the other is actively trying to conceal, deceive, deflect etc
I dont need to know "Micheal from Microsoft" with an indian accent personally to know Microsoft doesnt ask for payment in gift cards.
Aside from just knowing BS when you see it, a lot of tells are instinctual, so they are the same for everybody.
I once had a DM who asked me to "roll for spell effectiveness" for a Wish spell. My wish? As a Paladin, to be able to cast Spirit Guardians once a day at its lowest level, following all other spellcasting rules. A very reasonable request. I rolled low, and he ruled that I only had one instance of it ever. But apparently flying cows with lightning udders that attack the party and self replicating hats are okay. The kicker? I saw him write down that the next monster we fought was immune to radiant damage, and it wasn't anything heavenly we fought
I mean, if I remember correctly, the wish spell has that built in. A way to prevent like mega-wishes from happening. But making an enemy immune to radiant against a Paladin is a rude move for sure..
@@l_ndonmusic Targeted hate that doesnt make sense is just harassment, plain and simple. Harassing your players is _never_ a good way to go about it, unless theres a valid reason in the story.
@@l_ndonmusicI mean it’s only supposed to do that IF it’s a mega wish which this was not.
@@algotkristoffersson15 could've turned you into a cleric instead i suppose
Mimicking another lower level spell for no cost is literally a core function of the wish spell thats even listed in the rules for the main example of its possible use.
The spell being so ineffective that it only does its baseline function and nothing else is only one step removed from it straight up just failing and doing nothing.
Imo such a result could only ever be justified if you had rolled a straight up Nat 1.
Edit:
STOP FUCKING "CORRECTING" ME ON HOW WISH WORKS.
READ THE OTHER COMMENTS IN THE THREAD FIRST.
I CLARIFIED LIKE 3 TIMES ALREADY WHAT I MEAN.
I had to miss one game. On that game, the DM:
- Let other players play my character
- Let them kill my character
- Rule it that he is for some reason unresurrectable.
Quit right there.
I won't lie. I've been guilty of that exact situation as a new DM. I used to believe all PCs should be available every game because I was so stuck on narrative consistency. It was absolutely a series of unfortunate events in-game that lead to the character's death. I apologized to the player and tried to see the different alternatives. Ultimately, he opted for a new character (since he was the second assassin in the group and felt that was a bit overkill and squishy at the same time). I immediately opted out of having players play other people's characters. In hindsight, that was a dumb idea from the get-go.
@@samuellevesque7997 A character belongs to the player. Only with consent should other players or the dm be allowed to play them.
@@Kalenz1234 What are you talking about??? There was consent. We all thought that was fine until this happened. All the rules I used back then were talked and vetoed by the whole table. That was the way we played for a full year without any issue. I'm just sharing a story, man.
Btw, there are a lot more ways to play than whatever you or I think is best. Stop giving cookie-cutter advice, especially when you don't have the context...
@@samuellevesque7997 Did you reply to the wrong person?
@@Kalenz1234 No. Did you?
DMs who go overkill on racial drawbacks.
"I want to attack."
"roll disadvantage."
"why?"
"sunlight sensitivity."
"we're underground."
"you're in bright light."
"You said this place is all dim light."
"this room has a skylight."
"but we're like 20 feet underground."
"and there's a skylight. roll disadvantage."
drives me insane....
I call them Glitchy Alpha DMs, because they act like a pre released game with no polish and are full of bullshit and exploits.
Light doesn't have a Distance. DM was in the right.
@@FritzTheGerman light doesn't have a distance, but light can't penetrate SOLID ROCK, just like dungeons 20 feet underground can't magically have a SKYLIGHT appear for the express purpose of screwing me over
DM was in the wrong
@@penguinmaster7 I´m sure with some good (Dwarven) engineering and magic, an underground skylight is entirely possible.
It´s still BS for one to randomly appear just to crew you over tho....
@@johnyshadowi mean you could make a skylight, it would just affect like 2 feet of the battlefield considering it’s a 20 foot hole
I was playing with my school buddies at a new " friends" home. RAVENLOFT
as anyone who has played it. Is lethal.
The new guy didn't want me at his place, so as soon as we( the party) open the entrance hall doors, the 4 stone Red dragons, decided to basically eat my ass. Everyone laughed, I died, and I realized that my friends weren't my friends. They just liked my transportation. I stopped playing afterwards for a long time. Broke my heart.
Oof, I'm sorry. I've had 'friends' like that too.
hope ya made them walk home
We had a group at Gen-Con one year, and the GM we landed was notorious for TPKs, he would chant '5 go in, none come out' and had a group of GMs doing that with him. After being stuck in one of his campaigns before, when we landed him again, he 'started' the adventure, and the whole group decided to do a clam bake on the beach and screw 'saving the world'.
This is so damn cringe. "Let me do a TPK by purposefully overtuning the game and using over-powered shit so that basically the players have little chance to win" is the equivalent of putting a high school athlete in the Olympics and hoping for him to win. Some actually might, but 99% of them won't.
And so, I salute your clam bake! Save yourselves before saving the world lmao!
Unless that guy was running Tucker’s Kobolds pulling a TPK isn’t anything to brag about. Any idiot can throw an Ancient Red Dragon being ridden by a Demilich with an endlessly respawning army of Pit Fiends as backup. But taking about 20 CR 1/4 monsters and turning them into a nightmare of a fight takes actual skill
Atleast you know which dm's are terrible
Does TPK stand for total player kills?
@@rachels6808 Total Party Kill. It's when the whole table gets wiped.
GM from a Pathfinder game kept telling me my spells failed to cast. Why you ask? Because he wanted to get with the new player who joined us a few sessions in. She wanted to play an illusion focused Sorcerer and hated the fact my wizard was an illusionist (even though I had been there since the beginning of the campaing). That GM didn't seem to get why I didn't want to come back.
Some people are so pathetic. I hope you find a better DM in the future
@user-jq5ur7nc2t oh I have, though apparently after he started badmouthing me for leaving, his ex (who was playing with us at the time, I don't know why) up and kicked him in the face for being an idiot.
@@DHTheAlaskan Crickey, well at least you escaped that toxic environment!
That's literally a horrible ruling. If you took a subclass first and were with it for a while already, it's so petty that a different player had the DM sabotage you just for them to take the spotlight. I don't get why some people don't just ask the other player if they can use the same subclass, maybe focusing on different aspects of it.
@mihile4631 it's a mix of DM wanting to sleep with the new player and new player not liking someone using the same school of magic even though we were different classes.
the first DM admiting he did something completely wrong and didn't try to justify himself with BS is kinda a rare thing to hear. He sound he will become a great DM
He seems like he’d be a bit of a pushover though. He fucked up the ruling, yes, but he considers fudging the roll and damage all because a player threw a hissy fit over a bad roll (which wouldn’t even make him lose the fight). So long as he doesn’t fudge often to make players win unscathed he should be fine
Really? Thinking he should ignore the enemies feat? Or just flat out cheat and say the guy missed? Or another idea, cheat and make up the damage? What did he do thats "Completely wrong" He remembered to use the feat, as it is supposed to be used. There is nothing worse then when the party is having a great fight, then it loos lie its over, Total party kill. and suddenly no enemy wants to use its multi attack, lair actions disappear, and they stop applying fire damage on top of the physical.... Wooooow! Real great DM-ing! Being that there are no constant rules, and zero risk, why dont we just sit around and make up stories about baddass stuff we have all done while the DM pats us on the back.
When you play monopoly, and someone is out, do you just give them a tile on mayfair a couple grand and some hotels? He sounds like he will appease stroppy brats that need rules bending for them. How do the other party members feel knowing that they have a harder journey than the guy who needs his rolls fudged, only to then have to share the hard won celebration with the guy playing in kid mode, with the baby gloves on? TEAM GAME! TEAM! as in a group of people working together. I mean the baby isn't even dead, just down.
This guy needs to be an impartial game master. Not biased towards certain players. No one lies playing on an uneven field, and no one likes playing without any risk, or braindead npcs.
@@alexevans4877 i mean the issue with that post is that he fucked up the usage of the feat. The spell was meant to come out before the reaction, which could have potentially killed that enemy. The feat was used wrong. I do mostly agree with you though, dms shouldn’t hand everything to you
@@alexevans4877ain’t nobody reading all that bro, he had empathy and was trying to throw a bone to someone
There is no such thing as an impartial GM. There is no such thing as a cheating GM. There is only a good GM (one that helps everyone at the table have a good time) and a bad GM (one that favors a subset of the party or thinks that honoring what strangers wrote in a book they bought is more important than them and their friends enjoying themselves).
If the party likes pushovers, so what? If the party likes a relentless meatgrinder, so what? But don't pretend that the GM can be impartial when they are the sole arbiter of what challenge you are facing. The only reason your enemy has an ability, the only reason there aren't more enemies, the only reason there's an enemy at all, is because the GM decided it.
After making a charisma based character with a focus on diplomacy and bluff, I wasn't actually allowed to roll those skills because "You don't have to convince the NPC, you have to convince me."
If a DM pulls shit like this on you, just ask if a strength based character have to pull weights every time he has to do a strength check, or if an intelligence based character suddenly has to turn into a wikipedia in front of the DM every time they pull a intelligence check. Special treatment like this is just so bull.
AHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!! DM played D&D when all he wanted was to play Debate Team, Solo edition!
Thats how role playing used to work, you role played rather than roll played. There didnt used to be skills for diplomacy or bluff they came in 3rd. You had reaction adjustment based off of charisma for 1st impressions and bards could alter reactions with bard song thats it otherwise you had to acctually talk your way out of shit, that was the point. I understand that bringing those skills in from 3rd onwards has allowed more introverted people to take social roles in parties but it has taken most of the role playing out of the game in my experience
@@paulkerr7320 do you even lift bro
@@paulkerr7320question: what edition are they playing? 5e? Okay, then diplomacy/deception/intimidation IS part of the game. Flat out.
I joined a table at a game shop after a long-running campaign I ran had ended. Excited to break out of being a "forever DM", I had some fun building my first PC that wasn't intended for a one-shot. I asked the DM of this game several questions, one of which being "are we going to encounter a variety of enemies, or primarily one type?" I asked because most of the spells and abilities my character would have had no effect on undead or constructs, and told him as much. He replied that we would be "facing a smorgasbord of enemies" and that I shouldn't worry about it. For the first 3 levels (9 sessions, as I recall), we faced almost nothing but undead. DM said "Don't worry about it, it's just for this story arc." We finished the arc, had a session of RP-only, and the DM laid out the hook for the next arc of the story. An inventor's control unit had been stolen, so his underground lab was overrun with insane constructs. I reminded the DM privately after the session that my character was essentially useless against both undead AND constructs. I wasn't looking forward to another two months of being little more than a spectator, so I asked if I could play a different character that fit the setting better. He said "no" because my current character had already agreed to enter the lab, and the door locked behind us, so there would be no feasible way for a replacement character to join the party. I said "That makes no sense - what if one of our characters die? How would their new character enter the game?" He said "They would just have to wait until the end of the arc." I said "Good to know, thanks," and announced in the group chat the next day that I would not be returning.
You escaped a very terrible “Fudge the new guy” type of DM.
Some people really shouldn’t be in a hobby if they act like this…
@@vidmanandrew09highly agreed, not to gatekeep, but you shouldn't dm seriously for others if you don't know what you're doing or are a dick like that
That reasoning as to why you can't change PCs was bullshit. He is literally the DM, he can make up whatever he wants if he wants to. Whether a new character could enter or not is entirely up to his arbitrary judgement.
@@Birthday888 "The wizard stays back to find a way to unlock the front door in case you have to flee. As your party walks around a corner you stumble onto someone who apparently was locked in this laboratory for some time. Please introduce your character"
Done
Should have continued and just make it so all of the other characters die. Then ask, "So...can I make a new character NOW?
The only time I actually walked away was back in college. Maybe 1990, 2E DnD. We were playing Dragonlance, and i was a 7th level Knight. We entered a fortress, I dont remember why. A room was a big pit trap. We all fell in, and were sent to seperate small cells. Each with a wraith in it. Got hit twice before i could act. Lost 4 levels. Now 2nd level, I was facing a uninjured mid level monster. Those familiar with 2E know those level drains were not temporary. I complained the fight wasnt fair. Was told suck it up. Got up and went to my dorm room. Campaign collapsed that day, and never restarted.
As someone who was introduced on 2E AD&D I can tell you, those were some of the most bullshit unfun rulings. Loosing stats permanently and levels ruins a lot of what makes the game, which is meant to be a bit of a power fantasy, fun
@@Caragoner Well some people like the game more for a challenge, those types of creatures can be a lot of fun to fight, as they risk far more then just a nebulous "tpk," that being said... as a DM you have to be *really* careful with them and this... wasn't that. 😂
@@markusnixon3156 They can be if there's a narrative reason for them. However how many of them were incorporated it simply removed the creature from potential encounter variety because most people don't like loosing permanent stats/levels in random or minor encounters. If they were more formulated into optional abilities rather than core features of many of these creatures attacks then they could have been much more fun (think ala modern Legendary actions).
Had a dm rule that my otherwise squishy magic user was stripped of all magical and racial abilities by a ring and then said that a 19 base role plus my con modifier wasn't enough to remove said ring and that I wasn't able to cut it off or tell the others something about it. Yea that was the last time I ever played with that dm
"I will take away everything your character can do and also take away everything you can do about it, i see no issues with that"
-your dm probably
@@mihaiioc.3809 pretty much
I got something going on like that right now myself. Doesn't take anything away from my character, but anyway. I'll try to keep it short. My guy, during a carousing roll, gets married to this woman, her ex curses me with some black gem in my chest, it's apparently doing me some harm, so the guy clearly wants me dead, right? Accept when I do die three sessions (or so) later, to a mimic, I'm brought back to life with my charisma lowered(?) and when some uber powerful wizard, and a druid familiar with alllll sorts of powerful mumbo jumbo try to remove it from me, they say they've ne seen anything like it. So I'm left wondering, how the hell is this guy, that can just put such powerful curses on me for banging his ex? And the hell is his motive, if it keeps me from dying? Lol whole thing is just bizarre reasoning.
@jasonrustmann7535 yea I tried to talk to the dm about it and he got real pissy saying it would be a good role playing experience.... he left it open to interpretation how the ring worked so my character with a 18 wisdom score suddenly became gollum about the ring. But yea the dm didn't even offer a way to remove it that wouldn't take forever and probably get the party killed (I was the healer and had been using every spell slot to keep us alive)
This might be interesting experience, but it's extremely hard to balance and play around. And it definitely shouldn't last too long
Got one of my brothers group that the DM said explicitly at first game "this is my game, my world and your characters are mine. If you don't like it, you can quit."
They did
he was right, that dm dodged a bullet
Before my group dropped their foreverDM, he had the mindset of "Death isn't a punishment, it's a release." This mindset basically meant that stupid decisions wouldn't result in the logical consequence of the character winning a Darwin Award.
One such instance that made me stand up and walk out from the group until he was dropped, was his tendency to torment one particular player by punishing his foolish and reckless actions with other things, such as destroying a plot-important quest item, or openly branding his "true name", which- when spoken- forces the PC to follow the speaker's instructions. In front of the entire party.
I once had a character in a "Devil Beasts" setting (still have no clue what it was about, everything in the games were pretty much homebrew), that was made to be unlucky. But just so I could do that, the DM said I had to roll luck on every single basic action. While a few moments were funny and are joked about to this day (Breaking a futuristic unbreakable chair just trying to sit down on it for example), I checked out the moment the DM turned my punishments towards other players, making my bad luck awaken a character's Devil Beast transformation, which they had successfully suppressed for several sessions before I joined. There was a lot of bitter tension in the air, and I just walked out after several more sessions of me being constantly sidelined and or humiliated by the DM every chance he got when I failed these luck rolls. It was hell.
I still play with this group and ever since the DM was removed, things have been so much better.
>devil best transformation
Did the setting by chance involve said transformations imparting an urge to eat people? Details given here reminds of shin megami tensei: digital devil saga
@@yoshifan2334 As far as I recall, no. The PC in question was part of a military group in a setting where having such a transformation would have a bounty put on your head if anyone were to discover it. This PC had kept their character's transformation hidden for several sessions before I joined, and when a failed luck roll on menial tasks resulted in a whole pot of boiling coffee during basic roleplay being poured over them, that was enough to blow their whole cover. Tension was pretty thick for a while after that.
@@yoshifan2334 honestly I’m getting a Devilman vibe
It surprises me that people are capable of being just massive, pathetic losers in situations like this, and dont have the capability to know when to act more mature and civilized
@elliotwintersdemanagabei9437 Thankfully the rest of the group talked to me some time after I walked from the group and assured that we were chill, it wasn't until later that everyone decided it was best to drop the DM from the group as even as a player when others soon attempted to DM themselves and give the original one a chance to be a player, he would attempt to take control of the story with a minor main character complex. He wasn't argumentative or hostile, but he was overbearing and just not a good fit for the group. I eventually came back shortly after he was removed from the group and nowadays the mentioned incident with my unlucky character is more of a lighthearted joke with satirically exaggerated frustration from the affected player, who happens to be my brother in law. I do love my tabletop group for being so chill and communicative with me.
"All spell components must be material, they must be found in the world and will be rare, and all will be single use only."
Walked away so fast.
A yes, sesame seeds, a piece of meat and a piece of cloth
Such rare materials, this guy is a moron
I would have, too.😭Some rules are just too hardcore
yeesh, i've always ran material spell components really leniently, in the sense that you still have to procure them, but i ask for simplified ingredients generally
I could see that working if all players at the table was in agreement.
@@stargateproductionsalso if the setting was some sort of low mana world where the most magic one sees commonly is holy magic and the classes are either melee or hybrid.
Interesting background to play, awful imposition on regular games.
One of my experiences that nearly put me to leave was the use of the GURPS command spell:
-Tldr: Spell is two words that you must do/act upon in a single second (1 turn)
-I was attacking a mage with said spell, swinging for his neck
-Cast “Cut Leg”
-Instead of then changing the target to the mage’s leg, the GM ruled that I would cut my own leg, to which I then amputated, despite the fact that it was physically impossible to reach it.
-Argument ensued.
-They basically went “DM final say on it” and crippled my agile combat character over it.
I honestly respect the guy that admitted he was afraid to let the cart of hay be taken simply because he was afraid of the plot being derailed, instead of just pulling rank or telling the players to just deal with it (even though he resisted revealing the reason for a while). I hope he's improved, learned to improvise, and gained (reasonable) confidence in his skills since.
I didn’t leave the table immediately on this one, but I never played with the Gm again.
I once had a GM who really didn’t like my character.
I had built a divination wizard with lucky and silvery barbs, designed to be a support caster who mainly focused on protecting allies, negating crits and applying status effects like restrained.
This of course meant that I was able to shut down a lot of the worst that would come to the party, additionally I was kitted with defensive spells like Shield and Absorb Elements, along with invisibility that let me survive a lot of situations that I probably shouldn’t have (like the 3 separate times the gm sic’d a dragon on my wizard)
See, at these points I felt like I was being targeted, probably because the GM wanted me gone so I would stop negating his crits and stop saving the party from every bad luck (or poor decision made) but what was really the last straw was when I scouted an area ahead with my familiar and found out the cieling was full of giant spiders. So I stepped around the corner and instantly casted fireball into the cieling to damage the spiders and burn away the webs.
The gm ruled that because I was casting fireball indoors, everyone in the party had to make a Con save or be stunned for 1 turn because the flames sucked all the oxygen out of the room. this caused my allies to lose concentration on their long duration spells, along with other obvious penalties.
To mention, this room was a fortress room above a portcullis, roughly 60ftx40ft with dozens of arrow slits leading to outside, and large holes in the floor that also led to outside.
Him making enemies focus on me was one thing, but what made me not wanna play with him again was when he started introducing new rules to punish me for playing my character
So we were given a plot hook to recover a baby treant that was kidnapped by orcs as it was being born. We spent the best part of five sessions tracking down the orcs responsible in order to recover the thing, and had already given it a nickname within the party despite never having met it. When we finally reach the altar where the treant is being sacrificed, the odds are stacked against us, but I manage to slip past the front line of orcs and interfere with the sacrifice - barely surviving against the orc chieften by myself, but at least screwing up the ritual so that it couldn't be carried out, and surviving long enough for the rest of the party to get past the orcs and save my ass, along with the treant.
Now, in retrospect, I get what happened next, and I understand why the odds were so heavily stacked against us. However, in the moment, none of us were aware that the DM was planning for us to fail, as it was part of the plot. By succeeding, we had completely screwed up his plans, so in order to get things back on track, he ruled that as the sorcerer (wild magic, who had already been causing all sorts of chaos throughout the campaign) stepped up to the altar to free the treant, the ritual interacted with his magic and suddenly completed, obliterating the baby treant we had spent ages and risked our lives to rescue, and leaving behind a magic staff which was presumably the key to the next part of the campaign. I say presumably, because we never got that far.
The whole party sat in stunned silence for a few moments, before one of them asked if there was any chance of saving the treant, and the DM awkwardly said that it had been blown to splinters. Another party member asked if there was any chance of reviving it, and the DM reiterated that all that's left is the extremely powerful and plot-relevant staff, and a few inert chunks of wood. Of course no one actually cared about the staff, as we were far too bummed out about the fact that we had effectively failed, and allowed a newborn to be destroyed - and worse, we were somehow complicit in the act, as the sorcerer's magic was what did the deed in the end.
To his credit, the DM offered to walk it back and undo things, but clearly didn't want to change the way the plot was going, and frankly it had already killed any enthusiasm. I'd already had enough things happen that meant I was thinking of dropping out anyway, and a week later the first lockdown basically put the nail in the campaign anyway.
Lesson to be learned there: Never ever make your plot entirely dependent on your players failing; they'll find a way to succeed against all the odds. For that matter, never make it entirely dependent on succeeding, because they will absolutely screw things up.
He had a perfect out too. Wild Magic is perfect for altering the game's reality to let the players have their cake and eat it too. All he had to do is state that the Wild Magic interacted with the ritual completing it with his remaining spell slots instead of the treant child. Make him unable to use magic for a day after as a sort of arcane recovery period and yall would have succeeded and the story would have continued forward.
@@jamesstewart5706 To be honest, even if it had just blown one of the arms off the treant and turned that into the staff, it would have been accepted.
@@Paradukes he could have reworked the plot into people who wanted to make the staff going after your party for the treantling
DM must have worked for Planned Parenthood
Man, I see so many stories of bad times for players that basically boil down to "The GM wanted us to fail for plot reasons but also had zero preparation or creativity for if we somehow succeeded in the game made of random numbers and uncertain outcomes"
We were playing a homemade game once. After I successfully sneak to the miniboss and tried to knock him out with a shotgun, I got one. "You mixed up the end of the shotgun and shot yourself in the face" the GM said. I was already low on health, so I died. My frustration was indescribable.
So I guess that campaign was a one shot
@@asaffin1 nice
@@asaffin1 Nice
did you roll with advantage? Just curious
I once had a game in which the GM designed the entire dungeon specifically so that my character couldn't do anything of use.
After the session I told him I didn't have any fun and he told me that that was the point. I left the group.
I just cannot wrap my head around the mentality this GM and others like them. If I was so upset at a person that I would even consider doing something like this... I'd just uninvite the player or leave the game instead. Why the hell would I invite a person to game night, then prep and run all that just to make us both miserable? 🙄
In the 1980's I played in a AD&D campaign where we made characters inspired by fictional characters from other media. I chose to make a character inspired by Lion-O from the ThunderCats (my friend made one inspired by Mario). We took turns DMing and would design adventures so the characters would slowly acquire the abilities and equipment that the fictional ones had, and the themes often included villains from their stories. We were having a blast until "problem DM" decided to run a game. I can't remember what his character's theme was, but immediately the DMPC and his brother are gifted +6 weapons and armor from the quest giver along with some artifact level magic items. By this point my character had gained powered down versions of the Sword and Gauntlet of Omens and the ability to communicate with and command cats of all sizes. So I thought he just felt like his characters hadn't powered up at the same rate as me and my friend.
We meet the BBEG and he has two entire prides of lions in cages around him. I figure "Hey, this is my time to shine!" I ask the lions for help and agree to free them. They IMMEDIATELY ATTACK ONLY ME. I figure they must be under some kind of magical control, but no, the DM says that they want to kill me because ThunderCats are "gay" and the Sword of Omens is stupid. The DM and his brother then side with the BBEG and turn on us.
That group never played together again. I still played with my friend though.
I’m impressed, had that been me I would have broken something.
Jesus, imagine honestly saying that and presumably planning it too from the sounds of things. Some people need to get a life.
I think what bothered me more than having my character targeted was the fact that my friends character was punished just because his player was my friend. He had a dwarf character that could become an 8 foot tall ogre by eating a magic mushroom and could essentially cast firebolt for one minute if he ate a special flower. You get the idea.
To target him for misery because they didn't like MY idea was just wrong.
Yep one shot game. Had me roll a die and less than 5 minutes in I was permanently blinded and it was immune to aby attempts to be healed.
I have never gone back despite the other campaigns running.
I found a different group where the DM doesn't believe in doing that.
That's terrible
@@rayzerot yeah I got up and left once someone tried to heal me and they said no magic will fix it.
I could see it (no pun intended) if there was a way to cure it built into the one shot, or maybe a way to counter the effects, but just blinding someone like that is crappy.
@@badnewsBH I mean, for a one shot, I really don't think that's the way because you basically put someone in the passenger seat for the whole game. It's boring for everyone involved, I feel like. A one-shot is a short, fun affair and usually, nothing more.
I did make a player blind in a really long campaign. He got blinded by the taint they were trying to ward off their world. He nearly died and that ended up being his long-term wound from it. The character could be cured, but not easily. The party then decided whatever they needed to had to wait before basically doing a sidequest to heal him. The party trying to cooperate with him, help him in fights and just make curing him their first priority was a GREAT dynamic. But this was supported by a group of actual friends irl who I knew were fine with this, a long-standing campaign with player involvement and a clear way to cure him.
@@samuellevesque7997 yeah overall the DM definitely didn't want me there looking back at the 2 years I had been attending games in that group.
I had a DM who wouldnt give us loot, ever. He would only give gold, and whenever we went shopping, items either needed weeks to be crafted (while the DM was rushing the party to leave the next day otherwise "the BBEG would win") or were 10 times more expensive than the whole party's funds. One time at level 7, our warrior finally found... a leather armor. 1 hour later, we enter a room with a slime and before initiative, the enemy melted that armour entirely. The DM saw it as revenge because "we kept begging".
That same session, he also resurrected the rogue's love interest NPC who showed up in front of him... then a shadow beheaded her and peaced out. The rogue quit, then the warrior, who then also stole the DM's gf IRL.
In your case, I would have told the DM that if they have no equipment for us to loot, then they have no equipment to attack us with or protect themselves from our attacks...one or the other, it can't be both...
It also sounds to me like that person thinks a DM's Job is DM vs. the Players when in fact the DM's job is to ensure everyone (including the DM) has fun...
@@HappilyHomicidalHooligan yeah they were definitely the "DM vs players" type. And they also kept telling us "it's fine, I'll remove enemies if you struggle" and when we inevitably did, it was "damn, you couldn't even beat that? That's because all you do is fight back you gotta do more than that"
The DM thought Rolling diplomacy against enemies who shot first was what we needed to do. Or tripping them, which was harder to succeed than a hit
I had a DM like that except instead of crafting we had to "barter" and every "barter" was just them magically knowing how much gold each party member had then charging more than that. They refused to go down in price at all, no matter what we said or rolled, so it actually wasn't barting in any way, shape, or form.
In a Descent into Avernus campaign I was in, we were making pretty good progress through the area and had all agreed to try to save as many people as we could. In our party of fairly classic heroes, we had an edgelord who's tragic backstory somehow involved him being screwed over by both angels and demons, and thus didn't like either. He swore that his character would still go along with our party willingly and be helpful despite us having a literal angel as one of the PC's, plus an NPC hollyphant
Well, at one point in our adventures, we saved a half dozen angels from being used as fuel for a ritual which left them drained and defenseless. No biggie, we had a caravan of vehicles to take them to this Bazaar where all of Avernus would respect the non-violence rule set in place there, and send them on their way out of hell. Arriving there we were all but spent, and took some much needed rest with the DM going around the table asking what we did to prepare for the end of the night. After getting past all of us, he arrived at the edgelord, who decided that he was going to trade the angels we had just saved to someone in the Bazaar for a +2 bow for his ranger. According to the DM, No, we were not allowed to speak up and change or prevent the deal, we were doing other things already!
The real kick in the nuts, I was an artificer who was 2 levels away from being able to just make a +2 weapon if it really came down to it. Not that edgelord needed it, he already had a +1 bow and did buckets of damage. When we were told that there was nothing we could do and woke up to the angels being gone, it was safe to say the session was over. The DM is a great player, but this was his first and so far last try at being DM. The edgelord hasn't been invited back by anyone at the table.
My DM forced my giant shark polymorphed pc to rise to the surface of the water because the cleric previously casted water walk. I argued it granted the ability, but he would not hear me out and I didn't want to intrude on the session too much. He even said "you will not be able to convince me otherwise". I showed him the verbiage in the spell and then said ok, all abilities are forced to be used every turn, to which he quickly stepped aside and said that is how his 1st edition dm used to run the spell and he never thought about it.
Damn, you just made me realize I was running this spell wrong. I also thought it was "always on" while the spell was going. the more you know
Technically your DM is right, because RAW the spell is stupidly worded. It indeed "grants the ability to move across any liquid surface", but the being submerged part just happens. It says that "the spell carries the target to the surface", nothing about being granted the ability to in this section. Thus RAW you can turn off waterwalking and start bouncing up and down, as the moment you become submerged, the spell kicks in.
I can't be sure if the spell was intended to be always on or togglable, but don't blame your DM for interpreting this mess
@@sylph4252
Depends on the edition in use (and what revisions existed).
The spell also says it can target "Up to ten *willing* creatures you can see within range", i'd argue that your character should have not be targeted at all since unwilling.
@@sylph4252 ah, dnd, the more i play you, the more i learn about you, the more dogshit i realize the wording is on most things
I'm not sure if you'd call an alignment question a ruling, but I had a DM tell me that I was being "too evil" in an evil campaign and that I should "stop instigating with the other players" despite the fact I had gone through a rather extensive check to see if everyone was fine with me playing a Starscream type villain. The entire game devolved into everyone being too nice to play actual villains and me getting alienated cause of it, so I just walked.
We still play regular games as good characters, that was just the one that made me realize trying to play a villain with them was going absolutely nowhere.
Dude Starscream was my favorite villain when watching transformers, why play a game dedicated to being villains if at the end of the day you're still good.
@@mihaiioc.3809 My entire plot for the game, which I ran by the DM for the record, was that I was gonna become the BBEG by the end of the campaign. I was going to do a mix of a Starscream style coup (which if the party won I had a whole thing where I was gonna ham it up and have a blast with everyone) and a Kefka Palazzo level plot to disrupt the world balance if they lost. I had a whole plan to essentially destroy the capitol city as a massive testament to the might of my character's god, a god of destruction.
Drove me NUTS that they just WOULDN'T BE EVIL.
this is a big funny moment.
That DM would hate my evil-aligned character In an evils campaign, the party was tasked with capturing and ritualistically sacrificing a princess. We started in a tavern or pub (I can't recall) which gave my CE golden dragonborn rogue an idea. We had been given a Bag of Holding, so I asked the tavernkeeper for a keg of the most alcoholic drink they had. I put it in the Bag of Holding, then we moved on. I didn't tell anyone my plan before I enacted it. Fast forward to we have the princess's guards restrained and her ready to be sacrificed. I pull the keg out of the Bag of Holding, empty it onto the restrained guards, then use my breath attack. A golden dragonborn's breath attack is a 15 ft cone of fire with a Dexterity saving throw of 8 + Constitution modifier (for me it was +4, for a total of 24 to save) and the target takes 2d6 on a failed save. I'm fairly certain that was the character's first session, too.
here's a question, which starscream?
One of my old lgs i would help out with the d&d Expeditions. (I was there 3 days a week. One to help the store with Expedition on a sunday. I would come on a Saturday to play with my group and thursdays i would either play wargames or board games).
I started to receive alot of requests to do the Wednesday night encounters. And started to receive alot of people wanting to join my group.
So i went to the owner and was like what's up? He said he noticed a bunch of people stopped showing up on Wednesday for d&d. So we agreed i would come on a Wednesdays join a couple groups to see what might be problems. So i joined with one of my second tier characters (a divination halfling wizard aka the super lucky wizard) and he was trying to rule i couldnt use my divination dice, or my inspiration, or my lucky feat. He was like that to the other players. And he was purposely messing with the players and the other players thought they had to bribe the gm.
The night after the owner spoke with me i informed him but from the influx of players were newish i want to check out the other table the low tier.
So it was the guy's brother i used a pregen halfling rogue. The guy's brother was a creep and said we couldnt use our base abilities or spells. And was hitting on the gals in tge group. After half an hour i stood up and was like no im done with this. The brother tried to gaslight me and did the whole you dont know how to play or how tge adventure league works. I informed him i helped run the Expeditions on sunday. Mid (2 and eventually 3) tier in the morning and low tier in the afternoons. I informed them their actions where unacceptable and i was going to inform the owner. I got up and left and the store employees seemed very confused.
I called up the owner told them what happened. The next time i went there the owner was there he said he spoke to some people who were at their tables and some said exactly what i said. So he banned them from the store and i ran the encounters on thursday for about 4 months (princes of the apocalypse) until they got someone to run it on Wednesdays again
Close one, but I didn't walk away immediately:
You can't crouch behind a boulder, which is painted as an obstacle on the map, in order to get 3/4 cover, be happy with 1/2 cover. But enemies can crouch behind a table to get full cover.
Three sessions later, from the same DM:
Oh, I forgot to prepare some enemies in the back, and you sneak behind the enemy? Let me place some enemies from the front to the back right now, so you can't surprise them (I got down to 3 hp in that fight)
Two sessions later I left, after DM got mad at me a few times (in one case, for hearing that he rolled a dice twice when enemy didn't have advantage. He almost always rolls behind cover)
I didn't walk away immediately, in isolation these situations didn't feel bad enough and only irritated me, but one day I sat down and thought about things and realised "yup, it's pretty toxic", and then left (Citing lack of character choice as the main reason when DM asked). That DM usually isn't like that in most campaigns, I have no idea what was wrong with this (still ongoing, and from what I heard seemingly better now) campaign.
I once heard of a DM who told a player with the Magic Initiate feat that, because he was a Battlemaster Fighter and therefore didn't regain spell slots after a Long rest (due to not having any), he _also_ wouldn't get the 1st-level Wizard spell back from Magic Initiate either, unless he took at least one level in Wizard so he could regain spell slots after Long rests.
I can't personally recall any "bad rulings" off the top of my head, at least none bad enough that I quit a game, but I do prefer not to play with DMs who insist on strict readings of the rules exactly as they're written, because that's how you get nonsense like an Aasimar taking damage from their own Radiant Consumption (it deals damage to "each creature within 10 feet of you", and _you're_ within 10 feet of yourself), or being in combat outdoors during full daylight and an enemy lights a torch, so now because you're in the "dim light" radius of the torch your ranged attacks and vision-based Perception checks have disadvantage.
Technically, you are not "within 10 feet of you," you are you, to be within 10 feet of something you would have to be near it, not literally at it's position, if the spell said, "centered on you extending 10 feet in every direction," that would be a different matter.
The initial version of Aasimar clearly states that you and each creature within 10 feet of you take damage, but you also have resistance to the damage type. The revised rules lowered the damage to PB instead of half your level rounded up and they very clearly don't mention you taking damage. What I'm getting it is depending on which rules you used would depend on if they were doing it RAW or not. But judging by them not doing magic initiate as RAW and them ignoring RAW to do whatever they want, I daresay they lowered your damage to PB and said you take damage from it plus you're somehow not resistant? They seem like the type to completely fuck up rules for the sake of being an arse.
It was several rulings in quick succession.
1. A specialized fey creature of his own design was making uncomfortable amorous advances, wouldn't stop, and was immune to everything.
2. Another player was allowed to make a "called shot" and shoot my character directly in the eye.
3. When I went to retaliate against that player, suddenly an attack roll against AC wasn't good enough, the player was also granted a Reflex save to "just not be in the square I'm attacking".
It was at that moment I realized that bad D&D really is worse than no D&D.
"Not quite, but I did mutter angrily in the shower the next day..."
I will never understand Redditors and failing to answer the question properly.
People just like telling stories
One of my biggest gripes especially as a wizard in a number of campaigns has been some my old table's on and off again guest DMs was that he wouldn't allow us to have or create any golems or constructs. At one point I had actually had to rework and homebrew the entire golems and constructs tables because types of golems don't take into account upgrading building materials and/or constructing them to different sizes.
As an example, the shield guardian as a primary is classically constructed from wood, bronze, stone, and steel. However why would one use stone when one has access to better materials and that's not even getting into the types of wood or their properties as a basis. Basically all constructs can be called into question in that regard and my biggest axe to grind is that the constructs tables doesn't even really acknowledge below small. So you basically have to home brew something like a clockwork spider construct that's fairly disposable as a scout and that's not even getting into the fact that the shield guardian proves that control can be tethered to an item rather than a caster so they can be traded or given to say other party members for use.
That as a preface, said guest DM decided he was basically going to "rocks fall" what was effectively a party mascot construct we had that our usual forever DM had very much cosigned and even GIVEN us as a long standing party member/tool. So he literally killed our clockwork dog with out reason or even consent from our usual DM who wasn't DMing because he wanted to play as a player for a change as well and he also didn't even ask the rest of us if that was ok ether. Pretty much everyone walked away from that and he wasn't allowed back as a DM at all.
yeah, if i were the usual DM i would bar him from the table completely and completely nullify everything he ever did as a DM, if he's like that as a DM i guarantee he would be a "That Guy" player
@@GinaRanTruthEnforcer He did get table banned from being the DM but he was allowed back as a player. He wasn't consistently a player due to schedules but he did make semiregular appearances. He actually wasn't that bad as a player though.
Reminds me of the time in Pathfinder where I built a bunch of intelligent constructs and accidentally ascended to godhood because they were worshipping me as a creator deity. Good times
Got downed by a Will-O-Wisp and DM asked for a constitution check against death (5e). I rolled a 10, the DM ruled on the spot that the DC was 11 and told me not only did my character die, he couldn't ever be resurrected because the creature ate my soul. I was done.
Wow, had you eaten their last slice of pizza or something?
@@BlueTressym I think he just hated my warlock, he's the sort of DM who wants to win against his players and my fireball spell wasn't to his liking !
@@TheReaLcatniP Ah, one of those. Bleh.
@@TheReaLcatniP Sounds like a horrible DM who just wanted to one up his players instead of playing to have fun with everyone there.
That reminds me of one time a DM randomly changed the death save rule to be you had to roll an 11 or higher instead of a 10 or higher for my character who had just gone down. I ended up succeeding but it was like why the fuck did this rule get changed for me here and now!? 😅
I think the core issue of most of these DMs, as well as most of the ones described in the comment section, is that they care more about being in control and doing what they want than about the players having fun. Sometimes, allowing your players to take control of certain story elements can greatly benefit everyone's enjoyment of the game, including the DM. Food for thought.
Had a DM who set up a main quest encounter at level 2 against a dozen salamanders in an enclosed space and then had the gall to be indignant when people pointed out that there was no way ANYONE was ready for that kinda fight and all it achieved was forcing most the party to roll up new characters.
The ruling/remark that actually made me and most of the the players walk away was the "You're not allowed to question the DM" anymore and "Y'all just suck at this".
If there was a plot related reason for everyone to perish in that fight that's one thing.
But his responses made it clear that wasn't the case.
He was just a bad DM with a complex and an attitude.
DM saying you can’t question them is a giant red flag
@@mattaku9430 Yeah it definitely is.
@@mattaku9430that’s not a flag my friend that’s a crimson wall
Sounds like a skill issue to me
@@PikachuLittle Yes the DM definitely had a skill issue when it came to keeping his players and not being a prick.
Last time I played with people I didn't know prior, a player misunderstood a rule. A very basic rule that is central to how the game works. I explained it to him and he argued. I'm like no that's not it, and he said look you had your say now it's my turn. GM takes his side.
The very same GM who put the time and effort into providing all those cheat sheets that clearly explains the rules. He didn't refer to his own cheat sheets. I don't want to rule lawyerize but I can't play with stupid people.
That had to be frustrating. Did it hurt anything or ruin the fun at the table?
What was the rule?
ngl being this vague about the rule in question makes this kinda sus. would love to hear the other party's point of view
@@jambondepays1969 Don't even think its sus, just genuinely interested.
Can't forget that GM has final say about ALL rules regardless of what the book says, heck when I used to dm I would change some rules/ignore rules outright to make it more fun for my players because at the end of the day I wanted them to have fun which in turn meant I was also having fun, even if they derailed the plot every time lol.
Miss DMing for that group, good times.
my paranormal investigator who could literally call forth images of things that happened in a location, could literally talk to the walls was told 'you dont find anything' but the guy who rolled mid happened to find a clue. had to walk away from that one and explain to the DM that if my super specialised character couldnt do the one thing he's good at then what was the point of playing him?
My last group we were playing a western inspired pathfinder 2 game, I picked the gunslinger. Like half the monsters were resistant to piercing damage... That's literally all I got. I picked up a club at one point just to have another option. But yeah the "fun" in that was an all time low .
A DM who fails to create opportunities for the PCs to shine is a bad DM. Full stop.
Just for context, what was your investigation check result?
@@2MeterLP now your making me think as it was an old system, in D&D terms, would be equivalent 25+ on 5 rolls
@@summonsays2610 pretty well all guns in pf2e have concussive, which means they deal piercing or bludgeoning, depending on which the creature has less of a resistance to
Not me, but I was at the table. It was a Pathfinder adventure path. Something about giants. We were in a city being attacked by Orcs trying to save it and we get attacked by this tough Shaman that nearly beats us. I think the Shaman went unconscious and one of the players said he was going to Coup the guy. GM says the player will get an alignment penalty if he does.
Player counters we're in a warzone with no way to safely take a prisoner and he's too dangerous to risk letting him live.
GM and Player go back and forth about how bad it is and how circumstances need to be considered and so on until the player packs up his stuff and leaves. Last session of that campaign.
I still played with the player fir awhile and his thinking was the GM wanted the shaman to give us info but couldn't think of a way to tell us without an interrogation scene.
Dm added extra cold damage to people weating any type of plate armour. Plus receiving cold damage when taking a full rest. Exclusively for people wearing plate mind you. Regardless if there is a fire or not to keep the players warm
hearing that, i would ask if such type of armor are cursed by a diety or some shit because that makes no sense under any angles
Do people not know that knights and man-at-arms wore soft padding underneath their armor to prevent things like abrasion injuries? Their bodies were pretty well insulated, unless they get soaked, which affects most clothing anyways
Almost.
I finally bit the bullet and tried my hand at DMing. I had a fun idea of using the Commoner "class" for 5e (10s in 4 stats, 12 in one, 8 in last, get to level 5 and evolve into level 2 PC with bonus HP) and the twist is the players are children who go on imaginary adventures (revealed after all but one were slaughtered by a band of goblins). After a handful of sessions, the shoe dropped. The BBEG burned their village down and killed their families. They survived by "chance" (playing in the forest as usual).
Fast forward 15 years, in game, and now they are full-fledged adventurers and hear rumor of a chimera (the BBEG's mount and pet) sighted by a nearby village.
They arrive and it turns out the Baroness of the village has the people under her control. ("Rolled and Told"'s vampress Baroness adventure.) They make it to her castle, trigger a fight that leaves them battered and on the brink of death.
Then, one of the players (the one who had been DMing) goes to move some debris, which housed a swarm of centipedes. This swarm proceeded to kick their asses worse (a trap literally in the book) but they beat it. Now hanging on a thread, they short rest and leave everything alone (good thing as there was 2 or 3 more swarms hidden).
They go into a room they KNOW houses sleeping vampire spawn with the plan to stake as many as they can. Now, there are 4 PCs (5th was AWOL) and 8 or 9 Spawn. So I have them roll Stealth vs the Passive Perceptions of the Spawn (which I clearly said). They roll okay... but one rolls bad. Really, really bad. So I described how it jolted up and howled in death (as seen in every vampire movie) and did a check for all the vampire spawn to see if they woke.
They did.
The party is then wiped out and the Paladin (who the mad Baroness believed was her husband) was merely knocked out and dragged to her. The other DM (who was playing a Fighter iirc) rolled his Death Saves and got a Nat 20. Rather than escape, he followed the Spawn to "save his friend". Instead, he watched the Baroness turn his friend... who then came to turn him. Fighter then fled, swearing he would save his friend.
Now, I was planning to have him find a new group of adventurers to continue the story... other DM instead had a complete fit, openly complaining about calls I made (even though nearly all were following the adventure, specifically the trap he set off).
He then demanded to DM again and run his homebrew world. Okay, I prefer to play. I tell him about a Paladin I made that he loved the idea of a month prior (Half-Troll raided by a Cleric and so becomes a Devotion Paladin). "Sorry, my world doesn't have trolls because regeneration doesn't exist in the real world, so it would make the species go extinct." Never mind that in the real world, we literally have animals that regenerate limbs or even their entire bodies from their heads. Fine, I will make him Half-Orc. Whatever.
Mission is to clear out undead, AWESOME! My Pally can shine here, and does. Too bad it is a gambling den, and the DM tries to say I would be breaking my Oath as an LG to even enter or accept money (payment for the job). I post out that I wouldn't know if the place is run legitimately or if they heat people, nor is it my concern. It isn't my place to judge people, just protect them. (For the record, I am a Christian and my DM doesn't like Christians due to understandable baggage.) We move on and on the road get ambushed by a Gorgon, which tries to petrify me, I succeeded the save with a Nat 20 (DM implied I cheated).
Later that day, we make camp and just after dawn are attacked (on my watch) by a rust monster. Above ground. So to save my armor, I mounted my horse and threw a cast iron pot, the most ferrous item we have as I know the lore of them and how ironic their favorite meal. The RM ignores the pot that is 5 feet away and charges the mounted Paladin 30 feet away. Even with it missing its attack, he ruled my armor was damaged and AC dropped by 1.
I was done after that. Thankfully, another player wanted to DM so 'other DM' played in this Tal'Dorei set game... as a Bard who had to be the focus at all times.
The game only lasted a few more months, then 'other DM' and his partner got new jobs and moved across the state.
I apologize but may I have a summary? As much I want to read that I’d like to at least understand what’s crazy so my brain feels included and intrigued to read the rest of it.
@@samuelguzman9210basically
>guy runs Adventure Module as written
>TPK
>That Guy flips out, demands to be given the DM chair
>OP makes LG Paladin
>DM goes out of their way to screw over OP at every opportunity
>group collapses due to real life stuff
My DM (with a lot of experience) organized a few short sessions for my group (almost all new DnD players except for one guy) for us to get used to combat. We were told that there won't be a lot of interaction with NPCs, mainly just fighting (which I was sad about, but I was still extatic that I'm finally gonna play DnD).
I knew about the stereotypes, but I still made myself a sassy tiefling warlock (fiend pact) character, because I'm a huge sucker for sassy devilish magicians. I did research and thought up a tiefling name for her, "Enigma" (which I was very proud of), but when I really wanted to gave her a surname "Darklight" (maybe a little on the nose, but super cool in my opinion - I used it before in video games), my DM decided it was too cringe/too edgy and straight up refused to call her that, writing a standard tiefling surname from the Player's Handbook, "Kosirra", instead, on my character sheet (which he helped me create). And then through the whole (short, but still) campain he repeatedly called my character by the surname "Kosirra" instead of her name "Enigma", despite me correcting him every time.
I was very disappointed, bitter and honestly surprised why he made such a big deal out of it. It was just a name but it felt like he didn't care about my character at all.
Too be fair, you gave your character a stupid name
But then again I once named a character Joe Whoopass so it’s not like I can talk
Such a petty DM. 🤦♂️
Back when I had a run of Rise of the Runelords, I was playing the wizard in the final boss battle. The DM had ludicrously buffed the enemy wizard on top of his existing buffs just to make it harder. As wizard, it is my job to deal with such stuff and I was prepared with the exact thing for it. Mage's disjunction. Instant "every spell gone, do not roll save" to not have to do like 10 rolls against the guy's already buffed casting level. The DM would not have that, so unwilling to have all those walls of force and all the other defenses instantly come down, so he goes "contingency counterspell exactly for this". Thing is, I was ALSO prepared for that. I am a wizard. It is my job to be batman. Item bond free spell once per day to recall that spell and use it again. So next turn... I try to drop his ludicrous buffs again. Obviously, DM still thinks we should somehow deal with ten buffs while being incapable of even getting near the guy while he is bombarding us with spells, so he does the contingency thing again. Obviously, then comes the argument that you can't have two contingencies active at the same time (I know there are some very specific conditions, but he used up his one dm fiat) and as the conversation goes he decides to do the ruling of "oh, you tried to use it on an artifact. Lose all ability to cast spells. Period." which is not how that works but the man just continued holding the point and dismissing me.
So here I was trying to do my job and reduced to a peasant. I left in the middle of the fight and didn't even look back. Not sure how or even IF they managed to beat the guy because it looked like the DM had the disease of boss attachment even if it wasn't his own.
I was the dm but I walked away. Was running a campaign with college friends. Things were fine for a few sessions. Getting to a point in the story that Drow involvement would come up. They took a long time in a hostile area so I had the leader of the camp start making her way there. My thought process on the elder was Drow society is matriarchal, so the head of this force would obviously be a woman.
Out of nowhere the players start devising a trap with teamwork I've never seen. So I was like, alright, you're working together getting creative. That's cool. Let's lean into that.
They get her trapped and shut her magic down.
I'm thinking this is where the interrogation for details starts so I'm so lost in thought of coming up with what she knows and DC's for various charasma checks, I missed the part where they wanted to start stripping her.
And doing....more...after that.
I packed up and left right there and never met with them again. Made my skin crawl.
Yikes! Yeah, I'd be noping out so fast they wouldn't see me for dust, and I say that as someone who has GMed some pretty messed-up stuff.
Was it an evil party?
It's for the best
I had a DM who said the duration of a round in combat (Which is 6 seconds in DnD 5e) is "Up to interpretation". We didn't argue about it, but when he said my Bless lasted "1d4" rounds, I almost quit then. it spectacularly nerfed my Twilight Cleric support build, in which my ONLY source of damage was a sickle and who relied on buffing everyone else. I didn't have to quit because the DM not long after had life happen, but I was severely disappointed.
i was a human paladin with relatively high strength and asked the dm if i could break the chain, he said if I rolled high enough that I can, i got a nat 20 and then he asked me what race i was, to which i replied human and he then overruled the natural 20 and said i couldn't break it
Man if only there was something in dnd meant to calculate a character strenght using the same basis for every race
We obviously those chains had a Bane (Human) enchantment
Conan? Wulfgar? Shal Bal? All Humans, all have broken chains with brute strength, two of them from Forgotten Realms
Jonathan Joestar would be really sad
If it's impossible you don't let the players roll for it.
If it's possible you let the players roll and nat 20 is auto success.
That was complete bs.
I had a few close "walk-away" moments, but it would take a lot for me to walk away from the table. It would have to be absolutely fucked up for a ruling for me to walk away from a table.
Permanent blindness 5 minutes into a 1 shot
This isn't really an example of what the video is about, but funny story so I want to say it anyway. I was in a game with a DM who I hadn't previously met, as I'd been brought into the group by my friend who knew the DM from work. The game never actually got finished, but it was one of my only chances to actually play the game and I remember it fondly. Our party was hired to go check out a windmill and the surrounding cottage a bit outside of town where a few people had disappeared when travelling to or near. When our party got there and entered the windmill, there was a chest in the corner and little else. The rest of the party wanted to go for the chest, but I stopped them, having played a ton of Dark Souls and therefore being conditioned to *never* touch a chest until it has been thoroughly Mimic checked. So one of our party cast a spell (I don't have a lot of experience with the game so I'm not sure which one, but I think it was Detect Magic) and the chest was found to, in fact, be magical and alive. The DM was very obviously annoyed by this as I guess he'd figured somebody would fall for it and get eaten. We didn't try to fight it and just left it alone since it was one of the very first things we did in the campaign, but when we came back later we found that it was in a different spot and there was a bunch of blood on the floor where it had been before, so we ended up killing it there since we were stronger and more confident. Still not sure why somebody had apparently been stupid enough to try to open it since we left a "Mimic, do not touch!" note by it to indicate that it was dangerous, but some people can't read, I guess.
I was in a group with a new dm. We found a large box and when someone asked if they could open it, our dm has him make a con save. He succeeds to which the dm says “you find it in yourself to not open the box and walk away” (???) when someone else wanted to open it, he failed the con save and something flew out of it upon opening it. “What is it?” “It’s indescribable” “no like…what does it look like?” “It’s indescribable.” I left that party afterwards
tbf it sounds like that gm was just poorly doing eldritch horror. that isn't too bad
@@sekiyo_ I agree, sounds like he just couldn't paint a picture of the horror he had in his head. This is definitely not bad, just needs more creativity.
"you need to announce before you smite"
Nah dude.
I was once part of a play session where I was a mele class. It was already not going so swell for me since I was trying to take the game somewhat seriously and the other 4 players were skirting the lines of being murder hobos. Last encounter I was very inaffective, so understandably I wasn't in the best mood. What was the final encounter of that campain, when I tried to intimidate my opponent, it did nothing. The DM gave me the impression that nothing I could do would have any affect outside of pure combat. So I start using my turns to hit the monster. Which apparently not taking negative rolls for extra attacks was wrong, and also taking negative rolls for extra attacks was wrong. The session ended early, and the DM proceeded to chew me out for not having a good time. In front of my kid. For a one shot. Did I forget to mention this is my husband?
I stopped playing not only DND, but tabletop games entirely.
I respect the word's DM as law most of the time (as long as they're not power tripping) but if I ask if I can do something that seems completely sensible I am going to expect a more comprehensive answer than "no" as a response.
Haven't walked away from this group, but some of the GMs rulings drive me UP A WALL.
We were traveling west across an open desert during the day. I'm a scout with expertise in survival, *and I can fly.* I roll a 46 survival. (Mind you, this is 5th edition d&d.)
The DM tells us that we wind up going off track and heading almost due north instead. Can't I see the path of the sun? Can't I see the entire desert around us? Hell, we're like a day and a half from our destination, I should already be able to see the place from the air!
We were setting up for a custom Pathfinder 2e campaign and the DM had given us some free archetype feats for extra fun in creation. I made a goblin alchemist grenadier mounted on a camel. I could free action command the camel to move allowing my character to throw the maximum bombs possible per turn. A beautiful "mobile turret" build. We introduce our characters and set off...into a catacombs that the doorway is too narrow for my camel but of course it opened into a giant underground area. I walked away on that one.
My first ever D&D session had something that still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that if I had access to other groups and it happened now, I would've left. I will admit it's petty and a fairly insignificant issue, but since it was the first time I had ever played D&D, it pisses me off. I wanted to use Prestidigitation to make a rock sparkle to distract a group of goblins we needed to get past. The DM said his homebrew goblins don't have that trait. As far as I could tell, that was the only difference from the canon goblins. I was so proud of my idea, too. *_That's_* what pisses me off.
Ya that's some bs. It sounds like the DM didn't have much else planned for the session, and getting out of the combat would've made hurt his pride.
Thankfully my DM let me do something similar where we distracted and lured goblis out of rooms to make combat easier before we fought a bugbear. Interacting with the world is a huge part of ttrpg. Otherwise, we could all just roll dice in combat scenarios on our own.
@@TyRaff We still didn't even enter combat, if I remember correctly. (I may be remembering wrong, I have brain damage, and this was in 2020.) It was a really stupid quest, too. We were tasked with stealing a pie from an old woman. Granted, he did make a choice later on that while it was equally unfair, it was in my favor. My character should've died, but he spared me the pain of losing my character that early.
@disableddragonborn I mean to be fair not all goblins should be dumb idiots but I would've made the goblins roll and some get distracted (never enter combat) and some don't and fight the party. Makes your idea work and combat happen so idk
@@Enclave_Sergeant He just straight-up said "My homebrew goblins don't have that trait." I wouldn't be so bitter if it weren't my first session and an idea I was so proud of as a new player.
@disableddragonborn Makes sense I was just giving examples of how it would work but yeah kinda trashy of your Dm to do
i once had a DM that literally banned me from using the shield spell because i kept using it to protect my character, who wasn't otherwise great defensively. The character's background was in artifact/treasure hunting and therefore he developed a fighting style around quick fights that shield is very good for. Basically he's best when he has all his spell slots and uses all or most of his first level ones to cast shield whenever he gets targeted. DM didn't like this when i used this strategy in multiple quick battles at the beginning of the campaign, even after I carefully explained that the strategy was completely within the rules of the game, didn't work after a few turns, and told him my backstory's reasons behind it. I only finished that first session and then left. Worst part was that most of the other player agreed with him.
One of my DMs ruled an auto crit on my character because I hadn't been hit in a combat scene once - because I was succeeding my stealth rolls. We're level 2 and my con was shit. Incapacitated immediately.
???? whats the point of dice atp
@@yasone7873 bro fuck if I know, literally watched him roll a d20 for some archer to hit me, land on a 14, and he just says 'nat 20,' and snags the dice back. hadn't played since
A DM rule lawyered forge cleric's channel divinity so hard it was not only extremely uselss everywhere, using it creatively was shutted down (yes, including the "turn normal locked locks into open locks"), i couldnt profit 1 copper in any way shape or form. But the most stupid was not allowing to barricade a 5ft wide hallway with a door to block the 10ft wide boss from squeezing in. And complaining when his boss who was proned, grappled and hit with our last resources died (when it dealt half of our healthpools in damage in one spell. To all of us. On one turn). I just had my dwarf forge cleric walk away from this afterward. Pretty fucking sad when the players were kind.
The first one now makes me wonder about more times in which a DM actually makes an honest mistake in their ruling, whether or not it makes someone salty. No one's perfect, after all. Crap happens, and in the heat of the moment, it can be difficult to think clearly and recall the rules correctly. Times in which players make honest mistakes in their stuff even if it may not particularly be dumb could also be good.
Not me, but one of my players. I tried to get back into TTRPG, so I decided to get together with some friends who lived an hour away from where I lived. The group was pretty small, so I made a short Pathfinder campaign based on my novels' world as a setting. Character-wise, there was Raltz - a Human Monk -, Markus - a Half-elf Hexblade Assassin - and another character, but that player didn't stay very long due to living further away and not being able to visit often. To help round up the party, I added my story's main character - Karyana, a human Spellblade.
During the quest, Raltz decided to take an Oath of Silence as part of his monastery's teachings (though it may have been a misread on his part, as he was new to the game), and spent less time at the table and more around it. Given it was his house, we kept the story going, but I figured that it was best to wrap it up quickly, as our host was becoming less interested in playing. It turns out that he just wanted us to hang around, and didn't care all that much about the game. It pretty much killed TTRPG for me after that...
whilst I am sympathetic to how it went in your particular case...if a DM of mine wanted me to play in the world setting of his novel, and the party was escorted by the main character of that novel...I would take the dash action out the door and not stop walking until I got home.
that's about as many red flags as you can put in a single sentence.
@@dehro I wholeheartedly agree. I thought this was going to be a horror and maybe redemption story based on those facts alone.
I know this might sound petty, but... it was an online D&D game that I was playing in 3-4ish years ago. This was my first time playing with this group, so I didn't really know what to expect from them. I was playing a paladin, which at the time was my favorite class. This detail isn't too important to the story, but I was going for a paladin who wasn't obsessed with stopping the evil of fiends and undead but more of like the everyday evils of the world, however the entire party would make jokes about how my paladin would instantly freak out anytime there was an undead nearby. Like I said, it was not a very important detail to the story, but it was still something going through my head during the session. One detail that is important, though, is that at the time, my mic wasn't working, so I had to type out all my actions or dialog out in the chat. Back to the story. We got in a fight with an assassin, and it was going fairly poorly for the assassin. I was the only one within melee range, and the assassin decided to start running. I was able to take an attack of opportunity on the assassin, and I did. I asked the DM if the assassin was still up, and they said yes. The next thing I typed was okay, then I'm going to dump a second level smite on to them. The DM said you need a bonus action in order to do that and then proceeded to carry on with the story the assassin got away. I will say yes, I know that some smites need a bonus action to activate on your turn. However, I was using Divine Smite the Smite that every paladin gets, and that's a free action to use. I would understand if they made a ruling ahead of time that mentioned I have to use a bonus action for even Divine Smite, but that never came up. So, with that ruling, my mic not working, and the party making incorrect assumptions about my paladin, I just decided it would be better if I left the group.
Story 1:37 Our general rule is that those players who are absent, their characters are untouchable, usually they disappear
Right, either that party member is in a place where they cannot be harmed or "absent" in a manner that they have an excuse when they return.
@jacobbarnhart8770 basically yeah. I got lazy towards the end and they just weren't there
I had a DM once try to just strait up remove magic from the game. Long story short we didn't play that campaign.
honestly, sounds fine. As long as that was understood by all the players at the start, it might be interesting...
he should play a less magic focused game then lol
Why even play D&D then? Just pick a different system.
you could have just completely broken my brain because it's literally impossible to escape magic in D&D it is literally everywhere nature itself is magical proven by druids if it was Homebrew it could work but dear God you would have to change so many subclasses it wouldn't be worth playing
@@PikachuLittle You can have a lot of fun with limited or no magic. i ran a game where there was no magic (or well, none besides what gods and certain creatures could perform), but someone wanted to play a wizard so i had to clue them into some important plot details.
such as there is magic, its just that no one has ever seen it before from a mortal, and that me and him are going to be spending some long nights together making the first mage ever some custom spells. Honestly it turned out really fun, seeing a guy take incidents in the game, rationalize spells for them, and then crafting them with him. You can have a ton of fun with it, its all about making something interesting, rather than saying "no magic" and never expanding on it.
As a DM, I had a player drop out of my games for what I was told, a silly misunderstanding.
I'm starting a new long-running campaign with my 3 friends as the core players. I've explained to them and 3 other players that they're my core adventuring group, with back-stories and everything, while the other 3 players will have characters that can more easily drop-in / drop-out.
It was the second session this new player joined, and aided the main group with some zombies that invaded their camp during the night. They managed to easily fight back and win the encounter. After a long-rest, one of my player's character pulls out a pipe to share. We've home-brewed the drug that was in it (It's more or less dope).
Their characters are tolerant to it, but they pass it to the new character, whom I asked for a Con save. He failed it miserably.
It was late RL, so we called the game there so we could pick up next time with the new players trip experience. I typed out this whole thing where he goes through a forest and sees some visions & stuff...
The next game we're all there and ready to play except for him. It was about an hour & a half before we found out he wasn't showing up because he wanted to watch a hockey game.
Well, I told my players that his character goes semi-catatonic, and to leave him at the camp so we can progress. I was annoyed at him for saying he'd be there, but not telling us he cancelled until BEYOND last minute.
When he found out, it enraged him so much he just quit. Didn't even tell me. He told his friend that he was upset for "killing" off his character... It was just a misunderstanding, and I'd still have him join us if he wanted to come back... but he's gone.
One time my DM said that you cant seduce a dragon since the females died out long ago. My friend (The Barb) immediately left the table as he heard it, he said "If i can't seduce a female dragon, i dont want to play"
Not a ruling in my case but rather the combination of 2 very "dominant" personalities and a rather new DM.
My character was about to deliver a finishing blow to an enemy when that enemy tried to talk its way out of it. Now, the DM said this was my finishing blow so it was my decision. The 2 others decided my character would not make that finishing blow. Just like that. I was not mad that I could not finish the enemy and that we were now talking to that enemy, I was mad that the DM let 2 other players take over my character. If you want to stop my character's actions, do that in game. Heroically block the finishing blow and talk me out of killing the guy or what not. There's many ways to do this! But don't you dare play my character for me or I will throw my character sheet at you and quit cause, why the f* am I there then?
I'd have said no, I kill him because it's MY character and if they had a problem with that then I'd probably attack them in game as they just saved the villain, and to show that yea I'm done with this table
I played with a DM who hated to he corrected in any fashion. I am a veteran at DnD since i played since 3rd edition and read so many of the books. Not bragging just saying i understand the game very well.
The DM hated my character, a Warforged Monk, because somehow i kept rolling high and he coukdnt manage to hit my character. I wasnt cheating or anything. He demanded i roll 7 different types of dice and i still wasnt hit often.
He eventually cheated in 2 ways. Basically even the weakest of creatures or enemies had an unblockable AOE attack towards me. That alone pissed me off. Then what made me quit was he forced me to use a specific set of dice i learned later were loaded dice so i rolled low always.
The reason he did this to me? Because i corrected him one time about how i had advantage on something when he said i didnt. Literally had to pull out the book to prove it and he finally gave me advantage. Like i said, guy didnt like to be corrected at all...
I once had a DM for a 5e D&D campaign set in Eberron. There was a series of questionable houserules and a lot of homebrew content (including a friend of the DM playing a crazy-broken Artificer that combined wizard and artificer features in one class with no tradeoff). The one that made me walk, however, was when the DM ruled that we, as newly hired crew members on a flying ship, have to roll 20+ Wisdom saves to disobey the orders of our NPC captain. Including disobeying him 'in spirit'.
I admit that as a DM, I did once make my whole party quit playing. To be fair, I did warn everyone at the very beginning not to beg for any items as it would not end well. This was also 2nd edition if I remember right. One of my friends kept asking every session for a deck of many things. After about 5 or so times of him asking, I decided to give him one. Only it was a homebrewed version that was cursed. Every card pulled would cause a roll to compel him to pull another card (was unneeded at the end as he kept pulling cards hoping for a better result). The cards would do things like reduce stats, change gender, change appearance, etc. This was something he gained after the party went through an entire maze (2 - 3 sessions) and was getting their rewards from the treasure hoard. So he kept pulling cards that caused bad things to happen until he got the last card, which gave the wish spell (of course I had set it to be a monkeypaw kind of wish). He wished he had never found this deck. I asked if he was sure that was his exact wish and he said yes. Ok... so now time rewound for the entire maze encounter back to before they all entered. All items and experience gained during this was lost for the whole party. He left saying he would never play with me again. The rest of the party quit too.
20 years later they did in fact play again with me as DM in what they said was one of the best campaigns they ever played. I like to think I grew as a DM to do better by my players.
That is entirely on the player being a complete idiot
Of all things, asking for a Deck of Many Things is deranged.
I could see some other tame object, but that thing just causes horrific things to happen in any game it's dropped in.
I almost didn't make it to session 1 cause of a DM wanting to make up odd rules for character creation that only effected me. Essentially every player had a 1 on 1 with the DM to craft our characters so he could integrate our characters into the story, no big deal there and I appreciate the effort. Problem was that we started off as level 3 adventurers and it was DND 5E. I wanted to make a hexblade warlock, and I had flavor for my patron and everything cause I actually read the rule book. Well the DM says that hexblades can only have black razor as their patron, so my custom patron idea wouldn't float. So when I asked if that meant I wanted to be a hexblade I would be getting black razor or a weaker version of it at start. He said he wouldn't let a new character have such an item and black razor would never inhabit a weaker form of itself for my PC. The DM then followed this by claiming this was all book rules, and it just meant that I would have to pick something else and multiclass into hexblade much later. This was all over discord, and I was literally reading the book as we went along so of course I thought the dude was freaking high. When I told him I wasn't interested in playing if he was gonna make up lies on the spot to keep me from playing something he changed his tune immediately. This guy wasn't a much better player he'd brow beat whatever DM was in control that he could attack with a great sword with two hands and then use an off hand attack with a dagger without dropping the greatsword or something else along those lines.
It was one of my first 5E games and I was playing a Champion Fighter because the expanded crit range excited me. After reaching level 3 and rolling a 19 on the die, I get very excited saying that's a critical hit for me.
DM: "nah that's too overpowered, it's a regular hit."
In hindsight I should have stood up for myself and asked what my new feature should be since he had effectively robbed me of one of the reasons I wanted to play Champion. Instead, I meekly rolled with it and then quit from that table the first opportunity I could.
A 5% extra chance to crit is overpowered? I think leaving the table would still be a good choice, even if you stuck up for yourself chances are they would've done something else equally stupid down the line.
The first time i played D&D (and the last time for a LONG while), i was playing a rogue. I forgot the race, but part of it was that i had the ability to detect traps.
However, no matter how well i rolled, i was rarely able to actually detect traps, even obvious ones. I was accused by the other players of not doing a good enough job building my rogue, hence why i doing so badly. Towards the end, i wanted to cry because the group really hated me and the DM, who was someone i called a friend, barely defended me.
It wasn't until i rolled a 19 and another player boosted me that we found out what was going on.
Apparently the DM wrote down that i had a penalty that reduces the effectiveness of my detect trap skill because of a cursee object that i didn't know i had. I believe it was a bracelet i started with that belongee to my characters first love or something. But without telling me or anyone, it was cursed to make me fail the check more often than not.
EVERYONE, especially me, was pissed off at the DM. He had not even asked me if this was ok to do, he just did it. I had a miserable time because of him and they even lost a character because of it.
I stopped being friends with him and only recently started to learn how to play again.
Dm of a Gundam 5e campaign, threw a cr 12 enemy at us when we were only level 1-3(don't remember exact level, only that this was session 1), did 5 attacks in a single turn only telling us "mounted weapons are a free action" AFTER KILLING A MEMBER OF THE PARTY, AND THEIR MOBILE SUIT, IN ONE TURN FROM FULL HEALTH, also, no, and when confronted they were revealed to have a god complex
Mounted weapons in Gundam 5e are the same as any other weapon, they don't have rules allowing for "free action attacks" which should never be allowed in the first place.
My friend and I both chewed out that DM and most of the group left the game after that, it was a 6 person party, I think 1 person stayed and that dm duped others into joining a revolving door of people joining and leaving the campaign. We had become friends with the person who stayed before leaving the campaign, so we heard about what happened after we left.
The worst part was that the campaign was organized in a discord server of someone who reads dnd horror stories on youtube. It was like this dm took them as inspiration, rather than stories of what not to do.
Years ago, I was playing in a Dark sun campaign, as a druid that could turn in to a swarm of flies I think. Details are a little hazy at this point. First session we all start out locked in cells/cages. I said I was going to turn in to a swarm to extricate myself. DM said it doesn't work like that. It felt like something he just ass pulled to stop me from escaping.
I'm all for being an easy going player, and all he had to do was say "Out of character, please don't do that, I have something lined up" or "the cage has an anti magic field" and that would have been the end of it. Just never sat with me and has stuck in my craw.
DM was one of the best DM's I've ever played with though, just one instance of annoyance.
I wasn't a player but a co-dm to who had a rule he never allowed bags of holding. Ever. He was convinced players would fill it to the brim with daggers, and then in combat, turn it inside out and the daggers would shoot out like a volley from a cannonesque-bag. No amount of telling him that's not how the spell worked, would change his mind.
Oh and the DM who refused to let me search for someone who stole from us. Because my character grew up in the faewild and didn't know cities, so I wouldn't understand how to search for someone in a city. I mentally checked out. 3 real world hours later, the rogue (who had stolen something and was another PC) kept out-stealthing the party. We finally told him, keep it, don't want you in the party anyway.
Doesn't that trick only work with some kind of spell-storing feature with catapult?
@firstnamelastname7244 idk. I tried to convince him it did work that way to no end. He wouldn't budge even when I told him, that as DM, he could even make a rule it didn't work that way.
My very first experience for DnD was when 5e first dropped. A group from my college brought me in and wanted me to join, with me having zero knowledge on any of it, and I barely fumbled my way through character creation. So for a pirate campaign planned for the seven seas, I became Alduin, the Red Dragonborn Barbarian (I give all the bows for my 10 out of 10 name I had to make up on the fly, inspirations unknown). Listening to the DM on how to build a Barbarian, I made them physically tough, and tanky, with little brains and not much going for mental stats. Alright fair enough.
When we began to play however, we had a Paladin in the party who had higher stats than me basically overall all around. Now normally that doesnt necessarily mean alot, but it was apparent from the very beginning I was NEVER able to roll well, as I think throughout all of the sessions, Alduin managed to legitimately land 4 hits on his given attacks with his Greatsword, and maybe succeed in 3 skill checks throughout his time. We started in jail, of which even with damaged bars I could not attack my way out of in a Rage, but a cannonball from a pirate attack broke them. That Pirate comes through with his crew of 2, himself and his first mate Patches, the Peg legged Dwarf. Attempting to test our worthiness against them so we could be hired, Alduin attempted with his other rage to fight, but we immediately just beaten down. A few rolls from one of the players shows diplomacy was the way to go, and so session 1 has nothing for my character.
The next few sessions play out in similar fashions, where either story beats either dont play to the favor of the bronze, or if it was for muscle, I rolled so poorly, I did something like toss patches not onto the enemy ship, but face first with a crit fail into the mast of our ship, knocking him unconscious, and damaging it (it was ruled I wasnt intelligent enough to load a cannon, so I had no range). After a few sessions, I finally went to the DM and said, "Hey, is there anything I can do to improve this? I figured I would be the muscle while figuring things out, but things genuinely just dont play out that well seemingly ever. On top of that, the other players are getting rather nasty about it." At that point it had been expected that Alduin was just a failure, and being my first experience, it was getting to me like I just didnt get how to play because I was one of 2 new players at the table, but the other had no issues. And comments and remarks began quickly, but would turn at jabs at both my character and me, and I simply wanted to improve my time there. "Ya, give me a bit of a rewrite on your backstory, flesh it out a bit. You have that trinket, so work with it a bit. The next island you land on I have plans to work you in if you can get me something."
With that, I crafted the toy soldier missing its arm. Given my background was Outlander, I made it that I was originally a tribe, out in the lands of an island. The strong needing to prove themselves, only those who were weak would perish. This ideal would carry my tribe to its grave as I returned from the field one day playing to find it in ruin, the tribe buried under it's homes in fire. Going to my home, I would find my slain mother and father, and crushed under the home, my brother with his broken, charred toy. Alduin would then go out into the world alone, no family remaining, and wander to survive. This would be why the 5 year old Dragonborn could only could get stronger, why his mental skills suffered as he had no education, nor social grace: They burned and crumbled with his tribe that day.
My DM approved my new backstory quite alot.
As the crew landed on their destined island, Alduin recognized it faintly, but it felt... like it had been a long time. His loin cloth draped in symbols he barely remembered walked forward off the ship to take note of the land, the DM noting he believed he does in fact know the place. A survival check with advantage to navigate the terra- oh never mind, high score of 8. Not good enough as I got the group lost. Lovely. More groans from the party about Alduin's incompetency. Then a Red Dragonborn tribesman came wandering through, hunting attire. A similar garb to my own. Stunned, we asked. It was in fact Alduin's tribe. Some had survived, unknown to my character. Scattered about out of the village like I had been while out. He took us back to the tribe, now able to help us get directions to where we needed to go. However, they were not trusting of outsiders, even with myself as a tribesman of their tribe there. "Roll persuasion" goes my DM.
I wont bother saying how well that went.
An attack on the village then happened, in which we did help to defend them from the oncoming attack. Alduin was also knocked unconscious for that fight near the beginning of Round 2, which in a tribe of people who value strength over everything else, was probably the absolute worst thing imaginable. After this happened, the chieftain looked to us with thanks, except for myself. The DM allowed for me, and Only me, to attempt to make one more persuasion attempt to have the tribe help guide us to where we were going and.... a 2. And the party berated me and called me stupid for trying, not even Alduin at that point.
The session ended and I didnt return, as I was being made a fool, players were harassing, and the DM kept putting the new player into situations they werent prepared for nor able to handle. IT took me 3 years to return to DnD after that, and now since I have remained a near forever DM.
I left a game on 2 occasions...
The first was a Palladium Rifts Campaign when the GM got annoyed with what our Party was doing and hit us with Drake, a creature that looked Human but was MDC, had so much Regeneration (that couldn't be suppressed) that he was effectively unkillable and who's weapons did 7-10x the damage listed in their book stats and basically never missed (he had so many bonuses to hit, he needed a Nat 1 to miss)...we couldn't even run before he killed all our characters so the entire table got up, told the GM to go Sodomize themself with a spinning, 2 ft. diameter, Ghost Pepper Puree coated Brain Cactus (in far cruder language) and walked out...after spreading our tale of woe among the rest of the local Gaming Community, they quickly lost the ability to recruit new Players for any game they were running...To paraphrase Rob from Karma Comment Chameleon, Screw You Kat!
The second was when the DM (AD&D 3.0) got so frustrated about not being able to keep everyone on track, he got so Pissed that the next person that did something that didn't advance the Plot, a cow fell on them from several hundred feet up and instantly killed them (and made one HELL of a mess in the process, there wasn't even enough intact meat to make one sausage...SPLAT didn't even begin to describe it...😄😁😆😅😂🤣)...aside from the no way to dodge Insta-Kill, the group told the DM off because at the moment the cow landed, everyone was 200 feet underground cleaning out a Goblin infestation in a mine tunnel with 10 foot ceilings...Like the first instance, after spreading the tale, he too failed to find anyone willing to play in his Campaigns...
An issue that I have personally experienced multiple times is that, while a DM is obviously necessary for any tabletop game, because the DM pretty much has full control over the world, the position of DM very frequently attracts some of the most narcissitic, god-complex people on the face of the planet, and that really does suck.
I have a couple good examples of bad DMs making me walk way from the table.
There was a campaign that I joined through my university's D&D club that was an already in progress campaign that had been going on for a couple months at that point, so the PCs were level 7. The whole theme of the campaign was that there was a zombie apocalypse that had started through unknown means and it was threatening the entire land. I decided to make a firbolg wildfire druid named Carric who was the son of the leader of a reclusive enclave of druids living deep in the forest. His people thought their isolated location would keep them safe from the zombies, however they were eventually found and Carric's father was killed during the defense and evacuation of the enclave, leaving Carric and his twin brother Farric in charge. Farric stayed to protect the remaining members while Carric set out to try and discover what caused the zombies and to hopefully put a stop to it. I sent my character to the DM and she approved it. So fastforward to the first session after I joined and the DM immediately plops my character in the middle of the forest about half a mile from the rest of the party, without ANY of the gear I was supposed to have, so with nothing more than commoner clothes, not even a druidic focus. She then proceeded to sick two boneclaws on me. That's right, _she put two CR 12 undead up against an unarmed level 7 druid with no possibility of getting help from the rest of the party._ Needless to say my character died and the DM told me that she didn't like my character (that she approved) and that's why she killed him, so I had to make a new character. I walked away from that table immediately after hearing that and never joined a campaign ran by that woman ever again.
That woman in particular was the president of the club and while I never played at her table again, I heard tons of other horror stories about things she did from other members of the club. She would apparently routinely make non-sentient monsters explicitly target the PCs of players who she was annoyed with despite those creatures having no to target a single person. She had a habit of just killing off PCs she didn't like, often without even giving a chance for the character to actually survive. For example, one of my friends told me that she had it be so that when his character walked into _his own house_ some unseen monster jumped out of the rafters and decapitated him. No save, no roll to see if the attack hit, just instantly dead. How did this monster get into this guy's home in the middle of a major city without anyone noticing, who the hell knows. She also seemed to, how to put this, have a serious issue with consent and would routinely force things on the PCs. I'm talking sicking a succubus with ridiculously buffed charm spells on a player character who it was part of his backstory that he loved his wife and he was fighting for her. She would routinely favor her boyfriend who played in pretty much every campaign she ran, often giving him insanely powerful items and abilities. She would frequently tell people who weren't in a specific campaign about her plans for it and then when people gave her advice like "that boss will be a bit too weak for that party, maybe buff the boss a bit or combat will be over in like 2 turns" she would pretty much always ignore the advice and then pitch a fit when exactly what people said would happen happened.
She'd even be a nightmare in campaigns that she wasn't DMing. She joined a campaign that I had been in for a couple months late. My character in that campaign was a deep gnome divination wizard who was previously a college professor who taught magical archaeology, but his work dealing with newly uncovered magical artifacts led to him coming in contact with an artifact that gave him a premonition of a great disaster that was about to occur, so he set out to prevent it which is how he joined up with the party. This woman made a bard who supposedly was a big fan of my character and his work, was obsessed with my character and eventually ended up getting kicked from the table a few sessions in when her character tried to SA my wizard. When the DM kicked her, she threw a tantrum and said that they couldn't kick her because she was the president and she made the rules. The DM told her that he didn't care if she was the president, she wasn't playing at his table, so she kicked all of us from the club. Last I had heard, she had driven pretty much everyone except for her BF, and two other people from the club within a couple months of that happening and they had to disband the club because they didn't even have enough people to fill the necessary officer roles. That woman was an absolute nightmare and I'm glad I no longer have to deal with her.
That's so awful...
What an awful, awful woman!
I still remember almost leaving the first game I ever played. It was Pathfinder and I was playing a Magus (sword wielding half caster that attacks with his sword after imbuing it with a spell). I had build my character from level 1 to use wands with his sword, as there were a few feats that allowed him to. At around level 6 I'd finally gotten the feat to allow wielding a wand and sword and using with my spell strike ability, and he THEN rules that it only allows me to cast the wand but not through my sword. This completely shafted the character I'd been playing for half a year, and when I asked about retraining he gave me a crazy long retraining time. I instead opted to suicide in combat by making dumb decisions and making a new character. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth to this day.
started a game with a new DM that had this weird rule in combat were we had to roll to check if our weapons didn't slip from our hands after a few rounds because of the blood of our enemies staining the handle XD
I once asked if I could cast Spike Growth on a ceiling in order to deal with a Drider that was harassing us from above. Another player pointed out that it could only be a floor based on the spell description, but the DM told me I could try it if I did an arcana check (as a 10 int ranger). I rolled a 19, and was told I was 1 point off and 'wasted my spell slot'. You could have just said 'no', you jerk.
I once had a party in 5E tell me their Elf Rogue would be walking ahead in total darkness looking for traps. I ask for perception checks at disadvantage as they begin walking into a trap and I explain how darkvision lets them see but at disadvantage because nobody had any light sources whatsoever. The Elf Rogue leaves the game and her 2 friends ask me where I found this dumb house rule. I point out it’s not a house rule and darkvision also causes you to see only in shades of grey. This completely killed their head canon where dwarves and Elves see perfectly in color (They were big Pathfinder players too; no penalties for Darkvision) so they sulked and made rash decisions till they left my game as well.
In a 1st edition AD&D campaign the DM, who played plenty but never DM'ed before, hated Wizards and made them persecuted by the church. In addition to THAT spell slots weren't recovered overnight they were recovered weekly. Lastly, for a spell to affect a person the caster had to know their "soul name". I stuck it out for as long as I could because I knew I could still stick it to him with unconventional uses of spells while still hiding it from the church inquisitor in the party. That campaign lasted 3 sessions before everyone bailed.
Looking back I think it was personal.
4:05 Reddit Mod as DM.
I was playing a witcher RPG, My frustration started when we were Creating the characters, The DM had already created the characters' background and drew the dice to see who would get who. I got the elf, who could be a druid or a priest, I could choose. Ok, So far so good, then the DM told us to roll the dice again for each attribute. And that would be its value. I got a nat 20 in dexterity. The DM said I couldn't keep that value, because it wasn't compatible with the character's lore, even though he was an elf.. I asked to remove some points and reallocate them to other attributes that were low, which "matched the character's lore better" But he didn't let me, and I had to roll the dice again and unfortunately a low value came up. Anyway, I kept playing, since I wasn't any use in battle, I tried to do my best in diplomacy, Which was difficult, because some other players were taking the roleplay too far, and were usually always looking for a fight because "my character's is like this" But ok.
The final straw was due to two occasions. The first was when the big boss was introduced for the first time. When we were fighting him for the first time, (again, I remember that my character was useless in battles, and I was always a little frustrated that I couldn't help in them) I saw that crossbow close to me and I decided to use it against the boss, I went ALL in. I spent one turn aiming for the head, and the next I shot with disadvantage, nat 20. He asked to roll the dice again, after all, I was at a disadvantag, The critic passed by, and I was quite happy, I was finally going to help with something, I was super eager to roll the damage, but the DM interrupted me and simply described that "The arrow went towards the Boss's forehead and when it was about to hit, it stopped, the boss laughed, said how useless we are, and teleported away. I protested that I was a critic, but he threw out the "DM's word is final" bullshit.
Yeah..big frustration.
The second was when we were ambushed in a forest. Again I was useless and tried not to get in the way. However, I again tried to help in some way, I just asked DM if there was any rocks on the ground, He said yes, I picked it up from the ground and threw it at one of the enemies. Nat 20. He asked me to roll again, after all, - disadvantage- I went there and, yaaaay, another critic!, At that moment I was extremely hyped, shouting praises, But again, he interrupted me again. He told me to roll the dice again. Yep. "The disadvantage of the disadvantage", What. The. Fu***. He gave an bullshit explanation, That I actually had to roll 3 dice and choose the lowest number, DM's word is final bs again, And then I roll the dice again. A f**** NAT. 1. Yeah. A nat 1. Critical error. Everyone laughed at me, I had no more patience, I exploded and rage quit.
Later, when I calmed down and went to see if they were still playing, they told me that the campaign would no longer be going, and they blamed me for having "killed the RPG".
Wtf. I was upset with everyone for almost a year, I stopped talking to them During this time, and to this day they say it was my fault.
The funny thing is that I heard they made another RPG without me from scratch, the same story but with someone else to replace me. And suprise suprise, the RPG died again.
And the problem was me, Right?
Anyway, it's been a few years now, I've already forgiven them,
bro you're a doormat if you still hang and interact with these people do better for yourself
I walked away from a table I had been playing at for more than a year, because I realized the expectation I had from the campaign were different from all the other player's (and the GM's). No bad blood, and it broke my heart, but sometimes it's just not working.
To give a bit of context: we were playing as government-backed superheroes (the GM also had another table, in the same universe, with vigilante superheroes - think "Civil War" kind of scenario, it was great). And on our sides, things were going downhill, session after session... which meant months in real life because we could barely squeeze a session every month at best.
Eventually, the GM and I decided to kill off my PC (which I LOVED playing as) for 1/ the shock value and 2/ so I could reroll a character most suited to the situation... and the rest of the PCs. *someone* had to be a good guy in that team so I essentially roll a "lawful good", always enthusiastic, always happy to help, no-compromises-with-baddies new character.
Three sessions later, we've spent the *entire* game trying to *investigate* someone who clearly was a bad guy with good publicity (Lex Luthor expy essentially). Everybody in the team knew he was a bad guy, but the GM stopped dead every attempt to expose the guy even slightly, and I got really frustrated.
At the end of the game, ensued a long discussion, during which it became obvious the GM had planned for the situation to get even worse for at least a couple more sessions, before it could get any better. So to me that meant two precious RPG sessions, over four or six months, playing a character essentially fighting against FATE ITSELF.
But all the other players were OK with this! And it turned out that everybody else (except the GM, bless his soul) expected the government-backed sups team to be borderline vilains, so... my new PC didn't have a place in that team, my old PC was dead (*because* of the team, did I mention that? In-universe the bastards barely cared), and I couldn't continue with that game.
I played a few more sessions on a third game with them tho, where we were the "B team" and unambiguously murderous assholes (my PC was a *literal*, *card-carrying* nazi baron warlock - it was hilarious). And to this day this GM is by far my gold standard, he set the bar so high for player enjoyment.
1:37 This story makes me mad just hearing it. I can't imagine being that player. I'd probably snap.
It's just a game bro
@@JerdMcLean Punishing players for missing a session by literally selling their characters into slavery completely ruins the game for the affected players. I honestly don't know who I'm more mad at, the asshat players that came up with the idea, or the idiot DM that greenlighted it. It served no reasonable narrative purpose and was seemingly done purely to spite the players.
@@JerdMcLean It is a game you set aside untold amount of time to play, bro. Clearing a schedule to meet up, spending however many hours in a session wanting to get SOME enjoyment out of it. It's not just a game, it's time you'll never get back
My first time ever playing I was trying to build a character. I’d never played never really read up on lore so part of this might be on me, but the “DM” relentlessly mocked every decision I made with a level of superiority the Simpsons Comic Book guy would call excessive. This was my first year of college. I never played again until a few months back my buddy started up a game and I joined in it’s just a few of us but it’s chill and fun
First time ever playing DnD. I played a druid with a wolf familiar. It was with a large group and a good chunk of us haven't played before. It was going ok for us till we started delving into a cave. The DM had a lot of random saving throws or checks absed on even remotely bad rolls from other players. The party got split up, and one group found themselves in front of an angry elder dragon (we're all lvl1, btw). My group continued fighting goblins, teying to escape. Once we exited the cave, one player down was carried by my familiar. The DM had the other group, and the other half of players met us outside. DM has the dragon use its firebreath on us. My wolf dies, and DM rules that since my familiar dies, I die as well. Turns out the DM planned to do a full TPK from the beginning because he thought it was funny. I didn't play any DnD for a few years before I found a DM I was willing to trust.
I had a DM for PF1 (many years ago, before PF2e) that constantly contested everything I did. The last straw was when I was playing a catfolk with savage warrior, using my cat's claws. When I attacked and added the bonuses from savage warrior, he immediately ruled that cat's claws don't count as/can't be used as natural weapons, so I won't be able to get the bonuses. I tried showing him the rules to say that they can be used as natural weapons but he stated that he is the DM and what he says, goes. So I said alright, well if I can't play the character I built, I may as well not be here. So I left.
AFAIK all his players eventually left a while after. They played the game I was in and their characters ascended to godhood and went on god-tier campaigns, which were either boring or just frustrating according to one other player I kept in contact with and still play with to this day.He recounted a ratlike creature [seriously fighting rats as gods?] doing a ton of damage in one session, and then in another session they were just mowing down armies without much tension. On top of that he seemingly got worse, and was a real ass sometimes when some tough encounters were made trivial by players' thinking, he would rule on the spot that x or y couldn't be done or the enemy was unaffected. The players got frustrated and slowly backed out of his games one by one.
“Fighting rats as gods?”
Skaven best yes-yes!
I has a play-by-post game where the group was going through a lot of stressful stuff at the moment. a manipulative black dragon poisoning the water supply, a corrupt senator working with the dragon and blaming the poison on the downtrodden refugees, one of the party's past as a criminal coming back to haunt them, etc. The whole party was split and doing their own thing to wrap up loose ends before trying to take down the dragon.
My character had recently made a huge fuckup and was really down in the dumps, and the other player characters had basically said "Sit down and stay out of trouble before you make things worse." So my character was trying to confide in her Wyvern companion, the last true friend it felt like she had, trying to convince him to skip town with her, or at least give her a reason to not immediately leave.
And then two weeks pass. This wasn't "Two weeks of nothing happening" mind you, this was two weeks of nothing happening FOR ME. The DM was responding to every other player's stories and giving them progress, while i was just sitting there waiting for a conversation to continue. Frustrated after multiple comments in the OOC thread of "Hey, I'm still waiting here", i make another post basically saying "And then my character starts to pack up to leave town. Here's your last chance to stop it!" because the Wyvern just wasn't talking to her. This resulted in a lot of OOC talk, me calling out the DM for ignoring me, the DM saying "Yeah i was TOTALLY going to reply to you next!" which i didn't even remotely believe, and i gave an ultimatum: Reply to my original post of talking to the Wyvern, and try to give me a reply at least once a week, or i walk.
The DM said that sounded "Hostage-ish", so i left. i made one more post wrapping up my character leaving town and setting up her own village somewhere far away. Someone else then came in to play as the Wyvern, and some retcons had to happen so there was someone for him to actually interact with, and the party went out, killed the dragon, but then ultimately the game puttered out right as they were trying to wrap things up.
Still wish things didn't turn out the way they did, but that on top of a few other things was just the straw that broke the camel's back. It was a great game otherwise, and i was having fun. I just couldn't handle being ignored while I'm trying to have an emotional and dramatic moment, seeking the comfort of my animal companion while my character was at her lowest, while watching everyone else get multiple replies to their own story arcs, time progressing for them, but standing still for me. Not cool bro.
A different system called Rifts, but at one point our group had to charter a ship to cross the ocean. The ship captain had a strict "no weapons allowed on deck" rule, and made everybody put ALL their equipment into this impenetrable safe in the hold... which was fine, right up until the ship got attacked by a sea monster and nobody had the ability to get to their weapons to fight it, so the ship wound up getting destroyed and sunk. Even the magic-user couldn't use his magic, because he was the type of character that relies on specific items to be able to cast them (think of foci in D&D), and those items had been locked up in the safe with everything else. The PCs (and only the PCs) survived, but literally nobody bothered to come back the next session now that every PC had been more or less rendered into level 1 commoners.
Was playing a druid in abyss. And dm had us fight a giant with a second tumor like head. I chose to fight the Giant as a Giant Lizard and the party made a joke of me being yoshi. I didn't particularly enjoy the joke myself but I let the party have their fun. While fighting this Giant I missed an attack roll to bite and the DM took it too far. Basically forced me into making a tounge attack against the Tumor and went into a pretty gross scene. I wasn't particularly pleased with it at all and he punished me by making me roll on the madness table then stunned me for 60 Turns... left right then and there. Wasn't the first time He took my wild shapes into his own hands and I was never really comfortable at that table anyway.
@7:40 I have found that if you need the characters to be "overwhelmed but not killed" and that you want a "desperate but ultimately futile battle" that is going to advance the story, and that no-one is going to be perma-killed - then the BEST way to deal with it is to _tell_ the players that's what's going on. They can enjoy hamming it up and not panick or be too upset - they can even try things they'd never try when risk is on the line. Because they aren't desperate they can enjoy the story scene without really panicking about actually being wiped out. There's time when stepping out for the meta-game can really help the experience. No one is going to sht themselves over a LeroyJ move or the wizard pulling his dagger and charging for giggles, if they -know- this is a once off/very rare "It's ok to lose because you're not going to die/lose gear/lose millions gp" situation.
I had a campaign where we were about 6 months into, I was a level 9 wizard. Our dm enjoyed having mechanics going on that none of the players knew about. The previous session we had all received amulets which provided the light spell at will. Unfortunately, the dm omitted the fact that if you're wearing an amulet and fall to 0 hp you then turn to dust rather than fall unconscious.
After a difficult fight I had 1 hp, and while a big bad guy finished his combat ending speech, the dm advised that the bad guy was going to shout his last words and then die. He would deal for dramatic effect 1 sonic damage to everyone in the party. He ruled I turned to dust (I had no idea) and that for the next session I would have to roll up another character as resurrection was apparently not available in his campaigns.
The obvious solution it to show up with the exact same character sheet and play as your previous character’s secret twin who has come to avenge their sibling’s death
@@PikachuLittle bonus point if you give that twin suspiciously the exact same experiences up to the last encounter, every single memories perfectly identical down to the most minute detail.
oh and they also have the same equipment as the "previous one"
Yes: well more a series of rulings.
I was invited to play in a game of Rolemaster. if anyone has every rolled a Rolemaster character you'll know how much of an absolute pain in the ass it and how super narrow skills are.
I rolled a Longsword / LongBow rangers (I was 18 and brought up on LotR sue me)
Session 1: the DM removed all out gear and we were moved to another world.
6 painful session later I was still without a sword and had to roll everytime I used to my jury rigged bow I put together to see if it broke. We come into a clearing and theres a longsword sticking through a skeletons ribcage.
Expecting it to animate and fight me to the sword I took my time to draw the blade.
It was a nature destroying cursed sword.
I left the table and left my character sheet on the table. The Cleric Joined me at the bar about 5 minutes later apparently every told him he was a douche and they all quit.
I had a gm a while ago, was a bit...scatterbrained, we were playing bathfinder, he thought bards had spellbooks and other things that were...wrong. He used a lot of third party stuff, which is whatever, msotly, but there was a point where trying to get a question from a defeated combatant(and it was not very powerful and it was a simple request), I managed a 49 diplomacy check, this was a failure. Which was annoying, but worse than that, later on the DM used a third party dragon that drained strength with its breath weapon, this took out most of the party in one go, with our paladin managing to drag us out. this ended the game because they ruled this was a perfectly fine creature to use, even though it would literally take days for us to recover the ability to move properly from a SINLGE breath attack from a dragon we both didn't know existed and wasn't even a boss. Me and the paladin ditched it.
I was the DM, had a player with literally Impossible perception (I allowed it at the cost of nerfing another stat into the ground)...Player was always rolling perception checks, always thinking EVERY SINGLE NPC they came across was the BBEG...EVERY SINGLE TIME...
They came across a wandering trader in a forest, player rolls a nat 20 (+10) and was like: "Does he seem familiar? Have any of us ever met him before? etc. etc. 2 more rolls later:
"You are 100%, without a doubt, absolutely completely positive this person has no ill intentions and that you've never met and they're not wearing a disguise..."
Dude did a metaphorical table flip and left...Like, sorry dude, sometimes a wandering trader is just a wandering trader...
The problem is that he made a build and didn't get to use it. This is where it may be appropriate to tailor some encounters to leverage the player's abilities. For example, a plot hook that starts with running into someone who is very obviously hiding something.
Another possible issue is that some players have a player vs. DM mindset. If they don't ask for a perception check, then the DM will happily let an entire army of orcs walk right in front of them without them noticing. Let the player know that they don't _need_ to ask; they're always keeping an eye out and _you_ will ask for a roll if there's anything to see.
Addendum: Passive Perception is also a thing for a reason. If you need to call for an actual roll, I would proceed it with something suspicious they notice about the NPC, e.g. "You notice a bulge under their robe." Depending on how they roll, and depending on if there's actually anything to find, then you can explain further. "You hear the clink of a _lot_ of coin. He seems like he's in a hurry and is trying to conceal the bulge." But skipping the roll and just using Passive Perception is also a fine option, and in most cases should even be the default if the player isn't actively searching.
Edit: In the case of the wandering trader, don't even allow him to roll. Just tell him that he doesn't notice anything off about the trader and he seems like a normal trader. No roll. If you let him roll, and he gets a 20, then he _expects_ to find something. If there's nothing to find, there should not be a roll. You can also let players take 10 or take 20 as an alternative to rolling, so they can be certain that there's either nothing to find or nothing that they are _able_ to find.
Fighting on a thin bridge over a moat of lava.
"I want to push the other guy off of the bridge."
"Uhh... You can't do that. You can only push someone directly backwards."
I couldn't leave the table there since that would have involved making my ride take me home at the time, but whew lad. That was the moment I left that group.
That’s a disagreement I could see getting physical if only because it’s so easy to demonstrate how wrong the DM is with a physical component
@@andyghkfilm2287 my physical stats irl are way too low for that lol
@@johncameron1935 Only for now. Demonstrating basic combat physics to an obtuse DM is something worth training for. I believe in you.
@@Bad_Gazpacho nah this was years and years ago. It's just a funny anecdote now, I don't hold any grudge against them.
@@johncameron1935 ROLL FOR INITIATIVE *leaps across table at DM*
My current DM and I have had several disagreements, but thankfully nothing so bad that I've had to walk away. He's made mistakes (he was just starting to DM when I joined) and I've CERTAINLY made mistakes. But we respect each other. I've thanked him and the rest of the party when I've misunderstood something and they corrected/enlightened me. He's a reasonable guy and I certainly try to be as well