For the vampire baby thing; player is at fault. They did nothing to hide what they’d done, even seemed to be gloating. If they hadn’t said that comment and had washed off the blood, maybe even acted sad over not having gotten there in time or something… But as it was described? Totally deserved consequences.
Agreed. Cleaning up some and making it sound like they arrived to late to save the baby is what they should have done. He was acting like a cartoon villain who is evil because EVIL. There was no attempt at deception so naturally they put 2 and 2 together and made the player and his people the target of their wrath.
If the player can argue they technically brought back the child even if not alive, the NPCs can easily argue the lack of life means the child wasn't brought back.
people who lose children aren't known for their calm rational decision making in the immediate aftermath. Did this player expect the grieving couple to stop and say "Oh hey he got us on a technicality, oh man guess we're stuck". The gall of an Evil character to expect others to be virtuous...
Baby Mission: As someone who plays Vampire The Masquerade himself... The real problem (that the player is the A-Hole here, I don't think we need to discuss) in a game of personal horror should be that this action should cost him massive amounts of humanity. This is a resource in the game that keeps the character playable and is hugely important in social interactions with mortals, as a low humanity will bring heavy penalties to the dice pool as the character becomes more and more like a robot or a walking corpse. Obviously ‘alive’, but inhuman and creepy as hell. Humanity is available as a permanent value and then the so-called stains, which are a kind of ‘strikes’ and determine how high your chance is of losing further permanent points at the end of the session. Such an action with the baby should first cost one point in general and then give you a few more strikes (two - maybe even three). ...and then it's up to a good DM to tell the player how little regret he feels about the matter and how normal the whole thing seems to him. He should make it clear to him at length that his character is relativising and inventing rational reasons in front of himself, while he suddenly doesn't care about anyone around him. He should show him from his perspective that he's becoming quite the psychopath and how much his attachment to his memories of being human are increasingly dissolving as the bestial in his character becomes more and more established as it works to completely engulf him and his identity. It helps, believe me. I don't know of any role-playing game (and in my 25+ year RPG career I've played a few) that helps a person question their own morality as well as Vampire The Masquerade. Precisely because, with a good DM, it makes you fight tooth and nail against your own downfall.
Ugh i hate mechanics like that. Same with cyber psychosis in cyberpunk or sanity in call of cthulu. Maybe i want to play an insane character. I can do it just fine in every other system, so why should the gm get to tell me i can't play my character anymore? Just bad game design as far as i'm concerned.
@@clericofchaos1 Vampire is a game of political and personal horror. And this mechanic represents the creeping brutalisation of the character and the fact that he is moving away from his human side. That's also a Lore trope. If the characters meet another vampire who they know isn't particularly old, but doesn't show much human behaviour (including, for example, a particularly fixed stare without blinking, or none of those little micro-gestures that a normal human would make), then they should feel creepy. ...and player characters also adopt such behaviours when the undead predator that is part of their nature as a vampire takes more and more control because they give it too much freedom. The beast is effectively like the little devil on your shoulder. Self-centred, cowardly, ruthless. And the narrator is explicitly encouraged to role-play him that way too. And the more the characters give in to him, the more powerful he becomes. This ranges from a ruthless approach in stressful situations to a complete loss of control, which can last longer, depending on how strong the character has allowed him to become. And as I said: this applies to EVERY vampire in the game. Even NPCs.
@@clericofchaos1 so join an insane game or something, thats how its run by default thats like in most games asking why you cant go murderhobo when the rest of the party doesnt want that
@@MortusVanDerHell oh please, it's a game where you play as a vampire. What even is the point if you don't get to act like a vampire? That's like playing gta and going "yeah you're a criminal but you can't actually commit any crime". Who would want to play that?
@@ss3nm0dn4r8 murderhobo isn't crazy. I played a character in dnd once who was a fey touched moon druid called shaman nagtuk, he was insane because he could hear voices in his head and it turns out he was hearing the voices of the actual players and the gm talking out of character. This not only made for some great rp moments when he would bring up things about other characters backstories that he wasn't supposed to know and laugh at jokes that no one had told in character. There's more than one way to be insane and a lot of them are really fun.
Yes, this. I don‘t know all the legal ins and outs of it, but as far as I (as a German) know, the age of consent is 14 so that lovestruck teens can do lovestruck-teen-stuff together without committing a crime. As soon as you are 18 (a legal adult in Germany) you engaging with minors is always…problematic from a legal perspective, age of consent or not. That guy in the story is a disgusting creep.
@@julianpitten2769 i know that romeo and juliet clause still applies if said pair already been togheter for a few years. so even if someone turned 18, it would not mean its automaticly illegal for the fresh adultwhen there was already a proper relationship beforhand if not, then I encourage tazers and jailtime lmao
Irrespective of anything else, god pastel you have no idea how terrifying it is to glance down once the video loads and see a comment like that without any context
Almost every european country is like this, but it doesn't mean an adult can have sex with a minor... in portugal, for example, age of consent is 16, but you need to have a maximum of 2 years difference. So an 18 year old can be with a 16 year old, but a 19 year old can't. The guy in the story is not just a monster and a predator, but also stupid and unable to read wikipedia...
First story: Warlock played stupid games, was warned by everyone, continued to play stupid games, and won stupid prizes. His tantrum is on him. Second story: VTM jackass genie behavior is just asking for trouble. Really should have known nobody would have accepted it. Third Story: This is solely on the mom's head. Simon and his dad seem like good people. Mom's being a pain. He clearly said his private game wasn't for kids. Fourth Story: ...I don't know whether this is a case of Funny Mustache Man worshiper, a Chris Hansen case, or worse, _BOTH._ Last Story: Different strokes for different folks, but the sister is being a pain by trying to force her opinions and playstyle on OP. If OP's party is having fun, then they're doing it right. Say hello to the kitties for us, Doge.
@shadiafifi54 Tiefling bard in the last story's campaign and honestly, yeah! Everyone seems to enjoy the campaign. Plus she hasn't made it TOO easy for us.
Last story: you're not a bad DM just because nobody has died. I ran a 10 month long Hackmaster campaign, and nobody even got downed, let alone died, until the last boss fight in the last session. If your players are tactical and smart, they SHOULDN'T be dying.
You mean you weren’t constantly looking for any reason to try way too hard to harm the players? Not even punishing them for taking the time to play things safe? ThE hOrRoR!
Thank you for sharing! IMHO, your sister is being extremely rude. D&D isn't about DM vs Players, it's about collective storytelling. DMs shouldn't be out to kill their PCs, that kind of mentality makes D&D miserable. She is in the wrong, and you can quote me on it.
@@ewhschrisc thank you. And I’m not making my players immortal. I even included a fun Easter egg from one of my fav play shows that does damage if you blindly accept a deal from a certain NPC. I traumatized one of my players with it but everyone loved the twist
You sound like an excellent DM. Your sister is simply jealous, because your players are happy, engaged, and having fun, while hers are probably miserable (if she even has any; I suspect there's a lot of turnover in her campaigns, due to her being such an elitist sourpuss). Keep doing what you're doing, and tell Little Sis that if you want her opinion, you'll rattle her cage.
As a german, i can totally say...guy would had been thrown into jail regardless. The age of consent there is only low for other close ranged ones. Never for adults
It's the same in Japan but so many really gross people assume it's legal to groom minors. Japans AOC is for the purpose of allowing teens to buy protection to safely be with other teens. Adult predators are still illegal. My State in the USA has "Romeo and Juliet" laws that allow for things like a 16 year old and 17 year old to still have a relationship when the 17 year old turns 18.
@@strawberryjam6235I'm not a lawyer or japanese, so please take my words with a grain of salt. But I recently watched a documentary on complex law systems and it touched briefly on the laws in Japan. It is more complex than regular Countries. It depends on the precint you are in. Some have lower ages, others go as far as 21. Each changes their consent laws independentely, so consent laws in Japan are some of the most complex.
The first story is painfully familiar. My first ever character was also a Warlock who intentionally had -1 CON for roleplay reasons (He stabbed himself as part of making the contract and the wound never healed). Second ever round of combat, he took a crit and instantly died from full HP. I also got pretty angry at the time. The difference is that I apologized for getting angry and took it as a lesson (and my DM was really broken up about doing it too and apologized for how it happened). We still play together five years later and laugh about it now as a measure of how inexperienced we all were. The moral of the story is, making suboptimal decisions in character creation is fine, but if you nerf your character badly enough, don't be surprised if you die fast or end up only useful as an improvised throwing weapon.
First story reminds me of my own warlock in Dragon Heist. I like to make interesting characters, so my Warlock was a Goliath with The Fathomless as the patron, with a Great club reskinned as an anchor thst he swung around while casting spells. Well, I decided last minute to give him a con of 12 to bump him up to 10 HP. Come the first combat, and a troll crawls out of the Yawning Portal. The barkeep is supposed to deal with it, but rolled low on initiative, so playing my character, I rush in ancor in hand. The troll then proceeds to bitchslap me into a wall and the DM rolled high, 16 damage. I realized at that moment, if I hadn't changed my stats around to 12 con, I would have been instantly killed, as I would have had 8 HP.
Cool character. I also wanted to do an aquatic warlock using an anchor, probably a water genie warlock so I could use a lamp as a pistol and reborn race to look like a magic skeleton pirate.
Story 1. I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and might be the only one saying this. A con score of 8 is not a death sentence. However, it does mean you need to be very careful, take every form of defense you can think of, and maybe try to get some ways to gain temp HP to pad you (be it through you or another player). You also need to be willing to take your lumps when they come as well, so if you die you die. You kinda did the low HP part to yourself. However, as a first time player with a con of 8? Bad idea. Depending upon the edition of D&D, I wouldn't even recommend any full caster classes (except Cleric), as 3-3.5 edition, magic was really complicated to play normally. Story 2. It is almost universal, if a contract is to get a still living entity back, it is to be brought back alive if at all possible. This is unless the contract states "dead or alive". What is said upon the child's return would certainly make anyone suspicious. Add in grief into the mix, and it no longer even need to make logical sense. People can lash out in grief at anyone they might even perceive as being involved... true or not. Story 3. A private game is always an acceptance thing, especially when it's at a private residence. Mamma was being crazy in that one... Story 4. Gotta say. I was not expecting that turn of events at the end. I was thinking "racial purity" if you know what I mean... Story 5. Naw. The sister is just being a bit of a jerk. They might mean well, but the delivery of her statements are not well done...
Re: was the Vampire player at fault... The player was at fault. This is often an issue when a player doesn't think there will be a reaction to their actions. His character acted in bad faith, and got their retribution.
NGL, I think the German Citizenship guy was both. You can be both a Nazi and a pervert. I've, uh... known some people. Who revealed themselves to be both, after which I quickly stopped knowing them.
Yep yep yep. Once the fourth shoe dropped on the age of consent thing, it all clicked. This is a very specific kind of person, and they very much do exist. There's a reason the "chibi anime pfp" stereotype exists.
I did the math on the con dump warlock. He would've only had 12 more hp if he had put 14 into con which is a reasonable amount to put into con. That meant he had 27 hp in this story if made more accurately, which would've meant this dragon was 2 off an instakill if he was at full hp. A single less hp due to a bad hp roll or something and he was just dead. I think this was actually less the player dumping con, and more the DM throwing an adult white dragon at a level 4 party and deciding to use the breath weapon which would down even a 16 con barbarian that rolled near max on their hit die. And yes he'd have +3 to his con save, but vs a DC 19 breath weapon, he'd still need to roll a 16.
Exactly. The DM was kinda bad playing the dragon like that. Yeah, it has a breath attack. Doesn't mean you need to use it full power on a level 4 party. The dragon could have used a wing buffet to cause an avalanche or whatever, let the players come up with something fast.
oof low CON. That's such a risky move. I've got a character with low CON too but the difference is I know the risks and did it on purpose. Never dump CON unless you're willing to face the consequences.
@@wolfherojohnson2766nah, I agree with OP. From a powerbuilding standpoint it's obviously a terrible idea, but if you're okay with the fact that you probably will die and want to rp it, and the rest of the table is fine with that, then you should be golden
@@Forever-GM-DustyThat point about discussing it with the whole table is especially important. Just because a player is okay with the consequences of kneecapping their character, doesn’t mean the rest of the players or their characters will be okay with it. Always run your build idea by your party, whether it be good or purposefully borked.
@@sailorsloth8183 yeah, that's exactly why I brought it up as a point. You should never okay in a way that takes away from the table as a whole. I was mainly responding to the idea that it should never be dumped under any circumstance
As someone that plays in the campaign in the final story (the Tiefling bard), I can tell you. Another DM said the point of DMing shouldn't be killing your characters.
@mackiemark5149 But you shouldn't be out for your player characters' blood, either. Death should be a result of bad luck or bad tactics. Plus the DM for that campaign does have a pretty *fun* little Easter egg for her campaign that's a punishment for blindly accepting an offer from a specific NPC.
@@Surikoazimaet Fortunately, she's never made it that stupidly easy. Things have generally been what's around the proper CR range. No one's died in her campaign since she's typically kept things so that the enemy's as much a threat to us as we are to them.
Warlock Player - If he'd been playing as a Silver or White Dragonborn, he probably wouldn't have had to worry about the dragon's ice breath, but given that he was just learning, I doubt he would've thought of min-maxing _that_ hard. Worst of all is that I don't think there would've been an easy fix at 4th level with 15 HP and no cold immunity. Other than getting an Amulet of Health, an Ioun Stone, a Belt of Dwarvenkind, or Manual of Health beforehand, there's not much that he could've done to not die from that frost breath. VtM - Sure, they could have explicitly stated that they wanted the baby back alive, but the player is just plain stupid if he doesn't realize that. They legit thought that they were SOOO clever. But, just like a business can refuse to a sale, a contract can be declared void if one side feels the other violated the deal. Since this was verbal and not written contract, Player McDumbass has no one to blame but themselves. Poor Simon - Ugh, this sounds like the mom is one of those "party girls", who thinks of herself and no one else. She's probably the sort that wants to get drunk all the time and doesn't care about consequences. Might also be the sort to get fired and use that as an excuse to go on a solo vacation to "find herself" at the husband's expense. Citizenship - He was only half right: "The age of consent in Germany is 14 *if both partners are under 18*." If he's under 18, he could legally 'consort' as young as 14 'in theory'. But he's likely older than 18, which means it still count as statutory r-word, even if it was 'consenting'. Sister - Yeesh. Yeah, no, your sister is allowed to have her opinion, but it's clear that you and your friends have a different kind of fun with D&D. Not everything needs to be a meatgrinder. So long as everyone at the party is engaged and wanting more, it doesn't matter what others outside the game think.
The ‘pure blood’ story... I'm a German and the elf player is wrong in so many cases that I have to correct this. 1. you don't need a ‘sponsor’ to get German citizenship. Just go through the normal immigration process and you're good to go. 2. the legal age for his fetish is 16 with restrictions (minor AND the minor's parents have to agree to this and that's a loophole designed to forestall legal proceedings in the case of an impatient couple with an 18 and a 16-17 year old just because the two almost adults couldn't let their trousers on for a few more months). However, this does not apply to his interest. He still has to wait until his one-night stand comes of age at 18. The legal age of 14 applies to minors among themselves. And the elf player somehow sounded older than minor-age after the story. 3. Dual citizenship is only possible if you are the child of parents with different nationalities AND were born in Germany. Otherwise you inherit one or, if you immigrate later, you give up your old citizenship. And invoking German laws in order to be able to violate the law in the USA doesn't work at all. If you are in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Or put another way, minimum ages are just the threshold at which someone can hope to get away with it; if above minimum, they only have to face a lot of very pointed and hostile questions that may yet still see them imprisoned, while below that they go straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200. The only reason there is any ambiguity is because o one wants to fill the prisons with a bunch of dumb hormonal children. This does not apply to filthy adult perverts but because they’re unintelligent man children with no respect for society and an entirely self centered view of right and wrong they are unable to grasp that fact.
I think his plan was to move to Germany after becoming a citizen, which still yikes, but if it was like you said, him wanting to use German citizenship as a shield in America, Drax would say it best to That Guy: "You're an imbecile".
Player is certainly at fault in the vampire story. In-universe a) the whole letter-rather-than-spirit-pact is a fairy thing rather than a vampire thing and b) vampires are expected to NOT do stupid stuff like that as it not only lowers their humanity score (like sanity in CoC but linked to morality) but also puts a big target their heads when the game is about keeping the vampire-ness secret. Player was just trying to be a murder-hobo and DM was right to call them out on it.
The idea of a 25 year old man going upto his room and playing death metal like an edgy teen in a sulk is hilarious. I love it! Vampire Baby: If and only IF there was some kind of pact with exacting terms and the parents didn't specify alive then the player would have been well within his rights to con them like that and call them oathbreakers for their revenge. Otherwise no, player is 100% in the wrong Rude Sister: OP is a bit sensitive, she should have told her sister where she could shove her opinion
@user-ps7ok8dt6y The DM in the rude sister story is a woman, just letting you know. I'm the Tiefling bard in her campaign. But agreed that how she runs the campaign is none of her sister's business.
Vampire Baby: The NPCs could pull the same loophole shenanigans on the player by claiming the body without life is technically not their child meaning the request was unsatisfied and agreed payment isn't owed by them.
@@ArcCaravan Haha, yes! I can just imagine the enraged player screaming that the parent swore to stop the oppression of his people and the parent replying "But if I kill them all then they won't be oppressed any more, you should thank me!"
As for the Tantrum Warlock player I will give him one thing. That DM throwing a dragon that has a breath weapon that can do 10D8 dmg at a party of low level characters was kind of lame.
Glad to hear she’s doing well. I’d say that the “no one’s died yet” issue is caused by a failure of 5e itself. Not to say you should be trying to kill players, but with how there’s not really a punishment for getting downed and the ease of healing with healing word, stakes are hard to impose. Also with most monsters in the monster manual just being sacks of hp, the dm often ends up changing stats on the fly. Xp to level 3 said that he just gives an encounter three rounds so each of his players get to have a cool moment, and then say the fights won. That was probably a joke, but given how encounter balance is, it’s not too far off. (The rules lawyer did a great video about this) If your group likes more narrative focused games, play what you want, but if you want a system with more strategic combat beyond higher numbers and more build/character complexity and creativity, definitely check out pf2e. I recently started gming with a group at my lgs and it’s been great.
I would really love to hear the player at story 2 say what they expected to happen. Are they just being salty their genie gambit didn't work, or were they so stupid they genuinely believe their logic was sound?
Consequences of the player’s actions, if they were acting like it was the kidnappers and blamed the death of them maybe. But to make it obviously them, lucky they are not ash.
If the player can argue they technically brought back the child even if no longer alive, the NPCs can easily argue the lack of life means the child wasn't technically brought back.
14:52 As a German, I can say: No, that's not a thing at all. There is no Sponsorship of any kind. If you want to become a citizen, you go to the office responsible for immigration and fill out all the required forms (probably also requires an appointment). And the age of conscent in Germany is 14 only under certain circumstances (including the age of the other party being at most 21 - and I fully suspect that guy is WAY beyond 21), *NOT IN GENERAL*.
Yeah but there are loopholes even for people over 21 from what I've read. Thankfully, this dude is probably not even smart enough to make it out of his home town--let alone Germany.
I was literally still playing with beanie babies at age 14 and had only just barely started experimting with makeup. I didn't even get my first visit from Aunty Ruby for another 2 years. Dude is gross.
But then it turned out to be something else just as bad. A pedo who was trying to butter up the DM for sponsorship by acting like a Nazi because they made a racist assumption that "all Germans are like that".
While 20 seems just a bit too old for a 14 year old, id definitely prefer this type of law to be more widespread, as im 100% sure anyone that complains that age of consent needs to be lower are pedophiles.
Yep. Much like many of the states here in the US the laws are for Romeo and Juliet situations where they are close in age so the parents of horny teens can't ruin the other teen's life by getting them charged for SA when it was consensual.
Honestly, last story's sister sounds like the bad DM. "Why is most of the party furries?" Hating on furries in 2024? Pretty cringe. "No one's died yet? You're a bad DM" Thinking characters HAVE to die in D&D? Also cringe.
She is very anti-furry….. and idk why she thinks players need to die. I try to make things difficult but not too difficult and I did punish a player for blindly trusting a NPC
Most people who say that don’t realize that character creation is more than just filling out the character sheet. Let alone are they willing to put forth the effort to flesh out the character’s story and put forth any effort into making them more than a literal 2 dimensional scribble.
I think Warlock in the first story had a really bad reaction to his character dying. However, I'm trying to understand how the DM thought that leaving a possible TPK up to a d20 roll every long rest was a good idea. 52 damage of frost breath has a good chance of just killing people with very good con scores at level 4. The warlock is still in the wrong for the massive crash out, but the story probably would have been different if he wasn't the only one that died in that encounter.
For the vampire baby story: there argument that “They didn’t say they wanted the child back alive” is stupid. How specific does this player want people to be? When he goes to buy fast food he doesn’t specify he wants it all in a bag and individually wrapped.
The warlock story: DoIP is just a rough module, and they appear to have rolled HP, which makes things even worse. At level 4 with a -1 Con mod, warlocks should have 19 HP. Warlocks get 8 + Con mod HP at 1st level, and 5 + Con mod HP every level after. If the warlock took a 14 in Con, which is above standard at level 4, the warlock should have 31 HP... but the problem is that they were rolling. With 15 HP at level 4, the warlock was 4 down from standard, which would put them at 27 hit points with a +2 modifier. If the warlock was actually at 14 Con, he'd have 27 hit points... which is just barely enough to survive the single attack from full HP. However, if the warlock was missing just 2 hit points, or rolled just 1 HP lower, or took a 13 in Con, or if the dragon rolled 2 points of damage higher, he still would have died. What the DM should have done is start Cryovain far in the air above the adventurers long before the combat began to give them time to run and hide in a deep, narrow tunnel somewhere before Cryovain got in range, which is actually recommended in the module. This is the DM's fault here, if not DoIP's fault. That said, warlock definitely overreacted here. The situation probably could have been resolved if any of the players at the table did the math and the DM could have easily retconned the fight and announced that the players saw the giant fucking dragon soaring through the skies ages before the fight began.
Big agree to this. And also why our group doesn't play with instant death rules. Reminds me of in a game in 2e, running it by the module, it says to cast cloud kill on the party. For the recommended level, this would just be a bunch of AOE damage that we'd have to get away from. Except the party was of various levels, and in 2e, Cloudkill just instakills things below a certain level, no save. That was a fun argument.
Last story, I'm newer to DMing a serious long campaign, and at first I was very hesitant about DMPCs as well, but my players wound up really loving a couple characters and wanting them along, and even wanting them to get a bit more spotlight, going against everything I'd learned about being a good DM. I say that to say to the OP from one new dm to another, if your players are having fun, forget anything else! Every game is unique and if you're able to keep a large group engaged and having a blast, you're doing something right. I know I'd much rather play with someone who is freely creative and adapts to the group rather than with someone who has a player vs DM mentality.
@@MelonTartVA of course! I’ve caught myself way too anxious a few times over whether or not I’m running a good game, so I related a lot. I hope you and your players have a lot of fun in future games!
Strictly speaking, every quest giver and shopkeep is a DMPC by default. Every pet the players keep and every hired helping hand? Also DMPCs. It’s it even something worth acknowledging or worrying about. In truth, the concept people are trying to get at is more of a DM avatar being inserted as the main character, thereby demoting players to the role of extras. On the other hand, sis is apparently a 4chaner who doesn’t know most races in DND aren’t human so they wouldn’t know the difference in the first place.
I play a Tiefling Warbard (multiclassed warlock/bard for those unfamilar) I had a high con and dex stat just because I knew as a full caster I was limited to light armour and not as big as others for hit dice. I also althought rolling postive modifiers for all my stats rolled horrbily at level ups for the first 3 levels so when we got the lvl 4 stat increase I added to my CON,its now 20 and i started rolling great for lvl ups, so my tiefling has the second highest AC (high dex and +2 magic armour) I also somehow ended up the highest HP of the party, the Paladin is second highest. Our Rogue we have to watch in fights, his rolls were avg during creation and he ignored the PHB and our advice that DEX is kinda essential for a rogue. Hes never increased his armour despite seeing myself and Druid buying enchanted armours for ourselves. Our first fight against 4 bandits and hes nearly downed in 2 turns as his COn is only +1 and his dex was a flat 10 with no bonuses. hes also rolled horrbily at level ups for hp and at level 7 now, only has 38 hp as opposed to druid on 52 and me over 62hp. it didint help he tried to fight in the fornt line like the paladin too. Hes learned, spent his stat increase on DEX and the DM gave him a magic sword that raises his dex by +2 and a second attack. We nearly finished our first campaign, and will havethe option of keeping our PC's or retiring them, I may retire my Tiefling so I can try my concept of a Dragonborn Cleric or Changling Sorcerer. will have to see.
“An 8 in con is a death sentence” if he had an 18 he’d only have 20 more hp and STILL one have been one tapped, but not dead. Using point buy he’d probably have. 13 at most as the third most important stat, only 8 more hp, and still would have had been one shot. Nah the gm is to blame here for his death, but yeah the dude mega overreacted
I have run that campaign before. It is not supposed to be a full on fight against the dragon. It is supposed to fly away after taking only 10 damage. The DM should have maybe not used cold breath, but there were several layers of rng to get through for that to happen. DM would have had to roll a D20 to determine the Dragon’s location, then would have had to roll the highest initiative, and then warlock would have had to fail the saving throw. A higher con would have greatly improved his odds of survival. Also he only had 15 hp so that means he was also rolling for HP instead of taking an average. DM should not have used breath, but the warlock definitely holds the lion’s share of the blame here.
I once played a character with 8 CON for RP reasons, it was "suboptimal" of course, but to me atleast if you're experienced and know of the risks you could totaly go for it
I never make characters with a con score lower than 10, usually at least a con score of 14-16. And whenever I do that I’ll always have a high AC character to compensate for the lower HP. My dump stats are always either intelligence or strength depending on the class.
Warlock Tantrum: What a baby. It's your first run, Warlock, so I can understand your position, I was in a similar situation when my first character was insta-killed with a quicksand trap and two skeletons we nicknamed Sans and Papyrus (Don't ask). I did pout, it was our first session and I spent half of it on my DS, but I went back to that group with a new character held high, and it was one of the wackiest adventures I'd ever gone on with that new guy. So, if you're gonna cry in your room with death metal blaring, there's no helping you, the best option is to apologize, take the L, and start a new character. Baby Mission: Player is at fault, and it's jarring that they're trying to defend themselves. MF, if you order a pizza, do you expect them to deliver the ingredients with the tagline, "You didn't that we had to make it"? You did the crime; how could you not see the consequences staring you in the face? Bad Mom: Oy veh, I have no love for these types. You kids treat Simon well. Citizenship: This reminds me of another DnD Doge story I heard, TLDR: A football player in steel toe boots kicks something that wasn't a football, you can guess what. Neither America or Germany has any room for Adolfs or Jareds. Judgy Sister: Sorry to be rude but you are acting a bit overly sensitive on the matter. You say she has a few years of experience, but if her reaction to the party having no deaths is "That's terrible", her words mean nothing. Having a DMPC isn't wrong when used properly, and it sounds like you're using it properly, and there's nothing wrong with having a group majorly composed of nonhuman characters, people have their favorites, and D&D would probably be very bland if it didn't have other races to use for players, enemies, and NPCs. If your players can say with full honesty that the game is fun, you're doing it right, so take pride in that you are a good DM, don't let your sister's viewpoints make you doubt that.
The warlock story: I could honestly imagine myself leaving the table to listen to death metal. I would never actually do it, but it does sound like me...also, considering himself God's gift to intelligence sounds like me too. It's always nice to see a worse version of yourself and realize you actually aren't all that bad compared to how you could be.
Good story or bad story, I always need a dose of kitty. And in the words of a wise man (I think we all know of who I speak of): I really like that string.
Hey man I hope you’re doing okay with all things considered. I understand you won’t be alright for a while and that’s no problem man take your time. I just wanna say thanks for the uploads regardless of the situation and hopefully you’ll pull through sooner than you think. I might not agree on every method of a”sorry reading” or whatever you wanna call it on this channel but regardless I hope things will look up and go your way again soon man. Thanks for the hard work and consistent uploads even through a hard time. My condolences and I sincerely hope it’ll be better soon.
WHAT KIND OF SCAM BURGER KING DOESN'T HAVE BBQ SAUCE FOR THE NUGGETS?!?! I only wish that I had the kind of zen required to dismiss that as "trivial" and let it slide. I be slidin' through that window like it's Florida.
@MelonTartVA You did nothing wrong as a DM. If your players are having fun and you can manage to keep it that way then you are doing your job as a DM. As most professional DMs will say: "Your style is your own. Unless your players are unhappy then there is no reason to change a thing." Paraphrased but the idea is there.
@@dwaynejackson551When the poster said that his sister was experienced DM Afters her rude comments the thing I had to say was she's an experienced DM but that doesn't mean she's a good DM I'm sure the only long-term player she has are the masochists and she's usually shifting out new players because some just aren't going to stay and be her abused doll just so she can unleash her sadism and stress while I will agree with some people that did Opie is a bit sensitive that's still his family member and he likely looks up to her so he took it pretty hard but as they say broken pedestals come around once in a while you got to learn to overcome them I say this because I have an uncle well I had an uncle who I used to respect and look as a father figure but well he ended up disappointing me but I'm not going to suddenly drop the type of person I became because of him instead I'm going to strive to be the person I believed he was before I learned the truth so I can show him in the world that you can be a good person and you don't need to pretend so did the poster I say continue to be a good DM because looking at it you're going to end up becoming even better than your sister and experienced GOOD DM!
Some more context on that age of consent in germany thing, that's *technically* true, but there's a major asterisk to that. It's only 14 if everyone involved is between the ages of 18 and 14. Otherwise, it is 18. It's basically an exception to the law that's there so that teenagers fooling around with one another during their first relationships aren't criminalized for it. Cause you know, that might not be the smartest thing to do at that age, but you probably don't want teenagers getting criminal records for getting swept up in their feelings. Adults doing it with 14-year olds is still VERY much illegal in germany.
Regarding the Vampire story in which the player sacrifices a baby: 100% the players fault! In fact the GM was being kind just having the parents come after the PC. GM could have stripped Humanity points, had the Elders of the City find out and deem it a breach of the Masquerade and maybe even declare a Blood Hunt, GM could have had Vampire Hunters find out and start stalking the PC and even had Werewolves get involved by working in that the parents and the baby were all Kinfolk!
For DMPC, i do feel it is a slippery slope. But its been done well in my experience. As long as no one minds and everyone is having fun, i think its not a bad idea. The sister is just jealous i think and wants to put OP down. We had a DMPC once because our DM couldnt continue the game so a player stepped up and we just kept their character as a DMPC cause we had an established dynamic. Didnt change much aside from who was telling the story.
1.) Warlock Tantrum: 100% the Players fault. Its one thing if only one person is telling you something is a bad idea but if almost everyone including new players telling you the same thing, it most likely a bad idea. If you choose to ignore it, that's on you. Add to the fact that Warlock decide to throw a tantrum and started acting like a child after all that, yeah he deserved a kick. 2.) Baby Mission: Player is 100% at fault. He twisted the deal for his own twisted gains and gloat about it. Also, correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't VtM have major consequences for preforming such actions. The only thing I can think of in this scenario is that the DM should've ask said player, "Are you sure you want to do that?", but given how the player acted, that not going to work. DM is in the right here. 3.) DnD is NOT a FREE Babysit service. 4.) ...They should've reported that guy. The stupidity is Contagious. 5.) Ignore the Sister. She mostly likely an Elitist. DnD is about having fun not winning.
I think there are conditions in V:tM where a player character might be encouraged to be an absolute ___ like this, and there are also conditions where a player character might be expected to have absolutely no self-awareness of how they appear to others... but it is still reasonable to expect that a player character being an oblivious ____ will get called out on it in-setting. In that game there should NEVER be certainty of getting away with anything no matter how careful you're being about it; it's one of the reasons roleplay in the setting leans more towards "angsty tortured soul" than "diabolical mastermind".
Con is also needed for concentration spells. Con should never be a dump stat. Also, wtf was the dm supposed to do? Have it so he suddenly gets saved by a higher power to prevent his icy death?
OP of Baby Mission is omitting a huge detail about VtM. You get more experience when you do evil stuff like that. Doing a ritual is big enough deed to warrant a closed aspiration, plus humanity check, plus ruined relationship. 3 experience is enough to level up a Discipline. I have no idea what that ritual is, but I bet it also gives some benefits. That player just wants to have a cake and eat it too.
The motive of cheating the couple feels irrelevant when the problem was the player whining that they were betrayed after his betrayal. Neither side are genies or devils physically bound by their word and the NPCs can say without the child's life, the player only brought back meat resembling their kid.
@@ArcCaravan Yes, I get it, the story indeed is similar to "DM gets blamed because bandits act like intelligent human beings." But there is a nuance here: here, the system itself incentivizes antisocial behavior. I know two different players who would probably escalate the situation even further, by prompting a Frenzy check and failing it voluntarily.
Age of consent is also 14 in Québec but it doesn't mean an adult can have s*x with a girl age 14. It's a maximum of 5 years age difference and not in a position of superiority (babysitter, camp counselor, etc.)
For the VtM story, the player is absolutely at fault for the action, especially if they are playing a Camarilla story, but the ST could be at fault for letting it happen to begin with depending on their session one rules in place. In VtM, if you kill humans and it's not out of self defense or them being an outright danger to you, you lose more and more of your Humanity over time and become a genuine bestial monster. Even just a single inhumane/evil act against an innocent human or by draining and killing another vampire for selfish reasons will leave a Stain on your aura that anyone with an aura-reading ability will be able to see. Whatever "ritual" the vampire was doing (I'd need to know the Clan they were playing as well, since Tremere are well known for doing some unsavory things but are still considered "good guys" because they are/were part of the Camarilla), outright murdering and sacrificing a BABY and then delivering the corpse to the parents as an obscene "gotcha" moment is deplorable and not worth the character debuffs, in-character judgments and scrutiny, or the awful looks you'd be getting from the others around the table. If it's a Sabbat story, however...well, pretty much anything goes, if the ST allows it. They aren't for the faint of heart.
For our little german sympathiser: the age of consent is 14 in germany however it is still illegal to have intercourse with a mentally underage girl so basically the age consent is 16 if not 17 or even 18
I've messed up with some of my characters in the past, but I have never done anything that stupid. For example, I forgot to get thieves' tools for my rogue one time, but my Con. was a 14. You just never use CON as a dumpstat. Yet another case of frick around find out.
To correct the first OPs very wrong assumption about Warlocks. You can build your warlock around not using eldritch blast very easily and effectively. That players is just lame for many reasons
The couple could say technically the player failed to bring back the baby since the definition of "their child" could include the soul. Instead they got meat that looks like their kid.
The VTM player has no credibility whatsoever and it's baffling the rest of the group is letting the act drag out. Maybe next time you bring snacks when you play and they ask someone to pass them some chips or cheese puff or whatever chew them first and act like that was a normal thing to do.
Baby Mission Story. No way anyone gets that wrong. A parent asking for their kidnapped child back definitely wants them alive. Dude was trying to play some Fey Bargain stuff with this and thought they would get away with it. Even though they were not a Fey. No magical bond, no Fey Bargain. And as Dude didn't provide any evidence they weren't the one who did it, it would be logical for parents to blame Dude for it. And even with proof Dude was innocent, the parents might still blame Dude for botching the job and cancel the deal anyways in their rage. I just don't see how Dude could not see this going badly.
... The German citizenship story is weird and wrong on so many level. I don't know what's worse: the fact the guy was dumb enough to think that was how it worked, him trying to appeal to someone he thought to be German by playing *nazi* cliché (for those who don't know, German nowadays *hate* nazi and suggesting they still are is an easy way to piss them off), or the horrible, horrible reason he wanted to do it for.
Regarding the low CON Warlock I'm a little split, since playing a character with a big weakness could be interesting. Obviously the player behaved really badly, though.
Hi Doge, very excited to see what horrors awaits us this week. A small suggestion but have you also considered doing RPG Glory Stories to serve as a palate cleanser every few weeks?
An 8 in con for a backline character is perfectly normal, idk why everyone in that story was so weird about it. I always build my mages to be glass cannons. They are not supposed to be tanky lol.
@@ArcCaravan I am not defending warlock just confused over it being a negative reaction to his stat line, which to me is completely normal. If you die you die thats just the game.
As far as the baby goes, i would say it depends on the game. For instance, if he were playing dnd and using the fiend transformation from grimhallow, not only would he be totally justified, but by the family breaking their contract they'd have had one of those high cr constructs (marut i think) sent after them from mechanus to destroy their whole family until they fulfilled their part of the contract. In vampire tm where there's no extraplanar entities to enforce such contracts it seems more like a judgment call and the gm made the right choice. With the german story, i wouldn't say NO god would accept that logic, but no good gods would. Still, it's 5e and paladins are allowed to have evil gods without becoming oath breakers. Vengence and conquest are usually pretty good oaths if you wanna do that. Also, if age of consent was the only thing german sympathizer was looking for, the age of consent in the state of Nevada is 15. Only one year older and it's a whole lot easier than moving countries and getting a new citizenship.
I think it was mentioned the game was Vampire the Masquerade so only the words between individuals. Even with magic contracts, the parents could just as easily say technically the body without life isn't their child so they owe the player nothing (even less than nothing since it's an obvious deduction what happened to the kid).
Yeah, what the warlock did was not cool, but 56 damage to a group of level 4? sounds to me like the DM wanted to teach the newbies sometimes characters die.
It sounds like the idea was a sort of “discretion being the better part of valor” scenario. But instead of firecrackers to spook ‘em it was a whole real ass live hand grenade.
The whole "yOu NeVeR sAiD aLiVe" argument is such a weak and objectively trolling thing. Even in those genie stories with cautionary messages about how to word wishes at least try to make the poor wording obvious. When somebody says "I want my child back" there is literally no room for interpretation there, none. Even someone with no legal degree can see that statement doesn't have some loophole of "dead or alive", not when the freaking context is A KIDNAPPED PERSON.
When people announce their obsession with Germany of all countries... unless they are literally born and raised there that's a red flag... Because people obsessed with Germany rarely do so for the right reasons... given that he also made a character obsessed with racial purity I would just automatically label him as a racist at that point... Both those things separately? Sure a racist PC could just be a roleplay thing, and being fond of Germany for the art and culture sure that's fine... But racist PC+obsession with Germany, the alarm bells should be blaring at that point. The guy may have said it was for a different, also fucked up reason... but I still suspect he was also a Nazi.
second story: who try pull something thing like that without a leeway, if i was the storyteller i would understand this as a sign the player want to start a feud. I think it's a f$#@ing good plot, the war between the pc people and the family is a gold mine.
i had characters with low con before. hell, i had a wizard with low con. and i never once complained when i died. hell, with one of those characters, i never even died, came close a few times, but managed to survive using my large variety of spells that wizards have
15 hp sounds like really bad rolling for hp at level 4, not that the average of like 19 would have saved him lol, he had less health than a wizard with 10 con would have had, rough. Even if he had a 12 con with those rolls that damage would have killed him outright, he needed 14 Con to survive
In the vampire campaign, the player was in the wrong. It's like people saying bad things and not expecting consequences for what they said, because of their 1st amendment rights. And the german story was very predictable and what part of Germany that problem player liked the most. Something that is very illegal in that country.
It always makes me chocolate when people bring up racial purity because if anyone did a DNA test a really good one almost everyone in one way shape or form is of mixed ancestry. I don't care what color your skin is your ancestors probably came from different countries of different origins at some point. Granted this might not be 100% true for everyone but I bet it's the vast majority of human beings.. I can go further but you get the point. Also, a lot of people don't realize that if you were to take someone on as a sponsor to become a citizen in your country the amount of financial and legal responsibility you have for that person. Maybe it's different for Germany I don't know but in the US if you're taking someone in as you are their sponsor you best be ready for a lot of responsibility
Also as an example if you're mostly Irish or Scottish and you have red hair guess what..... That means you have Scandinavian ancestry you may still be a white person but guess what you are technically mixed before anyone tries to use the all my ancestors were this skin color route of reasoning. And know this is not meant to be political this is just simple science and history of humans
Actually I haven't even better example. My beautiful fiancee is Latina and both are biological parents are Latino however her mother's maiden name is Scottish and her father's surname is French . Latino. However her mother has very obvious Scottish Roots somewhere and also Italian from what I've heard and her biological father has French in his ancestry as well as Jewish so even though they are very much Latino play I also have a rich and mixed ancestry.
In terms of the accent, not necessarily. My family has German heritage but lives in America and I've grown up around people who speak German occasionally but I'm not fully fluent, just very close to it. I know that my German apparently has no accent and if I'm speaking to native speakers they often assume I'm native German. I don't know if OP was in a similar circumstance, but at least in my case I know it is very possible to just not have an accent. Though, to be fair, that elf player may have just been an idiot.
If you are going to skimp out on con, at least take the toughness feat and be a dwarf... if all problem player wanted to do is be a support caster, there is a class called cleric which you can flavor as being a cultist. Then all you do is take spellsniper as your first feat, then take eldritch adept for the repelling blast invocation. Maybe take the Rakdos cultiest background for additional spells that are useful like haste. If you are going to be a first time player, the worst thing you can do is assume you are correct.
For the vampire baby thing; player is at fault. They did nothing to hide what they’d done, even seemed to be gloating. If they hadn’t said that comment and had washed off the blood, maybe even acted sad over not having gotten there in time or something… But as it was described? Totally deserved consequences.
Agreed. Cleaning up some and making it sound like they arrived to late to save the baby is what they should have done. He was acting like a cartoon villain who is evil because EVIL. There was no attempt at deception so naturally they put 2 and 2 together and made the player and his people the target of their wrath.
If the player can argue they technically brought back the child even if not alive, the NPCs can easily argue the lack of life means the child wasn't brought back.
people who lose children aren't known for their calm rational decision making in the immediate aftermath. Did this player expect the grieving couple to stop and say "Oh hey he got us on a technicality, oh man guess we're stuck".
The gall of an Evil character to expect others to be virtuous...
@@darby2314 That last sentence about evil expecting others to virtuous speaks SO MUCH to me.
Baby Mission: As someone who plays Vampire The Masquerade himself... The real problem (that the player is the A-Hole here, I don't think we need to discuss) in a game of personal horror should be that this action should cost him massive amounts of humanity. This is a resource in the game that keeps the character playable and is hugely important in social interactions with mortals, as a low humanity will bring heavy penalties to the dice pool as the character becomes more and more like a robot or a walking corpse. Obviously ‘alive’, but inhuman and creepy as hell.
Humanity is available as a permanent value and then the so-called stains, which are a kind of ‘strikes’ and determine how high your chance is of losing further permanent points at the end of the session.
Such an action with the baby should first cost one point in general and then give you a few more strikes (two - maybe even three).
...and then it's up to a good DM to tell the player how little regret he feels about the matter and how normal the whole thing seems to him. He should make it clear to him at length that his character is relativising and inventing rational reasons in front of himself, while he suddenly doesn't care about anyone around him.
He should show him from his perspective that he's becoming quite the psychopath and how much his attachment to his memories of being human are increasingly dissolving as the bestial in his character becomes more and more established as it works to completely engulf him and his identity.
It helps, believe me. I don't know of any role-playing game (and in my 25+ year RPG career I've played a few) that helps a person question their own morality as well as Vampire The Masquerade. Precisely because, with a good DM, it makes you fight tooth and nail against your own downfall.
Ugh i hate mechanics like that. Same with cyber psychosis in cyberpunk or sanity in call of cthulu. Maybe i want to play an insane character. I can do it just fine in every other system, so why should the gm get to tell me i can't play my character anymore? Just bad game design as far as i'm concerned.
@@clericofchaos1 Vampire is a game of political and personal horror.
And this mechanic represents the creeping brutalisation of the character and the fact that he is moving away from his human side.
That's also a Lore trope. If the characters meet another vampire who they know isn't particularly old, but doesn't show much human behaviour (including, for example, a particularly fixed stare without blinking, or none of those little micro-gestures that a normal human would make), then they should feel creepy. ...and player characters also adopt such behaviours when the undead predator that is part of their nature as a vampire takes more and more control because they give it too much freedom.
The beast is effectively like the little devil on your shoulder. Self-centred, cowardly, ruthless. And the narrator is explicitly encouraged to role-play him that way too. And the more the characters give in to him, the more powerful he becomes. This ranges from a ruthless approach in stressful situations to a complete loss of control, which can last longer, depending on how strong the character has allowed him to become. And as I said: this applies to EVERY vampire in the game. Even NPCs.
@@clericofchaos1 so join an insane game or something, thats how its run by default thats like in most games asking why you cant go murderhobo when the rest of the party doesnt want that
@@MortusVanDerHell oh please, it's a game where you play as a vampire. What even is the point if you don't get to act like a vampire? That's like playing gta and going "yeah you're a criminal but you can't actually commit any crime". Who would want to play that?
@@ss3nm0dn4r8 murderhobo isn't crazy. I played a character in dnd once who was a fey touched moon druid called shaman nagtuk, he was insane because he could hear voices in his head and it turns out he was hearing the voices of the actual players and the gm talking out of character. This not only made for some great rp moments when he would bring up things about other characters backstories that he wasn't supposed to know and laugh at jokes that no one had told in character. There's more than one way to be insane and a lot of them are really fun.
Just a heads up, the age of consent in Germany is a lot more complicated then it is made out to be here.
Good
Yes, this. I don‘t know all the legal ins and outs of it, but as far as I (as a German) know, the age of consent is 14 so that lovestruck teens can do lovestruck-teen-stuff together without committing a crime. As soon as you are 18 (a legal adult in Germany) you engaging with minors is always…problematic from a legal perspective, age of consent or not. That guy in the story is a disgusting creep.
@@julianpitten2769 i know that romeo and juliet clause still applies if said pair already been togheter for a few years. so even if someone turned 18, it would not mean its automaticly illegal for the fresh adultwhen there was already a proper relationship beforhand
if not, then I encourage tazers and jailtime lmao
Irrespective of anything else, god pastel you have no idea how terrifying it is to glance down once the video loads and see a comment like that without any context
Almost every european country is like this, but it doesn't mean an adult can have sex with a minor... in portugal, for example, age of consent is 16, but you need to have a maximum of 2 years difference. So an 18 year old can be with a 16 year old, but a 19 year old can't. The guy in the story is not just a monster and a predator, but also stupid and unable to read wikipedia...
Citizenship Story. That dude needs to be on a watch list.
With any luck, he already is
Sounds like he is and wants to flee so he'll be off it.
First story: Warlock played stupid games, was warned by everyone, continued to play stupid games, and won stupid prizes. His tantrum is on him.
Second story: VTM jackass genie behavior is just asking for trouble. Really should have known nobody would have accepted it.
Third Story: This is solely on the mom's head. Simon and his dad seem like good people. Mom's being a pain. He clearly said his private game wasn't for kids.
Fourth Story: ...I don't know whether this is a case of Funny Mustache Man worshiper, a Chris Hansen case, or worse, _BOTH._
Last Story: Different strokes for different folks, but the sister is being a pain by trying to force her opinions and playstyle on OP. If OP's party is having fun, then they're doing it right.
Say hello to the kitties for us, Doge.
@shadiafifi54 Tiefling bard in the last story's campaign and honestly, yeah! Everyone seems to enjoy the campaign. Plus she hasn't made it TOO easy for us.
Simon definitely sounds like a good kid. Hopefully mom gets help and dad continues to step up.
Last story: you're not a bad DM just because nobody has died. I ran a 10 month long Hackmaster campaign, and nobody even got downed, let alone died, until the last boss fight in the last session. If your players are tactical and smart, they SHOULDN'T be dying.
You mean you weren’t constantly looking for any reason to try way too hard to harm the players? Not even punishing them for taking the time to play things safe? ThE hOrRoR!
Thank you for covering my story! 23:41 is the start of it for those who don’t know
Thank you for sharing! IMHO, your sister is being extremely rude. D&D isn't about DM vs Players, it's about collective storytelling. DMs shouldn't be out to kill their PCs, that kind of mentality makes D&D miserable. She is in the wrong, and you can quote me on it.
@@ewhschrisc thank you. And I’m not making my players immortal. I even included a fun Easter egg from one of my fav play shows that does damage if you blindly accept a deal from a certain NPC. I traumatized one of my players with it but everyone loved the twist
You sound like an excellent DM. Your sister is simply jealous, because your players are happy, engaged, and having fun, while hers are probably miserable (if she even has any; I suspect there's a lot of turnover in her campaigns, due to her being such an elitist sourpuss). Keep doing what you're doing, and tell Little Sis that if you want her opinion, you'll rattle her cage.
@@JKevinCarrier thank you
@MelonTartVA Oh yeah. That was great. I'd have likely considered it, had I not seen something similar in another campaign I've seen.
As a german, i can totally say...guy would had been thrown into jail regardless. The age of consent there is only low for other close ranged ones. Never for adults
Sounds similar to the laws in Japan
It's the same in Japan but so many really gross people assume it's legal to groom minors. Japans AOC is for the purpose of allowing teens to buy protection to safely be with other teens. Adult predators are still illegal. My State in the USA has "Romeo and Juliet" laws that allow for things like a 16 year old and 17 year old to still have a relationship when the 17 year old turns 18.
@@TigerW0lf Japan actually aged up the consent law to 16
@@strawberryjam6235 oh, neat. They're almost at the same level as Colorado
@@strawberryjam6235I'm not a lawyer or japanese, so please take my words with a grain of salt. But I recently watched a documentary on complex law systems and it touched briefly on the laws in Japan. It is more complex than regular Countries. It depends on the precint you are in. Some have lower ages, others go as far as 21. Each changes their consent laws independentely, so consent laws in Japan are some of the most complex.
The first story is painfully familiar. My first ever character was also a Warlock who intentionally had -1 CON for roleplay reasons (He stabbed himself as part of making the contract and the wound never healed). Second ever round of combat, he took a crit and instantly died from full HP. I also got pretty angry at the time. The difference is that I apologized for getting angry and took it as a lesson (and my DM was really broken up about doing it too and apologized for how it happened). We still play together five years later and laugh about it now as a measure of how inexperienced we all were.
The moral of the story is, making suboptimal decisions in character creation is fine, but if you nerf your character badly enough, don't be surprised if you die fast or end up only useful as an improvised throwing weapon.
First story reminds me of my own warlock in Dragon Heist. I like to make interesting characters, so my Warlock was a Goliath with The Fathomless as the patron, with a Great club reskinned as an anchor thst he swung around while casting spells. Well, I decided last minute to give him a con of 12 to bump him up to 10 HP. Come the first combat, and a troll crawls out of the Yawning Portal. The barkeep is supposed to deal with it, but rolled low on initiative, so playing my character, I rush in ancor in hand. The troll then proceeds to bitchslap me into a wall and the DM rolled high, 16 damage. I realized at that moment, if I hadn't changed my stats around to 12 con, I would have been instantly killed, as I would have had 8 HP.
Cool character. I also wanted to do an aquatic warlock using an anchor, probably a water genie warlock so I could use a lamp as a pistol and reborn race to look like a magic skeleton pirate.
@ArcCaravan Thanks, my concept was a former sailor who was saved by a sea serpent who became his patron.
Story 1. I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and might be the only one saying this. A con score of 8 is not a death sentence. However, it does mean you need to be very careful, take every form of defense you can think of, and maybe try to get some ways to gain temp HP to pad you (be it through you or another player). You also need to be willing to take your lumps when they come as well, so if you die you die. You kinda did the low HP part to yourself. However, as a first time player with a con of 8? Bad idea. Depending upon the edition of D&D, I wouldn't even recommend any full caster classes (except Cleric), as 3-3.5 edition, magic was really complicated to play normally.
Story 2. It is almost universal, if a contract is to get a still living entity back, it is to be brought back alive if at all possible. This is unless the contract states "dead or alive". What is said upon the child's return would certainly make anyone suspicious. Add in grief into the mix, and it no longer even need to make logical sense. People can lash out in grief at anyone they might even perceive as being involved... true or not.
Story 3. A private game is always an acceptance thing, especially when it's at a private residence. Mamma was being crazy in that one...
Story 4. Gotta say. I was not expecting that turn of events at the end. I was thinking "racial purity" if you know what I mean...
Story 5. Naw. The sister is just being a bit of a jerk. They might mean well, but the delivery of her statements are not well done...
Re: DM Sister
I think she's antagonistic. I am DM'ing a game and no players have died in 20 sessions. They're having a terrific time.
Re: was the Vampire player at fault...
The player was at fault. This is often an issue when a player doesn't think there will be a reaction to their actions. His character acted in bad faith, and got their retribution.
NGL, I think the German Citizenship guy was both. You can be both a Nazi and a pervert. I've, uh... known some people. Who revealed themselves to be both, after which I quickly stopped knowing them.
Yep yep yep. Once the fourth shoe dropped on the age of consent thing, it all clicked. This is a very specific kind of person, and they very much do exist.
There's a reason the "chibi anime pfp" stereotype exists.
Yep. Also getting wehraboo lolicon vibes.
@@ChobinoftheFunk ngl even lolicons would just straight up jump at him. most of these folk do not want anything to do with real children lol
@@ChobinoftheFunk also, this video and this comment are the first time I've heard the term Wehraboo. And I love it.
I did the math on the con dump warlock. He would've only had 12 more hp if he had put 14 into con which is a reasonable amount to put into con. That meant he had 27 hp in this story if made more accurately, which would've meant this dragon was 2 off an instakill if he was at full hp. A single less hp due to a bad hp roll or something and he was just dead. I think this was actually less the player dumping con, and more the DM throwing an adult white dragon at a level 4 party and deciding to use the breath weapon which would down even a 16 con barbarian that rolled near max on their hit die. And yes he'd have +3 to his con save, but vs a DC 19 breath weapon, he'd still need to roll a 16.
Exactly. The DM was kinda bad playing the dragon like that. Yeah, it has a breath attack. Doesn't mean you need to use it full power on a level 4 party. The dragon could have used a wing buffet to cause an avalanche or whatever, let the players come up with something fast.
Yup, DM was at fault here
oof low CON. That's such a risky move. I've got a character with low CON too but the difference is I know the risks and did it on purpose. Never dump CON unless you're willing to face the consequences.
Never dump it at all
@@wolfherojohnson2766nah, I agree with OP. From a powerbuilding standpoint it's obviously a terrible idea, but if you're okay with the fact that you probably will die and want to rp it, and the rest of the table is fine with that, then you should be golden
@@Forever-GM-DustyThat point about discussing it with the whole table is especially important. Just because a player is okay with the consequences of kneecapping their character, doesn’t mean the rest of the players or their characters will be okay with it. Always run your build idea by your party, whether it be good or purposefully borked.
The only thing that the table did wrong imo was rolling for hp on each level up.
@@sailorsloth8183 yeah, that's exactly why I brought it up as a point. You should never okay in a way that takes away from the table as a whole. I was mainly responding to the idea that it should never be dumped under any circumstance
As someone that plays in the campaign in the final story (the Tiefling bard), I can tell you. Another DM said the point of DMing shouldn't be killing your characters.
It shouldn’t but your players characters should be mortals and be able to die. Where’s the stakes in not dying at all?
@mackiemark5149 But you shouldn't be out for your player characters' blood, either. Death should be a result of bad luck or bad tactics.
Plus the DM for that campaign does have a pretty *fun* little Easter egg for her campaign that's a punishment for blindly accepting an offer from a specific NPC.
The point is making the players struggle on DM's side, not drop 5 adult red dragons and call it a day.
@@Surikoazimaet Fortunately, she's never made it that stupidly easy. Things have generally been what's around the proper CR range. No one's died in her campaign since she's typically kept things so that the enemy's as much a threat to us as we are to them.
@mackiemark5149 On the bright side, she has punished a couple players for blindly trusting NPCs.
Warlock Player - If he'd been playing as a Silver or White Dragonborn, he probably wouldn't have had to worry about the dragon's ice breath, but given that he was just learning, I doubt he would've thought of min-maxing _that_ hard. Worst of all is that I don't think there would've been an easy fix at 4th level with 15 HP and no cold immunity. Other than getting an Amulet of Health, an Ioun Stone, a Belt of Dwarvenkind, or Manual of Health beforehand, there's not much that he could've done to not die from that frost breath.
VtM - Sure, they could have explicitly stated that they wanted the baby back alive, but the player is just plain stupid if he doesn't realize that. They legit thought that they were SOOO clever. But, just like a business can refuse to a sale, a contract can be declared void if one side feels the other violated the deal. Since this was verbal and not written contract, Player McDumbass has no one to blame but themselves.
Poor Simon - Ugh, this sounds like the mom is one of those "party girls", who thinks of herself and no one else. She's probably the sort that wants to get drunk all the time and doesn't care about consequences. Might also be the sort to get fired and use that as an excuse to go on a solo vacation to "find herself" at the husband's expense.
Citizenship - He was only half right: "The age of consent in Germany is 14 *if both partners are under 18*." If he's under 18, he could legally 'consort' as young as 14 'in theory'. But he's likely older than 18, which means it still count as statutory r-word, even if it was 'consenting'.
Sister - Yeesh. Yeah, no, your sister is allowed to have her opinion, but it's clear that you and your friends have a different kind of fun with D&D. Not everything needs to be a meatgrinder. So long as everyone at the party is engaged and wanting more, it doesn't matter what others outside the game think.
The ‘pure blood’ story... I'm a German and the elf player is wrong in so many cases that I have to correct this.
1. you don't need a ‘sponsor’ to get German citizenship. Just go through the normal immigration process and you're good to go.
2. the legal age for his fetish is 16 with restrictions (minor AND the minor's parents have to agree to this and that's a loophole designed to forestall legal proceedings in the case of an impatient couple with an 18 and a 16-17 year old just because the two almost adults couldn't let their trousers on for a few more months).
However, this does not apply to his interest. He still has to wait until his one-night stand comes of age at 18.
The legal age of 14 applies to minors among themselves. And the elf player somehow sounded older than minor-age after the story.
3. Dual citizenship is only possible if you are the child of parents with different nationalities AND were born in Germany. Otherwise you inherit one or, if you immigrate later, you give up your old citizenship.
And invoking German laws in order to be able to violate the law in the USA doesn't work at all. If you are in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Or put another way, minimum ages are just the threshold at which someone can hope to get away with it; if above minimum, they only have to face a lot of very pointed and hostile questions that may yet still see them imprisoned, while below that they go straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200. The only reason there is any ambiguity is because o one wants to fill the prisons with a bunch of dumb hormonal children.
This does not apply to filthy adult perverts but because they’re unintelligent man children with no respect for society and an entirely self centered view of right and wrong they are unable to grasp that fact.
I think his plan was to move to Germany after becoming a citizen, which still yikes, but if it was like you said, him wanting to use German citizenship as a shield in America, Drax would say it best to That Guy: "You're an imbecile".
Player is certainly at fault in the vampire story. In-universe a) the whole letter-rather-than-spirit-pact is a fairy thing rather than a vampire thing and b) vampires are expected to NOT do stupid stuff like that as it not only lowers their humanity score (like sanity in CoC but linked to morality) but also puts a big target their heads when the game is about keeping the vampire-ness secret. Player was just trying to be a murder-hobo and DM was right to call them out on it.
German story: There are red flags, and then there are red flags with a white and black splotch in the middle.
The idea of a 25 year old man going upto his room and playing death metal like an edgy teen in a sulk is hilarious. I love it!
Vampire Baby: If and only IF there was some kind of pact with exacting terms and the parents didn't specify alive then the player would have been well within his rights to con them like that and call them oathbreakers for their revenge. Otherwise no, player is 100% in the wrong
Rude Sister: OP is a bit sensitive, she should have told her sister where she could shove her opinion
@user-ps7ok8dt6y The DM in the rude sister story is a woman, just letting you know. I'm the Tiefling bard in her campaign. But agreed that how she runs the campaign is none of her sister's business.
@@KitsuneYojimbo Corrected, thankyou
Vampire Baby: The NPCs could pull the same loophole shenanigans on the player by claiming the body without life is technically not their child meaning the request was unsatisfied and agreed payment isn't owed by them.
@@ArcCaravan Haha, yes!
I can just imagine the enraged player screaming that the parent swore to stop the oppression of his people and the parent replying "But if I kill them all then they won't be oppressed any more, you should thank me!"
As for the Tantrum Warlock player I will give him one thing. That DM throwing a dragon that has a breath weapon that can do 10D8 dmg at a party of low level characters was kind of lame.
Hello, I am the Bearkin Barbarian from the last story. I can confirm that the dm's depression was true and we comforted her
Glad to hear she’s doing well.
I’d say that the “no one’s died yet” issue is caused by a failure of 5e itself. Not to say you should be trying to kill players, but with how there’s not really a punishment for getting downed and the ease of healing with healing word, stakes are hard to impose.
Also with most monsters in the monster manual just being sacks of hp, the dm often ends up changing stats on the fly. Xp to level 3 said that he just gives an encounter three rounds so each of his players get to have a cool moment, and then say the fights won. That was probably a joke, but given how encounter balance is, it’s not too far off. (The rules lawyer did a great video about this)
If your group likes more narrative focused games, play what you want, but if you want a system with more strategic combat beyond higher numbers and more build/character complexity and creativity, definitely check out pf2e. I recently started gming with a group at my lgs and it’s been great.
@lrogersgaming4373 Actually we played both pf1e and 2e before. It was pretty good
@@MannyTheWhoolyMammoth cool!
I would really love to hear the player at story 2 say what they expected to happen. Are they just being salty their genie gambit didn't work, or were they so stupid they genuinely believe their logic was sound?
Sounded like they wanted to be cheeky and cheat consequences without considering the NPC can pull the same argument on technicalities.
Rule of thumb is always leave CON at average at least
It's the one stat that every class benefits massively from. You have to be a particular kind of fool to make it a dump stat
Next character is con dump stat wizard
As a citizen of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Thanks, but you can keep him.
Consequences of the player’s actions, if they were acting like it was the kidnappers and blamed the death of them maybe. But to make it obviously them, lucky they are not ash.
If the player can argue they technically brought back the child even if no longer alive, the NPCs can easily argue the lack of life means the child wasn't technically brought back.
14:52 As a German, I can say: No, that's not a thing at all. There is no Sponsorship of any kind.
If you want to become a citizen, you go to the office responsible for immigration and fill out all the required forms (probably also requires an appointment).
And the age of conscent in Germany is 14 only under certain circumstances (including the age of the other party being at most 21 - and I fully suspect that guy is WAY beyond 21), *NOT IN GENERAL*.
Yeah but there are loopholes even for people over 21 from what I've read. Thankfully, this dude is probably not even smart enough to make it out of his home town--let alone Germany.
I was literally still playing with beanie babies at age 14 and had only just barely started experimting with makeup. I didn't even get my first visit from Aunty Ruby for another 2 years.
Dude is gross.
Never thought I would see the words "nazi weaboo" written together to describe someone that exists
Wehraboo is the "proper" term, insofar as there is one.
Sadly more common than you'd think.
But then it turned out to be something else just as bad. A pedo who was trying to butter up the DM for sponsorship by acting like a Nazi because they made a racist assumption that "all Germans are like that".
That guy doesn't exist.
@@Muazen And you know this how? Or is this just more, "Lol! Reddit always fake!" post?
Considering your recent video, I think the guys on first story should count their blessings that the dude just blasted death metal
When you don’t take anyone else’s advice, you have only yourself to blame.
I googled the consent law and it pretty much says that if you are over the age of 20 you will be thrown in jail for exploting the law.
While 20 seems just a bit too old for a 14 year old, id definitely prefer this type of law to be more widespread, as im 100% sure anyone that complains that age of consent needs to be lower are pedophiles.
Yep. Much like many of the states here in the US the laws are for Romeo and Juliet situations where they are close in age so the parents of horny teens can't ruin the other teen's life by getting them charged for SA when it was consensual.
Honestly, last story's sister sounds like the bad DM.
"Why is most of the party furries?" Hating on furries in 2024? Pretty cringe.
"No one's died yet? You're a bad DM" Thinking characters HAVE to die in D&D? Also cringe.
She is very anti-furry….. and idk why she thinks players need to die. I try to make things difficult but not too difficult and I did punish a player for blindly trusting a NPC
25 years old.. thought they're teenagers the first half.
Problem players that invoke streamed DMs to insult games should be told, "Those games also have players that are better than you."
Most people who say that don’t realize that character creation is more than just filling out the character sheet. Let alone are they willing to put forth the effort to flesh out the character’s story and put forth any effort into making them more than a literal 2 dimensional scribble.
I think Warlock in the first story had a really bad reaction to his character dying. However, I'm trying to understand how the DM thought that leaving a possible TPK up to a d20 roll every long rest was a good idea. 52 damage of frost breath has a good chance of just killing people with very good con scores at level 4. The warlock is still in the wrong for the massive crash out, but the story probably would have been different if he wasn't the only one that died in that encounter.
unfortunately part of the module
For the vampire baby story: there argument that “They didn’t say they wanted the child back alive” is stupid. How specific does this player want people to be? When he goes to buy fast food he doesn’t specify he wants it all in a bag and individually wrapped.
The warlock story: DoIP is just a rough module, and they appear to have rolled HP, which makes things even worse. At level 4 with a -1 Con mod, warlocks should have 19 HP. Warlocks get 8 + Con mod HP at 1st level, and 5 + Con mod HP every level after. If the warlock took a 14 in Con, which is above standard at level 4, the warlock should have 31 HP... but the problem is that they were rolling. With 15 HP at level 4, the warlock was 4 down from standard, which would put them at 27 hit points with a +2 modifier. If the warlock was actually at 14 Con, he'd have 27 hit points... which is just barely enough to survive the single attack from full HP. However, if the warlock was missing just 2 hit points, or rolled just 1 HP lower, or took a 13 in Con, or if the dragon rolled 2 points of damage higher, he still would have died.
What the DM should have done is start Cryovain far in the air above the adventurers long before the combat began to give them time to run and hide in a deep, narrow tunnel somewhere before Cryovain got in range, which is actually recommended in the module. This is the DM's fault here, if not DoIP's fault.
That said, warlock definitely overreacted here. The situation probably could have been resolved if any of the players at the table did the math and the DM could have easily retconned the fight and announced that the players saw the giant fucking dragon soaring through the skies ages before the fight began.
Big agree to this. And also why our group doesn't play with instant death rules.
Reminds me of in a game in 2e, running it by the module, it says to cast cloud kill on the party. For the recommended level, this would just be a bunch of AOE damage that we'd have to get away from. Except the party was of various levels, and in 2e, Cloudkill just instakills things below a certain level, no save.
That was a fun argument.
Last story, I'm newer to DMing a serious long campaign, and at first I was very hesitant about DMPCs as well, but my players wound up really loving a couple characters and wanting them along, and even wanting them to get a bit more spotlight, going against everything I'd learned about being a good DM. I say that to say to the OP from one new dm to another, if your players are having fun, forget anything else! Every game is unique and if you're able to keep a large group engaged and having a blast, you're doing something right. I know I'd much rather play with someone who is freely creative and adapts to the group rather than with someone who has a player vs DM mentality.
Thank you. That was my story
@@MelonTartVA of course! I’ve caught myself way too anxious a few times over whether or not I’m running a good game, so I related a lot. I hope you and your players have a lot of fun in future games!
Strictly speaking, every quest giver and shopkeep is a DMPC by default. Every pet the players keep and every hired helping hand? Also DMPCs. It’s it even something worth acknowledging or worrying about.
In truth, the concept people are trying to get at is more of a DM avatar being inserted as the main character, thereby demoting players to the role of extras.
On the other hand, sis is apparently a 4chaner who doesn’t know most races in DND aren’t human so they wouldn’t know the difference in the first place.
I play a Tiefling Warbard (multiclassed warlock/bard for those unfamilar) I had a high con and dex stat just because I knew as a full caster I was limited to light armour and not as big as others for hit dice. I also althought rolling postive modifiers for all my stats rolled horrbily at level ups for the first 3 levels so when we got the lvl 4 stat increase I added to my CON,its now 20 and i started rolling great for lvl ups, so my tiefling has the second highest AC (high dex and +2 magic armour) I also somehow ended up the highest HP of the party, the Paladin is second highest.
Our Rogue we have to watch in fights, his rolls were avg during creation and he ignored the PHB and our advice that DEX is kinda essential for a rogue. Hes never increased his armour despite seeing myself and Druid buying enchanted armours for ourselves. Our first fight against 4 bandits and hes nearly downed in 2 turns as his COn is only +1 and his dex was a flat 10 with no bonuses. hes also rolled horrbily at level ups for hp and at level 7 now, only has 38 hp as opposed to druid on 52 and me over 62hp. it didint help he tried to fight in the fornt line like the paladin too.
Hes learned, spent his stat increase on DEX and the DM gave him a magic sword that raises his dex by +2 and a second attack.
We nearly finished our first campaign, and will havethe option of keeping our PC's or retiring them, I may retire my Tiefling so I can try my concept of a Dragonborn Cleric or Changling Sorcerer. will have to see.
“An 8 in con is a death sentence” if he had an 18 he’d only have 20 more hp and STILL one have been one tapped, but not dead. Using point buy he’d probably have. 13 at most as the third most important stat, only 8 more hp, and still would have had been one shot. Nah the gm is to blame here for his death, but yeah the dude mega overreacted
unfortunately that is actually built into the module
@@ss3nm0dn4r8 Bruh, 10d8 is built into the module?? At level 4? The book should just say "kill your injuried or casters now."
I have run that campaign before. It is not supposed to be a full on fight against the dragon. It is supposed to fly away after taking only 10 damage. The DM should have maybe not used cold breath, but there were several layers of rng to get through for that to happen. DM would have had to roll a D20 to determine the Dragon’s location, then would have had to roll the highest initiative, and then warlock would have had to fail the saving throw. A higher con would have greatly improved his odds of survival. Also he only had 15 hp so that means he was also rolling for HP instead of taking an average.
DM should not have used breath, but the warlock definitely holds the lion’s share of the blame here.
"Nazi Wehraboo" is an impressive turn of phrase.
Reminds me of hearing the term "westaboo".
I once played a character with 8 CON for RP reasons, it was "suboptimal" of course, but to me atleast if you're experienced and know of the risks you could totaly go for it
Sounds like what I would expect the average salaryman/generic laborer to have for Con, like a librarian or something who never gets out much.
I never make characters with a con score lower than 10, usually at least a con score of 14-16. And whenever I do that I’ll always have a high AC character to compensate for the lower HP. My dump stats are always either intelligence or strength depending on the class.
Warlock Tantrum: What a baby. It's your first run, Warlock, so I can understand your position, I was in a similar situation when my first character was insta-killed with a quicksand trap and two skeletons we nicknamed Sans and Papyrus (Don't ask). I did pout, it was our first session and I spent half of it on my DS, but I went back to that group with a new character held high, and it was one of the wackiest adventures I'd ever gone on with that new guy. So, if you're gonna cry in your room with death metal blaring, there's no helping you, the best option is to apologize, take the L, and start a new character.
Baby Mission: Player is at fault, and it's jarring that they're trying to defend themselves. MF, if you order a pizza, do you expect them to deliver the ingredients with the tagline, "You didn't that we had to make it"? You did the crime; how could you not see the consequences staring you in the face?
Bad Mom: Oy veh, I have no love for these types. You kids treat Simon well.
Citizenship: This reminds me of another DnD Doge story I heard, TLDR: A football player in steel toe boots kicks something that wasn't a football, you can guess what. Neither America or Germany has any room for Adolfs or Jareds.
Judgy Sister: Sorry to be rude but you are acting a bit overly sensitive on the matter. You say she has a few years of experience, but if her reaction to the party having no deaths is "That's terrible", her words mean nothing. Having a DMPC isn't wrong when used properly, and it sounds like you're using it properly, and there's nothing wrong with having a group majorly composed of nonhuman characters, people have their favorites, and D&D would probably be very bland if it didn't have other races to use for players, enemies, and NPCs. If your players can say with full honesty that the game is fun, you're doing it right, so take pride in that you are a good DM, don't let your sister's viewpoints make you doubt that.
The warlock story: I could honestly imagine myself leaving the table to listen to death metal. I would never actually do it, but it does sound like me...also, considering himself God's gift to intelligence sounds like me too. It's always nice to see a worse version of yourself and realize you actually aren't all that bad compared to how you could be.
I had a warlock with 8 CON and had no problems with it.
Good story or bad story, I always need a dose of kitty. And in the words of a wise man (I think we all know of who I speak of): I really like that string.
IDK I think In the Judgey Sister story that, no they're not a bad DM, but yes they are being a bit overly sensitive.
I appreciate ur input (that was my story)
Hey man I hope you’re doing okay with all things considered. I understand you won’t be alright for a while and that’s no problem man take your time. I just wanna say thanks for the uploads regardless of the situation and hopefully you’ll pull through sooner than you think. I might not agree on every method of a”sorry reading” or whatever you wanna call it on this channel but regardless I hope things will look up and go your way again soon man. Thanks for the hard work and consistent uploads even through a hard time. My condolences and I sincerely hope it’ll be better soon.
WHAT KIND OF SCAM BURGER KING DOESN'T HAVE BBQ SAUCE FOR THE NUGGETS?!?! I only wish that I had the kind of zen required to dismiss that as "trivial" and let it slide. I be slidin' through that window like it's Florida.
Are your players having fun? If yes, you’re a good DM. Stay the course!
Las story: She crossed a line. Those were fighting words.
Thank you. That was my story
@MelonTartVA You did nothing wrong as a DM. If your players are having fun and you can manage to keep it that way then you are doing your job as a DM.
As most professional DMs will say: "Your style is your own. Unless your players are unhappy then there is no reason to change a thing."
Paraphrased but the idea is there.
@@dwaynejackson551When the poster said that his sister was experienced DM Afters her rude comments the thing I had to say was she's an experienced DM but that doesn't mean she's a good DM I'm sure the only long-term player she has are the masochists and she's usually shifting out new players because some just aren't going to stay and be her abused doll just so she can unleash her sadism and stress while I will agree with some people that did Opie is a bit sensitive that's still his family member and he likely looks up to her so he took it pretty hard but as they say broken pedestals come around once in a while you got to learn to overcome them I say this because I have an uncle well I had an uncle who I used to respect and look as a father figure but well he ended up disappointing me but I'm not going to suddenly drop the type of person I became because of him instead I'm going to strive to be the person I believed he was before I learned the truth so I can show him in the world that you can be a good person and you don't need to pretend so did the poster I say continue to be a good DM because looking at it you're going to end up becoming even better than your sister and experienced GOOD DM!
@paulman34340 I agree, but dude. Periods and commas.
@@dwaynejackson551 Done with phone Mic Sorry bout that
Some more context on that age of consent in germany thing, that's *technically* true, but there's a major asterisk to that. It's only 14 if everyone involved is between the ages of 18 and 14. Otherwise, it is 18. It's basically an exception to the law that's there so that teenagers fooling around with one another during their first relationships aren't criminalized for it. Cause you know, that might not be the smartest thing to do at that age, but you probably don't want teenagers getting criminal records for getting swept up in their feelings. Adults doing it with 14-year olds is still VERY much illegal in germany.
it's entirely possible and SHOULD be valid for someone to use con as a dump stat, I've done it a few times, but I knew the risks...
Regarding the Vampire story in which the player sacrifices a baby: 100% the players fault! In fact the GM was being kind just having the parents come after the PC. GM could have stripped Humanity points, had the Elders of the City find out and deem it a breach of the Masquerade and maybe even declare a Blood Hunt, GM could have had Vampire Hunters find out and start stalking the PC and even had Werewolves get involved by working in that the parents and the baby were all Kinfolk!
For DMPC, i do feel it is a slippery slope. But its been done well in my experience. As long as no one minds and everyone is having fun, i think its not a bad idea. The sister is just jealous i think and wants to put OP down.
We had a DMPC once because our DM couldnt continue the game so a player stepped up and we just kept their character as a DMPC cause we had an established dynamic. Didnt change much aside from who was telling the story.
My party loves my DMPC and I avoid stealing the spotlight and making her a marysue along with the rest of the common traps
1.) Warlock Tantrum: 100% the Players fault. Its one thing if only one person is telling you something is a bad idea but if almost everyone including new players telling you the same thing, it most likely a bad idea. If you choose to ignore it, that's on you. Add to the fact that Warlock decide to throw a tantrum and started acting like a child after all that, yeah he deserved a kick.
2.) Baby Mission: Player is 100% at fault. He twisted the deal for his own twisted gains and gloat about it. Also, correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't VtM have major consequences for preforming such actions. The only thing I can think of in this scenario is that the DM should've ask said player, "Are you sure you want to do that?", but given how the player acted, that not going to work. DM is in the right here.
3.) DnD is NOT a FREE Babysit service.
4.) ...They should've reported that guy. The stupidity is Contagious.
5.) Ignore the Sister. She mostly likely an Elitist. DnD is about having fun not winning.
I think there are conditions in V:tM where a player character might be encouraged to be an absolute ___ like this, and there are also conditions where a player character might be expected to have absolutely no self-awareness of how they appear to others... but it is still reasonable to expect that a player character being an oblivious ____ will get called out on it in-setting. In that game there should NEVER be certainty of getting away with anything no matter how careful you're being about it; it's one of the reasons roleplay in the setting leans more towards "angsty tortured soul" than "diabolical mastermind".
Con is also needed for concentration spells. Con should never be a dump stat.
Also, wtf was the dm supposed to do? Have it so he suddenly gets saved by a higher power to prevent his icy death?
Ahh, the BBEG of all problem players: accountability
OP of Baby Mission is omitting a huge detail about VtM. You get more experience when you do evil stuff like that. Doing a ritual is big enough deed to warrant a closed aspiration, plus humanity check, plus ruined relationship. 3 experience is enough to level up a Discipline. I have no idea what that ritual is, but I bet it also gives some benefits.
That player just wants to have a cake and eat it too.
The motive of cheating the couple feels irrelevant when the problem was the player whining that they were betrayed after his betrayal. Neither side are genies or devils physically bound by their word and the NPCs can say without the child's life, the player only brought back meat resembling their kid.
More like the details were left out when telling the OP since they did say it was second hand.
@@ArcCaravan Yes, I get it, the story indeed is similar to "DM gets blamed because bandits act like intelligent human beings." But there is a nuance here: here, the system itself incentivizes antisocial behavior.
I know two different players who would probably escalate the situation even further, by prompting a Frenzy check and failing it voluntarily.
Age of consent is also 14 in Québec but it doesn't mean an adult can have s*x with a girl age 14. It's a maximum of 5 years age difference and not in a position of superiority (babysitter, camp counselor, etc.)
20:20 Epic plot twist!!!
For the VtM story, the player is absolutely at fault for the action, especially if they are playing a Camarilla story, but the ST could be at fault for letting it happen to begin with depending on their session one rules in place. In VtM, if you kill humans and it's not out of self defense or them being an outright danger to you, you lose more and more of your Humanity over time and become a genuine bestial monster. Even just a single inhumane/evil act against an innocent human or by draining and killing another vampire for selfish reasons will leave a Stain on your aura that anyone with an aura-reading ability will be able to see. Whatever "ritual" the vampire was doing (I'd need to know the Clan they were playing as well, since Tremere are well known for doing some unsavory things but are still considered "good guys" because they are/were part of the Camarilla), outright murdering and sacrificing a BABY and then delivering the corpse to the parents as an obscene "gotcha" moment is deplorable and not worth the character debuffs, in-character judgments and scrutiny, or the awful looks you'd be getting from the others around the table.
If it's a Sabbat story, however...well, pretty much anything goes, if the ST allows it. They aren't for the faint of heart.
For our little german sympathiser: the age of consent is 14 in germany however it is still illegal to have intercourse with a mentally underage girl so basically the age consent is 16 if not 17 or even 18
I've messed up with some of my characters in the past, but I have never done anything that stupid.
For example, I forgot to get thieves' tools for my rogue one time, but my Con. was a 14. You just never use CON as a dumpstat.
Yet another case of frick around find out.
To correct the first OPs very wrong assumption about Warlocks. You can build your warlock around not using eldritch blast very easily and effectively.
That players is just lame for many reasons
If you need someone to specify that they want their baby back alive, you're not very bright.
The couple could say technically the player failed to bring back the baby since the definition of "their child" could include the soul. Instead they got meat that looks like their kid.
@@ArcCaravan Now see that is a fair point. Even from a pure material reality angle what makes you you is gone after brain death.
The VTM player has no credibility whatsoever and it's baffling the rest of the group is letting the act drag out. Maybe next time you bring snacks when you play and they ask someone to pass them some chips or cheese puff or whatever chew them first and act like that was a normal thing to do.
Baby Mission Story. No way anyone gets that wrong. A parent asking for their kidnapped child back definitely wants them alive. Dude was trying to play some Fey Bargain stuff with this and thought they would get away with it. Even though they were not a Fey. No magical bond, no Fey Bargain. And as Dude didn't provide any evidence they weren't the one who did it, it would be logical for parents to blame Dude for it. And even with proof Dude was innocent, the parents might still blame Dude for botching the job and cancel the deal anyways in their rage. I just don't see how Dude could not see this going badly.
Could easily argue the body without life isn't their child.
... The German citizenship story is weird and wrong on so many level. I don't know what's worse: the fact the guy was dumb enough to think that was how it worked, him trying to appeal to someone he thought to be German by playing *nazi* cliché (for those who don't know, German nowadays *hate* nazi and suggesting they still are is an easy way to piss them off), or the horrible, horrible reason he wanted to do it for.
Regarding the low CON Warlock I'm a little split, since playing a character with a big weakness could be interesting. Obviously the player behaved really badly, though.
Hi Doge, very excited to see what horrors awaits us this week. A small suggestion but have you also considered doing RPG Glory Stories to serve as a palate cleanser every few weeks?
He used to do them at the end of Friday uploads
@@MrSoul8888 He did? Sorry, I just discovered this channel a week ago
@franciscobrisolladeoliveir9596 its an older thing. I'm not sure if he still does it
I’m sorry, but that is an imposter. Everyone knows Ziggy played guitar with the Spider From Mars and had a snow white tan.
An 8 in con for a backline character is perfectly normal, idk why everyone in that story was so weird about it. I always build my mages to be glass cannons. They are not supposed to be tanky lol.
Yet 8con warlock still acted like a victim after ignoring warnings and punishing everyone for the consequences.
@@ArcCaravan I am not defending warlock just confused over it being a negative reaction to his stat line, which to me is completely normal. If you die you die thats just the game.
As far as the baby goes, i would say it depends on the game. For instance, if he were playing dnd and using the fiend transformation from grimhallow, not only would he be totally justified, but by the family breaking their contract they'd have had one of those high cr constructs (marut i think) sent after them from mechanus to destroy their whole family until they fulfilled their part of the contract. In vampire tm where there's no extraplanar entities to enforce such contracts it seems more like a judgment call and the gm made the right choice.
With the german story, i wouldn't say NO god would accept that logic, but no good gods would. Still, it's 5e and paladins are allowed to have evil gods without becoming oath breakers. Vengence and conquest are usually pretty good oaths if you wanna do that. Also, if age of consent was the only thing german sympathizer was looking for, the age of consent in the state of Nevada is 15. Only one year older and it's a whole lot easier than moving countries and getting a new citizenship.
I think it was mentioned the game was Vampire the Masquerade so only the words between individuals. Even with magic contracts, the parents could just as easily say technically the body without life isn't their child so they owe the player nothing (even less than nothing since it's an obvious deduction what happened to the kid).
@@ArcCaravan right which is why i said the gm made a good call. I was just pointing out a situation where that might work.
Yeah, what the warlock did was not cool, but 56 damage to a group of level 4? sounds to me like the DM wanted to teach the newbies sometimes characters die.
It sounds like the idea was a sort of “discretion being the better part of valor” scenario. But instead of firecrackers to spook ‘em it was a whole real ass live hand grenade.
I don't remember seeing Ziggy before..... Prrrrrrrr.
22:58 The age of consent may be 14, but that's only the short answer
The whole "yOu NeVeR sAiD aLiVe" argument is such a weak and objectively trolling thing. Even in those genie stories with cautionary messages about how to word wishes at least try to make the poor wording obvious.
When somebody says "I want my child back" there is literally no room for interpretation there, none. Even someone with no legal degree can see that statement doesn't have some loophole of "dead or alive", not when the freaking context is A KIDNAPPED PERSON.
At lv 4 52 damage is downing everyone, and potentially killed more than 1 pc.
When people announce their obsession with Germany of all countries... unless they are literally born and raised there that's a red flag...
Because people obsessed with Germany rarely do so for the right reasons... given that he also made a character obsessed with racial purity I would just automatically label him as a racist at that point...
Both those things separately? Sure a racist PC could just be a roleplay thing, and being fond of Germany for the art and culture sure that's fine...
But racist PC+obsession with Germany, the alarm bells should be blaring at that point.
The guy may have said it was for a different, also fucked up reason... but I still suspect he was also a Nazi.
second story: who try pull something thing like that without a leeway, if i was the storyteller i would understand this as a sign the player want to start a feud. I think it's a f$#@ing good plot, the war between the pc people and the family is a gold mine.
I wonder if that paladin player has seen Kyle? He's about so tall
i had characters with low con before.
hell, i had a wizard with low con.
and i never once complained when i died.
hell, with one of those characters, i never even died, came close a few times, but managed to survive using my large variety of spells that wizards have
The life of that glass cannon is short but magnificent. What’s the saying, live fast, die young, and leave a pretty corpse?
@@ornerylurker8296 indeed
15 hp sounds like really bad rolling for hp at level 4, not that the average of like 19 would have saved him lol, he had less health than a wizard with 10 con would have had, rough. Even if he had a 12 con with those rolls that damage would have killed him outright, he needed 14 Con to survive
Szechuan Sauce tantrums...
20:05 ok i love how OP wrote "Nazi Wehraboo" because normally it is spelled "Weaboo" but the german army was called "Wehrmacht"
Wehraboo is an actual term for people who obsess over nazi stuff
Apparently there are variants of "weeaboo" based on what their into if it's not Japan, like "wehraboo" for Nazis and "westaboo" for cowboys.
In the vampire campaign, the player was in the wrong. It's like people saying bad things and not expecting consequences for what they said, because of their 1st amendment rights.
And the german story was very predictable and what part of Germany that problem player liked the most. Something that is very illegal in that country.
I saw Kintaro Oe and I had to watch lol
It always makes me chocolate when people bring up racial purity because if anyone did a DNA test a really good one almost everyone in one way shape or form is of mixed ancestry. I don't care what color your skin is your ancestors probably came from different countries of different origins at some point. Granted this might not be 100% true for everyone but I bet it's the vast majority of human beings.. I can go further but you get the point. Also, a lot of people don't realize that if you were to take someone on as a sponsor to become a citizen in your country the amount of financial and legal responsibility you have for that person. Maybe it's different for Germany I don't know but in the US if you're taking someone in as you are their sponsor you best be ready for a lot of responsibility
Also as an example if you're mostly Irish or Scottish and you have red hair guess what..... That means you have Scandinavian ancestry you may still be a white person but guess what you are technically mixed before anyone tries to use the all my ancestors were this skin color route of reasoning. And know this is not meant to be political this is just simple science and history of humans
Actually I haven't even better example. My beautiful fiancee is Latina and both are biological parents are Latino however her mother's maiden name is Scottish and her father's surname is French . Latino. However her mother has very obvious Scottish Roots somewhere and also Italian from what I've heard and her biological father has French in his ancestry as well as Jewish so even though they are very much Latino play I also have a rich and mixed ancestry.
Ziggy is my overlord
In terms of the accent, not necessarily. My family has German heritage but lives in America and I've grown up around people who speak German occasionally but I'm not fully fluent, just very close to it. I know that my German apparently has no accent and if I'm speaking to native speakers they often assume I'm native German. I don't know if OP was in a similar circumstance, but at least in my case I know it is very possible to just not have an accent. Though, to be fair, that elf player may have just been an idiot.
If you are going to skimp out on con, at least take the toughness feat and be a dwarf... if all problem player wanted to do is be a support caster, there is a class called cleric which you can flavor as being a cultist. Then all you do is take spellsniper as your first feat, then take eldritch adept for the repelling blast invocation. Maybe take the Rakdos cultiest background for additional spells that are useful like haste.
If you are going to be a first time player, the worst thing you can do is assume you are correct.
For Ziggy!
Rolled a nat 20 on the subscribe button.