Yes. My character ended up dying and turning undead. My party bard got the True Resurrection spell via magical sevrets and used it. Our DM told us that the soul of my character did not wish to return. No roll was made. I was not asked if my character would want to come back (and he had two big reasons to want to come back, ie. He was engaged to the party bard and was the adopted older brother of our party's barbarian). The DM simply did not want my cleric to come back because he didn't like that my cleric acted more like the classical flirty bard. So all three of us quit his game and went on to get a better DM.
Honestly, if your DM takes your agency by saying that you don't want to resurrect is a dick move. Having a campaign with permanent deaths is one thing, but this is so shameful that it should have a warning on the local store so other people can know.
DM isn't supposed to tell you what your character wants. The DM can tell you what you see, hear, etc., and how something appears, but the DM should never tell you what your character wants. That is for you to decide, not the DM. I'm glad you got away from that DM.
In that purify session, I think that player watched the most recent season of goblin slayer, because that's how they used the purify spell and it turned the blood of one of the goblins into pure drinkable water. Except this was not a spell directed specifically at water. This was to cleanse status conditions. The priestess viewed the goblin as impure and revolting just before she cast the spell, and since she viewed it as impure, it turned its blood into drinkable water.
Makes sense, but one's an anime, and another's a highly rendered game. And those two are not mutually exclusive unless you really work into it with Homebrewing. Guess we'll just have to give them benefit of the doubt as people who didn't want the rules to ruin their fun, which I know works for some D&D groups. But it's like the OP said, it's a mystery how their games were always played when they believed they had a 1-kill shot spell at such a low-level. The game would get boring real fast from my POV.
@@girl1213simple straightforward ruling: "the blood in a creature's body is an attended object and thus not subject to spell effects that don't target creatures without the consent of the attendee"
@5bars3g36 To be fair. The reason the blood itself turned to water was because it was the goblin's blood that she was examining when she declared that it was impure and revolting. That's why the purify spell reacted the way did in the anime.
Maybe! But it's worth noting that 'technically you can kill someone with [insert utility spell here]' has been around as a D&D meme longer than Goblin Slayer has existed as a property.
Yeah, had an adversarial DM at one point. Played a barbarian whose class features just didnt work becuase he said so. Rage only ends if the minute duration expires, you end it yourself, you go unconscious, or you havent attacked or haven't recieved damage since your last turn. DM had us in a combat where i got hit several times and told me the damage, i said cool and because of rage that was all halved. He asked which feature specifically allowed me to do that and then said the first attack that hit me took me out of rage for some reason. I was really pissed but put it to the side because he was trying to explain it - whatever. Danger sense gives you advantage on dexterity saving throws versus effects you can see such as spells and traps and is only ever negated if you are blinded, deafened, or incapacitated. In the middle of combat, i was hit with a spell that requires dexterity saving throw and he noticed i rolled twice. He asked why i was rolling with advantage and i pointed out my ability. He said i wouldnt benefit because the spellcaster was 'behind' me and i couldn't see him to react. Should've left then but swallowed my anger down and continued the campaign for the sake of some friends that were also at the table. Feral instinct specifies that you have advantage on initiative rolls *PERIOD* and that if you are surprised, you may act normally on that round as long as the first thing you do is enter rage. Another situation of just rolling twice and the DM was asking why i was rolling initiative with advantage and i pointed out my feature again. He told me it doesnt work that way as i was surprised and i wouldnt get to roll twice. I pointed out to him the surprised state of combat doesnt incur a penalty or disadvantage on initiative checks whatsoever and that i should get to roll with my adavntage. We went back and forth on it until he said he would only let me roll with advantage if i took a -10 penalty to my final total. This was a game at a gamestore i frequented so i stood up, collected my stuff, and left the store. Why let me play a class if you are going to be negating everything i get out of that class on a whim? Another story, not dnd related, was a shadowrun 4e game at that same store. Was a newer DM and we were all new to the system. I remember we had a Technomancer (someone in tune with machine magic and hacking), a Magical Investigator (who uses magic to better their detective work), a Face and Street Racer (someone really good at the inbetween of combats and got us our first gig), and then Myself. I made a Juggernaught. In melee for shadowrun, a really popular build is an Street Samurai (chromed or not, someone who can slice and dice with the best of them aiming for a high dps and attack pool). I opted for the opposite extreme. I made a minotaur with a high body, all 4 limbs replaced with chrome, trained in unarmed combat and defensive techniques, and covered from head to toe with a shield and enough armor to suffocate any normal person. My ballistic and impact armor was insane and i could soak a ton of stun damage. Practically unkillable with conventional weaponry. But i had weaknesses to make this happen: i wasnt good at grappling or keeping footing, my resistance to magic was practiaclly nothing, any AR gear i had i kept off cause he'd get motion sick, i turned off all wireless control to my prosthetics and had everything wired directly incuring more fees if i went to get any of it fixed, and i had a mood problem. I could get set off on moments of blinding rage and just hand the DM control where i would attack anything i could see or hear nearby, friend or foe. So there was a lot more than straight damage that could incapacitate me (you could even just insult my mother and i'd have to roll or lose control). Our first mission was a milk run. We go to point A, pick something up, and go to point B. Simple. Point A was a warehouse district with a chop shop we were supposed to go into and negotiate for our goods. We rock over there in our delivery van, the best vehicle for being inconspicuous while also spacious, and the garage doors open so we drive in. On exit and talking with our suppliers, we find out that they are tweekers who are low on smack, we find them itchy - looking at our expensive hardware and pristine vehicle, and we see this simple job start to turn as the reward for killing us is slowly outweighing the risk for trying. Our Face tried to talk them down. Failure. Our Technomancer and M.I. immediately take cover in the van as guns are drawn. Our Face is ok with a pistol so they pull out their glock and fire off some shots. I myself grab a man jutting a gun in my face and tear him in half. To our left, a crate bursts open as drones fly out into the warehouse. Heres where it went south. The DM said i start getting hacked. Im like, Huh? He repeated im getting hacked and starts going into that rule section to see what to do with me. I try to correct him and let him know - im not connected to any node, I have my limbs hard wired (offline), and, at most, they could hack my phone but that wouldnt do much. He thinks he understands (after the technomacer, who learned these rules, got my back) and says one of the drones latches to my arm and starts drilling in to get a direct connection (no checks, nothing). Now the entire table is arguing that thats not a thing really. Sure, he could drill through my armor and into my arm to damage me (given enough time) but im not something that could be hacked. At this point, the DM is getting frustrated. Next round, he focuses all gunfire against me. No problem, i was built for this. He gets plenty of hits and says what would be a number that would kill anyone else in our group. But i am the Juggernaut - so i soak all the damage, taking only a single block of stun from a bad roll. He doesnt know what happened and questions me ruthlessly in the middle of the game to understand so i go over how the armor rules work for him. He tries to burn me, electocute me, make me choke on gasses, and melt me wiyh acid. I show him where all my money had gone and why i came out of char-gen with only a bow and some arrows. Im built to tank all of that and last as i had my gear custom made to protect against most of what he just used against me. Keep in mind, even one of these new attacks would have been serious if not fatal for any of our other party members. Finally, he resorts to explosives. A tweaker jumps out of cover with a rocket launcher. Excusing all the other high tech stuff that these tweakers somehow were able to get, this is now absurd and we all know it. We call him out on it but he waves his hand and says they would absolutely have this, so, whatever. Come at me. And so he fires. Going into the book, he finds and Anti-Tank Missile Launcher and shoots me with it. After dice, i said cool, i soaked it all. DM is absolutely flabbergasted and demand the math from me and so i show him how you can build a character that can Darth Vader catch rockets with his fingers. Not looking at the book right now, so im a little fuzzy on exactly 'how much damage that missle was' but for the sake of argument, lets say it was 20. Our DM, in all his wisdom, said it was actually 200 instead. Pencils snapped, everyone looked around the table worriedly, and the DM announced i was dead and to not roll up a new character. I was stunned too as i knew what had happened - it wasnt only me who just died. A player leaned over to the DM and informed him that everyone within a block was either disintegrated or seriously injured. You see, Explosive Range Drop Off is a beautiful phrase. For the sake of argument, you can say the missile loses 2 points of damage for every meter you are away from the center of the explosion. That missile, normally, would only have a chance of injuring something a max of 10 meters away. That missile now damaged everything as far as 100 meters away, still dealing 100 damage at even 50 meters away. It was a consensus at our table that he just leveled the building and killed everyone inside. The DM just put his head down for a minute or two before raising his head and telling me to leave. I said gladly and picked up my stuff and left. Miss you, Goliath, old buddy. My juggernaught who was killed with an intercontinental ballistic missile from 7 meters away.
First guy: Definitely either power tripping or just very picky with his set of rules in *realism* which is bad. Second guy: Man, I get if you're new you're gonna be challenged a bit with doing and roll/point accolation. But cmon, when half the table tell you one thing, you don't double down on the other! At the point of him targeting me, I'd have started snide commentary at him. The fact je killed everyone at the.table because of sheer stupidity and then asked you to leave because everyone agreed just shows he was angry and wanted to get rid of you because he blamed you for some reason. -_-
If only that second guy wasn;t an asshole about it, that would have been an awesome character introduction. You rip a guy in half and the rest of them start going at you with everything they have, only for it not to do shit.
At the end of the day the 2nd guy is the dm he couldve just ignored the rules when it came to how explosive damage fall off works. Couldve said something like its a missile that implants the bomb into your skin. But better yet he couldve not tried to kill your character and made it a cool character moment and learned he would have to try harder to give yiur character a challenge.
@@Namelessstew I mean, it was the first combat encounter, right? This is where a GM is supposed to learn what the party can do so they can start figuring out how to balance encounters. If the party curb stomps? Fine. They get to feel powerful and show off, have a good time, you learn what they're prepared for and what to throw at them next time when they're overconfident, works well for the narrative of a group of newbies trying to make a name for themselves. I don't understand the GM need to 'beat' the party on the very first encounter.
Started in a new group. The DM clearly wanted us to not do something to the NPCs all got perception and insight +99 and suddenly could teleport. Or so it seemed. He was a new DM running a module to be fair. Personally I probably would have just said "If you do that you break the module. Feel free to do one we reach the city as the module can cope there". Sometimes honesty is the best policy. Especially if playing with adults.
I don't even understand the player who got upset that purify water wasn't a one-hit kill. This isn't like the X-Men where someone with seemingly useless Powers becomes terribly overpowered with creative use. If it had worked, that first level spell would have killed every living thing instantly. Why would you even propose that, much less get upset when it didn't work?
I could see it working (with Disintegrate stats) IF upcast, or cast on a tiny or smaller creature. Even then though, DM is perfectly in the right to say it doesn't work period.
@@DBArtsCreators "I cast purify food and water on the fairy to kill it." "Purify food and water can't kill a creature!?" "But Grug eats fairy, fairy is food!"
@@DBArtsCreators "I upcast to 9th level against the Storm Giant, I'm sure it's food to something!" 😆 I don't know why but I just find the idea of upcasting Purify Food and Drink to be hilarious.
8:10 "Hmm, this player that's completely new to the group and doesn't have any rapport with the other players is kinda quiet... I KNOW! I'll make him fight two random civilians and then have the guard and other PCs kill him! That'll get him to open up more!" The next day: "Why does no one wanna join my games now?"
How about “characters who don’t fit DnD and why”. Example: Imai Cosmo is a grappling martial artist and unfortunately DnD refuses to let grappling shine
I had to really struggle to create a good grappling Character. What I got was a simic-hybrid beast barbarian. Simic-hybrid lets you get grappling claws at lvl 5. You can grapple as bonus action instead of an action. Then Lvl 6 beast, you get a feature to help you jump higher, easily a minimum of 10 feet and SImic-hybrid has a feature that lets you reduce fall damage calcs by 100 ft. Basically you grapple enemy. Jump up and fall to make them take fall damage and be prone. Since they're grappled they can't stand up. Attack at advantage till they die.
Session 0, find out the DM has given the druid full plate (with proficiency) with a greataxe (with proficiency) and the dude is coincidentally also an enormous man child. Go figure.
Something like that happened to me, the DM gave the druid some feats that were not at PHB and when I wanted some of them he just said:"im just using PHB"
Yes a few weeks ago a dm tried to rule that the party and I wouldn’t get surprise or advantage because and I quote “ I can’t deal with dread ambusher, sneak attack, advantage and surprise” even when we used spells and resources making sure a place the bbeg frequented in the campaign and make sure every other guard was either sleep or unalive (potion in water supply or magically) and the dm knew we were planning to do that since the session prior
9:50 As soon as it said teenager and "a group of my older brother's friends" I knew exactly where this one was going. They WANTED him to leave, he was an "outsider", not part of the group, even after a few months of playing with them. I saw it happen (to me, and to other friends) several times.
For me it was one of my first DnD games. I joined a west marshes type campain. First session was a bit of a dud as everything my Bard could do someone else in the party could do better. Anyway played another few sessions really invested in my Character. Then one session we were investigating a clearing infornt of a cave and my PC being a bit cautious decided to hang back a bit and low and behold it was an ambush !!! Well on other Character died dispite us trying to help him he was stright up ganged up on and butchered. After the session the DM said 'I was going to kill a PC today and wanted to kill my Bard but I never stood where I was a target so I killed another instead' I just thought ...what a D-head and never came back.
We were using the army rules from Pathfinder: Ultimate Campaign. The DM decided it wasn't "realistic" enough and took away all the abilities that ranged armies had, because reasons and wouldn't listen to any arguments otherwise. Basically took out the fun of it. He'd also do stuff like tell us we couldn't fit more of our own armies into a space and then proceed to cram thousands more bodies of our enemies into the same area where he'd just told us there wasn't room. My dude. My guy. My dear brother in Christ. Nothing about this game needs to be realistic. It's a fantasy game. The more realism you force into it the harder the game becomes to play, not in the sense that the difficulty of the game itself becomes higher, but that we can't actually prepare for it, because we never know what other rule you're going to change or remove, next.
I was playing a fighter who had just reached level 5, the DM told me that I do not gain extra attack because my character didn't have a background in fighting, and so they wouldn't know how to properly do it
For one game I was in my character (an outdoorsman with proficiency in survival, but not a ranger) had to follow tire tracks through the desert. DM said they were big and obvious so I rolled a survival check to follow them. I got like a 12 and the DM had me fight a random monster way above my level. I asked why and he said “I’m still punishing you for that terrible roll”. Like that’s one of the worst things for a DM to say “I’m punishing you for a roll”. I actually did walk away from that game when I was 20 min late and walked in to my character being pranked with hot water and apparently peeing himself. Described in detail. My fighter nearly throttled the Ranger and actually considered killing her character just because this had been going on the whole campaign. I literally described my character nearly shooting them then storming off to go back to his forest forever. Specifically said anyone who follows will be killed (and he was 100% the strongest in the party so he could do it). It was just genuinely the stupidest thing I’d ever seen and that dude is a terrible DM.
waaaay back when, an old D6 based aliens/predator/colonial marine game, i forget the name of the ruleset. we all set up our characters as per the rules, i asked to play as an android, as i was interested in playing the 'no violence' rule, GM agreed. GM had us ambushed by a predator, while cloaked, in the first encounter of the campaign... bad enough... first round, first action, pred shot at me with it's shoulder cannon, no rolls were made, no chance to dodge, he just described me getting shot and losing an arm, most of my lower torso, and both legs, then said 'you're an android so it didn't kill you'. put away my dice, handed over the character sheet, and walked out. apparently, there wasn't a session 2, and 2 of the 5 other players were killed in the first encounter, not given the option to make new characters for that session and just told to wait and watch.
This reminds me of what had happened while I was away on holiday with ‘Ranger’ (fiancé). Because the main DM couldn’t continue with the campaign without me, (it was part of my Life Cleric’s story campaign), it was decided that someone else could do a one shot for that night. One of our newer people to join us was Scribe Wizard. He had been playing the game for YEARS, so everyone there more or less agreed to let him do the one shot. The night before on the chat, one of our players let everyone know she had lost her voice but was still able to come. Come the night, and everyone has a new LVL3 character to play as: Tempest Cleric (lost voice), Community Cleric, Bard (couldn’t remember which subclass) and I’m not sure what the main DM chose. What wasn’t realised at the time was, although we knew Scribe Wizard loved to RP as his character, he also wanted EVERYONE to RP for this one shot. Most of us are not very good with RP. Even though it was mentioned to him the day prior, Scribe Wizard still wanted Tempest Cleric to RP even though she couldn’t talk, even if it was to move a square. The boss they had to defeat was a type of demon. It was nearly a TPK. When I came back the week after (Ranger wasn’t feeling well), everyone was mulling over how the boss went after I asked about the one shot. They decided to check online and it turned out the demon was a very high setting for lvl 3 characters ( 3 or 5 star?) and everyone was shocked Scribe Wizard chose that as the last boss of the one shot.
Was playing a level 1 rogue in a sea world style game. By the time we finished the first session, we had killed an ancient white dragon, a kraken, and earned 200k gold. (not joking) Then, the DM introduced his own DMPC at the end of the session as a sneak peak into the next session. His character was level 20 while ours were level 2. He had an armada and said he would take us under his wing and teach us the ways of the world. I never returned. Another game I was playing with my wife. We were players in this game. My wife tended to get everything. All the magical weapons, all the NPCs enjoyed her presence, etc. etc. So, during a fight, my wife's character, A warlock, goes down to 0 hit points. During the turn she gets hit by some splash damage and fails a Death saving throw. When it comes to her turn, she rolls her death saving throw. She rolls a nat 1; which basically means the character is dead. The DM reaches over the table, picks up her dice, turns it some and then places it back down to a nat 20. My wife being who she is just states out right. "No, i'm dead. That is fine." The dm then stated, "But I have a lot of plans for your character in the future, I don't want them to be wasted." After some internal discussion between the two of us, we never returned.
@@cliff1446 Because the DM mistook me threatening a NPC with me threatening the DM. Turned the NPC into an ancient dragon, then had another player one shot it with an arrow when I told him of his misunderstanding. Once again, not joking.
worst dnd experience ive ever had was in high school. i had joined the school's Animanga (anime + manga) club. the teacher in charge (oh boi, this dude STAAAAAAANK like he never took a bath. ever!) had told the club that he would be DMing a BESM (big eyes small mouth) d20 game. we had a session 0 making characters and going over backstories. i wanted to make a Mecha pilot. i asked if mechas were in his world. he said they were. so i started making my backstory and as i did so i had asked about his world building. what was the state of the world? who was at war? racial tensions? all that stuff that would be relevant to my character as a military personnel for one of those countries that had mechas. well... do you know what the DM told me? "youll figure it out when we get started" needless to say, i had NOTHING, no names, NOTHING to work with. session 1. 30 mins in im dead. permanently. my party ambushed me while i was asleep, tied me up, and shot me in the face. multiple times. they then threw my body in a river and took my mech. did i mention this is the FIRST and last game i ever played with this group. the whole time this happened, NONE of them said "sorry". ALL of them just laughed at me. the DM said, "cool. if you want to continue playing then you can make a new character. i dont care if you do or dont". basically NO ONE wanted me to play. two of those players DID stop playing with that group. turns out there was a murderhobo in the party and the DM liked him. he ended up killing everyone in the party except two players (both females btw). the two that left did play other campaigns with me and we had an excellent time. the DM/teacher in charge, well lets just say after that incident i could tell that dude absolutely hated me. he was supposed to be the teacher in charge for my independent studies in discreet mathematics. he did not want to teach me shit. like when i told him about it he said, good luck. and i asked if he was going to teach me anything and he said, NO. well i went to the principal about it. he was forced to teach me and he did not try at all. lets just say, AUBREY KNIGHT FROM THE MISSISSIPPI SCHOOL FOR MATH AND SCIENCE === YOU ARE A DICK!
I was in the final fight of my Curse of Strahd Campaign the other night and we were using a different strahd stat block as per dm recommendation. The entirety of the fight was strahd running away from the party because our dm thought that he had 3 reactions that he could use whenever he wanted. ( replaces legendary actions). The entire time we are running around and strahd is running up walls and stuff and we can’t really get him down and this goes on for like 4 hours. I use an ability that knocks strahd prone while he is on the wall and instead of falling off he just is stuck to the wall. I didn’t leave but I was so close to just shutting down. We beta him eventually though so yippee.👏
11:55 I wish stories like this had a follow up. The stories that sound like the party didn't want to play with someone anymore, and instead of talking to him/her like an adult, they play through a whole set of sessions just being petty and arbitrarily targeting. It's pathetic. I want to know if these losers ever admitted that they killed off their "friend's" character just to get rid of them.
I had a GM who was kind of similar to the last story where they were so invested in their own world that they might as well have just written a novel. All throughout the campaign, every time there was a major story beat, one of his NPCs would be the reason it got resolved. It was never us. Sure we might help them to the conclusion they have to reach to fix whatever problem happens but we'd never directly resolve anything. At first, it seemed fairly normal. they asked each of us to make sure our character was connected to at least one of the npcs they'd made in a list. I picked whichever one I thought was most fitting and weaved a pretty dope story about being the adopted daughter of a great general. He was a really fun npc to interact with an at some point I was promoted to a rank with special reality breaking powers that were gifted to me by the church. I was fine by that even when he made it clear this was going to make me the party's "leader" of sorts. what I didn't realize at the time was that this would mean that every single major choice (which would then involve some NPC's doing random bullshit to push the plot forward) would come down to ME and that no one would be able to help beyond going "well the decision is yours." even as I tried to make a case that it was important everyone's voice was heard. What finally made me snap and realize I didn't want to play in the campaign was talking to another player and realizing that they'd promised her character's romance story to another player (who had since been booted from the game) and that's why they kept trying to push the two of them to talk more. This also led to me finding out a few other people had a *bunch* of problems with their DMing. I left kind of quietly not to cause a lot of drama. A lot of stuff changed in my life around that time so it was easy for me to just say that I would be far too busy to be in the campaign for now... and it turns out I made the right choice since apparently my character's vanishing wasn't even acknowledged.
I always try to work around this as a player during session zero with the DM. I try to avoid spoilers for a campaign they want to run, but I feel obligated to ask for context so a character I bring to the table makes sense for the story. I have two examples I provide to the DM: 1) I’d hate to make an ocean-based Druid with a water-dependent familar, all decked out for deep sea exploration… and the entire campaign takes place in the Sahara desert. 2) I’d hate to make a character who is really awesome for combating the undead, like vampires and zombies, for a campaign that doesn’t feature either. In essence, I try to ask the DM for the setting and genre without having to spoil anything if it can be helped. My method is roundabout, but establishing both the setting and the genre as the DM envisioned helps me as a player build a character that I will enjoy playing as and fits into the narrative organically.
These people had their fun ruined by other dungeon/game masters. D&D is ridiculously fun, and I absolutely would play with my friends again if given the chance. I once had a story scenario happen with my character who lost access to his paladin powers because of an internal conflict. And by some freak happenstance of the party being attacked by werewolves, he is the only one to contract lycanthropy. Would have been an awesome story to play out. Former paladin doing right by another deity and forgiving himself for failing his allies, even while afflicted by the werewolf curse.
The unbeatable encounter one - honestly I enjoy games where not every encounter is meant to be a winnable one. Especially with parties whose composition has a big weakness gap. That does need to be discussed and informed prior to the campaign though, but I wonder if that encounter with spell reflecting things against a spellcasting party was specifically an encounter that the party should have avoided, especially if the campaign wasn't railroading the players into encounters. Just seen a lot of times where players would deliberately do something stupid like "lets go fight this sleeping dragon at level one", then get all pikachu face when the encounter isn't "balanced" to their party and they all get one shotted.
Our DM had something called the Black Chip rule. If we did good he gave us Blue, green or red chips which acted as sort of inspiration. He banned inspiration in our 3.5 play. The Black chip would allow the DM to reverse a moment or event. pretty Much carte blanche. Well to make a long story short we decimated an encounter I guess he had his hopes of sort of 'putting these' players in their place. Safe to say, we destroyed the encounter and I one-hot-one kill his squishy Kobold mage. After the fight and loot, DM said nothing. It was close to end of session and everything seemed okay. Following week he dropped the black chip on us and reversed all our progress up to the cave entrance. DM's reasoning? Oh, he is the DM that is why. And it sounds exactly how it was said. Next week, two of the five left the table. Oh and I did not explain, the Black Chips are gained when we Rules Lawyer, say stuff the DM does not like etc.
That last sentence you wrote changes it a lot. You agreed to that system, so you had to expect that. Why did you continue to play once he told you at the beginning what a black chip was for? More importantly, why did he institute the black chip to punish you for being crappy players? Just warn you or talk to you [whoever] about their toxic behavior, and if it continues, boot your ass from the game, don't punish people in game for out of game things.
@@robinmohamedally7587 Oh diplomacy was attempted. I am not against the black chip in principle. But no one rule lawyered. We played the game. The players did not violate the rules we simply viciously overcame his encounter. On paper you expect the DM to be fair. That was not the case when we broke his encounter and used our heads.
The last DM I played with infuriated me with a BS ruling. I was a Paladin, and I got a Ring of 3 Wishes (with 3 wishes) and I wished that, once a day without expending a spell slot, to be able to cast Spirit Guardians at the lowest level, while still abiding by general spellcasting rules. I thought it was a very reasonable request. He asked me to roll for "spell effectiveness," which threw me off. I rolled pretty bad, and he ruled that I had one use of Spirit Guardians. I explained my interpretation of the rules and why I thought I was correct. He more or less told me to take it or leave. I left. He then harrys me for a week afterwards explaining why he's right and I'm wrong
That's so petty. It's amazing the rings some DMs will run around in just to avoid saying "look bro, that sounds cool, but imo that's too strong. Let's balance this, or choose something else."
@@Red_Devil_2011 It really was. My other two wishes I let a poll on Reddit decide, and apparently an invincible flying cow that shoots Chain Lightning from its udders is okay, but a cool spell that I otherwise wouldn't have access to isn't. Like, wtf
@@cloakersmoker Apparently you and I are the idiots. You simply should have clarified that your Spirit Guardians were flying cows with lightning udders. XD
@@Red_Devil_2011 I usually try to get creative when describing what my Spirit Guardians look like. For example, Gizmo the Gremlin in that little pink Barbie Jeep just running over people, the little green army men running around blasting things, or the offensive line of my favorite football team tackling the bad guy
Not me but a story I read/listen In short this player left because the dm and some players were bullying him and discriminating him. The reason? Op was blind and dm couldn’t/wouldnt allow him to play a character that could see, so every perception check was made with disadvantage due to out of game impairment
Ex DM here. Not sure if this counts, but I got my entire group to quit via Messenger. I had 6 players. Night before 4th session of CoS, two players tell me they can't make it. I said ok, the remaining 4 can still go on, you'll have plot armor, etc. They demanded I cancel the session. I said no, there's no reason the other 4 can't play. They both quit the campaign and called me a terrible friend. Next morning, I ask the others if they are still good to play. Two more drop out for not accommodating the first two. Bit of a shock as I thought I'd stood up for them to make sure they still got game time. Last two players were my wife and teen, and we just said F it.
I agree with the two on this. Don't exclude members from a session just because they can't make it, especially if they are missing it due to circumstances outside their control. Reschedule or cancel, it's not that hard.
I agree with you on this thinking. Cancelling a session because someone didn’t make it can sometimes lead to the campaign falling apart. I’ve seen so many times where someone says that they want to play, but then never plays because they have work at all waking hours of the day. It sucks for them, but the rest of the group shouldn’t suffer because of one/two people, in my opinion at least.
@@HumanoidDerplingDude, it *is* that hard to reschedule, sometimes you're going to miss a game, that's how life works, you shouldn't expect the rest of the group to work around your convenience.
@@markusnixon3156 In a DND game, everyone plays a crucial role, both mechanically and socially. While the DM can preform the player's mechanical functions, this player cannot experience this section of the story, nor can he or she interact with the environment for that section of the story. It's wrong to deprive even one person of a session just because it's less convenient to reschedule.
@@HumanoidDerpling Except you're ignoring one crucial detail, *it's a game,* life happens, deal with it, if some groups only played D&D when everyone could play, some groups would never play D&D, you can't expect the DM to carry your schedule, just because you get major F.O.M.O., a game is about having fun, and if you can't have fun occasionally missing out, that's on YOU to discuss that with your DM, you're not entitled to them fitting your schedule.
My dm let another party member eat me and trap me in a impossible to get out of dimension in doing so I could only get out if he summoned me and if I did he fully controlled my character forever this was my first campaign
Play HALO. I think I talked about this DM before in the comments section of this channel, but I'm still salty so I will always complain about this guy. XD Anyway, the DM was a narcissistic ass who liked to play puppet-master with the group. He insisted that the whole group (everybody) show up at his place at 7 PM for game, on whichever day he decided he wanted to play. I wouldn't have had an issue with that if we actually played at 7 PM. No, we all got there and he sat on his couch playing HALO for three hours while we all sat around bored. We weren't even allowed on the couch, because it would disturb his playing. We weren't allowed to talk about the game or work on our characters without his input, and he wasn't talking until he was "done" playing his game. At most, we were allowed to draw our characters because he was an "artist" and liked to critique our work. When we got hungry we made or ordered food, of course, whatever we made or ordered, we had to get some for him. When he did start the game (around 10-10:30) he would insist we play until the early hours of the morning, like 3-4 AM. We were all unemployed at the time (layoffs at our job) which meant we had "time to kill", but also, playing DnD until 4 AM on any given day of the week, made it awfully hard to schedule interviews. He didn't start out like this, and we ended up in a "frog in boiling water" situation, but when I did realize how he was manipulating us, I was done. I literally walked in, saw that he was playing HALO again and I was like "Here's my character (folder) I'm done."
Its not that i walked away but rather my negative reaction to it caused the game to die I was the forever DM of a group and i did a lot of risky plays that couldve been party wipes, but played them in a way where the party was always able to just barely scrape out a victory. It was a careful balancing act i had mastered over the years. One of my players wanted to host a game, and i was happy to play a character for once! But it was clear he was trying a lot of my difficult strategies, which worried me because this was only his second campaign. Long story short, he ends up isolating my character, trying to put me in one of those fights, and a character i was really invested in died. I admit i shouldve played it with more grace, but i pointed out how there was no way for me to survive that. He got defensive, tryinf to say i had plenty of options, and i just go "You're trying to use my style, but you didnt add a single out for equalizer. I tried everything. YOU didnt balance this correctly and my character has to die for that." He didnt take this well at all, and even though i designed a new character, he never ran another session. I went back to being the DM and that player was eventuallt kicked out for interpersonal conflicts. I still feel bad for going hard on him.
I had a DM, who tried to screw us over all the time. We did not get paid for missions, our enemies were carefully handpicked to counter us and every NPC we interacted with was an absolute nightmare. He also never let us role things. We had to act it out and if he thought, we acted well enough we succeded, but he never was convinced so every sotial interaction failed and we got no rewards or in trouble.
Not a TTRPG, but I was invited by some friends to join my university's only LARP group. There was one particular student in the group who took it upon themselves to enforce "historical accuracy" for a fantasy LARP setting, and so refused to let me participate because I had blue jeans on, and I needed to come back with something earth tone like Khakis. This was a problem for three reasons. First is the obvious - It was my first day, I had been invited by other group members who knew I didn't have other clothes, and most of the group thought it was fine. This one student, however, could bitch anyone's ear off if they didn't bend the knee, and was prepared to hold up the entire day just because of my pants. Second reason it was a problem was the field was muddy, and my only khakis were part of my Sunday Best for church. So there was no way I could justify going home and switching into those anyways. Third was the supposed "historical accuracy". I had literally done an essay for one of my classes about textiles, and I knew for a fact denim (serge de Nimes) was invented CENTURIES before Khakis, and that blue clothing was extremely popular among the merchant and worker classes of the middle ages. But no, in this idiot's mind, color must be reserved for royalty - take a guess what this person's station in the game was. Yeah. Royalty. They were literally pulling a "Rules for thee, not for me" because I was new. So it was a combination of these three factors that led to me walking off the field and never going back.
I've been binging these recently since i've been playing DnD again, and i know nobody's mentioned probably but: *And my Neurons activated when i heard Cave Story music in the intro's Ad and thought i was hearing things* _+10 pts for being a true gamer_
Shadowrun 6th Edition. I made a Decker (Hacker) character and the Johnson (employer) tasked my character to get the list of current employees from the local convenience store. For some reason, the DM not only made a Data Bomb explode in my character's face, but this alerted Black IC. Needless to say, my character died a horrible death. I gathered my things, got up and walked away when the DM suggested I build a new, non-Decker and non-Technomancer character.
I know the feeling of campaign 1. nobody else is a good dm so you take it up yourself. My first DM's were: a pork fetishist, a power game enabler and someone who hated me and wanted to make everything hard for me. Haven't had a player walk out of my own game yet and I'm happy to report at least most of my campaigns are well received by my players.
On the topic of purify food and water. I would only allow it if, and I do mean IF, it comes with the expectation that I can use it on them. Anything broken or stupid that doesn't outright work on rule of cool will either be shutdown or be used against the player. It's one of the few compromises for early game insta wins. Anything that you can do, so can others in the world you are in. Edit: Forgot some words like the idiot I am.
Man that purify food and water one sticks in my craw for how often it or something similar has cropped up at a table I play at or run. I'm all for creative spell use but it's so laughably annoying that everyone tries to make cantrip and low level spells instant death effects rivaling power word kill
It wasnt that I got up from the table. Or even that I eventually left the game. But one of my DMs has a history of nerfing mechanics that he doesn't understand. Early in my D&D career this DM had started a Clone Wars era Star Wars 5th Edition game with a few friends. Due to schedule conflicts i couldn't join in the first session but had my character made and time free for the 2nd or 3rd session of the game. I rolled up a heavily armed and armored aftermarket B-1 battle droid fighter that made heavy use of the "burst" mechanic (a weapon property in SW5E that lets you target an area with your weapon like a 10ft. cube spell AOE rather than rolling to hit one target while expending more ammunition.) Now, because this character was built around guns and the burst mechanic specifically I made sure the DM was aware of my plan and he okayed it. The next session rolled around and i'm ready to go. The party stops in at a hutt trading base to pick up a contract and get handed my character "13" along with it since 'we don't want him and he complains a lot' (something i approved in advance.) The party isn't too sure what to think of 13 at first but are at least happy to have him along as a bolt sponge if nothing else. Now 13 had the Star Wars equivalent of an Lmg and a backup sawn-off just incase we ran into any 'jedi scum' (It was a seperatist aligned party.) Both weapons of course having the burst property so he could make proper use of his fighting style and feats. After we get where we're going we end up in a fight against 3 tightly clustered groups of low CR clone troopers. I'm grinning as I realize 2 of these groups are within my range and I can make use of my precious new mechanic and see just how feasable it is. The rest of the party take their single attacks from cover and while a few of the clones move before my turn they stay in their groups just enough that I can get 4 of them with 1 burst attack. I start my turn, ready a suitably B-1 sounding battle cry, pop up from behind the crate i'm using for cover, take aim with my heavy repeater and- DM "Burst doesn't work like that" Me 'what?' "Burst has to have 1 square within melee range of you to work otherwise its too far away" 'Uh.. Hold on. According to the website its any point within the effective range of the weapon, which, they're in' "No burst only works if its close to you" '... Okay fine whatever' By this point I knew better than to sit there and argue with any of my DMs at the table and just decided i'd bring it up after the session. Still wanting to capitalize on my droid's particular set of skills I ended up charging the group of four like a hellfire droid that's run out of ammo and using the ability at melee range like the DM insisted. At which point... DM "okay well since you're shooting at a target within 5ft the two that are the closest to you get advantage on their DEX saves" Me 'Wait what? I thought you just said this could only be used within melee range' "Yes, but you're trying to shoot someone right next to you wich gives you disadvantage to hit, and since it's a saving throw instead of a to hit roll means they get advantage to avoid it" 'Then what's even the point of this weapon ability?' "Honestly, I don't know. I kinda thought it was weird when you picked that as your main focus" After silently pulling some hair out and nearly getting killed in the first round of combat due to barely doing anything after getting massivly out of position the session ended and I very nearly quit the game. Fortunatly between sessions I was able to find the exact text for how the burst feature was meant to work and convince him to revise his ruling. Also I feel like I got my DM back later. After we switched sides (against my will) and started helping the jedi win the war against the seperatists. Thanks to a critical deception roll I convinced the B-1 units inside of a super tank that their optical sensors were damaged and they were firing on friendly targets; prompting the commander droid inside to open the hatch only to have our mandolorian bounty hunter chuck a grenade inside from above and 1 round the boss fight. Of course that brilliant deception can't be mentioned without bringing up "Beeptonk the jawa mechanic" who cast overheat (the star wars tech casting equivalent to "heat metal") on the tank and giving advantage to my deception.
I had someone like that in a game I played too, but he wasn't the DM. The campaign started lvl 9 and my character was a paladin with blind fighting, so she had blindsight. Her incredible damage output, aura of protection and blindsight saved the party many times, as a lot of combats were pretty difficult and the DM liked to use magical darkness and invisible enemies to ambush us. Then there was this dude playing a rogue who would pick fights with me every session about how "divine smite too op" and "blindsight too op" and the dm shouldn't allow these; funnily enough he never complained about my aura of protection saving his ass all the time; and that if he was the one dm'ing he wouldn't allow anyone to be a paladin or have blindsight (every time I'd think "thank god you're not the one DMing, huh?"). Anyways, it was clear he just didn't want me to shine, he even admitted it to the monk player one day when I wasn't in the call. He thought rogue was the highest damage dealer in D&D 5e and that's the reason he picked a rogue, so he was disappointed my character was faring far better in combat than his. And I did try to explain to him numerous times that rogues are a utilitarian class in higher levels, not DPS, and that he should shine with skills in general, where my character wouldn't be nearly as good as his even if I picked a bunch of feats for that. That group, including the DM, were kinda new to D&D 5e and didn't know a lot of rules/mechanics (I even thought the sorcerer was a wizard for a looooong time cuz he refused to use metamagic or any of his subclass features...), but I was new in that group, had been playing and DMing 5e for years and knew my stuff, so sometimes when the DM didn't know what to do about a certain situation I'd explain the rule to him so he could make a decision, and this guy kept interrupting me, despite not knowing the rule, and just wouldn't let the DM say what his decision on the matter was, instead trying to argue with me about mechanics he simply didn't understand most of the time. My wife was trying to to convince me to leave that game and I remember the two of us discussing if he was doing that to me because I was the only woman in that group, but I guess I'll never know. Needless to say, the campaign didn't last long, and I left that group.
...okay so I commented this on the "Most Unfair Thing A DM Did To You", but Imma say it here because a simpler version is fair. Basically in an RP I was invited to, there was a thing called Wild Magic. 1/1,000 for anything from "you're rich" to "you painfully mutate into something else". My characters were immune because the imagery was rather uncomfortable to risk given how many of them really were rougher results. On April 1st of 2023, the host was like "okay Im tired of your dudes being immune, from noe on its gotta be like a temporary immunity". Literally, nobody had a problem with it until now, and even after the resulting rule, the moral consensus was "dude, c'mon, nobody cared". It basically became a drama fest when my "I won't bring my characters here anymore", which led to me being rather unfairly banned from the server, and honestly, since then I've actually been able to hear myself think. The host wasn't a bad guy, but the sudden change of idea because Wild Magic was contained now is rather upsetting.
Was trying to start with a friend's playgroup back in the early 2000's, I show up and show their DM my character sheet and he tells me he didn't allow wizards or clerics (my character was a wizard) and that I'd have to playa level 0 torchbearer npc for the entire campaign because I "didn't show up prepared with a suitable character". I didn't even bother to call out his bullshit, I just told my buddy I'd talk to him later and left.
Friend was a DM in a homebrew campaign. He told us that we had to control the NPCs during combat. There were 11 of them. It took me 2 hours to get to my Character's turn. I left after that session
3.5- My party encountered a group for gorilla-monster-things. I was playing a Hexblade and so had Charisma and all its associated checks stacked out the wazoo. We were pretty beat up, so I decided I was going to Intimidate them, because in most cases, when you Intimidate an animal, they either back off because you're not worth the trouble or they get scared and run off. I successfully (?) Intimidate them, only for them to kidnap me because apparently....it really turned them on. Like *REALLY* turned them on, if you catch my drift. They had really high movement and my party couldn't keep up with them. My Winter Wolf couldn't keep up with them, and they have a speed of 50ft. You can bet I left the table right then and there. That DM's really crappy ruling for how that Intimidate went, not to mention, utterly creepy behavior made D&D not very palatable for me for a decade or so.
Made a house rule that characters not present for important conversations should leave the table as to facilitate more fun "reveal" moments when present characters choose to tell important character information. As the player for an absent character, this made me leave the table immediately.
@@tylercrissman847 It was very hilarious then. If it wasn't I didn't want to say anything, cause I had a dm who did something similar and I actually liked it. You just told the joke too well, I started believing you lol
If I was the DM of a group that tried the purify food and water thing... I'd allow it, and then use it against them later. If you're going to cheese the in-world mechanics with semantics like that, the dm is allowed to do it back to you. Or the deity presiding over that type of magic would get incredibly pissed at them for using it like that and they're now the enemies of a god that's cursed them to ether never use magic of that sort again or have it backfire on them when they try to use it.
Another player took over DMing for a few weeks while the normal DM was writing the stuff for the next phase of the campaign. I was a Wood Elf monk. Everyone else was a caster. All the enemies exploded when they died and even monk abilities that launched enemies back would still have them explode point-blank. Then I got cursed and turned from a Wood Elf for the +5 movement speed to a gnome for -5 movement speed, meaning an overall drop of 10. Yeah. No. I left the entire group.
Have a fellow player who walked away from a dragon ball dnd game since taking a scale off a dragon was too gruesome. Now he has to stop my character from collecting ears for a necklace and collect parts for a flesh golem.
How do you even play DnD if theoretically taking a fictional scale off a fictional dragon is too much? Like how do you even attack, swinging a sword at a guy once is already more gruesome then removing a scale
@@valarmis that was what he was saying. Apparently they are in the Y7 dragonball world. The dragon didn’t die he was just sent to another dimension lol.
Weird question here, but anyone remember a video about an encounter involving the use of modify memory? It was something about a bard living in a small village and villagers with weird memory loss problems. Would love to get the title to it.
Left a party when the DM was making enemies that were clear surrogates for people in real life he didn't like or more so (ex GFs, ex BFFs). Was not going to be a party to a pseudo-serial killer.
A little melodramatic, don't you think? Holy shit, 6 other drama queens liked your comment. Soft, sensitive people. I'd think the DM was a little nuts or petty or whatever, but as long as the game was fun, that wouldn't bother me.
@@robinmohamedally7587 A little melodramatic for leaving a game because the DM creeped them out, really? There are far less valid reasons people have left games that are still valid.
It ened up being fine but my dm decided she no longer wanted champion fighters meaning i needed to change and we ended up having a great decision but at the time i walked away and took probably a hour figuring it out in my head once i did that i spoke to the dm she was very reasonable about letting me being a paladin with a arc going into a warlock and i cant say a year later it was awsome
There was a dm that made me lose interest in session one. Started as a Druid in decent to avernus, got into the city but got into a fight in an inn. I tried to cast grasping vines (2 players already downed by this point) and he said I couldn’t cast it because I was indoors, magical vines ffs. I was then downed as casting was still my action and I could do nothing else.
I joined a in progress campaign but my first session there was only one other player who was also new. We head for town, travelling on a path in an open area with a few trees 20ish feet off of the path. The dm asks us for a perception check and fail so he started describing how my character was now lost, going in circles around a lone tree and my companion hadn't noticed and it took her several checks to notice and I hadn't noticed in game. What was the result of my roll? Nat1? less than 0? Nope it was a 12
Not just the DM, but almost the entire party, I was at a friend's house, she's the same age as me, and we were playing D&D, and the session felt super linear since the parents were also playing, but it was only bad because of the fact that they were treating me like I had never played D&D before due to me only being 15, now, allow me to introduce myself to you, dear reader, I have been playing D&D for 5 years MINIMUM, and I am writing my own homebrew D&D based game that has been being written for those 5 years, so I have played plenty of D&D, considering 33% of my life has been spent on it. That campaign lasted 2 sessions before I told them what was up, and their stupid excuse was "well we didn't know". The kicker is that their daughter also has experience with D&D and has been playing for years, and she's, again, my same age. What agist parents. Edit: No, before anybody asks, me and this girl are not dating, and yes, we're still friends.
My players do try to exploit spells. Not mad about it in fact it’s fun sometimes because I will allow it to turn their strategy against them. However generally to save time you may try I will make a call a 1st level spell will not kill someone because you thought of a way to exploit biology. Game balance is important to me and I don’t like to make things too easy.
When the gm changes a fundamental rule of a feat because he didn’t like it. The feat in question was alert. The rule he changed was: Other creatures don't gain advantage on attack rolls against you as a result of being unseen by you. It’s like one of the core rules of the feat. The rest of that session really didn’t go well either… I really don’t remember much of it other than it felt very much gm vs player so I didn’t like it very much.
this exchange: DM: "because you're playing as a kobold, your character has been instantly killed by the attack. no death saves because beast races don't deserve them." me: "then why did you let me be a kobold?" DM: "just because I let you pick a race doesn't mean I can't be a racist towards it whenever I want." other player: "that makes no sense." DM: "neither do death saves when you get skewered through the face by a polearm." me: "you literally focused my character in every fight so far." other player: "yeah, that's kinda shitty of you, man." DM: "well, that's how d&d works. my campaign, my rules." other player: "except you literally changed the rules just to target the kobold." DM: "because kobolds are a shitty race and deserve racism." me: "Alright then, your majesty, what race should I make my next character for you to not treat me like shit?" DM: "if you don't want to be treated like the autist you are, play an elf." other player: "THAT'S your reason!?" me: "that's it, i'm out. targeting my kobold is one thing, but singling me out over a disability is where I draw the line."
Oh, I have one. Aside from the idiotic rule for getting nat 1 on attack rolls make you hit your allies with questionable physics, the homebrewed invisible status is just plain stupid. Because he insists invisible is broken (Believe you auto become hidden after having invisible status) and just make a very convoluted way to by pass it, which makes materials worse.
Hearing these stories, even though they're about bad things make the game sound really interesting, but I don't think I'd ever want to only play like once per month or play the whole campaign for a year or more. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have the patience for it.
The purify thing should only work if you genuinely view the subject as food. So like, does this character normally eat goblins? If so, then yes, I think it should technically work.
Jeez... what crappy DMs man. I remember getting into D&D for the first time when 3.5e was the main thing. I ended up coming into the campaign mid-story, but the DM managed to find a way to integrate me into the campaign seamlessly. He was fair, if a bit sadistic. But my DM always had ways for my character to get out of whatever pickle he ended up in.
That last one. ERP is iffy, not a great idea but can work I guess. Private ERP is something else entirely. ERP with a 16 year old is Pphilia. Don’t do it folks.
one time a DM allowed one of the players to be a white dragon, that was literally a pancake. they had no limitations on anything except that you couldn't be over 7 feet tall, soooooo pancake dragon
My dm at a crucial part of my characters story just kinda pushed it aside and made way for a hasty Christmas special and leveled us up from 8 to 12 Quit because I felt like I was sidelined and felt like nothing was truly earned overall because that happened many times but that's the moment I said "no"
I had a campaign coming up and I have the one player who uses the best classes, feats, and race, who bulldoze most of the campaign I bring up. I say we're doing a session 0 where we rely on the dice to randomize what race, class, stats, etc. And he instantly walks out and says it's not gonna be fun.
Yeah that's absolutely awful. You're taking away any semblance of player agency just because you don't know how to balance encounters for optimized builds? You're a bad DM and a lazy person. Quit.
I mean I didn't walk away from the table but I had to scarp my character I was a white dragonborn who's ultimate goal was to kill all silver dragonborns (genocide) my dm didn't mind that till we got to New party members who where silver dragonborn and my dm put in the strick no pvp rule so I could not complete my goal and then because of this my ideal we I will not care for the safety of others, so when I went to caste a thunder spell in a flooded room and my dm stopped me as it will hit my party so I ended up creating a new character
Is this saying the dm was right for the bar? If so, then the answer is the character had lived in the city for 20 years, so logically he'd have known which bars he was safe in, especially since he was looking for bars he was a regular in. If you are on the players side, then I fully agree and please disregard my entire comment.
@@thekingnerd6639 The story implied that the DM was being an absolute asshole. The DM added the bar through an asspull. His character would absolutely NOT be a regular in an anti-alien bar. If I were the DM, I wouldn't do that. Player characters need to be _alive_ to advance the story. Edit: Though I also understand that characters can die to advance the story as well. Though that should be between the DM and the player.
The story about purfy water not being a levle 1 power word kill, GM dodged a bullet there, i can only image how utterly boring and self stroking all their games are after that if theu found a GM that acomadated their god complexes.
I had a dm who made a custom status effect that (Get this) ACTIVATED WHEN U PLAYED THE CLASS HOW U WERE SUPPOSED TO a spell caster would get it for casting spells, a barbarian would get it for using rage, a rogue would get it for being hidden, u get the point. I left after the first session because it was bs
DM allowed us to have a special ability/item that set us apart. Another player chose fire resistance. Second session, DM pulls out an enemy that uses fire damage that ignores fire resistance. When asked how, they said "it's not fire, but it's fire damage". I stood up for this person I barely knew and contested the DM, even gave the DM the out of "they had Elemental Adept for Fire", which was still ignored. Other player and I left before next session. I'm not gonna play with a DM who gives us a feature/item to make us unique, only to bullshit their way past it. (Also, for those curious about mine, pocketwatch that grants the effect of a Potion of Fire Giant Strength; 1 charge, 1 week recharge. I was a grappling Beast Barb, and this was prior to Giants Barb)
If a GM makes a ruling that makes no logical sense and explicitly violates RAW "because it's cool" I walk away. I don't respect any game in which the only rule that matters is Rule of Cool.
In an effort to make martial combat less boring, our DM bought out a list of critical hits for martial attacks, divided into separate tables to match what kind of damage the attack did, which gave the attacker an added effect based on a percentile roll. It was amusing for a while seeing these crits being traded back and forth, but then a potential insta-kill was rolled: a slashing attack that would behead the target if they weren't wearing a helmet. After hearing that, I stood up mid-session, repeating the word 'nope' several times in rapid succession as I did so, and walked off. Another in that group came to find me ten minutes later when my turn came up, and we finished out the session relatively peacefully, but it took me a couple of days to find the words to properly articulate to them that any game where a PC's life and death can be decided at the drop of a hat based on what their character class can or can't use, is not a game for me. All such insta-kills were struck from the list from then on.
@@muhrichard8634 The contents of the crit-list were only shared with us as the rolls were made, but if you can think of a way for a monk and a sorcerer to justify retroactively deciding that they packed helmets before teleporting to the middle of nowhere, feel free to take your time machine back a couple years and tell it to me then. /s
@@muhrichard8634 I'll try to remember that if this scenario comes up again (unlikely), but the focus of my core point in this remains the same: any game where the lack of a specific proficiency that some characters can't get in the first place leaves that character with no chance at all of survival, isn't a game I have any interest in playing. If for example the piercing insta-kill on that list had struck through the heart, stopped only by medium armor or better, I'd have been packed up and out the door in two minutes flat, 'nope'ing all the way home.
Yes. My character ended up dying and turning undead. My party bard got the True Resurrection spell via magical sevrets and used it. Our DM told us that the soul of my character did not wish to return. No roll was made. I was not asked if my character would want to come back (and he had two big reasons to want to come back, ie. He was engaged to the party bard and was the adopted older brother of our party's barbarian). The DM simply did not want my cleric to come back because he didn't like that my cleric acted more like the classical flirty bard. So all three of us quit his game and went on to get a better DM.
Honestly, if your DM takes your agency by saying that you don't want to resurrect is a dick move.
Having a campaign with permanent deaths is one thing, but this is so shameful that it should have a warning on the local store so other people can know.
Wow, that dm can fuck right off with that. Good on ya to stand up and leave right there.
DM isn't supposed to tell you what your character wants. The DM can tell you what you see, hear, etc., and how something appears, but the DM should never tell you what your character wants. That is for you to decide, not the DM. I'm glad you got away from that DM.
In that purify session, I think that player watched the most recent season of goblin slayer, because that's how they used the purify spell and it turned the blood of one of the goblins into pure drinkable water.
Except this was not a spell directed specifically at water. This was to cleanse status conditions.
The priestess viewed the goblin as impure and revolting just before she cast the spell, and since she viewed it as impure, it turned its blood into drinkable water.
Makes sense, but one's an anime, and another's a highly rendered game. And those two are not mutually exclusive unless you really work into it with Homebrewing.
Guess we'll just have to give them benefit of the doubt as people who didn't want the rules to ruin their fun, which I know works for some D&D groups. But it's like the OP said, it's a mystery how their games were always played when they believed they had a 1-kill shot spell at such a low-level. The game would get boring real fast from my POV.
@@girl1213simple straightforward ruling: "the blood in a creature's body is an attended object and thus not subject to spell effects that don't target creatures without the consent of the attendee"
@5bars3g36 To be fair.
The reason the blood itself turned to water was because it was the goblin's blood that she was examining when she declared that it was impure and revolting. That's why the purify spell reacted the way did in the anime.
Maybe! But it's worth noting that 'technically you can kill someone with [insert utility spell here]' has been around as a D&D meme longer than Goblin Slayer has existed as a property.
Yeah, had an adversarial DM at one point.
Played a barbarian whose class features just didnt work becuase he said so. Rage only ends if the minute duration expires, you end it yourself, you go unconscious, or you havent attacked or haven't recieved damage since your last turn.
DM had us in a combat where i got hit several times and told me the damage, i said cool and because of rage that was all halved. He asked which feature specifically allowed me to do that and then said the first attack that hit me took me out of rage for some reason. I was really pissed but put it to the side because he was trying to explain it - whatever.
Danger sense gives you advantage on dexterity saving throws versus effects you can see such as spells and traps and is only ever negated if you are blinded, deafened, or incapacitated.
In the middle of combat, i was hit with a spell that requires dexterity saving throw and he noticed i rolled twice. He asked why i was rolling with advantage and i pointed out my ability. He said i wouldnt benefit because the spellcaster was 'behind' me and i couldn't see him to react. Should've left then but swallowed my anger down and continued the campaign for the sake of some friends that were also at the table.
Feral instinct specifies that you have advantage on initiative rolls *PERIOD* and that if you are surprised, you may act normally on that round as long as the first thing you do is enter rage.
Another situation of just rolling twice and the DM was asking why i was rolling initiative with advantage and i pointed out my feature again. He told me it doesnt work that way as i was surprised and i wouldnt get to roll twice. I pointed out to him the surprised state of combat doesnt incur a penalty or disadvantage on initiative checks whatsoever and that i should get to roll with my adavntage. We went back and forth on it until he said he would only let me roll with advantage if i took a -10 penalty to my final total. This was a game at a gamestore i frequented so i stood up, collected my stuff, and left the store. Why let me play a class if you are going to be negating everything i get out of that class on a whim?
Another story, not dnd related, was a shadowrun 4e game at that same store. Was a newer DM and we were all new to the system. I remember we had a Technomancer (someone in tune with machine magic and hacking), a Magical Investigator (who uses magic to better their detective work), a Face and Street Racer (someone really good at the inbetween of combats and got us our first gig), and then Myself. I made a Juggernaught. In melee for shadowrun, a really popular build is an Street Samurai (chromed or not, someone who can slice and dice with the best of them aiming for a high dps and attack pool). I opted for the opposite extreme. I made a minotaur with a high body, all 4 limbs replaced with chrome, trained in unarmed combat and defensive techniques, and covered from head to toe with a shield and enough armor to suffocate any normal person. My ballistic and impact armor was insane and i could soak a ton of stun damage. Practically unkillable with conventional weaponry. But i had weaknesses to make this happen: i wasnt good at grappling or keeping footing, my resistance to magic was practiaclly nothing, any AR gear i had i kept off cause he'd get motion sick, i turned off all wireless control to my prosthetics and had everything wired directly incuring more fees if i went to get any of it fixed, and i had a mood problem. I could get set off on moments of blinding rage and just hand the DM control where i would attack anything i could see or hear nearby, friend or foe. So there was a lot more than straight damage that could incapacitate me (you could even just insult my mother and i'd have to roll or lose control).
Our first mission was a milk run. We go to point A, pick something up, and go to point B. Simple. Point A was a warehouse district with a chop shop we were supposed to go into and negotiate for our goods. We rock over there in our delivery van, the best vehicle for being inconspicuous while also spacious, and the garage doors open so we drive in. On exit and talking with our suppliers, we find out that they are tweekers who are low on smack, we find them itchy - looking at our expensive hardware and pristine vehicle, and we see this simple job start to turn as the reward for killing us is slowly outweighing the risk for trying. Our Face tried to talk them down. Failure.
Our Technomancer and M.I. immediately take cover in the van as guns are drawn. Our Face is ok with a pistol so they pull out their glock and fire off some shots. I myself grab a man jutting a gun in my face and tear him in half. To our left, a crate bursts open as drones fly out into the warehouse.
Heres where it went south. The DM said i start getting hacked. Im like, Huh? He repeated im getting hacked and starts going into that rule section to see what to do with me. I try to correct him and let him know - im not connected to any node, I have my limbs hard wired (offline), and, at most, they could hack my phone but that wouldnt do much. He thinks he understands (after the technomacer, who learned these rules, got my back) and says one of the drones latches to my arm and starts drilling in to get a direct connection (no checks, nothing). Now the entire table is arguing that thats not a thing really. Sure, he could drill through my armor and into my arm to damage me (given enough time) but im not something that could be hacked.
At this point, the DM is getting frustrated. Next round, he focuses all gunfire against me. No problem, i was built for this. He gets plenty of hits and says what would be a number that would kill anyone else in our group. But i am the Juggernaut - so i soak all the damage, taking only a single block of stun from a bad roll. He doesnt know what happened and questions me ruthlessly in the middle of the game to understand so i go over how the armor rules work for him. He tries to burn me, electocute me, make me choke on gasses, and melt me wiyh acid. I show him where all my money had gone and why i came out of char-gen with only a bow and some arrows. Im built to tank all of that and last as i had my gear custom made to protect against most of what he just used against me. Keep in mind, even one of these new attacks would have been serious if not fatal for any of our other party members. Finally, he resorts to explosives.
A tweaker jumps out of cover with a rocket launcher. Excusing all the other high tech stuff that these tweakers somehow were able to get, this is now absurd and we all know it. We call him out on it but he waves his hand and says they would absolutely have this, so, whatever. Come at me. And so he fires. Going into the book, he finds and Anti-Tank Missile Launcher and shoots me with it. After dice, i said cool, i soaked it all. DM is absolutely flabbergasted and demand the math from me and so i show him how you can build a character that can Darth Vader catch rockets with his fingers. Not looking at the book right now, so im a little fuzzy on exactly 'how much damage that missle was' but for the sake of argument, lets say it was 20. Our DM, in all his wisdom, said it was actually 200 instead. Pencils snapped, everyone looked around the table worriedly, and the DM announced i was dead and to not roll up a new character. I was stunned too as i knew what had happened - it wasnt only me who just died. A player leaned over to the DM and informed him that everyone within a block was either disintegrated or seriously injured.
You see, Explosive Range Drop Off is a beautiful phrase. For the sake of argument, you can say the missile loses 2 points of damage for every meter you are away from the center of the explosion. That missile, normally, would only have a chance of injuring something a max of 10 meters away. That missile now damaged everything as far as 100 meters away, still dealing 100 damage at even 50 meters away. It was a consensus at our table that he just leveled the building and killed everyone inside.
The DM just put his head down for a minute or two before raising his head and telling me to leave. I said gladly and picked up my stuff and left. Miss you, Goliath, old buddy. My juggernaught who was killed with an intercontinental ballistic missile from 7 meters away.
First guy: Definitely either power tripping or just very picky with his set of rules in *realism* which is bad.
Second guy: Man, I get if you're new you're gonna be challenged a bit with doing and roll/point accolation. But cmon, when half the table tell you one thing, you don't double down on the other! At the point of him targeting me, I'd have started snide commentary at him. The fact je killed everyone at the.table because of sheer stupidity and then asked you to leave because everyone agreed just shows he was angry and wanted to get rid of you because he blamed you for some reason. -_-
If only that second guy wasn;t an asshole about it, that would have been an awesome character introduction. You rip a guy in half and the rest of them start going at you with everything they have, only for it not to do shit.
Man, do you even know what the Shadowrun GM's beef with you was (pun fully intended)?
At the end of the day the 2nd guy is the dm he couldve just ignored the rules when it came to how explosive damage fall off works. Couldve said something like its a missile that implants the bomb into your skin. But better yet he couldve not tried to kill your character and made it a cool character moment and learned he would have to try harder to give yiur character a challenge.
@@Namelessstew I mean, it was the first combat encounter, right? This is where a GM is supposed to learn what the party can do so they can start figuring out how to balance encounters. If the party curb stomps? Fine. They get to feel powerful and show off, have a good time, you learn what they're prepared for and what to throw at them next time when they're overconfident, works well for the narrative of a group of newbies trying to make a name for themselves.
I don't understand the GM need to 'beat' the party on the very first encounter.
Started in a new group. The DM clearly wanted us to not do something to the NPCs all got perception and insight +99 and suddenly could teleport. Or so it seemed.
He was a new DM running a module to be fair. Personally I probably would have just said "If you do that you break the module. Feel free to do one we reach the city as the module can cope there". Sometimes honesty is the best policy. Especially if playing with adults.
"I will be writing your backstories."
Fukdat. Yeah Ill accept and even encourage two party edits.
Basically pbta
I don't even understand the player who got upset that purify water wasn't a one-hit kill. This isn't like the X-Men where someone with seemingly useless Powers becomes terribly overpowered with creative use. If it had worked, that first level spell would have killed every living thing instantly. Why would you even propose that, much less get upset when it didn't work?
That's what entitlement is
I could see it working (with Disintegrate stats) IF upcast, or cast on a tiny or smaller creature. Even then though, DM is perfectly in the right to say it doesn't work period.
@@DBArtsCreators "I cast purify food and water on the fairy to kill it."
"Purify food and water can't kill a creature!?"
"But Grug eats fairy, fairy is food!"
@@markusnixon3156
"Upcast to 7th level and we'll talk"
@@DBArtsCreators "I upcast to 9th level against the Storm Giant, I'm sure it's food to something!" 😆 I don't know why but I just find the idea of upcasting Purify Food and Drink to be hilarious.
8:10 "Hmm, this player that's completely new to the group and doesn't have any rapport with the other players is kinda quiet... I KNOW! I'll make him fight two random civilians and then have the guard and other PCs kill him! That'll get him to open up more!"
The next day: "Why does no one wanna join my games now?"
How about “characters who don’t fit DnD and why”. Example: Imai Cosmo is a grappling martial artist and unfortunately DnD refuses to let grappling shine
God do I know that feel. There's just so much not facilitated by 5e.
I had to really struggle to create a good grappling Character. What I got was a simic-hybrid beast barbarian. Simic-hybrid lets you get grappling claws at lvl 5. You can grapple as bonus action instead of an action. Then Lvl 6 beast, you get a feature to help you jump higher, easily a minimum of 10 feet and SImic-hybrid has a feature that lets you reduce fall damage calcs by 100 ft.
Basically you grapple enemy. Jump up and fall to make them take fall damage and be prone. Since they're grappled they can't stand up. Attack at advantage till they die.
A poison mage that doesn’t suck absolute donkey
@@MajuGen I love this.
@@MajuGen neat but still dosnt cathc what a martial artist should be. D&d is very limited in that aspect
Session 0, find out the DM has given the druid full plate (with proficiency) with a greataxe (with proficiency) and the dude is coincidentally also an enormous man child. Go figure.
Something like that happened to me, the DM gave the druid some feats that were not at PHB and when I wanted some of them he just said:"im just using PHB"
Yes a few weeks ago a dm tried to rule that the party and I wouldn’t get surprise or advantage because and I quote “ I can’t deal with dread ambusher, sneak attack, advantage and surprise” even when we used spells and resources making sure a place the bbeg frequented in the campaign and make sure every other guard was either sleep or unalive (potion in water supply or magically) and the dm knew we were planning to do that since the session prior
9:50 As soon as it said teenager and "a group of my older brother's friends" I knew exactly where this one was going. They WANTED him to leave, he was an "outsider", not part of the group, even after a few months of playing with them. I saw it happen (to me, and to other friends) several times.
For me it was one of my first DnD games.
I joined a west marshes type campain.
First session was a bit of a dud as everything my Bard could do someone else in the party could do better.
Anyway played another few sessions really invested in my Character.
Then one session we were investigating a clearing infornt of a cave and my PC being a bit cautious decided to hang back a bit and low and behold it was an ambush !!!
Well on other Character died dispite us trying to help him he was stright up ganged up on and butchered.
After the session the DM said
'I was going to kill a PC today and wanted to kill my Bard but I never stood where I was a target so I killed another instead'
I just thought ...what a D-head and never came back.
Wait, so your bard, a jack of all trades, was a master of none? 😏
Was the DM’s name Xplosionman?
Stabby the Rouge. I have never heard a better Rouge name.
What's a Rouge? Is that a subclass of Rogue?
@@Suiki1 nah man it's a subclass of blanche
@@somerandomguy-3102 isn't it a subclass for scarlet?
It's a subclass of makeup.
Rogue* you buffoon.
We were using the army rules from Pathfinder: Ultimate Campaign. The DM decided it wasn't "realistic" enough and took away all the abilities that ranged armies had, because reasons and wouldn't listen to any arguments otherwise. Basically took out the fun of it. He'd also do stuff like tell us we couldn't fit more of our own armies into a space and then proceed to cram thousands more bodies of our enemies into the same area where he'd just told us there wasn't room.
My dude. My guy. My dear brother in Christ. Nothing about this game needs to be realistic. It's a fantasy game. The more realism you force into it the harder the game becomes to play, not in the sense that the difficulty of the game itself becomes higher, but that we can't actually prepare for it, because we never know what other rule you're going to change or remove, next.
I was playing a fighter who had just reached level 5, the DM told me that I do not gain extra attack because my character didn't have a background in fighting, and so they wouldn't know how to properly do it
My character doesn't have the Hermit background, so I guess my guy just doesn't know how to be alone.
@@thispincer8404 Infinite friends hack.
For one game I was in my character (an outdoorsman with proficiency in survival, but not a ranger) had to follow tire tracks through the desert. DM said they were big and obvious so I rolled a survival check to follow them. I got like a 12 and the DM had me fight a random monster way above my level. I asked why and he said “I’m still punishing you for that terrible roll”. Like that’s one of the worst things for a DM to say “I’m punishing you for a roll”.
I actually did walk away from that game when I was 20 min late and walked in to my character being pranked with hot water and apparently peeing himself. Described in detail. My fighter nearly throttled the Ranger and actually considered killing her character just because this had been going on the whole campaign. I literally described my character nearly shooting them then storming off to go back to his forest forever. Specifically said anyone who follows will be killed (and he was 100% the strongest in the party so he could do it). It was just genuinely the stupidest thing I’d ever seen and that dude is a terrible DM.
waaaay back when, an old D6 based aliens/predator/colonial marine game, i forget the name of the ruleset.
we all set up our characters as per the rules, i asked to play as an android, as i was interested in playing the 'no violence' rule, GM agreed.
GM had us ambushed by a predator, while cloaked, in the first encounter of the campaign... bad enough...
first round, first action, pred shot at me with it's shoulder cannon, no rolls were made, no chance to dodge, he just described me getting shot and losing an arm, most of my lower torso, and both legs, then said 'you're an android so it didn't kill you'.
put away my dice, handed over the character sheet, and walked out. apparently, there wasn't a session 2, and 2 of the 5 other players were killed in the first encounter, not given the option to make new characters for that session and just told to wait and watch.
This reminds me of what had happened while I was away on holiday with ‘Ranger’ (fiancé). Because the main DM couldn’t continue with the campaign without me, (it was part of my Life Cleric’s story campaign), it was decided that someone else could do a one shot for that night. One of our newer people to join us was Scribe Wizard. He had been playing the game for YEARS, so everyone there more or less agreed to let him do the one shot. The night before on the chat, one of our players let everyone know she had lost her voice but was still able to come. Come the night, and everyone has a new LVL3 character to play as: Tempest Cleric (lost voice), Community Cleric, Bard (couldn’t remember which subclass) and I’m not sure what the main DM chose. What wasn’t realised at the time was, although we knew Scribe Wizard loved to RP as his character, he also wanted EVERYONE to RP for this one shot. Most of us are not very good with RP. Even though it was mentioned to him the day prior, Scribe Wizard still wanted Tempest Cleric to RP even though she couldn’t talk, even if it was to move a square. The boss they had to defeat was a type of demon. It was nearly a TPK. When I came back the week after (Ranger wasn’t feeling well), everyone was mulling over how the boss went after I asked about the one shot. They decided to check online and it turned out the demon was a very high setting for lvl 3 characters ( 3 or 5 star?) and everyone was shocked Scribe Wizard chose that as the last boss of the one shot.
Was playing a level 1 rogue in a sea world style game. By the time we finished the first session, we had killed an ancient white dragon, a kraken, and earned 200k gold. (not joking)
Then, the DM introduced his own DMPC at the end of the session as a sneak peak into the next session. His character was level 20 while ours were level 2. He had an armada and said he would take us under his wing and teach us the ways of the world.
I never returned.
Another game I was playing with my wife. We were players in this game. My wife tended to get everything. All the magical weapons, all the NPCs enjoyed her presence, etc. etc. So, during a fight, my wife's character, A warlock, goes down to 0 hit points. During the turn she gets hit by some splash damage and fails a Death saving throw. When it comes to her turn, she rolls her death saving throw. She rolls a nat 1; which basically means the character is dead.
The DM reaches over the table, picks up her dice, turns it some and then places it back down to a nat 20. My wife being who she is just states out right. "No, i'm dead. That is fine." The dm then stated, "But I have a lot of plans for your character in the future, I don't want them to be wasted."
After some internal discussion between the two of us, we never returned.
How in the world did you defeat a Ancient Dragon with level 2 Characters?😂
@@cliff1446 Because the DM mistook me threatening a NPC with me threatening the DM. Turned the NPC into an ancient dragon, then had another player one shot it with an arrow when I told him of his misunderstanding.
Once again, not joking.
worst dnd experience ive ever had was in high school. i had joined the school's Animanga (anime + manga) club. the teacher in charge (oh boi, this dude STAAAAAAANK like he never took a bath. ever!) had told the club that he would be DMing a BESM (big eyes small mouth) d20 game. we had a session 0 making characters and going over backstories. i wanted to make a Mecha pilot. i asked if mechas were in his world. he said they were. so i started making my backstory and as i did so i had asked about his world building. what was the state of the world? who was at war? racial tensions? all that stuff that would be relevant to my character as a military personnel for one of those countries that had mechas. well... do you know what the DM told me? "youll figure it out when we get started" needless to say, i had NOTHING, no names, NOTHING to work with.
session 1. 30 mins in im dead. permanently. my party ambushed me while i was asleep, tied me up, and shot me in the face. multiple times. they then threw my body in a river and took my mech. did i mention this is the FIRST and last game i ever played with this group. the whole time this happened, NONE of them said "sorry". ALL of them just laughed at me. the DM said, "cool. if you want to continue playing then you can make a new character. i dont care if you do or dont". basically NO ONE wanted me to play. two of those players DID stop playing with that group. turns out there was a murderhobo in the party and the DM liked him. he ended up killing everyone in the party except two players (both females btw). the two that left did play other campaigns with me and we had an excellent time.
the DM/teacher in charge, well lets just say after that incident i could tell that dude absolutely hated me. he was supposed to be the teacher in charge for my independent studies in discreet mathematics. he did not want to teach me shit. like when i told him about it he said, good luck. and i asked if he was going to teach me anything and he said, NO. well i went to the principal about it. he was forced to teach me and he did not try at all. lets just say, AUBREY KNIGHT FROM THE MISSISSIPPI SCHOOL FOR MATH AND SCIENCE === YOU ARE A DICK!
I was in the final fight of my Curse of Strahd Campaign the other night and we were using a different strahd stat block as per dm recommendation. The entirety of the fight was strahd running away from the party because our dm thought that he had 3 reactions that he could use whenever he wanted. ( replaces legendary actions). The entire time we are running around and strahd is running up walls and stuff and we can’t really get him down and this goes on for like 4 hours. I use an ability that knocks strahd prone while he is on the wall and instead of falling off he just is stuck to the wall. I didn’t leave but I was so close to just shutting down. We beta him eventually though so yippee.👏
That is straight up how vampires work when they fall prone, that's not a dm ruling, that's official
@@valarmis I mean he looked it up but it’s still bullshit in my mind like what bro falls prone on the wall goofy as hell.
@@cennerdobber8196 you wanted to leave his game because he was playing it by the rules? You're kinda ret@rded, aren't you?
@@cennerdobber8196 You’re just salty bro.
@@VidelxSpopovich yeah
11:55 I wish stories like this had a follow up. The stories that sound like the party didn't want to play with someone anymore, and instead of talking to him/her like an adult, they play through a whole set of sessions just being petty and arbitrarily targeting. It's pathetic. I want to know if these losers ever admitted that they killed off their "friend's" character just to get rid of them.
I had a GM who was kind of similar to the last story where they were so invested in their own world that they might as well have just written a novel. All throughout the campaign, every time there was a major story beat, one of his NPCs would be the reason it got resolved. It was never us. Sure we might help them to the conclusion they have to reach to fix whatever problem happens but we'd never directly resolve anything. At first, it seemed fairly normal. they asked each of us to make sure our character was connected to at least one of the npcs they'd made in a list. I picked whichever one I thought was most fitting and weaved a pretty dope story about being the adopted daughter of a great general. He was a really fun npc to interact with an at some point I was promoted to a rank with special reality breaking powers that were gifted to me by the church. I was fine by that even when he made it clear this was going to make me the party's "leader" of sorts. what I didn't realize at the time was that this would mean that every single major choice (which would then involve some NPC's doing random bullshit to push the plot forward) would come down to ME and that no one would be able to help beyond going "well the decision is yours." even as I tried to make a case that it was important everyone's voice was heard. What finally made me snap and realize I didn't want to play in the campaign was talking to another player and realizing that they'd promised her character's romance story to another player (who had since been booted from the game) and that's why they kept trying to push the two of them to talk more. This also led to me finding out a few other people had a *bunch* of problems with their DMing. I left kind of quietly not to cause a lot of drama. A lot of stuff changed in my life around that time so it was easy for me to just say that I would be far too busy to be in the campaign for now... and it turns out I made the right choice since apparently my character's vanishing wasn't even acknowledged.
I always try to work around this as a player during session zero with the DM. I try to avoid spoilers for a campaign they want to run, but I feel obligated to ask for context so a character I bring to the table makes sense for the story. I have two examples I provide to the DM:
1) I’d hate to make an ocean-based Druid with a water-dependent familar, all decked out for deep sea exploration… and the entire campaign takes place in the Sahara desert.
2) I’d hate to make a character who is really awesome for combating the undead, like vampires and zombies, for a campaign that doesn’t feature either.
In essence, I try to ask the DM for the setting and genre without having to spoil anything if it can be helped. My method is roundabout, but establishing both the setting and the genre as the DM envisioned helps me as a player build a character that I will enjoy playing as and fits into the narrative organically.
These people had their fun ruined by other dungeon/game masters. D&D is ridiculously fun, and I absolutely would play with my friends again if given the chance. I once had a story scenario happen with my character who lost access to his paladin powers because of an internal conflict. And by some freak happenstance of the party being attacked by werewolves, he is the only one to contract lycanthropy. Would have been an awesome story to play out. Former paladin doing right by another deity and forgiving himself for failing his allies, even while afflicted by the werewolf curse.
The unbeatable encounter one - honestly I enjoy games where not every encounter is meant to be a winnable one. Especially with parties whose composition has a big weakness gap. That does need to be discussed and informed prior to the campaign though, but I wonder if that encounter with spell reflecting things against a spellcasting party was specifically an encounter that the party should have avoided, especially if the campaign wasn't railroading the players into encounters. Just seen a lot of times where players would deliberately do something stupid like "lets go fight this sleeping dragon at level one", then get all pikachu face when the encounter isn't "balanced" to their party and they all get one shotted.
He had me roll a fear save against his werewolf DMPC and when I failed he had me piss myself
I did that to a player once but I had a friend playing the Alpha Werewolf instead of it being a DMPC.
I know exactly where the guys at 6:40 got that idea from, they watched/read too much goblin slayer 😅😂
Our DM had something called the Black Chip rule. If we did good he gave us Blue, green or red chips which acted as sort of inspiration. He banned inspiration in our 3.5 play. The Black chip would allow the DM to reverse a moment or event. pretty Much carte blanche. Well to make a long story short we decimated an encounter I guess he had his hopes of sort of 'putting these' players in their place. Safe to say, we destroyed the encounter and I one-hot-one kill his squishy Kobold mage. After the fight and loot, DM said nothing. It was close to end of session and everything seemed okay. Following week he dropped the black chip on us and reversed all our progress up to the cave entrance.
DM's reasoning? Oh, he is the DM that is why. And it sounds exactly how it was said. Next week, two of the five left the table. Oh and I did not explain, the Black Chips are gained when we Rules Lawyer, say stuff the DM does not like etc.
That last sentence you wrote changes it a lot. You agreed to that system, so you had to expect that. Why did you continue to play once he told you at the beginning what a black chip was for? More importantly, why did he institute the black chip to punish you for being crappy players? Just warn you or talk to you [whoever] about their toxic behavior, and if it continues, boot your ass from the game, don't punish people in game for out of game things.
@@robinmohamedally7587 Oh diplomacy was attempted. I am not against the black chip in principle. But no one rule lawyered. We played the game. The players did not violate the rules we simply viciously overcame his encounter.
On paper you expect the DM to be fair. That was not the case when we broke his encounter and used our heads.
The last DM I played with infuriated me with a BS ruling. I was a Paladin, and I got a Ring of 3 Wishes (with 3 wishes) and I wished that, once a day without expending a spell slot, to be able to cast Spirit Guardians at the lowest level, while still abiding by general spellcasting rules. I thought it was a very reasonable request. He asked me to roll for "spell effectiveness," which threw me off. I rolled pretty bad, and he ruled that I had one use of Spirit Guardians. I explained my interpretation of the rules and why I thought I was correct. He more or less told me to take it or leave. I left. He then harrys me for a week afterwards explaining why he's right and I'm wrong
That's so petty. It's amazing the rings some DMs will run around in just to avoid saying "look bro, that sounds cool, but imo that's too strong. Let's balance this, or choose something else."
@@Red_Devil_2011 It really was. My other two wishes I let a poll on Reddit decide, and apparently an invincible flying cow that shoots Chain Lightning from its udders is okay, but a cool spell that I otherwise wouldn't have access to isn't. Like, wtf
@@cloakersmoker Apparently you and I are the idiots. You simply should have clarified that your Spirit Guardians were flying cows with lightning udders. XD
@@Red_Devil_2011 I usually try to get creative when describing what my Spirit Guardians look like. For example, Gizmo the Gremlin in that little pink Barbie Jeep just running over people, the little green army men running around blasting things, or the offensive line of my favorite football team tackling the bad guy
Not me but a story I read/listen
In short this player left because the dm and some players were bullying him and discriminating him. The reason? Op was blind and dm couldn’t/wouldnt allow him to play a character that could see, so every perception check was made with disadvantage due to out of game impairment
Ex DM here. Not sure if this counts, but I got my entire group to quit via Messenger. I had 6 players. Night before 4th session of CoS, two players tell me they can't make it. I said ok, the remaining 4 can still go on, you'll have plot armor, etc. They demanded I cancel the session. I said no, there's no reason the other 4 can't play. They both quit the campaign and called me a terrible friend. Next morning, I ask the others if they are still good to play. Two more drop out for not accommodating the first two. Bit of a shock as I thought I'd stood up for them to make sure they still got game time. Last two players were my wife and teen, and we just said F it.
I agree with the two on this. Don't exclude members from a session just because they can't make it, especially if they are missing it due to circumstances outside their control. Reschedule or cancel, it's not that hard.
I agree with you on this thinking. Cancelling a session because someone didn’t make it can sometimes lead to the campaign falling apart. I’ve seen so many times where someone says that they want to play, but then never plays because they have work at all waking hours of the day. It sucks for them, but the rest of the group shouldn’t suffer because of one/two people, in my opinion at least.
@@HumanoidDerplingDude, it *is* that hard to reschedule, sometimes you're going to miss a game, that's how life works, you shouldn't expect the rest of the group to work around your convenience.
@@markusnixon3156 In a DND game, everyone plays a crucial role, both mechanically and socially. While the DM can preform the player's mechanical functions, this player cannot experience this section of the story, nor can he or she interact with the environment for that section of the story. It's wrong to deprive even one person of a session just because it's less convenient to reschedule.
@@HumanoidDerpling Except you're ignoring one crucial detail, *it's a game,* life happens, deal with it, if some groups only played D&D when everyone could play, some groups would never play D&D, you can't expect the DM to carry your schedule, just because you get major F.O.M.O., a game is about having fun, and if you can't have fun occasionally missing out, that's on YOU to discuss that with your DM, you're not entitled to them fitting your schedule.
I don't know how much compromising on any of these would help.
My dm let another party member eat me and trap me in a impossible to get out of dimension in doing so I could only get out if he summoned me and if I did he fully controlled my character forever this was my first campaign
Play HALO.
I think I talked about this DM before in the comments section of this channel, but I'm still salty so I will always complain about this guy. XD Anyway, the DM was a narcissistic ass who liked to play puppet-master with the group.
He insisted that the whole group (everybody) show up at his place at 7 PM for game, on whichever day he decided he wanted to play. I wouldn't have had an issue with that if we actually played at 7 PM. No, we all got there and he sat on his couch playing HALO for three hours while we all sat around bored. We weren't even allowed on the couch, because it would disturb his playing.
We weren't allowed to talk about the game or work on our characters without his input, and he wasn't talking until he was "done" playing his game. At most, we were allowed to draw our characters because he was an "artist" and liked to critique our work. When we got hungry we made or ordered food, of course, whatever we made or ordered, we had to get some for him.
When he did start the game (around 10-10:30) he would insist we play until the early hours of the morning, like 3-4 AM. We were all unemployed at the time (layoffs at our job) which meant we had "time to kill", but also, playing DnD until 4 AM on any given day of the week, made it awfully hard to schedule interviews.
He didn't start out like this, and we ended up in a "frog in boiling water" situation, but when I did realize how he was manipulating us, I was done. I literally walked in, saw that he was playing HALO again and I was like "Here's my character (folder) I'm done."
Its not that i walked away but rather my negative reaction to it caused the game to die
I was the forever DM of a group and i did a lot of risky plays that couldve been party wipes, but played them in a way where the party was always able to just barely scrape out a victory. It was a careful balancing act i had mastered over the years.
One of my players wanted to host a game, and i was happy to play a character for once! But it was clear he was trying a lot of my difficult strategies, which worried me because this was only his second campaign.
Long story short, he ends up isolating my character, trying to put me in one of those fights, and a character i was really invested in died. I admit i shouldve played it with more grace, but i pointed out how there was no way for me to survive that. He got defensive, tryinf to say i had plenty of options, and i just go "You're trying to use my style, but you didnt add a single out for equalizer. I tried everything. YOU didnt balance this correctly and my character has to die for that."
He didnt take this well at all, and even though i designed a new character, he never ran another session. I went back to being the DM and that player was eventuallt kicked out for interpersonal conflicts. I still feel bad for going hard on him.
I had a DM, who tried to screw us over all the time. We did not get paid for missions, our enemies were carefully handpicked to counter us and every NPC we interacted with was an absolute nightmare.
He also never let us role things. We had to act it out and if he thought, we acted well enough we succeded, but he never was convinced so every sotial interaction failed and we got no rewards or in trouble.
Yes someone else blew up a barrel 35ft from my character and the DM said I instantly take more than twice my max hp in damage dieing instantly.
How far was the enemy? If your character got killed from that distance, the exploder should have gotten made into salsa too.
Not a TTRPG, but I was invited by some friends to join my university's only LARP group. There was one particular student in the group who took it upon themselves to enforce "historical accuracy" for a fantasy LARP setting, and so refused to let me participate because I had blue jeans on, and I needed to come back with something earth tone like Khakis.
This was a problem for three reasons. First is the obvious - It was my first day, I had been invited by other group members who knew I didn't have other clothes, and most of the group thought it was fine. This one student, however, could bitch anyone's ear off if they didn't bend the knee, and was prepared to hold up the entire day just because of my pants.
Second reason it was a problem was the field was muddy, and my only khakis were part of my Sunday Best for church. So there was no way I could justify going home and switching into those anyways.
Third was the supposed "historical accuracy". I had literally done an essay for one of my classes about textiles, and I knew for a fact denim (serge de Nimes) was invented CENTURIES before Khakis, and that blue clothing was extremely popular among the merchant and worker classes of the middle ages. But no, in this idiot's mind, color must be reserved for royalty - take a guess what this person's station in the game was. Yeah. Royalty. They were literally pulling a "Rules for thee, not for me" because I was new.
So it was a combination of these three factors that led to me walking off the field and never going back.
I've been binging these recently since i've been playing DnD again, and i know nobody's mentioned probably but:
*And my Neurons activated when i heard Cave Story music in the intro's Ad and thought i was hearing things*
_+10 pts for being a true gamer_
Shadowrun 6th Edition. I made a Decker (Hacker) character and the Johnson (employer) tasked my character to get the list of current employees from the local convenience store. For some reason, the DM not only made a Data Bomb explode in my character's face, but this alerted Black IC. Needless to say, my character died a horrible death.
I gathered my things, got up and walked away when the DM suggested I build a new, non-Decker and non-Technomancer character.
I know the feeling of campaign 1. nobody else is a good dm so you take it up yourself. My first DM's were: a pork fetishist, a power game enabler and someone who hated me and wanted to make everything hard for me. Haven't had a player walk out of my own game yet and I'm happy to report at least most of my campaigns are well received by my players.
On the topic of purify food and water. I would only allow it if, and I do mean IF, it comes with the expectation that I can use it on them. Anything broken or stupid that doesn't outright work on rule of cool will either be shutdown or be used against the player. It's one of the few compromises for early game insta wins. Anything that you can do, so can others in the world you are in.
Edit: Forgot some words like the idiot I am.
Man that purify food and water one sticks in my craw for how often it or something similar has cropped up at a table I play at or run. I'm all for creative spell use but it's so laughably annoying that everyone tries to make cantrip and low level spells instant death effects rivaling power word kill
It wasnt that I got up from the table. Or even that I eventually left the game. But one of my DMs has a history of nerfing mechanics that he doesn't understand.
Early in my D&D career this DM had started a Clone Wars era Star Wars 5th Edition game with a few friends. Due to schedule conflicts i couldn't join in the first session but had my character made and time free for the 2nd or 3rd session of the game.
I rolled up a heavily armed and armored aftermarket B-1 battle droid fighter that made heavy use of the "burst" mechanic (a weapon property in SW5E that lets you target an area with your weapon like a 10ft. cube spell AOE rather than rolling to hit one target while expending more ammunition.) Now, because this character was built around guns and the burst mechanic specifically I made sure the DM was aware of my plan and he okayed it.
The next session rolled around and i'm ready to go. The party stops in at a hutt trading base to pick up a contract and get handed my character "13" along with it since 'we don't want him and he complains a lot' (something i approved in advance.)
The party isn't too sure what to think of 13 at first but are at least happy to have him along as a bolt sponge if nothing else. Now 13 had the Star Wars equivalent of an Lmg and a backup sawn-off just incase we ran into any 'jedi scum' (It was a seperatist aligned party.) Both weapons of course having the burst property so he could make proper use of his fighting style and feats.
After we get where we're going we end up in a fight against 3 tightly clustered groups of low CR clone troopers. I'm grinning as I realize 2 of these groups are within my range and I can make use of my precious new mechanic and see just how feasable it is.
The rest of the party take their single attacks from cover and while a few of the clones move before my turn they stay in their groups just enough that I can get 4 of them with 1 burst attack. I start my turn, ready a suitably B-1 sounding battle cry, pop up from behind the crate i'm using for cover, take aim with my heavy repeater and-
DM "Burst doesn't work like that"
Me 'what?'
"Burst has to have 1 square within melee range of you to work otherwise its too far away"
'Uh.. Hold on. According to the website its any point within the effective range of the weapon, which, they're in'
"No burst only works if its close to you"
'... Okay fine whatever'
By this point I knew better than to sit there and argue with any of my DMs at the table and just decided i'd bring it up after the session. Still wanting to capitalize on my droid's particular set of skills I ended up charging the group of four like a hellfire droid that's run out of ammo and using the ability at melee range like the DM insisted. At which point...
DM "okay well since you're shooting at a target within 5ft the two that are the closest to you get advantage on their DEX saves"
Me 'Wait what? I thought you just said this could only be used within melee range'
"Yes, but you're trying to shoot someone right next to you wich gives you disadvantage to hit, and since it's a saving throw instead of a to hit roll means they get advantage to avoid it"
'Then what's even the point of this weapon ability?'
"Honestly, I don't know. I kinda thought it was weird when you picked that as your main focus"
After silently pulling some hair out and nearly getting killed in the first round of combat due to barely doing anything after getting massivly out of position the session ended and I very nearly quit the game.
Fortunatly between sessions I was able to find the exact text for how the burst feature was meant to work and convince him to revise his ruling.
Also I feel like I got my DM back later. After we switched sides (against my will) and started helping the jedi win the war against the seperatists. Thanks to a critical deception roll I convinced the B-1 units inside of a super tank that their optical sensors were damaged and they were firing on friendly targets; prompting the commander droid inside to open the hatch only to have our mandolorian bounty hunter chuck a grenade inside from above and 1 round the boss fight.
Of course that brilliant deception can't be mentioned without bringing up "Beeptonk the jawa mechanic" who cast overheat (the star wars tech casting equivalent to "heat metal") on the tank and giving advantage to my deception.
I had someone like that in a game I played too, but he wasn't the DM. The campaign started lvl 9 and my character was a paladin with blind fighting, so she had blindsight. Her incredible damage output, aura of protection and blindsight saved the party many times, as a lot of combats were pretty difficult and the DM liked to use magical darkness and invisible enemies to ambush us. Then there was this dude playing a rogue who would pick fights with me every session about how "divine smite too op" and "blindsight too op" and the dm shouldn't allow these; funnily enough he never complained about my aura of protection saving his ass all the time; and that if he was the one dm'ing he wouldn't allow anyone to be a paladin or have blindsight (every time I'd think "thank god you're not the one DMing, huh?"). Anyways, it was clear he just didn't want me to shine, he even admitted it to the monk player one day when I wasn't in the call. He thought rogue was the highest damage dealer in D&D 5e and that's the reason he picked a rogue, so he was disappointed my character was faring far better in combat than his. And I did try to explain to him numerous times that rogues are a utilitarian class in higher levels, not DPS, and that he should shine with skills in general, where my character wouldn't be nearly as good as his even if I picked a bunch of feats for that.
That group, including the DM, were kinda new to D&D 5e and didn't know a lot of rules/mechanics (I even thought the sorcerer was a wizard for a looooong time cuz he refused to use metamagic or any of his subclass features...), but I was new in that group, had been playing and DMing 5e for years and knew my stuff, so sometimes when the DM didn't know what to do about a certain situation I'd explain the rule to him so he could make a decision, and this guy kept interrupting me, despite not knowing the rule, and just wouldn't let the DM say what his decision on the matter was, instead trying to argue with me about mechanics he simply didn't understand most of the time. My wife was trying to to convince me to leave that game and I remember the two of us discussing if he was doing that to me because I was the only woman in that group, but I guess I'll never know.
Needless to say, the campaign didn't last long, and I left that group.
...okay so I commented this on the "Most Unfair Thing A DM Did To You", but Imma say it here because a simpler version is fair. Basically in an RP I was invited to, there was a thing called Wild Magic. 1/1,000 for anything from "you're rich" to "you painfully mutate into something else". My characters were immune because the imagery was rather uncomfortable to risk given how many of them really were rougher results. On April 1st of 2023, the host was like "okay Im tired of your dudes being immune, from noe on its gotta be like a temporary immunity". Literally, nobody had a problem with it until now, and even after the resulting rule, the moral consensus was "dude, c'mon, nobody cared". It basically became a drama fest when my "I won't bring my characters here anymore", which led to me being rather unfairly banned from the server, and honestly, since then I've actually been able to hear myself think. The host wasn't a bad guy, but the sudden change of idea because Wild Magic was contained now is rather upsetting.
Was trying to start with a friend's playgroup back in the early 2000's, I show up and show their DM my character sheet and he tells me he didn't allow wizards or clerics (my character was a wizard) and that I'd have to playa level 0 torchbearer npc for the entire campaign because I "didn't show up prepared with a suitable character". I didn't even bother to call out his bullshit, I just told my buddy I'd talk to him later and left.
The purify food and water one is absolutely obnoxious
Friend was a DM in a homebrew campaign. He told us that we had to control the NPCs during combat. There were 11 of them. It took me 2 hours to get to my Character's turn. I left after that session
Do you not have the human ability of speech? Talk about issues with the DM. Unaddressed issues are never fixed.
3.5- My party encountered a group for gorilla-monster-things. I was playing a Hexblade and so had Charisma and all its associated checks stacked out the wazoo. We were pretty beat up, so I decided I was going to Intimidate them, because in most cases, when you Intimidate an animal, they either back off because you're not worth the trouble or they get scared and run off. I successfully (?) Intimidate them, only for them to kidnap me because apparently....it really turned them on. Like *REALLY* turned them on, if you catch my drift. They had really high movement and my party couldn't keep up with them. My Winter Wolf couldn't keep up with them, and they have a speed of 50ft. You can bet I left the table right then and there.
That DM's really crappy ruling for how that Intimidate went, not to mention, utterly creepy behavior made D&D not very palatable for me for a decade or so.
Made a house rule that characters not present for important conversations should leave the table as to facilitate more fun "reveal" moments when present characters choose to tell important character information.
As the player for an absent character, this made me leave the table immediately.
I can't tell if this is a bit or not and it's making me feel very stupid. Like yeah, obviously you left the table that's the house rule.
@@brysonbarnett4 It was a bit x)
@@tylercrissman847 It was very hilarious then. If it wasn't I didn't want to say anything, cause I had a dm who did something similar and I actually liked it. You just told the joke too well, I started believing you lol
@@brysonbarnett4 Haha, appreciate it. Glad the subtlety made it through.
If I was the DM of a group that tried the purify food and water thing... I'd allow it, and then use it against them later.
If you're going to cheese the in-world mechanics with semantics like that, the dm is allowed to do it back to you.
Or the deity presiding over that type of magic would get incredibly pissed at them for using it like that and they're now the enemies of a god that's cursed them to ether never use magic of that sort again or have it backfire on them when they try to use it.
Another player took over DMing for a few weeks while the normal DM was writing the stuff for the next phase of the campaign. I was a Wood Elf monk. Everyone else was a caster. All the enemies exploded when they died and even monk abilities that launched enemies back would still have them explode point-blank. Then I got cursed and turned from a Wood Elf for the +5 movement speed to a gnome for -5 movement speed, meaning an overall drop of 10. Yeah. No. I left the entire group.
Did you try talking about it first even?
The water purify one would have me laugh. I'd have allowed it once on a random grunt for the memes. But yea not a chance with a serious enemy xD
Have a fellow player who walked away from a dragon ball dnd game since taking a scale off a dragon was too gruesome. Now he has to stop my character from collecting ears for a necklace and collect parts for a flesh golem.
How do you even play DnD if theoretically taking a fictional scale off a fictional dragon is too much? Like how do you even attack, swinging a sword at a guy once is already more gruesome then removing a scale
@@valarmis that was what he was saying. Apparently they are in the Y7 dragonball world. The dragon didn’t die he was just sent to another dimension lol.
By any chance, is your friend the Dr Frankenstein ?
The wondering tavern does sounds like a name of a gibly film
Weird question here, but anyone remember a video about an encounter involving the use of modify memory? It was something about a bard living in a small village and villagers with weird memory loss problems. Would love to get the title to it.
Left a party when the DM was making enemies that were clear surrogates for people in real life he didn't like or more so (ex GFs, ex BFFs). Was not going to be a party to a pseudo-serial killer.
A little melodramatic, don't you think? Holy shit, 6 other drama queens liked your comment. Soft, sensitive people. I'd think the DM was a little nuts or petty or whatever, but as long as the game was fun, that wouldn't bother me.
@@robinmohamedally7587 A little melodramatic for leaving a game because the DM creeped them out, really? There are far less valid reasons people have left games that are still valid.
It ened up being fine but my dm decided she no longer wanted champion fighters meaning i needed to change and we ended up having a great decision but at the time i walked away and took probably a hour figuring it out in my head once i did that i spoke to the dm she was very reasonable about letting me being a paladin with a arc going into a warlock and i cant say a year later it was awsome
There was a dm that made me lose interest in session one. Started as a Druid in decent to avernus, got into the city but got into a fight in an inn. I tried to cast grasping vines (2 players already downed by this point) and he said I couldn’t cast it because I was indoors, magical vines ffs. I was then downed as casting was still my action and I could do nothing else.
A lot of these aren't rulings, just things the DMs did that annoyed them. Rulings, as the term implies, require actual... rules to be involved.
I joined a in progress campaign but my first session there was only one other player who was also new. We head for town, travelling on a path in an open area with a few trees 20ish feet off of the path. The dm asks us for a perception check and fail so he started describing how my character was now lost, going in circles around a lone tree and my companion hadn't noticed and it took her several checks to notice and I hadn't noticed in game.
What was the result of my roll? Nat1? less than 0? Nope it was a 12
Not just the DM, but almost the entire party, I was at a friend's house, she's the same age as me, and we were playing D&D, and the session felt super linear since the parents were also playing, but it was only bad because of the fact that they were treating me like I had never played D&D before due to me only being 15, now, allow me to introduce myself to you, dear reader, I have been playing D&D for 5 years MINIMUM, and I am writing my own homebrew D&D based game that has been being written for those 5 years, so I have played plenty of D&D, considering 33% of my life has been spent on it.
That campaign lasted 2 sessions before I told them what was up, and their stupid excuse was "well we didn't know".
The kicker is that their daughter also has experience with D&D and has been playing for years, and she's, again, my same age.
What agist parents.
Edit: No, before anybody asks, me and this girl are not dating, and yes, we're still friends.
" you only gain experience if you lose and only the people that go down get it"
My players do try to exploit spells. Not mad about it in fact it’s fun sometimes because I will allow it to turn their strategy against them. However generally to save time you may try I will make a call a 1st level spell will not kill someone because you thought of a way to exploit biology. Game balance is important to me and I don’t like to make things too easy.
When the gm changes a fundamental rule of a feat because he didn’t like it. The feat in question was alert. The rule he changed was: Other creatures don't gain advantage on attack rolls against you as a result of being unseen by you.
It’s like one of the core rules of the feat. The rest of that session really didn’t go well either… I really don’t remember much of it other than it felt very much gm vs player so I didn’t like it very much.
this exchange:
DM: "because you're playing as a kobold, your character has been instantly killed by the attack. no death saves because beast races don't deserve them."
me: "then why did you let me be a kobold?"
DM: "just because I let you pick a race doesn't mean I can't be a racist towards it whenever I want."
other player: "that makes no sense."
DM: "neither do death saves when you get skewered through the face by a polearm."
me: "you literally focused my character in every fight so far."
other player: "yeah, that's kinda shitty of you, man."
DM: "well, that's how d&d works. my campaign, my rules."
other player: "except you literally changed the rules just to target the kobold."
DM: "because kobolds are a shitty race and deserve racism."
me: "Alright then, your majesty, what race should I make my next character for you to not treat me like shit?"
DM: "if you don't want to be treated like the autist you are, play an elf."
other player: "THAT'S your reason!?"
me: "that's it, i'm out. targeting my kobold is one thing, but singling me out over a disability is where I draw the line."
Oh, I have one. Aside from the idiotic rule for getting nat 1 on attack rolls make you hit your allies with questionable physics, the homebrewed invisible status is just plain stupid. Because he insists invisible is broken (Believe you auto become hidden after having invisible status) and just make a very convoluted way to by pass it, which makes materials worse.
Hearing these stories, even though they're about bad things make the game sound really interesting, but I don't think I'd ever want to only play like once per month or play the whole campaign for a year or more. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have the patience for it.
Allowing seduction rolls on PCs
That might be the worst one.
The purify thing should only work if you genuinely view the subject as food. So like, does this character normally eat goblins? If so, then yes, I think it should technically work.
Didn’t think I would hear Cave Story music.
Jeez... what crappy DMs man. I remember getting into D&D for the first time when 3.5e was the main thing. I ended up coming into the campaign mid-story, but the DM managed to find a way to integrate me into the campaign seamlessly. He was fair, if a bit sadistic. But my DM always had ways for my character to get out of whatever pickle he ended up in.
That last one. ERP is iffy, not a great idea but can work I guess. Private ERP is something else entirely. ERP with a 16 year old is Pphilia. Don’t do it folks.
I plan to one day make a campaign where i do all of these just to see if i can get my best friend to walk away XD
Told me I couldn't use meta magic
Never fall off, my dude ✌️
My DM said that all ritual spells now take an hour to cast unless it’s for a spell a lot. I nearly left the table.
We're not using the lizardman kobolds we're using "real" kobolds.
You get a like for using Cave Story music for the background :3
one time a DM allowed one of the players to be a white dragon, that was literally a pancake. they had no limitations on anything except that you couldn't be over 7 feet tall, soooooo pancake dragon
I'm so lucky to have the group and DM I have...
My dm at a crucial part of my characters story just kinda pushed it aside and made way for a hasty Christmas special and leveled us up from 8 to 12
Quit because I felt like I was sidelined and felt like nothing was truly earned overall because that happened many times but that's the moment I said "no"
yeah, manipulating me into losing three years with my kids. permanent instantaneous deal breaker.
I had a campaign coming up and I have the one player who uses the best classes, feats, and race, who bulldoze most of the campaign I bring up. I say we're doing a session 0 where we rely on the dice to randomize what race, class, stats, etc. And he instantly walks out and says it's not gonna be fun.
Yeah that's absolutely awful. You're taking away any semblance of player agency just because you don't know how to balance encounters for optimized builds?
You're a bad DM and a lazy person. Quit.
A vorpal sword at level 5? I know the rule of cool is variable, but that seems way too far for me.
I mean I didn't walk away from the table but I had to scarp my character
I was a white dragonborn who's ultimate goal was to kill all silver dragonborns (genocide) my dm didn't mind that till we got to New party members who where silver dragonborn and my dm put in the strick no pvp rule so I could not complete my goal and then because of this my ideal we I will not care for the safety of others, so when I went to caste a thunder spell in a flooded room and my dm stopped me as it will hit my party so I ended up creating a new character
lol half of the stories the person didn't even walk away from the game
PANR has tuned in.
Woo!
11:27 ... HOW THE FUCK WAS THE PLAYER SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT AHEAD OF TIME?
Is this saying the dm was right for the bar? If so, then the answer is the character had lived in the city for 20 years, so logically he'd have known which bars he was safe in, especially since he was looking for bars he was a regular in. If you are on the players side, then I fully agree and please disregard my entire comment.
@@thekingnerd6639 The story implied that the DM was being an absolute asshole. The DM added the bar through an asspull. His character would absolutely NOT be a regular in an anti-alien bar. If I were the DM, I wouldn't do that. Player characters need to be _alive_ to advance the story.
Edit: Though I also understand that characters can die to advance the story as well. Though that should be between the DM and the player.
@@exxor9108 as I said, since you are pro player in this situation, please disregard the first bit of prior comment, and I agree with you completely.
The story about purfy water not being a levle 1 power word kill, GM dodged a bullet there, i can only image how utterly boring and self stroking all their games are after that if theu found a GM that acomadated their god complexes.
I had a dm who made a custom status effect that (Get this) ACTIVATED WHEN U PLAYED THE CLASS HOW U WERE SUPPOSED TO a spell caster would get it for casting spells, a barbarian would get it for using rage, a rogue would get it for being hidden, u get the point. I left after the first session because it was bs
0917 Nicolas Forge
You know, I hear these stories and I can’t relate. I’m glad I didn’t have these experiences.
DM allowed us to have a special ability/item that set us apart. Another player chose fire resistance.
Second session, DM pulls out an enemy that uses fire damage that ignores fire resistance. When asked how, they said "it's not fire, but it's fire damage".
I stood up for this person I barely knew and contested the DM, even gave the DM the out of "they had Elemental Adept for Fire", which was still ignored.
Other player and I left before next session. I'm not gonna play with a DM who gives us a feature/item to make us unique, only to bullshit their way past it.
(Also, for those curious about mine, pocketwatch that grants the effect of a Potion of Fire Giant Strength; 1 charge, 1 week recharge. I was a grappling Beast Barb, and this was prior to Giants Barb)
Leaving over one enemy sounds dumb. He may have had that enemy encounter planned out before your abilities were picked.
🐉🐉🐉
W
If a GM makes a ruling that makes no logical sense and explicitly violates RAW "because it's cool" I walk away. I don't respect any game in which the only rule that matters is Rule of Cool.
In an effort to make martial combat less boring, our DM bought out a list of critical hits for martial attacks, divided into separate tables to match what kind of damage the attack did, which gave the attacker an added effect based on a percentile roll. It was amusing for a while seeing these crits being traded back and forth, but then a potential insta-kill was rolled: a slashing attack that would behead the target if they weren't wearing a helmet. After hearing that, I stood up mid-session, repeating the word 'nope' several times in rapid succession as I did so, and walked off.
Another in that group came to find me ten minutes later when my turn came up, and we finished out the session relatively peacefully, but it took me a couple of days to find the words to properly articulate to them that any game where a PC's life and death can be decided at the drop of a hat based on what their character class can or can't use, is not a game for me. All such insta-kills were struck from the list from then on.
dude just wear a helmet
@@muhrichard8634 The contents of the crit-list were only shared with us as the rolls were made, but if you can think of a way for a monk and a sorcerer to justify retroactively deciding that they packed helmets before teleporting to the middle of nowhere, feel free to take your time machine back a couple years and tell it to me then. /s
@@wolfskinchanger "our characters wouldn't be dumb enough to not bring a helmet into melee combat when one would be readily available"
@@muhrichard8634 I'll try to remember that if this scenario comes up again (unlikely), but the focus of my core point in this remains the same: any game where the lack of a specific proficiency that some characters can't get in the first place leaves that character with no chance at all of survival, isn't a game I have any interest in playing.
If for example the piercing insta-kill on that list had struck through the heart, stopped only by medium armor or better, I'd have been packed up and out the door in two minutes flat, 'nope'ing all the way home.
@@wolfskinchanger true, D&D is a pretty bad system