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DM's a dick?
Fagatron
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Registered User regular
So I have a gaming group that I play with that's been together with more or less the same composition since August of '09. The guy that got us together initially DMs 4th Edition D&D games. One is a story of his own creation, I play a Warforged Bard in it, we've been playing that off and on since we started, last week we started a new campaign using the Living Forgotten Realms modules with new 2nd level characters for a change of pace, for that I've got a Bullywug Rogue/Sorcerer hybrid (as an aside Rogue/Sorcerer rapes if you do it right).
The problem we ran into tonight, is he's really attached to steadfastly sticking to the rules even if they're kind of stupid, and in addition to that he seemed to be really hellbent on knocking my character out.
Here is what happened.
I asked if there was anything of note in a room, he said there was not, forgetting I had a low perception I proceeded to walk in and trigger a trap which promptly shot me with a dart. I have no objection to this, however the traps were capable of taking half of the HP away from even our tanks, and the way the death saving throws and healing work in 4th Edition that is a pretty bad thing.
After that, I rolled poorly for initiative, was last in the order, and proceeded to run across the room and climb up a statue on my turn, thinking I was out of the range of the dart (because it's a dart, in a relatively small room, if they travel fast enough to penetrate armor they should be traveling in a straight line). Before my turn came everybody else placed themselves around the room and there were multiple PCs standing closer to the (non-sentient inanimate) traps than my Bullywug.
Despite this, and my distance from the trap, it proceeded to shoot me immediately after my turn, even with the other targets, one of which was standing two squares away from the trap; taking a total of half of my HP (I have a CON and AC second only to the tanks). His explanation for why it was able to hit me when I was standing above it's line of fire was they were magic darts capable of firing in a parabolic arc (wtf). At this point we had a rather heated exchange about how the hell that would work in-game that ended with him just basically going "Deal with it, it's magic."
In the same round before I had a chance to heal he proceeded to have one of the monsters in the room attack me, putting me at -1 health and knocking me unconscious with a potentially mortal wound. I have less objection to this as the creature was close enough to me I was a target of opportunity, but there were also other targets and unloading like that in one round on one character is a dick move, especially when the trap attacked me the second time for almost max damage.
Yeah, it was dumb to trigger the trap but mistakes are made. After the fact if he had stuck to this strategy of focusing on one character per round the creatures and traps in the room would have easily taken out the entire party faster than we could make saving throws or heal.
After I regained consciousness thanks the the Paladin's Lay on Hands power, he told me, after referencing the Player's Handbook, that the way that worked is I regained HP and no longer had to make Saving Throws against death, but I still had to make a Saving Throw to regain consciousness. Two rounds went by like that with me failing the rolls before another player read the book and pointed out that by healing me I should have regained consciousness according to the same rules the DM had just read. When I said I should get to take the turns he cheated me out of by his misinterpretation of the rules he told me I only got to take one because I should have known the rules (when he didn't) even though two turns would have let me do enough to finish the encounter with skill, attack, and damage rolls. Later when he forgot to have the trap attack us in a round, he tried to have it attack us before I pointed out that based on his previous actions with the turns I lost it shouldn't happen and everyone agreed and he let it go.
We also spent more than half an hour trying to disable a trap when it was more or less irrelevant for the purposes of the story. (either the trap got disabled or the entire party dies ending the campaign).
In the other campaign he also made up some bullshit lore about Assassin Guilds forcing me to go on an assassination missions even if it was against my character's will or else they'd come after me AFTER I had already multiclassed as an Assassin (mostly for the Assassin's Shrouds power). While it is his choice to include this lore in his campaign in my opinion he should have informed me of it before I finalized the feat.
Also when we're not doing D&D I'm Storyteller for an ongoing Hunter campaign, in which he is the first person to complain about the players taking too much damage, or me gaming against them too much, even though I've gone out of my way to balance the PCs and antagonists and fudge rolls when it didn't server the purpose of the narrative and the enjoyment of the group.
I'm of the opinion that when the rules get in the way of the narrative they should be fudged, and if you're going to be steadfast about rules you need to:
I guess I am just pretty frustrated with how he is choosing to DM this, and I am going to try and discuss it as a group at the beginning of the next session and see if everyone can reach a consensus. If everyone thinks it is okay then that's that, but if people agree that it's messed up and he continues to take the tack of "Well I'm the DM and this is the way we're doing it deal with it." then I am going to ensure his character suffers enough bashing damage to be knocked unconscious at the beginning of every combat scene next time we're playing with Hunter and I'm the Storyteller he can deal with it.
The problem we ran into tonight, is he's really attached to steadfastly sticking to the rules even if they're kind of stupid, and in addition to that he seemed to be really hellbent on knocking my character out.
Here is what happened.
I asked if there was anything of note in a room, he said there was not, forgetting I had a low perception I proceeded to walk in and trigger a trap which promptly shot me with a dart. I have no objection to this, however the traps were capable of taking half of the HP away from even our tanks, and the way the death saving throws and healing work in 4th Edition that is a pretty bad thing.
After that, I rolled poorly for initiative, was last in the order, and proceeded to run across the room and climb up a statue on my turn, thinking I was out of the range of the dart (because it's a dart, in a relatively small room, if they travel fast enough to penetrate armor they should be traveling in a straight line). Before my turn came everybody else placed themselves around the room and there were multiple PCs standing closer to the (non-sentient inanimate) traps than my Bullywug.
Despite this, and my distance from the trap, it proceeded to shoot me immediately after my turn, even with the other targets, one of which was standing two squares away from the trap; taking a total of half of my HP (I have a CON and AC second only to the tanks). His explanation for why it was able to hit me when I was standing above it's line of fire was they were magic darts capable of firing in a parabolic arc (wtf). At this point we had a rather heated exchange about how the hell that would work in-game that ended with him just basically going "Deal with it, it's magic."
In the same round before I had a chance to heal he proceeded to have one of the monsters in the room attack me, putting me at -1 health and knocking me unconscious with a potentially mortal wound. I have less objection to this as the creature was close enough to me I was a target of opportunity, but there were also other targets and unloading like that in one round on one character is a dick move, especially when the trap attacked me the second time for almost max damage.
Yeah, it was dumb to trigger the trap but mistakes are made. After the fact if he had stuck to this strategy of focusing on one character per round the creatures and traps in the room would have easily taken out the entire party faster than we could make saving throws or heal.
After I regained consciousness thanks the the Paladin's Lay on Hands power, he told me, after referencing the Player's Handbook, that the way that worked is I regained HP and no longer had to make Saving Throws against death, but I still had to make a Saving Throw to regain consciousness. Two rounds went by like that with me failing the rolls before another player read the book and pointed out that by healing me I should have regained consciousness according to the same rules the DM had just read. When I said I should get to take the turns he cheated me out of by his misinterpretation of the rules he told me I only got to take one because I should have known the rules (when he didn't) even though two turns would have let me do enough to finish the encounter with skill, attack, and damage rolls. Later when he forgot to have the trap attack us in a round, he tried to have it attack us before I pointed out that based on his previous actions with the turns I lost it shouldn't happen and everyone agreed and he let it go.
We also spent more than half an hour trying to disable a trap when it was more or less irrelevant for the purposes of the story. (either the trap got disabled or the entire party dies ending the campaign).
In the other campaign he also made up some bullshit lore about Assassin Guilds forcing me to go on an assassination missions even if it was against my character's will or else they'd come after me AFTER I had already multiclassed as an Assassin (mostly for the Assassin's Shrouds power). While it is his choice to include this lore in his campaign in my opinion he should have informed me of it before I finalized the feat.
Also when we're not doing D&D I'm Storyteller for an ongoing Hunter campaign, in which he is the first person to complain about the players taking too much damage, or me gaming against them too much, even though I've gone out of my way to balance the PCs and antagonists and fudge rolls when it didn't server the purpose of the narrative and the enjoyment of the group.
I'm of the opinion that when the rules get in the way of the narrative they should be fudged, and if you're going to be steadfast about rules you need to:
- Establish them beforehand.
- Have a correct interpretation of them.
- And evenly apply them in every instance.
I guess I am just pretty frustrated with how he is choosing to DM this, and I am going to try and discuss it as a group at the beginning of the next session and see if everyone can reach a consensus. If everyone thinks it is okay then that's that, but if people agree that it's messed up and he continues to take the tack of "Well I'm the DM and this is the way we're doing it deal with it." then I am going to ensure his character suffers enough bashing damage to be knocked unconscious at the beginning of every combat scene next time we're playing with Hunter and I'm the Storyteller he can deal with it.
Fagatron on
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About the rules things, everyone makes mistakes. I probably forget tons of rules when I play. I think you're taking things too personally. For example, I doubt he meant to "cheat you" out of those turns. But I would have done the same in his shoes; it sucks that you missed turns, but it would be too disruptive to wind back the clock a few turns, so you soldier on and try to do better next time. It sounds like he's meeting you halfway if he messed up later and agreed to ignore a trap.
I don't know enough about D&D to know how the Assassin thing works, but it makes sense to me that if you become an assassin you should assassinate people.
To me it sounds like he's not being unfair, maybe just a little new at being DM. Cut him some slack.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
No! But it's not an official LFR campaign, just the premade modules. We're also using some homebrew rules for the Bullywug to put him on a more even footing with the Player's Handbook races.
Even without those though, a hybrid Rogue/Sorcerer built primarily for Acrobatic Rouging with some light magic use is capable of dominating combat, and the ability to use DEX for AC is actually potentially better than standard Leather Armor (which he isn't able to wear without a feat because of the rules for hybrid builds).
It wouldn't be an issue if it was just this one session, it's more of an ongoing thing, and there's been some OOC dramas where we took a different stance and animosity seems to be spilling over into the game which is frustrating.
A lot of the time he targets me because I'm good at tactics; but there was no in-game reason for the creatures to do it when all they'd seen me do was something blindingly stupid and then retreat.
It almost turned into an argument but five out of six players violently opposed him breaking the rules in his favor as soon as he started to argue that it should go retroactively with me.
The extent of the official information for the Assassin class is a short writeup from a Dragon magazine with a mysterious description of how their powers are frowned upon and they give a part of their soul over to the Shadow Realm in exchange for their abilities using ancient rituals. All it is is a method of killing dudes using kind of shady means, if it comes with social strings in addition to the potential for corruption by your powers DM should have specified it before I took the feat. After I took it and after he explained the additional costs, he made a point of mentioning that not only might the contracts I was assigned be against my morals, but that if my party members found out about my extracurriculars that it might cause serious problems based on their alignment. The way I saw it when I took the feat was more of a combat oriented rogue wielding shadow magic from questionable sources to better cloak their sounds and movements, and deal more lethal damage, and there's no official materials to say that my conceptualization isn't correct.
I ran an encounter earlier this week where the party was fighting a bunch of undead, and even though the bard kept throwing ranged spells at them, they kept attacking the meaty defenders in front of them, because, as I described them "they didn't seem to like all the magic getting thrown at them, but zombies are not known for their intelligence, and so they continue to attack the nearest warm body".
Pulling shit out like an arcing dart is just ludicrous.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The parabolic arcing wouldn't have pissed me off so much if I wasn't:
If there's one thing I learned Storytelling Hunter it's that to keep the experience fun for the players you have to make combat a group experience, and sometimes when the rolls go particularly awry you have to change things up.
If I hadn't done this in my own campaign the entire group would have died in the first combat instance.
The argumentative tack he's taking on this I'm gonna say 0.
Try and sort it out outside of game. Calmly explain that you're not having fun and what you would like done differently for you to enjoy it more. If he still won't change then your only real option, sucky though it may be, is to not play with him.
Game is not organized that way but non-ingame chatter is a different can of worms and problem in and of itself with this group.
Also none of us (including the DM) are entirely familiar with any of the systems we've been using so mid-game discussions and debates of how rules work, looking them up in the book, etc. are a necessary evil at this point. Maybe after we're all more seasoned it won't be but there's too many things the DM is not familiar with in 4th Edition, and I'm not familiar with in NWoD for this not to happen.
Maybe it sounded like more than it was?
Whole thing with the dart was basically
"Dude how did it hit me I was above it?"
"Well it shoots in an arc *draws parabolic curve*"
"How does it do that it's a freaking dart, it shoots in a straight line from it's origin."
"Fine it's a magic dart, it curves."
"Wat?"
"Deal with it."
Took maybe 30 seconds? After I got knocked out I was just all "Welp great, now I might die and I'm on the ground and I'm one of three people with effective ranged powers and the only person with the ability to climb up. *glare*" It was childish but he'd killed me in a round and I was pissed. He told me "Not to do stupid things."
The thing with the turns wasn't really a retcon because the entire party had been (ineffectively) trying to kill the last two flying creatures (both dart guns still active as well) and the two turns would have been enough for me to cross the room, climb up to a chandelier, and hit them on the turn I'd only just missed. As it was I was only able to climb up and then I still ended up hitting them so it wasn't different than the final outcome. It wouldn't have even been an issue if he had read the rules that were right in front of his face two rounds previously, and then told us with authority what they were even though several people were basically "That sounds kind of off." which led to other dude rereading them.
this would be a good idea, because from what I see it was you that was being silly @ the table there. o_O
Really any time you're having issues with your DM I would recommend the following steps:
If any step resolves the issue, go to no later steps. Also obviously if the issue is not worth going to the next step over don't go to the next step.
Do you think he might be taking "revenge" on you for how he perceives your treatment of players in your Hunter thing (I'm not familiar with that game)? Did anything particularly contentious come up in that game within a few weeks of this D&D experience?
Also, him penalizing you for 'being stupid' when you are actually role-playing as a stupid character? Fucking ridiculous. You should never penalize a player for role-playing accurately, ever.
Explain? I'm not sure exactly what you mean here and if I don't know what you think was silly it's hard to take a less silly approach.
It's leaving the group is more complicated than just doing so. This is a group of friends I've had for almost two years now, some better than others, I've been there since the beginning and my leaving would not go unnoticed. The entire reason there may be out of game problems influencing the DM's decision is because of drama between two players after a breakup that we had completely different opinions on solving due to extenuating circumstances. I'm not even completely sure it's related to that, and if it's not I don't think he's doing it consciously, I've just noticed he's taken a more aggressive stance with me in conversations since that mess went down, and I've been getting dicked over more frequently in game since then as well. I am generally a super reasonable and pragmatic person though, even if it's to my own disadvantage.
I have done the first step already, but the player I consulted is my girlfriend so the information I'm getting out of her is suspect; though she is very willing to side against me if I'm being a dumbass which is a quality I value. During a meltdown caused by a previous friend that I've already resolved she sided against me more than anyone else I consulted about the thing. She is however, the most socially adept out of the other players in the group, they're all very internet people and they all have their own social foibles.
Besides her, in order we have
I have also tried step two before with other things but it doesn't work so well with this dude he is just not usually very willing to compromise, doesn't usually get criticism of his actions, and is kind of a hypocrite. Will engage step three next Saturday. I won't be leaving the group though, I still enjoy it enough it's not really worth it.
The entire problem with these people is that I have hung out with them without playing D&D so there's baggage that gets carried over to the characters.
There hasn't been anything particularly difficult in Hunter since then? The whole problem with that was mostly them making the transition from D&D where healing is magical, to Hunter where you are the squishiest creatures in the setting hunting genuine monsters, and it's both modern, and fairly realistic with the healing. They weren't used to having to take such a tactical approach to combat, and they weren't used to having to retreat. In the first session a three person Cell tried to take on twelve antagonists instead of fleeing like I thought they would. After that confrontation they had to sit around for about a month just to let themselves get patched up.
Yeah, I don't know.
For reference the character is a paranoid schizophrenic constantly searching for information and fighting against a conspiracy perceived only by him. I chose Bullywug as my race because it was an interesting idea having a race that was actually an aberration in the Dungeons and Dragons universe that the universe itself tried to lash out at to correct itself, justifying his paranoia in his eyes. He's also an untrained Chaos Magic user with an affinity for magic, but not a complete knowledge of how to cast his spells. He only uses his spells when he's under extreme duress or in imminent danger, and when he does he sees their effect as some sort of divine intervention rather than magic.
Usually I would have waited for a character with better Perception to take point, but when he said that there was nothing noticeably dangerous in the room and there was this arcane looking circle with runes all over it in the center, I immediately wanted to take a look at it to see if it could further my knowledge or possibly prove existence of this conspiracy and I forgot to let someone better at noticing traps than me have a look around.
It's also worth noting that a reason he may have targeted me like this is I ask more questions about the layout of a room, terrain, the appearance of things and monsters than anyone else to the point that it seemed like he was getting miffed last night. There were several statues in the room and chandeliers hanging down from the roof. Their placement was important to me tactically because I planned to scramble up the statues, use Spatial Trip to teleport or jump up to the chandeliers so that I could engage the flying enemies in melee. He got noticeably frustrated when I was asking him to specify how high the statues were, how low the chandeliers hung down, the distance between them, and their placement in relation to each other but establishing the surroundings is his job as the DM. If he's going to get frustrated when I ask him pertinent questions about what is going on in the game around my character he needs to check himself.
This and my questions about how certain rules work when something interested or unexpected happens, and my questions about "Well can I do this?" when I get a creative idea has given me a noticeable edge over the other players and I would say that their lack of interest in terrain in relation to tactics is a fault with their roleplaying not mine.
Something else that was rejected last night was plugging the holes the darts were coming out of with a dart or some other object, causing a misfire. This is something that my character had actually DONE in the other campaign with a different trap that shot arrows.
It was actually pretty badass. We were on a bridge in a narrowish tunnel over an underground body of water with alligators in it. There were turrets that shot arrows mounted on the walls to either side of us and were were under fire from them, and an orc on the other side of the bridge kept shaking it knocking the group off balance. Things were going pretty bad and the turrets and the orc kept knocking people off balance and making them fall prone, or slip over the side where they had to make a grab check, nobody actually fell into the water. So I just jumped in. As a Warforged I didn't feel the need to breathe so I proceeded to sink to the bottom of the water, walk over to the wall while fighting off the alligators, climb UP the wall to the turret where I pulled an arrow out of my own chest that I had previously been shot with and jammed it into the turret keeping it from firing on the next turn and causing it some damage. I repeated this with one of the other turrets while the rest of the party took out two of them with ranged attacks.
This time he said that he had "fudged" that encounter because there were no rules for shoving something in a hole, and that because of that the only similar course of action was blocking the dart trap with a shield, which might be penetrated and cause damage to the character doing the blocking. o_O
Get a new DM.
You should stop playing with him and tell him that's why. The game's not fun or immersive when it seems like the whole universe it out to kill you.
Seriously, tell him. Maybe with a little more tact then I might have, but bad DMs should know why they're bad so they can maybe improve themselves.
Really, you can either talk to him about it and work out a compromise that still lets you have fun but doesn't break his encounters or stay inside his lines.
Either that or hold out until the Holes, and Things You Can Put In Them expansion comes out.
This is retarded, go back to 1985.
Edit: Fagatron you sound like you don't even like any of the people you are playing with, why are you even involved in that mess
They're not as bad as all that. I am obviously good friends with my girlfriend, and I also am good friends with the DM, the passive aggressive one, and the one that is used to awful DMing (the last two in this list are actually the ones who caused the stress with the DM over their relationship drama >_< ).
I like the other two well enough as well, the dude who is a prick has a code of honor about him which I find to be pretty rare, and he reminds me a lot of me a couple years back. The one who's awful at people has a wonderfully good and kind heart, she's just got some issues.
It is pretty hard to find people that aren't flawed in one way or another in my experience. I would rather take a flawed person I know I can trust than a seemingly well adjusted person that I can't. People are multifaceted, you can't take one line where I list all the faults in my group of friends and use that to determine I don't like them.
Im on board with the darts thing tho, thats pretty much bs unless for some reason that trap was supposed to be part of a boss fight, as someone said before you were fighting a wizard who was actively controlling it ( in which case it would be decidedly bad-ass). I feel like tedious skill challenges like that should be skipped if its a do or die type thing, you cant really penalize failure constructively.
sorry to dump in your rage thread, reading this brought back memories...
Henry Teach, human cutthroat
the game assassino_O
That's a pretty strange answer for a DM to give. The rules are there to guide and govern the roleplaying, not to railroad it.
AKA BoVD version 2.0. :winky:
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For the past many MANY months (perhaps half a year or more) I have been almost incapable of rolling a d20. It has, and I assure you I am not exaggerating, rolled 9 or under (basically auto-miss) at least 80% of the time, if not more some sessions. I know this is true because after awhile I started to say to myself "I am getting over-sensitive. This is ridiculously frustrating, but I bet the problem isn't as big as I am making it." So i started to record my die rolls. It was in fact, worse than I thought. Sometimes entire sessions would go by without me rolling a hit. I got so frustrated every time I would play D&D.
But instead of allowing myself to get frustrated, I simply adapted. What did I do? I played a cleric, so hey! I retooled my cleric to a pacifist healer / compassionate healer / saint build, added assured healing and a bunch of stuff like that, and overhauled my powers so that only one of them actually even dealt damage, and only very few even have a roll to hit. Now? My cleric is the coolest mofo on the battlefield. I consistently make a huge effect every turn, and I don't ever have to worry about chronically horrible luck.
Your situation is a bit different, but maybe the same principle applies here. Instead of getting frustrated at what happens, just treat it as an extra challenge. Start to assume that you're going to be attacked, take preventative measures, make sure you've got yourself enough healing, base tactics around it. Take it as simply part of the game as if it were a truth and play around it,. and then instead of dealing with a douche DM, you're just dealing with a more challenging game. A lot of the time, I find, this is really all you need.
I am okay with a challenge, challenges are great. I've already said he goes after me a lot in the other game, and I'm okay with it because I'm really competent in battle and while I don't do as much damage as say, my girlfriend's Sword Mage (hello class imbalance), I do take a lot of dudes out in ways that are unexpected, and I keep the team going via buffs and healing.
The problem with what went down here though is it's a 2nd level character with low HP (not because of his stats, but his level), and he got instaraped in less than a full round. I had plenty of healing for normal circumstances. I had two Potions of Healing, my Second Wind, and full Healing Surges; I just never got a chance to use any of it because of how fast my damage accrued.
How close are you from leveling up? The rulebook specifically says that when you level, you can retrain a feat for something else.
Eh. I already roleplayed through this scene where I went through initiation for an Assassin's Guild and I'd rather not "take it back" from a character standpoint. It was more a sidebar of other retarded shit he'd pulled previous to last session.
Don't make it personal. Tell him what he's doing is bothersome, not that he is bothersome. If you think you've made that point well, make it three more times. People jump to that conclusion if you don't beat it into their head that it isn't true.
Don't be surprised when you avoid making it personal that he still takes it that way. Be prepared for the reaction, so that it doesn't bother you. He's probably invested a lot of himself into this game and any criticism of it will feel personal.
Stick to the facts. Don't assume his intentions. Tell him how the game makes you feel and exactly what specifics make you feel that way. Do not speculate as to why he would do such a thing, do not speculate as to how you feel it may be tied to his feelings about your game.
Stay on task with your communication about this game. The two games are two seperate issues. Don't merge them or be drawn into merging them, because then you're confusing things and you'll start to fall victim to the same personal affrontment I warned of in the first two paragraphs.
Most of all, be kind and willing to drop it. Let him stew over the little that you've said if he reacts negatively. Pushing him when he's already not digesting the information will only cause him to lash out against the concept and build a permanent barrier against criticism. Let the barrier he may throw up alone so that he doesn't feel the need to reinforce it.
Good luck
what if you just straight up told him that this assassin thing doesn't sound fun?
This is true, if you regain HP you rise above 0HP every time. Rising from 0HP immediately grants consciousness.