Carebear DMs

[Spore]

Heyo,

what do you do as players with carebear DMs? My DM has planned out our character story arcs up to twice our actual level, and every time someone could be in or close to danger, the DM tones it down drastically.

1) The mindless constructs started dealing non lethal damage as soon as our sorcerer was unconscious.

2) When my rogue decided to scout the area and was ambushed by shadows, he could outrun them despite their fly speed 1,5x times my movement speed (and they're tireless).

3) When my rogue stole something he stated: "We would have your head, but this time we will make an exception. Take two of his fingers instead."

What can I do to signal him that I do not want an adventuring nanny - without calling him out and embarrass him.

[AgentofHellfire]

Well, I would just go to him privately and talk about it. It doesn't embarrass them since it's just between you, and he might honestly think that you don't want your character to die just yet, so it could change behavior.

[Red Fel]

First off, don't call him a carebear DM to his face. Remember that you can't spell "carebear" without "bear," and as a rule you don't want to anger one of those.

Second, I agree with Agent. Talk to him privately. But before that, talk to the other players individually - do they like the feeling of risk-free adventuring, or are they as bored as you are?

If the other players are as disenchanted as you are, then yes. Take the DM aside, and explain that while you appreciate his attempts to keep your party alive, part of the fun of the game is the danger. Suggest that, instead of giving you high-level encounters and then ratcheting them down, he could give you more reasonable-level encounters at face value.

And also, consider matters from his perspective. Perhaps he has a reason. Perhaps, for example, he is trying to give you these high-level adventures to load you up with XP so that he can get you quickly into high levels, where the real game begins. You should ask him, politely of course, whether he was intending something specific by his actions.

[XnOs]

Hello Sporeegg! :)

I too, have a carebear DM, and i can relate to your situation.

We have a rule, where when you "Die" you simply take a considerably large Xp penalty, and this makes the DM care less about the "death" of the characters.

The group carries the dead body to a church, and the person gets resurrected.

I'm not sure if this helps, but I hope it does! :)

Kind Regards,

Xnos.

[Dr. Cliché]

Well, if you want to really screw with him, you could make every effort to get your characters killed:

- Have your wizard run full pelt down corridors that are likely to be trapped.

- Have your Paladin/Fighter try to nobly duel dragons and boss-monsters, whilst the rest of the party sits back and watches.

- Have the rogue steal from the houses of nobles (he'll run out of fingers quite quickly). If they're still lenient with him, have him go after the lord/mayor's house, or even steal from the town guard or jail. In broad daylight.

- If the villain lays an obvious trap for you, do your best to blindly fall into it; as if the idea of him tricking you was unthinkable.

(Bonus points if you can make these seem like perfectly legitimate ideas, that somehow failed in their execution.)

I'll be the first to admit that this isn't the best way to resolve the issue. However, if the DM insists on mollycoddling you, then it could really mess with him as he desperately struggles to keep your characters alive - despite your efforts to the contrary. :smallwink:

[HalfQuart]

Red Fel's advice is spot on. One thing I would add is that when you talk to your DM phrase it something like: "Some of the things I really like about your DMing style/campaign is X, Y, Z. But I'm having a hard time with how it seems like you're taking it easy on us. Somehow without the sense of real danger it doesn't seem as fun." -- In short, when giving a critique to someone offer 3 positive/encouraging bits for everything you complain about. You're much more likely to get a positive response.

[Fouredged Sword]

Hand him the tomb of horrors book and say "I have heard great things about this module, and I want to try it out. I haven't read it so it will maintain the surprise. I hear it was written the way DnD was intended to be played by Gigax."

[Subaru Kujo]

In broad daylight.


While butt naked?

[Dr. Cliché]

While butt naked?

You could, but it might give the authorities unfortunate ideas about other things they could cut off...

[Scumbaggery]

I echo the private discussion option. My DM was scared to kill players for the longest time, even if it was blatantly our fault.

[lytokk]

My normal policy when it comes to player character death is pretty straightforward, I'm not going to try and kill them, but I don't have to save them. If they fail a search check and fall into a trap that would kill them, I'll tone down the damage to make it survivable, but just barely. Basically take them out of combat for the rest of the day, unless they receive a lot of healing. But if they receive no healing, and choose to run headfirst into the next horde of monsters, they will die.

If the death is certain because of horribly bad tactics, its pretty well ensured one of them is going to die. But if the death is because the monster has an ability or a stat that I didn't notice when I chose the monster, which resulted in the CR being far and beyond what the party could handle, I'll fudge a few things.

Basically I treat my players the way I'd like to be treated. I had a DM who was absolutely horrible with encounter balancing. Against a group of 3 characters, all level 2, he felt it was appropriate to throw a dire wolf against us. Normally, not a problem, except it was night and all but one of the PCs was asleep. Sentry failed his spot check, and the wolf killed my character before I even had the chance to wake up. One failed check lead to my death, and it wasn't even a check I made. I rerolled, and because of the encounter, party leveled up to 3, and his rule was when you die you come in with a new character 1 level lower. So, level 1 in a party of 3s. I never actually recovered from that gap, mostly since that character died because of the level gap.

The above situation is what I try to avoid. I don't think I'm a carebear DM, but in that situation, if I had DMed, I would have changed the dire wolf to a single wolf, who attacked while his pack was getting ready.

[Dr. Cliché]

My normal policy when it comes to player character death is pretty straightforward, I'm not going to try and kill them, but I don't have to save them. If they fail a search check and fall into a trap that would kill them, I'll tone down the damage to make it survivable, but just barely. Basically take them out of combat for the rest of the day, unless they receive a lot of healing. But if they receive no healing, and choose to run headfirst into the next horde of monsters, they will die.

If the death is certain because of horribly bad tactics, its pretty well ensured one of them is going to die. But if the death is because the monster has an ability or a stat that I didn't notice when I chose the monster, which resulted in the CR being far and beyond what the party could handle, I'll fudge a few things.

That seems like a good way to go.



Basically I treat my players the way I'd like to be treated. I had a DM who was absolutely horrible with encounter balancing. Against a group of 3 characters, all level 2, he felt it was appropriate to throw a dire wolf against us. Normally, not a problem, except it was night and all but one of the PCs was asleep. Sentry failed his spot check, and the wolf killed my character before I even had the chance to wake up. One failed check lead to my death, and it wasn't even a check I made. I rerolled, and because of the encounter, party leveled up to 3, and his rule was when you die you come in with a new character 1 level lower. So, level 1 in a party of 3s. I never actually recovered from that gap, mostly since that character died because of the level gap.

Ugh, that's really harsh - not just killing your character without allowing you a single roll to avoid it, but then making you 2 levels lower than the rest of the party.

[Slipperychicken]

This seems like confusion about the style of play you guys want. It looks like your GM wants to run an interactive narrative experience, while you want to overcome gameplay challenges with a real sense of danger and risk.

If I were you, I would talk to my fellow players about it, see what they think and whether they feel satisfied with the current state of affairs, and whether they feel the experience could be improved by changing the game's difficulty level. Once you have an idea of what they think, ask the GM about it. See if you can work something out.

[Ortesk]

My normal policy when it comes to player character death is pretty straightforward, I'm not going to try and kill them, but I don't have to save them. If they fail a search check and fall into a trap that would kill them, I'll tone down the damage to make it survivable, but just barely. Basically take them out of combat for the rest of the day, unless they receive a lot of healing. But if they receive no healing, and choose to run headfirst into the next horde of monsters, they will die.

If the death is certain because of horribly bad tactics, its pretty well ensured one of them is going to die. But if the death is because the monster has an ability or a stat that I didn't notice when I chose the monster, which resulted in the CR being far and beyond what the party could handle, I'll fudge a few things.

Basically I treat my players the way I'd like to be treated. I had a DM who was absolutely horrible with encounter balancing. Against a group of 3 characters, all level 2, he felt it was appropriate to throw a dire wolf against us. Normally, not a problem, except it was night and all but one of the PCs was asleep. Sentry failed his spot check, and the wolf killed my character before I even had the chance to wake up. One failed check lead to my death, and it wasn't even a check I made. I rerolled, and because of the encounter, party leveled up to 3, and his rule was when you die you come in with a new character 1 level lower. So, level 1 in a party of 3s. I never actually recovered from that gap, mostly since that character died because of the level gap.

The above situation is what I try to avoid. I don't think I'm a carebear DM, but in that situation, if I had DMed, I would have changed the dire wolf to a single wolf, who attacked while his pack was getting ready.

This is how i run things. and how you should tell your dm to run things. Run it fair, run it for what the guy is worth, but if you dont tell him this is a perfect way to run things hes likely to go "gygax" on you. I am used to little threat of death in games, but thats because i build monsters and hang back until the stench of TPK surrounds me. Then i go all out and group is just fine. Let him know theres a fine line between tough and dickish

[Trasilor]

As a DM I find I have the opposite problem. I kill players and they get all mopey and hurt, like I was out to "get them".

However, it sounds like the DM is falling into the trap of encounters that are too powerful for your party and he is toning them down on the fly.

As said before, talk privately, get a feel from the group, etc.

You may want to point him here for ideas for appropriate encounters.

The one thing I found, as a DM, is it is harder to tone down and encounter than it is to tone it up.