BS calls by DMs

[Azoth]

I know we all have our stories, and I would love to hear some of the most BS calls you have seen a DM make.

One recently that sent me fuming was a DM imposed penalty to hit an enemy spellcaster because I successfully made it through a prismatic wall. I charged the wizard, triggered his contingent prismatic wall, continued the charge through it, made all 7 saves successfully and had a 38 to hit on his Touch AC...with my anchoring weapon so he couldn't run away like he had every other time we encountered him. DM says I miss due to some ad hoc penalty of my character being shaken up about actually making it through the wall. The wizard teleported on his initiative taking another PC as a hostage.

There was much arguing over the penalty between him and I that ended with him invoking rule 0, and me walking off to go chain smoke. This was after another argument that the final layer of the wall would have destroyed my weapon (no mention of my other gear was made by him).

So what are some of your stories of complete bull calls you have seen a DM make.

[Necroticplague]

I know we all have our stories, and I would love to hear some of the most BS calls you have seen a DM make.

One recently that sent me fuming was a DM imposed penalty to hit an enemy spellcaster because I successfully made it through a prismatic wall. I charged the wizard, triggered his contingent prismatic wall, continued the charge through it, made all 7 saves successfully and had a 38 to hit on his Touch AC...with my anchoring weapon so he couldn't run away like he had every other time we encountered him. DM says I miss due to some ad hoc penalty of my character being shaken up about actually making it through the wall. The wizard teleported on his initiative taking another PC as a hostage.

There was much arguing over the penalty between him and I that ended with him invoking rule 0, and me walking off to go chain smoke. This was after another argument that the final layer of the wall would have destroyed my weapon (no mention of my other gear was made by him).

So what are some of your stories of complete bull calls you have seen a DM make.

Actually, right before the ruling against you, he also made one in your favor by ignoring a rule: you can't charge someone you don't have line of sight to, while a prismatic wall is opaque (and thus, blocks line of sight). You shouldn't have been able to 'continue the charge through it' by the rules.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Chances are he didn't have a choice in the matter, the wall appearing right in his body, as he was moving from one square to the next (and by that, coming into range). At least, that's one way to rule it, and allowing that charge to continue is completely fair, though I doubt it was an intentional benefit, and more of a 'common sense + didn't remember LoS for a second' (so you can't count it as a sign of good will).

Coming up with a penalty to protect your NPC is a stupid, stupid thing for the DM to do. If he really wanted the wizard to live, why a contingent prismatic wall instead of celerity? What's up with that?

[Mr.Moron]

I've only had issues with a single call back when I was a player and frankly I was out of line about it. It was a reasonable (if not strictly RAW), way of looking at things that I whined and whined about because it made my character do less damage.

In general I find these complaints generally boil down to "I charOP'd my way into a stone-cold-lock-of-the-century-OF_THE_WEEK win and the GM introduced a small complication that turned out be a tipping point".

For the most part issues have had with games have been ones where the GM can't maintain tone, lets disruptive players walk all over the game, or allow PvP that really only one side of the conflict is even close to enjoying.

[Azoth]

See, if I had just missed, I could have swallowed it. If he had blur/displacement up, and I failed the percentage so be it. If it had been a major image and the real guy was invisible nearby doing the dickery that would be fine. Had he called off my charge due to blocked line of sight, I could understand it.

The part that chaffed me so much was a non-status effect penalty that tanked my to hit so I missed. It was the DM invoking fiat for an NPC to not have to fight and risk his story changing from what he had planned.

It would be like the DM telling the wizard he can't prep spells for the day because he forgot his spell book back at the inn, when the wizard never said he left his book behind. Only, then the DM informs him that he packed in a rush and forgot it, because the DM feels he left in a hasty fashion.

[KingSmitty]

that's why you use clones.

[Necroticplague]

Chances are he didn't have a choice in the matter, the wall appearing right in his body, as he was moving from one square to the next (and by that, coming into range). At least, that's one way to rule it, and allowing that charge to continue is completely fair, though I doubt it was an intentional benefit, and more of a 'common sense + didn't remember LoS for a second' (so you can't count it as a sign of good will).

Actually, that's not a valid ruling either, as prismatic wall specifies the spell is disrupted and wasted if its cast into a space with with a creature in it. So either
1.wall between caster and charger. Wall is opaque, breaks LoS, can't charge.
2.Wall appears on top of charger. Spell is disrupted and wasted, charge continues as normal.
Either way, there is no scenario under which the charge can continue and he has to be effected by the wall. Though I do agree, it is more likely a result of forgetfulness than benevolence.

[Lorddenorstrus]

One of my recent DMs got fed up with Mindsight I had on a character and when a bunch of people snuck up on us and we interrogated them on how after we beat them.. it was apparently Amulets of Non Detection.... literally one of the most idiotic calls I've ever seen. I mean I'd've accepted Mind Blank if he REALLY wanted to counter me and then the amulets would've been worth the annoyance as something to keep ourselves lol but.. friggin Non Detection?

[jguy]

He could have used necklaces of Protection from Evil and it would have the same effect. Problem is the players get it afterwards.

My big gripe with a DM call was when we were ambushed and my fighter got flanked. He said because of the surprise and the flanking that my Tower Shield no longer applied to AC. I got super pissed because he was already getting flanking, so it went from a +2 to hit to +6. I argued RAW and realism but he ruled 0'd and I got hit. I didn't die and in fact crit and killed the NPC that hit me but I was pissed with that for a bit.

[Keltest]

He could have used necklaces of Protection from Evil and it would have the same effect. Problem is the players get it afterwards.

My big gripe with a DM call was when we were ambushed and my fighter got flanked. He said because of the surprise and the flanking that my Tower Shield no longer applied to AC. I got super pissed because he was already getting flanking, so it went from a +2 to hit to +6. I argued RAW and realism but he ruled 0'd and I got hit. I didn't die and in fact crit and killed the NPC that hit me but I was pissed with that for a bit.

In older editions at least, shields explicitly did not apply their bonuses against flanking attacks or when you were otherwise unable to fully perceive an attack, such as when you were surprised. Its not entirely out of nowhere, though I don't know if that rule was retained in 3.5

[justiceforall]

Non Detection

Don't you get a roll against that anyway?

I'm guessing you didn't get that roll.

[Gale]

I recently had a DM de-age my character’s adult dragon back to a baby. The reasoning was that the god of time themselves thought that the upcoming task our party had to face was going to be too easy and wanted to challenge us essentially. I was irritated given the amount of time I had put into the dragon looking into various feats for it along with building a spell list; but it wholly trivialized almost every problem we could come across.
Did I mention the dragon in question was a force dragon? In all seriousness it needed to be done. I only wished the DM given me some forewarning about it. It’s hard to willingly give up such great power even when it’s entirely unwarranted.

[ZamielVanWeber]

How the heck were you playing a force dragon? This campaign must have been high epic.

[Gale]

My character was a dragonborn and he happened to meet Bahamut himself. He offered me any dragon of my choosing to help me on my journey. I choose a force dragon because it was the strongest thing I could think of off the top of my head.
To be fair I did warn my DM multiple times that this was likely a bad idea, but he kept implying I was going to need it for the next big encounter. Needless to say we steamrolled through it.

[Marlowe]

PbP: I recently had a low-level Spiderclimbing Warlock poised on a wall, poised to blast a crossbowman above. Why the DM put me directly below the guy I've no idea. But it was already plain the DM had no idea what Warlocks were and was too proud to ask like a normal person.

The next post from the DM, after a long wait, ran something like: "[Your Character] leaps at the crossbowman. Only for a figure you didn't see to cast some sort of spell on you. You go weak and helpless and land at the guys feet."

So he's got a Warlock jumping into melee (straight up)for no reason instead of blasting, having her action interrupted by some sort of paralysing spell that apparently works as an immediate action and which doesn't give a save (I'm pretty sure no such thing exists) and then, depending on how you read it, either falling straight upwards to land at the feet of the guys I'd already seen, or else falling down to land at the feet of some new guys he hadn't bothered to mention.

This wasn't the first such event in this campaign's short life. Hell, he had me pick-pocketed earlier on of a pouch my character didn't even own. I told him flat out that this sort of thing was unacceptable. He promptly accused me of being a bad sport. I pointed out that he just wasn't playing D&D, but just screwing us over with one diabolus ex machina after another with not even a nod to the actual rules.

Yeah, so I left. Not a good story. It should have warned me off in the recruiting thread that the guy considered himself a Hardcore DM yet didn't know what basic skills did.

[Lorddenorstrus]

I was not given a roll, I simply wasn't able to detect these enemies and the necklaces broke when the users died or were incapacitated. >,< Apparently it was supposed to be a super difficult fight but my Sorcerer (This was a mostly funsies character designed around taking Mind Bender past 1st level. I know heresy / garbage.) I had Leadership and a Gestalt Troll / Monk companion... I enlarged him and things got wild. Claw damage increase from size.. unarmed increase from size.. + the feat he had to use both on each unarmed attack which activated Rend. I hadn't really gone wild with our pair prior to basically being pissed off. I'd been intentionally self neerfing basically to try to stay at a power level closer of my allies.

[Firechanter]

If he really wanted the wizard to live, why a contingent prismatic wall instead of celerity? What's up with that?

Maybe the DM, despite all his dickishness, is still sane enough to have the Celerity line banned in his games.

[atemu1234]

Maybe the DM, despite all his dickishness, is still sane enough to have the Celerity line banned in his games.

Ok, then time stop.

[lytokk]

DM once set my party up against a beholder. The beholder hit my halfling paladin with the eyebeam that slows down characters. He ruled that since I was slowed down, that I would only be able to move at half speed (so down to 7.5 since I was in full plate, but since everything rounds down in D&D 5 ft) and that I was unable to use a bow properly, as I couldn't release fast enough. I ended up pulling out my boomerang which I never used and just kinda had, only to have it fall right next to me since I move to slow to actually throw it. The whole point was to take me out of the combat.

Honestly, its not as bad as other things that have been mentioned. I know he did it in order to give the other party members a chance to do something. This was also the paladin I was breaking the game with (through creative playing and an ubermount build). The last time he set us up against beholders (well gauths) I had pointed out that the eyebeams are worse than the bite, and ended up sliding beneath them. He forgot that a fly speed also meant up when its perfect maneuverability.

Remembered another one. Same character, different DM. Need to get through a gate at the end of the city, and the only way through was for each party member to sleep with an idealized mate. Nothing in the paladin class said I couldn't, but with a war raging on above ground, in which my paladin was THE commander of the halfling forces, I felt that he just wouldn't be into it. Also this whole thing smelled of a trap. I say no, and try to come up with another way. DM calls for a will save DC 16. With my wisdom, charisma and all things considered, its pretty trivial for me to hit that. Another will save. Again, made it. After saving 5 more times I flat out ask the DM if he's just going to keep doing this until I fail. Nothing detected as evil, and the DM said I couldn't tell what was causing me to have to make the save, so honestly even if I had wanted to fight, I couldn't figure out the target. In the end I went along with it, as did the rest of the party, and was then subject to the DM's creepy telling of how it all went that night.

[Hellborn_Blight]

My friend specifically invited me to a game with all new players. I had been playing for a year, but never played a Barb, so I play a half-retarded (Int was like 7) Dwarf Barbarian, (named Yarp, after the line from Hot Fuzz) as not to out role play the newbies. The only other high attack bonus character in the party is a Paladin, and he is like 7 bonus below me, before raging. DM had been used to them sucking at hitting things, so I don't miss the whole encounter. End of chapter boss comes along and I rage and charge at him. Roll a 19,a crit threat with my great sword.
"Not a 20, so it is still possible to miss." So I ask what it's AC is.
"I don't have to tell you," and he says it like an A-Hole. I'm confused, not having any idea what is going on. The Rogue (my future wife now that I think about it) flanks and rolls and 11.
"Hit. Roll damage and sneak attack." wut. So I ask how is that even possible.
"She's flanking."
"Is flanking a +20 instead of a +2 in your games?" I say.
And he ignores me. So I'm pissed, pass my next two turns and eventually they kill the guy. Everything in the room was weird after that, so the night was kinda done. Once the session was over I asked him what the hell he was doing.
"I didn't want you to kill their bad guy since you just joined the game."
"So you cheated?"
"DM's can't cheat."
Stream of obscenities from me.

Found out latter that the d-bag used my character as an NPC for the game because the other players liked my character, but he told them I couldn't come anymore.

[Terazul]

Playing as a Lawful Good Half-Giant Dungeoncrasher Fighter who has the whole "hurr evil giants vs nice humans but then they get along WHOOPS OFFSPRING" backstory thing, where the character has spent their whole life doing his best to be a noble person who is more than his heritage. Wields an oversized shield, they call him Mr. Domino. In a party with a CN Half-Elf... Something, a NG Human Cleric with the Inquisition domain, and a CN Corgi (yes the dog) Warlock. We all meet up because the town is on fire. Thanks to goblins.

We manage to defeat the raiding party and capture one of the goblins. We tie him up with a rope, and look to interrogate him and find out where their hideout is to put a stop to this. My character tries reasoning with him, nothing. Other characters in the party threaten him with violence+cure spells to no avail, decide the best idea is to string him up over the rafters in the barn overnight. All of that bit much, but my guy rolls with it, go rest in the inn. Next morning, we pull him down, he's more willing to cooperate. So we keep him tied up, and hold on to one end of the rope like a leash and have him lead us there. Couple scenes go by and it becomes obvious that the goblin is stalling on leading us in the right direction, so my character holding the rope, flicks it in a "giddy up" fashion to encourage him along.

I am immediately told that if I continue this line of action that I am in danger of an alignment shift because torture is evil. Now, ignoring the fact that everyone else has been straight up torturing the guy (which is apparently ok because they're either Neutral or they have the Inquisition domain), why is a single set of actions going to change my character's entire personal outlook? This coming from the GM who loves paladins like they're going out of style. I argued about it, but ultimately just had to go "well ok" and proceeded to hand the reigns off to someone else.

The campaign didn't last for too much longer after that adventure due to scheduling issues, and it was years ago, but I'm still incredibly bitter about it. And that's just one of many reasons why I don't play with alignment, and if I have to, I avoid "good" alignments like the plague.

[ZamielVanWeber]

This didn't happen to me, but I was in this campaign:
The DM takes a player off for some secret rolling and keeps her there for about 25-35 minutes. What transpired during it was that she got some secret information, then went off and had a combat, and won. They then come back and she declares her intent to coup de grace the enemy with her club. The DM says that she kicks the guy off of a cliff which gives him time to teleport to freedom. While unconscious.

The worst part was keeping 4 people waiting for about half an hour for a combat.

[Marlowe]

Common theme with a lot of these stories is "DM cheating to stop a given player from accomplishing anything because some reason".

In my case, I think it was pretty plain the guy thought D&D was all about Big Men with Big Swords in Big Armour, and couldn't understand why anyone would want to play anything else. He enforced 4b6b3 and couldn't understand why so many people built spellcasters, even though few of us had arrays that could have made decent martials. He warned us there would be a lot of combat (there wasn't), implying he thought non-martial classes couldn't survive in a fight. In my case, I rolled an 18, 17, 13, 11, 11, 6 and he seemed very confused that I didn't go with his suggestion of playing a Half-Orc barbarian with INT 4.

Of course, since in his games reality keeps getting altered so any tactics that's not "hit something with a big sword" always fails, he was dead right.

The real red flag was another thread where it turned out he didn't know what the term "Deus ex machina" meant. He thought it was a video game reference.

[illyrus]

This was ShadowRun but the story should work ok for those that don't know the system. We were hunting a mass murderer and had been invited to a restaurant to meet with him. One of the PCs was determined to come armed and brought a small pistol through the security measures (took about an hour of gameplay). So during the meeting when the mass murderer reveals his plan to wipe out the city the armed PC pulls out his gun and rolls and gets an amazing number of successes, he then permanently burns karma to assure the hit.

To put this in D&D terms imagine rolling two 20s and then burning a level off your character (so you go from 8th to 7th level for example) to assure the hit. The GM looks at the dice, rolls some behind the screen, and says "the man calmly dodges the attack and goes back to talking." The character who fired was killed by the security team that responded and the GM was all smug. I spoke to the GM after the game and he used some "creative" math to justify the dodge. As in, completely made up and if legit would mean the guy could survive a cruise missile hitting him without a scratch. Then we just... stop pursuing the mass murderer and let him do whatever he wanted as we sought out different jobs. It really ticked off the GM but we didn't get any more BS calls like that.

[slade88green]

I was invited to a game many years ago and was playing a wizard/cleric. Its been so long I don't recall what classes were being played. So, as we are treking along to get to the BBEG's fortress, we get ambushed by his minions with owlbear pets. After surprise round I win initiative and, since they were grouped up, fireballed the lot of them. Next in the initiative order was one of his regular players, a wizard. The wizard hits the group with a cone of cold. The DM ruled that since the cone of cold was right after the fireball that my fire ball only did 1/4 damage, ya know, cause it put out the fire.......

Same game session the DM could tell that we were bored and asked it we wanted to "warp to the the end guy". I don't know how the session ended as I left. It was just too horrible to stay.

[Geddy2112]

A DM told my paladin in character (as my deity) that I could not under any circumstance do anything bad to party members regardless of how many people they murdered in front of me. Nor could I ever fall or suffer any negative consequences. None of the other players knew this, but I had to stand and watch as the rest of the party butchered innocent people and laughed about it.

[ComaVision]

This thread is why I always try to impress on new DM's that you do not force "your" story.

I've made some bad calls during the game when we don't know the rules and can't find them in a reasonable time limit. More importantly, I'll admit when I made a bad call and rule correctly in the future. So far, I haven't made a significant enough mistake to have to retcon anything.

I have a game with a new DM starting this Sunday. He has made a custom class for his girlfriend, who I kicked out of our previous game because 1) she sucks at D&D and 2) she complains about everything. Wish me luck!

[Velaryon]

I've been fortunate to mostly game with good players who enjoy a similar style as mine and don't try to pull BS like some of the stories I've read here. For the most part, all I've had to deal with are a couple of DM's who let one player monopolize too much of the focus, have no sense of realistic logistics (ask me sometime about the quarantined planet protected by an entire space fleet in order to keep twelve run-of-the-mill Mandalorian soldiers under guard), and earlier in my gaming career, the occasional overpowered DMPC.

However, I do have a few contributions to this thread, which I'll tell in order of increasing egregiousness.

This happened in the first D&D campaign I ever played (3.0, a few short months after it first came out), though not the first session. I and one other player were newbies, the rest were experienced AD&D vets who had mostly adjusted well to the new system but still confused an old remembered 2e rule for how things were done now. All in all it was fun, though my half-elf Fighter was horribly built and mostly ineffective.

Anyway, the worst BS call I can remember from this game was a pretty minor one. We were making camp for the night; our party didn't have a wizard to cast rope trick for us, so we were doing the standard "divide up for watches" thing. I had gotten up to go to the bathroom (we were playing in a dorm so that meant a long walk down the hall. I was gone for maybe 5 minutes). While I was away, the PC on watch heard sounds in the darkness that sounded like monsters approaching, so he roused the party to go and investigate. I came back to find that my character had been assumed to go along, though I had not had the opportunity to say so. While we were away from camp, the monster's allies sacked our camp, stole some of our supplies, and stole our horses. So I lost my horse and anything stored in my saddlebags (which wasn't much because the DM was very stingy with both gold and magic items), and was then told that I shouldn't have left my stuff unguarded if I didn't want it stolen. I tried to point out that I hadn't left my stuff at all, that I was out of the room when this was decided, but he was having none of it. I was annoyed but it was a fairly minor screwjob overall.

This second game was perhaps a year ago, playing Pathfinder with a different lineup from my usual group. The DM was a friend who created a homebrew setting, in which he also writes a comic (this is a red flag). From previous experience with this DM, I know he puts story before rules, which is okay but he takes it to an extreme. He also has a reputation for railroading in service to his plot. In his defense, he is also a good roleplayer and pretty awesome storyteller, but he lets the gaming aspects suffer in deference to the parts he cares more about. However, this game was set in a different part of the world from where he writes his comic, so I believed I had cause to expect less railroading than usual.

Anyway, I was playing a human Factotum (which he had approved after seeing the class, even though everyone else was playing Pathfinder classes). We were on a pirate ship - you know the kind, the "we may steal everything we own from law-abiding folks, but we're not EVIL!" kind of pirates. At some point we came into possession of a treasure chest that had the Super-Important Magical MacGuffin™ on it. As the resident skillmonkey, it was my job to check for traps. I don't remember what I got, but it wasn't enough to find the magical trap.

I opened the chest, reached inside, and was immediately told to make a Reflex save, and I of course got a natural 1. The treasure chest slammed shut on my hands, doing a bunch of damage (we were low level and it was more than a third of my hit points), and was told that my wrists were both broken, and I would suffer a -4 penalty on anything I tried to do with my hands until they were healed. This was bad news, because we had no healer in our party.

The ship's healer was an NPC named Madam Hao, who was also the ship's cook and fulfilled every negative Asian stereotype the DM (who himself is Chinese-American) cared to throw out there. For whatever reason she was not available to treat me at the time. However, after smashing both of my character's hands, the trap was expended and we still got the MacGuffin out.

Not too long afterward, we were boarded by the bad guys who wanted said MacGuffin (the spellcasting types teleported aboard while their ship approached and the mundane types boarded the old-fashioned way).

At our low level, I had something like a total of +1 or +2 to hit after taking my penalties into account, so I stayed the hell out of the way, trying to provide a distraction or otherwise influence things in minor ways without actually engaging anyone in combat since I was down a bunch of hp and effectively couldn't hit anyone without a 20. Seeing that I was not going to engage in normal combat, the DM had Madame Hao approach me on deck, feed me some foul-tasting concoction, and snap my bones painfully back into place. The net effect was that my pain was suppressed and the penalty on attack negated until the end of the encounter.

So in short, the DM fiated an ill-considered and arbitrary penalty on me because of a couple bad rolls, and then fiated the penalty away once he realized that it made me useless in combat. Thankfully, the campaign only went 4 or 5 sessions before concluding, and I've since returned to my normal gaming group.


To anyone who actually knows Latin, apologies for the Google Translated mess there. :smallbiggrin: For everyone else, that is intended to say "Deus ex total party kill."

A friend of mine was running a campaign in which he wanted to have the entire party end up with a cool template. The idea was that Levistus had escaped from his icy prison in the fifth (I think?) layer of Hell, and whichever god it was brought us back in order to deal with the problem.

We were originally supposed to get the Einherjer template from Deities & Demigods (the DM was big into Norse mythology at this time), but plans were changed because the DM didn't like that one of the players found out. This was kind of BS because he specifically told at least two of the other players that this was planned to happen, but he was mad that another player found out, so he scrapped it and instead gave us the Shadow Samurai template from Creatures of Rokugan. This did almost nothing beneficial for my character, especially since he interpreted the Spectral Equipment ability to mean that we could not acquire new gear other than what we had when we died. I at least managed to finagle an interpretation that allowed my bullets (it was a Ravenloft campaign and I was playing a Black Powder Avenger who dual-wielded pistols and also carried a musket) to return to me, effectively giving me infinite ammo.

This isn't about the narratively-enforced template itself, but rather how we came to be given the template in the first place. You see, in order to be given this template, we all had to die. So to start things off, Count Strahd von Zarovich summoned us to his castle. By "summoned," I mean "sent out a spellcasting lieutenant who cast mass hold person on us (the DM did not allow any of us the Will save we were supposed to get, because he wanted us all to be captured). Then Count Strahd tasked us all with a mission that was ultimately meaningless but which we had to accept on pain of death.

The details of said mission were not important, because the entire thing was merely a setup so that the DM could ambush us as we left Castle Ravenloft. A party of NPCs consisting of a wizard and a squad of archers was lying in wait for us outside the castle gate. As soon as they saw us coming, the wizard cast mass haste on the archers and they unloaded full attacks on us. The wizard also dropped a quickened fireball on us (we were maybe level 9 or so). The DM later confessed to me that the fireball was specifically because he was trying to ignite the gunpowder and bombs in my character's backpack, which means the DM was using OOC knowledge to try and turn my own weapons against me.

The entire party was TPK's in less than two rounds. For reasons unknown to me, we accepted this and continued playing the game, accepting the undead template and eventually doing the whole killing Levistus thing.

So those are my three stories, each with a different DM and completely different gaming group. Others have had worse I'm sure, but I'm no stranger to dumb DM calls.

[Crake]

I've been fortunate to mostly game with good players who enjoy a similar style as mine and don't try to pull BS like some of the stories I've read here. For the most part, all I've had to deal with are a couple of DM's who let one player monopolize too much of the focus, have no sense of realistic logistics (ask me sometime about the quarantined planet protected by an entire space fleet in order to keep twelve run-of-the-mill Mandalorian soldiers under guard), and earlier in my gaming career, the occasional overpowered DMPC.

However, I do have a few contributions to this thread, which I'll tell in order of increasing egregiousness.

This happened in the first D&D campaign I ever played (3.0, a few short months after it first came out), though not the first session. I and one other player were newbies, the rest were experienced AD&D vets who had mostly adjusted well to the new system but still confused an old remembered 2e rule for how things were done now. All in all it was fun, though my half-elf Fighter was horribly built and mostly ineffective.

Anyway, the worst BS call I can remember from this game was a pretty minor one. We were making camp for the night; our party didn't have a wizard to cast rope trick for us, so we were doing the standard "divide up for watches" thing. I had gotten up to go to the bathroom (we were playing in a dorm so that meant a long walk down the hall. I was gone for maybe 5 minutes). While I was away, the PC on watch heard sounds in the darkness that sounded like monsters approaching, so he roused the party to go and investigate. I came back to find that my character had been assumed to go along, though I had not had the opportunity to say so. While we were away from camp, the monster's allies sacked our camp, stole some of our supplies, and stole our horses. So I lost my horse and anything stored in my saddlebags (which wasn't much because the DM was very stingy with both gold and magic items), and was then told that I shouldn't have left my stuff unguarded if I didn't want it stolen. I tried to point out that I hadn't left my stuff at all, that I was out of the room when this was decided, but he was having none of it. I was annoyed but it was a fairly minor screwjob overall.

This second game was perhaps a year ago, playing Pathfinder with a different lineup from my usual group. The DM was a friend who created a homebrew setting, in which he also writes a comic (this is a red flag). From previous experience with this DM, I know he puts story before rules, which is okay but he takes it to an extreme. He also has a reputation for railroading in service to his plot. In his defense, he is also a good roleplayer and pretty awesome storyteller, but he lets the gaming aspects suffer in deference to the parts he cares more about. However, this game was set in a different part of the world from where he writes his comic, so I believed I had cause to expect less railroading than usual.

Anyway, I was playing a human Factotum (which he had approved after seeing the class, even though everyone else was playing Pathfinder classes). We were on a pirate ship - you know the kind, the "we may steal everything we own from law-abiding folks, but we're not EVIL!" kind of pirates. At some point we came into possession of a treasure chest that had the Super-Important Magical MacGuffin™ on it. As the resident skillmonkey, it was my job to check for traps. I don't remember what I got, but it wasn't enough to find the magical trap.

I opened the chest, reached inside, and was immediately told to make a Reflex save, and I of course got a natural 1. The treasure chest slammed shut on my hands, doing a bunch of damage (we were low level and it was more than a third of my hit points), and was told that my wrists were both broken, and I would suffer a -4 penalty on anything I tried to do with my hands until they were healed. This was bad news, because we had no healer in our party.

The ship's healer was an NPC named Madam Hao, who was also the ship's cook and fulfilled every negative Asian stereotype the DM (who himself is Chinese-American) cared to throw out there. For whatever reason she was not available to treat me at the time. However, after smashing both of my character's hands, the trap was expended and we still got the MacGuffin out.

Not too long afterward, we were boarded by the bad guys who wanted said MacGuffin (the spellcasting types teleported aboard while their ship approached and the mundane types boarded the old-fashioned way).

At our low level, I had something like a total of +1 or +2 to hit after taking my penalties into account, so I stayed the hell out of the way, trying to provide a distraction or otherwise influence things in minor ways without actually engaging anyone in combat since I was down a bunch of hp and effectively couldn't hit anyone without a 20. Seeing that I was not going to engage in normal combat, the DM had Madame Hao approach me on deck, feed me some foul-tasting concoction, and snap my bones painfully back into place. The net effect was that my pain was suppressed and the penalty on attack negated until the end of the encounter.

So in short, the DM fiated an ill-considered and arbitrary penalty on me because of a couple bad rolls, and then fiated the penalty away once he realized that it made me useless in combat. Thankfully, the campaign only went 4 or 5 sessions before concluding, and I've since returned to my normal gaming group.


To anyone who actually knows Latin, apologies for the Google Translated mess there. :smallbiggrin: For everyone else, that is intended to say "Deus ex total party kill."

A friend of mine was running a campaign in which he wanted to have the entire party end up with a cool template. The idea was that Levistus had escaped from his icy prison in the fifth (I think?) layer of Hell, and whichever god it was brought us back in order to deal with the problem.

We were originally supposed to get the Einherjer template from Deities & Demigods (the DM was big into Norse mythology at this time), but plans were changed because the DM didn't like that one of the players found out. This was kind of BS because he specifically told at least two of the other players that this was planned to happen, but he was mad that another player found out, so he scrapped it and instead gave us the Shadow Samurai template from Creatures of Rokugan. This did almost nothing beneficial for my character, especially since he interpreted the Spectral Equipment ability to mean that we could not acquire new gear other than what we had when we died. I at least managed to finagle an interpretation that allowed my bullets (it was a Ravenloft campaign and I was playing a Black Powder Avenger who dual-wielded pistols and also carried a musket) to return to me, effectively giving me infinite ammo.

This isn't about the narratively-enforced template itself, but rather how we came to be given the template in the first place. You see, in order to be given this template, we all had to die. So to start things off, Count Strahd von Zarovich summoned us to his castle. By "summoned," I mean "sent out a spellcasting lieutenant who cast mass hold person on us (the DM did not allow any of us the Will save we were supposed to get, because he wanted us all to be captured). Then Count Strahd tasked us all with a mission that was ultimately meaningless but which we had to accept on pain of death.

The details of said mission were not important, because the entire thing was merely a setup so that the DM could ambush us as we left Castle Ravenloft. A party of NPCs consisting of a wizard and a squad of archers was lying in wait for us outside the castle gate. As soon as they saw us coming, the wizard cast mass haste on the archers and they unloaded full attacks on us. The wizard also dropped a quickened fireball on us (we were maybe level 9 or so). The DM later confessed to me that the fireball was specifically because he was trying to ignite the gunpowder and bombs in my character's backpack, which means the DM was using OOC knowledge to try and turn my own weapons against me.

The entire party was TPK's in less than two rounds. For reasons unknown to me, we accepted this and continued playing the game, accepting the undead template and eventually doing the whole killing Levistus thing.

So those are my three stories, each with a different DM and completely different gaming group. Others have had worse I'm sure, but I'm no stranger to dumb DM calls.

To be fair, that last one, with the exception of using OOC knowledge for an NPC, just sounds like the required initial railroading needed to set up a game. It sounds like you were all informed beforehand that you were going to get some template that required you to die? Or am I wrong in that? I dunno, maybe I'm wrong and you were told the campaign would be an open world sandbox game and you instead had to go through all that.

That's basically my story, DM told us he was running a RP focused, open world sandbox. What did it end up as? Him running a module and one of the other characters played CE murderhobo paladins that insisted he was LG

[SinsI]

A DM told my paladin in character (as my deity) that I could not under any circumstance do anything bad to party members regardless of how many people they murdered in front of me. Nor could I ever fall or suffer any negative consequences. None of the other players knew this, but I had to stand and watch as the rest of the party butchered innocent people and laughed about it.
I don't think this is DMs BS call, but I think your character should've become an ex-paladin anyway due to getting disappointed in that deity. And at the very very least once the extraordinary circumstances that led to that situation were resolved (i.e. being undercover), he should've sought out the Justice for all the killed innocent people.

[Honest Tiefling]

Perhaps a bit minor, but one time I was playing rogue in a pathfinder game. There was another rogue in the party, and both of us had high perception. Of course, we are asked to roll perception. I got a fairly decent roll, and I think the other rogue also got a nice roll. Alas, our rolls were useless, as we had failed to inform the DM we had checked the ceiling, so some creatures got the drop on us. Never did the DM mention this rule, or suggest it as a player.

I spent the rest of the session listing everything I checked, sometimes even announcing multiple perception checks. I don't think he plays with it any more.

[ComaVision]

I remembered a pretty bad one of mine. I had set the DC (arbitrarily) for waking up from battle noise as 10 Listen check. At low levels, this resulted in meatsticks possibly missing entire fights. I've since lowered the DC to 0 so only characters with Wis penalties have to worry about it at all.

[Extra Anchovies]

I remembered a pretty bad one of mine. I had set the DC (arbitrarily) for waking up from battle noise as 10 Listen check. At low levels, this resulted in meatsticks possibly missing entire fights. I've since lowered the DC to 0 so only characters with Wis penalties have to worry about it at all.

You know, the Listen DC for battle noise is in the PHB, in the description for Listen, and it's even lower than you have it now.
http://i.imgur.com/sjj4dP6.png
(Image from the SRD, but the same table is in the PHB too)

[Geddy2112]

I don't think this is DMs BS call, but I think your character should've become an ex-paladin anyway due to getting disappointed in that deity. And at the very very least once the extraordinary circumstances that led to that situation were resolved (i.e. being undercover), he should've sought out the Justice for all the killed innocent people.

I agree that I should have fallen and sought justice. Its a BS call because the DM decided my character would be roleplayed as he wanted and he would bend the mechanics so that I would be fine with being in a party of murderhobos. There were no extraordinary circumstances, this was generally just random murderhobodom.


Perhaps a bit minor, but one time I was playing rogue in a pathfinder game. There was another rogue in the party, and both of us had high perception. Of course, we are asked to roll perception. I got a fairly decent roll, and I think the other rogue also got a nice roll. Alas, our rolls were useless, as we had failed to inform the DM we had checked the ceiling, so some creatures got the drop on us. Never did the DM mention this rule, or suggest it as a player.

I spent the rest of the session listing everything I checked, sometimes even announcing multiple perception checks. I don't think he plays with it any more.

So zipper DM'ing, or treating your players as if they are totally incompetent. http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?754367-The-Opposite-of-Zipper-GMing&

[ComaVision]

You know, the Listen DC for battle noise is in the PHB, in the description for Listen, and it's even lower than you have it now.
http://i.imgur.com/sjj4dP6.png
(Image from the SRD, but the same table is in the PHB too)

Aye, now if there was an official modifier for when the character is asleep I'd be good. +10 to the DC seems reasonable to me.

[Geddy2112]

Aye, now if there was an official modifier for when the character is asleep I'd be good. +10 to the DC seems reasonable to me.

Pathfinder has a modifier for perception made while asleep, it is +10 http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/perception

[ComaVision]

Pathfinder has a modifier for perception made while asleep, it is +10 http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/perception

Much appreciated! It's good to have a source :smallsmile:

[Khedrac]

In 3.5 there is no modifier to the DC for the listener being asleep:

A sleeping character may make Listen checks at a -10 penalty. A successful check awakens the sleeper. It's a penalty for the listener.

[The Random NPC]

You know, the Listen DC for battle noise is in the PHB, in the description for Listen, and it's even lower than you have it now.
http://i.imgur.com/sjj4dP6.png
(Image from the SRD, but the same table is in the PHB too)

But also don't forget you take a -10 penalty on Listen checks while asleep.

[Crake]

Also don't forget distance penalties and obstructions like walls and doors if any.

[Dire Moose]

During a Pathfinder Society session, a number of characters were badly wounded during a fight. The rogue had a wand of Cure Light Wounds and Use Magic Device, so he decided to draw it while moving and heal one of his unconscious companions.

The GM said that no, he couldn't do it, since a wand wasn't a weapon and couldn't be drawn as part of movement.

I pointed out that the rule also covered "a weapon-like object, such as a wand."

The GM still ruled against it, saying that since the wand wasn't being used as a weapon to attack someone, it couldn't be drawn as part of movement.

[Velaryon]

To be fair, that last one, with the exception of using OOC knowledge for an NPC, just sounds like the required initial railroading needed to set up a game. It sounds like you were all informed beforehand that you were going to get some template that required you to die? Or am I wrong in that? I dunno, maybe I'm wrong and you were told the campaign would be an open world sandbox game and you instead had to go through all that.

That's basically my story, DM told us he was running a RP focused, open world sandbox. What did it end up as? Him running a module and one of the other characters played CE murderhobo paladins that insisted he was LG

In a way that's true, though it wasn't the setup for a game so much as the middle of the campaign. He had told me out of game that he wanted to make us Einherjer, and he had told at least one, maybe two of the other players. Then he got mad when a fourth player found out and claimed the surprise was ruined (just think about that for a minute), which is when he decided to scrap the idea and dump a different template on all of us instead.

My problem is less that it needed to happen for the sake of the game and more about how he did it, i.e. denying us a save to get us captured, having us ambushed by meaningless characters who were there for no other reason than because we needed to die, putting us into a fight where we had no chance to react to anything and no decision to make, and so on. It was essentially "rocks fall, everyone dies" clumsily disguised with game mechanics, and with a story set afterwards.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

A lot of times the BS calls from DMs in my past are along the following lines:
- [X mechanic] is banned for players, but not for my beloved NPCs.
- Oh, you found a way to defeat my beloved NPC that lacks enough drama? Let me introduce an arbitrary complication or a complete negation of the tactic.

The worst was when a completely over-leveled and fiat-protected enemy was shot to hell and buried in dozens of boulders that should have done thousands of unavoidable damage (he was sitting in a permanent non-selective AMF, all openings had dispelling screens which we hucked force arrows and Shrink Item'd boulders through), but he just lived because "well you didn't stick around to find out how." Right.

Nitpick on charging:
If you don’t have line of sight to the opponent at the start of your turn, you can’t charge that opponent.So as long as the charger had LoS at the start of the turn, this restriction wouldn't stop the charge. So for instance, readying to cast Silent Image between the caster and charger when the charger approaches doesn't negate the charge. However,
if any line from your starting space to the ending space passes through a square that blocks movement, slows movement, or contains a creature (even an ally), you can’t charge.A Prismatic Wall hinders movement, I would say.

[Dexam]

I had a DM spontaneously rule that when an unconscious but stable and tended character on negative Hit Points wakes up, they had to start making stabilization checks (and Heal checks by the other players) every round to avoid losing HP again.

I showed the DM the exact wording in the PHB that explained why that ruling was BS, and got "Rule Zero"ed because they thought it was more interesting this way.

And this was in a very low-level game with no healers or healing potions.

[AvatarVecna]

Nitpick on charging:

So as long as the charger had LoS at the start of the turn, this restriction wouldn't stop the charge. So for instance, readying to cast Silent Image between the caster and charger when the charger approaches doesn't negate the charge. However,A Prismatic Wall hinders movement, I would say.

Perhaps it does, but not in the sense meant by the rules. A Prismatic Wall, much like a Wall of Fire, does not directly prevent someone from moving through (in the way that a Wall of Stone or a Wall of Force prevents movement), but instead punishes those who attempt to do so. Running into a Wall of Force would certainly stop a charger in their tracks, but a magic light curtain would not.

As another point, since charging if a full round action, the decision to spend your action that way takes place before the wall went up, meaning that by RAW you can't halt your charge before it carries you through the Prismatic Wall (I think).

EDIT:

Just so that I can continue the main topic, rather than just nitpicking the original example, I had a bad DM call in a 5e game I played awhile back.

So, I was playing a Ranger (yes, I know Rangers suck, I live in Dallas), when me and my two party members (a q-staff bladelock and a life cleric) were ambushed by several wights in a small room. Unfortunately, due to some bad luck, the cleric ended up dying before my ranger could heal them back up. When we were going over the battle afterward both IC and OOC, trying to figure out what went wrong, we realized that the DM (due to us all playing via Theatre of the Mind for that encounter) had forgotten where our characters were standing at that pivotal moment when the cleric got hit enough times to kill him. By all rights, my ranger (who normally fires arrows from the back, but was leading us at the time because we got ambushed) should've gotten an opportunity attack against the first wight that ended up attacking the cleric. Said wight was literally at 1 HP, and probably would've stopped to attack me instead of going for the cleric if the DM had known I was there. After presenting this all to the DM, he just kinda shrugged and said something along the lines of "thems the shakes".

I wouldn't mind, except that it was basically the only encounter the entire game that was run via Theatre of the Mind, because the DM didn't want to have to draw out this huge room, only to erase it so that he had room to draw the next big room. To the DM's credit, though, he didn't balk at drawing stuff out after that, and made sure to keep extra-good track of where we were whenever we played Theatre of the Mind on the long journey from the dungeon back to town. It still kinda stung though, and I really felt bad for the Cleric player (mostly cause we were like 3rd level and he'd recently lucked into a set of full plate, which neither of the other two of us had any use for).

[Crake]

In a way that's true, though it wasn't the setup for a game so much as the middle of the campaign. He had told me out of game that he wanted to make us Einherjer, and he had told at least one, maybe two of the other players. Then he got mad when a fourth player found out and claimed the surprise was ruined (just think about that for a minute), which is when he decided to scrap the idea and dump a different template on all of us instead.

My problem is less that it needed to happen for the sake of the game and more about how he did it, i.e. denying us a save to get us captured, having us ambushed by meaningless characters who were there for no other reason than because we needed to die, putting us into a fight where we had no chance to react to anything and no decision to make, and so on. It was essentially "rocks fall, everyone dies" clumsily disguised with game mechanics, and with a story set afterwards.

A right, from the sounds of it, I was assuming it was first session material kinda thing, not mid-campaign. In that case, yeah, that's more annoying. I also don't force templates on players unless I'm fairly certain they'll like the templates, or I discuss it with them beforehand.

[Tvtyrant]

A DM told my paladin in character (as my deity) that I could not under any circumstance do anything bad to party members regardless of how many people they murdered in front of me. Nor could I ever fall or suffer any negative consequences. None of the other players knew this, but I had to stand and watch as the rest of the party butchered innocent people and laughed about it.
Yeah this sounds like he was a good DM and you were a trouble player. If the entire rest of the group is plating murder munchkins and you decide to play Miko Paladin, that is on you.

[BWR]

We were fighting a mummy in an abandndoned underground complex. We were kicking it pretty hard and afterd eating a Scorching Ray it decided to make itself scarce. It vanished from sight and just over a round later, after finishing off its minions, the ranger tried tracking it to see which of the three tunnels it ran down. We were told it was impossible to track.
Never mind that we weren't allowed to roll a Listen check to see if we could hear it. (we were breathing too heavily)
Never mind the ranger's Track roll which was nearly 30 (can't track anything on hard stone, and dust and falling ash from the burned mummy apparantly don't leave marks either).

This was the same DM who would decide we were getting too much loot so instead of throwing enemies without loot at us or inventing some appropriate-for-story expenses would choose one of two things: either the magic items were specially enchanted to teleport away upon the death or capture of the bearer (alternatively, they'd lose their enchantment upon death or capture), or they were too ugly or evil looking and we were told we refused to touch them because they looked so bad.
We accepted this silently for one session each excuse, then loudly protested at how stupid it was. He relented.
See? Talking does help.

[Sith_Happens]

(yes, I know Rangers suck, I live in Dallas)

https://i.warosu.org/data/fa/img/0081/55/1398567963808.png

As for my actual contribution to the thread:

In an old group a number of years ago now, the party was ambushed and surrounded by variant lizardfolk. Knowledge check reveals that they have blindsense, but I open with Glitterdust over half of them anyways because who cares if they still know which squares we're in. We'd just hit 3rd level and the DM hadn't encountered the spell before, so after rolling the enemies' Will saves and being told that the ones who failed were blinded, cue "Oh, did I say blindsense? I meant blindsight." As annoying as this was I let it go because this was his first time DMing and he seemed like he'd forgotten which was which, so maybe he had honestly meant to give the enemies blindsight from the start. Whatever.

Next turn I cast Sculpted Grease (four 10-foot cubes option) catching all the lizardfolk in the area, half of them fall and one of the still-standing (and therefore flat-footed) ones is next to the rogue. Woot! Imagine my surprise when one of the fallen enemies proceeds to move ten feet while prone by pushing off the nearest dry ground with its tail and sliding across the grease patch. Upon expressing my displeasure and confusion at this turn of events, the DM responds with "It's grease, it makes sense." I point out that not only does the spell not make provisions for any such thing, but it's specifically meant to impede movement, not enhance movement. The DM stands by his ruling. Meh, none of the other lizardfolk seem to be getting the same idea and are just as prone and/or mired in place as they're supposed to be. I move on.

Next round is when the real stupid happens. You see, due to unfortunate positioning I had had to include the ranger's space in one of the grease patches and he'd rolled low on his save. It was fine though because so did the enemy next to him, so he was having a perfectly fun time exchanging prone-to-prone blows with it. Until he rolled a natural 1 that is... and the DM decided that his swing sent him sliding off the cliff we were fighting next to. Thankfully there was another ledge twenty feet down that he landed on, but still. And once again, the DM was having none of my protestations that that is the exact opposite of what the Grease spell does.

The worst part? The ranger and half the rest of the group spent the rest of the campaign blaming me for the ranger falling off the cliff, no matter how many times I reminded them that Grease isn't supposed to be able to do that.:smallfurious:

[geekintheground]

In an old group a number of years ago now, the party was ambushed and surrounded by variant lizardfolk. Knowledge check reveals that they have blindsense, but I open with Glitterdust over half of them anyways because who cares if they still know which squares we're in. We'd just hit 3rd level and the DM hadn't encountered the spell before, so after rolling the enemies' Will saves and being told that the ones who failed were blinded, cue "Oh, did I say blindsense? I meant blindsight." As annoying as this was I let it go because this was his first time DMing and he seemed like he'd forgotten which was which, so maybe he had honestly meant to give the enemies blindsight from the start. Whatever.

Next turn I cast Sculpted Grease (four 10-foot cubes option) catching all the lizardfolk in the area, half of them fall and one of the still-standing (and therefore flat-footed) ones is next to the rogue. Woot! Imagine my surprise when one of the fallen enemies proceeds to move ten feet while prone by pushing off the nearest dry ground with its tail and sliding across the grease patch. Upon expressing my displeasure and confusion at this turn of events, the DM responds with "It's grease, it makes sense." I point out that not only does the spell not make provisions for any such thing, but it's specifically meant to impede movement, not enhance movement. The DM stands by his ruling. Meh, none of the other lizardfolk seem to be getting the same idea and are just as prone and/or mired in place as they're supposed to be. I move on.

Next round is when the real stupid happens. You see, due to unfortunate positioning I had had to include the ranger's space in one of the grease patches and he'd rolled low on his save. It was fine though because so did the enemy next to him, so he was having a perfectly fun time exchanging prone-to-prone blows with it. Until he rolled a natural 1 that is... and the DM decided that his swing sent him sliding off the cliff we were fighting next to. Thankfully there was another ledge twenty feet down that he landed on, but still. And once again, the DM was having none of my protestations that that is the exact opposite of what the Grease spell does.

The worst part? The ranger and half the rest of the group spent the rest of the campaign blaming me for the ranger falling off the cliff, no matter how many times I reminded them that Grease isn't supposed to be able to do that.:smallfurious:

wow... thats bad. i would have pulled out the ol' "if i had known that i wouldnt have done this/done this differently" line

[LentilNinja]

DM didn't remember the prices for enhancements. Sold a +1 burning Battleaxe for 600g. I was away for a few sessions and couldn't correct this, so when I came back my party bought themselves high powered weapons for their level.

Worst part? Didn't even get me one. :smallmad:

[Bronk]

Next turn I cast Sculpted Grease (four 10-foot cubes option) catching all the lizardfolk in the area, half of them fall and one of the still-standing (and therefore flat-footed) ones is next to the rogue. Woot! Imagine my surprise when one of the fallen enemies proceeds to move ten feet while prone by pushing off the nearest dry ground with its tail and sliding across the grease patch. Upon expressing my displeasure and confusion at this turn of events, the DM responds with "It's grease, it makes sense." I point out that not only does the spell not make provisions for any such thing, but it's specifically meant to impede movement, not enhance movement. The DM stands by his ruling. Meh, none of the other lizardfolk seem to be getting the same idea and are just as prone and/or mired in place as they're supposed to be. I move on.

Next round is when the real stupid happens. You see, due to unfortunate positioning I had had to include the ranger's space in one of the grease patches and he'd rolled low on his save. It was fine though because so did the enemy next to him, so he was having a perfectly fun time exchanging prone-to-prone blows with it. Until he rolled a natural 1 that is... and the DM decided that his swing sent him sliding off the cliff we were fighting next to. Thankfully there was another ledge twenty feet down that he landed on, but still. And once again, the DM was having none of my protestations that that is the exact opposite of what the Grease spell does.

The worst part? The ranger and half the rest of the group spent the rest of the campaign blaming me for the ranger falling off the cliff, no matter how many times I reminded them that Grease isn't supposed to be able to do that.:smallfurious:

It sounds like he was either thinking of the AD&D grease spell or trying to add unwanted 'realism' to make his encounter more interesting, at least to him, or both.

The AD&D grease spell had the option of having momentum have you slip right through the area built into it... I always thought that made sense and provided more options, like when you want to ditch someone off a cliff on purpose. There was still no option for pushing off for the side...

The ranger call didn't follow either of these things though! Since he started out not moving, by the 3.5 version of grease, he should actually have been stuck in place!

[illyahr]

Next turn I cast Sculpted Grease (four 10-foot cubes option) catching all the lizardfolk in the area, half of them fall and one of the still-standing (and therefore flat-footed) ones is next to the rogue. Woot! Imagine my surprise when one of the fallen enemies proceeds to move ten feet while prone by pushing off the nearest dry ground with its tail and sliding across the grease patch. Upon expressing my displeasure and confusion at this turn of events, the DM responds with "It's grease, it makes sense." I point out that not only does the spell not make provisions for any such thing, but it's specifically meant to impede movement, not enhance movement. The DM stands by his ruling. Meh, none of the other lizardfolk seem to be getting the same idea and are just as prone and/or mired in place as they're supposed to be. I move on.

Next round is when the real stupid happens. You see, due to unfortunate positioning I had had to include the ranger's space in one of the grease patches and he'd rolled low on his save. It was fine though because so did the enemy next to him, so he was having a perfectly fun time exchanging prone-to-prone blows with it. Until he rolled a natural 1 that is... and the DM decided that his swing sent him sliding off the cliff we were fighting next to. Thankfully there was another ledge twenty feet down that he landed on, but still. And once again, the DM was having none of my protestations that that is the exact opposite of what the Grease spell does.

The worst part? The ranger and half the rest of the group spent the rest of the campaign blaming me for the ranger falling off the cliff, no matter how many times I reminded them that Grease isn't supposed to be able to do that.:smallfurious:

You know what? I would just roll with this. The only actual issue I see here is a weird crit-fail result that made no sense. Off all the weird stories I've heard, at least this DM was being consistant with his house-rule. As soon as you knew about the change in how the spell worked, there was nothing stopping you or the rest of the group from taking advantage and doing something similar.

[justiceforall]

Allow me to summarise - BS calls by DMs = any DM who thinks crit fails are awesome.

[Crake]

Allow me to summarise - BS calls by DMs = any DM who thinks crit fails are awesome.

On that note, I had a DM who used the natural 1/20 variant for attack rolls and saves, where instead of 1/20 being an auto fail/success(or hit for attacks), the roll is instead modified by +/-10. Now that would have been all well and good, had he not applied it to EVERY D20 ROLL IN THE GAME. It made certain things just irritating, like tumble checks and concentration checks that have had many skill points invested into them were no longer auto successes. This was infact particularly annoying for UMD, since a 1 only results in problems if it's a failure, so normally having +19 means you never need to worry about activating wands, but with this rule, you instead need a +29. Other silly things resulted from this, like olympic grade swimmers sinking in water because they rolled a natural 1 on their +10 check and couldn't even swim in calm water, or people getting +10 on grapple checks and being able to get out of the grips of creatures they should never have been capable of escaping from.

Speaking of grapple checks, the same DM also completely ignored the -20 to grapple checks rule if you wanted to not be treated as if grappled for creatures with improved grab. So all the purple wurms and mariliths we fought (among others) had an additional, rather huge advantage against us, especially since my character was a rogue, so them not being flat footed was annoying as hell.

[Firechanter]

Hm, I recall having threads like this before, but why not -- I'll post some of my bad experiences again. :p Most of these are associated with a single DM I used to play with in a 3.5 game.

First off, he used Fumble rules. I.e. if you roll a Natural 1 on your attack roll, bad things happen: either you risk hitting an adjacent ally (who however was usually allowed a Reflex Save to avoid, but there were no real fixed rules), or if no ally was nearby, you'd drop your weapon.

This is incredibly retarded, but it took many months and many discussions for him to finally stop that nonsense. I kept trying to explain to him that this unilaterally penalizes characters reliant on physical attacks (we had a TWF Ranger in the party, btw), while Spellcasters didn't need to care at all. IIRC, before he dropped the Fumble rules, some of us had started to simply refuse to take friendly fire damage (i.e. mark it on their sheets).

The same DM also started, in the middle of the campaign (level 8ish or so) having us roll Con checks during night watches, OD&D-style. I.e. you had to roll under your Con score on a D20 or you fell asleep. So this means, that an outstandingly tough character with Con 16 has a 20% risk to fall asleep during a 2 hour watch. That was ridiculous enough, but eventually I exploded when he had the _elf_ roll and fall asleep. He did not ask us to roll Con checks again.

I think those two were pretty much his dumbest BS calls. I'll post more if anything else comes to mind.

[jjcrpntr]

I don't have too many horror stories but the dumbest things I've had a DM do are:

Change spells mid way through the game. He had ok'd spell compendium for my wizard to use. When I cast orb of acid he said that a D8 was too much damage and unfair so it would only do a d6.

Later our bard started singing and he said it would trigger an AaO because it should be a magical ability that provokes because it's incredibly powerful (this was in a level 1 game). He then ok'd a 3rd party book (rogue wizards spellbook) for me to pull from then started saying "no you can't use that spell" or "I don't like how that works so it does x from now on".

I only lasted 2 games with him. I'm ok with the dm changing things or house ruling something. But you should let the players know up front. Changing stuff not only mid game but mid encounter is crap.

[Bronk]

Other silly things resulted from this, like olympic grade swimmers sinking in water because they rolled a natural 1 on their +10 check and couldn't even swim in calm water

I can only imagine how odd it was for all these people to get random charlie horses in tepid water!



First off, he used Fumble rules. I.e. if you roll a Natural 1 on your attack roll, bad things happen: either you risk hitting an adjacent ally (who however was usually allowed a Reflex Save to avoid, but there were no real fixed rules), or if no ally was nearby, you'd drop your weapon.

This seems weird to me, because I've always played with critical misses played in a way similar to this. It usually ends up annoying, but in a cool way.



The same DM also started, in the middle of the campaign (level 8ish or so) having us roll Con checks during night watches, OD&D-style. I.e. you had to roll under your Con score on a D20 or you fell asleep. So this means, that an outstandingly tough character with Con 16 has a 20% risk to fall asleep during a 2 hour watch. That was ridiculous enough, but eventually I exploded when he had the _elf_ roll and fall asleep. He did not ask us to roll Con checks again.

I've had this happen in games I've played in and I hate it. I had one DM/GM who randomly made us roll - the roll would always fail - and you would end up unknowingly dreaming about some kind of encounter, and inevitably sleep walk into a campfire and take fire damage.

[darksolitaire]

I think someone here at giantitp once wrote that if you have competent swordsman hitting straw targets for a day and end up killing themselves, you're doing fumble rules wrong. Or something :smalltongue:

[Segev]

I think someone here at giantitp once wrote that if you have competent swordsman hitting straw targets for a day and end up killing themselves, you're doing fumble rules wrong. Or something :smalltongue:

The way I ususally hear it is that you line up 20 commoners and have them attack unresisting straw targets with the one weapon with which they're proficient for 10 rounds; if any of the commoners are dead by the end of this, your fumble rules are flawed.

[Firechanter]

Yeah I know that exercise and have used that argument before. I think it was 10 minutes (100 rounds), or maybe even 1 hour? I don't know. But the gist is clear. Considering how strenuous that kind of physical exercise is, I suppose 100 rounds are a good benchmark.

[Segev]

Yeah I know that exercise and have used that argument before. I think it was 10 minutes (100 rounds), or maybe even 1 hour? I don't know. But the gist is clear. Considering how strenuous that kind of physical exercise is, I suppose 100 rounds are a good benchmark.

The test is less about real-world parallels of exhaustion and more about demonstrating the odds of rolling nat 1s that, under the most egregious fumble rules, result in death quite quickly.

[lytokk]

My players always liked having the possibilty of fumbling when they rolled the dice. Sometimes it can just make for a good story. What I did was balance it to the double crit rule, where two 20's (or threats assuming they hit) end with something special, now it takes two rolls of a 1 in a row to actually fumble. So far, with a game thats been going on for almost 2 years now, only one player has rolled two 1s, and that was for an animal companion. I've done it quite a few more times, so I'd say its balanced.

[illyahr]

I do the double 1 rule also. A natural 1 fails the save or attack but nothing else happens. It's only on a second "confirmation" roll that if they roll another 1 something really bad happens. In this way the odds are 1/400 of something dangerous happening. Since I only run melee based monsters (I have a low-op group) the bad guys end up failing more often than the party does.

[Kurald Galain]

So what are some of your stories of complete bull calls you have seen a DM make.

I'm gonna go with "zombies have a high reflex save and evasion". :smallbiggrin:

Also, the notion that in a room with no special features, just rectangular walls and the like, an enemy can somehow position himself so that you don't have line-of-sight to him, but he still has line-of-sight to you. What part of the word "line" is so difficult to understand here? :smalltongue:

[avr]

On that note, I had a DM who used the natural 1/20 variant for attack rolls and saves, where instead of 1/20 being an auto fail/success(or hit for attacks), the roll is instead modified by +/-10. Now that would have been all well and good, had he not applied it to EVERY D20 ROLL IN THE GAME.
I had a DM who used the same rule. Only when people used their op-fu (and increasing levels) to start succeeding on a 1 he started implementing critical failures on a 1 as well. Very frustrating.

[ComaVision]

Not to beat the dead Tarrasque too much but I also want to chime in that some groups like fumble rules. The last two campaigns I've been in, and the one I'm in starting Sunday all used fumble rules and all had different DMs.

Honestly, I'm sick of them but I don't care enough to make it an issue with people that are enjoying it. I'll just be over here playing my bard instead of a TWF Rapidshot boomerang build.

[RolkFlameraven]

We play with fumbles, but we think of it just like rolling a nat 20. If you roll a 1 on an attack, you roll again. If that roll would hit, you just missed if that roll would have missed as well things happen. Though its normally only something like your round is over or you fall prone.

It effects the monsters far more then it has effected the party members over the years, but we also play with triple 20 = death, and triple 1 = suicide and have for almost 20 years now. So far no PC has ever been hit by a trip 20 nor rolled trip 1's but quite a few monsters have and it has saved games from TPKs and once had an epic moment where a dragon rammed into the ground at full speed and broke its own neck before we even knew it was there.

If nothing else the looks on everyone's face around the table as after the DM rolls three ones and the dragon crash landed was worth it, even if we had to call it quits for the night because we were all laughing too hard.

[jjcrpntr]

Allow me to summarise - BS calls by DMs = any DM who thinks crit fails are awesome.

I disagree with you. We use the crit fumble deck in my game and it's hilarious. Once and awhile something really bad will happen but my players all have fun with it. Then again I use the crit fumbles for monsters as well so they get revenge as they draw the card for what happens to their attacker.

[Honest Tiefling]

I think it is only a BS call to use critical fumble rules if they don't ask the players before the game about that house rule. That's true of most house rules, but that is a particularly nasty case.

[Crake]

We play with fumbles, but we think of it just like rolling a nat 20. If you roll a 1 on an attack, you roll again. If that roll would hit, you just missed if that roll would have missed as well things happen. Though its normally only something like your round is over or you fall prone.

It effects the monsters far more then it has effected the party members over the years, but we also play with triple 20 = death, and triple 1 = suicide and have for almost 20 years now. So far no PC has ever been hit by a trip 20 nor rolled trip 1's but quite a few monsters have and it has saved games from TPKs and once had an epic moment where a dragon rammed into the ground at full speed and broke its own neck before we even knew it was there.

If nothing else the looks on everyone's face around the table as after the DM rolls three ones and the dragon crash landed was worth it, even if we had to call it quits for the night because we were all laughing too hard.

20 years and NOBODY'S rolled a triple 1? I've been playing consistently for only a few years now, and have seen at least half a dozen triple 1s, and at least 1 triple 20 against a player, though we ended up scrapping the triple 20 insta kill houserule immediately as it happened, because the player was really not happy about it.

If your DM rolls behind a screen, I'd honest question how many of those monster triple 1s was just fiat, though i guess he can't fiat a player rolling triple 20s.

[Kurald Galain]

Oh yeah...

Years ago, a DM had us attacked by some kind of monofilament spiders. That is, if you walked through their (impossible to see) webbings, you had to roll which of your limbs got severed, no save. Although a cloak of displacement worked as a counter, apparently because the DM didn't know what "displacement" meant.

Then there was the guy with the overcomplicated kudzu plot that involved the party randomly teleporting all the time and the world somehow getting destroyed by something, a campaign which ended as soon as we ended up at the local archmage who could help us if we could explain the situation, and the DM was really disappointed that none of us was capable of explaining it. I don't mean that we failed our diplo checks or something, but that none of the players had any clue what was going on any more.

And of course, the classic that one PC (and only one) may roll reflex saves against melee attacks, and that after combat, the high priest will arbitrarily teleport in, cure that particular PC of all wounds, and vanish into thin air again. Predictably, that PC was the DM's girlfriend.

[Hamste]

We play with fumbles, but we think of it just like rolling a nat 20. If you roll a 1 on an attack, you roll again. If that roll would hit, you just missed if that roll would have missed as well things happen. Though its normally only something like your round is over or you fall prone.

It effects the monsters far more then it has effected the party members over the years, but we also play with triple 20 = death, and triple 1 = suicide and have for almost 20 years now. So far no PC has ever been hit by a trip 20 nor rolled trip 1's but quite a few monsters have and it has saved games from TPKs and once had an epic moment where a dragon rammed into the ground at full speed and broke its own neck before we even knew it was there.

If nothing else the looks on everyone's face around the table as after the DM rolls three ones and the dragon crash landed was worth it, even if we had to call it quits for the night because we were all laughing too hard.

You realize statistically speaking your party has met with 3 natural 20s against them at least once right? You have pointed out the monsters have rolled triple 1's multiple times possibly with several 20's rolled against them and you have been playing for a very long time with triple 1's being the exact same odds as triple 20's. It sounds to me that your DM is just ignoring when the enemies are getting triple 20's.

Just going off 10 attacks a game and a game every two weeks you get close to 50% odds over 20 years and chances are you have many more that 10 enemy attacks per game (particularly if the enemies have rolled triple natural 1's and your team has rolled triple natural 20's)

[Hawkstar]

The way I ususally hear it is that you line up 20 commoners and have them attack unresisting straw targets with the one weapon with which they're proficient for 10 rounds; if any of the commoners are dead by the end of this, your fumble rules are flawed.Have you not seen Robin Hood: Men in Tights?


I think someone here at giantitp once wrote that if you have competent swordsman hitting straw targets for a day and end up killing themselves, you're doing fumble rules wrong. Or something :smalltongue:

The actual problem here is that you're transposing Crit Fumble rules outside of a combat context. Critical combat fumbles only apply in combat - attacking an inanimate object is NOT combat (Unless you're trying to strike an inanimate object while harried by actual enemies). Critical fumbles model the uncertainty and chaos that come with a fight.

When it comes to Criticals - a critical hit is essentially two hits. Critical Fumbles are fine if they are about the equivalent of an extra attack against you or an ally, or two misses (Lose your next attack)
You realize statistically speaking your party has met with 3 natural 20s against them at least once right? You have pointed out the monsters have rolled triple 1's multiple times possibly with several 20's rolled against them and you have been playing for a very long time with triple 1's being the exact same odds as triple 20's. It sounds to me that your DM is just ignoring when the enemies are getting triple 20's.Or they've lucked out. That does happen.

[RolkFlameraven]

20 years and NOBODY'S rolled a triple 1? I've been playing consistently for only a few years now, and have seen at least half a dozen triple 1s, and at least 1 triple 20 against a player, though we ended up scrapping the triple 20 insta kill houserule immediately as it happened, because the player was really not happy about it.

If your DM rolls behind a screen, I'd honest question how many of those monster triple 1s was just fiat, though i guess he can't fiat a player rolling triple 20s.

We haven't used a screen in years and I can't tell you how many 1/1/2 or 20/20/19 and other such 'almost' that we have seen over the years but nope, no PC has fallen pray as of yet. But its not like we play as often as we used too, we are lucky if we can get together once a month any more, life marriage, kids and now living in three different states have taken their toll.

Edit: Now that I think of it, we HAVE had a few trip 20's land only for it to fail do to miss chance/mirror image. Just no deaths due to it. And we didn't play with that rule when we were playing Star Wars.

[Talakeal]

PbP: I recently had a low-level Spiderclimbing Warlock poised on a wall, poised to blast a crossbowman above. Why the DM put me directly below the guy I've no idea. But it was already plain the DM had no idea what Warlocks were and was too proud to ask like a normal person.

The next post from the DM, after a long wait, ran something like: "[Your Character] leaps at the crossbowman. Only for a figure you didn't see to cast some sort of spell on you. You go weak and helpless and land at the guys feet."

So he's got a Warlock jumping into melee (straight up)for no reason instead of blasting, having her action interrupted by some sort of paralysing spell that apparently works as an immediate action and which doesn't give a save (I'm pretty sure no such thing exists) and then, depending on how you read it, either falling straight upwards to land at the feet of the guys I'd already seen, or else falling down to land at the feet of some new guys he hadn't bothered to mention.

This wasn't the first such event in this campaign's short life. Hell, he had me pick-pocketed earlier on of a pouch my character didn't even own. I told him flat out that this sort of thing was unacceptable. He promptly accused me of being a bad sport. I pointed out that he just wasn't playing D&D, but just screwing us over with one diabolus ex machina after another with not even a nod to the actual rules.

Yeah, so I left. Not a good story. It should have warned me off in the recruiting thread that the guy considered himself a Hardcore DM yet didn't know what basic skills did.

Wow, this sounds a lot like my current group. I would ask if you were at my table, but I know my DM bans warlocks on principal.

Of course, after an event like this he insists that his interpretation IS RAW and refuses to even look at the books or here arguments otherwise.

He then proceeds to mock you for not RPing / Optimizing at PRECISELY the right level. Seriously... if your character is too strong he mocks you for munchkining, if it isn't strong enough he mocks you for being pathetic, if you play the game too tactically he mocks you for being a mindless hack and slasher, but if you intentionally disadvantage yourself due to IC motivations he mocks you for being a fool.

[Crake]

Years ago, a DM had us attacked by some kind of monofilament spiders. That is, if you walked through their (impossible to see) webbings, you had to roll which of your limbs got severed, no save. Although a cloak of displacement worked as a counter, apparently because the DM didn't know what "displacement" meant.

We actually came across similar spiders in our game. Were they incorporeal skull spider creatures that shot their webs into the air? I dunno, maybe the incorporeal thing was just something the DM added to get around the Blindsense the party had, cause he liked to arbitrarily negate our abilities like that. They shot strands of apparently acidic web into the air and it slowly descended down onto the party. We had some stupid spot checks in the party, so we got to see them as the webs slowly fell down, but that was after the druid had his arm cut off by the first one.

[Jagernaut]

One time a DM made our Sorcerer make attack rolls when she was slinging fireballs at a dragon. Note that this wasn't because she was trying to shoot it through a small opening and the dragon was sitting right in an open field. He justified it because it was 400 feet away and it'd be really hard to aim that far...

[ComaVision]

One time a DM made our Sorcerer make attack rolls when she was slinging fireballs at a dragon. Note that this wasn't because she was trying to shoot it through a small opening and the dragon was sitting right in an open field. He justified it because it was 400 feet away and it'd be really hard to aim that far...

If only you could get a Fireball with a 20' blast radius, eh?

[danzibr]

I know we all have our stories, and I would love to hear some of the most BS calls you have seen a DM make.

One recently that sent me fuming was a DM imposed penalty to hit an enemy spellcaster because I successfully made it through a prismatic wall. I charged the wizard, triggered his contingent prismatic wall, continued the charge through it, made all 7 saves successfully and had a 38 to hit on his Touch AC...with my anchoring weapon so he couldn't run away like he had every other time we encountered him. DM says I miss due to some ad hoc penalty of my character being shaken up about actually making it through the wall. The wizard teleported on his initiative taking another PC as a hostage.

There was much arguing over the penalty between him and I that ended with him invoking rule 0, and me walking off to go chain smoke. This was after another argument that the final layer of the wall would have destroyed my weapon (no mention of my other gear was made by him).

So what are some of your stories of complete bull calls you have seen a DM make.
This is epic. I would've let my Wizard bite the dust (well, put up a good fight at least).

My friend specifically invited me to a game with all new players. I had been playing for a year, but never played a Barb, so I play a half-retarded (Int was like 7) Dwarf Barbarian, (named Yarp, after the line from Hot Fuzz) as not to out role play the newbies. The only other high attack bonus character in the party is a Paladin, and he is like 7 bonus below me, before raging. DM had been used to them sucking at hitting things, so I don't miss the whole encounter. End of chapter boss comes along and I rage and charge at him. Roll a 19,a crit threat with my great sword.
"Not a 20, so it is still possible to miss." So I ask what it's AC is.
"I don't have to tell you," and he says it like an A-Hole. I'm confused, not having any idea what is going on. The Rogue (my future wife now that I think about it) flanks and rolls and 11.
"Hit. Roll damage and sneak attack." wut. So I ask how is that even possible.
"She's flanking."
"Is flanking a +20 instead of a +2 in your games?" I say.
And he ignores me. So I'm pissed, pass my next two turns and eventually they kill the guy. Everything in the room was weird after that, so the night was kinda done. Once the session was over I asked him what the hell he was doing.
"I didn't want you to kill their bad guy since you just joined the game."
"So you cheated?"
"DM's can't cheat."
Stream of obscenities from me.
This made me lol.
Found out latter that the d-bag used my character as an NPC for the game because the other players liked my character, but he told them I couldn't come anymore.


During a Pathfinder Society session, a number of characters were badly wounded during a fight. The rogue had a wand of Cure Light Wounds and Use Magic Device, so he decided to draw it while moving and heal one of his unconscious companions.

The GM said that no, he couldn't do it, since a wand wasn't a weapon and couldn't be drawn as part of movement.

I pointed out that the rule also covered "a weapon-like object, such as a wand."

The GM still ruled against it, saying that since the wand wasn't being used as a weapon to attack someone, it couldn't be drawn as part of movement.
This also made me lol. Such as a wand.

[Roga]

A favorite of mine to share in Threads like these: DMs ruling that Kender are all-powerful theives.

Situation: Party has your stereotypical Klepto Kender, which I despise. I'm been in 5 games with them and they've always been the reason the game collapsed. I was determined to Kender-proof my character.

My Solution: I'm playing an Oozemaster, and had commissioned a Special Bag of holding that was a Small Iron flask. The nozzle was 1 inch across so I could squeeze anything I wanted in there from a Canoe to a potion using Malleability. So I was the only person who could get things out of it. I paid for it, and it's cap, to be immune to Acid. And I would swallow it when I didn't need it, and could reach in and pull it out as a full round action. I would sleep myself in a larger Urn (also immune to acid) and coated myself in my Con damaging slime.

GM Response: I wake up in my urn and find that despite my defenses the Kender had unintentionally stolen my flask. To compound the issue, he had put a note in it and threw it in the ocean to see if anyone would ever read his message. I hate kenders, that's the game that made me refuse to ever play in a game with one again.


ME: How exactly did he "accidentally" Open my Urn, reach down my throat without taking at least 1d6 Con, and pull out my flask?
DM: He's a Kender
ME: But explain how, I put a lot of investment into protecting myself. You knew my intentions when I commissioned those items.
DM: I already said, He's a Kender.
ME: *Incomprehensible Rage*

I know there are apparently good ways to run/play kenders, but this is about a bad GM ruling on one.

[Sith_Happens]

I think it is only a BS call to use critical fumble rules if they don't ask the players before the game about that house rule. That's true of most house rules, but that is a particularly nasty case.

Oh yeah, this reminds me. Same DM as before, I had asked him before the first session if there were any houserules he was at that point in time planning on using, and he said no. Cue the first natural 1 someone rolled (which I think wasn't until the second session) and he makes with the fumbling, at which point I remind him that he told me he wasn't using any houserules. Turns out fumbles somehow hadn't registered in his mind at the time as being an example of such. To his credit, while he said he was keeping the fumbles in he did apologize for accidentally misleading me. Luckily I was playing a wizard anyways and just made a mental note to stay away from rays.

Also to this DM's credit, he was actually a pretty good DM overall and the campaign was quite fun, it's just that both of those things were despite a high frequency of small annoyances like this and the incident in my previous post. The ones that stand out the most to me now being

1. Applying the fumble rule to skill checks, though I can't remember anything legitimately dangerous happening because of a fumbled skill check. It more just an opportunity to randomly turn us into infomercial actors for some cheap laughs around the table.

2. After the sorceress decided to learn Bonefiddle, he changed the 30 gp material focus to a material component. Because apparently 3d6 damage per round to one target that you have to concentrate on and with a Fortitude save to negate each round was somehow too good otherwise. Never mind that by that point in the campaign I'd already established a habit for opening nearly every fight with Grease and the melees were noticing and appreciating the impact thereof.


Wow, this sounds a lot like my current group. I would ask if you were at my table, but I know my DM bans warlocks on principal.

Of course, after an event like this he insists that his interpretation IS RAW and refuses to even look at the books or here arguments otherwise.

He then proceeds to mock you for not RPing / Optimizing at PRECISELY the right level. Seriously... if your character is too strong he mocks you for munchkining, if it isn't strong enough he mocks you for being pathetic, if you play the game too tactically he mocks you for being a mindless hack and slasher, but if you intentionally disadvantage yourself due to IC motivations he mocks you for being a fool.

Just repeating on principle at this point that this is almost certainly the best course of action for you:

https://38.media.tumblr.com/19a18cd4be4935a545bf3f8016f34ae2/tumblr_mp0rmsboTP1rlq66wo1_400.gif

[YossarianLives]

A favorite of mine to share in Threads like these: DMs ruling that Kender are all-powerful theives.

Situation: Party has your stereotypical Klepto Kender, which I despise. I'm been in 5 games with them and they've always been the reason the game collapsed. I was determined to Kender-proof my character.

My Solution: I'm playing an Oozemaster, and had commissioned a Special Bag of holding that was a Small Iron flask. The nozzle was 1 inch across so I could squeeze anything I wanted in there from a Canoe to a potion using Malleability. So I was the only person who could get things out of it. I paid for it, and it's cap, to be immune to Acid. And I would swallow it when I didn't need it, and could reach in and pull it out as a full round action. I would sleep myself in a larger Urn (also immune to acid) and coated myself in my Con damaging slime.

GM Response: I wake up in my urn and find that despite my defenses the Kender had unintentionally stolen my flask. To compound the issue, he had put a note in it and threw it in the ocean to see if anyone would ever read his message. I hate kenders, that's the game that made me refuse to ever play in a game with one again.


ME: How exactly did he "accidentally" Open my Urn, reach down my throat without taking at least 1d6 Con, and pull out my flask?
DM: He's a Kender
ME: But explain how, I put a lot of investment into protecting myself. You knew my intentions when I commissioned those items.
DM: I already said, He's a Kender.
ME: *Incomprehensible Rage*

I know there are apparently good ways to run/play kenders, but this is about a bad GM ruling on one.
That post makes me want to cry. I feel you.

[danzibr]

A favorite of mine to share in Threads like these: DMs ruling that Kender are all-powerful theives.

Situation: Party has your stereotypical Klepto Kender, which I despise. I'm been in 5 games with them and they've always been the reason the game collapsed. I was determined to Kender-proof my character.

My Solution: I'm playing an Oozemaster, and had commissioned a Special Bag of holding that was a Small Iron flask. The nozzle was 1 inch across so I could squeeze anything I wanted in there from a Canoe to a potion using Malleability. So I was the only person who could get things out of it. I paid for it, and it's cap, to be immune to Acid. And I would swallow it when I didn't need it, and could reach in and pull it out as a full round action. I would sleep myself in a larger Urn (also immune to acid) and coated myself in my Con damaging slime.

GM Response: I wake up in my urn and find that despite my defenses the Kender had unintentionally stolen my flask. To compound the issue, he had put a note in it and threw it in the ocean to see if anyone would ever read his message. I hate kenders, that's the game that made me refuse to ever play in a game with one again.


ME: How exactly did he "accidentally" Open my Urn, reach down my throat without taking at least 1d6 Con, and pull out my flask?
DM: He's a Kender
ME: But explain how, I put a lot of investment into protecting myself. You knew my intentions when I commissioned those items.
DM: I already said, He's a Kender.
ME: *Incomprehensible Rage*

I know there are apparently good ways to run/play kenders, but this is about a bad GM ruling on one.
My oh my, that's terrible.

[Marlowe]

I'm still going to bring up being pick-pocketed of a coin-purse that I never owned containing money that I specifically said I wasn't carrying on me just so the DM could teach me a lesson about not talking back to his NPCs.

Even "better", he had the pickpocket (an obnoxious Halfling, of course) hand back the purse along with a threatening note signed with the name of his adventuring party. That I (or any normal person) could just have gone to the City Watch and to the temple sponsoring the thief's party PALADIN (who was present for all this) and reported them for criminal behaviour never apparently entered his head.

Anyway, we should probably add "Any and all uses of the sneakthief Halfling (or Kender) trope to jerk around the PCs" to this list. It wasn't very funny the first time it got used back when Tiberius was Caesar and it's a d--k move now.

I make most of my Halflings in my own games scrupulously honest, stuffy, somewhat snobbish petit-bourgeouis types instead. Because that's original.

[Tohsaka Rin]

Just use the old standby: Look the DM straight in the eyes, and calmly say-

"If you cannot adequately explain or describe what just happened, it did not happen."

Because really, it may be a classic joke, but in DnD 'a wink is as good as a nod' does NOT fly.

[Gün]

On a Pathfinder game I was stripped 3 feats in midfight. Because I was too stronk.:smallamused:

He was right though. Sacred geometry is broken.

[frogglesmash]

Can you remember which feats?

[Gün]

It is hidden in the post. I showed him thefeat before taking them though. He didn't realize the brokennes of the feat until I started casting dazing hightened elemental acid splash from my 0 level slot for 4 turn daze.

I still miss it. ;_;

[Talakeal]

I had a good one last night. I decided to play a spear fighter.

The DM does not allow 5 foot steps or flanking. He also does not allow PCs to make attacks of opportunity, but the NPCs can use them normally. He also does not allow martial or exotic pole-arms in his campaign world because they "crowd the weapon list".

However, the DM still enforces the rule about being unable to use reach weapons against people within 5'.

And of course, proceeds to alternate between mock me for being useless and mocking my last character (a core only single class human great sword fighter whose highest stats where in CHA and WIS) for being a min maxxed power character.

[Keltest]

I had a good one last night. I decided to play a spear fighter.

The DM does not allow 5 foot steps or flanking. He also does not allow PCs to make attacks of opportunity, but the NPCs can use them normally. He also does not allow martial or exotic pole-arms in his campaign world because they "crowd the weapon list".

However, the DM still enforces the rule about being unable to use reach weapons against people within 5'.

And of course, proceeds to alternate between mock me for being useless and mocking my last character (a core only single class human great sword fighter whose highest stats where in CHA and WIS) for being a min maxxed power character.

Serious question: Why do you still play with this guy?

[Squirrel_Dude]

Worst ruling I've seen is probably this.

Long story short: Long dungeon run (run as in half the players weren't touching anything in this dungeon because it was one of those dungeons where every chest is a mimic and every statue is a gargoyle) was finally coming to end. It was the final encounter, and we ran into these medium-sized scorpion/bug things. I still don't know what they are because we weren't allowed a knowledge check to identify them "because we couldn't get a good enough look at them."

Well, anyway, one of the stupid bugs makes a really bad choice of trying to jump onto the Party's Goliath Anti-Paladin. The bug tries to grapple, they roll opposed checks and the bug gets beaten by double digits. So the bug gets thrown off, right? Wrong. This was the following exchange between the GM and player as best as I remember it.

GM: "You have spikes on your armor, and now the bug is impaled to them and stuck on your arm."
Player: :smallannoyed: "Alright, can I now make a knowledge check to try and identify the creature."
GM: "You still can't see it well enough."
Player: "I lift the thing up to my face and look at it. Can I identify it now?"
GM: "Not right now. Uh... After the combat I'll tell you what it is."

The party would just flee the combat into the next area (as the room was filling up with sulphuric acid water, of course), and the player would proceed to just drag the poor bug along with him until the GM forgot it was there.

And no, we never found out what the stupid things were.

[Nessa Ellenesse]

Actually, right before the ruling against you, he also made one in your favor by ignoring a rule: you can't charge someone you don't have line of sight to, while a prismatic wall is opaque (and thus, blocks line of sight). You shouldn't have been able to 'continue the charge through it' by the rules.

As we rotate DM in the group I play with it is difficult to pick just one, but I will go with what one DM did to my druid. She changed wild shape to when my druid wild shaped it would be one of 6 random animals, she would not give me the list a head of time so I could prepare the needed stats and she would not give me time in game to work up the stats so I could play the wild shaped druid. So I waisted a feat on natural spell and was effectively unable to use wild shape ever. I never forgave her for that.

She also changed the rules to where the cleric did not have to prepare her spells ahead of time, but my druid did. Talk about playing favorates.

[The Glyphstone]

Serious question: Why do you still play with this guy?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

[Talakeal]

As we rotate DM in the group I play with it is difficult to pick just one, but I will go with what one DM did to my druid. She changed wild shape to when my druid wild shaped it would be one of 6 random animals, she would not give me the list a head of time so I could prepare the needed stats and she would not give me time in game to work up the stats so I could play the wild shaped druid. So I waisted a feat on natural spell and was effectively unable to use wild shape ever. I never forgave her for that.

She also changed the rules to where the cleric did not have to prepare her spells ahead of time, but my druid did. Talk about playing favorates.

Some DM's just don't like druids.

I had a DM once who took away my powers and required me to go on a quest of attonement anytime I endangered an animal, including taking summoned animals or animal companions into combat.

The DM also ruled (when we were in a dwarven city) that the dwarven clerics could cast spells out of the Complete Druid's Handbook if they had the right spheres but I could not cast spells out of the Complete Book of Dwarves regardless of their spheres because I wasn't a dwarf.


Serious question: Why do you still play with this guy?

I explained it in another thread, but in short:
Every time I try and leave he begs me to come back. We are both players in another (very good) DM's game and so I can't cut off all contact without leaving the other game. I don't have the heart / balls / good sense to keep telling him no, especially when other people feel sorry for him and pressure me into giving him another chance.

[Keltest]

I explained it in another thread, but in short:
Every time I try and leave he begs me to come back. We are both players in another (very good) DM's game and so I can't cut off all contact without leaving the other game. I don't have the heart / balls / good sense to keep telling him no, especially when other people feel sorry for him and pressure me into giving him another chance.

Have you offered to help him with his DMing? Even if its just as somebody to run things by, I find it immensely helpful to have a player rather than a fellow DM critique my plans at times.

[Hellborn_Blight]

I explained it in another thread, but in short:
Every time I try and leave he begs me to come back. We are both players in another (very good) DM's game and so I can't cut off all contact without leaving the other game. I don't have the heart / balls / good sense to keep telling him no, especially when other people feel sorry for him and pressure me into giving him another chance.

Those other guys are trolling you. I'm serious. Either they know how annoying this person is and keep talking you into going back, because you keep going back (which is hilarious), or they themselves don't want to be hounded about playing with him, so you are their scapegoat. But for real, if those people are so invested, they need to make him sit down with you and maybe your other DM and tell him what is OK to do as a DM and what is not.

[Talakeal]

Have you offered to help him with his DMing? Even if its just as somebody to run things by, I find it immensely helpful to have a player rather than a fellow DM critique my plans at times.

Somehow I don't think that would work.

This guy is the worst case of Dunning-Kruger effect I have ever seen. He believes that he is infallible and that everyone else is flawed. He is constantly making up rules on the spot and insisting that is RAW and refusing to even look at the books. If someone else looks at the books he won't look and yells at them for "throwing a hissy" and undermining his game by being a rules-lawyer. He then goes on telling stories for DECADES* about how he humiliated you by proving you wrong. He adamantly insists he has never been wrong about a rule in his life.

Also, if you tell a story (about anything, not just gaming) he gets mad that you are stealing the spot light and tells you that your story didn't happen and then makes up the most outrageous lies to "prove it". His stories about tabletop war games are even funnier, because he considers himself the "giant slayer". Everyone else is a power gaming rules lawyer, yet he is so much smarter and more skilled than them that he beats them no contest in record time using underdog strategies.

*: I haven't been playing with him for decades, but he goes on and on telling stories stretching back to the 70s about how people he played with always "threw a hissy fit because they couldn't stand that he knew the rules better than they did" and I would bet dollars to donuts that in reality these stories played out just like they do now.

[Nessa Ellenesse]

Some DM's just don't like druids.

I had a DM once who took away my powers and required me to go on a quest of attonement anytime I endangered an animals, including taking summoned animals or animal companions into combat.

The DM also ruled that (when we were in a dwarven city) that the dwarven clerics could cast spells out of the Complete Druid's Handbook if they had the right spheres but I could not cast spells out of the Complete Book of Dwarves regardless of their spheres because I wasn't a dwarf.



This person didn't seem to like anything other than the big four fighter, wizard, theif and cleric. She tried to make our bard and sorcerer prepare spells until someone sat down with her and explained game balance how if the sorcerer and bard had to prepare spells wizards would pwn them.

[ericgrau]

Actually, right before the ruling against you, he also made one in your favor by ignoring a rule: you can't charge someone you don't have line of sight to, while a prismatic wall is opaque (and thus, blocks line of sight). You shouldn't have been able to 'continue the charge through it' by the rules.
So move through the wall without charging and have a mere +36 to hit touch AC.

And technically by RAW he had line of sight at the start of his turn because the contingent prismatic wall wasn't triggered yet, so he was ok to charge.

[Dimers]

Have you offered to help him with his DMing?

Never mind DMing, have someone help him with being a decent human. Seriously, any amount of mocking for any reason can be hard to take, but Catch-22 mockery is just short of a hate crime. The guy acts terrible at all times in ways that aren't related to playing a game.

[Honest Tiefling]

Were I a horrible person, I'd advise you to mock him for his lack of social skills. "Oh, telling this story again? Lemme guess, completely exaggerated and wrong?" "Oh, complaining that my character is completely weak? I thought you'd like a chance."

...Nah, I am a horrible person, go ahead and do it.

(Actually, I still have to ask why do you associate with these people? Did you incur some sort of curse by digging up graves or kick puppies in a former life?)

[Talakeal]

Were I a horrible person, I'd advise you to mock him for his lack of social skills. "Oh, telling this story again? Lemme guess, completely exaggerated and wrong?" "Oh, complaining that my character is completely weak? I thought you'd like a chance."

...Nah, I am a horrible person, go ahead and do it.

(Actually, I still have to ask why do you associate with these people? Did you incur some sort of curse by digging up graves or kick puppies in a former life?)

Lack of self esteem, love of game, and not much else going on in my life means that I put up with a lot on nonsense at the table.

[Firechanter]

Ah this reminds me, more shenanigans from the DM I told about before:

He basically ignored WBL. Not that we were all piss-poor, it was just that wealth was distributed extremely unevenly. Found treasures were mostly determined by random loot tables; each player got to roll once and keep the item they rolled. So if you rolled a great item, you were lucky, and if you rolled a lemon, you were out of luck. Trading or swapping between players hardly ever happened. By the time I took over the DM position around level 10, some PCs had 100k GP to their names, while others creaked around at 10k.)
Personally, I was playing a Cleric so it did not affect me much, but I did feel sorry for the poor Fighter.

Also, we did have gold. We just never got to spend it. Over the course of several _levels_, we only ever passed through hicks and ghost-towns. At one point (around level 7 iirc) he did announce at the end of the session we could go shopping, and everything was at -20% list price (as a quest reward). By that time, our gold was burning holes in our pockets, so naturally we spent the time between sessions to invest everything carefully and completely into magic items. Only so that at the start of the next session, when we wanted to give him our lists, he said "No no no, I meant everything out of the _Player's_ Handbook".
My response, "We all have +1 weapon and armour, what could we _possibly_ want out of the PHB at this level?" fell on deaf ears.

Oh right, and _selling_ excess gear would only have been possible at 25% list price, which made that entirely unattractive too.

It was only at level 9 when we finally were in Phlan (Forgotten Realms) and again, he ended a session with the announcement we could go shopping, this time also magic items. I remember that I sorely wanted to buy a Wisdom ammy, and he asked if I'd prefer a +2 or a +4 (which I would have been just able to afford). I told him I'd decide by next session.
Then when the next session had arrived, the dialogue went something like this:

Me: "So first off, concerning the Wisdom amulet, I'd like to go for the +2 for now."
DM: "Oh? Well if you want to buy that, we first need to find out if you can get that thing here at all."
And at this point, I snapped.
Me: "What? Last week you would have given me a +4 on the spot, and now you're causing a fuss over a +2 again? When we haven't been able to spend any gold at all since level freakin' Five? You know what, I'm level 9 now, I can teleport 900 miles per day [note: Travel Domain], if necessary I'll 'port all the way to Waterdeep to spend that bloody gold."
DM: (in a dissuading tone) "Well, do you want to play out the journey?"
Me: "I wouldn't mind, but let's ask the other three players what they think about sitting around for an hour waiting just for us to resolve the shopping spree."
And at _that_ point he finally gave in and let me have my bloody ammy. :smallsigh:

Before you ask, he wasn't _all_ terrible, or I wouldn't have played with him for over a year. We had a pretty generous stat generation method, and he was very easy-going about retroactively changing your build (for instance, if you discovered an interesting PrC in a new book). Also, he did not block off innovative problem solving, and the encounters he ran were always fair. But some of his attitude really drove me up the wall.

[Marlowe]

Ahem. Maybe I'm looking like a prat for mentioning this but.

My first 3.5 DM believed magic items and equipment were unbalancing, and "balanced" us by never giving any.

At the point (Level 13) when he TPKed us owing to his total failure to understand CR (He thought one CR 13 monster was an "appropriate challenge" for one 13th level PC with basic first level equipment), my character had a total net worth of about 1400 gp.

No. Not 14,000. 1400 gp at level 13.

And most of that was cash, because I hadn't been able to spend it. In the encounter that killed us, a major factor in our defeat was a total lack of Cold Iron weapons to overcome fiendish DR. My character had ordered one. DM had railroaded us out of town before it was delivered, though after I'd paid.

[Extra Anchovies]

Ahem. Maybe I'm looking like a prat for mentioning this but.

My first 3.5 DM believed magic items and equipment were unbalancing, and "balanced" us by never giving any.

At the point (Level 13) when he TPKed us owing to his total failure to understand CR (He thought one CR 13 monster was an "appropriate challenge" for one 13th level PC with basic first level equipment), my character had a total net worth of about 1400 gp.

No. Not 14,000. 1400 gp at level 13.

And most of that was cash, because I hadn't been able to spend it. In the encounter that killed us, a major factor in our defeat was a total lack of Cold Iron weapons to overcome fiendish DR. My character had ordered one. DM had railroaded us out of town before it was delivered, though after I'd paid.

That's awful. I'm all for running a low-wealth game as long as challenges are adjusted to compensate, but what your DM did was stupid.

[Firechanter]

Reminds me of a guy who was a fellow player in a group I was in; once while we were waiting for the other players he told me about his troubles with the 3.5 FR game he DMed. The campaign had been running for like 3 years and now it seemed that the players were losing interest, and he couldn't explain to himself why. So I asked him to describe his game.

In a nutshell:
- after ~3 years of about bi-weekly sessions, the group was currently at level 9. --> That's around one levelup every 8 sessions.
- he played a low-wealth game, hardly any magic items, but he adjusted the encounters accordingly, he said. --> which means the selection of enemies must be rather limited, and the players probably have to fight the same types of creatures over and over.
- last not least, he runs a very grim and darque campaign, kinda like Midnight iirc (only on the Moonshaes), where every bit of progress the PCs make on one front is immediately countered by two setbacks on other fronts. --> sounds like the most frustrating plot, ever. Keep in mind this has been going on for three years.

So when I shared my thoughts with him, especially how it's no wonder that the players are frustrated and lose interest if they make no progress whatsoever over such a long time, neither in character development nor with their campaign goals, he looked at me with big eyes and was like "You really think so?"

After that, it took a while until we met again (our game had been put on hiatus), and when I asked him a couple months later if he'd resolved the issues with his group, he said it had fallen apart, and the players had quit the game.

[Hellborn_Blight]

At the point (Level 13) when he TPKed us owing to his total failure to understand CR (He thought one CR 13 monster was an "appropriate challenge" for one 13th level PC with basic first level equipment), my character had a total net worth of about 1400 gp...

Man, no loot is rough. I have/had a DM that also had serious problems with the CR system. Even up until the end of the game he had problems balancing combat. He was great at story, but a party of second level characters can not fight an Athach with out several deaths. Also, I recall the only time he ever did anything that was dickish, other than story related dickishness.

I think part of the reason his combat was so bad, was he focused on details of story and just never read the books very closely. So we had a game that had been going on for like 3 years and we had started at 1 and made it to 10. For most of us, it was out first game, or at least first game of any considerable leangth. So, seeing as how the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, we wanted to have an opportunity to fight a Dragon and loot it's horde. So, even know it could end badly with his CR problems, we asked if we could fight a dragon. We proposed that we had kinda been on the rails for a long time and wanted to try and hunt down a dragons lair to loot. His response was to have a Great Wyrm Red Dragon (yeah, a CR 26) do a fly by and breath weapon us. It killed half the party out right. When we objected that that was a little unfair, his response was, "Well you wanted a dragon fight, that is how dragons fight!" Never mind we specifically asked about looting a dragon horde, and had only begun to try to bargain him into getting our way we he flipped out. So after that no one asked for any detours from his story, because we didn't want to be instamurdered by a super defensive DM.

[Odin's Eyepatch]

The biggest BS our DM has ever called upon us was near the end of our very first campaign (which went from level 1 to level 21)

We were nearing the end of the said campaign, and had to protect a plot-critical city from an army of undead, commanded by the Worm that Walks himself. Unfortunately he was allied with a secret organisation of shapeshifters which played havoc with our kingdom, setting nobles upon each other.

Finally, after calming the tensions between the nobles, we organised the first peaceful meeting between them, to prepare for the defence of the city. There were a lot of people joining, with each noble bringing family members, as well as various heads of church also invited. About 20-30 people were to join this war council.

We KNEW that the shapeshifters were going to try and eavesdrop in, and we utilised every means at our disposal to make the council private. The room was dimensionally locked, private sanctumed, with an antimagic field especially created to screen each person entering the room (and thus reveal the shapeshifters). We even made a comprehensive list of every person invited, and one of our party members (a dwarf fighter) stated very clearly that he was personally greeting each person, checking that they were invited, and surveying the screening process. Finally, everybody passes through, and said party member was the last person to enter the room. And as the dwarf enters, this happens:

DM: roll intelligence check
Player: ... 20!! (NB: he had 12 intelligence and rolled a 19 on the dice)
DM: .... You don't notice anything wrong....


It turned out that an intelligence check of 20 was not enough to notice that not 1... not 2... but 7 people had somehow slipped in unnoticed and were not on the official list. Apparently the player, after taking huge pains to greet everybody personally, and check them against the visitors list (and spent several minutes OOC restating this), was unable to notice that there were 7 people he had not yet seen who were in this room.

Needless to say there was a huge uproar when these 7 people got up and started slaughtering the nobles. The DM has since apologised and learnt what a check of 20 represents, but it has become a running gag that it takes a DC of 22 to be able to count up to 30.

(There were also several vaguely BS things the DM used to get past our defensive spells, but the one above was by far the most blatant)

[Elandris Kajar]

If only you could get a Fireball with a 20' blast radius, eh?
LOL I nearly died lauhing

[Elandris Kajar]

*laughter*

[Elandris Kajar]

*remembers that he needs to reread his original post before fixing typos*

[SinsI]

We even made a comprehensive list of every person invited, and one of our party members (a dwarf fighter) stated very clearly that he was personally greeting each person, checking that they were invited, and surveying the screening process.
What was his Sense Motive value? If they succeeded on Bluffing, they can force you to ignore such minor details as not being present in the list, or even the need to check the list itself. "These are not the droids you are looking for".
It was not the best idea to delegate it to character that has Sense Motive as cross-class skill.

[madtinker]

In a PbP game I was told that I should go talk to an NPC who lives in this cabin in the woods. I sneak up and knock on the door. "Why, you're the quietest thing to ever knock on my door," says the guy from his porch swing. It seems that if I didn't mention that I glanced around the DM assumed I was sneaking with my eyes closed. I called him on it and he relented, but when you rely on someone to describe a setting and they punish you for their own laziness a line has been crossed.

[justiceforall]

My party manages to defeat the boss bad guy and his goons. We start searching the bodies and the area (30ft room) only to be informed the boss body is not there.

"Wtf" is called, why didn't we even get spot checks, etc.

GM retorts with "he escaped. How many times have you used the 'bad guy mysteriously escapes without explanation' thing in your games huh?"

Me "Without explanation? Zero."

<awkward silence>

[Elandris Kajar]

Sorry about the triple post, I am new and did not know where the edit button was.

[Marlowe]

My party manages to defeat the boss bad guy and his goons. We start searching the bodies and the area (30ft room) only to be informed the boss body is not there.

"Wtf" is called, why didn't we even get spot checks, etc.

GM retorts with "he escaped. How many times have you used the 'bad guy mysteriously escapes without explanation' thing in your games huh?"

Me "Without explanation? Zero."

<awkward silence>

I did not realize that David Wingrove DMed.

[Talakeal]

In a PbP game I was told that I should go talk to an NPC who lives in this cabin in the woods. I sneak up and knock on the door. "Why, you're the quietest thing to ever knock on my door," says the guy from his porch swing. It seems that if I didn't mention that I glanced around the DM assumed I was sneaking with my eyes closed. I called him on it and he relented, but when you rely on someone to describe a setting and they punish you for their own laziness a line has been crossed.

Honestly, that sounds pretty cool.

[goto124]

In a PbP game I was told that I should go talk to an NPC who lives in this cabin in the woods. I sneak up and knock on the door. "Why, you're the quietest thing to ever knock on my door," says the guy from his porch swing. It seems that if I didn't mention that I glanced around the DM assumed I was sneaking with my eyes closed. I called him on it and he relented, but when you rely on someone to describe a setting and they punish you for their own laziness a line has been crossed.

Maybe the DM figured that since you concentrated on the door, and the porch swing was a distance to the side, you didn't spot it? You could say you should've been given a Spot check, but if I were the DM I would've given it only if the porch swing guy tried to stab you in the back or something. Stuff sometimes slip our mind, and having to be 100% correct 100% of the time is a bit much.

I don't see how he'd punished you for the laziness, to be honest.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Had one DM insist that every Wizard has Magic Missile (this 4e, where MM is a basic power, of which you get 2) and re-wrote one of my power cards to be Magic Missile. Before that, she insisted that Warforged can't be Wizards because.... I have no idea. Same character by the way.

In another game, I had my glasses wearing character's glass knocked off, no save, no nothing. Being a supportive character, I couldn't fight my attacker with vision, without I was completely helpless. Twas very annoying.

[Arbane]

In another game, I had my glasses wearing character's glass knocked off, no save, no nothing. Being a supportive character, I couldn't fight my attacker with vision, without I was completely helpless. Twas very annoying.

My eyesight's not that great, but I'm pretty sure I could fight about as well without glasses as with them (badly), as long as I wasn't called upon to be a sniper.

[MesiDoomstalker]

My eyesight's not that great, but I'm pretty sure I could fight about as well without glasses as with them (badly), as long as I wasn't called upon to be a sniper.

Admittedly, I had established earlier in the game in a non-combat situation he was severely blind without his glasses. Note: IRL I don't wear glasses so I really don't know how hard it is without.

[Marlowe]

Admittedly, I had established earlier in the game in a non-combat situation he was severely blind without his glasses. Note: IRL I don't wear glasses so I really don't know how hard it is without.

http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/cyborgs.jpg

[Slayer Lord]

Apparently our DM got bored with our last Pathfinder campaign and wanted us to give 13th Age a try. So rather than asking us about switching beforehand or simply ending the campaign (we had been kicking the BBEG's ass quite handily and it was looking like a final confrontation was looming anyway) we wound up getting railroaded into a mobius-strip like mansion that conveniently led down into the prison of some Yog-Sothoth-like entity which proceeded to effortlessly murder all the gods and destroy the world so a new one could be reformed. Keeping all of us alive because it "liked us," and even allowing us to keep all our castle and most of our allies and family members. It was all such a hamfisted way of getting us onto a new system and I thought it was rude to pull something like this without consulting the rest of us. Plus, I was also pretty pissed that this utterly derailed my cleric's character arc. I guess the others felt the same way because the 13th Age game ran out of steam really fast and now we're playing Mutants and Masterminds with a different DM. I think our previous DM is having more fun now that he's playing a character, so I guess it turned out well for everyone.

[Hellborn_Blight]

Apparently our DM got bored...

Things never end well if you see those words lol. But, changing systems, but keeping the characters? Cool idea if everyone agrees to it, bad idea for sooo many reasons if you just thrust it upon them. It's like, "Heres an Iron Kingdoms character sheet, get to it." (A few hours later) "Alright, now I want you to take that character, and convert it to Wheel of Time." WTH.

[Segev]

Regarding the kender stealing a coin purse you don't have with money in it you weren't carrying, I'd personally have refused to record the loss on my character sheet (since I wasn't carrying that gold), and would have recorded the money in the pouch I was handed as gains (because clearly, the money was handed to me from some other source)!

As for the threatening letter, I'd probably have ignored it.

With the oozemaster... I'd have been sorely tempted to act, IC and OOC, like the kender in quesiton had hideous burns, and, if it gave me a clue as to who'd stolen my vial of storing, I'd accuse him and treat him accordingly.

Kender played properly ARE the purview of the DM, but should be easily mitigated by a party who accepts their foibles and prepares for them. (This usually involves more post-hoc maintenance than preventative measures, since Kender show off their collections pretty much nightly, and are INVARIABLY happy to hand things to their friends that they "found" after their friends "dropped" them.)


Talekeal, have you ever asked him why the game allows NPCs to make AoOs, but not PCs? And I'll second the other poster's suggestion of mocking him right back. If he accuses you of being too weak, mock him by suggesting you were just giving him a fighting chance. If he says you're being a munchkin, reply with blasé apology, "After you said my last one was too weak, I wanted to live up to your challenges." When he mocks people from ages ago for how he "bested" them with rules knowledge, snicker and ask, "You mean like you owned the PHB by proving it wrong about 5-foot steps?"

[Keneth]

I'm mostly forgiving when it comes to bad DM calls, because I'm sure I've made a fair number of them myself. Sure, I'll argue both with players and DMs, but that's mostly just because I like arguing.

I think the biggest BS call I've had was with a DM who liked playing a bit fast and loose with the rules for the sake of story-telling, which was fine in and of itself, but he was particularly fond of fiat ambushes and BS encounter setups. In one campaign, we were playing low-level characters and sleeping behind locked doors in an inn when I was asked by the DM to make a Perception check (just one if I recall correctly). I rolled fairly low (<10) and had a pretty good idea that something ridiculous was gonna happen, so I asked the DM if whatever was happening would be enough to potentially rouse me from sleep (so I could get rid of the penalty to Perception). He said I'm allowed to make a Will save (ad hoc ruling, but I went with it) which I again rolled low, upon which I was promptly informed that there is someone (or some thing) sitting on top of me, pushing a blade into my chest (coup de grace) and needed to save myself from dying. So what happened is, this low-level rogue climbed up the wall to my windowsill, opened it from the outside, climbed inside, crept across the room to my bed, climbed on top of me, and proceeded to push a blade into my chest. For all of which I only got a single Perception check and a Will save upon request (both with non-trivial DCs).

Obviously, as a low level character, I failed my CDG Fort save, but I managed to convince the DM to let me burn all my hero points to stave off death. It's probable I would have failed all my Perception checks anyway, and the thing could have arguably just slit my throat without ever climbing on top of me (even if it was small), but killing low-level characters in their sleep is tacky even if you follow RAW to the letter. :smallannoyed:

[Crazysaneman]

Nothing to see here folks... move along.

[Gale]

@Keneth: If players are sleeping where danger can be expected and don't take it into consideration then they are at fault if someone sneaks up on them and assassinates them in their sleep. Although, personally I would be more forgiving of this at lower levels as there isn't much a party can do to keep potential threats out other than hide and sleep in shifts.
Players shouldn't feel endangered when sleeping in an inn though. If they have to pay money to sleep somewhere the DM should reward them with some safety. Otherwise they might as well sleep outside. I'm not saying inns should automatically be safe havens; but if there is a potential threat the players should be given a fair chance to deal with it.

I don't have any real stories of DMs making unreasonable calls. Although, I did remember a story of the first campaign I was ever in. We played with this girl named "Zoey" who barely paid attention the entire time. She spent most sessions playing games on her laptop or browsing Facebook. I honestly not sure why she even came. Zoey never wanted to talk to any NPCs and always complained whenever we weren't actively fighting something. She was a sorcerer, but the only spell she ever cast was Melf's Acid Arrow, even when we leveled up far past where it would be even remotely useful. Actually, I lied, she also cast Fireball, except she only ever did it when everyone else was in close-combat meaning we would all get hit it by it every time.
One time an NPC who we had been doing odd jobs for at the time gave us a task to annihilate an entire town. His reasoning for it was rather poor and none of the party wanted to do it. Except Zoey, who seemed more than happy to slaughter the innocent townspeople. For some reason I was the only one who tried to stop her, but being inexperienced at the game I got my ass kicked. Eventually, an airborne poison was gassed into the town and everyone died. Seriously. We were resurrected later, sometime in the future where said NPC had essentially taken over the world.
Some time passed and the party rogue and I were about done with Zoey's shenanigans. We waited until she hit us with another Fireball and used it as an excuse to take out our revenge on her. The rogue backstabbed her, killing her instantly. Then we threw her body in a bag of holding and put said bag of holding in a portal hole. It created a rift to the Astral Plane and her body was forever lost in the void. It was one of the most satisfying moments ever until the DM had a high-level NPC Wizard retrieve her body somehow and resurrect her. It didn’t make any sense but luckily Zoey realized then we didn’t want her around and stopped showing up to the sessions.
Other than the DM reviving Zoey by saying “a wizard did it” this isn’t much of a story of a BS call by a DM. But I thought I’d share it nonetheless.

[Talakeal]

Talekeal, have you ever asked him why the game allows NPCs to make AoOs, but not PCs? And I'll second the other poster's suggestion of mocking him right back. If he accuses you of being too weak, mock him by suggesting you were just giving him a fighting chance. If he says you're being a munchkin, reply with blasé apology, "After you said my last one was too weak, I wanted to live up to your challenges." When he mocks people from ages ago for how he "bested" them with rules knowledge, snicker and ask, "You mean like you owned the PHB by proving it wrong about 5-foot steps?"

His actual ruling his that AoOs are handed out at his sole discretion to prevent min maxing / rules lawyering / falling into a hack and slash mindset.

In reality, that merely means you can never get one of your own and NPCs can take them whenever they want.

I don't know if the DM means to do this, but over the course of the campaign I have never been allowed to make a single attack of opportunity despite having plenty of RAW legal opportunities, and have likewise had AoOs taken against me many times when something should have kept me safe.

[Segev]

Whenever he tells you you're "pathetic," accuse him of "falling into a hack and slash mindset," and explain that your concept is designed for role playing. Ask him if you should switch out for a more hack-and-slash, roll-play character to accommodate his obvious playstyle preference for this game.

[Keneth]

If players are sleeping where danger can be expected and don't take it into consideration then they are at fault if someone sneaks up on them and assassinates them in their sleep.

Danger could be expected everywhere in his campaigns. Like I said, he loved to set up encounters using DM fiat instead of using the actual creatures' abilities. One time, we were "surprised" by a squad of mooks in heavy armor who somehow managed to sneak up on our mid-level group resting on the top floor of an inn. Right up to the door too, no time to don our armor or anything. Luckily, the DM wasn't all that well-versed in game tactics either, so we were able to mostly bottleneck them at the door and finish them off with what few spells we had left from the previous day.

He was a good DM, and listened to (or asked for) my advice regularly, but the other players still have PTSD after his campaigns. :smallbiggrin:

[Keltest]

Danger could be expected everywhere in his campaigns. Like I said, he loved to set up encounters using DM fiat instead of using the actual creatures' abilities. One time, we were "surprised" by a squad of mooks in heavy armor who somehow managed to sneak up on our mid-level group resting on the top floor of an inn. Right up to the door too, no time to don our armor or anything. Luckily, the DM wasn't all that well-versed in game tactics either, so we were able to mostly bottleneck them at the door and finish them off with what few spells we had left from the previous day.

He was a good DM, and listened to (or asked for) my advice regularly, but the other players still have PTSD after his campaigns. :smallbiggrin:

Heavy armor can actually be surprisingly quiet. I mean, not rogue sneaking after you quiet, but if youre trying to sleep you might not notice someone walking down the hallway in properly made and fitted full plate.

[atemu1234]

http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/cyborgs.jpg

*applause*

[Keneth]

if youre trying to sleep you might not notice someone walking down the hallway in properly made and fitted full plate

Are you honestly arguing that a group of characters with superhuman hearing wouldn't notice an entire squad of mooks in heavy armor shuffling up to second floor in the middle of the night?

I think at the very least we would have deserved a Listen check before they were stacked in front of the door. :smalltongue:

[Keltest]

Are you honestly arguing that a group of characters with superhuman hearing wouldn't notice an entire squad of mooks in heavy armor shuffling up to second floor in the middle of the night?

I think at the very least we would have deserved a Listen check before they were stacked in front of the door. :smalltongue:

I have no idea about superhuman hearing, being of garden variety humanity, but there are at least a few people in my house who I could get out my old snare drum right next to them and have a hard time getting them up.


Having said that, a listen check would be polite, yes.

[Shin]

Happened recently:
We: Lvl 13 party
DM: Won't let us do metamagic or all too much dmg (at least not certain players)
A drow army attacks the city we're in. We are obviously supposed to stop the (epic / lvl25 or so) high priestess from necromancing the heck out of the city's graveyard, because what more reason do we need other than being told so by the local prince we've never met before? The priestess storms in with her (epic / lvl 25) male drow wizard cohort and on a giant black spider, shoots a maximized disintegrate at me. I die. "No", I point out, "I saw the attack coming, and thus, abrupt jaunt away". Strangely I got allowed to take that ACF, yet nothing else (aside from the wizard class, which was like the only class I've been allowed to play, which seems to be the just the perfect class to throw together with a dragon shaman, a scout, a ranger, a favored soul and a wilder, in terms of power - unlike things such as rogue or factotum, which were disallowed (because obviously op).

Man, what would I do without abrupt jaunt in this campaign. The drow did proceed to hit us hard while another group member (the ranger, who wasn't with us at the time) did rush into the drow army and proceeded to handle animal and ride two of their hydras rather effortless. I got the slight feeling that we were no match for the epic drow, which was why I flew next to them and did cast an AMF. The drow wizard cohort did jump off the spider and out of the AMF, turned around and hit my AMF with a disjunction, having it at hand just like the good sorcerer he obviously must've been and obviously not having to roll for success. Fortunately for us the two drow leaders obviously must've gotten bored, so they decided to abandon their important plan, teleport to their army at the walls and let the army retreat from the city. They will be killable as kind of a boss encounter when we're at epic levels ourselves, but why not fool around with the lvl 13 group in the meanwhile?

[MesiDoomstalker]

Remembered another one.

On convey to an abandoned mine to find a macguffin. Get some Perception checks (4e again, different DM though) that lead us away from the convey into the woods. Find a shack with an (undead) girl and a bunch of toys. Some stuff goes down and my Paladin gets a big giant A-OK to righteously smitify her. All her toys come to life and start kicking our butts. Eventually, I use my Dragonborn Breath Attack (big AoE), and all the toys catch on fire and stop moving. After that it was a cake walk. But I also apparently caught the shack the girl was living in on fire. Apparently, the toys had AC in the 30s (we were level 4) and HP well above 100, each. The DM wanted me to use my Dragon Breath to kill the toys (by making them unkillable by all other methods, essentially) so he could cause the shack to catch fire and destroy a different MacGuffin that would help the overall plot somehow.

tl;dr DM made encounter that required specific tactic to win, which destroyed plot via DM fiat just to waste time and patience apparently.

[ExLibrisMortis]

tl;dr DM made encounter that required specific tactic to win, which destroyed plot via DM fiat just to waste time and patience apparently.
Because knocking over a lantern wouldn't make any sense, undead have darkvision, duh!

[slade88green]

I had a DM a while back that would not let us get through an encounter without a fight. Diplomacy, bluff, and skirting far around never worked. No rolls, they just didn't work and everything attacked on sight for no reason. One of the encounters was 2 owlbears feasting on a horse and its rider. We spotted them from about 100 yards and tried to move around them. They spotted us without a roll and charged the 100 yards to attack us. They must have been moving fast too because we didn't have time to get any bow fire or spells off before they got to us and we were rolling init. We quit playing that game after 2 sessions.

[slade88green]

In another game I played in many years ago (AD&D) I was playing a wizard. We started at 7th level and I spent a great deal of time making a character as the DM made us track all spell components. BUT...that wasn't the bad part. Yes it was time consuming, but the bad part was that after about 2 hours of playing we got sucked into a vortex. Inside the vortex tunnel we saw a split coming. The DM rolled randomly on which way we went. To my horror (after spending hours making a character with component list for spells, the DM said my spell book and component pouch was ripped apart and scattered. He had me roll randomly which pages and components went down the same tunnel as me. After some bad rolls on my part, I landed with a small fraction of my spells and even fewer components. Even worse, I was the only character that got sucked down that path. Turns out we were sucked into ravenloft. As if that wasn't bad enough, I encountered a woodsman which turned out to be a very hostile 5th level fighter that my spells didn't effect until 6 rounds later for some reason. Between my lack of HP, poor attack and delayed damage on spells I didn't survive the encounter.

[Solaris]

Yeah this sounds like he was a good DM and you were a trouble player. If the entire rest of the group is plating murder munchkins and you decide to play Miko Paladin, that is on you.

I'd love to hear why you think his paladin was anything like Miko. Miko objected to the slightest violation of the law. Geddy2112's paladin objected to murder. These two are not alike.

If anything, he's a Roy in a party of Belkars.


What was his Sense Motive value? If they succeeded on Bluffing, they can force you to ignore such minor details as not being present in the list, or even the need to check the list itself. "These are not the droids you are looking for".
It was not the best idea to delegate it to character that has Sense Motive as cross-class skill.

What was the Bluff modifier? Even if we accept that the Bluff skill works like that, there's a big pile of circumstance modifiers suggesting that the Bluff check should probably have failed.


I have no idea about superhuman hearing, being of garden variety humanity, but there are at least a few people in my house who I could get out my old snare drum right next to them and have a hard time getting them up.


Having said that, a listen check would be polite, yes.

Adventurers aren't garden-variety humanity, and having spent a year or so in situations where sleeping in and sleeping heavily can result in death... yeah, while most people can be heavy sleepers, adventurers aren't most people. People who've never left the safety of civilization aren't a good metric for gauging people who wander around dangerous things and kill them on a daily basis, let alone when they're superhuman. I, for example, sleep lightly thanks to my deployments and I was on posts that are much better-fortified than a typical adventurer's camp, though before I deployed I was a very heavy sleeper.

It's the same sort of logic that demands someone prove their character can climb a wall by climbing a wall themselves.

[darksolitaire]

I had a DM a while back that would not let us get through an encounter without a fight. Diplomacy, bluff, and skirting far around never worked. No rolls, they just didn't work and everything attacked on sight for no reason.

This makes me think that he has had his encounter wrecked by a diplomancer at some point.

[VariSami]

This makes me think that he has had his encounter wrecked by a diplomancer at some point.

Or was a huge fan of Pokémon:

"No matter what their specialties or aims, there is one code that they all follow—when two Trainers make eye contact, they must have a battle."

Bulbapedia, Pokémon Trainer (http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Trainer)

[SinsI]

What was the Bluff modifier? Even if we accept that the Bluff skill works like that, there's a big pile of circumstance modifiers suggesting that the Bluff check should probably have failed.
Worst Bluff circumstance modifier is only +20 to Sense Motive.

Don't underestimate the power of maximized Bluff skill!
23 maximized +2 racial from Changeling, +3 from Charisma 16, Skill focus +3 =31. Snake familiar +3, Persuasive feat+2 = 36.

That's in an AMF that removes all bonuses from items, for a relatively un-optimized Changeling Sorcerer.

The Fighter would have, say:
11 Sense Motive + 3 (+6 Wiz item) + 2(masterwork item) + 20 (circumstance). = 36 Sense Motive.

So even in such conditions he would only have 50% chance of discovering the bluff. And assuming he did spent all those points on Sense Motive.

[Crake]

Worst Bluff circumstance modifier is only +20 to Sense Motive.

Don't underestimate the power of maximized Bluff skill!
23 maximized +2 racial from Changeling, +3 from Charisma 16, Skill focus +3 =31. Snake familiar +3, Persuasive feat+2 = 36.

That's in an AMF that removes all bonuses from items, for a relatively un-optimized Changeling Sorcerer.

The Fighter would have, say:
11 Sense Motive + 3 (+6 Wiz item) + 2(masterwork item) + 20 (circumstance). = 36 Sense Motive.

So even in such conditions he would only have 50% chance of discovering the bluff. And assuming he did spent all those points on Sense Motive.

There's a level of plausability at which point things like bluff become just straight up impossible. Sure the person you're bluffing might think YOU think what you're saying is true, but that doesn't mean that they will believe you. If you go around proclaiming to be a golden dragon in human form, people will believe you think you are, but until shown some kind of evidence (by say, you casting polymorph to turn into a dragon, and nobody has spellcraft to identify that you're actually just casting a spell), nobody's going to believe you.

Similarly, if you're crossing names off on a guest list, and someone comes in twice (as was apparently the case), no bluff in the world is gonna stop the person from gathering both parties and doing a thorough check to see which is a fake, and then summarily killing the fake off.

[Hellborn_Blight]

Similarly, if you're crossing names off on a guest list, and someone comes in twice (as was apparently the case), no bluff in the world is gonna stop the person from gathering both parties and doing a thorough check to see which is a fake, and then summarily killing the fake off.

(this doesn't go into the magic related stuff, it is just about the circumstance modifiers and plausibility of bluff checks in general)

I wouldn't say no bluff in the world is gonna work. I think, "Oh, yeah I had to slip out when you were letting (these other people you saw enter) in because I forgot my (map, intelligence, whatever happens to be relevant) seems pretty plausible to me. The added details seem to some what verify the story, and the reason is pretty relevant, so I wouldn't apply any penalty, except maybe a general -2 because the party was already very suspicious about BS going down. As far as the compare and contrast thing, a summary glance could fail a spot check, they could be in the bathroom, and Mr. Fighter can't very well leave the door to go find him, so a simple turn coat could be running interference on other party members meaning the guy at the doors hand gets forced. Nobles are often petulant children, so if a line forms you know they are gonna be bitching. So if the enemy took the tactic of creating that frustration, then the fighter might have gotten a penalty to the check even (kinda how when you were under age and tried to buy booze, don't do this by the way kids :smallfurious: you go up to the counter when they are in a rush and say you forgot your ID). But that conversation, opportunity to make the decision about perhaps checking on the first person to enter and the opposed skullduggery needs to happen, and didn't in this case. So I totally agree in this situation, a bluff check is irrelevant. I do think, however, that the main factor here was a lot of roleplaying and description was ignored to force the door, as it were, but it could have been done legit (or at least attempted) with some simple RPing.

[Crake]

(this doesn't go into the magic related stuff, it is just about the circumstance modifiers and plausibility of bluff checks in general)

I wouldn't say no bluff in the world is gonna work. I think, "Oh, yeah I had to slip out when you were letting (these other people you saw enter) in because I forgot my (map, intelligence, whatever happens to be relevant) seems pretty plausible to me. The added details seem to some what verify the story, and the reason is pretty relevant, so I wouldn't apply any penalty, except maybe a general -2 because the party was already very suspicious about BS going down. As far as the compare and contrast thing, a summary glance could fail a spot check, they could be in the bathroom, and Mr. Fighter can't very well leave the door to go find him, so a simple turn coat could be running interference on other party members meaning the guy at the doors hand gets forced. Nobles are often petulant children, so if a line forms you know they are gonna be bitching. So if the enemy took the tactic of creating that frustration, then the fighter might have gotten a penalty to the check even (kinda how when you were under age and tried to buy booze, don't do this by the way kids :smallfurious: you go up to the counter when they are in a rush and say you forgot your ID). But that conversation, opportunity to make the decision about perhaps checking on the first person to enter and the opposed skullduggery needs to happen, and didn't in this case. So I totally agree in this situation, a bluff check is irrelevant. I do think, however, that the main factor here was a lot of roleplaying and description was ignored to force the door, as it were, but it could have been done legit (or at least attempted) with some simple RPing.

Except that from the sounds of it there was only 1 way in and out, and the player was actively screening everyone coming and going, so that excuse wouldn't cut it? It sounded like the whole place was pretty heavily locked down, magically sealed and everyone being screened in an AMF. The player's character would have had to be mentally challenged to screw it up.

[Hellborn_Blight]

Except that from the sounds of it there was only 1 way in and out, and the player was actively screening everyone coming and going, so that excuse wouldn't cut it? It sounded like the whole place was pretty heavily locked down, magically sealed and everyone being screened in an AMF. The player's character would have had to be mentally challenged to screw it up.

I'm not saying it had to succeed, there is a much greater chance of it failing, I'm saying that it was possible and that not roleplaying it made it dumb. We don't know how big the room was, we don't know how it was furnished or laid out. We don't even know what the door to the place was like. I also specifically mentioned that I wasn't going into the magical defenses, as them being circumnavigated was a separate issue. So off his general description, I was just proposing a possibility. And it is definitely possible to RP that situation in such a way to create such a result. If the DM is harping on you as several annoyed Nobles that you are holding up the line and you can't get back up, you can't see the other one AND you fail your sense motive (which that being possible was my main point) then what are you supposed to do? I wouldn't call it meta gaming to not let them in, but putting up further resistance at that point when you belive him would just not make any logic sense (possible making the character mentally challenged lol:smalltongue:). Of course the fake could miss time his entrance and one of the other players pull away from the traitor, the Fighter could have just seen the original go into the bathroom, or the sense motive check could readily succeed, and the fake has the option of waiting at the entrance or being gutted. The hypothetical scenario I present is me just inventing an appropriate (and much less fiaty) DM attempt at crashing the event in much the same way that your proposed solution to the problem was something the players would have hypothetically done to prevent it. I think they both are pretty legit, and aren't mutually exclusive.

[Barstro]

So even in such conditions he would only have 50% chance of discovering the bluff. And assuming he did spent all those points on Sense Motive.

You still have to make it plausible first. Just as you do not roll a check to get out of bed in the morning, the smoothest person in the world cannot convince someone that a tight meeting of six people is "just fine" with twelve people in the room.

I'm not really saying the DM is wrong, just that it should have been better planned and actually roleplayed.

[Necroticplague]

What I question is how they managed to get in while looking like a guest. Wouldn't the AMF have disabled their shapechanging (since all sources of shapehanging I know of are either spells or SU abilities), thus revealing them?

[Crake]

What I question is how they managed to get in while looking like a guest. Wouldn't the AMF have disabled their shapechanging (since all sources of shapehanging I know of are either spells or SU abilities), thus revealing them?

I'd imagine they were using mundane disguises

[ShadowfireOmega]

Ok, so I wanted a character with flavor, so I chose a class I had always wanted to play, and a race I thought would be interesting in combination. Enter one of the worst race/class combos: The halfling monk.

I soon realized I had made a mistake, with no additional damage (like a sneak attack) to make up for the lower damage small weapons have, added to the fact I was rarely hitting and had a lower speed than anyone else, I was total ****. So I went online and found a thread on another board (http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/13/optimizing-a-dd-3-5-monk) and realized my mistake was worse than I had originally thought. But I decided to make the best of it. The first thing I asked my DM for "Improved Natural Attack" was denied on the basis of "I've had experience with players taking monster feats, they always turn out overpowered." So in short, me making my unarmed strike damage the same as a humans would have made me overpowered.

Now for the icing on the cake. "If you want to take a monster feat, you will have to take 'levels' in a monster class, like vampire or lycanthrope." Again, in short, I would be to powerful with a 1d6 for my unarmed strike, but not to powerful either being able to level drain WITH NO SAVE on each successful hit or having a full attack of two 1d4 claws and a 1d6 bite and in either case DR 10.

But, seeing as he allowed me to retrofit my backstory to include a lycan-birth, I did it. Then I followed the procedure for making a custom lycanthrope, I wanted a were-baboon (+4 str, +4 dex, +2 con and only 1 animal hit die) but he said "That procedure is only for NPCs, you have to take one that is already listed." So instead of the flavorful Were-baboon Halfling Monk, I was stuck with a werewolf halfling monk. It took me forever to get out of the LA and I to top it off, we died after I finally gained a monk level.

[SinsI]

Except that from the sounds of it there was only 1 way in and out, and the player was actively screening everyone coming and going, so that excuse wouldn't cut it? It sounded like the whole place was pretty heavily locked down, magically sealed and everyone being screened in an AMF. The player's character would have had to be mentally challenged to screw it up.
Read up on some of the uses of Bluff.

It even allows you to instill nonmagical suggestion. And suggestion has among listed examples one that says "this pool of acid is actually pure water and a quick dip would be refreshing" - which is also something one would have had to be mentally challenged to accept.

So with a big enough difference in Sense Motive/Bluff, that player's character really became mentally challenged - because that enemy screwed up with his mind!
High enough optimized Bluff skill is outright hypnosis.

Also, you are underestimating the ease with which you can forget whether you've finished a routine action or not. Ever caught yourself thinking "Oh, did i forget to lock the door?" a few minutes after exiting the house?
All your mind has to do is wonder on some some other topic a little (i.e. on how important this gathering is) and somebody's saying "oh, you've just marked me but forgot that you did it already" would sound as reasonable as it gets.


You still have to make it plausible first. Just as you do not roll a check to get out of bed in the morning, the smoothest person in the world cannot convince someone that a tight meeting of six people is "just fine" with twelve people in the room.

I'm not really saying the DM is wrong, just that it should have been better planned and actually roleplayed.

There are lots and lots of plausible options available, starting with the classic "it is actually still night and you are dreaming". And DM was absolutely correct that he didn't inform that player of the failed Bluff check (at least before they were in the middle of fighting). It was the main reason Charisma earned a reputation of a Dump Stat in 2nd edition - you "roleplayed" all the character interaction skills instead of actually using the skills. If he did inform him of that interaction immediately, there would have been a very big probability that the player would've used out-of-character knowledge to try and catch the intruders despite falling for the bluff.

What DM did is absolutely correct - if the shapeshifter convinced that character to forget about their group slipping in, the player only learned what the character remembered.

[Barstro]

There are lots and lots of plausible options available, starting with the classic "it is actually still night and you are dreaming".

Lets assume arguendo that you are correct. This is obviously a +20 situation that by your earlier math resulted in a 50% chance. Personally, I think these charts need one more column of "just isn't feasible - no need to roll", but I'm not writing the game. We can even say it's an 80% chance of the bluff working.

In the case at hand, SEVERAL people were there that should not be there. That's a roll for each time some sort of bluffing needed to be done. Eventually the fighter is going to realize that there are no naked elves around, so he cannot actually be dreaming.

Whether or not you accept my argument, I agree with you that this is a reason to not actually roleplay it. Too many people would take the roleplaying and make it metagaming instead. I'll just state that it takes a very good DM to pull this off and make it actually be an in-character interaction and not BS DM fiat.

I think that the BS line was crossed at the third person. After the sixth it simply became a Monty Python sketch.

[ComaVision]

As SinsI said, that's literally what bluff does. People are convinced of the most outlandish and impossible things in real life all the time, so I don't know how you think it couldn't happen to this extent in a fantasy realm. How many people buy those garbage "Lose 20 lbs in one week!" magazines? Clearly enough people to keep them in business.

"Oh, don't mind the 7 extras, I've cast Mirror Image." There's an endless amount of bluffs that would suffice if your bluff is high enough.

[Barstro]

As SinsI said, that's literally what bluff does. People are convinced of the most outlandish and impossible things in real life all the time, so I don't know how you think it couldn't happen to this extent in a fantasy realm. How many people buy those garbage "Lose 20 lbs in one week!" magazines? Clearly enough people to keep them in business.

"Oh, don't mind the 7 extras, I've cast Mirror Image." There's an endless amount of bluffs that would suffice if your bluff is high enough.

Reality: But they don't believe "It's been three weeks, so you have lost 60 pounds. Go put on a size-2 and hit the clubs".

In Game: Mirror image is all identical and are in the same 5x5 square. If they went beyond, then the lie was spotted. MaYbE a new Bluff will fix it, but it would require a roll.

Reminds me of the Evil Overlord List

All members of my Legions of Terror will have professionally tailored uniforms. If the hero knocks a soldier unconscious and steals the uniform, the poor fit will give him away.Doesn't matter what the reason is; if the suit does not fit, kill.

I'm not stating that SinsI is incorrect. RAW is rather clear. I disagree on the apparent notion that one roll allows an obvious falsehood and every subsequent compounding event to go unnoticed. The events as described were so numerous that the correct number of rolls would be statistically impossible to make.

[Odin's Eyepatch]

In all fairness: no bluff was used to get past the fighter, primarily because non of the shapechangers actually went through the front door! You see, the (epic level) High Archmage of the Kingdom who set up the Dimension Lock was actually mind controlled to 'fake' cast the spell (in hindsight trusting an NPC was a bad idea, but he had a fairly good 'track record' up till then). Obviously no roles were rolled to sense motive the mind control, or spellcraft the casting (We didn't call out for them to be honest. I 'almost' said "I spellcraft the Archamage", but for some unfanthomable reason I didn't).

So there was no dimension lock, and the extra visitors teleported in as everybody were bustling for seats. There again: no spot checks were required, despite the rest of the party (extra 5 pairs of eyes) being in the room ahead of time to welcome the nobles.

This was all at 20th level, and non of us had put any significant amount of points into Sense Motive, meaning that anybody with the slightest amount of Bluff optimisation could easily fool us. This is why we put our faith into the AMF, which would have suppressed the shapeshifting effect.

I'm not saying that our plan was without flaws. The shapeshifters were roughly humanoids outsiders (rashasharks or something like that), so disguise and bluff could potentially have got them past the AMF (in retrospect). But the "extra 7 people appear in the room" DC 22 int check? You got to be kidding me.



Interestingly enough, this episode had a profound impact on the rest of the session. Several of us felt like there was literally nothing we could have done to avert this. All the planning was useless. It was going to happen anyway, whether we liked it or not. So in the resulting battle to save the nobles a couple of the players 'gave up', and just decided to go crazy, be unhelpful, and explode the whole right wall of the castle by blasting a gnome through the ceiling.

This resulted in the death of a couple more nobles, which made it even worse for the players trying to actually save them. All in all, a rather dismal ending to that session, though luckily between the Kingdom and us we had enough money to resurrect all the slain nobles.

[ComaVision]

That sounds so close to being awesome DMing, if he had just handled it better it would have been great. The game's pretty much done if the players feel they don't have control over what happens in the world.

[Barstro]

That sounds so close to being awesome DMing, if he had just handled it better it would have been great.

Sadly, I agree. Perhaps clues should have been placed that the NPC was "not himself lately", but the middle result makes sense.

Were I DM and came up with the first part of that nonsense, I would have rolled WHEN (not if) you noticed. But, your new behavior upon noticing would have caused the enemies to act.

In all, I'm sorry that such a thing ruined the rest of the time. I'm not a fan of that kind of railroading.

[Odin's Eyepatch]

Sadly, I agree. Perhaps clues should have been placed that the NPC was "not himself lately", but the middle result makes sense.

Were I DM and came up with the first part of that nonsense, I would have rolled WHEN (not if) you noticed. But, your new behavior upon noticing would have caused the enemies to act.

In all, I'm sorry that such a thing ruined the rest of the time. I'm not a fan of that kind of railroading.

In all honesty, the DM did say that the Archmage "looked bored" as we were going through the screening process. But then again, most our NPCs just tend to stand around in the background most of the time, so we didn't think much off it. It was a good plan, subverting the only NPC who we had thought safe beyond all doubt. (We had even marked him with Stalking Brand to make sure that he wasn't a shapeshifter in disguise). Obviously at the time we were all too annoyed to think clearly about it, but it was a nice plot twist to get past our security measures :smallamused:

If only the rest of the execution wasn't so....:smallmad:

Luckily what happened that session has never happened again, and despite the setback we continued on to beat the BBEG, though the gnome spent the rest of the campaign believing that he was in a prophetic dream about what was going to happen, and believing that we were just various manifestations of his psyche!

[SolarSystem]

Slightly different take on DM BS where the players are saved from DM BS by other DM BS. At least she's consistant.
Current DM throwing things at us with a CR well above what our party could reasonably be expected to take on and win, then arbitrarily nerfing monsters in one way or another to prevent a TPK - either some random unknown npc comes in to save the day, or the monster 'forgets' certain traits (some core the monster!), or it suddenly had half the hit points....
Let's add railroading back into the planned story when the entire party decides the whole thing is far too dangerous and try to turn around and find a somewhat less suicidal mission.

This is a relatively new campaign,and we're only level 3. At level 1 we faced off against a Giant Crocodile, at level 2 we encounted a Vampire Spawn... last session (at current level 3 with only 3 party members) we faced some huge plant monster in a space in which it couldn't fit without squeezing (no idea what it actually was) that would have killed us all had not random help arrived out of nowhere.

(I'm one more railroaded-into-overpowered-for-our-level monster away from quitting the campaign, which I hope I can make clear to the DM before next session.)

[ComaVision]

My current DM is new to DMing. We did our first two sessions this weekend. In the first session, as a level 3 group, we fought 10 goblins, 2 wolves, and a level 2 Bugbear fighter way over wealth in one fight.

By luck, we all survived (two of us at 4 health, one at 3 health, one character missing a leg [crit table]). He was receptive to me explaining why it was way too much though and the second session was much better, though a member of the party was subject to a magic effect with no saving throw lol but he'll get the hang of it, I think.

[justiceforall]

This one didn't happen to me personally but its a group classic from the distant past, 2nd edition in fact.

The group used to run multiple DMs, they would swap on a weekly basis. The offending person was playing a Chaotic Evil Wizard. During his turn at DMing, the party found a Black Robe of the Archmagi. The first person to touch it instantly died - back in 2nd edition even touching one when you were the wrong alignment was extremely dangerous. And of course the DM having the only evil character in the party. Everyone else in the party refused to touch it at that point, and left the area.

Next session, now with the offending person as a player, he informs everyone he's wearing his new Black Robe of the Archmagi. One of the other players says "noone picked it up", to which the response is "I was DMing, one of you picked it up". The next question was "but how did we even pick it up with out dying?", to which I believe the response was "stfu".

[martixy]

My current DM is new to DMing. We did our first two sessions this weekend. In the first session, as a level 3 group, we fought 10 goblins, 2 wolves, and a level 2 Bugbear fighter way over wealth in one fight.

By luck, we all survived (two of us at 4 health, one at 3 health, one character missing a leg [crit table]). He was receptive to me explaining why it was way too much though and the second session was much better, though a member of the party was subject to a magic effect with no saving throw lol but he'll get the hang of it, I think.

That's not malice, or even stupidity, just inexperience, and you yourself just said that he's receptive to learning.

[Crake]

Read up on some of the uses of Bluff.

It even allows you to instill nonmagical suggestion. And suggestion has among listed examples one that says "this pool of acid is actually pure water and a quick dip would be refreshing" - which is also something one would have had to be mentally challenged to accept.



People always misrepresent that line in suggestion. The assumption is that the person being suggested doesn't know that the liquid is acid and thinks it's just water (since many acids are colorless, odorless liquids), hence why taking a dip is a "reasonable" request. "Asking the creature to do some obviously harmful act automatically negates the effect of the spell." If the creature was aware that the pool was acid, then the suggestion wouldn't work due to that line right there.


Also, you are underestimating the ease with which you can forget whether you've finished a routine action or not. Ever caught yourself thinking "Oh, did i forget to lock the door?" a few minutes after exiting the house?
All your mind has to do is wonder on some some other topic a little (i.e. on how important this gathering is) and somebody's saying "oh, you've just marked me but forgot that you did it already" would sound as reasonable as it gets.



That's why he had a checklist with the names of all the guests, sure maybe you forget, but the checklist has it marked down who's entered/left.


There are lots and lots of plausible options available, starting with the classic "it is actually still night and you are dreaming". And DM was absolutely correct that he didn't inform that player of the failed Bluff check (at least before they were in the middle of fighting). It was the main reason Charisma earned a reputation of a Dump Stat in 2nd edition - you "roleplayed" all the character interaction skills instead of actually using the skills. If he did inform him of that interaction immediately, there would have been a very big probability that the player would've used out-of-character knowledge to try and catch the intruders despite falling for the bluff.

What DM did is absolutely correct - if the shapeshifter convinced that character to forget about their group slipping in, the player only learned what the character remembered.

Despite what you're saying, there are ways to make a situation bluff-proof, merely a double checking of all facts as a protocol would have prevented all of this. All the bluffing in the world isn't going to stop you from double checking if you know people want to sneak in, and the people attenting are aware of the stakes, so people aren't going to complain about behing held up by security measures. The only scenario I would have accepted as a player was if some of the members of the meeting had been killed before the meeting, and the changelings had impersonated them. No doubles or extras would have been able to make it in under proper precautions.

That all said, it's a moot argument because that's not even what happened :smalltongue:

So none of you thought to test the dimensional lock once it was in place?! I'll admit, if you ethereal jaunted into a room of crowded people, it might be hard to tell, but Humans are good at approximating within 15% of the number of people in the room, so for 30 people, anywhere from up to 34 would have been acceptable, but 37 would have caught someone's attention.

[SinsI]

That's why he had a checklist with the names of all the guests, sure
maybe you forget, but the checklist has it marked down who's entered/left.
So what?

--- story mode on ---

...Sight of the Dwarf Fighter stopped for a moment on the enchanting figure of a masked smiling nimble Nymph dancer clad in that outfit barely covering anything they like so much in this city doing high jumps and coiling in various deviant poses on stage while whirling several dazzling multicolored hoops around her limbs and torso. Eh, if only there were some Dwarven women that were...
"Hey, knave! What are you doing getting distracted in the middle of talking to me!"
Suddenly, his line of thoughts was interrupted by a rude voice. Moving his sight back in front of him, he saw that in the violet light of the Antimagic Field was standing an old human man clad in what was the latest trend of fashion for the highest circles of society. While features of his face were completely generic for those pompous human nobles (not that Fighter was any good at distinguishing them humans anyway - they all looked the same to him), the way his face was distorted in that arrogant scorn unmistakably identified him as
belonging to that group of eternally in-fighting "nobles" that they so desperately try to keep from deteriorating into an all-out civil war again.
Was he standing there before? Before that line of thought managed to materialize in Fighter's brain, he was interrupted again.
"Where were you looking at! How long are you going to take to finish registering me already! Don't tell me you dare to be so disrespectful to me, Baron von Crake, Grand Lord of Swamps of Forumia, as to be distracted while checking me in! Have you put my name in already? If so, hurry and let me in! Don't tell me that you forgot to?"
He saw that the name "Stubborn Crake" in that secret script they devised already had a mark near it. But when did he put it there?
Looking at his own hand, he saw that he was firmly holding the pen with fresh ink on it and relaxed - he really did it just now, as he only ever took the pen in his hand after confirming that the name hadn't been marked yet. Reassured, he ushered the old geezer in.

...Fighter never remembered that the real von Crake came in that group of five half an hour ago nor noticed that the pen was slipped into his hand with a crafty Sleight of Hand trick...

--- story mode off ---
Now guess - which elements weren't arranged by the shapechanger?

[FrancisBean]

My current DM has an attitude that all character actions must be challenged. It creates an environment where we actually do better if we play poorly -- if we get clever, then he feels the need to toss obstacles in the way of intelligent play. 3 small examples:

1. In a large and messy fight, my wizard called his action as watching the enemy caster closely for casting, and readying to counterspell. "Make a DC 15 spot check." [Wisdom was my dump stat, and spot isn't a class skill, so 9.] No, there were no metamagic feats (silent/still/etc), sleight-of-hand skill tricks, etc. Just an arbitrary spot check to notice something which normally provokes an AoA. (Note: the counterspelling rules don't discuss Spot checks; it's based on a Spellcraft check, DC 15 + level; my Spellcraft was 24.)

2. We'd just gotten paid for a job and were carrying around 20,000 in platinum bars. Everything was fine, until finally I made a point of noting we need to add some magical protection to the loot just in case of pick pockets. Lo and behold, immediately after that we get picked. (Cue city chase scene, run-in with guards, eventual feud with thieves guild.) If I'd kept my mouth shut, nothing would have happened.

3. Like most casters, I tend to ignore material components unless they have a listed cost. I'd taken Hail of Stone as my only direct damage spell at first level, and it takes a 5gp jade chip. We spent in-game WEEKS checking every town for a lapidary who had jade. "Sorry, just sold out. Try up the river." By the time I finally found jade, my Wizard levels were so high that I was twice over the max damage for Hail of Stone (1d4/level, max 5d4, my CL for it was 10), leaving it as a mostly useless spell. I'll probably retrain it.

Challenges are good, but when it's nothing but arbitrary challenges to your every action and you know you're better off just playing dumb, it kills the rewards of being a clever gamer.

If anybody has constructive suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I don't think there's a good way to bring up the problem without him getting defensive. :smallfrown:

[chainer1216]

I once had a DM rule that I couldn't see a colossal+ god dragon that was maybe 1000ft away due to poorly understood spot rules.

[Barstro]

So what?

--- story mode on ---
...

--- story mode off ---
Now guess - which elements weren't arranged by the shapechanger?

Sure, sure. Amusing, well planned, well described. Shame on the party for having only one person at the door. In the future maybe they will write down the time instead of just put a check. I'd be honored to have you as a DM.

But this ignores the argument that the Fighter would get more checks (possibly with situational bonuses) when the next guy tries it (and the one after, etc., until all SEVEN made it in.

But this is a thread on DM calls, not Bluff rules. While I find the conversation enjoyable, I feel badly about continuing this tangent.

[SinsI]

If anybody has constructive suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I don't think there's a good way to bring up the problem without him getting defensive. :smallfrown:
Be sure to remind the DM that not using Out Of Character Knowledge should be demanded from everyone (so DM included), and not just the players. Otherwise, they would have to leave him out of their planning sessions or inter-character discussions (by i.e. exchanging information via secret notes). Were you tailed from the moment you acquired all that precious metal? Did the character essentially shout "I have lots and lots of money on my person and I don't yet have any magical protection on it" out loud on a busy street?

Don't ask for what you want specifically. Instead, ask for several different materials, so that the DM has no idea which you really need. It makes sense anyway since some merchants might tend to inflate prices if you show unduly interest in some good (though it might be a good thing (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0677.html) :) )

[Barstro]

The main bad DM that I had also caused lack of planning to be a bonus.

Encounters were almost nonexistent if the party did any scouting or planning. But if the party went headlong into danger without looking, then the fights were too tough and required fiat for there to not be a TPK. "Headlong into danger" was the result of not checking every possible source of danger. Look in 100% of the windows of a building before entering meant the building was empty. Miss one window and that was the one room that housed eight well trained guards.

Entering those fights (or worse ones) meant that half the party would die. But the remaining half would split the XP of an encounter much higher than the original party should have fought. Lather, rinse, repeat with free new character creation and the party was very unbalanced.

[Segev]

In the vein of blocking character actions, I was in a game once where the DM told us that the village full of elves were unable to get the materials to craft bows to help fend off a horde of advancing goblins...and didn't have the proficiency with the weapons even if they could. He generally meant well, but this was a part of a pattern; he seemed to think that anything we wanted to buy, no matter how mundane, was in short to non-existant supply, motivated largely out of (I think) a fear of what we'd do with it. I never did quite figure out why. He has another group with which these problems don't seem to arise, so it was probably a play style difference. (Admittedly, our barbarian's player is the sort to want to squeeze every ounce of lootable goods from every encounter. Including skinning wolves and bears and collecting their meat, having taken Craft skills to do so.)

[Hellborn_Blight]

Challenges are good, but when it's nothing but arbitrary challenges to your every action and you know you're better off just playing dumb, it kills the rewards of being a clever gamer.

If anybody has constructive suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I don't think there's a good way to bring up the problem without him getting defensive. :smallfrown:

Solidarity and specifics. Seriously, if he wants to tell every single player they are wrong, and ignore specific examples of egregiousness, then it's a lost cause and you are better off finding a new DM. A sad fact is, D&D is a social game, and that means hierarchies. The amount of importance placed on those hierarchies will vary person to person, but DM's have an awful habit, mostly because it can be hard to wield authority without becoming a pushover or a tyrant, of not balancing their personal importance within the group well. Some feel that if they don't wield complete unchallengeable authority and mastery of the game world then their importance to the group is diminished. Those DM's forget that world shaping power is the purvey of players as well.


But I hope it isn't an ego issue, and it's more of a being reactionary issue. If they are at least slightly able to see other people's points of view, then they should be able understand that if all their players are playing dumb just to avoid their blatant METAGMAING (which is what it is) then they have made a horrible mistake with how they adjudicate.

[Talar]

Last summer I came back to a group and asked to play a trip based fighter because I remember there being multiple other straight up beat sticks backed by a cleric, rogue, and wizard already so I thought this way I would play nice with the other characters. But this apparently was over powered and I needed to come up with a different character. They asked me to play a second cleric for the extra healing. The DM approved me playing a DMM persist cleric instead...I explained to him what it was and how it worked and he saw no problem with it. It still no makes no sense to me.

[golem1972]

Had one DM insist that every Wizard has Magic Missile (this 4e, where MM is a basic power, of which you get 2) and re-wrote one of my power cards to be Magic Missile. Before that, she insisted that Warforged can't be Wizards because.... I have no idea. Same character by the way.

In another game, I had my glasses wearing character's glass knocked off, no save, no nothing. Being a supportive character, I couldn't fight my attacker with vision, without I was completely helpless. Twas very annoying.

My opthamologist ballparks my vision at about 20/2000. He jokes that me reading the 20/20 line at 20 feet is like a normal person reading the words on a dime from across a football field. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the big E on the eye chart is blurry from about a foot away without my glasses (the lower half is clearer). I can still put bullets into a paper target at 15 yards and have few problems with melee or grappling. Poor vision isn't like darkvision, you don't have vision for a set distance that just stops. It's more like normal vision that loses detail with distance. I may not be able to read the words on your shirt from 10 feet, but I can tell who you are and how many fingers you're holding up.

[Segev]

I've never gottan an opthamologist to offer a ballpark 20/X scale for me. They tell me, at my visual acuity, they instead measure it by how far away I can tell how many fingers somebody is holding up. (I clock in at just under six feet by that test.) If I didn't know the top letter was always "E," I couldn't read even that much on an eye chart from anywhere near 20 feet away. (I'm lucky to be able to ID an eye chart as such from that distance; it takes context clues and knowing that there's a pyramidal shape to the black blurs on white background that usually indicate letters.)

Fortunately, it's correctable, still. Contact lenses are wonderful things.

[HaikenEdge]

So, about five or six sessions into a game at level 10-ish, and the party I was in hadn't earned any XP or wealth. This after having taken on a job to kill kraken, which though a bit over our CR, the party figured we could take down since we were fairly well-optimized. However, when we show up on a boat, it turns out it's not just one kraken, but waves and waves of kraken, five at a time. We manage to escape with a little GM intervention, including a level 20 character (what the hell, man, GM) running away from the encounter with us.

After returning to civilization, the group decides, for various reasons, that we're just going to build a floating city, because why the hell not, and we do so via some stone shape by the party sorcerer, along with some negotiation with the world's wizard guild, by basically offering them a contract for 10%ish of the city's space, including all future expansions, and to basically leave them alone. Afterwards, in order to populate the city, a few party members (the druid and the thrallherd) goes into a flowing time plane to breed a population for the city.

Fast forward 30 in-game, non-flowing time days, and the party members emerge from the flowing time plane with a large enough population to fill up the floating city, so we finally decide to turn our eyes back to the outside world. Turns out it's been completely taken over by demons. An entire world, loaded with level 20 characters, taken over by demons, and we, at about level 10, are expected to save the entire world.

That is just some bull; if a world loaded with level 20 characters (including clerics, druids and non-guild wizards) can't save itself, how are three level 10 characters, who have gained no wealth or XP since the campaign began, supposed to?

As an epilogue, in response to situation, the party said "screw it" and plane shifted to Middle Earth, because if the DM was going to screw us by setting up what is basically an impossible situation, we're going to run away.

[golem1972]

-Off topic-
I wish. Hard contacts are the only ones that will work for me (can't even use the semi-rigid gas perm anymore). Laser and RK are out cause I'm to far out of range. I am looking into an intracorneal implant (sort of like cataract surgery, but they implant a collagen lens into the space between the cornea and eye).

-On topic-
Had a DM decide truenamers were OP and changed the truespeak dc to 20 + utterance level + 3xcr.

Also decided barbarians were OP and took away martial weapon proficiency.

Also decided clerics were weak and could spend a full round praying to change a spell.

Ruled repeatedly that nothing any of my characters did would drop an enemy in the first round. Enemies always had 1 more AC than my attack roll, 1 more hp than my damage, and their saves were 1 higher than my DC's.

Taught me two things: no game is better than a bad game, and it's ok to tell the dm when they're being an asshat.

[Necroticplague]

One DM I've had BS'd that a Mass Cure spell hurt me, despite my character not being undead. Probably because he wants to be able to use the same tactics against me as the rest of the party (who are all undead). On a similar note, he also ruled that all magic effects incorporeal creatures 100% of the time (instead of 50% of the time), and that all spells extend into the ethereal.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Off topic: Last time I had my vision checked it was 20/19. I think it is still around there.

On topic: I had a DM tell me that, if I played an Apostle of Peace, an epic spellcaster would drive him insane. (I did have permission from the other players to play of Apostle of Peace.)

[SolarSystem]

On topic: I had a DM tell me that, if I played an Apostle of Peace, an epic spellcaster would drive him insane. (I did have permission from the other players to play of Apostle of Peace.)

That sounds like simply a DM veto on a class, albeit said in a mean sort of way. Other players permission is entirely irrelevant. Unless there's major inconsistencies in the DMs rulings, a veto of anything from the BoED is really not sounding like BS to me.
Now my preventing my PCs from playing my least-favourite core class, the Paladin, when it's my turn to DM may fall into BS (Certainly qualifies more than your example, anyway...) but it's my world and if you don't like it, tough!

[Venger]

Now my preventing my PCs from playing my least-favourite core class, the Paladin, when it's my turn to DM may fall into BS (Certainly qualifies more than your example, anyway...) but it's my world and if you don't like it, tough!

I see what you did there.

what's your reason? don't like playing with alignment, or just want to prevent players from trying a sucky class that seems powerful at first blush

[ZamielVanWeber]

That sounds like simply a DM veto on a class, albeit said in a mean sort of way. Other players permission is entirely irrelevant. Unless there's major inconsistencies in the DMs rulings, a veto of anything from the BoED is really not sounding like BS to me.
Now my preventing my PCs from playing my least-favourite core class, the Paladin, when it's my turn to DM may fall into BS (Certainly qualifies more than your example, anyway...) but it's my world and if you don't like it, tough!

Passive aggressiveness is always BS. I have told player's "no" many times by doing just that, telling them "no." Saying "yes but I will randomly smite you for it with no warning" is a BS call.

[Crake]

Passive aggressiveness is always BS. I have told player's "no" many times by doing just that, telling them "no." Saying "yes but I will randomly smite you for it with no warning" is a BS call.

I think we're starting to mix BS called with just being a plain old **** here.


I see what you did there.

what's your reason? don't like playing with alignment, or just want to prevent players from trying a sucky class that seems powerful at first blush

I do the same thing for the latter reason. Anytime someone wants to play a paladin in my game, i generally usher them toward playing a crusader instead, and just fluffing it as a paladin.

Either that, or help them optimise really well, like have them run an A-game paladin or something.

[Marlowe]

Yes it BS to tell your players; "Yes, you may take Precocious Apprentice. Yes, if you DO, your mentor WILL be turning up in the campaign at some point and be as annoying as I can make him?"

[Venger]

I do the same thing for the latter reason. Anytime someone wants to play a paladin in my game, i generally usher them toward playing a crusader instead, and just fluffing it as a paladin.

Either that, or help them optimise really well, like have them run an A-game paladin or something.

me too. same as monk/swordsage and fighter/warblade

[Plaguemask]

I'm guilty of this.
So, I'm DM'ing a party of I think It was six, three of these people were munchkins, one lawyer, one min/maxer, and one guy that generally just wanted to have a jolly time with his scythe wielding Necromancer. (3.5)
So, boss encounter, party is level 3.
Our... Argh, I can't even remember what the class is called... It was basically a fix to a bad class.
He turns around, swings his Greatsword, and through a combination of Power Attack, some class abilities and a +1 Greatsword, N20's, confirms the crit, and practically kills the Demon I had set up for them to fight.
This wasn't just *a* demon either, the point was for her to be a recurring villain, seducing characters when they didn't expect it and generally stealing stuff from them before they would run into an encounter and notice: ****, my sword's gone.
Instead, he rolls *Max damage twice on his Greatsword hit*
To clarify, at that level, he dealt pretty much 60 damage in one swing, which should've killed her.
Since I would have to spend the entire week re-writing the plot, I instead cheesed him out of it by having some forcefield bull**** and blablabla.

[Marlowe]

I'm guilty of this.
So, I'm DM'ing a party of I think It was six, three of these people were munchkins, one lawyer, one min/maxer, and one guy that generally just wanted to have a jolly time with his scythe wielding Necromancer. (3.5)
So, boss encounter, party is level 3.
Our... Argh, I can't even remember what the class is called... It was basically a fix to a bad class.
He turns around, swings his Greatsword, and through a combination of Power Attack, some class abilities and a +1 Greatsword, N20's, confirms the crit, and practically kills the Demon I had set up for them to fight.
This wasn't just *a* demon either, the point was for her to be a recurring villain, seducing characters when they didn't expect it and generally stealing stuff from them before they would run into an encounter and notice: ****, my sword's gone.
Instead, he rolls *Max damage twice on his Greatsword hit*
To clarify, at that level, he dealt pretty much 60 damage in one swing, which should've killed her.
Since I would have to spend the entire week re-writing the plot, I instead cheesed him out of it by having some forcefield bull**** and blablabla.

But it's a Demon! You could have just had her go back to the Abyss, decide she liked a man with spirit, and come back to try it again.:smallbiggrin:

[SinsI]

Crits and lucky rolls aside, even low-op party of 6 lvl 3 characters is supposed to deal 6*3d6 = 63 damage each round on average...

[Crake]

But it's a Demon! You could have just had her go back to the Abyss, decide she liked a man with spirit, and come back to try it again.:smallbiggrin:

Haha, this is exactly what I was thinking. That said though, don't demons take years to reform on the abyss if not assisted in some way like a limited wish/wish/miracle/true res?

That's where the ritual sacrifice rules become fun I think, because with a check of 40 for a sacrifice (not too hard considering all the bonuses you can get on the check, plus divine insight) her cultists (she's a demon seductress, she has cultists right?) could have just kidnapped some innocent girl, sacrificed her, and had the demon be reborn in her body, transforming it into her own.

That's just one of many ways that could have been solved without DM bs :smalltongue: but i guess for a rookie DM, or someone who's not quite used to thinking on their feet, it's hard to think of these things.

[Marlowe]

Haha, this is exactly what I was thinking. That said though, don't demons take years to reform on the abyss if not assisted in some way like a limited wish/wish/miracle/true res?


Maybe, maybe not. Easy enough to get around.

Malcanthet: LOL! That was awesomesauce! You're all "Come lick forbidden nectar from my dark abyss" and looking all sultry and then he just made you go SPLAT!!!

Random Succubus: Now that I know I can survive it, it was kind of a rush.

Malcanthet: Well? Go again. See what happens.

Random Succubus: Mom. It'll take me years to-

Malcanthet: Where's it say that? Well, nevermind. I'm sure I'm got some soul I can get to cast a Wish. Hey here you go--BY MY WILL, YOU LIVE AGAIN!!!

Random Succubus: K'thx Mom.

Malcanthet: Now go get that lil' go-getter. See if you can make him strangle you this time. I'd like to watch that.

Random Succubus: [sotto voice] I have got to get a new gig.

[Venger]

Haha, this is exactly what I was thinking. That said though, don't demons take years to reform on the abyss if not assisted in some way like a limited wish/wish/miracle/true res?

That's where the ritual sacrifice rules become fun I think, because with a check of 40 for a sacrifice (not too hard considering all the bonuses you can get on the check, plus divine insight) her cultists (she's a demon seductress, she has cultists right?) could have just kidnapped some innocent girl, sacrificed her, and had the demon be reborn in her body, transforming it into her own.

That's just one of many ways that could have been solved without DM bs :smalltongue: but i guess for a rookie DM, or someone who's not quite used to thinking on their feet, it's hard to think of these things.

Fiendish codex I says 99 years.

but yeah, finding some follower with an appropriate spell for any particular individual shouldn't be too hard.

[Elandris Kajar]

Maybe, maybe not. Easy enough to get around.

Malcanthet: LOL! That was awesomesauce! You're all "Come lick forbidden nectar from my dark abyss" and looking all sultry and then he just made you go SPLAT!!!

Random Succubus: Now that I know I can survive it, it was kind of a rush.

Malcanthet: Well? Go again. See what happens.

Random Succubus: Mom. It'll take me years to-

Malcanthet: Where's it say that? Well, nevermind. I'm sure I'm got some soul I can get to cast a Wish. Hey here you go--BY MY WILL, YOU LIVE AGAIN!!!

Random Succubus: K'thx Mom.

Malcanthet: Now go get that lil' go-getter. See if you can make him strangle you this time. I'd like to watch that.

Random Succubus: [sotto voice] I have got to get a new gig.
This is really good! :smallsmile:

Isn't it 100 years of banishment for a Demon Lord?
Lesser demons simply get demoted, possibly all the way to a Mane. Then, they can be promoted by the will of a demon lord.
So assuming that the demon was not a demon lord, it would become a Lemure or Mane until Malcanthet or whoever it served promoted it.

[Crake]

This is really good! :smallsmile:

Isn't it 100 years of banishment for a Demon Lord?
Lesser demons simply get demoted, possibly all the way to a Mane. Then, they can be promoted by the will of a demon lord.
So assuming that the demon was not a demon lord, it would become a Lemure or Mane until Malcanthet or whoever it served promoted it.

It's devils that get demoted (and promoted), demons have no structural heirarchy like that. Generally a succubus is "born" a succubus and stays one, just like most other demons.

[Segev]

No, demons also promote and demote. It's just not so...formal...a process as the devils have. They tend to gain power as their actions accumulate it. They can benefit from a demon lord's patronage; it's just a matter of the power coming from the demon lord rather than their own strength in accumulating it.

[Bronk]

I'm guilty of this.
So, I'm DM'ing a party of I think It was six, three of these people were munchkins, one lawyer, one min/maxer, and one guy that generally just wanted to have a jolly time with his scythe wielding Necromancer. (3.5)
So, boss encounter, party is level 3.
Our... Argh, I can't even remember what the class is called... It was basically a fix to a bad class.
He turns around, swings his Greatsword, and through a combination of Power Attack, some class abilities and a +1 Greatsword, N20's, confirms the crit, and practically kills the Demon I had set up for them to fight.
This wasn't just *a* demon either, the point was for her to be a recurring villain, seducing characters when they didn't expect it and generally stealing stuff from them before they would run into an encounter and notice: ****, my sword's gone.
Instead, he rolls *Max damage twice on his Greatsword hit*
To clarify, at that level, he dealt pretty much 60 damage in one swing, which should've killed her.
Since I would have to spend the entire week re-writing the plot, I instead cheesed him out of it by having some forcefield bull**** and blablabla.

Hmm, you could have just been 'Yup, there was a random demon there, and you killed it, yay!'

If you're going to have a sneaky villain, it seems odd not to introduce it in a sneaky way.

[Barbarian Horde]

I voice my objections after a game and ask for a work around to prevent that type of situation in the future..

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/uncyclopedia/images/d/d4/Nuclear_bomb.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090830025427
I only remember rule 0 bomb hitting the fight and my objections didn't exist.

[Mr Adventurer]

That's where the ritual sacrifice rules become fun I think, because with a check of 40 for a sacrifice (not too hard considering all the bonuses you can get on the check, plus divine insight) her cultists (she's a demon seductress, she has cultists right?) could have just kidnapped some innocent girl, sacrificed her, and had the demon be reborn in her body, transforming it into her own.

Out of interest, what ritual rules are these? They sound fun!

[Venger]

Out of interest, what ritual rules are these? They sound fun!

the ones in bovd. they're under sacrifice. they're rather universally acknowledged as borked though, so most DMs don't allow them.

[Mr Adventurer]

Thanks - I'll look them up!

[Propagandalf]

I have two little tales to add.

First was a few years ago in a convention one-shot game. The premise looked interesting; everyone would be playing Monks (premade), so I thought I'd give it a go. It was pretty cool too, until right at the end when we confronted the slavetraders ringleader in his underground headquarters. The DM wanted him to escape at the end, so escape he did, no matter what we did.

This included dissappearing/reappearing Web spells when convenient (he runs away through a tunnel, and when two of us try to give chase we trip in the Web spell cast earlier by one of the bad guys, which covered the whole tunnel the whole time. Then a locked cast-iron gate materializes out of thin air to block us. The bad guy just phased throught that one too i guess. We still run after him, so the guy just flat out outruns us (outruns monks with 40ft. base speed). All without using an ounce of magic too...

That's the thing that pissed me off. Make the guy a wizard with buff spells that can do all those things but noooo, he's just a normal bloke that can just rewrite reality somehow. :smallmad:


Second story was a minor one but still annoying none the less. In a vampire game I was breaking in a stronghold that stored positoxins (like poisons but harmfull only to the undead). I get in. I start looting the store room. One of the mooks tosses a positoxin flask at my character that leaves a paralyzing cloud hanging in the storeroom. Few rounds later my vampire character succumbs to the paralysis. Then I remember that I have the Telekinesis spell-like ability from the houseruled vampire powers. I pick up a dozen positoxin flasks at once and start shoving them in the bag of holding.

This is when the GM says that I can only put one item in the bag per turn... So yeah, my paralyzed vampire can telekinetically control a dozen small objects but can only put them in a bag one at a time. And I have maybe 5 turns before more guards appear and fry my undead backside. Needless to say, that particular mission was a fiasco. We got maybe 5 bottles of positoxin out of hundreds...

And the rules say that retrieving an object from a bag of holding is a move action. They say nothing of putting stuff in. My guess is that he meant for my character to steal maybe a dozen bottles as a whole, not all of them. But as a result my already underpowered vampire (compared to the other PC's) didn't get the resources he'd needed to be relevant in the vampire civil war that spanned half the continent. :smallfrown:

[Crake]

the ones in bovd. they're under sacrifice. they're rather universally acknowledged as borked though, so most DMs don't allow them.

Haha, I love them as plot devices. I actually had a similar situation arise in one of my games, where a succubus who was killed earlier was brought back in almost the exact way i described. The exact description would likely break a few rules to fully describe. She was then bound in service to the resurrector by the powers of his demon lord, and sent back against the player that killed her. Funnily enough, the player and succubus eventually made up (the initial reason for her death in the first place was the end result of a power struggle gone wrong) and they became friends, broke the bond between the succubus and her new demon lord and re-bound her to her old demon lord (who the player also happened to follow :smalltongue: ) and went on to kill the ritualist who brought her back to life.

That's the cliffnotes version anyway.

Anyway, my point is, they may be broken if abused, but if used in moderation, they can be super fun and a great tool.

[Venger]

Haha, I love them as plot devices. I actually had a similar situation arise in one of my games, where a succubus who was killed earlier was brought back in almost the exact way i described. The exact description would likely break a few rules to fully describe. She was then bound in service to the resurrector by the powers of his demon lord, and sent back against the player that killed her. Funnily enough, the player and succubus eventually made up (the initial reason for her death in the first place was the end result of a power struggle gone wrong) and they became friends, broke the bond between the succubus and her new demon lord and re-bound her to her old demon lord (who the player also happened to follow :smalltongue: ) and went on to kill the ritualist who brought her back to life.

That's the cliffnotes version anyway.

Anyway, my point is, they may be broken if abused, but if used in moderation, they can be super fun and a great tool.

sounds like a blast. I love demons/devils and they behave in similar ways in my game.

no, so, I agree with you as far as that goes. what I meant is, you're extremely unlikely to find a DM who will let you regularly make the very low religion checks to gain all the bonuses they entail.

[Crake]

sounds like a blast. I love demons/devils and they behave in similar ways in my game.

no, so, I agree with you as far as that goes. what I meant is, you're extremely unlikely to find a DM who will let you regularly make the very low religion checks to gain all the bonuses they entail.

Well, to be fair, it does say that only 1 reward is typically given per day per temple, so no stacking benefits. THHAAATT said. DC25 for an all day Divine Power? Yeeaaahh, probably not haha. If my players wanted to use it for stuff like that, i'd probably have to adjust some of those benefits.

I mainly use it for the planar ally, limited wish, and in very rare circumstances wish/miracle.