Helmet-kun
2017-07-31, 11:15 PM
I type this up now the day after all this happened, so feelings are still pretty rough. I kind of want perspective on this, so I can get some insight on the situation. If people in the game find it, whatever. It’s unlikely we’ll be in touch tbh.
This post is pretty long, and almost rant-y, but here we go.
So I joined a game a couple weeks ago as per my SO’s request. Their last player quit because the GM said no magic crafting or something like that. The game we played is a 5e conversion of some pathfinder module. Off the bat, the GM allowed some feats but not all; Lucky obviously, but also stuff like Polearm Master. No multi-classing either. Point buy system. He banned spells from SCAG (he rescinded this later) but allowed EE and of course PHB. Logically, these are things that are optional, so I didn’t have any problem.
But then he changed the way some things worked. For example, the Dueling Style - which I believe just gives +2 damage if you have a weapon in one hand and no other weapons - was changed so that it gave +2 damage if you have a weapon in one hand and nothing in your other hand. No shield. Nothing. Another was that if you wore armor that gave you disadvantage on Stealth, then you also got disadvantage on movement based rolls. The logic being, one was historically accurate to the Dueling Style, and the other being that it wasn’t realistic for the guy in heavy armor to be able to do things like…climb, I guess.
All fine and dandy for everybody else, but I was a strength based paladin, so… yea. I was starting off a little more hosed than usual. But, whatever. I talked it over with him, I understood his logic, I was willing to pretty much accept it.
So I’m going to kind of gloss over some of the things that happened during the game and give the highlight reel of what happened over the course of three sessions that I found bizarre or frustrating. It is a party of 4, all level three, consisting of Wizard, Bard, Paladin (me), and Rogue.
At the end of my first session, we encountered a boss monster with legendary actions. I was taken down by a DEX save move, knocked prone, and effectively KO’d within the span of it’s turn. People went to go heal me, I’d get up and move, and on it’s turn, it would effectively KO me again. Even though I did pretty well overall in the session, the ending made me feel like complete garbage. I at this point ask him if the encounters are appropriate for our level. He says that he doesn’t use CR at all. He just puts what’s there and is appropriate. The people who made Curse of Strad said they didn’t use CR, and that made sense to him.
In between the first and second sessions, I spoke with the GM about using an item that was effectively like blinding powder. He said that because that there were no rules for blinding powder, I couldn’t use it. I challenged him on this: “so, wait, I can’t throw sand in people’s eyes and blind them?”
“Nope. D&D combat is just an abstraction. You can’t, say, lop someone’s arm off or stab them in the eye.”
“Okay, but if you take it to the extreme of ‘if there are no rules for it, it can’t happen’, you’re saying that nobody except a wizard with access to Blindness/deafness can blind people, which isn’t very realistic.”
“I don’t appreciate my GMing style as being called extreme.”
In the end, he basically just told me to shut up and play my paladin and to not argue with a GM’s ruling and that I shouldn’t be trying to be doing things outside my class and to not compare my class to others which… yea, left me soured.
Second session, in the middle of combat, our wizard cast a flaming sphere, which is a five foot ball of fire. He tried to put in it a five foot wide door and basically block it off. He was told he couldn’t, because it didn’t line up with the grid. Everybody challenged him on this, and he didn’t back down. Also, because it wasn’t stated that it was a solid ball of fires, creatures can attempt to go through it (they take damage), but it could not go through creatures. Not sure how to feel about that one.
Third Session, we tried the new Greyhawk initiative with a few modifications. we fight off against an elderitch knight that was at least 7th level because he could use second level spells, who had both mirror image and another spell up at the start of the fight, and two robot dogs that had resistance to all types of normal weapons. We went into that fight with everybody fully healed except myself, who was missing 3 HP. I had the most HP as well (28 Max) and 18 AC, everybody was still pretty stocked even though they came off two fights.
We died. I got up about twice that fight and died.
For the record, those dogs could do 6d6 fire/lightning damage as a cone every 5-6 rounds. They bit for 3d6 physical damage, and 3d6 lightning damage. If they were within 5 feet of each other, they got +5 to hit. Needless to say, I was tied up with them for the better part of the fight. The elderitch knight misty’d stepped to go fight everybody else.
Bard put up a fight. The knight KO’d him, but the Bard kept making his death saving throws with nat20s and ****. Wizard was stuck trying to fight on two fronts. The rogue became our heal bot because he had this thing that let him heal people. I can’t help them, because I’m dealing with dogs that could oneshot me with a high enough roll, and KO me in two hits with an average roll.
Meanwhile, Greyhawk initiative kept ******* me. Bad rolls all night for me. Always rolled high, which made my moves last, which…yea. Wizard was pretty upset with it too. It really confused the bard and made him argue a lot that session, which dragged the long, agonizing fight longer.
So, yea, we die. The GM tries to say we went back to the compound, but the rogue quits, my SO quits and takes me with him (which I was fine with because I was sticking around for his sake).
Doesn’t end there.
When my SO sends him the message saying he’s quitting, he was rather salty about it (which is a failing on his fault, but I didn’t blame him). The GM goes on to explain how it was our fault we lost.
His first claim was that the party was aware that someone was in the dungeon, but we decided not to employ any means of stealth, divination, or any other methods of scouting. Okay. Scouting/stealth was overall a bad idea because this was a spaceship, with brightly light hallways, with doors that made noise when they opened. Divination wouldn’t have helped us in the fight because the Rogue deduced who it was anyway. Not like any of us had divination to even begin with. And it wasn’t like we didn’t know he had company. It was just that we couldn’t deduce that he had robot dogs because they were robots and even though they were designed to look like dogs we couldn’t deduce from the footsteps that they were at the very least dogs like.
Second, we could have retreated back to town after the first encounter to rest and heal up. Except, if you remember, we were in good fighting shape. In fact, arguably, we were in one of the best fighting shapes to pick a fight.
The problem wasn’t that we had nothing. The problem was that we were all trained to be conscious of our resources. The wizard and I weren’t willing to blow our loads off into a single fight because we just came off a rescue mission were time was crucial and we couldn’t do the whole “ten minute adventure” thing, which the GM expressed he didn’t want to happen. It didn’t help that the enemy could dispose of everybody so quickly that I was the only one comfortable to even get close to the enemy.
The Greyhawk initiative also ****ed us. I kept having to use swap gear die to try and figure out what weapon of mine didn’t have resistance to the dogs (turns out: none.) I kept rolling a bonus action spell die and not using it because the situation changed to being not ideal. Don’t get me wrong, it kept things interesting, but I felt like I was being constantly choked to death and would have been more useful in this system as a fighter or something. Wizard felt the same way, especially with his flaming sphere out.
Another claim he made was that the party threatened the shady figure with no attempt to discuss things, despite being injured and low on resources. We were not low on resources. In fact, we had all the resources that the GM made available to us that we were comfortable with taking without being ***** to the town we were in, which were two healing potions (which we never got around to using because Greyhawk rules) and two healer’s kit (made useful by the one feat that made healer’s kits useful). Like, I dunno man, it’s hard to be a munchkin that’s taking **** from a needy town when ¾ party members are Good Aligned and rational people. And, again, I was the only injured party member.
But even with all that? The party didn’t threaten the shady figure. It was the rogue, who had previous interactions with the shady figure, who threatened him. The rest of the party was extremely confused because the rogue didn’t exactly keep us in the loop, and the GM required knowledge checks to even understand what the guy was yapping about. And, even then, once confronted with the robot dogs, the rogue attempted pretty damn hard to back peddle and kiss the guy’s ass. Nope. Didn’t work.
So to top that nice cake off, my paladin died getting roped into a fight that she
1) Didn’t understand why it was happening
2) Didn’t really understand what the stakes even were
3) Didn’t get a real grasp of what this guy’s reasons even were
4) Was only fighting because the dude was attacking her friends.
Also bluh bluh “you could have fought smarter” but when you can be KO’d in two hits the only smart thing to do is run
Like, I dunno, I need some perspective. We managed to get the dogs down and the guy to down half-health, but he was an Elderitch knight without Healing Surge or some ****, which… okay? The GM claims that he was toned down from the conversions he used but at the same time he still hit like a truck and had pretty high HP which… come on? I just don't know how to really feel about the whole thing tbh. Like, was the party in the wrong?
This post is pretty long, and almost rant-y, but here we go.
So I joined a game a couple weeks ago as per my SO’s request. Their last player quit because the GM said no magic crafting or something like that. The game we played is a 5e conversion of some pathfinder module. Off the bat, the GM allowed some feats but not all; Lucky obviously, but also stuff like Polearm Master. No multi-classing either. Point buy system. He banned spells from SCAG (he rescinded this later) but allowed EE and of course PHB. Logically, these are things that are optional, so I didn’t have any problem.
But then he changed the way some things worked. For example, the Dueling Style - which I believe just gives +2 damage if you have a weapon in one hand and no other weapons - was changed so that it gave +2 damage if you have a weapon in one hand and nothing in your other hand. No shield. Nothing. Another was that if you wore armor that gave you disadvantage on Stealth, then you also got disadvantage on movement based rolls. The logic being, one was historically accurate to the Dueling Style, and the other being that it wasn’t realistic for the guy in heavy armor to be able to do things like…climb, I guess.
All fine and dandy for everybody else, but I was a strength based paladin, so… yea. I was starting off a little more hosed than usual. But, whatever. I talked it over with him, I understood his logic, I was willing to pretty much accept it.
So I’m going to kind of gloss over some of the things that happened during the game and give the highlight reel of what happened over the course of three sessions that I found bizarre or frustrating. It is a party of 4, all level three, consisting of Wizard, Bard, Paladin (me), and Rogue.
At the end of my first session, we encountered a boss monster with legendary actions. I was taken down by a DEX save move, knocked prone, and effectively KO’d within the span of it’s turn. People went to go heal me, I’d get up and move, and on it’s turn, it would effectively KO me again. Even though I did pretty well overall in the session, the ending made me feel like complete garbage. I at this point ask him if the encounters are appropriate for our level. He says that he doesn’t use CR at all. He just puts what’s there and is appropriate. The people who made Curse of Strad said they didn’t use CR, and that made sense to him.
In between the first and second sessions, I spoke with the GM about using an item that was effectively like blinding powder. He said that because that there were no rules for blinding powder, I couldn’t use it. I challenged him on this: “so, wait, I can’t throw sand in people’s eyes and blind them?”
“Nope. D&D combat is just an abstraction. You can’t, say, lop someone’s arm off or stab them in the eye.”
“Okay, but if you take it to the extreme of ‘if there are no rules for it, it can’t happen’, you’re saying that nobody except a wizard with access to Blindness/deafness can blind people, which isn’t very realistic.”
“I don’t appreciate my GMing style as being called extreme.”
In the end, he basically just told me to shut up and play my paladin and to not argue with a GM’s ruling and that I shouldn’t be trying to be doing things outside my class and to not compare my class to others which… yea, left me soured.
Second session, in the middle of combat, our wizard cast a flaming sphere, which is a five foot ball of fire. He tried to put in it a five foot wide door and basically block it off. He was told he couldn’t, because it didn’t line up with the grid. Everybody challenged him on this, and he didn’t back down. Also, because it wasn’t stated that it was a solid ball of fires, creatures can attempt to go through it (they take damage), but it could not go through creatures. Not sure how to feel about that one.
Third Session, we tried the new Greyhawk initiative with a few modifications. we fight off against an elderitch knight that was at least 7th level because he could use second level spells, who had both mirror image and another spell up at the start of the fight, and two robot dogs that had resistance to all types of normal weapons. We went into that fight with everybody fully healed except myself, who was missing 3 HP. I had the most HP as well (28 Max) and 18 AC, everybody was still pretty stocked even though they came off two fights.
We died. I got up about twice that fight and died.
For the record, those dogs could do 6d6 fire/lightning damage as a cone every 5-6 rounds. They bit for 3d6 physical damage, and 3d6 lightning damage. If they were within 5 feet of each other, they got +5 to hit. Needless to say, I was tied up with them for the better part of the fight. The elderitch knight misty’d stepped to go fight everybody else.
Bard put up a fight. The knight KO’d him, but the Bard kept making his death saving throws with nat20s and ****. Wizard was stuck trying to fight on two fronts. The rogue became our heal bot because he had this thing that let him heal people. I can’t help them, because I’m dealing with dogs that could oneshot me with a high enough roll, and KO me in two hits with an average roll.
Meanwhile, Greyhawk initiative kept ******* me. Bad rolls all night for me. Always rolled high, which made my moves last, which…yea. Wizard was pretty upset with it too. It really confused the bard and made him argue a lot that session, which dragged the long, agonizing fight longer.
So, yea, we die. The GM tries to say we went back to the compound, but the rogue quits, my SO quits and takes me with him (which I was fine with because I was sticking around for his sake).
Doesn’t end there.
When my SO sends him the message saying he’s quitting, he was rather salty about it (which is a failing on his fault, but I didn’t blame him). The GM goes on to explain how it was our fault we lost.
His first claim was that the party was aware that someone was in the dungeon, but we decided not to employ any means of stealth, divination, or any other methods of scouting. Okay. Scouting/stealth was overall a bad idea because this was a spaceship, with brightly light hallways, with doors that made noise when they opened. Divination wouldn’t have helped us in the fight because the Rogue deduced who it was anyway. Not like any of us had divination to even begin with. And it wasn’t like we didn’t know he had company. It was just that we couldn’t deduce that he had robot dogs because they were robots and even though they were designed to look like dogs we couldn’t deduce from the footsteps that they were at the very least dogs like.
Second, we could have retreated back to town after the first encounter to rest and heal up. Except, if you remember, we were in good fighting shape. In fact, arguably, we were in one of the best fighting shapes to pick a fight.
The problem wasn’t that we had nothing. The problem was that we were all trained to be conscious of our resources. The wizard and I weren’t willing to blow our loads off into a single fight because we just came off a rescue mission were time was crucial and we couldn’t do the whole “ten minute adventure” thing, which the GM expressed he didn’t want to happen. It didn’t help that the enemy could dispose of everybody so quickly that I was the only one comfortable to even get close to the enemy.
The Greyhawk initiative also ****ed us. I kept having to use swap gear die to try and figure out what weapon of mine didn’t have resistance to the dogs (turns out: none.) I kept rolling a bonus action spell die and not using it because the situation changed to being not ideal. Don’t get me wrong, it kept things interesting, but I felt like I was being constantly choked to death and would have been more useful in this system as a fighter or something. Wizard felt the same way, especially with his flaming sphere out.
Another claim he made was that the party threatened the shady figure with no attempt to discuss things, despite being injured and low on resources. We were not low on resources. In fact, we had all the resources that the GM made available to us that we were comfortable with taking without being ***** to the town we were in, which were two healing potions (which we never got around to using because Greyhawk rules) and two healer’s kit (made useful by the one feat that made healer’s kits useful). Like, I dunno man, it’s hard to be a munchkin that’s taking **** from a needy town when ¾ party members are Good Aligned and rational people. And, again, I was the only injured party member.
But even with all that? The party didn’t threaten the shady figure. It was the rogue, who had previous interactions with the shady figure, who threatened him. The rest of the party was extremely confused because the rogue didn’t exactly keep us in the loop, and the GM required knowledge checks to even understand what the guy was yapping about. And, even then, once confronted with the robot dogs, the rogue attempted pretty damn hard to back peddle and kiss the guy’s ass. Nope. Didn’t work.
So to top that nice cake off, my paladin died getting roped into a fight that she
1) Didn’t understand why it was happening
2) Didn’t really understand what the stakes even were
3) Didn’t get a real grasp of what this guy’s reasons even were
4) Was only fighting because the dude was attacking her friends.
Also bluh bluh “you could have fought smarter” but when you can be KO’d in two hits the only smart thing to do is run
Like, I dunno, I need some perspective. We managed to get the dogs down and the guy to down half-health, but he was an Elderitch knight without Healing Surge or some ****, which… okay? The GM claims that he was toned down from the conversions he used but at the same time he still hit like a truck and had pretty high HP which… come on? I just don't know how to really feel about the whole thing tbh. Like, was the party in the wrong?