A personal rant

[Wolfkingleo]

Well the campaign that I played finally reached a point of saturation for me, here is the follow up:

a) My party were investigating, at the behest of an Order of "Good Allignment" gods, an Hextor cult that was responsible for creating dictatorial governaments all over the city states in the homebrewed world;

b) The party were hired by one of Hextor's priest to rescue his daughter that were kidnapped by a gang of Yuan-ti and Lizardmen who worships Yig who seeks an Relic that said to contain a part of Hextor's powers in order to use such powers for their agenda;

c) We (lvl 8) manage to ambush the convoy that the priestess where kept and, while we were fending off the attackers, she backstabbed the party and manage to imprision us (and amputated our Tank right arm out of bliss);

d) The party eventually were rescued by a timely group of paladins-DMNPC's from the order that hired us (all in a nearly 30 minutes "cutscene" with boring black-and-white talk);

e) The group than, after settling up in another hunt for the "betrayer cleric" eventually catch up with her and after a long (strangely high HP stat wise lvl 9 cleric), subdued her and when the tank, wanting kill her in order to avenge his lost limb (already regenerated thanks to a side quest and half his gold), a paladin stepped out (he claimed that he was just there to provide support if necessary) with a few guards to "escort her back to the precint in order to be interrogated" while also threatening to arrest the group should we "try something funny";

f) Nedless to say, her father orchestrated her release and eventually she start plotting again to take the said artifact, eventually she tried to ambush the group with a globe energy trap in order to coerce us to help in her new quest for the object. DM wasn't expecting that our cleric could use a disjunction-like effect (can't remember the name of the spell that supposed to allow a escape) and forced a Wisdom test "with who knows what" DC to use it propperly and still the cleric scored a critical and by that he asked to do a concentration test to see it through....he failed it;

g) After the Macguffin quest we managed to again apprehend her, but this time her father timely appears to plead her release, this time however I decided to end her life (she was knocked out in the combat); The DM than stopped the session to have a brunch and during this time he called me in private and asked to not kill her because he doesn't want to sour the campaign and doesn't want to have another combat with the father and his minions due to the CR being "too high for the group to handle". That said, I simple *tried to "coup de grace" her but before anything could happen, the session stopped and the next one is about 1 month.

That's it....I'm a bit outraged by it and I just needed to vent.....still I am stubborn to not consider the OOC chat about the female cleric?

Cheers

[Eldonauran]

From my perspective, as if I were a character in that campaign, I would be fed up with their antics and have taken it into my own hands to strangle the female cleric and take on her father, the consequences be damned.

Now, as a Player, I understand that the DM/GM probably has some sort of storyline he is trying to railroad guide the players through. At his point, knowing that my character is going to continue to have a problem with the situation and is not likely to go along with the narrative, I'd ask the GM/DM about bringing in a new character.

[ExLibrisMortis]

The DM is being too heavy-handed in protecting a plot-critical enemy NPC; that's pretty common, and something that may improve over time. You can either go along with it, or drop the plot and move to a different plane. I suggest Arborea, I hear it's lovely this time of year. Either way, let your DM know you feel they're being too protective of their NPC. That sort of thing needs to be made explicit, because they're probably not aware of/thinking about how it looks from the players' perspective.

[Goaty14]

Your DM is railroading you and as a result of the attitude "if I try and have to PCs go do X, then they will", he/she/it(???) is now having to seriously reconsider if he/she/it can still cram you through all of his/her/it's planned encounters until level 20. If you can, just contact him IRL and try to work out how your character can do the deed (I feels too, I would've stabbed that ***** if I could), and still progress his choo choo train.

Honestly... I don't get where he could be stuck at, other than how to explain how his cleric just doesn't insta-gib you on the spot. I think that he could just have the father try to interrupt you (readied dominate, offer monies, etc), or have the father not care***, and then (the DM) conveniently offer the PCs an escape route.

***Why would the father not care about the death of his beloved daughter? Because he's a cleric. Not just any cleric, but an evil cleric of at least level 9 (5th level spells), and can thus cast Raise Dead, or better yet, turn her into an undead. He would only be losing her momentarily, if at all.

[Wolfkingleo]

Thanks for the response, guys!

On a serious note, I am already going to voice my concerns over this adventure (it have been happening for about 3 months), I was in need of blowing some steam off and you all helped me, still I'm worried to sound childish if everyhing sums (on his head) "LET ME KILL THIS NPC!!!!"

Thanks again,

Cheers

[Darrin]

You're being railroaded so that the DM can preserve the pet plot to His Very Own Masterpiece Fantasy Novel. Talk to the DM OOC and try to put it as diplomatically as possible: you're being a doofus, cut it out. Then kill the NPC.

(...and really, with spells like clone, polymorph, resurrection, simulacrum, and wish already in the game, I don't really quite see how this is even approaching a Full Henderson (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/The_Henderson_Scale_of_Plot_Derailment).)

[Mordaedil]

This is why I usually always plan around the potential that my NPC's can get killed at any point and it doesn't break my overall plot.

You just gotta tell your DM that he's gotta rethink how he does his NPC's and stop getting so attached to them. Or if he wants to preserve them so badly, make them capable of bailing themselves out in a believable fashion.

[jdizzlean]

kill the npc

next session, her "twin sister" shows up and the plot continues w/ a revenge element.

its really not that hard.

i agree, you're being railroaded. everytime you succeed, the DM is taking that away from you.

[Peat]

Classic Railroading with a big side dish of Shut Up And Admire The NPCs. Ranting is one of the few rational responses - if anything, I admire your restraint. I think the point I'd have thrown my dice at the GM is F - on the fly shutdown of PCs' success in order to preserve the plot is a gigantic no no.

And sure, maybe you're being a bit stubborn in not going along with the GM's OOC conversation... but nowhere near as stubborn as he's been to get you to this point to begin with. You probably need to have another OOC conversation, one in which you let him know that its not enjoyable when he keeps shutting down the PCs' successes to preserve the plot. Hopefully he learns and stops railroading so hard.

[jdizzlean]

Full Henderson (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/The_Henderson_Scale_of_Plot_Derailment).)


oh man, i'd forgotten all about this, the bad part about reading it at work is that i laughed so hard i saw stars and almost passed out.

good times :)

[Firechanter]

I would have been mad and madder at watching his Pet NPCs duke it out with each other; there's a good chance I might have gotten up from the table and said "Well, you don't seem to need any players, give me a call when you want to start a game sometime" and Exit Stage Left.

Arbitrarily stacking rolls to make the Disjunction spell fail would _really_ have been the last straw for me.
So I really can't say what I would have done after; I'd have left the game there at the latest.

[Fizban]

It occurs to me that I've actually seen plenty of dnd where it was completely acceptable to occasionally just railroad the players- because the players agreed and are there to play through the DM's story, not just run off on whatever. Loading Ready Run do plenty of madcap improv, but they also have occasions where the DM will just say "time passes and this happens."

This is not one of those games. I too would be offended at obviously bogus rolls to make a spell that automatically works, work. We all know perfectly well you didn't prepare for that spell, now you can either ask me what you need to retcon to prevent it, or just fiat nope it, but either way you'll be incurring some fiat debt.

Of course if they don't like it then that can make for a just super passive aggressive passtime, telling them what they should have done, redesigning their encounters while you're stomping all over them. But sometimes you just wanna tell them "Hey, if you don't want your NPCs dying then git gud." NPC keeps mysteriously surviving and escaping, there's plenty of things that can explain that after the fact. Shielding a high priority kill target (two things always motivate PCs: betrayal and theft) by rescuing them with designated Good Guy NPCs, repeatedly, by making those NPCs hold the idiot ball because they shouldn't be so stupid- pretty lame.

[Talverin]

That is an entirely fair rant. I've had a DM like that, and it was terrible! His favorite part of the game was showcasing all of the shiny things he thought up for it. One player ended the session RIDING AN ANCIENT GOLD WYRM (At level 6 btw) because he spent nearly two hours just asking the DM about this superhugefancymegaawesome prison-fortress and its' mega-enchanted adamantine-sheathed cold iron ghost touch Wall of Force-reinforced walls, and listening to the dragon talk about the history of the world and all of its' own past deeds. Because it was, after all, a 'good dragon', the prison-fortress granted it a one-every-thousand-years year-long parole.

There is a way to handle some stuff like your DM is doing, however. From his end, he could allow the Cleric to die, and have the party be attacked by the Paladins... Under command of her father! It turns out, they knew she would escape if they kept catching her, so her father made sure to use his wealth and influence to make sure they would keep taking her prisoner. Keeps your team busy and off the books, keeps those pesky good-aligned gods group from investigating further because they think it's being taken care of. Betrayal!

But how deep does the conspiracy go? Could the good-god-cult possibly be infiltrated, or controlled? Were Dominate spells used? Were any of them traitors all along, keeping the battle going between good and evil for some other party?

When the party closes a door (Or murderstabs your plot NPC) just describe another door in a shadowy corner they didn't notice before slowly creaking open. There's always more possibilities.

Also, if you're ever going to betray the party, make sure it's either not a critical NPC, or make sure they never see that NPC again outside of boss battles unless she has a retinue of people willing to die for her and an escape spell ready.

The points made about resurrection and the like I would agree with, as well. Perhaps she comes back as Undead. Intelligent undead, of course, to keep things fresh.



Also, have you considered that your cult friends might have betrayed you and are actually helping the evil enemy? Because... It kinda sounds like your cult friends have betrayed you and are actually helping the evil enemy. And that sounds like war with the good-god-cult time to me.

(Never go full Henderson)