Looking for feedback on DM playstyle (warning, long read)

[Silentone98]

Hello all,
I am looking for some advice/feedback on my groups current campaign... we have a group of 4 people, a DM and 3 players.

We all started at level 1, a ninja an oracle and a kinetickist(she retrained to alchemist after the first dungeon)
I get told prior to starting this campaign that I would be doubling as tank,.... as a ninja... I pointed out thats possible to a limited extent, but im not a tank still. We are a smaller group as well so I assumed everything would be scaled with this in mind.
I get allowed to play a heavily watered down half-fiend human. But still enough bonuses to be somewhat better than other racial choices(and I do mean HEAVILY watered down compared to normal half-fiend, 2 +2 stats, darkvision, some energy resists and natural attacks and human bonus feat, a few odds and ends that usually dont factor in like darkness 1/day and smite good when we are fighting undead in a campaign we had no prior knowledge that would be primarily undead based enemies >.> but this is all I got worth noting)
Still,... not complaining, since it seemed better than taking most other racial selections and it wouldnt have been fair to the other players to get the full package.
This was kinda viewed as a slight boost to make up for the idea of doubling as a party tank,... while a ninja(facepalm)
Shouldnt be a problem tho I imagine as I had 14 Con, and high AC right off the start, with or without armor. I am a ninja after all, make use of my damage to drop the enemies before they drop me and we should be fine.

Before we begin our first session, we are informed the DM watered everything down already because he made everything too tough the first time.
our first dungeon was also our opening scene, being bond and dragged to this dungeon, no equipment. We have a lvl 4 equivalent blinkling antipaladin NPC bound with us, who the DM goes into cinematic mode explaining how the blinkling breaks his bonds and goes all incredible hulk on some of our captors, disarming them with his bare hands and all. Killing a few of them in the process.
This is fine and all, he gets re-restrained, and we all get thrown into this undead infested military fort and demanded to retrieve an artifact for our captors...
Alright, great.... not a bad way to start im thinking
the dead corpses from what our blinkling friend killed are locked in with us for some reason, so we loot them and gear up between that and the surrounding storage rooms before heading in deeper. Then we fight our first skeletons, 16 HP each.... even our CON heavy kinetickist only had 11 HP... >.>
And these skeletons had something like 14-16 strength to boot. (our highest strength character is 12 for reference) In fact, I think ONLY the skeleton mage we fought last session had less than 14 strength throughout both dungeons so far... and im just assuming he did.
This isnt including the captain, who had more HP, no idea what else he had.

Luckily we had the blinkling, but im thinking to myself, this room had 5 skeletons, all with massive HP compared to us, and the blinkling can only realistically handle 1 at a time,... assuming he doesnt breath weapon, as we also learn he is blessed by tiamat and has some kind of half dragon thing going(but not the same thing the DM assures)
Several more rooms of this go by with 3-4 more skeletons, with likewise stats.


Okay,... so, overpowered for us im thinking, but balanced out because we have this NPC? But I am not so sure, because then it would be a spotlight whoring issue with an NPC, he runs the whole dungeon with(for) us. We are forced to crutch on that, because this is too powerful a dungeon for us. Traps had DC's of 20, and damage in the range of 2d8 +4, or close to(it may have been a 2d6, or something else like that)
and yea... we were warned we would have trouble with the traps unless we had someone with skills for it,... but we were level 1.

anyhow, I brought up with the DM that all this seemed abnormal to me. Standard skeleton being 4 HP, Low level traps being in the DC 13 range, and much less damage- this is what I would have expected for a dungeon crawl with multiple rooms and multiple fights at level 1. But his game, his rules- but it is odd and I wanted to point that out. He wanted this to be a challenge he says and if we die, its not his fault, but the fault of his dice.

Next session, He tones the traps down thankfully(above mentioned trap brought to 2d4, and all traps to this day have been massively more reasonable,... maybe even too gentle, but I dare not go there!)
.... said he toned the enemies down also... but that really was just single beefed up undead with high HP's still. But 1 guy instead of groups. This is why I brought up the spotlight whore issue of his NPC earlier, because only him and I had enough damage potential to really do anything worth noting (the kinetickist was getting a few 10 point damage hits in surprisingly but she wasnt feeling too useful since she was earth type and couldnt hit often at all since earth doesnt hit touch AC) I could do damage just fine... but I couldnt take it, and I most certainly struggled massively to perform my main role of dropping an enemy, even when I had sneak attacks most of the time.
.... so we just spent 2 sessions backseating on an NPC basically... >.>
The only thing that felt useful about our characters was our "sucking up to those more powerful than us" ability

I ignored the boss fight oddities, as it was a boss fight after all. Somehow we all survived. During the entire dungeon I was down to -9 HP at one point, but that was the worst of it(We thought my character was next to death, since we didnt realize pathfinder changed it from -10 health to -"your constitution"). Skeleton kept attacking me even tho I was down, I forget to mention, these were intelligent undead and wanted me to be one of them.
we leveled from the dungeon to level 2.


Well,... I explained my reservations about this campaign to the DM,.. said anyone could push mobs to level 4 equivalent HP, and god knows what else, and make it more challenging thru pure numbers. That doesnt make for a very interesting game to me, it makes it a chore. As it is, I cant even fullfill my role as a 1 round kill sneak attacker most of the time due to the difficulty in hitting most targets. When I do, its a whooper due to having so many attacks at a low level(something even his high HP enemies have to fear), but that isnt going to last us- and the other party members cant do that.

Obviously this was going to be a problematic campaign, and I didnt trust any of this despite the DM saying he looked at the numbers and saw what I was saying,... enemies with 50% or more higher HP than us, and elite array of stats, while we were rolled stats(just assume we are mediocre for the most part) The numbers were against us, regardless of the dice.

Our kinetickist wasnt enjoying her class... so I did the only thing I could and suggested a class that would vastly improve our chances, alchemist.
She is now brewing up potions that are IMMENSELY helpful, and soon to be doing alchemical crafting as well. Problem is I have to help her every step of the way since she doesn't understand rulesets well. But she likes it,... she feels more included and useful now. I also had her take explosive bomb,... the catching fire thing was the real seller, if we cant beat them down in 1 turn, make them dance on their turns I say! (This has been priceless so far)
I don't mean to say every enemy has to go down in the first round,.. but if we cant even get 1, on a surprise round, AND a high initiative? Well,... time to lock down the battlefield.

Anyhow, the next session rolls around... we are done with that artifact thing, and back in town and sent off to a new town.... we fight some bandits, and sure enough the new tactics work like a charm... all more HP than us still, as I figured it would be, but it didnt matter... we massacre'd them. I think its about this time we notice one of our magic items we picked up from the first dungeon is a bit troublesome as it drinks the bodies essence away. It's basically a vampire in a sentient weapon, but it literally ashes any corpse(good garbage disposal) But feeding it makes it more powerful.

I think the main idea here is clear, so I will sum up the rest.
Next dungeon trash mobs HP's are 30+ (not all, but you get the idea, and we switch between groups of enemies and single enemies a few times), we are level 2 with HP's of 15/16 and such.
Also worth noting that I have a much harder time hitting things due to AC bumps, even on flat foots.
Sentient weapon gets more powerful because the Oracle keeps feeding it, and now it can float and make its own attacks, and 1/day make rays of ungodly power that basically kill anything(anything we are currently facing anyhow)
I should probally mention that it's basically taken the role of the earlier mentioned blinkling.
We fight in the boss room, perhaps one of the toughest fights yet, as it has 3 undead, a brawler, a barbarian, and a wizard. The wizard blasts our undead companion for 14 damage or so, but I was able to sneak up behind said wizard and 1 round drop him, first and only one that I could even do enough damage to pull it off with at this level. All I know is he had more than 12 HP as the first hit didnt drop him.


On the plus side,... we have been getting +1 to +2 equivalent magical gear, but not necessarily gear any of us would want. +1 Studded Leather of Insults for example,... could sell for alot and get us all something more useful(who in their right mind wants to draw all the attention to themselves with these kind of enemies? Sounds like a sick joke to me), but DM made it clear he would be peeved if we sold **** immediately after we got it.
It's worth noting I was informed prior to the campaign that this was a low magic campaign. It's since then proven otherwise. Not complaining, as we basically need everything we can possibly get.


Now, what I wanted from all of you,... I am not imagining this right? The game mechanics weren't set up to support fighting waves of enemies with HP 50% higher than us at first level, and double at 2nd right? Do note this is even after the DM saying he noted the problem and addressed it.
I 100% fear level 3 means triple our health on every trash mob.
As a player in the game, the feeling I get is overcompensation for the ninja damage potential with extra HP... but it ultimately screws over my companions(and me as well in effect) and in most cases, I can count on being unable to drop an enemy in 1 round reliably with stealth/sneak attacks. I dont think he understand the only way I can "tank" is by dropping an enemy fast(especially early game, mock ninja, vanishing, substitute does wonders, but its limited in usage and I dont have all that so early). Kill them before they kill me.
I also feel like, theres a sort of idea with the DM that its unfair if our enemies dont get to act and die too soon before they rough us up.

Thoughts? Tell me if im over-reacting.... I am just concerned rather this is a campaign entirely rigged against us, or one where I should only fear the dice as the DM states, as this doesnt seem normal.

[DeTess]

It seems like your DM is either very new, or is used to playing against absolute munchkins. This seems like one of those situations where the best solution would be to offer to DM your own campaign as soon as is feasible, to show everyone involved how you think a campaign should be run. It gives everyone, including you DM, a chance to compare playstyles and figure put what they like more.

[Silentone98]

Thanks for the speedy reply...
I intend to show him this thread actually. After being told things were toned down twice, and instead see'ing things bumped up.... (excluding traps of course) And then straight up ignored at the table when I brought this up that the other players were robbed of even being capable of 1 shotting an enemy even if they get max damage and critical- while every single enemy CAN one shot them under the same conditions.... im concerned. (Not to mention, at level 1, any of those skeletons could have dropped us in a single hit just with max damage if they had just a longsword, no crit)


We have been playing my campaigns for the last 3 years I think actually, I may have had him a couple times before that but not as consistently.
I made plenty of mistakes along the way, but I am sure I never gone overboard like this... making sure things are mechanically feasible is always a first in my book before I go forward with things.
I personally think you are spot on with him being used to munchkins, as many of the things he has told me of his past games sound strange and as if neither him nor the players even understood any of the rules they were using.
But my hope is either be shown that I was doing it wrong and didn't understand the game like I thought I did.... or to have him shown that he doesn't realize what he is doing.
See'ing as he has played in my games before,... and I have spoken to him twice... this is kind of my last chance to get through to him that this is a campaign doomed to failure as the numbers are rigged against us from the start. The way I see it, we can only pull shenanigans so long to weasel our way thru, lol.

What I think we need right now is a collection of voices from experienced gamers, if they think this is as ridiculous as I do... or think im being ridiculous. And I do appreciate yours!

[DeTess]

Right, so to explain myself a bit more, and provide feedback someone can actually do something with.

The blinkling paladin seems a clear case of the bad kind of DM(N)PC. You should not have a NPC accompany the players that does more to solve the current problem than the players do. The sword seems to be going in the same direction (am I correct in assuming its fairly independent now, or is it still ordered around by the PC's?). Both of those shouldn't be there, especially if you're trying to make a campaign more difficult.

Second is his approach to campaign difficulty. He has taken the videogame method of just making everything bigger. In the right group this can work, but that doesn't seem to be your group, since you seem to be the only one interested in and capable of optimizing (more on that later). If I wanted to challenge a group like yours, I'd start running combat as war. I'd give your group obstacles that you very clearly can't overcome in direct combat, and all the tools you could possibly need to overcome them anyway. That would also mean moving away from straight dungeon crawls into more open-ended goals (assassinate the evil overlord in whatever manner you see fit, create an alliance between the human and elven kingdoms, etc.).

However, there's another things that seems fairly clear from your description, and that is that you optimize to a far greater degree than the rest of your party. Right now its probably one of the things keeping you guys alive, but it also makes it more difficult for the DM to balance things. If he's going to tone things down to the level rest of the party, you will have to do the same thing.

[Silentone98]

The sentient weapon is a dagger... functionally a +2 dagger, with 1d4 negative life draining damage as well. (I dont think it heals the wielder tho)

it has some abilities it can activate on its own, such as floating and attacking on its own, and creating 3d6 beam of negative energy, or a 6d6 magic missle like effect.
So,... it requires blood or corpses to consume to power itself, but it can functionally do so on its own now that the oracle has continued to feed it against my advice and given it enough power to float on its own. (metagaming knowledge, but I assume it would just game more and more abilities and the one I dont want to see is dominate, and have it turn on us or force an action we dont want- I would be reasonably wary of this object regardless- but that said, I also know it probably wont do that as its effectively the DM's NPC)
And it isnt even close to done getting more power from everything I can tell.

You are correct that I can optimize more than the other players, and that does curve the balance some- as well as when I give advice to others like the alchemist switch(honestly, her character is more useful than mine now). But in the end, I can really only stealth and kill with sneak attack.... I have proven next to useless without it.
and we both know a rogue who isnt getting in his sneak attack is doing his job wrong.... if these were level appropriate mobs, I would be dropping them in 1 turn as a human, no feats at all every single time(assuming I hit and didnt roll 1 damage +mod). Current situation, I am not even close to that. And once I cant find a way to get in flat foots or stealth, my damage plummets.
Some of my optimization came at DM's encouragement "You will need it, you are doubling as the tank" and so forth. So do keep that in mind as well. But yea.... this does add a layer to the problem regardless.
But I guess my point here is,... I think it this tells a bigger story when a nerfed character on a standard campaign would do better on average than what I do... im underpowered to the comparison in this current setting. So that begs the question, should I start bringing in multiclassing and munchkin builds catch up? Or tone myself back when im already behind?(which would result in TPW btw, I stopped playing logically for one fight, and we all hugged death so the dagger had to step up with his craziness)

[Geddy2112]

I am going to second that this sounds like a lot of newbie mistakes, which is the best hope for your scenario. New DM's and wannabe edgelords run campaigns a lot like this, but let's give the benefit of the doubt and just go with they have no idea what they are doing.

A party of 3 is small in a game designed for a party of 4-5, and can be harder to balance against. With this in mind and how insanely swingy combat can be at first level, I can reluctantly agree of giving the party a DMPC. Moreso since the other players seem to be newbies as well so a DMPC is good training wheels until level 2 or the players figure things out, at which point they exit. Certainly random jabroni locked in the same cell will probably help you bust out of prison then run off on their own thing. However, pet NPC's, DMPC's and Sentient Magical Items are an issue. Often seen in newbies thinking they will wow their players by showing them how cool of a thing they can make, but always come off as toxic, overshadowing the party, annoying, a combo of these, or worse. Having a mcguffin artifact as part of the plot is not always this, but can be and will if it becomes its own entity.

Making enemies that are too powerful or watered down is another hallmark of newbies who don't understand the system. A slight tweak in either direction results in lethality that makes Call of Cthulu blush, or scenarios where you cannot die if you try. I can also see beefing up enemies to that extent a sign of being abused by hardcore minmaxing munchkin players, but if you are not explicitly doing that the DM should realize and back off. Wanting to play a half fiend and insisting your role is to 1 round kill things with sneak attack could come off as munchkin powergaming and a threat to the DM, so ensure you are not trying to play adversarial with the DM. It is an arms race you cannot win and leads to a game you have said you do not wish to play.

Getting tons of magical swag is usually a Monty Hauling problem, although you are actually working quite hard it seems so the trope is not entirely fitting. Raining swag on players is another thing DM's, new ones in particular, will do to try to make their players happy. "Hey guys, check out all this cool stuff I gave you! Isn't this fun?!" Usually backfires by making the party gods and the inexperienced DM have to start overly juicing encounters, ending in a disastrous over-correction arms race. The DM not wanting you to sell it makes me think they will feel insulted unless you like all the cool stuff they gave you. Having it all be cursed or useless is another inexperienc thing I have seen, where the DM thinks "they will think this is so funny because I do" and it comes off as the opposite.

In my experience, the dm telling you things like "Low magic" "watered down enemies" and "If you die it is not my fault" off the bat. I find when DM's have to say things like that unsolicited it is the exact opposite. I stand pretty firmly by anything that has to be frequently/prominently/overstated is always untrue.

Who decided you were the "tank"? It is not really a necessary party role, although having a character with high AC and/or a boatload of HP is useful, ttRPG's are not MMO's. This is VERY concerning if the DM decided you were the tank, as it is basically saying "all of my enemies will attack you". If you decided as a group roles, that's totally fine. Being forcibly pidgeonholed into a playstyle or role in the party, particularly by the DM, is bad. Again, ideally this is just a side effect of being new and not realizing.

It reminds me of a game I once watched and afterwards, declined to join. It was some homebrewed nightmare of 5th edition for modern times. The highlight being when the party found an M1 abrams tank that was sentient. It had a southern belle voice and tried to seduce the party. I had long before decided I was not interested in playing, but that really sealed the deal. New DM or not, there are certain things that don't fly.

[Silentone98]

To the first part that applies to me,
I was saying at the start that I was hoping I wasnt the only melee and forced into tanking...

after everyone decided their classes, the DM told me I was tank, even as ninja. He offered an NPC to fill the role... I told him I would rather the game be balanced for 3 people, and go without a tank, because it shouldnt be strictly necessary. This is where we started building the characters after being told I was getting slight bumps to support this and building the character with that in mind. This was all before the campaign ever started.
The idea with refusing the NPC tank is I wanted to enjoy nice, quicker paced combat instead of being stuck in line all day... know what I mean? NPC's fighting NPC's..... yea, so fun.... *waives a flag half-heartedly* yippee,... go team, we can do it! lmao

We both agreed the half fiend was too much, thats why we watered it down. It actually started as a joke, and he offered as watered down version I could, so I pitched him stats that he agreed to. The agreement was so long as it was brought near inline with the other players (anumi, and kitsune) but slightly more since I was effectively tank.
I mentioned the majority of its racials, and you can see it is no where near a half-fiend.... so half-fiend is more flavor than anything. Closer to a tiefling with a couple extras. Nothing special as far as I can tell. Every enemy gets more than me individually,... add up any single group and I think you get the picture on what I think of this if my racial is his problem.

But since then, the DM has remarked several times that I would have been better off going blinkling. He may be right.
Despite these reasons making me feel that he SHOULDNT be threatened by this.... I do feel you are right that he likely did have a knee jerk reaction to this.


For the second part that applies to me,
The 1 shotting thing.... basic calculations tell me that even a level 1 fighter or cleric should be doing much the same on average damage and sometimes less with 1 shotting skeletons at level 1... so I would assume that was the case with a rogue based class that gets sneak attack on top of that. It kind of stood to reason that was the impression I had of my role... these are numbers we have both played with for years so for me it seems obvious this is the case. A more challenging skeleton sounds like 8 HP to me, but we went straight to groups all with 16 HP,.. (average die on a skeleton makes it 4HD, with what I strongly suspect to be an elite array of stats)
but yea- I made it no secret that I intended to kill and kill fast because I really did not have any other choice... you are right and I had not considered this would cause the DM to might wanting to overcompensate.

To add to this,... each one of us min maxed our stats a bit... but I think that stands to reason,.. you don't play an adventuring game, play your character and not put your stats where its needed to function. These were rolled stats also(3d6),.. so the good roles had to where they were needed, and that was the only "min/maxing" we really could do, outside racials... I imagine people know how 3d6 stat rolls usually work out... this is not even close to a high powered party.

To the remarks on cursed items,
2 majorly cursed items right off the bat. That dagger, and a ring that makes you a kind of vampire thrall, have to randomly "feed" with progressively difficult checks, paints a giant X on your back for both clergy AND the Vampire Lord who created the ring(who also happens to be part of the local royal family) and some other things that we dont know about because we got that thing off her ASAP.
And apparently chopping the finger off was ineffective, as it re-attaches on its own >.>

To the remark on the DM's enemies targeting me,
They actually have been targeting everyone,... oftentimes who'ever they feel is the most threat, using their individual logic... I got no complaints on that part- but the studded leather of insults painted a pretty clear message in my opinion.

So that this isnt all negative commenting on my DM also.... I want to mention that he did make something similar to the Morag Tong from the Morrowind game out of my ninja clan... so I can get a government writ to assassinate an intown person legally. Which was balanced surprisingly well compared to everything else, and set up so we could use everyones skills in some way, even if they weren't directly involved. The setup is where its all at, where as the final kill is simply the reward not the main dish. It's kinda fun and interesting for all.


One thing im trying to remember that he told me about one of his 3.5 ruleset games.... I believe he said he played a displacer beast rogue(arcane trickster maybe?)... or something like that, I cannot remember. And another about being a pixie... on all of these, I believe he said, no level adjust
I can ask him later

[Geddy2112]

Based on your feedback, your DM does not sound inexperienced, at least in system mastery. Have they been a DM before?

For one hit killing you are right that a sneak attack+hit on average will down the lower CR level appropriate enemies in a single hit. Certainly that you need to be able to down enemies quickly and are not built to just soak attacks and damage.

Mcguffin plot cursed magical items are what they are, and sometimes just work that way like all mcguffins, "because reasons". In and of itself, I don't see a problem here. Being forced to wear armor of insults as a stealth based character though, or really even being "given" that is likely unnecessary. I know you are not forced to wear it, but then you have to balance the highest AC you can get vs having your armor get your party attacked.

Assuming absolutely no malice on any side, I see a few scenarios that are not mutually exclusive
-Your DM might not have the best handle on mechanics and balance. Enough to know it is there, but not exactly what affects what and is not aware they are throwing the balance out of whack.
-Your DM knows very well about balance, and is compensating for abuse from ruthless minmaxing powergamers and assuming your group to optimize as much as possible.
-Your DM loves to be showy, likely as a player too. They have creative ideas for cool and fun magical items, enemies, etc.
-Your DM knows balance, but likes combats to be long/challenging/difficult/lethal.

I would just ask them why they do what they do. Not in an accusatory way, but simply to know their motivation and reasoning behind DMing like they do. This can help you to advert their potential fears, air greviances constructively, and give feedback as to what you want in a game vs what you don't. For the last thing, it is important to also bring up the things you think they do well.

As far as pet npcs and items, again remind them the positive aspects of what you like about their world. Morag Tong(I'm a dark brotherhood man myself but I respect pulling from the elder scrolls) guilds, magic items linked to vampire lords, sentient undead trying to take over the world, etc. Focus on these when you tell them that their execution of NPC X or item Y or cutscene Z came off as ____ to you as a player and group. Give the benefit of the doubt in that these things were put in the game to be cool and enjoyable to the players, not annoying or malicious. Unless they specifically tell you that they DM to torture their PC's and players, to flex their power and make everyone have a miserable session, in which case you wanna find a new DM.

[Silentone98]

"Unless they specifically tell you that they DM to torture their PC's and players, to flex their power and make everyone have a miserable session, in which case you wanna find a new DM."

does repeatedly telling us that he is sadistic and out for blood count?

They have DM'd before, years ago under different rulesets. But I am near certain that was in groups neither he nor the others actually followed any rules or sense of balance. Kind of like a free for all game is the impression I got. Stories involved total party wipes due to misfired wishes. Wishing for immortality for the whole party, and everyone being made vampires in broad daylight(other players didnt wish it, and didnt want it... the one guy did it anyhow and they all wipe from it). Playing as pixies and displacer beasts without level adjusts. And other things along those lines. Oftentimes he has mentioned a characters abilities from past games and what they did with them and I would ask "How? That ability doesn't do that"- but I cant remember any specific examples at the moment.
So yea,.. I get the impression he is used to wild free reign games from before he joined my table. Not that thats a problem in and of itself... but might be lending to some of the issue?


Thanks for the help so far, I think most of your things apply actually


"-Your DM might not have the best handle on mechanics and balance. Enough to know it is there, but not exactly what affects what and is not aware they are throwing the balance out of whack.""

He might, or he might not... he does keep saying he wants it challenging, but he also said he saw the problem I brought up... needed to research over night tho. How do you miss that all your trash mobs are more powerful than the party starting out? This after having said he reduced the difficulty.
The second time he reduced the difficulty, we saw 30 HP things at level 2.... that goes from a 50-60% higher HP than us, to double our HP. Granted not all trash mobs were double, but they were more than 50% higher....
But also, we had our alchemist, were better geared and our tactics adjusted and level 2 so we actually had an easier time with our second dungeon.
But now that the DM's seen we could adjust, I have very real fears this is a revolving door of countering us instead of a neutral narrating DM.

"-Your DM knows very well about balance, and is compensating for abuse from ruthless minmaxing powergamers and assuming your group to optimize as much as possible."

I somehow doubt this is actually, he stated multiple times it was balanced for us(which maybe it is, if we were fighting only one room or two rooms- but we are doing entire dungeons and told only 1 rest)
you tell me,... is room after room of that balanced for level 1? lol

His only concern would be me,.. but I think I covered that already? I would leave that to your own opinions... I know how to powergame and min max, but I know we are playing with 2 other players who wouldnt even know where to start. It wasn't a concern for me(not until we were already started anyhow... some of the alchemist suggestions were made with our situation in mind, since I knew we wouldnt last without it).


"-Your DM loves to be showy, likely as a player too. They have creative ideas for cool and fun magical items, enemies, etc."

as a player, he likes being the center of attention but has done better to restrain himself so that other players can do stuff. Pretty much everyone in the group has some kind of anxiety and I think the girls got it worse than us(mine just ****s up my sleep, like last night,.. this situation bugging the **** out of me) But because of their anxiety, it makes it hard for them to push him aside when he blocks them from doing anything.

I mean, this isnt really a problem here on its own... rather nice actually... but it plays into the bigger problem, like with the NPC'ing.
I am tempted to call his Dagger a McGuffin Mary Sue combo. lol


"-Your DM knows balance, but likes combats to be long/challenging/difficult/lethal."

I believe so,... every single combat... he is deathly annoyed at losing an enemy of ours on the first round or surprise round. Which from my perspective seems to be a problem and not a concern a neutral DM would have when the next enemy can be right around the corner waiting to pounce. His job isnt to kill us, but it seems as if he is treating it as such.



and yea... no malice between us... but last session that was the first time he straight up ignored me and continued on as if I didn't exist, without a word. That was with making the point that the other characters were robbed of the chance of getting early kills in(while still being capable of being 1 shot KO'd themselves) when in a standard game they would have had ample chance to, and that my own chances were there, but abysmally low when they would have been common otherwise. One of the other players piped up that yea, it didn't seem right and that their classes didnt have the tools to keep up damage wise on HP buffed mobs. I made this point during session, which was rude of me, but despite everyone agree'ing, we did not stop to discuss it.

I'll try to talk with him today at some point... but wondering if I should talk with the other players first and make sure we all feel the same.

[DeTess]

I'll try to talk with him today at some point... but wondering if I should talk with the other players first and make sure we all feel the same.

That would be a very good idea. Another suggestion is to reserve your feedback for after the game session. If during every combat you point out how the enemies are way to powerful, you'll come across as whining and disruptive to the game, no matter how reasonable your stance is, but if you reserve your grievances for an after-session chat, you aren't disrupting the current flow of the game and the DM is more likely to listen to you.

[Silentone98]

alright,... we talked it over,... only had a chance to talk to one other player but it didnt matter.
He got really silent with me again, but came back with that he see's some of the things im talking about(especially with the NPC'ing)- and for balance he thinks if he just leaves the stats alone for now and use stock creatures, it should solve the issue for the moment(which it would)
I mentioned he could still buff stuff up without causing too much issue, like even a skeleton going from 4 HP to 8 HP isnt too much issue in a level 1 dungeon crawl, right? But that yea... so long as our ultra powerful allys were taken out of the mix, he doesnt have to level things above us like that.
So we are on agreement(again).... and hopefully I dont see every trash mob with 50-60 HP on level 3....

Thanks for the advice all.

[Quertus]

I'm glad to hear that he's looking to remove the overpowered NPCs and weaken the monsters. One thing I'd like to address:

"every single combat... he is deathly annoyed at losing an enemy of ours on the first round or surprise round. Which from my perspective seems to be a problem and not a concern a neutral DM would have when the next enemy can be right around the corner waiting to pounce. His job isnt to kill us, but it seems as if he is treating it as such."

Personally, the only real joy I get out of GMing is wondering how the party will handle X. When the answer is boring - like repeatedly killing off a random monster before it gets to go, before they even know what it is - it's less interesting for me. If, OTOH, the party watched a group of monsters hunt, talked about their tactics, and surprise round murdered the monster of their choice? That would be entertaining for me, as GM.

But that's me.

See if you can get your GM to articulate why this bothers him, and what could be done to make it less bothersome.

[Silentone98]

I am right there with you Quertus, I apologize if I make it seem like I fully expect to win every encounter before they act or even a single target with no forethought or prep work. I am certainly not entitled to it or anything. And I think I mispoke, he isnt annoyed at losing the enemy, because he doesn't usually, HP pools were too high... he seems annoyed at the idea of the possibility of losing it.
We don't just get handed surprise rounds for nothing, and I pick and choose the opening 'attempted' kill carefully and we talk about how we are going to handle our enemies. All this work is essentially wasted tho when everything you fight might as well be stone walls, as you can imagine... well, not wasted because its likely what got us thru without dying(ignoring the mary sue dagger and blinkling NPC's...)
... I think you get the point.... someone compared his style to a video game, which is probably why I want to call our combat comparable to a slow grind.
I am just a melee ninja, and not a shuriken/kunai one that might have made it possible with attacking multiple enemies with sneak attacks and dropping several, leaving no one anything to fight. Our DM puts whole groups in usually, if that makes it more clear.... as a melee ninja, I really only have a chance to take out one target with our opening strike. My gripe I was trying to make is within this context.... remember, these are trash mobs and we are getting multi-level, many roomed dungeons to go thru with only 1 rest...
As for talking with DM to get him to speak plainly on why he is doing this, he is silent. I asked upfront if me or my character is causing him difficulties balancing, and he would not answer.

standard turns and grinding thru mobs in a kick down the door style just isnt all that interesting most of the time for me. Prep work, diplomacy, negotiations, traps, and more is loads more fun... but I also don't feel the players should be forced into any particular path most of the time, especially on your typical dungeon crawl. In this game, not many of these rooms are arranged any different than the last, so from the player side its just more enemies to chew thru.
And TBH, surprise rounds are not something thats been a prominent thing in any of our campaigns... its been one of those elusive rules/side things that occasionally popped up... usually in the hands of our enemies.

When I said I wanted to go ninja, this was partly in mind- get us into uncharted territory and shake things up. But even this gets stale.

some examples of how we shake it up a bit so far,

One of the things the DM wasnt expecting, since he made his skeletons intelligent, I rolled intimate on the last skeleton left in a room to demand him to surrender, got a natural 20.... then bounce over to the Oracle to roll diplomacy to negotiate him assisting us with the skeletons boss and traversing the rest of the dungeon(since the skeleton knew where traps were, and how to get places) We made him into a turncoat by cutting a deal.
DM was salty, because it made the rest of the dungeon easy after that- but it was satisfying! I doubt any of us would have been happy with it had we continued an uneventful grind.

We used a key to lock a bunch of people in a room instead of dealing with them. Then barricaded the door. You know, the classic, it never gets old :)

Another door we reset the enemies own trap, locked the door, and caltroped the floor after it. A guy who was trying to reach the boss to warn him of us ended up tripping it shortly after, thinking it was disarmed due to being tampered with. He got beheaded.

Can you believe I was the first player in 6 years with any of us to use caltrops of all things? One of the players didnt even know what they were...(DM hadn't had anyone use it before me in the past, hence why I say 6 years when we have only been playing together around 3)
In case that raises confusion I should mention that the second dungeon had both bandits and undead working together, I wouldnt have used it on undead alone.

One enemy the DM added was adamantine clockwork vipers. 2 separate groups of 3. Hard as heck to hit, and DR and poison.... normally I would have let the adamantine part go, but I was already salty from the unbalanced nature of the campaign so far, so we took the corpses with us to smelt down the adamantine or sell it. 10 pounds of usable adamantine, and the second group of the vipers suddenly disappeared from the game, no where to be found.
I don't know where I heard it from(reddit post I think), but after we nabbed the corpses, I shared the story of a giant mythril door at the start of a dungeon entrance in one DM's new game. Players dropped everything just to get that thing out of its sockets and haul it off to be sold.
This will likely just cause another kneejerk reaction from the DM tho even tho it would be easy and reasonable to just say theres no smith close by with the knowledge and skill we need to use this material.