Is it okay to be angry about this one? (extreme trigger warnings)

[samcifer]

I know that I do a lot of grumbling on here, but this time I think I have a legitimate point here.

So I've been playing a light cleric during the wednesday night group and every time I've tried to use blasting spells like fireball or cast Spiritual Weapon against a boss, it gets counterspelled every time. Knowing the 60' range of Counterspell, I thought that this time I was ready.

As we were going into battle against a lich, the dm said that the boss we were about to fight had some levels of fighter, sorcerer, and some third class I can't remember. The bsttle begins, we roll initiative and I get a crit, which I feel bodes well. I make sure that my character is 80 ft. away from the boss and for my first turn, I try to cast Spiritual weapon. The dm says that the boss counterspells it. I tel him that I'm too far away for that and he replies that he had both heightened and distant his counterspell, something that I know, having played sorcerers myself before, is an illegal move. I let it go and use Dodge as my action for the turn. The bard casts Guiding Bolt and hits the boss lich successfully without being counterspelled.

On the dm's turn he unleashes a 20 ft. radius swarm of insects that hits me and a few others and I lose 42 of my 82 hp. I Knowing from past experience with this dm and having already had a bad day out of game, I've kind of had it with him and, no longer enjoying the character, I use dodge and end my turn while still inside of the swarm of insects he cast last turn.

Now I want to explain why I did this. During the campaign so far, every boss we've gone up against has counterspelled every spell I've tried to cast against them. This is the 4th time that this has happened when using this character during the campaign and to be honest, it's gotten me so frustrated that I don't want to play him anymore because I had designed him to be a blaster with some healing options, but healing is the only kind of casting he allows my character to do.

Wanting a change of character, I had begun to try killing the character by letting him get dropped to 0 so that I can go with a non-caster character who won't have his attack negated so often.

The other players ask me why I intentionally stay inside of the swarm and the dm finds it funny that I had stayed there and rolls damage, dropping me to 0hp. The other players start asking why I did that and I explained that I was unable to play my cleric as a blaster the why he was designed. The other players tell me that I can still heal them, to which I point out that there's a druid, a bard, an artificer and a second (war) cleric in the party, but no rogue and that's what I'd like to play next. They counter, saying that they LIKE having 2 clerics in the party and start jokingly say that they're going to heal me even though I tell them that I want the character to die.

The druid and artificer who go after me in initiative leave me be, but the war cleric (my fiance') forces healing onto me against my wishes. On my next turn I use half my movement to get up, then dash another 15 ft. towards the boss, planning to tackle him in hopes of taking more damage. The bard goes next and manages to take the phylactery from the lich boss' neck and with effort from him and the blood hunter, they destroy it and kill him before my next turn comes.

I'll admit that I'm being salty about this, but I made my character to be a blaster, yet am only allowed to heal whenever we go up against a boss and it's happened several times. I also wand to re-iterate that the dm broke the rules of metamagic by using two metamagics that are not legally allowed to be used together.

I also what to point out that this same person once played a sorcerer in another campaign and was twinning and heightening Fireball for his action, then quickening and twinning Fireball as his bonus action in the same turn and he did this several times during that campaign. During a campaign before that he was playing Rick from Rick and Morty as a gunsmith artificer with the sharpshooter feat, then argued when the dm had his dwarves in a fort use a turret-style mounted gatling gun on Rick who was 500 ft. away. The player argued that he was too far away and when the dm pointed out that he had a blunderbuss with 500 ft. range, the gatling having the same range. They argued over this, the dm pointing out that a gatling was technologically superior to a blunderbuss, but 'Rick' disagreed and after several minutes of arguing in front of the rest of the table, the dm threw up his hands and let 'Rick' have his way. Later during that campaign we were going through a dungeon and were in a puzzle room with undead when Rick detonated a suicide bomb built into his vest and died. He had not discussed this with anyone beforehand and it was a shock to all of us, the dm included.

That dm confessed to me later than the Rick player has been known to take away experience points from players if he didn't like their jokes and I've watched him tell a player that they had disadvantage on their next attack roll when making a joke he didn't like when he's the dm.

This also isn't the first time during this campaign (the one he's currently dm-ing) that he's shut down all my attack spells during battle. In a session a few weeks ago he had us go up against a boss who had second wind, evasion, counterspell and the ability to reflect spell projectiles back at the caster. I wasn't able to do even 1 pt. of damage to him during that entire battle and was only able to heal other players.

He's used counterspell against my attack spells several other times as well. He's also mentioned between sessions in a joking manner that I don't know how to play a support character. This makes me wonder if he thinks that a cleric isn't allowed to be a blaster.

At least we leveled up to 11, but I'm beginning to consider quitting the game. I went to bed, too angry with my fiance' to speak with him, and only slept 4 hrs after waking up from a dream where I was in the same campaign, we were going up against Cthulhu and I had my character pick a fight with him by casting magic missile at lv. 5. The dm and other players started laughing, thinking that it was a joke, and I woke up.

The dm has accused me of being a min-maxer and yes, I admit that I am, but only against him. I never went through this kind of thing with the previous dm and am rather salty at the way the rest of the group is being on insisting that I keep the character simply to add more healing that is redundant.

[darknite]

Life's too short to play D&D with people you don't want to play with and who don't respect you. Find a new group.

[Millstone85]

Wanting a change of character, I had begun to try killing the character by letting him get dropped to 0 so tha tI can go with a non-caster character who won't have his attack negated so often.Do you need the character to die? Your cleric could abandon the quest, openly lamenting his failure to become the holy warrior his god wanted him to be.

[Solunaris]

If you want my advice, walk from the game. D&D at it's core is supposed to be fun and if the DM is singling you out your time is better spent watching paint dry. It just isn't worth the stress of having everything you want to do thrown in your face over and over again.

But, if walking from the game isn't an option for you I also have some other suggestions. Namely that Counterspell requires you to be able to see the target. Carry a tarp with you and toss it over yourself for a round so you can cast a spell no problem; see what the DM's reaction to that is. Other hilariously stupid suggestions include preparing exactly 0 support spells and just spam the ever-living heck out of blasting spells until you either die a counterspelled hero or burn all of the enemy's spell slots. If they are wasting a spell slot to counter your spell then your party can cast with impunity and you've burned their reaction.

On a rules note: you are entirely correct about the meta-magic. Not only can you not apply more than one meta-magic to a spell at a time but throwing extend a heighten onto counterspell would cost 4 points; a significant expenditure of resources even for a boss. Of course, I'm not sure why you'd put heighten on counterspell since it wouldn't affect anything with the spell. But monsters don't have to follow the rules PCs do; especially when it comes to abilities. For instance, when my party has to face an enemy caster alone I'll give them abilities from Cleric subclasses and a meta-magic that is "always on" just to make the fight more interesting. Although, I don't have them face lone casters often; more of a final boss sort of deal.

Finally, talk to the bard. Bards make great counterspellers and the enemy bosses can't counterspell a counterspell that is counterspelling their counterspell.

[Tetrasodium]

It sounds like you have done something to piss off the gm but he's not yet willing to disinvite you or he is just a bad gm. either way walk away. Tell everyone you don't njoy the game & will no longer be playing

[samcifer]

Do you need the character to die? Your cleric could abandon the quest, openly lamenting his failure to become the holy warrior his god wanted him to be.

Well my idea now, assuming that I stay in the group as a player, si to have the character quit. After the next long rest they'll find a letter from him along with his broken symbol of faith explaining that after the lich (who had tried to claim the cleric's soul during the previous session) and finding that his combat prayers keep failing him, has lost his faith and the will to continue and wishes the others well. Then I can bring in my barb/rogue tabaxi I've been planning as a back up character. At least HIS attacks would be able to be counterspelled and we could use another pc who can take a lot of damage even if he'll be a hit-and-run character as I stated in a different thread.

[Composer99]

In principle, there's nothing wrong with a DM using counterspell, or even with a monster having a special feature that allows it to occasionally ignore the normal restrictions on metamagic.

However, that's outweighed by the principle that everyone at the table ought to be having fun, and the principle that players should play the character they built, not the one the DM thinks they ought to be playing.

If you're upset enough about the game that it's affecting your ability to positively interact with your loved ones and losing sleep, you might need a break.

If you really want to continue with this game in particular, just tell the DM he either needs to respect your character's build decisions a bit more (meaning not constantly shutting your cleric's blasting down while ignoring anyone else doing so) or let you switch characters.

Otherwise, you may want to drop out, even if only for a bit.

[Bundin]

As this has apparently been going on for some time, have you contacted the DM outside sessions to ask what's up? Have you asked another player that you trust to keep quiet if s/he also noticed the DM picking on your character? Maybe the group considers it all a joke, do make sure to them it isn't, if you're willing to give it another go.

In the end, if talking doesn't change anything, I'd walk away. Of course I'd give an explanation to the other players (examples limited to this group, the history is not relevant to them), wish them all the best, and see about forming a group without that one person.

[NNescio]

Finally, talk to the bard. Bards make great counterspellers and the enemy bosses can't counterspell a counterspell that is counterspelling their counterspell.

Sure they can. Unlimited Reactions or some other malarkey. DMs can make up whatever abilities they want, right? And Tiamat has it already for copy-pasta'ing.



Then I can bring in my barb/rogue tabaxi I've been planning as a back up character. At least HIS attacks would be able to be counterspelled and we could use another pc who can take a lot of damage even if he'll be a hit-and-run character as I stated in a different thread.

Next up: enemies immune to SA.

(What do you mean "immune to SA"? This isn't 3.X.
DM: Here, it's in the statblock.
You just penciled it in.
DM: So?)

Anyhow, my gut feeling tells me this is not going to end well. DM misused his position of power to bully you; he will likely continue to do so in the future especially since he managed to make you break down in front of a bunch of other people, all without being called out for it.

Best to take a break and only come back once everything has cooled down.

[Contrast]

I'm pretty sure you've been given this advice every time you post about this game but...if you're not enjoying it (and it certainly seems like you aren't) then there really isn't any sensible reason for you to be playing.

You don't have to get a character killed to play a new one (and passive aggressively seeking death like you did is very annoying and awkward for other players - what are they meant to do?). Talk to your DM and have your old character written out and a new one written in. I know some DMs get annoyed with players who constantly swap characters but honestly if you don't trust/can't engage with your DM on those sort of issues then, again, consider if this is really how you want to be spending your leisure time.

Even if this is the only game you can be involved in and you really want to enjoy it - you seem to be spending a lot of time here venting about it and are apparently losing sleep/having nightmares about the game. That just doesn't seem worth it.

It certainly sounds from what you've said that the DM is singling you out and twisting the rules to work against you (you've mentioned many times how impossible it seems to be to keep your characters alive yet you mentioned in another thread how there's melee casters who stay alive fine because they're rarely targeted which seemed a red flag to me). We're only getting one side of the story and aren't at the table so its difficult to comment on that but regardless of if your complaints are valid or not that wouldn't change the fact that you seem to be finding the game far more stressful than you are enjoyable.

Talk to your fiance. Maybe you can get your fix of D&D DMing a single character adventure for them if you can't find other players.

[JackPhoenix]

Technical note: Neither heighten nor extend work with Counterspell. Counterspell has no save for heighten, and it's got no duration to extend.

Even if you mean distant, that doesn't help. While it would increase Counterspell's range just fine, there's no point: trigger for its reaction is "when you see a creature within 60 feet of you casting a spell", and that's separate from the spell's range, and unaffected by distant metamagic.

[Gryndle]

The way I see it Samcifer, is that you have two practical choices. 1- is talk to the guy and find why he is insistent on shutting you down. Maybe you two can come to some sort of understanding. Though if it is normal for him to take out personal issues in game I am doubtful this will resolve anything long term.
2-Most likely your best option is to simply walk away from the game, either temporarily or permanently. As someone else said, Life is to short to spend time with jerks you don't have too.

My feeling is if the DM was a **** to you as a cleric, then he will continue to be a d to your rogue, barb, pally, naked ballerina, whatever. It wont matter what you play, he will still be a jerk.

[samcifer]

Well they don't need a 5th pc who can heal in a party of 7 pcs. They have a bard and an Artificer who both have healing spells learned as well as a druid and a war cleric who have access to healing spells, so when the next session starts, I'm going to have them wake up from a long rest with my light cleric gone as I described above and if the dm won't let me play my barb/rogue, I'll quit the campaign as a player. It'll just suck as we play in the den of my house only 20 ft. from my bedroom, but I refuse to play my blaster as only healer because that's what everyone else wants. IF the dm doesn't like it, tough.

I'll go full on drama queen, with finger-snapping and everything and but the bard's effeminate gay man who I like and has treated me well to same. (For the record, I'm a gay man too, but have a more 'middle-of-the-road' personality in regards to masculinity vs. effeminacy, which I have no issue with effeminacy, to be clear).

Edit in response to above... It's Distant that I meant, not Extended. My bad. Too little sleep and too much stress here to brain... thingy... ish... something. :P

[NNescio]

Well Thjey don't need a 5th pc who can heal in a party of 7 pcs. They have a bard and an Artificer who both have healing spells learned as well as a druid and a war cleric who have access to healing spells, so when the next session starts, I'm going to have them wake up from a long rest with my light cleric gone as I described above and if the dm won't let me play my barb/rogue, I'll quit the campaign as a player. It'll just suck as we play in the den of my house only 20 ft. from my bedroom, but I refuse to play my blaster as only healer because that's what everyone else wants. IF the dm doesn't like it, tough.

I'll go full on drama queen, with finger-snapping and everything and but the bard's effeminate gay man who I like and has treated me well to same. (For the record, I'm a gay man too, but have a more 'middle-of-the-road' personality in regards to masculinity vs. effeminacy, which I have no issue with effeminacy, to be clear).

I fully sympathize with you, but making a scene is just going to paint you out as the bad guy and harm your relationship with all the other players.

(Yes, I admit I'll be tempted to do the same if I were in your shoes, but I don't think it's a good idea nonetheless.)

[LentilNinja]

Not only does it sound like your DM is trying to choose how you play, but other players are too. These members of the group sound very toxic, having the mentality that D&D is 'their game'.

I've had plenty of experience with bully DMs: You can't beat them in-game.

A suggestion above was to play in spite, and by all means give it a try but you'll never win. The DM will never come round, the players will just get annoyed at the in-fighting, and you'll end up walking away (just as the bad guy).

But don't walk away yet. Address the group, whether in person or over some kind of IM, and tell them EXACTLY why you want to leave. Tell them what they've done to you, how they've made you feel, and how their behaviours would be unfair towards anyone.

Addressing the problems with them shows you're willing to be honest & considerate with them, informing them the problems in the hopes you can co-operate to resolve them. The balls then in their court, and how they react determines what happens next: If they aren't willing to change, walk away. If they are, a break might be good anyway.

I suggest this because if you really wanted to just go, you wouldn't have made this thread & just left. But the best answer I always see to threads like these: Its better to play no game at all than a bad one. And believe us when someone says that, because we were either told too or, like myself, learned the hard way.

[Wildarm]

Definitely not fun to feel singled out in combat. Perhaps because the DM sees you as the most dangerous character(Min/Maxing doesn't help with this) he seems to be singling you out.

I can't comment on the other battles but in a battle against a lich, a creature with so much mastery of magic that it defeated death itself, well you can expect magic is not going to be that effective against it and it would be able to assess who the biggest magic threat to it and be able to counter them. Now the counterspell from beyond 60' is not per the rules but the DM can honestly do whatever they want for monster abilities. The caveat I apply to that is this should be done to making it more challenging but enjoyable for the group.

Others have mentioned it but you could work with your group to coordinate and help you land your big blasts. Have someone draw an attack of opportunity to use the enemies reaction or have the Bard ready to counter the counterspell.

If it comes down to "I'm not having fun playing this character anymore" then speak plainly to the DM about that and ask to switch characters. If you're still not having fun. Switch DMs. Sometimes things just don't work in group dynamics.

[Keravath]

1) You could always have a team mate counterspell the counterspell (the bard should have counterspell at some point). Given how many counterspells are flying around it would make a lot of sense for at least one party member to have it.

2) Counterspell, as mentioned, is 60' to trigger. It has nothing to do with the range of the spell, it has to do with the text that allows it's use.
"Casting Time: I reaction, which you take when you see a creature within 60 feet of you casting a spell" ... range isn't relevant so using distant metamagic doesn't matter.

3) Counterspelling spiritual weapon is a waste of a spell slot - it isn't really worthwhile counterspelling.

4) How does the DM play spell identification? Do you know what spell the bad guys cast before they complete it? If you play RAW where you don't know what spell it is until after it is cast then write down what you are casting on a piece of paper. Tell the DM you are casting a spell and ask if he is counterspelling then reveal your spell. It will be amusing as he uses counterspells on cantrips if your table plays that way. In addition, bosses are supposed to have limited spell slots though this may not matter since battles are short. More important is that when the BBEG uses counterspell he burns his reaction. He can't cast shield, can't take any other reactions which may make him a lot easier for your team mates to take down.

---

However, it seems to me that the DM in this case would appear to be intentionally trying to bother you with the implicit support of everyone else in the party. If the DM is only counterspelling your spells and not others in the party. If he makes sure to counterspell every attack spell you use and not anyone else's then the DM is intentionally being an a**hat.

Maybe you need to figure out why? The thing is, the DM is in charge, they more or less set the rules and decide how the NPCs act. Changing your character will not fix any issue that has to do with a DM mistreating your characters. No matter what character you choose the DM can come up with something to make it unenjoyable to play.

Unfortunately, it is impossible for a bunch of us on an internet forum to give you any insight into the dynamics of the group or why the DM would decide to behave badly. Teasing, jealousy, for laughs, maladjusted, no significant other ... the list is virtually endless.

Anyway, if the game isn't fun, leave, find a new DM, take your fiance with you. Life is too short to spend it wasting time on an activity that isn't fun or worthwhile.

[Alhallor]

I just have to ask, are your damage spells the only one who got countered?

If yes, that is really... I don't know effed up? Especially with the "don't know how to play a supporter" quip you overheard?

The very cool thing about the RP hobby is that you can subvert expectations, playing a Necromancer that uses undead to make graveyards more safe? No Problem. A rogue who is an official retriever of artifacts from familiy tombs? No Problem. Cleric who calls down the wrath of his god to burn down unholy abominations? No Problem.

I would advise talking to the GM again and tell him that you feel there is a crucial part of your hobby that he cuts away and you don't have fun like this and if he wants to cripple all your characters.

Sometimes it helps if you confront people with what their doing. Ask him if he really has such a narrow view of the classes (Clerics do Support, mages blast, warriors tank...) and if yes I would think about if you really want to play in that narrow world. (I can understand still wanting to play, but it seems he really cuts into individuality.)

[Cygnia]

I'd walk. And I'd also remind your fiance to have your back in this case.

[Grey Watcher]

Adding to the chorus of people saying it's probably time to just walk.

Even if your Light Cleric successfully leaves, it sounds like, unless you manage to read the DM's mind about what you SHOULD be playing, you'll hit a similar problem, like them arbitrarily making Sneak Attack harder to use or suddenly giving everything a ridiculous perception bonuses. That, or the DM has it I'm for you for whatever reason and will make your life miserable no matter what.

Either way, just don't bother anymore. Not worth going to a game that's so frustrating that it's managed to literally give you nightmares.

[BurgerBeast]

Definitely walk. I not only wouldn't play with this person... I’d not be around him/her. I don’t suffer petty losers.

But here’s the problem, as I see it. You’ve chosen a course of action that hurts the team in response to your anger at the DM. That’s a problem. They are right to be annoyed with you for acting this way. You gave up in the middle of a fight that they cared about.

But what’s worse is that the DM “is winning” (so to speak). Suppose that he/she is intentionally trying to turn the group against you. If that were the case, then you’ve taken the bait and fallen right into the trap. You’ve been used as a marionette.

Basically, don’t let this @#%! turn you into a @#%!.

I hope this is helpful.

[KorvinStarmast]

Is it okay to be angry about this one?
Yes, but for your own good please let the anger pass since it is an unproductive emotion. I had to learn that the hard way IRL ... so I'll pass that lesson from life along to you.
Anger is an understandable reaction to broken promises and broken expectations. You seem to have had an expectation of fun in this
pastime that has been either ignored, underserved, or possibly deliberately trampled upon. The thing with anger is, as long as you hold onto it you'll tend to pursue destructive courses of action. (Again, life's hard experience talking here. A bit of anger management workshop and a professional counsellor helped me see what was going on).

Your next step is to acknowledge the anger, and then set it aside while you look at solving the problem via communication. There's some good advice from the other answers on how to approach that. This one's pretty good, so I'll repeat it.

But don't walk away yet. Address the group, whether in person or over some kind of IM, and tell them EXACTLY why you want to leave. Tell them what they've done to you, how they've made you feel, and how their behaviours would be unfair towards anyone. I'll suggest that you add in "I play this game with you all to have fun together, but not only is this not fun, it feels like I am being picked on. That's not just not fun, it hurts."
Some of the people in your group may not realize that this can be a hurtful situation.
Addressing the problems with them shows you're willing to be honest & considerate with them, informing them the problems in the hopes you can co-operate to resolve them. The ball's then in their court, and how they react determines what happens next: If they aren't willing to change, walk away. If they are, a break might be good anyway.
That's pretty good advice, right there. Some members of the group may be blind to how hurtful this situation is.

If they are callously being hurtful to you, walking is the correct course of action.
If they are being hurtful unintentionally, there's hope that you can mend fences.

Best of luck and best wishes.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Hate to potentially bring up gone and forgotten memories, but is this the same DM before that you had issues with as a Barbarian? I recall your next character was going to be a Sorlock, if it is the same one and you've already switched to Cleric for one reason or another, I can't help but see a mountain of red flags.

This DM is out to get you, there's no two ways about it. Even with just this session in mind you've described yourself being personally targeted by the DM in a way that doesn't enable you to play your character in the ways that you would like.

If it is the same DM as previously, I'm sorry to say that hope of a peaceful resolution to this is probably not there. The situation before would have been enough for me to peace out, this situation now would have been enough. If both of them together happened together I would steer clear of this table for the rest of my life.

[Squark]

Yeah, I'd have to agree that you should bail. Try not to burn any more bridges than you have to, of course. I'd also council against calling the DM out too much for his behavior- The other players are on his "side" at the moment to some extent; If he makes it feel like you're attacking him, it'll probably just make things worse. So, standard conflict resolution stuff, I guess. Talk about how you feel without placing any more blame than you have to. Let your fiance in on the whole story in private, of course.

I do agree that going suicidal was the wrong move. While perhaps a certain amount of recklessness on your character's part could have been justified by In Character despair, making yourself a liability just made you the bad guy in this situation; Probably what the DM wanted all along. Plus, there's always the risk you dredge up something uncomfortable you don't know about for one of the other players. Admitting fault here should hopefully go some way towards mending fences with the other players.

EDIT: I missed the bit about the game being played in your home. That... complicates things a bit. Definately talk to your fiance about how to resolve this.

[Maelynn]

A lot of the responses focus on the DM. And while yes, he does come across like one who abuses his power in specific cases, there's other things that catch my eye.

- your fiancé didn't back you up the way you wanted him to.

It could be that his way of having your back was to save your PC, perhaps because they thought that you were just a bit miffed and didn't really want your character to die ("come on hun, chin up, it'll be all right, don't give up just yet"). It could also be that healing you 'against your wishes' was only because the group started to joke about healing you - just like the rest of the group, they didn't take you seriously only because they thought you weren't really serious. Your story didn't go into much detail about his stance after the fact. Have you talked about it with him? Told him what you told us? Surely he will support you once he heard what you wrote in this thread?

- D&D is hosted at your place, and it seems the sessions will continue there even if you leave the group.

Surely you have a say in who enters your house and who doesn't. At the very least it's something you discuss with your partner, because normally both have an equal say in who can come over. It could be a bit different if it's his house and you moved in with him (some people think that makes his opinion superior to yours), but even then you should still have influence. Besides, I doubt he'll want you to feel unhappy in your own home. Have you talked about it with him? Of course leaving the party is a last resort and you should try other methods first, but it's important that you know what will happen if you do leave. You need to know if your man has your back.

My advice would be to talk with your fiancé first. Tell him what you told us, how it's ruining your fun. Ask him how he feels about your plan to roll up a Rogue and if he wants to back you up. Then wait and see what happens with your Rogue (see if you're treated fairly now, or that the DM starts throwing around bosses that are immune to SA like someone predicted). If the Rogue gets the same treatment, point it out to your fiancé. If they see it too and back you up, then you call the DM out on this at the table. From there you'll just have to see how it goes.

[samcifer]

Martial characters work just fine and it's only my pc's attack spells that are countered. He has at best a +3 stat to attack with one only simple weapons with only 1 weapon attack per turn, so he's only good for attacking with spells. When that's shut down, all he's hood for is healing. I made a LIGHT cleric, not a Life cleric. If I had, it would be fine, but I enjoy playing DPS characters and this character seems to be forbidden from attacking any bosses. THAT'S my issue. The bard can usevall the damage spells he wants, but not me, apparently. :(

[Zman]

He is a problem as is your passive aggressive suicide moves.

Talk to him in an open setting with the group. If that doesn't resolve the problem then you have three options: 1. Just deal with it. 2. Leave the group. 3. Force him out.

I'd try effective communication. Then I'd force him out for being terrible.

[Segev]

Just retire the character. No need for suicide. The character is no fun to play? Then he clearly has better things to do than adventure. Have him quit.

They'll either let you build a new character, or they won't. They can't force you to keep playing this one.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'd try effective communication. Then I'd force him out for being terrible. Then who runs the game? :smalleek:

[Sigreid]

You could always epic quit. By that I mean go on the next adventure with this character and if the constant counterspelling happens, when you get to the big boss fight, wait for it to start and everyone to engage and then turn around and walk away.

Edit: bonus points for baring the door behind you so the rest of the party cant retreat. And yes, this is burning bridges.

[Cygnia]

I'm wondering if the Geek Social Fallacie (http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html)s are in play here...

[Sutekh]

Just use every spell slot you can to memorize/use Counter spell.
No healing, no nothing, sit in the back and counter spell EVERYTHING your douche of a DM throws at you.
Fight fire with fire.

If that's not your deal, Then I will add to the chorus of walk away, no one needs that junk in a hobby designed to be fun and cathartic.

[Bundin]

I'd walk. And I'd also remind your fiance to have your back in this case.

I'd not do the latter. At least, not to a different extent than the rest of the group. During ingame activity, real-life relationships shouldn't be relevant. During out-game conversations, strictly about the game, they also shouldn't matter.

I've once played with a couple, where one of the two expected support from the other, regardless of what was happeining in game. When that didn't always happen, there was whining, then tantrums, then others awkwardly mentioning that it was getting late and yes, it's been fun, bye!

[Goggalor]

Or... the most extreme measure is not allow the DM into your abode. You can easily trump his asshattery by saying he is not allowed in until he starts playing the game fairly with everyone, including you.
Otherwise you inform him that if he steps in, that he will be trespassing and you will call the authorities. With how much you are stressing over this, I would not play with this guy as DM and would tell the group to find a new place to game until a new DM is found.

[MoiMagnus]

You're DM counter-spells your spells because you casting spells against the boss go against what he want your role to be (healer), and goes against what he think boss battle should look like (Either because you are too efficient at nova, and would kill the boss too quickly, or use control spell like hold monster that make the fight trivial in case of success).

[To be fair, boss battle in 5e are kind of clumsy to handle, and can easily be anti-climactic, so I can totally see him being frustrated by bosses not working as intended against a player that actually knows how to use the system efficiently]

From this point there are 3 solutions:
1) Have a rational conversation with him, and convince him to change his vision of the game. Sound difficult, if not impossible, since you described him as particularly non-rational and almost hateful against you.
2) Walk away (possibly together with some other players), and find a new table, or become DM yourself. You will spare you some anger, and the other players will be able to have more fun than by constantly seeing the two of you getting on the nerve of the other one.
3) Adapt, and find a character and playstyle which is in the intersection of what you find fun, and what your DM will allow. Warning: the intersection might be empty.

[Damon_Tor]

(extreme trigger warnings)

Is this meant to be ironic?

I was expecting a story about a DM who was subjecting his players to violent fetishes or something. What is "triggering" about being counterspelled?

[Sutekh]

Is this meant to be ironic?

I was expecting a story about a DM who was subjecting his players to violent fetishes or something. What is "triggering" about being counterspelled?

It's about being marginalized in your "escape" environment -in your own home-.
If you don't get that, I don't know what to say.

[Squark]

Running this scenario over in my head, I'm inclined not to attribute malice to the other players' reactions. I think they just misread what you were feeling and tried to diffuse the situation (poorly) while stopping you from doing anything you'd later regret. Plus, In character its unlikely they'd leave a comrade to die. So I'd definitely caution humility and apologies when discussing this when them.

Is this meant to be ironic?

I was expecting a story about a DM who was subjecting his players to violent fetishes or something. What is "triggering" about being counterspelled?

Attempted Suicide (Albiet in game)

[Hail Tempus]

I play a War Cleric. I'd die laughing if a DM was dumb enough to waste the boss's reaction on my Spiritual Weapon. Another party member should be smart enough in that situation to hit the boss with their deadliest spell.

But, it sounds like there are other, more serious, problems at that table.

[Sigreid]

So, at the core of this, you are absolutely not required to play a character you are not enjoying for any reason. You're certainly not required to play a character you are not enjoying because the rest of the party wants you to be a cleric.

Earlier jokes aside, just tell the group that you're not enjoying the character and not getting to fill the role you intended so you're going to play something else. If they dont want you to switch say "I appreciate you like this character but I dont. I wont be playing him again.

[JNAProductions]

Here's what I'd say, having read the OP:

It's 100% fine to be angry about this. That being said, do NOT lash out at your friends. Let yourself calm down so you don't say anything hurtful or mean, and have an open discussion with your DM and other players. Hopefully, you'll be able to explain your frustration and they'll understand, and you can then either roll up a new character or play the same one, but with your abilities actually usable.

If they don't allow that... Don't play with them. It ain't worth it.

[Cygnia]

Actually, do you consider the other players friends at all -- or are they just the people you happen to game with (and yes, there can be a difference)? Because if they're all encouraged to dogpile on you (and willingly do it)/refuse to call the GM out on his vendetta, don't walk -- RUN.

[patchyman]

If they are callously being hurtful to you, walking is the correct course of action.
If they are being hurtful unintentionally, there's hope that you can mend fences.

Best of luck and best wishes.

And start by talking to your fiancé. They should have your back, it will help you choose your words when you speak to the others, and maybe they can offer perspective on the situation.

[Waterdeep Merch]

You can be mad, but put that energy to something productive. Being inspired out of anger is healthy; acting out of anger is not. Here's a short technique:

1. Pick out what exactly makes you the most angry first, see if you can write them in order of anger.

2. Starting at the bottom (the smallest offenses), look at the problem and ask yourself what three possible ways you, personally, can solve that problem going forward.

3. Starting at the bottom again, read your solutions and ask yourself if they're worth doing.

4. For every point that you don't believe any of your solutions are worth attempting (perhaps because of the damage they'd cause), make a decision to let that point go. You either can't or don't want to solve it- this is not inherently a bad thing, but continuing to mull over it is. Your only recourse is to get over it. Put your energies to doing this.

5. For every point that you see a possible solution that you believe could work and is worth attempting, give it a try! Still start at the bottom- it's easier to work through minor issues than to start by tackling the hard things. You may not succeed, but you'll have greater insight into the problem going forward. Do this again if you have to, using what you've learned to either finally solve your problems or finally let it go, depending on what happens. It's okay to come back to this process if you discover you can't let things go, too. Maybe a better idea will come to you in the future.

Good luck!

[GlenSmash!]

What I see here is that you don't trust that your DM is being fair and consistent.

That's not something that can be fixed with rolling up a different character.

[Pex]

Quit the game. The DM for whatever reason doesn't want you there. You can never succeed to do what you want. When the DM has to make up rules to justify why your character can't do what you want it to or have something bad happen, he's not even pretending to be fair.

[Frozenstep]

You can try talking things through, make the group understand how much this is frustrating you because they might have noticed, but I think at your point of frustration you might be better off just saying "I'm sorry, I just don't have fun in these sessions anymore, I'm going to be dropping out."

Even if you managed to explain your frustrations and even if the DM vowed to change things, I don't think you would be able to play a session with that DM without being on alert for unfair treatment, and that's going to poison your ability to enjoy the game.

[stoutstien]

I know that I do a lot of grumbling on here, but this time I think I have a legitimate point here.

So I've been playing a light cleric during the wednesday night group and every time I've tried to use blasting spells like fireball or cast Spiritual Weapon against a boss, it gets counterspelled every time. Knowing the 60' range of Counterspell, I thought that this time I was ready.

As we were going into battle against a lich, the dm said that the boss we were about to fight had some levels of fighter, sorcerer, and some third class I can't remember. The bsttle begins, we roll initiative and I get a crit, which I feel bodes well. I make sure that my character is 80 ft. away from the boss and for my first turn, I try to cast Spiritual weapon. The dm says that the boss counterspells it. I tel him that I'm too far away for that and he replies that he had both heightened and distant his counterspell, something that I know, having played sorcerers myself before, is an illegal move. I let it go and use Dodge as my action for the turn. The bard casts Guiding Bolt and hits the boss lich successfully without being counterspelled.

On the dm's turn he unleashes a 20 ft. radius swarm of insects that hits me and a few others and I lose 42 of my 82 hp. I Knowing from past experience with this dm and having already had a bad day out of game, I've kind of had it with him and, no longer enjoying the character, I use dodge and end my turn while still inside of the swarm of insects he cast last turn.

Now I want to explain why I did this. During the campaign so far, every boss we've gone up against has counterspelled every spell I've tried to cast against them. This is the 4th time that this has happened when using this character during the campaign and to be honest, it's gotten me so frustrated that I don't want to play him anymore because I had designed him to be a blaster with some healing options, but healing is the only kind of casting he allows my character to do.

Wanting a change of character, I had begun to try killing the character by letting him get dropped to 0 so that I can go with a non-caster character who won't have his attack negated so often.

The other players ask me why I intentionally stay inside of the swarm and the dm finds it funny that I had stayed there and rolls damage, dropping me to 0hp. The other players start asking why I did that and I explained that I was unable to play my cleric as a blaster the why he was designed. The other players tell me that I can still heal them, to which I point out that there's a druid, a bard, an artificer and a second (war) cleric in the party, but no rogue and that's what I'd like to play next. They counter, saying that they LIKE having 2 clerics in the party and start jokingly say that they're going to heal me even though I tell them that I want the character to die.

The druid and artificer who go after me in initiative leave me be, but the war cleric (my fiance') forces healing onto me against my wishes. On my next turn I use half my movement to get up, then dash another 15 ft. towards the boss, planning to tackle him in hopes of taking more damage. The bard goes next and manages to take the phylactery from the lich boss' neck and with effort from him and the blood hunter, they destroy it and kill him before my next turn comes.

I'll admit that I'm being salty about this, but I made my character to be a blaster, yet am only allowed to heal whenever we go up against a boss and it's happened several times. I also wand to re-iterate that the dm broke the rules of metamagic by using two metamagics that are not legally allowed to be used together.

I also what to point out that this same person once played a sorcerer in another campaign and was twinning and heightening Fireball for his action, then quickening and twinning Fireball as his bonus action in the same turn and he did this several times during that campaign. During a campaign before that he was playing Rick from Rick and Morty as a gunsmith artificer with the sharpshooter feat, then argued when the dm had his dwarves in a fort use a turret-style mounted gatling gun on Rick who was 500 ft. away. The player argued that he was too far away and when the dm pointed out that he had a blunderbuss with 500 ft. range, the gatling having the same range. They argued over this, the dm pointing out that a gatling was technologically superior to a blunderbuss, but 'Rick' disagreed and after several minutes of arguing in front of the rest of the table, the dm threw up his hands and let 'Rick' have his way. Later during that campaign we were going through a dungeon and were in a puzzle room with undead when Rick detonated a suicide bomb built into his vest and died. He had not discussed this with anyone beforehand and it was a shock to all of us, the dm included.

That dm confessed to me later than the Rick player has been known to take away experience points from players if he didn't like their jokes and I've watched him tell a player that they had disadvantage on their next attack roll when making a joke he didn't like when he's the dm.

This also isn't the first time during this campaign (the one he's currently dm-ing) that he's shut down all my attack spells during battle. In a session a few weeks ago he had us go up against a boss who had second wind, evasion, counterspell and the ability to reflect spell projectiles back at the caster. I wasn't able to do even 1 pt. of damage to him during that entire battle and was only able to heal other players.

He's used counterspell against my attack spells several other times as well. He's also mentioned between sessions in a joking manner that I don't know how to play a support character. This makes me wonder if he thinks that a cleric isn't allowed to be a blaster.

At least we leveled up to 11, but I'm beginning to consider quitting the game. I went to bed, too angry with my fiance' to speak with him, and only slept 4 hrs after waking up from a dream where I was in the same campaign, we were going up against Cthulhu and I had my character pick a fight with him by casting magic missile at lv. 5. The dm and other players started laughing, thinking that it was a joke, and I woke up.

The dm has accused me of being a min-maxer and yes, I admit that I am, but only against him. I never went through this kind of thing with the previous dm and am rather salty at the way the rest of the group is being on insisting that I keep the character simply to add more healing that is redundant.

Start using double blind casting. Have all your spells written down on separate slips of paper with coins representing spell lv. Palm them and declare you are casting. The DM must deside to use counter spell before they know what spell is cast.

Then reroll a character with no healing. If you don't want to heal dont. Full stop .

[Sparky McDibben]

I recommend having an open conversation with the whole table. Bring notes so the DM can't just waive it off as saying "Oh, you're exaggerating." Tell them what's going on, why you're frustrated, and mention that this is not the first time you've felt this way.

However, do not mention the metamagic thing. DM's can break the rules. Just talk about what's frustrating you with the game.

There are three basic ways this goes. In option 1, the DM and other players realize they've been making this less fun for you, and you guys have a conversation about how to fix that. In Option 2, the other players realize your characters have been getting kind of screwed over, and you have some ammo with a recalcitrant DM. Finally, in option 3, the DM and the other players all disagree with you and tell you you're imagining things.

Option 1 is hunky-dory. In option 3, I recommend leaving the group. For option 2, if the DM keeps pulling this crap, I recommend offering to DM for your friends. Just ask them if they'd like to play a game with you, instead of the other guy. If they're down, you're good.

Also, is this the same group as the Dresden Files game?

[Zman]

Then who runs the game? :smalleek:

Not the terrible DM, that is the point. If the campaign dies, it dies, and you find an a new DM and new campaign.

[KorvinStarmast]

Not the terrible DM, that is the point. If the campaign dies, it dies, and you find an a new DM and new campaign. This presumes that the entire group of people include one who wants to DM.

In my experience, it doesn't always work out that way, although sometimes it does.

It really depends on the group.

Also, depending on where one lives. the number of DMs/groups one may fit in with is significantly limited.

In a perfect world, yeah, your suggestion is a decent one. Get a different DM.
In the messy real world, that sometimes isn't an option.

[samcifer]

So I finally(!!!) have a few moments to reply at work, so here goes...

Anything I would try to do to fix this with the character including blind-casting (love the idea, btw), would come off as me being an a**h***, and martial characters have been allowed to function just fine in this campaign, so I will rule that my character had, after his close encounter with the lich and his attack spell/prayers having failed him, lost his faith, abandoned his calling and left in the night without any word to anyone. I'll then offer my new character (the tabaxi bear-totem 5 / Scout rogue 4 / fighter 2 thanks to leveling up at the end of last night's session) who uses STR to attack with barb bonuses and a rapier for SA damage as well as focusing on hit-and-run tactics to replace him. (the dm makes fun of me for always beign a ranged character, but let's see him keep up with my 50ft. base movement and up to 200ft. of movement from bonus-action dashing and the tabaxi racial power to double my movement speed).

If the dm says no, I'll quit the game and if yes, play a few more sessions to see if he tries anything else to my new character. If he does, I'll quit right then and there in front of everyone, stating my reasons why to the group as a whole, and probably quit the every other Friday game as well if he pushes my buttons hard enough as he dms that campaign too.

Perhaps I could find an group who plays online. The problem is that I work 9:30am to 6:30pm every weekday and have sleep apnia, so I can't stay up late on nights before work, so my only times to play are Friday night through Sunday afternoon and most groups in my area don't play during those days/hours, severely limiting my options on playing. :(

Also, the dm is married (to a fairly nice woman) and with my fiance' we all live together in the same house, so making too much of a scene would cause severe issues I'd prefer to avoid if possible in spite of how much this p***** me off.

[jaappleton]

I’m getting pissed off just reading this. Damn.

The whole point of the damn game is to feel like a hero! How can you do that if your core feature is nullified?

Is this DM one of those dinks that think Clerics are supposed to heal and that’s all?

Samcifer, I know you’ve been mentioning a desire to play Rogue but it seems this dingus of a DM will even try to find ways to ensure you can’t get Sneak Attack. If you can’t cast offensive spells for no damn reason, I refuse to give the benefit of the doubt for other abilities being allowed.

If you are set on continueing (more in a moment), I’d actually suggest full Barbarian. Let’s see ‘em try to disallow RAGE, and besides, having your new PC come in with a big angry ****off Weapon fueled by pure hatred of bullcrap is pretty damn appropriate for this scenario.

Back to whether or not you should continue... No D&D is better than bad D&D. And besides, there’s TONS of ways to play! You could find an online game, like maybe on Roll20 or another site! Don’t think that you don’t have options to play! Walking away from this table doesn’t mean you have to stop playing.

[KorvinStarmast]

Back to whether or not you should continue... No D&D is better than bad D&D. And besides, there’s TONS of ways to play! You could find an online game, like maybe on Roll20 or another site! Don’t think that you don’t have options to play! Walking away from this table doesn’t mean you have to stop playing. Did you catch this little detail/wrinkle (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=24170335&postcount=52)?

Also, the dm is married (to a fairly nice woman) and with my fiance' we all live together in the same house, so making too much of a scene would cause severe issues I'd prefer to avoid if possible in spite of how much this p***** me off. this forum may be the only safe place to vent frustration with the overall situation.

[samcifer]

I’m getting pissed off just reading this. Damn.

The whole point of the damn game is to feel like a hero! How can you do that if your core feature is nullified?

Is this DM one of those dinks that think Clerics are supposed to heal and that’s all?

Samcifer, I know you’ve been mentioning a desire to play Rogue but it seems this dingus of a DM will even try to find ways to ensure you can’t get Sneak Attack. If you can’t cast offensive spells for no damn reason, I refuse to give the benefit of the doubt for other abilities being allowed.

If you are set on continueing (more in a moment), I’d actually suggest full Barbarian. Let’s see ‘em try to disallow RAGE, and besides, having your new PC come in with a big angry ****off Weapon fueled by pure hatred of bullcrap is pretty damn appropriate for this scenario.

Back to whether or not you should continue... No D&D is better than bad D&D. And besides, there’s TONS of ways to play! You could find an online game, like maybe on Roll20 or another site! Don’t think that you don’t have options to play! Walking away from this table doesn’t mean you have to stop playing.

I'd want at least 2 levels of rogue for cunning action so that I can dash. My above build has mobile as a feat, so that's a minimum of 50 ft of movement per turn. I love the idea of playing keep away as a melee character and with up to 200 ft of movement in a turn, I'd literally run circles around foes. I COULD go bear totem barb 8, scout rogue 3. Being able to walk up to 25 ft away when foes approach me without taking an oa when I was already 30 ft. away would be pretty sweet as a defense on top of bear resistance. I love thos concept more and more of late and thats not even takung this abusive dm into account.

[dragoeniex]

Samcifer, I know you’ve been mentioning a desire to play Rogue but it seems this dingus of a DM will even try to find ways to ensure you can’t get Sneak Attack. If you can’t cast offensive spells for no damn reason, I refuse to give the benefit of the doubt for other abilities being allowed.

If you are set on continueing (more in a moment), I’d actually suggest full Barbarian. Let’s see ‘em try to disallow RAGE, and besides, having your new PC come in with a big angry ****off Weapon fueled by pure hatred of bullcrap is pretty damn appropriate for this scenario.


In defense of the Swashbuckler tactic, that's by far the easiest rogue subclass to ensure no-fuss sneak attack damage with. It's also a fun set to play with and gives free disengages to your high-speed rage ball.

Saying "no" to rages is just a matter of keeping enemies at a distance where the barb either has to dash/do something else that drops rage, or make attacks that won't hit just to keep it up. The bonus action dash and free disengages will add nice maneuverability to help counter that.

I'd say the main thing here is the OP putting together a martial build he finds fun.




OP: Since your working theory is the problem stems from you being pigeon-holed as a healer, I'd say this is definitely worth a try. Keep in mind it's not about trying to "beat" the DM, since if the DM is set on actually ruining your ability to play, they'll find a way regardless of what you bring in. Tactics on enemies is fine; the comments you mentioned, though, do make it sound like you're being singled out for not playing "a support character" correctly.

Not playing the "support character" is a good option, then, and it's a nice way for you to make an effort that removes a contributing problem. If it works, kudos! Enjoy swashing. If problems persist in an unreasonable way, you can explain that you've tried to work with the team and DM but are at your breaking point and walk away.

Stay classy, and good luck!

[Magicspook]

Maybe you could consider showing this thread to your DM? With or whithout mentioning that this is actually your thread. Just put a link in your group chat (Im sure you have something like that).

[MaXenzie]

Glad you're taking the leap to try and force them to accept a different character.

If you did stay Cleric, I would've suggested un-prepping all healing spells (since Light Cleric has no mandatory healing spells prepped) and then adamantly NOT be a healer.

If they don't let you change character, do the thing above (or quit, which is a better idea.)

[Contrast]

If you are set on continueing (more in a moment), I’d actually suggest full Barbarian. Let’s see ‘em try to disallow RAGE, and besides, having your new PC come in with a big angry ****off Weapon fueled by pure hatred of bullcrap is pretty damn appropriate for this scenario.

Possibly not the solution OP is looking for given previous threads (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?592489-I-don-t-want-to-be-a-melee-anymore-It-s-too-stressful) about finding playing barbarians stressful.

[Kane0]

"Mate, I'm just not having fun in your game(s). Reckon we could head out for lunch and talk it over?"

Edit: de-Australian that as necessary.

[samcifer]

In defense of the Swashbuckler tactic, that's by far the easiest rogue subclass to ensure no-fuss sneak attack damage with. It's also a fun set to play with and gives free disengages to your high-speed rage ball.

Saying "no" to rages is just a matter of keeping enemies at a distance where the barb either has to dash/do something else that drops rage, or make attacks that won't hit just to keep it up. The bonus action dash and free disengages will add nice maneuverability to help counter that.

I'd say the main thing here is the OP putting together a martial build he finds fun.




OP: Since your working theory is the problem stems from you being pigeon-holed as a healer, I'd say this is definitely worth a try. Keep in mind it's not about trying to "beat" the DM, since if the DM is set on actually ruining your ability to play, they'll find a way regardless of what you bring in. Tactics on enemies is fine; the comments you mentioned, though, do make it sound like you're being singled out for not playing "a support character" correctly.

Not playing the "support character" is a good option, then, and it's a nice way for you to make an effort that removes a contributing problem. If it works, kudos! Enjoy swashing. If problems persist in an unreasonable way, you can explain that you've tried to work with the team and DM but are at your breaking point and walk away.

Stay classy, and good luck!

I mean it'd be one thing if I was a healing-focused Life cleric, but I like playing dps characters so I went with Light cleric for some blasting and the dm is acting as if it's illegal for a cleric to blast. If that was the case, they never would've added that subclass to ANY book let alone the phb.

As for the players wanting me to heal, I think they're forgetting the fact that they already have 4 other pcs with healing spells. It's pretty unreasonable to force me to play a support role I don't enjoy against my will just so that they can stick around longer. They're not bad people, really, and I like playing with this more team-oriented group than my Friday group, but acting like I'm the bad guy for not wanting to play what they want me to play instead of what -I- want to play is pretty unfair.

As for my idea for my new character, I created him in a character creator and got the following on a bear totem barb 7 / scout rogue 4:

STR: 20, DEX: 18, CON: 16, INT: 12, WIS: 14, CON: 16
Speed: 50 ft., AC: 19 (unarmored + shield), HP: 107, Initiative: +4, Save profs: STR + CON
Skills profs. : Doubled Athletics (rogue), Acrobatics, Doubled Slight of Hand (rogue), Stealth, Doubled Nature (scout), Perception, Doubled Survival (scout), and Intimidation.
Weapon: Rapier, attack stat: STR.

On Barb levels this gives me resistance to all damage but psychic, extra attack, Advantage to dex saves, reckless attack, +2 rage damage, advantage on STR saves and checks, advantage on inititative rolls, and I took Eagle for my totem 6 because it was the only one that sounded useful and didn't clash with the bonus skill prof.s of Tiger.
On rogue, I have 4 doubled skill prof.s, +2d6 Sneak Attack damage, and I can retreat up to 25 ft. of a foe approaches me without triggering an oa.

Mobile feat and Reckless attack's advantage replace the loss of Swashbuckler's lv. 3 features and the Alert feat later replaces the final one of them not already covered.

For my next level, which would be in 2 or 3 weeks as that's how frequently we level up, I could either go Barb 8 for another asi/feat or go rogue 5 for uncanny dodge, which is a class feature I really want to have at some point on this character.

[Themrys]

Is this meant to be ironic?

I was expecting a story about a DM who was subjecting his players to violent fetishes or something. What is "triggering" about being counterspelled?

I wondered that too. Was waiting for the whole first page for the triggering thing to turn up.

Sure, having a horrid DM in your own home is a particularly nasty situation that I have been in, but even though as a single woman I didn't dare kick him out as such, but just told him to not return per e-mail later, I can't say this thread triggered flashbacks or anything.



Since not playing with that group anymore doesn't seem to be an option, I'd go the "Cleric loses faith and leaves, new character can't be forced into the role of healer" route. It is quite possible the DM isn't being antagonistic, as such, but just wants things to be like he wants them, and he happens to want clerics to only heal.

The horrible guy I had the misfortune of playing with wasn't antagonizing every action of my character ... just every action of hers that didn't fit into his misogynist worldview. Had I decided to play a male character, he would likely either have vetoed it, or tried to push that character into acting in a stereotypical masculine way, so it wouldn't have solved the problem.

What you need to find out is if the DM stereotypes clerics (in which case playing a different character would work) or you as a person.

In the latter case, changing characters won't work.



Definitely talk to your fiance. Is his involvement the reason why you feel this warrants a trigger warning? You feel betrayed?

[samcifer]

I wondered that too. Was waiting for the whole first page for the triggering thing to turn up.

Sure, having a horrid DM in your own home is a particularly nasty situation that I have been in, but even though as a single woman I didn't dare kick him out as such, but just told him to not return per e-mail later, I can't say this thread triggered flashbacks or anything.



Since not playing with that group anymore doesn't seem to be an option, I'd go the "Cleric loses faith and leaves, new character can't be forced into the role of healer" route. It is quite possible the DM isn't being antagonistic, as such, but just wants things to be like he wants them, and he happens to want clerics to only heal.

The horrible guy I had the misfortune of playing with wasn't antagonizing every action of my character ... just every action of hers that didn't fit into his misogynist worldview. Had I decided to play a male character, he would likely either have vetoed it, or tried to push that character into acting in a stereotypical masculine way, so it wouldn't have solved the problem.

What you need to find out is if the DM stereotypes clerics (in which case playing a different character would work) or you as a person.

In the latter case, changing characters won't work.



Definitely talk to your fiance. Is his involvement the reason why you feel this warrants a trigger warning? You feel betrayed?

I said trigger warning because there have been a lot of ranting posts on here from me as a player that I know have warn thin on some folks' nerves.

Later I'll have to relate (maybe in a separate thread) how our one player had his fighter die by a drug dealer's drug-cooking pan, how that same player on a different pc murdered a shopkeeper while haggling, or how we recently lost our barbarian after he got into a fight with the sorcerer of the party.

It's all pretty messed up stuff...

[dragoeniex]

I mean it'd be one thing if I was a healing-focused Life cleric, but I like playing dps characters so I went with Light cleric for some blasting and the dm is acting as if it's illegal for a cleric to blast. If that was the case, they never would've added that subclass to ANY book let alone the phb.

As for the players wanting me to heal, I think they're forgetting the fact that they already have 4 other pcs with healing spells. It's pretty unreasonable to force me to play a support role I don't enjoy against my will just so that they can stick around longer. They're not bad people, really, and I like playing with this more team-oriented group than my Friday group, but acting like I'm the bad guy for not wanting to play what they want me to play instead of what -I- want to play is pretty unfair.

As for my idea for my new character, I created him in a character creator and got the following on a bear totem barb 7 / scout rogue 4:

STR: 20, DEX: 18, CON: 16, INT: 12, WIS: 14, CON: 16
Speed: 50 ft., AC: 19 (unarmored + shield), HP: 107, Initiative: +4, Save profs: STR + CON
Skills profs. : Doubled Athletics (rogue), Acrobatics, Doubled Slight of Hand (rogue), Stealth, Doubled Nature (scout), Perception, Doubled Survival (scout), and Intimidation.
Weapon: Rapier, attack stat: STR.

On Barb levels this gives me resistance to all damage but psychic, extra attack, Advantage to dex saves, reckless attack, +2 rage damage, advantage on STR saves and checks, advantage on inititative rolls, and I took Eagle for my totem 6 because it was the only one that sounded useful and didn't clash with the bonus skill prof.s of Tiger.
On rogue, I have 4 doubled skill prof.s, +2d6 Sneak Attack damage, and I can retreat up to 25 ft. of a foe approaches me without triggering an oa.

Mobile feat and Reckless attack's advantage replace the loss of Swashbuckler's lv. 3 features and the Alert feat later replaces the final one of them not already covered.

For my next level, which would be in 2 or 3 weeks as that's how frequently we level up, I could either go Barb 8 for another asi/feat or go rogue 5 for uncanny dodge, which is a class feature I really want to have at some point on this character.


See, I slightly disagree. The reason I've put "support class" in quotations is that, while they make marvelous supports, they shouldn't be forced to fit that mold. Even a Life Cleric has damaging options on their base spell list that they can and should feel free to whip out as often as desired. Clerics are full casters, not full healers specifically.

My group will be starting a new game in a couple months, and we've got one member coming in with a cleric that will heal rarely- if ever. He just liked a lot of the other spells they get access to. The team had to reassure him we wouldn't expect healing if he didn't want to do it regularly.



Seems like you've got some fun ideas for the new character! I'm partial to Uncanny Dodge myself, but plenty of feats would be nice too.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I don't know them well enough to judge, but it doesn't sound like your fiance necessarily meant anything bad by saving you. You ought to get the answer from him yourself- maybe he thought you'd regret it later, maybe he was afraid you were going to ditch the game altogether, maybe he was trying to keep things copacetic between you and the rest of the group, or maybe he just couldn't deal with seeing you do something like that, even in an elf game. There are a lot of possibilities here; for him, at least, assume he didn't mean anything bad until he's gotten the chance to tell you what he was thinking. This isn't worth killing a good relationship over.

[Contrast]

I can retreat up to 25 ft. of a foe approaches me without triggering an oa.

Just a reminder in case you haven't registered, the retreat is at the end of the enemies turn so they are free to attack you first. It also uses your reaction which conflicts with Uncanny Dodge if you're planning on picking that up later.

If you're a melee rogue who intends to run away from melee off turn you can bonus action disengage and are also picking up Mobile that feature is honestly almost a ribbon as you'd much rather wait until your enemies turn so your can use your movement to move away rather than having to spend half of it moving back into melee.

Scout is fun in terms of the extra expertises you pick up but that ability is kind of less impactful than you might first think (particularly if a DM groups enemies together to act on the same initiative).

[samcifer]

Just a reminder in case you haven't registered, the retreat is at the end of the enemies turn so they are free to attack you first. It also uses your reaction which conflicts with Uncanny Dodge if you're planning on picking that up later.

If you're a melee rogue who intends to run away from melee off turn you can bonus action disengage and are also picking up Mobile that feature is honestly almost a ribbon as you'd much rather wait until your enemies turn so your can use your movement to move away rather than having to spend half of it moving back into melee.

Scout is fun in terms of the extra expertises you pick up but that ability is kind of less impactful than you might first think (particularly if a DM groups enemies together to act on the same initiative).

Damn, really? Sigh. Might as well go swashbuckler then and take either the tough feat or +2 DEX to boost my initiative more as well as my AC and all of my dex-based skills since Mobile would be a bit redundant save for the speed boost.

[Phhase]

"You don't know how to play a support class." Wow, that's incredibly jimmy-rustling. If he's really being egregious, you could just bring it up. Why doesn't anyone else get counterspelled? Pigeonholing someone into a role stereotype is really uncool.

My recommendation: play a class that can cast Silence, and build for grappling. Get magic items that also make silence, or Iron Bands of Bilarro. Take the Mage Killer feat. Precast Silence out of sight and sit on his precious casters' faces. Break their fingers/restrain them/otherwise force them to make tons of hard Concentration checks. Nobody gets to cast.

Alternatively, take a few levels of fighter to get Action Surge along with Sorceror Quicken. Cast three leveled spells in one turn. The enemy will only be able to Counter one, since you only get 1 reaction.

You could also show them this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y84OYRwzZU8), which emphasizes the smashing capabilities of cleric while being comedic.

[tKUUNK]

side note:

how many reactions do bosses get per round? counterspell is a reaction, right?

you could try jogging past the boss, triggering an opportunity attack to burn their reaction, THEN immediately cast the spell.

[samcifer]

Actually, I realized that Lucky was an option, so I took that for the second asi/feat because A: the dm never grants me inspiration (he does it rarely for anyone, in fact) and B: no crits for him unless I roll a botch (a 1 on the d20) to use them on instead.

[Yakmala]

First and foremost, as others have said in this thread, life is too short to waste time on a campaign that stresses you out this much.

But if finding another game is not an option, I suggest picking up a few levels of Sorcerer yourself, or change over to a Sorcerer, specifically for Subtle Spell. With no Verbal or Somatic components, the enemy has no idea your spell is coming and thus cannot counterspell.

And if the DM decides that his bosses can counterspell you regardless of subtle spell? Just politely say "thank you for the game" as you pick up your stuff and leave.

[Phhase]

But if finding another game is not an option, I suggest picking up a few levels of Sorcerer yourself, or change over to a Sorcerer, specifically for Subtle Spell. With no Verbal or Somatic components, the enemy has no idea your spell is coming and thus cannot counterspell.

Oh, that's an interesting approach. Neat. And it's not too janky either, a completely normal Sorcerer Thing.

[AdAstra]

One thing to look out for with that build is that even 14 wis will not be reliable against spells against that save. Many of those can easily disable your character, sometimes for multiple rounds. Even a non-hostile DM is likely to attempt to target your weaknesses, expect to see a lot of Hold Person in the future. On that note, maybe try to pay attention to see who he has his caster bosses use Counterspell on in the future, if any? Don't dwell on it too much if he doesn't, but the behavior is suspect at best.

Major thing: Someone wanting people to use all the abilities they have at their disposal isn't wrong. Wanting "support characters" to never do anything other than support is bad behavior (plus the existence of fire support). If your DM and fellow players apply this attitude toward the whole game, you may run into barriers when trying to use skills. Hopefully they don't see a Barbarian and immediately assume an angry simpleton with no social skills, but don't be surprised if they treat you like one in spite of your other abilities.

[samcifer]

One thing to look out for with that build is that even 14 wis will not be reliable against spells against that save. Many of those can easily disable your character, sometimes for multiple rounds. Even a non-hostile DM is likely to attempt to target your weaknesses, expect to see a lot of Hold Person in the future. On that note, maybe try to pay attention to see who he has his caster bosses use Counterspell on in the future, if any? Don't dwell on it too much if he doesn't, but the behavior is suspect at best.

Major thing: Someone wanting people to use all the abilities they have at their disposal isn't wrong. Wanting "support characters" to never do anything other than support is bad behavior (plus the existence of fire support). If your DM and fellow players apply this attitude toward the whole game, you may run into barriers when trying to use skills. Hopefully they don't see a Barbarian and immediately assume an angry simpleton with no social skills, but don't be surprised if they treat you like one in spite of your other abilities.

So would going Barb 8 and taking Resilient: Wisdom for my next level be the best way to go on my next level up?

[ad_hoc]

I said trigger warning because there have been a lot of ranting posts on here from me as a player that I know have warn thin on some folks' nerves.


I think the confusion here is that trigger warnings are given to allow people with PTSD (or similar) to avoid being triggered and having a panic attack (or similar).

To relate to this think of it as triggering the fight/flight/freeze response. If you were to turn around in your chair and there was a bear there lunging for you then you'd experience a sudden jolt of adrenaline. Some people with PTSD literally enter this state when triggered and relive their trauma as though it is currently happening to them. The body links the events together.

Nowadays people often give them as 'content' warnings rather than 'trigger' to include people who may experience extreme discomfort rather than the triggering of an outright episode.

When providing a trigger/content warning it is customary to include the subject matter that is being discussed for example - CW: sexual assault.

[GreyBlack]

I know that I do a lot of grumbling on here, but this time I think I have a legitimate point here.

So I've been playing a light cleric during the wednesday night group and every time I've tried to use blasting spells like fireball or cast Spiritual Weapon against a boss, it gets counterspelled every time. Knowing the 60' range of Counterspell, I thought that this time I was ready.

As we were going into battle against a lich, the dm said that the boss we were about to fight had some levels of fighter, sorcerer, and some third class I can't remember. The bsttle begins, we roll initiative and I get a crit, which I feel bodes well. I make sure that my character is 80 ft. away from the boss and for my first turn, I try to cast Spiritual weapon. The dm says that the boss counterspells it. I tel him that I'm too far away for that and he replies that he had both heightened and distant his counterspell, something that I know, having played sorcerers myself before, is an illegal move. I let it go and use Dodge as my action for the turn. The bard casts Guiding Bolt and hits the boss lich successfully without being counterspelled.

On the dm's turn he unleashes a 20 ft. radius swarm of insects that hits me and a few others and I lose 42 of my 82 hp. I Knowing from past experience with this dm and having already had a bad day out of game, I've kind of had it with him and, no longer enjoying the character, I use dodge and end my turn while still inside of the swarm of insects he cast last turn.

Now I want to explain why I did this. During the campaign so far, every boss we've gone up against has counterspelled every spell I've tried to cast against them. This is the 4th time that this has happened when using this character during the campaign and to be honest, it's gotten me so frustrated that I don't want to play him anymore because I had designed him to be a blaster with some healing options, but healing is the only kind of casting he allows my character to do.

Wanting a change of character, I had begun to try killing the character by letting him get dropped to 0 so that I can go with a non-caster character who won't have his attack negated so often.

The other players ask me why I intentionally stay inside of the swarm and the dm finds it funny that I had stayed there and rolls damage, dropping me to 0hp. The other players start asking why I did that and I explained that I was unable to play my cleric as a blaster the why he was designed. The other players tell me that I can still heal them, to which I point out that there's a druid, a bard, an artificer and a second (war) cleric in the party, but no rogue and that's what I'd like to play next. They counter, saying that they LIKE having 2 clerics in the party and start jokingly say that they're going to heal me even though I tell them that I want the character to die.

The druid and artificer who go after me in initiative leave me be, but the war cleric (my fiance') forces healing onto me against my wishes. On my next turn I use half my movement to get up, then dash another 15 ft. towards the boss, planning to tackle him in hopes of taking more damage. The bard goes next and manages to take the phylactery from the lich boss' neck and with effort from him and the blood hunter, they destroy it and kill him before my next turn comes.

I'll admit that I'm being salty about this, but I made my character to be a blaster, yet am only allowed to heal whenever we go up against a boss and it's happened several times. I also wand to re-iterate that the dm broke the rules of metamagic by using two metamagics that are not legally allowed to be used together.

I also what to point out that this same person once played a sorcerer in another campaign and was twinning and heightening Fireball for his action, then quickening and twinning Fireball as his bonus action in the same turn and he did this several times during that campaign. During a campaign before that he was playing Rick from Rick and Morty as a gunsmith artificer with the sharpshooter feat, then argued when the dm had his dwarves in a fort use a turret-style mounted gatling gun on Rick who was 500 ft. away. The player argued that he was too far away and when the dm pointed out that he had a blunderbuss with 500 ft. range, the gatling having the same range. They argued over this, the dm pointing out that a gatling was technologically superior to a blunderbuss, but 'Rick' disagreed and after several minutes of arguing in front of the rest of the table, the dm threw up his hands and let 'Rick' have his way. Later during that campaign we were going through a dungeon and were in a puzzle room with undead when Rick detonated a suicide bomb built into his vest and died. He had not discussed this with anyone beforehand and it was a shock to all of us, the dm included.

That dm confessed to me later than the Rick player has been known to take away experience points from players if he didn't like their jokes and I've watched him tell a player that they had disadvantage on their next attack roll when making a joke he didn't like when he's the dm.

This also isn't the first time during this campaign (the one he's currently dm-ing) that he's shut down all my attack spells during battle. In a session a few weeks ago he had us go up against a boss who had second wind, evasion, counterspell and the ability to reflect spell projectiles back at the caster. I wasn't able to do even 1 pt. of damage to him during that entire battle and was only able to heal other players.

He's used counterspell against my attack spells several other times as well. He's also mentioned between sessions in a joking manner that I don't know how to play a support character. This makes me wonder if he thinks that a cleric isn't allowed to be a blaster.

At least we leveled up to 11, but I'm beginning to consider quitting the game. I went to bed, too angry with my fiance' to speak with him, and only slept 4 hrs after waking up from a dream where I was in the same campaign, we were going up against Cthulhu and I had my character pick a fight with him by casting magic missile at lv. 5. The dm and other players started laughing, thinking that it was a joke, and I woke up.

The dm has accused me of being a min-maxer and yes, I admit that I am, but only against him. I never went through this kind of thing with the previous dm and am rather salty at the way the rest of the group is being on insisting that I keep the character simply to add more healing that is redundant.

Not gonna lie, this might be a function of the Light Cleric in the D&D Player/DM interaction. I had a rather similar experience with my light Cleric, not being able to play him as the blaster I wanted to, to the point of being told "You're useless if you don't memorize healing spells." (Not an exact quote but you get the picture.)

I wonder if the problem is the preconceived notions of the Cleric being a "support class" that makes people so disinclined to let the Cleric play the character they want to?

Oh, and if you do go the Sorcerer route, if you get up to level 5, you can Counterspell his Counterspell using your reaction on your turn. So that's fun.

[AdAstra]

Not gonna lie, this might be a function of the Light Cleric in the D&D Player/DM interaction. I had a rather similar experience with my light Cleric, not being able to play him as the blaster I wanted to, to the point of being told "You're useless if you don't memorize healing spells." (Not an exact quote but you get the picture.)

I wonder if the problem is the preconceived notions of the Cleric being a "support class" that makes people so disinclined to let the Cleric play the character they want to?

Oh, and if you do go the Sorcerer route, if you get up to level 5, you can Counterspell his Counterspell using your reaction on your turn. So that's fun.

I will say that people’s preconceptions of classes can cause them to try and enforce playstyles that are unfun or even blatantly suboptimal, despite often using optimization as their justification. However, I have played a light cleric, and seen other players play similar concepts with nary more than an occasional joke, except for other people (often me) making sure they at least have healing word. That is the level of healing that I feel clerics “need” from an optimization standpoint, and I’ve never seen anyone suggest more healing than that. So I can say for certain this is a far from universal attitude (not that you’re claiming that, I just thought it worth mentioning)

While most of the people I’ve played dnd with were relatively new, I don’t think that factored in much to their openness. In 3e and derivatives, a healbot cleric was apparently pretty balanced overall, but clerics could be so much more than that it isn’t even funny, generally being considered tier 1 when taking full advantage of their options. In 5e, using all your slots for healing is an outright terrible choice. Even Life Domain clerics benefit immensely from a more diversified repertoire. If you’ve actually played the game without meta-level or dm-enforced restrictions, you definitely aren’t going to think “healing’s the only smart thing to do on a cleric”. One could blame pop culture, but the presence of shows like critical role has done a lot to alleviate that, and frankly, depictions of dnd in pop culture almost never get to the level of “clerics are healers” in the first place. MMOs with rigid roles could be a factor, and arguably the most likely candidate, given that even as those roles have expanded, people’s conception of them often has not. The whiny dps comes to mind, both as a stereotype, and as a common attempted enforcer of stereotypes.

I have no idea what causes people to stereotype things, then attempt to actively enforce their stereotypes on other people, usually in a patronizing way that benefits no one. I think it’s a perennial human failing, trying to others to fit in our generalizations, but one that’s avoided with better self-examination and clearly differentiating “levels” of generalization/opinion (ie “murder is wrong” should be held far more closely and rigidly than “burgers are made with beef”)

[Hail Tempus]

A lot of people are giving suggestions on this thread for character ideas or abilities and the like. But, that kind of misses the point here. If the OP decided to play a rogue, the DM would probably decide to nerf his sneak attack. If he decided to play a warlock, the DM would end up using his pact against him. Trying to "beat" a DM like the one described by the OP isn't really possible. He'll just make up abilities on the spot for his NPCs.

What the OP has described here isn't really an at-the-table problem. There seem to be some issues between the player and the DM. The only way to resolve those is to have a conversation with the DM and/or the other players. If that doesn't work, I'd suggest the OP find something else to do with his free time. If he's not having fun, why continue playing in this campaign?

[samcifer]

I was thinking over gameplay as a barb/rogue and realize that with high up and resistance to all but one damage type, the dm will likely want to gang up on me, so being able to disengage on their turn and get some distance as a scout would play into the 'highly mobile' theme I'm going for better than swashbuckler would. I also like the higher level scout abilities better than the swashbuckler ones as I want to be a high mobility striker rather than a defender or tank even with resistances and high hp.

[Waazraath]

I was thinking over gameplay as a barb/rogue and realize that with high up and resistance to all but one damage type, the dm will likely want to gang up on me, so being able to disengage on their turn and get some distance as a scout would play into the 'highly mobile' theme I'm going for better than swashbuckler would. I also like the higher level scout abilities better than the swashbuckler ones as I want to be a high mobility striker rather than a defender or tank even with resistances and high hp.

As long as you expect the bolded part to happen, I'm really with the folks that say 'no gaming is better than bad gaming'. It's bad enough to have to play with somebody who you consider to be an unfair, cheating player, but to have him as your referee, and actively picking on you, it's never going to be fun & games. And that's what it really should be.

[Damon_Tor]

I think the confusion here is that trigger warnings are given to allow people with PTSD (or similar) to avoid being triggered and having a panic attack (or similar).

To relate to this think of it as triggering the fight/flight/freeze response. If you were to turn around in your chair and there was a bear there lunging for you then you'd experience a sudden jolt of adrenaline. Some people with PTSD literally enter this state when triggered and relive their trauma as though it is currently happening to them. The body links the events together.

Nowadays people often give them as 'content' warnings rather than 'trigger' to include people who may experience extreme discomfort rather than the triggering of an outright episode.

When providing a trigger/content warning it is customary to include the subject matter that is being discussed for example - CW: sexual assault.

All this is relevant to my comment, along with the descriptor "extreme". At worst, the OP was subject to a jerk being a passive-agressive asshat. Maybe it could be considered triggering for someone who was bullied or something, but I definitely take issue with calling it "extreme". It's effectively putting your experience on the same level as war trauma or sexual assault, and it cheapens the whole idea of a trigger warning. It's not there to keep people from getting mad or sad, it's there to protect people from real psychological harm.

For the record, I agree the OP has a valid gripe and her DM was being an ass. But labeling her story with "extreme trigger warning" was entirely inappropriate.

[samcifer]

All this is relevant to my comment, along with the descriptor "extreme". At worst, the OP was subject to a jerk being a passive-agressive asshat. Maybe it could be considered triggering for someone who was bullied or something, but I definitely take issue with calling it "extreme". It's effectively putting your experience on the same level as war trauma or sexual assault, and it cheapens the whole idea of a trigger warning. It's not there to keep people from getting mad or sad, it's there to protect people from real psychological harm.

For the record, I agree the OP has a valid gripe and her DM was being an ass. But labeling her story with "extreme trigger warning" was entirely inappropriate.

HIS dm. I'm a man. :)

[Sigreid]

All this is relevant to my comment, along with the descriptor "extreme". At worst, the OP was subject to a jerk being a passive-agressive asshat. Maybe it could be considered triggering for someone who was bullied or something, but I definitely take issue with calling it "extreme". It's effectively putting your experience on the same level as war trauma or sexual assault, and it cheapens the whole idea of a trigger warning. It's not there to keep people from getting mad or sad, it's there to protect people from real psychological harm.

For the record, I agree the OP has a valid gripe and her DM was being an ass. But labeling her story with "extreme trigger warning" was entirely inappropriate.

I believe that he was trying to warn people before they opened the thread that they may just think he's whining again; not that he was triggered.

[Segev]

If the dm says no, I'll quit the game and if yes, play a few more sessions to see if he tries anything else to my new character. If he does, I'll quit right then and there in front of everyone, stating my reasons why to the group as a whole, and probably quit the every other Friday game as well if he pushes my buttons hard enough as he dms that campaign too.

Perhaps I could find an group who plays online. The problem is that I work 9:30am to 6:30pm every weekday and have sleep apnia, so I can't stay up late on nights before work, so my only times to play are Friday night through Sunday afternoon and most groups in my area don't play during those days/hours, severely limiting my options on playing. :(

Also, the dm is married (to a fairly nice woman) and with my fiance' we all live together in the same house, so making too much of a scene would cause severe issues I'd prefer to avoid if possible in spite of how much this p***** me off.

1) Be careful about building just to annoy the DM; you don't want to become "that guy" at the table. The build is probably fine, but don't deliberately be a jerk about it. The DM may well be feeling overwhelmed and unable to challenge the party. As a DM of a Tomb of Annihilation campaign, I keep having to remind myself that my players seem to think they're always on the brink, that things are deadly, etc....despite me looking at things and never feeling like I've so much as put them at serious risk. They feel drained of resources when I know they probably have 3-4 more encounters in them before they're even at real hazard. 5e seems to be really good at creating the illusion of danger, but this has the hidden downside of making the DM feel ineffectual if he doesn't read his players well.

2) Don't ragequit. If you feel like the new character also isn't being allowed to be cool, say so, then, after the session or in the middle of the week, try discussing your issues calmly. If things get heated, take a deep breath, and apologize that they got heated (being very careful not to phrase it as something that could be heard as, "I'm sorry you got angry," or anything else implying it's others' fault; even if it IS, telling them so doesn't help). After apologizing for things not working out, politely bow out of the game, saying something along the lines of, "I'm just not having fun in it." It doesn't matter whose fault it is that you're not having fun. If they think it's yours for having unreasonable expectations or something, it still doesn't change that you're not having fun.

Don't quit mid-session unless you have to to keep your temper under control. That will only spark bad feelings you don't want in your shared household.

I do recommend you at least discuss this with your fiance before the next session. A day before, if possible. He should know how his betrothed is being hurt and the cause of upset, because he's probably not a mind-reader and should at least have a chance to try to help you make this better for you. Even if it just means being supportive when you eventually leave the game. (And, too, you need to make sure you're not making this feel in any way to him like you will hold it against him for staying in it if you leave. Because that would be rather unfair of you.)

[Cygnia]

OP, I still am curious to know -- do you consider any of the other players friends?

[GloatingSwine]

Sneak into the GM's house in the middle of the night and spread D4s and lego where he'll step on them out of bed in the morning.

It's the only way.

[jaappleton]

Sneak into the GM's house in the middle of the night and spread D4s and lego where he'll step on them out of bed in the morning.

It's the only way.

Not the ONLY way.

I was going to suggest fire, and lots of it. But that might be a tad extreme.

For now.

[Segev]

OP, I still am curious to know -- do you consider any of the other players friends?

Seeing as the OP is affianced to one of them, I sure hope so.

[Master O'Laughs]

Not the ONLY way.

I was going to suggest fire, and lots of it. But that might be a tad extreme.

For now.

Especially since Samcifer lives in the same house as the DM.

[samcifer]

OP, I still am curious to know -- do you consider any of the other players friends?

I've been playing with the Wednesday group every week for 3 months so far and the teamwork is waaaayyy better than with my every other Friday group. I THINK they're beciming friends and havent been unfair to me, it was only a few (2 or3 of them including my fiance and the dm) telling me that could heal people when i was basically forbidden to use blasting against the bosses). THAT'S what has me so salty over this, really, and makes me want to change charactwrs. Besides, they'd still have a cleric (I chose cleric because there wasn't one before and fiance made a second one for his character the following week once he joined the campaign) but there's no rogue in the group, so I was considering what the group needed when I decided on my next character.

[LentilNinja]

I've been playing with the Wednesday group every week for 3 months so far and the teamwork is waaaayyy better than with my every other Friday group. I THINK they're beciming friends and havent been unfair to me, it was only a few (2 or3 of them including my fiance and the dm) telling me that could heal people when i was basically forbidden to use blasting against the bosses). THAT'S what has me so salty over this, really, and makes me want to change charactwrs. Besides, they'd still have a cleric (I chose cleric because there wasn't one before and fiance made a second one for his character the following week once he joined the campaign) but there's no rogue in the group, so I was considering what the group needed when I decided on my next character.

It might be in your best interests to tell them why you don't want to play your Cleric anymore, and why you want to play your Rogue. Maybe when you talk about it, the DM & others might come around. Otherwise, explaining why you think your Rogue character is a good fit for the group & how will set the expectations of how you're going to play. If the DM or anyone else has a problem with it, you've given them the opportunity to address as such then and there. DM's can be a hassle, but a big red flag is when they get into their problems with your character AFTER you've cleared it with them. If that happens, it should be pretty evident to the group there's a problem with the DM. You're not wanting to fight with them if you're trying to be friendly of course, but giving them the opportunity to be a jerk in front of everyone won't go amiss.

[GloatingSwine]

Especially since Samcifer lives in the same house as the DM.

Oh then the opportunities for petty yet ultimately harmless revenge will be legion.

[JakOfAllTirades]

I've been playing with the Wednesday group every week for 3 months so far and the teamwork is waaaayyy better than with my every other Friday group. I THINK they're beciming friends and havent been unfair to me, it was only a few (2 or3 of them including my fiance and the dm) telling me that could heal people when i was basically forbidden to use blasting against the bosses). THAT'S what has me so salty over this, really, and makes me want to change charactwrs. Besides, they'd still have a cleric (I chose cleric because there wasn't one before and fiance made a second one for his character the following week once he joined the campaign) but there's no rogue in the group, so I was considering what the group needed when I decided on my next character.

Wait, you've already got another D&D game? And you're enjoying it? No problem!

Yeah, just walk away from that trainwreck and don't hesitate to (calmly) explain why if anyone asks.

[samcifer]

Wait, you've already got another D&D game? And you're enjoying it? No problem!

Yeah, just walk away from that trainwreck and don't hesitate to (calmly) explain why if anyone asks.

Both campaigns are run by the same troublesome dm. :/

In the other one I'm playing a half-elf sor-lock and that character is allowed to spellcast without hindrance from the dm, it's only my cleric in the other campaign who is being denied the right to use 'blasting' spells (my terminology, not the dm's).

[durrin]

He’s banging your bird. Or at the very least he wants to.

[samcifer]

He’s banging your bird. Or at the very least he wants to.

*facepalm* the dm is a straight man and his wife also lives with me, a gay man, and my gay male fiance'.

[GlenSmash!]

*facepalm* the dm is a straight man and his wife also loves with me, a gay man, and my gay male fiance'.

The typo makes this sentence extra hilarious.

[samcifer]

The typo makes this sentence extra hilarious.

*rapidly and impatiently* youknowwhatImeant!

:D

[durrin]

Freudian slip. When you say one thing, but you’re thinking about amother.

[JakOfAllTirades]

Both campaigns are run by the same troublesome dm. :/

In the other one I'm playing a half-elf sor-lock and that character is allowed to spellcast without hindrance from the dm, it's only my cleric in the other campaign who is being denied the right to use 'blasting' spells (my terminology, not the dm's).

Thanks for clarifying that.

I'd recommend one of those stainless steel things for your DM. You know, those surgical devices they use to pull a guy's head out of his arse? I keep forgetting what it's called....

[samcifer]

Well, just had a quick chat with the dm and he's okay with me changing characters, so that's good. :)

[Envyus]

What kind of idiot Lich keeps his phylactery on his person.

[samcifer]

What kind of idiot Lich keeps his phylactery on his person.

Yeah, he was wearing it like a pendant.

[Sutekh]

What kind of idiot Lich keeps his phylactery on his person.

One run by an idiot?

[Mutazoia]

First of all...talk to the rest of the players. Tell them exactly why you were letting your cleric die, and explain, especially to your fiance, why bringing him back upset you. Let them know that you are not having fun, with the DM singling you out for "special treatment", and that you would hope that they would support you, rather than joining in on the bullying.


In the mean time. Don't heal. Ever. Go full melee, get up in everybody's grill and get pounded into the ground. Fill your spell slots with the most useless trash you can find. Adventuring in the desert, be sure to stock up on water breathing. Adventuring under water, make sure you have stone shape prepared. If your DM's going to be a douche-nozzle, and the rest of the players are going to join in, or at least stand by and let it happen, then unless you are willing to quit, become the spoiler. Sure...it's petty and childish, but why should everybody else have fun if your not allowed to?

[Magicspook]

First of all...talk to the rest of the players. Tell them exactly why you were letting your cleric die, and explain, especially to your fiance, why bringing him back upset you. Let them know that you are not having fun, with the DM singling you out for "special treatment", and that you would hope that they would support you, rather than joining in on the bullying.


In the mean time. Don't heal. Ever. Go full melee, get up in everybody's grill and get pounded into the ground. Fill your spell slots with the most useless trash you can find. Adventuring in the desert, be sure to stock up on water breathing. Adventuring under water, make sure you have stone shape prepared. If your DM's going to be a douche-nozzle, and the rest of the players are going to join in, or at least stand by and let it happen, then unless you are willing to quit, become the spoiler. Sure...it's petty and childish, but why should everybody else have fun if your not allowed to?

Antisocial behaviour is never the solution to antisocial behaviour; fighting fire with fire isn't a valid option in this case.

In Dutch, there is a saying which roughly translates to 'chasing someone into their armor'. It means that through your behaviour, you're setting people up to dislike you, which ruins your chances to make them sympathise with your problem. People do it all the time; even though they have a valid point, all they do is pout and whine about it, which is why nobody likes them enough to do something about it.

The only way out of this is by communication.

[Jakinbandw]

If you really want to hurt a GM just do the following:

Walk up to them and say "Sorry man, but I don't want to play in your group any more because I don't find it interesting, creative, or fun. It's been a slog, and I've tried to keep playing hoping that it would get better, but I just can't any more. I keep finding it getting worse."

And if you're GM is anything like me, that will at least ruin their whole day.

[GreyBlack]

If you really want to hurt a GM just do the following:

Walk up to them and say "Sorry man, but I don't want to play in your group any more because I don't find it interesting, creative, or fun. It's been a slog, and I've tried to keep playing hoping that it would get better, but I just can't any more. I keep finding it getting worse."

And if you're GM is anything like me, that will at least ruin their whole day.

..... I feel this in my soul....

[Sigreid]

What kind of idiot Lich keeps his phylactery on his person.

I think the lich in the comic on this site did.

[The Glyphstone]

I think the lich in the comic on this site did.

Xykon is explicitly noted to be an idiot.

[Throne12]

Switch out your spells pick up create undead and raise dead, use command to have his villains piss themself with urinate. Then pick warding bond and cast it on your favorite undead. Then over the next few sessions describe how more depressed your character is and how he is getting more and more interested in dead. Then change your domain to death or life if you go life just heal your undead bodys.

[MeeposFire]

I would play the cleric and not prepare any healing and any other spells you do not want and tell everybody you are not preparing them so that they need to be ready for that. If they complain you tell them the truth you wanted to play a cleric and you wanted to play one that blasts things you did not want to play a healer.

If they want someone to be the explicit healer type THEY can play the healer type. It is not your job As for counter spelling if he counters you then he is not countering one of them so the group should plan for that situation. By being direct you avoid being passive aggressive which is nice. If you are playing with people with some emotional maturity they should be able to accept your choice especially in a game that does not require a healer and you already have allies that can heal outside of you. Don't play suicidal but do play aggressively. If you die you die.

[Mutazoia]

Antisocial behaviour is never the solution to antisocial behaviour; fighting fire with fire isn't a valid option in this case.

In Dutch, there is a saying which roughly translates to 'chasing someone into their armor'. It means that through your behaviour, you're setting people up to dislike you, which ruins your chances to make them sympathise with your problem. People do it all the time; even though they have a valid point, all they do is pout and whine about it, which is why nobody likes them enough to do something about it.

The only way out of this is by communication.

Already a lot of anti-social behavior flying around. If that's the way the game is run, you might as well go with the flow and have fun with it. Your cleric can't be a blaster, and he doesn't want to be a healer, so he's taking time to re-invent himself, with wacky consequences. When your DM gives you lemons, yadda yadda yadda.

If the DM had a problem with blaster clerics, he should have said as much before the game started, instead of torturing a player. The goal is to have fun, even if you're not allowed to play the character that you built. So manufacture fun where you can. Or quit. But quitting isn't very fun.

[Witty Username]

Do you consistently win initiative with your light cleric? this example it seems that you did, does your DM counter spells as soon as they are slung or does he target your spell casting specifically? One of those is much easier to fix. If your DM does tactics lazy, then holding actions to cast spell when the enemy takes an action/reaction could be a solution since that would force the DM to counter other people's spells, if your party complains then you can say that they don't know how to play support(maybe don't do that). If your DM is specifically targeting you, then ask if enemies are intimidated by you or if your character is more effective than the other members of the party.

Overall, I would chat about it, it sounds like you have done some already.

[samcifer]

Okay, so to answer the question above on initiative, I got a crit on my initiative roll for that last battle which in our group means you always go first unless someone else ties with a crit of their own (or any other number) and then it goes by who has a higher dex score, then they choose among themselves if that's a tie as well.

Anyways, to reiterate from above as well, I talked with the dm last night and he's letting me change characters, so I went with the following:

Totem (Bear at lv. 3) Barb 6 / Swashbuckler Rogue 5
STR: 18, DEX: 18, CON: 16, INT: 12, WIS: 16, CHA: 15
Asi/feats: Resilient Wisdom and Lucky
+1/+1 Rapier and a shield for gear in combat
Inititative: +6, Speed: 40', AC: 19, HP: 107

The reason I went this way was because of how much damage the dm's monsters do as he buffs them up a lot to make for more challenging encounters. I want to focus on survivability and being able to turn 78 dmg. from an attack into 20 every round is just too good to wait on. I'll go up the next 2 levels in barb for the lv. 7 bonuses and then another asi/feat and by then I'll now if I need to max out my strength, dex, add more con or maybe take the tough feat for even more hp.

I went Swashbuckler over the Scout sub-class after realizing that the Swashbuckler features would get way more use than the more situational ones Scout gives. I may go up to barb 9 or 10 before taking any more levels of rouge as the lvl. 9 Swashbuckler feature isn't really appealing to me.

This will give me more things to do outside of combat with the rogue abilities and so long as I focus on strength with a rapier for attacking, I can combine the combat features of barb rage with sneak attack without issue. My choice of swapping to a martial character are the face that, from our experiences in this campaign, martial character can attack without interference while offensive spellcasting has had a hard time being successful and not just from me. The bard has had a hard time getting his de-buff spells to take and our druid has had issues as well with this. The war cleric has been able to make successful melee attacks without issue, so there's that, too.

Staying with my light cleric would have only led to more frustration and hurt feelings followed by unsportsman-like conduct from me as a player that would only have made everyone at the table miserable, which I don't want to do. I just want to play a character I enjoy and haven't enjoyed playing a cleric as much as I had thought I would. The shutting down my blasting was a big part of these feelings, but I refuse to be driven from the game and am willing to try to adapt my playstyle to one I'd enjoy more and would be more effective, which will hopefully lead to a better overall experience for me and everyone else. I'll let you all know how the next session goes wednesday night.

[MeeposFire]

I do not think you can play something you like. How many threads are you up to now saying you need a new class or advice for a class that eventually leads to you choosing a new class? I mean you played a barb and did not have fun as you were too close to dying so I have a hard time recommending anything in melee since they will likely be more vulnerable than your barb. If you do not like getting counter spelled and this DM does it all the time then no caster that you use directly will work for you. I just have this feeling you are going to have another thread in a week or two saying how your next class is being neutered in some way and you are not having fun so then asking for tips on it and then probably saying you are going to change to another class.

I would be happy to be wrong but this is the sort of rut you seem to be stuck in.

[samcifer]

I do not think you can play something you like. How many threads are you up to now saying you need a new class or advice for a class that eventually leads to you choosing a new class? I mean you played a barb and did not have fun as you were too close to dying so I have a hard time recommending anything in melee since they will likely be more vulnerable than your barb. If you do not like getting counter spelled and this DM does it all the time then no caster that you use directly will work for you. I just have this feeling you are going to have another thread in a week or two saying how your next class is being neutered in some way and you are not having fun so then asking for tips on it and then probably saying you are going to change to another class.

I would be happy to be wrong but this is the sort of rut you seem to be stuck in.

Actually, there have been pcs that I've enjoyed: I really like playing as sor-locks, I had a moon druid/light cleric in a previous campaign that I enjoyed, and my sorcadin was a lot of fun too. I also liked playing as an evocation wizard in spite of the dm doing everything he could (THIS dm, btw) to stop me from making use of my owl familiar. The characters I've hated are my pure moon druid as he lacked any blasting abilities, my barb/fighter because he had nothing to do outside of combat and it was my first experience with a tank character, which I found too stressful to play, and now my pure light cleric because the dm makes bosses who shut down his blasting. I only have a few years of experience with 5e and that hasn't really given me enough time to experiment with different classes enough to find what I really enjoy playing with a few exceptions. I've been analyzing the mechanics of a barb/rogue and really want to try one. I think that with the way I want to play him in combat and all the thieving abilities out of combat would give me a survivable striker who can do things out of combat as well. I'm willing to try, at least.

[Envyus]

I think the lich in the comic on this site did.

No he kept it on his henchman's person.

[D+1]

Noted that you've already changed PC's thus ending the issue with this PC but wanted to respond anyway.

So I've been playing a light cleric during the wednesday night group and every time I've tried to use blasting spells like fireball or cast Spiritual Weapon against a boss, it gets counterspelled every time.

During the campaign so far, every boss we've gone up against has counterspelled every spell I've tried to cast against them. This is the 4th time that this has happened when using this character during the campaign and to be honest, it's gotten me so frustrated that I don't want to play him anymore because I had designed him to be a blaster with some healing options, but healing is the only kind of casting he allows my character to do.

This also isn't the first time during this campaign (the one he's currently dm-ing) that he's shut down all my attack spells during battle. In a session a few weeks ago he had us go up against a boss who had second wind, evasion, counterspell and the ability to reflect spell projectiles back at the caster. I wasn't able to do even 1 pt. of damage to him during that entire battle and was only able to heal other players.
A) You can't EVER just fume in silence. It may be obvious as hell to you that there is a problem but you MUST state your objections out loud. People don't read minds and people that are seemingly intent on driving you crazy are even less likely to suddenly develop ESP and be nicer. COMMUNICATE DAMMIT. A player who doesn't TELL their DM that the DM's own actions are preventing them from having any fun must ultimately blame only themselves for the DM NOT changing their ways.

B) It was mentioned elsewhere in the thread but in relatively extreme cases like this you have three options - just quit; summarily drop that PC and start another one; and simply start being as much of a jackass as you can in revenge until the DM and the other players get fed up and throw you out.

If you quit, you can either just ragequit shouting obscenities or something, or you can gather up your stuff and silently walk away, or you can tell the DM steadily and clearly why they're being a jackass and then walk away. If you haven't already had a conversation with the DM about the DM being a jackass then the DM (and likely everyone else) is going to see YOU as the source of the problem.

If you're going to try a different PC you DO NOT need to pointlessly suicide the existing PC to justify the change. Obviously the DM is going to be interested in hearing WHY you want to change PC's. TELL THEM - although again, if you're reaching this point, that conversation with the DM should have already taken place - and actually more than once. The first time should be privately. The second should be publicly so the other players are also aware that their DM is being a jerk (or know that you believe it to be the case whether anyone thinks it's true or not). If other players (even spouses, fiances, or whomever... and especially the DM) try to convince you not to change characters tell them to BUTT OUT because it is your PC not theirs and then remind them all again WHY it has come to this.

You can try being a jackass yourself in any number of ways. Don't. That is worse behavior than anything the DM will have done. It puts you BELOW their level and robs you of ALL legitimate right to complain. It will also NEVER make the situation better. It surely won't endear you to the DM and get them to suddenly see the light and Do Better, but it also makes every other player at the table into a needless victim of your F'n petulant, pathetic, childish temper tantrums. NOBODY should or would want to game with you if you become That Guy.


He's also mentioned between sessions in a joking manner that I don't know how to play a support character. This makes me wonder if he thinks that a cleric isn't allowed to be a blaster.And here is where I personally would likely have been triggered and lost my #%*@. Playing ANY PC in only a style that the DM approves of is, IMO, grounds for that DM to face full Player Wrath. Players are not there to be passively FED entertainment by the DM of course, but they sure as hell aren't there to BE the entertainment for the DM by dancing at the end of his puppet strings. DM's who try to run a players characters FOR them, whether by direct dictates or simply preventing/punishing all other ways and means but the ones THEY want used, need to get forcibly woke to their REAL place at the table. If a DM genuinely cannot abide a "blaster"-style cleric then BY GYGAX he can damm well SAY so and ASK the player to not do that. Just as a player who genuinely cannot abide continual DM nerfs and interference and petty digs about your roleplaying and game mechanics choices had damm well better SAY so and not just keep that crap bottled up until it reaches critical mass and explodes, completely surprising EVERYONE except the player.

COMMUNICATION.

I'll say that again because it is the source of 95%+ of all problems that kill D&D campaigns.

COMMUNICATION.

Learn it. Know it. Live it.

Even having now changed PC's your DM still needs to be told in no uncertain terms why (if they haven't). It honestly shouldn't be, and almost certainly wouldn't have been an issue if the DM had not gone the route of just making sure the blasting cleric was utterly ineffective, and if the player would have made it clear far sooner that the DM's wholesale denial-of-service attitude was petty and exasperating. The DM could have then politely said, "Yeah, maybe you're right, but I really, REALLY don't want clerics in my game to be big spell-damage dealers but genuinely just provide support with their magic." And the player could then have politely said, "I'm disappointed because I liked this character, but there are an infinite number of choices of different kinds of PC's I can play and I really DON'T want to be trying to play a character that annoys anyone, especially the DM, so I'll just pick something else." And then this thread would not have come to exist.

[samcifer]

I felt that changing to a different kind of character would be the best option. I don't want to stop playing or end up feeling as if I had been driven out of the group and playing an FU play-style would've caused too much disruption and just made for a miserable time for everyone. Playing out of spite is never a good answer and would just make me out to be a resentful ass of a player, which I want to avoid doing.

By changing characters I can avoid all the toxic BS and and go with a pc that, after watching the blood hunter, war cleric and even the artificer work much more effectively in combats, even against bosses, I think that going for a melee character who can hit and run would work better in this campaign, at least for me. By being able to disengage as either a free action (thanks to Swashbuckler) or at least as a bonus action will help me to avoid feeling as if my character is being mobbed and even if he does get mobbed, he'll have plenty of defenses to survive a round so that I can break away and get some breathing room, unlike my barb/fighter tank who just ended up having to trade blows all the time to keep his rage going and ended up taking a lot of damage every round while everyone else was safe. Yes, I know that THAT is the point of being a tank, but it was my first time playing one and I found that kind of play-style too stressful for me to find it enjoyable.

Besides, I've been wanting to play a rogue in an extended campaign for awhile now and this will let me explore new ways of playing a pc both in and out of combat, which appeals to me as a player.

There's a facebook group the dm made for all of the players to access, so I'm thinking of posting a message like this:

"So I talked it over with the dm and he's given me his permission to change characters. My cleric was designed to primarily be a blaster, but he's proven to be very ineffective in combat. Rather than be limited to a support role that I didn't design the character for and no longer enjoying playing him, I'm going to retire him and bring in a pc with some levels of rogue to add some more variety to the party and fill in some roles that might be lacking."

Sound good enough to be polite and not be ranting?

[Segev]

Speaking as a DM, owl familiars are...tricky. They're extremely fragile, so if they're being effective, they're glass cannons. And you have to either play tactically smart, and take them out, or permit a high-mobility artillary turret to go wherever. (The wizard in my campaign likes to cast dragon's breath on it; it is highly effective.) Without efforts to hide, there's nothing in the rules that says a small creature goes unnoticed, so if I let it be "unnoticed" because it's "so small," after it's done a 15 ft. cone of screw-you damage, I'm giving it powers it doesn't have.

Honestly, if there's advice for my player as to how to make the owl harder to hit with ranged attacks (last fight, my cannibal took it out with a thrown spear), that'd be welcome, so I can pass it along. I imagine anything devoted to that would also have opportunity costs, so I don't mind giving him tactical options.

Back on the main topic, I agree that making a new character whose play style will mesh with what the DM expects/is okay with/will "allow" is the best solution to this problem. Especially since you sound excited about this build.

[samcifer]

Speaking as a DM, owl familiars are...tricky. They're extremely fragile, so if they're being effective, they're glass cannons. And you have to either play tactically smart, and take them out, or permit a high-mobility artillary turret to go wherever. (The wizard in my campaign likes to cast dragon's breath on it; it is highly effective.) Without efforts to hide, there's nothing in the rules that says a small creature goes unnoticed, so if I let it be "unnoticed" because it's "so small," after it's done a 15 ft. cone of screw-you damage, I'm giving it powers it doesn't have.

Honestly, if there's advice for my player as to how to make the owl harder to hit with ranged attacks (last fight, my cannibal took it out with a thrown spear), that'd be welcome, so I can pass it along. I imagine anything devoted to that would also have opportunity costs, so I don't mind giving him tactical options.

Back on the main topic, I agree that making a new character whose play style will mesh with what the DM expects/is okay with/will "allow" is the best solution to this problem. Especially since you sound excited about this build.

The dm hates familiars. When I tried to have my owl fly up to do some scouting In a city, the dm had a random hawk attack it and it flew down to me, too scared to try ahain. He also, when I got drunk in a tavern, said I hugged it hard enough to crush it to death even though I wasn't even interacting with it at the time. Then when I resummoned it the next day and tried to gently pet it, the dm said I petted it too hard and snapped it's neck. After that, I stopped trying to have a familiar. Fortunately, that campaign was abandoned a few sessions later.

[stoutstien]

The dm hates familiars. When I tried to have my owl fly up to do some scouting In a city, the dm had a random hawk attack it and it flew down to me, too scared to try ahain. He also, when I got drunk in a tavern, said I hugged it hard enough to crush it to death even though I wasn't even interacting with it at the time. Then when I resummoned it the next day and tried to gently pet it, the dm said I petted it too hard and snapped it's neck. After that, I stopped trying to have a familiar. Fortunately, that campaign was abandoned a few sessions later.
This DM is just toxic. I think it's time for you to join us on the dark side of the screen.

[ProsecutorGodot]

The dm hates familiars. When I tried to have my owl fly up to do some scouting In a city, the dm had a random hawk attack it and it flew down to me, too scared to try ahain. He also, when I got drunk in a tavern, said I hugged it hard enough to crush it to death even though I wasn't even interacting with it at the time. Then when I resummoned it the next day and tried to gently pet it, the dm said I petted it too hard and snapped it's neck. After that, I stopped trying to have a familiar. Fortunately, that campaign was abandoned a few sessions later.

Holy geez, you've got some sort of willpower sticking with this DM. For every nice thing I've seen you say about them I've seen tenfold more ridiculous decisions.

How many different characters have you been through in the last 2 months? Don't just count this campaign, I'm curious at the total number used with this DM. There's got to be at least 4 considering your previous threads. I can't help but feel like you're being pushed towards a DM approved character rather than anything you want to play.

[Hail Tempus]

The dm hates familiars. When I tried to have my owl fly up to do some scouting In a city, the dm had a random hawk attack it and it flew down to me, too scared to try ahain. He also, when I got drunk in a tavern, said I hugged it hard enough to crush it to death even though I wasn't even interacting with it at the time. Then when I resummoned it the next day and tried to gently pet it, the dm said I petted it too hard and snapped it's neck. After that, I stopped trying to have a familiar. Fortunately, that campaign was abandoned a few sessions later. Seriously, why do you continue to play in this guy's campaign? He's a ****ty DM with some weird personal issues.

I've seen you post a number of threads on here complaining about this guy. You're expending way too much emotional energy on something that should be a fun social activity with friends.

[IsaacsAlterEgo]

The dm hates familiars. When I tried to have my owl fly up to do some scouting In a city, the dm had a random hawk attack it and it flew down to me, too scared to try ahain. He also, when I got drunk in a tavern, said I hugged it hard enough to crush it to death even though I wasn't even interacting with it at the time. Then when I resummoned it the next day and tried to gently pet it, the dm said I petted it too hard and snapped it's neck. After that, I stopped trying to have a familiar. Fortunately, that campaign was abandoned a few sessions later.

Based on this and the previous stories you've told, this DM is an absolute control freak and you will never really be free to do what you want in these sessions. You'll always be doing something "wrong" that the DM has decided they don't like for whatever arbitrary reason and you'll be punished for it.

Trust me. They'll decide they don't like disengaging so much and every enemy you face will have Sentinel. Or they'll just decide they hate Tabaxi, so you'll be punished for that and every NPC will treat you ilke dirt. From everything you described, the issue at the heart of the matter is that the DM does not respect the players or their choices and that will not change no matter how you try to capitulate.

The ONLY possibility of saving the situation is telling the DM "this behaviour is not cool" and hopefully having them change their style (though this is unlikely to happen). Changing characters likely won't solve the issue because it'll just be some new thing that draws their ire.

[Cygnia]

Hell, how is this guy outside the game? You say you live with him...does he pay rent (or do you & your fiance pay rent to him/share the lease)? Is he just as micromanaging in day to day activities?

[KorvinStarmast]

Seriously, why do you continue to play in this guy's campaign? He's a ****ty DM with some weird personal issues. I've seen you post a number of threads on here complaining about this guy. You're expending way too much emotional energy on something that should be a fun social activity with friends. They live in the same house. Go back a few pages. The DM and DM's wife, and samcifer and fiance, all live in the same house.

There are some social nuances here that may not be the same as other game tables.

[AHF]

There are some social nuances here that may not be the same as other game tables.

It seems likely that issues away from the table are leading to the DM seeking to revenge / bully / abuse, etc. samcifer at the table. With the range of abuses described on this thread, it is obvious that the DM is being a total a****** and there is no in-game way around that. Someone who likes to wreck games for other people will keep doing things like "you pet your owl and do it too hard, breaking his neck." The actual rules of the game mean nothing to them so there is no elegant way of working within the rules to achieve your goal. The only potential workable solution is getting to the heart of why the DM is acting out like this. Since this is someone you live with, that would ideally also lead to a better relationship in the house. This would be the ideal solution.

Failing that, I am saddened for you that the other people at the table allow this type of bullying. Personally, I would talk to the people at the table that you like and respect and get them firmly in your corner before having the conversation with the DM. In an ideal world, they would be the ones to stand up and call him out on this if you can't reach a workable resolution with him. With the group dynamic of D&D, it is only the group permitting this behavior that lets him continue as DM without needing to even treat the players with a basic level of decency.

[LentilNinja]

The dm hates familiars. When I tried to have my owl fly up to do some scouting In a city, the dm had a random hawk attack it and it flew down to me, too scared to try ahain. He also, when I got drunk in a tavern, said I hugged it hard enough to crush it to death even though I wasn't even interacting with it at the time. Then when I resummoned it the next day and tried to gently pet it, the dm said I petted it too hard and snapped it's neck. After that, I stopped trying to have a familiar. Fortunately, that campaign was abandoned a few sessions later.

I'm glad to see you've resolved your current predicament with your Barb/Rogue, but after reading this it's evident the DM has control issues that need to be addressed. If you don't, while you may have circumvented his toxic behaviour this time, it will just happen again.

Out of interest, how often does he do this to other players?

[Goggalor]

Do not give up on familiars in his game(s); use the improved familiars that locks have access to and really mess with him. With the improved familiar option, you have access to the imp, which can go invisible (at-will) and can shapeshift (also, at-will) into three other tiny forms if he wants to somehow say the guards in a city all have detect invisible. Add on top of that the fact the imp is immune to fire (also poison) and you have a nifty little un-suicidal bomber if you can find a necklace of fireballs for the imp.If he gives you any grief about the fact that your familiar is an imp and would act out against you, point out the fact that the spell (which is where the lock is getting the familiar from) says the familiar is a spirit and that, while the imp may act independently of you, it ALWAYS obeys your commands.

[Hail Tempus]

Do not give up on familiars in his game(s); use the improved familiars that locks have access to and really mess with him. With the improved familiar option, you have access to the imp, which can go invisible (at-will) and can shapeshift (also, at-will) into three other tiny forms if he wants to somehow say the guards in a city all have detect invisible. Add on top of that the fact the imp is immune to fire (also poison) and you have a nifty little un-suicidal bomber if you can find a necklace of fireballs for the imp.If he gives you any grief about the fact that your familiar is an imp and would act out against you, point out the fact that the spell (which is where the lock is getting the familiar from) says the familiar is a spirit and that, while the imp may act independently of you, it ALWAYS obeys your commands. Everything you said is true, but none of it matters. Based on what the OP told us, if this DM decides he doesn't want an Imp familiar in the game, he'll just find a way to repeatedly kill it.

If a DM doesn't want to run a game in a fair, good faith manner, none of the rules will make any difference.

[MadBear]

So this whole set of scenarios sounds pretty terrible to me. At some point, you just have to walk away from the table (not the group per se, but the table). I have some great friends, who I thoroughly enjoy, who I purposefully don't game with. They're absolutely awful people to game with (overly competitive, mock the other PC's when they don't listen), but are great outside that realm.

So maybe next time they want to play, you just say "nah, I'm good, I'll be in the office playing skyrim (or whatever else you darn kids are playing nowadays), thanks though. Let me know if you guys are playing a board game though". If they ask why, just point out "The way I want to play, doesn't really match up with how you guys like to play, and its just stopped being fun. No worries though, enjoy your game".

[AHF]

Everything you said is true, but none of it matters. Based on what the OP told us, if this DM decides he doesn't want an Imp familiar in the game, he'll just find a way to repeatedly kill it.

If a DM doesn't want to run a game in a fair, good faith manner, none of the rules will make any difference.

100% agree. If he compels you to hug your familiar and decides that hugging it kills it, he won't have a problem killing an imp. "The local church of divination constantly is scrying for demons and detected that an Imp has been summoned. They teleport a goon squad to your location and instantly kill it and then teleport away. Too bad about that familiar, huh? I wouldn't bother summoning it again because the church will be constantly watching out for it now and they have unlimited goon squads and teleportation capabilities."

The DM has limitless tools to abuse players. In-game solutions are not the answer.

[Segev]

Have you tried asking him why he does things like that? The "you hugged it to death"/"you pet it too hard" thing in particular stands out as something to look at him and ask, "Why?"

Just that. Ask "why?" Make him explain what it is that he thinks this adds to the game. Let him know that this isn't fun for you.

[Goggalor]

100% agree. If he compels you to hug your familiar and decides that hugging it kills it, he won't have a problem killing an imp. "The local church of divination constantly is scrying for demons and detected that an Imp has been summoned. They teleport a goon squad to your location and instantly kill it and then teleport away. Too bad about that familiar, huh? I wouldn't bother summoning it again because the church will be constantly watching out for it now and they have unlimited goon squads and teleportation capabilities."

The DM has limitless tools to abuse players. In-game solutions are not the answer.

They can scry all they want, but good luck with them finding the familiar as it will be invisible (why not if the little bugger can do it at-will). If he says they have See Invisible on, let them kill the "spirit". Resummon it (pain in the arse, but Sam needs to prove a point with the douc--DM) after and have the imp shapechange into a rat. When they come looking for the imp again, show them a regular rat. Now, if he goes out of his way to kill a rat, you show the table just how far the guy is willing to go to personally screw your character. Win-win in my book in making him look like the too--obstinate DM he is to the rest of the table. This is discounting the fact that he can, as an action, temporarily dismiss the little dastarb to a pocket dimension where it awaits Sam's summons.

Alternatively, ask for a Hat of Vermin (common magic item from XGtE) and show the guards the rat from the hat while your familiar is one-hundred feet away invisible and hiding (with its +5 stealth). I would also have hand-written (elf-notes!) notes detailing to another player at the table where the familiar is going and not inform the DM of the actions directly, but through the player.

*FICTIONAL INTERACTION*
DM: The church's guards are actively looking for your imp, as they know it is here somewhere.
Sam: Actually, he is not, as I wrote down specific instructions for the imp to follow based on whatever number I think to it, as I can communicate telepathically with it within a certain distance (the steps would be detailed on the paper; so instruction one would be go to the stables, two would be go to the front gate, three would be start a fire over at the merchants' stalls, etc.). Good luck finding him.
DM: You cannot do that.
Sam: Why not? Because you cannot easily shut it down? Because I am asking another player to verify that I noted (works on both levels!) this to my familiar and sent it off to him? Seems like you have some kind of hard-o--vendetta with me if you are trying that hard to kill a spirit that I can just resummon an hour later if you somehow manage to kill it.

[IsaacsAlterEgo]

They can scry all they want, but good luck with them finding the familiar as it will be invisible (why not if the little bugger can do it at-will). If he says they have See Invisible on, let them kill the "spirit". Resummon it (pain in the arse, but Sam needs to prove a point with the douc--DM) after and have the imp shapechange into a rat. When they come looking for the imp again, show them a regular rat. Now, if he goes out of his way to kill a rat, you show the table just how far the guy is willing to go to personally screw your character. Win-win in my book in making him look like the too--obstinate DM he is to the rest of the table. This is discounting the fact that he can, as an action, temporarily dismiss the little dastarb to a pocket dimension where it awaits Sam's summons.

Alternatively, ask for a Hat of Vermin (common magic item from XGtE) and show the guards the rat from the hat while your familiar is one-hundred feet away invisible and hiding (with its +5 stealth). I would also have hand-written (elf-notes!) notes detailing to another player at the table where the familiar is going and not inform the DM of the actions directly, but through the player.

*FICTIONAL INTERACTION*
DM: The church's guards are actively looking for your imp, as they know it is here somewhere.
Sam: Actually, he is not, as I wrote down specific instructions for the imp to follow based on whatever number I think to it, as I can communicate telepathically with it within a certain distance (the steps would be detailed on the paper; so instruction one would be go to the stables, two would be go to the front gate, three would be start a fire over at the merchants' stalls, etc.). Good luck finding him.
DM: You cannot do that.
Sam: Why not? Because you cannot easily shut it down? Because I am asking another player to verify that I noted (works on both levels!) this to my familiar and sent it off to him? Seems like you have some kind of hard-o--vendetta with me if you are trying that hard to kill a spirit that I can just resummon an hour later if you somehow manage to kill it.

His example was just...well, an example, not a concrete event to be planned around. A DM has complete and total control over what happens, and if they say someone comes along and fires a familiar-seeking magic missile, they just do that. You can't fight a DM straight on using game rules because a DM decides the rules. They can decide a magical plague has fallen over the land that only afflicts familiars and kills them instantly and irrevocably. Or just outright ban the Find Familiar spell from their table.

All you can do is argue this out of game. Trying to find in-game solutions to circumvent out-of-game problems will never, ever work, especially if you're trying to find a way to thwart a DM. You will never thwart a DM, they can do literally anything they want, while you are bound by the rules.

[AHF]

They can scry all they want, but good luck with them finding the familiar as it will be invisible (why not if the little bugger can do it at-will). If he says they have See Invisible on, let them kill the "spirit". Resummon it (pain in the arse, but Sam needs to prove a point with the douc--DM) after and have the imp shapechange into a rat. When they come looking for the imp again, show them a regular rat. Now, if he goes out of his way to kill a rat, you show the table just how far the guy is willing to go to personally screw your character. Win-win in my book in making him look like the too--obstinate DM he is to the rest of the table. This is discounting the fact that he can, as an action, temporarily dismiss the little dastarb to a pocket dimension where it awaits Sam's summons.

Alternatively, ask for a Hat of Vermin (common magic item from XGtE) and show the guards the rat from the hat while your familiar is one-hundred feet away invisible and hiding (with its +5 stealth). I would also have hand-written (elf-notes!) notes detailing to another player at the table where the familiar is going and not inform the DM of the actions directly, but through the player.

*FICTIONAL INTERACTION*
DM: The church's guards are actively looking for your imp, as they know it is here somewhere.
Sam: Actually, he is not, as I wrote down specific instructions for the imp to follow based on whatever number I think to it, as I can communicate telepathically with it within a certain distance (the steps would be detailed on the paper; so instruction one would be go to the stables, two would be go to the front gate, three would be start a fire over at the merchants' stalls, etc.). Good luck finding him.
DM: You cannot do that.
Sam: Why not? Because you cannot easily shut it down? Because I am asking another player to verify that I noted (works on both levels!) this to my familiar and sent it off to him? Seems like you have some kind of hard-o--vendetta with me if you are trying that hard to kill a spirit that I can just resummon an hour later if you somehow manage to kill it.

Do you really think he won't come up with some other justification to kill that Imp or render him completely ineffective? He already ruled that hugging and petting an owl killed it. He can come up with whatever BS reason he wants or get around any solution you can come up with because he can just change the rules.

"Of course, they scry with True Seeing active. They aren't idiots. They see through the invisibility and see the true form of the shapeshifted Imp and teleport to its exact location. When they appear, the Imp is surprised and they all attack. [Rolls] The Imp is dead. Now they give you a warning about bringing demons or unnatural familiars into the kingdom / continent / world / whatever. Man, you really should think about giving up on that familiar."

The DM's tools are limitless.

The only meaningful solution is setting a new dynamic with the DM.

[BoringInfoGuy]

You need to play with a different group. Go out, find an AL game, check out local comic or game stores, check Facebook for a local gaming community, whatever.

Failing that, quit. D&D is purely a recreational activity. If you are not able to enjoy the game, why waste your time playing? And if the game causes you stress and nightmares? Stop playing.

Sucks that you live with your DM. Still, you should quit. Say the basic truth - “I’m not enjoying sitting at your table” and leave it at that. Don’t get drawn in any further down that hole then you need to.

Bad D&D is not better than no D&D.

But sometimes you can forget that when you aren’t able to play in Good D&D.

[GlenSmash!]

The dm hates familiars. When I tried to have my owl fly up to do some scouting In a city, the dm had a random hawk attack it and it flew down to me, too scared to try ahain. He also, when I got drunk in a tavern, said I hugged it hard enough to crush it to death even though I wasn't even interacting with it at the time. Then when I resummoned it the next day and tried to gently pet it, the dm said I petted it too hard and snapped it's neck. After that, I stopped trying to have a familiar. Fortunately, that campaign was abandoned a few sessions later.

This person is a fool.

[MeeposFire]

Do you really think he won't come up with some other justification to kill that Imp or render him completely ineffective? He already ruled that hugging and petting an owl killed it. He can come up with whatever BS reason he wants or get around any solution you can come up with because he can just change the rules.

"Of course, they scry with True Seeing active. They aren't idiots. They see through the invisibility and see the true form of the shapeshifted Imp and teleport to its exact location. When they appear, the Imp is surprised and they all attack. [Rolls] The Imp is dead. Now they give you a warning about bringing demons or unnatural familiars into the kingdom / continent / world / whatever. Man, you really should think about giving up on that familiar."

The DM's tools are limitless.

The only meaningful solution is setting a new dynamic with the DM.

NOt just did he rule that the hug killed the familiar it sounded like in the story the DM just decided that the player hugged the familiar and then it died. The DM is just telling the player what they do in these situations and forcing their familiar to die. That is really terrible.

[Segev]

"I hug the BBEG and he dies."

[NNescio]

NOt just did he rule that the hug killed the familiar it sounded like in the story the DM just decided that the player hugged the familiar and then it died. The DM is just telling the player what they do in these situations and forcing their familiar to die. That is really terrible.

To quote another thread: This isn't gaming. This is Stockholm Syndrome with dice.

[Wizard_Lizard]

my dm didn't like my familiar either... ...but not THAT much.

[Ekzanimus]

The dm hates familiars. When I tried to have my owl fly up to do some scouting In a city, the dm had a random hawk attack it and it flew down to me, too scared to try ahain. He also, when I got drunk in a tavern, said I hugged it hard enough to crush it to death even though I wasn't even interacting with it at the time. Then when I resummoned it the next day and tried to gently pet it, the dm said I petted it too hard and snapped it's neck. After that, I stopped trying to have a familiar. Fortunately, that campaign was abandoned a few sessions later.
Oh my god, this story is just getting better and better. In a dark, twisted sort of way. Samcifer, I politely advise you to quit all games with this DM. After this little tidbit about familiars there is no question that he is not just a bad DM - he is a... bad man to put it mildly. If he hates familiars that much he could just ban the spell altogether. But noooooo. He decided to TORTURE you for choosing the option that he doesn't like. Your situation with blasting cleric is similar. He could just tell you that in his world clerics doesn't work this way. It is not very good approach but totally acceptable. But nooooo. He ACCEPTS your character concept only to TORTURE you afterwards. Don't you see a pattern? It doesn't really matter if he does this sort of bs only to you or other players as well. What really matters is that he DOES it at all. End of story.

[samcifer]

GAH! it's too busy at work! no time for reading or replying there...

Anyways, the rest of the players in both groups just seem to be rolling with the dm's behavior and only I seem bothers by any of it. If I had options, I'd walk, but this is the only dm I know.

Out-of-game, he's not too bad of a person. HE and his wife tend to do most of the cooking around here and always share, which is nice. They even treated us to homemade fondue night before last with beef, sausage, bred chinks and veggies.

It's just mostly in-game that he acts this way towards me. Two other people in the group have dm-ed for us and I admit that I like their dm styles much better than this guy's way of doing things.

At least I can say that I'm not the only one who has lot of bad things happen to their pc. In our last Friday session, the ratling wild magic sorcerer ended up making death saves 4 times f=during that single session. Granted a lot of that had to do with the fact that he only had 60hp max and I think his AC was around 15 or so (and that was after he got an ASI/feast and took light armor proficiency. Two of those times making death saves had to do with his pc assaulting another pc when the characters got into an argument that turned into a fight in the city streets.

So my fiancce was playing an older character of his, a half-orc barbarian, because his first character, a longtooth shifter champion fighter, died in the campaign. So he wanted to buy a belt to increase his strength and we bounced back and forth between the expensive white court market that had the item for a lot of gold, or the shady gray market that could order it for cheaper at only $45k in gold. HE settled on the gray market and after rolling low on an insight check to see if he could trust the shopkeeper, he took a gamble and wait a day. We arrived the next morning to find the shop gone. No belt and no trace of the $45k in gold.

The ratling makes a joke at the barbarian's expense and my fiance, slightly irked at that, elects to have his barbarian kick the ratling in the groin for mocking him. The dm tells the ratling's player that the kick landed, but did no damage. The ratling's player says, and I quote:

"So I cast fly and fly up... Then I keep casting Fireball on him until he's dead."

I want to remind everyone that this is during daytime hours in the middle of a crowded city street. As the barbarian flees towards a nearby tower for shelter from the fireballs, the city gaurd are coming and the bystanders are fleeing while the sorcerer keeps casting Fireball. The barbarian shouts to the guard that he's being attacked and the guard, who have powerful counter-spells and shut down the sorc's casting even when he tries again to attack the barb.

Both are arrested and the barb is released after a week in-game. My fiance' says that it was the last straw for his character, who quits the group and the character is retired. That was our tank, btw. But my fiance' brings in his human conjuration wizard from the campaign where my evocation wizard's familiar kept being killed and the wizard my fiance' brought in can summon elementals, technically replacing the group's tank after a fashion.

The ratling was released from prison after a month in-game, and is still a part of the group. The ratling made nice with the new wizard by giving him a gift, tho I can't recall what it was.

[Wizard_Lizard]

how does the dm feel about elementals, is the conjurer going to be able to hug the fire elemental to death too?

[samcifer]

how does the dm feel about elementals, is the conjurer going to be able to hug the fire elemental to death too?

Well the wizard used a large earth elemental in the dungeon we did and there was a medusa head trap, but earth elementals cannot be petrified, so he had it smash the head. the sorcerer took the eyes and stuck them into the eyes of the elemental and we had it lead the way through the dungeon. Sadly it fell into a deep chasm pit trap in a room filled with treasure, much to the dm's relief that we didn't get to use the petrification gaze elemental against the boss. ("I'm glad that happened," he said. "I don't know why I gave you something as powerful as that.") We had to fight an Orobourus boss the hard way in the end.

[Hail Tempus]

This whole game sounds like a train wreck. PvP, constant turnover of characters, a DM who doesn’t really seem to understand the rules or the point of D&D (it’s supposed to be an enjoyable social event). Is anyone really enjoying this game, or are you all just doing it to piss each other off?

And OP, just because you live in a house with someone, doesn’t mean you have to do everything with them. If this game isn’t fun for you, you have every right to tell the group you don’t want to play anymore.

Unfortunately, I think we’ll be seeing more threads like this from you in the future, when this DM decides he’s going to arbitrarily nerf your next character because he doesn’t like sneak attack, or portent or whatever.

[ProsecutorGodot]

The ratling makes a joke at the barbarian's expense and my fiance, slightly irked at that, elects to have his barbarian kick the ratling in the groin for mocking him. The dm tells the ratling's player that the kick landed, but did no damage. The ratling's player says, and I quote:

"So I cast fly and fly up... Then I keep casting Fireball on him until he's dead." ...

Please, I don't want to read any more. If this were a competition for most dysfunctional table dynamic you'd be in the top position. This is horrid, no reasonable city would release this ratling after committing this severe of an offense, he would be put to death.


Well the wizard used a large earth elemental in the dungeon we did and there was a medusa head trap, but earth elementals cannot be petrified, so he had it smash the head. the sorcerer took the eyes and stuck them into the eyes of the elemental and we had it lead the way through the dungeon. Sadly it fell into a deep chasm pit trap in a room filled with treasure, much to the dm's relief that we didn't get to use the petrification gaze elemental against the boss. ("I'm glad that happened," he said. "I don't know why I gave you something as powerful as that.") We had to fight an Orobourus boss the hard way in the end.
And with everything we've heard about this DM I'd feel safe in betting that the inescapable chasm trap didn't exist prior to your petrifying elemental strategy.

[Goggalor]

All you can do is argue this out of game. Trying to find in-game solutions to circumvent out-of-game problems will never, ever work, especially if you're trying to find a way to thwart a DM. You will never thwart a DM, they can do literally anything they want, while you are bound by the rules.


The DM's tools are limitless.

The only meaningful solution is setting a new dynamic with the DM.

Yes, you are both correct that he can do anything. He could also simply say that spell fizzles, but he will not. The DM has to make it look somewhat organic to the world, otherwise the other players might know his true motive...

To which I am going to offer a different take on why the DM is acting the way he is: the DM loathes Sam. While he puts on a veneer of being nice to Sam (making meals for him and his fiancee, rooming with them in the same house), it seems (to me) deep down that the DM is using the game as a way of showing his displeasure of Sam. Maybe it is resentment of them staying there (a married couple having others live with them can strain a relationship) or maybe some other reason(s) that we are not aware as we only have very limited information about the situation, but it is a different theory/take on the DM's behavior.

However, back from the theory, the point is that it looks like Sam is dead set on playing with the guy, so Sam should play using the DM's "rules." Additionally, it appears to me that the DM does not like to have his authority challenged at the table, so showing the rest of the table the extent of the DM's authoritarianism is a win-win (sometimes it is the small wins in life).

[blackjack50]

Option is simple. Leave. Or DM yourself. I’m spoiled. My DM is a challenge course facilitator and good at puzzles. But is also a fan of loopholes.

[stoutstien]

Yes, you are both correct that he can do anything. He could also simply say that spell fizzles, but he will not. The DM has to make it look somewhat organic to the world, otherwise the other players might know his true motive...

To which I am going to offer a different take on why the DM is acting the way he is: the DM loathes Sam. While he puts on a veneer of being nice to Sam (making meals for him and his fiancee, rooming with them in the same house), it seems (to me) deep down that the DM is using the game as a way of showing his displeasure of Sam. Maybe it is resentment of them staying there (a married couple having others live with them can strain a relationship) or maybe some other reason(s) that we are not aware as we only have very limited information about the situation, but it is a different theory/take on the DM's behavior.

However, back from the theory, the point is that it looks like Sam is dead set on playing with the guy, so Sam should play using the DM's "rules." Additionally, it appears to me that the DM does not like to have his authority challenged at the table, so showing the rest of the table the extent of the DM's authoritarianism is a win-win (sometimes it is the small wins in life).

I don't know if we can credit malice or just ignorance here.

It could be a subconscious manifestation of envy more than hate. Envy is more dangerous.

[samcifer]

Please, I don't want to read any more. If this were a competition for most dysfunctional table dynamic you'd be in the top position. This is horrid, no reasonable city would release this ratling after committing this severe of an offense, he would be put to death.


And with everything we've heard about this DM I'd feel safe in betting that the inescapable chasm trap didn't exist prior to your petrifying elemental strategy.

The ratling's player was using the "that's what my character would do" kind of play style (which, if I am ever the dm, would be banned from playing. If they do something like that, I'd have heavy penalties such as that pc being either imprisoned with no possibility of escape or execution). Sadly theres another player who AKWAYS plays his characters this way, such as killing a shopkeeper for not giving him a discount in a good campaign, then there's the incident with a phosforous stake causing a vampire to explode while I was within range of the blast radius.

The warforged life cleric in that group plays well and tries to use teamwork, I try to use teamwork whenever possible as a blaster, while our hexblade pc is at least never disruptive and the same goes for my fiance and his pcs. The rattling has been a good dm in past campaigns as well as helpful as other pcs he's played, but this time he's more annoying than anything else. :P

As for the pit trap, the dm seemed truly relieved that the elemental fell into it, arguing that it had been there the hole time (get it?!?).

But that makes me ask what would've happened if a pc had fallen into the hole?

[Segev]

It could also simply be that the DM thinks lolrandom stuff is funny, that familiars are cheap and replaceable, and has a knee-jerk "must challenge the players, so have to use every ability at my disposal to shut down their best abilities" reaction.

Still not good, but it may not be malicious.

The solution still involves laying out to him that you're not having fun, and why, and asking him what kind of character he'd be happier to let you play. If he denies that he has a problem with your characters, bring the conversation back around to what he's doing that's making it seem like he does have a problem with the character builds. How he's shutting them down, making them no fun. Let him ask the inevitable "so, what, I shouldn't ever challenge you?" type questions, and then point out that you never get to use your abilities. And then listen to his reply; he might have a list of a bunch of times you got to use your powers well. If so, evaluate his list. See if he has a point and this is just you only remembering the bad instances.

I'm not saying it is all in your head. I'm just saying that you should seriously listen to him and see if his perspective changes yours.

And then seriously discuss with him what you do and do not like about his games and how your PCs play in them. Find out if you're somehow bothering him with your character builds or tactical choices.

In a Rifts game I'm in, it took months, but I think I finally came to a gentleman's agreement with the GM that I would refrain from using certain spells because she refuses to change their mechanics, but feels they're overpowered. So I try to use them only when their basic application is painfully obviously intended, rather than being creative with them, and to mix it up and use other things even though the tried-and-true-but-overdone ones are just that effective. In return, she doesn't try to find every excuse not to let anything I try work. She had felt she had to, lest I take a mile if she gave an inch, whereas I was trying to find something, anything, that would not fail miserably to be effective. Communication, despite the occasional tension and heated defensiveness on both sides, helped immensely.

[BoringInfoGuy]

GAH! it's too busy at work! no time for reading or replying there...

Anyways, the rest of the players in both groups just seem to be rolling with the dm's behavior and only I seem bothers by any of it. If I had options, I'd walk, but this is the only dm I know.

Out-of-game, he's not too bad of a person. HE and his wife tend to do most of the cooking around here and always share, which is nice. They even treated us to homemade fondue night before last with beef, sausage, bred chinks and veggies.

It's just mostly in-game that he acts this way towards me. Two other people in the group have dm-ed for us and I admit that I like their dm styles much better than this guy's way of doing things.

You HAVE options.

DO NOT TELL YOURSELF OTHERWISE.

Currently, you are stuck on option one.
Keep playing and keep trying to convince yourself things aren’t so bad while having nightmares over a game and vent on the forum. Venting can help release some stress, but has it done anything to resolve the underlying problem?

Normally, I would suggest option two.
Mature conversation between adults regarding expectations of play styles and what is fun versus frustrating. Living with this DM makes this more difficult, since a potential outcome of this is bad feelings and ruined friendships if the conversation turns heated.


Quit playing in this guys game.
This option is past due.

From there, you have several sub options.
Take a break from D&D. Sucks, but you may NEED it.

Find a new group. Have Facebook Or other social media? Try searching for [name of your city / community] Gamers or D&D or Adventure League.

The entire point of Adventure League is to help players find tables to play at.

I know I’m just a rando on the internet to you, but I’ve been playing D&D for decades. You are not the first player to feel stuck under a crappy DM. I’ve had a few such players join my table, and just be amazed at how much fun the game is when the DM is not abusing his players.

You need to sit under a better DM to see the difference.

[AHF]

The solution still involves laying out to him that you're not having fun, and why, and asking him what kind of character he'd be happier to let you play. If he denies that he has a problem with your characters, bring the conversation back around to what he's doing that's making it seem like he does have a problem with the character builds. How he's shutting them down, making them no fun. Let him ask the inevitable "so, what, I shouldn't ever challenge you?" type questions, and then point out that you never get to use your abilities. And then listen to his reply; he might have a list of a bunch of times you got to use your powers well. If so, evaluate his list. See if he has a point and this is just you only remembering the bad instances.

I'm not saying it is all in your head. I'm just saying that you should seriously listen to him and see if his perspective changes yours.

And then seriously discuss with him what you do and do not like about his games and how your PCs play in them. Find out if you're somehow bothering him with your character builds or tactical choices.


Definitely agree with this. I don't think there is a solution to this other than getting to a new common understanding with the DM, particularly where the other players are content with his style and treatment of the players. In a world where he tells you that you hugged your familiar when you never told him you were doing that and that hugging or petting said familiar kills them multiple times, there is no outwitting him or working within his rules to get to a playable situation. It is only by a Session 0 style conversation about how the game will work and how you will get along together that can get you past this.

[Contrast]

To which I am going to offer a different take on why the DM is acting the way he is: the DM loathes Sam. While he puts on a veneer of being nice to Sam (making meals for him and his fiancee, rooming with them in the same house), it seems (to me) deep down that the DM is using the game as a way of showing his displeasure of Sam. Maybe it is resentment of them staying there (a married couple having others live with them can strain a relationship) or maybe some other reason(s) that we are not aware as we only have very limited information about the situation, but it is a different theory/take on the DM's behavior.

You're speaking awfully confidently about the motivations of someone you've never met and their actions in a game you've never been to. I really don't think its helpful or healthy for us to speculate about things like that. Samcifer should definitely be discussing these things with their fiance who, you know, actually does know these people and has seen these interactions.


However, back from the theory, the point is that it looks like Sam is dead set on playing with the guy, so Sam should play using the DM's "rules." Additionally, it appears to me that the DM does not like to have his authority challenged at the table, so showing the rest of the table the extent of the DM's authoritarianism is a win-win (sometimes it is the small wins in life).

In my world 'be purposefully petty and try to undermine and get under the skin of someone I live with' does not fall within the definition of 'win-win' (justified or not). Best case scenario, you achieve what a mature adult conversation would have achieved in less time. Worst case scenario, you have to move house. Whereas if you just talked to the person the worst case scenario is...you stop playing in a game thats been giving you nightmares. That's win-win.

[samcifer]

Well, after considering everyone's advice, I think that talking to the dm and explaining why I'm changing characters is the right way to go along with the change of characters to something that I know will work in the campaign based on other player's characters combined with personal experience with how the dm builds encounters.

I know I come of as an 'I'll take that under advisement' kind of person, but I really do appreciate all the help you guys have been offering as well as your support in this. I'll let everyone know how things go after a few sessions.

[douglasbushong]

Well, after considering everyone's advice, I think that talking to the dm and explaining why I'm changing characters is the right way to go along with the change of characters to something that I know will work in the campaign based on other player's characters combined with personal experience with how the dm builds encounters.

I know I come of as an 'I'll take that under advisement' kind of person, but I really do appreciate all the help you guys have been offering as well as your support in this. I'll let everyone know how things go after a few sessions.

Best of luck to you. If it doesn't work out...welcome to Adventurers League. :smallsmile:

[MadBear]

Good luck. Hopefully things turn around, and the game gets better for you.

Just to reiterate, if you do end up walking away from the game, that doesn't mean you've "turned" on the DM. Sometimes despite the fact that you're friends, you just have irreconcilable differences in what you want out of D&D. What works for you, may not work for him, and visa versa.

[Goggalor]

You're speaking awfully confidently about the motivations of someone you've never met and their actions in a game you've never been to. I really don't think its helpful or healthy for us to speculate about things like that. Samcifer should definitely be discussing these things with their fiance who, you know, actually does know these people and has seen these interactions.



In my world 'be purposefully petty and try to undermine and get under the skin of someone I live with' does not fall within the definition of 'win-win' (justified or not). Best case scenario, you achieve what a mature adult conversation would have achieved in less time. Worst case scenario, you have to move house. Whereas if you just talked to the person the worst case scenario is...you stop playing in a game thats been giving you nightmares. That's win-win.

You are correct on the first front in that I do not know, but, as I wrote, I put out a theory. It looks like Sam has chosen to avoid based off of his latest post.

If Sam wanted to talk to the DM about the issue(s), sure, that would work, but it does not seem the case (to me). I did write before walk away, but if he wants to continue playing, play by that guy's "rules", especially if he is as vindictive as Sam seems make him out to be towards himself.

However, I have been involved in a bad DM situation that I should have walked away from months beforehand, but I did not, as my friends were playing there as well and would not walk away. We talked with him multiple times about issues we had with the game, as the group generally liked to have a flow of ideas after sessions about improvements, most of which he never used but expected us to do all of the ones he suggested (one that I think of that he actually cut back on was his use of a certain monster that he preferred (the bodak), if I recall correctly).

Now, this is fifteen years ago, so my example is not as fresh as Sam's, but a big one was where the group was escaping after a big boss fight from a temple that started collapsing after he was "defeated" (very low HP, though he surrounded himself with a group of minions, maybe ten?) and was also filling with zombies (or some other type of horde-ish minion). Seeing how close the boss was close to defeat and how close the horde was (though, not close enough to the boss himself), I decided to sacrifice my character (who was a melee character and still in fairly good shape) to protect the retreat. The DM did not give me a chance to even go for the boss because he wanted the boss to live and decided my character committed suicide by horde instead (who somehow materialized all around him); no rolls, no nothing. Simply death for the character and time to roll up yet another new character (this DM had a knack for throwing too much out in a fight and then rolling it back, especially if one of his "favorites" looked to be doing badly; oh yeah, he played favorites, too, with people).

[Segev]

Best of luck to you. If it doesn't work out...welcome to Adventurers League. :smallsmile:

While I will recommend anybody looking for gaming but unable to find it try this out, I will say that, for me, PFS and AL have proven to be my "no gaming is better than bad gaming" experience. It's not even the tables; it's the way the modules run. The bookkeeping feels particularly artificial, but worse, the play style doesn't feel like anything I do matters. The character I'm playing is irrelevant beyond tactical tricks, and even then, arbitrary box text based timing means that if I don't guess when the module writer expected me to take long rests, I screw myself over. Because the boxed text will not change the result based on pushing forward as if we were on a clock, so the enemies will be exactly as entrenched and any allies we hoped to save exactly as wounded, regardless of whether we rested or pressed on immediately.

And RP is discouraged by being entirely superfluous. You're hitting the bullet points of the module as long as you're moderately agreeable to proceeding.

So it just isn't fun for me. I'm not playing a character; I'm playing a tactical combat game. And while those can be fun, the dress-up to try to pretend otherwise tends to make the tactical decisions get muddied by the fiction layer failing to match the tactical game layer.

[Phhase]

The dm hates familiars. When I tried to have my owl fly up to do some scouting In a city, the dm had a random hawk attack it and it flew down to me, too scared to try ahain. He also, when I got drunk in a tavern, said I hugged it hard enough to crush it to death even though I wasn't even interacting with it at the time. Then when I resummoned it the next day and tried to gently pet it, the dm said I petted it too hard and snapped it's neck. After that, I stopped trying to have a familiar. Fortunately, that campaign was abandoned a few sessions later.

Woah woah what the duck? What's this guy's problem? Why would you do that? What kind of joyless egg has that much of a vendetta against cute animals? I'd start casting Stoneskin/Dragon's Breath on your familiars, and having an archer cover it. Like, come ON dude. That's just mean.

Also, what's this I'm hearing about a phosphorous stake...? Sounds like some Spec Ops: The Line stuff.

[Hail Tempus]

Woah woah what the duck? What's this guy's problem? Why would you do that? What kind of joyless egg has that much of a vendetta against cute animals? I'd start casting Stoneskin/Dragon's Breath on your familiars, and having an archer cover it. Like, come ON dude. That's just mean.

Also, what's this I'm hearing about a phosphorous stake...? Sounds like some Spec Ops: The Line stuff. Some DMs hate familiars because they're frequently used as a way to give advantage through the Help action.

My response to that complaint, as a DM and a player is: so what? There are a lot of ways to get advantage in the game. Who cares if the party wizard has figured out a way to do so regularly? (at least, until the familiar dies when it gets caught in an AOE, familiars are pretty fragile).

Everything about this DM screams "hates fun".

[Willie the Duck]

Woah woah what the duck?

Yes? :P


Some DMs hate familiars because they're frequently used as a way to give advantage through the Help action.

My response to that complaint, as a DM and a player is: so what? There are a lot of ways to get advantage in the game. Who cares if the party wizard has figured out a way to do so regularly? (at least, until the familiar dies when it gets caught in an AOE, familiars are pretty fragile).


Something tells me that either 1) someone had a player that treated this as auto-advantage and also threw a fit when said auto-advantage was circumvented or the familiar was targeted, or 2) it's one of those knee-jerk 'come to the edition and see something that crosses ones' wires wrong' moments. Regarding the later, I remember my first 3e campaign, where the DM decided that low level treasure output was too inflated compared to the D&D they knew, and cut the payout before actually reading what gold was actually used for in the new edition (say what you will about buying magic items in 3e or the Christmas Tree effect or WBL, etc., don't you think you should understand said rules before you start moding them?). I'm not justifying this behavior, only stating that I've seen similar stuff happen more than a few times.

[samcifer]

Wow! Okay then... So I messaged the dm today asking if he would let me use the UA Revised Ranger and he said yes, so that changes my build some.

I decided to go Bear Totem Barbarian 5 / Revised Ranger 2 with Two-weapon Fighting / Swashbuckler Rogue 4 with +2 STR and Dual Wielder as my two asi/feats. This would give me a lot including a potential third attack as a bonus action if I don't need to dash, disengage from 4 or more enemies or hide during combat. I took Humanoids as my favored enemy.

I know this might seem like a weird and less than optimal build, but it would let me have 2 asi/feats, the equivalent of the duelist fighting style against my favored enemy, advantage on initiative rolls and enemies who haven't acted during the first turn of combat and a good number of other compatible abilities from the other classes. The bonus action attack is there in case I end up having a turn of really bad attack rolls, giving me a third chance to land my sneak attack. I know that 2d6 is not much extra damage, but having the option of a third attack would up my dps by a nice amount, adding an extra minimum of 9 damage per turn and as much as 18 on a non-crit. I'm not planning on doing this ALL the time, but having that extra option makes me feel better about playing a martial character since the blaster spell-casters I normally enjoy playing aren't feasible in this campaign from how the dm is handling it. I'd also like to point out that my blaster-oriented sorlock in the other campaign I play in with the same dm can blast without hindrances.

I kn ow that playing multi-class characters like this may seem in-efficient to some people (*cough!* my fiance' *cough! cough!*), but I love multi-classing and finding fun ways to combine the features of various different classes.

I'll give it 2 or 3 sessions until we level up again to see if I really need Uncanny Dodge at rogue 5. If not, I'll go Gloomstalker ranger instead, then up to ranger 4 for another asi/feat and play it from there based on my experience playing this character and seeing what I'd need more of.

[stoutstien]

Wow! Okay then... So I messaged the dm today asking if he would let me use the UA Revised Ranger and he said yes, so that changes my build some.

I decided to go Bear Totem Barbarian 5 / Revised Ranger 2 with Two-weapon Fighting / Swashbuckler Rogue 4 with +2 STR and Dual Wielder as my two asi/feats. This would give me a lot including a potential third attack as a bonus action if I don't need to dash, disengage from 4 or more enemies or hide during combat. I took Humanoids as my favored enemy.

I know this might seem like a weird and less than optimal build, but it would let me have 2 asi/feats, the equivalent of the duelist fighting style against my favored enemy, advantage on initiative rolls and enemies who haven't acted during the first turn of combat and a good number of other compatible abilities from the other classes. The bonus action attack is there in case I end up having a turn of really bad attack rolls, giving me a third chance to land my sneak attack. I know that 2d6 is not much extra damage, but having the option of a third attack would up my dps by a nice amount, adding an extra minimum of 9 damage per turn and as much as 18 on a non-crit. I'm not planning on doing this ALL the time, but having that extra option makes me feel better about playing a martial character since the blaster spell-casters I normally enjoy playing aren't feasible in this campaign from how the dm is handling it. I'd also like to point out that my blaster-oriented sorlock in the other campaign I play in with the same dm can blast without hindrances.

I kn ow that playing multi-class characters like this may seem in-efficient to some people (*cough!* my fiance' *cough! cough!*), but I love multi-classing and finding fun ways to combine the features of various different classes.

I'll give it 2 or 3 sessions until we level up again to see if I really need Uncanny Dodge at rogue 5. If not, I'll go Gloomstalker ranger instead, then up to ranger 4 for another asi/feat and play it from there based on my experience playing this character and seeing what I'd need more of.

This may sound odd but you may have more system Mastery than the DM which may be why he fall back on sudden snap decisions that are bad due to inconsistencies. Every one of your characters have been very complex put together multiclass build which isn't bad but may have a shock component when your DM is trying to figure out where to take the game.

I'm not defending his actions thus far but he may feel bad for limited your options but isnt sure where your power level actually is at so he is constantly trying to tweak during game.

Just a thought.

[samcifer]

This may sound odd but you may have more system Mastery than the DM which may be why he fall back on sudden snap decisions that are bad due to inconsistencies. Every one of your characters have been very complex put together multiclass build which isn't bad but may have a shock component when your DM is trying to figure out where to take the game.

I'm not defending his actions thus far but he may feel bad for limited your options but isnt sure where your power level actually is at so he is constantly trying to tweak during game.

Just a thought.

Well my last character on this campaign was a light cleric 8 / Wizard 1 / Rogue 1 (I was going for rogue 2 for cunning action, but he wasn't aware of this or seemed interested in knowing) and that wasn't really that powerful as he was shutting down my offensive spellcasting completely, reducing me to support casting to heal. There's already a lycan sub-class blood hunter who can deal the exact same amount of damage he takes every time he takes damage and a half-orc bear totem barb / champion fighter with both polearm master and sentinel in the group and they'd still be bitter threats than me. I'd still most likely be only the third highest in damage and with my abysmal luck with die-rolling, I'm looking to get in less attack than either of the two biggest hitters in the group. I'm figuring that my pc will be more annoying than anything else, being more like an annoying insect buzzing around and hard to hit rather than a big brute who comes in and does massive damage or stops foes in their tracks from reach.

[stoutstien]

Well my last character on this campaign was a light cleric 8 / Wizard 1 / Rogue 1 (I was going for rogue 2 for cunning action, but he wasn't aware of this or seemed interested in knowing) and that wasn't really that powerful as he was shutting down my offensive spellcasting completely, reducing me to support casting to heal. There's already a lycan sub-class blood hunter who can deal the exact same amount of damage he takes every time he takes damage and a half-orc bear totem barb / champion fighter with both polearm master and sentinel in the group and they'd still be bitter threats than me. I'd still most likely be only the third highest in damage and with my abysmal luck with die-rolling, I'm looking to get in less attack than either of the two biggest hitters in the group. I'm figuring that my pc will be more annoying than anything else, being more like an annoying insect buzzing around and hard to hit rather than a big brute who comes in and does massive damage or stops foes in their tracks from reach.

That's the point. He isn't ready for a caster that has the opportunities and flexibility that a light cleric has. He wasn't ready for your fireball so he countering it so who the players who he was expecting to do the damage can do it.

Player knowledge and experience doesn't translate as much a people think when you are running a game. He is being reactivate vs proactive in his planning which is indicative of information overload.

[Tvtyrant]

I am going to mirror other people here. Talk to the DM about your expectations in the game, and see if you can't get on board with each other. If the party needs additional healing ask for a refilling wand of CLWs or something to be given to the party so you can play something proactive.

[Shabbazar]

I'm a man.

{scrubbed}

[KorvinStarmast]

Just to reiterate, if you do end up walking away from the game, that doesn't mean you've "turned" on the DM. Sometimes despite the fact that you're friends, you just have irreconcilable differences in what you want out of D&D. What works for you, may not work for him, and visa versa. Yes, sometimes that's the best choice.

That's the point. He isn't ready for a caster that has the opportunities and flexibility that a light cleric has. He wasn't ready for your fireball so he countering it so who the players who he was expecting to do the damage can do it.

Player knowledge and experience doesn't translate as much a people think when you are running a game. He is being reactivate vs proactive in his planning which is indicative of information overload. Great points on the DM being less into charop than samcifer is. I run into this in my brother's group.

I dig into details, and make suggestions to the players when I DM, but that is as far as I go. As a fellow player, I also (because I have decided to dig into the mechanics a bit) will sometimes make an observation/suggestion ... and then I shut up. They all know that they can ask.

My brother, when he DMs, often makes rulings that do not fit this edition. He did quite a bit of 3.5e D&Ding as my nephew was growing up. (I'll ask him after a session, or send him an email, pointing to "this is how these mechanics work, are you good with that or not" and then I await his decision). What I do not do is argue with him, nor do I get upset if a ruling does not go my way. The play's the thing, not my PC's "success" in the game. And if my PC dies, I get to roll up a different one and try something else.

It is really important to me that no matter where each player is with "system mastery" for this edition that my current fascination with the details Must Not detract from our play as a group. For us, the game is a social setting first, and we enjoy it to the extent that we can all get together to play, though most sessions are missing at least one person due to RL being RL.

For samcifer: I am wary of offering you advice, as I often think that you post to vent/get things off your chest and that you find that talking it out with people in the Playground as a part of the venting process, maybe in a cathartic way, that is helpful to you. But here I go:

Demanding or expecting that the DM is as deep into system mastery as one's self (as a player) is in my experience counter productive. Had to learn this the hard way on a few occasions. I say this with the experience of all editions other than 4th, though I didn't play all that much 2e AD&D and 3.x. (Life reasons ...). What I learned over time was that it was really important to work with the DM and the rest of the group to have a fun experience as a group.

That may be the situation that you are in here, but it may not be apparent to you from the inside looking out. I have an idea, a suggestion, but of course the choice is up to you as it's your game and your PC.

For your new PC, play a single classed character. That may reduce the burden on your DM. Sometimes, reducing complexity reaps rewards. And play a class / sub class that you have not played before.

In any case, best wishes in getting this worked out with your DM. I can tell that you have a passion for this game based on your posts here, and I sincerely hope that you get "more fun and less frustration" as your game progresses.

May you always make your saving throw.

[samcifer]

So it went horribly...

He acted surprised when I brought in my new character even though I had asked him 5 days ago if it was okay for me to change characters and he said yes, and was now angry that I hadn't "talked it over with (him) first".

During combat we were up against 8 werewolves and I got highest initiative, so I raged, used double movement to run up to the boss, landed 2 of my 3 attacks while attacking recklessly (I'd forgotten the first round advantage to creatures who have not acted yet in combat)doing 8 + 1d8 per attack with 2d6 Sneak Attack damage added on, then retreated back to the group and, playing the part of a self-serving rogue, took a position behind the other players because rogues, to me at least, prefer to avoid retaliation.

He went next and had 4 werewolves after me who each had 3 attacks and did a total of 132hp of damage to me, but thanks to my resistance from raging, only lost 66hp of ,my 105hp maximum. The rest of the battle was tamer, but he made sure to attack me with a creature every round (THAT part was fair to me), and I managed to avoid becoming infected with lycanthropy, but our war cleric (a minotaur) did not and was turned by the boss, but only got to attack one of us other pcs (not me) before the boss died and he was free of the alpha's control and changed back. During the battle the cleric healed us 2 times, which was the only thing that kept me from making death saves.

After the session (which ended after a bit more roleplay and I mulled over what had happened once the other players had left. I felt that the dm had been a bit abusive in his over-the-top, (to me at least) retaliation against my new character. My fiance' came to me a short time later and I talked with him over how I felt than, now feeling bullied by the dm, was considering quitting the campaign. He left and a few minutes later he returned and said that the dm wanted to speak to me, so I go upstairs and my fiance' sits there as the dm tells me off for complaining constantly and accusing me of making a min-max character and that he hates tabaxi...

That last part was certainly news to me because in our other campaign we had a gal playing a tabaxi paladin and he never seemed to have issues with her character.

As the berating continued, he said that he's now planning on actively killing off my new character.

I've decided that I'll play until he does so, then quit the campaign. I refuse to be driven away sooner and I want to see if he carries out his threat. He also said, in outrage, how he tries to make balanced encounters, which I find to be an outright lie after the things he's been doing.

Now I'm back to feeling as if being around people isn't worth the effort, really. I've been suicidal off and on for the last 28 years and I don't need this kind of abuse from someone who finds pleasure in bullying players for trying to survive his in-game b.s. I grew up being verbally abused and disowned my family over it, so I won't take up from some lard-a** upstart (I'm 17 years older than him and he's making me feel even older, hence that insult).

As for my fiance', he's lucky I was willing to give him his birthday presents (today is his b-day). I'm pretty steamed with him for going and reporting my feelings to the dm like that without even mentioning that he was thinking of doing so. I think I'll go out for most of the night and only come home when it's my bedtime. I really don't want to be around either one of them.

Thanks again for all the advice and support, everyone. I just wish that a more reasonable person was dm-ing in my group. I can handle him being a player, but his dm-style is beyond unreasonable, imo.

[Cygnia]

No.

Leave
The
Game
NOW!

Don't give him the chance to be his personal punching bag. He is a toxic individual that you should avoid gaming with.

[Vichaous]

No.

Leave
The
Game
NOW!


I have to second this response. Leave the game be. The GM is bad for you, and "sticking it to him" by staying in the game is only going to make things worse for you. Call it a day and move on. I won't comment on your relationship with your fiance. That's a different thing altogether.

[Daghoulish]

No.

Leave
The
Game
NOW!

Don't give him the chance to be his personal punching bag. He is a toxic individual that you should avoid gaming with.

I'm going to third this. Samcifer, I don't know why your so adamant about this but leave. Don't stick around, don't wait until he kills you. This isn't giving him the finger it's just making you look insane. Leave the game, do it. There are dozens of other ways to play d&d, stop being this dm's outlet for their negativity. Get out.

[KorvinStarmast]

So it went horribly...

Thanks again for all the advice and support, everyone. I just wish that a more reasonable person was dm-ing in my group. I can handle him being a player, but his dm-style is beyond unreasonable, imo. Aaarrgh, I am so sorry to hear that. :smallfrown:

1. Priorities and first things first: heal whatever hurts there are with your fiance. Long term, that's who is important. (I am guessing that what happened there was an attempt to be a peacemaker, and it misfired)

What to do with your soiled relationship with the DM:

2. Kill 'em with kindness, rather than what you are thinking of doing.

*Thanks for all the time and effort you have put in as a DM. I'll be missing the next few sessions*

And leave it at that. Make no further explanation, as none is required.

3. Then what?

1. If the whole group invites you back at some time in the future, have a session 0 and make sure you are on the same page before character creation.

2. I will suggest that you try a single class PC that you've not played before if you do choose to go back.

3. Spend your leisure time enjoying a different hobby for a while, or,

4. try your hand at writing an adventure for DM's Guild and when it's nearly finished, ask them to help you play test it.


Again, thanks for the support everyone. I think I'll just wait until someone else dms. I also wish I didn't work such late hours as most AL sessions are already well under way by the time I could arrive for them.
Double Arrrgggghh!! Against Real Life, there is no saving throw. :smallfrown:

[samcifer]

I'm going to third this. Samcifer, I don't know why your so adamant about this but leave. Don't stick around, don't wait until he kills you. This isn't giving him the finger it's just making you look insane. Leave the game, do it. There are dozens of other ways to play d&d, stop being this dm's outlet for their negativity. Get out.

He says he wants to play with me, but hates every character I create, ranted that I hadn't bothered making a backstory when that's never been a problem before and my characters' backstories have never been relevant or even seemed to matter, so what's the point?

He just... I just want to lay that fat little s*** on his a**!

I'm just in a terrible mood and feeling like nothing is worth caring about anymore. And I do mean anything!

Again, thanks for the support everyone. I think I'll just wait until someone else dms. I also wish I didn't work such late hours as most AL sessions are already well under way by the time I could arrive for them.

[Kane0]

*Channels Arnie* GET OUT!

[Yunru]

Record everything.
Pretty sure things such as them saying you didn't discuss it with them and proof to the contrary can only help the situation.

[Dudu]

He says he wants to play with me, but hates every character I create, ranted that I hadn't bothered making a backstory when that's never been a problem before and my characters' backstories have never been relevant or even seemed to matter, so what's the point?

He just... I just want to lay that fat little s*** on his a**!

I'm just in a terrible mood and feeling like nothing is worth caring about anymore. And I do mean anything!

Again, thanks for the support everyone. I think I'll just wait until someone else dms. I also wish I didn't work such late hours as most AL sessions are already well under way by the time I could arrive for them.
I understand that frustration

You get invested in a game, just to see some one arbitrarily sabotage it. Some dms are psycopaths, I think. It seems like they see the game as some powertrip. Or have a very strict idea on how the players have to play.

Maybe they just have a weird mentality, and feel like players suceeding gloriously in the challenges means they outwitted and humiliated them. That player vs DM mentality simply cannot happen, it's completely against one of the dnd's core concepts of everyone having fun at the same table.

In my case, I only had trouble with the sh1thead DM, the rest of the players were fine, great even. So we all quit and left him alone. But having other players agree with that bs your DM keeps pulling is unerving.

Stop agreeing with this dude. It became abusive, and in any abusive relationship, whenever you try to compromise and give in some of the things you wanted, you just get more punishment and frustration.
I'm more intrigued that no one else in the table is condeming that behavior.

[Cygnia]

Stop agreeing with this dude. It became abusive, and in any abusive relationship, whenever you try to compromise and give in some of the things you wanted, you just get more punishment and frustration.
I'm more intrigued that no one else in the table is condemning that behavior.

Especially his fiance. :smallfrown:

[ProsecutorGodot]

This is one of the rare occasions that I'm disappointed that I was correct in my assessment of this DM. I'm sorry to hear that it went so badly for you Samcifer.

Gotta echo what's been said: You've had willpower beyond what I'd have been capable of myself but you really need to walk away from this table. It's confirmed without a shadow of a doubt now that this DM is out to get you, the best thing you can do is not allow him the pleasure of killing off another one of your characters and making that his final victory over you.

You can either tell him in private before the start of the next session, that would likely be the most amicable way to walk away or you can bring it up at the start of the session in front of the rest of the players. That is decidedly less amicable as even if your intent is simply to leave peacefully I get the feeling this DM would see it as an offense against him.

Personally I would go for the second option but I understand that you have to live with this gentleman and that might push the household dynamic too hard. Just be sure that whatever you choose that you make it clear to him why you're quitting and how he's been making you feel.

Don't let this guy ruin DND for you, it's a great hobby and you're meant to enjoy playing it. Best of luck.

EDIT: As a side note, you should probably have a serious 1 on 1 with your Fiance. He really mucked things up with the way he acted and regardless of how much he enjoys the DND sessions it was pretty rude of him to act how he did. Just don't try to pull him out of the sessions with you when you leave, as much as he should have had your back it wouldn't be fair to pull him out if he's still enjoying it.

[1Pirate]

Yeah, you've got to just peace out. Don't go to another session with him. Sticking around for your character to die is just an opportunity for the DM to further humiliate you in front of your friends.

This is sort of why people here have been telling you to leave, the friction with your DM has started to bleed into your personal life. The longer you keep playing together, the more you're going to start seeing him as the s****y DM and not the friendly housemate(and the same will probably go for him).

Because things have escalated a bit, leaving is going to make things tense around the house(maybe even another argument), but things are much more likely to blow over once you each get some distance away from the game.

EDIT: Also DO NOT, under any circumstances, show up to that last session. If no one else has called him out on his behavior thus far, he's clearly manipulative enough to make you look like the bad guy one way or the other and being there in person will just make you feel worse(or possibly even result in a physical altercation, which definitely destroy any relationship you two might have had outside the game).

If it's at your home, greet people as you see them, but don't sit down at the table, don't take out your dice or character sheets, be polite. If anyone asks just say you're not feeling like playing and leave it at that.

[Adar]

I’m going to pile on here in the nicest, fluffiest, kindest way.

You have been treated poorly, and it really feels awful for good reason. What we are all telling you is that you don’t deserve another helping of this poor treatment. Walking away means you don’t give the DM another opportunity to hurt you. The DM holds all the other power in the room, the only power that is yours is opting out. In my opinion, it is time to exercise that power in the name of being kind to yourself.

Other people are picking up on some nuances - you are heavily into mechanics, min-maxing your builds with an eye to “filling tactical gaps.” The DM would rather the game be less numerically tuned and honed... more organic. I can’t argue with that assessment - I suspect these observations are correct. However, a thoughtful DM would have said exactly what I just said in this paragraph to you before you rolled up a new character (heck, before there was any grief whatsoever!) in a “let’s work this out” mindset. So even if you did misread the room as it were, you still don’t deserve this type of treatment. You have not gotten appropriate feedback about style of play, if that is the underlying issue.

Since I have decided to dip a toe into this conversation, I might as well voice what I think is the most salient observation: You can’t fix Out-of-Game problems with In-Game mechanics. You’ve tried that repeatedly with this situation, and as a result you’ve “taken it on the chin”. Time to switch tactics.

Wishing you respite and good health tonight. I hope you come to a peaceful resolution with your fiancé that grants you a better headspace. Stay safe. People out in internet-land are thinking of you and sending good thoughts your way.

[BoringInfoGuy]

Going to say something that may not help my popularity here.

First, a bit of Story time to lead up to my advice.

I was early to work one day, along with my Lead. Our Supervisor comes in, and angrily chews out my lead over the improper behavior of a coworker.

When the coworker in question comes in, my Lead tells him that he needs to change the improper behavior.

My coworker gets upset over this. When out of the Leads earshot, he complains to me that he doesn’t like getting yelled at, especially first thing in the morning. I point out that he was talked to, not yelled out. (Our Lead did not even raise his voice). But if my coworker had wanted to see what being yelled at was like, he should have seen our Lead getting yelled at for the coworkers behavior.

Did not matter. My coworker was the type of person who takes any negativity in his direction as a full chewing out. He still kept complaining to everyone about being “yelled at” and sulked for days.

Not saying you are like my coworker. I am saying that I don’t know you. Your situation sucks, and I’m sorry. But all we have is your side of things.

All you have is your side of things.

Once you have a chance to process and cool off a bit, ask your fiancée how he views what happened, and really consider his input. Was he sitting there shocked that the DM was laying into you? Or did he see a frustrated DM sharing his grievances, hoping that the two of you would work out your differences. Or whatever.

That perspective can help.

Sometimes a DM is just a jerk and should not be allowed behind a screen. Sometimes two people just keep escalating a problem without realizing their own role in worsening the situation.

I can’t know. You may not know. We all have blind spots.

But it is long past time to quit this game. The DM may say he wants you at his table, but something about your play style is definitely not compatible with his DMing style. And regardless of who did what to whom to cause the problem, this table is toxic.

D&D should be fun. A bad session should mean the dice were being mean to you, not the DM.

I hope things improve. Good luck.

[furby076]

1) Your character could take his bag and go home
2) Your character could suicide
3) Your character could murder hobo until the party kills him
4) You and your fiancee can get a marriage counselor as she clearly has issues with respecting your wishes, in something as a game

[Sigreid]

Holy crap dude! If the game is making you hate the rest of your life then don't play another second at that table.

If you do ever talk to him about the game again, suggest that the next time he's starting a game he ban up front any spells, races or other options that he has issues with to avoid having these problems with others. Tell him it's better for everyone, himself included if everyone knows the game he wants to DM ahead of time.

[Segev]

As the berating continued, he said that he's now planning on actively killing off my new character.

I've decided that I'll play until he does so, then quit the campaign. I refuse to be driven away sooner and I want to see if he carries out his threat. He also said, in outrage, how he tries to make balanced encounters, which I find to be an outright lie after the things he's been doing. No. He has said he's killing off the character. The best response here is to apologize for making a character that is so troublesome for his game, and to bow out of the game entirely. No matter what he says, just state that you're not having fun, and that you seem to make him have less fun, and that you won't do that to him or to you. Explain, as you did to us, that you value his friendship outside the game, and don't want the strain the game seems to put on it.

And then excuse yourself. You don't owe him a chance to berate you. He's not your boss. He's not your parent. The game doesn't mean he has authority outside of it.

Don't. Play. Again. It's not fun for you, and the only fun you might be getting at this point is vindictive. Which isn't really fun, and is d


Now I'm back to feeling as if being around people isn't worth the effort, really.I apologize in advance: I know this isn't helpful as a response to an emotional reaction, because emotions are what they are and don't really respond to being told why they should be different. And you have every right to feel upset and hurt. But after you sleep on it, and hopefully feel a bit better, remember that one person is not all people. "It's not worth the effort to be around people" is not a reasonable reaction to one person being a jerk.

Hopefully, he'll stop being a jerk when you're not involved in his game.


But let him know, clearly and without rancor, that you're not showing up to any more sessions to play. Let him kill off your character or do whatever he likes with it; offer at least one reason the character might choose to leave the party, so he doesn't have to figure out a way to kill him off and play him as an NPC until then unless he wants to. Don't ask after the fate of your character. If told about it, treat it as water under the bridge, regardless of what happens. He may well kill your character off in some spiteful fashion; if so, laugh it off. That'll be better revenge than any reaction that takes it seriously. If he's mad, you refusing to be mad will make his ire either fade, or make him suffer because he's failing to hurt you. And, more importantly? You won't be hurting due to his behavior.

Do not play in another session. Let him handle your character's removal from the game however he likes. Don't argue with him about it. Don't justify yourself or anything else. Acknowledge that he's upset by something about how you built or introduced or whatever your character, and explain that you don't feel you can contribute positively to the table if you're pressed. Don't discuss the game if it makes you emotional. If it's discussed, don't bring up any part of your involvement in it; be happy for the others' fun with their parts in it. Don't be drawn into a discussion about your part in the game. Acknowledge it happened and change the subject if it's brought up, and if somebody gets pushy about it, just tell them that you don't want to talk about it.

Don't sulk; this will be hard, if you're anything like me. Sulking is a passive aggressive plea for attention, for others to bring up the subjects you're upset about so you can dwell on them and blame others for bringing them up. Don't do it. You can be better than that. It took me years to master not sulking. And I still probably shouldn't say I've "mastered" it. :smallredface:

Remove yourself from the game, and don't allow the game any further power over you. It no longer has anything to do with you, save that it's something your friends enjoy; participate in conversations about it as if you were talking to good friends who loved a sport you had zero interest in.

But, again: don't play again. Leave the game. Staying in it to prove a point only proves that you're willing to hold your hand on the burning hot stove while third degree burns develop on it.

[Phhase]

Part of me wants to advocate Henderson-style vengeance, of the highest caliber.

But things aren't beyond the pale yet, and you're clearly feeling (rightfully) super done, so my sounder mind echos the sentiments of fellow posters. Cut your losses. Don't be like Redcloak, see the sunk cost fallacy for what it is. Rest easy knowing you did everything you could, and that your DM remains a moron that couldn't find his arse with both hands and a map.

[Rynjin]

This has long since passed over "game drama" and into "legitimately serious real drama". I think a lot of posters are seriously understating the flags this whole scenario throws up. If even half of this is accurate, DM is emotionally manipulative and has chosen you as a target, for whatever reason.

Leave on your own terms and definitively make it known to everybody in your friend group that you are indeed the better person.

DO NOT, under any circumstances, break off contact with the rest of these people. DM sounds like the kind of guy who will go out of his way to poison your friendships and isolate you; if he can't hurt you in-game he'll do so out of it. As much energy as it takes (and I fully understand how much energy it takes to even talk to a friend even about fluff sometimes), stay engaged with the friends in this group if you care at all about maintaining that connection in the long term.

You stay around and show you're "cool" despite his BS, he has less of a chance to talk **** about you behind your back. And if he does start doing so, they won't have you throwing some kind of tantrum "over a game" to put that kernel of doubt in their heads.

This puts DM in a bind; he can either drop it, get more subtle, or tip his hand. In two out of three scenarios you win, and people tend to be real bad at the really subtle social manipulation, so your odds are good.

Make peace with the fact that this guy is a two-faced loser. Any nice gesture he does for you is not for you; it is for the benefit of everyone else. It is to make him look good in front of the rest of the people you hang out with.

Don't try to trade barbs; there is a strong chance that people who act like this are sociopaths. You're not going to hurt their feelings, and if you do it is not going to turn out as you expect.

Go about your business as usual sans game. Minimize all unnecessary contact with the individual. Never be alone with them, but never leave THEM alone with anybody you want to care about you. This includes your fiance.

Suppress anger. Avoid passive-aggression. Be nothing but pleasantly cool, if distant to the individual. Any flare-up will be used against you. Anything you do in retaliation will be turned against you as evidence that you're an *******. Every action you take and word you speak will be picked apart out of earshot by this person. Do not attempt to run damage control; it makes you come off as "defensive". Shrug it off, give no evidence to fuel the drama machine. If your actions are incongruent enough to his words long enough, people will begin to be suspicious of him instead.

This is a long process. Maybe it's just me being paranoid, but this looks like a situation that needs delicate handling. If possible, find someone trustworthy you can talk to. Someone with no connection to the individual. A therapist is good, or just a friend in a completely different friend circle.

Last bit of unsolicited advice: you probably need to have a very long and in-depth discussion with your fiance about trust, boundaries, and communication. Things you tell your SO in confidence should not then be shared with the world, particularly not to the person you're venting to them about. If your SO cannot be trusted to be there for you and keep even a basic confidence, that is a serious relationship issue that needs to be nipped in the bud before it festers into something a lot worse.

[Kane0]

Good advice by all here, but also remember that we are just people on the internet and if you are having actual problems affecting your life and wellbeing, see a professional.

[Wizard_Lizard]

well he couldn't possibly hqve a problem with bard...?
Unless you are simply too inspiring...

[LentilNinja]

He acted surprised when I brought in my new character even though I had asked him 5 days ago if it was okay for me to change characters and he said yes, and was now angry that I hadn't "talked it over with (him) first".
...
He went next and had 4 werewolves after me who each had 3 attacks and did a total of 132hp of damage to me, but thanks to my resistance from raging, only lost 66hp of ,my 105hp maximum. The rest of the battle was tamer, but he made sure to attack me with a creature every round
...
I talked with him over how I felt than, now feeling bullied by the dm, was considering quitting the campaign. He left and a few minutes later he returned and said that the dm wanted to speak to me, so I go upstairs and my fiance' sits there as the dm tells me off for complaining constantly and accusing me of making a min-max character and that he hates tabaxi...
...
As the berating continued, he said that he's now planning on actively killing off my new character.
...
He also said, in outrage, how he tries to make balanced encounters, which I find to be an outright lie after the things he's been doing.

samcifer, he is an outright bully. He is a controlling, manipulative, and abusive bully.

They're the kind of person that plagues any tabletop system: Because they're the DM, they treat the entire game as theirs; whether it's through changing how the game works, ruling / acting against a specific player, changing how they run the session, or just downright attacking them like he has you. They are toxic, tyrannic, and will never co-operate or reason. They will consistently and relentlessly target players they don't agree with or don't agree with them until the player 'falls in line' or leaves.

Abusive DMs hold power because they have people to play with, at least that much is true. I know what it's like to be the victim of their abuse while every other player either turns a blind eye to it or sides with them. But they're in control, and whether it's the game or the group you aren't going to win. You can try fight them, try show the other players their crimes, go against their grain intentionally, etc. But from someone who's tried this 3-4 times now, there is no point. No matter how much you fight to change it, you'll never do as much damage as you'll receive.


My fiance' came to me a short time later and I talked with him over how I felt than, now feeling bullied by the dm, was considering quitting the campaign. He left and a few minutes later he returned and said that the dm wanted to speak to me, so I go upstairs and my fiance' sits there as the dm tells me off
...
I'm pretty steamed with him for going and reporting my feelings to the dm like that without even mentioning that he was thinking of doing so. I think I'll go out for most of the night and only come home when it's my bedtime. I really don't want to be around either one of them.
Now I'm sure there's a joke in here somewhere, receiving relationship advice from a D&D forum, and feel free to take or leave what I have to say but this just isn't right to me.

I'm not going to say that just because you're engaged or even been with someone for a long time that they should automatically side with you. But as your partner, they should be trying to see things from your point of view and their goal should be to work with both sides to come to a resolution. By the looks of it, your fiance is not. The fact that they just sat there while you were hurled abuse is too big of a red flag, let alone they essentially went behind your back to the DM. And this is not the first time you've mentioned your fiance siding with him over you, I'm sure. That's a problem I'd advise you definitely tackle, because even if you quit the game & never have to deal with the DM the fact you live with them both leads me to believe there could easily be future problems.


Now I'm back to feeling as if being around people isn't worth the effort, really. I've been suicidal off and on for the last 28 years and I don't need this kind of abuse from someone who finds pleasure in bullying players for trying to survive his in-game b.s.
This is what really concerns me. I'm sorry to hear about everything you've been put through already, but please don't let this ONE group affect your outlook on socializing. Don't forget, all of us on GitP are here to help & support you. I think most if not all players experience a toxic DM like this at least once in their tabletop career. I've dealt with two, one of which I gave a second chance & was let down just as badly as the first. I stuck with them that second time because I enjoyed the game when he wasn't being toxic, but I eventually learned no game > bad game the hard way. I know it would suck, but if finding another group isn't an option you could always turn to online campaigns. There's usually lots going between D&D forums, and if you're in a different timezone or work shifts / have other commitments you'll find one to accomodate. There is an initial disconnection from playing online vs at the table, but once you get into it you'll forget all about that.

If you really need help, seek help. This guy is not worth all the stress and abuse you've been getting. D&D is a GAME; I'm not saying that to undermine your experience but there is no point in playing something that just isn't fun. As with everyone else, I strongly think you should leave & deal with any problems with your DM / fiance outside the game and away from the other players.


He says he wants to play with me, but hates every character I create, ranted that I hadn't bothered making a backstory when that's never been a problem before and my characters' backstories have never been relevant or even seemed to matter, so what's the point?
Just to note, this is definitely in line with the behaviour I mentioned before. He's acting like this so he appears accommodating to the other players & to make you fall in line. This is manipulation, don't fall for it.

[MaXenzie]

When this many people tell you to leave, assume the consequences of living with this person afterwards are outweighed by getting out of the game.

[GreyBlack]

Yeah, no. It's time to get out. Put some distance between you and the game, and between you and the DM. No game is worth this.

Get yourself some help, and remember that we're here for you, too. Your well being comes before that of your abuser.

[AdAstra]

Gotta agree with everyone else, this DM is not a very good one. If I were to judge him purely based off of what you’ve told us about him he comes off as an outright abusive *******. I recommend at minimum removing yourself from the game and ensuring that he does not attempt to destroy your relationships with the other players. You deserve better treatment than this, and I’d recommend touching base with your fiance and getting his read on the situation. It would be helpful to know how the DM treats you and how he presents your issues when you’re not around. If he’s attempting to talk about his side of the story when you’re not around to defend yourself, and trying to paint other people’s perception of you, that’s a major problem that staying or leaving won’t resolve on its own.

[Sigreid]

Gotta agree with everyone else, this DM is not a very good one. If I were to judge him purely based off of what you’ve told us about him he comes off as an outright abusive *******. I recommend at minimum removing yourself from the game and ensuring that he does not attempt to destroy your relationships with the other players. You deserve better treatment than this, and I’d recommend touching base with your fiance and getting his read on the situation. It would be helpful to know how the DM treats you and how he presents your issues when you’re not around. If he’s attempting to talk about his side of the story when you’re not around to defend yourself, and trying to paint other people’s perception of you, that’s a major problem that staying or leaving won’t resolve on its own.

Really, it doesn't matter if the DM is a jerk or not at this point. The OP says his in game frustration is ruining the rest of his life. No leisure activity should be allowed to ruin your enjoyment of the rest of your life.

[CantigThimble]

So... My first advice aligns with the consensus view here of "Don't deal with this bull****"

But if you're going to ignore that, then my next piece of advice is to ask him m what character he wants you to play. If he's going to be petty every time you pick a class, race, playstyle or backstory he dislikes, and you'll only find out about it when he starts taking some weird revenge in game for it then straight up ask him what character you should play.

If people are stuck in a passive aggressive cold war, like you seem to be in, then one solution I've found is for one person to capitulate to whatever minor gripes the other has, and actively request all of their preferences that they aren't revealing, until the other side can no longer rationalize their passive aggressive behavior. Whatever happens when the passive aggression is ended like this depends on the people involved and whatever serious beef is between them, but at least this brings some clarity.

I despise passive aggression and actively try to structure my behavior in a way that neutralizes it or gets people to be open with me. It costs me some friendships but makes others stronger, so take my advice with however much salt you like.

[Yunru]

Don't let the DM control the narrative (well, unless it's in game). They're deliberately slandering you to set the others against you. Expose that to them privately. Show the conversation (if it's dated, even better) and mention how it's at odds with what they said at the table.

[samcifer]

So a revolt might be in the works here. I was chatting with the rattling player of the alternate Fridays game, who was my first dm among that group and was always fair as dm, and he lives with the hexblade player who admitted to him that he hates this campaign. He also told me that the cleric player is tired of being a heal-bot as he's spending most of his time in combat casting healing spells after we take the dm's overpowered attacks. I've seen both players looking put out during battles, and the rattling player has hinted at wanting to dm a campaign again. If he dms, I'll gladly play because he's a much more fair dm and makes many fun and likable npcs as well as pretty good stories. I'll have to see what happens and let everyone know what comes of this.

[GreyBlack]

So a revolt might be in the works here. I was chatting with the rattling player of the alternate Fridays game, who was my first dm among that group and was always fair as dm, and he lives with the hexblade player who admitted to him that he hates this campaign. He also told me that the cleric player is tired of being a heal-bot as he's spending most of his time in combat casting healing spells after we take the dm's overpowered attacks. I've seen both players looking put out during battles, and the rattling player has hinted at wanting to dm a campaign again. If he dms, I'll gladly play because he's a much more fair dm and makes many fun and likable npcs as well as pretty good stories. I'll have to see what happens and let everyone know what comes of this.

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

Seriously, that sounds like great news! Ask them if they'd like to play the new game on Wednesdays at the library (or some other neutral location)....

[Wizard_Lizard]

So a revolt might be in the works here. I was chatting with the rattling player of the alternate Fridays game, who was my first dm among that group and was always fair as dm, and he lives with the hexblade player who admitted to him that he hates this campaign. He also told me that the cleric player is tired of being a heal-bot as he's spending most of his time in combat casting healing spells after we take the dm's overpowered attacks. I've seen both players looking put out during battles, and the rattling player has hinted at wanting to dm a campaign again. If he dms, I'll gladly play because he's a much more fair dm and makes many fun and likable npcs as well as pretty good stories. I'll have to see what happens and let everyone know what comes of this.

Yay! good for you!

[samcifer]

So my fiance' is running a one-shot for tonight until we figure out what to do as a group going forward.

[JakOfAllTirades]

So a revolt might be in the works here. I was chatting with the rattling player of the alternate Fridays game, who was my first dm among that group and was always fair as dm, and he lives with the hexblade player who admitted to him that he hates this campaign. He also told me that the cleric player is tired of being a heal-bot as he's spending most of his time in combat casting healing spells after we take the dm's overpowered attacks. I've seen both players looking put out during battles, and the rattling player has hinted at wanting to dm a campaign again. If he dms, I'll gladly play because he's a much more fair dm and makes many fun and likable npcs as well as pretty good stories. I'll have to see what happens and let everyone know what comes of this.

Give these good people all the support you can and encourage them to step up. Make sure they know that you're on board with their ideas, you're not happy with the status quo, and you'll help in any way possible. "Be the change you want to see" is a corny thing to say, but it applies here.

Edited to add: if your passive-aggressive jerk-wipe DM becomes a player in the next game, resist the urge to "get payback" and just let it go. He really needs to learn what a fairly-refereed fun-for-everyone game of D&D looks like. So just let him enjoy himself for eight or nine sessions so he understands how a functional game works. Make sure he gets it.

Then hog-tie his character naked in orc country with no equipment and leave him there.

[Zhorn]

Then hog-tie his character naked in orc country with no equipment and leave him there.

Usually the phrase "turn the other cheek" is referencing to faces, but given the circumstances I think it's still applicable :smallwink:
Plus if their character has a high enough Str AND Cha score, this could still turn out as a positive experience for them :smallbiggrin:

[AHF]

Agree with all the advice about avoiding any more games with the problem DM. He has objectively demonstrated he is a bully and unstable. I don’t know any other way to describe someone who just outright forces your character to kill his own familiar multiple times, breaks the rules of the game to ensure he counterspells your character every boss fight, and explicitly tells you in front of another player that he is planning to kill your character off. As others have said, this behavior raises lots of red flags that point to possible RL risks.

So let me add the unsolicited advice of starting to look for a new living arrangement that doesn’t involve you sharing living space with this bully. I join everyone in hoping he would do nothing in RL to you but some of the details of the way he has done this point to an element of cruelty (like not targeting your familiar in combat but forcing your character to be the one that snaps its neck and the way he talked to you after your fiancé disclosed your frustration to him).

For the game, you should absolutely talk to the good potential DMs to encourage them to step in and talk to the other players about their frustrations with the jerk DM so you have eachother’s backs. It is perhaps the saddest element of this thread that they have enabled this type of abuse but it also sounds like you weren’t aware that they were unhappy so there may be a communication gap rather than actual indifference from the group. Don’t let the bully drive a wedge between you and anyone you care about.

Hope you can get to a better place with this. Rooting for you!

[samcifer]

So the one-shot took longer than my fiance' as dm thought it would, so in two weeks we'll finish it and turn the rest of that night into a session zero were the now former ratling sorc who will be the dm of that campaign gets us all together to talk over our characters, get our backstories and what we will want to happen during that campaign. It's going to be an evil one again and my fiance' will finally get to play an evil character.

As for the one-shot, it had us transporting a magically locked safe on a week-long trek back to its owner as he'd had to flee his former home and left it behind. I was playing a tabaxi sun soul monk and we were all level 5 and the dm forbid multi-classing. The bad dm was playing an inquisitive rogue changeling, the ratling was a dawrf war cleric, the former cleric was now a variant human eldritch knight, the rogue who had used the phosphorous stake that nearly killed my character was now a barbarian (I forget if he said what race he was.

We were attacked by baboons, but they were all so weak we one-shotted them all easily (I took out 3 of them during my first turn), and the new barbarian decided to take the apes' corpses and gut them to both make a shirt as well as a stew for us all as we traveled, throwing the guts out the back of the wagon as we traveled. That... wasn't the best idea. It attracted werewolves who attacked us. Everyone fought well, but the cleric was dropped and not wanting anyone to actually die, my fiance' as dm finagled the rules to say that he instead had to make 2 con saves at the end of the dm's turns and if his cleric went an entire round without the werewolf munching on him while he was down, he had to make a single death save and only if he hadn't been munched on that round. The fighter and barbarian were both also bit and the barb rolled high on his con save, the fighter... did not roll so good on his.

My sun soul radiant strikes proved to be the best attacks against them (except for the one blast where I rolled a botch and had to roll damage against myself, which was the only damage I took that session) and we ended up finally killing all of them. The cleric recovers and we travel a bit more before stopping for the night... The second night of the full moon. The cleric feels hungry and decides to go hunt as we have no meat left to eat. The dm tells him to make some wisdom saves, but doesn't tell him if he succeeded or not. The fighter also starts making wisdom saves at the dm's instruction, but not the barbarian.

The cleric player says that he's recently learned of the Oh Long Johnson cat video and was watching it on his phone and we were all making jokes and laughing about the video. "Ohhh Dooon Piaaaannnnooo" I sang and we all laughed some more.

Back in-game as the moon rises, the fighter decides to go looking for the cleric, who has been gone (skinning a rabbit he shot with an arrow and seems rather interested in the blood from it) and finds him by scent. The rest of us go to work on the rogue's plan to Oceans 11 the safe so that we can have what's in it for ourselves, though I'm sure as a player that the rogue is conning us all. He had taken each of us aside and schmoozed us all into agreeing to help him with his heist of the safe and had build a rig to move the safe off while we wait at a fork in the road for another wagon to arrive to move the safe onto with the plan of delivering the empty wagon to the guy who hired us. I'm pretty sure that the rogue is planning to take off with it and let the rest of us take the blame for the loss of the safe.

The rest of us take to high ground as the cleric and fighter change into werewolves out in the woods as an ominous double howl rings out through the wilderness...

"Awwwoooo long johnson!"

We end the session on a cliffhanger.

[JakOfAllTirades]

This sounds exciting!

[Wizard_Lizard]

Well, I guess that problem is solved. Try to resist brutally murdering the former dms character...

[KnotaGuru]

I've been following this thread for a while. Sounds like you all had a great time during the one-shot. I'm happy for you to have found enjoyment in D&D again. The DM was smart to ban multi-classing as that seems to create some discontent within the group.

However...


The bad dm was playing an inquisitive rogue changeling...

...the rogue's plan to Oceans 11 the safe so that we can have what's in it for ourselves, though I'm sure as a player that the rogue is conning us all. He had taken each of us aside and schmoozed us all into agreeing to help him with his heist of the safe... ...I'm pretty sure that the rogue is planning to take off with it and let the rest of us take the blame for the loss of the safe.

This guy is poison as a DM and as a player. He's already laying the groundwork to turn on the party and create a player vs. player atmosphere, which is never good.

The whole point of D&D is for a group of people to sit around a table for several hours and have a great time. This guy doesn't get it. He's only in it for himself. I imagine he gives the excuse of "that's what my character would do" which is a bunch of BS. If his character was always in the habit of backstabbing party members, he'd have a long list of people that want to kill him. If he's not willing to play nicely with the party, he shouldn't be in one.

As long as you're all aware of his play-style and are fine playing that way, that's your choice. For me personally, I'd have a chat with him about his motivations as a player/DM and their effect on the other players.

[samcifer]

I was going to sit out last night's session of the Wednesday group (the one where I had changed from a light cleric to a barb/rogue/ranger), but my fiance' talked me into playing. This session went much better. Everyone was enjoying themselves (even the dm) and he wasn't being crazy overpowered with Baba Yaga (sp?) and her walking house as we went through the Slavic version of Hell.

There was also the lone surviving werewolf from the group that had attacked us last session and was... Well... Imagine Moon-Moon as a werewolf. At least he became an npc ally to us and helped us against Babba. The damage was spread around a bit evenly and I went third to last due to a low initiative roll. BY hit me and several others with a Lightning Bolt before I could rage, but I was able to save for lower damage. I got in 2 hits on her, then backed away and the dm seemed confused he couldn't oa me for a moment before he recalled that I was a Swashbuckler rogue. I was positioned to either go back after her or help the cleric and Moon-Moon (not the npc's actual name), as they were fighting the house itself. BY tried to use Banish 2 times and the dm rolled a d6 to see who would be targeted. The Blood Hunter was the target both times and saved the first time, but it took 2 uses of Inspiration to help him save from the second try.

Here's why being Banished would be beyond bad in this campaign... We are all criminals who were executed for various reasons. Anyone who is banished, should they be gone more than a minute, would have to re-live their execution all over again and be out of the campaign.

By my next turn, BY had taken some serious damage and was near death, so I went to help fight the house instead. BY was killed on the next round before my turn and the house died instantly, collapsing on top of us. I was able to get out from the rubble thanks to advantage to STR due to raging and helped the cleric out when he failed to escape the rubble on his own, but our half-orc fighter who was evil killed Moon-Moon because his character found M-M too irritating to live.

All-in-all it was a much more enjoyable session and here's hoping that the talk my fiance' had with the dm got him to lighten up some and ease back on the bullying as I didn't notice it this session. Knowing my fiance' he'll keep getting me to keep playing. Only time will tell, I suppose.

[Contrast]

It's going to be an evil one again and my fiance' will finally get to play an evil character.

Normally I'm the first to defend allowing evil characters at a table but you're really playing with fire here.

If you don't trust someone at the table to play maturely and impartially out of character, an evil campaign seems a bad idea. I look forward to the next thread :smalltongue:

[samcifer]

Normally I'm the first to defend allowing evil characters at a table but you're really playing with fire here.

If you don't trust someone at the table to play maturely and impartially out of character, an evil campaign seems a bad idea. I look forward to the next thread :smalltongue:

Well we've done it before and this one (after a facebook poll among the participants in a private group) we will start evil and work our way towards being neutral. It was actually kind of fun to play. Maybe this time we won't spend 95% of the campaign taking over the starting city. :P

[samcifer]

So as a further update on the Wednesday campaign, My fiancé urged me to play again and I admit that this session was better for the most part. The dm has stopped ganging up monsters on me and is spreading things out more. We had been in Camelot as one of a series of inter-connected underworld/afterlife planes and our blood hunter had performed a heroic deed, so he was given Excalibur. As for the bard, he made a deal with the black dragon who is connected to Merlin as a rival and became possessed by him.

We moved on through the Slavic hell and defeated Babba Yaga, collecting the 5th of 14 chaos amulets to stop the big evil of the campaign from getting them, then moved on to the eqyptian hell. Our warforged artificer was out sick, so we were at 6 players + the dm.

We fought off some undead hippos, then met Isis (the goddess) who gave us a piece of Osiris' foot to either give to him or to Anubis, who had learned of our presence and was coming after us. Isis left and we were able to take a long rest, but Anubis reached us as our rest finished. The Blood Hunter turned out to be a worshipper of Anubis and was able to negotiate a peaceful deal by giving the god the piece of Osiris. Pleased, Anubis bound the BH to his service, breaking all contracts the BH had with everyone else, including his servitude to the bard player. The BH got a weapon that granted a 3rd attack per turn (or 4th of the BH was changed into his lycanthrope form due to his Lycan subclass), then left.

The bard immediately turned to the BH and took Excalibur from him...

The bard... who is possessed by the evil black draon of Merlyn lore... Now was the wielder of Excalibur...

The bard hears the voice of the dragon urging him to move the sword to his dragon-tainted hand and the Bard makes a deal that so long as the dragon curse that has been warping his body lessens so that his face returns to normal, he would comply. The dragon agrees and the bard moves the sword to his dragon hand...

The sword of legend is instantly corrupted into a blade of evil and the dragon uses it's power to take over most of the bard's body, making it draconic with a super-sized right arm, but the bard's face is now perfectly restored. The bard also has to make a madness check (d20 - 11 or higher passes) and fails. Now he is cursed so that if he tries to make a melee attack, there's a 1 in 4 chance of attacking an ally instead. The cursed sword now does +1d6 acid damage, is a +2/+2, and has an acid beam attack that does 6d6 acid damage.

So that's a thing now that the dm hadn't planned for. None of us considered such a thing happening either, including the bard's player.

We then have a random encounter with a boss and 2 helpers. Only radiant damage works well against them. The boss is nearly dead, so he turns into a meteor strike that we all have to make a dex save against an aoe of 50 ft to take half damage. The damage is 198 hp of fire damage. All but the half-orc fighter (I had thought he was a barbarian, but apparently not) ends up making death saves. The half-orc is at 1hp. He says he has something he can do, but we all start making saves (he's first in initiative) and he instead goes to take the chaos amulets from the downed bard as a just in case. Funny thing about chaos amulets, you have to make a madness check each time you touch one. There are 5 on the bard. The h-o passes the first 4, but not the 5th time. The dm says he'll tell him what madness he suffers next session as it's getting late. I make my death save rool and get...

a 1.

The h-o says he has an amulet that does Spare the Dying up to 3 times, and saves me, then the BH, then the cleric, then the bard. The BH and our druid pass their saves naturally, we all get a long rest and wake up, then level up to end the session.

The meteor strike makes me again wonder if the dm secretly longs for a tpk, but we're all still alive for now. I am now at bear totem barb 5 / swashbuckler rogue 5 / Revised ranger 2 (I was going to go for Gloomstalker, but I think Uncanny dodge is more important to have first, all things considered.

[AHF]

The meteor strike makes me again wonder if the dm secretly longs for a tpk, but we're all still alive for now. I am now at bear totem barb 5 / swashbuckler rogue 5 / Revised ranger 2 (I was going to go for Gloomstalker, but I think Uncanny dodge is more important to have first, all things considered.

Sounds like with this DM Uncanny Dodge and then Evasion two levels later would be golden.

Not sure what mechanic he was using for the meteor strike. A 9th Level Meteor Swarm will do 140 damage on average so whatever he was doing was a little over 40% more damage than an average Meteor Swarm. Evasion would be great for that.

[Neoh]

What's with RPG players and their patience? I've seen countless threads where other players or DMs are total jerks and the victim just continue playing like it's nothing.

I mean, D&D is a game, you play because you want to have fun, because you can be whatever the **** you want, if a DM is purposefully trying to force you to play a heal bot (which is the most useless role in a party btw), he'd better get the **** out of MY house and apologize when he comes back.

D&D sessions can be long, usually multiple hours, if people are purposefully trying to take away your happiness, I'd consider it malevolent and everyone at the table should stop playing for a few minutes and have a serious talk about it.

[CantigThimble]

So, it sounds like whatever issue there was between you has been resolved somehow and now it's back to gaming as usual? Am I reading this right?

[samcifer]

What's with RPG players and their patience? I've seen countless threads where other players or DMs are total jerks and the victim just continue playing like it's nothing.

I mean, D&D is a game, you play because you want to have fun, because you can be whatever the **** you want, if a DM is purposefully trying to force you to play a heal bot (which is the most useless role in a party btw), he'd better get the **** out of MY house and apologize when he comes back.

D&D sessions can be long, usually multiple hours, if people are purposefully trying to take away your happiness, I'd consider it malevolent and everyone at the table should stop playing for a few minutes and have a serious talk about it.

Well I DO enjoy the stories and rp encounters with this dm. He makes rather complex stories and interesting characters and everyone enjoys that part. It's just how he tends to play favorites in relation to in-game mechanics as well as how he makes combat encounters so ridiculously overpowered. I mean a 50' aoe that does 198 damage (half on a dex save success) that he didn't even roll the damage for and that same damage applies to everyone hit? that's beyond excessive imo.

As for the dm's abuse towards me, it's toned down a lot. He can't even complain about my tabaxi movement with the Swashbuckler free disengage vs foes he attacks because the BH player has the Mobile feat and in one turn during the first battle he attacked a foe, then ran clear across the battlefield due to his own few levels of rogue for bonus-action dashing. I only used the double speed once and that was after missing with all 3 attacks in a turn (barb 5 + dual-wielding for the 3rd attack), so I got some distance as I whiffed all my attacks that round.

The only time the dm denied me anything was when we encountered a merchant and he told me that there were no rings of protection for sale while other characters were able to get items, including the BH who got a cloak of protection that gave him just enough of a boost to his AC that he felt the need to tell the dm that an attack would've hit if not for the cloak in a gloating way. "Why did you feel the need to tell me that?" the dm asked sounding both amused and put out at the same time. We all chuckled that that exchange.

[Hail Tempus]

My 12 year-old son has started running a D&D group for his friends and cousins. My son is serious about learning the rules, and the players are serious about teamwork and making sure the party succeeds.

I’d much rather play with that group of 12 and 11 year-olds than this train wreck of a table.

[Neoh]

Well I DO enjoy the stories and rp encounters with this dm. He makes rather complex stories and interesting characters and everyone enjoys that part. It's just how he tends to play favorites in relation to in-game mechanics as well as how he makes combat encounters so ridiculously overpowered. I mean a 50' aoe that does 198 damage (half on a dex save success) that he didn't even roll the damage for and that same damage applies to everyone hit? that's beyond excessive imo.

As for the dm's abuse towards me, it's toned down a lot. He can't even complain about my tabaxi movement with the Swashbuckler free disengage vs foes he attacks because the BH player has the Mobile feat and in one turn during the first battle he attacked a foe, then ran clear across the battlefield due to his own few levels of rogue for bonus-action dashing. I only used the double speed once and that was after missing with all 3 attacks in a turn (barb 5 + dual-wielding for the 3rd attack), so I got some distance as I whiffed all my attacks that round.

The only time the dm denied me anything was when we encountered a merchant and he told me that there were no rings of protection for sale while other characters were able to get items, including the BH who got a cloak of protection that gave him just enough of a boost to his AC that he felt the need to tell the dm that an attack would've hit if not for the cloak in a gloating way. "Why did you feel the need to tell me that?" the dm asked sounding both amused and put out at the same time. We all chuckled that that exchange.


Well, as long as you're having fun that's all that matters, but honestly, he really sounds like a jerk, are you the only one he targets?
Even if it's toned down, it still seems like he has something against you, I don't know, it feels like he wants to punish you or something. "No you can't cast offensive spells" sounds like he wants to time-out a kid or something. Same with the ring: "No candy for you", does he have a complex of some kind?
Well, maybe the ring is just a matter or rarity, I believe the cloak is uncommon and the ring rare so it might just be that and nothing more.

But anyway, if you ever feel like he targets you again, have a proper talk with him.

[AdAstra]

I can kinda see the reasoning. A barbarian-rogue is already going to be hardy and difficult to pin down. No need to add extra AC to the mix, especially since he’s presumably got medium armor and a shield (?). A luckstone or something might be more useful, since it gives the same boost to saves while improving your ability checks (including initiative). It’s also uncommon rather than rare. I’d be wary, but this by itself isn’t an obvious red flag.

[opaopajr]

Abusers need Victims for Self-Esteem. And Victims need their victimhood for Sympathy, again for Self-Esteem.

The cycle goes into lulls once the victim is about to stand up for themselves... so that the Abuser & Victim dynamic can play out once again later.

Solution: Stop being a Victim. :smallsmile:

Best of luck! :smallcool:

When this cycle restarts you may want to stop the cycle by: a) not sharing it in detail here, b) cut off your fiancés cajoling as it starts, and b) stop hosting. Stop being a Victim. :smallwink:

[samcifer]

Sadly my fiance' was down with food poisoning that kept him in a lot of pain, so he wasn't able to dm last night or even discus what we all wanted for the new evil campaign. We were also short another player who called off coming saying that he wasn't feeling well either. The troublesome dm offered to run a one-shot for the rest of us and told us to make lv. 10 characters with pre-racial stats of 18, 18, 17, 17, 15, and 15.

One player decided to experiment with a variant human berserker barbarian, the dm of the upcoming evil campaign went with a goliath shadow monk and I tried a gnome evocation wizard with a starting level of forge cleric for armor and a bit of healing. I had also wanted to make use of elementals, but if I'd bothered to ask the dm what kind of campaign it would be (my bad), I would've gone for something I could have used.

It was a series of 3 arena battles against bosses. The first was a large melee guy who was resistant to fire (any guesses as to which spells I took the most?). The second was a guy who was resistant to cold damage and had a griphon he could ride. The third battle was against both bosses at the same time.

The monk didn't understand that he wasn't able to see inside of the darkness he could create, so we were all hampered for the first round against the 1st boss. He finally dropped it and tried repeatedly to grapple the bosses because he wanted to use that mechanic. Sadly, it hardly ever worked and never for long.

The barbarian kept using his berserker ability with gwm to try to max out his dpr and figured we'd get to rest regularly (So did I).

We took out the first boss after a bit of me doing disappointing damage due to the flame resistance. Then we were allowed to try to encourage the crowd watching from the stands to toss us helpful items like in the gladitorial games of rl history. The other 2 pcs rolled good enough to get stuff, but I cried "Give me s***!" and rolled...

a 5 total.

,,,Someone in the crowd literally gave me what I'd asked for, so I had to use prestidigitation to clean myself up as we went into the second battle.

The monk, who admitted that he did better as a dm than a player (this is the player who was the ratling sorcerer in the former friday group), but at our urging, began to play more like an actual monk save for the times he failed charisma saves and got himself banished for a round at a time (2 times, in fact). We managed to kill the boss and his griphon died instantly without it's master alive.

Then we learned that only one of us would be allowed to get a full rest while everyone else only got a short rest. We explained to the monk how he didn't need a full rest to get back his ki pts, but the berserker had gotten 2 levels of exhaustion and I was getting low on spell slots. After a friendly debate between the two of us, we decided to roll a d20 each to see who got the long rest. He rolled a 4 and I rolled...

a 2.

I settled for regaining lower spell slots instead and I asked if I could get the time to bring out an elemental, but the dm said no, so I went without for the final battle against both bosses.

I got counterspelled only once during the session when I tried to lightning bolt all 3 of the monsters. I tried countering with my own lv. 5 counterspell and needed to get 15 or more, but only got 14.

The barbarian went down but I was able to use healing word to get him back up. The monk went down as well and then the barbarian again, leaving me all lone with both bosses and almost no spell slots left. I healed the monk to get him back in the fight and he decided to mess with the barbarian by saying he wanted to kick him while he was making death saves, but attacked the griphon instead and killed it. Boss 2 droped the monk and I used toll the dead and managed to kill off the 2nd boss, and then on the next round after taking a pummeling from boss 1, I got in another toll the dead, but it wasn't enough to finish him of. The dm attacked, missed the first attack, then got a botch (nat 1 as it's called by most of my groups), and we have a rule that a botched attack triggers a free OA from the one being attacked. I had warcaster, so I tried toll the dead again and got 13 damage. The boss tried to save and rolled a 3 total, so my retaliation was enough to kill him.

The barbarian was able to make his death saves and decided to kick the monk who was still making his and killed him, to which the monk player laughed and said that it was fair and he'd brought it on himself.

One of my best performances in dnd and my best victory to date.

We spent some of the night fleshing out our expectations for the upcoming evil campaign and what we wanted to be able to do within it and it was a rather satisfactory night for me.

For my poor fiance'... Not so much as he spent most of the night in bed and was in too much pain to be able to do anything with us. Fortunately he's feeling much better today.

AS for the troublesome dm, he seems to at least have backed off on the bullying. Even though his monsters are still rather overpowered (boss 1 had 2 uses of action surge, for example, which seems a bit much to me), he wasn't ganging up on me very much... Of course it might have been the fact that the barbarian was almost always recklessly attacking,

[Dimcair]

... tbh that 4 werewolf attach would have likely murdered any of your other party members with that damage?
So as a barbarian with resistance you took the damage and were still standing? Doesn't feel like he was picking on you in that situation.
If you are dealing a big amount of damage against an enemy it is also likely they see you as a bigger threat and try to eliminate you first?


The other **** is ****ed up.