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TinyMushroom
2022-01-10, 07:22 PM
Right now I am in a campaign with a 5e campaign with a very... opinionated GM.

On the one hand, I think it's good, since his opinions allow him to develop his world in very intricate, detailed ways.
But I think it also wrings some of the fun out of the game. Fights in his campaign are very rare, and when they do happen he dials the difficulty up to 11. It's especially caused friction in the group when he explicitly makes it a point to nudge us towards taking up a quest, and then when we're there the combat is absolutely brutal (our backliners are mostly ok because they remain out of sight, but our frontliners drop like flies and it just doesn't seem all that fun for them...).

We've already tried talking to him about it but he is of the opinion that we just want the campaign to be easy. But we don't! I just want the campaign to communicate more clearly about whether or not we are supposed to take up a challenge or not, and maybe to have some more action that doesn't feel like being put through a wringer.

I don't want to be an ungrateful player. But it's very frustrating and I'm not sure what to say anymore. It feels like he has a certain way he wants us to play the game, and when we don't we take 80% of our max hp in damage on the first turn because we tried a certain quest before we were level-appropriate even though he didn't have to give us the quest in the first place.

I'm just looking to vent but any advice is welcome.

Mastikator
2022-01-10, 09:12 PM
On the top of my head here are some options.

1) Tell him he's a jerk for dismissing your opinion. Telling people they're jerks is usually pretty hard for both parties and may spell the end of the campaign.

2) Repeatedly TPK. Combat too hard and he refuses to turn it down? You conspire with the group to play suboptimally and all die. Can't have a campaign if everyone is dead and that's on the DM. This may also just straight up end the campaign, especially if he finds out.

3) Start a group with someone else as a DM, invite your DM and tell him "this is how it's done", if he ever complains then make an impossible encounter to kill his PC and say "do you prefer it this way?"

4) Tell him you're not having a good time and leave. This one has the benefit of cutting to the chase, probably having the best chance to actually change his mind. But also highlights the reality that he probably won't change his DMing style. You should probably ignore 1&2 and just go for this one. But 3 is always a good backup plan.

MrStabby
2022-01-10, 09:38 PM
Right now I am in a campaign with a 5e campaign with a very... opinionated GM.

On the one hand, I think it's good, since his opinions allow him to develop his world in very intricate, detailed ways.
But I think it also wrings some of the fun out of the game. Fights in his campaign are very rare, and when they do happen he dials the difficulty up to 11. It's especially caused friction in the group when he explicitly makes it a point to nudge us towards taking up a quest, and then when we're there the combat is absolutely brutal (our backliners are mostly ok because they remain out of sight, but our frontliners drop like flies and it just doesn't seem all that fun for them...).

We've already tried talking to him about it but he is of the opinion that we just want the campaign to be easy. But we don't! I just want the campaign to communicate more clearly about whether or not we are supposed to take up a challenge or not, and maybe to have some more action that doesn't feel like being put through a wringer.

I don't want to be an ungrateful player. But it's very frustrating and I'm not sure what to say anymore. It feels like he has a certain way he wants us to play the game, and when we don't we take 80% of our max hp in damage on the first turn because we tried a certain quest before we were level-appropriate even though he didn't have to give us the quest in the first place.

I'm just looking to vent but any advice is welcome.

Ok, so a couple of options.

1) He is an ass
2) He isn't and has some kind of point - however poorly communicaed.

The first point isn't really interesting. Leave. Don't look back. No one needs that grief.

The second one might require at least an attempt to see things from his perspective. I can have some sympathy here - havening DM'd things that didn't go as planned.

My guess is that he wants a rich background to the adventure - a living world. I also guess that if he goes to the trouble of creating this then he doesn't want it to be just background. It is probably rich with useful information for turning deadly fights managable. Mr Doddingham the alchemist who told you his life story four sessions ago might know something about how to defeat a Golden Cockatrice and what its important resistances are.

The tailor who told the party the history of the aold aristocracy hiding from the revolutionaries in the base of hollowed out tree stumps might be a guide to how to avoid fight, to know what to look for to find a hiding place.

Dialing the difficulty up to 11 might not be about crushing the party, but rather be about providing a specific incentive to play smart.

Or it might be about a belief that an exciting game is one where characters can actually die (and the players beleive it), and this needs a bit of a demonstration.



Now the DM needn't be an ass, they might just not know how people feel and think it is going well. Did you communicate clearly. Was it a clear "I don't like this" or was it more euphemistic? Was it just you or were the other players saying the same thing? Was it I like X but not Y, and your DM thinks they are linked and that one is really a cost to get the benefits of the other?

When the DM is giving you quests that are not level appropriate, how is he doing it? Is it a worldbuilding thing - i.e. explaining the famine by the presence of an ancient lich killing all the crops and the PCs jump up saying "what ho! a lich sounds a jolly good adventure for our level 3 characters! Hooray for now knowing scorching ray!". If they have people displaced and begging, is it part of painting a picture? Or is it a clear hook? Is the non-level appropriate encounter gently added to the world as a means to trick and stomp the party or is it a motivator and a yardstick to measure power development against?

Were there warning signs that the encounter was not level appropriate? Did your party excercise their agency making an informed choice to go into this danger or was it an ambush? I have seen some of these things happen when there is an expected level of metagaming that doesn't take place. "How should we know a mind flayer was particularly dangerous - my character wouldn't have heard about them" through to "Has anyone ever heard of a nightstalker before?".

I.e. in retrospect, could the party have known something was a big risk and did it anyway.

Now even with all of these it doesn't let the DM off the hook. He is still running a game people don't like and should sharpen up - but it does mean that maybe he should be cut some slack if he is trying to do good things but playstyles and expectations just don't match.



Now I know a lot of this sounds a little imbalanced as if I am just defending the DM; this is somewhat true. The reason is that I can't talk to the DM and can't tell the DM what might be going on in the player's heads. Having a view that both sides should try and understand the other does come across as biased when you only get to say this to one side.

TexAvery
2022-01-10, 09:39 PM
Do you happen to be one of Takaleal's players?

Blue is sarcasm 'round these parts, right?

LecternOfJasper
2022-01-10, 10:13 PM
Do you happen to be one of Takaleal's players?

Blue is sarcasm 'round these parts, right?

Indeed :smallbiggrin:

TinyMushroom
2022-01-11, 04:03 AM
Ok, so a couple of options.

1) He is an ass
2) He isn't and has some kind of point - however poorly communicaed.

The first point isn't really interesting. Leave. Don't look back. No one needs that grief.

The second one might require at least an attempt to see things from his perspective. I can have some sympathy here - havening DM'd things that didn't go as planned.

My guess is that he wants a rich background to the adventure - a living world. I also guess that if he goes to the trouble of creating this then he doesn't want it to be just background. It is probably rich with useful information for turning deadly fights managable. Mr Doddingham the alchemist who told you his life story four sessions ago might know something about how to defeat a Golden Cockatrice and what its important resistances are.

The tailor who told the party the history of the aold aristocracy hiding from the revolutionaries in the base of hollowed out tree stumps might be a guide to how to avoid fight, to know what to look for to find a hiding place.

Dialing the difficulty up to 11 might not be about crushing the party, but rather be about providing a specific incentive to play smart.

Or it might be about a belief that an exciting game is one where characters can actually die (and the players beleive it), and this needs a bit of a demonstration.



Now the DM needn't be an ass, they might just not know how people feel and think it is going well. Did you communicate clearly. Was it a clear "I don't like this" or was it more euphemistic? Was it just you or were the other players saying the same thing? Was it I like X but not Y, and your DM thinks they are linked and that one is really a cost to get the benefits of the other?

When the DM is giving you quests that are not level appropriate, how is he doing it? Is it a worldbuilding thing - i.e. explaining the famine by the presence of an ancient lich killing all the crops and the PCs jump up saying "what ho! a lich sounds a jolly good adventure for our level 3 characters! Hooray for now knowing scorching ray!". If they have people displaced and begging, is it part of painting a picture? Or is it a clear hook? Is the non-level appropriate encounter gently added to the world as a means to trick and stomp the party or is it a motivator and a yardstick to measure power development against?

Were there warning signs that the encounter was not level appropriate? Did your party excercise their agency making an informed choice to go into this danger or was it an ambush? I have seen some of these things happen when there is an expected level of metagaming that doesn't take place. "How should we know a mind flayer was particularly dangerous - my character wouldn't have heard about them" through to "Has anyone ever heard of a nightstalker before?".

I.e. in retrospect, could the party have known something was a big risk and did it anyway.

Now even with all of these it doesn't let the DM off the hook. He is still running a game people don't like and should sharpen up - but it does mean that maybe he should be cut some slack if he is trying to do good things but playstyles and expectations just don't match.



Now I know a lot of this sounds a little imbalanced as if I am just defending the DM; this is somewhat true. The reason is that I can't talk to the DM and can't tell the DM what might be going on in the player's heads. Having a view that both sides should try and understand the other does come across as biased when you only get to say this to one side.

The first thing I want to get out of the way is: mostly, I like this GM and I'm not looking to bash him. He's not an ass to me, but other people do consider him an ass sometimes due to his stubbornness. Most of the time I'm having fun and I am too looking to give him a fair shake.

The thing is, in his campaign he works with a "quest" system. Things that are quests are pretty explicitly given to us as a task we can do, and he wants us to go to these places. There's an explicit quest log. Now, I know that he is doing that video game thing where some quests are overleveled and you're supposed to tackle them later. But in games that do that usually there's some clear level indicator of whether you're supposed to tackle the quest or not. For us, sometimes it's really hard to distinguish between a quest that's just hard but that he wants us to tackle and a quest that we straight up aren't supposed to do (a quest that basically had "this is a suicide mission and you have no reason to do this" written all over it was a Main Quest that would let us level up, and frankly that's the main reason we even touched that quest). As a caster, I usually get to pull out some weird tricks in order to mitigate the difficulty but it is probably sourer when you are a fighter, supposed to be the great buff guy with a big HP pool, and nearly go down in a single round on the regular.

In general, as a player I already really try to engage with the world, but we already take quite a bit of time in down time, recon and preparations for most quests so I'm not sure what we're missing that would make these quests easier. I'm not sure there even is anything, and this is more of a communication issue.

Lalliman
2022-01-11, 06:21 AM
Now, I know that he is doing that video game thing where some quests are overleveled and you're supposed to tackle them later. But in games that do that usually there's some clear level indicator of whether you're supposed to tackle the quest or not. For us, sometimes it's really hard to distinguish between a quest that's just hard but that he wants us to tackle and a quest that we straight up aren't supposed to do (a quest that basically had "this is a suicide mission and you have no reason to do this" written all over it was a Main Quest that would let us level up, and frankly that's the main reason we even touched that quest).
Have you explained your issue to him in those words? Perhaps phrase it not as a complaint but as a question: what should we do differently so that we can make better judgements about which quests are doable?

Perhaps it needs to be emphasized that D&D's abstract combat system makes it pretty much impossible to estimate how powerful an enemy is before you fight them. Sure, you can estimate their Strength score from their appearance, and judge the quality of their equipment, but you'll never know from appearance whether someone has 15 HP or 150, whether they can make multiple attacks, how powerful their magic is, etc. Even knowing that you'll be fighting a giant monster tells you very little, because an unidentified huge-sized reptilian creature could be a CR 2 giant constrictor snake or a CR 17 adult red dragon. You can get broad estimations of how dangerous an enemy is from in-world sources, but nothing mechanical. If someone tells you to stay away from X because it's dangerous, does that mean it's dangerous for normal people and a suitable task for you as a mid-level character, or does that actually mean it's dangerous for you as well? Unless they metagame by remembering stat blocks from the monster manual, which may be frowned upon or may not work for a homebrew setting, players have very limited ability to estimate whether any particular enemy is in their ballpark.

Xervous
2022-01-11, 07:49 AM
I would ask him if the characters are supposed to know what quests are level appropriate. They live in the world after all. The player isn’t going to know some trivial detail that their character would never overlook. Unless the game is supposed to be a test for the players, you should be getting some context for the hazards ahead. Ask him if you’re supposed to find out the difficulty before you take the quest, or if it’s supposed to be trial and error. Most importantly tell him he did a good job conveying the difficulty for quests X Y and Z. By telling him “I liked Q and would have liked R more if it fit the pattern of Q” you’ll be avoiding direct negative statements. Pick a hard quest that was properly communicated for Q. Invoke the imagery of the flaming skull mission rank and highlight what descriptions made you conclude the mission was difficult. Tell him how he won at GMing there so he can see a pattern for future winning.

Vahnavoi
2022-01-11, 07:57 AM
First: your complaint is about game difficulty. If your game master says "you just want the game to be easier", just say "YES" and then follow it with the specific change you want made to make it easier in the particular way you need.

Second: what happens in the game if you genuinely lose? It's somewhat unclear what you mean by statements like "our frontilers are dropping like flies". Do these characters die and get resurrected, or what? Since your backliners are okay and you seem to have been able to keep progressing in the campaign despite your struggles, you must have some kind of safety net.

I ask, because there might be another avenue for solving your problem. Videogames like Dark Souls get away with every fight being brutal and potentially lethal by allowing nearly unlimited trial and error. Being allowed some way to try again would take the edge off of poorly telegraphed challenges.

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-11, 08:47 AM
The second one might require at least an attempt to see things from his perspective. I can have some sympathy here - havening DM'd things that didn't go as planned. The DM wants to the players to engage with the content he's created. Most DM's do.

Dialing the difficulty up to 11 might not be about crushing the party, but rather be about providing a specific incentive to play smart. From the OP, it appears to me that the front liners are taking it in the face, and the back liners may not be effective at debuffing enemies.

Or it might be about a belief that an exciting game is one where characters can actually die (and the players beleive it), and this needs a bit of a demonstration. Yes. Without the real prospect of character death some of the edge is taken off of the campaign. (And this usually needs to be discussed at session 0).

When the DM is giving you quests that are not level appropriate, how is he doing it? Is it a worldbuilding thing - i.e. explaining the famine by the presence of an ancient lich killing all the crops and the PCs jump up saying "what ho! a lich sounds a jolly good adventure for our level 3 characters! Hooray for now knowing scorching ray!". If they have people displaced and begging, is it part of painting a picture? Or is it a clear hook? Is the non-level appropriate encounter gently added to the world as a means to trick and stomp the party or is it a motivator and a yardstick to measure power development against? Nicely presented, hope this helps the OP communicate with DM.

Were there warning signs that the encounter was not level appropriate? This takes a bit of art to signal, and maybe the DM isn't great at it.

For the OP: you say the back liners are not getting hammered. I'd suggest a focus on debuffing the enemy might be where you can help your front liners more. Not sure what classes and spells you all have, but if you are blasters, not controllers, you will often leave your front liners hanging out to dry. Using spells to slow down, separate, and otherwise debuff the opponents is the best way to make your front liners more effectie. (Spells like slow, web, evard's tentacles, blindness, and so on).

Do you tend to have one really hard monster, or bunches? Spells like fear can break up groups of monsters, for example.

MoiMagnus
2022-01-11, 09:58 AM
Fights in his campaign are very rare, and when they do happen he dials the difficulty up to 11. It's especially caused friction in the group when he explicitly makes it a point to nudge us towards taking up a quest, and then when we're there the combat is absolutely brutal (our backliners are mostly ok because they remain out of sight, but our frontliners drop like flies and it just doesn't seem all that fun for them...).

Looks to me like your GM is of the kind "a fight where the PCs are not afraid of death is a boring fight not worth my GMing time", which leads to him getting rid of all the easy fights. It follows that you enter difficult fights, you're not at the level of attrition that a normal game should lead you to, so to maintain those fight actually difficult, the GM dial them up to 11.



We've already tried talking to him about it but he is of the opinion that we just want the campaign to be easy


No, If think it's important that you communicate that you want the fights to be easier, it can still be a difficult campaign. And not even every fight, in particular not the fight that you should have known better not to engage. Just the fight that you're expected to win, you want to be able to engage them by making less mental effort about it, and being able to have more casual fun playing with your characters. And that it doesn't mean that the characters are having fun and are relaxed, just the players.

But I think it's important you discuss with your GM why does he want the campaign and fight to be difficult?
(1) As said above, it might be a problem of "I don't have fun GMing easy fight, there needs to be tension, there needs to be fear, there needs to be climactic stakes, otherwise I'm bored." In which case you need to explain that the way he increases tension, by making brutal fight, is unpleasant for some players who are forced to the boring role of meatshield just because that's more optimal.
(2) It might be a problem of "I want my universe to be consistent, so if the fight were easy to win, NPCs would have dealt with those problems by themselves rather than relying on PCs." In which case there is a simple solution: change nothing to the universe and give bonuses to the PCs so that they're higher level than expected (maybe they've made some secondary quests during some time off and gained a free level).
(3) It might be other reasons.

Easy e
2022-01-11, 10:23 AM
Get Gud*

It seems like there are two major issues:

1. Unsure what quests are level appropriate. You mention recon and prep work, so your PCs are not just walking blind into these quests after all. Perhaps do the prep work before telling the quest givers you are going to take the quest? That gives you in-universe a way to back-out.

Alternately, you could choose to no longer engage in the quest system and start driving the direction your fellow players/characters actually want to go?

I am unsure how your DM approaches these issues, but it sounds like there is a good faith effort on their part to deliver D&D content to the group. Perhaps, simply explaining the issue and why it is a buzz kill will be sufficient.

On a related note, do your fellow players feel as you, or are you the one feeling the pinch because you are the one taking all the hits? This could be a different issue then.

2. Tactical sub-optimization. It sounds like your front-liners maybe getting in over their head while the back-liners are getting off lightly. The issue here maybe how you are approaching your combat "roles" and you need to shake up how you are approaching a fight.

This is another discussion with your players, not the DM. Is the recon and prep work you are doing not flowing into the actual combat then?



Anyway, of all the D&D issues I have read, this is not a bad one. It is a minor one. Everyone sounds like they are making a good faith effort to play the game, but expectations are out of whack. Typically, group discussion and revisiting expectations will handle it.


*= This is the typical advice you get for these types of situations in War Machine games. It is very off-putting.

DeTess
2022-01-11, 11:38 AM
Heya all, I'm actually another player in the campaign TinyMushroom mentioned, and I definitely get where they're coming from.

Before I get to talking about the things I find off-putting, I just want to stress that this DM really puts in a lot of effort into making an incredibly rich world. I'd say he also really cooperates with us in integrating our characters in the world and making us feel like we're a part of a coherent whole. Honestly, from a 'designing and running an interesting world to RP in' point of view, this DM might be one of the best I've played with.

At the same time he also seems really invested in having our characters be, if not exactly street-level (at least not anymore), be very much not at the top of the food-chain, even where other humanoids are considered. He also runs a relatively grounded and gritty campaign (while I personally prefer slightly more heroic campaigns), with a lot of humanoid opponents rather than obviously dangerous monsters, which makes it difficult to tell what the actual challenge level of a fight is going to be before going in. Like, a guy in fancy armor with a fancy weapon could be an appropriate encounter for our current level, or could be about 6 CR above what we're able to face, and we probably only know once we're getting our faces kicked in.

Also, he tends to be fairly stingy with gold, which makes it p a bit of a challenge for frontliners to gear up, armor wise. The two front-liners we have are both leaning towards heavy armor (particularly the paladin, I foresaw this issue and gave my Goliath enough dex to be able to get by with medium armor, but at the cost of having lower stats elsewhere).

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think part of the issue lies with using 5e as the system for this game. The GM seems to want to run a gritty game that rewards cunning over raw power, but dnd 5e really isn't made for that, at least in my opinion. For example, a current situation we're in has us trying to advance down a very long and very trapped tunnel while someone/something is shooting at us with a very powerful rifle (seems to be two shots per round) average damage per shot seems to be around 15 if we pass the DC16 con-saves against poison, double that if we don't, which is a lot for a level 6 group). We had some pretty good ideas for preparing for this (we'd tried and failed this once before already), including having my Goliath craft a massive tower-shield. The DM was quite willing to work with us on this, but at the same time once everything gets couched in 5e's mechanics, doing a steady approach while hiding behind a big shield down a hallway suddenly doesn't work out as well, as between turn-order and the fact only one person fits into a 5-foot square leaves us still pretty vulnerable.

Something like blades in the dark might be better suited for this type of game (from what I hear of the system, at any rate), so maybe it's worth considering discussing that with the DM and the rest of the group.

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-11, 01:40 PM
I just want to stress that this DM really puts in a lot of effort into making an incredibly rich world. I'd say he also really cooperates with us in integrating our characters in the world and making us feel like we're a part of a coherent whole. Honestly, from a 'designing and running an interesting world to RP in' point of view, this DM might be one of the best I've played with. Great to hear. :smallsmile:

He also runs a relatively grounded and gritty campaign (while I personally prefer slightly more heroic campaigns), with a lot of humanoid opponents rather than obviously dangerous monsters, which makes it difficult to tell what the actual challenge level of a fight is going to be before going in. That's a good cue that parley is a skill/approach that will often be needed. (In similar games that I have played).

Like, a guy in fancy armor with a fancy weapon could be an appropriate encounter for our current level, or could be about 6 CR above what we're able to face, and we probably only know once we're getting our faces kicked in. Yeah. See above: parley and intel gathering as approaches.


Also, he tends to be fairly stingy with gold, which makes it p a bit of a challenge for frontliners to gear up, armor wise. The two front-liners we have are both leaning towards heavy armor (particularly the paladin, I foresaw this issue and gave my Goliath enough dex to be able to get by with medium armor, but at the cost of having lower stats elsewhere). Ah, that's unfortunate. Level 6?

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think part of the issue lies with using 5e as the system for this game. The GM seems to want to run a gritty game that rewards cunning over raw power, but dnd 5e really isn't made for that, at least in my opinion. I disagree, but it does have a pretty wide range of power potential.


For example, a current situation we're in has us trying to advance down a very long and very trapped tunnel while someone/something is shooting at us with a very powerful rifle (seems to be two shots per round) average damage per shot seems to be around 15 if we pass the DC16 con-saves against poison, double that if we don't, which is a lot for a level 6 group). We had some pretty good ideas for preparing for this (we'd tried and failed this once before already), including having my Goliath craft a massive tower-shield.
Two thoughts for you: (1) dodge and (2) fog cloud.

The DM was quite willing to work with us on this, but at the same time once everything gets couched in 5e's mechanics, doing a steady approach while hiding behind a big shield down a hallway suddenly doesn't work out as well, as between turn-order and the fact only one person fits into a 5-foot square leaves us still pretty vulnerable. Which might be why the enemy set themselves up in this defensible position. (Is there anyone in your party who can turn invisible?)

MoiMagnus
2022-01-11, 01:44 PM
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think part of the issue lies with using 5e as the system for this game. The GM seems to want to run a gritty game that rewards cunning over raw power, but dnd 5e really isn't made for that, at least in my opinion.

You really need to rely on the GM for cunning behaviours to actually work in 5e. There are a few basic underused tools like getting disadvantage from obscurity or cover, but not that much more if the GM doesn't grant some circumstantial uses of skills (parley, information gathering, etc).

When you're at the top of the food chain, you can have guards and various NPCs to command and there might have some interesting tactical decisions, same if you have plenty of weird magic items.

But for a "gritty" 5e campaign to rely on cunning over raw power, I feel like the players need to take the mindset "if we have to roll for initiative, that means we already lost". (But then, it's arguably kind of a waste of the time put in creating the fighting statistics of the characters.)

Easy e
2022-01-11, 02:56 PM
But for a "gritty" 5e campaign to rely on cunning over raw power, I feel like the players need to take the mindset "if we have to roll for initiative, that means we already lost". (But then, it's arguably kind of a waste of the time put in creating the fighting statistics of the characters.)

This is how my group tends to operate. If we roll Initiative, we are basically dead or dying. Therefore, get to a point where you roll initiative. Flee or withdraw first instead.

Then, if we DO have to roll initiative we give it the old college try but are not afraid to dodge/disengage and then try to dash away and flee.

TinyMushroom
2022-01-12, 07:47 AM
Two thoughts for you: (1) dodge and (2) fog cloud.


Trust me, we've tried all that. The problem is that the guy is not visible from our position, fog cloud grants at most disadvantage, and you can't stack advantage and disadvantage, they cancel out no matter how many sources you have on each side. Such rulings, together with the money issue really make the amount of preparations and tactics we can realistically do problematic. We are short enough on money that spending 50gp on an antitoxin or fire resist potion is basically something we wouldn't ever consider unless a really good payment lies in waiting.

We should probably give up on this specific endeavor, so to take it back to the original point:

"If you have to roll initiative, you're already losing" is the approach we've mostly been taking up until now, but that means in practice that the party power is intensely skewed towards the spellcasters (like, more than the problems 5e already has). And honestly, it just feels like it sucks that as a social-oriented sorceror me and the ranger are basically the only ones who get to contribute in (social) stealth scenarios. Maybe DeTess is right in that we should consider an alternate system.

Of course, we'll also discuss this with our fellow players and GM as you've all been suggesting. But our gm can be really stubborn so I felt like we need to check if our perspectives were fair.

Re: the "our frontliners are dropping like flies" comment. I'm referring to a specific incident where a fight started out with 2 fireballs while we were level 5. Then, the main villain of that fight (that we were supposed to fight because it was a main quest) kept trying to stab our frontliners as they were being healed by our healers (even before they'd gotten up or taken any action for him to notice that). We felt like it was a **** move, he felt like that's what a brutal tactically optimal fighter would do. In the end, we were able to convince him otherwise and he won't play that the same way again.

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-12, 11:10 AM
Trust me, we've tried all that...Then, the main villain of that fight (that we were supposed to fight because it was a main quest) kept trying to stab our frontliners as they were being healed by our healers (even before they'd gotten up or taken any action for him to notice that). We felt like it was a **** move, he felt like that's what a brutal tactically optimal fighter would do. In the end, we were able to convince him otherwise and he won't play that the same way again. I see, thanks for the response.

Kish
2022-01-12, 11:19 AM
My advice is: Next time he says "you just want the campaign to be easy," come back with some variation on, "Where 'easy' is defined as 'not taking 80% of our max HP in damage in one round in a non-boss-fight,' yes, you are correct. Please make it easier. Or if we're out of our level range give us some way of knowing that, some way of knowing which quests are aimed at our current level and which are not."

Xervous
2022-01-12, 12:23 PM
Re: the "our frontliners are dropping like flies" comment. I'm referring to a specific incident where a fight started out with 2 fireballs while we were level 5. Then, the main villain of that fight (that we were supposed to fight because it was a main quest) kept trying to stab our frontliners as they were being healed by our healers (even before they'd gotten up or taken any action for him to notice that). We felt like it was a **** move, he felt like that's what a brutal tactically optimal fighter would do. In the end, we were able to convince him otherwise and he won't play that the same way again.

Ah yes, pop up healing and NPCs ignoring downed players who are just going to stand back up. Always a classic 5e expectations issue. Glad to see you got this one worked out.

DeTess
2022-01-12, 03:36 PM
Ah yes, pop up healing and NPCs ignoring downed players who are just going to stand back up. Always a classic 5e expectations issue. Glad to see you got this one worked out.

I get where you're coming from, but after a boss wipes out the frontline in 1-turn alpha-strike, trying to heal people so that running doesn't result in half the party dying does feel like it should be an option. Like, it wasn't a case where we where deliberately pop-up-healing. Rather, my fighter and the paladin went down, our druid started dropping healing spells and the boss immediately stabbed said characters again to make sure they didn't take any sort of action, which therefore included trying to run away.

It should be noted that the DM has also started running a houserule where death saves are rolled in secret by him, which encourages pop-up healing even more, as you don't know how close to death someone is.

edit: I think another part of the issues me and TinyMushroom are having is that this is a group in which we've both been playing for a long time, with differing DM's, and all previous campaigns (with the exception of Shadowrun, where cunning and brutality is part of the system expectation and better supported by the rules) had very much been a lot 'softer' and focused on heroics and story stakes rather than 'pick the wrong fight and you're looking at a potential TPK, or at least a very painful slog to get out of it'.

King of Nowhere
2022-01-12, 05:36 PM
Trust me, we've tried all that. The problem is that the guy is not visible from our position, fog cloud grants at most disadvantage, and you can't stack advantage and disadvantage, they cancel out no matter how many sources you have on each side.

that's a major problem of 5e. they made it that way specifically to discourage too much preparation, and it punish those who are trying to play smart.




We felt like it was a **** move, he felt like that's what a brutal tactically optimal fighter would do. In the end, we were able to convince him otherwise and he won't play that the same way again.
i feel it's what anyone smart would do when fighting enemies that keep popping back up on their feet with magical healing. that, or focus the clerics.

Drogorn
2022-01-12, 07:57 PM
Switch systems to something where smart play is actually rewarded. Traveller, perhaps.

icefractal
2022-01-12, 08:04 PM
i feel it's what anyone smart would do when fighting enemies that keep popping back up on their feet with magical healing. that, or focus the clerics.
Ok, sure - and the result will be that the frontline PCs (at least) are dead. Is that a desirable result? I'm not saying it can't be, but it doesn't sound like it was a good thing in this case.

Because when you're the GM - the one deciding who the enemies are and what tactics they'll use - then you can't hide behind "it's what the character would do". If you put a character in who would logically TPK the group, and they do, then you, not the fictional character, have decided to TPK the group.

So maybe there shouldn't have been a "brutal tactically optimal fighter" there, or if so then there shouldn't have been whoever launched those fireballs.


Incidentally, if talking to the GM gets nowhere, you could try calling his bluff and dying a lot. Play the way you want to play, not ultra-cautious. If that results in PC deaths, just roll up a new character and continue on. Maybe do the "Knuckles VII" thing and change as little as possible. Act like death is expected ... because it is.

No guarantee this will work, maybe the GM is just fine running a meat-grinder, but then at least you can confirm you've tried playing that way and didn't like it (or if you do like it, then problem solved).

Mordar
2022-01-13, 07:28 PM
Some things I'm curious about that I haven't see specifically mentioned...

What does "dropping like flies" mean here? Frequently slain? Frequently reduced to unconsciousness? Frequently taken out of the fight so quickly that heroic measures are required to escape with their nearly-dead bodies?

Maybe also: what percentage of the battles end with the PCs unambiguously victorious, what percentage end with the badguys similarly victorious...and what percentage require deus ex or extraordinary circumstance to not be a TPK? I suppose also need to know which end in some sort of a draw.

Finally, how many character deaths over what time period?

Depending on the answers, I wonder if some of this might be best addressed by including some un-dramatic fights in favor of the good guys.

- M

GentlemanVoodoo
2022-01-13, 10:39 PM
Right now I am in a campaign with a 5e campaign with a very... opinionated GM.

On the one hand, I think it's good, since his opinions allow him to develop his world in very intricate, detailed ways.
But I think it also wrings some of the fun out of the game. Fights in his campaign are very rare, and when they do happen he dials the difficulty up to 11. It's especially caused friction in the group when he explicitly makes it a point to nudge us towards taking up a quest, and then when we're there the combat is absolutely brutal (our backliners are mostly ok because they remain out of sight, but our frontliners drop like flies and it just doesn't seem all that fun for them...).

We've already tried talking to him about it but he is of the opinion that we just want the campaign to be easy. But we don't! I just want the campaign to communicate more clearly about whether or not we are supposed to take up a challenge or not, and maybe to have some more action that doesn't feel like being put through a wringer.

I don't want to be an ungrateful player. But it's very frustrating and I'm not sure what to say anymore. It feels like he has a certain way he wants us to play the game, and when we don't we take 80% of our max hp in damage on the first turn because we tried a certain quest before we were level-appropriate even though he didn't have to give us the quest in the first place.

I'm just looking to vent but any advice is welcome.

Drop the game and DM.

The fact you already have tried to speak to this person and they have dismissed it is the red flag it is time to find another game. Shows the DM has dismissed the concerns addressed by all players. From what your describing it seems this person is more interested in power gaming than anything else where as you and the other players aren't.

But again when the DM has refused to change after the players voice a unanimous concern hasn't at least done something to show good faith in alternate their current methods, it is time to leave. This situation is only going to get worse over time regardless what other positives they may do like world building.

DeTess
2022-01-15, 03:48 AM
Some things I'm curious about that I haven't see specifically mentioned...

What does "dropping like flies" mean here? Frequently slain? Frequently reduced to unconsciousness? Frequently taken out of the fight so quickly that heroic measures are required to escape with their nearly-dead bodies?


Some combination of the last two (IE: knocked down to 0 HP, and often requiring some really fancy planning to get everyone including those down out of the fight if those initial downs occurred because we just learned we ran into something we're really not ready for).




Maybe also: what percentage of the battles end with the PCs unambiguously victorious, what percentage end with the badguys similarly victorious...and what percentage require deus ex or extraordinary circumstance to not be a TPK? I suppose also need to know which end in some sort of a draw.


This depends a bit on what you call a battle. Is a dungeon one battle or a series of battles, for example? Keeping in mind that my memory is probably skewed towards battles that left an impact, I'd say we're probably at around 50-60% unambiguous victory, and the remainder split between villain victories and one that is either a draw or a deus ex, depending on whether the DM had planned in advance for the one we where fighting to retreat at half health pretty much independent of the current state of our party. If we count dungeons as a single battle, however, the number of unambiguous victories goes down significantly.



Finally, how many character deaths over what time period?


Whether due to luck or otherwise we haven't had any deaths yet, though that is also in part because of really long stretches of RP sessions between sessions in which combat occurs.



Depending on the answers, I wonder if some of this might be best addressed by including some un-dramatic fights in favor of the good guys.

- M

I don't think that's the answer, as it doesn't really take away how frustrating the tough fights tend to be. Though I might be wrong about that.

TinyMushroom
2022-01-15, 04:31 AM
I don't think that's the answer, as it doesn't really take away how frustrating the tough fights tend to be. Though I might be wrong about that.

I think splitting the tough encounters into multiple less tough fights could help a lot actually. If the fights are slower and there's an element of conserving resources/attrition, it's easier for us to decide to extract if things start going south. A partial victory where we decided to give up on the final prize to escape with our lives feels more meaningful than "we got into something that the dm said we're supposed to get into and now we can't get out because 2 of us are ko already".

Having us be able to beat more enemies might turn the campaign less gritty than intended, though.

Also, I'll totally admit that my character does make dangerous decisions. The RP runs long enough that at some points I just really wanna get into a skirmish and solve a problem on our to-do list by punching it. And maybe this is not the campaign to do that, but the expectations aren't always clear to me there, and I could use a little more "yes, and" on the challenges we do decide to take on. The dm seems to have a pretty strong but badly communicated idea on what we are "supposed" to take on and anything else just runs into a "no, you're fighting a CR your level + a lot character now"

Grod_The_Giant
2022-01-15, 09:07 AM
It's very possible that "fights are rare" and "fights are hard" are connected.

5e assumes a long adventuring day. If the players are only getting into one or two encounters, you have to crank the difficulty way up if you want things to feel meaningful. Which is what it sounds like this GM is after-- combat is something that happens when things go wrong, not your go-to tactic.

Sadly, that's just... not what 5e is good at. Have you guys tried the "gritty realism" variant, or some other sort of adjustment to the rest structure?

Slipjig
2022-01-15, 07:07 PM
Coiple of thoughts:

Are you sure that the DMs isn't expecting you to run away from some of these fights?

Why is he even offering you plot hooks that are too high level for you? But unless he's also offering clearly labeled "these side quests are optional, but will provide a mcguffin/ally/item that will make this quest easier", that's just jerk behavior.

If the DM hasn't actually killed any players yet, maybe his intention is that every fight should be desperate and frightening, but he doesn't intend to ACTUALLY let you die. I'm thinking that could be what he's doing with that "Death Rolls in secret" houserule: he wants it to be nerve-wracking, but doesn't want you to actually die, so he wants the ability to fudge the death save. Have the villains had you at their mercy, then gloated and left without finishing you off?

How is this sniper able to take shots at you while being totally immune to return fire?

If your DM is setting up scenarios where the ONLY way to progress is to walk down a corridor while he gets to take 20-30 free shots at you, each of which deals a serious chunk of damage on a SUCCESSFUL save, I don't care how good his world building is, that's some crummy DMing. There should always be alternative means to accomplish your objectives, whether that's negotiations, stealth, or going in the back door (or down the chimney, or up through the sewers, etc). What you describe is some Tomb of Horrors-level shenanigans (which was fine when Gary wrote it because TPKs were routine at the time, but the game has evolved a lot since then).

Reversefigure4
2022-01-15, 08:06 PM
Well, it sounds like you -do- want it on easy mode, relative to this GM's level of "normal" difficulty. Just like different video games have different relative settings (Dark Soul's easy mode is more equivalent to Kirby on Nightmare Mode, not the same as Kirby on easy, even though both games are set to "easy").

Try asking for easy mode, and if you get it, see how do you like it compared to the gm's "normal"? It's no judgement on you - if your GM's Normal difficulty is "Boss kills half the party, guaranteed, in the first action", then you probably want Super Easy difficulty, where the Boss merely hits for good damage and takes several rounds to take down.

TinyMushroom
2022-01-17, 02:27 AM
Sadly, that's just... not what 5e is good at. Have you guys tried the "gritty realism" variant, or some other sort of adjustment to the rest structure?
We haven't tried that yet, if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear it. I think an adjustment to the rest structure could help, but most of all we need a way to extract from encounters. Gritty Realism sounds like it punishes combat even harder and stretches the downtime even longer, which we definitely don't want.



How is this sniper able to take shots at you while being totally immune to return fire?

Our darkvision is limited to 60 feet, and he's at least 300 feet away. We don't know how this character can see so far or afford to spend as much on poison and bombs as it is (that stuff doesn't come cheap at all...). Were definitely going to extract from that sidequest, since it's above what we can handle. It was just an example of how lethal situations can get in this campaign.

King of Nowhere
2022-01-17, 06:49 AM
Ok, sure - and the result will be that the frontline PCs (at least) are dead. Is that a desirable result? I'm not saying it can't be, but it doesn't sound like it was a good thing in this case.

Because when you're the GM - the one deciding who the enemies are and what tactics they'll use - then you can't hide behind "it's what the character would do". If you put a character in who would logically TPK the group, and they do, then you, not the fictional character, have decided to TPK the group.

So maybe there shouldn't have been a "brutal tactically optimal fighter" there, or if so then there shouldn't have been whoever launched those fireballs.
.

Yes, the dm gave a too hard encounter. Now he has to intentionally gimp the npcs to let the players win.
I don't like that. It is a form of deus ex machina: you'd be toast, except that the enemies suddenly and inexplicably start acting stupid.
Much better to have weaker enemies and let the pcs feel like they actually earned the victory.

Alternatively, if the dm want hard fights, he should build the campaign with the premise that needing a fee resurrections every once in a while is expected and not a big deal

King of Nowhere
2022-01-17, 07:30 AM
If the DM hasn't actually killed any players yet, maybe his intention is that every fight should be desperate and frightening, but he doesn't intend to ACTUALLY let you die. I'm thinking that could be what he's doing with that "Death Rolls in secret" houserule: he wants it to be nerve-wracking, but doesn't want you to actually die, so he wants the ability to fudge the death save. Have the villains had you at their mercy, then gloated and left without finishing you off?



I suspect this as well. Many dm try to do this, because it works well in movies. So they think, if they try to make the fight super hard, but won't actually kill the pcs, then it will be super exciting, overcoming impossible odds.
They don't realize it doesn't work. It only can work if they are dming for their little 5 yo brother. It can work for a bunch of middle graders, if they are particularly clueless.
People with a bit of perception will realize the dm is setting up impossible fights and letting the players win by deus ex machina. It removes agency from the players. And the players know it doesn't matter what they do, they will always end up losing and then be handed victory cheaply.

Those kind of dm often railroad hard too, because if you can fudge rolls and opponents to make a more "exciting" fight, then you can invalidate players choices to make a more "exciting" story.
They don't realize that the players are easily seeing through their paper-thin attempts at dissimulation, that the story is actually lame because it invalidates the players.
They may have a good world to go along with, and may actually be excellent storytellers. But they are using the wrong medium