"Game Master! Why have you forsaken us?!"

[Eldan]

Huh. Why did you wait five hours for some douchebag who just walked off in the middle of the game? I would have left after maybe twenty minutes.

[Tanuki Tales]

Yeah. That was kind of weird. He assured me that he had a reason for that not being the Warhorse Rescue Quest (TM), but I never got to find out what it was.

Did you ever try contacting the other players?

Nearly three pages in and no mention of that Lanky Bugger?

For shame!

Well, I was assuming this thread would get personal stories of woe, but no thread of this kind is complete without Lanky.

Last session two players didn't show up to the game, so the rest of us delegated their characters to simple, out-of-the-way jobs that would be easy paperwork for the GM. We figered this would mean the GM can concentrate on those of us who did show up and the others can catch up when they return next session.

During the adventure the GM killed off the two absent characters and the rest of us had no way to even collect their bodies or the items they had which were kinda useful to the plot at hand!

Not sure how the players will take it when they come back next week, but that's pretty "forsaken" in my book.

That's just...I don't even...

Under what mind set is that proper DM/GM behavior towards absentee players?

Not just once, but twice more.

I've read the one where he got stabbed, but I now am unsure if I've actually read the other two stories concerning him....

[Fighter1000]

My friend is a HORRIBLE DM. He's always switching campaigns and systems on us. He would say, "I'm gonna start this campaign using this system and this plot and bla bla bla" and then a few days later pull the rug out from beneath us and make us do a different one. It got so bad that the gaming group reached a unanimous decision, disallowing him from using any other system besides Pathfinder.

There was one campaign that he ran. It was really bad. I wasn't there for it, but my friends told me stories. He got bored with the campaign before the first session was even over and caused an avalance on the party. The party somehow survived that so he made snow sharks pop out and eat the party. I created a character for that campaign too, but never got to play her.

The campaign he is currently running is totally weird and screwed up. In the first session, we started out in Golarion, but because of some random portal we ended up in the Disgaea world. I'm like, what the heck? Cuz I don't know anything about Disgaea. And our chaotic evil human barbarian chick becomes queen over an entire realm without so much as a single battle happening. The most recent session, I was playing a gnome monk and it was annoying him because I kept running away from every single battle. There was no plot. Just one random battle thrown at us after another. And then he metagames, making the ice drake attack me only. I should have run away from that fight too. ****.

[Minitroll]

Spoiled for length.

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So, me and my friends were in 4th grade- mere fools who still barely understood anything. So, for my birthday, I asked my dad to run me and my five best friends in an adventure. So he had an adventure and we all made characters- a half-dragon sorceror (Drak), a halfling sorceror(Twinkletoes-me), a troll barbarian (Flame), a drow Theif assassian (Gib), a albino lizardfolk cleric (Huin- he wasn't a vampire, for the count), and a human paladin (Yioia).
So, we went into this dungeon to unplug this dam for some brownies. Of course, being fourth graders, our opinion was MONSTER! KILL! So when Twinkletoes and Gib found a group of 4 wererats, we prepared a method of attack. Drak flew Flame to a hidden crany where he could leap onto the battle as Gib and Twinkletoes could cast spells with Huin, and Yioia would leap into battle after Flame did. After the battle had begun, Gib woudl wait and pop out with some backstabs. Considering our age, this was a good plan. However, we didn't realize that my dad was giving us a bunch of hints that the wererat seemed to run a democracy like group and didn't seem evil. So, we leaped out and attacked. We quickly dispatched two of the wererats in our surprise round, and were very proud of ourselves. The boss wererat had a low inititive, so the first round began. We first focused on the small wererat- a max damage burning hands combined with Yioia's sword killed him quickly, so we turned to the main wererat. Twinkletoes' magic missle got blocked by spell resistance (we later learned was a magic item), Gib leaped and couldn't hit the beast flat-flooted, Huin tried some and even Flame with an overpowered hit didn't hit the rat. When the rat went, all we heard was time stop. When it ended, the rat had a protection from fire up and unleashed a few fireballs centered on himself, killing Flame, Gib, and Yioia. Drak, Twinkle and Huin quickly realized that the best idea is often the simplest- running away from the, as dad then revealed, level 18 npc wererat sorcerer that we needed to speak with and get his help to magically seal the dam. So, we ran and the wererat used a teleport to find us. Drak tried to fly away and Huin and Twinkle ran to the ladder up to the above floor rather then navigating through holes in the ceiling. Twinkle made it to the ladder first with an expeditious retreat, which the wererat cast likewise, sprinting to Huin and killing him with a melee attack that ended the albino lizardfolk. Then, he turned to the soon escaping Drak, as Twinkle got lucky and the wererat bombed his spot check. The wererat used a telekinesis to hit Drak with a rock, knocking him out and flinging him to the side. Luckily, I got out, possibly because it was my birthday. I then, for every gaming session for a while, used Twinkle as my character until he reached level 15 and got a group of mercenairies together with a large group of high level clerics to find his level one friends and bring them back. However, the wererat had turned them all into slaves and used guerilla tactics and killed all of us, finally, after 4 years of gaming, causing a finished TPK from years ago and killing the entire new group.

Happy birthday.

[Lord Torath]

Yeah. That was kind of weird. He assured me that he had a reason for that not being the Warhorse Rescue Quest (TM), but I never got to find out what it was.

Did you ever try contacting the other players?

I still have one of the other's contact info on Skype, and I've sent him a couple of messages with no reply.

It's a real shame, because I was having a good time. You know, apart from wandering aimlessly in the forest.

[Agincourt]

My friend is a HORRIBLE DM. He's always switching campaigns and systems on us. He would say, "I'm gonna start this campaign using this system and this plot and bla bla bla" and then a few days later pull the rug out from beneath us and make us do a different one. It got so bad that the gaming group reached a unanimous decision, disallowing him from using any other system besides Pathfinder.

There was one campaign that he ran. It was really bad. I wasn't there for it, but my friends told me stories. He got bored with the campaign before the first session was even over and caused an avalance on the party. The party somehow survived that so he made snow sharks pop out and eat the party. I created a character for that campaign too, but never got to play her.

The campaign he is currently running is totally weird and screwed up. In the first session, we started out in Golarion, but because of some random portal we ended up in the Disgaea world. I'm like, what the heck? Cuz I don't know anything about Disgaea. And our chaotic evil human barbarian chick becomes queen over an entire realm without so much as a single battle happening. The most recent session, I was playing a gnome monk and it was annoying him because I kept running away from every single battle. There was no plot. Just one random battle thrown at us after another. And then he metagames, making the ice drake attack me only. I should have run away from that fight too. ****.

Someone else needs to step up and take over being GM. This is full on Calvinball where the rules change at any moment.

[Gamgee]

Huh. Why did you wait five hours for some douchebag who just walked off in the middle of the game? I would have left after maybe twenty minutes.

Rough town, I didn't own my own car. So I was stuck waiting for my ride, who was the friend of said GM and putting up with it.

[Demidos]

Long Unhappy player rant

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Wow some of these are pretty horrible dm's. I am glad I have never had anything like some of the worse ones here

The worst dm I had really wasn't out of maliciousness more of incompetence and my poor knowledge of what was "Average" power level.

This was my first time playing D&D ever, I had played neverwinter nights so I knew the rules decently and am very good at game design. I didn't know what the baseline for the group was so I decided to play it low and have fun with a Dread Necromancer at level 8. "Average" in this case was being a spell stiched necropolitian lesser aismir with a corpse crafted level 8 dread necromancer animating me in a desecrated altar with almost all the other bonuses from corpse crafter. Good feat selection and a 24 charisma. Ya apparently the group was more low op than I thought, the other players were a fighter with a spike chain that used whirlwind attack. A glaivelock who overcomplicated his build and basically just fired eldritch blast and flew around. And a cleric who forgot most of his spells.

First encounter was against a bunch of xorns, we manage to win barely and kill all but two of them causing those two to flee. I grin and say that I wish to animate them, the GM asks how many and I say all of them (Dread Necromancers ) At that exact instant half the corpses are dragged into the ground by the two xorns who had "Fled". Before I could cast any spell the remaining corpses were also disposed of. When I asked why the xorns would do that as they weren't intelligent he said, "Just because". Okay slightly annoying, we go on for a bit and eventually heading into a swamp area with a bunch of kobolds and signs of a dragon. The GM describes the kobolds as all having slings and just slings and there being about a hundred of them. I tell the party to sneak around and try to find the dragon's lair/info about it and I can tank the kobolds as non of them can deal damage against my damage reduction 4/magic. The instant I mention that he changes his mind and they all have special slings that deal 1 damage regardless of damage reduction. I sigh and we fight the kobolds forcing them to retreat. At that point the dragon reveals itself, I proceed to one shot it with shivering touch. The DM surprisingly allows this and lets the dragon die, when I wanted to reanimate it he mentions that it "fell into the swamp" and becomes unreachable. Despite the fact that it fell 20ft from me and into a swamp that wasn't there earlier... The session ends on this note.

After the session, I talk to the DM and state that I think my character was a bit too strong so I would remake a similar character that is much weaker. The DM agrees readily and says that he changed his mind and I could keep the dragon if my next character can animate undead.

Next character is essentially a mounted fighter with a lance and spirited charge. Other feats include weapon focus and similar random feats that I thought were interesting. During this session we enter an arena where fights are to the death, now level 9 my character has to fight a singular mind flayer. I win initiative and charge at it killing it in one attack. The next fight I have to deal with? Two Ghaeles... http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ghaele.htm.... Caster level 14 clerics... I am level 9... Combat starts, I charge one. I don't kill it, it 5ft steps and prismatic sprays me and I die due to turning to stone. Joy... Session ends shortly afterwords.

Next session I come in with a malconvoker at level 10. We fight a team battle in the arena which was ship combat and I summon a bunch of fiendish whales to help us which the DM was very annoyed about for a reason I am not quite sure. Mostly he was annoyed that I managed to lift a submarine out of the water with them. So while we are resting at an inn we are ambushed by assassins, fairly typical. Whats not typical is that the party apparently went out of its way to leave the fight to me... One of the players was ACTIVELY trying to kill the other players (Calling the city guards on the inn upon the players. I still have no idea what the point of that was) while another wasn't part of the group yet so he stayed out of the fight (Assassins weren't after him) the other character fled as he thought we would lose the fight. Clearly the fight was meant for multiple people and I am struggling to live. I have to choke-point them and summon almost every round to prevent them from just swarming me. At this point the "caster" who has only cast 1st level spells at this point targets me with disintegrate, I roll a 19 on the save I believe something like 29 total or something high. DM says I fail and I take 120 damage killing me in one hit... I tried to use abrupt jaunt to dodge but the DM said that the ability still hit me even though I abrupt jaunted behind a wall... At this point I am kinda annoyed as this will be the fourth character in four sessions...

The story ended well though XD. Mostly he just wasn't a good DM as he didn't know how to make encounters challenging. Afterwords his campaign fell apart (party split into 4 groups that all hated/didn't know each other) so I actually ended up doing a campaign and the group got a long quite well after that. And now that I am still the dm I have plenty of time for payback! (I am joking of course )

Sounds like an awful DM. In his defense, its a definite improvement over his first campaign --

The party refused to leave the town to visit the (spooky) mines, until, through various chains of events involving flooding and players walking into collasping video game arcades, a giant tunnel made of an indestructible substance fell from the sky, literally channeling them into the caves (the flooding helped ensure they didnt just sit around at one end of the cage and wait for it to vanish (the fact that caves are generally below ground and therefore prone to flooding is an illusion -- please ignore)).

IMPROVEMENT!

[Silva Stormrage]

Long Unhappy player rant


Sounds like an awful DM. In his defense, its a definite improvement over his first campaign --

The party refused to leave the town to visit the (spooky) mines, until, through various chains of events involving flooding and players walking into collasping video game arcades, a giant tunnel made of an indestructible substance fell from the sky, literally channeling them into the caves (the flooding helped ensure they didnt just sit around at one end of the cage and wait for it to vanish (the fact that caves are generally below ground and therefore prone to flooding is an illusion -- please ignore)).

IMPROVEMENT!

Well I wasn't there for that one so I couldn't tell the story of it

[Tanuki Tales]

Sounds like an awful DM. In his defense, its a definite improvement over his first campaign --

The party refused to leave the town to visit the (spooky) mines, until, through various chains of events involving flooding and players walking into collasping video game arcades, a giant tunnel made of an indestructible substance fell from the sky, literally channeling them into the caves (the flooding helped ensure they didnt just sit around at one end of the cage and wait for it to vanish (the fact that caves are generally below ground and therefore prone to flooding is an illusion -- please ignore)).

IMPROVEMENT!

There are still people who think it's proper GM/DM behavior to do stuff like that?

[Steward]

That last one is so heavy-handed and overbearing that I'm surprised that he didn't install railroad tracks in the giant indestructible tunnel. Or, hell, once you've abandoned all verisimilitude, why not just use the old classic saw where the PCs are all of a sudden knocked unconscious from behind and wake up in the DM's intended destination, with no idea how they got there.

[Fallbot]

The DM obviously reacted very badly, but the players apparently "refused" to leave town and go on the adventure he had prepared, and this was the guy's first campaign so likely he wasn't experienced enough to make up an alternative adventure on the spot or convince them to cooperate in a more graceful manner. It sounds like it was a case of jerks all round.

[Khaelic]

Lurker Tax:
I have two friends (Jay and Bee) who usually take turns DMing and they are both really good for different reasons. We also have four other regulars, including myself, that play on a regular basis. Toward the end of the Jay's campaign, one of the players (Cee) who had never DMed before asked if anyone was planning a campaign. Both Jay and Bee replied that they had nothing else planned. So Cee says he wanted to DM a campaign.

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For reference, Cee is notoriously meta-game-y and not a roleplayer in general. He only plays one build of fighter and when asked to talk with NPCs, he can only do basic interactions. (He's tried to talk himself out of situations, only to put himself in hotter water and drag us in with him) He's not a bad guy, he's just more used to CoD or online games with no need for talking.

So for two weeks, we listen to him talk about how he wants to DM a campaign. I had a small amount of hope for the campaign because he genuinely looked like he wanted to learn about more than just character things and made a concerted effort to put thought into his campaign.

Game day: Because of work, school, and whatnot, only three players and Cee show up. So we take about two hours, chatting and designing characters. When we say we're finished, he puts down a stereotypical town map and says: "You're in a town." We ask some questions about where we are in the town, how big it is, things of that nature, as he hadn't supplied any of this information to us. To which he responds after a stunned silence: "I can't do this."

[Eldan]

Well, it's certainly not incompetent DMing, but at least it's upfront, honest and not dickish. I'd say some other examples in here would have annoyed me a lot more.

[Lochar]

Playing in a fantasy world created by our DM, we're having a lot of fun and generally following along with the plot that the DM has in store for us.

We started about level 5 or so, made it to 7 and were just starting to get drawn into the overarching plot of world shattering importance. You know the thing.

The plot manages to kill me, I get resurrected by the other players getting me a rez for lots of gold.

I die again shortly thereafter and even if the players sold my gear they wouldn't have had enough to rez me again. I shrug, and ask to roll up another character instead.

My new wizard gets introduced to the party and drug along, but two sessions later the GM gives into 'DMing fatigue' and hands the reigns of the game over to his wife.

We then find ourselves magically teleported into a cave system and we wander through it for a little while, following some obvious humanoid tracks.

We come out of the cave, the wife-DM says 'you see buildings ahead of you, hundreds of feet tall. Strange things fly through the air, and you can see thousands of people walking about in the city nearby.'

Welcome to D20 Modern/Sci-Fi, with our fantasy world characters. We spent the entire session trying to communicate (Language translation spells failed) and then running from an increasing strong police/military force after we were attacked by thugs and we defaulted to SOP for fantasy characters of kill the enemies.

I left the group, and from what I understand so did the rest of the players shortly thereafter as well. Looking back, I can see the original DM had 'prophecy' plans for all of our characters and just rolling new ones threw him out of his comfort zone. But when the local clerics won't rez for anything but money and I didn't want to sit out for two or three sessions while the rest of the group ran around building up a cash reserve just to blow it. We barely scrapped WBL-2 anyways.

[Sith_Happens]

Here's an epic one in the making.

[Tanuki Tales]

Here's an epic one in the making.

Just...what...ugh...


For those who don't want to or have the time or what have you, post 13 sums up that thread and why I think it's one of the worse GM horror stories I've read yet:

Okay, I spoke to the GM. At length.

Apparently part of the reason we're being so hemmed-in is because he already wrote the major plot of the adventure, and us in it, as part of the ascension of his literal author avatar to godhood, so while we're free to do anything ("no rails"), the laws of the universe as delineated by his future in-game self prevent us going outside our assigned role and the world changing to thwart us is an artifact of that.

As in, there's a character that is literally him in-game through some many-worlds shenanigans who's been going around to all of his favorite fictional universes and "fixing" them, and we're playing in one of the universes he's yet to "fix", and so we need to see how badly off we are before the god that is literally the GM in-universe fixes all our problems for us. Said deity is apparently literally invincible, as well, because he can read his OoC self's mind and knows what we're going to do before we do. Sort of. And apparently he can retroactively switch places with a clone of himself in case we manage to get around all of the above.

At least that's everything I understood. I don't really know even what to call this other than "not at all how I'm used to playing RPGs".

[Gamgee]

I don't get how GM's can get DMPC's wrong. I treat them like people from a Bioware game. Ie they have their own backstory for why they are doing this. Their own faults and if they screw up they screw up and will die like a player. They are also not infallible and will not metagame because I want to play them as an interesting character.

Even then I know the DMPC's place when the party wants one for whatever reason. Be it they want an extra man on the field, or to fill a gap in party balance, or hell in rare occasions because they like the character itself.

[Tsriel]

I got one, happened recently too. I'm kinda glad to get this off my chest as I really didn't have anybody I could vent to within the group since I was the newbie.

I was in a low-powered D&D 3.5 campaign playing bi-weekly via Maptool. In the group to start was a Cavalier, Warlock, an NPC cleric, and myself as a Factotum. We soon added a bard and a rogue shortly starting. There were a few things that was made clear. We didn't "need" nor were we allowed to pick any heavy spellcasting class. Our NPC cleric was vital to the story (aka, leash to lead us wherever he wanted). We were only allowed 20 points to apply to attributes, meaning we were only a little better than your average peasant. Not a dealbreaker, it just meant it would be a challenging game. Next, the DM stated that we would be taking penalties to attacks, saves, and skill checks as damage accumulated to half and one-quarter of your life. I cringed over this, but thought it wouldn't be so bad since we basically had Healbot 9000 being escorted by us.

The first few sessions actually went fairly well. The story progressed to where we discovered that our undercover route we were assigned to had been compromised and our decoy that we were escorting turned out to be the "blessed one" that needed to be rushed to safety under the king's protection. Our group, now suddenly feeling quite vunerable, immediately made alternate plans to get off the planned route and proceed in secretcy. Conveniently enough, we were attacked by frost gnolls in sporatic waves and were continually attacked even while in town, just wearing down the group and draining our resources to exhaustion. Suddenly, our NPC healbot was out of healing power (which never seemed to suggest that it could prior to this) as we finished off the last wave. By this point, all of us had taken heavy damage with -4 penalty to attacks, saves, skill checks, ect (one of us only had -2, it wasn't me). Then, an armored, mounted platoon consisting of one commander, 9 soldiers, and one wizard came in and proclaimed that they were sent to escort our cleric for the rest of the trip. In character, I recognized right away their intentions thanks to some good knowledge and sense motive rolls.

Being the brains of the outfit, I knew right away we were in no position to fight. I did the only thing I could do. I created this elaborate story about how our cleric was my little sister and that it was my personal responsibility to see her through her quest. We said our "goodbyes", which was an elaborate plan to sneak into their camp at night, take our cleric back, and ride off with their horses. I would be the mole and leave a trail for the party to follow.

Things started out well enough before the captain ordered his men to tie me up and throw me in a ditch. I broke free in less than a minute and followed the mass of hoofprints back to their camp, tearing off pieces of my cloak for the group to follow as I went. I made it to their camp roughly around midnight. Meanwhile, the rest of the group had no way to heal and got sidetracked by some friendly goblin just outside of town who provided a safe place to rest. (Each group learned in their own way that a death squad from the kidnapping party was coming to finish us off.) My character literally watched a majority of their force ride out and away from the camp back to town, armed to the teeth. Not knowing where my party was nor if they found my trail, I waited until about 3am in-game. I decided then that I couldn't wait any longer and proceeded to sneak into the camp. By process of deduction, I figured out where our cleric was and successfully snuck inside. She was there, along with a wide awake commander (lvl 7 fighter) and his mage cohort (lvl 5 wizard). I being only level 3.

I immediately had a problem with this. It had been explained by that very same commander earlier in the day that they had been riding hard with little rest for a couple days. I've been in the military, and have done things under orders where I had to stay awake for extended periods. I can say with experience that nobody is ever "battle ready" after having to push yourself that hard. Anyway, I knew right away that this was a fight that I couldn't win, so I grabbed our cleric and was pulling her along, barely dodging the mage's Shocking Grasps as the commander sounded the alarm. Suddenly there's 10 other guys (who knows where they came from, since most of the horses were gone) popping out what I was certain to be vacant tents. I was quickly surrounded, captured, and had a hand cut off.

I'm not completely sure what happened next. I showed up for the next session but fell asleep out of sheer boredom of having nothing to do. Apparently the group finally made it to the camp with now the cleric and myself captured. I fight must've ensued and it went very badly, as I expected it would. My character was summerially killed without my knowing except for a group email later recieved from the DM recanting some of the evenings events, but I was still dead. By now, I'm rather pissed about a few things like "How come you can have mages but we can't?", "Why were there so many troops still in camp even after I watched most of them leave?", and of course "Why am I still dead even after it was very clear that there was zero chance of rescuing our cleric?"

By now, I was feeling rather useless at this point anyway with having both a bard and rogue in the party. I was the only skill monkey, suddenly there were three. We were sorely lacking in diversity. I'm fairly certain after that fiasco that we really needed something that could do crowd control, or heal, or possibly both and had explained very valid reasons why we needed this. So I made two characters, one a cleric that focused on melee, the other a druid that focused mainly on buffs and heals. Both of their spell capabilities were toned down using the guidelines from Unearthed Arcana. I got a long, elaborate email from the DM a couple days later basically stating "no" to both ideas and that if I wanted to play this kind of character, then I had to play his "dull as dishwater" personality cleric. In response, I promptly deleted any sembelence that I was apart of that game from the DMs forum and never bothered to respond to his e-mail.

That probably wasn't the most mature of responses that I've done as of late, but honestly I really didn't feel like it was worth my time to try and continue. Over the course of the game, I learned that the DM thought wizards and clerics were the most OP things in all of D&D and hated them, hence why we couldn't have any. Now I'm patient and tolerant with lots of people, but to me, it's a huge red flag if you think that a basic cleric or wizard is OP. The pantheon knows I've certainly played host to worse.

[Pink]

snip

I feel bad but I gotta play devil's advocate on this one because I only see a couple things that seem like bad GMing and the rest of it seems more like play style clash.

First, the GM laid out his house rules by openly to start with. If you felt you weren't going to have fun under those rules, you should've felt free to walk away right there.

Second. You assaulted a strong force by yourself. You should realize that chances of you succeeding at this were slim to begin with. While certainly on the stronger end of challenges, a Lvl 7 fighter and Lvl 5 wizard is certainly not the most unreasonable of challenges to present a group of Lvl 3. However I don't necessarily believe that it was required to challenge them immediately. The group could've tailed the force and regained their strength and used guerrilla tactics to lower the enemy force until the challenge was more tipped in the PCs scales. Also, regarding their stamina, potions of lesser restoration are great at getting rid of fatigue if I recall correctly.

Point for you: the enemies appearing out of nowhere does smack of railroading. Difficult to say if the death force wasn't an elaborate ruse to set up a rescue attempt and have the force double back unseen to rejoin the camp.

Third, you fell asleep for the second session and are very vague about the whole thing, which makes it hard to see you as a victim. While I have no problem with a player letting me know if they don't feel like playing on game night or wondering what they can do if their character is incapacitated, I would feel fairly insulted if a player just up and went to sleep in the middle of a session with no warning. As for your character dying, giving the lack of information of the circumstances it's impossible to tell how fair the GM was or not. Was he asking a person who was asleep at the keyboard to make fort saves for disease or infection and when nobody responded he had someone else make them, and the results resulted in a death? Was it a logical response to the party attack (more consequences for attacking a camp solo)? Did he actually try to give you opportunity for escape from the inside the camp and you were just asleep and non responsive? We'll never know.

Point for you: as a GM, if a character was going to be largely incapacitated during a session, I'd talk with them beforehand to figure out what they'd be doing, whether they have a temporary NPC to control for the sessions or something.

Fourth, I don't think you can necessarily fault the GM for other players rolling up similar characters, and in fairness I think that the three classes play differently enough that, assuming your factotum had been alive, you'd function great as a group. And again, the GM laid out the house rules of no full casters at the beginning, you can hardly fault him for sticking to his own rules. In fact it sounds like he was perhaps even accommodating in his offer to let you play the basic cleric.

I won't say that he was a good GM or anything. He certainly sounds like he had some flaws. But you don't sound like the best example of a player either. Mainly thought, it seems like a play style difference. This GM seems to run gritty difficult games, lower PC power, and you perhaps are more used to a regular DnD high fantasy game. But he seemed to be up front with the type of game he was running from the beginning, so I don't think he really belongs in this thread.

[Sith_Happens]

Now I'm patient and tolerant with lots of people, but to me, it's a huge red flag if you think that a basic cleric or wizard is OP.

In that case you should put up a "red flag" on most of the Internet, because you'd be hard-pressed to get many people to disagree with your DM on this particular point.

Where most of us can disagree with your DM is on thinking that it's okay to "ban" something for balance reasons and then promptly use it against the players to whom it's been denied.

[Tsriel]

Snerk... Your title is "Troll in the Playground". OK, joke over.

First, the GM laid out his house rules by openly to start with. If you felt you weren't going to have fun under those rules, you should've felt free to walk away right there.

Clearly...

Second. You assaulted a strong force by yourself. You should realize that chances of you succeeding at this were slim to begin with. While certainly on the stronger end of challenges, a Lvl 7 fighter and Lvl 5 wizard is certainly not the most unreasonable of challenges to present a group of Lvl 3. However I don't necessarily believe that it was required to challenge them immediately. The group could've tailed the force and regained their strength and used guerrilla tactics to lower the enemy force until the challenge was more tipped in the PCs scales. Also, regarding their stamina, potions of lesser restoration are great at getting rid of fatigue if I recall correctly.

None of this was an option. Without a ranger, we would've lost their trail by sunrise.

Third, you fell asleep for the second session and are very vague about the whole thing, which makes it hard to see you as a victim. While I have no problem with a player letting me know if they don't feel like playing on game night or wondering what they can do if their character is incapacitated, I would feel fairly insulted if a player just up and went to sleep in the middle of a session with no warning. As for your character dying, giving the lack of information of the circumstances it's impossible to tell how fair the GM was or not. Was he asking a person who was asleep at the keyboard to make fort saves for disease or infection and when nobody responded he had someone else make them, and the results resulted in a death? Was it a logical response to the party attack (more consequences for attacking a camp solo)? Did he actually try to give you opportunity for escape from the inside the camp and you were just asleep and non responsive? We'll never know.

That's the million gold dillema. I certainly had no idea what was going to happen prior to the session as there wasn't any communication between sessions. I didn't find out about the hand thing until the day of. I'm guessing the DM didn't want me to break free like I had before so easily. Inspiration points will do that.

Fourth, I don't think you can necessarily fault the GM for other players rolling up similar characters, and in fairness I think that the three classes play differently enough that, assuming your factotum had been alive, you'd function great as a group. And again, the GM laid out the house rules of no full casters at the beginning, you can hardly fault him for sticking to his own rules. In fact it sounds like he was perhaps even accommodating in his offer to let you play the basic cleric.

Missing the point. When you're already going out of your way to make a base cleric or druid weaker than intended, I would think that you're certainly trying to make a suitable compromise. Let me put it this way, would *you* play something that you would hate playing? Or have zero attachment to?

I won't say that he was a good GM or anything. He certainly sounds like he had some flaws. But you don't sound like the best example of a player either. Mainly thought, it seems like a play style difference. This GM seems to run gritty difficult games, lower PC power, and you perhaps are more used to a regular DnD high fantasy game. But he seemed to be up front with the type of game he was running from the beginning, so I don't think he really belongs in this thread.

To each their own opinion. I simply came to share a story. Not seek approval for how things went down. That being said, I do agree that he wasn't a DM for me. It happens. Life goes on.

[Tanuki Tales]

None of this was an option. Without a ranger, we would've lost their trail by sunrise.

Did the DM flat out say this though? Generally a Ranger is just being used as a DM's tool to put his party back on the rails, but that can be done without one.

That's the million gold dillema. I certainly had no idea what was going to happen prior to the session as there wasn't any communication between sessions. I didn't find out about the hand thing until the day of. I'm guessing the DM didn't want me to break free like I had before so easily. Inspiration points will do that.

While I don't condone sleeping instead of participating, I do have to side with you on this point in that the DM shouldn't have just had the plot go rolling on without talking to you or anyone unless there were extenuating circumstances.

Missing the point. When you're already going out of your way to make a base cleric or druid weaker than intended, I would think that you're certainly trying to make a suitable compromise.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

Let me put it this way, would *you* play something that you would hate playing? Or have zero attachment to?

Do you need a Tier 1 to be unrestrained to be something you wouldn't hate and something you'd have attachment to? Or am I missing what you're trying to convey?

[Sith_Happens]

Did the DM flat out say this though? Generally a Ranger is just being used as a DM's tool to put his party back on the rails, but that can be done without one.

From what I gather, the rails were leading away from rescuing the cleric.

[DiscipleofBob]

I have had these two friends, let's call them Scarecrow and Specs.

Scarecrow and Specs were best friends. I played in two very long campaigns with them, both 3rd edition and set in the same heavily homebrewed world.

Props where it's due, they both had some really cool ideas conceptually and put in enough work to keep a constant soundtrack going. But there were significant problems with their campaign styles.

Both were heavily influenced by Suikoden. What this means is that we had 6 "slots" in the party. We started with a group of 4 or 5 PC's. By the end of the campaign, most of the other people would drop out and the rest of the slots would be filled with recruitable DMPC's with completely broken homebrewed abilities, and we were basically reliant on them to get anything done. Both times I joined late in the campaign. The first campaign (run by Scarecrow) I rolled a Beguiler and, with some prestige class tweaking and the Spell Compendium, I did all right, especially considering that somehow after the illusionist joins the game, everything we fight is either undead, a plant, a construct, or otherwise has too high a will save for it to matter. In the second campaign (run by Specs) there was a full party with all the roles covered, even a Druid and a Swordsage. Since there were a lot of army battles with homebrewed rules, I decided to make a Marshall. Only when I actually joined the second campaign, most of the group had gotten fed up and left, leaving me (the Marshall), a Gnome Bard, and Scarecrow's character. Which leads me to the second problem.

Scarecrow and Specs played enormous favoritism with each other. In Scarecrow's campaign, I never got to see exactly what Specs played. I think it was a Duskblade/Paladin with a bunch of homebrewed abilities. He also got what, for the longest time, was the only magic item in the game: an epic sword with bonuses against everything we fought and the ability to teleport the party anywhere at will. It was much worse in Specs' campaign, where he let Scarecrow play a GESTALT Monk/Cloistered Cleric with further homebrewed abilities that were fresh out of Dragonball Z. He also got the sword let us teleport everywhere (somehow). Then both complained when I started taking levels in Warblade (they wouldn't let me redo the character) saying Tome of Battle was broken. I agree, but nothing compared to what they were doing. We fought ridiculous boss monsters that should have been epic but basically required rolling MULTIPLE CONSECUTIVE 20's to do any damage. I had to rely on manuevers which could bypass the DR and other stuff. But Scarecrow and Specs didn't have this kind of trouble.

Specs outright cheated, and everyone could tell the way he hid his dice. We didn't say anything though, because at the time he was a player and we had to do something in order to beat whatever ridiculous thing the DM threw at us. Scarecrow on the other hand didn't cheat. We watched his dice carefully each time. Whenever he was DMing, he'd roll almost exclusively 20's. Whenever he was playing an actual character, he'd get a natural 1 every other roll. This was the same pair of dice and we watched him roll every single time. The trick to surviving was when Scarecrow was DMing to let the DMPC's do the dirty work since he'd roll several 20's in a row for each attack, and when Scarecrow was playing, let him use all those roll-less homebrewed abilities.

In the second campaign, we couldn't even find any magic items (except for the sword) until at least 16th level. Not even a +1 sword for my completely useless Marshall/Warblade.

[almightycoma]

wow. saying ToB is broken when your gestalt that's ballsy. (neat avatar what is it exactly? looks like spiderman with a cape.

Reading these stories has made me want to post another of mine. i like to call this one, the infinite hallway of increasingly difficult traps.
this is with the same group as before, but a couple of campaigns later.
the group this time around was a ranger, a rogue,a fighter,an NPC healer(not the same one as before) , and me a gnome wizard (a master specialist elemental savant). this was my first spell caster ever so he mostly blew stuff up and had other random spells i thought were cool.

We just arrived at a ruined temple/castle of an ancient vampire king (he's long dead/destroyed thankfully) looking for one of the 4 maguffins to destroy the BBEG. We slay some left over undead mooks and creepy-crawlies that have taken over the entrance into the front half of the structure. All is going well so far we aren't exploring the place though we are just following the main path to the throne room. (it's where DM usually puts stuff or the deepest pit in the deepest dungeon.)
We get to the grand entrance hall ,and here is where things start to go sideways. The rogue searches for traps cause its what they do, lo and behold he finds some, he disables them no problem. We go another 5ft more traps, again rogue disables them. The process repeats 15 times.the DC's steadily increase over the next hour real time about a day in game. We rest up and go at it again, so i figure ill switch to my non-blasting spell list you never know what might help and a have a couple decent non damage spells. The rogue get back at it and gets to the point where he's taking 20's while that works for another 5 checks.
keep in mind we've made it like 200ft down this entrance and still cant see the other side. This i where I pitch in with an idea. ill use tenser's floating disk and take the rogue across. (if we aren't on the ground we cant set off the traps. that's my reasoning any way) He sits on it crossed legged and I being size small sit in his lap. That works for about 100ft then we spring a trap.
I ask" What we hit we aren't touching the ground"
DM replies "You hit a light beam leaking through the cracks and sit it off."
(fine whatever) We survive so a throw up a wall of iron to block where the trap came out and keep going. We make it another 50ft when we spring another trap.
I ask "Did we hit another light beam?(slight irritation in my voice)"
DM "Nope you feel your cloak catch on a fish hook dangling from a line on the ceiling."
me "Wait no spot check?" DM "Nope." me
The rogue and I both fail this time and are knocked to the single digits, so we head back to the healer, then rest up so i can refresh/change my spells.
The next day in game I tell the DM "I cast teleport to get myself and the rogue where we stopped to turn back."
DM reply "You cast the spell it fails you don't go anywhere."
me "Why? (rolls spell craft and knowledge arcana both totals in the high 30"s)"
DM " You have no idea."
We trek down it the long way. I'm pretty fed up with this now almost all my spell slots are walls of some kind. We make it down the hall an additional length of a football field when i run out of walls. Ive been refreshing the disk so we are still of the ground. then i cast resilient sphere around us anchored on the disk, and keep going down the hall. traps are bouncing harmlessly off the sphere until the duration expires. and we still can't see the end of the ****ing hall!
I tell the rogue's player "I'm done and am turning around he can push on without me or i can give him a ride back".
He chooses to come back with me and as we head back not a single trap goes off. I tell the others in and out of character this way isn't an option and we have to find another path. They all agree so we explore the some other rooms get a little loot and the session ends. As we are cleaning up to go home i ask the DM "what was up with that hallway that was bull crap?"
DM "I know, I was wondering when you'd get the hint. i wanted you guys to explore the place and look around.I spent a lot of time making this place and there is a lot of stuff in there i want you all to see."
Me .......

[Sith_Happens]

Obviously you didn't have enough Power Stars.

[Feddlefew]

A never ending hallway of traps could be awesome if done correctly. Especially if they became increasingly more absurd as you went along.

[Gravitron5000]

A never ending hallway of traps could be awesome if done correctly. Especially if they became increasingly more absurd as you went along.

You seem to have discovered a portal to the elemental plane of traps. Either that or you have a Kobold infestation.

[Tanuki Tales]

-Snip-

Overly attached to the mysticism of Shonen and playing DM favorites is never a recipe for a fun game for everyone. Add in cheating and eh....

wow. saying ToB is broken when your gestalt that's ballsy. (neat avatar what is it exactly? looks like spiderman with a cape.

Now now, we're all friends here. Even if I don't agree with his opinion either (unless one is arguing that it's broken compared to mundane melee...which it is when it comes to certain aspects. Or if we're talking about Arcane Swordsages).

-Snip-

Yeah, that was really ham-handed. If you don't want the players exploring a certain area, do it with more finesse. I would have just had that passage way's ceiling collapse for example.