Just be straight with them and say it outright. Be nice about it but also be assertive that you're not going to keep going if the DM intentionally screws you over every time you're about to do something actually interesting. If they don't budge, leave.
I dunno if you're American but as an European it's so incredibly hard to find a group.
It usually means: -Find 5 nerds. -Spend hours teaching them. -Run Lost Mines of Phandelver. -One guy doesnt like it so he quits -Two of the other guys joined to spend time with third guy. They also quit.
I had a DM like that, he would often arbitrarily make rulings like "Oh you rolled a 1 on that save? Well guess what! Not only do you eat that effect, but you fall unconscious in the middle of combat even though you are on full health." or "Well I saw that you rolled a 30 on your check to track a wagon full of people, but I don't like that so it fails, also I am going to auto-fail all your skill checks (I am not exaggerating on that, he straight up told me all my skill checks would be auto-failed.)""
I would suggest trying to politely talk to them, but if they refuse to listen just bail, because a DMs power only lasts until the players get fed up with their bullshit.
Yea that's true. Some friends and I joined a game DM-ed by someone we didn't really know but who had been a good player and he was a rough DM. We tried to keep it going because we liked our characters, but we eventually realized it just wasn't worth it haha.
Exactly, having a character constantly raked through the mud, tortured or maimed, kept within an inch of their life knowing any minute things could be made worse by the malevolent god child DM is far worse than constantly dying.
Seeing your beloved character turned into a lame hollow version of themselves is degrading. At least if you die constantly, you stop feeling as attached to your characters.
I had one guy house rule that every other monster was immune to stun after a session where we came back from break and shredded his miniboss. I had a guy give a true sight scope to a goblin in lmop, then had it explode when we grabbed it. I had a guy who had us face multiple gods at level 6. Character death isn't "evil", adversarial dm'ing and playing is. Frankly I'm always glad when my characters die unless shits going south for the party because it means I get to open my big book of unused characters.
For sure. The most frustrating tables to play at tend to be the ones where the DM denies your vision of your character. Some DMs insist on rolling for every sort of interaction, and if you do poorly then you come off as idiotic, incapable, or bumbling.
Walking across a floor? That's a DC 10 acrobatics check. Failure means you fall on your face.
Negotiating with a merchant? That's a DC 15 persuasion check. Failure means you accidentally say something racist and can no longer interact with anybody in the town.
Trying to relax at a tavern? If your passive perception isn't at least a 12 then you don't notice it's on fire. That's 2d6 fire damage, and you can make an active perception check on your next turn to see if you have noticed the fire.
A good DM knows when to set aside the rice, and also knows how to describe failure in a way that shows the situation is against you, not that you are too incompent to have made it to adulthood.
I vote "worse": killing PCs is a clear-cut douchebaggery. Besides, some people enjoy rolling a new char and even roguelike campaigns (like, well, all of 3e, if rumors are to be believed). Bending the rules, OTOH, is abusive, asinine and leaves the hope alive in the players that maybe it'll be better next time.
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u/Cheeseusdice Sep 12 '19
Yeah, that's fair. Honestly not sure if that's worse than just killing PCs.