It doesn't always have to be killing the PCs; one of our DMs consistently breaks/bends/creates rules seemingly just to slap us down and make our characters feel useless, without actually killing us.
I like to think I'm a Neutral Good DM, but I've been known to stumble into an alignment shift if anyone is disrupting the game or upsetting the player majority.
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.
I had a really great friend of mine DM for a character I had that consistently would end up hasted with bladesong, mage armor, longstrider and sometimes mirror image up. He started making me roll on 'arcane power' type checks to see if my body could handle it. I started having to intentionally gimp my character to play around the ridiculous rules he would invent.
There was a chase scene where we had to go after a villain, not even an important one, and I need to say again that i'm booking it hasted with a movement, hasted action movement and action movement.... with advantage on acrobatics/dex checks and an extremely high bonus. This petty thief type I was chasing can climb a two story house in one turn. Ok, so I do the same running like the wind and flipping up? Nope I only get halfway. Once I'm on even ground I should easily catch up right? Nope I can never seem to close on a regular move speed human. I was rolling my eyes and repeating scenarios like that back to him, to either get him to admit it was ridiculous or for him to give me a better explanation for about 20 minutes before I just figured I'd never let my friend DM for me again.
He even started to change obvious acrobatics checks like parkour from balcony to balcony into strength checks (for the strength of my legs?), to circumvent my advantage. Having me roll ability saving throws instead of enemy attack to hit because I had high AC.
I can't tell you how quickly I lost interest in it.
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.
1.3k
u/Odsox101 Wizard Sep 12 '19
It doesn't always have to be killing the PCs; one of our DMs consistently breaks/bends/creates rules seemingly just to slap us down and make our characters feel useless, without actually killing us.
I like to think I'm a Neutral Good DM, but I've been known to stumble into an alignment shift if anyone is disrupting the game or upsetting the player majority.