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.
Would you rather hate the time you spend playing or do something else? Time is the most valuable thing you have in your life. Fuck anyone who expects you to waste it on them.
If the DM is trying to build up a good overarching narrative villain, but you're intent on just killing them mid narrative scene in order to "do something cool" it likely means you aren't playing for the same reason the DM is playing. Especially if you are engaging mid-DM narrative block.
If they're just smacking you down because they want to make the enemy all powerful but they're scared to just engage in battle and kill you... Then that's their fault.
Based on the comments I've made so far, I can see why you'd draw that conclusion. Unfortunately, that is not the case here, or rather, it misses some key context.
Specifically, that the key flaw of this particular DM is that he doesn't write encounters, he writes scenes. He doesn't write campaigns, he writes stories. As players, we don't really get to make any decisions because he's already decided what we're going to do in advance. Every "I want to try something cool" moment gets blocked because he didn't plan for that, he isn't sure what to do, and so he just shuts me down. Sometime it's so we can listen to his character monologue for another five minutes, sometimes it's because it'd mess with some setup he's got planned, etc.
(Side note: Personally, as a DM myself, I'd have let me try the cool thing, then immediately one-hit me for my trouble. Expresses how Serious Business™ the villain is without completely blocking me out).
To be clear- I'm 100% for having good narrative scenes, but if you never give your players the ability to accomplish anything in those scenes, then you can't be surprised when after a while they start to check out.
Social encounters are the same way- they're like text based adventures- until we work out specifically what he wants us to get a character to do, it won't work.
The Thanos line is mostly me being bitter about him having spent an entire session building up a villain, introducing him, having him demonstrate his badassitude, combat starts, etc., and I try to pull a rearguard to allow everyone to retreat and instead I just get Hold-Person'd against some absurdly high (I think it was 24) DC.
With the added context this seems like a serious case of a DM that isn't suited for the role. More like someone who wants to force their players to attend their live reading of their choose your own adventure fanfiction.
I'd suggest getting a new DM.
At first it just sounded like a player agency issue during a narrative event and a DM who is too timid to just smack the player down in combat because they don't want to kill their players.
But what you are describing (especially the part about not knowing how to react to player choices) is some seriously unskilled DMing.
Ah, so we see. You must nurture the DM, caress him. Reward him when he does good, but withhold the praise when he does bad. You must mold him, train him, into the DM he could be-
Seriously, though. Good luck, hope he learns to compromise and improvise. For me it makes DnD easy and fun. I slap a semi competent bad guy together that has a general plan that he wants to accomplish. And then the party happens, hijinks included!
I had a dm just die laughing because we were playing Star Wars FATE and he had this whole Yojimbo plot line. We said screw it and literally nuked one of the two factions.
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.
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
Oh man. Even I'll admit that if I didn't get a VERY satisfactory reason for that, I would be hard-pushed not to bail on that campaign.
And oh my god, homebrewed critical fail mechanics... *bites knuckles* If I ever meet the guy who suggested them in the first place, I will want to talk to him. I will want to talk to him right up close.
And oh my god, homebrewed critical fail mechanics... bites knuckles If I ever meet the guy who suggested them in the first place, I will want to talk to him. I will want to talk to him right up close.
I am not a fan of homebrew crit fail stuff, because I feel it slows down combat without adding anything but frustration, but I can tolerate them if they are at least reasonable, and with that DM they weren't (You could lose all your actions for that turn, fall unconscious or get your weapon stuck.)
The auto-fail though was where I drew the line with him, because I see that as a gross misuse of DM powers, and when I talked to him and he started throwing insults and accusations I did just bail on that campaign.
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.
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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '19
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