D&D 5E DM purposely gimping my Warlock

[Sacrosanct]

What if the OP was playing a fighter? What would the reaction be then to a DM who said you start off naked. Oh and you only get 1 hit die back per long rest. And your primary abilities like action surge or second wind are fine, but since I am limiting short rests, you wont be able to use them often.

start off naked, wait, what? What are you talking about?

 

[Mistwell]

I dont think the OP ever stated he expected 'free' short rests. Just the ability to use them normally (instead of with the DM limitation).

Which is why the response was to you and not the OP. You has just respond to someone else, who HAD said "they are not free" and you disagreed with him. It was YOU who was saying they are free.

There is no reasonable reason, in my opinion, to limit short rests to a number of times a day.

It's not my house rule, but I absolutely think it's a reasonable house rule. He's not limiting your ability to rest - he is limiting your ability to regain some abilities and hit points from a rest. The creators of the game have already said they recognize this is a playstyle they will support, with support for it in the DMG. This DM, lacking a DMG right now, is just doing their best to address the issue now. Extending the time between short rests makes as much sense as the current time between short rests (1 hour). If the 1 hour makes sense, then the 8 hours makes sense - neither are really based on anything other than a vague time frame concept.

Monsters can be smart, there can be patrols. But if the PCs want to take their time and rest often, so be it. A good DM will adapt if it becomes an issue. What happens when they get spells like rope trick or Tiny Hut? Will wandering monsters start being able to dispel magic at will?

Some may. I am saying the game does not assume you get short rests at fixed rates - it assumes a widely variable rate, and this DM is simply encoding that rate at a different time frame than you prefer. It does not make his preference wrong and yours right. In fact I gotta ask, how often in your experience are you finding the party takes a short rest in your games?

The arbitrary limitation on short rests...

ALL short rests are based on an arbitrary time limit, so complaining you like one arbitrary limit and not the other is silly.

I felt the OP was reasonable and the DM was very unreasonable in that exchange. Not once did the DM acknowledge the OP's backstory, or try to assist the player with valid suggestions. Moreso he cut him down and berated his 'playstyle' while trying to defend his 'dm style'.

That is not how I read it - the tone is very clearly aggressive on the player's part, and not aggressive on the DMs part. Other players also mention that the player in question is being aggressive. It's a matter of tone more than anything else. Others in this thread also noticed it.

 

[Astrosicebear]

start off naked, wait, what? What are you talking about?

From the OP: The DM started us with virtually no money and no gear....no armor, no weapons, nothing.

 

[Sacrosanct]

From the OP: The DM started us with virtually no money and no gear....no armor, no weapons, nothing.

And that applied to everyone equally. What does that have to do with what I quoted and bolded? Warlocks are designed a certain way. Slinging spells like a cleric, druid, bard, wizard, or sorcerer isn't that way.

 

[Astrosicebear]

That is not how I read it - the tone is very clearly aggressive on the player's part, and not aggressive on the DMs part. Other players also mention that the player in question is being aggressive. It's a matter of tone more than anything else. Others in this thread also noticed it.

I felt the OP was trying to establish a baseline to compromise with the DM, who completely shut down the discussion 'if you don't like it walk'. The OP clearly wanted to be in the game, and was trying to find a solution to make that happen. DM didn't seem interested in listening.

I say we agree to disagree.

 

[Piratecat]

I felt the OP was trying to establish a baseline to compromise with the DM, who completely shut down the discussion 'if you don't like it walk'.

While we're armchair-quarterbacking this -- here's a pretty good example of good and problematic ways to ask DMs about rules. GOOD: ask privately and politely, in such a way that you aren't challenging their authority in front of the other players. PROBLEMATIC: ask publicly and using a lot of ALL CAPS, get defensive, and post publicly about it on other sites when you don't get the answer you want. I'm not crazy about the GM's house rule, but it's kind of a rough way to go about creating change.

I can't blame the OP, but I suspect his response did more harm than good in this case. C'est la vie.

 

[shamsael]

I like his rule about hit dice, but the limiting short rests like that is silly. If this DM isn't clever enough to find a way to make those hours spent resting have a their own inherent cost, then he's probably not clever enough to make a game worth playing anyway.

 

[Mistwell]

The short rest limitation ... I don't think the impact this has on my particular character is fully understood, frankly, nor even cared about. Would you want to play a character that you can only cast 1 cantrip 99% of the time?

The assumption, up front, that the DM does not understand or care about the impact of their house rule, is aggressive. It's also of course false, as others have pointed out Warlocks are not primarily about spells and you're acting like that's all they are about.

I am simply concerned how these rules changes espcially effect/gimp my Warlock more-so than any other class in the campaign and make him a complete bore to play, reliant on one cantrip for nearly everything in a combat situation. To the point at which I may withdraw from the campaign.

OK, this really gets bad here. First the myth that a Warlock is almost only about spells is repeated, and again the DM is being told the player will be bored in the campaign if they don't get their way on spells (a relatively minor issue for a Warlock to begin with). And then it's matched outright with a threat to withdraw from the campaign if the player gets bored and doesn't get their way. That is NOT a reasonable attempt to negotiate - threatening to leave if you don't get your way is an invitation for the DM to say OK, this isn't the game for you. Which is exactly what this DM did.

This probably isn't a good fit for you, you seem to place a real emphasis on dealing damage as opposed to developing a character, just the comment how it gimps your character is pretty telling, so you might find it more enjoyable to find a campaign that doesn't have any restrictions. I made it pretty clear that this was not going to be for everyone and that it was going to be a hard campaign...

This seems like a polite and reasonable response to me. He's telling you this campaign is more story-oriented and less combat oriented, and that as a player you seem very focused on the combat-oriented issues, and therefore this is probably not a good fit for you. Others in this thread have misrepresented this comment from the DM as talking about power gaming, but that does not appear to be the issue the DM is focusing on - he is focusing on the fact that the player's playstyle seems to focus a lot on combat, and the campaigns playstyle focuses a lot on role development.

I think your characterization of me is insulting, frankly. I am fine with roleplaying AND character development but frankly only being able to do 1 cantrip 99% of the time is a bit on the boring side.

This is again aggressive. Nobody was insulting the player. The player is obviously very focused on this issue of casting spells, thinks the campaign will be 99% of the time about his casting spells (and so will be boring because it will be the same one over and over for that 99% of the time), and that does not match with the DM's playstyle for this campaign which obviously will NOT involve the player casing spells 99% of the time regardless of the house rule.

This has absolutely ZERO to do with dealing damage. This is what I was talking about with making house rules with no consideration as to how it might unfairly affect one class vs. others. If you read the threads I linked to the consensus seem to agree with me.

This appeal to the authority of this thread was entirely unfair. You never gave a fair impression of the DMs tone or arguments in this thread until AFTER you had this aggressive conversation with him. If you wanted to use us as your argument, presenting the actual words of the DM and their position in a fair, neutral tone would have been better. Instead you basically set your DM up, and bludgeoned him with this thread, and are surprised he reacts defensively.

You are no more old school than me. I started with 1st. edition too and have played the game for decades.

This is sort of a personal attack on the DM. It's hard to see until you realize the DM never mentioned being old school, at least not in this part of the discussion. The DM is trying to mention what the tone of this campaign setting will be in terms of playstyle, and you're twisting that to be about who has more old school credibility.

Okay I hate getting into arguments that cause drama and crap like that but dude, you are victimizing yourself way too much. Your posts on the other forums are kind of biased and make it seem like he is targeting you. I'm playing a warlock in another game and we never take more than two short rests per day, It's really not that hard to manage. You get pretty much 6 spells per day and the invocations are crazy good. At level three you get a summon that can scout for us while invisible, 3 more cantrips, or a magic weapon all of which are also really good and spell independent. Almost all the classes benefit from short rests not just warlocks.

This fellow player is trying to address your concerns about your Warlock, in a reasonable way. He goes entirely ignored by you, which tells me this is no longer about addressing the issue.

I'm not going to get into a pissing match with you, if you don't like the way I run this then don't play. I am sorry if I offended you that was not my intention. As stated several times this campaign is not for every one. There a number of ways to deal with, as you say being only able to cast one spell, within the the game find a solution in game or don't play. I can't put it any plainer that that.

And now we get to the logical conclusion of all your aggression directed at the DM. He's telling you that you can find a way to deal with it in-game...and others have indicated ways to do just that. Above was mentioned how you're getting 6 spells and the other powers of the Warlock more than compensate for this. I mentioned earlier you can try and take long rests more often to deal with it. You don't seem to want solutions though, you want it your way.

Warlocks are more dependent on short rests than any other class in the game and without them are one-trick ponies. It seems you disagree with the rest of the internet on this.

OK this, this is total BS from you. The "rest of the internet" did not agree with you in this. The Warlock is not primarily about their spell slots, you knew this going in, others had already said it to you, and you repeatedly ignored them and pretended the whole world except this DM agreed with your perspective, when they did not.

 

[Astrosicebear]

Mistwell, You put far too much work into that. I concede out of respect for your tenaciousness.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I like his rule about hit dice, but the limiting short rests like that is silly. If this DM isn't clever enough to find a way to make those hours spent resting have a their own inherent cost, then he's probably not clever enough to make a game worth playing anyway.

Can we please stop with the personal insults about someone's intelligence based on the (biased) one-sided heresay of a person, especially when you know nothing about this DM, and mostest especially since personal play style =/= mental capacity?