Bacon Bits
Hero
I didn't say they weren't valid. Indeed, except for those who just say, "it works for me," I explicitly said they were solutions. They're just solutions we reject. Changing playstyle to fix a problem with a feat is like switching to Savage Worlds to fix a problem with a class. It resolves the issue, but it's a lot more work than you need to do. All I'm arguing is that modifying the feat is a perfectly valid solution to having a problem with -5/+10. However, every time I say that, someone seems to disagree with me.
I've still seen no real argument justifying a reason that the feat should remain as-is. The game of D&D is designed to be changed to suit your style. We pick a game system because it supports the type of game we want to run. I want to run a fantasy dungeon crawl? I run D&D. I want a wild west adventure? I probably pick Deadlands. We pick campaign settings because they support the type of campaign we want to run. Maybe I want Dark Sun, or Middle Earth, or Greyhawk for my adventure. We pick the plotlines to explore, the dungeons to create, the NPCs to interact with, the stories to tell, and the encounters to challenge the players with. As players, we pick the class or abilities of the characters we want to play. In some game systems, we get to pick right down to the ability scores on the sheet and the exact mechanics we employ during play. Nearly everything we do in roleplaying is about making the mechanics fit the style. The mechanics need to be fair, reasonable, and comprehensible, but beyond that it's always about the mechanics suiting the style. So why should anyone change their style for mechanics? What makes Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter into the tail that wags the dog?
No, I don't think they're contradictory, but I can absolutely see why you would read it that way. The former is a general statement about running D&D. The latter is a specific statement about how my current DM is running D&D.
The way our game table works is that everybody DMs. We all take turns. Some of us like to DM so they do it more often, but everybody is expected to DM some of the time.
Our current DM runs a published adventure because, honestly, he's not the type to create a campaign himself. To be brutally honest, he's not a very creative DM. He wouldn't create the NPCs, the background story, etc. He balances encounters by adding and removing monsters and using the guidelines and using one of the online encounter calculators. Then he runs the monsters presented. When he needs henchmen for a solo fight, he picks something appropriate from the MM. Almost every encounter he runs is deadly. He says they're a waste of time otherwise. He also gives out a lot of treasure. Most of the PCs in the 6-8 PC party have 3 attuned magic items already. He also runs the game every week virtually without fail everybody has a lot of fun. You might not like his style, but he's not a bad DM. He's just not Matthew Mercer. Telling this guy to "change his DM style" is going to be about as effective as asking a wall to step aside. He's not going to do it because he's already playing how he wants to play, and everybody at the table has fun even if some of our players would rather have less combat.
So how is this all the fault of the module? It's not in our case. It's entirely how our DM is running it. However, I also know DMs who don't even do what our current DM does. They always run combat encounters exactly like they're presented in the module. If the module doesn't tell you how to modify for more or fewer players, then they don't do that. It's sloppy, but they do it because they simply don't have time to fully plan everything out, or lack the necessary experience to correct the flaws. I've played with DMs who are reading the module at the table as the players are exploring it. We had one DM draw a gigantic square room in the room on his battlemat, and then draw a big circle inside reaching almost to the walls. "What's that?" I said. "Uh...," he said, reading the module, "it's a bit pit to hell." Then he said, "Oh, wait. I wasn't supposed to draw that. It's covered by an Illusory Wall." Again, you're not going to change the style of this sort of DM. You can criticize this DMing style, but if people are playing the game and having fun and the only problem they're finding is -5/+10... why should they change their style and not just the feat?
It is the way our DM ran it.
[sblock]It ended in a slugfest against Demogorgon in downtown Menzoberranzan. He ran Demogorgon undamaged, so we faced a full CR 26 creature at level 15. Honestly, with the amount of magic we had it wasn't that dicey until the cleric was feebleminded. A blessing of heroism and Heroes' Feast buff were definitely the MVPs of that combat, though. We ended with half the party unconscious and most of the other characters at half max hp from the necrotic damage.[/sblock]
He's now going to run us up to level 20, because his campaigns always end at level 20. He's the only DM that consistently does that.
