D&D 5E How do you feel about PC abilities being nerfed by the DM?

[beancounter]

Personally, I don't care much if other players are more powerful than I am. My objective is to be as effective as possible with the given "tools" I have. But would prefer to have all of my tools, not fewer...

 

[payn]

As GM I remember doing this once, maybe twice. The biggest one for me was Paizo era PF1 gunslinger. Full martials were never intended to use touch AC and the gunslinger ended up with like a 95% chance to hit. I already dont like guns in my fantasy, so it did not go over well. From a mechanical perspective I choose to ask the player to play something else instead. As GM trying to balance stuff around the party was too hard, but I did at least try. The player didnt even fight it since I did try and could see themselves how the PC effected the game for everyone.

So, its a rare event, and if im a GM im going to talk it out and have reasons. As a player, I expect a conversation at least to help me understand why the GM wants to nerf or scratch something at the table.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

I’ve had a bad experience with this. When one of my group’s DM had nerfed someone’s class last minute, it’s became the first of many impulse nerfs during the campaign they did to the point where it becomes obvious that the DM was trying to prevent us from doing anything that might “break” the flow of their story.

The breaking point was when an argument broke out after the DM told one of the players they couldn’t do something (I forget the actual action they were trying to take), then another player jumped in reminding the DM that they had a similar argument with them when the roles were reversed, but the current DM (then player) was at that time arguing to do the action. That when the game became unsalvageable as it became clear that the DM just didn’t trust any of us to play their game “the correct way”.

Now I’m wary of any such things. If we have a session 0 and a DM has a list of banned or tweaked races, classes and other things, I’m ok with that. But if a DM says nothing and then bans or nerfs something last minute, I’m not ok with that and that’s a big red flag telling me to get out.

 

[el-remmen]

As a DM, I personally find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with the options available even if you only allow stuff from a couple of books beyond the core - and I think it is unreasonable to expect a DM to be that familiar with every thing to be able to make a judgment call on the fly that way.

In my recent games I have kept to core-only, with an option to consider stuff from Xanathar's or Tasha's with DM discussion/approval. This put a placeholder on anything a player chooses until I as DM have a chance to look at it and we've had a chance to discuss it.

Occasionally, when I am not sure what effect some ability will have on the game, but I suspect something won't work either for the game in general or our specific game style in specific, I will say something like "We can play this as written now, but if it turns out to be over/under powered, we will revisit and figure out a solution."

I only allow spells from outside the core to be found/researched in-game - which also allows me a chance to read them carefully before making them available without having to read every single spell in the books and pretend I remember them all and considered how they interact with what we're going for.

Of course, some things (even from core) will just not be available at the outset because they don't fit the conception of the campaign.

As a player, whatever the DM says is usually fine. If I disagree and make my case but the DM is not buying, I will usually just choose to make something else. I don't care that much because to me a character sheet is not a character, nor is a character idea, the character you play is the character - so until I play them any predetermined notion of what they should be like is just vanity.

 

[Jer]

I’ve had a bad experience with this. When one of my group’s DM had nerfed someone’s class last minute, it’s became the first of many impulse nerfs during the campaign they did to the point where it becomes obvious that the DM was trying to prevent us from doing anything that might “break” the flow of their story.

This is the worst kind of nerf.

As a DM I take the point of view that it's not "my" story it's "our" story. When players do something outside of my expectations that's when I need to improvise off their actions to build on it and not react with a "no no shut it down" reaction. Keeping to that mindset has really helped me to become IMO a better DM.

 

[James Gasik]

This is the worst kind of nerf.

As a DM I take the point of view that it's not "my" story it's "our" story. When players do something outside of my expectations that's when I need to improvise off their actions to build on it and not react with a "no no shut it down" reaction. Keeping to that mindset has really helped me to become IMO a better DM.

I agree with you, but it's shocking how many DM's will vehemently disagree...

 

[James Gasik]

I once created a game world with it's own unique history and races. I tried to balance it between recognizable and novel, so nobody (I hoped) would feel overwhelmed.

I had a player scan over the house rules and he stopped dead when I disallowed Paladins.

"Why are there no Paladins?"

"In this setting, Clerics are the champions of the Gods, and all divine magic comes from Faith. So I felt Paladins were unecessary."

"But you have Druids!"

"Think of Druids more like shamans, they are in tune with spirits of nature and animistic totem spirits. Individually such creatures couldn't grant powers, but in aggregate, they can, provided the Druid uphold the rules of the pact they make with such entities."

"No Paladins is dumb"

"Can you explain why you think so?"

"There's no reason to disallow a class."

"They just don't fit the lore, and I feel their role is redundant."

"You should just change their lore then so they can work. Don't Gods have knightly orders?"

"They might, but why can't a Cleric be a knight?"

"They're priests, they can't be knights."

"Let's see, War Domain. Martial weapons. Check. Heavy armor. Check. Seems Knight to me."

"They don't get extra attack though."

"Most Fighters don't either. You have to understand, higher level characters are rare individuals."

"Level 5 isn't high level."

"To you, no. To most people, yes."

"So I can just kill everyone at level 5? That's a dumb world."

"Not everyone, there are people who can stop you. It's just that not every town guard has a fighting style or can second wind."

"Just let me play a Paladin, and we can say he's a Cleric of whatever made up God you have that's Lawful Good. There, now they fit the lore."

At this point I realized I was just going around in circles with the guy. Annoyed, I said fine, whatever.

"Great. Now why can't I be a Bugbear?"

And this is when I threw my hands up in the air.

I realized then that my players didn't want a unique setting. Or lore. Or history. Or new concepts to explore. They just wanted a game that let them play whatever they thought was cool. It was a sad lesson, but one I took to heart.

 

[amethal]

As a player, if I think my character is over-powered I will nerf it myself. So I'm pre-disposed to get a bit annoyed if the DM then nerfs it some more afterwards.

Generally, I won't play a character that has been nerfed by the DM, since the whole point of playing a specific race, class etc. is to see how it handles itself in the game. It's not a big deal, I'll just play something else (I've got a very long list of characters I'd like to try).

 

[amethal]

I once created a game world with it's own unique history and races. I tried to balance it between recognizable and novel, so nobody (I hoped) would feel overwhelmed.

I had a player scan over the house rules and he stopped dead when I disallowed Paladins.

"Why are there no Paladins?"

"There are no Paladins because Achaekek ate them all."

"But can I play a Paladin?"

"I guess so. You do realise Achaekek hasn't gone away?"

 

[James Gasik]

Never underestimate the ambition of a player to play the "Last X" in a game. You say that an entire tribe of werewolves was wiped out of existence, very tragic story that happen one thousand year ago?

"Can I play a White Howler? I can be the last one, and it'll be my quest to bring back my tribe!"