D&D General DM Says No Powergaming?

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Or they want the players to suffer from the consequences of their actions that the players won't just blow off or ignore.

If "you're a fugitive being hunted down by your former allies and are possibly cursed" are consequences that your players can just "blow off/ignore", I don't know what to tell you except that you're not being creative enough for how much/majorly it could come up in-game.

 

[MNblockhead]

But if the group all want to be at the same power level, the idea of "no powergaming" from a DM is literally "I don't know how/want to do my job and balance for a more powerful party".

A DM telling an entire group to tone it down is a red flag of a poor DM, or maybe a lazy DM running a pre-made module they think doesn't need to be customized to their party. A DM talking to one or a minority of players because they are out of line with the rest of the group is a sign of a good DM.

I agree, except I would remove the judgmental tone. Because I've been that DM. When I started running 5e I hadn't run a TTRPG in a couple decades and was running my campaign for a group of very experienced and highly tactical players. For my first campaign I ran a homebrew setting that was low magic and wizards were not a allowed character class. It was partially for thematic and story reasons, but it also made the game much easier and more fun for me to run. Now, almost 7 years later, I'm running a gonzo campaign where most of the party is 17th level. I mean, they are going into encounters with clones and polymorphed into dragons and beholders. That can make encounters very hard to prep and run. It takes a lot of white boarding and sometime simulating combat on my own to test things out in order to have challenging and fun encounters in high-level D&D.

Not every game master is going to want to do that level or prep work and even fewer have the natural talent and system mastery to make interesting challenges on the fly. Those who don't want to do the work or don't enjoy it, either have to remove some options or play a different system. I don't think that makes them "poor" DMs.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Just curious -- Show of hands: Who here is secretly mad that Paladins no longer have the 'The DM gets to steal your powers for not sharing their morals' stipulation?

 

[Wolfram stout]

I feel bad for these warlocks who entered such bad deals. My infernal warlock, Johnny the folk-hero, won his warlock powers from a fiend in a fiddle playing contest. The fiend lost and had no choice but to give Johnny a sliver of power.

Sure, he could kill Johnny outright but word would eventually get around and fewer and fewer people would be willing to enter into these contest.

A DM can tell me No Warlocks and that is fine, he can even drop rocks on my characters head untill he dies and I would understand that is his perogative. But to intentionally throw something in the game to strip my character of his class? No, just drop the rocks and call it a day.

Now if he routinely targets the wizards spell books and breaks the fighters weapons......at least he is playing fair.

 

[tetrasodium]

I feel bad for these warlocks who entered such bad deals. My infernal warlock, Johnny the folk-hero, won his warlock powers from a fiend in a fiddle playing contest. The fiend lost and had no choice but to give Johnny a sliver of power.

Sure, he could kill Johnny outright but word would eventually get around and fewer and fewer people would be willing to enter into these contest.

A DM can tell me No Warlocks and that is fine, he can even drop rocks on my characters head untill he dies and I would understand that is his perogative. But to intentionally throw something in the game to strip my character of his class? No, just drop the rocks and call it a day.

Now if he routinely targets the wizards spell books and breaks the fighters weapons......at least he is playing fair.

Theres a pretty big difference with patrons though. A wizard's spellbook can't be used to pull rank over NPCs & monsters nor can it be called up to actively involve itself in worldly affairs.

 

[Synthil]

There are no rules for what happens to warlock breaking their pact because every pact is different. Some pacts might include the patron withdrawing the warlocks powers after a breach of contract. Others might have given all the potential power already for a deed done in the past. And yet another patron might not be able to take the given power away but can stop giving new powers, forcing the character to multiclass from then on. Some patrons might not even be aware of their warlocks.

I had a Genie warlock who got her powers as a wish after freeing an efreeti from a lamp. There were no further obligations. The deal was already done, the patron wasn't involved in the story anymore.

 

[tetrasodium]

There are no rules in as to what happens to warlock breaking their pact because every pact is different. Some pacts might include the patron withdrawing the warlocks powers after a breach of contract. Others might have given all the potential power already for a deed done in the past. And yet another patron might not be able to take the given power away but can stop giving new powers, forcing the character to multiclass from then on. Some patrons might not even be aware of their warlocks.

I had a Genie warlock who got her powers as a wish after freeing an efreeti from a lamp. There were no further obligations. The deal was already done, the patron wasn't involved in the story anymore.

That's part of the problem. It's a class linked to a single random elemental up to The Arch Fey or The Arch Fiend & so on but trying to be all things to all of them & only ever doing their fluff linked mechanics in the PC's favor.

 

[Blue]

I honestly don't know why anyone would DM at all if some of you folks are right and problems at the table are always the fault of inflexible, capricious, tyrannical, or downright nasty DMs. Hopefully one day their poor players will rise up and cast them off, I guess.

This is a persecution complex. Never said anything like it, especially as I DM just as much as I run. If you want to reframe my statements this way I don't think we have a viable ground for discussion.

 

[Blue]

Roleplay out how you feel about how your Warlock Patron is commanding you to do something against your oath as a Paladin then.

No problems. If the strongest argument you can muster is a weird corner case between two classes, and it assumes that the player has no capacity for drama, then I know my point is strong enough to stand on it's own.

BTW, I'm the player back in AD&D who had the wonderful drama of a paladin who wanted to marry a cleric of another god and her god didn't approve and we had levels and levels of wonderful drama and tension trying to prove he was good enough, and the paladin almost losing her paladinhood and becoming a vanilla fighter. The idea that there's drama and tension to be explored is something to embrace.

 

[Blue]

It seems there was difficulty in reading what I wrote.

If they don't have interest in the group they aren't welcome at my table. I will absolutely welcome anyone to play D&D. My group doesn't need people who desire to harm the group.

That's a gate I will always keep.

Let's actually read what you wrote:

"If an extreme powergamer walks into my group I know that they aren't there for the enjoyment of the group. They are there for themselves and their power."

At no point are you directly saying that the player aren't interested in the group in what I responded to. So no, not a single problem reading what you said - you didn't say that.

Unless you are indirectly saying that powergamer == uninterested in the group, which is what I was defending. Commonly known as the Stormwind Fallacy. So in that case, also no problems reading what you wrote, I responded to it.

If you still feel I misread what you put down, can you use what you actually wrote and let me know what part I misunderstood?