DM Schticks That Grind Your Gears

[lukelightning]

I see nothing wrong with the "Old PC behind the Bar" situation. The DM needs a fully developed NPC for some reason, why not recycle an old PC? This isn't to say he should take on more prominent role or anything.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

1. The Railroad Adventure - Everyone's been involved with this one at one time or another. No matter what you do, the thingamabob will be stolen by whoseywhatsis with a whatchamacallit, and it will be the basis for the adventure - so let it be written, so let it be done. Deviating from the planned storyline is verboten, and any action that doesn't have anything to do with the planned adventure gets "you see nothing" or "nothing happens" responses. Veiled complaints from the players gets a "well there's Annoying NPC you can talk to...", and this continues until the players go along with the adventure out of sheer boredom, or revolt and start killing things or setting fires or other juvenile behavior a la KODT.

I've got a complaint about Players that goes right along with this.

Players who won't bite the adventure hook even if you jam it down their throats

DM - After searching the bodies of the rogues who leapt out of the alley to attack the party you find a note. It is a contract on the lives of the party and it is signed by the BBEG.

Player - Well we take their money and shove the bodies back into the alley, find the nearest tavern, get wasted and start a bar brawl.

DM - ARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

 

[Greg K]

The one character that got punished was a paladin. I gave the character a code in writing. Among the tenets.

1. Protect the weak and helpless
2. Be a beacon of courage, hope, and valour.

(note: We were playing under another system and I had warned the player about these two tenets on multiple occassions without any punishment).

The party was fighting an undead dragon. The sequence went something like this.

1. The fighter and barbarian both got paralyzed (both had rolled 1's on their saves).
2. The Paladin attempts to turn undead. The turn undead attempt failed (player rolls low)
3. Dragon moves in.
4. Paladin attempts to turn undead. fails again (player rolls low)
5. wizard casts spell that does some damage
6. Rogue moves to forefront to protect party and gets hit.
7. Paladin attempts to turn undead (is given warning that the weakest combatants are in the front; still tries to turn and rolls low).
8. Rogue gets hit multiple times (including a/critical) and falls unconcious
9. Wizard places himself between the dragon and the fallen rogue
10. Paladin begins to attempts to turn again
11. Wizard gets hit by Dragon twice and should be dead. However, as he showed the qualities that the Paladin was supposed to be displaying, I had the paladin's deity intervene.
12. Fighter and Barbarian are able to act and rush to face the dragon.

I've never stripped a paladin of their powers, but I've only had 3 players play paladins and they did so well. Usually my NPC paladins had to tell them to lighten up a bit. Of course, I also have a bit of semantic wiggling on the "willingly consort with evil" aspect as any paladin on a mission will suck it up and go drinking with baby-eaters if it serves a purpose. When the purpose is done they should focus on taking down the baby-eaters but sometimes you have to only smite one evil creature at a time.

Once, in 2e, I made a cleric atone in a non-spell fashion. He got tricked into doing something evil that wasn't obviously evil at the time but his god expected him to know that anything Lloth does has an ulterior motive. His god made him quest to find the family of the individuals his actions harmed and accept whatever justice they demanded. (I wasn't setting out to screw the party, one PC managed to gate the party to Lloth's lair by using a magic doohickey they'd sworn they'd never use and this was me suddenly having to run an encounter with a diety's avatar)

IMO, gods should be aware of the relative rarity of their cleric/paladin followers and exert some small amount of effort to correct abherrent behavior.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Wow, what was the Paladin's player thinking? Skeleton dragons have way too many hit dice for a Paladin to turn, even a high-level Paladin. Even the first turn attempt was a serious tactical blunder. By the sixth time, he was just tilting at windmills.

 

[lukelightning]

Wow, what was the Paladin's player thinking? Skeleton dragons have way too many hit dice for a Paladin to turn, even a high-level Paladin. Even the first turn attempt was a serious tactical blunder. By the sixth time, he was just tilting at windmills.

Stupidity is not against the paladins' code.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Stupidity is not against the paladins' code.

Very true. Sancho! My armour, my sword! Forward Rocinante!

 

[Greg K]

Wow, what was the Paladin's player thinking? Skeleton dragons have way too many hit dice for a Paladin to turn, even a high-level Paladin. Even the first turn attempt was a serious tactical blunder. By the sixth time, he was just tilting at windmills.

I can understand the first attempt. Maybe the second. And now I recall exactly what made me strip him of some spellcasting ability- Previously, he did a similar tactic against an other undead creature. He failed twice and was about to try for a third time and I pointed out his tenets and gave him a voice of deity's disapproval. Against the dragon, he was doing it again and it would have resulted in the death of the rogue and wizard if not a tpk.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I can understand the first attempt. Maybe the second. And now I recall exactly what made me strip him of some spellcasting ability- Previously, he did a similar tactic against an other undead creature. He failed twice and was about to try for a third time and I pointed out his tenets and gave him a voice of deity's disapproval. Against the dragon, he was doing it again and it would have resulted in the death of the rogue and wizard if not a tpk.

Even the first time was patently foolish. The dragon skeleton in the SRD has 19 Hit Dice and is CR 8. Assuming the Paladin is level 8, making this battle a routine and easy encounter (which it seems it was not), the Paladin would turn as a level 5 Cleric, meaning if he got a really lucky roll that totalled 22 or higher he could turn a 9 HD opponent.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

If you think you take the opponent without harming the horses, you do it. If you think the horses are your opponent's weak spot, you exploit it. Easy as that.

For most NPCs it is not a fundamentally different decision than whether to Sunder a weapon or not. Horses are walking bags of money and destroying perfectly good spoils early in the combat is pretty undesirable. Killing them makes sense if it allows you defeat an otherwise too strong opponent.

 

[Iron Captain]

Stupidity is not against the paladins' code.

You just gave me a great character Idea! Thunk the Half-Orc Paladin of Pelor with an Int of 6!