Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kae'Yoss" data-source="post: 3665246" data-attributes="member: 4134">There you have it: Proof that you're a lousy DM!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I'd say that letting other people play that guy's character might not be a good idea, unless the player agreed to it beforehand. Otherwise, I'd have left that character at home while the rest is adventuring (or doing some off-the-screen adventuring so the player can rejoin the group at the appropriate wealth and character level). Other players might not show the same interest in keeping the character alive than the character's own player.But that's nothing that makes you a bad DM.So he could have been rescued by his partymates? Did the ghoul turn on more dangerous enemies before mauling the helpless knight? Why didn't it just tear the knight's throat out (coup-de-grace)?I'd say that might have been handled better, but I can't really say without knowing the whole battle. Doesn't sound like a lousy-DM situation to me, though.Sounds like a good idea. Boring PCs to death does not make for an interesting game. Was it too fast? Did you go from cake-walk to meat-grinder?Was it too slow? Imperceptibly so? Tough enemies happen. As long as you don't overdo that, it's alright. As for the accusation: Is it true? Are your sessions all combat? All your sessions? If not, he's wrong, and it's not impossible that he's exaggerating.Personally, I think that periods of combat-heavy sessions are okay.So he complains about the combat-heaviness of the game but also complains if other players play characters that are geared toward non-combat situations? If the game shouldn't be all about combat, why should the characters be?What, by slowly bumping up the difficulty? Nah. If you were an adversial killer DM, you'd ramp up the difficulty in one fell swoop to catch them off guard. You'd also tailor the encounters to downplay the characters' strengths and capitalise on their weaknesses. You'd also use DM knowledge the enemies could not know and would probably engage in "unnatural" behaviour in favour of your monsters. (As opposed to unnatural behaviour in favour of the players, like a hungry animal not killing a helpless PC because you don't want to kill him. No, you would have enemies target helpless and unconscious characters even if the time would be better spent defending against acting enemies).I had that once. The DM seemed dead set on making us lose. Our strengths were neutralised, and when we retreated and planned to overcome that encounter the next day with proper preparation, the enemy found us, and sicced lycanthropes on us. Their EL was significantly higher than our party level, and they managed to walk up on us without us getting any check to see whether those boars were just wandering around or stalking up on us, so of course they got a surprise round.After we won that fight, he threw a fit and ended the campaign. It was no loss really.That's often the case, but players tend to overlook this. They think that all encounters have to be defeatable. Not everyone will react positively at realising that this isn't, in fact, the case.</blockquote>

Verification