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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 8263604" data-attributes="member: 20564">WARNING: Contains minor hidden spoilers for Curse of Strahd.Normally I update about the games I run, but I need to talk about last session I played in.We're running Curse of Strahd, and I've had concerns about the DM pulling their punches.  Early in the Death House, at one point my character was down and making (well, failing) death saves and I whisper texted to the DM (we're using Roll20+Zoom) that if I die I'm fine with it - it would really set the horror tone.  His response was "don't worry, that won't happen".  And the party did finally heal me after two failed death saves, but it sort of felt like he wouldn't have let me die from the pit trap even if they were slower.Several of the other battles in there it really felt like he was pulling his punches, like [ISPOILER]not having the ghouls use their paralyzing bite, and the monster in the basement begging somewhat defanged[/ISPOILER].  But we were 1st level back then, I wrote it off as just adjusting to our level.I need to give a little background for the next part.  During character creation the DM had worked with each of us to give us a secret flaw/benefit.  My paladin of the moon had been infected with magically weakened werebear blood.  I could do a partial transformation but it put me in a fury against foes and took away all sense of self preservation and I needed to make WIS saves to come out of it.  The DM also has a 1 is a critical failure, and counts 1s and 20s as auto-failure/success even on skill checks and saves.Anyway, let's talk about last session.  We're following clues from the Troika card reading, and ended up somewhere well beyond the 3rd level we are now.  We had [ISPOILER]killed two and driven off the third inhabitant of the mill[/ISPOILER], (which probaby was also him pulling punches), and we now enountered that last person in their lair.We had one character die in the first round to massive damage - they were brought to zero and then hit for 42 damage which is more than their HP max.  My character was yelling at everyone to run, and attempted to pull other characters out of an Evard's Black Tentacles.  I failed, even with advantage from Inspiration, and the DM said that if I hulked out I could succeed, which I did.  So everyone else in the party got away, and I made a WIS save to see if I could revert and do the same.  Natural 1.We could see our opponent through the sliding viewport on the door, and I did exactly what the fury against foes and lack of self preservation dictated - misty stepped (from Fey Touched feat picked up as vHuman) inside to fight them.  Mind you, while "that's what my character would do" is often used to justify bad play, I had spent my last action making sure everyone else was safe, and it was my own character only I was killing.  I shouldn't have the extra bonuses if I was going to ignore the balancing drawback - I was okay with it.  Anyway, a horror module like Curse of Strahd having a character die just adds to the ambiance.  And I told that directly to the DM on the chat.Anyway, the DM just backed out.  The foe was nowhere in their hut even though we had just seen her there, the hut stopped attacking, I was fine and we got all the loot in the hut, and a random NPC none of us knew about stopped by to resurrect the PC that died from massive damage.  The DM explained that that NPC [ISPOILER]was to when the party is in over their head as a "get out of jail free" card, but only once.[/ISPOILER]All in all, I've lost all fear in this game.  I'm playing a tank which now feels like a redundant role because it seems we are protected by plot armor.  What's supposed to be a horror campaign no longer holds any of that.  I need to talk to the DM, but I did mention multiple times to him previously that I was okay dying, and protested in front of everyone during the session.  The feeling I got is he feels he did us a favor, as we've put a lot into creating and RPing these characters and there's a lot of good inter-party RP about their relationships.  But there's now no fear of loss, which means there's also no reward in win, and I wonder if that's just his DMing style.This is my main group I get to play with, as him an occasional DM runnign a hardcover book campaign when the main DM wants to take a break from runnign his homebrew.  But we are pretty early in CoS and have likely months and months more of this.  The DM is also a player in a game I run and I wonder if this is what he expects if his character would die there.</blockquote>

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