SnowleopardVK
First Post
A while ago a roommate and I were really bored, so we started up a game of pathfinder him GMing, me as the lone player. It was meant to be kind of sandboxy, and a game that we would come back to whenever we had nothing else to do. Eventually he moved though, and times where we were bored and could afford to get together to play got increasingly rare. We haven't gone back to that game in nearly 3 months now, and each of us has moved on to games with other people who are closer to us, so I don't think we're going to.
But for the sessions we did play, I remember it bring really difficult. Far more than I'm used to, and I've occasionally wondered whether he was trying to kill me. (I do sometimes suspect that he has a "GM vs. Player(s)" mentality...)
I was playing as an antipaladin (yay evil campaign) who had just gained her power at the start of the game. I was smart enough to not go attacking local authorities at random, but I wanted to at least kill someone so I set out towards the slummy areas of the city. I came across an injured woman and a child hiding out in what had looked like an abandoned house so I decided to kill them, figuring they wouldn't be missed. Turns out the woman wasn't injured, the "child" was actually a halfling, and they were criminals trying to lure other criminals into their trap. (To be fair, I botched my rolls really badly when it came to spotting their ruse).
They nearly killed me, I ran. I ended up finding a witch-doctor type of guy elsewhere in the slums to heal me. Afterwards, having no idea where the previous enemies now were, I started watching a group of four homeless men, I was intent on killing them but I decided to be cautious based on what had happened last time. I watched them for several days, continually rerolling checks to notice if there was anything off about them. Nothing turned up, and when one of them actually died of starvation I was pretty convinced they really weren't hiding anything.
I attacked. They were paladins. Apparently a group of paladins had set out to hunt me (odd because I hadn't actually managed to do anything yet) and were so perfect in their disguise that I couldn't recognize them. They were also so devoted to luring me out for some reason that one of them had deliberately starved himself to death to make me believe their trick.
I still managed to kill one of the remaining three, and based on how the fight went they weren't extremely high level compared to me (so I don't see how they were able to disguise themselves so well). The other two knocked me out and captured me.
I ended up in a prison cart and was informed that I was being taken to my execution. Also prisoner in the cart was an NPC, a succubus. I engineered an escape that involved bluffing the driver into thinking I was settling down to sleep so that he wouldn't stop the cart to look as I attempted to undo my chains. I managed to roll a natural 20 within the first few attempts, getting out of the chains before the driver got suspicious of how long it was taking me to get comfortable. I freed the succubus, stole the driver's keys without him noticing, opened the cage door right behind him, and shoved him off the cart. It was a complicated set of rolls, but I managed to pull them all off. We were now in control of the cart. Advantage right?
Nope. Two guards were walking alongside in such ridiculously good armour that in 5 rounds' worth of attempts (10 attacks) we only managed to hit one once, with another nat 20. So we decided to flee. Surely the cart could outrun them right? No. They could apparently keep up with it on foot despite their armour.
We jumped from the driver's seat to the backs of the giant lizards pulling the cart and cut the cart loose. Now that they weren't pulling it, the lizards were fast enough to get away from the guards, but now there was a paladin on horseback who had (I assume) been riding behind us. He caught up and knocked me off my lizard, not to mention down to a single hit point with a smite evil. I faked being unconscious as he left me to the guards while he went to catch up with the succubus, but not before he commented that I'd just earned an early execution. As in he was going to do it as soon as he got back. Well I started sneaking away as soon as he left to chase the demon, and then running when the guards noticed a couple of rounds later. The paladin was apparently sufficiently distracted, as I managed to make it all the way back to the city. I hid out in the slums again, having barely survived another encounter, and was able to throw the guards off my trail.
The succubus later came back and found me, and she brought me to her lord. He sent me on a mission to clear out an old mine shaft of monsters so that he could sent a strike force through undetected to attack... Something. He wasn't really clear about what. Well I went to the mine shaft and travelled a very long way in finding absolutely nothing. The dungeon was seemingly empty. No traps, no monsters, no hidden doors, and I took the time to search every room to make sure of that. All I found were a few small side passages, and I even blocked those off as I went so that nothing could sneak up behind me.
Well once I was very deep the trouble started. A room locked as I entered it and began to fill with poison gas. I looked for other ways out, I tried to pick the lock, I even tried to goad the trap-setters into fighting me face to face. In the end I had to break down the door back the way I came, but it took so many tries that I was poisoned by the time I was out. Suddenly the "empty" dungeon was full of monsters that would have been challenging to me even if I hadn't been poisoned and there was only a single one of them. All the side tunnels I had blocked were now unblocked and filled with traps and difficult terrain that Kobolds would shoot at me from the other side of before retreating (before I could get to them). Every time I managed to save and get rid of the effects of poison another trap would soon spring up poisoning me again, or a poisoned arrow would hit. Once again I barely made it out alive and had killed nothing, when I did get out I met the demon I was supposed to rendezvous with after completing my mission. He had just enough time to call me a worthless failure for screwing up an easy (yeah right) task before I passed out from the still-active poison.
We haven't played since then. My character is still alive, as the demons took me back to safety and healed me. The next adventure would apparently have begun with my punishment. (You know, for failing a difficult task given to me by a demon I had no real association with who didn't provide me with any help beyond directions to the dungeon.)
That's four sessions of play during which I've managed to kill exactly one opponent, one of the disguised paladins. The GM didn't award me any experience for roleplaying or engineering any of my three escapes, or... Well to be honest he gave me no experience at all other than from that one paladin. I can appreciate a "thrust into a situation far beyond your ability" campaign, but I don't think he was running one, since usually experience would be awarded simply for managing to survive the "too-difficult" situations. No, I think he was just treating me as an opponent and doing his best to kill me without being quite so obvious as throwing a high-CR monster at a 1st level character.
I know that as always, it's hard to make a judgement with only one side of the story. I tried to put in as much detail as I could though.
But for the sessions we did play, I remember it bring really difficult. Far more than I'm used to, and I've occasionally wondered whether he was trying to kill me. (I do sometimes suspect that he has a "GM vs. Player(s)" mentality...)
I was playing as an antipaladin (yay evil campaign) who had just gained her power at the start of the game. I was smart enough to not go attacking local authorities at random, but I wanted to at least kill someone so I set out towards the slummy areas of the city. I came across an injured woman and a child hiding out in what had looked like an abandoned house so I decided to kill them, figuring they wouldn't be missed. Turns out the woman wasn't injured, the "child" was actually a halfling, and they were criminals trying to lure other criminals into their trap. (To be fair, I botched my rolls really badly when it came to spotting their ruse).
They nearly killed me, I ran. I ended up finding a witch-doctor type of guy elsewhere in the slums to heal me. Afterwards, having no idea where the previous enemies now were, I started watching a group of four homeless men, I was intent on killing them but I decided to be cautious based on what had happened last time. I watched them for several days, continually rerolling checks to notice if there was anything off about them. Nothing turned up, and when one of them actually died of starvation I was pretty convinced they really weren't hiding anything.
I attacked. They were paladins. Apparently a group of paladins had set out to hunt me (odd because I hadn't actually managed to do anything yet) and were so perfect in their disguise that I couldn't recognize them. They were also so devoted to luring me out for some reason that one of them had deliberately starved himself to death to make me believe their trick.
I still managed to kill one of the remaining three, and based on how the fight went they weren't extremely high level compared to me (so I don't see how they were able to disguise themselves so well). The other two knocked me out and captured me.
I ended up in a prison cart and was informed that I was being taken to my execution. Also prisoner in the cart was an NPC, a succubus. I engineered an escape that involved bluffing the driver into thinking I was settling down to sleep so that he wouldn't stop the cart to look as I attempted to undo my chains. I managed to roll a natural 20 within the first few attempts, getting out of the chains before the driver got suspicious of how long it was taking me to get comfortable. I freed the succubus, stole the driver's keys without him noticing, opened the cage door right behind him, and shoved him off the cart. It was a complicated set of rolls, but I managed to pull them all off. We were now in control of the cart. Advantage right?
Nope. Two guards were walking alongside in such ridiculously good armour that in 5 rounds' worth of attempts (10 attacks) we only managed to hit one once, with another nat 20. So we decided to flee. Surely the cart could outrun them right? No. They could apparently keep up with it on foot despite their armour.
We jumped from the driver's seat to the backs of the giant lizards pulling the cart and cut the cart loose. Now that they weren't pulling it, the lizards were fast enough to get away from the guards, but now there was a paladin on horseback who had (I assume) been riding behind us. He caught up and knocked me off my lizard, not to mention down to a single hit point with a smite evil. I faked being unconscious as he left me to the guards while he went to catch up with the succubus, but not before he commented that I'd just earned an early execution. As in he was going to do it as soon as he got back. Well I started sneaking away as soon as he left to chase the demon, and then running when the guards noticed a couple of rounds later. The paladin was apparently sufficiently distracted, as I managed to make it all the way back to the city. I hid out in the slums again, having barely survived another encounter, and was able to throw the guards off my trail.
The succubus later came back and found me, and she brought me to her lord. He sent me on a mission to clear out an old mine shaft of monsters so that he could sent a strike force through undetected to attack... Something. He wasn't really clear about what. Well I went to the mine shaft and travelled a very long way in finding absolutely nothing. The dungeon was seemingly empty. No traps, no monsters, no hidden doors, and I took the time to search every room to make sure of that. All I found were a few small side passages, and I even blocked those off as I went so that nothing could sneak up behind me.
Well once I was very deep the trouble started. A room locked as I entered it and began to fill with poison gas. I looked for other ways out, I tried to pick the lock, I even tried to goad the trap-setters into fighting me face to face. In the end I had to break down the door back the way I came, but it took so many tries that I was poisoned by the time I was out. Suddenly the "empty" dungeon was full of monsters that would have been challenging to me even if I hadn't been poisoned and there was only a single one of them. All the side tunnels I had blocked were now unblocked and filled with traps and difficult terrain that Kobolds would shoot at me from the other side of before retreating (before I could get to them). Every time I managed to save and get rid of the effects of poison another trap would soon spring up poisoning me again, or a poisoned arrow would hit. Once again I barely made it out alive and had killed nothing, when I did get out I met the demon I was supposed to rendezvous with after completing my mission. He had just enough time to call me a worthless failure for screwing up an easy (yeah right) task before I passed out from the still-active poison.
We haven't played since then. My character is still alive, as the demons took me back to safety and healed me. The next adventure would apparently have begun with my punishment. (You know, for failing a difficult task given to me by a demon I had no real association with who didn't provide me with any help beyond directions to the dungeon.)
That's four sessions of play during which I've managed to kill exactly one opponent, one of the disguised paladins. The GM didn't award me any experience for roleplaying or engineering any of my three escapes, or... Well to be honest he gave me no experience at all other than from that one paladin. I can appreciate a "thrust into a situation far beyond your ability" campaign, but I don't think he was running one, since usually experience would be awarded simply for managing to survive the "too-difficult" situations. No, I think he was just treating me as an opponent and doing his best to kill me without being quite so obvious as throwing a high-CR monster at a 1st level character.
I know that as always, it's hard to make a judgement with only one side of the story. I tried to put in as much detail as I could though.
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