Is this a cruel DM?

[Dog Faced God]

By the way, how did you handle the spell pages being soaked in a river? I had a similar situation awhile back, but the DM really wasn't happy with the solution that we had since there really isn't anything that clarifies water damage to magic pages? Essentially a spellbook is a magic item of a sort.

In fact, I think part of the reason why he was so quick to eat my spellbook was that it gave him an easy out to remove the "offending" spellbook.

cheers

This was in 2e. I ruled that some of the ink washed off, ruining a few random spells. I also told the player that if he wasn't extra careful handling the book while preparing his spells that night (taking about 4 hours) he had a chance of ruining the pages containing the spells he was preparing. Also, if he didn't do <i>something</i> to try to prevent the pages from sticking together as they dried out it would ruin some random pages as well.

 

[TiQuinn]

This is one reason why I dislike low magic worlds.

Lots of magical creatures, curses, and it's hard as heck to get ahold of the spells/items you need to cure yourself, heal from fighting them, or use to fight them.

Which is kind of funny since in a low magic world, you'd think you wouldn't run into magical creatures and curses all that much!

To be more accurate, they tend to be mid-level magic worlds where none of the magic comes into the possession of the PCs.

Yay.

 

[Wolfen Priest]

I just have one question:
Why in the world don't you and the other players find someone else to DM?

I have a pet peeve with jerkish and controlling DM's, I think there are far too many of them, and they are never the good ones.

 

[Xarlen]

I've noticed a lot of this lately. People posing advice about what to do about mean DMs, or if these are mean DMs.

It's like an abusive marriage.

 

[Tiefling]

Methos, I definitely don't think you should e-mail the thread to your DM. He might take exception to the fact that you went on a message board to ask a question like this. Not that such an attitude would be really rational, but people aren't rational.

Rather, make notes of what's been said here and then confront him with it yourself.

 

[barsoomcore]

This is one reason why I dislike low magic worlds.

Lots of magical creatures, curses, and it's hard as heck to get ahold of the spells/items you need to cure yourself, heal from fighting them, or use to fight them.

As TiQuinn pointed out, you're describing a world where there's lots of magic, just not for the PCs.

I LOVE low-magic worlds, but the DM's got to play by the same rules as the players.

Methos: ask you DM why he thinks this campaign is fun for the players. My players rebelled once against my campaign and it really made me think about what I was doing. And more importantly, how I was communicating my campaign vision -- I realised they didn't know I had a "plan" and just thought I was trying to beat them into submission. Really what I was doing was setting up some real terrors early on so that as they grew in power they would discover themselves able to take on those challenges that so frightened them before. I thought it would be super-rewarding, but they didn't understand.

Now they do and things are much happier.

So ask. He may have a perfectly good answer.

 

[Xarlen]

Maybe I'm just biased against low magic worlds, then.

Me, I like playing spellcasters, and actually having magical items that I don't need to play grenade-diver just to keep.

Although, I can agree with the sentiment to keep from making magic = disposable technology, I need my groove thang.

 

[Methos]

Yes. That is probably good advice.

One other note, when we finally defeated the Mummy (not really a true Mummy, but a modified creature with special powers) at the end and laid the creature to rest, we found out that the creature at that point was I believe CR 14.

One of the other players, his brother actually, pointed out that under the experience point rules in the DM guide, we should not have been fighting something that strong, and that the campaign in effect is too tough.

Funny.

cheers

Methos, I definitely don't think you should e-mail the thread to your DM. He might take exception to the fact that you went on a message board to ask a question like this. Not that such an attitude would be really rational, but people aren't rational.

Rather, make notes of what's been said here and then confront him with it yourself.

 

[Xarlen]

Not to mention you should've gotten a BUTT load of XP.

 

[Methos]

Hmmm.... Interesting. This has been a bit of a pet peeve for me, and I haven't really understood why. I'm beginning to understand that this really isn't a low-magic world, but the players simply don't have access to the magic.

Example: As a 5th level character I would think that I would have more than one magic item at this point. I currently have a +1 spear, and nothing else. Following the NPC examples in the DM guide, I should likely have a bit more by now. Mind you, in low-magic world, this might make sense, except for the fact that we are fighting strange mummy-like creatures that have levels in sorcerer as well as lycanthropes. In fact, not all of the characters have magic weapons, but we are fighting creatures that have damage reduction in the absence of at least a +1 weapon. Seems wrong to me.

As TiQuinn pointed out, you're describing a world where there's lots of magic, just not for the PCs.

I LOVE low-magic worlds, but the DM's got to play by the same rules as the players.

Methos: ask you DM why he thinks this campaign is fun for the players. My players rebelled once against my campaign and it really made me think about what I was doing. And more importantly, how I was communicating my campaign vision -- I realised they didn't know I had a "plan" and just thought I was trying to beat them into submission. Really what I was doing was setting up some real terrors early on so that as they grew in power they would discover themselves able to take on those challenges that so frightened them before. I thought it would be super-rewarding, but they didn't understand.

Now they do and things are much happier.

So ask. He may have a perfectly good answer.