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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StreamOfTheSky" data-source="post: 5165267" data-attributes="member: 35909">So, by asserting that you can't really pin good or bad DMing to one moral view or the other, I went against relativism?  Man I love it when people try and tell me I'm not allowed to defend a position without forfeiting my relativism club membership!  It's like being in a school debate, and the only thing the other team can think to respond with is, "shut up!"Eh, it's a good trick if the DM's using legitimate planning or tactics to let the villain slip away only to come back later.  I had great fun one time wearing down a party by having a ghost with near unlimited healing capacity attack them several times, only to retreat into the wals when badly hurt, weakening them for the true fight with him once they reached the Macguffin.  If the party figures out a way to stop the little bugger from getting away and the DM clearly bs's some excuse why it doesn't work (like say, he has a nervous pause, stressfully thinks to himself for a while, and then gets an "aha!" look on his face just before saying why it doesn't work) just to not screw up his plans...that's pretty wrong.  In my party's case, they really had no means to stop the ghost from plinking at them at will.  They kind of knew it would be like that going in, though, and had lots of healing resources and some per encounter ToB stuff themselves.I don't blame you.  It hurt as much as an empowered fireball from a 10th level Wizard or a 150 ft fall, did it?  That's stupid.  And how do you not get a reflex save to dodge something falling on you?  That's what the reflex save exists for!  So that when the DM says, "rocks fall, everyone dies," you can proudly declare "Nat 20!  I make my reflex save!" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Relativism and Absolutism both have their benefits in terms of how to handle D&D morality.  Also, wow, that's awful.Nope, never had anything that frequent or severe.  What your DM is doing is called Deus Ex Machina.  It's actually listed in the DMG as one of the worst possible ways to DM a game.  You should look it up, just for kicks.Now, far less frequently and with much less magnitude, my groups have had the DM pull punches when things turn bad, just no where near to the level your DM does it.  The most egregious exampel was probably one time my party decided to bite off WAY more than they could  chew and actually go after a powerful sorcerer who was intended to become their major nemesis later on in the game.  Like...10 or so levels later.   So, combat is joined, we all get hit by a massive blast radius spell immediately.DM: *rolls a LOT of dice.  then picks up some more to roll because it turns out he didn't have enough to roll all of the damage dice at once*  ...How much hp do you guys each have?Players: *worried looks, some begin replying*DM: *thinks for a moment, realizes that our answers really don't matter, he rolled high enough to kill us all 2-3 times over*DM: ...You're all knocked unconscious.  You awaken a few days later in a jail cell.He didn't really want to TPK us, so he just ad hoc'd that the spell did nonlethal damage somehow.  We didn't mind the mercy, we still got taken prisoner and had to escape and find our gear, so there was a penalty for losing.</blockquote>

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