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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9322645" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Well, in at least two of the cases, it was because the DM was throwing encounters at us that were stupidly strong but which gave relatively paltry XP for their level, so even though we'd (barely) survived multiple Deadly encounters, we hadn't yet cracked the XP needed to reach level 2. For example, one campaign folded following session 4 (still at 1st level, mind) after we had an all-but-one-person TPK (the rogue alone escaped) two combats after a previous near-TPK...and said previous fight had only earned us 70 XP apiece due to the "you outnumber the enemy" halving of XP value since it was just one CR 3 creature (a mummy) vs our party of 1st-level characters.I suspect that, in that specific game, if we had survived the ambush the DM dropped on us while we were taking a short rest to recover, we'd have (finally) levelled up. As it was, like I said, effective TPK killed the campaign.Sadly, I had specifically warned this DM, multiple times, that 5e characters are extremely fragile at low levels and that it was necessary to be cautious about throwing high-CR enemies at them. He blithely dismissed my concerns, due to having had a previous party that (I presume purely by luck) managed to punch well above their weight class. He believed he had to be "tough" in order to give even a moderate challenge in 5e. That policy did not serve him well in that campaign.I certainly don't need rules that purport to achieve the impossible goal of preventing genuinely ill-intentioned GM behavior. But given how grievously I've seen the rules of 5e both misused and actively ignored in ways that directly and severely harmed the experience--enough to drive multiple friends away from D&D permanently, as far as I can tell--it seems to me that designers choosing to dump everything on the GM's shoulders, shrugging and saying, "You're the DM, you figure it out" was an unwise move.Of course, I'm sure someone will now come along and extol just how successful 5e has been and thus it couldn't possibly have done anything incorrect if it sold well. Because everyone knows sales are perfectly 1:1 correspondent with quality and effectiveness in design.</blockquote>

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