Players Vs. DMs

Being the invincible DM that I am, I didn't let it bother me. The cursed item is the plot of my currand adventure path... so if he doesn't like it, all he has to do is follow the adventure.

I have to say that if it were me I'd not be whining, I'd be going out of my way to get killed just to spite you. :devil: There are better ways to push your plot forward.
 

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Taint - noted. It'll be kept minor - just enough for the PCs to know that this place is a really full-on don't-let-your-grandmother-go-down-there haunted abode of damned evil vile nastiness that ever crawled out of a pscycho's nightmares.

Of course the hordes of zombies sliding on a wave of beetles out of the mouths of giant grotesque heads onto the PCs in a room buzzing with flies and with blood pouring down the walls might also convey the same information.
 

Looking at the numbers, even a reasonably optimized character only hits vs AC on an equal level foe about 50% of the time. Against an elite, solo, or higher level monster it can get much lower than that. I'd probably be pretty annoyed by the item too, unless I was an Elven deadly trickster or something. Given how many rounds fights go in 4e, the odds of this item taking the player out of the fight late in any battle are pretty good.

Cursed items aren't neccessarily a bad thing to introduce into the game. I'd just do it very carefully. Alot of thought needs to be put into the mechanical implications of the item, as well as the personality of the player you are giving it to.
 


Looking at the numbers, even a reasonably optimized character only hits vs AC on an equal level foe about 50% of the time. Against an elite, solo, or higher level monster it can get much lower than that. I'd probably be pretty annoyed by the item too, unless I was an Elven deadly trickster or something. Given how many rounds fights go in 4e, the odds of this item taking the player out of the fight late in any battle are pretty good.

Cursed items aren't neccessarily a bad thing to introduce into the game. I'd just do it very carefully. Alot of thought needs to be put into the mechanical implications of the item, as well as the personality of the player you are giving it to.
I call this the 50/50/90 rule.
If your party only has a 50% chance of doing things, my party will have a 90% chance of doing the same things.

Case in point, My players succeded in 9 out of 11 skill challenges, Didn't even fall once during KoTS, and Use their dailys on the baddie that they probably needed to in order to keep things seeming "real".

I'm not trying to say that my players are Better in any way, they just know me pretty well, I know them very well, and they all have horseshoes up their butts!
Maybe I should buy them all new dice... and force them to use them. Their dice are enchanted dice of always rolling good +5 I swear.
 

Yeah, once again someone confuses A SINGLE plot point as the entire adventure.

The cursed item is the plot of my currand adventure path... so if he doesn't like it, all he has to do is follow the adventure.

Uhm, you said in your first post the cursed item "is the plot" of your adventure. Not one of many. Is it safe to say without this "plot point" your adventure path falls apart?

This sounds like a bit of a railroad to me, as all the disgruntled player has to do to get rid of the item is "follow the adventure" as you have it plotted. He doesn't have any real say in the matter.

I can't speak first hand of running an adventure with a cursed item attached to a player as the main plot thread, but I do remember railroading my players in a campaign oh so many years ago (well, we didn't call it railroading back then) and it wasn't pretty... they fought the direction of the plot every which way... I wound up the campaign way early and sat in as a player instead of a DM for a few months... it was eye opening... players have much more fun when they feel they have an influence on THE story. I kind of forgot that as I was dragging them by their noses thru MY story.
 

Uhm, you said in your first post the cursed item "is the plot" of your adventure. Not one of many. Is it safe to say without this "plot point" your adventure path falls apart?

This sounds like a bit of a railroad to me, as all the disgruntled player has to do to get rid of the item is "follow the adventure" as you have it plotted. He doesn't have any real say in the matter.

I can't speak first hand of running an adventure with a cursed item attached to a player as the main plot thread, but I do remember railroading my players in a campaign oh so many years ago (well, we didn't call it railroading back then) and it wasn't pretty... they fought the direction of the plot every which way... I wound up the campaign way early and sat in as a player instead of a DM for a few months... it was eye opening... players have much more fun when they feel they have an influence on THE story. I kind of forgot that as I was dragging them by their noses thru MY story.
maybe you don't have the mental capcity to make multiple adventure paths in one campaign... but I do. So keep your one track mind to yourself and quit flaming me just because I don't clarify every single sentance I write.
Adventure path =/= WHOLE CAMPAIGN
IT is somthing I threw in. Yes it is the CURRANT one they're on, because THEY chose to go on it.
One player in 7 being uspet over having a curse is easy to deal with, and not that big of a deal, definately not worth being flamed every second post over.
I'm done being nice about this. Arguing over the fairness was not the intent of this thread.

Aparently I'm the only DM to ever do somthing "unfun" in an adventure ever like pass out a single cursed item and have a way to be rid of it written in the adventure...
WAIT didn't Gary Himself CREATE cursed items? ALSO dindn't he create and PUBLISH whole campaigns based on it?
Oh no, Maybe I'm not the guy you should be flaming.
 

There was no flaming in your direction, at least not from me. Clarifying your statements? That i did. Mention when I had a campaign go bad and why it went bad? Guilty.

As for my mental capacity and my apparently one track mind... :p
 

If one good thing came out of this failed conversation about Players Vs. DMs is that I don't feel so bad about the complaints about my cursed item.
The "I'd walk out" or "Id kill myself to thwart you" comments are way worce than my players dislike of his cursed item.
 

If one good thing came out of this failed conversation about Players Vs. DMs is that I don't feel so bad about the complaints about my cursed item.
The "I'd walk out" or "Id kill myself to thwart you" comments are way worce than my players dislike of his cursed item.

Well, I'm glad you got something out of it. :)

A quick comment: you may have gotten the wrong feedback from your POV in part due to your thread title. "Players Vs. DM" has people entering the thread with the bias that this is about a Player / DM Power struggle of sorts. What you probably should have titled it is something along the lines of "Using Cursed Items as a Plot Device... Any Thoughts?" or something. It might have steered the conversation more in the direction you expected. Just a thought. I actually have those on occasions ;)
 

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