Pushover DMs

[Bragg Battleaxe]

I hate it when a DM "gives" me anything. I want a risk of death for my PC, I want some randomness to finding magic weapons, spells, etc. and I want consequences for bad decisions- roleplay, combat, or otherwise. To me, a high level character should be something to be proud of having obtained... not just a certificate of attendance for each session.

 

[grimwell]

I don't like silver platters. Or rings of plot protection. When I was in college there was a major game at the gaming club (14+ regular PC's and one DM). You could not stay dead. The DM always had his favorite friendly NPC appear and save us. A friend and I got into a death race to see who could die first from CON loss. After 6 or 7 deaths each we both got bored and I started a new game.

Half of the people instantly came to my table.

I've found an easy solution though. In the one game I get to play in these days I just retired a character who was turned into nothing, but still brought back. My character was in an explosion, rolled a '1' on his save, the "you really screwed up" check pointed to the artifact in my characters hand as the item I was going to have to roll for. It failed, horribly, to survive the force of the blow, and blew up on it's own (it was a staff).

If there was anything left of my PC it was atom sized.

Got a True Ressurection from the DM.

My character would accept it, so I did. Then I promptly had the character retire from adventuring to he could retire to his cottage and study magics in safety.

Worked well enough. The character is gone from active play and the DM gets to save him for whatever he was trying to do.

 

[Magius del Cotto]

The DM always had his favorite friendly NPC appear and save us.

I did that for a (literal) one shot adventure. Quite a bit of interaction between the deus ex machina and the characters, actually. But, as I said, it was a one shot adventure, and I had to prove that I wasn't the kind to keep needless characters alive, so I introduced the evil Deus ex Machina, who promptly killed them before the good Deus ex Machina could react.
My, did that take the players by surprise.

 

[Henry]

One game I played back in my college days (1st edition AD&D) had a DM who gave us all sorts of fun stuff. I once had a 9th level druid with +5 "everythings," from scimitars of speed to Murlynd's Serving Spoons, and my companion, a level 8/7 drow female cleric ranger, who had highly enchanted longwords and a Helm of Brilliance. (!!!)(Anyone familiar with the old Unearthed Arcana book will understand the significance of my comerade)

Once, after a particularly tough battle, he announced, "You all go up a level, AND you get a wish!" (!!!!!!)

GOD, I miss those days.


These days, there is a time and a place for pushover campaigns in our group, but they are exceedingly rare.