D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Mort]

It's unlikely to be the same guy really, but if the DM I knew was related to him, I wouldn't be surprised. Here's something else he pulled.

3.0 game, our first, in fact. The DM simply thought he could continue to use his 2e game with no changes, and was constantly flummoxed by the new rules and lamenting how "stupidly powerful" we all were. We were fighting a vampire in a cavern, when the Fighter finally had enough. He dropped his shield, downed a potion of Bull's Strength, and put a two-handed grip on his Dwarven Waraxe and went to town on the guy, boosting his damage per hit by 4 points- which you wouldn't think was too bad, but the DM freaked out when his precious NPC's hit points melted away.

"The last attack hits the vampire with such force that it cleaves through him and into the rock pillar he was standing next to, cleaving it in twain. Suddenly, cracks appear in the cavern's ceiling and it collapses!".

This, IMO, is the critical difference between a "killer DM" and a DM where sometimes the PCs die. It's clear retaliation, and there's no place for it.

Yeah, literally rocks fall, though only the Fighter died. But wait, there's more! Upon recovering the body, an NPC Druid wandered by and offered to restore the Fighter to life. The DM rolled some dice behind his screen and our Fighter came back as a Gnome. -1 level, -2 Strength, and unable to use his old armor or shield (but by 3.0 rules, he could at least use his Waraxe as a two handed weapon) as his "reward" for defeating a major foe.

And of course, no vampire xp since he "died in the encounter"!

Yeah, I've seen something similar. I managed to last 2 sessions in such a campaign, because I was overly forgiving of such behavior back then.

 

[Lanefan]

That's too bad IMO. Gear is replaceable, in kind if not exactly. Few characters in the fiction would rather die than lose their sweet axe, so the attitude would be a problem for me too. That being said, if the table wants to play that way more power to them.

I've had players who'd rather see their characters die than lose a level, even though both conditions are reversible in the game (though both do leave permanent aftereffects: death-revival leaves you down a Con point and restoration is never perfect).

And yes, the greedier players howl when their gear goes boom, until I remind them that if going boom wasn't an option they'd have much less of it to begin with. On that, the howls usually soften to whimpers.

 

[Lanefan]

Part of the reason I've never used rust monsters is that it's already hard for fighter types to compete with wizards at high levels. Lose that sword, your armor and shield? That can hurt. The wizard losing his belt buckle? Not really much of an issue until his pants fall down. Meanwhile the monk makes fun of them both.

Hey, Monks gotta have their day in the sun sometime!

 

[Thomas Shey]

Speaking of control, if someone were to say that they were comfortable leaving the ongoing debate over DM vs. player control as "agree to disagree," are you OK leaving it there too? Agree to disagree?

Sure. Note my line about "want to weigh in"? There are absolutely players who want the GM to do all this, and that's their choice.

(Though, note my focus on "as a group"; the fact one player doesn't want to be involved in the discussion doesn't mean the rest are obligated to not want in. This can get messy, as with most things involving people, if you have some border situations where, say, only one player wants a say in house rules, but, well, suprise, degenerate situations produce degenerate results).

Seems like a cyclical debate now, doesn't it? The same folks repeating their positions over and over? Neither side convincing the other? Minds not being swayed? Folks see it differently, and that isn't a big deal.

Better to stop at "agree to disagree" than have feelings get hurt.

No one is obligated to keep responding.

 

[Lanefan]

Spellbooks are the #1 reason I prefer sorcerers to wizards. I've had bad experiences with DMs intentionally targeting spellbooks.

I can't remember ever intentionally targeting spellbooks, but if they happen to be in the blast zone then so be it.

That said, usually spellbooks are in a backpack. For things like AoE damage we give the backpack a save first, and if it makes it then everything inside is considered to have survived as well. But if the backpack fails, then everything inside is exposed and has to save for itself.

Fireproof red-dragon-skin spellbook covers are rare but really sought after. They don't, however, help much if the spellbook gets drowned or has to save vs lightning, acid, etc.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure. Note my line about "want to weigh in"? There are absolutely players who want the GM to do all this, and that's their choice.

(Though, note my focus on "as a group"; the fact one player doesn't want to be involved in the discussion doesn't mean the rest are obligated to not want in. This can get messy, as with most things involving people, if you have some border situations where, say, only one player wants a say in house rules, but, well, suprise, degenerate situations produce degenerate results).

More common IME is where players have varying levels of opportunity to weigh in and-or the DM gives more weight to the opinions and preferences of one player than to those of another.

The player who sees the DM three times a week over beers outside the game, or is a co-worker with or spouse of the DM, is by default going to have far more opportunity for input than the player who only ever sees the DM at the games. And a good friend or spouse of the DM is far more likely to be listened to than someone the DM doesn't know well and only sees at the games.

It's not always a question of who wants a say, sometimes it's a question of who has the opportunity.

 

[Micah Sweet]

More common IME is where players have varying levels of opportunity to weigh in and-or the DM gives more weight to the opinions and preferences of one player than to those of another.

The player who sees the DM three times a week over beers outside the game, or is a co-worker with or spouse of the DM, is by default going to have far more opportunity for input than the player who only ever sees the DM at the games. And a good friend or spouse of the DM is far more likely to be listened to than someone the DM doesn't know well and only sees at the games.

It's not always a question of who wants a say, sometimes it's a question of who has the opportunity.

Gaming is no stranger to politics.

 

[Faolyn]

Modern D&D only has death as a hard-loss condition. TSR-era D&D offered a host of other options.

Level drain was a good one: a loss condition that didn't end the game (unless you lost more levels than you had, of course, but that's pretty rare). Item destruction is another such.

The only real problem with level drain is that it's much more difficult to enact in 5e than it was back in AD&D, which didn't have new abilities every level, and isn't useful with milestone leveling. It could probably be brought back in some form or another, however--permanent reduction to max hp, penalties to die rolls, even permanent levels of exhaustion (reversible, perhaps, with greater restoration).

Indeed, but there's still the basic instinct to not lose. Loss conditions include character death, level drain, petrification, item or gear destruction, stat loss, and so forth.

Which means, were I to take a (hypothetical) proposal to the players that would result in more item and gear destruction and a second proposal that would result is less item and gear destruction, which do you think they'd vote for? As in, 100 times out of 100.

Now here's the second question: Would more item and gear destruction actually make for a better game? Or simply a harder or more punishing one? What do the players get out of destroying their property? Even if the point is to make the game harder, it should at least make it more interesting in some way. Does this rule accomplish that goal?

Because that's what we're talking about: house rules to make the game better. Does destroying property and nerfing spell slots actually make the game better, meaning more fun for everyone?

When players and GMs work together, they can usually find a decent compromise.

If I put this to a player vote, though, it would never pass. The current group is mellow enough I don't think it'd devolve into a big argument (with some past groups, it most certainly would have!) but I still very much doubt I could get it through. And so, it's on me to be the bad guy. Conflicting agendae, straight up.

See, I think it might in my group. When the silvery barbs spell came out--it's horribly overpowered, it was the players, not the GM, who said no to it. I brought up the idea of incorporating the 5.24 weapon properties to the game before I really looked at how they work, and they seem really unbalanced to me (at least in a 5.14 game) so I was quick to say "whoops, I didn't realize they were so powerful, my bad."

And to forestall the question I can already see on the horizon - "Why don't you just boost the non-casters instead?" - I'm not interested in the resulting power creep. We've had some of that already over the years, and I'm looking to tamp it down rather than add to it.

It's not necessarily power creep when it's simply more options.

For instance, in Level Up, martials get maneuvers. The lower-level maneuvers let warrior-types briefly cause some condition (the target is tripped, shoved, disarmed or something like that), let the warrior reduce the damage they take, or give the warrior some extra movement. There's a saving throw involved, so it's not an automatic effect, and some take the place of doing damage entirely. And there's really nothing stopping you from giving adversaries these abilities as well.

I don't see this as a power creep at all. It's just things for fighters to do that aren't just "I hit and do 9 damage."

 

[kermit4karate]

No one is obligated to keep responding.

Right, except that there's a difference between agreeing to disagree and "No one is obligated to keep responding."

Agreeing to disagree means respecting that the other party has a valid opinion, even though you disagree with it. While saying that someone else doesn't have to respond is more like saying, "OK, but I'm right, you're wrong, and I don't really respect your opinion."

 

[AlViking]

Back around '81-'83 there was a group of 10-20 folks once a week playing in a game that a local comic/record/book/game store owner in Rockford IL ran. They ranged from maybe 7th grade to mid-40s and some had probably played with Gygax before the rules were published, and the players used whichever of 1e, B/X, or OD&D they had (I'm not sure which version the DM used).

About 1/3rd of the party died every night, and it was a feat to make it to 2nd level. My elvish cleric was one level below retirement in the boss battle after a probably year long dungeon crawl. The vampire touch (iirc) brought me down in level, and then (after I had to go home so my parents didn't metaphorically kill me) the friend I had playing my character reported the lich teleported behind the back row of the party and let off a 20-die lightning bolt.

The DM didn't try to kill us, she played the things the way they were written up and we all had a blast. And none of us spent a lot of time making up our characters, even though we tried to throw in some flashes of color. (Iirc, my 300 lb. cleric brought chickens with in the dungeon and always scouted out restaurants when in town. He made it a couple of levels, but then I [and he] learned what the Necronomicon was and that you shouldn't read it, or there's a chance Cthulhu decides to pay attention to you and you need a new character).

I think the important thing is that we all knew what we were getting into (or at least knew if we talked to anyone else before joining, and certainly by the end of the first session) and that she didn't play favorites. And I can't think of anyone who played back then wouldn't love for Bev Mason to be back at Toad Hall running games so that we could do that again.

Even if it was totally unlike our own games that we ran for each other where the characters seemed to last a lot longer, we shared GMing, and we would have been crushed after a while to have them die. And even if it is totally unlike any of the games we've played since or run ourselves.

On the other hand, some of the killer DM descriptions on the last few pages sound like no fun at all.

I've played some one-shots with DMs where we knew we were going into a killer game and had a lot of fun. It's all about the GM setting expectations so you know what you're getting into. There also has to be a chance to survive or at least a fun and glorious way to die. The killer GM I had ... it was not fun. I'm not even sure how he thought it would be an enjoyable experience to just have one character die because of rocks falling from the ceiling or similar.