Rat bastard DM or just the norm? Share your stories.

[DM-Rocco]

Despite lack of knowledge and generally not being very savvy, they ventured over 50 miles from a big city into the wilderness. They're basically wandering around with nfc.

Why they're not sticking close to town, you'd have to ask them. Its certainly not for lack of things to do.

Now be fair, when I started with the cleric PC we stayed very close to town, no further than a mile from the largest city. You are refering to poor choices of the other party and are subjecting me to thier lack of good judgement.

As to why they encountered a hill giant... that's his territory. They've encountered him twice, the first time he was out for a stroll and didn't notice them.
They've had really good luck on wilderness encounters, except for getting the giant twice. Oh well.

There is no magical forests just full of bunnies... there be bears in them woods too.

There should be

But even if there was, I'm sure they would be like the bunnies from the Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, able to kill a fully armored knight with one bite.

 

[DM-Rocco]

You knew you were diseased. The cleric was out of spells and wanted to hit town, but you wanted to explore a few more rooms in the ruins/dungeon. It was filth fever (which I believe is the weakest disease). The wound was healed, but was still tender and red, and the cleric confirmed you were diseased. Three days later, you failed your Fortitude save (I rolled secretly) and took minor damage (-1 Dex, -2 Con).

Oh yeah, all most forgot. I must have been moved through not only space but time as well. Got bit in the morning, teleported less than an hour later and somewhere in there you added three days for disease to fester cause it was after one night of rest, not three, that you gave me the "Minor Damage." (for the record, there is not such thing as minor damage at first level).

I know I took the damage, cause you made me roll for it.

Anyway, I didn't want to come to the community to sound like a, "My DM is not playing fair, tell him to stop being a meany," kind of thing, but you asked me to post it, so here it is.

 

[EvilGM]

the bottom line...

If you're not having fun, I'd suggest another game.

 

[green slime]

I'd put this down to an inexperienced DM. But that depends on whether or not he is willing to listen to the criticism.

 

[Imperialus]

I dunno... Evil GM would have to be pretty experienced to try and run Gestalt characters. They can be tough to DM. Assuming he is inexperienced though I think the situation is salvageable. It always sucks to leave a gaming group.

I don't think it's anyone’s "fault" either. I'm sure there are times that the most experienced DM's make mistakes, no doubt even Piratecat could come up with a few. Lord knows I do and I've been DMing on and off for 10 years now. To be fair though DM Rocco could have played it a bit safer especially since it seems that he knew that due to the merging of the two groups there might be some hand waiving involved in getting them together. EvilGM could have let the hand waiving go both ways though, sometimes a little flexibility can go a long way.

With that said, let’s see how I would try and salvage this:

The first thing you need to do is get the party out of the wilderness and back to the city. That way they can run though the adventures that you have prepared for their level rather than wandering into random encounters that they have no chance against. To do this I would seriously consider my tongue in cheek proposal in my last post. Have them encounter a much higher level adventuring party that in obviously hurting from a previous encounter. Make two things obvious.

One: the party is obviously higher level. Give them flashy magic items even if they aren’t the most effective, Have the spellcasters cast higher level magic at every opportunity ect.

Two: The party is obviously in rough shape. Not only is their armour and equipment banged up but they are obviously grubby disheveled and generally uncomfortable. Taking it even further I would have their cleric unconscious, maybe even a dead party member or two that they are bringing back to the town for healing.

To cap things off I would also have them escorting the person they were trying to find. They rescued him the day before and are now fleeing whatever remains in the dungeon with him in tow. Hopefully your players will get the hint and offer to join them. The NPC's accept. Now whatever you do make the NPC's genuinely helpful, useful and agreeable. Don't give your players an excuse to either kill them or leave them and resume wandering.

Finally you may want to still give your players the opportunity to save the day. This gives them a sense of still accomplishing something and gives them the more experienced party as an ally, which can be relied on for minor favors that only a higher-level party can accomplish. They might for example be willing to part with that that magic item that no matter what you couldn't find anywhere else (for a fair price of course). Not only that but from your perception as DM they can also be a font of plot hooks and adventure ideas. The more a group of PC's come to develop relationships with surrounding NPC's the better.

*edit*
Anyhow, I hope you manage to keep your group together. It's really up to you guys though to decide if it's better to go your separate ways. I think the most important thing to do is call each other up and have a calm, rational (and honest) discussion about what you are hoping to get from the game. Be willing to compromise and hopefully you can hammer things out. Remember to involve the other players as well even if it's just phone tag back and forth between everyone.

 

[TheGogmagog]

My vote is for idiot player(s). You don't need remove disease, just make two checks in a row. *Hint, use the heal skill*, you mentioned the cleric had it aside from outrageous point buy and being gestalt. One half is mage (wizard?) what's your other half? Heal is a class skill for just about every class (IIRC) there's no excuse for one character to not have it maximized, and another two capable of aiding another.

I didn't read all of his comments or your replies, but not ever monster encountered has to be level apropriate because it dosn't have fought.

There might be some fault on the DM, I think some had mentioned new DM and gestalt campaign. That can be troublesome, but you should work together when something doesn't add up, not pick sides.

 

[Imperialus]

One other thing that I would suggest if you like my idea is don't let the NPC's one up all the PC's by virtue of their level. Maybe they need help with a cure spell to get their cleric back on his feet and try and make the party consist of classes that don't necessarily overlap with the PC's. Just using DM Rocco's wizard as an example perhaps their wizard is dead and during a tough fight on the way back the party fighter tells him to go through his (the dead wizards) scrolls and use them. Perhaps the same fighter has a broken (or recently amputated) arm and needs the help of the party tank in holding the line. Maybe he'll even loan him a powerful two-handed magic weapon or shield since he can't use either. Turning the NPC rescuers into DMPC's or overly powerful Deus Ex's might serve to frustrate the party further so try and avoid that.

 

[Al the Absentminded]

Poor GM obviously, who forgot the one rule GMs should stick to: Players should have fun with the game. Now you can discuss that with him, and if things don't improve, just seek another game.

I have seen much worse than this:

1) Game begins, and my character polymorphed into a bird flies over the castle we are supposed to investigate. My character lands down onto the highest tower's roof, and then the DM says: "You're dead". No amount of discussion changed anything to it. Of course the DM had a perfect explanation for this: "The vampire-mage-assassin has been alerted by a demon sentry in the ethereal, so he used his mirror of mental prowes to come to you and kill you. Period." End game for me after just 20 minutes of gaming session. Of course I didn't play again with that DM.

Was it known that there was an utter bad*** in the tower?

Because, either:

A) The vampire-mage-assassin doesn't care about being known, and thus people know that this tower is a _bad_ place to go. In which case the nearest town should have been full of dire warnings. In which case you should have been on full alert, checking for magic, astral, and etherial presence.

B) The VMA wants to remain relatively unknown. In which case casually slaughtering any shapeshifted human who lands on the tower is asking for trouble, when you can just suggest or charm them away.

C) The VMA doesn't mind the evil reputation, but he just moved in. In which case the DM shouldn't have used you as the first canaries for building up the local legends.

-Albert the Absentminded

 

[DM-Rocco]

My vote is for idiot player(s). You don't need remove disease, just make two checks in a row. *Hint, use the heal skill*, you mentioned the cleric had it aside from outrageous point buy and being gestalt. One half is mage (wizard?) what's your other half? Heal is a class skill for just about every class (IIRC) there's no excuse for one character to not have it maximized, and another two capable of aiding another.

I didn't read all of his comments or your replies, but not ever monster encountered has to be level apropriate because it dosn't have fought.

There might be some fault on the DM, I think some had mentioned new DM and gestalt campaign. That can be troublesome, but you should work together when something doesn't add up, not pick sides.

I will defend the DM in saying that he does know his rules, although, like everyone, including myself, I get them wrong from time to time. That said, I know he has DMed in the past, although, other than having him as a player in my own game, I have only played under him once. That was years ago and seemed fair, as did our first few sessions this time around.

As to a heal check, I might have oversighted the heal skill, I thought it was a cross class skill for my two classes, which are Wizard//Artificer. I don't think either gets it, but I would have taken ranks in it if it wasn't a cross class skill. As to the cleric and his heal skill, he made an initial heal check to determine I had the disease, then I was warped into the wilds. He on the other hand was at his son's birthday party, so he was not thier. There was a Dwarf in the party with a few ranks in the heal skill, but he always rolled under 5 when making checks, bad dice.

I think the situation is salvageable, like Imperialus had suggested, and he, meaning Evil DM, can be reasonable, but I think he made an error this time around, IMHO. I'm sure he will read this again later today and make comments. We shall see.

I really want to play, it took me forever to make a character for this game, as some of you might atest to from some of my threads recently in the last month or so.

 

[DM-Rocco]

Was it known that there was an utter bad*** in the tower?

Because, either:

A) The vampire-mage-assassin doesn't care about being known, and thus people know that this tower is a _bad_ place to go. In which case the nearest town should have been full of dire warnings. In which case you should have been on full alert, checking for magic, astral, and etherial presence.

B) The VMA wants to remain relatively unknown. In which case casually slaughtering any shapeshifted human who lands on the tower is asking for trouble, when you can just suggest or charm them away.

C) The VMA doesn't mind the evil reputation, but he just moved in. In which case the DM shouldn't have used you as the first canaries for building up the local legends.

-Albert the Absentminded

I don't think it matters the way I see it. I side with Turanil on this one. If the VMA had such a contempt for life that he would kill anything that comes near him their would be warning and legends everywhere. That said, even if he did as he did, knowing this, a good DM would at the very least play out a fight. I might see it on the DMs side if the VMA needed a contact in the world of dead to spot the constant sounds of those he slew from driving him mad so he killed the PC and plans on using him to silence the voices from the neither world, promising to return the PC to life with the use of a wish scroll and then leave the area forevermore. Although, even that is a bit much to take in